Karen Hunter's brother and his folkband, Chaim and the Essentials play a song he wrote for her, here: http://www.folkalley.com/openmic/song.php?id=15963 There is also a link on the right side of this page. It is incredibly moving. I thank him for sharing it with me. Coincidentally, he posted it, after four years of working on it, on my 43rd birthday. I can understand how it would take him so long to produce something so beautiful and also so painful.
And not coincidentally, I post notice about the song on Valentine's Day.
Happy Valentine's Day, KBH.
14 February, 2011
06 February, 2011
Eight, really 4 times 2
Well extended-family,
It's almost February 8th, which will be my 8th birthday. By now, my mommy and I are very accomplished at making blog postings together. I can just think them and send them to her.
Being 8 really feels like being 4 times 2. My brother Bernie is 4 and I feel like he and I are a team -- so really we are both 8 and 4 at the same time. Since we do so much together, I run as much a 4 year old and he sleeps as much as an 8 year old. We consult with each other on everything except the catnip toys and strawberry ice cream. I don't know why, but those are always mine first. Otherwise, we share. Of course, I give him back his catnip toys...and he gives me back my fuzzy carrots, etc. Frankly, we have the same of everything, so it's hard to tell whose is whose, except that I don't dunk the fuzzy carrots in food. If it smells like food, it's his carrot. I've never understood that, but he doesn't understand why I sweep up AFTER he sweeps up around his bowl. It's a Larry thing.
I would like to thank all of my family for their love this year, for the new nicknames, (Sarastro, The LUVBUG, Leering Larry, etc.), and for looking at all those fabulous pictures of Bernie and me that my mother sends around. (It's not our idea, though we hear it brightens peoples days.) Above is one of me being my "smooth" self in the early am.
Cheers and Happy Love Forever Day!
Larry
27 January, 2011
Oh what a beautiful snow day
After two days of Regents exams, I am very grateful for today's snow day. Waiting around in the hallway to 1)escort students to the bathroom; 2)be on hand to get more pencils; and 3) be of use in potential disasters, usually makes me a little too talkative afterwards. Think of it: I spend most of my days being pounced on to communicate and explain things. It's addictive. Then I have to play Monk with Pencils during Regents' Week. The first person who says hello to me on my break is in for an earful! At least, when I am proctoring, I am forcefully engaging students with my eyes and footsteps. But, I wasn't selected to proctor until tomorrow. Proctoring isn't my favorite duty either, as I am always afraid of losing important papers/messing up the order of things.
It's also just these kind of activities which bring out the worst in the nicest of people. All of us were grumpy. If someone was five minutes late, administrators were called. Keeping an entire group of people in a silent world in which their job is to maintain silence can cause them to be irritated by the smallest sounds. I instinctively bark if I hear a student's mouth begin to open. I mean literally bark. "Woof!" I also hiss. I feel like a predator, alert to sound as if it is my nemesis and my prey. The students are completely used to this and it doesn't even generate a giggle.
My colleagues have begun the customary increase in the number of sentences which begin with "What am I supposed to....." It's the silence and the stakes of it. We still have grading to do. We have planning to do. There is nothing more disabling than hours of staring and snarling. You can't read papers as you have to keep your eyes on the kids. You can't look at anything but the kids for the time you are with them. If you are in the hall, you scout not just for the teacher calling you to escort a kid, but for any stray people who might be coming the wrong way. In a building with two other schools, this can happen. Even in those patches in the hallway in which you have nothing to do and feel like you are being lazy, you can't leave because something is going to happen soon and you will be needed. Grrrrrr. There are no words for it.
There's also a great deal of politesse which emerges from being busy and separated for a good part of your day. You simply don't see people enough to get angry.
At meetings, you collectively decry meetings. You collectively swallow your feelings and volunteer for more such assemblies. Then you go back to your intensive universe for a while. Even when you collaborate on curricula, you are all quarterbacks executing huge plays across a large field. The kids become quarterbacks, too. We are all together, but alone with the process of creation, as well. It's like working on sculptures. So, take us out of that and our hands and feet and teeth all chatter. It's much better to shiver silently in the snow.
It's also just these kind of activities which bring out the worst in the nicest of people. All of us were grumpy. If someone was five minutes late, administrators were called. Keeping an entire group of people in a silent world in which their job is to maintain silence can cause them to be irritated by the smallest sounds. I instinctively bark if I hear a student's mouth begin to open. I mean literally bark. "Woof!" I also hiss. I feel like a predator, alert to sound as if it is my nemesis and my prey. The students are completely used to this and it doesn't even generate a giggle.
My colleagues have begun the customary increase in the number of sentences which begin with "What am I supposed to....." It's the silence and the stakes of it. We still have grading to do. We have planning to do. There is nothing more disabling than hours of staring and snarling. You can't read papers as you have to keep your eyes on the kids. You can't look at anything but the kids for the time you are with them. If you are in the hall, you scout not just for the teacher calling you to escort a kid, but for any stray people who might be coming the wrong way. In a building with two other schools, this can happen. Even in those patches in the hallway in which you have nothing to do and feel like you are being lazy, you can't leave because something is going to happen soon and you will be needed. Grrrrrr. There are no words for it.
There's also a great deal of politesse which emerges from being busy and separated for a good part of your day. You simply don't see people enough to get angry.
At meetings, you collectively decry meetings. You collectively swallow your feelings and volunteer for more such assemblies. Then you go back to your intensive universe for a while. Even when you collaborate on curricula, you are all quarterbacks executing huge plays across a large field. The kids become quarterbacks, too. We are all together, but alone with the process of creation, as well. It's like working on sculptures. So, take us out of that and our hands and feet and teeth all chatter. It's much better to shiver silently in the snow.
09 January, 2011
Truthout gets it right on Obama and Education
Note that the author says that most people in DC don't agree with Rhee's/Obama's policies.
Read it here
http://www.truth-out.org/mr-president-we-want-your-childrens-education-too66425
Read it here
http://www.truth-out.org/mr-president-we-want-your-childrens-education-too66425
06 January, 2011
CODA: Founder of Brooklyn Bridge Academy Replaced As Principal
Three years since the close of Brooklyn Comprehensive, our replacement, Brooklyn Bridge Academy has already replaced its founding principal. A major issue was violence. Never once did BCNHS has a violence problem. Oh and Inside Schools notes that "Attendance is always an issue" at the school. So, they added violence and they did nothing to increase attendance.
I hope the new principal can re-direct the school. It will be interesting to see how he handles the attendance issue and the fact that the school's four year graduation rate is 13 percent. Most of our students didn't graduate in four years...and that ended up being a reason to close us. The fact that these kids DID eventually graduate didn't matter.
Good luck. "To the stars despite the difficulties."
I hope the new principal can re-direct the school. It will be interesting to see how he handles the attendance issue and the fact that the school's four year graduation rate is 13 percent. Most of our students didn't graduate in four years...and that ended up being a reason to close us. The fact that these kids DID eventually graduate didn't matter.
Good luck. "To the stars despite the difficulties."
21 November, 2010
Sweeter than music
This is the plane Karen hoped to buy. It was very light, and that and its crispness made it feel like a pair of wings to her, I think.
Karen B. Hunter, November 23, 1951 - Sept. 2, 2005
Goodnight, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to they rest.
At 4:57 pm on November 18, 2010, Michael Renchiwich, once Art Editor of National Lampoon and Circus magazines, passed away. He was 53. About two weeks earlier, he had come into the hospital with swollen legs and having fallen several times. Classic signs of a blood clot in his legs. He was sent home. Three days later, he came back into the hospital, was conscious for a time, then went into cardiac arrest. After 13 minutes of resuscitation, his heart began to beat. To prevent his brain from swelling, he was placed in a medically induced coma from which he would never emerge.
Michael could be a very quiet man, and he certainly never wanted to impose on anyone. Yet, he was a funny, intelligent, rebellious and tender person. I once asked him how he would most like to spend his life, if he could. He said he would like to have lunch with his friends every day. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Save me a table.
