Angry

I’m glad not to be a man

Glad to be a woman

But being angry just isn’t sexy

And I’m angry a lot these days

(Today a woman died from a back-alley abortion)

Sometimes the only way to sleep is to run

Mile after mile to quiet my brain

(Today a girl screamed as an old woman cut off her clitoris with a dirty knife)

I don’t cry much anymore

It’s not his fault the world is crazy

(Today a girl lies in a hospital, burned with acid)

But there’s a war on women

And I am a woman

Exploding with power

And anger

(Today a woman was murdered by her husband)

You can’t hold a hand

That is clenched into a fist

Hairvolution

It’s been an insane summer. Late nights down at the state capitol, testifying, waiting, screaming, waiting, marching, waiting, crying. Helping my daughter film a movie on the evenings and weekends. Falling asleep over spreadsheets, getting up four hours later to do it all again. And in the middle, losing my faithful and beloved German Shepherd, who finally gave up her fight with time and slipped away from us. My friends say, you were there, you were the “unruly mob,” you’ve got to write about that. But it’s so raw and yet already over-analyzed and over-debated.  Every day I get emails asking me to “stand with Wendy” by donating money, and every day some Republican or another posts something that again betrays an absolute and carefully crafted ignorance of the issue and the people it affects.

So I’m going to leave all that alone for now, and write about a very quiet and personal revolution. A hair revolution.

You see, most of my life, I’ve had long hair. Growing up in the70s with all those long-haired female movie stars, I decided to stop cutting my hair, and soon it was long enough to sit on, a thick, wavy, hot blonde mass of hair. My mom put it up in tight braids. I took it down again. I rode my horse and let it blow loose in the wind, then cried for an hour as the tangles were brushed out. Oh, it was heavy and sweaty in the summer, caught on my sweaters and coat in the winter, and drove me crazy in every season, but I loved it. I would stand in front of the mirror and see a goddess in my reflection. For a while when I was a teenager I cut it short, but when I met my husband, he begged me to grow it long again, so I did.

Then I moved to Texas in the middle of a terrible heat-wave, and one day I just drove over the Floyd’s barbershop and told the stylist, “cut it all off.” She was a bit tentative, afraid perhaps that I would hate it, but I reassured her that I really wanted it short. Of course my normally unruly hair was particularly wavy, smooth, and gorgeous that day, but I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

When she was done, I looked in the mirror. I knew that I would look weird to myself, that it would take some time to get used to. I hadn’t expected how short hair exposed all of my physical realities, uneven ears, the middle-aged softening of the skin on my jaw and neck. For days, I walked around feeling naked, exposed, vulnerable. When I went to bed at night, I missed the hair curling around my neck and warming me. When I looked in the mirror, a stranger looked back at me. But when I went for a jog, or rode in the convertible, or jumped in the local pool with my kids, I reveled in the freedom. My hair had been so thick and heavy that it gave me headaches. If I parted it on the side it would actually pull my head into a slight tilt. If I left it loose, it shielded my eyes from the world like a veil.

Without it, slowly I stopped thinking about my hair any more.  I stopped buying conditioner and hair bands. I stopped carrying a hair brush in my bag. But something else, something unexpected happened. For the first time in my life, I realized just how important my physical looks had always been to me, and in a strange way, I began to understand men just a little bit better. Without my long hair to camouflage  me, my face just is what it is. And I stopped worrying about it. I didn’t realize it, but the time I spent thinking about how other people perceive my looks dwindled. As did mental comparisons between myself and other women.

Backpacking a few weeks ago with my family, when I was overheated, I just scooped a handful of water  out of the river and dropped it on my head, ran my fingers through my hair, and my primping was done. I had to sunscreen the back of my neck, but otherwise my short hair was completely liberating.

As the weather gets cooler, I am entertaining the thought of growing my hair out again. But if I do, my relationship with this stuff that grows on my head has permanently changed.

On the Porch

Why is it that our family trips always seem to go awry? There was that camping trip three years ago that included snow, wildfire, dust storms, and an unfortunate incident in Sante Fe. This year’s fun was supposed to be backpacking in Arkansas, which included a case of food poisoning, a lovely downpour, a totally failed rainfly, an all-night drive across Texas (with a stop in a cornfield to look at the meteor shower), and finally ended in Big Bend, where rainflies are seldom required.

