Chandra Clarke

Offering Whatever Light I Can

A View From the Stands…

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You read this space for the unusual opinions and the occasional laugh, right? Keep that in mind. I say that because I’m going to talk about professional sports. Even worse, I’m going to be sympathetic to the players.

There’s always a lot of talk about “fat-cats” and “greedy vs. greedier” in connection with professional sports. Whenever contract talks or strike actions come up in conversation around the water cooler, people inevitably end up complaining about the high salaries and spoiled players. And it’s true: some player salaries are astronomical, and some players act very spoiled as a result.

However, professional athletes, in spite of the multi-digit salary figures, have it tougher than you think. (Hey, bear with me!) Consider, for a moment, the single issue of job security. First of all, you have to be good enough to make to the big leagues, which means spending a lot of time on unknown, mostly unloved, and underpaid ball teams — in the hopes of catching the eye of a scout. If you don’t make it, you’ve just wasted the prime of your life honing skills that aren’t remotely useful. Last time I looked, bat swinging didn’t qualify under the heading “work experience” on your resume. Unless you’re looking to join the mafia, I guess.

Once you get to the big leagues, you have to stay there. What the heck is “secure” about basing your entire income on your ability to consistently hurl an 80 kph ball at a small target? And what happens if your nephew decides to give you a real-life demonstration of his new karate skills? Crack! Bad rotator cuff? Goodbye stardom. Unless you’re Nolan Ryan, you have to count on a short, and probably painful career.

Forget stability. Too bad if your wife has friends and a job in this city. Too bad your kids are well-established in school. You’ve just been traded to the west coast. Ciao. Next year? Maybe Japan will take you. Or, you can spend your career on the road away from family completely. How many marriages survive that?

How about employer expectations? Everyone makes mistakes, but your boss doesn’t tape your on-the-job whoopsies and broadcast them around the world. (“Tonight on OfficeBeat – Bernie fries the photocopier! Instant replays!”) There aren’t too many radio call-in shows that feature an up-close-and-personal discussion on your recent email slump. And have you ever had to make deliveries while being watched by 50,000 rowdy, beer-drinking fans? Talk about pressure!

Let’s look at the salaries. Sure, they’re big, and it’s not fair that a second baseman gets paid more than a doctor. But, try to think in terms of expenses. Being a superstar has got to be costly. There are bodyguards to pay, homes to secure, travel expenses, operations and medicine to stay healthy. Perhaps the team helps pay for it. Or maybe it doesn’t. That might depend on your last season’s ERA.

We should also remember that professional baseball (and any other sport like it) is a business, not a game. That’s why it’s dubbed `professional,’ after all. And if you think the connection between money and baseball is a new one, just think back to the “Black Sox” scandal of 1919, and you’ll see that it’s not a new phenomenon. Kids play games. Adults always have, and always will, play for keeps.

More than anything else, though, sports professionals entertain a lot of us. I didn’t particularly feel the lack of pro sports when the pandemic shut everything down, but I know lots of people who did. There’s value in what they do. Entertainers and creatives — especially creatives, but that’s another column — should be paid for the service they render.

As to how much? In the triple digit millions seems … excessive. Lionel Messi, as of this writing, has a 4-year $673 million (USD) dollar contract, so he pulls down something like $168 million a year. On the other hand FC Barcelona was on track for $1 billion in revenue for 2021, and it seems to me that the players, the people who actually provide the entertainment, deserve a decent piece of that.

Then again, those players don’t win games without a huge support system, and the people who look after the equipment, clean the stinky practice clothes, and slop out the dug outs and the penalty boxes probably don’t get paid nearly enough.

The NHL implemented player salary caps a long time ago, for a number of very good reasons. But as long as we’re willing to think about caps, we should also be looking at floors too: living wages, not minimum wages for those other parts of the sports complex. And as long we’re willing to consider caps and floors in sports, we should also look at implementing them elsewhere, to start smoothing out some of the horrific inequities that plague our planet.

Not everyone paid the same no matter their ability, comrade, so relax. But a minimum that doesn’t require choosing between the rent and dinner, and a maximum that doesn’t result in the aggregation of power in the hands of a few.

And then we’d have a sports analogy worth applying to the rest of the economy. Because we really have to start coming together as a team.

IPhoto by Brandon Mowinkel on Unsplash

Thank You For Your Concern

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Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting us about:

[PASTE CUSTOMER’S COMPLAINT HERE AND DELETE THIS LINE]

Why the heck are you wrapping green onions in non-recyclable plastic film now? Every time I go to the store there’s MORE plastic, not less. Enough already!