Michael could be a very quiet man, and he certainly never wanted to impose on anyone. Yet, he was a funny, intelligent, rebellious and tender person. I once asked him how he would most like to spend his life, if he could. He said he would like to have lunch with his friends every day. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Save me a table.
19 October, 2010
It's been almost a month
I'd like to say, "since my last confession," but it's since my last blog post and I am making myself write. Two doctors appointments in the next two days, maybe another pursuit of the sabbatical. Depends on my orthopedic surgeon and how much longer he thinks I can literally stand up. I'm not sure I'm standing up now, but there is still some distance for me to come down to sit, so maybe I am least standing sideways....
School is intense and so much better with high school students. The school in which I have been placed does nothing to offend anyone and the children are very happy, if only because they are very loved by the faculty, administration and staff. They are fighting the good fight, and it shows in their exhaustion and in the kids general coherence as an academic entity. It's a good place and I'm lucky to be there. I've applied here twice before in younger incarnations and not been considered, so I know I'm not going to be, but I'm respected and I respect them back. That's plenty. Where will go after here? Let's see if I can stand up in February, first. Let's see how I do tomorrow. For now, I pray this school is allowed to grow in peace. All they want to do is teach the kids. Let them.
School is intense and so much better with high school students. The school in which I have been placed does nothing to offend anyone and the children are very happy, if only because they are very loved by the faculty, administration and staff. They are fighting the good fight, and it shows in their exhaustion and in the kids general coherence as an academic entity. It's a good place and I'm lucky to be there. I've applied here twice before in younger incarnations and not been considered, so I know I'm not going to be, but I'm respected and I respect them back. That's plenty. Where will go after here? Let's see if I can stand up in February, first. Let's see how I do tomorrow. For now, I pray this school is allowed to grow in peace. All they want to do is teach the kids. Let them.
10 September, 2010
What is Superman?
1) An idea in an essay by Nietzche.
2) Part of the title of a play by George Bernard Shaw actually about Don Juan.
3) A comic book character that more than one writer has suggested was an expression of Jewish angst against the Nazis.
4) The prototypical dream of the prototypical geek.
5)A role in a movie portrayed by, among others, the late actor Christopher Reeve and first played on television by George Reeves (no relation.)
6) The fictive construct who is the boyfriend of fictive construct Lois Lane.
7) Whatever the big "S" symbol conjures up in the 3-46 year olds who wear it on a t-shirt.
8)The title of a Barbara Streisand album.
9) Probably as many things as there are meanings to the number "3" in Mozart's The Magic Flute.
None of these qualifies him to save our educational system. In fact, the metaphor behind the title of the new documentary, Waiting for Superman suggests we give the schools over to Disney. Then we can REALLY LIE to the children.
I'm 42 and I've seen more movies about educational saviors than I can count -- most of whom taught or served as a school leader for not much more than a year (Look up how long the real life model for Dangerous Minds taught.) None of them had much longevity. The saddest to me will always be Frank Mickens who was the big hero at Boys and Girls High School when I was just beginning to teach. Mickens left and...the school as a 37 percent graduation rate despite the fact that it's motto is "Failure is not an option." Thomas Jefferson had a flash in the pan as a military style academy. Gone. Brooklyn Comprehensive had a formidable leader and it died shortly after she did. Institutions are not built by personalities nor are they rescued by them, though they can make them famous. Maybe it is the constant influx of personality that keeps The Metropolitan Opera going...but people don't fork over three figures for tickets unless the show is something to see and hear. And the place has survived geniuses and idiots at the helm. I think it requires a commitment to work to go beyond the ugly, but not to let the mistakes define you. Our Dept. of Ed. does nothing but let the mistakes change their minds -- they continue what is an American tradition.
Our Secretary of Education says that the new documentary Waiting for Superman does the equivalent of "calling a baby ugly." The underlying reference to the youth of public education in the US, I think is not really at the core of his response, though I wish it were so. I wish he could look at the historical approach to public education in this country and set his work in context of it, building upon progressive ideas which have often been quickly abandoned when other ideas became fashionable. That's my prejudice. Accepting that, as the students say, "all he's trying to say is," is that there are some ugly parts of our school system, then this movie does nothing new. When a country cannot even decide WHY it's educating it's children, you can't expect it to know WHAT to do. Ask our secretary why I have colleagues working in schools that have no gyms, no computers and in some cases not even a basketball. IN 2010. In, what my grandmother called, "America." This at the same time as students who just happen to score better on some tests than others have brand new equipment of all kinds and a pool. Yet, Stuyvesant students can no longer be called an elite group because that would mean that we understood them to be part of some larger whole. What goes on in Stuyvesant (Class of 85, here) is NOTHING like what my colleagues and I are allowed to do with or without equipment. Students are driven to meet expectations because they have an understanding of the pressures of the world and because...they JUST LIKE TO LEARN. Every kid just likes to learn, but only at some schools do they have the equipment and the CARE and I do mean "TLC" to be able to do it. Most NY students have one guidance counselor to 500 kids. I saw a counselor, a SPARK officer, a psychiatrist and had therapy at Beth Israel hospital when my family experienced an enormous crisis. Do you know any student in NYC anywhere else who would be granted that attention? Spark offices get cut routinely AT THE MIDDLE SCHOOL LEVEL. Who doesn't need counseling more than a middle school student?
It's not any one ugly decision that makes our schools the way they are. It's that we make NO DECISIONS at all. We refuse outright to commit to anything for our children. If I had a child and then left him/her outdoors to fen for himself/herself from infancy, it would be the same crime. We ask students who have difficulty reading to choose into a Pre-Law, Pre-Med or Pre-Nothing program. But, we will not give them Special Education services. God forbid we stigmatize them with the possibility of what amounts to healthcare. For free? The fact that students in some suburbs get as much assistance as they need and their parents are willing to cough up the funds in taxes eludes most of the public. Even our President, who went to Columbia and Harvard and spends private school money on his kids PRETENDS he doesn't know what the cost of a good education is. EVERYONE deserves a private school education. Taking on the commitment and the flexibility of mind of private schools requires crediting teachers and administrators with an ability to define what learning is. We'd also have to make some serious investments in technology, buildings, counseling, etc.
Ah, but we'd have to pay for it. And we'd have to support it as a culture.
What we have done instead is placed the UFT/AFT at the new forefront of the attack against unions which has been progressively seething in this country, with its signal moment being President Reagan's firing of the Patco workers. Teachers have become thrust into a stereotype of civil servants which was never really true. When you decide to become a civil servant (which as Mario Cuomo would point out, includes politicians) you exchange a long-term commitment to a job for a less competitive payscale. You also wed yourself to the way that institution works. It's not like a Senator could walk into the Israeli Knesset or British Parliament and just pick up where he left off. While institutions don't survive on the back of one person alone, they do develop their own methodologies unique to their own surroundings. Anyway, because I have insurance and my summer's off I am now the poster-child for American Sloth. Why aren't all of my students getting 90's? Did all students ever get 90's. At schools where the competition is very still, an artificial curve is built in to insure that NOT EVERYONE gets 90's. This is unfair because some of these students could get 100's at easier places. But, there is an inherent value to the 85 which isn't there in the 100 somewhere else. And, besides, you know, you get a better education, or one more suited to a pace you enjoy. On the Yankees, does everyone hit 300? How many times do the Angels have to beat the Yankees to prove that excellence comes in many forms? You send your child to a school because their way of doing things seems like it would work best for him/her. My mother scored right on the money and she barely made more than minimum wage. She asked people she knew who graduated from the school and she made a few visits. I could have survived nowhere else the way I did at that small, idiosyncratic Hebrew school which then lead me to Stuyvesant. My mother is seriously ill and yet, the fine education she received back in the dark ages when people didn't take as many Regents, etc. prepared her to do this for me. That, and a mother who brought with her a European devotion to learning for its own sake. (What other person would still know her Latin in her 60's.) What makes education good is a willingness to be open-minded, to be dedicated, to be unique to the needs of your students and to care. If Randi Weingarten or any other UFT/AFT person seems to froth at the mouth (as she is described doing in this upcoming documentary) it is because no one should have to spend so much time proving the value of something which is done entirely in support of children. If I choose not to work summer school, it isn't because I'm a lazy sloth -- it's because I've broken my back and I need rest for the next round. Most teachers I know are broke most of the time, supplementing their classrooms with what is not there. The computers, the media projectors, the memberships in educational groups which share information, etc. And we don't have credit cards supplied by our company. It's not even easy to deduct this stuff. Not that it pays to think about it. You do your best, you give everything you can. Or, why stand up at all. Especially, when you are vilified just for having a pension. More teachers go on disability than any other group of workers. The statistics are too broad and consistent for all of these people to have genetic predilections to breaking down.
