‘Tis the Conflict of Interest Season

President-elect Trump is certain that “the president can’t have conflict of interest.”

Oh really? Not much mentioned during the campaign, this controversy now has reached a boiling point. Never before has someone presided over a world-wide multi-million dollar business at the same time as presiding over a country.

It sounds like some kind of magic show: now you see it, now you don’t. Maybe he could be called Hoodwinker-in-Chief.

Don’t worry—in this post-Thanksgiving blog, politics will be only a “side.”

However the Trump Show plays out in the weeks and months ahead, he’s raised my consciousness about the various, minor, but very familiar conflicts of interest that are a fact of life, especially right now. In this case we’re not talking about two cheerfully different things, co-existing happily side-by-side. We’re talking about competing forces, locked in a kind of battle, one threatening to annihilate the other. And all on the domestic front, mind you, precisely where you might reasonably expect peace to reign.

Here’s what Trump said, to a room full of reporters from The New York Times:

In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There’s never been a case like this. I’d assumed that you’d have to set up some kind of trust or whatever and you don’t.

Going for the title of the Ultimate Multi-Tasker! Of course there’s that pesky Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, prohibiting  federal office holders from accepting anything resembling gifts or other kinds of economic benefits from foreign leaders. Trump may have wanted to “drain the swamp,” but it looks like we’re all paddling in some murky waters now.

So too, in this time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, many of us might wish that the way forward could be a little clearer. Do we concentrate on acquiring packages with new things to lift our spirits and bring smiles to our loved ones?

Or would it be wiser to just take stock of what we have, re-find some treasures that have been with us all along, tossing much but not all of what we find? Not a huge dilemma, at first glance, but one that can be vexing all the same. We have limited energy, and so we want to do our best to direct it wisely.

A few friends posted this feature right after Thanksgiving, and it makes sense to me.

http://www.womenafter50.com/home/2016/11/24/85qzit9melztqjmn2110dwxhtcxfwg

If we spend all day Thursday with nearest and dearest, does it thereby follow that on Friday we should tear out of the driveway to hunt bargains in big box stores?

I shudder at the thought of trying this with my family. Would. Not.Work.

What we did yesterday was much more satisfying: took a drive all together to pay our respects to the hard labor a cousin and an uncle have been doing for months to build a house. The rooms are bare now, but in due time they will get filled in. Possibilities glimmered from every new outlet, each empty crawl space upstairs.

Those of us who have houses that are plenty filled in already often feel the approach of Christmas as a mixed bag. We cherish the beauty of the season, hoping to find ways to accentuate sparkle while at the same time minimizing clutter and stress.

Maybe I’m unusual, but it’s always at this time of year that I experience the greatest urge to get down in the basement and go through all the boxes that have too long been dormant. Look what we already own! Drink in the splendor of this painting done in someone’s 3rd grade year! Count our blessings! Throw whatever is not a blessing the hell out!

Part of our day yesterday included a stop at a delightful bookstore called “MainStreet BookEnds” in Warner. I had been given a gift certificate there, one I was glad to share with my kids. It was lovely watching everyone choose their volumes; I can’t recall when we last did something like this. The book I chose was Colson’s Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, hot off the press and featuring a main character who happens to share my daughter’s name.

This morning, seeking a kind of balance, I re-acquainted myself with some of the old books that came to me from my parents’ bookshelves. Here’s what a couple of them look like:

The copyright year on The Wizard of Oz is 1899, about twenty years before my mother was born; I don’t know how she received the book or in fact whether it was originally my father’s. On the first page of the other one, The Princess and the Goblin, “B. Lamb” is written in pencil; as I look at it, a kind of lightening bolt goes through me as I imagine her as a ten year old red-headed girl.

The fact is, I suffer from pretty much perennial conflict of interest, and it’s probably time to celebrate rather than bemoan the constancy of the condition. Far be it from me to expect to run anything– my household or my family or my job– “perfectly,” especially when they’re combined. But there must at least be some middle path approach to Christmas, combining old and new in about the right proportions, and I intend to find it.