thirdgarage™

January: Taking A Mulligan

2012-01-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

January

Golf has a wonderful tradition meant to give some relief to those who practicethat sporting religion. It is especially helpful to the most par-challengedplayers who find their ball in a sand trap, pond, or do not find their ball at all.There are several variations on this tradition, but the most common onesinvolve the ability to take a shot over once in a round, or sometimes, once oneach of the front and back "nines." It is called "taking aMulligan."

In life we call a Mulligan byanother name: January.

Many, perhaps most of us, enter Januarywith a list of things that we will resolve to begin, improve, resume, or justplain try. Individually and collectively we shout,"Do-over!"

Resolution

This being mid-January, many of theseaspirations are still alive and we are brimming with warm promise, even as thethermometer (finally) consistently dips below freezing. Those of us who havemore than a passing familiarity with these resolutions know that in a couple ofmore weeks we are going to be sorely tempted to skip the new yoga class, stuffthat old manuscript back in the drawer, or grab a bunch of carbs from the shelf.

In case youhave not noticed, or have been visiting a distant planet on a Twilight Zone Cruise,our age grows more complicated with each new front page story about financialinsanity, each celebrity's or politician's YouTube video or Tweet, or merelymentioning the words "Athletic Department." Given the hazards of our Ripley's Believe It Or Not world, when we begin to lose ourresolve, we need some relief.

Behold an idea whose time has come: TheMulligan Of The Month Club. Twelve Annual Mulligans at your disposal.

This does not mean that our macro (The Euro)or micro (your piggy-bank) economic woes will disappear overnight. It also doesnot mean that this incessant political campaign and its participants will bequiet or retire to an asylum anytime soon. And, it is probable that, as we speak,another guardian of your money will be found to have "borrowed" abillion or so of client money and, so sorry, misplaced it.

Face it; oncein a while, we are going to find ourselves in life's rough, stuck in sand, or,my perennial least-favorite, making a total whiff! What's done is done,what you forgot to do is forgotten. All we're saying here is that you get tobegin anew, whenever you choose, and you do not need to wait until next Januaryto do so. In fact, you do not even need to make a resolution that you knowyou will break. You simply sit or stand still, turn off your phone (this willnot be fatal), take the proverbial deep breath and hit back into life's fairwaywith renewed vigor and move right along to avoid getting struck in the limbs bysomeone else’s wayward shot.

A Mulligan a month. I'mguessing that some of us could already use one.

_____________________________________________________

Bonus Thought: If that Mulligan idea doesn'thelp, maybe this will.

A little over a year ago, I was driving hometo Rye from Williamsport, PA on Route 15 South. Coming around a bend, I glancedup to the right and saw a large billboard looming over the road, which read:

Not a bad idea, I thought, reading it more as an instructive haiku than a warning.

Buckle Up Next Million Miles. We need tokeep moving forward, but we need to pay attention to oncoming traffic, slipperysurfaces, and the ones we love sitting next to us and in the backseats.

Make that two million.

My (Brief) Life As Steve Jobs

2011-12-29T11:31:00.000-08:00

Less is...less

I rose early and went downstairs. The first thing I noticed was that we had too much furniture, so I began removing it piece by piece. It was all junk and clutter. Our closest neighbors were away and I had the keys to their house and garage, so I put a lot of it in both. Then, I put some of it in another neighbor's back yard and garage. They all had terrible taste anyway and deserved having even more bad stuff around.

The emptiness enveloped me.

I had recently showered, about three days before, and I could still smell the remnants of Irish Spring upon me. I took a solemn vow to get rid of this by not showering for at least a month. I began to feel pure and well on my way to enlightenment.

Then, I looked in the refrigerator and was horrified to find that most of what had accumulated in there came from animals: cold cuts, bacon, eggs, and, as disgusting as it may sound, butter. I threw it all away and made a note to get to Whole Foods that afternoon to get some healthy vegan food in the house. I wanted to feel like I had, when I had tramped around India in the corporate jet fifteen years ago, when I ate only peeled fruit and some seeds.

Bozo phones. Morons.

Then, I called the head of the company for whom I was selling on commission and told him he was a complete bozo and that their products were s@*t and that, if they didn't shape up quickly, I would leave. When he reminded me that they had never hired me, and, in fact, didn't owe me a dime or anything else, since I had not yet sold squat, I quit. This is what geniuses must do.

As soon as I hung up, my daughter called. She had not called me to say she loved me since the previous day, an extreme betrayal of my devotion to her. So I immediately hung up and said I wouldn't speak to her for a year.

After meditating, I went to my desk and decided to make something that would change the world and be insanely great. A four-week presidential campaign? Never work. An inkjet printer that works more than two days a month? Impossible even for me. Buy a piece of the Mets and win a Series? Oy.

What would be worthy of my unique combination of an artist's sensibility, a designing eye, an engineer's obsession with precision, not to mention an Olympic-sized ego, unbridled arrogance, and an ability to burst into tears an instant after being slighted by bozos who make s#@t stuff?

As usual, I was all alone in my hour of need, abandoned once more by those who could not love me enough, because they could not see that I was smarter, more creative, richer, smellier and meaner than just about anybody.

I went for a long walk with my editor and tried to manipulate her into accepting the stories I'd submitted, which she had hurtfully and summarily rejected. We walked and walked in my neighborhood, while I told her how much I admired her and her little paper. Feeling kind and compassionate, as the Buddha has taught us, I didn't even mention that my column had saved her whole enterprise. After a couple of hours, even I was exhausted. So, I took a shortcut home and called the Publisher and said that he had to get rid of her, and mentioned that I was not available to replace her, because she was a friend. This is what great friends do for each other. If he begs, I will have to take the job.

SJ's Hero

By now it was dinner time and I had forgotten to go to Whole Foods. My wife, who was sitting on the floor in our living room, asked why the fridge was emptied and what were we going to have for supper. I immediately forbade her from ever calling dinner supper again and said that there was a head of iceberg lettuce left, which, together with some purified water, would make an excellent purge of a meal. She got her car keys and left in a huff, or maybe went to get a cheeseburger. Once again, I was alone, unloved, misunderstood, and, I must admit, really hungry.

Being left alone in the house gave me an opportunity to get rid of the beds and most of the upstairs furniture, which I put by the curb for people with no taste to pick-over and take home to their imperfectly designed houses. I slept on the mattress just as my Indian teachers had done many years before during the time I was learning to hide my superiority by being a world class jackass.

Gratefully, I woke up for real, with my wife sleeping beside me and all of the furniture in place. Alas, it was all a dream, and I was, once again, just another bozo, but felt much better for it, and was hungry for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich and a long shower.

Ed Note: Disclosure: I have a Macbook, an iphone, and an iPad and am an admirer of Apple and, to a certain extent, of Steve Jobs. While reading Walter Isaacson's book, Steve Jobs (I do not consider it to be a real biography, but think it's a long profile), I had a frightening thought: will parents force their children to read this book and expect that the kids will use deceit, dishonesty, meanness, greed, and manipulation, as Jobs did, in addition to his finely-honed intuition, creativity, and great communications skills? Will those young people believe that you can't be a genius and be a well-mannered, truthful and mature adult? Consequently, I thought it would be good for at least one person to poke fun at St. Steve. Perhaps, as many reviewers have suggested, Jobs had a bit of Einstein and Franklin in him, two other lives Isaacson has chronicled. But, we would do well to recall that Jobs also had a lot in common with another one of Isaacson's subjects: Henry Kissinger. That is not a compliment.

Holiday This

2011-12-19T07:30:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas!

There, I've said it out loud, sort of: the two little words which you will never hear uttered by network or cable TV Holiday-heads, or retailers, who have banished the words, "Merry Christmas," without the need for any explanation.

Do they all believe that separation of church and state extends to them, even though they are not government organizations? Do they really believe that citizens who do not celebrate Christmas will be deeply offended by these words of good will in an age in which true nuttiness extends across the borders of politics, media, academia, business, and, yes, religion itself?

Happy Christmas, Happy Christmas, Feliz Navidad! Go ahead, sue me.

And, while we're at it: Happy Hanukka! Happy Chanukah!

While researching a story recently, I was stunned to find a web site wishing me (don't let the kids see this) Merry Christmas (http://www.globetrotter1897.com/). The site showed Santa descending to earth in a hot-air balloon, and, as amazing as this sounds, I was not the least offended by this depiction, nor did I drop dead of fright. And why would I, since a "belief" in jolly old St. Nick requires little in the way of religious commitment. Imagine if they had shown a manger scene? The shame of such a thing!

Please.

It has come to this: the mavens who run our media and retail domains, believe that it is entirely appropriate that we watch every minute of the Kardashians' lives, and live every moment of Newt Gingrich's quest, and think Black Friday is a really good idea. But they will employ any means, invest whatever it takes, to keep us from hearing or seeing the words "Merry Christmas."

Soon, we may have to watch censors' versions of Bing in White Holiday, enjoy the Piece of Good Fortune on 34th Street, and watch It's A Wonderful Life revolve around an unnamed set of "holidays."

I am not embarrassed to say in public that I am not giving a single "holiday" present this year. I respond to every shop clerk and telephone solicitor wishing me a "Happy Holiday" with a resounding "Merry Christmas." They are shocked, of course, and will probably report me to the Holiday Authorities.

Let them come and get me and hear me sing O Come All Ye Faithless!

I am going to bop them on the head with another thing that scares them to death...

...Peace on Earth.

Where The Suns Don't Shine

2011-12-06T08:12:00.001-08:00

Hole

The constellation called Coma is 336 million light years away from Earth. It is the brightest galaxy in a huge swirl of galaxies. In it lies a humongous "black hole," in which could fit 21 billion Suns. That, Mr. Buffet, is a real billionaire.

Another monster black hole lies in Leo constellation, near a galaxy knowns as NGC 3842. This one could have eaten 9.7 billion suns. That's real hunger, folks.

Why do I bother telling you this? Well, for one thing, the Sports section of my paper of choice is featuring an illustrated story about a hockey player's brain; and, while I think this is worthwhile effort to stem the Canadian tendency to drop gloves and start a fistfight over the last dregs of a Labatt's Blue or a vintage Leonard Cohen LP, I have a decided disinterest in it. No offense to the brain or the player.

Original Newt, Isaac

Also, amazing as it may sound, I can only take so many Newt Gingrich stories. I definitely remember maxing out on these back in 1998 or so. It is a testament to the intellectual powers of Gov. Perry and the "alleged"romantic adventures of Mr. Cain that we now have to deal once more in a semi-serious way with Newt. He is everywhere, and the same paper of choice never tires of pointing out his shortcomings. For them, Newt is an industry.

Frankly, I prefer reading about black holes, the real kind, and not just metaphors for the places where Greek debt and our taxes get to.

According to the Times, "Astronomers also think the supermassive black holes in galaxies could be the missing link between the early universe and today..." I hope not. For their sake, I do no think they or any other phenomena would want to be blamed for today. Instead, I am beginning to think that we might be a massive black hole, except that we cannot see that, since we are here and not out in galaxy NGC 4889 looking down on Earth, which would take 336 million light years, about the same length as the Republican primary season.

Talk about coma.

I mean, why worry, when there are phenomenal things happening out there that are much more important than whether poor children should become janitors in schools, rather than waste their time on Astronomy or Physics; this is the newest bright idea to emerge from the distant galaxy know as Newt's Brain, near the Rod Serling constellation.

Whole

Isn't it somehow comforting to think that someday soon, universally speaking, our Sun will burn out and our solar system and Galaxy will be sucked into one of these Super-Dyson-like black holes? This is something that has happened billions of times already, and that makes me feel very small indeed.

It's just such a comforting thought. Makes you want to take the day off from the thoughts of European central bankers or boring political commentators and go fishing, start reading Proust again, or cuddle up with the dog and watch Jules Et Jim for the soixantieme time.

Ed Note: We wish to thank Dennis Overbye for his fine reporting about black holes, which you can find here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/space/astronomers-find-biggest-black-holes-yet.html?scp=1&sq=dennis%20overbye/black%20holes&st=cse

Do Leave Home Without It...Sometimes

2011-11-28T08:52:00.001-08:00

1) I entered the Starbucks at Sutter and Powell, just down the hill (what would you expect?) from my San Francisco hotel. I stood on line and noticed that every customer in the place was staring into their mobile phone.

Everyone except me that is; gadzooks, I had left my phone behind in my room! Suddenly, I had a premonition that I was in danger of being arrested, for, in San Francisco, one never knows which new proposition might reign at any given politically correct moment. I quickly concluded that jail was not in my immediate future, at least not for being a phone-truant; however, it did look as though I might have wandered onto a set from Zombies By The Bay III.

I'll tell you a scary secret and hope that you can bare it: sometimes I leave home without my phone ON PURPOSE.

True. On Sunday, I went for a walk on the nearby High Street ( for you young ones, this does not refer in any way to reefers, but means a street with shops) with no phone upon my person.I did not expire in the street, was not hit by a $200,000 vehicle driven by a guy whose Viagra prescription had run-out, and did not feel the least restrained by my audacious act of telecom neglect.

Moreover, when I returned home and looked into my so-called smart phone, I had not received any dire warnings of imminent terror, found that none of my offspring had come to any harm worth mentioning, and that my spouse had cared so little about demons that might have descended upon me...that she had left her phone at home as well. Scary, no?

We have come to the point, Friends, when we think it's remarkable when we do not carry a phone with us. We are being trained to believe that our phones can nearly instantaneously cure our desires for a new pop song, our favorite Seinfeld episode we've seen 175 times, or rally our friends and neighbors to bring down the regime in Cairo, or Occupy to prop one up in Washington. We seem to do every damn thing on our phones, except make phone calls, and one wonders if we are really communicating more or just simply being herded into vast flocks of sheep grazing in fields marked Let's Make A Deal.

I concluded long ago that a television was not much more than a vending machine, dispensing bits of entertainment, information and commercial messages. Perhaps the best thing about TV as a dominant player in our lives was that it was not very portable. If we could not bring ourselves to turn it off, we might just go to another room without one or leave the house (this was before airports, banks, delis had TV's). We could hide from advertisers. This was a good thing.

Our mobile phones are more about advertising than meaningful communication in the form of calls, texts, emails, web pages, Tweets. Google does a lot of cool stuff, but, at the end of the day, and more importantly at the end of the quarter, they are in the advertising business. Facebook? Advertising and Marketing Info. Groupon? Advertising.We're walking around with little billboards in our pockets, which is okay as long as we know it.

Sometimes it might be better to, as some ad almost said, Leave Home Without It. Talk about risky!

2) For those of you who have not abandoned me after that frightening confession above, here's another.Sometimes I drive my car ( more precisely my Jeep) without listening to the radio or a cd.

Amazingly, there are no long term Ill effects from listening to the engine run, the gears shift, and the tires hug the road. I have gone so far as to listen to the clicking sound traffic lights make when they change without having to go to an Emergency Room for immediate treatment.In fact, driving a car much like our grandparents did (in my case a ton and a half navy DeVille, license 3N8) might be healthy for us.

Who knew?

Homage To Fabriana

2011-11-19T07:46:00.001-08:00

Euro-Central Banks

The seemingly endless supply of European central bankers reminds me of those Volkswagen Beetles at the circus, from which a dozen or more clowns always emerged. I'm not casting aspersions - those clowns actually had a real function and performed perfectly every time.

In addition to all these central bankers, Europe seems to have produced an inordinate number of economists, many of whom used to be or are about to become central bankers.

This causes the European public and private banking systems to be like a railroad with dozens of Grand Central Terminals and only a very few minor stops, at which real people get on and off; that is, the kind of people who work in banks and actually do banking things like accounting or lending with an expectation of being paid back.

Perhaps fittingly, the term "pay back" has no direct equivalent in the Greek, Italian, or Spanish languages. The closest equivalents mean "check's in the mail," "just roll it over," and "is this a joke, Juan" respectively.

econo-banker

We should not necessarily jump to the conclusion, based on some current confusion, that thousands of European "economists" and "central bankers" are not qualified. They all must pass the same test; in fact, they all go to school together, marry each other, and breed the next generation of economists and central bankers. Parenthetically speaking, this is pretty much how those circus clowns regenerate as well.

This test is extremely difficult and involves not just having a way with numbers; it tests one's ability to think critically, reason existentially, and learn to behave like european royalty of long ago, but in an understated kind of way. Here are a few examples of test questions:

1. Dimitrios labors for his cousin, a local public works administrator. He works three days a week and gets paid for six. Dimitrios has a lot of expenses and does not pay any taxes. At what temperature should he bake his moussaka?

More Prada, please!

2. Fabriana loves to shop - in Roma, in Fiorenze, Paris and in New York. She maxed-out on all of her credit cards, and is behind on monthly payments on most of them. How would you arrange to keep Fabriana shopping, so that the economy can keep spinning along nicely? Would you recommend that she get a job in a bank, for example or become an economist?

3. Jose borrowed 6 million Euros against the value of his olive groves, which are currently valued at 2 million Euros. How many olives are needed to accompany a nice chunk of Manchego cheese at his favorite tapas bar?

4. How would you translate the following German-Swiss expression: Nein! into English, French, Gaelic, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish?

Manchego

As you can see from the difficult nature of these questions, European economists and central bankers who successfully and creatively answer them can certainly find their way out of their current set of difficulties.

Don't you think?

Ciao, Bambinos.

Pilgrims' Regress

2011-11-18T12:16:00.000-08:00

Pilgrims' Rock

Thanksgiving Day. What's not to like? Even turkey, which most days tastes like salted paper-towel, tastes great. Normally bland turnips turn into tantalizing tidbits on the tongue. There is no tree to purchase or trim, no frantic trips to town to buy Uncle Ralph a tie that we know he will never wear, and no marathon wrapping sessions in the attic. It's neither too cold nor too hot, and some orange, red, and yellow leaves remain on the trees.

Thanksgiving Day, brilliantly concocted to be on a Thursday, creating a four day weekend of food, football, and fooling around. Even we could not mess up Thanksgiving, could we?

