Bootlace Business

My pair of new Herman Survivors bootlaces was delivered to our doorstep last Saturday mid-afternoon, several hours before the 10:00 p.m. cut-off time that Walmart had promised. I was relieved.

What did it take to find 54-inch laces for the brown Merrell hikers that I purchased several years ago at R.E.I.? Not a lot, but more than it should have.

I began shopping at Famous Footwear across Euclid Avenue from our neighborhood. Their sparkly, shiny laces in the length I needed offended my sense of style. The Merrells expressed offense as well.

I then made my way down I-271 to the R.E.I. where I’d bought the boots. I would cut to the chase and get the job done efficiently.

Alas, R.E.I did not have a single pair of 54-inch laces in stock. But the helpful clerk suggested their Portland (Oregon?!) store might have them, which isn’t helpful when you live in northeast Ohio. (I know that they meant that I could probably find them online at the Oregon store, but it still struck me as an odd suggestion.)

You sold me the dang shoes, didn’t you? Can’t you carry their laces?

Back at my Mac, I refused to search for them online from any R.E.I. anywhere. Surely I could find and pick up a pair at Dick’s Sporting Goods. But again alas, such was not to be.

So I ended up at one of the last two places I often end up looking for items: Walmart. (The other last choice is Amazon, but given the choice, I tend to choose Walmart. It just seems so real and so local, compared to the amorphous super-duper mega Bezos enterprise.)

Visiting the Walmart website at 9:30 on a Friday evening isn’t exactly the best way to start the weekend. But it was worth it, or seemed to be, because…

…Yes! Walmart had the laces I needed, for $2.50, pick-up-able at 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning at their store a couple of miles from home. I’d save Walmart the cost of shipping by getting them myself the next day…though somewhat later than 7:00 a.m.

But with the morning came disappointment. My laces were not available at that store, or anywhere else in the Walmart universe. Downcast, I returned to the Walmart website after breakfast, and found a $3.00 pair that I could pick up that day—Saturday—after noon. The additional $.50 was no problem. I wonder what they will cost with whatever tariffs Mr. Trump eventually decides to place on imports from China, because that’s where they were made, probably for a couple of yen.

Then, a few minutes later arrived the inevitable dreaded email: No, my Walmart doesn’t have them after all. BUT, meta Walmart can deliver them to me before 10:00 p.m. this very evening! How could I say no?

Thus, and with relief, it came to pass that—

My new pair of Herman Survivors bootlaces was delivered to our doorstep last Saturday mid-afternoon, several hours before the 10:00 p.m. cut-off time that Walmart had promised.

What did I learn from all of this?

1. Never assume that you can get laces for your shoes from the place where you bought them. Imagine: R.E.I. Merrells showing Walmart laces in public! Un-cool, but also unavoidable.
2. Never think that you can easily get the laces you want anywhere.
3. Everything comes from China, at least for the time being.
4. Walmart is not quite sure of its inventory.
5. “Herman Survivors” was once a pretty good brand of boots whose name Walmart bought and now uses to market what reviewers say are at best serviceable boots—not great, but okay for the price. ’Tis the way of current American commerce.

Finally—and I am embarrassed to admit this—my Merrells don’t really need 54-inch laces. I had carefully measured the old ones, but didn’t account for the fact they are stretchy, which all clothing is these days. The new laces are about 6 inches longer than I need when stretched to their limit. Maybe the 48-inch laces R.E.I. did have would have been okay. I will never know.

Because, you see, the laces I finally found work, which is good enough for me, American consumer that I am, beaten down a little bit more that weekend by the way that America does business today.

Another sad day for our republic

 

Wrecking the White House's east wing to build the Trump ballroom seems to me to be the perfect symbol for what he and his party are trying to do to our nation.

No Kings Protest in Mentor, OH—A Personal View

Maxine and I were part of a significant turnout of Americans at this afternoon’s No Kings protest in Mentor, OH. Mentor is in Lake County, northeast of Ohio’s Cuyahoga County and the city of Cleveland. It is very Republican.

We stood with many others (I cannot guess a number) along busy Route 20, carrying home-made signs, chanting slogans, waving to passing cars, and acknowledging one another in a very upbeat atmosphere. We were all ages and conditions of folk, mostly white but a few Black. The signs we carried decried many aspects of the Trump administration. A few contained personal attacks on him and others.

