It's pledge drive time again

Don't you just love this time of year? A slight nip in the air, low humidity, football Friday nights, football Saturday afternoon, football all day Sunday, sunlight on an angle that illuminates everything from the side, the brilliant foliage, and desperate pleas for funds from every direction.

I met my friend Petro at Starbuck's last night for our annual stewardship conversation, culminating in my writing a number on a sheet of paper and discreetly folding it into an envelope. He drank cappuccino, perhaps because of the likeness of its color to the cloak worn by the Capuchins, an austere order of Franciscan missionaries and preachers. I drank green tea. We had a pleasant yet earnest conversation, which I always enjoy, and we understand each other pretty well. An hour later I drove to the rec center in my gray Ranger, and Petro drove home in his new used dark green Jaguar.

This morning, Dan and Maggie and the gang down at the WCBE Fort Hays studio are back at it on the radio trying to talk their loyal listeners into ponying up with a check or credit card. Everyone hates the pledge drive, as they freely acknowledge, but for the price of a cup of coffee, you can keep the transmitter running and the unique programming on the air, etc., etc. When I've heard enough, I switch to WOSU, where they're doing the same thing in slightly more sophisticated language, and when I've heard enough, I switch to Smoove Jazz WJZA and try to ignore the commercials.

Shortly I will receive an enthusiastic letter from the two colleges from which I actually graduated (the other ones don't bother), reminding me that the current generation of students can finance their education only with my help. As a somewhat loyal alumnus, I will enclose a small check in the enclosed postage-paid envelope. Oddly enough, coffee is not involved.

The letters from environmental, human rights, civil liberties, public health, political advocacy, and other interest groups will continue to arrive at my desk, the difference being that they don't wait for the fall pledge season. Deciding whom to support is an exercise in values clarification as well as money management and, yes, identity politics. What can I afford? Who do I most want to support? Who needs my money the most? Who can be trusted to use it prudently on my behalf? What am I doing, really, in distributing my 'wealth'?

Ha! You call this wealth? Well, yeah, compared to most of the world, I'm rolling in it. Not saving much, yet managing to salt away a little here, a little there, paying the bills mostly, certainly not living large but rarely missing a meal, and indulging in the odd luxury here and there. While I'm not set for life or anywhere year prepared for retirement (whatever that is), I feel like I have enough money coming in to - are you ready? - redistribute a tiny bit.

Uh oh, I think I just uttered a hot-button word. Isn't it un-Amerikan to "redistribute" wealth? That's contrary to the 'Darwinian' (Spencerian) struggle of each against all for a bigger piece of the pie, which as some of our would-be leaders tell us, will actually "grow the pie" - an unfortunate turn of phrase. As Justice Holmes said, "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization." So I guess we all choose where and how much to redistribute.