I have an acquaintance who gathers all the discarded math textbooks from our schools and sends them to Kenya where they are SAVORED and used again and again. But, no one should ever have to be so hungry in the first place to have to be given a discarded textbook. The fact that people in other countries know the value of an education and we do not, is a testimony to one of the greatest American products: Ignorance. The idea that a cartoon character can save the world is as naive and pathetic as the terrified young men and women who had to look to the funny papers when the world turned its face on the crushing of 11 million people, 6 million of them Jews. Who would want to watch the news when Roosevelt turned away boats of Jews, even as he slowly began to concede that we would have to enter the war. I don't hate Roosevelt. He wasn't a cartoon character. He was a human. When he died, he left enough in place so that the very capable Harry Truman could make a decision no one should ever have to make again. He said he never lost a night's sleep over it. I don't believe him, but I understand that sometimes one must stand by one's decisions, especially ones that hard. At the end of the war, a number of veterans got together and founded The International Baccalaureate so that there would be a curriculum that would bring humanity together. The trouble is, you have to be able to read to use it. And you have to be of liberal enough mind to see the value of a project over a standardized test. You have to test the project and the performer in real terms -- in context of the world around it, both local and global. That's a lot of work. And very little of it is QUANTIFIABLE. But to admit that good work cannot always be measured in an exact rubric and has to be valued with intelligence and compassion, would be to admit that comprehension involves not just the ability to read the text but the subtext and what it might foreshadow. All of that takes time, experience and care. It's not the job of one person, but the effort of the whole. And, it's ain't cheap. Some people look at children in uniforms and see students ready to learn. I see children being primed to serve. I want my children to have TASTE. Now, that alone, giving the student the time and energy to learn to choose his clothes, is something we won't commit to anymore.
If they can't choose their clothes, and they all are following Superman, they will do very well working in retail. I'm afraid most of the students I have met would do better than I would in that field, already. They know how to sell and wear someone else's name on their backs. What I want is to teach them to stand on their own, follow their conscience, and read the fine print.
Perhpas, "I love the Funnies" should be the theme song for our school system. Never heard of it? Well, look it up.
04 September, 2010
Famous mom? Have a baby out wedlock? No prob.
Gee, when my students have a baby out of wedlock, they don't get put on "Dancing With the Stars." Maybe they don't try hard enough? See link for details about Bristol Palin's new makeover for the show..... This is like that show that takes people who need help and re-makes their home, only better! Those people should go out and have babies out of wedlock and they'd get to be stars with star salaries....Then they could pay for their own makeovers and join the economy.
http://tv.yahoo.com/falltv/photos/dancing-with-the-stars-season-11-cast/608
http://tv.yahoo.com/falltv/photos/dancing-with-the-stars-season-11-cast/608
02 September, 2010
30 August, 2010
28 August, 2010
This song is dedicated to Karen B. Hunter, Nov. 23, 1951 - Sept. 2, 2005
Rogers and Hart, "I could write a book."
If they asked me, I could write a book
about the way you walk and whisper and look.
I could write a preface on how we met
so the world would never forget.
And the simple secret of the plot
is just to tell them that I love you a lot.
Then the world discovers as my book ends
how to make two lovers a friends.
If they asked me, I could write a book
about the way you walk and whisper and look.
I could write a preface on how we met
so the world would never forget.
And the simple secret of the plot
is just to tell them that I love you a lot.
Then the world discovers as my book ends
how to make two lovers a friends.
18 August, 2010
Grynberg has a note
Dear Teacher, Friend, Relative, Larry and Bernie,
Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 08:13
After I came home from last night's Yankees game (they won), I found I couldn't sleep a wink. This happened the night before, too, but I was sure the game would wear me out. It didn't. I got a headache listening to a bunch of wise-guys behind me trying to predict the Yankees team for next year and a bunch of reckless 30 somethings drinking beer and making inside jokes loudly and nearly pissing themselves. On the two hour ride home (the "N" is local after 10pm.) I was able to "blitz out" a little. God bless Mr. Bloomberg. Now I have so many more chances to be mugged and assaulted by homeless people who get on at stations like "City Hall." Why we are stopping in non-residential neighborhoods and going under the fetid tunnel to do it, I don't know. I thought you saved energy when you went directly from point to point, not stopped and started. Fortunately, there were lots of people on my train discussing sales loudly and keeping their children under the age of one up late on the ride home from grandma. The kinds of noises babies can make never cease to amaze me. This one sounded like an electric toothbrush running backwards. My poor mother kept me off the subways until I was 7 so that I might have normal hearing. Alas, it was all for nought.
There doesn't seem to be a week in my life in which there is not some major catastrophe about to befall me or my friends. This summer brought eviction notices (to friends), the threat of jail for missing jury duty too many times (friends), and the tenderhooks which come from caring for a cat who is sensitive to all kinds of stress and who resists by not eating. (Friend's cat. Larry and Bernie eat.) So, even when you jump away to the Church of Overpaid Athletes and surround yourself in the photos and memories of successes which make your parents, uncles -- all of your forebears -- dreamy-eyed, you can't really escape the tension. Then, of course, I forgot that I moved my medication schedule way up, so that it starts at 10pm. Completely impractical, but some of this tension contributed to this foolish decision. So, just as the game ended, the withdrawal started to kick in. The buzzing in the ears. The inability to complete a thought. The rage at my own stupidity. And for some reason, I get very thirsty.
I got a real deal on a huge bottle of water for one dollar.
But, then my friend wanted to explore for a while and my mind was turning into rabbit food, my feet beginning to swell and my back bend toward the ground. For some reason, I think people can see these symptoms, but since I'm already so short, have huge feet and bad posture, I guess it's only a matter of degrees. I had to insist we go home. Then I had to remember which train to take -- which stairs to go up or down on. There were a lot of MTA people in the station telling us what we already knew. I thought I heard the MTA person tell my friend to just go upstairs and take the four. I got confused and angry and my friend, rightly told me to back off. When we finally reached the train, our place in Yankees mythology now torn away from us, the grimness set back in. Medicine had to be got at the pharmacy. Inadequacies of the Vet bothered my friend and this brought back memories of the loss of my first godson-cat. An afternoon in which he was screaming for attention and it was hard to get it. I wasn't there because I was somewhere with Karen. If I'd've been there I could've kicked up a scene. I'm good at that. That was my job. Instead, my friend was trying to bridge the line between Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi Driver that is the Animal Medical Center and my godson cat collapsed in the process. We lost him the next morning.