There were a few Trump signs in our crowd, carried by people who seemed willing to engage in conversation with anyone who approached them. I heard no raised or angry voices.

Other than a sign stating that “Jesus would be a socialist,” I saw or heard nothing about socialism, one way or the other. Across the street a speaker with a huge sign about sin and damnation tried to bring some folks to Jesus. I would love to have heard a conversation between those two!

A memorable thing happened when a good-sized, red pick-up stopped right in front of us. The older man who was driving got out, and the woman who was with him slid into the driver’s seat. For a moment I feared what they might be up to. He walked around the truck, took a sign out of the back seat, and then somehow got himself into the bed of the truck, where he stood displaying a sign that said something about the USMC (Marine Corps) and liberty. I wish I had a picture of it, but I believe he was a veteran expressing his dismay at what President Trump’s administration and party are visiting upon the land he defended.

The drivers of many of the vehicles that passed by honked their horns or raised their fists in support of us. Some of them had signs, too, and when they passed us more than once I realized they were part of our crowd. A few drivers flipped us the bird or gave us a thumbs down; we responded with peace signs and waved flags. Most drivers just drove on by looking straight ahead, trying not to get involved. I understand that.

There were quite a few American flags in our crowd, and since no one tore them out of anyone’s hands, or stomped on or burned them, I am quite sure I was not in a “Hate America” rally. Nothing I saw or heard indicated anyone around me was pro-Hamas, or pro any of the other things Speaker Johnson warned us about. He, like many of his cohorts, is living inside the Beltway bubble that only believes what serves their particular political interest, and who have little contact with day-to-day American life and Americans ourselves.

Ours was an orderly crowd, and as far as I experienced it, a passionate one, too. We  love America and fear losing her. I dare to hope that we will all continue to find ways to demonstrate America’s truth to the powers that threaten our way of life. I trust that, with sustained effort, we will be able to get back to the business of securing liberty and justice for us all.

Un-American Americanism

“Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity.”

Wow! That’s a whole lot of anti-s!

All appear, together, in a memo President Trump signed recently aimed at “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” The memo identified a presumed “terror network” that is fueling violence, particularly violence against ICE agents.

The trinity of anti-s appears in the President’s claim that the “common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The memo goes on to suggest ways in which law enforcement is to counter individuals and organizations seeming to engage in or support such viewpoints and activities. They pretty much come down to the government can do practically anything it wants to hassle anyone or any organization that it suspects does not agree with its priorities and policies.

Wow, and wow! This is American?

There are all kinds of ways to challenge this dangerous memo (and what’s the status of a memo anyway, even if the President authors it?). But focus for the moment on the anti- threesome.

The implication of placing the three of them together is that the three are interrelated: that “American, capitalist, and Christian” are like three peas in a red, white, and blue pod; that you can’t be any one of them one if you aren’t willing to be all three; that if you are opposed to, or even mildly suspicious of, any one of them you must automatically be opposed to the other two.

With regard to Christianity’s place among the three, remember that Christianity has been around for far longer than the either the United States or capitalism have been. Its reach around the globe is far broader than our nation’s ever will be. And Christianity as a faith neither wants nor needs any government to defend it against those who are against it.

Christianity has flourished in America for 250 years, not because to be an American is to be a Christian or vice versa, but because Christianity has been free of government support and control. That the number of Christians in American is declining is not the government’s problem. In fact, the religious convictions or lack of such convictions on the part of the American population is only of interest to our government when any one faith tries to use the state’s power (including tax money for religious schools) to achieve its own ends.

There were a lot of Christians in the room when our nation was founded and its Constitution adopted. And they freely paid homage to God and Jesus in many of their writings. But they left both out of the Constitution precisely because they had had enough of state-sponsored religious institutions. They did not want their federal government to equate being an American with being a Christian, or with any other faith or non-faith group. Until the present administration, we pretty much agreed on that, despite recurring passionate skirmishes over exactly what it means.

I have no idea who or what this Presidential memo is for, or what it will eventually result in. I do know that in its every detail it is just about as un-American as anything I’ve ever read.

Shouting Our Way into War

 

Huffing and puffing and war-whooping don't make a nation great. And using the military against its own citizenry doesn't make a nation free.