Assimilation

In the comments to the last post reader Loren noted:

I'm still wondering what good these refugees will ever do for America.

I think that is the central question we are facing.

I cannot answer that question because it is essentially unanswerable.  It is impossible to peer into the future but it is possible to make some guesses about the road based on what we see in the rear view mirror.

Revisionist history
We like to think that our fore-bearers were butchers, bakers, candlestick makers and potato farmers.

That is partially true.  But our fore-bearers were also petty criminals, debtors, drunks, failed farmers and religious cranks.

Somehow most of us assimilated.

Assimilation
The difference is that nearly everybody who immigrated in earlier decades wanted to assimilate.  Sure, the Swedes and Slavs, the Pollacks, the Irish and  Italians tended to congregate in their own neighborhoods, often anchored by the church of their choice.

They had their own restaurants, their own way of celebrating births and weddings, of mourning their dead.  But they assimilated the values of Greater America.

There are some other minorities that sort-of assimilated.  Who feels threatened by China-town or checking into a motel run by an East Indian?  Not me.

I think the difference is that the differences were not automatically celebrated.  If an immigrant failed to assimilate certain, key values then they found themselves left behind by the herd.

A few of those key values include being able to speak English clearly enough for a bored clerk to understand you.  A job to earn money.  Staying out of jail so you did not lose your job. The ability to defer gratification so you could save a down payment on a house or vehicle.

There is an air-bubble in the assimilation siphon 
In former times there were vast numbers of jobs that kids could do.  It was the larger economy writ small.  The habits and values kids picked up on those jobs served us well when we graduated to the larger economy.  Those jobs installed an internal compass within us that gave guidance even when the chop and turbulence of the larger economy gave conflicting signals later in life.

Kids mowed grass and raked leaves.  Kids delivered newspapers.  Kids lugged cinder blocks at construction sites and pulled weeds in gardens.  Vast numbers of kids worked on the farm tossing bales of hay and picking fruits and vegetables.

Most of those jobs have been mechanized or taken over by adults.

There also used to be organizations like Junior Achievement that would create "businesses".  Actual products would be designed, manufactured and sold; items like desk lamps and such.  The death knell of JA was when they started doing "paper studies" of businesses and stopped making and selling products.  Product liability was the reason given for the change.

Scouting is another example.  How many kids belong to Boy Scouts?  How many of those Boy Scouts go camping, in tents that they lug into the site, more than once a year?

The progressives with skin in the game
If you take a couple of steps back, you can see that the "progressives with skin in the game" essentially created a 4-H program for adults and their kids.  Real planning.  Real inputs.  Real effort.  Real results.

At least those refugees and their kids have a fighting chance of being productive members of our society.  I am less sure about the refugees that are parachuted into central cities and trained to sign up for entitlements.  And, frankly, I am less sure of the suburban yuppie larvae who have been brainwashed into believing that they create billions of dollars of value and six figure paychecks by the rapid manipulation of a keyboard.

Your mileage may vary.
Previous post on this topic
Next post on this topic

Progressives with skin in the game

A local couple runs a huge community garden on their own property.  It is right next to their house.  Both of the couple work full time jobs.

Each one of those postage stamps is approximately 45'-by-30' or 1300 square feet.  A typical, urban community garden plot is approximately 100 square feet. Some families garden multiple plots.

What makes their effort unique is that a large percentage of the gardeners are refugees from war-torn areas.  Gardeners are from Nigeria, Zaire, Burundi and other distressed countries.

One gardener has 17 children.  The gardener's sister died in the refugee camp so she added the two broods together.

Another gardener spent several generations in a refugee camp in Burundi.

Reading between the carefully chosen words of the garden's director, many of the recent refugees picked up behaviors that are considered dysfunctional in a First World Country.

I choose to present this through the lens of "resources" because "resources" are judgement neutral.

There is no such thing as "private property" in a refugee camp except the few things you can defend with tooth-and-claw.  Look at those walls...a child can push their way through them and pilfer.