Thinketh again, Pilgrims. Welcome to Thanksgiving Inc.

Wal-Mart has decided to open its doors at 10PM on Thanksgiving Night to accommodate "customers," AKA People Who Need to Get A Life. Amazingly, those customers took umbrage at last year's experience, one might even say privilege, of having to line up beginning around midnight in order to get prized shoppers' wrist bands, which the stores didn't distribute until 2AM, while otherwise reasonable folk were sound asleep.

The wrist bands had allowed the Chosen Frozen to enter the stores to begin shopping at 5AM on something aptly called "Black Friday." Apparently, Wal-Mart was only responding to competitors like Kohl's, Target, and Best Buy who planned a pre-emptive strike by opening their doors for shopping at midnight Thanksgiving. The nerve.

And they say that America can no longer innovate. Hah! Imagine what these sleep-deprived customers could accomplish if only they still had full time jobs with benefits and access to credit?

On 2nd Thought, Make it 12AM!

Thanksgiving Inc. Weep-eth with me, Pilgrims.

One guesses that the original Pilgrims could never have thought of something so clever as a huge shopping opportunity like Black Friday or, Black Thursday Night. After all, they could not even think of a name for the place at which they landed other than "Plymouth," the very name of the place from which they came. They landed at Plymouth on November 11, and, no doubt they were tired of ship's non-POSH food and the Pilgrim-in-Chief's constant sermonizing. Native corn, oysters, cranberries and wild turkeys, not to mention a snout full of wild crabapple-liqeur must have seemed like a really good idea after a couple of weeks.

Americans now imagine that all descendants of early Pilgrims have become wealthy beyond all get out over the generations; but the truth is that not so many of them as imagined would make Warren Buffet's Millionaires' Most Wanted List for super-sizing their tax bite. Instead, I think it's more credible and frightening to think that a good many Pilgrim descendants might be tempted to convene at Wal-Mart Store # 2336 off Route 44 in contemporary Plymouth to assail themselves of values on Wrangler jeans, fake snow machines, Barbies and much too much more just like the rest of us.

Bradfords, Brewsters, Standishes. Imagine the original Pilgrim set lined up in their pj's at midnight:

Pilgrim #1: "If only we had stow-ethed some of these container-size packeths of Depends for our ocean journey; we are indeed blessed in this new world."

Pilgrim #2: "You said-eth it, Pilgrim, and we could have used them along with these seven cases of bottled water for $1.29, with coupons! Have you knowledge of said blessing, Pilgrim, the coupon?

We live in an age in which we begin selling Halloween candy around July 4th, sign up for our free-range, grass-fed, organic turkeys while still wearing bathing suits, and begin seeing Christmas lights in the hardware store before the last homegrown tomatoes have fallen from the vine.

Bonkers Buyers Bunking

Occupy Wall Street? Maybe we should be occupying Main Street. Bankers? Enough already with that, how about the people who have gone totally Bonkers!

We may be able to do without the rotary dial; we can adapt to the new habit of treating a hurricane as Armageddon; we may survive allowing our boss, spouse, child to call/text us at 3AM; we may accept that it takes us twenty-years to replace a little bridge lost in a flood; and now we know what it's like to have a blizzard before the leaves fall.

But, Pilgrims, let us unite against this insidious intrusion into our Thanksgiving, one of the the last bastions of decency, sanity...peace.

Please-eth.

Rick, Herman, And...Kim?

2011-11-10T06:08:00.001-08:00

New Bravo "debaters"

Bravo TV is rumored to be deep into negotiations to sign all the current Republican presidential candidates, except presumed winner Mitt Romney, to long-term contracts. A Bravo poll strongly indicates that most Americans already believe that the "debates" are a Bravo-produced reality TV show, and the cable channel is eager to pounce on an opportunity. Apparently, Americans are not put-off by having had nine candidate debates occur with a full year remaining before the actual election, in which most eligible American voters will not participate anyway.

Bravo, Fox, and other cable channels, along with The New York Times have already concluded on behalf of potential primary voters, most of whom won't vote, that the primary race is now over even though there has not yet been a primary vote yet. Bravo poll data also indicated that voters will consider any future Romney-Obama debates as being as exciting as debates between the Accounting faculties at Utah State and the University of Illinois; and believe that viewers would rather see more entertaining "candidates"continue making fools of themselves in the most amazing ways.

Reportedly, a representative of former Governor, former candidate, former this 'n that Palin, the most successful reality TV candidate in history, has already approached Bravo with an offer to join the current group of hapless, but lovable, debaters. Bravo has declined, feeling that $25Million over two years (Bravo plans to continue the show well-beyond the November 2012 Election Day) is too steep.

Newest "candidate"

Instead, Bravo sees the possibility of making this new show an extension of its stunningly popular Kardashian franchise, now that Kim's marriage plot has dissolved, with Kim joining the group as a candidate.

A spokesperson for Mr. Cain's campaign referred questions about Ms. Kardashian to Mr. Cain's lawyer and claimed that the candidate had never been in the same room with her, at least as far as he could recall. Mr. Perry said that he had a reaction to the reports, but that he could not, for the moment, remember what that was.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Foreign reaction to the Bravo rumor was swift:

In Moscow, former and future President Putin said that, "...as usual, the Americans had been quick to criticize his 'arrangement' with Mr. Medvedev, the Russian voters, and the manufacturers of Russian voting machines as being a sham and not real democracy. These ridiculous 'debates' show that the Americans are so busy spreading democracy abroad that they forgot to be serious about practicing it at home." He went on to say that the Russian people rightly consider a long debate, or any debate about who will lead them to be a waste of time and money.

Debates? Nyet

In Teheran, Mr. Ahmadinejad offered to hold one of the future Bravo "debates" on Iranian soil and pre-agreed to a UN controlled radiation inspection of the debating hall.

President Karzai, in Afghanistan, said that Americans will finally have an opportunity to see how corrupt their political system has become, with a political industry of consultants, lobbyists, reporters, unions and hangers-on sharing hundreds of millions of dollars in donated booty. "In Afghanistan," Mr Karzai said, "we have always had our corruption out in the open, where people can see it, which is more honest." A spokesperson for Karzai said that his use of the term "booty" was not meant as a reference to Ms. Kardashian, even though the President has long admired her from afar.

A spokesperson for the government in Beijing said that officials were too busy managing their own inherently corrupt system to be bothered talking about someone else's.

______________________________________________________________________________

The White House staff, newly re-organized around the President's small group of most trusted advisors, in order protect him from any ideas or opinions that he might not like to hear, could not help gloating over the Bravo reports...

Can one candidate "win?"

...until it became apparent that there was a distinct possibility that the non-Fox cable media and the Times might very well find some piece of scandal with which they could knock off the only remaining opposition candidate, leaving the President a clear path to running...

...against himself. And they wondered what it would mean if he won an election against nobody.

By The Numbers

2011-11-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

Nein-Nein-Nein: Leading Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's answer to allegations of sexual harassment while he was head of the National Restaurant Association.

One: To add insult to alleged injury, Marjorie Kettleworthy, 83, of Sandusky, OH has filed a discrimination suit against Mr. Cain, alleging that she was the only female employee at the National Restaurant Association during Mr. Cain's tenure as president , whom he did not sexually harass.

365: i) Actual number of days remaining before the actual presidential Election Day 2012; ii) actual number of Americans who knew the election was not today; iii) number of Iowan voters deciding who the next Republican candidate will be; iv) final number of alleged sexual harassment incidents needed to convince Herman Cain to drop out of the race; v) Number of times this week, so far, that NJ Governor Chris Christie has declined pleas from the Republican National Committee to run; vi) Number of times this week, so far, that NYC's Mayor Mike Bloomberg has denied plans to enter the race, despite the fact that nobody asked him about it.

4: Number of times that Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York has been seen in public since he was sworn in last December.

44: Number of times Gov. Cuomo has called VP Biden this year to assure the Veep that he has no intention of trying to replace Biden on the 2012 ticket.

444: Number of private cell phone calls to Gov. Cuomo originating in the Oval Office this year, so far.

4,444: Number of millionaires it takes to make one Warren Buffet, who is spearheading a national movement to raise the tax rates for millionaires.

Zero: Number of billionaires named Warren Buffet, who understand that they are not obligated to take every possible deduction available to them, or to take advantage of every loophole in the personal and corporate tax codes.

471: Total number of published blog posts in the ThirdGarage/RareBurghers communications conglomerate, including this 281st posting.

Greytops™: What To Do With Us?

2011-10-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

I.B.M. has just named Virginia M. Rometty, 54, to be their next CEO. No argument there; we need more women in the CEO ranks. But, listen to what else the Times had to say: "A leading rival to succeed Mr. Palmisano..., was Steven A. Mills...But his age, analysts note, was probably an obstacle. Mr. Mills just turned 60, the traditional retirement age for I.B.M."

Are we to understand that Mr. Mills had lost a certain edge or, perhaps knowledge of some kind, while aging from 54 to 60 at the company? Are we too understand that Ms. Rometty has only six great years in her and then, Bye-Bye?

Is this the message that one of America's iconic companies wants to send to millions of Boomers? Should we, at 60, just go take a seat in the waiting room at Frank E. Campbell's Funeral Chapel on Madison Avenue?

The New 30

All across the country, people approaching or past 60 are looking to extend their jobs, have lost their jobs, been early-retired, or, as some bureaucrats might say been "displaced." They are meeting in schools, church halls, and Starbuck's networking among themselves, in order to get back in the game, back in regular jobs, with regular pay and benefits. Some days, it's hard to keep hope alive, but they do, day by day.

Many of them, perhaps most, have replaced "job" with work, and plenty of it: they do projects, the chair volunteer committees, they hold one or more part-time jobs, they conduct a search for full-time work, and, yes, they write blogs and books. There is no time for whining about stupid banks, ranting over 15-month long political campaigns in which nothing of substance is ever said, or complaining about QE2 or 3 or 4. We're too damn busy.

Here's some news: Yesterday I called on two potential customers on behalf of a technology product I sell on commission. I am 63; the two clients were approximately 60 and 57; my boss is...74.

Should we all just crawl into a hole, I.B.M.?

going out to pasture

Obviously, I.B.M. meant no offense. But, that's the point; our culture has it stuck in its collective head that we should begin our working lives with one goal...to retire as soon as possible and not have to work anymore, which pre-supposes that we won't like our work much, which just might explain how so many companies seem to be run by less than brilliant execs, instead of high-quality people like Ms. Rometty or Steve Jobs.

Wouldn't it be nice one day for a business or political leader to just acknowledge how great it is that millions of people at, around or beyond 60 are vibrant, healthy, active, smart, wise, strong, nurturing, creative, attentive, compassionate, honest, and still worthy of regular compensation and more than legally token consideration for real jobs?

Well, there it is and you know what...typing that didn't make me go all weak at the knees or faint in the head and in need of a nap; there's a lot more where that came from, I.B.M.

©TWMcDermott2011

At Last, A Solution: Fewer Millionaires

2011-09-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

Millionaire

Whoa, something must have happened while we were on a small island and missed the paper. All of a sudden we're at war again...against those heinous foes...Millionaires!

The President, in particular, is out to get Millionaires. We can tell, because he calls them "people" and not "folks." Folks are "ordinary Americans," who are a lot of things (overweight, poor students, credit-liars, tax-evaders), but they are simple folks, who are constantly screwed by the kind of people we call...people. Especially Millionaires.

Around election time, which begins the day after any election, there are suddenly a lot more folks than people out there in election land for Democrats to praise. Republicans can't seem to find anyone to praise, who isn't currently living in some asylum or will soon be in one.

Golly, maybe some of the Millionaire parents in O's daughters' exclusive private school did something particularly bad, like make gauche donations to the scholarship fund?

The real answer seems to lie with Warren Buffet, who is not even a Millionaire; he is a Billionaire and, apparently, that is an okay thing to be, particularly if you happen to be a Democratic Billionaire. Why, everyone knows that Uncle Warren is "just folks." He is beloved because he found a way to make money blackmailing banks like Goldman Sachs and Salomon Bros. Who wouldn't love that? We even love that little gecko, who works for Geico, one of Warren's many companies.

A few weeks ago, after Buffet got finished blackmailing Bank of America into giving him a sweetheart deal, he must have felt remorse. He woke one day complaining how absurd it was that he was paying an effective tax rate that was lower than the one most of his employees pay. Rather than give them all a whopping raise, he proposed ways to make him pay higher than 17%.

Could it be that Warren Buffet, The Sage Of Omaha, does not know that he could pick up the phone on his NetJets' jet (he owns this company which allows Millionaires who can't afford their own jet to share, plus he is cheap as all get out) and call his lawyer and accountant and simply instruct them to not take certain deductions, so that he could pay higher taxes? One would think that most folks know this can be done.

Apparently he doesn't know this. The President does not seem prepared to tell him this. The Times and MSNBC, desperate to prop up President O and always eager to annihilate unsuspecting Millionaires, who do not live in Tribeca, have jumped on this band wagon. Is it too early or too outrageous to think that we might soon be erecting Millionaire Internment Camps as the best solution to the nation's many problems?

Camp Millionaire, Nebraska

This must be very confusing to recent immigrants to this country from China, Mexico, Hungary, Bulgaria, or Ecuador. These folks have a dream of becoming Millionaires, and this dream is partially what drives them to come here, work two jobs, educate their children, eventually become citizens and, yes, even pay some taxes.

What Mr. Buffet and the President and their cohorts seem to be missing is that what they have to say about Millionaires paying more taxes and the way they say it, is a very, very good argument for something they consider to be abhorrent...a flat tax of...17%*.

You see, Uncle Warren, that if you paid a flat 17% income/capital gains tax on everything you made, with only one deduction of $8-10,000 per dependent, you would effectively pay a whole lot more money in taxes, as would every despicable Millionaire in the country. Plus, your company, Berkshire Hathaway, would also pay a flat 17% on earnings.

You see, Uncle Warren, unlike your friends in Washington, real people pay their bills with money, not ideas.

They like the possibility of doing their taxes on a postal card and knowing that Millionaires and Billionaires are paying a lot more money, even though they are paying the same rate. Real people like simple, practical things like EZ Pass, itunes, etc.

Is that too hard for some folks to understand? Yes, because they are caught up in their feelings, rather than in finding a rational solution to our problems.

Grow up.

* Here is a list of grown up countries, run by adults, with adult electorates, who use a simple flat tax:
http://flattaxes.blogspot.com/2010/09/flat-tax-countries-and-jurisdictions.html

This Little Piggy...

2011-09-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

Piggy Bank

1) For many of us, the little piggy shown here was our first bank. We all learned the fundamentals of saving by putting our spare coins into the slot. Later, when certain adults made a point of trying to impress us by giving us a dollar, or, in the rarest of rare cases five dollars, we learned to pull little piggy apart, or remove the cork from underneath and insert the paper bill.

This latter move, of course, also taught us about something called borrowing; once we had the knack for breaking into piggy, we had a little taste of credit.

Sadly, we outgrew our piggy banks and graduated to small savings accounts in big bank buildings, many made of brick or granite, supported by huge columns. The bulk was to make us all feel secure about putting our money inside a place too big for a thief to carry around. These banks had names like First National City Bank, Chase Manhattan, or even Chemical Corn Exchange and each one had its own armed guard inside.

Who would have thought that, after all these years, little piggy would once again prove to be a very sound alternative to those same big bulky stone banks...

Bank Piggy/DSK

2) The French banker, Christine Lagarde, is the head of the IMF, a kind of bank of banks. She recently replaced another French banker who is so famous he is known only by his initials, DSK, who resigned after having an unseemly, at best, liaison with a maid in his New York hotel (naturally, he blames the maid, puritanical Americans, and a conspiracy for his troubles).

Ms. Lagarde has been chiding her Euro partners to get going on baling out Greece and other countries, which cannot pay their debts and are in danger of default. Collectively, these countries are rather conveniently known as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). Not making it up.

In case you have not been paying attention, Greece sold many $billions of bonds to banks in France, Germany and other countries, so that Greeks could continue to provide a swell vacation spot for other euros without having to pay taxes. Then the banks bought insurance in case these bonds went bust, which they assuredly will if the same banks don't lend Greece more money.

If this sounds familiar to an American audience, especially if you are unemployed, have had your home foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford health insurance, it should. Greece is playing the role of home buyers who got mortgages they could not possibly repay from banks like Countrywide, who then sold a piece of the mortgage to other suckers, who then insured the worthless stuff with the same insurer, AIG. You know the rest.

Questions: why are there so many French bankers? Why don't they teach bankers that it is not a good idea to buy bonds from Greece, instead of sound investments like ouzo or feta cheese? Why don't we let children run the banks and the IMF: even they know not to buy from Greeks bearing bonds!

3) For some years we have had an account at a certain Swiss bank. In 2008, while said bank was losing about $38Billion, we actually made more money than they did. Considering that we were unemployed at the time, this was quite a feat and made us wonder why the bank did not hire us to manage them.

This week, the banking world was shocked...truly shocked ...again to find out that a lone trader at the same bank had run up losses of $2.3Billion (so far) without the loss being detected. These kinds of traders are always called "rogues," which is a way of banks saying that all is okey-dokey because there was only one. They think this makes clients feel a lot safer.

The bank has said,"The true magnitude of the risk exposure was distorted because the positions had been offset in our system with fictitious ...positions..." In other words, we can't be blamed or fired for not knowing since the guy made up stories to cover the bad stuff and our system can only find the bad stuff, not made up stuff.

Well, okay, we feel much better about our account now; and, this also explains why there is no minus sign on the Swiss flag; always accentuate the positive.

4) At least that "rogue" trader will go to prison; we can be assured of that. But, what about all of these other jamokes, who pompously, arrogantly, deceitfully, dishonestly, stupidly and, yes, piggishly baled out their pals at our expense? The Taliban would be too good for them.

It turns out that the little piggy bank was a very good idea after all. Oink.

