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Opinion
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
“If you always think what you always thought, you'll always do what you always did and you'll always get what you always got, and think what you always thought.” – Anonymous
It was a moment of silence for me – the pen swooping swiftly across the paper – equal pay for equal work. It seems so simple and equitable like the lessons we were taught in primary school.
The day President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law on Jan. 29, I sat with eyes fixed to the television on CNN.
The passage of the bill means that women can challenge unequal pay.
A woman with cropped blond hair and librarian-style glasses told of her plight in a voice that sounded like that of the Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Lilly Ledbetter was employed as a supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Gadsden, Ala. from 1979 to 1998.
She worked as an area manager for most of her career. The majority of people in her position were men.
At first her salary paralleled the salaries of the men performing substantially similar work. Over time Ledbetter’s pay stagnated compared to the pay of male area managers who had the same or even less seniority.
At the end of 1997 she was the only woman in the position of area manager and the pay discrepancy was blatantly obvious. Ledbetter was paid $3,727 per month while the lowest-paid male area manager received $4,286 and the highest paid received $5,236 per month.
The act addresses fairness and equality in an era of desperation.
It also makes the statement that maybe the best man for the job is not always a man.
I’m not touting womanpower, just human power and basic human rights.
It’s simple. It’s like picking a bushel of apples, or in Lake County, pears. If a man and a woman both contribute the same amount, why would the man walk away with more pieces of gold?
According the National Women’s Law Center, the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act reverses the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in 2007 and restores the ability of victims of wage discrimination to hold their employers accountable for injustice and challenge the practice in court.
“This is truly a monumental achievement for women – and all workers. The Supreme Court stripped workers of their ability to fight wage discrimination but now a new president and Congress have stepped in and restored their basic legal rights,” said Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. “Employers will now be held accountable for each discriminatorily reduced paycheck, because every time pay is unfairly lowered, it’s a violation of the law and fundamental fairness.”
It takes perseverance and patience to fight the good fight or envision the big picture as Ledbetter learned in her experience, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), U.S. Supreme Court.
When I consider equality for women, I often look to famed sociologist, philosopher, feminist and author, Mary Wollstonecraft, born in 1797, an avid advocate of independence and education for women.
During an unlikely era she stood firm about the importance of self-discipline, honesty, frugality and social contentment. She placed the responsibility of sensibility, economics and political theory on women while fully appreciating the role of motherhood. She died from complications associated with childbirth when her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of “Frankenstein,” was born.
In the spirit of strong women, strong humans, Ledbetter stood in front of a crowd in Washington DC, her image on the televisions of many millions, proving that we all have a voice.
The world is tumultuous at best now. The simple act promoting civilized and fair behavior provided some respite from the cold winds of war, poverty and overwhelming hopelessness.
Mandy Feder is an award-winning writer and editor who now joins Lake County News as a columnist and contributor.
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Thirty years later, and having lived for a significant amount of time in a total of three very different nations, I think I may have come to know the meaning of such stress.
Stress is a mental experience, that affects the body and the emotions, but that does not necessarily have to do with actual outer circumstances or events, rather it is often rooted in specific beliefs and perceptions. It is how we handle life that causes us to be stressed, rather than life itself, most of the time.
Life here seems to be handled with high expectations, standards of perfections that are not seen in too many other cultures, that are often deemed to be “substandard” by Americans. Even Europeans are looked upon with some disdain for having supposedly lower standards in some aspects of their lives. Some environmental causes are met with the comment: ”So you want us to live like Europeans?” as if Europeans still lived in the dark ages.
The flip side of this pursuit of materialistic happiness, which goes with the pursuit of superficial perfection, is stress, as nothing is ever good enough, and no one can ever be satisfied with what they have, they consistently want more, bigger, louder, brighter, faster. Even food has to be large, and as it gets bigger, shinier and more perfect, like plastic, it looses its content, with almost no nutrition.
