Ladies Bountiful and Women in Need

Women's Health Day, up at the old hospital in Northport, started as an ordinary, pleasant, welcome annual event. It filled an important need. On that day uninsured and underinsured women in Leelanau County could receive a free health checkup, including mammogram. Health care was the object, but somehow it was a fun morning! Half the town was there, all ages, and it felt very egalitarian and social. There was nothing embarrassing about it. It was like going to vote, except that people had time to chat in the waiting room.

Then one year it was taken over by a large group of volunteers, women who had no need of the services but a great need to be needed. They put on a big brunch spread and then, having really nothing more to do but not wanting to feel useless, went around the room urging the women who had come for their checkups to avail themselves of the buffet. They themselves were not going to the buffet; nor were they in need of free checkups. Medical attention and food were for the others. 

For the first time, the event was structured by class: on one hand there was the host of ladies bountiful, on the other a crowd of women in need. Those of us who came for the checkup, the supplicants, were dressed casually, many in blue jeans, while the ladies bountiful were set apart in dresses and heels. The fun was gone! The following year I skipped the whole thing. Now the hospital is gone, and so is the event.

I bring it up because of something that concerns me with many do-good projects. So often, in a way, the volunteers are as needy as the recipients of the bounty to be distributed. The givers need projects and purpose and meaning in their lives. They need to feel needed and need to give and need to be recognized as givers. But they don't usually see themselves as needy. They do see themselves, in a helping context. Do they, I wonder, always see those they are so eager to help? 

I don't mean to ignore or deny the genuine humanitarian impulse. It's good to want to do good in the world, and doing good probably needs to be encouraged and, yes, rewarded, too! I'm also sure it's easiest for all of us to see ourselves in positive roles, wherever we are in life, and hardest to see others differently situated in as positive a guise. I don't mean to point fingers. Really. 

But if you think about it for a minute, you know, whatever your station and condition in life, that it can be a lot harder to receive than to give. And when only one group is acknowledged as givers, the other defined as beneficiaries, a dynamic set up: the first group is one-up, the second one-down. And so, while what's given is helpful in one way, it can be destructive in other ways. 

This is a digression, but one of the most memorable lessons life ever gave me was in the example of a friend who suffered severe physical trauma, losing much of the ordinary health and strength the fortunate among us take for granted every day. After the incident that nearly took her life, and after a long, painful period of recuperation, my friend, unable drive a car and without not stamina to walk to and stand at a bus stop, was dependent on friends to drive her to the grocery store. Once there she needed to tour the store in a motorized chair. She needed someone to carry her groceries out to the car and into her house. She needed a lot of help. And yet – this was the miracle and the lesson – she never expressed pity for herself, never apologized for needing help, and neither did she demand assistance in a resentful or autocratic way. She was natural about it all, graciously graceful. It was just the way things were, and we were friends, and we did things together. That was all. And so the way she received the help she needed was a gift she gave to us, her friends. Not many people could pull that off! I doubt I could ever do it with her grace, but if I am ever in a similar position, I hope I will remember her example and try!

I feel uniquely positioned in Leelanau County, with a foot in each camp, not a full-fledged member of either group. For twenty years, before eligible for Medicare, I went without health insurance (Women's Health Day was a godsend to me!), and I have no retirement pension waiting for me down the road. But by education and as a local business owner for nearly a quarter of a century, I am at least a nominal member of the privileged group. 

I understand the desire to help and to give, as well as the need for recognition. My own charitable giving means a lot to me, I am very careful about causes I choose to support, and I wish I could do more. At the same time, I also know, from not having had health insurance for so long and being still unable to sign blank checks for expensive health care, the sting of being designated as "needy," when I work very hard to be independent and provide for myself!

None of this is meant as criticism of any individuals or groups. I “bring it to the table” because the people around the table are generally in the bountiful givers group, and that's no accident. They are the ones with free time, and they are also the ones who feel comfortable and welcome at the table. They are seen as – and feel themselves as -- belonging there.

But those not at the table are "stake-holders," too. They have a stake in the economic wellbeing of their community, in the education provided for their children, and in being recognized as community members.

I don't see inviting the two groups to the table together, however, as the solution or even the beginning of a solution. 

So what is??? 

I suspect a "solution" to the gap in class and need may be something no group can invent, regardless how many hours are spent brainstorming. Maybe it just takes one-on-one conversations, in casual encounters, with a lot more listening on both sides. It might also take, for every single one of us -- me, included! -- looking into our own hearts and being honest with ourselves about what we see there.

What will we find? Then, what will we do with what we find? I don't know.

Sorry this is inconclusive. I have no recipe to offer, only my perspective from the gap, from the social chasm, between rich and poor.

Question varies, answer remains the same

Answer: It varies from year to year.

Question could be any of the following:

What’s winter like here?

