An Odd Inventory in Bangkok

Two members of my tour group and I were walking down one of the main streets of Bangkok. It was probably Sukhumvit Road, often billed as the longest street in the world, stretching through Bangkok all the way to the Cambodian border. Like many of Bangkok’s busy streets, this was a formidable, 6-lane expanse. It certainly wasn’t like the streets in the old sections of European cities where tourists wander.

The sun beat down on us along the treeless stretch. Occasionally we’d see a person hurrying along, wearing a mask, an obvious precaution against Bangkok’s notorious smog. The street was not particularly pedestrian-friendly not only because it posed such a hazard from traffic exhaust, but also because it couldn’t be crossed. When some shop on the other side of the street caught our attention, we looked in vain for a way to get to that other side. We found that there aren’t frequent traffic lights in Bangkok as there are in most U.S. cities. There was no question of trying to dodge across those six lanes of traffic. That would have been a death-defying, Evel Knievel feat. We saw we would have to walk the equivalent of four or five blocks in order to get to one of the steel bridges that span the street at rare intervals. So we contented ourselves with what was on “our side.”

We imagined the people whose shops lined the sidewalk would similarly make the distinction between “our” side and “their” side.” The traffic lanes created two different turfs with very little easy, friendly interaction between the two. We even fancied that if you were born to parents with a shop on one side of the street, it was likely you might never venture to that other side, a permanent “terra incognita.”

But there was plenty to see and do just sticking to the one side. The work-a-day world is much more open to view in places such as Thailand than it is in the U.S. where work and home are strictly separated and where work is most often restricted to shops and offices behind closed doors. In that sense, Thailand is the ideal setting for home-schoolers. Children can see what their parents do for a living and can even participate in the work, learning “on the job.”

We passed by a number of mechanics’ shops. Greasy engines and auto parts spilled out onto the sidewalk, looking like a bunch of captives making a break for it. The cars that the engines had come from were also often astride the sidewalk and were being operated on by individuals sprawled under them. So we had the interesting experience of stepping over supine bodies as we walked along. Sometimes it wasn’t cars being operated on, but tuk tuks, Thailand’s famous electrified rickshaws.

Some of the shops had roll-up doors raised as if inviting an audience to view a stage show on which the curtains had been raised. We saw a woman pedaling furiously at a fabric being fed through an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine. Another shop featured a performance by two workers dipping rolled T-shirts and scarves into vats for tie dying. Some of their finished products were pinned up, brightly waving at us. In still another shop we saw a blender whirring away on a counter making bubble tea to which tapioca pearls would be added.

Farther along, we saw a man engaged in some dovetail joinery project. He was deftly attaching wooden boards to each other at right angles, obviously making some sort of box. As we paused, he looked up and gestured us to come in and watch. We gleefully took the chance to make contact with a real native. The man spoke perfect English and we immediately started to pepper him with questions about what it was like to live in Thailand. He was apparently a more affluent entrepreneur because he told us that he sometimes would take the summer months off, get away from steamy Bangkok, and go to his second home in Germany. We later learned this was a common practice among wealthier Thais. There’s a mass exodus from Bangkok in the summer as everyone who can afford to goes to relatively cooler Germany or other European countries.

The man stopped his work and escorted us down a breezeway to the back of his building to see his garden. He proudly pointed to the frangipani, hibiscus, and rhododendron that were in lush line-up along the borders of his yard. It was hard to focus on the beauty of these blooms though because our conversation was being conducted to the accompaniment of a steady, loud chorus of yapping. One side of the man’s yard was taken up by a dog run which had several scrawny dogs racing up and down its length, directing their fusillade of noise at our intrusion. The man explained that he often took stray dogs off the street. He said he tried to do something for them, but it was hard because there isn’t a strong tradition of adopting dogs as pets in Thailand. Dogs are left to scrounge and suffer injury on the streets against a background of most people’s indifference.

As we walked back through the shop, we noticed several racks of umbrellas standing at attention against one wall. The senior member of our little troop commented on this array and especially admired one frilly, flowered parasol. The man smiled benevolently at our companion. He took the umbrella off the rack and handed it to her with a little bow of respect. He said, “Here Madame, it is yours. No charge. It is such a hot, sunny day out. You need something to protect you from the sun.”

Our friend thanked him profusely, but then wondered how he came to have so many umbrellas for sale.

The man said that he came by all these used umbrellas at funerals. He said that mourners often carry umbrellas to shade themselves when they walk behind the casket as it is taken to the place of cremation. During the days of chanting and other rituals that precede the cremation, people often put down their umbrellas and forget them. If they were not very expensive umbrellas, no one ever comes back to claim them. So the man said he retrieved those umbrellas and sold them as an adjunct to his business.

Our friend was a tad less enthusiastic about her umbrella now that she knew it had been connected with a cremation. The man had said these umbrellas were left behind by mourners. But we could imagine that sometimes an umbrella might have belonged to the actual deceased, part of the individual’s worldly belongs that were shed. However, our friend was still appreciative of the present. But she wondered how the man happened to attend so many funerals.

“Oh, I thought that was clear,” he said, surprised at the question. “That is my main business. I make coffins.”

We looked at the “box” we’d seen him fashioning with tongue-in-groove precision, and now recognized it for what it was to become. It was the start of another coffin to be added to his inventory of coffin boxes we newly noticed stacked up in an alcove of his shop.

“Yes,” he summarized. “That is my business. I sell coffins and umbrellas.”

We exchanged a few friendly farewells, and then went back out onto the sun-drenched sidewalk. Our friend opened her parasol and twirled it coquettishly as we proceeded down the street. We laughed in celebration of the glorious incongruity of our encounter. What an incredible inventory of goods the man sold. Imagine! Coffins and umbrellas! Somehow that seemed to sum up Bangkok - a wildly unpredictable mix of livelihood and life.

College Bound - The College Admissions Scandal

The real shame behind the current scandal over parents’ manipulations to get their children into Ivy League colleges is not so much the cheating they’ve been doing. It’s the fact that they place such importance on getting into prestigious schools in the first place.