So this plastic culture focuses almost entirely on appearances. Damn the content, worship the superficial. People eat perfect-looking empty or chemical food, they elect individuals who “look presidential” and are clueless or have no integrity or character, they watch mind-numbing movies and flashy news and entertainment, they live in huge houses made of cardboard, and they attempt to look and act as if they were still 20 in their 40s, with fake body parts whenever they can afford them.
Indeed the struggle to appear perfect also targets physical appearances and personal lives. People don’t just want perfect trappings; they want perfect lives, some according to Hallmark ideals in the domain of relationships. They also want perfect bodies, women still being generally pressured to strive to look like the 16-year-old anorexic models who fill the pages of popular magazines.
Happiness must also be perfect, and anyone who feels sadness or grief, or anything even slightly negative, better get over it quickly and according to some predetermined and orderly steps defined by the experts, or else it is concluded that there is something wrong with them and that they need psychotropic medications, which are given to the public by doctors like candy these days.
Normal anger is not tolerated, but violence is, and pervades society precisely because people are taught to bottle up their everyday anger and frustrations, to control their behaviors and suppress their feelings, until they go postal or psycho, or implode in depression. So while no one should ever express normal, rational anger or pain, everyone better have a gun and some medication, as fear and paranoia become rampant.
Children are not immune from a pressure to perform, to excel, and to compete madly, the latest being that toddlers can be taught to read. Perhaps they will be made to have read Shakespeare and Homer and do calculus by the age of two … after all, you can never induce a person to aim for the best too early, or so it is believed.
What is lost in this process of striving for superficial perfection and performance? Some American tourists made a comment, while visiting Venice, reputed to be one of the most romantic cities in the world … they said it wasn’t bad, but it needed a coat of paint. They were apparently oblivious to the soul of the place, and wanted it to look like Las Vegas.
Soul, heart, poetry, charm, substance, meaning, authenticity, these things are lost, in people as well as the outer environment, when outer perfection is sought with such neurotic determination. There is definitively a huge yet unconscious hunger for these attributes in America today, as can be seen in the current trend of “distressed” furniture which people with so called disposable income and some sophistication like to acquire, looking for some traces of soul in their decor. Because this hunger is unconscious, the attempt to restore “soul” in everyday life is indeed feeble and superficial, and as everything else commercially exploited.
The poetic dimension of life, so crucial to the soul, that without it withers and dies, is severely lacking in this speedy plastic and concrete “perfect” American culture, so seemingly practical and materialistic yet without respect for actual matter, without much respect or love for land, water and air, and so fundamentally alien to nature, as can be witnessed when, traveling by air, perfectly straight lines and square angles are seen to define cities and impose their very odd, unnatural order on curvy, naturally wiggly hills and valleys.
What is also lost here, and the source of the most intense stress in the final analysis, is self-acceptance. High standards mean relentless self-criticism, each one of us being trained to be our very own “coach,” beating and whipping ourselves into guilt and ever greater demands to become better in all areas of our lives, not from natural growth and inner inspiration, as should happen given some care, trust, and natural time, but by trying to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps.
Mistakes are frowned upon and learning time and performances are condensed to the speed of light. Those who fail or appear to give up are pariahs, akin to lepers … they are “losers.” It is ironically believed that there is something seriously wrong with those individuals who do not have the drive to relentlessly struggle to better their lives according to other people’s standards, and almost everyone is conditioned to want it and want it yesterday … from the hurried business executive to the spiritual seeker demanding instant enlightenment.
For these very reasons, because growth does not happen naturally and on its own terms, from the inside out (there is no time to live, only time to race through life, to get and perform rather than be), people who forcefully achieve the goals society teaches them to seek frequently end up feeling fake, and have an occasional “identity crisis,” as their outer life does not match their inner life.
Yet most do not experience such necessary redemption, they simply navigate unaware on the edge of meaninglessness and despair, attempting to function while quickly pursuing what is called happiness with ever more and better stuff, ever more effective medications, greater and madder sources of entertainments and escapes, and a belief that if they could only reach the epitome of what they think is perfection in one aspect of their lives or another, they would be satisfied at last, they would feel worthy and could rest on their achievements for an instant … until artificial standards are raised again, and a new race begins, and the gerbil is back running in the wheel inside his/her mental cage, going absolutely nowhere with great speed and impressive determination.
Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.
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- Written by: Dr. William MacDougall
As most of you know, the California State Legislature still has not agreed upon a budget. This places all state-funded agencies, including schools, in a very tough position.
As they debate, life goes on and state-funded agencies spend monies not knowing exactly how much will be received when the debate ends. In their efforts to force an agreement, the legislators and the governor have made rumors and threats regarding cuts and financial withholdings.
I was taught to always “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” This philosophy has served me well and that is exactly what we have been doing.
Prior to the beginning of the year, the Konocti Unified School District developed a budget based upon the best projections available from multiple sources. The KUSD administration knew that things were going to be tight and staffed accordingly.
We have entered 2009 still with no budget adopted by the state. The governor has stated that there will be drastic cuts, but no amounts have been determined.
Now rumors are surfacing of IOUs coming from the state. These are only rumors, but IF it were to happen, it would cause a huge financial turmoil that would affect all aspects of the California economy. However, with the “prepare for the worst” philosophy, we have secured funds to get our contracted employees through this possibility.
The key phrase here is “contracted employees.” We know how much we are spending on our contracts with our classified and certificated staff. Where we come into problems is when we add staff time through time sheets.
Most of these time sheet hours are to be paid out of grants we have been awarded or categorical funds we have been promised by the state. The state is saying that it may not honor or may greatly reduce what we have been awarded or promised. Thus, we should not spend monies that we cannot count on receiving. That is why we have temporarily suspended time sheet hours and continued the spending freeze.
Once the budget is adopted, hopefully very soon, we expect to lift the suspension of time sheets and continue to fund the staff needed to operate programs such as our after school Academic Opportunity (AO) and music programs.
Over 40 years ago, my father told me that a person’s true character is best shown during the “tough times.” I have talked with several people who are being financially affected by the temporary suspension of time sheet hours. Almost every person I have spoken with has understood the necessity of this decision and then stated that “we’ll make sure that the kids get what they need anyway.” Members of our community, specifically in this case the KUSD staff, are again going the extra mile, without financial compensation, to provide services and enrichment to our community. This is the TRUE character of our community.
In these times we have very few things we can count on, but we can count on our community. When I first came to Lake County, the Lower Lake High School football field, later named Sadler Field, had just been completed. This field was completed through the funds and volunteer efforts of many outstanding citizens. This month, we opened our new gymnasium, a state-of-the-art facility that has the largest indoor seating capacity in Lake County. The gym was paid for out of bond funds purchased by our community. Amazing things happen when our community decides to invest in our children.
Another great example of how a rural community, with limited financial resources, can create a highly successful, heavily attended family activity is the Konocti Basketball League (KBL). KBL provides evening activities for youth at each elementary school and then coordinates games from 8 a.m. To 3 p.m. on Saturday.
Opening day games took place on Saturday, Jan. 10. There were hundreds of people at Lower Lake High School, enjoying a fun-filled, family activity. Parents are asked to pay $30 for each player for the entire season, but several children are sponsored by community members because some parents are unable to pay the fee. KBL is an all-volunteer organization. All coaches, referees, and organizational positions volunteer their time so that the youth of our community have supervised, safe activities after school and on Saturday.
KBL requires and enforces a policy of sportsmanship and code of ethics for its athletes and parents. This policy promotes a sense of honor, appreciation, respect and community.
The healthiness of this family activity is noteworthy. Children and their parents spend the day participating and watching basketball, and sharing “quality time.” This activity would not be possible without a partnership between the schools and a large group of community volunteers. Many of these volunteers do not have children participating; they simply want to “look after” the kids in our community.
The Calling All Communities Challenge is another example of our community’s unity and health. This U.S. Cellular-sponsored competition stated that $100,000 would be given to the 10 schools around the country that received the most community support. Community support was determined by the number of prepaid postcards that were filled out naming an individual school.
