However, I find the chart a little misleading for a couple of reasons. (I’m not saying we’re not having economic problems, I’m just saying this chart may be exaggerating the contrast between the current problems and previous ones.)

There are two issues with the chart. First, the scale is in absolute numbers of jobs, rather than a percentage change. Since the total number of jobs at the peak was different in the different recessions, rather than saying “We lost 2.5 million jobs in 2001 and we’ve lost 3.5 million so far”, we need to express that as a percentage of the total jobs there were to start with. A blogger at time.com did a better job, with % changes and more historical data.

The second issue is a bit more subtle, however. The data are expressed as the “job losses relative to the peak month”. OK. But aren’t the peaks just as anomalous as the valleys, in some sense? If we had really high employment during a good period, that’s great. But I’d really rather compare the % losses to the annual average of the previous 12 months, or something to that effect, rather than simply to the peak month, which may have seasonal effects and other factors at work. (I do confess that I don’t know a lot about the underlying data for these charts and how it’s collected, which may have a large influence on whether we really care or trust a number like that, however.)

Oh sure, it was a fairy tale at first, but after the first few months of endless dancing, mindless nattering with the ladies of the court, and fingers sore from embroidery, Cinderella was thinking scrubbing floors for the cruel stepmother wasn’t so bad after all. She’d had time to herself then. Thoughts of her work didn’t follow her back to her straw pallet in the cellar at night. She’d had her friends the mice and birds.

Now people watched her every move from the moment she got out of her fluffy feather bed in the morning. The last mouse she’d seen had sent her maids to shrieking and been squashed by an overzealous page. Prince Charming was an utter bore, a trait tempered only by his continual absence.

She sighed and gazed out the high window of her bedchamber across the hills and valleys over which Prince Charming would someday rule. “Oh, Fairy Godmother, if only you could help me now,” she said.

<br/> “Come sit with me on the bed, Fairy Godmother. No, a little closer to the bedpost. What’s that? Oh no, the ladies of the court aren’t really all that bad, I suppose. Yes, yes, you’re very right. No… Oh, nothing, no worries. There, all done.” She looked up at Fairy Godmother, who wore a puzzled look on her face.

“What’s all this about, dear?”

Cinderella had tied Fairy Godmother’s feet to the bedpost with a silk scarf. “If Prince Charming is so wonderful, you live with him,” she said firmly. She gave Fairy Godmother a shove back onto the rumpled bedclothes and wrestled her wand out of her hand.

“But… Dear, I… that is…” Fairy Godmother sputtered.

“Bibbity Bobbity Boo,” said Cinderella.

And she lived happily ever after.

I knew a Chickadee, who hatched from his shell, came out of his tree, and flew away. One day he flew up to a temple, where a young monk fed him seeds. He stayed for many turnings of the moon, tamed by the monk to sit upon the windowsill and sing his song.

Autumn came, and the Chickadee thought to himself, “I should find the other chickadees and flock together with them.” But the monk fed him seeds, and the temple was warm and dry. The chickadee took to sleeping in a knothole in the rafters of the monk’s room, and after a while his wings were weak and forgot how to fly. The monk still fed him seeds, but the Chickadee grew sad and no longer sang his song.

One day a March wind blew through the windows of the temple, and the Chickadee stirred in his knothole. Out the window of the monk’s room, he saw another chickadee flying by, and soon the other chickadee came and sat on the sill of the window. He sang out to the Chickadee, “Why do you stay in this room? You should fly and sing.”

The Chickadee said to this other bird, “The monk feeds me seeds, and I have forgotten how to fly and sing.” But in his heart, the Chickadee knew that he missed soaring on the wind and singing his song in the sun.

The new bird said, “Come away and fly and sing.” But the Chickadee could not be moved from his knothole. So the new bird flew away, though he was sad to see the Chickadee still and silent in the temple.

The Chickadee knew that he should fly away from the temple, but his heart was heavy with fear. What if he could not make his wings fly? What if he could not remember his song?

When spring finally came, the Chickadee could no longer stay in the temple. He flew tentatively, down to the windowsill. He looked out over the trees and meadows, wondering where his friend the other chickadee had gone. And at last, he took wing and flew out from the temple.

At once he felt the exhilaration of flight, the wind bearing him up over the land. But he flew and flew and looked for his friend, and did not find him. When night came, he found a tree to roost in. When the morning sun warmed his feathers, he flew and looked for the other chickadee.