Bon Courage

2011-09-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

51 Stars

The current 50-Star US flag was designed by a seventeen year old high school student Robert Heft as part of a class project in 1958. He got a B-, until the design was accepted by the nation to be its new flag; then, his teacher gave him an A. Talk about tough markers!

Heft was a young man who thought ahead, a kind of Steve Jobs of flags, and so he also designed a 51-Star flag, shown above, at the same time, and didn't stop until he hit a 60-Star model.

In October 2001, I tried to contact Mr. Heft to ask his permission to use the 51-Star flag for a project. At the time, I thought of the extra star as a potential healing and unifying symbol, a point of reference for a wounded city and nation.

For a number of reasons that project never took flight, and I did not have the opportunity to connect with Mr. Heft, who died in 2009.

But, today, I am thinking again about that 51st-Star, and thinking that now, perhaps more than ever, the country might benefit from having a new reference point, a unifying light, a visible and symbolic source of energy, imagination and courage.

I am also thinking about all those 17-year-old young men and women out there today, and their futures. I would say to them: now is the time to be bold, to seize the moment, rise above our profound sense of grief and loss; rise too above the current national malaise and all the jibber-jabber.

Now might be an even better time to take inspiration from the Star and the imagination and confidence of that

17-year-old boy back in 1958, to begin to re-design...everything around us that requires re-designing... which is quite a lot;

and to not look back or listen to those who say you cannot do it. Bon Courage.

This One's For You

Stephen King At The New DMV

2011-08-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

1) Did CT's new Governor ask Stephan King to design the new DMV? We spent 3 hrs. yesterday at the DMV in Bridgeport, CT attempting to obtain a CT driver's license in exchange for one from New York State. This was not enough time.

Recent public employee lay-offs, have caused major setbacks at CT-DMV offices. Some of the processes that citizens were able to accomplish at the Norwalk office, for example, like exchanging an out of state license, must now be done in Bridgeport or another office.

At the 3 hr. mark, having not yet even gotten to the first window to present the paperwork, we realized that we better check on the next part of the process, the eye test. The test room was filled with people and the wait was 1.5-2hrs. At that point, we threw in the towel. The nice family sitting behind us had already been there for 5 hrs, and the daughter had just been called to wait again for a test.

We have seen a bit of the cut-back future, and it is not working well. Throughout the entire experience, we can say that the DMV employees were courteous, respectful, knowledgable....and just as baffled as regular citizen- motorists about the whole ordeal.

DMV Drive-Thru

We exchanged messages with Governor Malloy's office this morning (yes, they responded immediately and the trick is to have a positive headline and to offer solutions). We made the following suggestions:

Post wait times by the Customer Service line up front or outside the front doors. Not all processes have the same wait times, but that's a detail. Right now, the only way to know there is a 3hr wait...is to wait 3hrs. This is only a temporary fix, but why make everyone waste an entire day?
Consider an emergency extension of licenses and registrations, perhaps 3 mos. This would allow for some planning, and a blanket extension could be honored by insurance companies.
Create a contest for CT students, challenging them to re-design the current DMV website, which currently creates more problems than it solves and is too complicated. Today's tech-students could probably re-do the entire thing in a few weeks at a relatively low cost. Reward them with generous scholarships.

Greenwich, where we now reside, Bridgeport, and Norwalk are all in Fairfield County. In 2011, Fairfield had the sixth highest per capita income in the US. The latest national median income figures for 2009, ranked CT number one in the US. And yet, the State is currently incapable of properly and simply processing drivers' licenses and vehicle registrations.

The Governor's Office said they would discuss our proposals with the DMV, if they can get to a window. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/nyregion/connecticut-workers-approve-contract-they-had-rejected.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Little Tuk That Could

2) We took a ride in our friends new tuk-tuk the other night, a bright red-one with a white vinyl top and sides. This one had a little gas engine, but newly built US models all have electric engines, which provide about 250 miles per charge. You may have become familiar with these three-wheeled vehicles by way of harrowing rides around Delhi, Bangkok, or other Asian cities.

These US cousins are classified by DOT as motorbikes for licensing and insurance purposes and are legal in all fifty states; however, for CT residents, we recommend waiting to get one, as you might be able to drive one of these to CA and back before being able to register one in CT.

http://www.tuktuktransport.com/

Yabba-Dabba-Doo-Doo

2011-08-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Are we having fun yet?

It must have been a lot like this just before our distant ancestors came up with the design for the round wheel. Imagine Fred & Wilma trying to sleep at night, worried tomorrow would bring another day of commuting on square rocks and that the quarry might run out of coin-stones.

Here's some good news: future ages will be studying our era as if it were another Stone Age, and we're not talking Keith & Mick, we're really talking Fred & Barney. Imagine the opportunities!

I have to think that our stoney pals spent a lot of time bopping each other on the head with stone before they figured out that wheel thing. And, sad to say, Boys, but I also have to think that it was probably Wilma or one of her friends, who pointed out the advantages of roundness. So annoying when they insist on stopping to ask for directions!

It feels a lot like we're still in the bopping on the head stage.

Funny, how history repeats itself. When you look at corporate America, especially those banks (Chariots of Fired!), you really don't see too many women drivers or bright headlights either. Same for that distant planet called Washington DC.

Barney's boss, Mr. Slate

We've asked this before: would you have asked the guys at Verizon and AT&T to design an iphone? Would the brighter-than-bright boys at Encyclopedia Britannica have come up with Google? Would trade publishers been able to skip a few author's lunches to design Amazon? Please. Did the Bridge & Tunnel Authority come up with EZ Pass?

Then, why are we waiting for so many Mr. Dulls to re-invent the tax code, re-finance the deficit, figure out why we even have Greek bonds in the first place? Greek Diners, yes, but buying debt from people who think Taxes is just where the Dallas Cowboys call home? No surprise that France loved those Greek bonds; they think Jerry Lewis is a genius too.

Ah, but we did promise good news, didn't we?

We will have to re-design everything and we will need to do it ourselves: government, education, healthcare, investing/saving, business organization, etc. No matter whether you are twenty-four or sixty-four, the good news is that everything works like a square wheel right now and Barney's boss, Mr. Slate, seems to be in charge of it all.

Apple's Steves, Jobs & Wozniak

If we can come up with a small tablet (!), with which we can see and know every star in the sky, watch every movie ever made, listen to any song ever sung, teach every course brilliantly, and on which Betty can catch-up on a video chat from Beijing with her old friend Wilma back home for free, we can fix this other stuff.

Let's Yabba-Dabba-Do It.

Fast.

Don't Call Me Ishmael

2011-07-31T05:14:00.000-07:00

©TWMcDermott2011 (this post runs concurrently in The Rye (NY) Record)

Don’t call me Ishmael, please.

But, I have been to the great whaling island, where I’m told harpoons and surf rods have been replaced by bespoke scrimshawed golf clubs, wielded by captains of what used to be called industry. I get the news second-hand, since I left that place nearly twenty years ago. I was somewhat frightened by the experience of bumping into too many friends from home at the Portuguese bakery, and terrified by whale-sized “jeeps” racing along the beach, where we sat, bundled, even on foggy days.

Thereafter, we installed our young ones in summer camps far enough up in Maine that only a very brave few would be tempted to visit even one weekend; and that was mandatory, in case the camp managers needed to place your rebellious child in the car for the return trip on which you might cry wee, wee, wee and much worse all the way home.

Fortunately for us, this never happened, and so we were able to discover the excellent joys of summering at home. This had the added benefit of allowing us to take our island vacation in late winter at a different well-hidden place requiring several modes of transport to reach and either an airplane or what locals euphemistically call a Fast Ferry in order to golf.

And what could one do at home, while other brethren flocked in summer to the same island on the same ferry in their vehicles bigger than many summer cottages? Well, it turns out that one can do much of what you might have done far away, and even more:

You can find a free parking space in town on the street even on Friday afternoons. Especially on Friday afternoons!

The only line in town is at the little ice cream store, but it is worth the wait. On a day when things are not going your way, an ice cream cone soothes many ills, and you can always walk or swim it off later. Nobody can lick an ice cream cone and not feel like a kid again, and those problems look much smaller as the cone slowly disappears.

Did someone say swim! Rye Golf Club, Playland, the Y; Apawamis, WCC, AYC, etc. Or, throw a stone from your house and it will land in your neighbor's pool, or maybe your own. The Sound itself is best of all and you can see the ladies in their white bathing caps at Manursing in the evening as they rise and fall in the swells.

You can actually park right in front of the post office to mail a card to your friend on the whaling island, who may already be suffocating from the traffic, de rigeur cocktail parties given by friends from home, and the long lines at the Portuguese bakery.

You sit on the open porch under the awning in the evening before dinner, feeling the breeze rise in the west. There is much less traffic on the roads and lanes and it is quiet until August, when the cicadas begin their festival.

Some Fridays and Saturdays, you just feel like having dinner in the city. So, you get in the car and in about 30 minutes you are at a favorite uptown place, or a little longer, and you can be downtown, where all the locals have vacated and you beat the European tourists, who eat late, as they do at home. Then breeze home again, feeling much better for having the little adventure.

Other nights, you rest the Weber, and go over to Port Chester, crossroads of the world, or at least the Americas. Indian, Italian, barbecue, tacos, fish tacos, bar taco! Brazilian? Marvel at the current balance between gentrification and true grit, and wonder if the grit will be all gone with the rising of the luxury lofts a la Soho.

Saturday morning at the Farmers' Markets with your basket and finally there is good corn. You buy radishes and other things you seldom buy, just because it makes you feel good to do so. You indulge your secret craving for those damn cider donuts and that special goat cheese that tastes like a mild blue.

There's something especially wonderful about Sunday mornings at home in church. Well, so I am told; I am not expert on this, but aren't the odds in your favor with all that extra space between fellow petitioners?

An evening picnic by the water on benches beside all manner of charcoal grills: the secret marinades, sauces, dressings: the multiple recipes for potato salad: real tomatoes from the garden and real corn.

Milton Point, looking south to the city and the bridges and east over to Long Island. You might almost be in Hong Kong, except that it's prettier and the waters are less crowded. If you're lucky, you will see the moon, huge and slightly yellow, as it peeks over the tree line in the east.

Waiting For Some Dough

2011-07-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

So, while we sit and wait like our tramp friends, we too might ask, "What are we waiting for?

I have a friend who rants against entitlements. I have heard him do so while buying a senior citizen's ticket at the local cinema and purchasing a senior discount train ticket on Metro North. This is a fellow of some means.

I have another friend, who hates the way that the country has, not so much gone to the dogs, as it has gone to the lobbyists. She is a member of AARP and AAA and practices real estate sales. She is assisted in these by a small army of lobbyists in Washington and state capitals. Even when she buys her corn flakes at the grocers, she is assisted by the corn, cereal, packaging, advertising, marketing, food manufacturing, farmer, trucking, road building, fertilizer, tractor, cash register, and grocery lobbies. Just to name a few.

Both, of course, hate other people's debt and their own taxes.

This morning, while contemplating the course of my day and making my plan of attack to bring organization and fiscal sanity to the world of municipal parking meter management, my concentration was broken by the mating calls of two very loud leaf-blowers. These things are to rakes what ipods were to stereo systems. Apparently, we must continue to be more productive and efficient in ridding our grounds of leaves, even in summer, at the high cost of our hearing and having even a semblance of quiet in the morning.

I have little doubt that the leaf-blower lobby is a mighty one, although I have a lot of doubt about whether many of those who wield these weapons will form their own associations, which would require the filling out of forms and the presentation of certain documents regarding identity.

Once more our republic stands at a crossroads. Shall we wander down Fiscal Insanity Drive or take a stroll down Entitlement Boulevard? Neither one seems to have much merit and both eventually lead to some very bare spot not unlike the one where Beckett's tramps wait in vain.

Our two political "parties," assisted by an upstart third, largely a media invention, are pretenders. They have allowed themselves to become not much more than extremely large lobbying machines for every citizen and especially for large organizations all the time, and for themselves.

The great zen teacher and, at least by my calculation, humorist, Alan Watts has written:

"...If you discover yourself in a blind alley, or even a cul-de-sac, the fact that you found yourself there will invariably tell you something."

What he meant, I think, was that this moment or any moment has its own possibilities beyond what may seem to be the obvious ones. Instead of torturing ourselves with these versions of what we might do to avoid fiscal calamity, to pull one more rabbit out of a hat whose bottom has finally worn through, we should stick with what we know for sure...

...something has come to an end.

Then, we should probably call Steve Jobs and an even Higher Power for an immediate re-design.

But, for now let's just concentrate on what has come to an end with the proverbial whimper, because that is recognizable truth. The truth can be annoying and painful, but it is always informative in a way that lends itself to transcending the particular stinky muck in which we find our personal or national feet stuck.

We have a no-party system; the two party system, as we've known it, is over. At least for now. When this whole charade is over next week, we will be told "the system worked" in a hundred different ways and they will all be lies.

It is better to know the real problem and not know exactly what to do about it yet, then to have manufactured one (debt ceiling) and created fool-proof solutions, which by definition are made by fools.

If we're looking for a savior: Godot, the Good Witch, Lincoln, Churchill, or Joan of Arc, we will need to look in a mirror this time around.

If you make $200,000 and get taxed at 30%, it's easy to see why'd you'd like someone who made $2Billion to pay more than their current 15%. Actually, I'd rather you both paid the 15% and got no deductions. I't also easy to see why we would all expect GE and Exxon to contribute something in taxes, or at least to have the decency to no longer fly our flag at their respective HQ's. But, this is the easy part.

The rest is harder, but so much better than all of this waaaaaiiiiitttttiiiiinnnnngggggg.

Why We Won't See An ibox

2011-07-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

1) Why do people love the company called Apple so much? One reason is that they see hope in the way that Apple innovates so consistently and in how the company always seems to simplify what others have made to look so complicated.

The music industry was an inbred, greedy, self-satisfied, bloated mush ten years ago. They were systemically unable to innovate beyond studio technology and their contract artist's own creativity. So, Apple created itunes and the ipod and drove a stake in their hearts.

The cellular phone industry, dominated by a few major phone "service" companies and a handful of phone manufacturers were also incapable of true innovation, with the exception of BlackBerry. Apple changed the whole scene with the iphone and the app store.

The computer industry, where Apple itself competed as David to the PC Goliaths? Complacent and still dominated by The Big Box, Microsoft. Then Apple introduced ipad. Many laughed. This week, Apple announced that the ipad is now a $6Billion business on its own, twice the size of Dell's consumer PC business, according to he Times. Apple sells every ipad it makes.

I'll bet that not a single person at Apple, certainly not Steve Jobs, ever utters the expression "think outside the box." And I'll bet that those music, phone and computer companies used that expression all the time and still do.

People and institutions that truly think outside some box do not know that they are doing so. It would never occur to a truly innovative person or company to ask others to think outside the box for the simple reason that they do not live inside any box.

2) Apple, Facebook, and Google all have one thing in common. Innovation? Maybe, but the really remarkable thing about these companies is that they show a marked disdain for Wall St. They see Wall St. as a necessary evil, but have no respect for it whatsoever.

Apple continues to give conservative earning's estimates and couldn't care less about analysts' reports. Facebook will finally go public next year, because it must, due to SEC (completely funded by Wall St. fees) rules surrounding private stock ownership. All of these institutions have an inherent mistrust of Wall St. and see bankers and their lawyers as late-coming opportunists, who structure deals to enrich themselves and perhaps a very small set of clients.

Take the recent LinkedIn IPO for example. LinkedIn's valuation has soared to about $10Billion. A day after the IPO, it was valued at $8.9Billion, making millionaires of bankers, lawyers, and employees; while making at least one billionaire.

LinkedIn. Apple, Facebook, and Google are probably shaking their heads asking: But, what does LinkedIn do?

LinkedIn's users are its only real assets. They ( Disclosure: I am one) create networks of contacts. LinkedIn provides the platform, of course, but by itself that is not valuable. Users pay no fees. The captive audience of users with their detailed professional and personal information is potentially valuable.

So, based on that value, how much did each LinkedIn user receive from the IPO? After all, by some measure, they built the company. Answer: zero. Not a dime.

Facebook, in particular, should consider that little information bite. Right, friends?

3) There has been some mention in Washington recently about "thinking outside the box" regarding deficit reduction, taxes, and reigning-in entitlements. Wash DC is the boxiest box of them all.

I cannot help thinking about what Steve Jobs and his crew would do with this stuff, if we gave them a chance. Shall we take a shot at that?

I came, I saw, itax

a) Create a Flat Income Tax with 2-3 flat rates, based on income levels and allow absolutely no deductions. None at all. Income tax becomes like jury duty in New York; just do it. Everyone pays. Period. Personal and Corporate.

b) Create a National Sales Tax. Not a VAT, just a simple sales tax. Yes, on internet sales too. Congress does not manage or spend the proceeds from this tax. Congress, by law, cannot remotely touch the proceeds of this tax and cannot change the rate at whim or exempt themselves from paying it with a special Get Out Of The Tax Card. The tax may be directed by its Trustees towards a specific area, deficit reduction for example, or education. Everyone pays: citizens, non-citizens, visitors, illegals, children, extra-terrestials. Even UN diplomats pay, no exemptions.

Simple, elegant, effectual. itax. A start anyway, even if it is just an idream. Dream of new taxes? Not new, not necessarily higher, just different.

Summer...Way Back Then, Way Back When...

2011-07-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, someone suggested to me that I write about the shortness of summer. This caught me by surprise, since I had just spent a "spring" day in the city, on which people were passing out in the subways and on the streets from the unseasonable heat and humidity. I had had the distinct impression that the "new" winter lasted through baseball's Opening Day snow, far into April, to be immediately followed by a new, longer summer.

The season previously known as spring had gone the way of mortgages requiring repayment.

In other words, we had a summer that had outgrown its calendar boundaries whether we had wanted one or not. I, for one, do not celebrate this development, but in order to comply with the editorial request, I dipped deeply into memory's recesses to the delightful endless summers of the past. And so my thoughts drifted once more Way Back Then, Way Back When...

