Shocked, shocked, I'm sure

Hello darlings! Pretty Lady has not fallen off the earth; she has not been celebrating, she has not been mourning, she has merely been Silent. Silence may, indeed, be one of the most underrated luxuries of human existence.

But Pretty Lady was veritably shocked yesterday, when she heard on NPR that a group of International Economics Experts had concluded that the global economy is, in fact, in a recession. Really? How can they tell? What a daring pronouncement!

(This is the sound of Pretty Lady being ponderously sarcastic.)

Because the fact is, Pretty Lady and her Gentleman Friend have been well and personally aware of the global economic situation, for lo these many months. Pretty Lady is in a couple of Luxury Industries, and her GF runs hardware systems for the Corporate Financial World. At least, both of them used to do these things, back when there were people and corporations who could afford to pay for them.

Now, Pretty Lady and her GF do whatever they can do, whenever they can do it, to cover each bill before the interest rate goes up, the service gets disconnected, the policy is cancelled, the late fee kicks in, the car dies, or they are evicted for non-payment of rent. She is pleased to report that the lights are still on.

This is due, in no small part, to the fact that Pretty Lady and her GF are not living in a stoic, individualistic vacuum. What is currently keeping them afloat is their immersion in Community. Not as parasites of the Welfare State--as contributing members in a network of human beings with diverse skills, assets and liabilities.

Pretty Lady, being enciente, avails herself of the services of a doula, a Life Coach, an acupuncturist, a prenatal massage therapist, and a network chiropractor, by virtue of the Barter System. (See her Wellness Review for details.) Her hip new pair of glasses comes courtesy of the Blogher Network. Prenatal nutrition is ensured at reasonable cost by membership in the Park Slope Food Co-op, plus a lot of cooking. She has just finished setting up a darling Infant Bedroom, three months in advance, courtesy of generous friends with toddlers who have outgrown their Pack N Play, their Baby Bjorn, their high chair and their catchall bibs. And she is forever grateful to those friends and relatives who hit her Rent Fund button, unsolicited.

Her Gentleman Friend, meanwhile, runs around town fixing people's computers, installing their electrical systems, assembling their furniture, managing their events, and generally being a godsend. Week by week, task by task, bankruptcy is kept at bay.

This, friends, is what Pretty Lady means when she thinks of the Fundamentals of an Economy. Healthy economies involve human beings at work on physical things. They do not necessarily involve manipulation of abstract derivative on top of abstract derivative, clever bet on top of clever bet, or making up imaginary numbers and adding them to one's government balance sheet. 'We are all in this together' does not mean Socialism. It means that we look out for ourselves by looking out for one another.

So although Pretty Lady is deeply pleased by the fact that the American electorate has finally appointed a sensible leader who listens to people besides his ideological cronies, values competence over ideology, organizes from the grassroots up rather than the top down, and who enlists the services of experts when addressing problems, she is not waiting for a Messiah to solve anything. She is living the change she wants to see in the world, and hoping for the best.