It was my first trip to Big Bend, and so amazing. Renee begged to stay until the last possible moment, so we made the last day an excursion to Terlingua. It’s a long drive down from the Chisos Basin, across the western half of the park and into Terlingua. In fact, when you get to Terlingua you’re not quite sure if you’ve found it or not, because it doesn’t look that much like a town. You go past a scattering of stone and adobe buildings in various stages of collapse, past the cemetery, and finally wash up against the most likely looking thing in town – the store. It has a roof, a wide porch, a couple of cars out front, and some people; yep, this must be the center of things. We crawled out of the Subaru, pulled on our hats to protect our eyes from the glaring sun, and climbed the steps to the porch. Long benches ran the whole length of the building under the shady overhang. A couple of guys were sitting there like they had no place else interesting to be, and a dog sniffed around. I looked at the signs on the wall that read No Dogs on the Porch and I looked at the dog. One of the guys said, “Thing about dogs is, they can’t read.”

Can’t argue with that. There was an acoustic guitar on a guitar stand and a bulletin board with advertisements pinned to it next to the heavy carved wooden doors. I pulled open the door and wandered inside. The store building was vast and high ceilinged, naturally cool by virtue of the thick adobe walls. Polished rocks and scorpions in acrylic and serapes and other touristy eye-catchers were arranged attractively on the shelves and walls. Tri-fold ‘walking tour’ brochures were offered for $1 each next to the cash register. We bought one and ventured out into the blinding sun to explore. We prowled through an arroyo and several partially ruined buildings that had once housed the Mexican miners. The kids complained bitterly of the heat, so we took them back to the porch of the store and bought two cold Mexican Cokes. Which tasted like childhood and regret. We sat on the benches and savored them, listening to the locals.

“It’s not too hot today.”

“It’s starting to cool off some. I slept last night with a sheet over me.”

“Yup. I’m off the grid, so I’ve got no A/C at my place.”

“I don’t have any electricity. The house is wired, but it’s not hooked up.”

Leaving the kids and the locals to enjoy the shade, my husband and I explored a little more. The ruined school, complete with a 6-hole outhouse, and the restored church, with a new roof and swallows swooping in and out of the open windows, decorated for a wedding. I walked into a prickly pear and spent several minutes transferring the spines from my toes to my fingers before giving it up. I took a picture of a rusty old truck and a wagon wheel. We returned to the porch, where the kids had finished off the Cokes and were working on a bottle of water. A mountain biker, sunburnt and sweaty, pulled up to the store, leaned his bike against a post, picked up the guitar, settled on a bench and began to strum.

“I’m hot,” said Emily.

“I’m hungry,” said Renee.

Their faces were bright red from the heat. It was probably only about 110, but my little Oregonians just can’t handle that much solar energy.

“Let’s go see the cemetery and then find something to eat.”

I’m a freak for old cemeteries. I love the peace and the history in them. I love the stories they tell. This one was special. Even the unmarked graves were carefully tended, decorated with silk flowers and wooden crosses and other trinkets. Some graves were festooned with bridal wreaths and veils. A firepit showed where the annual Dia de los Muertos celebrations were held. Like all old cemeteries, the saddest were the graves of all the children killed in the influenza epidemic of 1918. But my kids were fading fast, and the camera batteries were dead. We sought the shelter of a local eatery.

The only thing open was the café of a small local hotel. It showed no signs of life on the outside, but when I poked my head in, there was a cloud of smoke over the regulars’ table and a large man behind the bar.

“We’re open, and we’re air conditioned. Come on in,” said the proprietor.

“Best place in town to eat,” commented one of the regulars from under his ten-gallon hat.

“You’ve got Shiner Bock on tap,” I said reverently. “Let me go grab the fam.”

When we got back inside, there was an icy mug of Shiner Bock on the end of the bar waiting for me.

I ordered a bowl of chili, of course.