One day, flying above the trees, he saw his friend the chickadee in the distance, flying and swooping with another bird. They danced on the wind. The Chickadee was sad, because his friend had found another bird to fly and sing with. But the Chickadee watched them from afar, and his heart was glad for their dancing on the wind.

The next morning, when the sun warmed his feathers, the Chickadee sang.

So the final step of finding out where you should be is looking at everyone’s life with a clear lens. Adult life is really hard. Finding out who we are, and finding someone to share our life with, and having kids and still having a life, and being able to pay for all of that: Impossible, really.

So you look around and see who is doing what part of that well. And you pick the sacrifices that they made. Because no life is perfect, but all lives have some things to offer. Be clear on what you’re choosing and what you’re giving up, and don’t pick anyone’s life if they tell you they have everything: they’re lying.

It’s so true. I don’t have everything in that list — “finding out who we are, and finding someone to share our life with, and having kids and still having a life, and being able to pay for all of that” — but I have enough of those things that I realize I am truly happy with who I am, who I have become, and where I’m going for now. I’ve made choices, I’ve given things up, things have happened to me — but all in all, I like my life, and I’m thankful for the things I have, and don’t hold onto regrets over the choices I’ve made or the things I don’t have.

Sorry for the string of sappy blog posts recently, but I’ve lately been awed and humbled by the gifts the universe has given me…

Aside from my parents, there are four people in my list. These are the four people in the world who could call me at 3 a.m. and ask for help moving a body, and I would show up without asking questions. They’re the four people I would make sure got to the secure compound in the countryside after the nuclear holocaust.

They’re all from different parts of my life: high school, college, work, and completely random. We have different things in common. Mostly, they don’t know each other; they’re only connected through me. Only two of the four live in the same city that I do.

But I know this. Stephanie, Nick, Sara, and Chris: I love you, and I am so thankful that each of you is a part of my life.

I was thinking about writing today, and for the first time in my life, I longed for winter — the long, dark quiet of the night. All sounds are muffled, there is no smell but cold, and you can be utterly alone in a wide, wide world.

The summer night is full of sound, crickets chirping, locusts buzzing, traffic flying by even in the small hours. There are the smells of plants and dirt and barbecue and rainstorms. But in the winter night comes early, and with it the eerie silence made by a blanket of snow. Summer is all around you, there are living things everywhere, but in winter, you can look out upon the darkness and feel the world collapse in upon yourself. It is both lonely and freeing. I love the silence and the darkness, being alone with my thoughts that way. I have to answer to no one but the questions and doubts in my own mind. I can have endless conversations with myself, working out my desires and conflicts and the meanings the universe holds within me. It is a time of creation.

That seems odd, that winter should create. Fall heralds the oncoming onslaught of darkness and cold in which I can create within, while without it signals the destruction of the life of summer. Spring melts away the aloneness and freedom of winter and brings out summer’s stifling closeness. This, then, is finally the reason to love the winter, to always look to the north, to orient life toward the snows that are coming. Summer is easy to love, and it gives its love easily away, but winter is less kind and accommodating. You can love it on its own terms, for what it has to give, but its love is not the warm love of summer, and no fires and Christmas carols can make it anything but what it is. Winter is the state of suspension in which the soul is free to seek itself.

Far and away, the best thing I read this year was Little, Big by John Crowley. It’s not new; it was written in 1981 and won a World Fantasy Award in 1982. I don’t recall now how I stumbled across it, but I’m glad I did.

It’s a remarkable story, and really kind of indescribable. It feels something like an E.M. Forster novel with some inexplicable, mysterious magic about it. I could say it’s about fairies, but that doesn’t do it justice, and it’s not really about fairies at all. It’s about people, who are at once ordinary and utterly wondrous. It’s funny, it’s touching, it’s happy, it’s hopeful, it’s sad. I laughed and cried. Reading it feels like listening to a vast symphony of notes that conjures up your emotions and leaves you deliciously spent. I highly recommend it.

“The farther in you go, the bigger it gets.”

A traffic light late at night,
red, seems so pale and dim;
it fades into the darkness.
What might seem an angry admonition,
“STOP!” loses its exclamation,
an empty sputtering.
Stop or ignore, it doesn’t matter;
there’s no traffic anyway.
Its power is subsumed,
swallowed in the night.

