Category: Random Thoughts

The Calling of Stewie

I’m now at the age where many of my peers are dealing with serious medical issues and too many have passed away. I’ve been pretty lucky so far, though my list of aches and pains gets longer all the time and it’s obvious that trend is unlikely to change. Seems like I’ve had more colonoscopies in recent years than is reasonable, particularly since they always tell me the same thing afterward: “You’ll be fine”.

I recently realized my circulation isn’t what it used to be, as I almost always get that “pins and needles” sensation in my left hand after an hour or so of bike riding. I could try tweaking the set-up of my bike to take some stress off the hands, I guess, but I also get the same feeling if I sleep on my hand “wrong”, and there’s not much I can do to modify my sleep set-up.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem like a big deal as I just have to shake out my hand for a couple of seconds and it’s back to normal. It happened the other night – I was sort of half awake and half asleep having a vivid dream in which my left hand had that numb feeling. I started to shake it out when I heard, very clearly, the words, “Matthew 12:13”.

I said (possibly out loud), “What!?” And for the second time, I clearly heard “Matthew 12:13”. Now I was fully awake. I thought, “Wow, that was weird!”

Although I do have a couple of bibles on my bookshelf, I virtually never consult them, much less actually read them, and I have no real familiarity with their various books, chapters and verses. But this incident made me want to investigate right away. I finished shaking out the pins and needles, stumbled over to the bookshelf, and opened my New Oxford Annotated Bible to Matthew 12:13, which says,

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.

Hmm.  What to make of this?  Coincidence?  Someone “up there” trying to tell me something?

Does this dream/incident mean that if I accept Jesus as my personal savior (or whatever the correct protocol might be), then I won’t get any more pins and needles, no matter how long I ride the bike or how I might sleep on my hand?

Follow me!

Or maybe it means that I’ll be better situated somehow in the afterlife if I change my beliefs now? I’ve always felt about 95% sure I knew what happened when you died, and 100% sure that even if I was wrong about it, my guess was closer than what the clergy has historically warned about.

Jan Van Eyck renders Dante

My guess is that after you die you will experience all the same sights, sounds, smells and other sensations that you experience between the time when your colonoscopy doctor says to the anesthesiologist, “OK, let’s get started” and when the recovery room nurse says, “Sir, are you awake? You’ll be fine”.

So I’ve never felt any real need to get on better terms with Jesus or anyone else who might want to communicate with me when I’m half asleep.

At first glance, the meaning Matthew 12:13 seems to be basically what the underlying theme of everything in the New Testament is, i.e. that one way or another you’ll be a lot better off if you have faith in you-know-who than if you don’t.

But it isn’t that simple. The context of the verse is that the Pharisees were trying to discredit Jesus by pointing out that he shouldn’t be fixing anyone’s hand on the Sabbath because healing is work and the commandments say not to work on the Sabbath. Jesus rebuts them with a couple of aphorisms and they go off in a huff to resume their scheming.

Anyway, the lesson of the whole incident is not that God will fix your hand if you ask Him. He’s God, not Santa Claus. No, the lesson is that God cares much more about the spirit of the law than the letter of the law. Doing good is more important than anything else no matter when you’re doing it, even if you bend a rule or two in the process.

Now, why exactly this message needed to be transmitted to me in this fashion, and who exactly was transmitting it, remains mysterious to me, at least for the moment. Who knows? Maybe it will all be revealed during my next colonoscopy.

In any case, I’ll be fine.

Eclipse hoax

They’re at it again. It’s the same old crowd of leftist intellectuals with their oh-so-fancy “science” degrees, probably financed by that extreme left-wing kook, George Soros. The same crowd who laughs at the people in the flyover states, calls them “deplorable”, and thinks they’re smarter than you.

Now they’re saying that in a couple of hours from now, there will be an “eclipse” of the sun across the United States. Don’t fall for it!

They want you to leave work and buy their special glasses. It’s the same old anti-American agenda we’ve seen a million times before. These are the same people who want you to think we landed on the moon in 1969, or that the polar ice cap is melting because human activity is changing the climate. The same people who want to cover up what really happened in Roswell.

They control the media and the banks and the government. Don’t let them control you!

It’s the same crowd that’s always claiming their “scientific method” allows them to predict things that will happen based on what’s already been “proven”. Now they’re telling you the sky will go dark in a little while. Don’t you believe it.

Who do they think they are? God? They don’t even think the Bible is true! Don’t fall for it.

It’s all a fake. Fake news. Fake science. I promise you this: if the sky actually does go dark this afternoon, I’ll personally take my kids out of home-school and down to the free clinic for an MMR shot. That’s how sure I am that these pointy-headed liberal “professors” are all wet.

Wake up, Sheeple!

 

 

Happy birthday, Social Security

On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, thereby creating a “safety net” for retirees who may not have saved enough to get by on their own after they stopped working. Unemployment was close to the all-time 1933 high of 24% in 1935, still at about 20%, with over 10 million unemployed.

At the time of the enactment, there were 37 workers paying in to the system for every retiree drawing out of it. Life expectancy was 61 years in 1935, so fewer people ever got to the point of collecting, and those that did collected for a much shorter time than they would today.

Today, there are only three workers paying in to the system for every retiree receiving benefits, and this number is expected to shrink even further going forward. The average life expectancy is now about 85, so many more people will collect Social Security and for much much longer.

Something’s got to give. The main problem, as we have seen most recently in the A.C.A. Repeal/Replace effort, is that once an entitlement is put in place, it is very, very hard indeed to take it away.

The apparent solutions to the new SSA math would be to extend the age of retirement so that there would be fewer retirees collecting for shorter periods, and also to institute further means tests for benefits. But it isn’t that simple.

The problem is  compounded by pressures on corporate leadership to reduce all benefits to employees, which are the biggest drag on their profits, the poor job prospects for older workers in the digital age, the freedom of a poorly-regulated financial industry to siphon off large chunks of “retirement” savings in the form of fees,  and the inevitable migration of jobs to cheaper labor markets.

dil1

I suppose all this is one of the main causes of younger people’s resentment against the Baby Boomer generation. Their view of it is the Boomers are selfish, entitled, and want to get paid now, while flipping off their kids and grand-kids who will have to fend for themselves. Again, it’s not that simple.

boomer1

Speaking as a Boomer who paid in to this pyramid scheme for decades, I certainly do want to get paid now, and, yes, I feel entitled to it. If that makes me selfish in the bargain, then so be it.

I fully understand that when the revolution begins, they will be coming for me first. Keep your eye out for me on the bread line – I’ll be the one carrying the sign that says, “Will work for C.O.P.D. meds”.

 

Republicans rising

In recent weeks, Tweety has made something of a point of complaining that a simple majority of 51  senators is not enough to enact his agenda, and that the filibuster rule, which generally works to require 60 votes, needs to go.

fili

Like everything else that flies out of his Twitter, he got these ideas from watching “Fox & Friends”, where people like Sean Duffy, Republican representative from Wisconsin, are putting it forward.

duffy

For the moment, we have seen that even abandoning the filibuster rule wouldn’t be enough, as only 48 Republicans voted for repeal of the A.C.A., but you can be assured that the Republicans will do whatever they feel they need to, rules and tradition and bi-partisanship be damned, as was shown in the case of the Gorsuch vote (Tweety’s only “accomplishment” to date).

But they may not have to change the rules. Republican voters may give them what they need to get over 60 senators. Duffy pointed out that, since the passage of the A.C.A seven years ago, Republicans have gained “1000 seats” nationwide.  Politifact confirms the truth of this scary fact.

The big gains are mainly in state legislatures. Ballotpedia notes that the Republican Party held more seats in 82 of 99 state legislative chambers (82.3 percent) in January 2017 than it did in January 2009.

“During President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, Democrats experienced a net loss of 968 state legislative seats, the largest net loss of state legislative seats in this category since World War II. The second-largest loss occurred following Dwight D. Eisenhower’s two terms in office, when Republicans were handed a net loss of 843 state legislative seats.

In addition, Democrats have lost  their majority of seats in the Senate, as well as over 60 seats in the House. And 12 governorships, too.

I don’t know whether six months of Trump has done anything to stem this rising tide, but I doubt it. The “Lock Her Up – No Regerts” crowd is still firmly behind their man as far as I can tell, even while the reality-based voters are more and more sickened by the incompetence, recklessness, greed, vulgarity, mendacity, and willful ignorance of the current administration.