These parents have such tunnel vision. They are locked into struggling to achieve something that doesn’t matter or that shouldn’t matter. The fact is that having a degree from an Ivy League University is usually not necessary to lead a happy, productive life. In fact, graduating from Harvard might actually limit one’s possibilities in some perverse way. The high school drop-out might feel psychically limited to flipping burgers. He feels the job of being a corporate executive is closed to him. But the MBA from Yale is equally psychically limited. She doesn’t feel able to entertain taking a long-term job as a burger flipper. She feels that she must be on the fast track to advancement in the corporate realm.

I’m reminded of the Mary Tyler Moore sitcom. Once Mary’s TV character became fully established and successful in her career as television producer, she felt she really had to move out of her convivial studio apartment with its pull-out bed – into the sterile, removed high-rise apartment we saw her occupying through the last years of the series. The only reason her home life continued to have any interest at all is that she imported many of the characters from her old, still congenial, work life into it.

As it went in fiction, so it typically goes in fact. The poor man might feel he will never be free to drive a Mercedes and live in an 8-bedroom mansion in the suburbs. But the rich man probably will never feel free to drive an old Toyota and to live in an apartment over a tavern in an ethnic neighborhood. Each one is operating under certain ultimately self-imposed constraints. A Yale education, or the lack thereof, doesn’t necessarily have much to do with an individual’s prospects. In the relatively prosperous and safe United States, it’s the extent of each person’s imagination and spirit that will play the biggest part in determining whether he or she is successful in ways that count.

Just looking at practicalities, it’s not true that a degree from a notable university is the only on-ramp to a distinguished career. I went to a 4-year State-supported community college that didn’t have much cachet in the larger world. I went for the fun of it, not caring about what it would do to advance my earning capacity or my status farther down the road. However, my closest cohort in college, Linda Winer, was perhaps a little more concerned about what she could do when she graduated.

As it turned out, our school’s status had absolutely nothing to do with her eventual success. In her senior year as a music major, she saw an ad announcing a seminar that was being offered in California to train music critics. She wrote the requisite autobiographical essay and sample critiques of some local musical performances she attended. She had the ability to encapsulate opinions in snappy phrases. The rather indifferent production of the Puccini opera she saw got the title “Blah Bohéme.” She bundled up all this application material and sent the packet off to Martin Bernheimer, the already established critic who would be heading the panel conducting the seminar. She was accepted, and off she went for a season in Los Angeles.

Her ability was recognized; her student articles got circulated beyond the confines of the seminar. When she returned to Chicago, she was readily taken on as a second-string music critic for The Chicago Tribune. But it wasn’t too long before she became one of the Tribune’s lead music/theater critics. From there she went to on become the music/theater critic for New York’s Newsday. Along the way, it mattered not one whit what college she had attended. I don’t think anyone ever thought to ask her. That’s probably the way it is for most people who have independently launched themselves by one route or another. Their schooling becomes largely irrelevant.

The irrelevance of a college degree becomes even more apparent when I consider the “home-schooled” people I know. Not only did most of them never go to any college, prestigious or otherwise - but most of them never went to any high school or even any grade school. Their resumes are blank on that score. However, not one of them that I can think of ever had any trouble getting any job he or she sought.

It’s true that none of them attempted to practice medicine, engineering, or any profession where public safety is significantly at stake and where formal educational credentials are therefore necessary. None wanted to burst in off the street and claim a position in the higher echelons of a Silicon Valley corporation. None wanted to jump into practice at a prestigious law firm, although there is still a means of becoming a lawyer without attending law school. Four states still allow aspiring attorneys to take Abe Lincoln’s route to that career. They allow individuals to enroll in apprenticeship programs with established lawyers (at a cost of a few hundred dollars a year), and then to take the Bar Exam. If they pass the Exam, they’re qualified.

So perhaps my home-schooled acquaintances were simply lucky that they didn’t want to engage in an occupation for which a degree is immediately required. But none of them “settled.” They are all working at jobs they truly enjoy. One is head of the accounting department in a California casino. Another one, a self-proclaimed “car nut,” is working at his dream job. He is chief mechanic for his city’s police department, responsible for maintaining and repairing all their rolling stock.

Surprisingly, these home-schooled individuals generally didn’t encounter any difficulties when they applied for their respective jobs. If anything, their lack of any formal education might have given them an edge in the application process. The novelty of those blank spaces on their resumes got their applications kicked off the normal assembly line assessment process. That home-schooling background suggested they might have the kind of “fresh approach” to offer that so many bosses say they are seeking. So, while other applicants’ resumes were tortuously being processed through computer-aided elimination protocols – my home-schooled acquaintances got right in to see an actual human being who assessed them personally from the start. Then their enthusiasm, their articulateness, and the scope of what they had learned independently, won the day for them.

A number of the candidates running for President this year are adding weight to the false idea that a college education is the royal road to success. They are perpetuating the myth that a college diploma is the only way to boost a person’s earning capacity over a lifetime. These candidates are strengthening that unimaginative, limiting assumption by making “free college for all” a major plank in their platforms. When Herbert Hoover promised voters “a chicken in every pot” if he was elected, he was promising something that truly was necessary for a person’s well-being. He was promising FOOD! If our current crop of candidates really wanted to make a freer, more equitable America - instead of promising free college, they would advocate spending those taxpayer billions on providing people with a plentiful variety of healthy food, decent shelter, an urban landscape with a well-maintained infrastructure, a clean and safe environment, and access to free, unlimited learning through well-stocked libraries.

Alternatively, the politicians could work to bring the cost of going to a liberal arts college down to earth by recalling the basics of what learning entails. Hardly anyone has ever gotten a better liberal education than Socrates’ students. This simply involved their wandering around under the trees with Socrates, engaging in conversation with him and their fellow students. That kind of ideal and idyllic education could be replicated for mere dollars today. What has caused universities to elaborate themselves into massive building programs and bureaucracies, and consequently into massive expense?

Even in those cases in which an individual’s career ambitions do require a college degree, particularly a degree from a college with some expensive facilities - it still rarely matters which school an individual attends, as long as that school is accredited. Most of the Doctors I had to choose from on my HMO plan have come from rather obscure foreign universities – medical schools in the Philippines, Mexico, or the Middle East. But they maintain their patients’ loyalty and are generally being advanced within their departments according to their attitude and skills, not according to the prestige of the schools they attended way back when.

