Month: April 2017

The Latest Tourist Destination

You may recall Salinas as the place where Bobby McGee slipped away. It’s also John Steinbeck’s hometown. Salinas was so proud if its native son that they burned his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath on Main Street. Citizens felt insulted by the roguish characters inhabiting his novels Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men. Many of the picaresque adventures Steinbeck depicted took place in California’s Salinas Valley and Monterey Peninsula.

Over the years, stubborn Steinbeck fans have made pilgrimages to the California coast south of San Francisco to take in the settings and get a feel for the moods of Steinbeck’s novels. As the fortunes of the city of Salinas waned, and commerce moved away from the downtown core, the city leaders struggled with how to revive the local economy. The shiny new National Steinbeck Center opened in 1998 at 1 Main Street. The multi-media museum includes among its features “Rocinante,” the GMC pickup and camper namesake of Don Quixote’s horse that was Steinbeck’s traveling home as he toured the U.S. for Travels with Charley, his attempt to illuminate the soul of America. The facility’s archives contain original manuscripts of the author’s work, correspondence and video interviews.

The Center, and its annual Steinbeck Festival (May 5-7 this year) brings tens of thousands of visitors to the otherwise drab farming town. Restaurants and other tourist-oriented business on and around Main Street are thriving. Travel writers are spreading the word about Salinas as a vacation destination.

The National Steinbeck Center on its own is worth the trip. Only a short distance away is the Monterey Bay Aquarium. You will need more than one day to experience both.

Culinary note: If you like donuts, real donuts, not the fancy four-dollar “gourmet” kind, or the hipster Voo-Doo experience, go to Red’s Donuts in downtown Monterey. You will be satisfied.

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You’ve Come a Long Way

April 11 is Equal Pay Day. The second Tuesday of April is recognized as the approximate date that the workplace begins compensating women for the year in comparison to men who begin earning on January 1. Its purpose is to bring attention to estimates that, on average, women earn 79% of what men do for similar work. This is an improvement over the previous year’s 77%. Younger women are doing better percentage-wise: they are paid 93% of what men are. That’s progress, or it could be that the pay gap is smaller at the lower end of the scale, where the younger workers beginning their career paths presumably are.

President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963.

 

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Volunteer Fire Departments

A few decades ago, I served as a volunteer fireman. I proudly displayed the “Cannon Beach Fire Department” frame around my car’s license plate. We met at the station on Tuesday evenings for training, followed by beer.

For some of us, training sometimes included practice maneuvering the fire truck in reverse back inside the station. One of the volunteers, whose day job was driving a log truck, did it with his eyes closed, (Not literally.) We were paid $2.00 per meeting and $2.00 per fire call; even way back then not enough to compromise our volunteer status.

Once, I volunteered to assist EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) training by being a literal pincushion, for their practicing giving injections and taking blood samples. A major perquisite was the annual American Legion crab feed. Members of the volunteer department ate – and drank – for free.

Not all volunteer fire departments are thriving. In Sonoma County, where I spent the past twenty-plus years before moving back north, eleven volunteer departments are struggling with budgets and lack of volunteers and political bickering. A year ago the county had fourteen volunteer contingents. Response times have increased in rural area. Departments who viewed each other as competitors are now consolidating or putting up a united front for funding and administrative services.

Sonoma County is a microcosm of national trends. An aging population combined with those in the workforce commuting to urban areas and able to respond to emergencies in their rural communities only at night or on weekends.

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Your Tax Dollars at Work

This week our President  hosted Xi Jinping, President of China and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. What better place to have high-level discussions between world leaders than at an ostentatious, soon-to-be-underwater, private club in Palm Beach Florida that boasts our President’s brand? And where, allegedly, no visitor logs are kept.

Cost estimates of the President’s almost weekly stays at Mar-a-Lago are north of $3 million per visit. The New York Times has put together a handy chart showing how many days since inauguration the President has spent at Trump-branded properties and what he purportedly did there. We taxpayers are paying the Trump organization for lodging, meals, et cetera for these trips.

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Thriving on Minimum Wage

A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a piece about people earning less than $12,000 a year. The paper called them “Lucky Duckies” because they paid no federal income tax. (WSJ didn’t mention that they paid Social Security and Medicare tax at a much higher percentage than high-wage earners.)

There has been much in the news about people agitating for a $15.00 per hour minimum wage. Here is a handy chart that shows you how to build wealth on half that.

A few highlights:

  • Sell your car. Buy a used bicycle for your commute.
  • Relocate to a place where rents are cheaper. If you’re in San Francisco, move to Amarillo. But how do you pay for a one-way rental truck when you’re making the minimum wage? Well, maybe you’ll take only what fits in your car. Oh, that’s right; you don’t have a car.
  • Buy your clothes at the thrift store.
  • Spend $0.00 on entertainment.
  • But buy health insurance. (Your minimum-wage job doesn’t include medical coverage.) Of course, Congress is working feverishly to eliminate subsidies for low-income people.

Not mentioned: Don’t have children. There’s no money in the budget for that. Practice celibacy; you can’t afford birth control either.

You lucky ducky.

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