Down at the Statehouse

I am tired and this may not be the most cohesive thing I ever wrote, but I am also angry and heartsick and needing to say what is swimming around in my brain.

After I got off work yesterday, I hurried downtown to take my opportunity to speak out against HB60, along with hundreds of other men and women of Texas. I hadn’t had dinner. My children were anxiously awaiting my return for the dozens of projects they want to do and things they want to tell me at the end of every day. But to stand by and do nothing while the committee debated was not possible.

It was interesting to listen to the testimony. Those who stood in favor of the bill fell into two categories. The pathetically ill-informed, who often resorted to calling upon God to fill in the gaps of their testimony, and the sad, deeply personal stories of a few who had either been coerced into abortion or who had chosen to continue a pregnancy with a terribly flawed fetus that could not live. While their stories were touching, it was interesting that they failed to see that through their words shone the true value of the choice that they were speaking against. Of course, those speaking against the bill were generally, but not always women, highly educated and well-informed, though often young, nervous, and in some cases nearly incoherent with emotion.

The testimony dragged on into the night. I kept checking my phone, but after my husband texted me that he had fed the kids Torchy’s Tacos and put them snugly to bed, I determined to stay until the dawn or later to have my say. Unfortunately, that time never came. In an unprecedented move, the chairman closed the proceedings while at least 200 still waited to speak, telling us that we were becoming repetitive. We stood and shouted in outrage. We refused to leave.  We asked the sympathetic members of the committee (all women, by the way) to intervene in our behalf. The chair agreed finally to hear 30 more minutes of testimony.  We selected a few of those who were oldest or had traveled the longest or who had great credentials to speak on our behalf.  The chair complained bitterly of our lack of respect, often interrupting speakers who had travelled across the state and waited for hours to remind us about his right to respect. I left the chamber at 1:30am and dragged myself home, too tired to eat but too upset to sleep.

So, since I did not have the chance to stand and speak last night, here is my testimony.

My name is Geraldine Mongold, representing myself and Faith Action for Women in Need, and I am against HB60. Mr. Chairman, you tell me that you have treated me and the others here with respect. Sir, I know exactly what respect looks like. Respect is not calling a special session in order to ram anti-choice legislation through the legislature. Respect is not closing most of the abortion clinics in the state and calling it an improvement in women’s health. Respect is not trying create a de-facto ban on abortion, when safe and legal abortion is supported by the clear majority of Texans. Respect is not burning up the three minutes people are allowed to speak with your own reiteration of the procedures or grand-standing or cutting them off before their time is up. Respect is not wandering in and out of the chamber when men and women tell the most intimate stories of their lives. Respect is not shoving an ultrasound wand inside a woman’s vagina for a painful, medically-unnecessary state-mandated rape because she should have the bad fortune to need an abortion or even because she is miscarrying her wanted child. I grew up in a Texas that had scientifically accurate sex education. I grew up in a Texas where a well-equipped and fully funded Planned Parenthood was around the corner to provide the high-quality health care and family planning that an uninsured teenager needed to ensure she could manage her fertility and make her own choices in life. I used to be so proud of being a Texan. But now, I am ashamed. When friends tell me “if you’ve got a uterus, you’ve got to leave that state,” I have to agree that they speak the truth. I fear for my daughter's future in a state that values the right to carry a gun on the college campus she attends over her right not just to bodily integrity and choice, but her right to life itself. Because HB60, if enacted will cause even more deaths of Texas woman, already suffering from cuts to women’s health programs and the failure of this state to expand Medicaid coverage. This bill is a hateful attack on Texas women and their families and must not be enacted.

Entitlement

My parents are retired and live in rural Arkansas. Living on social security and a tiny teacher’s retirement check is really tough. Getting adequate healthcare from a combination of VA benefits and Medicare is even tougher. And neither VA nor Medicare offers dental care. Untreated periodontal disease is taking its toll. My mom emailed me a few weeks ago to tell me that there was a once-a-year free dental clinic in Arkansas, and could my husband Dan please come up and take Dad to it.