My mother graduated from Northwestern. But thinking back on it, she realized that as she subsequently applied for and got jobs such as translator in the foreign department of a large commercial firm – not once had anyone made an issue of which university she’d attended. Ultimately, it didn’t matter whether she had gone to Northwestern, Harvard, or Podunk U.

Again, the key is to get in to be interviewed at the outset by an actual human being, just as the key to getting any problem a person might be having with a company (regarding billing or service or the like), is to get past the robo-menu on the phone and to get through to an actual human being. Instead of spending thousands upon thousands of dollars bribing and cheating to get their children into top-flight universities – ambitious parents could just spend a few dollars on a “hack” book that tells how to get through to a live person. Then of course another hack book might be helpful in telling the applicants how to present themselves once they are seated in front of a hiring executive.

Coincidentally, just before this college admissions scandal broke, I had finished reading a book co-authored by Northwestern’s current President, Morton Schapiro. The book is cleverly titled Cents and Sensibility. Its main theme is an advocacy of letting the humanities more fully inform the study of economics. But along the way, the authors offer some astonishing hacks about getting into college and getting good deals on tuition.

For example, they reveal the little-known fact that most universities will charge students different tuitions (or, what amounts to the same thing, will offer them different sorts of scholarships and other attendance stipends) depending, not on need, but on the way the student approached the university. If the student scouted the university by coming on campus with parents for a tour – that student will likely be offered few incentives to matriculate. In short, they will be charged more if they end up attending. That’s because the student showed an obvious interest in that university, an obvious preference for it. If accepted, that individual would be much more likely to choose to enroll there than a student who had not shown such previous depth of interest. There’s no need to offer scholarships or other incentives to the tour-taker. Such a student will likely find a way to afford the university without aid.

But the main point I want to make in this essay is not that it can be easier and cheaper to enroll in the university of one’s choice than most people imagine. Nor is my main point that it doesn’t matter in the long run which college you attend, or whether you attend any college at all. I want to make a larger point about the kinds of human failings made evident by this recent college admissions scandal. The main criticism I have of those feverishly bribing, cheating parents caught in the current scandal is that they demonstrate a regrettable propensity for a very limiting sort of self-assertion. They say a resounding “NO, not for me or my children!” to all the everyday opportunities that are at hand for them. They show how neglectful they are of the present in favor of some propulsion into the future.

This attitude on their part flies in the face of the philosophies many of them probably espouse. It’s likely that many of these celebrity parents go to yoga classes, spout about the importance of “living in the moment,” and endorse an “Eat, Pray, Love” attitude towards life. But that sort of all-embracing philosophy is apparently not what they live. They are very far from lending themselves to the moment or “going with the flow.” Instead they divert and dam the flow of possibilities at every turn.

There are cases in which parents might recognize their child has a very specific talent or enthusiasm that would require attendance at a specific school in order to be fully developed. Perhaps it’s plain that a child is another little Mozart and it would be a loss to the world if the path wasn’t cleared for that child to get access to the best music schools and the best teachers able to give instruction in the instrument the child wants to play. Or perhaps a child has a sincere and singular enthusiasm for studying supernovae at the edges of the known universe. It’s understandable that such a child would want to be admitted to a school such as Caltech where she could have regular preferred access to the Mt. Palomar telescope. However, such obviously committed and talented young people would probably have no trouble being accepted at Julliard or Caltech simply on their own merits. It would not only be wrong, it would be unnecessary, for the parents of such children to bribe and cheat in order to get their children enrolled at these specific schools.

But little Mozarts are rare. The average youngster, as well as the average adult, has a flexible genius. It could be applied in many different settings to many different ends. The talents of most children don’t require being nurtured in any specific school or, often, in any school at all. Talent, enthusiasm, and interest are free-wheeling, unpredictable qualities that only require self-discipline to bring them to productive focus. Self-discipline isn’t something that can primarily be acquired in a costly, prestigious school. So it’s senseless for parents to try to stoop to all kinds of chicanery to get their pluripotent children into Harvard. Their ambitions in this regard are a sign that, like a Gucci bag, they view education as just a status symbol. It shows they view learning merely as a way of keeping up with, and indeed outdoing, the Joneses.

Worse yet, the actions of these parents show how they are given to flying through life like sharply-pointed arrows. They fly past what is, toward some small circle of a bull’s eye. Far from living in the moment, they harshly judge the present and find it wanting. They see nothing in it for themselves or their children to linger over. They are not the kinds of people for front porch friendships, or sunset reveries, or any kind of abiding. They are people who are always busy, always on their way to somewhere else. In the largest sense, they demonstrate how oblivious they are to the grand, wondrous “all of it,” – and that’s the real shame of their misdeeds.

The Case Against Raising the Minimum Wage - Part II

In a previous essay, I gave some reasons why I thought it was not a good idea for the various States to enact bills raising the minimum wage. Such a wage hike seems to be a fait accompli in Illinois, where Governor Pritzker recently signed a bill that would raise the minimum wage from its current $8.25 an hour to $15.00 an hour, to be phased in over the next few years. (Chicago already has a higher minimum wage of $12 an hour for employees of larger companies operating within the City.)

Even though the push for a higher minimum wage seems to be an unstoppable force across much of the United States, I still think it’s worthwhile to stop and reflect a moment about some of the negative consequences of further increasing wages. The policy has an obvious appeal. Who wouldn’t want $15 in hand, instead of $8.25? But the immediate gratification of that increased paycheck might have some very damaging long-term effects.

I won’t argue that increasing the minimum wage will simply lead to an inflationary cycle that will proportionately increase prices, which will necessitate still higher wagers, which will increase prices still further, ad infinitum. Economists have endlessly gone back and forth arguing that aspect of the issue. Conservative economists tend to argue that an enforced higher minimum wage does not comport with a free market system and that it drives an unnatural spiral of inflation. Liberal economists often deny both those charges. I tend to partially agree with the conservatives on this point, although there’s likely to be a lag time before an increase in general costs becomes evident after a wage hike. In addition, many other factors contribute to increasing costs, obscuring whatever part higher wages might play in any generally higher cost of living.

It should be obvious though that increasing wages doesn’t automatically put people in a better position down the road. The percentage of the U.S. population deemed to be living at or below the poverty level is currently about the same as it was when Lyndon Johnson launched his War on Poverty. The income needed to rise above poverty has naturally increased significantly, in tandem with wage increases, since the 1960’s. So according to that measure, all the social welfare programs and all the increases in wages that have taken place since the 1960’s have done nothing to decrease the number of people defined as “poor.” We have been running faster and faster, instituting more and more social welfare measures, just to stay in place.

