Blue-collar aircraft machinist Bud Fox (Martin Sheen) lies in the hospital, gravely ill. His son, dark-suited Wall Street broker Carl (Charlie Sheen) stands at his bedside clutching his fathers hand. Both shake with tears as the prodigal son returns to honor his father’s integrity and wisdom.

That moment stuck with me, but I wasn’t moved so much by the father-son sentimental moment. Rather, it was the hint of a darker conflict that had been resolved between the men that marked me. The nature of that conflict wouldn’t occur to me until much later, when, one day, I realized I was running out of time.

My midlife crisis began at age 39, crested at 41, and was pretty much resolved by the time I hit 43. The estimated damages include four motorcycles, one FJ Cruiser, a decade of my wife’s life (thanks to the motorcycles, mostly), and one career change.

Overall, I think it worked out well.

But mortality has a way of bringing honest scales to any discussion. My life was half over, at least. What did it add up to? It occurred to me that while I was making lots of money and was important, I couldn’t say much about the real worth of my job.

Now I normally don’t seek philosophical answers by watching the Discovery Channel. But I was surprised to realize that Dirty Jobs, one of my family’s favorite shows, was speaking on this very issue.

Mike Rowe, the host, travels the country and stands shoulder to shoulder with people doing the dirtiest, nastiest jobs imaginable. It makes great reality TV, but Mike has a deeper purpose for the show: he wants America to see that there is worth and a certain nobility in dirty, hard work. This worth is not based on social standing or big paychecks, but on the fact that the work needs to be done and it’s dirty and it’s hard and people just do it. It is the labor of those people he introduces each week that “makes it possible for the rest of us to live the way we do.”

The eighteenth century economist Adam Smith, on the other hand, probably never did a dirty job beyond scraping the horse manure from his English boots (actually, I’m sure he had someone do that for him), but in his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations he explains how wealth and worth are created. For Smith, wealth is defined as the worth of goods and services produced by a population’s labor (what they make or improve by their work). The relative amount of wealth a country produces is most dependent on the level of “skill, dexterity, and judgment” the workers apply in their work. The smarter, more skilled workers generate more wealth. (See the Industrial Revolution.)

Now the key to understanding the importance of Smith’s message to me in my mid-life crisis is the distinction he makes between creating wealth and accumulating wealth. Accumulating wealth is simply the transfer of one person’s wealth to another (a redistribution, if you will). For wealth to be created, something has to be made or improved, and this requires labor (skilled or not). The labor of the farmer produces crops. The plumber makes the toilet work. The truck driver moves something from where it can’t be used to a place where it can. All this labor creates wealth by making something new or by making something better.

Any labor that fails to make or improve something creates no wealth. Stock traders who labor to buy low and sell high successfully transfer wealth, but they create none. Speculators in commodities (such as grain, oil, etc.) and real estate accumulate vast wealth, but they create none.

Now, looking back, I understand why Wall Street was on my mind. The relationship between Bud Fox, Carl Fox, and Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is that dark conflict that had became mine.

In a pair of scenes the polar opposites Bud Fox and Gordon Gekko attempt to persuade the young Carl Fox concerning the nature of wealth. In the first scene, Bud exhorts his son to “stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others.”

Meanwhile, the evil Gordon Gekko whispers into Carl’s ear, “The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own.”

The work of Gordon Gekko may be morally acceptable in our society, but it lacks nobility and worth. His kind don’t create wealth, they just redistribute it.

But what about the executive, the guy like me during my crisis, who directs the creative efforts of others toward an objective? Do we create wealth? Are we Gekkos or Buds? Adam Smith would say that to the extent that we enable laborers to use greater “skill, dexterity, and judgment” in their work, we are creators of wealth. But I’m skeptical that this can be measured, at least not in the same way I can measure the worth of the work of a motorcycle mechanic, or that it amounts to much. I wasn’t satisfied with not knowing. I had to make sure.

That’s what I needed to turn the corner into the second half of my life: certainty that my work had worth, that I was a creator of wealth, not merely an accumulator of it. So I stopped telling people how to make software. I stopped being merely an approver of the creative efforts of others and retooled myself. I create every day and judge the worth of my work. And I approach my creative labor with the eye of a craftsman, content with an iPhone application well-built, solid, with a little art thrown in there where, perhaps, only another craftsman might notice.

Photo by flickr user Evil Erin.

My amateur photo session finished, I was at the window with a book about poetry-writing. The wooden seat beneath me was worn and heavily grained, and this reminded me of a photographer friend who takes a lot of pictures of woodwork. I mused that she would have taken better shots than I did, since I was not a photographer in any significant sense.

What surprised me was not this moment, of knowing I wasn’t photographer, of admitting it almost fondly in my ponderings, and silently admiring my friend. Rather, my surprise came when I opened the poetry-writing book.

“Did you think it would be easy?” the author asked, meaning, did I think that being a poet was a simple thing. The answer? Yes, I had. But suddenly, and forcefully, I understood my error.

“I am not a poet,” I said to the room, and the dog shifted a little on the braided rug near the fireplace.

Truth be told, I was not really making my statement to the room. I was dropping it into a timeline that I now recognize. I was experiencing these audible words as a turning point, or at least the offer of a turning point.

As it goes, I accepted the deal.

How long did it take to come to that point? Decades perhaps? Could I trace my poetic life back along many moments and claim a series of markers? If I wanted to make a memoir of it, I suppose I could.

But that day is when the ship began to turn, in a way I could actually feel, and I needn’t write the memoir (at least not now). On that day I took action, determining to buy more books on poetry and read more books on poets and criticism. When I returned to New York (and after I got the dog hair off my black sweater), I also began writing poetry in earnest. I opened myself to possibilities I could not even yet imagine. The imagining was not the important thing; it was the opening that counted. I had already published a book of poetry with International Arts Movement, but this was different. It was a looking forward, potentially to an entire life of poetry ahead— an odd pursuit, it seemed, considering the odds of how little renown and financial support it might lend; yet, as a professional writer, I had to consider these odds, because a person only has so much time to give, and a person must have a livelihood (though not renown, and that is probably a good thing).

Unexpected outcomes followed. That sounds so business-like! And yet that is exactly what it should sound like, because poetry is now, in significant ways, my business. It is my business in the reading and the writing of it. It is my business in the acquisition of it, for a small press I started just a year after my recognizable turning point. It is my business on Facebook, where I am happily gathering an audience for poetry. And it is my business for a daily-poetry subscription, which takes a great deal of delightful work and which I must charge a small annual fee for (99¢), to cover my costs.