I went home angry at myself, my friend, at the doctors and ugly with the feeling that I had let down my dearest friend -- and he was. My own cat Fred, I fear I over-reacted to so many times that it had much the same effect. I am much calmer with Larry and Bernie but they are brimming with health and stamina and curiosity. Where and who I will be when they are frail and desperate I don't know. I promise them the world, but I mean the Disney one. The real one is the color of breath on a late night in the subway. A faint grey, tinged with sweat and impropriety. After all, who cares what happens to the 40 or so people on the "N" after 10pm? If you run a train, slowly, through the ghost stops of the workday, clicking into the routines of the homeless, the desperate and the lonely, what kind of protection can you offer the few people coming home from a sale or a baseball game? If that baby were screaming for attention and the parents got out at Court Street, there would be hardly anyone on the street until they reached the small newsstand down Montague. If they called 911, they'd be taken to over-crowded and under-funded Brooklyn Hospital or to the smaller, but no less crowded Long Island College Hospital. Would the baby have collapsed by then?
All of this does not deflect from my role in the death of my godson-cat. No one can handle anyone's failing health alone. I should never have let his mother go alone without me. But I was on my way somewhere with Karen or was I on my way to work? Work at a school closed in directly inverse proportion to the amount of care that the staff put into it -- it was done quickly and silently with barely a trace. The school that replaced it is a land-mine, out of control and dangerous. The first day they opened a girl brought a knife. But the principal is married to someone involved in the creation of Transfer High Schools. So, despite the fact that there is shouting in the halls and souls are collapsing, it will keep going. I'm told a lot of the new schools are in this kind of disrepair. So everyday, some parent goes home on the subways, clammy with the knowledge that he/she was powerless to save his own child.
So, please forgive me. I didn't sleep last night. I would like to have done things today, but I have to try to sleep. On a night in 2007, after four nights of not sleeping too well, I made a very poor judgement call which nearly put my cats and me in jeopardy. I yelled at someone. I tried to cross through that chaotic barrier of unwillingness and resignation to certain death and say something. But, I was rude, and I was tired and I was crying. So I spent a year and three months in the DOE's Rubber Rooms deciding whether or not I was civilized enough to ever work with people again. I did this, knowing full-well that it was illegal to put a person with Aspeger's Syndrome in the Rubber Room on his/her first offense. As a disabled person, I was entitled to the least restrictive environment. But, I was hoping that the many people who were speaking up for me would make the case. At least, in the end, it got me out sooner and helped me negotiate a settlement. Because no successful person in this country has ever lost his/her temper in public. Not George Steinbrenner, not Billy Martin, not Thurmon Munson, not Lou Piniella, not Michael Bloomberg, not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Ronald Reagan ("tear down that wall" is a polite request), not MacArthur and not Barack Obama. Never. Curt statements about human rights don't count -- they were done in the proper form. You can't have everyone over for beers. So long as you don't shout, don't cry or show emotions, you’re fine. There are no mediators in most places. And what we need most are mediators, especially if we are going to bridge political, social, emotional gaps and reach across the table between the neurotypical and non. They say Einstein probably had Asperger's Syndrome. He was given a lot of room for eccentricity and assisted in bringing his ideas to the world. If that hadn't happened, well, he'd of been the janitor in "Good Will Hunting," if he were so lucky. Probably not with that hair.
What about the founding fathers, the “Give me liberty or give me death," people, the notion of resisting oppression especially when it’s life threatening. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” You can’t run a country with everyone resisting every five minutes. Well, you could, actually, if people would just be open about what their agenda were from the start. Then you’d know either not to take your cats to that Vet or you could stage a more formal protest against decisions made for reasons. Arbitrariness invites secrets and the theories of luck and favor. Someone once told me it was a particular politician’s “time.” Jesse Jackson used to preach sermons about it being “Morning Time” – time for the country to wake up.
The reality is that time is on a 24 hour clock and it’s either time to go to work or it isn’t. There is no particular “time for a change.” There is a necessity for a change. If you tell someone at a job, “it’s time for a change” and walk away, they might just change the music or ignore you and wait for more specific instruction. If you say, “it’s necessary to make a change,” they can immediately ask of what and why? If you believe it’s “necessary,” you’ll be more convincing and more likely to succeed. No one is going to take care of that cat or baby because it’s time to do so – Mussolini ran the trains on schedule and it helped no one, plus, his example has caused most people to go the other way. Time is now, later or yesterday. And it’s in the moment. No need to call attention to it. People make “To do” lists not “To Time” lists. I’m belaboring the point. We create fake measurements of efficiency in this country by doing so in terms of time, which we then say equals money. In that case, we have no control over either. Time is just a way we refer to something out of our hands. The question is: “How well is this country taking care of its people?” That answer comes in how many are living, how they are living and how many are not living. It is reflected in the number of prescriptions for sleeping pills, tranquilizers and sales of alcohol. A generation Martini’d, tranquilized and otherwise drugged itself through the day. My generation has advanced to variations on our parent’s methods, including more intricate and varied drugs as well as Yoga, etc. It’s all not a very efficient way of trying to do one thing: get attention for a sick child, a sick cat or a loved one. We attenuate our feelings so that we can, as politely and non-offensively as possible, ask for what we think is very necessary and some people are gifted at mediating through this, some people are lucky enough to be provided with mediation. For the rest of, there are the hours of lurking in the slow moving train home, blocking out the noise and the knowledge that should anything happen to us, there’d be nothing we could do about it. And you wonder why Ipods sell so well?
Meanwhile cats and babies pass out everywhere.
I will find sleep eventually. I hope there is time later in the week for the things I have promised today. I am genuinely sorry.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 08:13
After I came home from last night's Yankees game (they won), I found I couldn't sleep a wink. This happened the night before, too, but I was sure the game would wear me out. It didn't. I got a headache listening to a bunch of wise-guys behind me trying to predict the Yankees team for next year and a bunch of reckless 30 somethings drinking beer and making inside jokes loudly and nearly pissing themselves. On the two hour ride home (the "N" is local after 10pm.) I was able to "blitz out" a little. God bless Mr. Bloomberg. Now I have so many more chances to be mugged and assaulted by homeless people who get on at stations like "City Hall." Why we are stopping in non-residential neighborhoods and going under the fetid tunnel to do it, I don't know. I thought you saved energy when you went directly from point to point, not stopped and started. Fortunately, there were lots of people on my train discussing sales loudly and keeping their children under the age of one up late on the ride home from grandma. The kinds of noises babies can make never cease to amaze me. This one sounded like an electric toothbrush running backwards. My poor mother kept me off the subways until I was 7 so that I might have normal hearing. Alas, it was all for nought.
There doesn't seem to be a week in my life in which there is not some major catastrophe about to befall me or my friends. This summer brought eviction notices (to friends), the threat of jail for missing jury duty too many times (friends), and the tenderhooks which come from caring for a cat who is sensitive to all kinds of stress and who resists by not eating. (Friend's cat. Larry and Bernie eat.) So, even when you jump away to the Church of Overpaid Athletes and surround yourself in the photos and memories of successes which make your parents, uncles -- all of your forebears -- dreamy-eyed, you can't really escape the tension. Then, of course, I forgot that I moved my medication schedule way up, so that it starts at 10pm. Completely impractical, but some of this tension contributed to this foolish decision. So, just as the game ended, the withdrawal started to kick in. The buzzing in the ears. The inability to complete a thought. The rage at my own stupidity. And for some reason, I get very thirsty.
I got a real deal on a huge bottle of water for one dollar.
But, then my friend wanted to explore for a while and my mind was turning into rabbit food, my feet beginning to swell and my back bend toward the ground. For some reason, I think people can see these symptoms, but since I'm already so short, have huge feet and bad posture, I guess it's only a matter of degrees. I had to insist we go home. Then I had to remember which train to take -- which stairs to go up or down on. There were a lot of MTA people in the station telling us what we already knew. I thought I heard the MTA person tell my friend to just go upstairs and take the four. I got confused and angry and my friend, rightly told me to back off. When we finally reached the train, our place in Yankees mythology now torn away from us, the grimness set back in. Medicine had to be got at the pharmacy. Inadequacies of the Vet bothered my friend and this brought back memories of the loss of my first godson-cat. An afternoon in which he was screaming for attention and it was hard to get it. I wasn't there because I was somewhere with Karen. If I'd've been there I could've kicked up a scene. I'm good at that. That was my job. Instead, my friend was trying to bridge the line between Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi Driver that is the Animal Medical Center and my godson cat collapsed in the process. We lost him the next morning.