...you placed your new pair of Keds at the foot of the bed, and gained a supernatural ability to wake up early all by yourself as soon as the last day of school had passed. The streets were quiet in the early morning and dew hung on the windshields of the parked cars, things you never noticed on your way to school.

...The Giants were in Manhattan, the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, the Twins were the Senators, the A's were in Kansas City, Braves in Milwaukee and the Red Sox were just another team playing a Sunday afternoon double-header at the Stadium.

...you could wear a seersucker or linen suit into the city and most days have a reasonable chance of not expiring on the street or in the subway, and did not need to have the linings removed or have the trousers cut into shorts...

... the best tennis was lawn tennis, in which the white ball, slowly turning green, could bounce this way and that, requiring creative and savvy players and favored those who risked rushing the net to volley in order to avoid too many bounces, rather than the baseline ball smashers of today who favor the perfect corporate bounce every time. Ho-hum.

...reading was something that many young people did all year long, but perhaps even more in summer, on their own, unrelated to a course, a test, or any other person's requirements and was certainly not meant to "improve" them, prepare them for banking careers, or make each one a much better person than their friends...

...you took a typing course, instead of Mandarin; flipped burgers by the pool, instead of interning; played games without coaches, schedules, recruiters, and most assuredly parents, who, if you returned home before 5 or 6 pm after a day on your own outside gave you a funny look that said, "What are you doing here?"

...you were full of energy, all day, and yet you cannot remember having eaten a single "healthy" thing for lunch, ever. In fact, you cannot actually remember ever eating lunch at all, nor can any of your friends, although you still get a certain glowing feeling when passing by the baloney at the deli counter in the grocery...

...it was entirely possible to buy some real estate in Alaska or Florida before leaving the house in the morning simply by tearing off the coupon on the side of the cereal box and having mom mail it. You probably still own that square foot just outside Fairbanks or under some busted condo off Alligator Alley...

...there was a breeze on most evenings, when you went out again to play with friends, and you might have worn a shetland sweater around your shoulders and actually put it on once in a while. I am not making this up, even though you cannot possibly wear a shetland today even on most winter days and cannot even wear merino at night in summer, except occasionally at the shore...

...we could locate lemon or cherry italian ices without using mapquest at any paper store or pizza parlor, we "went" for ice cream to Jahn's or frozen custard at Carvel, and could take a seat at the pharmacy, like Schmidt's or Sutton Hall and have an ice cream soda, a malt, or a banana split and they also sold some drugs...

...it was entirely possible to play a game of stickball at P.S. 144 in the morning, stoopball in the afternoon, and top it off with a wiffle ball game in early evening without getting a single text from your parents asking how you were doing...

...and it was possible to invent your own game called cupball, using scrunched-up paper cups from the snack bar at the beach and pieces of fencing, played underneath cabanas with full line-ups whose names and positions you can still remember, and to emerge in August nearly as pale as you looked when the season began in late June, and your mothers marveled at this ability to disappear and they were perfectly happy, not worrying that this might hold you back in some way from acceptance to college or advancement in a lucrative career in which you could not explain what you really did in a sentence or less, except that it involved being in the vicinity of a whole bunch of money...

...way back when, way back then...

Ed Note: PS 144, Schmidt's and Sutton Hall pharmacies were located near Forest Hills Gardens, NY. Only PS 144 remains today. We could have also noted the fine stickball games played at our alma mater (K through K) PS 101, located inside the Gardens' confines; it still stands as well, which says something about public education relative to drugstore economics, but we're not exactly sure what it means.

"Monday, Monday...No DMV"

2011-07-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

"Monday, Monday"

* Did you know that Monday is a holiday in the state of CT? I, for one, did not know that. There I was, standing in the nearly empty parking lot at my newly adopted state's DMV office in Norwalk. Imagine my delight, when I exited the ramp at the end of Route 7 expressway, specifically designed to place your vehicle at the DMV's doorstep, when I saw a nearly empty parking lot. Ah, I thought, the excessive heat has kept other less hearty and hopeful motorists at home, and my reward will be perhaps a new world record time for registering three vehicles.

Not.

Only the cleaning crew was working on Monday, which is a holiday for DMV workers in CT. Every Monday. While I was there, a dozen fellow citizen motorists arrived with that same wondrous look in their eyes upon seeing so few other cars, but only for a moment, until they realized once more that what appears to be too good to be true, often is.

* Nationally, the official unemployment rate is 9.2%, which is approximately as correct as an old Soviet Five-Year Plan for wheat, meaning not correct at all. A Bureau of Labor statistician might take a brief walk around the block and have at least anecdotal evidence that the real rate may be twice that. She might even return to desk to find that 176 people had tried to get her job while she was away gathering data.

In cities like Norwalk or nearby Stamford, 9.2% unemployment is a punch line to a not very funny joke.

Please.

* The state of CT is about to lay-off 6500 employees, who recently turned down a new deal negotiated by their union bosses and the new Governor. Like anyone else these days, they were merely acting in what they saw as their own best interests.

Standing there in the empty parking lot on a Monday, contemplating the locked DMV doors, realizing that Monday was a holiday, probably because the DMV is open a half-day on Saturday, a few citizens wondered how this could be. How is it possible that the state could not find enough people to work a schedule that included a half-day on Saturday and a Monday?

We were thinking that somewhere nearby were a whole bunch of people who would be willing to work those hours for what must be pretty decent wages and benefits. Actually, we were thinking that we would be willing to do that.

We were also thinking that we better get back there on Tuesday, early, to make sure that we got through the very complicated license and registration processes before those lay-offs hit the DMV, making Tuesday a holiday as well.

* How complicated are those processes? For a license you need: an app, your old NY license to surrender to the state, 2 proofs of residence, an original birth certificate or a passport, and an original Social Security card, beginning in October. Not making up that last one. Then you pay first an app fee, take an eye test, then pay a license fee (two separate transactions), and have your photo taken twice. It's all about identity and catching illegals. Strangely, nobody has any interest whatsoever in whether you know how to drive safely and any "points" are simply erased.

Customer Focus

To register your NY vehicles in CT you need: original titles, CT insurance cards, $20 emissions test/or $10 VIN verification certification. CT treats your your NY inspections and registrations, plus the titles as if they never existed, so they can get some fees. Then you pay tax on the vehicles. Oh yes, if one of the registrants should happen not to want to go to the DMV, imagine that, you need to have a notarized Power of Attorney too.

* During this ordeal, I visited my insurance broker's office in a very large, very expensive looking suburban office building. Here is a photo of the 20 or so putters outside an office there. Everyone was dressed in golf shirts and pants. The putters were not meant for customers.

* Whatever happened to the customer? Best not to think about it and just listen to The Mamas and the Papas "Monday, Monday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h81Ojd3d2rY

An Interview Exclusive: 8 Ball

2011-07-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

3G: Since Rupert Murdoch let his hair go to its natural grey, he has had nothing but trouble with his Brit tabloids. Will he soon return to that orangey-brown tint?

8B: Signs point to yes.

3G: The President and Congress have "sequestered" themselves in full view of their adoring respective constituencies to "negotiate" a reported $4Trillion deficit reduction over ten years. Will it happen? Will it help?

8B: You may rely on it/ Until next time.

3G: New York State faces unprecedented budget deficits and massively underfunded public pension plans. Do you agree with those who think legalizing gay marriage is an important first step in solving
these fiscal problems ?

8B: Try the not.

Rupert's former tint

3G: The media have been unanimous in their praise of New York's Governor Cuomo during his first six months in office. Do you see this love affair continuing? Will he run for President in '16?

8B: Love is a many splintered thing/Undecided.

3G: Former Governor Spitzer's CNN show has been cancelled due to abysmal ratings. In leaving, he noted that his failure was actually a triumph of sorts. Can this man be humbled?

8B: Don't rely on it.

3G: Will "Unavailable" ever stop calling us?

8B: My sources say no.

Sans tint. Humble Dye?

3G: Our bank was once Village Savings Bank, then it became First Fidelity, which morphed into First Union, and was then merged into Wachovia, which was forced into the arms of Wells Fargo. Wouldn't it be easier just to have apple and google remake the whole banking thing into i$ and gdough?

8B: Without a doubt.

3G: If we buy a digital book from ibooks or kindle for $12.99, we get to put it on our laptop, tablet, and phone. If we buy a hardcover in an indie book shop for $26.95, we get the book. Shouldn't retail hardcover buyers get a download at no additional cost? What do trade publishers think about?

8B: Most assuredly so/ Lunch.

3G: The 2012 Presidential campaigns are in full swing in Iowa and New Hampshire for Republicans. Does one of them have a chance of winning? Are you excited?

8B: Tea leaves point to no/ Zzzzzzzzzz.

3G (quietly): Thanks.

The Best Graduation Speech Ever...Sort Of

2011-06-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

"St. John's"

I have a friend named Mulligan who lives down the lane. Some mornings he comes by for coffee and a talk; mostly he talks and I listen. I do not know what Mulligan does for a living exactly, but he once told me that, "I made money the old fashioned way; by using other peoples' money." Apparently, this talent has also provided him with a lot of free time.

Since it's June, our "discussion" turned towards graduations:

"I went to St. John's College in Maryland; they also have a campus in Santa Fe," Mulligan explained. "I had gone to a Jesuit high school in New York, where they taught Latin and Greek as if it was punishment for some unknown offense. Still, there was something attractive about the Classics to me, and St. John's specialized in classical Great Books education, from both Western and Eastern traditions.

I'm not exactly proud of the way I wound up going there. My grandfather was a pretty successful guy; he had gone straight to work after graduating from the eighth grade, and never stopped. He was a self-made man, who disliked Joe Kennedy, 'Ivy Leaguers,' and off-the-rack clothing in that order. He told me that he would pay the entire cost of my college education as long as I attended the college of his choice, St. John's. He meant, of course, the one located in Queens, primarily known for its basketball and baseball teams, and for its Law School, an entry-ticket into the theatre of local politics.

Tenaka

I had been a very good student and was actually a serious candidate for admission to the schools today's parents slobber over, Harvard, Princeton and Yale, naturally; and, in my day, Columbia and MIT as well. But, it became obvious that I could not ask my parents to pay big bucks, while turning down a free ride. So, I played a little four-year trick on my unsuspecting grandfather, who dutifully made out the checks, including my allowance to 'St. John's.'

I 'read' only the Classics in college, Herodotus, Catullus, Confucius, and had a real passion for the Eastern spiritual traditions: Taoism, Buddhism, etc. As graduation neared, I was named to a select team to pick the speaker. Since both of the other two team members had gone off to join some lower case version of Kesey's Merry Pranksters near Santa Fe, I got to make the decision all by myself. So, I invited the Roshi from a well-known Zen Monastery on Maryland's Eastern shore, where I had spent some time: Tenaka.

At Commencement, Tenaka walked to the microphone on the stage full of academic dignitaries, and we all waited in the hot, muggy air for what he had to say, especially me, for obvious reasons. Roshi walked slowly to the mike in his saffron and crimson robes. He was short and the audience could just see his full head above the podium. He looked out at that audience, then turned and looked at the dignitaries behind him, all of whom smiled back at his calm, unlined face.

And we waited and waited....and then waited some more. Roshi just looked out into the crowd of black-robed graduates and expectant relatives and faculty. And he kept looking at them minute after minute, after very slow minute. You could almost hear a ticking sound as we began to shift uncomfortably in our chairs, wipe the sweat from our eyes, wonder if the old gentleman was having some kind of a stroke.

"Graduation"

After a while, the President of the College and the Head of the Trustees began to stare at me in my seat of honor in the front row, and I became the most uncomfortable one of all in a sea of discomfort. 'Say something. Anything.' I thought to my embarrassed self. But, it finally became clear that Tenaka wasn't going to say a thing; he was going to stand there, and I was going to have to suffer for it all the way through, I supposed, the full 12-15 minute suggested length of the "speech."

When the audience had tired of wiping all the sweat away, shimmying in their seats, giving funny looks, and rolling their eyeballs, the murmuring began, then it turned into a steady rumble, and then some began to shout some pretty rude things at Tenaka. He just continued to look over the crowd as if he were looking over a field of poppies or a beautiful seascape in his native Japan. The more uncomfortable we became, the more serene Roshi seemed to be.

Just before he 'finished,' it finally occurred to me that he had in fact made the perfect speech. By saying nothing, he had said it all, at least to me. It was as if he really had said, 'you're all so full of yourselves that you do not even remember who you really are or were meant to be. You've been getting your pablum in many forms for a long time and I am not going to give you any more. You expected a message about the evils of money or war, helping people in Africa, or following your 'bliss.' But, life is not about anything, not health or love or soul or body or meditation, and certainly not about a bliss derived from drugs or ego...

...Life is, is all. Tough luck. Thank you, now, I'm going.' Or, something like that, I supposed. It sounded better unsaid.

By the time we had received our diplomas, most people were just happy to get into the shade and smoke a doob, rather than to think too much about the 'stunt' the so-called speaker had sprung on them. For some parents, it confirmed what they had thought all along about their daughters' and sons' decision to study only the Great Books. What kind of job could you get with that, they wondered? And might be wondering still.

I escorted Roshi to the car waiting to take him back to the monastery. I'm proud to say that neither one of us said a single word. He just got into the car and drove off.

"But what happened," I asked Mulligsn, "when your grandfather asked about attending his St. John's graduation?"

"Aquaduct"

"I couldn't disappoint him. I had a friend who worked in administration at his St. John's in Queens. She simply added me to the list of graduates and diplomas to be printed. They had such a large graduating class that nobody noticed. I invited my grandfather (I had already 'confessed' to my parents some time before), took my seat, received my 'diploma,' and went to lunch at 21 Club, wearing a new graduation suit made for me by my grandfather's tailor, Promevitz. Later I went to Aqueduct and made the last two races."

"Who was the speaker at that graduation?" I asked. "Haven't a clue." said Mulligan.

From Caveat Emptor To Carpe Diem

2011-06-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

4 for me, 1 for you, 4 for...

Am I the only one who thinks that we have become a nation of accountants and interns? No, I though so.

Growing up, even in a largely upper-middle class community, I do not remember people being so interested in the Dow Jones Average, the Federal Budget, and Secretary of the Treasury, bank CEO's (please), and certainly not the head of the Federal Reserve Board. We're even becoming experts on public pensions, which requires knowledge of a very special kind of math.

We used to save all that boring stuff for school. Yuch.

Yet, pick up what passes for a newspaper today, turn on the TV, or simply stand in line at a bank or waiting for a plane, and somebody is telling you all about these things...and more: The Deficit (again!), Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security (again!), interest on the National Debt, etc. The sky is falling in pieces made of quarters and dimes.

Meanwhile, corporate America has trillions in cash on hand, while we hear and read ad infinitum about the official jobless rate of 9% plus, which means to anyone with a brain that the real jobless rate is closer to 15-18% or higher.

In-Turns

And, while some companies are hiring, they are not adding any new jobs. Why would bean-counting CFO's approve jobs, when people who still have jobs are working overtime for no extra pay? When they leave the office, they work on their BlackBerrys and computers at home, on the train/plane, even while driving ? These folks are willing to hold on to these jobs despite the disappearance of some benefits and the ever-escalating cost of their share of healthcare premiums. How do we account for this insanity?

Every business and non-profit organization appears to have fallen in love with "internships." At Thirdgarage, we call these "in-turnships," in which the worker does everything asked, for free or for very low pay and zero benefits, and the organization, in-turn, owns the value of the work and does not owe squat to the worker.

What a great concept! For accountants. But, not so great for young college grads or boomers trying to stay in or re-enter the workforce.

Shanghaied

Is it a wonder that in an environment, in which we politely and incorrectly refer to the result of organized, massive stealing (really bad accounting!) by those who were meant to protect our financial system as a "recession," we do not have great political leadership? In Washington, Albany, Sacramento, they all sound like accountants, or more precisely, accounting professors, whom in-turns have provided massive amounts of mind-numbing data.

But, nobody actually ever does anything, unless, of course, you call playing accounting-chicken real action. It' just cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. Oy.

We bought the whole concept of corporate and public capitalism and quarterly accounting hook, line and sinker. Even the Chinese thought it was a great idea, and it is for about 300 million of their 1.3 billion people. They even continue to lend us money so that their Party can keep our party going strong until...we have to account for our actions and do something about it.

Seize! Not Seizure.

Which would be right about now. Until we wake up to that fact, we will be stuck listening to the accountants jabber. Where is our Lincoln, our Churchill, our Ike at D-Day. Where is the next generation of women to call all of this BS and lead us beyond the balance sheets and Power Points and get us balanced and powerful again?

We forgot about Caveat Emptor, big time, but we can still Carpe this f*@#*#g Diem.

Moving

2011-06-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

move. v. to change in position from one point to another; to follow some specified course; to stir the emotions.

I

ginkgos never forget

My favorite dictionary, which has remained nearby on various desks and tables in a number of rooms and homes over forty years, devotes seven inches to the verb, move. Nowhere in those seven inches is there a warning about why one might not even attempt to do so, and maybe there should be. But, we would ignore it, I'm sure, out of curiosity, or just because we must do what we must do, sometimes when we least want to do it, but also, on occasion, at just the right time. We don't get to decide these things, no matter the size our car, bank account, or ego; we just get to think that we do, because we're human and because we're inherently silly.

Sometimes in life, we really do get what we wish for: the girl or boy, that perfect job, the last- second goal, the house to die for. Before the dream plays out, we suffer. Awake at night, on too many nights, we stare out the window from our bed at the red light on the corner; the headlights of a turning car shine on us, as if God has answered our plea, but it won't be that night, or the next, or even the next.

Walking the dog in the dark late on another night ,we reach out to touch the bark of a beloved gingko tree, as we might reach out from the platform to someone we love who is departing on a train too soon. "Don't go yet," our fingers seem to be spelling out in braille. For, in love for people and homes, we are indeed blind.

But, we've had one more autumn than we supposed, when the yellow ginkgo leaves mixed with the crimson ones from the japanese maple, forming a path up the stairs, little buddhist monks ascending. And that is a very good thing to have had.

