If only everything felt as good. As CFO of a community college which is staring into a biennium of budget reductions on a scale we have not yet experienced (which is saying plenty!), there is much to be concerned about. Difficult choices lie ahead, but what really galls me is why these "difficult choices" even exist.
Reading, last night, Bill Lueders' excellent article (Scott Walker's War) from Isthmus it sank in that serious class warfare has begun here in the US. What started a number of years ago as a gradual but very intentional consolidation of wealth and power away from the working classes (if I can use that cliché label) and toward corporate interests and the relative minority of super-wealthy, and which became a frenzied resource-grab during the last Bush administration's term of office, has now come dangerously close to triggering revolution.
That the sacrifice of workers benefits should be required to balance state government after corporate greed (unpunished and unmitigated) stripped the economy of cash and left state and local government revenue sources suddenly missing in action is so disingenuous as to be criminal. But it does serve the intended purpose of making one working class the scapegoat of another, distracting the people from the real thieves in the room. As a result, some have come to believe that this is a fight at the trough over scant resources, with there simply not being enough to go around.
Consequently, "difficult choices" is the phrase on everyone's lips. But the difficult choices some of us are truly facing are not natural, they are contrived and caused. The feast was rich, but only a few have enjoyed it. Now, with only the scraps left to feed the majority we have come down to "difficult choices" about who will eat and who will starve. Or, for those of us in education, who will still be able to afford an education and who simply will not. And what will that mean 5, 10 or 20 years from now? For all of us?
Yet the missing money is still here, just out of reach of most. Check out this article for a good picture of what I mean: It's the Inequality, Stupid. Or check out the info-graphic data in this short article: Empire at the End of Decadence. I am worried about where this train wreck is heading and who the casualties will be. There is not all that much, any longer, that separates Egypt from Wisconsin, or Wisconsin from the other 49 states in our fragile union. Meanwhile, some argue about how best to distribute the mean leftovers at the trough as if we should simply except our "new normal" (The New Normal). It's the wrong discussion.
But this is a blog about commuting music, right? So....back to normal (that word again!) programming.
I had set the iPod to my Patrick Cassidy playlist while working in the office yesterday afternoon and forgotten to dial it back to shuffle-all mode, so today's playlist is all Patrick Cassidy. This is not a bad thing at all. A mathematician turned classical composer, known for casting his cantatas in Irish Gaelic, his work is beautiful and grand. Most of his work is based on Irish mythology and history, with story lines that would give Tolkien a run for his money. Immortal Memory is actually a collaboration between Lisa Gerrad (formerly of Dead Can Dance) with songs in Gaelic, Aramaic, and Latin. Really beautiful music.
The full playlist (with albums in parenthesis)
- Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy: Elegy (from Immortal Memory)
- Patrick Cassidy: Tuath De Danann (from The Children of Lir)
- Patrick Cassidy: Lir's Heart Is A Husk of Gore (from The Children of Lir)
- Patrick Cassidy: No no break this day, my heart (from Deirdre of the Sorrows)
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