March 2009 Archives

A recession/depression can make honest people out of us--for example, it brings you face to face with the fact that that you simply can't afford to buy those dress shoes this month, maybe not for a while. Uncertain times have forced impulsive consumers like me (a vanishing breed these days) to admit that a beer budget won't support even the occasional champagne taste.

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My best friend is broke. As long as I've known him, which is more than 30 years, he's been broke more or less continuously and flirted with poor more often than he wants to remember. Partly it's because he's an artist (a brilliant one) and musician, partly because he's always had a tough time getting decent part-time work that artists and musicians get to pay the bills. These days, with the economy sliding off the rails like coal sliding down a chute into darkness, he's looking poor in the face, and he's trying to laugh. But it's not funny.

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A public confession: I'm going to quit tap dancing. Not metaphorically (I've been unambiguous enough in my opinions over the years to be accused of many things, but rarely tap-dancing). I mean literally. I've been taking a tap class every Saturday for the last dozen years. It's not that I haven't enjoyed it. In many ways the class has been a mind and soul-saver, a small but steady light of progress and self-empowerment in an era in which so many things outside of class have stagnated and the phrase "power of the press" has felt increasingly like an oxymoron. Mastering a routine felt at least as satisfying as publishing a column, in large part because in the last couple of years I've been more successful at learning tap routines than in publishing columns. Such is the life of a freelance journalist these days.

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