Within weeks, Lower Lake High School was listed as having the fifth-highest number of votes in the entire nation. The local newspapers and communication networks kicked into high gear as the new year arrived. People throughout Lake County realized that only one California school was ranked anywhere near the top 10.
Votes for Lower Lake High School started pouring in from all over Lake County. We will not know the final results until Feb. 15, but the last unofficial estimate from U.S. Cellular had Lower Lake High at No. 4. Thanks to all of you who voted! This really shows how our community and county are special, strong and supportive.
Representatives from the county of Lake, the city of Clearlake, KUSD and our community have been meeting weekly since November to investigate ways to increase revenue and make our dollars go further. Members of our community continue to volunteer their time and resources to provide activities, food and shelter to our kids.
One thing is certain; the best investment we can make is in our children. This is the basic, beautiful belief of the Konocti Unified School District and our community. We live and work with some of the most caring, hard-working, community-minded people on Earth. I am humbled and honored to work with you and to be able to serve our community.
Dr. William R. MacDougall, Ed.D., is in his first year as Konocti Unified School District's superintendent. He writes periodic updates with community members to let them know the state of the district.
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
WASHINGTON, DC – The estimates of two million people were low. Most could not get in: perhaps double that number were at the Capitol Mall today!
I am overcome by the sheer jubilation and numbers of people here. We woke up at 4:30 a.m., left Alexandria, Virginia at 5:30 a.m., sausaged ourselves on the Metro (stop and go, mostly stop) for two and a half hours, faced extraordinary crowds, and encountered NO volunteers to help with crowd control. Despite that, the crowd was remarkably well-behaved. Without volunteers and with some of the crowd management missteps in the setup, it could have easily been a disaster had the crowd not found a way to self-manage.
After the Metro, we waited another three hours in the Blue Ticket line to see the inauguration—though it was less a “line” and more like a river of humanity, pressed together so close that a dropped mitten became a major incident. We wondered how Wanda Harris, Tony Farrington and Cliff Swetnam were faring over at the Purple Ticket gate.
I was sure we all shared the bitter cold: even the warmth of the nearby bodies did not stop the inevitable numbness setting into fingers, toes and any exposed skin. We were all in SUCH a good mood, though ... singing in the crush of people. Today is OUR day, after all, we are taking our country back and adults are in charge again and the rule of law will be restored. Hope reigns.
Once inside the event venue, the festivities began without any waiting … this meant there were thousands upon thousands with tickets still outside, waiting to get in who would miss the event altogether. The fact that there wasn’t a riot at this point was amazing.
As the dignitaries were introduced, a strategically placed big screen treated the crowd to a preview of who would soon enter the venue. Later that evening, as I watched the pre-recorded inauguration on Tivo, I can tell there were moments that were either ignored by the media or not adequately appreciated.
First, there were few comments about who was cheered and who wasn’t. The crowd was surprisingly restrained when President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush were introduced. Most people did NOT boo — perhaps a few close to the ABC and MSNBC cameras did, it sounded a lot louder on TV than in real life.
And, even though this president was clearly unpopular among those attending this event, the comments around us were more relief than anger at the outgoing president. In fact, the most negative response of all was reserved for Joseph Lieberman — perhaps loyalty means more than disagreement over policy.
Lieberman scored a even more negative response from the crowd than Dick Cheney, who engendered a modest amount of restraint with his (convenient?) wheelchair: there were some side comments about how crass it might be to boo someone in a wheelchair. Here, democracy flirts with boorishness, those around commented on how allowing our country to torture might be worth a few boos even if the guy is in a wheelchair.
It was clear that most folks intended to celebrate the new administration, and the cheers that erupted at the first glimpse of Obama on screen proved this.
Next, no matter what the pundits say or don’t say, the inaugural address was spot on with the crowd and, in my opinion, with the international community watching around the world.
Here in the shadow of the Capitol, we were cheering and in tears. Obama seemed to strike the right balance between acknowledging the dire situation we are in and his reference to dark storm clouds gathering suggested that we have some particularly difficult times ahead, which we all appreciate and are experiencing back home.