This article sums up our feelings well, but until it appears somewhere other than the eastern elite lying fake media, it just doesn’t matter.

fear

 

Healthcare in the good old days

Ron Johnson, Republican Senator from Wisconsin, pointed out the other day that,

“In the ‘40s, 68 cents of every health care dollar was actually paid for by the patient. Today it’s only 11 cents. So nobody cares really what they pay for anything, which is why costs run out of control.”

He was saying that we’ve become a nation of self-entitled sissies that needs to straighten up and take some personal responsibility, because Obamacare is ruining everything. (I’m paraphrasing here. Liberally, if you’ll pardon the pun).

But hearing his argument took me aback a little, until I started to reflect on what a specious, dishonest load of bull it really is. He’s getting his facts from this 46-year-old report, and, yes, they’re basically correct. But it’s not the whole story.

First, let me say that the 1940’s were not the good old days, especially if you weren’t a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and no one should be pining for them. But I’ll just confine today’s discussion to health-related things.

We didn’t know much about a lot of things back then, e.g. that if you worked in a watch factory making radium dials, you shouldn’t be painting your nails with the stuff for smiles. This picture is from a book review of, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. The tagline is, “they literally glowed from their work- and then it started killing them.”

radium

Want to lose weight and have more energy? Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette!

Little kids played with the liquid mercury they took from old thermometers – so much fun! DDT was sprayed on everything until Rachel Carson started pointing out a few problems with it in the 1950’s.

Kids routinely suffered through all the childhood diseases back then, before immunologists figured out how to prevent them.

“Female troubles”? You’re in luck.

ultrasound

And you just might get polio and live the rest of your life with a serious disability, like President Franklin D. Roosevelt did. Or like Mitch McConnell.

In the 1940’s the life expectancy at birth for a man was 60 years. Now it’s 79.

Health care costs more today because we’ve made a lot of advances, and technology isn’t cheap. Think about all the stuff they can do for you today that didn’t exist back then: C/T scans, laser surgery, organ transplants. The list goes on and on. In those good old days, your GP came to your house if you were sick, and you didn’t have a lot of access to specialists.

The question boils down to whether we care about the health of our citizens as much as every other industrialized and “civilized” country on the planet. Or do we want a country where your health, good or bad, is an opportunity for an insurance or pharmaceutical CEO to pay himself even more obscenely.

To Ron Johnson, I would say: Why stop at the 1940’s if we’re looking for the ideal period in health care history?  Let’s go back to those glorious days of our nation’s beginnings, in the 1790’s. What did the founding fathers think? Back then, you were expected to pay 100% of your own “health care”.  None of this namby-pamby 11% nonsense. Freedom! You were a real American – self-sufficient, proud and strong.

And sick. If you had appendicitis, you were a goner. Toothache? Let me get my pliers out. Off your feed? Got some fresh leeches right here to give you a nice, healthy bleed.

But if we know one thing about Republican Senators, it’s that they practice what they preach. To prove it, the GOML Investigative Reporting Team has been able to acquire an actual photo of the contents of Ron Johnson’s medicine chest, and we now have evidence that he is NOT a hypocrite and he loves the Good Old Days.

snake

Kansas snapping out of it?

Republicans don’t like taxes. Or government. But they could tolerate government if it had no money to do anything, i..e. if taxes were cut.

Every Republican running at the state or national level in recent memory has repeated basically the same idea: if you cut taxes and reduce regulations, you will unlock the creativity and potential of America’s entrepreneurs and thus unleash the greatest job-creation engine the world has ever known.

And, yes, a few hard-working and visionary people will become incredibly rich, fulfilling the “American dream”, but the rising tide will lift all boats and the benefits of this unrestricted free-enterprise will be better living for all our citizens as the newly-created wealth “trickles down”.

This has been repeated so often that it has become accepted as actually true, at least to the people repeating it.  To them, the tax-and-spend Democrats are crippling the economy, killing jobs, and ruining America. Cut taxes on the rich and all will be well.

The problem is that there is absolutely no evidence that it works that way and plenty of evidence that it doesn’t. The only part that ever actually works as expected is that a few people become incredibly rich. The trickling down part has never happened, but that doesn’t seem to impact the message or the messengers.

Kansas elected Sam Brownback as governor in 2010, and he took office in 2011. He had represented Kansas’ second congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1994 to 1996, part of Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution, and then was elected to fill the Senate seat vacated by Bob Dole.

Brownback pursued deep reductions in tax rates early in his administration, calling them a “real live experiment” in conservative governance.

His Wikipedia entry sums him up this way:

He opposes same-sex marriage and describes himself as pro-life. As Governor, Brownback signed into law the largest income tax cut in Kansas’ history, eliminating state income taxes for business profits realized as non-wage income, affecting mainly IRS “S filers.” Brownback turned down a $31.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to set up an insurance exchange as part of the federal health care reform law, signed a bill that blocked tax breaks for abortion providers, banned sex-selection abortions, and declared that life begins at fertilization.

The income tax cut generated a substantial budget deficit, affecting core government service, particularly in education, and led many former and current Republican officials to criticize his leadership in the run-up to the 2014 gubernatorial election and endorse his Democratic opponent, Paul Davis. Polls taken in September 2016 gave Brownback an approval rating of 23%, the lowest rating of all 50 governors in the United States. Brownback was reelected in a close race with a plurality, a margin of 3.7%.

But life got better, right? Tons of new jobs were created by that entrepreneurial job-creation engine, right? The benefits trickled down as promised, didn’t they? The “real live experiment” showed that Republicans have been right all along, right?

No. Of course not.

From this WaPo article:

kansas economyThe legislature began this year’s session with the government in a deficit of $350 million, leaving lawmakers mulling more budget cuts. They have drained the state’s reserves of cash, diverting money meant for roads, delaying payments to pension funds and, in essence, forcing local agencies to make loans to the state government.

Last year, the governor pushed back the schedule for 25 construction projects planned around the state, the climax of delays intended to keep more cash on hand. In March, Kansas’s Supreme Court ruled that the lack of funding for public schools violated the state’s constitution, forcing lawmakers to act.

But Republican legislators in Kansas seem to be waking up a little bit.

In a decisive repudiation of conservative tax-cutting philosophy, Kansas Republicans voted this week to reverse deep tax cuts enacted by Gov. Sam Brownback (R), a move that lays bare the challenges of one-party control and the risks for Republicans in Washington pursuing a similar policy at the national level.

Kansas’s legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, but moderate GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats after it became clear that support for Brownback’s policies had become a major political liability. In last year’s election, a number of Brownback’s allies lost key races to Democrats or moderate Republicans opposed to the tax cuts. On Tuesday, 18 of the state’s 31 GOP senators and 49 of the 85 Republican members of the House voted against the governor.

If Republicans in Kansas are finally snapping out of this destructive trance, maybe there’s some hope for the rest of the country as well. Fingers crossed.

Trump women honor the fallen

The Trump women set an appropriately respectful tone over the Memorial Day weekend, honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedoms. Each woman rose to the occasion in her own unique way.

Melania chose to set a somber example by donning a $51,000 jacket by Dolce & Gabbana in Sicily, where the average annual income is $23,400.

meljacket

I’m certain she was thinking of the Allied Invasion of Sicily the whole time, in which 2811 American soldiers lost their lives and 6471 were wounded. The loss of American life there exceeded the losses on D-Day, when the allies landed in Normandy. About 5000 Canadian and British troops were also killed in Sicily, or missing in action, and 6500 wounded.

I didn’t read anything about a visit to the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery where 7861 of our dead are buried, but she must have gone there, right?

sicily

To add a bit more perspective to Melania’s wardrobe choices, consider that the CBO scoring of the revised Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act mentions some interesting figures:

Older Americans who make little money and buy individual insurance would see their premiums climb far beyond what they would be under Obamacare. A 64-year-old making $26,500 would pay $1,700 in premiums annually under Obamacare. In a state making those “moderate” changes to its market, that 64-year-old would pay $13,600, and in a state with no waivers, the cost would be $16,100. That’s more than nine times that person’s premium under the Affordable Care Act.

