The One Percent Has Its Say (For A Change?)

In the December 29^th Chicago Tribune, Dawn Turner Trice reports on a study by  Northwestern University researcher Fay Lomax Cook of the attitudes and practices towards charity, volunteering, and the government’s role in rectifying poverty. In this survey, 100 Chicago families in the 1% are interviewed. (According to the IRS, a family is in the 1% if its adjusted gross income is $343,927 or its net worth is at least $8.7million.)

Part of the motivation for doing the survey was to facilitate a dialog between the 1% and all the rest of us so that there can be some resolution of our nation’s problems of income inequity. It seems that we have been harboring false stereotypes about them – boohoo – and they’re hurt and somewhat miffed. No, they are not all selfish and greedy. Some of them are very generous in their charitable giving and their time.

The attitudes reported in the article of the 1% did not particularly surprise me. Of course, some wealthy people are generous with their time and money – although giving an average of 4% of their income isn’t especially magnanimous. Most seem to feel that the government should have a limited role in adjusting the income inequity in our country. Is the corollary that it should be up to the largesse of those who can afford it?

Americans in general are a very generous people when it comes to giving on an individual basis or volunteering and the 1% is no different than the rest of us in that respect. The problem is that this isn’t working nor has this ever worked. Before our social safety net was in place, during the Great Depression, people depended on the kindness of others and ended up selling apples in the street. Many starved and there were many evicted when they couldn’t pay their rent or mortgages. We need to have a much more systematic approach to deal with United States' income inequity which is now the most unbalanced in the world. We have a 1% who has 36% of the nation’s wealth. More and more people are becoming unable to pay for their basic needs and are finding it increasingly difficult to send their children to college or to think of being able to retire. I think that this is what the Occupy Movements have been trying to say. The issue isn’t the individual attitudes of a few people; it’s about the system. And something besides a few well meaning people has got to give.

Let’s hope that in the New Year we can get beyond all our large and small differences and arrive at some kind of resolution. Happy New Year everyone! May it be a happy, healthy, and more prosperous year for EVERYONE.

I’ll be back next year with more easy, economic recipes along with my stories and ideas. See you soon!  

The American Girl Turns 25

This interesting year 2011 that is almost over thousands of women marched in Egypt’s Tahrir Square protesting brutality committed against them. Five Saudi women were arrested for driving cars. Women have been elected heads of states. In Myanmar formerly known as Burma, one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi leads a movement for democracy.

In America, the American Girl doll had her 25^th birthday. It’s time for her to call herself a woman and get involved in world events. For the uninitiated, the American Girl is a set of dolls with accompanying books, clothes, and furniture representing many of America’s subcultures and ethnic groups. These dolls with accompanying books are priced at $105 each rendering them inaccessible for many children of the 99%; but that’s another topic that I’ve dealt with in previous posts. 

Perusing the American Girl catalogue, I see that many girls are missing. American is such a huge, diverse country that I guess that's easy to do. There are no mixed race girls on the list. Or how about one who is in third grade and in the top of her class in math and wants to be a doctor someday? Somehow they forgot about Linda whose family came from Asia and is now working hard while she studies to go to college. What about Maria who can’t go to college because she was snuck into America when she was a baby and being here illegally, campaigns for Congress to pass the Dream Act? There are so many types and stereotypes that should be included. We'll have to have some Middle Eastern dolls who came here as war refugees. Where is Susan who is named after her great-great-great aunt Susan B. Anthony and is now joining in the latest wave of feminist thought? Speaking of that, I wonder what the original Susan B. Anthony would think were she alive to see the current American girl with all of her achievements and retreats.

So American Girl, let’s get it together in 2012. At 25, you’re a woman now. Happy Birthday. I hope that you achieve your dreams in the next year or at least begin to work toward them.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy Kwanzaa to all!

