Yesterday I read about the new strategy for the old J.C. Penney stores: Put in brand departments and NO MORE SPECIAL SALES! Everything is to be priced fairly (reflecting true cost) every day.

Today I read that J.C. Penney stock is up. No surprise. One of the cost-cutting effects will be to get rid of all those employees whose job it was to paste new price tags over old price tags.

I’m not sure yet how I feel about this. My image of J.C. Penney comes from the childhood memory of being taken by the hand to that smallish department store a half-block down a side street from Main to get basic school clothes: underwear, socks, and a Girl Scout uniform. Maybe there were other items, too, but I knew and still know that Penney’s is not where you go for “outfits” (i.e. stylish clothes). We went to Winkelman’s or Heinemann’s as we grew older – with friends – to buy swim suits or coats. Yes, we were allowed to charge them to our parents. It only took a phone call.

In my heart of hearts I want Penney’s to survive, and not by dedicating 400 square feet to Martha Stewart or by clearing out the center of the store of cosmetics and jewelry in order to put in a food court. I would like it to be something like a 3-D Vermont Country Store, where I could go back in time and buy decent socks. I would like to be able to have tailored white blouses always available. Likewise, good quality towels and blankets that can be ordered monogrammed. I want cozy flannel nightgowns for winter and cool cotton pajamas for summer.

Add in a department that has good quality children’s shoes, something almost impossible to find these days. How about boys’ camp shorts, the ones with the roomy patch pockets and a clip on the belt loop? Oh? These now are called cargo pants? You don’t understand:  I mean the short pants that can be passed on next year to another child. By the way, whatever happened to kids’ overalls — not the farmer kind stocked at Sears & Roebuck even further down the side street, but corduroy ones — the kind you wore with striped tee shirts.

As for the branding of departments, I’ve seen that happen in the biggest store in the world, Harrods in London. In my mind that is a disaster, simply lifting store fronts up three or four floors beyond where you want to be, in the full stomach of a very old building.

Harrods used to feature English goods, things people really needed, every substantial household had, and that lasted a lifetime, or two, or three. Now it is hard to find English-made goods anywhere. If you want to try to find a particular thing in the store that claims to be “the biggest,” you have to wade first through the ground floor throngs, past the watchful eyes of snooty salesclerks who will perhaps show you (depending on how you are dressed) unbelievably expensive handbags, perfumes, scarves, etcetera, to get to the elevators. First this makes you feel bad. You are a Have Not. Then it makes you pleased that you have escaped the trap.

You might then saunter into the ground floor Food Halls, which are still quintessentially British. The basic clientele there is reputedly Royal, but the clerks will sell an ordinary shopper anything we want (if we are willing to ”queue” a while). The clerks are professional, but still willing to please and charm the customer.

One change in the Food Halls: There no longer is a stack of naked beef roasts in a display in a corner of the floor. These days, it would be considered unsanitary and perhaps in (pardon the pun) bad taste. Possibly, even Mohammed Al Fayed, who now owns the store, can’t bear to throw away good meat at today’s prices.

Another change: Harrod’s now accepts Chinese credit cards.

Just wondering…how many days they allowed the same roasts to serve as props — back in the good old days of gluttony.

The authors, David Houle and Jonathan Fleece are  a “CEOs futurist” and “leading health care attorney,” respectively. Houle is known for his conception of “The Shift Age” (Get used to it: everything is changing rapidly.). Fleece (who should have changed his name) “specializes in advising clients on how to take advantage of health care reform.” Silly me. I thought he meant clients-as-patients.

As soon as I got the book I saw that it has no index. Bad sign. It has a long table of contents instead. If you are interested in the nine “directional flows” you can skip to the chapter on the structure of health care. Concentrate on what the authors have planned for the economics, and particularly insurance, and the “accountable care organizations” (ACOs) that you may be reading about elsewhere. They excuse themselves from talking about the indigent, and point to a solution to cost in stratification of employees by health ratings, and assigning appropriate care according to need. They suggest that the corporations adopt health goals. Then they point to the website of a model “employer accountable care organization” (EACO), Virgin Healthmiles. On this site a CFO (client?) can calculate by entering number of employees and average salary how much money he or she will save the company by these tactics.

No doubt in my mind that this book is written to engage doctors in the reform game. It promises to let them be in control of the “medical homes,” groups of patients to whom they pitch preventative measures, and not just fix the problems after they occur. They give us the math! Doctors can lecture in an auditorium to 100 patients, who pay $20 a ticket, about how to avoid dying of heart disease. In an hour they make $2000 instead of the measly $400 they would get for staying in their offices to consult with four patients for 15 minutes each for $100 a pop.