Ivanka, too, got into the right spirit over the weekend. Her blog suggested these activities as a way to honor the fallen:

Pack your basket with summer noodles and watermelon coolers

Heed Jamie Oliver’s ten tips for grilling the perfect feast

Wear all white. If we’re following the rules, it’s the first day we can wear it

Blast some tunes with this road-trip playlist

Cap the night off with a champagne popsicle.

popsicle

The champagne popsicle is a Memorial Day tradition here at GOML, the perfect way to respect and remember.

Meanwhile, the ever-sincere and never-exploitive Kellyanne Conway just about broke the internet with this tweet:

tweet1

Lots of appropriate responses to this in the above link, including,

“Our brave @POTUS got 5 draft deferments, attacked a gold star family, took a vet’s Purple Heart, and sent men to die in Yemen over dinner.”

“Grossly grossly embarrassing and disrespectful hearing this from conway Disgusting.”

“No it isn’t, if that were true you and @Potus would feel some sense of shame when denigrating one of their ranks.”

“Gold Star families are very special & I will never forget how rude and disgusting @realDonaldTrump @POTUS was to Khizr Khan and wife.”

 

 

 

Bird in a gilded cage

I generally have no sympathy for Melania Trump. Like the other Trump wives, she’s made her choices and can now live with them. She actually seems to have things pretty much her way, though, so no tears for her in any case. Doesn’t have to go to that backwater, D.C., doesn’t have to live with the man-baby, shops and gets her hair done at will.

I’m not aware if she has any “interests” beyond that, but that’s probably because I pay as much attention to Melania as I do Pippa Middleton, whoever that is.  All I know about Pippa is that he or she is in today’s Google news feed, and has something to do with being “royal” or whatever. It’s therefore probably not fair for me to have too many opinions about either of them – though being on everyone’s radar does seem like part of their shtick.

I do think it’s strange that on the one or two occasions that Trump has returned to New York since inauguration, he has actually stayed at his golf club in New Jersey, rather than Trump Tower with his lovely wife. Saving the taxpayers money, he explains. By creating yet another security nightmare at yet another location. Well, I guess he knows what he’s doing.

This picture is a bit sad, though. Even I have to admit that.

bird in a gilded cage

We’re used to seeing The First Lady walking dutifully behind The First Man-Baby, but Jesus Christ! Can’t these effing Saudis find one person who will talk to her? Or walk next to her? Or look at her? Isn’t there some American diplomat somewhere that could make this a little easier on her? How about a little dab of multiculturalism for the visiting dignitaries?

No. The women must remain as invisible as possible in the Kingdom. This is achieved in part by refusing to look at them when the infidels bring them along.

For the evening’s entertainment, the man-baby took part in a male-only traditional sword dance. So much fun.

sword

I’m not clear on where Melania spent the evening. Comparing nail polish with some of the wives somewhere out of sight? Couldn’t say.

Melania seems to me to be a bird in a gilded cage. I don’t know why anyone would aspire to this life or envy anyone in her position. Unlike the Saudi wives, however, it’s a role she chose for herself.

Mazel tov, fegelah.

Why no one is reading this

Spoiler Alert: it’s not because the content is less than brilliant 😉

Yesterday, I had an errand to do which required me to take a short subway ride on the Red Line during the morning rush. I went from Harvard to Charles/M.G.H. – in other words from one of the world’s most elite institutions to another, stopping at a third (M.I.T.) on the way.

I started thinking that more than a few people in the car were certainly involved in solving the problems of the present, and also predicting and solving the problems of the future. And then I thought about what a lousy job of predicting things the “futurists” have done in the past.

The futurists of the 1950’s completely whiffed on so many of the things they figured we’d have by now: flying cars made out of Saran-Wrap, elegant dinners consisting of a steak pill and a potato pill and a vintage wine pill, jet-packs we’d strap on for a short trip, a geodesic dome over the city ensuring clean air and perfect climate for all, and a million other things. But, OK, it was the 1950’s – of course they were wrong. Everyone then thought DDT, radium-dial watches, and a carton of Lucky Strikes would make life better for everyone, so you couldn’t really expect much accuracy from their predictions.

But the people who were predicting how the future would be just ten years ago completely missed the most important, pervasive, and life changing development of all: the “smart phone”.  On my brief subway ride, there were, I don’t know, maybe 150-200 people in the car I rode in, give or take.  Not one was reading a book or (gasp!) a newspaper, and not one was just looking blankly at nothing or taking a nap. Every one of them was absorbed in viewing a 5″ screen one foot from  their face.  Every. Single. Person.

phones

Get Off My Lawn is not very phone-friendly. Yes, you can read it on your phone and I know some of you do – but the format is different from what you’d see on a laptop or desktop. You may not see the “categories” links and you may not see the list of day-by day entries. There’s not much opportunity to select another article if you want to keep reading.

It’s rare for anyone to follow any of the links included in many GOML pieces. Clicking on links while using a phone is more cumbersome, and would take you to a different site from which it might not be that easy to return, rather just opening another tab or window as would happen on a desktop screen. And if you like what you’re reading, you are much less likely to email someone a link or forward it using the phone – cutting and pasting is out of the question, and even the usual “share” options are too much trouble. The “comments” that the regulars leave may not be seen on a phone without some determined effort, and you might not even think of leaving your own comment when using the phone.

But the real problem is the “long-form” nature of GOML. The reason people prefer Twitter to anything longer is partly that their attention span has been eroded by all the stimuli of our connected world, and partly because they’re busy and only read stuff on their phone while on the go. Long form + smart phone = meh.

Hell, I get bored just writing this stuff half the time – I totally understand why someone wouldn’t take the time to read it on a larger screen, much less a hand-held.

I had lunch the other day with an old friend from school days who said he’d been reading the blog and enjoyed it (Hey, Mouse, that’s you!).  I asked him if he shared any of it with his wife and he said she was so busy that she hardly had time even to talk to him, and that something like GOML just wouldn’t fit in. It’s too much of a commitment for most people.

I’ve had people tell me “I don’t read much any more” when I’ve tried to interest them in GOML. I suppose that could just be a polite way of saying they don’t really care about my particular take on things, but I’d rather blame smartphones.

Anyway, I’m sick of writing this now – I think I’ll go flip through Twitter for five minutes.

 

Immortal art and confirmed bachelors

It would be nice to live in a world where someone’s gender or sexual orientation was unremarkable and didn’t come up in workplace matters or in courtrooms – where it would actually be odd to refer to it.

But that’s not the world we live in now. Homosexuality, for example, is regarded very differently depending on where in the world you find yourself. In Iran, there is none, if you believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or in Chechnya, either.

The map below comes from this site, where you can find a breakdown of how gay people stand. There are ten countries were homosexuality now is punishable by death.

rightsmap

In general, North America and Western Europe are on the right side of history here and seem to be illuminating the path forward. But it’s a daily struggle.

Yesterday, Trump signed his  “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty” order, saying, “For too long the federal government has used the state as a weapon against people of faith.” The long national nightmare of persecution of Christians may be coming to an end. But many Evangelicals are not happy about it. They’re pretty miffed, in fact.

See, they were expecting Trump to include language that he had promised, and that had appeared in earlier drafts of the order, which would allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBT employees based on faith beliefs. Slate commented on the original language:

“a homophobic government employee could refuse to process a same-sex couple’s tax returns or Social Security benefits; federally funded religious charities could refuse to serve transgender people or women who’ve had abortions; and government contractors could fire all LGBTQ employees, as well as any workers who’ve had sex outside of marriage. Meanwhile, a homeless shelter or drug treatment program that receives federal funding could reject LGBTQ people at the door, citing religious beliefs.”

Apparently, Trump was somehow made to understand that in pleasing the evangelicals on this point, he would be displeasing a larger segment of voters, so his “core principles” kicked in, and he decided in favor of getting more “likes” and “re-tweets” with the new version, leaving the LGBT community alone, at least for now.

Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking about the Italian Renaissance (bet you didn’t see that coming!), because it’s pretty clear that it produced some of the most beautiful and enduring works of art mankind has ever seen, and many if not most of these works were produced by homosexuals. Moreover, the principal patrons and beneficiaries of this torrent of creativity were churches and other religious institutions, including and especially the very center of Christendom itself, the Vatican.