It remains to be seen if I can actually live off of poetry as a business. Few have done it. Many entities that sponsor poetry are, themselves, sponsored by grants and donations. I feel unusual, focusing on a business model instead of a non-profit model. I wonder if people will think my efforts are counter to the very spirit of poetry.

Still. Once a ship begins to turn, it is exciting to stand on her and look to far-away waters, open to where you might travel—to lands of coconut trees, and jingle-shell beaches, or groves of oranges and new-ripe peaches, or even back to an old inn in Pittsburgh, to pick up some purple-bottled poetry for the uncharted days to come.

Firms fix to win
unless the grid browns down, turns black;
contender nations bud; the rush is on,
the riders high and winning’s all.

Overawed tots pop and thrive, sugar their thighs.
Hetty Greens titivate on Corporate War.
What fun!  And never-failure banks fleece the sky
while teeny-show-me-yours repeat cock-sure clichés.

And they’re off!  Pristine, the chargers gallop
bigger than grand – loser nags steered underground.

Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina

On May 20, 2011, The Curator published an essay by Josh Cacopardo (“Subversive HR”), in which Cacopardo asked and answered this question: How should Christian businesses differ from secular businesses? I am troubled by Cacopardo’s answer, and I would like to offer a sketch of what I think is a better answer. My answer begins — as do many good answers — with Humphrey Bogart.

Bogart played the role of successful businessman Linus Larrabee in the 1954 film Sabrina. Early in the film, his playboy brother David questions why Linus is still in business:

David: “You’ve got all the money in the world.”

Linus: “Making money isn’t the main point of business. Money is a by-product.”

David: “What’s the main objective?

I believe a good answer to David’s question here will also provide us with a better answer to Cacopardo’s question. That is, knowing something about the purpose of business will help us see how Christian businesses should differ from secular businesses.

But first, what’s wrong with Cacopardo’s answer? He says that Christian business should differ from secular businesses, and so should be “subversive” in a capitalist business culture. Specifically, Christian businesses shouldn’t seek to hire the best candidates for their jobs. Instead, they should use their positions to develop people who wouldn’t ordinarily be hired for such positions. Secondly, unlike secular businesses, Christian businesses shouldn’t be motivated by profits.

But why should Christian businesses follow these guidelines? Cacopardo thinks that the goal of Christian businesses ought to be different from that of secular businesses. He believes that the purpose of a secular business is profit, but that the purpose of a Christian business is manifold: development of employees, advancing God’s kingdom, and, to a diminished degree, profit. Because the purposes of the businesses differ, so should the behavior. Cacopardo says:

In a capitalist industry, being subversive in this matter would mean losing money, which is counterintuitive to the capitalist philosophy in the first place, but in a church, the goal is to serve the people, not the bank or the corporation. By giving those with less experience an opportunity to develop, the church or ministry serves not only the population it seeks to reach in the first place, but also the employees who help to provide that service, however imperfectly.

He puts this point in terms of the church, but he was arguing that this sort of difference of goal should be representative of Christian business in general. He goes on to add that . . .

Christians — whether at a Christian organization or a secular one — shouldn’t limit themselves to the “cream of the crop” in candidates the way typical HR practitioners would suggest . . . such behavior [is] exactly the same as secular behavior . . .

So, Cacopardo thinks that the objective — the purpose — of Christian business differs from that of secular business, and therefore the nature and practice of the two businesses should differ. And this is where I think he is wrong. He is wrong about the purpose, and as a result, he is wrong about the practice. (Cacopardo also discusses churches and non-profit organizations, but my focus will be traditional, for-profit business.)

In order to explain where Cacopardo went wrong — and why I believe that he did — we need to better establish the purpose of business, but where do we go to figure out something like this? In this case, a good place to go is back to the beginning — the origins — of business. Here we can ask the same question of business that Christ did of John’s baptism: is it from God, or from men?

Cacopardo’s answer is that business is from men, from humanity. This is implicit in his argument. Secular business is in need of subversion by Christian business, he says. Part of the idea of subversion is that what is prior is subverted by what is posterior. What comes first is subverted by what comes second. Cacopardo’s story is that humanity created the enterprise of business, with its mammon-driven goal, and that Christians ought to subvert business by applying God-given principles to it.

This gets the story backwards. In the beginning, God created earth and put humankind in it to rule and cultivate it. God created in humanity the desires and capacities to pursue those ends — the desires and capacities to discover, build, and care for the earth and for each other.

Well and good, you might be thinking, but what does this have to do with business? In reply, let’s return to Bogart as Linus Larrabee. David has just asked him about business: “What’s the main objective? Linus responds:

A new product has been found, something of use to the world.  A new industry moves into an undeveloped area. Factories go up, machines go in and you’re in business. It’s coincidental that people who’ve never seen a dime now have a dollar and barefooted kids wear shoes and have their faces washed. What’s wrong with an urge that gives people libraries, hospitals, baseball diamonds and movies on a Saturday night?

Linus thinks that business plays a pivotal role in discovery, development, and the flourishing of humankind. He sarcastically remarks on the “coincidence” of business growth and increase of standard of living. Genuine examples of this include, among others, the United States and Canada over the past 120 years or so, the Czech Republic in the past 20 years, and more recently, China and India. Linus thinks the point of business is to make things better.

My point is this: in the pursuit of ruling and cultivating the earth, business enterprise is crucial. Similar reasoning applies to art, engineering, horticulture, law, and all other essential components of culture. So I conclude that God, not man, created business, and oriented humanity towards it.

What, then, is the purpose of business? Linus would have us believe that it is to make things better. He gets something importantly right, but I cannot accept this without a caveat. For whatever else a business may pursue, it seems clear that a salient purpose is also to turn a profit. Certainly, employee development and environmental stewardship are important aspects of business, and cultural development and increased standard of living are ideal consequences .

But while an organization can pursue any of these ends and still fail to be a business, all it takes for any organization to qualify as a business is pursuit of profit. Pursuit of profit is business’s distinguishing feature, and it need not be single-minded; much of our history attests that single-minded pursuit of profit can lead to the degradation of employees (and others), environmental and cultural destruction, and human misery. However, in order for any business to develop its employees, steward the environment, foster cultural development, and raise the standard of living, it must exist. To exist, a business must turn a profit. So I would hazard that the purpose of business is twofold: to turn a profit and to make things better.

