Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
The Whirlpools in Naruto Strait, Awa Province (Awa Naruto no fukei)
(1857)

This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived as the series moved from civic urgency into personal witness and domestic intimacy. The writing ranged from the philosophical resignation of Quarter to the genuinely felt depth of Charity, from the Hubrisimiliation of a faucet set screw to the autobiography of Initiation, from the Believing that powered an Amazon open house to the Motleys that constitute the reliable indicators of Prosperity’s presence. The Muse fixed the faucet from her wheelchair. The open-house protestor who swore he wouldn’t go inside eventually shuffled in anyway, but asked nobody any hard questions when faced with the opportunity. The wardrobe mistress's responsibilities still seem bottomless. The series found this week that Prosperity’s most reliable indicators are rarely the ones anyone would choose to display.

Thank you for following along!

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Weekly Writing Summary

Quarter
“Hold your Prosperity lightly lest it break you when it slips out of your hands.”

This Prosperity Story finds Misfortune arriving not like a thief in the night but like a pirate in midday light — offering no Quarter to anyone, Prosperous or pauper — as seven thousand Spokane homes burn and the wildfire smoke settles in.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how Misfortune offers no Quarter. It does not arrive like a thief in the night but more like a pirate in midday light, essentially heartless regardless of any pleas for mercy. Nobody in the history of this universe so far ever once deserved to be visited by this pirate, and nobody ever gained an ounce of salvation by simply acceding to such unwarranted punishment. The Prosperous learn, like everyone learns or not, not to take very much of what happens all that personally. Our Prosperity propelled us to take a tour around the Northwest last June. It seems now that everywhere we visited then has more recently been visited by fire, up to and including Spokane, which experienced the worst natural disaster in this state’s history last weekend, with over seven thousand Prosperous homes lost and literally irreplaceable. Terrible things sometimes happen to even the Prosperous. Nobody gets any Quarter in the tragedy business. Hold your Prosperity lightly, lest it break you when it slips out of your hands.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: Oystercatchers (c. 1833/34)

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Charity
“Charity always begins at home, but it rarely ends anywhere near there.”

This Prosperity Story examines Charity as the consistent means by which the Prosperous share their good fortune — and finds its deepest expression in a mother’s rattly VW Bug, a pioneer cemetery lovingly restored, and a food pantry system nobody anticipated needing.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how the Prosperous give of their time as well as their treasure. My mother drove her rattly little VW Bug several times each week to check on aging relatives, holding their papers, negotiating with the VA or the County, seeing that they were decently buried. She remembered arriving in this town as a young mother with four kids under five, utterly reliant on the kindness of not-always-perfect strangers. The Muse’s mother refurbished their town’s little pioneer cemetery, righting stones, leveling ground, replanting sod. She’s buried there now, next to her frugal husband. The baby boomers were never quite as Prosperous as their parents’ generation. Food pantries were unknown in my youth. As I approach my dotage, their necessity has been increasing by double digits annually. We’re all benefactors now, by necessity rather than necessarily by choice. Charity always begins at home, but it rarely ends anywhere near there.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: A Golden Pheasant amid Snow-Covered Bamboo on a Steep Hillside (c. 1840)

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Hubrisimiliation
“…humiliated into a begrudging silence again.”

This Prosperity Story coins Hubrisimiliation for the inevitable compound of hubris and humiliation that the DIY experience reliably produces — and discovers that The Muse, in post-surgery boots and a wheelchair, fixed what I couldn’t.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how a kind of hubris can overtake the Prosperous, temporarily convincing them that possession bestows the ability to maintain what it might, at best, inflict the obligation to maintain. Armed with a YouTube video’s useless knowledge and unfamiliar yet strangely reassuring confidence, I set to work on the dripping kitchen faucet, only to discover a Torx tool, whatever that is, a form of Allen wrench designed to humiliate non-mechanics. No civilian knows what it was designed for. I bought it by accident years ago. I surrendered. The Muse struggled into her post-surgery boots and wheeled her wheelchair into the kitchen. She mastered that set screw before ordering me to find two pairs of channel locks. Five minutes later, she ordered me to go turn on the water. I hunkered in the basement afterward, folding laundry, humiliated into an embarrassed silence again.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: Dragons Among Clouds (1844)

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Initiation
“I became Prosperous the day I realized that I could choose, and did.”

This Prosperity Story answers the question that eventually enters every conversation about Prosperity — How does one become Prosperous? — and discovers that the answer is a story rather than a formula.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how nobody seems to be just born into Prosperity. It takes some sort of Initiation for its force to take over. My first wife, Betsy, came from a Prosperous family. My father was a proud letter carrier. I was raised to be a laborer, paid by the hour, definitely not college material. A series of almost accidents ultimately connected me to my Initiation: a company that found a part-time position for me, offered to pay my books and tuition, and always treated me decently, as if I belonged, long before I’d earned a place at that table. I knew I’d made the transition when Betsy started asking who I’d become. I began as barely a renter of my life before finally becoming the owner of my existence. I was hardly wealthy, but I became a chooser anyway. I finished my Initiation and started being Prosperous the day I realized that I could choose, and did.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: Tea Kettle, section of a sheet from the series “Mirror of Stone Rubbings of Views of the Provinces” (Kohon meihitsu ishizuri kagami) (Not Dated)

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Believing
“…the first sweet or savory taste of a Prosperity finally emerging.”