II

Little Monks

These wishes come in their own time, and while you are waiting and waiting, you discover things that you had forgotten or never knew. You will open an old wooden box with rope handles and find treasure: a brother's first baseman's mitt; an old Jack Kramer from camp; another like it in a green 1962 canvas cover, still perfect in its press, gut intact; hockey pucks and a well-used mouthguard.

Old

Did someone say books? A regular Strand on each floor, musty cellar to vast attic, many not even on the library shelves, where there are about 1200. Almost all keepers there. So, you must donate, discard, dust each one you save, then box, bag, stack and carry every last blessed one of them. All your life, you've loved books from the very first two -a Grossett & Dunlap Riders of The Purple Sage and a Doubleday orange Kipling - and you will come mighty close to not wanting to see or hold another book...ever again, but it will pass, while you chose the 100 or so that will fit snuggly on the new shelves.

And, you stand in the kitchen, looking at the big old Paris clock and think: where in the world will we put that?

In fact, you also sit on the floor of the new place, months before you will move and wonder what it will be like to live here. Where will this and that go? Will the TV work over the fireplace and mantle? Will the dining room table from our old, old house work again in this one? And, where, oh where will we fit all of the things, generations of things, in 2500 sq ft. that lazed about so easily in 6,000? Yet, you love this new place in a way that is hard to describe, perhaps because you have not yet let yourself fully love it for fear of offending the memories still residing in the other place you've loved much longer.

And, where will that clock go?

III

Last Train, 35 Mins.

Where some home browsers hear noise, you hear sounds: trains arriving and departing, tooting; especially the diesels, and the last train departing GCT at 1:40am, hopefully with a son or daughter on it and your friends' too, and its arrival at exactly 2:40am; you count the ten minutes until you hear the front door open. Glorious, safe sound.

Oh joyous moment, on that first night in the new place, when you hear the train toot at the new nearby station together. Ecstasy of a kind.

The big clock ticks in the new place, but the hands will not move, as if time has actually stopped and you are stuck in between one universe and another.

IV

New

Where other visitors saw and heard traffic and dust, you witnessed the world going by on ancient and new roads outside the old gate.

Again, you rejoice one morning while showing the dog her newly appointed path, as you hear the traffic on the Turnpike and it sounds just the same as it used to, at least in your imagination, like waves constantly breaking on a shore.

Boxes get filled, trucks get filled, a new cellar is filled with what got emptied from another one. Too many clothes try to get into smaller closets, like one who has not been exercising trying to get into that favorite suit or dress. Well, we 'll have to start feeding these closets!

And one day, one amazing day, after near-panic, actual panic, fear of this and that and an exhaustion you've never quite felt before except when someone close had died, after sleeping like the proverbial baby...it is over. You've moved. You begin to recognize a kind of buoyancy that you've been missing.

Good As Old

You go downstairs and into the new library, push the minute hand of the big clock in a certain way, and, it begins to move, one minute at a time, and keeps on moving, and so do you.

Day Game

2011-05-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Old Bat

Oprah is closing her show before inviting me as a guest. Elaine's is closing before I attained good-table status. And there is no bat where fans can meet at the New Stadium.

It seems like a good time for moving on to something big, something new. But, what exactly? Good question: when in doubt, take in a game. When is serious doubt, take in a day game.

I sat out by the left field foul pole in the shade of an overhang to watch a game in the New Stadium. A few other singletons sat nearby. Admittedly, they were some years ahead of me with little else to do and, judging by the quality of their clothing and their plastic lunch bags, perhaps not much in the bank to help them do it. I was hoping that I didn't fit in.

We saw a good home-team win and were forced to listen to some of the worst white rock & roll music ever recorded, at superhuman volume, just so we'd have something to do between batters, pitches, and just about anything else that might happen naturally during a beautiful May afternoon game.

Fortunately, even noxious music and a corporate lack of faith in the game itself cannot diminish some things:

the newest old Yank, who no longer has the speed or the eye of his youth, on a given day, can hit two 400 ft. homers to center. Andruw Jones.
Jeter getting his 2,976th hit. A double.
Mo, making his 1,000th appearance. Mo-ver!
Sinatra doing it His Way one more time after a win over the listless Jays.

There were people there, mostly young and mostly male who actually paid $9.50 for a single bottle of beer. These are the ones who moaned deeply about the $4.59 per gallon they had to pay somewhere in New Jersey in order to get across the GW. Yet, they will pay over $100 per gallon for a beer at the New Stadium. Go figure.

Mo & Tex

Some, no, many of these people were very poorly dressed:

in "gym" shorts, although they had definitely not seen a gym since high school.
in undershirts that should have been under something.
in too many calories stuffed into too short-shorts and too skimpy-shirts.
in remarkably bad suits and haircuts, nervously looking at their BlackBerrys for a command from their boss or client.

And the most attractive person there by far? Naturally, she was wearing a SF Giants cap, orange brim.
Cool, even in the hot sun.

As much as I loved baseball, and as much as I loved a day game above all others, I honestly wanted to be somewhere else, and it wasn't just because of the haberdashery. I couldn't envision exactly where I'd rather be, but could not help thinking: how could most of these people, who look so unhealthy, who dress so poorly, who will pay anything to drink watery beer have full-time paying jobs.

Today's Lonely Bat

How these people found and retained good jobs and kept them with absolutely no sense of style is a mystery as great as the true location of the strike zone is to pitchers and batters. We may still be over-employed, and that's a scary thought.

I had no doubt that thousands of these people loved being mercifully away from their too-busy jobs. But, I had little compassion for them, wanting instead to steal their jobs, while they were not looking, as Granderson surely should have stolen third in the second inning, while the Jays third-baseman was napping.

When you're at a day game in May, in the shade, with the sun shining after days of rain, as the home team is walloping homers, and you wish you were somewhere else, it's time to make something happen. It didn't need to be a Saint Oprah grand slam, a sold single would do.

Most people believe that reaching the age of sixty to be a form of early death. They won't even walk past Frank Campbell's fine Funeral Emporium on Madison Avenue for fear that they will be magnetically attracted upstairs among the bouquets. Well, maybe they haven't heard the news: Sixty is The New Thirty! I know this is true, because I made it up.

I walk past Frank's any time I please on a lunch break from the Writers & Artist's Club Members' Reading Room after a brief waltz around Crawford Doyle, one of the last great independent book emporiums on the Isle of Manhatta. I may even do a little jig just to prove a point.

Forever Is A Long Long Time

They're all over Jeter and Posada for being near dead too. Who's next, Mo? In baseball, when you're forty, "they" think your sixty.Yet, Posada played a huge part in a walk-off win recently and Jete will soon get his 3,000th. And there is still much Mo to go.

And what about Andruw Jones! Two huge shots to center, one in the visiting bullpen, the other into the Memorial Park, over the 408 sign. Many say he's washed up. Once upon a time, I watched him play in center for Turner's Braves in '96, and face Mo in late innings, the first of the Torre-Yanks' string of Series wins. Now, he's an add-on cagey vet, who just might get that game winner in another October.

The Yanks always know where they want to be.

Dear Andruw, Jorge, Mo, and Jete, You're not washed up until you say you're washed up. And then some.

Walking to the train after the last out, seeing the ghost of Joe D in front of me, I almost believed it myself.

When It Rain...It...Rains...And...

2011-05-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

Bumper Sticker

1) Driving behind a woman in a Toyota sedan, Riverside, CT. Bumper sticker:

Wise Men Still Seek Him

Note To Him:

With all due respect, this does not seem to be working well enough. Perhaps it's too exclusive a group. May I humbly suggest more Women Seekers be pursued or that You ramp up efforts to recruit more Un-wise men?

Respectfully,

3G

2) In-Turn Defined: "You will provide work to us and our clients and can tell your parents, friends and prospective selective schools that you work/ed here; you will have other people with whom you can work, and services and products with which you can work - In-Turn - we will not pay you much or at all, or cover your personal expenses, and we will own all of your work and it's value forever. Further, this in-turnship does not imply any offer of future employment or future in-turnships."

3) License plate on Mini Cooper parked in Greenwich, CT:

MOMLET

Merc nearby:

BREATH

Please. Why do we do these things to ourselves?

Full

4) Somebrellas are Better Than Others: One of our favorite city things to do is walk down Madison or Park in the rain after visiting our club on East 79th Street. We buy a new umbrella near any subway station or major intersection, if we've left ours at home or on the train into town. We always get the big one for about $10. We say "about," because, depending on where you are, the vendor, just in from Africa (they own this business), might ask $12 or even $15. Just tell him you're a New Yorker and he'll take less, maybe even $8 on a slow day. After all, he wants to be a New Yorker too.

5) Speaking of our club: the Travellers &Writers Club is the result of the merger some years ago between two clubs, The Travellers and Writers & Artists. The Travellers had a great building, the site of the merged club, and W&A had a better library.

Choice

The club offers a very efficient solution to the fact that it has no steam room. On hot, rainy, muggy days , such as we've recently been having, the staff closes the windows and doors in the The beautiful tall-ceilinged Reading Room on the 2nd floor and turns off the air conditioning for an hour or so. This results in members being able to read and get a steam in the same room.

No need to bother with a shower afterwards on those rainy days!

Also, the club has brilliantly outsourced its all of its dining, except for Elevenses and Tea, to the very affordable Viand Cafe, which is practically next door. It is, of course, run by a man named Ari (Greeks still own this business).

6) License plate on a gray Maserati ahead of us in Rye, NY:

F08-08S

We though it odd that this Mighty Mas owner would not bother to get a vanity plate; however, while stuck at a red light, we figured it out. F**k 08, 08 Su**ed. Indeed. Guess it was an '09 Mas, succor (sorry) for the TooBigToFail class.

Confusion

The Mas was immediately replaced in front of us by a gray Astin Martin Rapide. License plate:

RAPIDE

How slow can you get. Arrete!

Ed Note: Apologies, but currently my old iphone is not on speaking terms with my old mac with new software. So, we need to use stock photos. Maybe my editors will provide a new phone!!??

Get Thee to The ...Nuttery

2011-05-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

Discourtesy's Up

1) You get home in the evening after a tough day. Before deciding not to go to the gym, whose homework to tackle, and what to make for dinner, you want a little room to decompress.

The phone rings; it's the land-line. You hesitate. It might be your brother, your mother, or your brother about your mother or visa versa. Could it be that client you pitched a couple of months ago, finally, or that job you applied for last year, but never heard back? You grab the receiver.

"Please hold for a courtesy call," says the lovely voice. Courtesy? As if. Instead, it's a perfect example of an Orwellian corporate world, intruding on you in a most discourteous way, but giving it a warm and fuzzy name.

What kind of fellow-humans thought that this would be a good idea? Get thee...!

2) You're on hold again - duh! - after punching in your account or phone number.

"We appreciate your call..." Really? Then, why don't you ever answer the phone without putting us on hold? If you truly appreciated our business, we would not be automatically on hold, or, at least, we would be able to proceed quickly without having to listen to nine different options, none of which cover the real reason for the call.

My Account Number

Eventually, you get through, and the first thing you are asked is: "May I please have your account number?"

What do they do with these numbers , while you've been on hold for five, ten, eighteen minutes?

Get thee to...!

3) Triple Play is a baseball term for something that is very hard to perform and only happens 4-5 times a season, since 1876, less than 1,000 times in baseball history!

And yet, you might think that it's a commonplace event the way certain companies throw this supposed money-saving term around:

Cable-Internet-Phone. Phone-Cable-Internet. All for about ninety bucks a month. Such a deal.

Well, not always. It turns out that Cable companies may not be any good at phone calls, in the same way that they are not always good at Cable! And, phone companies don't always offer cable in your area, or aren't really so good at that. You get what you pay for.

Triple play? Near-miracles don't come cheaply. A double and a single is just as good as a home run.

Get thee to The...!

4) You're on the check-out line and hand in your Shopper's Card. Before the cashier begins giving you some special benefit, she asks, "Would you like to donate a dollar to help children?" Huh, didn't this just happen at the gas pump?

Charity is epidemic: it's at Stop & Shop and Costco. Chase "card services" wants you to donate to Robin Hood Foundation online. Suddenly, the most generous citizens in the world by any measure of giving are being inundated with more requests for giving. Everywhere we go: everywhere we look.

Want Heaven With Those Fries?

And, where there is charity, there is...guilt, whenever you choose not to give. Was that an "attitude" you saw in the cashier's eyes, when you said no? How did we get here?

Obviously, we are not against giving. To the contrary, we do what we can and encourage others to do so (see Disclosures, below), but this feels different. The companies facilitating the giving see it as part of their brand. Banks especially, after nearly taking the country down a couple of years ago, seem to be on a new mission or several of them with our money.

Here's an idea: why don't these companies start asking people and The Party in China to start an epidemic of giving? Why aren't American companies building their brands and doing good by expecting their Chinese "partners" and consumers to donate to these worthy causes?

Could it be that they would not want to offend their Chinese customers?

Get thee to The...Nuttery!

Disclosures: A)We think that there is a place for giving in a consumer environment, just not everywhere. We once created a national limited-time program for vending machine giving called Small Change, Big Dreams, in which one of the snack/drink choices was a specific program to reduce child obesity. Everyone loved it until the vending company's corporate parent sent in the lawyers...and it died. B) We created a tennis tournament, which currently raises money for a local children's tennis program. C) One of our business services clients is an educational non-profit organization for whom we develop ways to reach donors among other things. We see pervasive requests for charity giving as a privacy issue more than a giving issue.

When It Rains...

2011-05-16T06:15:00.000-07:00

"...the wind is part of the process
   the rain is part of the process..."
- Ezra Pound, Canto 74, The Pisan Cantos

"...But visionaries are limited by their vision..."
- Malcolm Gladwell, Creation Myth, TNYer, 5/16/11

   *

Sunday morning tennis was rained out, and so we had to conjure up other things to do. Shall we think about how complicated our world has become? Yes, let's; and let's also talk about how we deal with that.

   *

Simple, but not digital

We have plenty of digitized gadgets that are meant to simplify our lives; some call these hardware. These gadgets provide and contain information in a number of new ways; some call these software. Are you with me so far? Good. Now, here comes the hard part: these digitally-engineered gadgets and their info packets have raised our expectations regarding human capabilities. Just for fun, let's call this Simplicity's Complication.

*

During the past week, I have spoken to a bank supervisor in Bangalore on my cell-gadget regarding the fact that a significant sum of money seemed to be missing from my balance, as indicated on my mac-gadget in my virutual account. He was very professional, but could not find the money either and apologized, saying "I"m sure it's there somewhere." He also explained how some "cash" was not always "cash" to a bank, until that bank, especially if it is comprised of not one but two formerly Too Big To Fail Banks says it is cash.

I have also spoken to a representative of an office supply company in Oklahoma about a dysfunctional wireless printer, who said the "connection is there somewhere, but we just can't see it yet."
According to my calculations, we couldn't see it yet, as we could not see the "cash" yet because it was not there. The systems were flawed. But, according to the humans on the other end of the lines in these capers, these things were not there because a certain human was too flawed to see them: namely, me. Apparently, I hadn't been updating my software: read, digital capabilities.

This was getting too complicated. I just wanted to have the cash to cover my chili-steak wedge and to print out my email exchange regarding the missing cash. Couldn't do either.

*

Complex

This might be a good time to tell you that my friend Mulligan has a theory about people that might help us here. He believes that there are only two kinds of people - no, not richer or poorer or sick or healthy or alive or dead - as in marriage vows.

A Type #1 person begins each day expecting good things are going to happen in the course of that day; this places the person in an excellent position to deal with anything that might be somewhat troubling in the course of the day. Type #2 begins each day expecting trouble during the day; this does not help the person deal with trouble, and, what's worse, it places the person in a poor position to take advantage of good opportunities that might arise. In fact, most of the time, #2 will not even recognize a good thing when it hits them in the face.

According to Mulligan, all religions revolve around the difference between the two types and why being one Type is infinitely better than being another (Hint: if you do not know which is which, you are Type #2), unless you really love suffering, which, apparently, billions of people do.

Mulligan is certainly no Norman Vincent Peale*, and I have tried to poke holes in his theory many times, without any real success. The guy seems to have a very good point.

*

Where were we? Oh yes, complications.

When things get too complicated, I resort to a few tricks, all of which have the following goals: A) to slow me down, B) to keep it simple, C) to poke fun at myself, and D) to make me into Type #1, at least for a little while, even if I am a natural born Type #2.

humble

One of my tricks is to read poetry, which is, perhaps, the perfect literary form for our age. It is relatively short compared to most stories and novels; it is musical; and it contains mystery. This last trait is very important, and has turned poetry into a kind of torture for generations of students unfortunate enough to be taught by people who mistake mystery for something called Hidden Meaning.

For those poor students, we offer the following thought: great and even good poets never hide anything. Ever. They offer only clarity; however, they do it in a unique way right in front of our noses, and therein lies the mystery.

I might read a deceptively simple poem by Kay Ryan, our former Laureate, or a longer, more complex poem or series like Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos, which happens to have been Sunday morning's choice (see quote above).

Digitally-engineered gadgets love precision, not mystery. When they do not function according to the engineered plan, according to the engineers and their representatives, it is also due to hidden meaning. This is why engineers mistrust poetry, mystery, and people like me and probably you, if you're on this mailing list and have time to read this stuff.

*

TooSmallToFail©twmcd

Another of my tactics is to look at a very fine book called humble masterpieces: Everyday Marvels Of Design by Paola Antonelli, Curator of Architecture & Design at the MOMA.

It is impossible to recommend this little book highly enough to anyone interested in simplifying life in the face of constant complication in the form of poor design, shoddy workmanship, lack of customer service, general rudeness or a prevailing memyselfandI-ness.

Here are some of the most profound design ideas and improvements by human beings, who, one has to think, are united in their Type Oneness; they expected to be able to make something really cool, and so they did.