New Year Hope from the New Foundation Center

I have good news to share with you for a change: The New Foundation Center, which serves more than 250 men and women with serious mental illnesses who live in the north and northwest metropolitan Chicago suburbs, has received a $15,000 challenge grant to continue its important work.

Janet C. Parker, the vice president of the organization’s board of directors, shares information about the group.  "We partner with people who have a mental illness to support their recovery and their pursuit of lives with meaning and purpose. People go for support and companionship with their peers through support groups and drop-in centers. They can also access case management services, job referral, and supported housing there. The challenge grant has come at a crucial time when many groups are losing funding.

The New Foundation Center provides members with many services including recovery programs, permanent supportive housing, supported employment, and health and wellness programs, all within a community that encourages sharing, independent living, friendship, personal responsibility, and family participation. We believe that people can recover."

The New Foundation Center provides a lifeline to many of the members who come there. They helped Mike get the medical care he needs to regulate his diabetes. Before connecting with the New Foundation Center, his diabetes was so out of control that he wasn’t able to function. They helped Debbie and her five children to obtain permanent housing. Before that, Debbie and her family were being tossed between shelters and other temporary housing. Now with stable housing, this family can establish a good life.

“Every $1 from new donors and every $1 of incremental donations from current donors will be matched by the foundation. Your gift will have double the impact. You can give by logging onto the New Foundation Center site through the following web address: www.wilpower.org then click on the “Giving” hyperlink in the upper right hand corner of the website page and follow the directions for making a donation."

"Thank you for donating!"

Janet C. Parker
Vice-President
New Foundation Center board of directors

Janet says “thank you” and so do I. The New Foundation Center is doing important work to help people to help themselves. Thank you for your support.

The Anti-Shopper Gets Ready for the Season - With Resolutions and Vegetarian Eggplant Parmesan

Everyone who knows me well knows how much I hate to shop. Thus, in more ways than one, I feel like what Temple Grandin terms "an anthropologist on Mars.” Just finishing watching Modern Family on TV frantically getting ready for Christmas on December 16^th, the only date available for their extended family to get together, I realized that it was that time of year once again. Since we’ll probably do the modern Jewish Christmas (movies, Chinese food, and some volunteering), I’m grateful that I’m not obliged to join in the Christmas season shopping fray. I hope this Modern Family and all the families they are an exaggeration of gets together and stops worrying so much about the gifts. They spent so much time shopping and wrapping and worrying about them that they must be exhausted to a frazzle by the time Christmas arrives. The way they’re celebrating doesn’t look like fun to me, but I’m on the outside looking in. As I said, I’ve always been the Anti-shopper. Fortunately, no one is depending on my shopping to spur an economic recovery. If they are, the whole free world is in even bigger trouble than it thinks.

Instead, I have already started contemplating what comes next – the resolution making for the New Year. While I’m hoping the powers that be make some important ones – To do what’s best for the people of this country even at the risk of making their opponents look good –for myself, I’m starting small. I already started power walking almost daily and eating healthy food. Let’s see how long it lasts.

In keeping with these resolutions, here’s a recipe for vegetarian eggplant parmesan. It’s less fattening than the one with meat and can be prepared in about 20 minutes. It serves 4.

                                                       Vegetarian Eggplant Parmesan
1 eggplant cut in slices
¼ pound Swiss cheese or mozzarella cheese diced small (I use the low fat cheese)
mushrooms
1 yellow onion sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic
oregano, basil, ground pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese grated

Preheat the oven to 350º Fahrenheit.
Put the sliced eggplant in a pot with water to cover. Steam until soft or about 10 minutes.
While the eggplant is steaming, slice the mushrooms and onion and sauté in the olive oil.
Put the tomato sauce in a pot and add the mushrooms and onions and the seasoning.
When the ingredients are ready, assemble as follows: a layer of eggplant, a layer of cheese, a layer of tomato sauce mixture, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
Put in the oven on a bottom rack and cook for about 30 to 40 minutes.