How much snow do you get?

When do the cherry trees blossom?

How hot is it in summer?

What’s the best week to catch fall color?

They Just. Don’t. Get It! (Sigh!)

Back a few years ago, our local, county-wide bank was bought by a large, out-of-state bank, and one of the first thing “Corporate” did was to install those chrome stands you see in movie theatres, the kind with thick, velvet-covered ropes or chains, to indicate where customers should line up for tellers at the counter. Cries of outrage greeted the innovation. We are not livestock! We don’t need to be herded through cattle chutes! We know how to wait our turn! Things reverted to the way they were before, and everyone calmed down. This year “Corporate,” guided by “Marketing,” has made many more changes, most of them pointless, some of them downright irritating.

For starters, work by local artists was banished from the walls and replaced by promotional posters for the bank. (Why all the strenuous effort to sell what people are already buying?) All branch offices were painted in tones of beige and green, a new logo appeared on the outside of the bank, and the doors sprouted new green Lucite handles. When I went to the bank in Leland one morning, I was asked, “Do you feel like you’re in Northport? Because that’s the aim.” The aim of all this branding and homogenizing, I guess: make every branch feel like every other branch. Well, let’s get something straight. When I’m in Northport, I want to know I’m in Northport. When I’m in Leland, I want the feeling of being in Leland. And if I’m in Traverse City or Empire, I want to be clear about that, too. Each of these towns is unique, and that’s the way we like it Up North. Big box banks? Not appealing at all, folks!

My husband says that when he goes to the bank these days, he is annoyed the minute he sees the green door handles. Well, I can live with those, and if I were a teller, I’d probably be okay with the new uniforms: they are attractive, and employees have a choice of colors and coordinating articles of clothing. (Less figuring out “what to wear” every morning would have appealed to me back when I worked in offices.) The free pens have been a big hit. I’m told (and this surprised me) that the new 24-hour grace period before overdraft charges netted the bank a nice number of new customers. Twenty-four hours does not seem like a big deal to me before an overdraft charge of over $30 per check is assessed (I do not overdraw and so do not keep current on the penalty figure), and I wouldn’t have guessed that such a short grace period would bring in new customers, but hey—whatever!

What I find most—no, what I found most annoying, until a few days ago, is the new video display on the wall behind the tellers. It’s like a big, wide-screen TV, constantly in motion, and I have to hold a hand up over my eyes to block it from my view. When I’m talking to a teller, I want to be paying attention to the teller, not being distracted by a video display of the bank logo (who cares?) and “products” the bank is trying to sell me. In my case--and I suspect I am not alone in this--the annoyance of the distraction makes me, if anything, less likely to consider deepening my relationship to the corporation.

What makes local banking attractive in the first place? (1) The bank is here. (2) The workers, people we know, are friendly and courteous. (3) The staff knows the bank’s procedures and are helpful to customers. That’s it. That’s all we care about. The free pens are nice, but we lived without them for years and could live without them again. We just want the bank to be here and for the employees to do their jobs and be pleasant. If another bank bought up the current bank, we would switch “allegiance” without hesitation, as long as the bank was here and the employees—our friends and neighbors--pleasant and efficient. “Brand loyalty”? There is no such thing in today’s world. I can’t believe the marketing wonks haven’t heard the news.

And how much has all this “branding” nonsense cost? Because, no, there is one more thing bank customers would appreciate and that would be better interest rates, so instead of wasting customers’ money on such unnecessary and annoying changes, how about if “Corporate” just upped the interest rates a noodge? We would appreciate that!

Ah, but the changes weren’t over yet--and maybe they still aren’t, which is a scary thought—because just the other day, turning my gaze from the offensive video display to the clock on the wall, I saw—the clock was gone! Up there on the wall all alone was a silly double outlet, too high to be useful for anything, nothing plugged into it. Where was the clock? Can you guess? Ah, yes! “Marketing,” those chipper, eager, bright-eyed youngsters down at “Corporate,” decided it would be better not to have a clock in sight. People might time how long they were waiting in line. I’m not kidding. At least, this was the only rationale anyone could come up with.

Corporate, Marketing—get a clue! These branch banks are in small towns! We hardly ever have to wait in line, and when we do, no one minds, because we use the time to visit with one another. It's a break in the day for us! The occasional impatient person, usually a tourist off a yacht in the harbor, doesn’t understand small town life, either, and clearly doesn’t know how to be on vacation, the point of which is to slow down. Please don't gear our life to their ways!

Clearly, the marketing people are city people, and no doubt they’re very young. To their credit, they want to earn their salaries. So they come up with ways to change things. But if we wanted to live at a city pace, in anonymous city surroundings, we wouldn’t be here in Northport. Many of us, however, are still working for a living, and we do need to keep track of the time, so please put the clock back! Is that so much to ask?