TO MY BIG BROTHER GEORGE

AND so it goes. The final line of It's A Wonderful LIfe. I always watch that movie and I appreciate the line. But, really what does it mean? George has no money. He is in debt. His life insurance policy is all he has. As Henry Potter, the villain says, "You're worth more dead than alive George."
So, what does his brother Harry mean by that final toast? Surely, he speaks of the riches of a well lived life. George has many friends and is loved and this is finally what gives him his wealth. I wonder how many people think of wealth in those terms. I would say we have to redefine wealth. I have come up with a new criteria. Now that I have a family and I see the sands of time slipping away, I think we have all been swindled into thinking what true wealth is. This is my criteria for wealth:

When was the last time you came home early from work?When was the last time you didn't go into work to spend it with your family?When was the last time you called up a friend and did something with them for no reason at all?When was the last time you spent the entire day with your family doing nothing?When was the last time you slept in?When was the last time you took a walk? When was the last time you curled up with a good book?When was the last time you turned off your cell phone or beeper?When was the last time you planned to do absolutely nothing?When was the last time you didn't try and fill all your time with workWhen was the last time you did something with your son or your daughter?When was the last time you watched a sunset? A sunrise? When was the last time you looked at the stars?When was the last time you walked through the woods?When was the last time you didn't read the newspaper or get on the Internet and didn't care what was happening in the world?When was the last time you remembered what it was to be a kid again?When was the last time you went to a coffeehouse with a book?When was the last time you had a party and didn't' give a damn about the cost or what it did to your house?"When was the last time you read poetry?

Well, you get the picture. I have come to view wealth a whole lot differently. I saw a man the other day in front of his million dollar vacation home on a beautiful lake. His son was out on the dock. The man came out and swept the dock while his son watched. When he was done, the man went back into the house. I wondered if that man knows that one day his son won't be there at the end of the dock. So I guess that's what Harry Bailey was saying in the end. He was toasting his brother who didn't have any money but had all the things that money simply can't buy. Time. Money can't buy time and that is precious.
So I say it to loud and clear, here's to George, truly, the richest man in town. Amen.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

CAR SALESMAN

It is a derogatory term. CAR SALESMAN. If you really wanted to sum up someone who was a conman or flimflam artist then you called him a car salesman. You remember those guys, they would promise you one thing and then suddenly you were in the struggle of your life not to get ripped off. These same guys are now in Washington--they drove--how middle class--and they are asking for billions to save their hides. Now where were they when those big cars of ours dropped by twenty five percent the moment we drove them off the lot? Or how about the second our warranty expired and the transmission went out? Or that strange noise our new car made and you brought it back to the dealer to find out it was kanooten valve or the brakes or the axle...oh and by the way, you know that bumper to bumper warranty you are paying fifteen hundred bucks for--ITS NOT COVERED UNDER THAT. Then we walk out a cool thousand bucks poorer, going to some garage guy to fix our problem because we can't afford to go back to the dealer. NOW WHY IS THAT? Or how come those foreign cars seem to be so much tighter in the steering and not break down and even cost less? Now why is that? Or the way we would watch our gas tanks get sucked dry by engines that are about as efficient as a steam locomotive while the rest of the world is working on hybrids and fuel efficient engines. Now our cars are worthless. If you own anything over a mid size car then good luck. Your blue book tells it all. And these same guys who gave us forty five thousand dollar price tags...who made so much money on the SUV's they made them like hotcakes--these same guys--these car salesman--now want to get billions of dollars because they priced themselves out the market and didn't bother to give America a decent car? You know what, let them walk back to Detroit. They probably wouldn't make it in their cars anyway.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Confirmation of Fiction

I was reading an article in the New York Times about how writing is now being outsourced to India. Newspapers are now employing someone in India to write about what is happening in Scranton. Amazing. But of course it is economics. Those same disembodied voices that tell us we are late on our credit card payment will now be reflecting on our fourth of July parade down mainstreet. This leads to the second biggest fear in publishing--the digitizing of books into bits and bytes. The death of the book. Put these two together and you have the perfect outsourced culture, complete with disembodied voices that flow to us from places we know not. Too bad humans are flesh and blood. Then it would be perfect. But we aren't cyber. Not yet anyway. So we may read our books on smart phones or we may read the latest rumination from India on the quality of sweet corn in Iowa, but we still need our stories. And those have to come from people who know our wants and needs and cannot be outsourced. And lying in the hammock just wont do it with our kindle or our phone. Too much like work. In the final secret hour of our communion with the written word we turn back into the flesh and blood creatures hiding behind those screens and i phones. And we know we are mortal. So we look for our humanity, however it is delivered. We look for our fiction.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com