Here are Karl Elsener's Swiss Army Knife, Reach & Shibe's baseball, Kasper Faber's lead pencil, Italo Marchioni's ice cream cone, Sire Henry Tate's sugar cube, Walter Hunt's safety pin, and a French Design Team's Bic Crystal pen, with which I composed the first draft of this piece.

apple

And there are many more examples of how human beings make life truly simpler for themselves and others using nature as the best design teacher. They were artists as well as designers; they slowed down, kept it simple, had a sense of humor.

Somehow, after looking at this book, I cannot help being a Mulligan #1 person for an entire rainy day and longer. Innovators are not limited by their own design; they borrow, tinker. They dream, but carry a tape-measure. And they love a good mystery.

We need more of them right now, before we drown in our own complexity.

Ed Note: We highly recommend the current May 16 Innovator issue of The New Yorker. We particularly recommend Gladwell's story about the creation of The Mouse and Anthony Lane's profile of Pixar. It is no coincidence that a man named Steve Jobs plays a pivotal role in each of these stories.

* wrote a book called The Power Of Positive Thinking among others. I seem to recall that he was one of Richard Nixon's favorite authors. We recommend skipping it and going with Mulligan's ideas, which are shorter and do not involve any connection to Nixon.

For Insanity, Press Seven

2011-05-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

"Thank you, Mr. Dermo"

We moved recently. We moved only a few miles away, but, as far as certain "service" companies were concerned, we may as well have moved to Mars. Perhaps you too have encountered one of the absolute non-miracles of our digital age (some might say, The Middle Digit Age), the Main Menu, on which everything is a la carte. Here is our compendium of recently recorded Main Menu telephone "conversations:"

1. " To continue in English, please press 1 and do not whine about English being relegated to a 'second language' or mention how stupid it is that you have to press a digit, instead of someone who doesn't understand English. These might lead to a disconnection and/or losing your place in the queue, which, for your information, is not spelled c-u-e. If you do not press 1 and are a resident of Arizona, you will be asked a few brief questions by a representative of the Arizona Department of Immigration and Naturalization."

2A. "For Billing and Accounting questions , please press 2 and be prepared with your 27 digit account number. If you cannot remember your account number, which data shows 99.9% of callers cannot or, if you are not calling from the phone number listed on your forgotten account, you will be asked several 'security questions' you answered when establishing the forgotten account. If you cannot remember the correct answers to these questions, for example, What is the mother's maiden name of person who stole your first boy/girlfriend, you probably don't have an account with us, and you may hang up."

2B. "For Billing and Accounting questions (Cable). Please note: we are a cable company, and, as such, nobody outside of a few geeks inside the Accounting Department actually understands cable billing, and these geeks are not available for consultation. We recommend canceling service, at which point you can speak immediately with a sales representative. They do not understand your bill either, but they may offer you a slightly better deal in order to keep you as a customer, and, although you will still not understand your bill, you might pay a little less each month for a couple of months anyway."

3/4. "For repairs, technical assistance or to make or cancel an appointment or installation, please press 3. If you are calling about removal of 30 feet or more of unnecessary cabling and stapling in a room, which may or may not have actually needed cabling, you will need to remove it yourself; however, please go back to the Main Menu and press 4, so that you can temporarily turn off service. Please note, we are not responsible for injuries due to self-repair. Also, Please Note: all appointments and installations require the presence of an over 18 year-old adult on the premise, and do not even think about trying to make appointments outside our regular 8am-2pm and 2pm-8pm slots."

In your dreams....

0. "Sir/Madame, Please do not press 0 again. Pressing 0 will not bring you to an Operator, because we do not have any, and it will not bring you to a representative. At the end of this menu, you will be instructed as to how to properly receive representative service, since the menu has been created in order to reduce the cost of having representatives, which only creates a bigger monthly bill for you.

5. "For Customer Service, please go to www.wedontdothatanymore.com or press 5, but we highly recommend our web service, which has been specifically designed to avoid having to offshore customer service representative jobs, which, if we were going to hire customer service representatives anymore, which we most assuredly are not, almost certainly would be American jobs for Americans, who usually press #1 and speak reasonably good American English with local colloquialisms, lilts, and other kinds of things your grandmother would remember if she can remember much of anything."

6-8. "Pressing these numbers will not actually bring you anywhere except back to the beginning of the Main Menu, which, as you already know if you've ever eaten there, is longer than the wine list at La Tour d'Argent in Paris. You should have pressed something in the 1-5 range already. If you have not pressed any number, due to having a sorry, old a rotary dial, Hah!

La Tour d'Menu

9. "If you now want to speak with a representative or require phone trauma therapy, press 9. If you would like to speak with a trainee, we offer service at no charge. If you would like to speak with an experienced representative, who might be helpful, we charge $10 per each five minutes. If you would like to speak with a supervisor-level representative, who will use their real local name and not a made-up American type name and actually answer your inquiry somewhat to your satisfaction, we charge $25 per each 10 minutes. Please have your credit card number, expiration date, security code, and the name of your first pet available. If you never had a pet, that's terrible, go back to the Main Menu."

Snow Job: Early Season Games

2011-04-30T06:05:00.000-07:00

MLB Early Season

Tomorrow, May 1, is Opening Day. I am perfectly aware that Major League Baseball now begins its season in March, while it's still snowing, but that is their problem. I have begged the Commissioner's Office without success to begin the season in Florida and Arizona, where all the teams gather and it is warm and sunny. One always has to approach the Commissioner's Office; the actual "C" is like an ancient Chinese Emperor and must be protected from individual fans without an Inc. after their names.

What MLB calls early season games become spring training for me; their "spring"training occurred mostly in winter. Are you still with me? This is the kind of issue that caused me to create a whole new league a few years ago, the Universal Baseball League, with myself as very accessible Commissioner and to become a co-owner owner of the New York Pearls with my friend Mulligan, who needs the carry-forward losses. But that is a good story for another day or the "Mulligan" novel my agent, Goldberg, continues to bug me about.

World Champions

As some of you know, this is a special season for me, because it's the kind of season that only happens every 56 years. The Giants are defending World Champions for the first time since 1955, when I saw my first game in the Polo Grounds ( vs. the new Milwaukee, nee Boston, Braves). Many pundits have chosen the Giants to repeat, but true Giants' fans may know better; they are off to a middling start.

The New York Yankees, Inc. are off to a fast start, winning at a near .600 clip, which will win them a division title if they keep it up. They won't. They have too many pitching holes and Burnett and Joba's shrinks do not travel with the team. The slow-starting Red Sox will eventually light up Fenway like a pin- ball machine against what, in another era, would be AA pitching.

The first miracle of the season (No, not Barry Bonds' acquittal on the serious charges) is the Mets, who have recently won 6 in a row after a fittingly dismal start. They are still below .500, but are respectable on the field, which is the most that Mets fans have hoped for since their beginning in, of all places, the same Polo Grounds. The Times, which has always considered the Yankees to be the only team in town, even when NYC had 3 MLB teams (and when they owned a piece of the BoSox), has been battering the Mets owners like a Joba fastball straight down the middle.

Now, I must disclose that I am a lapsed Mets fan. Very lapsed, indeed for excellent reasons. One Opening Day, Mets management decided to card everybody buying beer. Everybody. I was over 50, but they still carded me. This created long lines and many missed the first pitch and inning of the season. At another game that same season, it became apparent to fans that the Mets players ran the bases and fielded with an utter disregard for how many outs there were. Also, my former friend, Goldberg, not the agent another one, stopped sending me his free Inc. tickets.

Ebbetts Redux

The final straw was the new "Citi" Field, which pays open homage to the Brooklyn Dodgers' old Ebbets Field and Jackie Robinson, since the owner-Wilpons hail from Brooklyn. Any self-respecting Giants fan would be deeply offended by this grave transgression. This, of course, makes our recent Series victory that much more satisfying (to add insult....this season the "C" has taken over the Dodgers who are a mess at the moment. Golly, that's too bad).

When the Times starts pummeling even hapless owners, when Bernie's People come looking for dough, when you have to borrow from the "C" just to make payroll (as the Mets have done), when you have to let your son run things (see also Knicks/ Dolan, James), and when you field mostly AA-AAA talent everyday, well sir, I start to get interested, because I love the underdog. Plus, you have to love a team that builds a new "field" and makes it so big even The Babe could not reach the fences, but forgets that it doesn't have any pitching to go with it. Oops. Bring the fences back in.

One can only wonder how Casey would explain it all. He would know, because he played for The Dodgers (Ebbetts Field) and the Giants (Polo Grounds), and managed the Yankees (Old Stadium) and the Mets (Polos again and Shea).

But, then again, we wouldn't understand what he was saying anyway. This, in its way, might make him the perfect spokesperson for MLB today or any pro sport for that matter.

The Sunrise Monologue

2011-04-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

Nina, middle

My family has a term they use to describe my ability to speak at length about certain subjects (okay, all subjects). They call it "doing a Columbus." This is a reference to a somewhat one-sided "conversation" between my then middle school-aged daughter and myself, which took place in Sunrise Pizza some years ago. The Sunrise Monolog.

She was working on a Christopher Columbus project and had obviously only been receiving the PC version of this former hero in which he was merely an imperialist, racist, gold-monger. She asked, "Dad, can you tell me more about Columbus?" Perfectly innocent question: ....over an hour later I was just summing it all up, when my dazed daughter said thanks, but she had something really important to do like pore hot wax on her legs.

Thereafter, family members prefaced their rare questions to me by saying,"without doing a Columbus....."

But, without doing a Columbus, you might say, why do I bring this up?

I bring it up because I have been thinking about old Chris lately, because I have been thinking a lot about destiny and journeys of discovery for reasons I won't go into here. I have also been thinking that we seem to be lost at sea at the moment. By "we," I mean the collective we, and by collective we, I mean more specifically the American We. US.

GPS

Critics or grouches among us might point out that Columbus was famously lost; however, I would answer that at least he had a direction and destination: West to The Indies. It was neither his fault nor failure that he happened to bump into The Bahamas (thank you), Hispaniola (whoa), Cuba (caramba) and, by extension, this little nation called America. This was his destiny. Destiny, in CC's day, was thought to be decided by a higher mysterious power, not by Oprah or W.

We, on the other hand, seem to be obsessed with controlling our own destiny, without paying attention to our direction. We are terrified to take a risk on sailing into unchartered waters in search of something meaningful. Yet, we seem overly eager, as a nation, to jump into any convenient conflagration, calamity, or compost heap. It is as if we had a national case of A.D.D.

On the other hand, we want to carry a GPS at all times, so we will know exactly where we are or a cell phone so that someone else (our boss, partner, google) will know exactly where we are. If we think that this means that we are not lost, we better stop and ask for directions. We actually believe that, if we could just get our taxes right, or our healthcare right, or schools right, or someone else's democracy right, that we would be alright.

Let's be very clear about this: if we really believe that our individual and collective destiny could or should be decided in Washington, on Wall Street, in the Principal's Office, or in Tripoli....we are hopelessly lost.

Too Grande Too Fail

We don't get to decide our own destinies; they play out in mysterious, some might say sacred ways. We can't make our own destinies, even if we (or our children) get perfect SAT's, an 8-figure bonus, and drive a vehicle bigger than the Pinta and Santa Maria combined.

If the Frank Sinatras of this world want to claim "I Did It My Way," fine, but the gods have a song too and it is called, "Fool On The Hill."

Like Columbus, we do get to choose direction, based on certain calculated risks, but we seem to be stuck at the mooring or, at best, drifting without a rudder.

So why have we seemingly turned into a whining, scattered, conniving scrum of a people? Maybe it's just me (as I'm sure you would tell me). Maybe I need a vacation. Can't be: just had two!

Columbus was not perfect, but he had the courage to lead and take a calculated risk. His banker-backers, First National Bank of Ferdinand & Isabella, took very little risk for a potential great reward (why does this sound familiar?). Plus, they were using other people's money anyway and could always get some more. They probably gave little thought to CC during his voyage of several years in a 65' ship, although they may have given great thought to how to spend some of the gold upon his return.

Our contemporary heroes would seem to be Ferdinand & Isabella, rather than the tattered Columbus. F & I had great credentials, a house to die for (many did while building it), and tons of dough. All the things we now covet.

Ridiculous tax codes, blatantly unmanageable debt, entitlements galore for all, and leaders who couldn't clean CC's bilge pump are only inconvenient details. If we do not have a serious national conversation about who we really are now, where we want to go, and the best course to set in order to fulfill our as yet unknown destiny, none of those boring debates will matter.

Every age thinks that it is more enlightened than the ones before it. As stupid as our age has become, even we believe that we are smarter, faster, better than previous ages. Here's a newsflash: we are not as smart as we think we are, and, even if we were, it would not matter, since destiny has little to do with smarts, income, or relationship status. It has to do with being true to deep spiritual and cultural values, just for a start.

And, what are our shared spiritual and cultural values worth taking along on our journey? Hard to say....

....without doing a Columbus.

Ed Note: Sunrise Pizza is located in Rye, NY and is the finest pizza emporium in the area despite what others with less knowledge about these things might think. They serve a classic slice, whose origins are clear: Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, and Queens. Not Chicago, Greece, or, please, New Jersey or California. Sunrise pizza is as close to the pizza of my youth at Pizza Prince on Austin St. in Forest Hills as pizza can get. With each slice, I recall the jukebox at the Prince: from Frankie Avalon's Venus to The Rolling Stones' Not Fade Away.

You May Find Your Easter Bunny...

2011-04-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

The Easter Bunny is everywhere, if you let him or her be. You might find your Easter Bunny....

....At the pump, after paying $97.52 for a full tank....of regular, and you will smile at the wonder of that.

....On line at the bank, which is your old bank with a new name and logo, which is an unattractive red and gold, and there is a huge expensive flat screen TV behind the counter telling you how many good things are available to you from this bank which was once not only one but two banks just....Too Big To Fail....and you think, "Liar, liar, pants on fire," and dance a little jig with him....

....or maybe when you realize that your property taxes are exactly equal to your child's private college tuition, ....and that both amounts are about what your parents paid for their house in 1966, and you will think about them, your parents, with even greater admiration and gratitude...

....or, you might find your Easter Bunny....

....when you read that GE, a company you once admired and held shares in, did not owe any federal income tax for 2010, and, in fact, will receive a seven-figure refund or credit, and you may marvel at the size of the American flag flying in front of their HQ in beautiful Bridgeport, CT....and you will think that boys will be boys, oh well....

....or while listening to a commercial on your TV which continues to blast at a much higher volume than the regular programming so that you can still hear it in case you try to leave the immediate vicinity of the TV area during said commercial, and you might recall that Congress was going to legislate about that, but have not yet and you imagine the TV lobbyist at lunch over perche du lac at a restaurant in Washington and his voice is so loud it can be heard over the collective voices of the lunch crowd as he explains to your Congresswoman, in her 10th Congress, how much his clients need that volume to sell more and create more jobs and you can almost see her smiling at the thought of profiteroles for dessert....

....or you might find her....

....when you realize just how much you truly love your dog, who does not ask for much beyond an occasional walk in the sun, a nap on your lap, a period of scratching her belly, and those fabulous "pet pocket" things in which you hide her pill, but which to her taste like the boudin noir you once ate for lunch at 33 Rue Jacob in the Sixth, and you think Ah, Easter in Paris in April....

....in the centerpiece of the dining room table all set for family Easter dinner as you did when you were a child, and he is yellow on the outside and marshmallow inside and you bite off his ears which taste even better than you imagined a sugar-coated marshmallow Easter Bunny's ears could possibly taste....so you bite off all the rest of the ears too....

....or you might find him while on your knees trying to fit the contents of your old very large clothes-closet into you new quite small one, when you also remember just how fortunate you are to pay more than your fair share of taxes, fly an appropriate-sized flag and have something in that TBTF bank; and so you pray a decent length prayer, while accepting the gifts you've received regardless of their size and promise not to lose sleep over other things you have not yet received and may never, which is perfectly okay....

Happy Hunting.

The King's Teeth

2011-04-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

If at Firth...

Our media reporter reviews some of the newest film and TV offerings:

The King's Teeth: Following up on the success of The King's Speech, the same team returns to the oral theme which produced gold. This time, having somewhat overcome a stammer, King George VI (Colin Firth) finds that even a king is not immune to having terrible teeth in England. We follow the difficult, yet hilarious, search that his loving Queen makes to find just the right dentist, who can teach the King to keep his new false teeth in his mouth and to overcome a debilitating habit of losing them.

30 Rocky: The new guys at Comcast, who have replaced GE as owners of NBC, home to the former hit show 30 Rock, have a problem on their hands. So many of the funniest plots had revolved about the inherent arrogance and stupidity of GE's corporate ways that even Tina Fey has had a hard time coming up with new ideas. Also, and this has proved embarrassing, Comcast bean counters forced NBC to vacate its ancestral home in Rock Center for a studio in Hoboken. Sylvester Stallone joins the cast of the show-within-a-show injecting new excitement, not to mention great music. Sponsored by Stairmaster.

Ravi-shing!

Dancing With The Sitars: This Bollywood TV import has surprised more than a few critics who did not think that Ravi Shankar, the show's producer (and father of Nora Jones), could pull this off. American audiences took a while to warm up to this "new" ancient sound. But, the Boomer set loves this piece of musical nostalgia (who can forget George and his sitar), and the skimpy saris on the female partners also help. And, Oh, that tabla beat!

Get Shorter: A chuckler of a new comedy about a eponymous height-challenged mayor, Sidney Shorter. This multi-billionaire mayor finds that the whiny, scolding, condescending, sarcastic methods which made him a great business success (and the subject of many lawsuits) do not work as well in politics. Deborah Messing stars as "the towering girlfriend," who manages to put the little guy in his place in a million funny ways. Plus, she's a babe and smarter than he is. She does not succeed in making us love him, but we do kind of feel sorry for him. Well, almost. Sponsored by Cole-Haan Elevated Shoes.

Bay Witch: An ingenious fusing of John Updike's Witches of Eastwick and Bay Watch. Three wealthy, young, scantily-clad witches wander the cold, windy beaches of Duxbury, MA in skimpy bikinis and see-through cover-ups thinking up some funny-evil pranks to play on hapless locals. The thin plots are balanced by the buxom baddies. Just pull up a lounger and tune-in to the hocus-pocus. Kinda like a "Charlie's Witches" with less clothing. Starring The Kardashians.

