Eulogy for Barbara Smith

Last Thursday I had the honor of giving the Eulogy for my grandmother, Barbara Smith, who died on Friday, February 12th less than 2 weeks before her 91st birthday. Barbara was an important force in my life and I spent a very long time walking the streets around my parents house, trying to figure out what I wanted to say. Although I spoke without notes, the following is the closest approximation I can make to what I said in my grandmother’s honor.

I suppose it’s not surprising to any of you that I’ve thought a lot about this moment in the last couple of years. There were so many late night phone calls, so many mad dashes to the hospital, so many doctors who measured the time in days or weeks but never months. They told us to prepare ourselves and we did.

And then Barbara would bounce.

And then she would bounce

And then she would bounce.

Until, the reality of her resilience became more dependable than any prognosis, no matter how dire.

Which is why I find it so suddenly shocking to be standing here today. She was an incredibly powerful force in the life of my family. She drew us all into her orbit through the strength of her character and now that she’s gone, I feel my family spinning aimlessly in the dark and I am left standing here, trying to make sense of the light that has gone.

Her name was Barbara. Let’s get that straight right off the bat. Barbara.

Most of you know the story, that when my sister Kathy was born my grandmother decided that she was far “too young” to be called Grandma or, God forbid, Granny and she continued to be “too young” until the day she died just before her 91st birthday. Sometimes I thought she was younger than me.

She went by some other names too. A few people called her Barb. I used to call her Babs (but never to her face). If you were a waiter in San Francisco you knew you had to step up your game if you saw Mrs. Smith had a reservation that night. But my favorite name, and one that I only heard about a few years ago, was Buzz.

Buzz.

You could see her every once in a while, even in the last months when Barbara was very ill. When Barbara was in the right kind of mood getting just the right kind of attention, (usually from a man) her hips would start to sway and she would smile and make a CLICK CICK sound. And there she was... Buzz

Buzz was the the girl who stole her Dad’s car, snuck into speakeasies and hitched a ride on a barnstorming biplane. I picture her young and fierce and beautiful and maybe just a little bit dangerous-daring the boys to keep up with her and not being too disappointed when they couldn’t but knowing she had found a friend for life when they could.




You can only imagine how proud my grandfather Bob Smith was when she chose him. I wish I could’ve known him better.

My grandmother always seemed to know the right way to do things, whether it was how to bid a hand of bridge or where to get the best deals on linens in Cairo or dishware in Copenhagen. She knew the right way to handle money and how a family was supposed to behave around each other. Maybe that’s why she enjoyed doing needlepoint so much. That’s something I never got. It seemed mind numbingly boring to me. How she could spend hour after hour following those patterns, making sure all those bright colored threads were placed absolutely perfectly?

Barbara knew exactly how things were supposed to be and when the world broke the rules, when a waiter didn’t treat her just right, or a politician misbehaved or her grandson didn’t call her on her birthday, Barbara was hurt, and she was angry and she was somehow betrayed.

I never knew how the world was supposed to be. I’ve always seen the world as grey and complicated, filled with subtle hues, shifting constantly with every change of perspective. But no matter how hard I tried to explain that to her, no matter how hard I tried to show her the world as I saw it, she never could. She chose instead to believe in the world as it was “supposed” to be and that made this strong woman very, very fragile.

My grandmother talked with her eyes closed. You all noticed that, right? Whenever my friends would meet her they would pull me aside after and say, “Hey man. Did you know your grandmother talks with her eyes closed?” And I’d say, “Oh, gee, I never noticed that.”

I mean it’s weird, right?

And I started to wonder. “Where does that come from?” I mean has anybody ever asked her about it. I asked my mom but she didn’t know. No one did.

I mean it really started to bug me. I wanted to grab her and say, “Look at me!!” “See me!!”

Because, you see, although I’ve always known that Barbara loved me there were many times when I thought she didn’t really know me.

But then, how hard have I tried to know her.

All I had focused on was the world she was missing. I never stopped to think about what she was seeing. What movie was playing behind the lids of her closed eyes? What world was she seeing?

Well, first of all, we can be sure that everyone there is impeccably dressed. Every waiter recognizes her and her grandson never forgets to call. Maybe it’s a world where smart girls in the thirties were allowed to follow their fathers into business and accomplish great things. I’m sure it’s a world where she didn’t have to see her husband taken away so early or watch so many of those dear to her die before their time. It must be a place far from the ravages of age and cancer, where the threads of her life are woven exactly as they are supposed to be and the bright vibrant colors of the world never fade.

And there, at the center of it all, buzzing with light, is a beautiful woman. Smart, fierce, joyful... and young.