In Florence, where Lorenzo the Magnificent was amping up the patronage and philanthropy exemplified by his grandfather Cosimo de Medici, you had a raft of “confirmed bachelors”, working more-or-less contemporaneously, producing art that can only be called immortal.

Lorenzo death mask

Death Mask of Lorenzo de Medici, 1492 

Here’s an interesting read that explains the official attitude towards homosexuality at the time,

During the Renaissance, Florence developed a reputation for being pervaded with homosexuality – “sodomy” in the language of the time. Smarting from this reputation, reeling from population loss suffered during the Black Death, and pressured by homophobic clerics, in 1432 the city government set up a judicial panel called “The Office of the Night” exclusively to solicit and investigate charges of sodomy.

It goes on to say that although the population of Florence at the time was about 40,000, there were 17,000 arrests for sodomy during the 70-year tenure of the Office of the Night. That’s a lot – nearly half the male population for two generations.

But in the meantime, in the studios and palaces of the wealthy, the guys were hard at work.

The model for Verrocchio’s “David” is thought to be the fourteen-year-old Leonardo da Vinci:

david-verocchio

Donatello’s “David” really speaks for itself, n’est-ce pas?

david-donatello

Michelangelo’s “David” is the most famous and perhaps most beautiful:

Michelangelo-David

All these bachelors worked for the Medicis, as did lots of others, including Sandro Botticelli:

sandro-botticelli

Birth of Venus

When it was time to decorate St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Lorenzo lent out a few of his guys to the popes. Michelangelo and Botticelli painted the Sistine Chapel.

Botticelli’s frescoes:

botticelli frescoes

Michelangelo’s ceiling:

ceiling

Out in the main part of the Basilica you can find Michelangelo’s Pieta, perhaps the most beautiful single object ever created by human hands, done at age 24.

michelangelo_pieta_grt

Anyway, this is not the place to summarize the brilliant body of contributions made by “confirmed bachelors” to the world in general, and to the church in particular.

Today’s point is that it would be nice not to have to reference anything about the personal lives of these geniuses and to let their art stand on its own. Maybe we’ll all get to that point some day. But today I think it’s useful to point out to the National Association of Evangelicals that employing gay people is not something they need to promote laws against.

The GOML Bicentennial is here!

Yup, this is the 200th blog, post, column, article, bloviation, rant, or whatever that I’ve “published” here since “Get Off My Lawn” began in October.

Stewie’s been going at full speed without a break.

Kurt's dog

To the few of you that have been with us from the beginning and have read every word: thanks, and you may take the rest of the day off!

For those who have joined us more recently and may have missed some of the early ruminations, here are a few pieces selected randomly from the archives for you to sample. Some are from the days before GOML was open to comments, so it would be cool if anyone was moved to say something about any of them now.

Stewie votes in the Massachusetts Primary

Baseball and War: Parallel worlds in 1941

Revisit Stewie’s crystal ball from Inauguration Day

Privatizing public spaces in Boston

On the death of Castro

On the Trump campaign taking responsibility for incitement

On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor

Bernie voters have some responsibility

Climate change and Team Trump

 

Manspreading for Trump

There was a piece on the CBS Evening News last night that had some college kids explaining why they like Trump. I wasn’t listening to them, so I have no idea what their reasons were, but I’m sure they were just brilliant.

Anyway, glancing at the screen, I was struck by how the younger generation, at least those who like Trump, appeared to be oblivious to the concept of “Manspreading”.

I snapped this pic of the TV:

manspreading

According to the internet (is there any other source of information now?), Trump is a well-known manspreader and takes great pride in his manspreading skills.  He’s the best and provides a great role model for his young supporters.

Trump

Historical note:

elvis

Gotta get those coal jobs back

In 2014, the last year for which statistics are available, the total number of jobs throughout the entire coal industry in the U.S. was 76,572, including office workers, sales staff and all of the other individuals who work at coal-mining companies.

The Whole Foods company alone employs 72,650.

To put it in further perspective, the coal industry falls somewhere between the economic clout of travel agencies and the bowling industry, two other sectors that are on a downward trajectory in terms of overall employment.

coal

Looking at the above list, it strikes me that none of the other industries highlighted pose anything like the health risk to its employees that comes with coal-mining, or anywhere near the power to destroy the environment of all for the benefit of the few. Some will argue that skiing has a pretty bad environmental record (golf, too), but its impact is nothing like coal’s.

The coal industry gets the focus though, because it has been the subject of government regulation, and because Hillary Clinton has been unwise enough to disparage it. It is therefore the poster-industry for the “How Democrats Want To Destroy America” contingent, and the focus of various demagogues, most notably Donald Trump.  Coal also has the advantage of being geographically focused in a small region, so if you want to target a certain group of electors, coal is a good bet.

Of course, neither government regulation or Hillary Clinton are actually responsible for the long downward trend in coal jobs.  Automation is the culprit, and it’s been going on since 1920.

coal jobs

And, looking to the future, automation is only going to get a lot better still.  For a frightening peek at what robots already can do, check this:

There is nothing Trump can or will do to bring more jobs to the coal industry, although I’m confident he will be able to resume the environmental destruction.

Marathon Monday Mashup

A few random, loosely connected thoughts occur to me about Boston and the things people say about it on Marathon Monday, always a big festive occasion here.

1. Boston is a racist, small, parochial city that is, at its heart, deeply illiberal.

Yes, OK, we’ve heard this often and I have no great desire to argue about it. I suppose the stereotype still fits in several neighborhoods that resist change and hang onto their ethnic enclaves like grim death. I won’t mention them by name because it always pisses people off, but you can tell by looking at a map who the usual suspects are – they’re all in Boston proper, but separated from “downtown” by bodies of water, train tracks and highways, or other natural and man-made boundaries that make it easier to retain their unique “character”.

ted landsmark

The Bad Old Days

2. Boston is a world-class city, internationally known for its culture, institutions, and history of progressive thought and action.

Yes, this one is also true and I like it a lot better. In fact, I would say the truths here greatly outweigh the truths of No. 1 above. No one can match our hospitals and universities. Our museums and symphony are as good as anyone else’s. We’re a technology and financial center, and an incubator of new businesses and ideas.

Great institutions anchor the Longfellow Bridge

I’ve heard it said that there are more books per capita in Boston/Cambridge than anywhere else. We can be counted on to be on the right side of history when it’s time to vote. True, we’re not New York, and we’re all in bed by 1:00 A.M., but that’s a good thing, if you ask me.

rings

And if you like sports, Boston has it all – plenty of championships in the four major professional sports, and a wealth of great college programs as well, e.g. three national powerhouses in college hockey within walking distance from one another: Harvard, Boston University, and Boston College.  A fourth, Northeastern, is quickly closing in on this elite circle. And amateur sports flourish here, too, which brings me to:

3. The Boston Marathon is an international, cross-cultural magnet. It is the oldest annual marathon in the world, and arguably the most famous. Tens of thousands will run officially and unofficially, and some will be professional athletes, but the overwhelming majority are amateurs.  It will draw people from all over the world who have trained and sacrificed and traveled great distances for the honor of running “Boston”.

I’m writing this before the race, but I will go out on a limb and say that both the men’s and women’s winner will have come from a far away land and have an absolutely huge grin on their face despite the exhaustion of having gone all out for a couple of hours.

winners

Yesterday was a hot day, not a great day for running. But out on the Charles, lots of runners were getting in their last tune-ups before the race. Smiles all around, people taking selfies, locals and visitors in happy concatenation. A great day to be a Bostonian.

4. Martin Richard Park. Since the 2013 bombings, the Marathon has taken on a new and important aspect, beyond that of just sporting glory. It has come to embody the “Boston Strong” spirit of overcoming adversity, and not surrendering to our worst impulses. A new park and playground has opened up honoring Martin Richard, the little kid who lost his life in the bombings, and his family wants everyone to enjoy it and have good and positive feelings about it, like Martin would.

I hope it is successful and doesn’t become another in the unfortunate string of misuses and privatization of public space that we like to rail about here at GOML.

 

5. Doing harm while doing good. Apart from the Marathon, just about every weekend there is some sort of outdoor event where you can try to help an important cause. Maybe it’s a “walk for hunger” (shouldn’t that be a walk against hunger?), or one to support cancer research. It’s hard to keep up with them all, but everyone seems to want to do good.

