PRIVACY

PRIVACY

There has been controversy in the past year about a new phenomenon in the Southern California area. The City of Los Angeles has been putting little cameras at strategic places in the city so that they can monitor potential crimes in progress. There have been cameras installed in a public park and now, a few of them have been placed on Hollywood Boulevard. Both locations are recognized as hotbeds of drug activity.

Critics of such policies say that the cameras are an invasion of privacy. Protect my privacy” in Americanese is usually code for, “Stay away from my sex life”.

To them I can only say – How can you be in a public place and be “private” at the same time? What kinds of “private” activities did you have planned for the next time you’re strolling down Hollywood Boulevard or feeding the ducks in Silverlake? Did you plan to strip naked for a lark? Maybe you had plans to have an illicit affair out in broad daylight? Come on, folks. If you don’t like the idea of cameras in the street, I’m guessing you’re not an exhibitionist. But even if you did something so stupid: 1) You wouldn’t be the first or the last, so get over yourself; 2) The risk of getting arrested would exist with or without cameras; and 3) Nobody really cares.

For myself, I say, go ahead! Take a good look! You will see me caught in the act of walking, perhaps singing to myself, petting a dog, saying hello to a stranger, window shopping, or picking up a free newspaper. Maybe I’ll be spied upon as I enter a Middle Eastern restaurant or a nail salon. You might even see me kiss my husband. Oooooooooooooooooooooh! Big stuff! In other words, behaviorally, I will be exactly like almost anyone else walking down the street. Visually, you may see me in glasses, without glasses, wearing sunglasses, having a bad hair day, having a good hair day, wearing jeans, wearing slacks, wearing a coat, or wearing a sweater. Again – What an invasion of my privacy!

But, why risk it? I say – Dismantle the cameras. Better safe than sorry! So what if a few drug deals go down? So what if a few cars are stolen? So what if some criminal element is allowed to kidnap a few kids and get away with it, even? A drive-by shooting, ah well, it can’t be helped. At least, we’ll all have our precious “privacy”.

I know, I know. This is not the position a “liberal” is supposed to take. But one of my own dearly held beliefs about freedom is that, no matter what label they slap on you, you still have the right to side with the opposition if they’re right about something. To me, that’s what true individuality is about, and it’s nothing that shows up on a camera. As for “privacy”, until the day the government trains cameras on our home, I’m okay.

© 2005, Robin Munson

JUST IN CASE

JUST IN CASE

Well, it’s come again. I can’t avoid it anymore. It’s the yearly clean up. This is the beginning of a process wherein I gather up all the papers from the past year, file them away in big cardboard boxes with labels like, “Bank Statements, 2004”, “Business Receipts, 2004”, etc., and then stack them up at the front door so that Art can take them down to the basement storage. We must have about 500 square feet of storage space already filled from the past seven years’ worth of records (which I understand is generally how long you have to keep your receipts just in case the I.R.S. wants to audit your tax returns). It’s kind of like the lotto in reverse. You know that your chances of being audited are slim to none (although, alas, not as slim as your chances of winning the lotto). Still, one must be prepared. The weird thing is – I think I just finished putting away our 2003 papers last week!

If you count up all the “just in case” things we do in modern life, you realize that we devote a great deal of time, energy, and money to the various gloomy hypotheticals that clutter our thoughts. There is insurance for every contingency. There is fire insurance, home or renter’s insurance, earthquake insurance (here in California, anyway), flood insurance, auto insurance, and of course, health insurance (even for our pets). There is business insurance in case your warehouse or office is destroyed by a natural disaster. There is even insurance to cover your mortgage, just in case you should slip on a banana peel and be rendered permanently unable to pay (or dead). Oh yes, that reminds me – There is burial insurance. Just in case you should die. There is vacation insurance (just in case your cruise is rained out). There is flight insurance, so that if your plane goes down your estate can sue the airline. (That’s just too creepy for me).

Oh, and then there are emergency supplies. We are constantly reminded to keep canned provisions and bottled water on hand – just in case. Duct tape. (There really are a million uses for duct tape, not all of them laughable). Then there are Band-aids, hydrogen peroxide, paper plates, flashlights, batteries, battery-powered radios and TVs, aspirin, extra toilet paper, propane stoves, generators, and of course, a bottle of whiskey (for medicinal purposes only). I also like to keep an emergency suitcase packed in case we have to leave our home in the middle of the night unexpectedly.

Then there are the things you do “just in case” you should get very lucky. I don’t know what the name is for this. For example, you might buy a Rolls-Royce key ring, just in case you do win the lotto. You might buy a formal gown just in case you should ever win the Oscar. You might learn French, just in case you should be named Ambassador to France. You might take up dance. just in case Broadway comes calling. Or in my own case, you might send a song to Reba (just in case she is looking for exactly the song you wrote). Notice that my list of “just in case” good stuff is a whole lot shorter than my “just in case” bad stuff.

My husband says I worry too much, and maybe I do. My therapist once told me that this was the result of Jewish ghetto mentality built up over thousands of years and, I guess, genetically imprinted on my brain. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. But – what if I’m right? I’d better keep worrying, just in case.

Anyway, I’d better cut this short and run my errands in town. Just in case there’s a torrential downpour later that floods the roadways.

© 2005, Robin Munson

COUNTRY

Art and I are in Connecticut visiting his family.

We have been coming here together for about seventeen years. Every time we’re here, we are overwhelmed by the beauty of this place. Late September is, of course, an ideal time of year to visit. The leaves are magically beginning to turn – yellow, red, gold. The sky can be grey and heavy one day, blue and sparkling the next.

Coming from Los Angeles, it seems as if we have stepped into another world altogether. The majority of the houses are very old by American standards – many over two hundred years old. The style is “Cape” or “Victorian”, “Saltbox”. There is no “landscaping”, as we know it in L.A. There are trees, taller than the houses, thick and substantial. You wouldn’t see so many trees clustered together in the West, because they would have been struck down by fire far too often. Here there is plentiful rainfall, so the fire danger is minimal.

At night as you drive down the winding country roads, there are almost no lights, save for the lights inside the homes. If you look up, you can actually see stars against a black background.

Being here makes my heart beat a little slower. In fact, everything slows down just a little. I feel serene, calm, unhurried. (Even though there is a lot for us to do here).

I would recommend that you visit New England, but I’m afraid you would. We don’t want to have the place even more overrun than it is already. But then, I feel very guilty because everyone should experience this at least once in their lifetime. To come here is to go back in time. To go back to a time when neighbors knew their neighbors and looked out for one another. A time when you couldn’t go shopping on Sunday. A time when people felt safe leaving their keys and their pocketbook in the car (as my sister-in-law did last night). A time when there really were small towns holding meetings to decide what is best for the community (as the Town of Morris did last night). Here, the American Dream is not a dream.

I recommend you come and experience it for yourself. Before it disappears.