Bigger is not Better

No other country in the world so celebrates things that are Big as does the United States. Big corporations, big automobiles, the biggest corporation and the biggest building. This attitude drives other countries to compete in an effort to equal or better the United States. While this behavior is probably based in biology and psychology, it is perfectly silly, and yes, even stupid.

This week the so-called “financial sector,” the core of the capitalist engine collapsed.  The system that produced nothing but money with little or no risk violated all of the principals of the capitalist ideology, and now the United States government is dealing with the collapse of capitalism with socialism–nationalization of the corporate titans of Wall Street.  How completely ironic it is that the long condemned system of communitarianism is now the sole means by which American International Group, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Merill Lynch will be prevented from failure.

The business leaders who claimed to be bullet proof couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag. They used businesses as if they were private piggy banks with no obligation to serve the public good. Now the system on which the so called financial sector based its rationale as essentially collapsed.

Big business can get too big and should never be allowed to exceed the grasp of managers. Business can get too big and should be broken up and never allowed to control the lives of people.  The lesson people must learn again…live within your means and act to serve life.  The commons is literally all around us and we all most share.   Businesses got too large and they were used as if this basic truth did not apply.

This is My Word a chronicle of my thoughts on the social, economic, political and cultural affairs of our lives.

My Mother, Ruth A. Gilham-Ryser always encouraged debate at the kitchen table. The events of the day, the politics of our country and the lives of our neighbors in the small town of 150 souls were among the subjects of our discussions. Adults and children alike had the right to an opinion, to information and to argument. When ever she expressed exasperation at some silly, stupid or unfortunate event that would become a topic of our kitchen table discussions my Mother would simply raise her voice a little and say “My Word!”  Mother. This is a conversation, a discussion of another kind that you would especially like. We will have plent of opportunity to say “My Word!”

Welcome to “My Word Chronicle”

I like the millions of others in the world who now  Blog have decided to add my words to this growing world of self-published and commentary.  As I note at the bottom of the other column, “My Word” is the expression I remember my Mother Ruth saying so often.  She loved writing and the written word.  She longed to be a chronicular and had handwritten script that was so beautiful one would swear she was an artist who paints or draws. She did neither, but she did cherish the word and spent long hours filling in little boxes in Reader’s Digest crossword puzzles. She liked playing word games, wrote letters to family and friends regularly, and she read books to herself and aloud to her eight children.

My mother had an eight grade education, but she would have gone on to high school and college had her learning not been tragiclly interrupted by the violent death of her beloved father John Dement Gilham. He was killed by logs rolling off a railway car not far from where he and his family lived in Thorp, Washington just a little way south of Mount Tahoma…high in the mountains. My mother so loved my Grandfather she always spoke of him to her children. A month before she died she asked to reclaim photographs for her to see him again.

To Ruth A. Gilham-Ryser I dedicate this ongoing kitchen discussion about the events, ideas and memories of culture, politics and critical analysis.