There is one part of the book I really liked: the history of modern medicine, chapters 2 and 3. Things started getting complicated 150 years ago when the “elite” of this nation demanded “the best” of everything, including doctors. From 1847 we got a gradual refinement of qualifications. We can see where that had led us, right back to seeing a no-nonsense nurse when we are in trouble.

No, this is not a blog about tinnitus. It’s a commentary following the ringing of bells on Sunday, the anniversary of theTucson shootings, loss of lives, and re-emergence of Gabby Giffords.  Many people said the events displayed a coming together of people in a sincere feeling of community. I hope so.

This hope turns to envy when I watch the news about the Presidential primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. I wish Arizona would allow for such a thorough study of candidates and assertion of where we stand. I have started to read A SAFEWAY IN ARIZONA: WHAT THE GABRIELLE GIFFORD SHOOTING TELLS US. Journalist Tom Zoellner takes the story way beyond that day, into the bowels of our state. I am almost afraid to read the whole thing, as it may be indigestible to find out what the majority believes in and where we seem to be going.

I am a midwesterner of Progressive influence. Growing up, we women became as vocal as men in politics, especially on the local level. Of course the settlers were farmers, and farm families were mom and pop enterprises. The discussion about elections was not about personalities, but ideas. Farmers also routinely cooperated for the greater good.

Today, I look at the TV screen when our partisan representatives are “discussing” current events, and realize they have not been trained properly in civic discourse, and especially debate. Debate was a fixture in Wisconsin high schools. The debate teams went to regional and state competitions. Additionally, our education in the English language was thorough. Our notions of how we wished to present ourselves in speech (e.g., to be “cool”) did not enter the picture. We believed the teachers. We even believed our parents most of the time.

My generation has since been judged “conformist,” which took on a negative meaning, as if we never thought for ourselves. It isn’t true. We had a lot of time to think about where we stood when we did our homework, sat around the dinner table listening to adult conversation, read books and serious magazines, and, if we were lucky, joined debating societies. We had two newspapers delivered to our home, one Democrat, the other Republican. We read more than the comics.

There’s no time in kids’ lives now to do those things. I don’t want to blame soccer, because I think exercise is a good thing. However, I do think we need to question the value of the most prevalent activity in many homes today, and that is watching sports. Compete and win. We have come to a place in politics that is like a football field, where one team has to triumph over another — all others – and players go on to great careers and huge paychecks. Before you yell back at me that I’m crazy, think about the majority of those careers, how they impact on family life and often the health of that players.  Then look at the careers of people who have been taught how to think - not what to think, but how to go on thinking, to be resilient, open, and even change their minds when they get new information. What will a beat-up and broken football star who barely got a bachelor’s degree (or not)  do from age 45 on? What will Gabby do from now on?  That is the question.

There’s better news on immigration today. A study by demographers at the University of Southern California shows that people who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s “made consistent progress toward social and economic integration until the Great Recession” (“Immigrants Are Still Fitting In,” Wall Street Journal, Monday, November 14, 2011, A5).

There are some particularly engaging facts in the report. One is that these successfully assimilated immigrants are mainly from Asia and Latin America. The authors compiled census data, and used measures such as overcoming poverty, owning a home, and acquiring proficiency in the English language. This study focused on the old “melting-pot” ideal, which means erasing differences between themselves and natives. In other words, there was a desire and effort on the part of the Asian and Latin American newcomers to fit into what is broadly defined as American culture.

One of the notable trends is the way in which the 1990s immigrants placed such high value on home ownership (“the American dream”) that they would pool money and purchase lower priced properties to achieve that goal.

The article suggests that immigrants from Asia and developed countries assimilate more quickly because they know what to expect. They recognize opportunities.

The demographers say that it takes two decades to allow for complete assimilation. Ironically, many Americans do not perceive that, nationwide, newcomers are assimilating, especially if they are among immigrants who do not progress as quickly, that is, they are not well prepared.

My last blog was about the need to prepare immigrants, and our foolish waste of money on fences that could be applied to programs that would educate and orient people to the opportunities and the realities of this country. Certainly those who came in the 1990s did not count on a recession, and yet they have survived.