But I’ll leave the endless merry-go-round of argument on this point to the economists. I want to argue against raising the minimum wage from a different angle. I want to advance considerations that have almost never been mentioned in the general economic debate.

In my first essay on this subject, “Wage Slaves – The Case Against Raising the Minimum Wage,” I pointed out what a catastrophic effect high wages can have on the environment. In high wage economies, material resources get wasted at a prodigious rate. Since material is cheaper than labor, all manufacturing processes in which there is any flexibility of approach are consequently designed to use a maximum of material and a minimum of labor. The parts of fish, animals, and plants that don’t lend themselves to being machine-processed for use – are simply discarded. Manufacturers are limited to standardized, high-volume output that can be produced without recourse to much manual processing. On the home front, everyone I know is aware of how expensive it is to have anything repaired these days. So despite our best intentions, we all feel forced to generate more waste by throwing away anything that develops the slightest glitch. Buy a new one, throw out the old. Who can afford to hire someone at $30 an hour to repair something that only costs $25?

In my previous essay, I also pointed out how high wages lead to uncongenial workplace conditions. As wages are raised yet again, more employees are laid off and the remaining workers are left to do double duty. This skeleton crew of workers are burdened and harried and supervised into maintaining maximum efficiency at all times. There’s little breathing room for friendly human interaction any more. It all has to be “Go, Go, Go!” We’re almost coming full circle back to sweatshop conditions. Sweatshops once were possible because so many poor, powerless laborers were available that they could be paid low wages since there were always more workers waiting in line to take the jobs. Now sweatshop conditions loom in many workplaces because employees command such high salaries that employers can only afford to hire a few of them. Those few have to do all the work that might more congenially be spread among many.

But in that first essay, I touched on yet another reason to oppose raising the minimum wage – a reason I would like to elaborate on here. Higher wages create extreme hardships for senior citizens, for the disabled, and for people caring for those either too young or too old to care for themselves. These people need human services above all else. As human services become more expensive relative to material goods, it’s these individuals who can be most profoundly disadvantaged.

Younger people might realize some temporary improvement in their lifestyles when they get increased paychecks because a large part of their budget is typically devoted to buying material things such as electronics, cars, household furnishings, and other consumer goods. A higher hourly wage allows them to get more of these things, which incidentally are already relatively cheap because they are often manufactured in countries with low wages.

However, older people concentrate less on acquiring more “stuff.” Their most urgent need is usually for human help. They already have their homes furnished and they generally aren’t very interested in acquiring as many new computers, phones, cars, etc., etc. What they need instead are plumbers, painters, carpenters, drivers, and caregivers. Most senior citizens are already struggling on this score because such help is scarce and very expensive. Any further increase in wages would tend to put these services further out of reach. Seniors would increasingly be left to suffer as their dwellings fall into disrepair and as they sit alone, dependent on relatives or occasional volunteers for the personal assistance they need.

I have been a volunteer driver for senior citizens. My friend Addie’s situation was representative of what many of the elderly have already been suffering as a result of our relatively high pay scale. Addie lived in a subsidized apartment in senior housing near the old Cabrini Green projects in Chicago. Like Addie, most of the residents in the building were African-Americans in their eighties and beyond. Addie was 96-years-old. She had come up from the cotton fields of the South where she had worked as a youngster. When she arrived in Chicago in the 1930’s, she immediately got a job, even though it was the height of the Depression and jobs were scarce. She earned 25¢ an hour +cleaning Pullman train cars. She worked 50-hour weeks, scrubbing down the cars with bleach and other strong chemicals, making them spotless for the passengers who would be re-boarding to go on to New York or Los Angeles. So Addie’s average weekly take-home pay was under $12.00

She carefully saved as much of her money as she could, while still helping her daughters and other relatives when they fell on hard times. She retired when she was 68-years-old, with a history of over 50 years of hard labor. She did get Railroad retirement benefits, the apartment subsidy, and some other incidental help. But she had never been officially married, so she, like many of the single women in her building, were not able to collect any spousal Social Security.

Addie was remarkably healthy, did all her own cooking, and most of the daily apartment maintenance herself. However, after she fell and broke a wrist, she needed some help. Working through the tangle of red tape, she finally contacted an agency that sent out a caregiver – whom Addie had to pay $20 an hour. The caregiver would come and sit with Addie, watching television with her, occasionally making her a sandwich. For every hour of this care-giving, Addie had to pay almost double what she herself had earned in an entire week!

Addie couldn’t possibly afford to hire the caregiver for more than 4 hours a day at those rates. Any more hours would have stripped her of her life-savings in short order. So she’d have the caretaker assemble a light supper ready in the refrigerator, line up her medicines where she could reach them, and leave her settled on her couch with her TV remote. “I’ll be OK. I’ll be fine on my own through the night,” she’d say. A few of the other building residents would drop in to check up on her.

But she and I would shake our heads and ruefully laugh at the cost and quality of the “help” she’d been able to procure. This was before President Trump’s election. However, immigration was even then being raised as an issue. Addie and I took the opposite view of most of the politicians speaking on the subject. We’d conspiratorially jest that, instead of discouraging the fleeing Mexicans - we’d hire a convoy of buses, go down to the border, and wave as many potential workers in our direction as possible. Addie and everyone like her needed more HELP, HELP!

The contrast between what most politicians were advocating and what was really needed on the ground was made even clearer whenever Addie’s free-wheeling grandson would drop by for a few minutes. Her grandson would bombard us with complaints about the job he’d recently quit (one of a chain of jobs). They hadn’t paid him enough – there just wasn’t any decent work to be had. As he stood there outlining this sorry state of affairs - as he stood there ripe for the blandishments of any politician who promised a higher minimum wage – Addie and I would exchange sad, knowing looks. She’d hand her grandson a $20 bill and ask him if he would pick up a pound of butter for her and bring it when he next visited. He could keep the change. The nephew would lean down, kiss his “granny” on the cheek, and say, “Sure thing! Anything for you, Granny.” Then he’d breeze out again, into that wide world where there was presumably no work to do and vastly insufficient compensation for doing it. He wouldn’t be seen again for a month or two. When he would re-appear, he’d be predictably butterless. (I expanded my volunteer duties to do a lot of shopping for Addie and some of the other residents in the building.)