A remarkable consequence of this argument is that just as there is no such thing as “secular horticulture” and “Christian horticulture,” neither is there such thing as “secular business” and “Christian business.” There is only one kind of business: an enterprise that is supposed to turn a profit and make things better. Of course, the world and its inhabitants are fallen, and that makes it difficult for businesses to measure up to this ideal. But failure comes in degrees, and some will fail less badly than others. And some may both turn a profit and make the world a better place.

At last we are in a position to see more clearly what went wrong with Cacopardo’s argument. He says Christian businesses shouldn’t seek to hire the best candidates for their positions. But failure to hire the best candidates results in a less skilled work force, which leads both to reduced profits, and to diminished effectiveness in achieving goals. Reduced profits cause businesses to fail, or put them at great risk to do so. And what does it profit a business not to profit? Nothing. A business can neither survive nor work to make things better without profit. Additionally, making things better isn’t easy, and a business cannot do this with an unskilled staff. A Christian business should both hire the best, and pursue profit.

Which finally brings us back to our original question: How should Christian businesses differ from secular businesses? I believe the answer is: they shouldn’t. After all, Christian businesses are engaged in fundamentally the same enterprise as secular businesses. Both should pursue profit while developing employees, stewarding the environment, fostering culture, and raising the standard of living for those involved. Sure, many secular business fail to display these virtues — fail to make things better. But so do many Christian businesses. Whether or not the leaders and employees of some business are in Christ, or are a part of the Church, makes no difference to whether they should try to make things better. That businesses should try to make the world better isn’t any more evident to a Christian than to anyone else; hence the fact that many secular businesses do strive to make things better. Christian businesses should strive to make things better as well. But then, all businesses should, for that was God’s intent from the beginning.

To detail all of the responses would take up too much time here, but there were a few overarching themes that troubled me: that Christian organizations too frequently hire individuals who are not as qualified as they should be for the “ministry” (read: organization) to reach its full potential; that Christian organizations need to be more proactive in creating processes and programs to deal with suboptimal employee performance; and that Christian organizations require too much sacrifice on the part of their employees in terms of compensation and benefits.

The first criticism I have of these responses is that, Christian or not, they have raised issues that are not actually unique to Christian organizations, but endemic to all. Furthermore, the solutions the responders have offered are the same broad, idealistic suggestions I would expect to find at, say, the secular company I work for. The question Comment posed, if I understand correctly, sought to bring to light what is different about Christian organizations. According to the responses, nothing.

Take, for example, one of the prevalent complaints of Comment’s responders: too many Christian organizations hire individuals who are not qualified for the job, therefore the job isn’t being done at its full potential, and the church or ministry may be suffering. I consider this to be a very bold and potentially unfair assessment, especially when it comes without relevant examples. How have these organizations suffered? Merely in terms of not achieving a goal on a time or budget line? And how is a ministry’s potential measured? By money or numbers or other objective measurements? How does one effectively measure the impact of  the service of the church or ministry?

Again, speculation is difficult here because none of the responders went into detail about where these employees or ministries are lacking, but a Christian organization– and especially a church– ought to be more open to giving people an opportunity. Frequently, if a person doesn’t have all of the right experience for a job it’s not because he or she is incapable, but because no other company will give him or her the opportunity to gain the experience. Shouldn’t the church be more subversive? In a capitalist industry, being subversive in this matter would mean losing money, which is counterintuitive to the capitalist philosophy in the first place, but in a church, the goal is to serve the people, not the bank or the corporation. By giving those with less experience an opportunity to develop, the church or ministry serves not only the population it seeks to reach in the first place, but also the employees who help to provide that service, however imperfectly.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Christians should just hire anybody off the street for a job that requires specific know-how. What I am saying is that Christians — whether at a Christian organization or a secular one — shouldn’t limit themselves to the “cream of the crop” in candidates the way typical HR practitioners would suggest. Not only is such behavior exactly the same as secular behavior, but it also limits the sovereignty of God in doing amazing things in the workplace. This may sound like idealism, but I say it is at the very center of the Christian faith.

Further treading the border of idealism, and rightfully so, is the idea that Christian organizations, above all others, should steer clear of the “processes” designed to evaluate and enhance employee performance. First of all, those processes tend to criticize more than they encourage employees. If an employee is not meeting performance standards, the default for most organizations is to fall back on a process for getting the employee back on track, but this assumes that all employee performance issues stem from the same thing, which is almost never the case. Further, such processes are too objective for what is frequently a subjective problem. More often than not, an employee fails to meet an expectation either because his or her thought process needs to be adjusted, or because he or she really doesn’t have the necessary skill set, in which case a performance review isn’t going to be very helpful even with an incentive plan to follow. A stiff criticism, finger-wag, or reprimand won’t be enough if employers don’t provide the tools for change, whether that has to do with thought processes or hard skills. A man can’t saw through a tree if all he has is a hammer.

Even more disappointing than the responses about performance reviews and hiring practices was the response about compensation and benefits. It’s no secret that non-profits are not exactly known for their packages, nor should they be. After all, they are non-profits, which means they aren’t supposed to be in business to make money — something that becomes problematic when we consider that they are still operating inside a capitalist structure. Something Americans fail to consider is that, if none of our businesses were turning profits, we’d all be as underpaid as the non-profit workers, suggesting instead that they are not actually underpaid, but that the rest of us are overpaid. As long as non-profits must still operate inside a capitalist structure, there will be a compensation chasm.

Highlighting the philosophy, however, doesn’t change the reality, which is that non-profit workers are more likely to struggle making ends meet than the rest of us. But predsumably, non-profit employees don’t take their positions for the pay; they work for non-profits because they believe in them and their causes. Those who work for Christian organizations should be people who believe in a cause — the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.  Christ didn’t pay his disciples — in fact, he required that they leave everything behind, and has told us that if we are to follow him, we must do the same. I don’t mean to saturate this commentary with idealism or fundamentalist Christian propaganda; I don’t imagine that Jesus intends for us to do without the things we need to live. I will suggest, though, that part of the reason that he requires us to leave riches behind is because he, himself, will provide all that we need while we are doing his work. Working for low wages anywhere, and especially in a ministry or church, can be a testament to the reliance Christians are told to have on Christ. If an employee passes up or leaves an opportunity at a church because of compensation, then that person probably isn’t the right fit for the post in the first place. A church is a place of worship and sacrifice, not capital gains. Does this mean that secular counterparts to Christian organizations will look more attractive to some? Of course. But that doesn’t mean the Christian organizations are the ones that need to make adjustments. Following the example of the world to win the service of others should be an intuitively dangerous road for any Christian.