But sometimes, even the well-meaning can do harm while trying to do good. I was out walking yesterday and noticed some pink plastic/rubber ties on stakes in the ground by the riverbank, obviously there to help participants navigate some part of a charitable event. Having just written a few days ago about the proliferation of plastics everywhere around us, I couldn’t get the following progression out of my mind:

pink1

pink 2

birds2

And, just to go out on a high note, here’s a bonus pic of a teenage goose on the ground and some teenage trash in the trees.

headphones

Man and nature in harmony. If only.

That’s it for my Marathon Monday Mashup. Peace out, people!

The customer is never right

In corporate America today, the transformation is almost complete. The big ones are just about done eating the little ones. How many options does the consumer really have now when choosing a bank? Or an internet/cell/TV provider? Or an airline that flies a particular route? Even the grocery stores are coming under the the control of the increasingly few corporate parents.

As consumers have their choices reduced, and as companies who built their business on great customer service are acquired by companies that didn’t, the whole notion of trying to do right by the customer is becoming obsolete.

If you need to call Intergalactic Cable because they just added another $15 to your monthly bill for no apparent reason, you’ll soon realize the effort required to get that money back will cost you a lot more than $15 in time, effort and aggravation.

You wade through a maze of voice menus and finally arrive on “hold” listening to a recorded voice tell you repeatedly that your call is important to them. Your call is not important to them. It’s a giant pain in the rear end and they hope you just go away. But don’t forget to pay your bill promptly to avoid penalties.

When someone finally does answer, you soon realize they are entry-level employees in the Philippines or India or somewhere else where labor is cheap. They read from a script, often in an accent you have trouble comprehending. They have no authority to address your issue. They try to sell you additional “services”. Would you like to enroll in their auto-pay program? They’ll just go right into your account every month without you needlessly worrying about the details. So convenient!

You may be transferred and transferred again to other “customer service” people who also cannot help you. Sometimes you wind up back with the department you started with, but with a different person. Each step along the way requires you to provide extensive identifying information before you start all over trying to explain the problem. You’re fortunate if, after all this, you aren’t simply disconnected. And if you do achieve the goal you started out with – getting that $15 removed – you feel like you’ve won the lottery. But that $15 will reappear in two months and you can decide then if you’d like to repeat the experience.

If you’re dim enough to ask your insurance company to give you some money when you discover your car has been dented in the parking lot while you were shopping, your rates will be raised. The business model amounts to “you give us money, we give you nothing”.

The customer is not always right. The customer is a sucker to be fleeced.

The corporation has several constituencies that need to be served, and their interests conflict. First and foremost, management must be taken care of. The C-level few will get their obscene compensation packages whether the company does well or not, whether the products are faulty or not, and whether the customers complain or not.

After they’ve had their turn at the trough, the shareholders may or may not get some return on their investment, then the employees may or may not get some consideration, and then comes the customer. The customer gets nothing.

We’re supposed to feel good when we read a story like this one about Wells Fargo clawing back $75 million from two executives. Two! This is after six months of them  “investigating” themselves about the fraud which saw two million fake accounts created and 5300 employees fired. See, it was the employees who were actually the guilty ones! Why did these two jokers get paid so absurdly in the first place? Why does it take a media firestorm to get rid of them, and another to get some of the loot returned?

Here’s a piece  from last July that puts the nine-figure compensation of failed Yahoo CEO, Marisa Mayer, “in perspective”. She’s gone now. What would they have had to pay her if she actually did what they hired her to do, i.e. finally turn the company around?

You only get “accountability” from the guys at the top after they’ve exhausted all their other options. This week’s United Airlines fiasco is a case in point. First came the statements from the top about how procedures were followed and how proud they are of their employees. Then there was some talk about how they weren’t really the bad guys, because, see, it was actually law enforcement that screwed up. Then there was the obligatory blaming of the customer – he was “defiant” (as opposed to what?). Then there were some lukewarm “apologies” for having to “re-accommodate” some passengers (none of whom had actually been accommodated in the first place).

DC: Airline Industry CEO's Speak At Chamber Of Commerce

Only after it became clear that this wasn’t going away, that there would be lawsuits, that the paying customer was assaulted (lost his front teeth and was concussed!), that CEO Oscar Munoz is finally using some more-or-less appropriate language. As part of this mea culpa, he also said “It’s never too late to do the right thing,” Actually, after you’ve knocked out your customer’s teeth, it is a little late.

But if you believe for a minute that any of this is sincere, that it’s anything other than pathetic attempts at damage control, well, you’re the perfect customer for United Airlines and all the other mega corporations for whom competition in our “free-market” economy is not a worry.

Anyway, I started writing this because today I read something about the airlines overbooking policies that bothered me. I wrote the other day that it seemed to me that, since you pay for your ticket when “reserving” it these days, the airlines will have their money whether you fly or not, and that the overbooking policy now is nothing more than an opportunity for them to sell the same seat twice. The article I read today said no, not exactly, because when people who purchased a refundable ticket don’t fly, they might get their money back and then the airline loses.

First of all, I’m not worried about the airline “losing”. They’re doing fine. Second, I’d need to see some statistics about how many of the no-shows actually bought refundable tickets, because they often cost twice as much or more than the non-refundable ones. And third, the airlines have already protected themselves against the possibility of losing money on no-shows. The full-fare customers who did fly have simply paid an insurance premium for something that didn’t happen. It’s all profit for the airline, and loss for the customer.

So what’s the takeaway here? Uh, I’m not sure. We’ve gone pretty far down the road of corporate consolidation to turn that ship around at this point. And I think we can rule out hiring Marisa Mayer to fix things, or anyone at Wells Fargo. But, beyond that?

Bernie for President in 2020?

 

 

Michael Flynn, foreign agent

In 2014, President Obama fired Michael Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for freelancing on foreign policy. Flynn held different ideas about “Radical Islam” and other things than the president, and had been acting on his own.

His ideas were sometimes referred to as “Flynn Facts” (also known as “falsehoods”) by those who worked with him, for example his assertion that Iran has killed more Americans than al Qaeda in the 21st century. Flynn tweeted links to fake new stories (created by his son!) that reported Hillary Clinton was running a sex slavery ring out of the back room of a Pizzeria in D.C., which was later shot up by a true believer in such things. In short, Flynn’s a little nutty.

After being fired,  he receded into the world of mid-level defense contractors and international influence peddlers. In December 2015, he appeared with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Moscow banquet.

Flynn’s style has been described as “Kiss up, kick down”. No one loves the “Kiss up” part more than our very own man-baby, and no one is more easily taken in by it. This speech, given by Flynn at the Republican convention in July, is loaded with it.

In the opening minutes, he says, “the destructive pattern of putting the interest of other nations ahead of our own will end when Donald Trump is president”. If ever there has been a more hypocritical load of bullshit exclaimed with more patriotic conviction (at least in the English language), I am unaware of it.

Flynn became one of Trump’s closest advisers during the campaign and was ultimately appointed National Security Adviser, a controversial pick that did not require Senate confirmation.

During the campaign, Flynn had been discussing the Obama administration’s sanctions against Russia  with the Russian ambassador,  Sergey Kislyak. and he then lied about those discussions to the Vice President, Mike Pence, which caused a problem for the Trump White House.

On February 13th, Kellyanne Conway said on TV that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn enjoyed the full confidence of President Trump.

Later that day, twenty-four days after being appointed, Flynn resigned.

The next day, February 14th, Sean Spicer insisted that Flynn did not resign, but that Trump fired him, after losing faith in his honesty.

On February 15th, Trump said Flynn was a wonderful man, apparently forgetting about the honesty thing.

“Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.”

This week, Flynn registered as a Foreign Agent, for doing $530,000 worth of lobbying work for Turkey during the campaign, i.e. at the same time he was talking about not putting the interests of other nations ahead of ours. Also at the same time that Trump was talking about “draining the swamp”, which, it’s hard to remember now, referred to getting rid of lobbyists and the moneyed interests they represent.

Spicer said he was a private citizen during this time. Yes, Sean, we got that. Thank you so much for the unneeded clarification – a lobbyist is a  private citizen. And as such, he was exactly the kind of swamp-thing that needed a heavy draining.

Mike Pence said this affirms Trump’s decision to fire him.