And that’s how I’ll try to remember her.

The Maximum Wage

The Maximum Wage

There was a time when the American dream meant a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Remember, we are a nation of immigrants, many of whom came to this country with little more than the clothes on their back. For them, it was enough to build a safe life where their children would never face the hardships that brought them to our shores. That was the American dream.

Today, however, the American Dream is one of mansions and private planes. It is a dream of wealth, fame and power so limitless that it can never, actually be achieved. This dream has created a new generation of Robber Barons who are willing to do almost anything, destroy the environment, enslave workers in the most oppressive conditions, and even start wars in order to add one more million to their already bloated bank accounts. And we have allowed them to do it.

It’s time for that to end.

For years, we have had a minimum wage in this country. I think we need a maximum wage as well.

I propose that we limit income (salary and bonuses) to one million dollars a year. That’s it. That’s all you can make. I don’t care if you’re a big movie star, a baseball player or the president of Pepsi. One million. No more.

Does this sound un-American to you? Does it stink of socialism or communism? Well, how American is it to have people going to bed hungry? To have parents working two and three jobs to pay for their children’s medical expenses? How American is it to support dictators and fight wars over oil?

Does this mean I’m against people getting rich? Absolutely not. I believe that success, hard work and innovation should be rewarded. If you bring a company from bankruptcy to solvency, write the great American novel or design a better mousetrap you should definitely make good money.

The question is, “how much money, is good money?” Right now, according to our society, the answer to that question is, “as much as you can possibly get.”

The truth is one million dollars a year is a shitload of money. It’s enough for mansions and Rolls Royces and first class trips around the world. In other words, you’re going to be just fine.

But there are a lot of people making one hell of a lot more than that. For instance, over the last three years, the top 5 executives at 20 financial institutions (all of whom received bailout money) had combined compensations of over 3.2 Billion dollars. Do the math. That’s 100 guys averaging over ten million a year whose companies were inches away from bankruptcy.

All I’m suggesting is that they get a pay cut from dirty, stinking, ridiculously rich down to just very, very rich.

We stand at the brink of both economic and environmental collapse. We are all going to have to make sacrifices and if that means that some CEO is going to have to settle for last year’s Lear Jet then so be it.

So what am I suggesting here? Am I talking about massive taxes or automatic garnishing of the wages of millionaires? No. All I’m suggesting is a simple salary cap. How the company chooses to spend the millions they will be saving is up to them.

But, here are a few suggestions.

Lower your prices.

Sick of all those fees your bank is charging you? What about your cellphone bill or cable company? How about the interest rate on your credit card that just skyrocketed? You can’t afford to pay for health care but the CEO of your insurance provider can afford to buy his own private island.

Pay your employees more.

In 1981 the average CEO made 42 times more than his average employee. Today that average is 431 to 1. WalMart CEO H. Lee Scott received $29.7 million in 2007, which is 1,314 times the salary of the average Walmart employee. And, of course, those are American wages. If you compared CEO salaries to offshore employees where wages are often set at pennies an hour, those ratios would be in the tens of thousands.

Treat your employees better

And it’s not just salaries. We’ve heard the excuse over and over, “We can’t afford to give our employees health care/Better working conditions/child care, etc. Well, we’ve just put a few extra million dollars in your coffers to do just that. And again, the offshore situation is far worse. Although I wont go so far as to say that we use slave labor to build our products, it’s not that far from the truth. Policies which we would find abhorrent in the US, child labor, unsafe conditions, massive hours etc. are common practices at American run companies all over the world.

Treat the environment better

Again, we’ve heard the excuse, “We can’t afford to clean up our factories.” Well, I for one believe that if you’re taking home 20 million dollars and you’re still poisoning our planet, you’re not trying hard enough.

Be a better citizen

If corporations are to be given all the rights of a citizen (as the supreme court just mistakenly ruled) then it’s time for them to take on the responsibilities of a citizen. None of us live in isolation. We all have a shared duty to take care of our communities, our children, our planet and our people.

You might say that the maximum wage would only provide a small fraction of the funds we need to solve the massive problems of our time and you’d probably be right. However, this isn’t just about the money. It’s about the motivation. With salaries capped, our business leaders can no longer benefit from some of the destructive and dangerously short sighted policies they have used in the past.

These are people in positions of tremendous power and power, as we all know, corrupts. We cannot eliminate the consequences of that corruption but we can, at least, rein in the rewards.

The truth is I believe in capitalism. I believe that hard work, innovation, and even good luck should be rewarded but I also believe that the unrestrained quest for wealth is dangerous and if we’re not careful it might just transform the American Dream into the American Nightmare.