Comment follows their first question with a second: How can HR be done with integrity? The answer is that HR must undergo reform. But this cannot happen unless Christian organizations themselves are willing to embrace reform. If the people who are involved in running Christian organizations are themselves not thinking like Christians, then a distinction between Christian and secular organizations becomes a moot point. Thinking like a Christian, though, does not simply mean being more gentle when terminating an employee or more tolerant of underperformance. It means intentionally engaging in the lives of employees in order to facilitate change. In my experience, the secular world discourages this if not through company policy then through — forgive the expression — the cover-your-ass legislation we’ve become so fond of in America. Everyone is afraid of lawsuits and consequently, we are hesitant to get too involved in the lives of our employees and coworkers. This is not a Christian response to HR, but a secular one. This needs to change in both worlds if HR can ever have integrity in any organization, and Christians should view themselves as charged with spearheading this change, regardless whether it means that a church or ministry will not be running at full potential all of the time.

In short, Christian organizations need to be more subversive when it comes to HR or they run the risk of being no different than the secular corporations that have been so successful at removing the “human” aspect from Human Resources practices.

I placed his desk close up to a small side window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy back yards and bricks, but which, owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present no view at all, though it gave some light… Still further to a satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice. And thus, in a manner, privacy and society were conjoined. – Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

Critics plumb the depths of Melville’s Bartleby the Scriver looking for the cause of Bartleby’s psychosis. Was Bartleby protesting capitalism, vowing to shrivel and die rather than participate in the market economy? Does he represent the working class? Is he setting up a new social order not to be corrupted? Is he a quitter? Is he crazy? Is he just a literary invention with no reason other than to spurn critics in a guessing game of interpretation that has Melville laughing in his grave? I’ll let the interpretation fall to more rigorous scholars for now. What has haunted me, since I read this for a second time, after graduating and getting a “real job,” is the physical nature of Bartleby’s surroundings. What has haunted me, and what I want to explore, is what Melville seems to instinctively know and plant with malicious intent, yet has no name for yet: the cubicle.

Two years into an office job, sitting in a circle and talking with other graduate students about Bartleby, it hit me that Bartleby’s surroundings were a proto-cubicle. The narrator placed him in this clever contraption that permitted both “privacy and society,” in other words, observation. Bartleby felt both secluded and exposed. He was naked before everyone, yet no one could see him. My mind immediately flashed to the panopticon, that dreary prison concept that sets up a prison in a cylinder with one guard in the middle who can survey all. My mind then flashed to me.

For two years I had been a cubicle dweller. It was a love-hate relationship. Sometimes I could relax, listen to music, and hum away on my computer, working diligently. But however long that lasted, interruption commenced, and suddenly people peered over the walls, walked right into the cubicle, looked over my shoulder. With walls but no doors, the cubicle isolates from sight but not from voice and not from quick observation or interruption. Its qualities of privacy are a facade.

So too are its qualities of society. When I sit down inside those five and-a-half foot walls, the whole world disappears. Community becomes something that needs to be committed to, both with coworkers and the world outside. There will be times when I get up to get coffee, and I realize that it’s been snowing or raining for three hours. Sometimes you don’t talk to anyone meaningfully all day, just sitting in the cube working away. Sometimes you talk to people through the cubicle walls, like Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen in Papillon. It’s actual work to have conversations with people, to participate in face to face society in such a physically open, yet restrictive place. I know people who will call or email from two cubes down, not wanting to make the effort to get up and venture out of their cubicle.

When you grow up you’ll be put in a container called a cubicle. The bleak oppressiveness will warp your spine and destroy your capacity to feel joy. -From Dilbert, March 24, 2004

The cubicle is both cell and kingdom– a place of entrapment and a place to claim as yours alone. Bartleby fits this perfectly, if you’ll allow one bit of interpretation from me: he is trapped in his cube, and refuses to work in reaction to his entrapment, but his stubborn, unyielding mantra “I prefer not to” is a declaration of control from a person who lives in a kingdom of one. Both of these responses, to give up or become a dictator on your six by six plot of dim lit industrial carpet, are not healthy or adequate responses.

We are pushed into thinking of the cubicle as a prison, a place of middle class oppression that slowly destroys our souls. This line of thinking, while it seems correct, is symptomatic of a modern view of work as drudgery or slavery. In essence, it is a poor view of vocation.

Vocation is the establishment of the work of our hands. It is very serious business, and a very serious way of looking at the work we do, whether we paint portraits, take pictures of ninth graders for yearbooks, fill garbage trucks, teach dance, drive a truck or sit in a cubicle. If we feel oppressed, it is often not because of our work but because of how we interpret our work as being inadequate or useless. Martin Luther expressed the doctrine of vocation as our work being “masks of God.” That is very serious business indeed! Work is not trivial when it has a higher calling, to not be drudgery but to be a way of passing love and compassion to others. Our work, probably more than anything else in the day, is our greatest and most powerful way to be neighborly. And who wants to love their neighbor like Bartleby did? Instead, if we choose to put on the doctrine of vocation and push back our dark thoughts concerning our work, we will find a purposefulness, hopefulness and desire to use our work as a way of blessing people and loving them as we love ourselves.

But what about that cubicle? How do we handle it? I don’t know when it hit me, but as I was dwelling one day on the thought that my cubicle might very well be a prison, the thought came to me: why do monks call their rooms cells? Are they in prison as well?

In Cloister Talks, John Sweeney writes:

One of John Cassian’s great affections was for his cella or cell―his little room in the community. As an abbot, he taught his monks to love this tiny enclosed space, like a bird loves its nest or a worm its hole. He learned from his time in the Egyptian desert the saying, “The cell will teach you all you need to know.”