It sounded like such an ordeal for an 82-year-old guy that I went to my local dentist to ask about alternatives. I spent an hour talking to the staff – they searched for dental programs and clinics in Texas and in Arkansas that he might be eligible for and came up with nothing. Although they offered to do the work themselves on a payment plan, he needs thousands of dollars worth of care that no one in the family can afford. So Dan packed up the Subaru and drove north.

Last Thursday, Dan and my dad drove from Odem to Arkadelphia to go to the clinic. It was set up at a school. The line started forming the day before. They checked in, received armbands, and were directed to a row of hard metal folding chairs outside. This was where they were to spend the night. Porta-potties were provided, but if they left the line for any other reason, their armband numbers were removed from the list and they lost their place in line. Storms raged through Arkansas that night. Tornadoes were sighted in several communities, accompanied by hail and floods. Dan sat with my dad all night, both snoozing as best they could in folding chairs. Cops were there to keep the crowd under control.

They were awakened at about 4:30 AM by the clinic staff.  By this time over 600 people had lined up hoping for dental care; many had to be turned away. As part of the first group, my dad was shown into the school gymnasium, filled from one end to the other with temporary dental chairs. He took a seat. The volunteer dentist asked him which teeth were the problem. Dad pointed them out. The dentist numbed his mouth, pulled out the five teeth, gave him a bottle of ibuprofen and a bottle of antibiotics, and sent him on his way. He got home and went straight to bed. 

Next year, if he goes back to the annual clinic, he can be fitted with dentures or partials. They only do dentures every other year.

Two days later, on a so-called liberal Facebook group that an acquaintance had added me to, someone posted a meme of two rustics with bad teeth with a joke about inbreeding. When I took the group to task for making fun of poverty, they explained that they were just making fun of poor people who vote Republican against their best interests, and explained that there was no excuse for such bad dental health, since ‘you can get free dental care.’ The discussion quickly devolved to a rant about how those stupid red states should just have to fend for themselves. I opted out of the group within the hour.

Dan says the people who ran the clinic were ‘real nice.’ I wonder why these nice people created such a miserable and dehumanizing experience for the people they serve. Why exactly was it necessary for a frail 82-year-old man to spend a stormy night in a metal chair? Why was it necessary for a cop to guard him? Mission of Mercy indeed. He doesn’t need mercy. He needs respect. The man served in Korea and Vietnam; he gave his youth and his innocence to his country. As an old soldier, he waited patiently in line and was grateful for what he received. Next year, my husband will drive back to Arkansas and take him to the clinic in whatever town it is held.

God bless America.

at Genuine Joe's

light slanting through bamboo shades

onto a dusty painted concrete floor

young men with serious faces and laptops

under strings of christmas lights

black lipstick and canvas shoes

and screenplays blossoming in ragged spiral notebooks

pairs of gray-haired women

someone laughing too loud, head thrown back

and the waitress with short bleached hair

playing percussion with a dishpan full of cups

dreams wrested from the dregs

paper napkin genius crumpled

on the empty tables

at closing time

The Unified Theory

I totally understand the physicist’s fascination with the “unifying theory.” Sometimes we just want things to make sense, want there to be a reason for the way things are. Sometimes I cook up a theory that’s perfectly logical to me, but trying it out on other people is a bit risky. Just explaining it is hard. Well, I told my daughter today that being nervous about something was no reason not to do it, so here goes.

So what about this war on women anyway? I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, a time when women made great progress in this country, a time when rock & roll was king, STD’s could be cured with a shot, and my best buddy’s mom worked at the local Planned Parenthood. We had sex education in schools AND at church. There was no such thing as a purity ball. Birth control and abortion were non-issues. I went to parties and dances and school trips without fear of being raped. When I started dating, my grandmother interrogated me to ensure that I was on the pill. I joined the army and never suffered from assault or even harassment from my fellow soldiers. The one guy who harassed a woman in our Reserves unit got unceremoniously kicked out of the military. And when our gubernatorial candidate made a casual joke about rape, he was shredded at the polls and lost to a fiery gray-haired Democratic woman.