We’re still waiting for some affirmation on the decision to hire him in the first place. In any case, if the swamp-draining is still going on, it’s going on out of public view.

In the Bizarro world

The other day, Trump gave a very newsworthy speech to Congress. I didn’t watch the speech because I can’t stand listening to the guy, but I read about it the next day. It was apparently newsworthy not for the things he said in the speech, because, as usual, he didn’t say anything. The speech was light on policy and details, and long on slogans and self-congratulation. This is Trump as expected, so nothing newsworthy there. The best part, for me, was Trump imploring others to put aside “petty fighting”. Hilarious. Coming from a guy who has done nothing but petty fighting for years, this sage piece of presidential wisdom can only be offered in the Bizarro world.

No, it was newsworthy because Trump seemed, finally, to be “presidential”. Maybe this is the long hoped-for “pivot”, the pundits said. Maybe there really is another Trump who is actually qualified to do this job. In the Bizarro world, it is headline news when the President of the United States does not appear to be a petulant, incompetent, vulgar clown for twenty minutes.

Things that have been considered real news in the past are getting a little harder to find, but I was able to tease out a paragraph or two about the U.S. participating in the re-taking of Palmyra from ISIS. It is certainly good news to free this treasure trove of antiquities from  barbarians. But what struck me is that we are now apparently in a coalition with Russia, the Assad government, Hezbollah, and, by association, Iran. I guess it’s expected at this point that we would be in bed with the Russians, but probably most people overlooked the fact that it means being on the same team as Hezbollah, the Iranian client, as well. After all Trump’s anti-Iran rhetoric, wouldn’t you think he’d be the last guy to authorize this? Not in the Bizarro world.

Everyone knows that Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky did certain things that Clinton tried to say were not “sexual relations”.  His otherwise excellent eight years of peace-and-prosperity were just about ruined by this unfortunate parsing of words. The crime he was impeached for was not these relations, sexual or otherwise, but lying to Congress about them under oath – the greatest sin you can commit in our government.  Remember? Well, now comes Jeff Sessions who, it turns out, lied to congress  under oath about conversations he had with Russians during the campaign. He has recused himself from the Trump administration’s investigation of itself (Bizarro!), but, really, shouldn’t he resign from his position as the nation’s top law enforcement official after committing the greatest sin you can commit? Not in the Bizarro world.

Hillary Clinton also committed an unpardonable sin, for which she was investigated repeatedly  by the FBI and hauled up before congress on multiple occasions: she used a public email account while Secretary of State. It might have been hacked, her opponents howled. There might have been Top Secret info in those emails! It wasn’t and there weren’t, but  it was enough to derail her presidential aspirations. Now comes Mike Pence, who, you may remember, was one of Clinton’s harshest critics on this matter. Guess what? He also used a public email account while Governor of Indiana. And it was hacked. And there was confidential information in his emails. And he’s fighting tooth and nail in the courts to make sure the emails are not made public. Will there be any consequences for Pence? Not in the Bizarro world.

And, then there’s the beloved Kellyanne Conway. I personally do not care if she puts her shoes on the furniture in the Oval Office or anywhere else, but I just love the hypocrisy of those who condemned  Obama for doing the same. Remember?

In the Bizarro world, only one of these acts is outrageous. But, as I said, ho hum. More important is the sanctioning that Conway will or will not receive for improperly hawking Ivanka Trump’s crap while being interviewed on TV. You can’t do that, Kellyanne. The Office of Government Ethics (remember that thing Congress tried to do away with overnight a while back?) recommended disciplinary action against Conway, but, in the Bizarro world, you know how that’s gonna work, right? From the Washington Post:

Stefan C. Passantino, who handles White House ethics issues as deputy counsel to President Trump, wrote in a letter Tuesday that his office concluded Conway was speaking in a “light, offhand manner” when she touted the Ivanka Trump line during a Feb. 9 appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

In the Bizarro world, the appearance of misconduct is just fine. And the appearance of being “presidential” is just awesome.

Where the jobs went

Are you old enough to remember the days when someone else pumped your gasoline? A guy came out and asked you whether you wanted regular or hi-test and how much. While he was pumping it, he washed your windshield, checked your oil and maybe put air in your tires.

At some point,  the “self-serve” option appeared and you could save some money by foregoing the “full-serve” extras. In New Jersey, this was never allowed because, allegedly, the motorist was more likely to set himself on fire than a “professional”. It seems to me that the “full-serve” option is getting harder to find, at least in my neck of the woods, and New Jersey is now the only state where it’s illegal to pump your own. Truth be told, it’s kind of a pain in the butt for most visitors who are accustomed to a quick visit for gas.

One of the big advantages of the pump-your-own model was that you could get the customer to do a job for free that you had been paying someone else to do previously. Other businesses saw the potential, and the result has been that there are a lot fewer jobs of a certain kind now to be had. Fewer bank tellers, retail check-out people, postal clerks, and so on. The customer can do the work.

With the rise of the internet, whole professions were obsoleted seemingly overnight: stock broker, travel agent, and so many others. Technology has enabled the elimination of middle-men of all descriptions. When you think of it, it’s just the natural progression of things.  Labor-saving, time-saving, and of course, money-saving are big drivers of a lot of technological change.

And the globalization of labor just made it a lot cheaper to do most manufacturing elsewhere.

The final blow will be the rise of robotics in the workplace. Assembly line work is an obvious example we’ve had for a while now. Warehouse pickers, baggage handlers, and lots of others as well have already experienced this . With the advent of self-driving cars, another whole class of jobs will soon wither away.

The bottom line is this: those coal-mining jobs Trump has promised to restore are not coming back, and neither are most blue-collar jobs that have already disappeared. Robotics is the main culprit, not the E.P.A. To get a glimpse of what’s coming, check this out:

A Deal with the Devil

If there actually were any real “Christians” in the Republican electorate, they abandoned their religious convictions to vote for Trump, an amoral con-man with no religious convictions at all. Everyone knew what he was, but they threw away all the “family values” and other holier-than-thou rhetoric and litmus tests that were applied to all presidential candidates over the last several decades.

Many have said all along that what was really at stake in this election was the ability to nominate Supreme Court justices, particularly for the seat left open by the death of Anton Scalia a year ago. Since that time, the Republicans have behaved in an unconscionable way, refusing to even meet with a highly qualified middle-of-the-road Obama nominee, Merrick Garland.  The ninth seat has remained vacant, leaving the court split 4-4 on ideological issues. Of course, there should be no “ideological” issues at all for the SCOTUS, but rather only legal issues. But we’re way past that now.

And the reason the Supreme Court pick is so important to them is that their fondest hope in the world, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, is now possible. This was their deal with the Devil: we’ll elect even the preposterously unqualified and manifestly dangerous Donald J. Trump if it means the end of legal abortion in our country.

In selecting Neil Gorsuch for the court, the man-baby has delivered. Gorsuch will be approved even though the current rules require 60 senators to vote for the approval and there are only 52 guaranteed republican votes. Democrats would be well justified in resisting this after l’affaire Garland, and perhaps they will. There are ten among them who must run for re-election in states won by Trump, so their calculus is a bit different. Maybe they’ll give in.

But it doesn’t matter – even if the Republicans can’t convince eight democratic senators to vote with them, they will simply change the rules to require a simple 51-vote majority for confirmation. It’s who they are. It’s what they do.

The first two weeks of Trump have been a vertigo-inducing amusement park ride, but without the amusement. I can’t imagine anyone in congress looking forward to four, or perhaps even eight more years of it.

At this point, I would gladly accept a different deal with the Devil: we give you the SCOTUS and the overturning of Roe. You give us impeachment for Trump’s blatant conflicts of interest. We’ll have President Pence for four years, and a return to some sense of normalcy.

Whaddya say? Deal?

 

 

This Land Is Your Land

If you have visited any of the National Parks, you know what a treasure they are and how important their protection is.  I suppose it’s possible to visit one of the parks and not be impressed and awed, but not for me.

There are more than 20,000 people who work for the National Parks Service. As far as I can tell they are almost universally dedicated and underpaid, and are just really outstanding individuals. I’m sure there are the same number of bad apples in that group as in any other, but I’ve never run across a single one.