I think the key to unlocking the potential of the cubicle, the non-monastic cell, if you will, is the word community. How often at work do we forget we are in community? Even when we are slammed against the wall of a deadline, deep in thought on a matter of policy or lost in a swarm of emails, we must remember that over that wall is a neighbor, our neighbor.  Being neighborly can be tough, as Frost alludes to in the line “good fences make good neighbors.” But part of being a good neighbor, as the monastics teach us, is going on the other side of the fence and sharing in community, loving them as you love yourself. Monks had to deal with this as well, as Sweeney recounts that living in a cloister “there is no escaping the bad qualities of the brother whose cell is next to yours.” The monks may have gripes, but they call each other brother for a reason. Their connection is deep, they are masks of God to one another and treat each other as family. The resolution to the problem of Bartleby then just may well be looking at our work as a vocation much like the monastics do– that in the toil of a studio, office or cubicle is an opportunity to cultivate meaningful community through an understanding of our work as vocation and our presence as a mask of God.

The theatre world in New York is beginning to reap the effects of a long-tail culture. That is, different theatre companies and collectives are reaching niche markets of people who are interested in very specific styles of art. Off-Broadway is capitalizing on this new demand trend, while Broadway is still lagging behind, trying to fit their content into a one-size-fits-all product.

Off-Broadway has a more flexible structure, offering something for everyone. If you want to see something new and edgy you can go to Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. If you want to see something experimental and collaborative-based, you can go to SoHo Rep. If you want to see a re-envisioned classic, you can go to Classic Stage Company. Ars Nova is great for comedy and camp. MCC is an‘emotional powerhouse’ kind of place. And so on and so forth.

But it goes even smaller. Like the iTunes “listeners also bought” feature, the downtown theatre scene is made up of splinter groups known for pushing the boundaries of narrative and storytelling. The Amoralists, The Debate Society, Elevator Repair Service, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, among others are all grassroots collectives producing some of the best new theatre out there.

And Off-Broadway companies are starting to recognize the grassroots/collective appeal. Like indie record companies who found out how to create consumer allegiance through a like-minded aesthetic, Off-Broadway theatres are finally teaming up and sponsoring the work of these collectives to establish new audiences. The Public Theater recently co-produced something from Elevator Repair Service, and SoHo Rep did so with Nature Theater of Oklahoma. This pattern – of grassroots artist collectives teaming with non-profit Off-Broadway companies – is where theatre is headed, whether Broadway is on board or not.

This works best in New York, where space is at a premium. It only makes sense that a myriad of smaller theatres that provide an array of options will thrive, whereas massive theatres might dwindle. Sure, it’s not a lucrative business (has the theatre ever been?), but this trend is increasing as our culture morphs into niche-appeal. In order to support the trend, ticket prices to these smaller theatres have become more democratic and more competitive.

But word isn’t spreading quickly enough. New Yorkers and tourists alike still look first to Broadway when they consider seeing a show. And because of this, the casual theatre-goer still perceives the stage to be too expensive.

So, in an attempt to support the excellent community-reliant art form that is the theatre, here are a number of ways to take advantage of affordable theatre tickets from some of the culture-setting Off-Broadway houses in America’s theatre capital.

For Young Professionals…

HipTix with Roundabout Theatre Company

If you’re between the ages of 18-35, HipTix is an affordable ticket service through Roundabout Theatre Company, whose shows range from huge Broadway musicals to intimate black box plays. Membership is free. All tickets are $20 or less (I’ve purchased $10 and $15 HipTix via their handy email blasts). Plus, HipTix members can purchase advance tickets and receive invites to exclusive post-show parties. (Monocle and fur coat not required.) You can choose to upgrade your membership to HipTix Gold with a $75 tax-deductible contribution, which ensures two orchestra level seats to every HipTix show.

Vineyard Theatre

If you are a theatre artist or under the age of 30, a $30 tax-deductible Vineyard Theatre membership will get you $15 tickets to every single show. This, out of all deals in New York, is one of the best. The Vineyard Theatre is at the top of their game, and is arguably producing the best new American theatre out there. Recent productions of The Scottsboro Boys and Middletown prove that the theatre is still alive and well, so long as we’ll go to it. Vineyard Theatre has a sterling reputation that is being elevated each year, so see their shows in their intimate Union Square theatre before they head to Broadway and cost you a fortune.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater – Under 30 Plan

A $20 membership for those under the age of 30 will get you one $15 ticket to each Rattlestick show. In addition, members receive priority booking, invitations to Under 30 Members’ nights with meet and greet with playwright, director, cast, crew and staff, and free admission to all public readings as part of their developmental Evening Reading Series throughout the season, including The Good Plays Festival, TheaterJam and other special events. Rattlestick is known for excellent, edgy, new theatre, where you can see plays from the best up and coming writers.

Playwrights Horizons Student and Under 30 Memberships

For students, a $10 membership gets you $10 tickets to all shows. If you bring a friend who is also a student, they can get a $15 ticket. For those who are under 30 but aren’t students, a $20 membership gets you $20 tickets. All tickets can be purchased in advance (no standing in annoying rush and lottery lines). Playwrights Horizons is another great theatre that serves as America’s home for fostering new plays and musicals.

For Smaller Theatres…

Most theatres under 100 seats won’t charge more than $20 for a ticket. If that’s out of your price range, the always-fascinating SoHo Rep has 99-cent seats for all Sunday shows– yes, 99 cents– and PS 122 has “Passports” available for purchase where $55 gets you into 5 shows.

For Everyone Else…

TDF (Theatre Development Fund) Membership

This is for those who prefer to have a wide-array of options. Shows available on TDF range from the most buzz-worthy musicals on Broadway to Off-off Broadway, with a smattering of dance, concerts, and variety shows in between. Full-time students, full-time teachers, union members, retirees, civil service employees, staff members of not-for-profit organizations, performing arts professionals, members of the armed forces or clergy are all eligible for membership, which right now costs $30. Broadway tickets usually cost $25-$35, Off-off Broadway shows cost $9. TDF also houses the famous TKTS booths that are situated around the city. If you don’t have a membership, brave the crowds and find discounted tickets in person. Or, get their brand new TKTS iPhone app to see what’s selling. See their website for more info.

Atlantic Theater Company – 15for15

Started by David Mamet and William H. Macy, the Atlantic is a mainstay of the American theatre scene. Plays from Martin McDonagh, Ethan Cohen, Sam Shepard, and Harold Pinter can all regularly be seen at Atlantic. And $15 tickets are available for the first 15 performances of all their shows.