I know similar scenes were being repeated in virtually every apartment in that large housing project – and likely in most such projects, apartments, and houses all over Chicago and the U.S. When government officials promise to raise the minimum wage, they are catering to the complaints of people like Addie’s grandson – meanwhile leaving Addie herself teetering on the brink of impoverishment.

It wasn’t always quite that difficult for people in the lower middle class and above in the U.S. When my grandparents were raising their children in the early 1900’s, they and all their neighbors could count on having some affordable household help available. In those days, such help was often provided by young Irish women who had emigrated away from the difficult times in Ireland. Having household help was as crucial then as it is now, but often for different types of chores. My grandmother and the “maid” would work together boiling vats of water for wash days. The next day would be ironing and sewing.

But there were also the ageless kinds of work to be done. The household help would be available to spell my grandmother when a new baby was brought home or when one of the children would get sick. Now a family has to be making a fairly high income to afford help raising children, particularly in-home help. The majority of Americans are left to work, raise children, and take care of all the other daily chores – without any help whatsoever. Every man, and woman, is an island, struggling through alone. Single parents all over are often strained nearly to the point of breakdown, trying to do it all without affordable help.

One of my volunteer associates told me about the tragic case of the father of a severely disabled daughter. In her vegetative state, she had frequent seizures. She needed around-the-clock care. Despite all the promise of aid and agencies that the government would make – there was in fact virtually no relief available for people in such a situation. After years of tending to the daughter on his own, the aging father couldn’t do it anymore. He killed his daughter - then himself.

Almost every senior care facility, every hospital, every nursery – could use more help. The elderly are left to sit endless hours in wheelchairs in hallways because there’s no one to help change their diapers, to feed them, to simply sit with them in companionate ways. On the rare occasions when the world looks at the desolate predicament of such individuals, blame is often hurled at what’s taken to be the money-grubbing corporate owners of these care facilities. Well, such blame is sometimes deserved. But the bottom line is that there simply aren’t the people available to do this work, at least not for the wages that even the most benevolent facility owner could afford to pay. Raising the minimum wage will not be likely to attract more people to this calling, and it will only impel both greedy and generous facility owners alike to cut staff still further and to cut more corners.

Our society truly doesn’t need to “create” more jobs. If politicians and their constituencies would think in terms of “work,” rather than “jobs,” they would realize there is plenty of work to do out there. That means increasing awareness of how much we need additional people. We need more kind-hearted, willing immigrants. We need more people to leave their less-than-crucial jobs as corporate liaison communications department coordinators and make themselves available to do society’s truly necessary work.

Most of all, we need these people to be available at affordable rates. While no one would want to go back to the old sweatshop conditions in which desperate people worked long hours for pennies – neither should we raise wages so high that HUMAN intelligence and HUMAN presence become prohibitive. The human touch will remain essential to our generating good products and good services. We can’t afford to price it out of the market.

The 50 Best Songs Ever Written

Of course, what I mean is “In My Opinion – The 50 Best Songs.” But that would have made for an unwieldy title, and it’s understood anyway. Any list of “Bests” has to be subjective.

I want to issue a proviso that I really haven’t listened to a great deal of music in my lifetime. I’ve always driven older cars whose radios (if there were any) were unreliable, so I’ve traveled in silence, even on the longest road trips. At other times, I usually didn’t have any radio playing in the background.

As this list makes plain, a lot of the listening I have done centered around what has been considered “country” music. Before readers groan in dismissal (many people tend to sneer at country music), I want to specify that I listened to country music primarily through the 70’s and 80’s when the term “country” was often a catch-all term applied to songs that weren’t either quite folk or quite rock. So the designation included a lot of music that was distinguished simply by strong individual voices with distinctive timbres and by songs that told a story or painted a picture in ways that transcended any musical categories. I was introduced to Leonard Cohen’s music when he appeared on “Austin City Limits,” presumably a country venue.

Also, it’s often hard to say whether I’m choosing the singer or the song. In many cases, the two are indistinguishable. There is often a mystical union of the two under ideal circumstances, so that, as Emerson and others wrote, “I am the singer and the song.”

This list was admittedly built on shifting sands. If I were to have posted it yesterday, it would likely have been different. I’m continuously thinking of other songs that deserve inclusion, and I’m re-evaluating songs that were included, sometimes finding on a fifth or sixth listening, that they aren’t really that great after all. Sometime in the future, I might add a list of “Runners-Up” to this count-down, acknowledging all the songs that I remember too late.

Furthermore, the precise ordering of the songs, especially past the first ten or so, is rather arbitrary. There really was no way to say which song should be No. 38, while making another song No. 41.

Finally, I’m only considering popular songs that contain the traditional elements of lyrics, rhythm, and melody. So I haven’t considered songs from such genres as opera, hip-hop, or rap.

I include a little of the history of each song, or else some of my personal associations with it and the reasons I consider it to be one of the best.

So with a nod to Casey Kasem, here’s my Countdown of the 50 Best, working from the bottom up –

50. Happy Days Are Here Again, by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen, as sung by Annette Hanshaw/ as sung by Barbra Streisand

The reason I included this song and so many others on this list is because of their hidden complexity, their special potential for duality, for light and dark, cheer and tragedy. I return to credit this trait in the first song on my list. But “Happy Days” certainly has had that dual nature brilliantly revealed. On the one hand it has had singers such as Hanshaw who rendered it as the rousing, bouncy campaign song that propelled FDR and others to office. But then along came Streisand who found the almost unbearable cry of paradox and pathos inherent in the song.

49. Summertime, by George Gershwin, as sung by Ella Fitzgerald

This song steeps the listener in a summertime I really would never want to spread my wings and fly away from.