Desperate Bradys: We never seem to tire of this TV-family, no mater how inane the plots, how vapid the characters, or how many actors in the original cast suffer bankruptcy or cocaine addiction, get loads of parking tickets, and become pole-dancers in West Hollywood. This time around, it's a reality show, in which the producers completely dispense with any semblance of fictional "Bradys" and focus on those crazy original cast members instead. Dreadful. But, wasn't it always? Why do we love this?

What's Green, Wears A Crown And And Gets Comped In Vegas?

2011-04-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

"Only her hairdresser..."

Today is April 15 and our thoughts naturally turn to thinking about our government. Some of us can remember a time when we only thought about government a couple of times a year at most. No, really, I'm not making it up.

Back then, we still had this dreaded tax day for the minority of citizens and corporations who actually paid taxes; then, once in a while, we had to visit the DMV, which, in comparison, made paying taxes seem like fun; and, we occasionally had to go to the Post Office (we will not discuss the Draft Board). That's about it, and the DMV wasn't even the Feds! In my home state of New York, the DMV was the only reason we even had a state capital.

But, I am not thinking about taxes today; yesterday I dealt with the fact that Uncle Sam is the only one in the universe besides my daughter's co-ed private college (Cartier Institute for men, Tiffany College for women), who believes that I am wealthy. I am mad at my government today for infringing on my territory as a writer: the government is getting into the metaphor game.

By now, you all know about the Post Office gaff, in which they printed millions of Lady Liberty "Forever" stamps with a Wrong Lady photo. Using a fake Lady from a casino in Las Vegas on the official stamp seems like a perfect metaphor for what's false, cheap and shallow in our culture vs. what's truly valuable, honest, and hopeful. Caught with their pants down, did the PO apologize? Please. Their spokesman said that they would have chosen the same photo anyway even if they had know it was the wrong one....and then said they were reviewing their process. Oy.

We hear that Republicans have seized upon this gaff as a brilliant way for the PO to raise advertising revenue by actually selling "stamp-ads." I can't wait for my Wells Fargo mail to come with B of A stamps. You can make up your own bad combinations.

Dear Postals, please leave the metaphors and satire to writers and we will leave counterfeiting to you.

Not to be outdone by their postal cousins, the Air Traffic Controllers weighed in today as well. They must have been reading Steve Jobs biography to come up with this paradigm change: they are going to add a second controller to the airport tower night shifts to make up for the fact that current single-duty controllers take naps.

We are disrobing, being pawed and made to feel like uncommon criminals by the TSA (too long a story to tell here) in the security line so that we can climb to 38,000 feet and have the pilots all landing without guidance?

Dear Controllers, please stop making metaphors for government sleeping on our dimes and leave the comedy to Tina Fay, SNL and Rupert Murdoch's hair colorist!

We are about to launch into a protracted mind-numbing national discussion ad nauseam, not to mention really funny, about whether or not we should spend $3.3 Trillion a year or $3.2 Trillion a year for these fine services noted above. This is basically about how many T-Bills the Chinese will buy before their fortune cookie says, "Man who tinkle into wind get wet and smelly."

As a road sign I recently read said so succinctly, "Buckle up, next million miles."

....and try to get Steve Jobs's private number. We need a good creative egomaniac billionaire perfectionist ( who isn't a whiny mayor) to tear it all down with one or two sensible, beautiful and totally outrageous ideas.

How It All Played In Peoria

2011-04-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

Peorians rise up

Peorians are up in arms and taking to the town squares and the streets. They are taking out their anger and frustration on the political, corporate and social elite. No, we are not talking about that Middle West Peoria, Hollywood's favorite movie thermometer. We are talking about the fictional country called Peoria, deep in the heart of the Middle East.

Several decades ago, Peoria took a look around the world for a model on which it could build itself for the future generations of Peorians. They looked at the USSR (now Russia et al), England (now UK), France (still France, are you kidding?) and other countries. Finally, they hitched their wagons (real ones, not just metaphorical) to the American Star. Peoria became the cultural equivalent of a Fund Of Funds, tracking American business, politics, and society and reflecting those trends in its own way of life.

It must have seemed like such a good idea at the time.

It was "Morning In America" then and the Evil Empire was crumbling, stunned by the sledgehammer of Capitalism. The hostages had returned from Iran. The Gipper faced down the Traffic Controllers' Union. Suddenly, many Americans began to read the Business section instead of the comics and students flocked from the ashram to "business school."

Peorian Bowery Hotel

Hollywood went corporate. Harvard went corporate, The NBA, NFL, and MLBaseball went corporate (the NHL went nowhere, of course). New York City, including Soho, the Bowery, Tribeca, the Village, even the Upper West Side (gasp!) went corporate; even NYC mayors went corporate before they went ga-ga.

Slowly at first, but then very quickly, when you said "China," you were not just talking about the relatives coming over for dinner. Even Mao's China went corporate! With a vengeance (real vengeance, not just metaphorical).

So, you can understand why Peoria became infatuated. They too figured out that the only way they could pay for their families healthcare was to work for large corporations. They too traded something called "profit sharing, " AKA money, for stock options. They began investing in 401K's tax free, and watched in amazement and with gratitude as their monthly statements came etched in gold. Finally, even middle class Peorians, which is as middle as middle can get, were able to do exactly as the truly wealthy Peorians and Americans could do, use other people's money to make even more. They could borrow.

Looking back, some thoughtful Peorians (a dying breed, as in you know where) began to wonder if it was a good thing that plumbers, electricians, doctors, salespersons, CEO's were spending an enormous amount of time day-trading instead of working. And, it turned out that many of them were trading in stocks of "internet" or "tech" companies that did not yet actually have products or customers, which turned out to be not as good as bank analysts and stock raters had preten....ah, hoped

Great Peorian Bubbles I and II

Meanwhile, Peoria had adopted the two-year long Presidential campaign, another capitalist miracle in that it earned millions for Peorian media companies and the political consulting industry, although the candidates sometimes looked like those to-good-to-be-true internet products. In short, Peorians too got the leaders they deserved, watching it all on huge TV's in their huge homes, in banks, at airports, and at the deli waiting for a Peorian's favorite meal, a 1,000 calorie sandwich and a 2,000 calorie drink (love really is blind, and fat too).

Since Peoria is in the Middle East, it has lots of enemies, real and imagined: Families, tribes, religions, sects. And these are just inside Peoria. So, when its idol was forced to borrow trillions of dollars from those very same Chinese to find Weapons of Mass Destruction that were amazingly like those pretty much non-existent internet products, political leadership qualities and stock options, Peoria too began to borrow and fight, borrow and fight.

Federal Reserve Of Beijing

This went along pretty well as long as Peorians tuned into Foxoria (oh, yes they copied this too), until they began to hear rumors that some Peorian banks may have over-extended themselves in real estate. Well, okay, every Peorian bank, its Treasury, Federal Reserve, its Fredoria & Fannoria Macs, Peoria Internationl Group Insurance, even Peorian Sachs, Holy of Holies, was going bust overnight, all of them AAA rated by their own raters!

You know how this story goes, having lived it yourselves. The smartest, bravest and richest in the Peorian land saved the Whole Shebang. Soon, all the bad stuff had gone up in a puff of smoke (Acapulco Gold?) and bank profits and bonuses returned. Naturally, Peorians celebrated their deliverance by reforming healthcare, promising (with a wink) to improve education, and once again buying SUV's, made in Peoria by Peorian hands, on Peorian machines. Peorian banks were forced to buy the really ugly banks for pennies and to change their logos so that executives could avoid any jail time.

Mandarin Lesson

And, just like us, Peorians have just dodged a fiscal bullet and avoided having to shut down their magnificent government. They have, yet once again, saved Planned Parenthood, although to some it might appear that the most truest of true things one might say about both Americans and Peorians is that they wish that the parents of the num-sculls left in charge of everything had done more parent planning and saved all of us a great deal of discomfort, not to mention hypocrisy.

Reportedly, the Peorian rioters chief demand is that every Peorian begin mandatory lessons in Mandarin.

To them we say: be careful, sometimes you get what you pray for.

Take This Job And Spend More Time With Your Family

2011-04-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

newt

Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear accidents, widespread political revolts, our third war, another earthquake. You'd think that Republican kingpins trying to make Uncle Sam into the Biggest Loser overnight could have picked a better time to get noticed.

Newt Gingrich knew how to get attention. We're talking about the real Newt back in '94, not the current Okay For Prime Time Newt with the presidential haircut and the jowl-job. He had a hissy-fit back then over being relegated to the back of Air Force One and played chicken with Clinton The First, when absolutely nothing else was happening. Bill put Newt into the deep fryer and only the Pope could get him out of it.

This is the most boring Federal Shutdown ever, being put on by the most boring set of numbskulls this side of the Mac twins, Fannie and Freddie. Ho-hum. Fellows, next time you do this, don't try it a week before Tax Day, because everybody, we mean everybody absolutely does not give a little nit about shutting down the Whole Shebang on April 8. Talk about Biggest Losers!

*

I Think I Can Can Someone

Now here's a guy who knows how to get attention, Mayor Billionaire. He has publicly admitted to making a mistake. Good grief; will he have to go to bed without his Teddy?

Cathleen P. (for Phew!) Black, whom the mayor insisted on hiring as school chancellor, despite not being able to find a single other human being who thought it was a good idea, "resigned" by "mutual agreement" yesterday.

Let's be very clear about this. She was fired, royally fired by His High Royal-ness.

Why is it do you think that most of us get fired, canned, eliminated, dusted, smoked, summarily dismissed, shown the door, when CEO's, Chancellors and their chums get "to spend more time with their families (who are probably horrified)," " to seek new opportunities?" Or, how about Warren Buffet's recently departed lieutenant who got to do both: "to spend more time investing for his family." Except that he was fired for investing for his family in the companies Buffet was about to buy every day. That guy got canned too.

Poor Cathy. She got fired twice in one year! Over at Hearst, when they brought in a new guy from Conde Nast to replace her, she was "elevated" to make room for him. Yeah, except that it was a one way elevator to the lobby. Could it be that The Little Mike That Could was the only person in the universe who thought that she had actually gotten promoted?

Yes. The only question we have now is: how big will her city pension be?

*

"For The Double-Dip Hypothesis"

Speaking of which, here is a scoop. the Nobel Prize Committee has added a prize for Pension Mathematics. Apparently, there are only about 100 or so people in the world who can do this specialized form of calculating. Good news: 98 of them reside right here in New York State.

copyright2011twmcdermott

Dutch Treats

2011-04-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

Chiquita

Many of you have written: what have you been doing, where have you been, what did you read? Well, actually, we may have imagined that you asked those questions. Whatever. We have been traveling and then re-entering.

While we were away, all hell broke loose: earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear accidents, and Africa & the Middle East erupting in popular revolts. We are once again at war, this time in Libya, although we are calling it every other name in the book in ways that would make Orwell give a little "told you so" nod.

One morning, it happened to be March 19, the 8th Anniversary of Shock And Awe, we sat on the porch, watched Chiquita move about, and read Kay Ryan, American Poet Laureate 2008-2010. We found one poem that seemed more than apt for our world at the moment, or perhaps, at any moment: Here it is:

Dutch

Much of life
is Dutch
one-digit
operations

in which
legions of
big robust
people crouch

behind
badly cracked
dike systems

attached

by the thumbs
their wide
ballooned-pantsed rumps
up-ended to the
northern sun

while, back
in town, little
black-suspendered
tulip magnates
stride around.

Can this be said any better? We do not think so.

On another morning, shortly before we left, our friend Dunmore Townes III stopped by to rock and chat on the porch. Mr. Townes is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Saint James, and upon leaving he gave us this as yet unpublished poem:

The Island Men Are Walking

The island men
are walking
in the morning,

"Flat-bed" Island Work Truck

north and
south
along Bay Street.

each stride,
a stanza
written on stone.

The island men
are walking,

high tide
and low.

I want to walk
like these island men,

slow, or near to slow,
arms pulling
in their own arcs
to their own time.

I want a walk
to put the capital "D"
in Dignity.

I'll get
where my feet
are going

when they
want to
take me.

The island men
are walking
in the morning,

not with a purpose,
but purposefully.

Ed Note: Dutch is from Say Uncle, 2000 Grove Press, New York. Copyright 2000 by Kay Ryan
The Island Men Are Walking is Copyright 2011 Dunmore Townes III.

My Life In The Gardens, Sort Of

2011-04-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

Laguna Beach & Hills

Contributing to a special House & Garden issue might seem like a reasonable thing to do, except that a year in the real estate market has left me numb about houses, any houses. And, there is the fact that I do not know compost about gardening.

We live in a town where one could hurl a handful of seed and hit an award-winning gardener or even two. The Garden Club has even met at our house a few times to discuss all kinds of green and flowery things. For all I know, the Little Garden Club may have spent some time here as well and I did not even see the members, because they’re so, well, little.

The plain truth is that I do not know anything about gardening. I do recall that once, in high school, a teacher or maybe it was a coach, called me a "blooming idiot," but he didn’t even mean that I was a bad gardener.

FHG, Station Square

I actually did make a kind of living for a while as a "Weedy-Man," while living in Laguna Beach, a perhaps the most beautiful California beach town. Laguna was a place where a human or a squirrel lucky enough to live there could drop any seed to the ground and it would grow rapidly. Anyone could have done it, even me, if I had tried.

By spring, all of Laguna: canyons, avocado groves, hillsides, and even valuable empty lots would be vibrating with every conceivable plant and flower. But, of course, I do not remember their names, except for the nasturtiums, which grew in my neighbor’s garden.

The wild weeds, which thrived in the hills above the town and on those empty lots became fire hazards when the Santa Anna winds blew in from the desert and when the dry summer heat settled in.

I borrowed my landscaper roommate's blue VW Bug with a small open-bed trailer hitched to it. This machine never started properly, although, luckily, Bluebird Canyon,where we lived was all hill, so that I could coast down, jam it into second gear, and pop the clutch to start it up.

FHG, Solum Crescent

We used scythes to cut the tall, thick grasses and those gas-powered spinning weed cutters for shorter stuff. These machines were remarkable only for their extremely annoying whirring sound and the spinning filament line’s habit of wearing out faster than George Foreman might say "Weed O-Matic."

This was an incredibly labor-intensive business, not so much for me; it soon became obvious to me that I was suited to management, not labor. It was hard work for my roommate's surfer-brothers and their friends, who became the weed-chopping crew. Like many another grand enterprise, it soon fizzled. Or, maybe the surf was up too often for the crew.

Later, I was able to turn this experience into a real “gardening” job working on a municipal crew. We went into the hills above the town to do some serious weed-clearing to make fire-breaks. We started at 7am and quit around 2pm, or just in time to get in some good beach time.

FHG, Deepdene *

Most of the crew had recently spent some time as guests of the state in various houses of detention, where they had gained experience working on other types of outdoor crews, although they referred to those as “gangs” for some reason. That prior work was important, because it meant that they knew how to deal with rattlesnakes, who can be quite annoying when you disturb them from slumber.

It may occur to you that most of my experience with things that grow are related to chopping them down, which, honestly, isn’t exactly the perfect background for writing about gardening.

I did happened to grow up in a place called Forest Hills Gardens, one of the country's most successful attempts at a planned community (see photos), one with many large and small open parks, greenways, closes and even, yes, gardens. The idea was to create an English hamlet, where Miss Marple might feel right at home.

WSTC

"The Gardens," as residents have always referred to it is in Queens, about 20 minutes from midtown Manhattan on the IND subway line at Continental Avenue. Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. designed the community for the Russell Sage Foundation beginning in 1908 aand Grosvenor Atterbury, the famed architect designed several homes there.

The West Side Tennis Club emigrated to Forest Hills Gardens from Manhattan, and built a famed tennis stadium in 1923. I grew up across the street from the club’s entrance on Tennis Place and later, as a member, romped on its soft grass courts, which you might say became my garden.

There were probably many fine private gardens in Forest Hills, hidden behind hedges and walls, but I did not spend much time in them. After all, the whole place was a garden. Why try to improve on Frederick Law Olmstead even if he was Jr.!

Ed Note: We will be writing more about Forest Hills Gardens in the future. Meanwhile, here is some official info and a short slide show made by the author.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Hills_Gardens,_Queens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSVbqroIL2w

* Another rphoto of this home recently appeared in The Times. It was Geraldine Ferraro's home on Deepdene Road in FHG. the author's uncle lived in it until the late Fifties and his family sometimess gathered there on holidays.

Dis 'n Dat

2011-03-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

I was never a huge McEnroe fan, due to his obnoxious behavior on the court, although I always appreciated his artistry with a racquet, his agility, and his competitiveness. I never thought that I would be quoting him, as I have done above; yet, his words seem to be the perfect antidote to so much we see and hear around us today.

The words also serve as a personal reminder. As much as I'd like to be serious and often fall asleep thinking serious novelist thoughts, day after day I wake up as a cartoon writer who cannot draw and has to borrow pictures.

Tomorrow, I will be on the island of Saint James* and will absolutely not be serious.

*

GEMINI: "...The Sun's voyage through the sign of Aries is a call to explore your options and expand your horizons. Once Mercury starts moving forward on the 23rd, you're going to know exactly what you need to do next to stop tormenting yourself about all the ifs and maybes."

Sysa...Sisy...

Actually, I just wanted to be able to sleep all the way through a night without waking from a dream that I am a human abacus, a melting snowball, or that I'm Sisyphus being chased down the hill by the rock.

Since the mercury starts moving far upward for the air and the sea sometime tomorrow afternoon when I arrive on the island of Saint James, I will know exactly what to do: find Chico and order some lobsters for Monday.

