I feel like I’m living in the middle of an experiment.  I have heard of writers “embedding” with their subjects.  I have read “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” by Barbara Ehrenreich and recently started to read (had to return to the library before I was done; I hate that!) “The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table” by Tracie McMillan. But these are authors who took on their embedding by choice.  I’m in it and I didn’t choose to be.  

I only wish it was experiment.  The truth is, like 11.8 million people, or 7.6 percent of the American labor force (as of 8/1/13) we are part of the capable but unemployed ( U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its monthly Employment Situation Report which includes the headline unemployment rate. Headline, or U-3, unemployment is a measure of how many members of the workforce— defined by the BLS as the set of Americans who are both eligible and willing to work — are actively seeking employment).

Actually, that is not entirely true.  Having a small business, we do bring in a paltry bit of money which technically puts us in the category of  U-6 “which counts not just those job seekers included in the U-3 (headline) rate, but also those who are marginally attached to the workforce (underemployed) and people working part-time for economic reasons. This measure of unemployment hit 14.3 percent in June, half a percentage point increase from May but down from a peak of 17.1 percent in April 2010.” (http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/how-many-americans-actually-have-full-time-work.html/?a=viewall) My boldface emphasis included.  So, we’re really like 22.2 million people.  But that’s just one statistic.

There are more grim ones.  According to the Huffington Post, economists estimate that on average, just 35 percent of the jobless have collected benefits over the past 22 years. We are now a part of the 65%.   Politicians like to make headlines by spouting off about ES fraud and claim that many unemployed workers choose just to stay on unemployment benefits rather than look for work but the real truth is that if you can qualify for and receive unemployment income you are still limited as to how long you can receive it.  And, based on the stats, that’s a big “if.”

“No wonder people turn to crime.” 
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘turn to crime.’ It seems to me that this is a crime and you are in the middle of it.”

European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

Okay, I know.  European starlings, as a species, are much maligned, at least by Americans.  Starlings were purposely introduced to the country in the late 19th century for, get this, literary reasons!  That’s right, some homesick Europeans wanted to bring the bird species of none other than Shakespeare to Central Park in New York.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Turns out that European starlings took to America like, well, any species would who arrived in a place where they had no natural predators.  They flourished.  A bit too well.  Now, as the Washington Dept of Wildlife’s “Living with Wildlife” Web site puts it, they are ubiquitous.  Probably ranked somewhere between pigeons in the city and gulls at the coast.  The good news is that, although they were brought here under quite false pretenses, it turns out that one of their favorite snacks is the larva of the leatherjacket or marsh crane fly, which is also a non-native (and for that very reason deserve to be eaten!).

So why do we hate the beloved bird of Shakespeare?  Why indeed.  I mean, just because they tend to crowd out other song birds, including stealing their already occupied nests for starling eggs.  Just because they are messy housekeepers and small flocks can desiccate fruit and young veggie crops.  Just because older, more established roosts are breeding grounds for diseases unkind to humans.  What’s not to love?

In spite of all that I know about starlings I must confess that all that is dimmed by their voices.  I love the starling calls, described by “Birds of the Puget Sound” as a “continuous series  squeaks, squawks, including mimicry of other species.”  But this limited characterization doesn’t begin to do justice to the artful array of sounds of which these birds are capable.

I know this because I sleep with them.  Well, I mean, not literally.  They are more like “roommates.”  You see, there’s a nest of them under the eaves of our famous cupola and during the summer months, since we keep our windows open up there, we can hear everything our roomies are saying–in the early morning hours when they are getting ready for the work day and in the evening when they come home from work and are settling in.  I know it amounts to eavesdropping (I’m talking more about what I do, listening to them not what they do, making quite a mess of their room) but I can’t help but smile to hear them twitter, caw, chortle, cluck, click, chatter, chuckle, tweet, and guffaw.  Sometimes we’ll mute the TV so as to hear their bantering all the better.
 Listen,  I know they’re a nuisance; I know we need to get someone up there after this second batch of chicks is gone to get rid of the nest and debris but in the meantime, I’ll enjoy the free concert for a while.

For the past two-and-a-half years I’ve been a party to teaching my granddaughter the meaning of the word “no.”  I have also tried, with limited success, to teach my dog and my cat the same word.  I spend the better part of my life teaching four children the same word.  One would gauge, based on my experience, that I have a full understanding–and appreciation for–the word and that I would excel at applying it in my own life.  But, as they say, “those who can do, and those who can’t, teach.”