I went home angry at myself, my friend, at the doctors and ugly with the feeling that I had let down my dearest friend -- and he was. My own cat Fred, I fear I over-reacted to so many times that it had much the same effect. I am much calmer with Larry and Bernie but they are brimming with health and stamina and curiosity. Where and who I will be when they are frail and desperate I don't know. I promise them the world, but I mean the Disney one. The real one is the color of breath on a late night in the subway. A faint grey, tinged with sweat and impropriety. After all, who cares what happens to the 40 or so people on the "N" after 10pm? If you run a train, slowly, through the ghost stops of the workday, clicking into the routines of the homeless, the desperate and the lonely, what kind of protection can you offer the few people coming home from a sale or a baseball game? If that baby were screaming for attention and the parents got out at Court Street, there would be hardly anyone on the street until they reached the small newsstand down Montague. If they called 911, they'd be taken to over-crowded and under-funded Brooklyn Hospital or to the smaller, but no less crowded Long Island College Hospital. Would the baby have collapsed by then?
All of this does not deflect from my role in the death of my godson-cat. No one can handle anyone's failing health alone. I should never have let his mother go alone without me. But I was on my way somewhere with Karen or was I on my way to work? Work at a school closed in directly inverse proportion to the amount of care that the staff put into it -- it was done quickly and silently with barely a trace. The school that replaced it is a land-mine, out of control and dangerous. The first day they opened a girl brought a knife. But the principal is married to someone involved in the creation of Transfer High Schools. So, despite the fact that there is shouting in the halls and souls are collapsing, it will keep going. I'm told a lot of the new schools are in this kind of disrepair. So everyday, some parent goes home on the subways, clammy with the knowledge that he/she was powerless to save his own child.
So, please forgive me. I didn't sleep last night. I would like to have done things today, but I have to try to sleep. On a night in 2007, after four nights of not sleeping too well, I made a very poor judgement call which nearly put my cats and me in jeopardy. I yelled at someone. I tried to cross through that chaotic barrier of unwillingness and resignation to certain death and say something. But, I was rude, and I was tired and I was crying. So I spent a year and three months in the DOE's Rubber Rooms deciding whether or not I was civilized enough to ever work with people again. I did this, knowing full-well that it was illegal to put a person with Aspeger's Syndrome in the Rubber Room on his/her first offense. As a disabled person, I was entitled to the least restrictive environment. But, I was hoping that the many people who were speaking up for me would make the case. At least, in the end, it got me out sooner and helped me negotiate a settlement. Because no successful person in this country has ever lost his/her temper in public. Not George Steinbrenner, not Billy Martin, not Thurmon Munson, not Lou Piniella, not Michael Bloomberg, not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Ronald Reagan ("tear down that wall" is a polite request), not MacArthur and not Barack Obama. Never. Curt statements about human rights don't count -- they were done in the proper form. You can't have everyone over for beers. So long as you don't shout, don't cry or show emotions, you’re fine. There are no mediators in most places. And what we need most are mediators, especially if we are going to bridge political, social, emotional gaps and reach across the table between the neurotypical and non. They say Einstein probably had Asperger's Syndrome. He was given a lot of room for eccentricity and assisted in bringing his ideas to the world. If that hadn't happened, well, he'd of been the janitor in "Good Will Hunting," if he were so lucky. Probably not with that hair.
What about the founding fathers, the “Give me liberty or give me death," people, the notion of resisting oppression especially when it’s life threatening. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” You can’t run a country with everyone resisting every five minutes. Well, you could, actually, if people would just be open about what their agenda were from the start. Then you’d know either not to take your cats to that Vet or you could stage a more formal protest against decisions made for reasons. Arbitrariness invites secrets and the theories of luck and favor. Someone once told me it was a particular politician’s “time.” Jesse Jackson used to preach sermons about it being “Morning Time” – time for the country to wake up.
The reality is that time is on a 24 hour clock and it’s either time to go to work or it isn’t. There is no particular “time for a change.” There is a necessity for a change. If you tell someone at a job, “it’s time for a change” and walk away, they might just change the music or ignore you and wait for more specific instruction. If you say, “it’s necessary to make a change,” they can immediately ask of what and why? If you believe it’s “necessary,” you’ll be more convincing and more likely to succeed. No one is going to take care of that cat or baby because it’s time to do so – Mussolini ran the trains on schedule and it helped no one, plus, his example has caused most people to go the other way. Time is now, later or yesterday. And it’s in the moment. No need to call attention to it. People make “To do” lists not “To Time” lists. I’m belaboring the point. We create fake measurements of efficiency in this country by doing so in terms of time, which we then say equals money. In that case, we have no control over either. Time is just a way we refer to something out of our hands. The question is: “How well is this country taking care of its people?” That answer comes in how many are living, how they are living and how many are not living. It is reflected in the number of prescriptions for sleeping pills, tranquilizers and sales of alcohol. A generation Martini’d, tranquilized and otherwise drugged itself through the day. My generation has advanced to variations on our parent’s methods, including more intricate and varied drugs as well as Yoga, etc. It’s all not a very efficient way of trying to do one thing: get attention for a sick child, a sick cat or a loved one. We attenuate our feelings so that we can, as politely and non-offensively as possible, ask for what we think is very necessary and some people are gifted at mediating through this, some people are lucky enough to be provided with mediation. For the rest of, there are the hours of lurking in the slow moving train home, blocking out the noise and the knowledge that should anything happen to us, there’d be nothing we could do about it. And you wonder why Ipods sell so well?
Meanwhile cats and babies pass out everywhere.
I will find sleep eventually. I hope there is time later in the week for the things I have promised today. I am genuinely sorry.
07 August, 2010
It's Bernie's Third Anniversary
Around this time of year, three years ago, Bernie came to live with us. I believe it was August 8, but I'm not sure so we're celebrating the whole week. As you may or may not know Bernie is our three year old mix of Siberian Forest Cat, Tabby and some other wonderful cats, found on the street by our veterinarian's assistant. Specifically, it was Henry's cardiologist's assistant who found him. So, it was as meant to be as one could say, since we had lost Henry almost a month before. We never admit, or we rarely do, that Henry has left us, since he was so impossibly wonderful that he was almost mythological even as a full-blooded, pink-eared, white and grey furred litter-mate of Larry.
Bernie, like Larry and all of his forebears, has become the hero of his own epic. Bernillius, Bernoolius, BERNSTEIN (when he's engaged in mischief), Purrnee, etc. is called "The Master of Joy" around here. Recently, he and Larry went to the vet. It was Larry's first time at Bernie's vet and he had a panic attack. So Larry jumped into Bernie's carrier. At first, I separated them, thinking that would be too close for comfort (it's the largest carrier Sherpa makes and it held Fred who neared 25 pounds so it was just big enough for two). Then Larry threw up on his own carrier and I put him back in with Bernie and he absolutely calmed down. Bernie turned to his side and cradled Larry. It wasn't the first mensch-like act of Bernie's, but the one that confirmed that our cherry-nosed wonder is also a full-blown MENSCH. He held Larry the whole ride home and Larry didn't let out a peep. When I lowered the carrier onto the living room floor and unzipped it, they took their time coming out. The two were snuggling comfortably and they peered out of the carrier and slowly emerged. Bernie had infused Larry with warmth, calm and love, and when he calmed down,he returned it. They stayed very close for a while, Bernie making sure Larry was okay even out of the carrier before they returned to their normal routine of bouncing and leaping and teasing and the occasional play-fight. He also, as the SECOND PICTURE shows, is a staunch advocate for all good things (like playing with the cat dancer and cuddling) and that is the look he gives me when he feels I am not listening.
