Walking. Grove City.
Taxman – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Ain’t Got No Money – Justin Townes Earle
Money – Mary Fahl
Money – Cheryl K
Money Song – Gracie’s Corner
She Works Hard for the Money – Donna Summers
Take the Money and Run – Crosby & Nash
Work for Your Money – Howlin’ Wolf
Cash Money Blues – Kaiser Clifton
After Taxes – Johnny Cash
Income Tax Blues – Ralph Willis
You Never Give Me Your Money – The Beatles
Jubilee – Jim and Jean Strathdee
Give a Little Love – Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers
Gove Love – Sweet Honey in the Rock
Give Thanks – Black Violin, Kevin Marcus Sylvester, Phil Beaudreau & Wilner Baptiste
How Can I Keep from Singing – Little Windows
Tag Archives: money
15 April 2024
Filed under Current Events, Exercise, Music, playlist
Bad habit meets guiding principle
I felt a tug on my arm as I left the number 7 train at Times I turned to see the woman who had sat across from me. Her hand held a crumpled dollar bill. My crumpled dollar bill.
I have a bad habit. Or I probably should say, “Among my bad habits is the fact that I carry bills in my pockets.”
I simply cram them into the pocket. They end up resembling the spit balls that my friends and I used to create in junior high school. Little wads of green.
Some interesting things result.
I receive bemused looks when I pay with cash. I dig into my pocket, pull out what bills are there and straighten them. I have reminded more than one cashier, “It all spends.”
I find little wet wads of green now and then when doing laundry. I delude myself with the line, “Made money again.”
And I drop bills from time to time. It happens. I confess I do not know how often it happens. Sometimes I find the fallen bills. Sometimes, as today, I rely on the kindness of friends and strangers.
When this happens, I come up against one of my guiding principles for money. If I find money, I first try to find the owner. Failing that, I give it away. Coins end up in the hands or cups of strangers on the street. Larger bills usually go to a program addressing hunger in some way. It may feed people or help people feed themselves or work to change the reasons people are hungry in the first place.
I will join today’s dollar to some others and pass them along before the evening ends.
Guiding principles trump bad habits. At least on this one.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under New York
Living without love
Waiting in line to buy
junk food I did not need,
I was more than a bit befuddled to hear
the young clerk wonder:
“Would you rather have
love or money?”
It seemed a most out-of-place
inappropriate query to pose to
an absolute stranger who only wanted
a candy bar filled with sugar and calories
that would do me no good.
As I stood searching for
a response that seemed witty –
or someone germane –
or at least not totally inane,
she spoke again.
“‘Would you rather have
love or money?’
That’s what she asked.
And I said:
money!
Love is too stressful.”
My disorientation deepened.
Who was this mysterious woman
who posed to my clerk the question?
And what was going on?
Was she expecting a response from me?
From the guy stacking the shelves?
From someone I failed to see?
Was she practicing a soliloquy:
preparing to audition for some part
that might forever transform her life?
I’ll never know.
Silently I took my change
and stepped toward the door,
but on the way,
a thought – unsaid, but still recalled,
filled my spirit, mind, heart:
love brings stress; it’s never easy–
commitment, compromise, costs.
But what of the stress,
and what of the costs,
and what of the loss,
of the utter, empty barrenness
of living without love?
2 August 2011
Gate B-19, MDW
Filed under Poem
Along the Graybeard Trail 