General and Student Rush…

Most, if not all, theatres offer discounted rush tickets on the day of the show. If you are willing to stand in line, in the cold, and risk not getting a ticket, they are a fine way to see great theatre. Most are priced around $20 with a very limited availability. Each theatre’s rush policy differs. For general info on all shows go to the TalkinBroadway.com Rush Board.

Some of the best rush policies are found at 2^nd Stage Theatre ($15), Atlantic Theatre, Vineyard Theatre ($20), MCC ($20), MTC ($20), and The Public ($20), which actually has a warm lobby and cafe you can wait in.

Some say we’re entering the “Creative Age.” But what is an artist to do when he can barely afford life’s necessities, much less pay for the materials to carry on in his work?

It is easy to hope that a fabled patron might come along to foot the bills – and at times they do. When reality strikes back, though, we realize that not every artist is going to be able to make a living wage making his or her art. Even in the best of economies, this will probably never be the case. But, that does not mean that the artist should give up or even retire for a “safe” career.  When painting pictures will not pay the bills, perhaps the best way to respond is by painting outside the lines.

I read a book that inspired me to rethink the way that artists should go about making money. Chronicling the life and work of Robert Rauschenberg, this book wove an interesting tale of Rauschenberg’s “Off the Wall” path to success. Rauschenberg’s paintings are now at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, and other prestigious museums, but years ago he was painting over old canvases because he could not afford to purchase new ones. In a tough spot after being fired from a job as a janitor, Rauschenberg needed a new source of income. And after a bit of creative thinking, he found it in an unlikely place: window dressing.

Having done a brief stint doing windows for Gene Moore, Rauschenberg began doing displays for a variety of venues, including such highbrow operations as Tiffany’s and Bonwit’s department store. Rauschenberg even managed to reel his friend Jasper Johns into what became a regular operation, and a quite lucrative one at that. Before long, thanks in part to Rauschenberg’s innovative approach to making art and Johns’ meticulousness for detail, the duo was pulling in work from a variety of avenues. The artists’ approach was simple: they took on only enough jobs to sustain their finances, and managed to save up most of their time for pursuing their personal artwork. Eventually, the two branded their partnership as Matson Jones, using this name to keep their commercial projects separate from their painting.

The duo’s work as window dressers is an interesting case study about the outpourings of an artist’s vocation. It is particularly interesting when considering how someone with a penchant for painting – or for that matter any art form – might work out his or her craft.

Matson Jones provided a way for Rauschenberg and Johns to continue making their art, even if they were not getting paid enough to live on – and in Rauschenberg’s case, it encouraged the use of new and different materials. Rauschenberg began using concepts gleaned from his window dressing work in his artwork, incorporating new materials such as aluminum and gold leaf. As a result, a commercial occupation often regarded in disdain by some artists ended up expanding Rauschenberg’s artistic palette. Go figure.

It is no mistake that these two later-famed painters were successful with their window displays. Their commercial success was most certainly tied to their experience envisioning and creating artwork, not just some ability to conjure up moneymaking schemes. Window work is, in many ways, a natural fit for painters who are accustomed to turning ideas into images and producing bodies of work that build upon a theme.

With this odd partnership sketched out, there are certainly some lessons that can be gleaned. But, rather than trying to provide the answers, I would like to pose a few questions. How might Rauschenberg and Johns’ model for making money while continuing to make art apply to and inform artists today? For instance, what non-traditional ways might an artist consider for honing his or her craft? And further, how might an artist transform his or her view of “work” to incorporate new outpourings that might result in an income?

While the answers to these questions are not black and white, they remind us that neither is the vocation of an artist. Talent does not always equate with financial viability nor does the sheer quality of one’s artwork. This is what is clear: when the way forward seems impassable, a painter should not give up painting, a writer should not give up writing, and a musician should not give up music making. Instead, as the Matson Jones model suggests, sometimes a bit of creativity is necessary to make things work. With enough outside-the-box thinking, the result may just be (perhaps even to the artist’s surprise) a mutually beneficial collaboration.

We are motoring away from Kwadjokrom in a red dugout boat and I have stopped crying. In the heat of the sun I smell like the road, the fine dust gritty between my teeth as I clench and unclench my jaw, trying to work out my shame at my outburst on the road from Kijiji.

Kijiji is a market just beyond the Western bank of Ghana’s Lake Volta, on whose waters thousands of slave children labor. At three or four years old, just weaned from their mothers’ breasts, they come to a lonely life of work and hunger. The fishermen who buy them are often child slaves themselves, grown up on the lake, set free at seventeen or eighteen years old to fend for themselves. At Kijiji, the masters’ wives sell the fish from the children’s nets, and this afternoon we walked in the sun among those market baskets, their mouths full to overflowing.

I am in Ghana on behalf of a U.S.-based non-governmental organization that partners with Ghanaian anti-trafficking leaders to rescue these children. One of my Ghanaian colleagues is sitting at the helm of the red dugout boat, calling to the boatman who guides our craft through the clutter of Kwadjokrom’s shore-docked fishing boats. The boats are shaped like thin moons, each end tipped up, and their wooden flanks are painted with David and Goliath, the Good Shepherd, and the Rainbow and the Dove. We are on our way from Kijiji to a fishing island, where a fisherman has promised to give up a little boy he keeps.

Yet as we push out, my thoughts are of Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, black map dots that rise in my mind with the rhythm of a dull heartbeat. I have no reason to think of those cities while I am here in Ghana, except that they mark for me the trafficking route of a friend, and I have seen Kijiji.

It does not make sense. It did not make sense half an hour ago on the road from Kijiji, when the old man sitting behind me in our rickety trotro asked, through an acquaintance’s translation, why was I so angry?

I did not realize that I was shrieking in the trotro’s cramped cab, holding forth in a language that only three of my traveling companions could fully comprehend.

“Using Craigslist is like buying a coach class ticket on the upper deck of a slave ship,” I think I yelled. The old man was perplexed. “They sell thousands of kids in sex trafficking and prostitution and they could care less!” He did not get that either. “Everyone who buys a used couch knows what’s happening in the ‘adult services’ section and doesn’t care!”

At this point, one of my English-speaking companions yelled back, in near-equal force, that I should zip it. He was right. I turned in my seat to face the front of the bus and the rutted, dusty road leading up to the lake. I was crying now, less from the reprimand and more from the map of the cities I had remembered. I brought my handkerchief up to wipe my forehead and nose and then I held it to my mouth.

