Snow-Nabal

After a winter of nearly and nary zero snowfall, old Mother Nature decided to send us a Northeaster' mid-March semi-blizzard Stella on Monday night into Tuesday. It turned out to be a substantial amount. About 12 inches or so, with bands of more and less depending on your domicile location.

My general shoveling of snow philosophy, honed by years of living in the 'burbs, is to shovel early and shovel often. One can decide to watch the snow fall platonically inside the cozy cave as it were (for all of you who took Philosophy 101 in college) but at some point, sooner or later, you have to pick up the shovel and throw some snow. Or bear the consequences. Back-pain payment with the interest ache. Present small amounts per shovel vs. future big debt payment at the end.

I watched a neighbor a couple of days ago attempt to remove snow from their driveway after a couple of days of melting then re-freezing. A mess, that is what is was.

As I was out early on the shovel Tuesday, way before any of my neighbors, I got to thinking about Nehemiah in the Old Testament when the people of Jerusalem were told to rebuild and guard their portion of the wall. No Homeland Security or FEMA or another Federal agency to do your dirty work, do it yourself or pay the consequences of not manning the breach you didn't seal and protect.

I was contemplating the consequences of when people don't shovel the literal snow on their property or the metaphorical snow in their lives, expecting someone else to sweat and strain for them.  The biblical view of government is not charity. It is justice, both in structure and punitive. A just society has less need for charity, for much of the need of charity is the result of structural inequalities favoring the rich over the poor, etc. For example, a poor person should be able to get their day in court to present a legal grievance against a wealthier party.

But, we know how reality rolls. The rich lawyer up and create such complicated legal procedures that the poor person is stuck. Don't think this is so, try tangling with an insurance company. The odds are stacked so heavily in favor for insurance companies, both in law and in practicalities, that one is screwed when taking them on by design. Another instance, the Republicans had several decades, starting with the Reagan Revolution, to reform health care. But, there was so much lard in it, that they couldn't pass up on the grease. That is, until Obama came along. Big insurance companies and big government both represent the same problem. Too big to fix because vested interests suck the lifeblood and have become part of the structure, as awful and inefficient as it is. America has a weird symbiosis between government and corporate interests, not truly public nor private, but the worst of both.

Point of Clarification: There is a place for charity. The orphan, the widow, the infirmed. Not the able-bodied.

But, I digress...that is what I do. Like the GEICO ads. As an aside, tt cracks me up and then makes me angry when insurance companies have these bizarre commercials (Farmer's First is the worst, but GEICO, Allstate, State Farm, etc. all do it) where some doofus and/or freak situation winds up blowing and burning themselves or a property up. Then, the insurance company rep comes in (or some god-like voice) assuring the poor chump that it will be covered. HA! I want to give that baldy Farmer's First smarmy stickman spokesman a wedgie that he would take to his grave.

Insurance companies are reticent and reluctant to cover even legit incidences when one party is completely innocent, and they are going to have mercy and benevolence on some ding-a-ling? Sure. That is a work of fiction, my dear readers. Aaron Rodgers don't need no home insurance from an errant golf swing. That ad is just insulting.

Speaking of ding-a-lings. I was reading a story in the Old Testament about a Hall-of-Famer ding-dong (advanced ding-a-ling) named Nabal. He was a wealthy dude with a lot of livestock and land. David's men had informally protected his his possessions without poaching any of it. And since they were hiding out in the hinterlands from murderous and insane Saul, they requested--not unreasonably--for some food and water compensation. Nabal told them essentially to go "F&%$ themselves."  David was enraged when he heard of this response and set-out to thrash the fool Nabal. Nabal's name means "Fool" in Hebrew and I wondered if it had meant this before he was named it or if it became a synonym for fool after the fact. Who would name their kid a fool at birth beforehand?

Nabal would be one of these idiots in modern day insurance TV commercials. Not just stupid, but insistently so, ignoring all evidence of needing to change course. The story does not end well for Nabal. Although spared the wrath of David through the judicious intervention of Abigail (Nabal's smart and beautiful wife), he croaks of a heart attack and takes a week to pass away. A little agony goes a long way.

Messing with God's anointed king, in retrospect, probably weighed on him quite a bit. Nabal was a Calebite (from the line of Caleb) so his stupidity was not genetic. Caleb, along with Joshua, were the only two spies who believed the words of God about the Promise Land and were blessed for it. It might explain that his wealth was inherited rather then earned on his own. It is harder to make your first million than your second million as my dad says. Wealth snowballs due to how the financial system works, as long as you are not a King-Kong dolt like some professional athletes who squander millions and wind up broke, both in body and spirit.

This has applications to our current president whose dad did much of the dirty work (and some of it was dirty) to own a good chunk of the residential rentals in Queens which then parlayed itself into financial leverage in Manhattan. Not a whole lot different than how Comcast owned the prosperous Philly Cable market and then gobbled up smaller fish outwardly. Sometime being a bit off the beaten path, but close enough to it, helps build dominance.

As I was on the backside of the shovel job on Tuesday, not quite done but more than halfway, I saw a car come down the street and then get stuck on the hill past my place. Some young dude wearing Eagles football gear (already a sucker if an Eagles fan like me) who was out and about on the roads, couldn't get up the incline. His car tires were as bald as Patrick Stewart's noggin. He probably didn't need to be driving. But, there he was. I watched him in vain try to drive up the hill. After about the fourth failure to do so, I decided to try and help him out.

Well, he wouldn't listen to my counsel. I mentioned that he could pull into a spot on the side of the road where cars were already parked but he insisted on trying to get up the hill and up his driveway. I advised him that this appeared to be a losing strategy. So, then he decided to park in the middle of the road and shovel out the road ahead in attempt get enough clearance and momentum to roll into his driveway. I just shook my head as I walked away and saw him labor in vain over the next half hour or so. Eventually, he parks his car on the other side of the road, where it is illegal to park even when there is no snow and after he shovels that part out, then the snowplow came through and plowed away the snow on the street (what remained after his efforts, vainglorious as they were) and presumably he got his car into the driveway.

He could have saved enormous effort and energy by heeding my advice. When he got testy and chippy after I re-petitioned him to consider my counsel at the outset, I decided to walk away rather than get in a tangle with a young dude who already had several marks against him on the common sense score card. Some people got to learn the hard way. I took no delight (OK, maybe just a little) in his furious futility but I was glad that I didn't engage it.  I had enough shoveling of my own to do and being a good neighbor more often means taking care of your own funk and not placing it on someone else.

One last thought before I put this blog shovel down. We all do a lot of foolish things. We make mistakes and re-calibrate--or at should. Take time to listen to others, we might be able to spare some pain and make the load a bit lighter.