The definition of a recession - two consecutive quarters of negative growth - is meaningless to most of us. It's like saying there's ice on Mars.
George Bush, who often appears to reside on the Red Planet, works assiduously to avoid the R word, even as a top economic adviser concedes we might go into negative growth this quarter. Alert the media.
These distinctions are gobbledygook. Ben Phillips put it best. Phillips, a cabbie, comes out of the Dunkin' Donuts in Jamaica Plain one morning last week. I ask him if we're in a recession. He replies: "I don't know what a recession is. All I know is that things are not right now."
His calls are down about 40 percent. No tips. Gas is killing him. And he's spending a lot less on himself.
Later that day, I'm up on Beacon Hill, the plummy side that slopes to Charles Street. An older gent with silver hair in a yellow foul-weather-gear jacket is walking his two dogs past DeLuca's, the ancient grocery store on Charles where a friend once told me you have to take out a second mortgage to buy an orange.
I ask the man if we're in a recession. He nods. I ask him if this is affecting him personally. In an elegant minimalist move, he moves his head back and forth ever so slightly, his eyes radiating a bemused "surely you jest." The man finally breaks into speech with this: "The past 10 years have been very kind to the rich."
Back on planet Earth, I'm reminded of the probate judge who said divorce is meaningless to the very rich and the very poor and a financial disaster for pretty much everyone else. So is recession.
"Absolutely we're in one," says Chris Fahey, who works for an affordable-housing nonprofit. "We've tried to refinance our house but the interest rates are much higher. Our children are struggling to find work," she adds. "We're rethinking a trip to Ireland to celebrate our 25th anniversary. It's all too tight. There's no flexibility."
I talk to a contractor in Southie name Jerry. He came over from Ireland 38 years ago and has been in the contracting business for 36 of them. He says we've been in a recession for five months. This is a slow time of the year for contractors anyway, but he says above and beyond that his business is down over half.
What drives Jerry really nuts is the food inflation. "One hundred dollars for a bag of groceries is nothing now," he says. "Ten dollars is a breakfast."
I talk to Kenny Henderson, a restaurant cook who has been out of work for eight months. He's also in Southie, taking his infant for a swing along Broadway in the stroller. "I'm a stay-at-home dad now," he says.
Even folks like Joy Silverstein, who has built the successful hair salon Fresh Hair in JP over 25 years, feels it. Silverstein is doing fine, but she sees recession seep all over her business.
"We offer more coupons, more deals," she says. "Clients come in every eight weeks now, not every six. They're not getting the extra services like manicures and facials. Also, they go to
Personally, she's cautious how she spends her money, even if she doesn't have to be: "I watch where to buy my gas. I'm buying more in cash. I'm using coupons, doing whatever I can to save a penny."
What we've got here is fear of the future - completely appropriate under the circumstances. Steve Adams, a federal government economist whom I run into on the Common, says the situation is largely attitudinal. True, but then this attitude didn't just fly in on the red-eye from the coast.
Economists as a group are harebrained on their best day. But Adams doesn't get lost in pie charts. He cites a pizza maker in his home town of Holden who has seen the price of flour triple in six months. The man gets the flour from California, where foreign demand has driven prices through the roof.
You generalize about people at your peril. Just when I'm ready to write off the swells of Beacon Hill as recession-proof, I run into Kathryn Quirk, who is stopping by a friend's house in Louisburg Square, epicenter of the cobblestone class. Quirk, who lives nearby on the good side of the Hill, stunned me by saying the recession is affecting her family a lot.
"My husband is a history teacher and I'm a full-time mom," she says. "We're cutting back in every way - consolidating credit cards, creating a monthly budget." She refers to the Whole Foods on Cambridge Street as "Whole Paycheck," and notes she drives a 10-year-old sport utility vehicle and her husband a 1992 Corolla.
The couple bought a two bedroom, three-story walk-up in 1997, when the real estate market paused a bit. Just married, two incomes, no kids. They loved the place. They loved Boston. Still do. But two kids have arrived since then, and she dropped her full-time marketing job some time ago. Money is tight, the condo is small, and they're pondering selling.
So we retreat farther under the bed as the recession bites and the bad news rises. We live defensively. Do we really need a formal name for what's going on? Why not simply say, as Americans always have, we're in hard times and leave it at that?
Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com