So, what the hell happened? Why, at a time when the clear majority of Americans support free birth control, legal access to safe abortions, and equal rights for women, are so many fundamentalists crawling out of the woods to wage an unprecedented war on our bodies and our rights? Why is any media time devoted to rape apologists, deniers of domestic abuse, and people who actually say with a straight face that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote? Why is the "leadership" of my own state mandating invasive trans-vaginal ultrasounds for women who seek abortion, and wasting my tax dollars in the attempt to close the remaining abortion clinics in the state?

 The thought came to me as I was sitting in traffic in Austin. I was meditating sadly on my own inability, as a consultant who is constantly traveling to meetings, to divorce my car, and the general state of the environment, when the connection suggested itself. Here we are, in the midst of a catastrophic drought in central Texas. Wildfires have decimated our forests. Ranchers are selling off their cattle and their land. Houses in the hill country sit empty because their community water supply has dried up.  Dead trees punctuate the hillsides, gray skeletons among the springtime screen of baby leaves. There is a sprinkle of wildflowers on the verges that should be blankets of blue and red. And what are we doing about this? Practically nothing, actually.

In general, I blame fear for the evils of the world. It’s an annoying habit of mine, to try to make sense of everything, and to look for root causes everywhere. Why does that family member make irrational and self-destructive decisions? Why does that colleague lash out at team members in meetings? Why did my  cousin’s wife's sister get nasty in a debate about prayer in school and unfriend me on Facebook? Why? It usually seems to come down to fear. Yeah, okay, I’m not fearless. Hell, I get scared about all kinds of stupid things. Skiing moguls. Dancing in public. Job interviews. But I’ve been figuring out how to get past it and live with it since I was a little girl.


I’ll tell you what I’m really scared of. I’m terrified of global warming. I’m frightened for my children and their futures. I look back on my own childhood and the blissful innocence and ignorance I had, we all had, about our world, and sometimes I want so badly to wish myself back to that place. I wish I could go back to an Austin without traffic jams, a Texas that had open country between the cities, a Dallas with endless flocks of birds and the Milky Way in the sky at night. I can wish with all my might for this, but there is no going back, and forward looks pretty horrifying. Desertification, mass extinctions, coastal flooding, famine, economic and political collapse. I’m a natural optimist, but even the best-case scenarios are awful to contemplate.

The climate-change deniers might be able to fool a few people for a little while, but I don’t think they’re fooling themselves. I think this ridiculous war on women’s rights is a desperate attempt by people of little courage and less honesty to attempt to control something, anything, in this big scary modern mess of a world we’ve created. Women’s bodies are intimately connected to the rhythms of the earth, to life and death and the warm mucky wormy soil. Our destruction of the planet and systemic violence against women are two symptoms of the same disease. These fundamentalists and their pet politicians remind me of toddlers screaming at and kicking the mother who said ‘no’ to that toy at the store. Just as our mothers controlled our lives and choices when we were young, Mother Nature rules us all. Her laws are immutable; no matter how much we rail against her authority we hold no sway over her decisions. Her body gives birth to us, nurtures and holds and inspires us, and eventually consumes us when our span of years is complete. For centuries, our societies and religions revered and deified the Mother, but as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam spread across the globe, the Goddess was demonized and driven underground. The lives and bodies of women as well as the earth itself were reduced to resources entrusted to man by a male God. This myth of human domination and control of nature is so interwoven into our social structures, our economies, our language, and our lives that it is almost impossible to travel to a different mental space and imagine a different philosophy.

The current attempt to legislate and codify sexual activity, family life, and child-bearing is the terrified midnight screaming of men and women who are trying to hide from the catastrophe of a failing civilization. The news today of legislators in North Carolina attempting to create an official state religion is just one more foolish attempt to build a wall around the reality we choose instead of facing the reality that is. There is only one word for this:  insanity.

What is the cure for this madness? People of courage must be willing to stand unflinchingly in front of the gates of the hell we have created. We must open our doors and invite terror and death and despair to the table. We must play the cards that we hold because there is no ace up our sleeves, and we all know it. Shall I deal you in?

