The symbolic meaning of X-mas decorations and...., nothing

One of my three part-time jobs, in this wrecked working-class culture of Wisconsin, has me recently toiling in Down Town Janesville, Wisconsin. Starting this new downtown project, I had little time to notice the latest nuances of said fair city. And, we went with out snow for all of December 2014 - a very rare occurrence.  So, it was basically at the 30 mile-per-hour drive-by, just another dreary downtown in Wisconsin in a snowless December. 

Deciding to take a break on Christmas Eve, and all my family out of town, I drove downtown to the site of my latest project to use it as a base for some evening debauchery. There would no doubt be a couple adult beverage haunts still open late. In other words, I was not planning on diving home.  I planned to and did indeed, just stay downtown at my studio for the night. As I drove, I took my mind off my abysmal work world, and..., I thought of my studio, my only bright spot in a city and work world ravaged by out-sourcing and left with minimum wage part-time jobs. But, when I drove to said base station early in that evening of the pending Christmas Day, it hit me between the eyes like a rock.

There were literally....., no Christmas lights in the downtown....., on Christmas Eve.

It was a stunning absence of a tradition.  It was a compelling statement of...., nothing.

Later the next night while working a production job on the evening of Christmas Day, my mind could hearken back to the former evening's discovery.  There were just nine..., yes nine, sad light-pole decorations on Main Street.  Some kind souls had paid to put them up - some lighted snow flakes as large as basketball hoops on their sides. And Main Street in Janesville oddly enough, is a side street.  The lights just happened to be on the block in front of my studio.

I had heard a few days later on the radio, the new City Manager, trying to explain his five-percent pay raise in the midst of a city with....,  no Christmas lights.  He basically said something to the effect (and paraphrasing here), "You guys need to bump up my pay or I'll leave too. If you want decorations..., you pay for it."  He makes well over 140 grand a year.  I on the other hand, got my last pay raise in 2007, and it was a 15 cent raise per hour.

There is an old theory in Communications called, "Symbolic Iteractionism."  It basically, in a nutshell, says, non-verbal signs and symbols are powerful messages.  In the Vietnamese section of greater Los Angeles for example, they still fly the old South Vietnamese flag on their light poles in Westminster (Little Saigon). In Northern Iraq, they refuse to fly the Iraqi flag and fly their own Kurdish flag. That would be like Wisconsin refusing to fly the American Flag.  Powerful omissions without speaking a word.

What was the wordless message that hit me between the eyes on that quiet Christmas Eve as I drove around the curve on East Milwaukee Street hill and looked down into Down Town Janesville? A city of some 63,000 people. The flagship County Seat city of Rock County. A county of 160,000 people.

Here is what I was told by...., the...., nothingness.

"Hi silly traveler. Why are you going through our downtown?  We don't give a fuck about our downtown. Why would you? Take another route and find another town if you want to see Christmas lights.  We damn sure don't care about our town and we sure the hell..., don't care if you care."

In the City Council meetings however...., we will ring our hands and gnash our teeth over the 50-year plight of Down Town Janesville, and say with a sly factious grin..., right after we vote the City Manager a fat pay raise....,

"We gotta fix Downtown...., so people use it!!!!"

Janesville, Wisconsin, "new norm" underemployed prison city with invisible fence of steel.

2 July 2014

Janesville, Wisconsin, "new norm" underemployed prison city with invisible fence of steel.

I moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, back in 1992 for a year after re-settling in Wisconsin from Texas. I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, forthwith; then, just south of that capital city to rural Green County.

My mother's cancer brought me back to Janesville in 2000..., been here ever since. Life has a way of doing that to a guy.

Mom grew up in Janesville for the most part. Moved away for years; then, moved back from my dad's farm in her retirement. Her own dad worked for Janesville's infamous GM plant. She worked for the city's famous Parker Pen company. Both gone..., GM packed up in 2008-9 in the Great Recession. Parker left in the Misery Recession of the late '70s and early '80s. And gone too, all the satellite industries that helped facilitate the two cap-stone companies and their family supporting jobs. What's left..., part-time service jobs. If that.

People here work crappy jobs as best they can. Many have silently fled..., slowly but surely. Not everyone can flee. I am 60, have health issues, and own a house. Hard to pack up and leave like one is 18 again. That leads to another variable.

What is left for commerce in the once industrial city is three-fold...., and disappointing at best, disturbing at worst. The number one industry if you will, is health care (sick people). Number two industry? Public schools (Taxes). Also, number two facilitates Janesville's biggest export..., its children after graduation, to other cities, states, and countries to find jobs. And the third industry? Well of course it is taverns and fast food (drunks and fat people).

When one is forced to work part-time, non-benefit jobs to get by, they start to slowly be deconstructed. They don't get sick-time so they work sick. They don't get vacation time so they never get a rest. They are essentially slowly destroyed. They never have enough money to make even the most basic life-style really work. There by, they slowly get in a rut of not having the seed-money to escape.

With gas at nearly four dollars a gallon, even a recon trip to a more vibrant state to scope out the potential could cost 600 bucks in gasoline alone. An untenable amount, for a person only making 165 bucks a week..., a 1978ish paycheck actually. And that assumes of course..., they even have a car any more.

People are trapped in a weak service economic self-fulfilling nightmare. Janesville's newspaper of record recently lords in an OpEd piece, that these low-wage jobs are entry jobs and people don't stay in them long - there's no reason to raise the wages.

Excuse me, but people don't stay in them long because the jobs are horrid with no dignity and their bodies are wrecked. And, people may leave those jobs if they are lucky and can actually escape Janesville. Others, like people over 50, tough out these jobs to make the few bucks they can. The "older ones" are not allowed to participate in Janesville's culture unless they volunteer their efforts for free. They..., when they try to keep languishing for that inadequate wage, are often deemed losers, by the normative driven owners of the message, like the local newspaper. Yet, those same struggling workers are sung praises when they volunteer for free.

Detecting a pattern? See an inept and misguided conspiracy of taking advantage of an already unfortunate economy? Can you notice the gleeful opportunists' use of the unintended consequences wrought by outsourcing our economy to third-world countries?  We have become a third world country ourselves.  Hey, we even like soccer now too.  A great subject for a subsequent essay.

But today, this is Janesville. A poster child if you will, for the dirty secret of America's and Governor Scott Walker's new economy. Don't let the handlers of the "official message" con the good people of Madison and the rest of the fair state into thinking everything is hunky-dory down in good ol' Janesville. The happy-talk message can get out of the invisible fence of economic decay...,

..., but, what is left of the workers are still imprisoned behind it.