We begin what will probably turn into a two-week celebration (to allow me to take care of some other things which have come up and give Bernie the attention he deserves). He has just had the inaugural meal -- a small plate of steamed broccoli, his favorite food.
Happy Bernie Weeks! We couldn't be doing anything without you, you little miracle, you!
(To see Bernie's first intro on this blog, go to
http://saddleshoe.blogspot.com/2007/08/meet-cousin-bernie.html)
Can you figure out which picture was Bernie THREE YEARS AGO?
01 August, 2010
Massachusets deploys National Guard overseas. Reconsidered.
(With apologies for the digressions in the initial version....)
About six years ago, I was walking down the streets of Provincetown, Mass, thinking, "I wonder if the Taliban is going to come down here and do a raid on a gay bar?" Maybe THAT's why that woman sitting next to us in the audience in which we were watching the comic Leah DeLaria had such a long skirt on?
When I wrote about the loss of Michael Gonzales (INNOCENT BYSTANDERS), I shielded myself from thinking about another kind of loss familiar to probably every New York City public school teacher: the loss of students who are in the armed forces. Just in the past year, one of my first students, by now a 41 year old father of three, signed up for his National Guard in Utah. I expect, like those men and women from Massachusets who were deployed today to Afghanistan, he will be sent off to "do construction projects and bolster our nation's security around the world," as the reporter said at the end of the feature story which popped up after the one about the "yellow lobster" which was actually what had brought me to the Yahoo News site.
It kind of reminded me of my last visit to Provincetown during which my friend Karen did have lobster and during which I did not once think about terrorists of any kind. It's funny. We were actually pushed out of New York airspace that night because then President Bush was leaving New York just after his speech to the Republican convention. If he, or anyone had really thought there were terrorists en route to or from Massachusets, we shouldn't have been able to hear Air Force One ask for permission for take off. Let's see, he wasn't leaving JFK...probably he was leaving from White Plains and anyone with a friend who had a plane and was in the air at that moment knew exactly when. But, I digress...kind of. It's a great party story. Losing my students has become too popular a blog story.
It's not just the possibility of their deaths which upsets me and my own feelings about the futility of this war, but the cycle which lead them to choose the armed forces as a career. NOT ONE had ever told me that he/she dreamed about being a soldier. Serving your country is an honor which I do not mean to denigrate. The fact is that our economy has driven some of my smartest students to do tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. They tell me they are okay and they are proud of their work. First and foremost, they wanted to be working in challenging professions. They wanted to be in positions of leadership. Trying to balance college and supporting their families wasn't the only deterrent which kept them from making alternative choices. The reality that they could turn around after all that hard academic work and find an economy poised on grinding down their bodies and spirits without even benefits was a risk they found to profoundly painful to accept. It's a fate worse than death. Literally.
For all the time we spend debating the morality of the works of literature they read, whether children can read about gay parents when they probably watch them on TV anyway, we don't spend enough time arguing about what vocational skills we are giving our students. The liberal education was intended to free the mind. When it was conceived, it presumed a life in scholarship, law or the priesthood. Of those three professions, only the last offers any security and ladder of promotion. I'm not being facetious; I mean to speak in the plainest terms possible. No matter how much reading, writing and arithmetic are essential to survival, they are not enough. No matter how beautifully conceived a research project is for an honors class, it is not enough. Getting a 5 on the AP of anything, is not enough. Very few doctors and lawyers today can break out into practices of their own. And if they do, who helps them when, in their first years, they can't afford to fix things or can't afford classes which will help them compete in the marketplace. But these are, by far, not the weakest members of our economy. Take the "A" student with an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature. Who knew that he/she would likely teach classes the way women and men in sweatshops sewed garments -- both groups would be paid for "piecework." Most scholars have to teach and get paid by the class -- 3000 a pop. So, if you could teach ten classes a term, you could earn, before taxes, about 30,000. There are some people who are lucky enough to find tenure track jobs which often start at salaries in the 20 and 30 thousand dollar range. I hear that outside of New York, you can possibly survive on that, but that's not equitable payment for someone who has spent 8 years after high school dedicated to any field.
I'm not worried JUST about those kids who fail their exams. What I'm worried about is that BOTH the kids who do well and those who don't will be joining the National Guard whether they like it or not because they won't have many options.
When my doctor asks me if the book I am reading, Simon Schama's AMERICA'S FUTURE tells if we are going to become "The United States of China," I'm a bit embarrassed. Schama is tracing our ideas of what an American is -- but is that question even in the "bottom line" anymore? Goldman Sachs isn't treasonous when it makes choices which destroy the power of our economy and our government. But, when we bargain for fair treatment as teachers --whether it be for money or respect--we are vilified in the press. We rarely get to argue whether we WANT to be the United States of China. Besides our loss of money and power, what else do we care about in that equation? How can we care, for example, about our potential job losses to new immigrants and to our growing bad credit, when we haven't even faced the fact that Americans lose these jobs because they no longer pay a fair wage and that we keep borrowing money to fix an economy which needs serious re-envisioning? What do we want our children to be? What choices are we creating now for them to consider in the future?
I'm sure some of my students clicked on the story about the Yellow lobster and then went on to the story about the National Guard. Do you think they wondered why so many young and not-so-young people had joined a part of our military which people don't usually hear about? Do you think they wondered why many of them were people of color?
But, it doesn't get so far in the minds of a ten year old and maybe not always in a that of a tenth grader, who may, instead be wondering how you fish for lobster, why are yellow lobsters rare and can we go to Red Lobster tomorrow? And the practical questions of the trade as well as the marine biology are things they should understand. When they fight us off so hard, they do so both because they sometimes find us too hard and too irrelevant. They believe we are supposed to be training them for the hard work and all the possibilities of adulthood? We are supposed to be helping them find life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Are we?
About six years ago, I was walking down the streets of Provincetown, Mass, thinking, "I wonder if the Taliban is going to come down here and do a raid on a gay bar?" Maybe THAT's why that woman sitting next to us in the audience in which we were watching the comic Leah DeLaria had such a long skirt on?
When I wrote about the loss of Michael Gonzales (INNOCENT BYSTANDERS), I shielded myself from thinking about another kind of loss familiar to probably every New York City public school teacher: the loss of students who are in the armed forces. Just in the past year, one of my first students, by now a 41 year old father of three, signed up for his National Guard in Utah. I expect, like those men and women from Massachusets who were deployed today to Afghanistan, he will be sent off to "do construction projects and bolster our nation's security around the world," as the reporter said at the end of the feature story which popped up after the one about the "yellow lobster" which was actually what had brought me to the Yahoo News site.
It kind of reminded me of my last visit to Provincetown during which my friend Karen did have lobster and during which I did not once think about terrorists of any kind. It's funny. We were actually pushed out of New York airspace that night because then President Bush was leaving New York just after his speech to the Republican convention. If he, or anyone had really thought there were terrorists en route to or from Massachusets, we shouldn't have been able to hear Air Force One ask for permission for take off. Let's see, he wasn't leaving JFK...probably he was leaving from White Plains and anyone with a friend who had a plane and was in the air at that moment knew exactly when. But, I digress...kind of. It's a great party story. Losing my students has become too popular a blog story.
It's not just the possibility of their deaths which upsets me and my own feelings about the futility of this war, but the cycle which lead them to choose the armed forces as a career. NOT ONE had ever told me that he/she dreamed about being a soldier. Serving your country is an honor which I do not mean to denigrate. The fact is that our economy has driven some of my smartest students to do tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. They tell me they are okay and they are proud of their work. First and foremost, they wanted to be working in challenging professions. They wanted to be in positions of leadership. Trying to balance college and supporting their families wasn't the only deterrent which kept them from making alternative choices. The reality that they could turn around after all that hard academic work and find an economy poised on grinding down their bodies and spirits without even benefits was a risk they found to profoundly painful to accept. It's a fate worse than death. Literally.
