May 2008 Archives

This morning, my Dad sent me a story from the Detroit News about the American Axle strike that's been on for over 12 weeks now in Three Rivers, Michigan, a town that's near and dear to our whole family. My grandparents bought a cottage there in the 1970s, though the strike won't much affect vacationers, unless it's in the form of having fewer Main Street shops to visit on a rainy day. For those who call Three Rivers home on a year-round, work-a-day basis, however, the strike is having a widespread affect, which the Detroit News article demonstrates well. Rob and I helped start a fair trade store in downtown Three Rivers in 2003 and it's still alive, though certainly feeling the pinch of the strike along with other downtown merchants who have been giving vast amounts of their own time, creativity and money toward revitalization of the historic district and beyond.

I've heard several people criticizing the strikers, saying that in the end, they'll all lose their jobs and that they're being greedy as the highest paid employees in the area. But Rob and I are still left with the question: why should a company that is consistently turning a profit (even in a flailing automotive industry) be allowed to cut its manufacturing employees' pay in half? Are the CEOs, who could certainly thrive on half their salary more than an hourly worker could, willing to make the same sacrifice if such budget cuts are indeed necessary? Twelve weeks of $200/week strike pay and standing at the plant's entrances in all kinds of weather doesn't look like greed to me. It looks like a desperate attempt not to allow corporate executives to send us back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution.

A friend sent me a link to a wonderful article on Slate.com about back yards and children's play equipment. It made me think again about how my best memories of being outdoors as a kid are connected to nature: falling asleep in the grass on a hot day under towering oak trees, burying "treasure" in a back corner of the yard and digging it up the next summer, planting carrots with my dad, climbing trees, exploring my friend's farm to make sod houses or vegetable soup. Of course, I also remember learning how to do the monkey bars on the swingset and playing in the sandbox--both of which my dad built himself out of wood (in contrast to the garish "safe" plastic that so many playthings are made out of today). Here's a lovely quote from Michael Pollan, with some of the text from Tom Vanderbilt's column to give it context:

In his book Second Nature, Michael Pollan writes touchingly about a hedge of lilac and forsythia at his childhood home on Long Island, N.Y. To the adult eye, the hedges were simply flush against the fence. But he had his own secret garden, a space between the hedge and the fence. "To a four-year-old, though, the space made by the vaulting branches of a forsythia is as grand as the inside of a cathedral, and there is room enough for a world between a lilac and a wall."

"There is room enough for a world between a lilac and a wall." Beautiful, both as a turn of phrase and as a practice.