Scofflaw Companies Limited takes Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) very seriously. You can tell we do because we capitalized it! As America’s food and pharmacy leader, we aim to create positive environmental and social change by focusing on issues that matter most to our stakeholders. And by stakeholders we mean shareholders.

Our company’s approach to CSR and performance against our targets, which are some bullshit numbers we pulled out of thin air and are entirely divorced from reality, are detailed in our latest CSR report. For a snapshot, please also review our CSR Highlights document. Our efforts are guided by our company purpose – helping Americans Live Life Betterer.®

Again, you can tell we take this very seriously because we wasted money on consulting, focus groups, and filing for trademarks to make this into something vaguely brandable, rather than actually addressing any problems. We’re still figuring out the hashtag, but bear with us. It’s becoming harder and harder to find social media interns, as no one wants to work for free anymore.

Look, we wrap this crap in plastic because customers WANT us to. They said so. Well, okay, we haven’t actually heard anyone say, “please swaddle all my food in plastic so that I can ingest a credit card’s worth every week and who knows what that’s doing to my body,” but we’re sure you want it. You dummies keep buying this stuff.

Alright, fine, you buy it because you have to, as we slather plastic on pretty much everything now. But you COULD grow your own food, you know. On the tiny balcony of your shit apartment. In January. But you WON’T because you’re LAZY. And probably too busy eating avocado toast.

Where were we? Oh yeah. So, our efforts are guided by the following principles:

Respecting the environment – Our aim is to reduce the environmental impacts of our operations, with a focus on food and packaging waste, and greenhouse gas emissions. Like, we’re SUPER focused on this. LASER focused in fact. Have you seen those laser scanners we use at checkout? We love to watch you pay us. In fact, our CEO has that little scanner beep noise as his ring tone.

Sourcing responsibly – We strive to sell products that are safe and responsibly sourced. Strive. Yeah, yeah, we have so much buying power we could force changes all the way up the supply chain pretty much overnight, but we’re happy to strive. Baby steps, you know? At least until we get offered tax credits for doing stuff we should have been doing all this time.

Making a positive difference in our communities – We aim to support our colleagues and communities by placing a focus on advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) through our operations, promoting health and wellness, and our philanthropic efforts. As you can see, this is practically a trifecta. We’ve got focus, we’ve got an official socially acceptable acronym in there, AND we mentioned philanthropy. Because let’s face it, the money we spend to brand your kid’s soccer shirts is chump change, but they look awesome and will probably help you forget the state of our oceans, amirite?

For the most up to date information on our CSR initiatives, please visit our corporate website.

Also, did you see how we capitalized Valued Customer? Did you? That means you’re important-ish too!

Still having issues? We ask that you please do not reply directly to this email, because honestly, we didn’t want to talk to you in the first place.

Best Regards!

 

 

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Weed it and weep

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Why I don’t plant veggies in my backyard.

 

It’s finally summer-like here in the northern hemisphere. That time of year when, suffering from cabin fever, we all race outdoors to do something — anything — in the fresh air.

For an increasing number of us, if you can believe the market analysts and demographers, that something involves gardening. I know I’ve been getting into it more lately, and in fact was out last weekend cleaning the debris from our front flower gardens. To hear my husband describe it, this means I viciously attacked the garden with a rake to expose the poor naked and cowering seedlings underneath.

I freely admit that the plants under my care have to be tough, as I tend to have a “you will grow or else” approach to gardening. I hope to accomplish one of two things with this policy:

1) Through an evolutionary/survival of the fittest campaign, make the greenery tough enough to grow and even blossom through the winter, or

2) Terrify the plants enough that they will maintain themselves. (“Noooo!” shriek the columbines as I approach. “Nottherake nottherake nottheRAKE! Look! We’ll weed ourselves, see? No need to trouble yourself, PLEASE!”)

You see, the fact is, I’m a very lazy gardener. I love looking through seed catalogues and nurseries, and I’m a sucker for large expanses of multi-coloured blossoms and greenery. The reality is though, that gardens are an awful lot of work. Just think of the effort of starting a new five by five patch in front of the house – break the soil, remove the sod, turn everything over, add the mulch and compost, pick your seeds and bulbs, plant everything, water and feed it.

Oh, and don’t forget to install the edging, decorative fencing, stepping stones, cute decorative froggie statues (ribbit!!) and the very trendy sunken pond complete with goldfish and lily pads.

If you’re really, really lucky, you’ll have an explosion of blossoms on June 25th — and nothing but limp greenery the rest of the season because the fine print on the seed packets notes  that all of your seeds are actually early bloom plants.

Incidentally, weeds don’t have an early season, as they are capable of choking the living daylights out of any plant you actually want in your garden no matter what weather and soil conditions prevail. I personally suspect that the only thing that will kill off Creeping Charlie is kryptonite. And don’t get me started on thistle. No, really, don’t get me started on it, the little @#$%^! bites back.

