Dear Classmates,

It has been some time since my last update, my apologies.  My wife and I continue to be quite busy with our project, and I am pleased to report on our success.

As you may remember, we undertook our Downward Mobility Project some twenty years ago, in a determined effort to balance the income distribution for the members of our class.  Though some of you have made the ultimate goal impossible (we would have to have quite a large negative income to achieve any real balance), we have continued to maintain the project.

I have successfully managed to avoid any form of gainful employment for the full term of the project.  Being self-employed has had its ups as well as downs, and though I have had a number of embarrassingly successful quarters, especially during the 90's, I have managed to remain in the lower 50% income bracket.

Despite all the effort of agents and publishers to lower my wife's income over the years, we decided it would be best to break off that income stream.  My wife has, therefore, embarked on selling her own paintings.  I think you will agree that this is a splendid move in the right direction.

We are very excited to report our most recent initiative - becoming professional musicians.  As far as downward mobility goes, this is a little like shooting fish in a barrel, and that's why we held off making this move for so long.  It was simply too much fun, however, to pass up.  Fun is not inconsistent with downward mobility!

Our home, strategically located in the "bad" neighborhood of a small mill city, has until recently succeeded in resisting any appreciation in value.  The recent run-up in house values has brought us in line with the rest of the state, unfortunately, but we look forward to a correction in the near future.

I know some of you may be concerned that the current political climate has made our work too easy.  Though this is partly true, I would like to reassure you that we are not just coasting on the political realities.  We are actively building on what has been a strong political foundation in support of downward mobility.

Please do not be alarmed by some of our recent activities in web design, graphic design, and music production.  Though they are traditionally successful income-producers, we are actively exploring the lower financial reaches of these activities.  We believe that, in time, and thanks to information technology, these activities will become a commonplace in the exercise of downward mobility.

In conclusion, I would like to share with you some of our plans and dreams.  We continue to hone our skills in the exciting field of blogging, which we feel has real, untapped potential in the pursuit of downward mobility, more so even than, say, novel writing.  And we are just in the planning stages of our next endeavor, the Retirement is Impossible Project, which we feel will be a natural extension of the current project.

Downwardly Yours,
BC

Fried

My wife and I began attending a blues jam nearby.  At the time, we were rank beginners, and not a little intimidated.  The first thing you do at a jam is find The List and sign in.  The jam host is supposed to consult The List when he calls musicians up onto the stage.  Some hosts are better about this than others, but usually The List gets ignored after a half hour or so.

The List at this jam was being managed by a couple who we immediately felt comfortable with.  She was pleasant and talkative.  He was clearly a musician, a guitarist, and he would sometimes pluck at his unplugged electric guitar during the evening.  He was quiet, with an impish grin, and when he said anything, it was usually funny.  He looked like he could have been David Bowie's cousin, with a slight sadness around the edges, and a hint of that burned-out look that rockers got from too many drugs in the 80's.

There are a lot of different reasons why players attend jams.  There are beginners trying to learn, experienced players who just don't have a chance to get out, players looking for work, or trying to hire talent.  New bands will sign up as a group, looking for stage experience.  There are quite a few pros who gave it up years ago, and are trying to get back in - they are sometimes the most shy.  We guessed that our friend was in this category.

We became regular participants at this jam, and would usually sit with the couple.  By now we were comfortable being on the stage, but our guitarist friend never signed up, never joined in, playing on stage.  We would encourage him; "If we can do it, you certainly can!"  But he would just smile, and gently beg off.

One night, a couple of ringers walked into the jam with matching bowling shirts.  They were not only pros, but members of a band, and they had come to show off their stuff and advertise their band.  They were pretty full of themselves, handing out cards to everyone.  The leader was a big black guy who sang and played harmonica, and his sidekick was a sax player.  My wife, who is a beginning sax player, was all excited (this jam had not attracted other horn players yet), but this guy brushed off her enthusiasm with a comment that ended in "I'm a professional musician!"

When their turn came up, they got on stage with a couple of the house band players.  They were good, but we had been turned off by their vibe, so we really weren't paying attention.  In the middle of a song, a loud, unearthly sound emerged from the stage.  Everybody looked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from.  The guys on stage lost their focus, but soldiered on, and that's when my wife and I spotted him.  Our shy guitar friend, the one who never got on stage, had finally, after weeks, summoned the courage to get up, and had chosen this moment to plug in and start playing.  He wailed away, oblivious to everyone else on stage.  He had launched into a psychedelic acid-rock solo, as if he'd gone back in time, and he wouldn't let up.  The harmonica player gamely brought his song to an end, and he and his buddy slunk off the stage and disappeared from the room.

Our pal, meanwhile, exhausted by his time travel, sat back down next to us with his guitar, and said, "Wow, what just happened?"  We laughed and clapped, and he asked, "How was that, was it OK?"  "It was great," we cried in unison, "it was perfect!"  He had no idea, but we regarded him as a hero.  Unfortunately, I think it had been all too much for him, as we never saw him again at this jam.

BC

Afterglow

I have thrown the last of the glossy full-color political "literature" into the recycle bin, and my telephone has been relatively silent for the last week, no longer bedeviled by pollsters and robots.  It was an exciting season here in Rhode Island, where we rarely get any national attention for our political races.  We're all sorry to have given Linc the heave-ho.  He's a nice guy, and we really needed the seniority to offset our tiny representation in Washington (why do you think we kept Pell in for so damn long?), but something had to be done, and by golly we did it.

It's been fun to read all the post-election analyses and commentary.  Some of it has been ludicrous, some of it thoughtful, some of it triumphant.  I especially enjoyed The Onion's story about how outraged the Republicans were to learn that the Democrats were deliberately trying to persuade people to vote against Republicans.

I did notice a feeling among Democrats that this was a collective return to our senses, that people had had enough, and that they finally were able to see through the Republican spin machine.  I would like to have that feeling, too, but something doesn't ring true about it.  The Republicans have been awfully successful at marketing themselves, coldly and efficiently, and I don't believe that people all of a sudden developed a resistance to that marketing.

It's a common and well-known conceit that each of us thinks of himself as resistant to or unaffected by marketing.  There are even specific marketing techniques that work by taking advantage of this conceit.  Marketing is a science, and it builds on research.  And we have all been willing participants in that research, largely by devoting our time to watching television and then running out to buy stuff.  Believe me, the marketers have us down cold.  We're not that complicated.

So when I read a post by Billmon well before the election, explaining why he thought the Republicans might lose this one, I caught a whiff of truthfulness in what could be taken for an air of cynicism:

The Rovians have always acted as if constant, mind-numbing repetition was an absolute virtue - the key to drowning out any competing message.  But the problem is that this gets really BORING after awhile.  And thanks to the invention of the remote control, modern TV is all about changing the channel as soon as the flickering images fail to entertain.

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There are two things you can do when a series goes stale:  You can shake things up with new characters and new situations, or you can accept that your appeal is now limited to a gradually shrinking core audience and focus your scripts on delivering what diehard fans really want.

The Republicans may have misplayed an important marketing strategy - keeping your brand fresh.  It's true that the Bush brand has been static for five years.  Staying the course is consistent with the reliable, steadfast, righteous cowboy character Bush has been playing.  And maybe we did get bored, or annoyed, and simply switched channels.  Was this the victory of one marketing team over another?  Is it cynical or is it realistic to think this way?  Possibly both.  Still, I'm enjoying the afterglow, like when the Red Sox finally won the World Series.

BC