Beautiful

Occasionally, one of my friends will post one of those “I’m not perfect, I have curves, I don’t wear makeup” memes on Facebook, and dozens of people will like and share. While I appreciate the concept of being proud of who you are, I never share or comment or like these things. Why? Well, two reasons. One is, I’m actually kinda fit and by grace of DNA on the tall and lanky side. The other reason? Because it’s ALWAYS women who post that meme. Think about it. Do guys you know post on Facebook “I’ve gained a few pounds and I can’t see my toes anymore and I never shave on the weekend, but my looks don’t define who I am!” I mean, really. Not that guys don’t care about their looks, or never feel insecure, or crave a little validation. Of course they do. Tell a guy that you like the shirt he’s wearing, and he’ll smile for a day. But they don’t feel the need to be publically defensive about their looks, or self-deprecating, or boastful either. What kind of things do my male friends post? Pictures of their dogs, their cars, their kids, the artwork they’ve painted, the cover of their latest album, pictures of the bathouse they built for a friend…..it’s about what they do, not what they look like. 

My friends who post these “I’m not perfect” memes are, in fact, beautiful, every one of them. Smart, accomplished women. Women with advanced degrees. Women who run their own companies. Women who are comfortable talking into a microphone in front of an audience of hundreds. Women who support their families. Women who can manage a classroom full of children. Women who inspire and motivate and educate me. Why should they call attention to the stretch marks that I will never see? I have some too. I’m a 46-year-old mother and proud of the scars and physical signs of a life well-lived. My body carries me on this incredible journey called life. I try to treat it with respect, and it keeps on operating, every day, for which I am constantly grateful. If I were built like a model, could this body do all the things I need it to do?

Mud and Sweat

On Saturday, I went to an awesome workshop at Renee’s schoolhouse on Hugelkultur. You might ask what that is. I did. The basic idea is to use buried rotting wood to hold moisture and build soil in your garden. For us here in Central Texas, where our main crop is rocks and we are suffering from what appears to be endless drought, anything that helps build soil and reduce water use is worth a try.

About 20 of us gathered at the schoolhouse, and after a brief introduction to the concept, got to work digging a semi-circular trench in front of the house and deconstructing a raised bed in the vegetable garden across the street for the good top soil it contained. I volunteered for raised bed demolition, but progress was significantly side-tracked by my daughters who discovered it was a terrific habitat for wolf spiders. A couple of the guys digging the trench had pick-axes, and we discovered an interesting scientific truth. In the battle between pick-axe and PVC, pick-axe trumps. In other words, do make sure you know where your water lines are before you try this at home! At least the kids got an interesting lesson in emergency plumbing.

While we waited for the plumbing repairs, a few of us scrounged around the back yard and the vegetable garden for old firewood and lumber. The older the better. The stuff you can’t even burn in the fireplace because you can stick your fingers into the decomposing wood; that’s the best stuff. We made a huge pile of it. Some of the pieces were too large to be useful, so I grabbed the bow saw and started cutting it down to size. A couple of the younger children watched me saw for a minute, then one little boy said “I could help you with that.” It’s a sign of how the schoolhouse has changed me that I didn’t look around for a parent, I just said “sure,” handed him the saw, and showed him how to use it. Of course, then all the kids wanted a turn. It took a long time to cut that log, but efficiency wasn’t the point.

Finally the PVC was repaired, the trench was completed, and we piled the wood in, filling the trench and then mounding it up a foot or more above grade. After the wood was in place, we shoveled all of the dirt over the wood. When we finished, it looked a lot like an oversized grave. Plot ideas for murder mysteries skipped through my brain. The final step was to edge the bed with rocks and bricks to prevent the mounded dirt from washing away.

The theory behind Hugelkultur is that the rotting wood absorbs moisture like a sponge, releasing it slowly and eliminating the need for irrigation. It also releases nutrients and builds the soil. By all accounts it’s a very effective and sustainable gardening method, and I can’t wait to try a variation of it in my own not-yet vegetable garden, a very rocky strip of backyard with almost no topsoil. I don’t know how long the bed will continue to serve its purpose before it must be replenished. One article I read said “up to 20 years,” but I suspect there are a lot of variables that will affect that. Still, I’ve had limited success with traditional raised beds and mulch, so I’m bought in to the concept. It makes sense.