Happy Holidays everyone. Whichever way you enjoy celebrating, I hope you have a healthy and happy season.

The 99% And Some Recipes From the Great Depression

Today people in over 325 cities in America rallied to support the Occupy Wall Street protests. Unfortunately, I could only be there in spirit because I am getting over a cough. The wind/chill factor in Chicago was around 25º.  The Chicago protest drew several thousand people who knew I was important to get out there.

According to Rana Foroohar in the November 14^th issue of Time Magazine, the 1% that the 99% is enraged at takes home 21% of the country’s income and owns 35% of the wealth. He states that partly as a result of this plus several other factors upward mobility has been seriously eroded. No wonder people are angry.

When I graduated from Binghamton University in 1970, I left debt free ready to begin my adult life with no strings. My family wasn’t even close to the top 20%, but my parents were able to send me to a state university. At that time, the cost of a year at a state college including tuition, room, and board was about $1500. Now the cost of a year for undergraduate students at Binghamton University including tuition, room, and board is about $19,000 per year for state residents and it has been cited by Kiplinger’s Magazine for several years for being a great value. The cost for tuition, room, and board at other state universities can be as high as $25,000 per year. This is hardly in keeping with the rate of inflation. Students graduate from college laden with debt and then have great difficulty finding employment. That’s for the ones who are fortunate and/or determined enough to go to college. No wonder people are angry.

The Occupy Protests seem somewhat reminiscent of the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. Why shouldn’t they? There was no safety net then and some would like to destroy our fragile safety net now.

With that in mind, I wondered if there were any lessons to be learned from the Great Depression. Certainly, there must be some good thrifty recipes so I asked my mother if she remembered what they ate then. This is one recipe she remembered from that era. My grandma must have made it often. They called it Jewish spaghetti. This should serve 4.

                                             Jewish Spaghetti

               a quart of water
               1 pat of butter

3/4 box spaghetti

               ½ pound grated cheese
               spaghetti sauce
               mushrooms, onions, garlic, oregano, salt, and pepper

Preheat oven to 350º.

Put pot of water on the burner. When the water is boiled, cook the spaghetti.
Butter a casserole dish. Put the spaghetti in the dish. Add the spaghetti sauce, mushrooms, onions, garlic, oregano, salt, and pepper. Mix with the spaghetti.
Put the grated cheese on top.
Cook for 40 minutes or until the cheese gets crisp around the edges.

 

Are You A Job Creator? Maybe You're Entitled To A Tax Break

When I was downtown the other day, I ran into an old friend. She had such a euphoric grin on her face that I wanted some of whatever she had. “Guess what!” she said. “My name came up on the waiting list. I’m on my way to Nordstrom’s to get my $9,010 Chanel sequined tweed coat. And just in time to claim it.”

“Claim it?” I asked.

 “Yes,” she answered. “Don’t you know that job creators have a special place in our economy? Think of all the jobs I’m creating by buying the coat. It should be worth some tax deductions.”

 “Congratulations,” I said.

 Since I hadn’t been in a store except for the supermarket in months, I realized that with the year almost over, I was falling down on my civic responsibilities. By contrast, my friend was inspired to go out and buy that $1400 pair of shoes to go with the coat. I felt ashamed. After all, we must all do our fair share. There must be something I could do to help. Here I was surrounded by stores. As I was pondering what to buy, a man selling Streetwise, the newspaper written and sold by the homeless, sold me a copy. Thinking that he was doing a worthy project, I paid him extra. Then I asked myself how he was contributing to job creation and hoped that they taxed him to the fullest. Yes, it was time for me to do my fair share, but I was not in the mood to shop so I got my hair done and then went to a restaurant to eat. Feeling that I had done what I could, I went home satisfied with my efforts.

By the time I got home, it was late and I needed to make something quick. Here is a recipe for low-fat enchilada casserole. Prep time is about 20 minutes and it feeds 4.