48. Broken Arrow by Robbie Robertson, as sung by Rod Stewart

This song was likely intended to refer to a Native-American’s love offering – not the fancy, store-bought thing that Europeans consider a suitable gift, but just the small, personal token that has some buried history attached to it. Because of this, some people have objected to Rod Stewart’s coopting the song. But I think Stewart’s touching voice carries the meaning. His accompanying video is also one of the most visually striking I’ve ever seen, although since it doesn’t have any reference to Native-American life, it might be a reason to object to its association with the song. However, whatever the song’s intentions, I find myself humming it, thinking of it often. As I’ve mentioned in other essays here, I have a number of friends who are hoarders and who take delight in the kinds of gifts others would spurn. As I trudge up to a friend’s door carrying some tattered, muddy artifact I found in the alley, I often catch myself quietly singing, “Who else is gonna bring you a broken arrow; who else is gonna bring you a bottle of rain.”

47. Is That All There Is?, by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, as sung by Peggy Lee

With this song, I’ve already broken my rule about nominating only songs that have a continuous melodic line. This song is largely spoken narrative with no musical back-up. However, the chorus is sung and gives meaning and music to the whole. It also, sadly, too often reflects my reaction to life. As I stood in front of the Eiffel Tower, lit up at night, my companion’s eyes filled with tears. I, on the other hand, heard Peggy Lee’s let-down murmuring in my head. I wished I could have been my companion then, feeling her same intensity of response to the beauty.

46. Waltzing Matilda, lyrics by Banjo Patterson, as performed by the Australian Army Band/as sung by Noel Watson

The melody of this song is another one that is inherently bipolar. It can be a spirited march, or a sad refrain. It has the strange capacity to evoke longing, a sense of lost love waltzing off beyond one’s reach. And yet, that isn’t what the lyrics are about. In Aussie slang, “waltzing Matilda” just refers to walking around with your knapsack. I was shocked when I learned about this prosaic reality. It was as disillusioning as some children find the revelation that there is no Santa Claus. But the melody, filtered down from a variety of traditional sources, carries the day. The listener can perhaps choose to forget about the knapsack and return to picturing the beautiful Matilda in her swirling skirts, waltzing away into history.

45. Role Me on the Water, by Bonnie Koloc, as sung by Bonnie Koloc

This is the most sensuous song I ever heard, sung in that crystalline voice by the woman whom many describe as “the best singer no one has ever heard of.” Well, few people outside of Chicago’s “folk” scene have heard of Koloc, and perhaps she is just as happy about that. Perhaps she’d agree with Emily Dickinson when she wrote, “How dreary to be somebody, how public like a frog.”

44. The Gambler, by Don Schlitz, as sung by Kenny Rogers

Some people sort of laugh at this song as being too facile, too folksy a piece of wisdom. But it’s true - so much success in life depends on knowing when to stay and when to go, although a lot of that is luck. But to the extent it’s a reasoned knowing, I perennially seem to have lacked such an instinct. I have lurched from one private Viet Nam to another, always throwing the good after the bad, always staying too long in hopeless efforts. I have yet to learn when to “fold em” so that I might break-even in some day of final reckoning.

43. Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night, by Tom Waits, as sung by Tom Waits

This is one of the cases where the singer and the song are inseparable. It takes the marriage of music, lyrics, and Waits’ gravelly, gin-soaked voice to boost this song into the top 50.

42. Like a Rock, by Bob Seger, as sung by Bob Seger.

I first heard this song when it was used to advertise Chevy trucks on TV. Some people felt that Bob Seger sold out by lending his song to such commercial purposes. But I was grateful that corporate profits had led to my being introduced to this stirring backward look that a man takes to the years he was in his prime.

41. You’re the Top, by Cole Porter, as sung by Ethel Merman and Bing Crosby

It was almost a toss-up whether to include Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” here, or whether to give precedence to this friendly tennis match of a song ripe for a duet in which compliments are lobbed and returned. “Anything Goes” has a unique chain-link sort of melody with interlocking phrasing, but its extended lyrics include too many references to scandals and jokes of the 1930’s that date the song. More of this song’s references stand the test of time.

40. The Wayward Wind, by Stanley Lebowsky and Herb Newman, as sung by Gogi Grant

This is the most onomatopoetic song I ever heard. When I was a child, I’d run into the room whenever this song came on the radio – to hear the wind blowing the drifter away from his border town.

39. Geronimo’s Cadillac, by Charles Quarto and Michael Murphey, as sung by Hoyt Axton

This song conveys the sharp edge of the cynical, cruel treatment that Native Americans often received at the hands of their white captors and of whites in general. In the early 1900’s, while Geronimo was being held as a prisoner of the U.S. Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he would occasionally be trotted out for a “photo-op” in the hokey spirit of a Wild West Show. He never really got to own or drive a car. In an almost mocking spirit, he was just allowed to sit behind the wheel of one. Hoyt Axton, with his resonant growl, makes us feel the injustice of Native Americans being stripped of everything worthwhile in their cultures – while being given a meaningless “Cadillac” in return. (Antique car buffs say it wasn’t even a Cadillac that Geronimo is shown at the wheel of, but actually a less prestigious “Locomobile.”)

38. It’s a Wonderful World, by Bob Thiele and George Weiss, as sung by Louis Armstrong

This song makes you look around, feel, and appreciate.

37. Man on Fire, by Alex Ebert, as sung by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Ebert irresistibly invites the whole damn world, “over heartache and rage… over panic and strange” – to “come dance with me.” The original accompanying video, filmed in New York at the Brownsville Recreation Center, is kinetic triumph.

36. Out Among the Stars, by Adam Mitchell, as sung by Joe Sun

This song tackles the unlikely topic of “suicide by police.” It’s particularly relevant now, with police shootings of “ghetto” youth having made headline news so often. It brings the listener into the pain and weariness on both ends of the gun when this happens. Many leading singers have covered this song, but the version done by Joe Sun, a great and under-appreciated country singer, is by far the best. As he represents the shame the boy’s father feels with that snarling catch in his voice - we can understand how the boy got to such a tragic point in his life. His parents are more concerned with what people think than with simply loving their child.

35. The Last Morning, by Shel Silverstein, as sung by Dr. Hook

Here on the heels of “Out Among the Stars” is another song about suicide – possibly. This mournful, despairingly evocative song was on the soundtrack of the wandering, surreal movie “Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?” In addition to including this “best” song, the movie featured another best in the performance of Barbara Harris in a supporting role. The end of the movie presents the song’s meaning as being less equivocal.