I am learning again the meaning of no.  No, I can’t climb that.  No, I can’t carry that.  No I can’t do all of that.  And, no, I can’t/won’t eat/drink that.  I have never been accused of being too thin.  Since young adulthood I have battled off an on with my weight–specifically how much I can eat based on how much I am burning. 

Then I entered into that most revered status: perimenopause.  All bets were off.  I didn’t necessarily gain a great deal of weight but my body reverted to its once familiar state: pregnancy.  I lost what little there was of my waist altogether.  I adjusted.  I got rid of two-thirds of my clothes.  I learned to live with elastic waistbands or pants that sat below the waist.

But then, the stroke and post-menopause and a broken hip.  I’m fairly certain now that my body doesn’t burn a single calorie for anything.  I just got rid of two-thirds of what was left in my closet.  I weigh more than I ever did at full term.  I have to learn to say “no” again.  No, thank you, no wine for me.  No, thank you, no toast for me. No potatoes, no pasta, no, no, no.  In truth, I do not like the word.  No, I do not.

But nearly…

Why do I seem to have so much trouble writing?  Why can’t I seem to form the habit?  I might have found the answer in yet another movie quote. One of my favs is the not-quite-old-enough-to-be-a-classic, “Throw Momma from the Train.”  Perhaps it is because I can somehow relate with the protagonist, Larry.  Not because he is a frustrated divorced literature professor but because he has serious writer’s block.  The movie is funny and has many memorable lines but the one that sticks most often in my mind and haunts me regularly is the one spoken by Larry (played by Billy Crystal) to his class of misfits: “Remember, a writer writes.”  And therein lies the problem.

I wouldn’t say I have a great imagination but I have a fairly active one.  I imagine all kinds of scenarios such as me fifty pounds heavier or what I would do if I won the lottery.  I imagine myself walking again.  I imagine craft ideas or sewing projects.  I imagine myself a published author.  The problem is, most of the stuff I imagine never makes it out of my mind and into reality.  Granted some of that I have no control over.  But a great deal of it I do.

If a writer writes then I am not a writer because I don’t actually get most of what I think or “write” down on paper.  I mean, sometimes I do because obviously I’m writing now but most of my really creative stuff stays stuck in my brain, inaccessible at the moment that I sit down at the computer.  I can sometimes access it through voice recording but the super good stuff stops short at the connection between brain and fingers.  And the real casualty in this is you, dear reader, because you will never know what you’re missing.  I am, after all, a writer in my mind.

The other day my daughter complained that every time she uses our pepper grinder–which has three settings for grind size–“someone” has changed its grind size to coarse and that she wished people would return it to fine when they finished using it implying, of course, that fine is the normal setting, the status quo.  Any other option is a deviation, translated “wrong.”

I realized then that in our household at least, there exists in other instances this same group think.  There is a “normal” setting such as this for the toaster, dishwasher, clothes washer and clothes dryer.  This setting is so accepted that if someone (i.e. me) changes the setting for a particular load (because that choice is more appropriate) others using the same machine go on using that new setting without questioning even if it is not appropriate for their purposes.  This is because, in their minds, there is a “normal” setting that is “always” used; why would anyone deviate?

This thinking often spills over into other areas like positioning of the driver’s seat and mirrors.  What is normal for me is not necessarily normal for you.  Yet,if I was the last person to drive the car you might expect me to reposition everything so that it was perfect for you the next time you drive (presuming that your setting is right and normal; mine is the aberration).   It’s easy to see why you might think this if you drive the car more often than I.  You might see yourself as the main driver and therefore your settings as the accepted normal.  But the status quo could quickly change if I suddenly started using the car “more” than you.  You begin to see how “normal” is truly arbitrary.

In 18th century America it was “normal” to own slaves.  In most of the 20th century it was normal to smoke in restaurants and on airplanes–even doctors might smoke in their examination rooms.  Group think–often the accepted definition of “normal”–is not necessarily right, not necessarily what’s best.  It is true that in nature sometimes wires get crossed and something “unusual” happens in a species; but sometimes that “unusual” thing starts happening more and more until what was abnormal is now quite normal. 

In reality, what I think of as normal, is often what I have decided I am comfortable with, what works for me, what fits my view of the world.  I might find like-minded people who agree with me but this does not necessarily mean that I am right, that there is, in fact a “normal” and then there is the “abnormal” and the world should side with me and my supporters.

The smaller the world gets and the more connected its inhabitants get the more we need to be open to rethinking “normal.”