People join together into extended family groups, perhaps aligned along village of origin or tribal affiliation.  Then they ferociously defend the artifacts they need to survive day-to-day.

Another thing that occurs when there is no such thing as private property is that people live for today.  Grab as much as you can and then trade for fleeting pleasures.  No sense saving what the thief will take in the night.  There is a thriving trade of illicitly brewed beer and sexual favors (often not consensual) in refugee camps.

The total dependency on the stream of outside resources and the internal barter economy results in people taking more than they need for use as trading goods.  It does not matter that a person does not need three hats, they take them anyway.

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
The couple who run this community garden learned to work through these issues.  The gardens provides the recent refugees with a safe, micro environment to "grow" into First World behaviors.

It is not fast.  It is not a straight line.  Some of the gardeners refuse to "play nice" and are not invited back.

A few examples
Put out five pounds of bean seeds and the first gardener to see them will take them home and make soup.  The couple responded by buying ten pounds of bean seeds and pre-packaging them in envelopes containing enough seeds for a 30' row.  Then they ask each gardener how many rows of beans they intend to plant.

Of course, many of the gardeners comes back the next week and asks for more bean seeds, which the couple graciously give them.

It is a bit like a foster child who was hungry.  The foster parents let the toddler walk around with a carrot or apple in their hand so the child's anxiety is eased.

Ten pounds of beans last a long, long time when handed out 60 beans at a time.

Another example was when two of the gardeners had a spat.  A newcomer carefully measured out her plot and figured out that it was smaller than another lady's.  I suspect that the other lady belonged to a competing tribe "back home".  A screaming match ensued.

The woman who owns the garden resolved the issue by pointing at the larger plot and observing that there was not a single weed in the plot.  Then she pointed at the smaller plot and noted that it was not as well taken care of.  The woman then ruled, in her squeaky, not-very-commanding voice, "You can have a larger plot next year but first you have to show me that you can take care of it by doing a better job on this smaller one.  We have plenty of land here but not enough to waste."

It must be noted that the pristine plot was weeded by 18 sets of hands.  Yes, it belonged to the Nigerian woman who was also raising her nieces and nephews.

Another example involves the chase to find vegetables that resemble the ones they ate "back home".

Most of the refugees refuse to eat yellow corn.  Yellow corn is for chickens.  They want white corn.  Also, they don't want "sweet" sweet corn, they want big, starchy, belly-filling roasting ears.

Winter Sweet and Sweet Meat squash fit the bill.

Pumpkins proved to be a bit more of a problem.  The gardeners kept clamoring for pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins.  The orange pumpkins were not what they wanted.  It took a bit of research but they couple learned that Africans call winter squash "pumpkins".  And they almost universally wanted smooth, round squash with white or light gray skin.

The path from "refugee" to "citizen" is labor intensive and is "high touch".  Each refugee comes with a unique burden of scar tissue.  The progressive couple with the community garden are high-minded but are not blinded by what should be.  They see what is and set about making it better.

Next post on this topic

A Sunday thought

Today's main reading was the parable from Matthew 20, 1-16 where the owner of a vineyard hires day-labors at various times of the day and yet pays them all the same at the end of the work day.

The traditional "sermon" that goes with this story is that souls saved on their deathbed are welcomed into heaven as joyfully as those who were saved at a very young age.

The sermonist will often include an editorial aside something like "And we know this is the message because the behaviors of the vineyard owner make no economic sense."

Maybe I am just contrary
I think there was a sub-plot to the parable that was readily apparent to Jesus's audience, a message that became invisible to us as we drifted away from our agrarian roots.

The parable DOES make economic sense if the grapes are very, very ripe and a storm is coming.  In fact, I think Jesus was "blogging", that is, taking a recent event that was very much on people's minds and using the event as a springboard for a moral message.  My gut feel is that a local vineyard lost much of its harvest because the landlord failed to be flexible when weather demanded urgency.

Several bad things can happen under those circumstances.

