Brave New World

I'm frankly baffled, out in the cold wondering what's up next. I thought of sitting down and making a list of all the things I'm not going to miss, but I couldn't imagine the shift in going from everything to nothing or at least to a very damn little. So here's the short list:

I can live without my Prius, but I do need a car for some of my out of the city assignments. A bike in winter in the Northeast doesn't do that well on the Mass Pike. I don't think they're allowed unless motorized.

I can live in a smaller home, but I do need a little privacy between my bedroom, kitchen and living room. I do need to eat and maybe having lots more time on my hands without a whole lot of work will allow me to cook long, slow meals the old fashioned way, avoiding all the waste of those pre-packaged things I buy at Costco and merely "prepare". This would be living green and saving the landfills.

Maybe we will ditch all of the two landlines we need for business and just pay for the two cell phones (or ditch the cell phones and go down to one land line). We need the line for business more than for personal use.

I could go on and on, but what about "my"Internet? How could I live without Comcast feeding my high speed? Would I become a cranky old Internet grouch?

Enough of this. I choose optimism. The alternative is just too bad for words.

Panic

No hopeful news out of the presses all over the world today. But that lack of a hopeful sign may be the hope we need. So far all the plans, from the bailout to the insinuation of taking over the healthy banks temporarily, have not rallied the stock market or assured economists and even some heads of world government, so maybe we'd better be patient until the right people formulate something clearly progressive for everyone to understand. If we can grasp something here, we can at least stave off panic.

What does panic do? It's the worst possible emotion. It's fear SQUARED. Remember that we have laws that protect people from panic in public spaces: you cannot scream FIRE in a movie theatre. I watched panic once in horror in a breathtaking scenario. I had just arrived in France and turned on a local TV feed only to witness live video from Belgium when a panic broke out after a soccer game and people were being trampled to death. And this was only a soccer game. It went from enthusiasm at winning the game to over-excitement, to the beginning of a stampede rush, and finally escalated to a panic to AVOID getting crushed to death, which resulted in hundreds more getting crushed to death.

What does a panic do to the American economy? It grinds everyone to a standstill. On September 11th, 12th and for at least a week afterwards in 2001, very few people spent much money. We were even wary of traveling outside, much less purchasing good and services. We were in a numb panic. Osama bin Laden won by stopping the wheels for a brief time. This time if we remain calm we can actually think our way through this, solve it one piece at a time and look at the whole--global climates, global trade, global cooperation. For my sanity, i know there are worse days ahead, but the ease with which we transition to better days (and certainly they won't look like the last five to ten years) can be productive and satisfying. Calm leadership, genuine and thoughtful is called for all across this land. Vote Obama.