A line in a reader response caught my attention.

“Not everyone can afford those better clothes and the idea that they were lesser because of it was nonsense back then just like it is now.”

The fact is that while clothes do not make the person, they do reflect, to a certain extent, where a person stands in society. All societies throughout history have employed certain aspects of human representation to reflect where people stand in that society, whether those aspects are tattoos, hairdos, the size of ear lobes, styles and amount of expensive clothing, or something else.

Clothes have certainly played that role in western European culture, as have they in technologically advanced far eastern cultures and others as well.

Admittedly, all these forms of persona self-statement and/or representation effectively rest on comparative economic or social/religious position, but they’re far from nonsense, because the people with power in complex, materialistic societies do want to distinguish themselves from people who they believe are lesser. While one could even make the argument that “clothes competition” is a far less wasteful use of wealth and power to gain or demonstrate position, the problem is that the mega-wealthy simply escalate the level of “display” into the mega-mansions and mega-yachts now in vogue.

There’s also a reason why soldiers wear uniforms, or why students in some elite private schools do as well, and it has to do with removing clothing as a weapon of overt social positioning.

I’d agree that that greater or more extensive display hardly measures human worth, but it does measure economic success… of someone, even if the wealth is inherited.

But to say that better clothes as a display of wealth, power, and position is nonsense shows a lack of understanding of culture and human nature.

I can recall when I was a teenager – more than sixty years ago – my mother telling me that men should not go downtown [in Denver] without wearing a coat and tie, preferably a suit and tie, and that women should always wear gloves and a hat. Jeans were not allowed in public schools, and most private schools required either uniforms or had strict dress codes.

There were written invitations for dinners and parties, and those invitations required written replies either accepting or declining the invitation.

Police officers, teachers, doctors, and even lawyers were respected, as was age. And back then almost 70% of Americans could afford to buy a house (unlike the 43% today).

Then, during and after the end of the Vietnam War (and it was a war) matters changed swiftly, especially for social mores.

When I first went to Washington as a legislative assistant to a newly elected Congressman in 1973, I was twenty-nine, and almost all the Congressional staff directors were men (and a very few women) in their forties and fifties, if not even older. Ten years later, at thirty-nine, I was one of those staff directors, and most of the staff directors were my age, if not younger.

All of that is a form of nostalgia and ignores some very basic ills in American society at the time. Women and minorities effectively had far, far fewer rights than white males, and in parts of the South blacks had almost no rights at all (and we still haven’t gotten where we should be). The air was close to unbreathable at times in most major cities, and the water in most lakes and rivers undrinkable and unswimmable. In the 1960s, cars were still deathtraps in accidents.

But back then, people talked to each other and knew their neighbors. And they could talk to people who had different politics and religion. Now, it seems that far too many Americans live in self-selected internet bubbles with increasing intolerance of those who believe differently. Too many also ignore invitations without declining or show up without accepting.

We also have increasing amounts of violence by people who act as though the world should bend to their whims or desires. Road rage was essentially unheard of in the 1950s or 1960s. Shooting someone for “dissing” has also become more and more common.

What’s also been forgotten is that the way people dress reflects a certain amount of respect – or lack of it – for others. Wearing pajamas and flipflops on an airplane or sweaty gym clothes to a restaurant isn’t only poor taste and possibly unsafe, but it’s disrespectful to others, an arrogation of narcissism, if you will.

No, the past wasn’t wonderful, by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems like we’ve shed the good along with the bad, and that’s not the way to build a future.

Back almost thirty years ago, after The Soprano Sorceress was published, a small number of readers, and my then editor, the esteemed David Hartwell, thought that the name of one of the characters [Jimbob] was totally inappropriate. For the first three books of the series, Jimbob is a comparatively minor character, but in the fourth book he becomes the ruler of Defalk,

David insisted that Jimbob’s name change, and I did have Jimbob make the change, out of vanity, which certainly fit with Jimbob’s character. My wife, however, thought that the change was totally unnecessary, because of her family background in the mountains of Kentucky, where names such as Billy Joe and Billy Bob, Bobbi Jo are not uncommon. Also, where every farm animal (at least on her grandparents’ farm) has the salutation “ole,” as in Ole Barney (mule), Ole Jers (cow), Ole Butch (dog).

There’s also a personal connection, if attenuated, and a certain irony with David’s dislike of “Jimbob” (which actually exists as a given name in the U.S.). David’s full name is David Geddes Hartwell, which made him a second cousin of Alice Geddes Lloyd, the founder of Alice Lloyd College (given her name after her death) in Kentucky, an institution which provided a college education to my wife’s mother and many others who have double first names and who could not have attended college otherwise. By the way, my wife also has a double first name.

And history is certainly not without odd names, such as Robert Curthose (aka facetiously “Bobby Shortsocks”) who could have been king of England instead of Henry I; Astrolabe Abelard; Victory Birdseye; Styles Bridges; Bob Goodlatte; and many, many others.

Of course, for authors, odd-sounding names tend to fall into a category that might be termed “true but implausible,” where something that actually occurred is rejected by editors and readers as too implausible to be believable. At the same time, David’s objections notwithstanding, how can anyone who’s ever spent any time in the American South find a name such as Jimbob implausible (especially for a narcissistic ruler)?

Owning a house requires continuing maintenance, especially if you’ve lived in it for years. We’ve owned our present domicile over thirty years (the longest time either of us has stayed in one place), and during that time, the house has required repairs and replacements of items like the air conditioning compressor, dishwashers, washing machines and driers, as well as repainting and reroofing… and much more.

All this is obvious, but the need for such maintenance doesn’t apparently occur to far too many local, state, and federal officials. The amount of foregone maintenance in the Forest Service and National Park system is staggering, yet the current administration’s present and proposed budgets for the National Park System only address (from what I can tell) less than ten percent of the more than $24 billion of unfunded maintenance requirements.

One GAO report found that DOD was only funding 57% of the necessary maintenance at twelve major military bases. Another GAO report found that 73% of all Air Force maintenance on Air Force aircraft was delayed, up from 31% in 2019.

This isn’t confined to the federal government. Here in Cedar City, roughly twenty years ago, the city built a civic theatre, which was badly needed. That theatre has been essentially booked solid a year into the future, but the city council underfunded maintenance, which resulted in major maintenance work requiring total closure of the facility for months.

The Utah state legislature appropriates funding for new buildings for state colleges and universities, but little or no funding for ongoing maintenance, one reason why the roof of the music building at SUU leaked copiously after any significant rainfall (rare as it is).

Everyone wants the newest whatever – from military aircraft to public buildings – but governments at all levels continue to ignore the maintenance requirements, which just might also have something to do with the problems aboard the Abraham Lincoln, not to mention the fact that the President’s maintenance requirements seem fixated on a ballroom, an unneeded triumphal arch, getting his name on the Kennedy Center, and of course, the slope of the White House helipad.

From now until September 3rd, Tantor is offering the audiobook version of the firsr Alyiakal novel — From the Forest — at a 60% discount.

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