The parks are under pressure from people who want to cut funding to them and exploit the resources within them. They are public property in an era where that very idea is anathema to the powerful, and their education mission is threatened by those for whom all education is an expression of partisan politics, as we have seen in recent days.

It’s too depressing to think of what will be lost if the parks system succumbs, so today I’ll reminisce in advance of any loss by posting a random few of my own photos.

Click on pics to enlarge. Also, please send Stewie some of your own pics or memories of the National Parks.

Acadia (via Elaine)

Carlsbad Caverns

Crater Lake

Denali

Glacier

Grand Teton

Grand Canyon

mthood10

Mt. Hood

olympic1

Olympic

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Mt. Ranier

redwoods06

Redwoods

smokies

Great Smoky Mountains

Yellowstone

Zion

Alea iacta est

Today the Rubicon is crossed.

The kakistocracy is installed and empowered, the nuclear codes handed over.

From here, there will be no “access” to leadership and no “news”.

From here, there will be only pre-approved interpretations of events, statistics, economic indicators, battlefield successes or failures, climate change, science.

There will be propaganda on the one hand, and “spies”, “liars”, and “fakes” on the other. There will be nothing in between.

Polls will be discredited when unfavorable, and embraced when supportive.

The prestige of the academy will diminish and its credibility doubted.

Credit will be taken for the accomplishments of others, and blame will be assigned for the inevitable failures and disappointments.

The rot and dishonesty that has festered in the judiciary, legislature, and fourth estate will finally take its toll. The checks and balances mitigating tyranny will no longer maintain.

Those who smile and nod will be praised and rewarded. Those who doubt and resist will be vilified and destroyed.

Clean air and water will be become more precious and rare, at some point available only to those who can afford them.

Routine medical care will no longer be routine. Life expectancy will lag behind other societies and possibly even decrease.

Public property will come under increasing control of private interests.

Those responsible for the welfare of all will prosper, and those who rely on their protection will struggle.

The transfer of wealth from the many to the few will accelerate.

Friends and neighbors will be distrusted and accused.

Historic allies will be abandoned as historic antagonists attempt to direct us.

Above all, the ship of state will not be steered with a steady hand. Chaos and uncertainty will increase.

“The best lack all conviction. The worst are filled with passionate intensity”.  Yeats.

.

Why we can’t have nice things

So we’ve mentioned what a failure City Hall Plaza is before. It’s a nine-acre plain of 1,246,343 bricks and nothing else.  We’re always interested in the latest plans and schemes to  make something useful out of it.

boston-city-hall-plaza-8183277-gegu-5486

Wind speed averages 24 miles per hour on a portion of the plaza’s barren flats, which was rated “dangerous and unacceptable” in a 1996 engineers’ study.

It originally had a fountain, which Architectural Digest hailed as Boston’s answer to Trevi Fountain in Rome! I’m guessing no one at that publication had ever actually seen Trevi.

trevi

cityhall010-1448asdf

But the fountain leaked from the beginning, with the water going into the subway below, and quickly morphed into a weed-choked hole. It’s gone now -they put plywood over it and then concrete.

fountain

In 2014, safety concerns were raised. The Boston Herald reported plywood under the concrete is severely waterlogged and sponge-like, and could be compromised. “Due to the observed plywood saturation, mold and insect infestation, we consider the remaining service life to be uncertain,” BSG Group engineers wrote in a report.

Over the years, lots of things have been suggested to improve the space. Jan Wampler, an MIT architecture professor who worked  for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, considered the plaza “horrible,” and in 1970 began suggesting improvements: a drive-in movie, maybe, or public vegetable gardens.

The cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who lives in nearby Cambridge, supported a proposed $4.5 million “music garden” inspired by Bach’s “First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello.” But after a year’s wrangling over money and scheduling, a frustrated Mr. Ma pulled up stakes and found another city: Toronto, where, in a day, he secured a prime three-acre site and basic backing for the deal.

In the 1990’s, mayor Tom Menino held a contest for the best ideas on what to do with it. 190 people submitted ideas, including put a ballpark there, or an abolitionist museum, a video village, a “Tomb of the Bambino” (for Babe Ruth).

In 1995, he formed The Trust for City Hall Plaza, a 33-member panel led by real estate developer Norman Leventhal, who was responsible for many successful projects in Boston, including the beloved Post Office Square park.

At hearings, a Trust member requesting anonymity said, referring to the City Council chambers, “Since the redesign process is starting from scratch, why not think big? Why not get rid of the monstrous City Hall building, an architectural Frankenstein, and replace it, in a new location on the lot, with something that works. This room is a prime example of what’s wrong with City Hall.  It’s a hearing room where you can’t hear.”

They came up with proposals that included a hotel, a glass-enclosed Winter Garden and cafe, civic green and more. But people in Boston objected to the Trust, saying it only had real estate developers and corporate interests on it, and not enough average citizens, and anyway it didn’t have the authority to recommend anything.

In Boston, everybody has to have their say and this usually means nothing can get done. Menino backed away from the Trust and their ideas withered away.

So here’s today’s brilliant idea: let’s let Delaware North transform City Hall Plaza into a winter wonderland, give it a hashtag, #BostonWinter, and then they can charge people money to use it!

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From Boston.com

For the entire month of December, Boston’s City Hall Plaza will be transformed into a magical land of winter festivities, New England’s first European-inspired holiday market featuring 42 shopping chalets, and attractions. Bostonians and visitors alike will be dazzled by the eclectic array of winter activities with more than 50 things to do, from wine and chocolate tastings, ice skating, live events and local artisans and musicians. #BostonWinter has plenty to offer all ages every day of the week from 11 a.m. daily through New Year’s Day. See website for holiday hours and evening closing times. Tickets for paid attractions are available online in advance (bit.ly/BostonWinterTix); shopping, public performance and browsing is free and open to the public. 

Closing times? Ticket prices? Will we never learn? This is why we can’t have nice things.

And the 2016 Stewie award goes to…

Teddy Ebersol’s Red Sox Fields! Also known at Stewie Committee Headquarters as the “Teddy Ebersol Grass Museum”.

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Congratulations, Teddy!  For the 8th consecutive year, Teddy Ebersol’s Red Sox Fields has garnered the prestigious Stewie, which is awarded annually to the second worst public space in the Boston area.

Here is a brief FAQ about the prestigious Stewie award and its 2016 winner.

What qualifies as a “public space”?

Any place that is open to the public, whether owned or maintained using tax dollars or is privately controlled.  Examples include public parks (of course), airport terminals, train stations, college campuses, waterways, “greenways”, bike trails, and so on.

How does the Stewie committee determine what a bad public space is?

Well, it’s the opposite of a good public space, which is one that is well used, one that invites you in, one that is known as a good place to meet old or new friends, one that is accessible, comfortable, and functions well as intended.

An example of a good public space is Post Office Square Park, formerly a parking garage, now an inviting urban oasis. Privately developed and maintained.

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Everybody in the area gravitates to it and enjoys it.

Why does the Stewie go to the second worst public space in Boston and not the worst?

Because there is no question about which space is worst and therefore no surprise about who would get the award. The worst public space in Boston, and maybe anywhere in the country, is, and always will be, City Hall Plaza. It is a vast Sahara of bricks, unbroken by any shade, benches, greenery, water, or other indication that human beings might be able to survive on it for more than a couple of minutes.  It is such a complete and abject failure that no other space could ever hope to compete.

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It can only be seen as “successful” if its objective was to keep you from ever entering City Hall itself, the brutalist monstrosity which is also a horribly failed public space.

Who is Teddy Ebersol?

He was the 14 year old son of Dick Ebersol and Susan Saint James who was killed in a chartered jet crash in 2004 in Colorado.

What does this have to do with the field we’re talking about?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.  The kid was a Red Sox fan. The father was an NBC exec who is friends with Tom Werner, a Red Sox team owner.  They all figured a good way to memorialize the kid was to appropriate a well-used public space and put their own stamp on it.

Isn’t this another example of the privatization of public resources?

Yes. Yes it is. You have to make an appointment to use the field. It’s “closed” one day a week.  The permitting process is guided by an unnamed Advisory Board, and the permit schedule is not made public.  All weekday field use is permitted to Hill House, a Beacon Hill community group.

What are some other examples of privatization?