The best part of the day wasn’t that we created a great new gardening spot at the schoolhouse. It was the event itself. A few snacks, some rusty shovels, two wobbly wheelbarrows, a pitcher of ice water, and an odd assortment of Austinites working and learning together in a community of sweat and dirt and laughter – a reminder of what could be and should be.

...and the kitchen sink

It’s never been my goal to live in a big, luxurious house, or in a planned neighborhood with gates and an HOA. So when I started looking for a house to buy in Austin, I gravitated towards the comfortable south Austin neighborhoods I’m most familiar with. And found a darling little place, built on a hillside, that looks oddly like an English half-timbered cottage. It was in respectable condition, passed the VA inspection anyway, but terribly plain with white paint and generic fixtures. Happily, the owners took our low-ball offer, and after the usual amount of paperwork and frustration, we moved in.

The entire neighborhood was built in the 80’s by a developer whose mantra must have been ‘fast and cheap.’  We knew that new cabinets in the kitchen would be high on our list of priorities. I wasn’t expecting the plumbing to be so substandard. A leaking kitchen faucet that was corroded in place led to a weekend project to replace both the sink and the faucet. As usual with such projects, three trips to the hardware store and considerable frustration ensued. Finally, the new deep, cast iron sink and tall, curved faucet were installed and the various adjustments completed. It’s the best looking thing in the house, and makes the rest of the kitchen look pretty shabby in comparison.

As I look around the house at all the evidence of shoddy workmanship, I feel discouraged at all the work ahead of me. But my new sink is a pleasure to use. I can easily fill up my tallest stock-pot. Washing dishes is no longer a tedious chore. The smoothness of the white porcelain reminds me of my grandmother’s kitchen every time I do the dishes, and recalls happy memories. And for some reason, the traces of my fingertips in the caulk around the edge of the sink gives me a warm sense of accomplishment.

And that, I think, is the difference between a craftsperson and a laborer. My house was built by corporate laborers, hired at the cheapest possible rate, who were no doubt encouraged to work quickly by a foreman who was incented on the number of houses he constructed in the least amount of time. While I do not claim to be a highly skilled plumber or carpenter, when I’m working on my own house, I use the best quality materials I can afford, work slowly, and do the best job I can;  not just because I’m going to live with the results for many years, but also because I enjoy the work. There’s something very satisfying about figuring out the proper geometry of the plumbing, or finding the right router bit to shape the wood just as I wish. There’s something very real about the stickiness of the caulk on my fingers, the smell of the pine as I cut it, the creative potential in a newly opened can of paint. No one’s telling me what to do, or how to do it, or setting a budget for me, or paying me anything but compliments for my work, and somehow that’s part of the satisfaction. And well, that leather tool belt is pretty macho too.

When I read those helpful articles on social media or quotes by Steve Jobs advising people to find a career that they love, I tend to get a little hot under the collar. It sounds so simple when stated by a person who was blessed with exceptional intelligence, looks, educational opportunities, and luck. So many people today struggle to find any work at all. Any number of educated, talented people in my circle of friends and family are unemployed, underemployed, and financially desperate. No matter how creative, smart, or entrepreneurial they are, they can’t make something out of nothing, can’t start their own company with no funds or support, can’t focus on the deepest desire of their hearts when their brains are fully occupied with where the rent money will come from this month. Many others are working at jobs that are just jobs, because they have family to support and bills to pay. How are people to find the kind of creativity and satisfaction in their work that I experience when tinkering in my house? How is it that American productivity is so high when Americans’ satisfaction with their careers is so low? What is it that we are so busy producing, exactly? And why does it have to be such a miserable experience?

In contemplating this, I did a little research. As usual, the answers I found just let to more questions.

Fact: In 2012, corporate profits hit an all-time high, while employee earnings were at their lowest ever.

Fact:  While workforce productivity has grown steadily since 1945, wages have remained stagnant since 1975.

Fact:  In the past year, my home state of Texas has seen job growth, primarily in the services, leisure and hospitality, and mining industries.

In other words, we’re working our asses off at increasingly menial and low-wage jobs.

For most Texans, this is probably not news. The question is, what are we going to do about it?