The grapes can be damaged by hail.  Image from HERE

The grapes can absorb water due to osmosis and split and rot.  Image from HERE

Botrytis bunch rot.  Image from HERE

Finally, rain can cause the individual grapes to push off the cluster.  They absorb the rain which causes them to swell.  If the cluster is tightly packed then they berries push each other off their individual stems.  This flaw is called "shelling".  Imagine, you have a vineyard full of perfectly ripe fruit, perhaps the best harvest in five years and you can lose half of it to a prolonged rain simply because the berries pick themselves.

The same phenomena but a different crop
First class "horse" hay goes for about $5 a small, square bale around here.  Eight hours at the local minimum wage of $8.90 an hour is $71.20.

Image from HERE

Suppose the hay is baled and the farmer can see that a long, drenching rain is coming and he has far more baled hay in the field than he has ability to put in the barn.  Soaked bales of "horse" hay have no value.

In that case, it is in the economic best interest of the farmer to hire somebody at a full day's wage for one hour's work if he believes they can increase the harvest by fifteen or more bales in that hour.

Summary
Subplot one: The harvest is rich and the laborers are few.  We should be imbued with a sense of urgency.
Subplot two: A storm is coming.  Not in the Apocalyptic sense but in the sense that life is fraught with tumult and tempest.
Bonus subplot: "Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?"  Capitalists were fending off the creeping encroachment of property rights 2000 years ago.

Obamacare overload

Alright, already.

Republicans trying to "fix" Obamacare is as inane as police attempting to resuscitate a suicide-by-cop shooter.

For one thing, the Affordable Care Act as implemented has so many sucking chest wounds that it is likely not savable.

One dynamic that reinforces the continuance of something like the Obamacare is the increasingly dynamic workplace.  Both Republicans and Democrats are complicit in this.

If you look at a small town you will typically see that the businesses that have the greatest longevity have some source of protected income.  I am thinking about bars with a license to serve alcohol.  Licenses create an artificial scarcity which in turn creates a steady income stream.  Because licenses are difficult to transfer, they foster business longevity.

Three things overturned the apple cart.

The economy is now Globalized.  Factories and shops are not just competing with the guy down the road, they are competing with Bangladesh and China and Mumbia.

The economy deregulated.  Sectors that are protected are shrinking.  Interestingly, the most protected sector is .gov.

The last thing that killed job longevity was the Fed lowering interest rates.  Investors are anxious to find venues that create better return pour money into venture capital.  These funds provide a war chest to nascent businesses that allow them to under-price the true cost of production.  That crushes the existing competitors.

The new entrants to the market find themselves, in turn, being crushed by even more entrants, especially after the war-chest of investor capital is depleted and they must price at or above the true cost of production.  The bottom of the dog-pile are corpses.  Only the bodies on top have enough oxygen to survive.

In the old days the employee who started with a firm as a young, healthy person was subsidizing the old guy who had been there thirty-five years and it was all invisible to the new person.  Preconditions were handled internally to the Human Relations department.

No longer.  It is not uncommon for a person to find themselves looking for employment every couple of years.  In fact, many folks never stop looking for their next job because experience taught them the horse will get shot out from beneath them.

All of a sudden, preconditions become a very, very big deal.

There is a solution, at least for most of us.  And it is not a very popular solution.  The answer is to stay healthy.  Eat well.  MOVE.  Get to your ideal weight, or close to it.  Surround yourself with positive, caring people.  Ditch unhealthy habits.

Good news abounds

Our dishwasher started working again.

It was not draining reliably and the symptoms suggested that the cause was something binding up the shuttle valve.

I did not tear it apart but suspect it was a label that we put on some of the plastic ware we use for lunches and such.

Mrs ERJ receives many return address labels from charities who want her contributions.  We have been using those labels for lids and tubs.  I think a few of them washed off and bound up the valve.

How-some-ever, our dishwasher finally passed its kidney stones and is once again running like a champ.