By the article that appeared today, I was reminded that our parents’ generation of mainstream churchgoers were dedicated to mission work. My mother sat in her Ladies’ Circle every week hearing about Presbyterian contributions to education and health care in Africa and on the Navajo Reservation. Today, perhaps church circles are devoted to mission work in cities. I would suggest that they – or any other organization concerned about Third World populations – specifically aid recent immigrants from undeveloped parts of the world.

I know there are groups who sponsor Third World immigrants. Often, though, the efforts result in ghetto-like neighborhoods of newcomers who help each other but continue to speak their language and continue to cultivate their “differences.” Sometimes they are put on display through well-intended media coverage or public programs. Even though it may garner financial support, somehow this seems twisted.

In my opinion, it would be far better, if assimilation is the goal, to have sponsoring groups place people temporarily in homes with citizens who are either natives or established immigrants, just as college travel and study abroad programs do. People whose idea of the United States comes mainly from television and movies will experience our patterns of daily living.  Meanwhile, the exchange and distribution of ideas would travel faster, and more of us who have taken ”the American dream” for granted would learn how to be global citizens.

We all are on one, big, messy planet. We have to get along together and feel as one people to get it cleaned up.

Living in a border state, one can hardly escape thinking about immigration. I have always thought a fence for keeping people out is delusional. Spending millions (or is it billions?) on a more sophisticated border fence is obscene. Think of what that money could do to educate and prepare people wanting economic relief or political asylum – or just to be with family.

Every so often, usually on an all-American holiday, there is a photo in the news showing immigrants being sworn in as citizens after having passed their exams. These exams test their knowledge of the English language, of the American Constitution and how our government works, and what basic laws and rights are here in the United States. Applicants must also swear to the tenets of our Constitution.

I am of the opinion that this is not enough to make an American, especially as applicants must already know the Constitution is repeatedly under attack and our Members of Congress who make the laws do not have the confidence of their people. At the moment their approval rating is 10%.

In the 21st century we are less a melting pot than a patchwork quilt. This is a result of travel, a high regard for multiculturalism, and interest in maintaining a sense of our “roots.” Some aspects of this are controversial, but for the most part we enjoy having a rich and colorful mix of backgrounds, and even where international, interracial and interfaith marriages have occurred, there usually is an attempt to acknowledge the heritage on both sides.

Here is the problem: Even a generation ago, when someone immigrated they left their old life behind. This is no longer necessary. We have phone cards, email, webcam and Skype, plus instantaneous communication by social media. I am inclined to think some of this is anti-social media, because it encourages the new Americans to remain in their old cultures and to retain habits, beliefs, behaviors, and customs that do not help them to adapt to their new environment.

Here are two examples: In male-dominated countries, women typically form their own social groups to cope; one of the commonly expected behaviors (reported by women) is to plot against their husbands. It is hard, then, for a woman from such a background to understand that Americans are expected to solve differences in family units. She will be looking for female friends who will listen to her litany of injustices done to her by her spouse. She may instead push people away, become lonely and even desperate enough to fall prey to “friendships” with people who will harm her rather than help. Another example: There are quite a few cultures where yelling and making scenes in public are perfectly acceptable behavior. Western travelers who witness men about to break out into a fistfight have been astonished to see the adversaries suddenly shake hands or kiss each other on the cheeks. In the United States, public yelling could be considered “disturbance of the peace,” or threats seen as “assault.” If one of the people involved has an aversion to such public displays, the perpetrator may be taken away in handcuffs.

These examples do not encourage tolerance of newcomers. Therefore, I believe we should be looking at ways to introduce prospective citizens to their new society by role-playing, or films that illustrate the differences they should expect. Parents should be thoroughly introduced to expectations of schools. A more prolonged course of orientation for citizenship – and there are a few in place – could avoid troubles down the road when an individual has to choose where his or her loyalties really are.

This morning I heard that Borders bookstores are closing, all 399, putting 11,000 people out of work.

I’ve always liked the size of Borders, but for several years I have wondered why they don’t do more to liven up their retail environments. Why didn’t they fight back? The bigger store down the street doesn’t succeed just because of its size.

Here’s my idea of what they should have done: USE THEIR NAME.

WHAT A GREAT NAME FOR A STORE: BORDERS!

A border is the  line across which you step, not the line that keeps you out. If I were the marketing head at Borders bookstores, that concept would drive my campaign, and it would be relentless.

Every week in every store I would have had a book discussion, with or without the author, about a metaphorical border that is crossed in literature. I would have bought full page ads in newspapers or pop-ups on screens with the announcement of that new book in stock that crosses over.