34. A Couple More Years, by Shel Silverstein and Dennis Locorriere, as sung by Dr. Hook

When I first heard this song, with its refrain of, “I’ve got a couple more years on you babe, and that’s all. I’ve had more chances to fly and more places to fall” - I pictured having an older man sing the song to me. Now, several decades later, I have to picture myself singing the song to a younger man.

33. Let It Be, by Paul McCartney, as performed by The Beatles

Paul McCartney has generally been reluctant to pin down the meaning of this song. Is “Mother Mary” a reference to his own mother, or to the Virgin Mary? Either way, this is a beautiful encouragement to accept – the things we cannot change.

32. Glory Days, by Bruce Springsteen, as sung by Bruce Springsteen

Here’s a moving take on the barroom regrets of a couple of characters who peaked too early in life.

31. Take Me Home, Country Roads, by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, and John Denver, as sung by John Denver

This was recently adopted as West Virginia’s official State Song, replacing earlier, less poignant evocations of the beauties of the State. Every time I hear the song, I want to get on the Greyhound bus and go back there where I’m lucky enough to have some acquaintances and always have a place to stay. One evening as I sat in my overalls on a rocking chair on my friends’ front porch and looked out at the rolling hills – I had to chuckle how I had become the perfect embodiment of the song’s “mountain mama.”

30. I’m So Lonesome, I Could Cry, by Hank Williams, as sung by Bernadette Peters

Elvis Presley said this song was “probably the saddest I’ve ever heard.” (Its authorship was contested by Paul Gilley.) Whoever wrote it, it is the quintessentially train whistle of mournful song.

29. Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen, as sung by Bruce Springsteen

This song perfectly captures America’s infatuation with the natural mix of revving engines, sex, speed, and leaving. After I had worked 20 years at ushering my 1948 Chrysler through the restoration process, it was ready to hit the roads. A friend and I drove out to Lake Shore Drive on a Sunday dawn when there was little traffic in order to “see what she could do.” As we were picking up speed, a motorcycle gang, decked out in chains and all, pulled alongside us and signaled. The race was on. We accelerated to over 80 mph and beat the gang to the second off-ramp we passed. (Well, it’s possible the gang let the old car win.) But as we were speeding up, leading the pack, the same song automatically occurred to both my friend and me simultaneously. We both broke out with a rousing declaration of – “Tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”

28. I’m Always Chasing Rainbows, adapted by Harry Carroll and Joseph McCarthy, as sung by Judy Garland

Judy Garland could always be counted on to vocally paint the arc of a rainbow. This song makes art of the scientific fact that you can never touch a rainbow, no matter how far and fast you walk in its direction.

27. Auld Lang Syne, by Robert Burns with traditional folk melody, as sung by Rod Stewart

This song, with exquisite sentimentality, recalls the importance of honoring old friendships.

26. Brilliant Disguise, by Bruce Springsteen, as sung by Bruce Springsteen

This is a piercing reflection on the question of whether we ever really know the person we’re looking at. The song has a kind of twist ending as Springsteen turns the metaphoric mirror to face the other way. It’s also accompanied by one of the best music videos ever made.

25. The End of the Line, by George Harrison and The Traveling Wilburys, as sung by The Traveling Wilburys

If anyone you know is in despair and is considering ending it all, have them listen to this song. It’s almost sure to jounce them out of that mood.

24. All I Want Is You, by U2 and Bono, as sung by Bono

The haunting poetry and instrumentation of this song (“You say you’ll give me a river in a time of dragons… a highway with no one on it”) strips away all the non-essentials that clutter weddings and relationships in general, and leaves the listener with the simplicity of “When all I want is you.”

23. Ol’ Man River, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, as sung by Paul Robeson

A classic. This is a rare instance when two white men really seem to captured some appreciation for what black people went through. Ol’ Man River (the Mississippi) – “he don’t plant taters, he don’t plant cotton, but them that plants ‘em are soon forgotten.” We thank soldiers for their service; this song makes me realize how we should also thank all the nameless people for their toil through the centuries - creating all the goods of our lives.

22. When Johnny Comes Marching Home, lyrics by Patrick Gilmore set to Civil War tune, as performed by any marching band, as sung by Angel Snow

This song has an inherent undertone that contradicts the rousing cheer of its apparent theme. In this instance, the dual nature of the song likely wasn’t intentional since the melody has filtered down from a traditional Civil War-era folk tune. However, that tune was strangely composed and transmitted in what is likely an ancient form of the Dorian scale of music, different from our conventional modern major or minor scales. The song has different intervals than we are accustomed to hearing. That difference somehow automatically conveys a tone of sarcasm and derision of the cheering words that got attached to the song, resulting in what so easily can be heard as a moving anti-war protest.

21. Joan of Arc, by Leonard Cohen, as sung by Leonard Cohen

This song has imaginative lyrics that give a new, poignant meaning to being “consumed by fire.” Fire is personified as Joan’s groom as he declares he loves her because of her “solitude and pride.” That line alone is arresting because women almost never have been loved for such traits. It reminds me of the way Marlo Thomas shattered all conventional gender expectations when she opened her 1974 “Free to Be You and Me” TV special by reciting a fairytale about a Princess “beloved by everyone in the land because she was so – brave.” Rarely before or since has a woman been sincerely loved for anything but her “beauty” – until Leonard Cohen came out with these “Joan of Arc” lyrics.

20. He Played Real Good For Free, by Joni Mitchell, as sung by Joni Mitchell

This is a beautiful song which contains a beautiful encouragement to be alive in the moment and to appreciate what is all around us, even if it is presented “for free.” A famous violinist once sat out in front of Carnegie Hall where he was scheduled to play that evening at a charge of at least $100 a seat. The man played on the street corner a lot of the same music he was going to play inside in a few hours. Most pedestrians walked right by him, some actually registering disdain and dismissal of this presumably homeless man playing for his supper. A few tossed a coin or two his way. This song pays homage to all those people who play for free. May there be more of them, and more people awake to their contributions.

19. I Remember Loving You, by Utah Phillips, as sung by Fred Holstein

This touching song evokes the hardships of the 1930’s Depression, when only love could provide a person with a lasting, fond memory.

