c. 2008 Religion News Service
NEW YORK _ Like many Americans in this yet-to-be-announced but fully functional recession, my family is planning a “stay-cation” this summer.
That means staying close to home, enjoying an area we rarely have time to explore during busy workweeks, taking small adventures, and avoiding the multi-whammy of high gas prices, rising air fares, absurd hotel rates and relentless congestion.
We plan to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to a great pizza place. We have tickets to minor league baseball games on Staten Island and Coney Island, and to a concert at Town Hall. We’ll picnic at the New York Philharmonic’s free concert in Central Park, and a more modest jazz concert not far from the Riverside Park bridge where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks finally kissed in “You’ve Got Mail.”
I want to explore interesting neighborhoods, take the Circle Line cruise around Manhattan, and treat my bride to a horse carriage ride through Central Park. Maybe a museum, or maybe not. The beauty of a stay-cation is that nothing need be done.
Plus, while some stay-cation adventures do cost New York prices, we won’t end the summer with unpaid credit card bills. If we can’t afford, say, the Circle Line cruise, we’ll do it another summer. Sleeping late and curling up with “beach novels” needn’t require a costly rental at the beach.
Business folks seem surprised when people adapt to a recession with ideas like stay-cations, skipping the $4 latte at Starbucks, trading the gas-guzzler for a hybrid, delaying home-purchase plans, exploring state universities and moving to a cash-only personal economy.
With even a half-hearted ear to the ground, U.S. automakers could have seen this coming. Toyota did. The travel industry should know that catering only to the business traveler _ $350 rooms, $22 martinis, $750 fares _ ties their fortunes to easily cut corporate travel budgets. Photo spreads showing $1,200 spike heels cast an aura, but, from what I see, people actually shop at Harry’s Shoes on Broadway. The trip from a $4 latte to a $1.50 cup of joe is a short one.
In fact, I think we’ve been waiting for an excuse to change course. I think we have been looking for ways to end this latest “Gilded Age.”
The collapse of the SUV market, for example, is far more sudden and complete than a $2 hike in gasoline prices can explain. Same with the suddenly unacceptable cost of a far-flung suburban manse. Maybe it isn’t just fuel cost, but life lost to inching along alone while listening to Rush Limbaugh’s blather. Maybe it’s the unmasking of lawn and house maintenance as dull pursuit.
This recession might be more than a temporary correction. People seem to be discovering what they do and don’t value. Who needs a large home for a small family, for example? Or a super-fast $75,000 car on congested roads? Maxed-out credit cards haven’t left us any happier. No toy or tog can equal the love in another person’s eyes.
I see this every Sunday in church, as newcomers arrive, many of them young adults, looking for true value, such as connection, friendship and meaning _ pursuits that don’t just materialize on Sunday morning.
“Gilded Ages” don’t last, not only because money runs out, but because they are revealed as shallow, vain, demeaning and dull.
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)
KRE/PH END EHRICH600 words
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