Maybe the book is  about immigration; or maybe it is about Carl Jung and dreams.

Maybe it is about undercover investigation. Maybe it is about being a dog.

Maybe it is about gender confusion, or travel, or being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Maybe it is about finding religion.

GOODBYE, BORDERS (boo-hoo, wahhhh, and doggone) — but never mind: BOOKS are everywhere, and all we need is encouragement to see what’s on the other side. Just as courageous as Alice, we must step through the pages to grow and experience the imaginations of talented people and the realities of a larger world.

Why didn’t BORDERS INC. get it?

It’s 104 degrees F in Tucson today — but, as they say, “it’s a dry heat.”

We took a visitor from Cuiliacan, Mexico, to the Arizona Desert Museum last Saturday night, one of the summer evening openings this institution has to allow human beings to view their non-human neighbors who come out at dusk. Our 12-year-old granddaughter, whose father was hosting his week-long visit, was with us.  She and her grandfather and I have been to this world-class outdoor exhibit many times.  This is the first time I felt sorry for the animals, who are in enclosures, but very large ones that mimic their original habitats. Juan thought it was a beautiful place, and took all kinds of information to share with his colleagues, planning to organize trips for businessmen, government officials,  university professors, and students to follow in his footsteps exploring Tucson.  This would be a prime stop.

To me, even the cactus pads looked puckered up.  We’ve had no rain. It brought me back to an earlier posting here, about Juanita Ahill, a woman I met writing a story  for Arizona Highways in 1976.  Her people, then called Papago Indians (now Tohono O’odham) used the red fruit from the tops of tall saguaro cactus “trees” in their cuisine. The tradition of camping out to pick the fruit during the summer, before the rains, had all but died out when I met her; she might have been the only one interested in continuing the practice.

Imagine Papago desert nights around 1910. You would be lying on a cot softened with a blanket, on the west side of the Tucson Mountains, far beyond any city lights. The sky is a canopy of indigo, with pinpricks of starlight gradually becoming larger.  The mesquite wood under the fruit pots infuses the air with sweet-acrid odors, familiar, not threatening, just enough to make you sleepy.

These two segments of Juanita’s memories I recorded on tape and transcribed are the opening to her new page in the ORAL HISTORY section of my website.  This is just a taste.

1. SAGUARO HARVEST

I don’t know that place
we used to go to in a wagon.

Yeah.
We used to go from here
that that
camp
on the other side of Old Tucson by that mountain.
I don’t know
what is the name of that mountain.
And we used to camp about almost three
months.
And we stayed there
and my uncle
and my other friends
we went down there.
When I was about
I don’t know how old
and my sister is kind of bigger than me and my baby
brother
but now he’s hig now. [Laughs.]
And we used to go out and help my mother how to harvest
the fruit.
And they want us to go out and pick the fruit.  If we don’t do it she used to get after us
get us
make us do it and so we learned from her how to make syrup.
And we gather the fruit and dry fruit.

I think I was around about
about nine or ten.
Yeah.
Ten, I guess.
I don’t remember and at someplace the lady said:
“Maybe you must be twelve.”
so I remember everything.

2. HER MOTHER’S BASKET

My mother has to stay close to us, you know,
she has to be on the other  . . .
We used to carry those little
cans     . . .
Four pound can?
When we fill it up we have to take it to the big basket
and pour it in there
and so my mother carry it on top of her head when
that basket is full of the fruit.

It’s just like a big bowl,
basket, it’s willow and
devil’s claw.
And they’re big ones!
I don’t know who took my mother’s when she died.
I wish . . .

Somebody got it already.
After that, why the basket was dis’peared. I tried
to ask my sister where did that basket went because
pretty soon we gonna grow up and get married and so we
can go out and collect that . . .
Yes, it was a big one.
About this big.

We who have lived in Arizona for many years and love the forests and meadows of the Mogollon Rim are sickened by the Wallow Fire destruction.  It is  now considered the  largest forest fire in the state’s recorded history.

I am especially fond of Hannagan Meadow, about where this fire started,  and treasure two photos of my younger son (now 46) standing in the same location in the pine trees at ages 4 and 10.   Also, that lodge at Hannagan Meadow is where my parents first met my husband,  the stepfather to my three children. It’s where my husband, before we were married, proved his merit in the kitchen by whipping cream into peaks with a simple fork. We had picked raspberries along the road.