This Prosperity Story attends the Amazon Web Services Open House and discovers that Prosperity depends upon Believing, and that those committed to Nonbelieving worked way too hard not to believe anything they heard.

In this Prosperity Story, I wheeled the wheelchair-bound Muse inside the Amazon Web Services Open House while a small sea of skeptics surrounded a pop-up tent on the periphery. Once inside, experts at stations around the lobby testified as only true believers can, from knowledgeable conviction. The AWS employee, under The Muse’s cross-examination, reported that he’d researched to find the best in the business and chose AWS because he wanted to work for the best, echoing her own due diligence exactly. The protestors who came inside shuffled dispiritedly around the periphery, as if working way too hard not to believe anything they heard. They moved like soulless black holes around the spectacle. Believing works like priming a pump, a necessary step in eventually siphoning water, but never wholly sufficient. Believing’s just the first act in a much longer-lived Prosperity, but engaging in it might deliver the first sweet or savory taste of a Prosperity finally emerging.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: A Lion Training a Cub (c. 1832/34)

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Motleys
“Motleys might be the most reliable indicator of Prosperity’s presence.”

This Prosperity Story finds Prosperity’s most reliable indicator not in the curated and coordinated, but in the accumulated, story-laden, estate-sale-and-hand-me-down Motleys that constitute a genuinely lived life.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how Prosperity attracts collections. The Muse collects Franciscan Appleware crockery. I have a small collection of D-handled shovels maintained for no good reason other than that I favor them. Our furniture fully qualifies as Motley. Each piece has a story. The kitchen table reminds us of Dora Colley, from whose estate sale we acquired it. The chair I sit in every morning came from the neighborhood Lutheran Church’s yard sale. Someone asked me this week what I do for a living, and I responded that I’m a writer, though I know she believed I’d implied that meant I make money for writing, when I never have. My readers seem to stretch the definition of "loosely related," their individual Venn diagrams overlapping along a single, slim perimeter. Variety seems the inescapable side effect of all Prosperity. Motleys might be the most reliable indicator of Prosperity’s presence.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: Badger, from the series “Mirror of Stone Rubbings of Views of the Provinces” (Kohon meihitsu ishizuri kagami) (Not Dated)

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When It’s Being Tested

A question for my Third Party Perspective Editor: How does this week’s writing fit into and expand the Prosperity theme?

"This week the series did something it hadn’t quite done before. It demonstrated Prosperity under genuine pressure from multiple directions simultaneously, and showed it holding.

"Quarter and Charity established the week’s moral register: Prosperity neither protects against Misfortune nor exempts anyone from responsibility. The pirate arrives regardless. The charitable obligation arrives regardless. These aren’t consolations. They’re conditions.

"Hubrisimiliation and Initiation then worked as a paired set — the first showing Prosperity’s most comic failure mode, the second tracing its most serious origin story. Both are autobiographies, but autobiographies in the service of argument. The faucet set screw and the company that treated you as if you belonged before you’d earned it are equally essential to the series’ understanding of what Prosperity actually might or might not be.

Believing brought the series’ long civic thread — the data center controversy, The Muse’s briefing document, the County Commission appearance — to its most personally witnessed moment. The open house as the occasion for examining Believing versus Nonbelieving resolved something the series had been circling: the opposition’s fundamental problem isn’t their facts; it’s their epistemology. They arrived committed to not receiving anything. That’s not skepticism. That’s its own kind of nihilistic poverty.

"Motleys closed the week by returning home, literally and philosophically. After the pirate’s arrival, the inevitable charitable obligation, the faucet humiliation, the origin story, and the open house, the series rested in the accumulated, story-laden Motley evidence of a Prosperous life as lived. The wardrobe mistress whose charge describes clothes he can’t find. The vanity writer whose readers barely qualify as an audience. The living museum that looks like slumming it to anyone who hasn’t heard the explanatory stories.

"Taken together, this week argued that Prosperity is not a state one achieves and maintains, but a capacity one exercises under conditions that are never ideal: under wildfire smoke, broken ankles, set screws that won’t budge, committed Nonbelievers, and a wardrobe full of reds that eternally aren’t the right red. The series has discovered that Prosperity might be most visible precisely when it’s being tested."

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Thank you for following along!

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You can order Cluelessness from Bookshop.org, Powell’s Books, or Amazon. Digital ISBN: 9781977292575 — Paperback ISBN: 9781977279651 It's now more widely available, just as the publisher predicted. There's this Kindle link. Link To Publisher's Website Here

I employed Claude.ai, a commercial AI-powered text editor, using it to perform repetitive copy/pasting work and to create the above story summaries, prompting with: “Please briefly summarize this story in the first person while retaining the original voice.” I manually copy-edited each result.


©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz