The Public Works: Places: Design Observer

There's been a lot drama lately about the bank bailouts. Obama "bailed out Wall St." blah, blah, blah. It's just kinda funny because it wasn't a choice. Had the banks failed, and they would've fallen like dominoes, we'd all be standing in line, pieces of plastic in hand, staring at empty ATMs. Standing in front of shuttered shops. Marching up and down Broad St., banging on pots and pans like this was Buenos Aires circa 2001. The only difference between 1929 and 2009 was the TARP program. I'm not defending Wall St.  Just defending dinner on the table. And not on a table in a soup kitchen. You put out the fire then you worry about catching the arsonist.

This article has more to do with our infrastructure than with banks per se The Public Works: Places: Design Observer but it all sort of comes back to how we spend our money and how we as a people have come to relate to government and to the public realm in general. The writer takes specific aim at privatization of public assets. Most governments have long since sold off the enterprises that were profitable - power generation, telephone networks, etc. - and have turned to doling out contracts for services that aren't profitable. So, for instance, instead of paying taxes to run the local library you are paying taxes so a private company can run your library, or your train or your park. The idea of extracting profit from something that isn't profitable has always intrigued me. Not because I don't understand where the profit is coming from (my pocket) but because they get away with it.

Speaking of profit-making . . . the Mrs. and I have been running the birth circuit. Last week we talked with a home birth midwife and then went to the Birth Center in Bryn Mawr. The Birth Center was crazy in that professional hippie kind of way. I don't mean full-time hippies. I mean hippies who found something they like to do and are really professional about it. So this week we went to visit the OB who is part of Penn Health. They were all really nice. I'm not knocking the people - just the process. We weren't there but 5 minutes and they have Beth filling out marketing crap for infant formula. Similac, the product on offer, is a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company Abbot. Beth politely said, "oh, no thanks" but then the nurse insisted, "you never know." Like we couldn't find formula at the grocery store if we needed it. It was just a weird experience all around. Maybe it's my own hippie upbringing but when every piece of stationery has a drug ad on it I get a little creeped out. The environment was also a lot like being in an emergency room but in slow motion. Like it's a 9 month emergency. Like they see the car crash coming so they're getting all of your paper work in order and paging the anesthesiologist. That reminds me of a great book, 'The Long Emergency' by James Howard Kunstler.

Wow, that was circular.

One more stop before decision time. Today the niño (or niña) is the size of a kidney bean. We gotta get this all figured out because before we know it, it's gonna be the size of a lemon. Seriously. One of the baby books I've been reading compares the fetus to various nuts, legumes and pieces of fruit all the way up to week 20. We're going to check out the birth center in Wilmington next week for a few reasons, one of which is that, while it's further distance-wise it takes less time to get there than Bryn Mawr. If it's as cool as Bryn Mawr then that might be where we end up.