A few years later, our older son was stationed across the road from the lodge at a Forest Service camp used for his helitak crew. He worked as a fire fighter in the summer and sometimes stayed the fall semester.  That’s why it took him six years to graduate from NAU (Northern Arizona University).  The following summer, his sister, on a field trip with a UA (University of Arizona) geography class, told her professor about the helitak camp and for some odd reason he refused to believe her.  When she gave her report on the findings of her group (they were mock-planning a ski resort), she wore Greg’s shirt with the identity and location of the Hannagan Meadow U.S. Forest Service camp. That’s my girl!

The Blue River runs along the east side of the highway up there. One summer, long before my husband and I fell in love, I was hiking with friends from Hannagan Meadow to a wide, shallow spot in the river.  We encountered  a couple living out there at the edge of the woods. They had set up camp, a fire pit, and a scavenged cupboard nailed to a tree for their food.  I’d guess they were in their late 60s.  They told us that during the warm months they salvaged for scrap metal to make a little extra living. They researched and mapped where airplanes had crashed, and climbed up  mountainsides to retrieve parts, even sections of wing.

On the path back our group straggled into a hunting camp and found a pen full of lovely hounds. There were no human beings in sight, but there was a building with an open door, and we were hot and tired. The room was clean-smelling, though empty of furniture. On a windowsill someone spotted a tin of salve typically used on cow’s udders when they got sore — and presumably on the female dogs when they had pups.  One of the guys in our group said it is used by people, too, and suggested my cramped calves might benefit by a little rubbing on of the strong-smelling stuff.  I tried it and could walk painlessly back to our cabin at Hannagan Meadow.

This time the pain won’t go away.  I can hardly stand to think of what’s going on right now. I think of the danger to the firefighters, the stupidity of the people who left a campfire still alive.  While much of that area has been built up and overrun by tourists, the little place where I have these pleasant associations remained pleasant to this year.  I hope it will become pleasant again for generations to come.

POSTSCRIPT: With natural disasters occurring everywhere, there’s one sort-of funny story running through my mind. In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, reporting on the Arizona fire, there is a photo of a pickup truck loaded with trophies a family wanted to save during their evacuation — deer antlers, elk antlers – who knows what else — the souvenirs of killing the natural inhabitants of that  land. Still, it called to mind a St. Louis summer day c. 1957 when  we had a tornado alert in the middle of the afternoon.  Mother, her house guest and I (then a college student) quickly headed to the basement.  Down there in the rec room we looked at each other with merriment.  Mother had brought some cookies.  I took along a book to read (if the lights stayed on.) The guest of ample bosom had grabbed her brassiere.

You can hear me talk about issues related to SOPHIE REDESIGNED by using this link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/big-blend-radio/2011/05/01/champagne-sundays

Amidst the struggles for “closure” (a word our 6-year-old granddaughter introduced into conversation the other night – too wise too soon — there is humor.

I had told her last summer when she stayed with us for seven weeks that whenever I find a feather on the ground I believe it is a message from my father. My dad died in 1998, and I honest-to-goodness adopted this belief as part of my grieving process. I hoped it would give her the idea that when someone dies they never really leave the people who love them. (Her mother has a terminal disease.)

At the B&B where we were staying, she was with her grandfather and me for two nights. One morning we took a walk around the acreage, stopping at the horse corral to see if we could entice the two brown Arabians to come to us for a loving pat on the nose. First, however, we noticed an enormous pile of “horse apples” near the railing. In one there happened to be a large black feather stuck quill side down, as if it had been thrown like a dart.

Maya said, “Look! Your dad sent a message. It’s not good. Something bad is going to happen.” Her grandfather quickly said: “I think we had better ask Papa Bob to aim a little better next time.” I added: “I don’t think he sent that one. It doesn’t look like the others. He wouldn’t choose black.”

Still, it made me feel a little fearful, as a lot of bad things are happening to that little girl. We hope for closure soon.

At the end of our visit we (Daddy, too) went to Santa Fe, and we had a great time at the Santa Fe Children’s Museum. Maya prefers the outdoor play areas, although this time she decided to go into a room that is hidden under a hill of plants. It is for science, mainly. In one corner is a box of worms. It is sort of a treasure chest, a combination of wood shavings of some kind and organic material from the clippings and veggie scraps. The worms are at work making good soil, and children are invited to find them (usually in the corners). Maya and a little boy named Charlie got into a contest, and Maya came up with 15 worms in her hand. She was a happy camper. Such joy children have in a place where they can explore and the adults with them can see they are safe and learning. Such joy for grandparents to see a child forgetting for a few moments that gusty winds do exist.