For all the time we spend debating the morality of the works of literature they read, whether children can read about gay parents when they probably watch them on TV anyway, we don't spend enough time arguing about what vocational skills we are giving our students. The liberal education was intended to free the mind. When it was conceived, it presumed a life in scholarship, law or the priesthood. Of those three professions, only the last offers any security and ladder of promotion. I'm not being facetious; I mean to speak in the plainest terms possible. No matter how much reading, writing and arithmetic are essential to survival, they are not enough. No matter how beautifully conceived a research project is for an honors class, it is not enough. Getting a 5 on the AP of anything, is not enough. Very few doctors and lawyers today can break out into practices of their own. And if they do, who helps them when, in their first years, they can't afford to fix things or can't afford classes which will help them compete in the marketplace. But these are, by far, not the weakest members of our economy. Take the "A" student with an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature. Who knew that he/she would likely teach classes the way women and men in sweatshops sewed garments -- both groups would be paid for "piecework." Most scholars have to teach and get paid by the class -- 3000 a pop. So, if you could teach ten classes a term, you could earn, before taxes, about 30,000. There are some people who are lucky enough to find tenure track jobs which often start at salaries in the 20 and 30 thousand dollar range. I hear that outside of New York, you can possibly survive on that, but that's not equitable payment for someone who has spent 8 years after high school dedicated to any field.
I'm not worried JUST about those kids who fail their exams. What I'm worried about is that BOTH the kids who do well and those who don't will be joining the National Guard whether they like it or not because they won't have many options.
When my doctor asks me if the book I am reading, Simon Schama's AMERICA'S FUTURE tells if we are going to become "The United States of China," I'm a bit embarrassed. Schama is tracing our ideas of what an American is -- but is that question even in the "bottom line" anymore? Goldman Sachs isn't treasonous when it makes choices which destroy the power of our economy and our government. But, when we bargain for fair treatment as teachers --whether it be for money or respect--we are vilified in the press. We rarely get to argue whether we WANT to be the United States of China. Besides our loss of money and power, what else do we care about in that equation? How can we care, for example, about our potential job losses to new immigrants and to our growing bad credit, when we haven't even faced the fact that Americans lose these jobs because they no longer pay a fair wage and that we keep borrowing money to fix an economy which needs serious re-envisioning? What do we want our children to be? What choices are we creating now for them to consider in the future?
I'm sure some of my students clicked on the story about the Yellow lobster and then went on to the story about the National Guard. Do you think they wondered why so many young and not-so-young people had joined a part of our military which people don't usually hear about? Do you think they wondered why many of them were people of color?
But, it doesn't get so far in the minds of a ten year old and maybe not always in a that of a tenth grader, who may, instead be wondering how you fish for lobster, why are yellow lobsters rare and can we go to Red Lobster tomorrow? And the practical questions of the trade as well as the marine biology are things they should understand. When they fight us off so hard, they do so both because they sometimes find us too hard and too irrelevant. They believe we are supposed to be training them for the hard work and all the possibilities of adulthood? We are supposed to be helping them find life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Are we?
25 July, 2010
An absolutely irrelevant note about foreign policy
Last night, a cab driver assaulted me.
No, it wasn't the usual, "You nice lady. You married, Miss?"
It was about healthcare. I spent about 15 minutes (the entire ride) trying to explain to a man to whom I just explained the word "breathing," why our country didn't have national healthcare already.
"Germany, England, France, you pay nothing. Obama say in 2014 we pay a little bit. This good plan, Miss?"
He was a leaden pipe full of hot water, and if his long beard weren't black, I'd've thought it was steam. Here we were, Jew and Muslim driving toward the neighborhood we both live in (Bensonhurst/Dyker Heights), and we weren't talking about "loneliness" or Israel.
In the past, drivers, and in fact, people in cafes, my left-wing psychiatrist -- a fair number of people have engaged me on foreign policy early in conversations. I learned about Israel's latest controversy while sitting in the waiting room of my psychiatrist's office --reading TIME magazine. Yet, we didn't get into it at all in session. We were both more concerned about our pets and about the obvious necessity to increase my anti-anxiety medication. The latter has become a staple of how I "deal with" the state of our economy and my job. In fact, economics has ruled most of my social and medical life since Bloomberg took office.
Yesterday afternoon, at a cafe, no one even bothered to put the closed captioning on when our Secretary of State Hlilary Clinton was on CNN. Perhaps she is aware of her own place as a kind of throwback to another time. I was shocked to find she has now grown her hair long and set it in the "Upsweet" popular in the 1960's. Will the Jackie-O make-up follow?
I still have no idea what announcement the former-First Lady/Presidential Candidate and powerfully staunch hawk was making. At a time when world economies continue to be in need of serious vision, hardly anyone cares about what we hope to be our foreign policy. Excepting of course those unfortunate people whom we might be bombing, boycotting or bungling attempts to provide humanitarian aid. Sadly, most of those people are really facing the results of our economic policy which has remained stagnant since we voted in resounding force for change back in 2008. Take those receiving the humanitarian aid known as unemployment. --I know they're not the same, but de facto, they are. In a WORLD which lives on credit and in which money is no longer measured by the gold standard, the question of what we pay and what we afford has to do with psychology and not finance. If that weren't true, everyone would've pulled their money out of the stock market years ago as very few sectors of any economy are truly flourishing. Unregulated capitalism leads to a lot of cheap goods, bankruptcies and reorganizations as well as monopolies. None of this provides much entry-way for the average citizen to benefit. No Milton Friedman fan can defend/explain or fix what happened in Russia if you want proof on a smaller scale than our worldwide dilemmas.--
What I did know this week was that President Obama said it was important for Congress to "do the right thing" and extend unemployment. That's about as strong and open-hearted a phrase he has used in some time on a liberal cause and it made me hopeful. Our President doesn't want to see people suffering. That's important.
It did not give me an answer for what to tell my driver. In the end, we haggled about his tip, which I had mistakenly not added using the new touchscreens mandated by our lovely Mayor. This is perhaps because I pushed the button to turn the screen OFF very hard possibly damaging it., so that I would not have to watch the especially bad and tourist-driven television it will proffer it I did not. In the end, I reviewed the receipt multiple times and handed the driver much less than the percentage I would've tapped in had the machine been working properly. I resented the argument, though I knew it was his right to make it. I wasn't about to NOT tip him, but there were more polite ways to raise the issue that the tip did not seem to be calculated. For someone who had been fervent, but open to my opinions in an overall discussion of economics, the push and shove on dollars was a little unsettling. If I hadn't been so tired and were generally a more confident person, I might've used it as what we is called a "teachable moment." The same tension with which he fought over three versus five dollars is what drives the argument against healthcare. It is also what some people call, "bad business" as it's not the kind of behavior that makes someone want to step into your cab again. Since it is truly random whether or not a driver sees a passenger again, I guess it doesn't matter. It is an industry, then, which can be used as a microcosm for examining our economy. Essentially, it is driven by an exchange between two people and the value of the service fluctuates depending on individual moods and the weather. Like a magnate, a cab company survives by having so many cabs that they can cover their losses. There is very little ability to control quality beyond a minimum. (I get out of cars that don't have air conditioning or heat and I suspect that's where most people draw a line if they have made the decision that they need to pay the fare.) It is a mobile marketplace complete with haggling salespeople.
If he was asked, I am sure the driver would prefer not to have to raise the issue of a tip. I'd certainly prefer that the agreed upon price somehow provided him with adequate sustenance. But, that would require a decision by producer and consumer on what the set value of the entire service IS. What does the driver deserve to make? What does a human being require for healthcare?