So why go through all that struggle and effort? Why not just stick to grass? Well, if you think about it, maintaining a lawn isn’t any easier. Every year, in the fond belief that poking something with a sharp tool dozens of times, and running over it with a crushing 100 pound weight will make it grow better, we aerate and roll our lawns. Then we douse it with chemicals to make it grow greener faster and stronger — only to drag a mower/mulcher over it to hack it down to a well-behaved three inches.

Could it be that we ike the peace, quiet and serenity all this nature promotes? Somehow, I don’t think so. At this very moment in my neighbourhood, there are three lawnmowers, one weed whacker, two hedge trimmers and a rototiller on the go. Almost makes one long for the relative silence of the inner city, doesn’t it?

No, in the end, I think we do this to ourselves because we all like to pretend we’re farmers of a sort. In spite of the fact that the modern farmer actually uses genetic engineering and satellite technology to grow his crops, we like to harken back to the days of old, and make-believe we’re pulling a hard living from the soil. You know, get out into the elements, scrabble in the dirt, do battle with Mother Nature.

Don’t believe me? Remember this the next time you see your neighbour out mowing his tiny suburban lot with a huge riding lawnmower which looks suspiciously like a scaled-down John Deere tractor.

In the meantime, hand me my rake. The columbines are slouching.

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What do you like to plant at your house? Answer in the comments.

Talking to the animals…

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My vicious brute, Sasha.

As depressing as the environmental news is from day-to-day, one thing never fails to amaze me: how well certain animals manage to adapt to the presence of man. I thought of this the other day I stepped out on the porch. I caught sight of a squirrel ambling across the yard.

I should tell you that we don’t have a lot of big trees on our property, and the ones we do have are spaced out along the length of the back. As I was watching this squirrel I thought perhaps this might be a touch inconvenient. I was wrong.

We do have a fence around one part of our property. A five foot wooden one, which this squirrel uses as a sort of rodent freeway. He (or she, I wasn’t close enough to ask) hopped on the post, and was able to walk all the way from one side of the yard to the other. The fence is apparently just the right height from which a squirrel can safely tease our dogs. I know this because it stopped, several times, tail flicking, while the dogs had fits. I reckon tail flicking must be the squirrel equivalent of: neener neener.

From the fence he then hurled himself onto our neighbour’s fence. When that didn’t take him as far as he wanted to go, he yeeted himself onto a clothesline, and from there to someone’s roof. It was then that I realized that the little runt could travel all over town without setting so much as a paw on a tree trunk, if necessary.

Birds are incredibly adaptable too. Pigeons, a prime example, know exactly how to suck up to older ladies with bags of bread crumbs. And who needs trees when there are so many statues around?

We have a lot of mourning doves around here — possibly because of the grain mills and farms in the area. I’m especially fond of mourning doves. They’re so adaptable, they can build nests smack in the middle of my narrow window ledge. Did you know they start cooing at four in the morning? They’ll start even earlier than that if they know you crawled into bed at two. Cute little things, doves.

Hummingbirds have become pretty dependent on people too. I don’t know what the hummer population would do if there was a sudden shortage of those plastic flower thingies that are always filled up with sugar water. Or for that matter, how the finches would fare without their feeder, or what the sparrows would do without suet balls . . .

And how about dogs? We own a pair of [deep breath] Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers, a breed renowned for their keen hunting ability. Part retriever, part pointer, they’ll track down anything. Just one tiny genetic step away from the vicious, ruthless, wild wolf. Grrr.

Erm.

Okay, look, I’m not saying our pooches aren’t keen hunters. Heck, they can smell a cupcake at fifty metres. They’ll point at anything with gravy on it, and they’ll retrieve anything from the supper table. Including your fingers, if you’re not careful.

Put them out in the wild though, and I’m not so sure. Pheasants don’t come wrapped in cellophane, and rabbits don’t require can openers, so I doubt our dogs could find them. And certainly the idea of actually sleeping on the ground would confuse them. Their version of “roughing it” involves barking softly.

Cats would not be dining on such delicacies as “Italian Style Fish Fantastico” in the wild. Neither would they find many balls of yarn, wind-up mousies, or fuzzy scratching posts. And there would be no one around to get rid of their fleas.

Bears have been known to clamber into hot tubs for a soak, moose love water sprinklers, and if you search for Stoat Kit Goes Wild On Trampoline, you will not be disappointed.

My point is, for all our very evident faults, humanity is not especially soft, weak, or hedonistic compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. We just figured out how to build sofas first.

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What’s your favourite example of critter adaptation to modern life? Answer in the comments.