Friday, December 09, 2005

The Big-Spending Month of December

This time of year the money picks up speed. Crisp twenty dollar bills leap into the trays of bank machines. Credit cards slide out of wallets and jump out of purses. Saved-up allowances dribble like water through the cupped fingers of school kids. We put a new gadget in our cart down at the chain store, and we wait in line, and a week’s pay pours out of our hands in an instant.

After it leaves us, the money pools in the dark interior of a cash register. By the time the mall closes, the money from all the registers is overflowing like bath water out into the aisles. It seeps under the doors of the loading docks and fills the low spots of the parking lot and runs into the streets. All that money slides down the boulevards and avenues of the town.

This time of year, bakers on their cigarette break watch the money glide by at midnight. The streams of money gather into a river, and the river of money finds its way out of town. When the sun rises, all that money is already entering Chicago and Indianapolis and Detroit on its way to corporate headquarters, payroll departments, pension funds, stockholder’s accounts, and state departments of taxation. And all the while, other money is flowing back. These are the main currents of our Midwestern prosperity.

This time of year, when the money runs like water through our hands, it’s good to slow down and look around town at some of the people who try for a different relationship with money. There are some clothing and gift shops that avoid the chain store economy. They focus on hand-made products, often created by people on the other side of the world who don’t have much access to the river of money that flows through our American dream. Customers at a store like Just Goods, located on Mishawaka Avenue near South Bend’s Farmer’s Market, can buy beautiful clothing and see their money support both a local business and the distant weavers who made the shirts and sweaters and hats.

Other people prefer to spend their money on art. They see jewelers and potters and painters gathering in co-ops to create not just their individual works but also a way of life and a regional arts scene. Districts spring up; galleries draw people to nearby coffee shops; restaurants draw people to nearby galleries; folks driving by see the people out on the sidewalks and remember how good city life can be. The money we spend with local artists pools in the neighborhoods where the artists live and show their art. It seeps down into the soil; it deepens the ground waters beneath the town; it stays here for awhile.

Out at the mall, we can find this year’s version of the pet rock, and over at the big box store on the strip they’ll have the newest gadget. But in your local gallery district you can find something truly strange or beautiful. Last Saturday, on the “Four Galleries in Four Blocks” section of Colfax Avenue that straddles the river in downtown South Bend, I got to talk to potters working at their wheels. I saw the wobbly glazed pots thrown by beginners and the graceful vases thrown by their teacher; I got up the nerve to speak with a couple of brooding young artists who were just as edgy as their paintings. In one gallery, among all the rich textures and fabulous shapes, I found a photographer of small town Indiana life who helped me see what growing up here might be like. There is a picture of a smiling boy with a white mouse on his shoulder that I want my kids to see.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on December 09, 2005
Arts & Entertainment • Commerce • Community • Customs & Rituals • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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