Development of beach front real estate that de jure still allows public access to the beach, but de facto makes it almost impossible

Converting metered parking spaces on public streets to reserved spots for Zip-cars and the like.

Allowing small planes to pull ad banners over public spaces, creating flying lawn-mower noise pollution  that makes enjoying your back yard difficult in summer.

Closing off the Boston Esplanade to public use for a week before the July 4 concert for “security reasons”, and reserving large spaces in the venue for “VIPs.”

Allowing tour buses filled with people who want to gawk at Harvard or M.I.T. to park in public bus stops, making it difficult for the public to access their bus and creating unneeded traffic jams.

Private interests have transformed what once was a well utilized and loved space into a virtual “Grass museum”.  You can go by there at any time on a beautiful spring or summer day and see not a soul.  Once in a while you might see a pack of Beacon Hill nannies with their toddlers off to the side in the shade, wearing their play-time helmets and slathered with sun-screen, but that’s about it.

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It is the most underutilized public space in Boston. For decades, this space had been a great destination for anybody wanting to play with their dog, throw a football around, smoke a joint, make out with their love-interest, take a bag lunch, or just hang out.  It was well used with no complaints. No more.

Everyone is sorry about Teddy dying in the plane crash, but there simply has to be a better way to honor his memory than to take away a well-used public space and substitute a never-used grass museum.

Today, everything about Teddy Ebersol says, “Keep Out”, and that’s why it’s a perpetual Stewie award winner.  Congratulations and well done.

Bees Denounce Honey

In a related story, the Trump campaign today said that “Mr. Trump and the campaign denounces hate in any form.”

This was in response to the “warm embrace” of Trump by the KKK journal, “The Crusader”, which calls itself “The Premier Voice of the White Resistance”.

Observers also noted that in denouncing hate, the Trump campaign made significant progress in its effort to re-purpose as many English language words as possible in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Both “hate” and “denounce” have now been added to the list of words that no longer retain their original meanings when spoken by Donald J. Trump, the next president of the United States.

 

Some people feel the rain.

Others just get wet.

I know as little about poetry as I do about wine, which is to say practically nothing. I took a wine class once to try to fix this. On completing it, I felt this cartoon accurately reflected my new level of knowledge:

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In high school, I was exposed to some poetry basics, like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Around a campfire,  “The Cremation of Sam McGee” seemed awesome, but that was about as far as I got.

My more literate friends gave me the side-eye when I said  Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, just sitting there on the page with no music, was the best poem I ever read. Fifty years later, it turns out I’m a damned poetry genius.

As with everything Dylan, getting the Nobel Prize for Literature stirs  controversy. Part of it is his initial apparent snubbing of the prize people, but most of it seems like envy and misunderstanding – critics being critical and needing to show how clever they are by putting something down. Like the man said, “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand”.

I think maybe there’s something else going on as well. It’s like the legendary visit Steve Jobs made to Xerox PARC, where they gave away all their innovations, which  Jobs then used to revolutionize desktop computing. Jobs said he was so blinded by the brilliance of the first thing they showed him (the graphical user interface),  that he completely missed the importance of two others (ethernet and object oriented programming).

Maybe Dylan’s powerful vocal style and “finger-pointing” songs blinded the critics to his beautiful music and his brilliant poetry.

Dylan’s vocals were unique and authentic, so much so that many thought he couldn’t really sing. Mitch Miller was head of A & R at Columbia when they signed Dylan, and said he “didn’t see the genius in it”. They wanted beautiful voices and beautiful arrangements.

And sometimes you don’t realize how beautiful Dylan’s tunes can be until you hear them covered by someone else, and he’s been covered by more contemporary artists than anyone. This site catalogs something like 6000 recorded covers of 350 different Dylan songs covered by about 2800 different artists.

But the torrent of words, images, thoughts, dreams, and ideas that flowed from Dylan is the thing, above all else, that defines his brilliance, and has only now been accepted by the literary establishment (or at least the Nobel Prize committee) as “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

Dylan may be quoted more that any other English language source besides Shakespeare and the Bible. Dylan is the song writer most quoted by the Supreme Court. There are over 700 references to Dylan’s words in the biomedical journals database.

Everywhere you look there is a Dylanism. Today I saw something in the bookstore subtitled “The whole world’s watching”. I’m guessing the author didn’t know this is from “When the Ship Comes In”, a brilliant song and poem that has been largely forgotten, except that I just this second heard it on TV as the soundtrack to a VW Golf Alltrack ad.

So much has been written about Dylan that it seems silly to try to add anything new at this point. But if you’re looking for expert opinion on poetry, I can now say with confidence that you’ve come to the right place today.

Also, watch this space for my thoughts on why Gruener Veltliners and Rieslings co-exist so well in the terroir just west of Vienna.

The New Yorker Endorses Trump!

Just kidding.

They endorsed Clinton, of course. As if anyone gives an actual shit about who The New Yorker or anyone else “endorses”. But this brilliant piece says everything there is to say about it.

Early voting started on Monday and my local library opened its booths at Noon. I went over there at about 12:30 and there had to be 150 people in line ahead of me. I saw a guy came out of the booth with a red “Make America Great Again” ball cap. I guess it can’t be unanimous, even in Massachusetts. But as he passed by me on the way out, I saw that his cap actually read “Make Donald Drumpf Again”. Maybe it CAN be unanimous.

I don’t know why voting is always so much more inconvenient than it needs to be. Let’s just do it on the internet, like we do everything else. Some of the problem is the little system they have in place, and some of the problem is the geriatric volunteers there to “help”. Apart from the helpers squabbling among themselves about who has more pens, etc., you have to jump through too many hoops, and the helpers can get a little discombobulated.

When your turn comes, you step up to the first guy who asks your name, which he can’t hear. After a couple of attempts, you try to spell it out and he can’t find it on his list. Some time goes by and he finally turns his computer screen to you. You point out your name and even this takes three tries.

Then he prints out a little ticket, and says the next woman will help you. You take a step sideways, Soup Nazi style, and stand in front of the second woman who ignores you for what seems like two or three minutes while she shuffles envelopes around and mumbles.

Finally, a third woman next to her calls out to you, “Sir. Sir! Can you please step over here?”  Yes, yes I can. I can step anywhere I’m directed to step. She hands me an envelope and a ballot, tells me to write my name and address on the envelope, sign it, go into the booth, mark the ballot, put the ballot in the envelope and return to her for further instructions.

First, though, we have to find a pen.

Finally, I’m able to actually vote. I return to her, she inspects my name and address, directs me to place the signed envelope in the ballot box and hands me the “I voted” sticker. Whew. All done.

This system is meant to be an improvement over the conventional experience, which is check in with the voters-list guy,  get a ballot and fill it in, put your ballot in the box, and check out with the second voters-list guy.

In eliminating the second voters-list guy in favor of the woman who inspects your signed envelope, they quietly, and probably without too much thought, also eliminated one of the bedrock principles of our free elections: the secret ballot. For the first time, your ballot is now wrapped in an envelope with your name on it.

Well, at least it’s convenient.

Visited the U.K. once – not going back.

I have always hated the class system. It is my conviction that the U.K. will never let go of it. It’s not just the worship of and gawking at “The Royals”. It permeates every thing they all say and do, from the school you go to to the accent you speak with. It’s the reason any ambitious Brit comes to America to further his career and no ambitious American goes to Britain.

And the class system, the idea of “breeding”, is also at the heart of the very deep and persistent current of antisemitism that I believe runs through daily life there. I was in London all of thirty minutes before a stranger made an antisemitic remark to me. Even in Munich, that never happened.

Roger Cohen, a Brit, is the NY Times’ most dedicated critic of Israel and most consistent apologist for Iran. He is one of the many who usually insist that strong criticism of the Israeli government is in no way indicative of any antisemitic sentiment. This of course, is nonsense, and in today’s column he finally refers to the “safe place” that Corbyn and Corbynism creates for the antisemites.

“That which the demonological Jew once was, demonological Israel now is.”

When the left turns against the Jews, all is lost.

You might ask, “Why single out the U.K. – you’ve been elsewhere in Europe many times and surely things are even worse in many other countries?” True. But it’s one thing to visit with your historic enemies, knowing exactly what they think of you, and another to visit to your closest cousin and ally who hugs you and smiles in your face, but actually hates you and talks shit about you when you leave.