                                                         Low-Fat Enchilada Casserole

 2 14 ounce cans black or red beans drained of liquid

½ cup chopped onion
4 tsps chili powder
½ tsp freshly ground pepper
2 gloves garlic minced
1 cup water
11.5 oz jar mild taco sauce
6 corn tortillas
1 ¼ cup shredded 2% sharp cheddar cheese
2 green onions finely chopped
shredded lettuce
chopped fresh tomatoes
fat free sour cream for garnish

 Preheat oven to 375° Fahrenheit.

Saute the onion. Add chili powder, cumin, pepper, garlic and water. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.

Lightly cover bottom of 9x13” pan with half of taco sauce. Place 3 corn tortillas in bottom of pan cutting tortillas to fit. Spread bean mixture on top of tortillas. Sprinkle with ½ cup of cheese.  Drizzle with remaining taco sauce over cheese and top with remaining 3 tortillas. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 25 minutes.

Garnish with green onion, tomatoes, sour cream, and lettuce.  Serve.

Recipes and Comfort From the '50's

Is life in the 21^st century too complicated? Are the Occupy protests too much?  Are there too many choices for some people? Is there often a collective nostalgia for the ‘50’s or is the focus on that decade a multi-national corporate plot designed to encourage us to stop thinking critically? You be the judge.

This weekend we saw Maple and Vine at the Next Theatre Company in Evanston. Written by Jordan Harrison and directed by Damon Kiely, this satire poses many interesting questions. It is about a high powered young couple in Manhattan who are overwhelmed by their lives. When they meet two ‘50’s re-enactors, they decide to trade their success driven lives for a simpler era of casseroles and stay-at-home wives. Is it really simpler? This is what the two main characters must decide. I won’t play the spoiler because you should see this play for yourselves.

What interested me most was that the people involved in creating the play are all younger adults who never having experienced this period, seem to idealize it. This decade that gave us the McCarthy witch hunts, the threat of nuclear war, the murder of Emmett Till, and the Feminine Mystique [to list a few highlights] is remembered by most people as a time when all was well and nothing was complicated. I was 12 years old in 1960 so my memory of the period is hazy at best. Reflecting on it historically, however, I have to say that I'll stay in 2011 thank you despite the ubiquitous superficial electronic connections. What do you readers think?

Alas, no era is all good - or bad. I think I’d like that camaraderie (bad word choice for that time period) among the women. The shared recipes and Tupperware parties sound somewhat comforting. That’s why it felt really good to share some of those things with my friend Janet Parker. She’s sharing this recipe for Potato-Fennel Gratin. It was really delicious. 

                     Potato-Fennel Gratin By Ina Garten from “The Barefoot Contessa”

2 small fennel bulbs

1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 T. good olive oil
1 T. unsalted butter
2 lbs. russet potatoes (4 lg. potatoes)
2 c. plus 2 T. heavy cream
2 ½ c. grated Gruyere cheese (1/2 lb.)
1 t. kosher salt
½ t. freshly ground black pepper\

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Butter the inside of a 10x15x2-inch (10 cup) baking dish.

Remove the stalks from the fennel and cut the bulbs in half lengthwise. Remove the cores and thinly slice the bulbs crosswise, making approximately 4 cups of sliced fennel. Sauté the fennel and onions in the olive oil and butter on medium-low heat for 15 minutes, until tender.

Peel the potatoes, then thinly slice them. Mix the sliced potatoes in a large bowl with 2 cups of cream, 2 cups of Gruyere, salt and pepper. Add the sautéed fennel and onion and mix well.

Pour the potatoes into the baking dish. Press down to smooth the potatoes. Combine the remaining 2 tablespoons of cream and ½ cup of Gruyere and sprinkle on the top. Bake for 1 ½ hours, until the potatoes are very tender and the top is browned and bubbly. Allow to set for 10 minutes and serve.