Of course, most of the time, I take the subway or bus, but I was trying to avoid the death-claw of the humidity on the platform last night. I was able to do so, in no small part, owing to the long history of labor bargaining for a fair wage and benefits. But, someone who isn't so lucky, who might take the train and find breathing suddenly difficult might then be rushed to the ER. There, he or she would receive services which, if he/she is uninsured, for which he/she won't be able to pay. Because we are not as cold-hearted a people in New York as people think, our hospitals don't push people toward their deaths and refuse them treatment. Yet, we don't just agree to provide all members of our city with insurance because we would rather engage in daily bargaining than commit our wallets. (What is a healthcare plan which will be implemented in 2014 but conjecture -- at most, a gauntlet on a bargaining table.) I wonder at how much this would really cost us if we sat down and considered:
1) What REALLY is a fair amount of profit? Yes, there is unfair profit. Maybe we should call it unreasonable profit -- a profit margin which will ultimately make it impossible for any consumer to afford the product. That requires a certain honesty on everyone's part. For example: No one needs a 150 dollars sneaker which is not orthopedic and no one should be making 140 times what it cost to make the sneaker, assuming that it took some Indonesian woman at Nike one whole day to make that pair for her wage of one dollar.
2) What is the REAL COST of our treatment? The price of the 15 minute glance-over and routine blood tests most people get, at best? Is that the treatment which our doctors really think is enough if they were being paid adequately? Not being as liquid as my mother was, I go see doctors who take my insurance. Even when they are good, they are still overworked and behind schedule.
3) Do you find it unpleasant to step over homeless and sick people on your way to work, or do you just consider this some reaffirmation of Calvinism, Fascism -- or do you just enjoy the feeling of being inside a painting by Francis Bacon?
If we thought about all of this, we might then turn up the volume on Mrs. Clinton, as, I am sure something she was talking about had to do with paying for bombs or humanitarian aid. For the value of the former, see question 3 again
No, it wasn't the usual, "You nice lady. You married, Miss?"
It was about healthcare. I spent about 15 minutes (the entire ride) trying to explain to a man to whom I just explained the word "breathing," why our country didn't have national healthcare already.
"Germany, England, France, you pay nothing. Obama say in 2014 we pay a little bit. This good plan, Miss?"
He was a leaden pipe full of hot water, and if his long beard weren't black, I'd've thought it was steam. Here we were, Jew and Muslim driving toward the neighborhood we both live in (Bensonhurst/Dyker Heights), and we weren't talking about "loneliness" or Israel.
In the past, drivers, and in fact, people in cafes, my left-wing psychiatrist -- a fair number of people have engaged me on foreign policy early in conversations. I learned about Israel's latest controversy while sitting in the waiting room of my psychiatrist's office --reading TIME magazine. Yet, we didn't get into it at all in session. We were both more concerned about our pets and about the obvious necessity to increase my anti-anxiety medication. The latter has become a staple of how I "deal with" the state of our economy and my job. In fact, economics has ruled most of my social and medical life since Bloomberg took office.
Yesterday afternoon, at a cafe, no one even bothered to put the closed captioning on when our Secretary of State Hlilary Clinton was on CNN. Perhaps she is aware of her own place as a kind of throwback to another time. I was shocked to find she has now grown her hair long and set it in the "Upsweet" popular in the 1960's. Will the Jackie-O make-up follow?
I still have no idea what announcement the former-First Lady/Presidential Candidate and powerfully staunch hawk was making. At a time when world economies continue to be in need of serious vision, hardly anyone cares about what we hope to be our foreign policy. Excepting of course those unfortunate people whom we might be bombing, boycotting or bungling attempts to provide humanitarian aid. Sadly, most of those people are really facing the results of our economic policy which has remained stagnant since we voted in resounding force for change back in 2008. Take those receiving the humanitarian aid known as unemployment. --I know they're not the same, but de facto, they are. In a WORLD which lives on credit and in which money is no longer measured by the gold standard, the question of what we pay and what we afford has to do with psychology and not finance. If that weren't true, everyone would've pulled their money out of the stock market years ago as very few sectors of any economy are truly flourishing. Unregulated capitalism leads to a lot of cheap goods, bankruptcies and reorganizations as well as monopolies. None of this provides much entry-way for the average citizen to benefit. No Milton Friedman fan can defend/explain or fix what happened in Russia if you want proof on a smaller scale than our worldwide dilemmas.--
What I did know this week was that President Obama said it was important for Congress to "do the right thing" and extend unemployment. That's about as strong and open-hearted a phrase he has used in some time on a liberal cause and it made me hopeful. Our President doesn't want to see people suffering. That's important.
It did not give me an answer for what to tell my driver. In the end, we haggled about his tip, which I had mistakenly not added using the new touchscreens mandated by our lovely Mayor. This is perhaps because I pushed the button to turn the screen OFF very hard possibly damaging it., so that I would not have to watch the especially bad and tourist-driven television it will proffer it I did not. In the end, I reviewed the receipt multiple times and handed the driver much less than the percentage I would've tapped in had the machine been working properly. I resented the argument, though I knew it was his right to make it. I wasn't about to NOT tip him, but there were more polite ways to raise the issue that the tip did not seem to be calculated. For someone who had been fervent, but open to my opinions in an overall discussion of economics, the push and shove on dollars was a little unsettling. If I hadn't been so tired and were generally a more confident person, I might've used it as what we is called a "teachable moment." The same tension with which he fought over three versus five dollars is what drives the argument against healthcare. It is also what some people call, "bad business" as it's not the kind of behavior that makes someone want to step into your cab again. Since it is truly random whether or not a driver sees a passenger again, I guess it doesn't matter. It is an industry, then, which can be used as a microcosm for examining our economy. Essentially, it is driven by an exchange between two people and the value of the service fluctuates depending on individual moods and the weather. Like a magnate, a cab company survives by having so many cabs that they can cover their losses. There is very little ability to control quality beyond a minimum. (I get out of cars that don't have air conditioning or heat and I suspect that's where most people draw a line if they have made the decision that they need to pay the fare.) It is a mobile marketplace complete with haggling salespeople.
If he was asked, I am sure the driver would prefer not to have to raise the issue of a tip. I'd certainly prefer that the agreed upon price somehow provided him with adequate sustenance. But, that would require a decision by producer and consumer on what the set value of the entire service IS. What does the driver deserve to make? What does a human being require for healthcare?
Of course, most of the time, I take the subway or bus, but I was trying to avoid the death-claw of the humidity on the platform last night. I was able to do so, in no small part, owing to the long history of labor bargaining for a fair wage and benefits. But, someone who isn't so lucky, who might take the train and find breathing suddenly difficult might then be rushed to the ER. There, he or she would receive services which, if he/she is uninsured, for which he/she won't be able to pay. Because we are not as cold-hearted a people in New York as people think, our hospitals don't push people toward their deaths and refuse them treatment. Yet, we don't just agree to provide all members of our city with insurance because we would rather engage in daily bargaining than commit our wallets. (What is a healthcare plan which will be implemented in 2014 but conjecture -- at most, a gauntlet on a bargaining table.) I wonder at how much this would really cost us if we sat down and considered:
1) What REALLY is a fair amount of profit? Yes, there is unfair profit. Maybe we should call it unreasonable profit -- a profit margin which will ultimately make it impossible for any consumer to afford the product. That requires a certain honesty on everyone's part. For example: No one needs a 150 dollars sneaker which is not orthopedic and no one should be making 140 times what it cost to make the sneaker, assuming that it took some Indonesian woman at Nike one whole day to make that pair for her wage of one dollar.
2) What is the REAL COST of our treatment? The price of the 15 minute glance-over and routine blood tests most people get, at best? Is that the treatment which our doctors really think is enough if they were being paid adequately? Not being as liquid as my mother was, I go see doctors who take my insurance. Even when they are good, they are still overworked and behind schedule.
3) Do you find it unpleasant to step over homeless and sick people on your way to work, or do you just consider this some reaffirmation of Calvinism, Fascism -- or do you just enjoy the feeling of being inside a painting by Francis Bacon?
If we thought about all of this, we might then turn up the volume on Mrs. Clinton, as, I am sure something she was talking about had to do with paying for bombs or humanitarian aid. For the value of the former, see question 3 again
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