It was nearly five years ago that I met the woman whose life is in that map of Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles. I was newly married and newly arrived in the third of four cities my husband and I would call home that year. I was teaching literature at a university, but I wanted to keep a hand in the anti-trafficking community, so I signed on for the first meet-up of Polaris Project’s Seattle chapter. When I arrived at the meet-up, she was there, too.

I know what it means to be lonely. I know the delicate aspect it brings to a person’s face and the white cast it brings to the eyes and skin. I know less well how to bear up under my own loneliness, whenever and why-ever it arrives. When I see the kind of fortitude that I lack alive in someone else, I mark it. I know I will need that memory.

When she was fourteen, her father left. Her mother followed. Improbably, she was left alone in blue-collar suburban Seattle, where she was found by an older boyfriend-cum-savior-cum-pimp. She was beaten, raped, and sold on the streets and on the Internet. She was cut, branded, and thrown out of moving cars. The West Coast circuit – Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles – was her pimp’s bread-and-butter. When she became pregnant by him with a second child, she took her two-year-old daughter and fled.

It is hard to befriend a woman who grew up in the rigged world of a “stable” – a slang term for the women that a pimp owns, exploits, and uses to exploit each other. A woman who has known this life wants to love and to be loved, but she does not believe that love can be given freely.

When my husband and I moved to Washington, D.C., my friend and I kept in touch for a while. Once when I called her apartment, I got a drunken woman who told me that my friend and her daughters had been kicked out. I begged for another number and the woman gave me the line for a motel room, where my friend answered once and a man, whose voice I did not trust, answered a second and final time.

These days, Facebook cuts short the romanticism of myriad lost loves and lost friendships, sometimes for the better. I looked for my friend on Facebook last year, sometime in the wake of the Boston Craigslist murders, when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Polaris Project, and several U.S. Attorney Generals rallied – and ultimately lost their battle – to stop human trafficking via the Craigslist erotic services (now “adult services”) section.

In the midst of the brouhaha, I found my friend. Her Facebook profile was meager and her wall was a strange slate of auto-generated messages, but this seemed in some way fitting for all the abuse she had experienced in the world of mid-nineties Internet.

Knowing what she had overcome, I understood what my friends and colleagues were after in their campaign to clean up Craigslist. I was not sure that attempting to reform an online kingpin, especially one who had no natural impetus to do so, was the best way to do it.

I stumbled on to Kijiji – www.kijiji.com of eBay, rather than Kijiji of the Kwadjokrom overbank, the red dust road, and the market where women sell fish caught by slave children – sometime during those months. I talked to a few colleagues about what it might look like to stage a kijiji.com “other-cott” and steer like-minded friends toward an online classifieds site that chooses, of its own accord, to entirely prohibit the “adult services” ads that make Craigslist a haven for human traffickers.

But the other-cott did not go anywhere. Or, to rephrase, I did not take it anywhere. I do not know why.

What I do know is that today on the road from Kijiji, someone mentioned Craigslist. I was thinking of my friend, I remembered how many thousands of boys, girls, women, and men like her had been sex trafficked on Craigslist, and without counting the cost, I began shrieking incoherently and obnoxiously about slave ships and sins of omission.

I would like to laugh about the incident, but it occurred while I was on the clock – and besides the inquisitive old man, our trotro ferried half of our Ghanaian partner staff, a former White House economic development expert, and one of Touch A Life Foundation’s most faithful and generous supporters.

It was a bad moment.

I have apologized sincerely to the person at whom I shrieked the loudest. I will apologize tomorrow morning to the other shriek-ee, who was in fearfully close-range. If I can find the old man, I promise that I will apologize to him, too.

I figure that since I have nothing left to lose, I might as well go all out.

I want you – my colleagues, friends, family, random people I went to high school with – to know that Craigslist’s convenience is not worth its price.

If you want to stop human trafficking, stop using Craigslist and use kijiji.com. Tell your friends to do it, too. The more, the merrier, and the better the second-hand shopping selection.

And if you think of it, please pray for my friend and pray for me, that in every way that our lives intersect, I would love her well.

For more information, check out:

Kijiji: www.kijiji.com

Kijiji Rules of Use

Polaris Project’s Letter to Craigslist CEO

Polaris Project’s Quick stats & Client Service Reflections re: Craigslist

Craiglist complies with some of its critics’ requests, but human trafficking persists.

Get involved:

Join the Facebook group.

Sign the Change.org Petition

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form at the author’s blog, and is reprinted by permission.

The Mouse's Lair

I just flew back from Walt Disney World – and boy, are my ethics tired.

I suspect many of you, gentle readers, have not been to Disney World since your own childhood, or not at all.  Some of you intend to protect your current and/or future children as much as possible from the Disneytainment conglomerate, because something about it—or everything about it—is far too lowbrow, too decadent, too sexist, too liberal, or too conservative:  perhaps, in a word, too American, in whatever sense you believe Americanism is either beneath your children or dangerous to them.  You may also, or instead, be morally opposed to or logistically incapable of mustering the time and money required to make the pilgrimage – especially if it’s to a Mecca you don’t believe in.

My children are seven, four, and two. I, too, am concerned that Disney, like many other bedrock components of our culture, may in fact be too lowbrow, too sexist, etc., for our own good. But I am also keen for my children to grow up comfortable in their culture, aware of its joys and tragedies, fluent in its faults and in its fantasies. For example, my wife and I are enthusiastic public-school parents, despite the fact that some of our friends and neighbors decry the educational system’s academic rigor as poorly calibrated and others say the same about its moral compass.

That is not to say that Disneyism is as vital to my childrearing goals as our involvement in the public schools.  But its flaws, however grandiose and dangerous, do not necessarily preclude me from allowing my children into the mouse’s den.

One of the first things we must admit about Disney, like many entities I embrace far more enthusiastically (such as public schools or the FIFA World Cup), is that it is truly one of a kind.  There’s no Target to Disney’s WalMart.  There’s not even an Apple to Disney’s Windows, or an IHL to Disney’s NHL.  The M-word certainly applies, but I submit that Disney is not merely a single seller, it’s sui generis.

This Disnopoly has 70+ years of branding momentum behind it, to be sure; few other brands reach that far back.  But at the risk of seeming to be a Disney apologist, I think we must also admit that its identity goes beyond mere product marketing.  The Disney multiverse encompasses numerous archetypal classics, like Peter Pan and Beauty and the Beast—narratives, characters, and mythologies that bring to life questions and answers I actually want my children to explore.