Green, though—
green is red’s converse in every way.
“Go, go,” it breathes softly,
bathing the car in its seductive glow.
It beckons sotto voce:
forward, accelerate, seek no counsel.
It promises safe passage
without ever quite saying the words,
and if the car wrecks,
well, no one can say the light lied.
A promise written in photons
can’t be counted on.

I stand in the snow in my slippers
breathing in the darkness
smoking half a cigarette.
I am not a smoker
but sometimes I like to smoke.
Half a cigarette is enough.

I watch animals creep in the darkness
among the stark tree trunks,
Nature’s bones laid bare for the winter.
Orion hangs high in the sky above,
looking down on a blue neon clock
and the headlights of cars
creeping along a road far off.
City lights twinkle like the stars above.

I wonder who owns the windowless house
two doors down,
its walls crumbling
and snow piling on the floors.
Someone must own it, I reason;
after all, it’s a house,
not a tree.
Some corporation owns the neon clock
but no one owns Orion.
The birds don’t care;
they roost on the trees or the crumbling walls,
they shit on the clock and fly under Orion.

My cigarette half-smoked,
I stoop to extinguish it in the snow.
Inside when I take off my sweater,
I do not smell like myself.

My Life, and Some of the Things Dad Told Me About

by Phydalis Emma (King) Walraven

Born March 26, 1918 to Stella (Bassett) King and Ernest R. King. Baptized at St. Joseph’s Church. The rest of my life I have been a member of St John’s. Made my First Communion and was confirmed there. In September of 1936, the first day of September, also at St. John’s, Charles Walraven son of Anne and Anthony Walraven and I Phydalis King were married. We were blessed with six children:

Kenneth — October 23, 1937
John — December 5, 1939
Nancy — August 23, 1942
Lynda — July 7, 1944
Ilene — November 12, 1951
Luann — March 7, 1955

. . .

Now back to my childhood. We lived with my Grandparents Peter and Mary (Rickard) King. When I was two, Mom and Dad bought the farm, forty-five acres that my grandpa homesteaded when he came here from Canada. He built a fourteen-room house. Dad, Mom, and I lived in the back of the house and they lived in the front of the house. There was a stairway that went up from the back and the front.

I don’t know where my grandparents went to live after a July 5, 1920 chimney fire that destroyed the house. I don’t remember any more until four or five of living in the new house Dad built.

I remember of telling an old gentleman where the King place was as I was walking home from school and I told him “in that tar paper house.” When I got home he was there talking to Dad I learned he was the township supervisor.

I don’t remember what was on the sides of the house or when he finished it. I helped him put on the tile roof. He finished the house by the time I was sixteen. He built a beautiful stone fireplace in the living room. He took the wall out between the old living room and bedroom and made a beautiful big room. Then they had a fire and lost everything again (electrical fire).

My Grandpa King had planted a big orchard so there were all kinds of apples and pears and also a grape arbor. Back then everyone made wine and cider.

We also raised our own pork and beef, also had chickens for eggs and eating and cows for milk and butter.

When I was growing up my Grandfather Bassett would bring a big black suitcase filled with fireworks. Gramp was a diver and was away from home a lot. He put cables up the river deep so boats wouldn’t hit them. He drowned when I was twelve. It was a bad year.

In April 1934, Grandpa King was living with us when he passed away. In July Grandpa Bassett drowned, in August Grandma Bassett died, and in November my Great Grandma Willett died. I lost all my grands in six months. My Grandma King died when I was about five or six, I remember her though. She had breast cancer. After she passed on Grandpa mostly lived with us.

My Grandma Bassett and Aunt Cora came and stayed at our house in the summer to help Mom cook. We always had a couple of hired hands then. Grandma Bassett being an invalid since she was 36, I was with her a lot. She taught me just about any card game you could think of.

I went to Raby School. I graduated in June 1933. When I was twelve they paved Center Avenue so at recess at noon we would sit by the fence and watch. All that was where I decided I was going to marry Dad. It was six years later but it came true. Our corner was the gathering place. The kids on the south side of the road (22nd) went to Portsmouth School on Cass & Knight Road. We were on the north so we went to Raby on Center & Knight Road. That was when I first met Dad. He and Marv would come down and play cards with Charlotte and me.