Those around me were saying “Amen!” to key phrases like “putting away childish things” and “restore science” and “ready to lead once more” and Obama’s reference to the “values upon which our success depends: honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism.”
I, for one, greatly appreciated the reference to the restoration of the “rule of law” and his unwillingness to sacrifice our constitution for expediency, his acknowledgment that we are a member of a world community and our needs will not be met through the oppression of others.
Obama made known his priorities: peace, energy, economy, education and health care. His emphasis on giving all the opportunity to pursue their full measure of happiness was particularly refreshing: acknowledging that the concentration of wealth has created such huge injustice in recent years.
He focused on the concepts of personal responsibility, hard work and our task of growing abundance and prosperity for all, while acknowledging that the one thing we control is our willingness to serve, and the nobility of devoting oneself to service, to an effort greater than ourselves. This was a great blend of reality and hope.
Fortuitously, after the swearing in, we left the inauguration and walked around the US Capitol just in time to see the Obamas escorting the Bushes down the Capitol steps for George and Laura Bush’s sendoff off in a helicopter.
The TV pundits did not comment on the song that erupted in the massive crowd: “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey hey goodbye!” But in replays of the scene, you can clearly hear it on ABC’s coverage of the event and also at about 30 seconds into this Youtube clip: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFhlZtTn_0U.
This impromptu singing was much louder in person than on TV. I felt an odd mixture of delight and bit uneasy about the response (I am glad to see him go too). Was this democracy or a baseball game with the opposing pitcher being removed from the mound? It seems the two have been merged together somehow. Yet, how else might a crowd celebrate their glee?
At this point, maybe 2 p.m., after no breakfast and being on our feet for nine hours: we were cold, we were tired, we needed to pee and we encountered a 30-person long line at a Starbucks on the corner of 5th and New Jersey. We decided that a warm coffee would be worth the wait. We would at least get inside for a respite.
In what I consider a miracle, Starbucks was also serving oatmeal with nuts, raisins and brown sugar that afternoon. I can honestly say that this is the second-best meal I have ever eaten (the first being the soggy hospital hamburger that I consumed after the birth of my son). This simple dish reminded me that food is sacred, and this food was a godsend: warm, hearty, filling and oh-so-delicious. Unfortunately, the bathroom was closed to the public, not even customers were allowed in.
A final thought on the overwhelming crowds: Barack Obama's concert was handled so well on Sunday ... it is too bad that the same folks were not apparently planning the crowd control and services for the inauguration!
We needed many volunteers to handle the record crowds on this inauguration day. The WORSE situation was this: nearly every bathroom and porta-pottie anywhere within walking distance of the capitol building was LOCKED – no, check that, PADLOCKED – virtually all of them at Union Station, a prime Metro stop suddenly closed due to crowds and another three hours of walking and lines to find a way home.
The lack of attention to basic human needs was absolutely appalling … hotels with their armies of employees out front to prevent crowds from using their bathrooms, even the elderly and disabled were turned away.
What happened? How could dozens of facilities lined up for use by the crowds all be locked, all except one which was in disgustingly dire condition? No matter where folks walked, they found the same situation, and the crowds were not allowed back into the standing areas where other portable facilities were located.
Hundreds of thousand of people there – all waiting since the early hours of the morning, all dressed up and literally nowhere to go. To make matters worse, Capitol police were giving misdirection to those in need of facilities, directing them to local restaurants or the Union Station – they were no help at all.
I couldn't help but feel that this is the last gesture by the Bush administration: the planning for basic needs was clearly abysmal. In addition, the lack of trash cans resulted in a Capitol area covered in litter after the event. I’m not sure who was in charge of this part, but it wasn’t handled well.
All that said, people were remarkably upbeat. It was a jubilant day. For example, in the midst of all of the chaos, one of the street vendors gave Loretta a free Obama button. The gentleman’s smile and act of kindness shone through like the sun.
There were thousands reaching out to each other: all were singing, celebrating and filled with a growing realization that we were all a part of history.
Denise Rushing represents the Northshore on the Lake County Board of Supervisors. She lives in Upper Lake.
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