And I’m not even counting Pixar.

To that point, let me clarify what I mean by the $34.5 billion­–dollar word “Disney”:  not their recent colonizations of pre-existing classics, such as Aslan or Kermit; not high-school musicals or whatever a Ferb is. I’m thinking of Mickey and Goofy, of “It’s a Small World” and “I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!”, of the Briar Patch and the Liberty Tree, of Snow White and Cruella De Vil. Most of them weren’t dreamed up by Walt and company, of course. But the broader culture has known and embraced them primarily in their Disneyfied incarnations for a generation or more. (“Classic Pooh,” which appears—during one’s first visit to a Babies ‘R’ Us, for example—to be a rare instance of original imagery resurging and thriving alongside Walt’s version, is also a Disney property.)  By “Disney,” then, I mean old-school Disney—the stuff theme parks are made of.

On my visit this fall, I was reminded again and again that the magic of the Magic Kingdom is, in effect, the magic of its stories.  After all, the theme parks—and the company’s bread-and-butter branding—depend far more heavily on discrete arcs, such as Sleeping Beauty or Pooh and Some Bees, than on the interchangeable episodes of Hannah Whatsername or the Witches of Wherever.  Most of these stories and characters preceded Disney’s Nine Old Men by decades or centuries.

What Disney has done to make these stories the building blocks of its brand is perpetually remind us of its golden age of best-in-class artistry and technology, when it was the only feature-quality animation purveyor around.  Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Mary Poppins are probably preferable works of art in their original, prose format.  But let us not resent their movie versions, in and of themselves, any more than we do The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, or Beau Geste (to mention just a few of the many book-based gems produced by Hollywood in a single year).

This is not to ignore the fact that the Disney factory also churns out quite a bit of prepackaged product masquerading as art.  Its cross-marketing is relentless, its advertising sometimes frighteningly ingenious.  I am still startled and disturbed by its rampant expansion into the tween audience, apparently cemented in the 20ish years since I left that demographic by an army of airbrushed live-action mannequins stepping through plots of laugh-track predictability on cable TV.  And even old-school Disney is recursively self-marketing:  there is perhaps no marketing strategy more bald-faced and (one assumes) effective than the positioning of carefully calibrated gift shops at the exit of each major Disney World attraction.

And that brings me back to my recent trip:  when we find ourselves three steps inside the turnstiles of the Most Manufactured Place on Earth; when we cradle an overtired, overstimulated preschooler who has had her heart set on a ride that’s closed for the final day of the trip; when we disembark from the Pooh ride into shelf after shelf of overpriced Pooh product, how should we react—as parents, as ticketholders, as citizens of the culture at large?

Some adults embrace a certain if-you-can’t-beat-‘em-join-‘em respect for the consistent excellence that makes the Disney theme-park experience possible; on a customer-satisfaction level, they’re comfortable being impressed by the scale and polish that 70,000 “cast members” manage to maintain 365 days per year, rather than engaging with the value(s) of the content itself.  This is, in its own way, an all-American reading of the situation.  As post-Protestant capitalists, we in the U.S. may not technically embrace the idea that the ends justify the means, but we certainly appear to believe in success as a reflection of Somebody’s divine approval—might doesn’t necessarily make right, but we tend to treat it as a lagging indicator.

Other adults throw up their hands in semi-apathetic protest, pretending to be mere corks tossed about on the tsunamis of their cultural obligations to provide their children with The Most-est of everything.  This is also a tempting posture for Americans, because it involves three of our favorite cultural pastimes: (over)indulging our children, jumping on bandwagons, and keeping up with the Joneses.  But a week in Orlando, despite the drop in real prices for airline tickets since my visit in the pre-Reagan era, is no small investment, and parents who pretend to go reluctantly or passively are openly abdicating their power of the purse—in full view of their children, no less.

Perhaps most foreign to me, personally, is the approach of the hard-core devotees.  Aided by geography, singlemindedness, a startling disposable-income level, or all three, they manage to make numerous, routine visits and don’t care who knows it.  On one hand, I believe Floridians get a resident discount—one of many reminders of the colossal regulatory and tax-based underpinnings of the Mouse’s infestation of an otherwise empty swamp.  (It almost suggests a private-sector variant of the Federal incentive for residents of the exact opposite corner of our continent, a Wonderland of a very different sort.)  On the other, I suspect we have all met one or more adults who seem to believe that Orlando is Neverland—a place where everyone is always a child.  This seems a dangerous way to invest one’s aspirations, not least because it seems akin to worshipping at the altar of Las Vegas, which employs even more cast members to fabricate the equal and opposite fantasy.

What about me, you ask?  Am I immune to all of these temptations?  No, not as much as I’d like.  On this trip, my wife and I aimed to be ‘in Disney World but not of Disney World,’ but it’s a seductive, exhausting place. (From a practical perspective, if you venture to Mickeyville with children in tow, I do recommend including any available grandparents and making the trip a family affair.  Not only do you forge more memories for all involved and spread out the stroller-pushing duties, you also ground your children during the visit with a reminder of the rest of their universe.  It’s a lot harder for parents or children to slip into an ‘anything goes’ mentality in the immediate presence of older, wiser loved ones.)  As with anything else, balancing is harder than either boycotting or binging, but balancing is what being an adult is all about.

Being a child, on the other hand, is all about growing out of unrealistic extremes.  In fairy tales, good and evil are writ large, innocence and peril exaggerated.  Stepmothers are not merely difficult to get used to, they’re wicked to the core.  Princes, on the other hand, are universally charming and incredibly capable in battle.  Parents tell children fairy tales of all shapes and sizes—not just the ones Disney has appropriated; as children mature, they recognize more and more what can happen in the real world and what can exist only in Fantasyland.  They take home the moral of the story, and the imagery and the tragedy and the hope, and they carry them along like souvenirs.  Eventually, they learn that there is no such thing as a magic kingdom where the regular rules don’t apply (and if there were, you might want to be careful not to spend too much time there).  They also learn that scullery maids still exist, and so do balls, and that sometimes the least among them shall be great, if the shoe fits.

Fairy tales may not include overpriced, uniformed photographers, but we take our memories of these stories with us when we return to the real world.  And if we choose to take home a Pooh-themed souvenir to help our children remember the extravagance and wonder that a trip to Disney World embodies, it’s nice to know where you can find one for sale.