The downside is that I bought a replacement dishwasher.  It was on Craigslist for $65.  It was two years old and the owner had just changed his kitchen appliances to stainless steel.  The good news is that the old dishwasher started working again before I busted my knuckles replacing it and the great news is that I now have a spare.

In other good news...
I don't write much about Mrs ERJ because she is entitled to living out her own life in privacy.

Three weeks ago the director of a local non-profit organization had to leave due to health reasons.  The parent organization asked (begged?) Mrs ERJ if she could fill the gap while they hunted for a new director.

Mrs ERJ threw herself on the hand grenade and went from a life of leisure to working 50 hour weeks. 

Due to the urgency of the previous director's health issues, there was not a tremendous amount of time for overlap.  Also, since the health issue arose suddenly, the previous director did not have a lot of time to render the job into documentation.

Friday, the parent organization indicated that found a new director.  The new director will start in two weeks.  The parent organization is being smart and is planning on a two week transition.  The first week will be the administrative side and the second week will be on the "people" side.

Mrs ERJ is walking with a bounce in her step this weekend.  There is an end in sight.  Life will return to normal in about four weeks.

Shamelessly stolen from Knuckledraggin

Look at the joy on her face.

Great image.  Thanks Wirecutter.

Seasonal Affective Disorder

While I do not dwell on the fact, I am subject to periods of depression.

I take a type of antidepressant called an SSRI, that is, a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor.

Historically I do well through most of the winter, spring and summer.  Fall bites me in rearmost parts of my anatomy.  October is my undoing.

I think it is like many biological processes; it is triggered by the shortening days.  Deer and sheep start cycling for spring fawns/lambs based on decreasing day-length.  Trees drop their leaves based on day-length.  Animals in temperate and arctic regions toggle between summer and winter plumage/fur based on lengthening days or nights.

The traditional literature suggests that SAD is caused by lack of light, that it is worst in December and January and February.  Perhaps it is so for Napoleon and Hitler.  Not so much for me.  Maybe I am the outlier.

Side-effects
I started taking my SSRI yesterday.  One of the nice things about planning ahead is that I can avoid most of the side effects by starting with a half dose.  I simply split the pills.

People on large doses who experience SAD might consider starting on even less than half.

The typical protocol when starting a patient on an SSRI is to yank them off work for two weeks.  The purpose is two-fold.

One of the reasons is that SSRIs make you sleepy.  Not a good combination if you drive to work or if you use heavy equipment at work.  Cutting the dosage means you will sleep like a log but will, likely, be able to function at work and on the highway.

The other reason is that many SSRIs, especially the older ones like Prozac (Fluoxetine) and Zoloft (Sertalin) take three or four weeks to reach their full, therapeutic potential.  This is not necessarily a bad thing because missing a dose of the older SSRIs is not the end of the world.  These older SSRIs are great choices for patients who might not have the support structure to ensure total med-compliance.  A couple of examples are of somebody who has Attention Deficit issues and might get distracted.  Another example is of a young person who might be subject to, um, romantic distractions where they are deflected from their normal routine for a few days.

Some of the modern SSRIs kick in much, much more quickly than the old SSRIs.  Notably Escitalopram and Paroxetine.  Discontinuing them, unfortunately, results in a quick loss of antidepressant activity.

One doctor told me of an Emergency Room visit by a patient.  The patient was so debilitated by anxiety and depression that he appeared to be a boneless puddle of sobbing protoplasm.  Due to the dire situation, the attending doctor chose one of the faster acting SSRIs.  The next weekend the former patient brought a friend into the same Emergency Room for an unrelated issue.  The former patient was affective, gregarious and happy.  The former patient recognized the doctor and gave hime a double thumbs-up!  What really caught the doctor's attention was that the turn-around was much, much faster than the three-to-four weeks that is typically listed.

I figure I will run at half dose for a week and then bump it up to the full dose.  I intend to make the next transition during one of my "weekends".  Then, it will not be a big deal if I take a nap in the middle of the day.

To quote Red Green, "We are all in this together."