I didn’t see him as much being two years older than I was he started high school. But when I started high school there were no buses. I rode to school with him and Aunt Jean. We started going to basketball games and that was it until we decided to set the date. I remember one night he walked down and I decided if he didn’t kiss me good night I was going to kiss him, and I did. His eyes got the most surprised look like a little boy getting caught in the cookie jar.

Charles’ dad bought a Model A Ford to drive to school and it also was for Marv to drive too. So Dad bought a Model T Ford Coupe. He took the wheels off an old Buick and put them on the T.

When we were in it, it was like being in a big truck, you could see over all the cars ahead of us. To keep it running all the you needed was gas, a couple of coils, some wire, and a pair of pliers. We could drive up to Rose City and back with it. Grandma Walraven would pack a lunch for us. We didn’t have much money back then.

Sometimes Dad would have a nickel and I would hunt up five pennies for big double dip ice cream cones. When we were dating Wenona Beach was the place to go. There was a ballroom where name bands played. A big building was where you could roller skate to music.

There was a rickety old Jack Rabbit and merry-go-round, arcades, and booths. The Fourth of July with fireworks, it was the place to go.

. . .

These are some things about your Dad. When they lived in Essexville, “they” were called Walraven’s Angels (Charles and Marv), they were always into something. One Easter Sunday they both had new suits. They lived across from the sugar factory and knew every part of it. (Grandpa worked there.) That Sunday after Church they went over there. It was pretty dark where they were but they knew where the plank was across the three foot open space between walls, but somebody moved it and they fell in there, new suits were full of soot. I can just hear Grandma Walraven when she saw them. Back then things were pretty bad not much money, and one of his friends had a big family, so when the coal cars came into the sugar factory they would climb up on the cards and throw coal down. Then they would all help pick it up and take to their friend’s place.

Every Saturday Dad and Marv caught the trolley car to the movies. It was in the building that Mill End is in. It was before the talkies so dad would read and tell Marv what was being said. People would holler at him to shut up.

The kids all swam in the river. Back then the raw sewage ran into the river. Dad always laughed when telling me they had to push the turds away to swim.

. . .

Dad graduated in 1934. I went to high school two years and I hated it. For Christmas of 1935 he gave me my first ring. It wasn’t very big but it sure sparkled. We set the date then September 1, 1936. Mom made me a beautiful wedding dress.

Charlotte had just come down with TB. We couldn’t decide on a hat or a veil. But I had my First Communion veil Grandma Bassett had hemmed by hand. And with a headband it was really nice.

. . .

Charles and I bought the twenty-acre farm across from my Dad’s place. We moved in the day before Thanksgiving. It was so nice to have our own place. The house was new but it was not finished inside. There was only one piece of sheet rock in the corner of the kitchen. The chimney was in the corner by it.

We covered the walls with heavy building paper. The kitchen, the bath, and in between the bedroom. We had a big wood stove for heat, a kerosene stove to cook on, a kitchen cabinet the shelf pulled out, and table and chairs new that Grandpa and Grandma Walraven gave us for a shower present.

For a wedding present they gave us a bed and dresser. We were in heaven.

We lived there seven and a half years. April 9, 1944 we moved to our place on Borton. It was quite a change, there were no cupboards, bathroom, or water in the house. There was a dug well with a pump.

Dad checked it out and had to clean it out, it had frogs and worms in it. Then he hauled some water in it until it rained then it would fill up. We got a well driller and soon had water in the house.

There was a sink but Joe Badaire’s sister was trying to take it out and her brother told her that went with the house. She also took the mailbox. Joe made her bring that back. It was so funny, she sneaked by the side porch and left it and ran back to the car.

We went to the lumber yard and bought two door upper cupboards and the lower had two doors and two drawers. It was a long room but only eight and a half feet wide. You had to walk a ways to get from stove to refrigerators and back to the sink or cupboard. The tables was in the center with one light bulb in the ceiling, it wasn’t very bright. Also the linoleum was gray, the wainscoting was gray, and two narrow windows.

The yard was mostly brush from the driveway to the front of the house. So I cut brush for a week. Dad was working at Dow’s.

There was no way to drain the field so we had a ditch dug along the east side for 80 rods. The corner on the back ten acres was sort of a creek bed, it had cattails, water with ducks in it, and lots of stones. One stone was so big Dad used TNT to break it so we could get it out.