18. Bird on a Wire, by Leonard Cohen, as sung by Leonard Cohen

This is one of Cohen’s most famous songs. It contains the memorable line: “Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir - I have tried, in my way, to be free.” As I’m writing this, it’s 20 degrees below zero in Chicago, but many of the homeless are still refusing to go to shelters, preferring to stay outside on the streets, free of the regulations and impositions and danger they often face in the shelters. They are illustrating Cohen’s famous observation about our most persistent attempts to be free.

17. What’ll I Do?, by Irving Berlin, as sung by Bernadette Peters

This is one of Irving Berlin’s most plaintive songs – a simple question, posed by a true musical genius.

16. He Went to Paris, by Jimmy Buffet, as sung by Waylon Jennings

A person would never guess this mild philosophical retrospective of a song had been written by Buffet, who is most known for his party-hearty booze bingeing songs. I don’t know if Buffet had the any particular man in mind when he wrote this, but it’s the biography of someone who drifted through life, frittering away his talent and time – something I can relate to only too well. But the listener is left with the feeling that perhaps such lack of ambition is OK after all. The man “had a good life all the way.”

15. Both Sides Now, by Joni Mitchell, as sung by Joni Mitchell

The last time I was on a plane, I looked out the window and saw a bank of particularly fluffy clouds – below me. I inevitably thought of this song, and of how “I still don’t know clouds at all.”

14. My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, by Sharon Vaughn, as sung by Willie Nelson

This song and Willie Nelson’s tumbleweed-in-the-wind voice are the perfect marriage, and end up perfectly portraying the used-up fate of a drifter.

13. If It Be Your Will, by Leonard Cohen, as sung by Antony

This is one of the few songs that Cohen wrote that is sung better by someone else. Antony’s version is unearthly beautiful.

12. Starry, Starry Night, by Don McLean, as sung by Don McLean

This was one of my favorite songs even before I knew it was the story of Vincent Van Gogh and before I knew how perfectly it reflected Van Gogh’s talent and struggles. “The world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.” With all my youthful angst and ego, I thought the song was made for me.

11. Forever Young, by Bob Dylan, as sung by Rod Stewart

The qualities and the kinds of luck needed to maintain a youthful spirit are beautifully rolled out here. Stewart’s video is also irresistible, with the young boy who’s riding along on his lap - tweaking his nose as they go.

10. Strange Fruit, by Abel Meeropol, as sung by Billie Holiday

This song contains what is perhaps the most searing metaphor in all of English literature. With Billie Holiday singing in her calm, liquid, almost matter-of-fact tone – the horror of racism is brought home all the more keenly. A 96-year-old friend of mine said she came upon a couple of trees hung with this fruit as she was walking through the woods outside of Macomb, Georgia, in her youth.  

9. Endless Road, by Hoyt Axton, as sung by Hoyt Axton

The beautiful harmonics of this song lead the listener home. When Hoyt Axton, who arguably had “the best pipes in the business” forms that final chord with the music – it’s chillingly beautiful.

8. September Song, by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson, as sung by Willie Nelson

This is a timeless reflection on love sustained through the long years.

7. Blowin’ in the Wind, by Bob Dylan, as sung by Odetta

This has rightfully been the anthem of the Civil Rights movement and of freedom movements everywhere. It was likely a key element in winning Dylan his Nobel Prize for literature. As a result of my having joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when I was in high school, a classmate wrote a stanza from this song in my graduation book. The song is eternally relevant.

6. Sunday Morning Coming Down, by Kris Kristofferson, as sung by Johnny Cash

This song perfectly captures the retirement quality of Sunday mornings. No job to go to, not many stores open, not many people out, no mail delivery, nothing at all coming your way. Even the sun seems to shine gray on these Sundays. It only sheds enough light for you to sit and notice the dust filtering through its rays, with no stir in the air - settling down and covering your furniture, your life.

5. Love Me Tender, adapted by Ken Darby from Civil War ballad Aura Lea by W. W. Fosdick and George Poulton, as sung by Elvis Presley. (Aura Lea version sung by Frances Farmer)

The minimalist version of this song that Elvis sings in his movie debut is the ultimate demonstration of how moving a simple song, sung by someone whose voice has a beautiful timbre – can be.

4. This Land Is Your Land, by Woody Guthrie, as sung by Pete Seeger

This song should be our national anthem. Its rousing, welcoming, all-embracing spirit is America, or what America should be. Now they call it “inclusiveness” – a quality this song has in abundance, without being self-conscious or politically correct about it.

3. Over the Rainbow, by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, as sung by Judy Garland

This classic needs no commentary.

2. Good Ole Boys Like Me, by Robert McDill, as sung by Don Williams

This poetic narrative of a song speaks volumes. It distils the works of Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and other southern writers, into a glass of smooth bourbon. It speaks for the southerner who has been disenfranchised in the modern world, whose plight and heartache is disregarded in the rush to give priority to the disenfranchised represented in rap music. But there’s pathos in the way the poor white southerner has come too. When an acquaintance of mine proudly tells me how his father thumped the Bible and thumped him a whole lot harder - I hear the strains of this song. When I see the incomprehension in his eyes as he’s confronted by this world of political correctness – I hear the strains of this song. As he walks away from me, in beleaguered, impotent rage at my suggestion of evolution and equality, I hear the central question of this song - “So what’ll you do with good ole boys like me.”

1. Blue Skies, by Irving Berlin, as sung by Harry Richman

This song, seemingly such a simple ditty, has that underlying complexity that makes for a great song. If it’s sung at a cheery pace, there is still that inevitability of tragedy hiding behind the lilt, peeking out. If it’s sung as a slow blues wail, there is still that inevitability of joyousness peeking out. I had a hard time finding a singer who allowed this split personality to reveal itself sufficiently. It seemed that Harry Richman’s version came the closest. Richman, one of my favorite singers, had the advantage of singing the song close to the time it was written, when that 1920’s singing style usually had the in-a-tunnel, megaphone quality that carries such an automatically touching resonance. It automatically evokes a combination of nostalgia and happy expectation.

It’s hard to sing this song badly, but in my opinion, Al Jolson, another one of my favorite singers, uncharacteristically accomplishes that butchering when he bursts out with his eye-rolling, chopping- block rendition of the song in The Jazz Singer, the movie credited as being the first “talkie.”

In any case, the song was the first song to be heard when the modern media era was ushered in, and it might well be the last song to be heard when our time on this planet comes to an end. Then it will be “nothing but blue skies, from now on…”