Then we hired King Herman to clear it. He had a big single Prairie plow to go deep and break up all the brush.

The next year we did some tiling. We couldn’t afford all of it in one year. We had to place all the tile in rows “no wonder my arms are so long.” We would take two tile in each hand off the wagon. But we had unloaded them from the truck that brought them, then we had to reload them on the wagon. So they were handled many times. We tiled about four times, all cement tile.

In 1948 we remodeled. It had two hip roofs on the sides. We cut it down in four pieces and took the entire top off by putting up a jim pole and using the tractor and chains lifted each piece down to the ground. Had a lot of wood for the furnace. I sure pulled a lot of nails, a five-gallon pail full. My Dad and I did most of the work. Charles was still working at Dow’s. One night when we had the roof almost done and tarp over the rest, we got a real bad wind in the middle of the night. Dad was up on the roof putting some planks on the tarp, we were afraid it was going to take the whole roof off. It was the fall of 1947 we started. It was quite a job, had to put out bags of straw in between the eaves to keep out the cold. We had dug out a 14 by 24 basement for our bedroom, the entrance to the house and down the basement, and kitchen. We then got the drywall up. The first night we slept in our new bedroom it must have been about 30 degrees in there. We finished in August 1948 we plastered. It was so cold and damp that week that Dad and I slept on the springs and mattress on the kitchen floor. Dad had such a cold and going to market not getting enough sleep I thought he was going to have pneumonia. But we all survived. The next summer we put in the cupboards and covered the wood floor.

. . .

Dad and I accomplished a lot in 44 years of farming.

The first ten to fifteen years we always had a horse and a cow and chickens and pigs. When we were farming our first twenty acres we always had old nags, we couldn’t afford and young teams were not for us.

We had one old white horse that I used to pull a spike drag over the potato rows before they came up to knock out the small weeds. We couldn’t afford new harness so the blinders to keep them from looking to the side or back were in very bad shape. The blinder on the right side hung down and she could see me. She would slow down, so I had a stick with a three-foot clothesline rope. All I had to do was hold it up and twirl it in the air and boy did we ever speed up.

For quite a number of years I canned about 1,000 quarts of tomatoes, peaches, plums, and assorted relishes, also jams and jelly. We never were hungry. Had to stretch our money until the next year.

In 1953 we bought 80 acres of hunting ground in Gladwin, put up a cabin and built a fireplace. Sold it before Dad passed on.

We garden farmed until 1956 when we bought the Pinconning farm from Uncle Fred and Aunt Cora. The man that owned the ground before them raised sheep so every ten acres has fences around it. So we had steel posts and rolls of fence to take down. Then we went through the same thing with the tile again. About four or five more times put in tile. When we retired we rented it to Sonny Vermeesch. Then we had a pond dug and well drilled to fill the pond so he could irrigate. We started raising potatoes and it was too hard to bring the machinery back and forth so we rented out the farm on Borton.

In 1956 we bought four lots on South Dease Lake near Hale, and built the first cottage on lot 1.

In about 1974 we built the last cottage on side of hill. Had a full basement, it was a 24 foot by 24 foot chalet with an eight and a half foot wide porch the entire width with a bedroom above it. One large bedroom at the other end upstairs. Bath, bedroom, kitchen and dining area, and living room on first floor. I sold it two years after Dad died. Being built in the side of the hill it was 30 feet up to the room above the porch.

In 1978 we built the new house where the old school stood on Borton. When they closed the school the land reverted to us and that is where we built.

After 44 years we retired. Then Dad had his big surgery but came through it good and we had a chance to do some traveling, eight and a half years. Our trips with Jake and Arlene were wonderful.

In January 1994 Dad learned he had cancer. He lived until May 14.

In April 6, 2001 moved to Reese. I bought a very nice condo.

The year before I moved I had double bypass, two weeks later had a blood clot. I ended up as a heart attack and cardiac arrest. They used paddles to start my heart and here I am today. It is now October 11, 2003.

. . .

Lynda asked me what my favorite flower was. I started to laugh because Dad always kidded me about “licking lilacs.” There was an old fallen-down house on the way up to the cottage. It must have been for a long time, it was surrounded with bushes because you could only see a few boards. They were so pretty.