*

I love my American Heritage Dictionary, which has been by my side since 1979. Strangely, I have always had a faculty for being able to spell many, if not all difficult words and a complete inability to spell certain easy words, such as racquet, used above (much preferred to racket). My only problem with my beloved AHD, or any dictionary, is that, in order to look up a word like Sisyphus, you pretty much need to know how to spell it.

I confess, it's becoming easier, simply to google words like exercize and legnth, which stump me every time.

*

Today's Correspondence:

From: Thomas McDermott [mailto:twmcdermott@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 9:28 AM
To:DPW
Subject: [BULK] Refusal to Take Recycling

We recently corresponded about snowplow damage to our fence; now, we have a new problem. For three straight weeks the recycling truck has refused to take glass and plastic material from our curb. For the first two weeks, I noticed that our helpers had placed those materials in the blue or wrong basket (photo), but the recycle crew did take all of the paper. Today, the glass and plastic were in the proper basket, but my wife has just reported that they left it again with no explanation whatsoever. We have been leaving these kinds of materials in the same place for several years with little problem.

Why is this occurring? What are we suddenly doing incorrectly? How to we fix this problem?

If this is not under your jurisdiction in Public Works, please pass this message on to someone who can help us with this problem. We are unaware of any changes in city recycling procedures and simply think it's strange to suddenly have the crew leave these items without the courtesy of a note or any message about why. For nearly $XX,XXX annually in taxes, we find this unusual, especially since we are perfectly willing to abide by your new rules, if we know what they are.

Thank you.

Tom & The DG
1 Hidden Spring Lane

Good Morning Mr.. McDermott and DG,
The reason the recycling has not been collected for the past few weeks, is that the bin is broken. If the recycler goes to pick it up, all the recycling will fall all over the ground an then we will have another problem. If you would like to replace the bin we sell them at public works for $7.00 all you would need to do is come and pick it up.
Angie
City of Rye
914-967-7464

Dear A:

Thank you for responding so quickly. Please mention to someone in City Hall that it would simply be common courtesy, not to mention good service, to put a little tag in the bin so people can replace them before the bottles and other material build up. Or, perhaps I just did not see it or respond when the crew member walked up to our door to let us know, in which case, sincere apologies.

Tom

While I was hitting send on this last ditty, two DPW gentlemen arrived at the door to explain the situation in person. They listened politely to my suggestion to actually let people know about broken bins, but told me people pay no attention to those kinds of things. They very nicely offered to return with a new bin and I have prepared a check for $7. He appeared, I paid, and I have a new bin.

Only after writing the check did I realize that these bins get broken by the crews themselves more often than not, but case closed.

Moral: pack an extra swimsuit, the water's fine and don't go all kerplonkety about silly stuff, as they say on Saint James. Or, as Chico tells me, "Tom, you here now, man, hear what I'm saying?"

And I will hear.

* you will not find this very small Bahamian island on your map, because I have changed the name to protect the innocent from having too many visitors, anyway, there is no golf, service is really, really slow, roosters may wake you before dawn and well known celebs might run you over on their way to harass Queen Conch, who just ignores them. She knows real royalty when she sees, since she sees through royal eyes.

Road Trip

2011-03-10T05:12:00.000-08:00

How easily we allow ourselves to get caught up in a whirlwind about one thing or another. When events seem to conspire against us, we hope and pray that they will go away, but first we want them resolved in our favor, of course. And soon! We may lie awake at night wondering when something is going to happen, when something is going to end, and when are we going to feel much, much better.

We always seem to be sitting in the back seat, wondering, "When are we going to get there!"

I know that this kind of thing never happens to you, Pilgrims, but certain recent events reminded me of a moderately silly poem I wrote a couple of years ago; we had just visited a friend's house far, far to the north, then further to the southeast, then a short sail from a long dock. I thought it might be worth sharing (Note: For those of you viewing this on a phone-screen, the lines may get jumbled. Google is working on it):

Road-Trip

Alone in the back seat,

parents in front,

maybe grandparents ahead

or behind

in a house with creaks

and smells.

Life,

like driving up to Maine,

coastal route,

in and out, town after town,

rock after rock,

breaker after breaker,

white paint, white paint, white paint,

fog here and there.

Tee-shirt, sweater, jacket,

tee-shirt.

Sticky leather seat, mom’s

godawful music.

Are we there yet? No!

Regular choir up there,

sun melting the dash.

Find a space, lug the bags,
run for tickets,

board the mailboat,

climb the dock, walk the sandy path,

fishy smell, welcoming gull.

Are we there yet? Yes!

Life.

Soon as we arrive,

we want to go home.

Shock And Awe...From Phones

2011-02-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

"...the mobilization power of the internet was one of the Egyptian opposition's most potent weapons..."

Main Beach, Laguna

On Friday March 19, 1976, I loaded my scruffy '67 Chevy Malibu, made a right on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, CA, and pointed the hood north towards San Francisco.

I had a hundred bucks in my pocket (gas was hideously cheap back then) and a dream of the writer's life in my head. After a year and a half, I had finally tired of Laguna's beautiful women sun-bathing topless on its beaches, Pacific sunsets perfectly framed in my kitchen window, the sweet smell of the avocado grove across the narrow road from my bedroom in Bluebird Canyon, and a series of cushy outdoor jobs. What was I thinking!

Somewhere near San Luis Obispo, roughly where southern California begins to fade, the Malibu developed homesickness in the form of a knocking sound beneath my feet. Figuring that car-misery loves company, especially if that company just happens to be a mechanic, I picked up a hitchhiker (Dear Millennials, this act of faith should not be confused with the death-wish that picking up a stranger would be today).

Creative Anachronism

He was a cherub-like being with a thick scraggly beard, glasses and a head full of tangled curls; alas, he could not identify the cause or possible effect of the occasional knocking sound (it later proved to be a broken U-joint). He was on his way to Santa Cruz to attend a "jousting" contest, and I immediately thought maybe he was a wayward member of Kesey's Merry Pranksters, except that he seemed too young. Instead, he was a member of The Society For Creative Anachronism. No, he was not an early Reagan supporter, he was on his way to one of this society's medieval pageants ( http://www.sca.org/ ).

"...But quickly lost in the swirl of revolution was the government's ferocious counter-attack, a dark achievement that many had thought impossible in the age of global connectedness..."

You might think that this would have been the most interesting thing about my young passenger. You would be wrong. The most interesting thing he told me was that he and his grad-student friends from Stanford and Berkeley had been participating in a Department of Defense project. They were using the universities' mainframes to communicate and invent games with one another. He could speak to someone across the country or around the globe on a computer and they could speak with him through this new network ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET ).

Tahrir Square, Cairo

Naturally, I thought the guy was totally nuts, but I now recognize that this was the first time I had ever heard of the Internet. 1976. He may be sitting by his pool counting his billions while I, Dear Friends, live out my own dream in these humble words.

I dropped him by the side of the road and continued on to San Francisco, where I met my friend Karen. The next day, Saturday, I called a friend of a friend and got a construction-labor job. I began Monday. On Tuesday, my boss offered me a free apartment in the building we were renovating on Fillmore Street. I parked the Malibu one last time on a steep hill across from the light blue French-American School on Alamo Square with its tennis court with a chain-link net.

"...just after midnight on Jan 28, a technologically advanced, densely wired country with more than 20 million people online was essentially severed from the global Internet."

During the last two weeks, as Egyptian youths and others gathered in their square, determined for myriad reasons to bring down Mubarak's homegrown version of Creative Anachronism, I could not help thinking of that conversation with my hitchhiking friend. I wondered what he might have to say about the power of global, free services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to connect hopeful people and put fear in the hearts of hapless leaders.

Finally, we may have seen the real shock and awe of the Defense Department after all these years, not falling from planes, but ringing and glowing from phones through its own invention, the weapon of mass construction, the Internet.

Ed Note: The quotes used above are from a Feb 16 NYT's front page article by James Glanz and John Markoff, available at The New York Times . In addition to being a Contributor to The Rye (NY) Record, we are now writing a series of profiles and features for Volunteer Square

Battle Hymn Of My Tiger Parents!

2011-02-11T07:38:00.000-08:00

One time, after I only flunked three math tests in a row, they made me see a tutor for five whole weeks! Then, I had to get two C's in a row before they would let me stop. Talk about strict.

Another time, they would not let me go out one night to see my friends, even though my sister had only been missing for a couple of days. When I protested by sitting on top of my bureau reading the entire Constitution to find the part about my rights, they thought it was great, and handed me the D. of I. to read too! Torture!

I snuck out my first-storey bedroom window often, but this one time I forgot and came back in the front door early the next morning. They actually thought I had just gotten up early for a change; then, they smelled gasoline from my helping a friend siphon from another car. Grounded for a week. Brutal!

Sometimes they went to see a musical, ugh, and I refused to go. I had a party one time, and really cleaned up carefully before they returned. They woke me up later to ask where was the dog; they couldn't find him. They accused me of losing him. Totally unfair! He turned up in a couple of days and they made me wash him and walk him everyday for a month. Heartless.

Every couple of months, my dad made his favorite meal: codfish cakes, baked beans and black-bread that came out of a can; and they made me eat it like in a prison or something. Then they got mad when my sister and I couldn't hold back the gas and laughed 'til it hurt. Food Abuse!

They got really upset, when I said they could not attend my college graduation, because I had not exactly been attending college and had invested the tuition they'd given me at the track. They totally lost it and didn't understand that learning about horses and track finance from my friend John "Little Tush" Tuccio and his brother Tony "Big Tush" was just as good as college. They made me get a job in an office to pay them back and didn't speak to me for more than a year. Way too harsh!

When I was only 30, and living at their place, working feverishly (not hard, I just always had a fever) on my third screenplay, they became aware that I had not actually sold the first two yet. They asked me to leave! And they only would give me five measly grand for a fresh start! Unforgivable!

The final straw was after I had sold more derivative mortgage-backed securities than anyone else in my firm, and had accumulated a solid eight figures worth of cash bonuses. I wanted to buy them a new house. They wouldn't come to the door and told me to go away. They were embarrassed to even know me. So ungrateful. The irony of success!

Ed Note: If there is anyone left who has not heard of The Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother by Amy Chua, a Yale Law School Professor, they must have been in Borneo for a while. Before some of you write to tell me that you actually knew my parents and that they were very loving people, save the ink; this was just for fun and I even made some of it up.

The BlackBoard: Tools & Others Stuff

2011-02-08T06:30:00.000-08:00

I will put wheels on all my baggage and roll, not carry.

I will eat dessert, drink caffeinated, say yes "with cheese, please" and walk 3 miles daily.

I believe that the meek will inherit the earth, but not the one they thought.

I and 111 million other people watched the Super Bowl; 6.78 Billion others didn't.

I will cease heavy-lifting and get a twin-handled snow shovel to push.

I will still need to develop a strong back to climb upon.

I promise to quit trying to eat life-soup with a fork.

I will throw away any key on my keychain that I have not used in five years.

I know that at least 50 million viewers did not know what a steeler or a packer is or was.

I know that it will snow tomorrow, because I did not buy the push-ovel today.

I want to be like Tom Sawyer and have many people improving my fence.

I will watch out for the free pen containing ordinary ideas.

I know that schools have walls, but learning has no boundaries.

I recommend reading Genesis in the present tense.

I will try to be fearless, while keeping in mind that T Rex is extinct and the Monarch Butterfly thrives.

My Blackboard

2011-02-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

I will stop doing my childrens' homework when they get to college.

I will not speak to my Boomer friends about what Twitter does or does not do.

I will try to remember that I am a person and not just a brand.

I will no longer try to figure out why we champion democracy, except where/when we don't.

I will admit that residential real estate is not of this world despite use of the term real.

I will forget that the Super Bowl is just a 4-hr Fox-GOP commercial in which a game is played.

I will continue to buy and eat thinly sliced baloney whenever possible.

I will remember that "senior" means high school or college, and "retire" is what to do to a vehicle.

I will wear a coat and tie whenever I damn well feel like it.
I will stop trying to get others in my family to change the oil.
I will continue eating Brussels sprouts despite unpleasant childhood memories of same.
I will dream of the day when I no longer need to shovel, sand, and salt every morning.

Still More Way Back When....

2011-02-04T06:54:00.000-08:00

©copyrightTWMcDermott2011

Way Back When.....

We had one password for everything: "Open Sesame."

A friend was someone we'd actually met and a job came with pay.

Banks employed more tellers than fortune tellers.

The only trader we knew was Vic.

Where there was smoke, there was a smoker.

And....smoke was in the office, butter was on the roll, fat was in the gym, and bacon in the pan.

Starbuck's was the brick place on Main Street, Nantucket.

healthcare provider

A visit to the doctor or his/her visit to you did not require three separate corporations to send/explain the bill, process payment of the bill, or mail your prescription in 10 days.

Soho was in London, Tribeca was a message with a phone number on a wall, and meat packers really did.

All real pizza began below 14th St, crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, spread and changed the world.

A brand was what cowboys put on a cow.

No Ball Playing!

Amazingly, many adults still read books. Reading was something that actually happened all year, not just in summer. Children read books that had absolutely nothing to do with any test, list, or anything other than the pure whimsy of doing something entirely on their own without any merit, medals, or meddling. Imagine the audacity of growing an imagination, right in their own homes! It's scary to think about, but it's true.

Kids often went outdoors after school, unescorted, on foot or bicycle, unsupervised, un-coached, and unscheduled to an open space clearly marked NO BALL PLAYING, where they proceeded to play every conceivable kind of ball game....just because.

Ed Note: We really did say, "Open Sesame," even if there was nothing behind the door or curtain; it was an adaptation of the opening lines of Ali Baba. Yes, Millennials, doctors made house visits, prescribed sulpha tablets for everything from a sore throat to a "charlie-horse," to an addiction to watching re-runs of My Little Margie. The photo is of Hawthorne Park, Forest Hills Gardens, NY, where ball playing was prohibited, and the author and his friends endlessly tormented Bill The Park Warden (RIP). This was our greatest game of all, except perhaps when we learned to lure Charlie The Private Detective into a chase each night. But, that is another story.

Couple Of Nutty Things That Bug Us

2011-02-03T09:55:00.000-08:00

Dum, Dumber & Dumbest

"Knowledge Worker:" The brainiacs at McKinsey send me their Quarterly Review just about every week, which makes you wonder what calendars these folks use, while making gazzillions holding senior managements' hands. Today, they sent us a new piece about the "knowledge work" and the 21st Century needs of "knowledge workers." This only bothered us a little, until we figured out they were referring to us; and then it bothered us a lot.

Why would anyone hire a company and pay them huge fees, if they use language like this? Let's send a clear message to planet McKinsey, "Stop using the term Knowledge Worker!" This sentence is, we suppose, filled with knowledge, and it certainly took work to think it up, but we call it....writing. Some folks put actual fenders on automobiles in a factory, it takes knowledge, but we call them automobile workers. Some people think up ways to build bridges, parks, and skyscrapers, and we call them engineers, designers or architects.

Okay, by finding a single term for all of these people, McKinsey might be simplifying things. But, we must do better: Come to think of it, is there any kind of worker who is not a knowledge worker? No! There are only degrees of knowledge; every worker has knowledge.

I am going to City Hall right now. I am sure that I will find people there with knowledge. They will know how to do or not do what I would like them to do. Or maybe they will take a lot longer to do it than I would like if they do it at all. Their snow-knowledge crew broke my fence while plowing snow; the snow-knowledge person was obviously not a fence-knowledge person. The City Hall compensation-knowledge person is likely to find my notary-knowledge person's stamp on my letter with attached photos to be lacking in some way. This will cause a delay in decision-knowledge regarding my claim.

Will the snow melt in spring before the City reimburses us for the fence repair knowledge-person's work? As our great friend and Answer-Knowledge-person Eight Ball might say, "Highly Likely."

"Milk Fat" Explained: Have you been thinking that the 1% Milk, or Low Fat Milk you've been buying has 99% less fat than "Whole Milk?" Not exactly. These percentages measure the Butterfat content of milk. Butter itself is 80% BF-butterfat.

"Whole" Milk contains only 3.25% BF, not 100% as some might think. Are you with us? And 2% or Reduced Fat Milk? Right, 2% BF and only about a third less BF than Whole Milk.

Skimmed? Right, 0-.5% BF. Half & Half? A whopping 12.5%, almost 3X the BF of Whole Milk, since it's half cream and half whole (sorry) milk!

Milk knowledge-persons could do a Whole lot better explaining this stuff to us, don't you think? And, don't we feel 100% better about that 3.25% BF Whole Milk? We do. Dump the H&H though. Deadly stuff.

We have more where these came from, Pilgrims.

Ed Note: Tip, when dealing with City Hall, sometimes it pays to go at lunch time. In my case, everyone was out, except the City Manager himself. He reviewed my case on the spot, gave me his card, and said to get an estimate directly to him. That is a knowledge worker. For real, so far.

©copyrightTWMcDermott2011

Famous Quotes, Updated For "The Age Of I, Me, Mine"

2011-01-28T07:31:00.000-08:00

"Give me liberty or give me death, or maybe a piece of that Facebook IPO."
- P. Henry

Cousin Eleanor

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself....unless you happen to marry your cousin, then you've got real problems."
   - FDR

"Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes and forgetting your id and password."
  - B. Franklin, D. Defoe

"The pen is mightier than the sword, but the wallet packs the really big wallop."
  -E. Bulwer-Lytton

Famous Pensioner

"Go west, young man....and keep going, not stopping until you've reached East Asia!"
  - H. Greeley

"Beware of enterprises that require new clothes your mom bought you online."
  -H.D. Thoreau

"We shall fight them on the beaches,
  We shall fight on the landing grounds,
  We shall fight in the fields and on the streets,
  We shall fight in the hills.

   And those are just the teachers and pensioners!"
   - W. Churchill

"The buck stops here, even if it was borrowed."
   -H.S. Truman

" I cannot tell a lie, but I can refer you to my lawyer who tells exceptionally good ones: expensive too."

Truman

  - G. Washington

"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do to get that country place with the stables and the pool."
  - JFK

"Don't fire until you see something."
  - S. Palin

"Don't fire until you see something that looks like a duck wearing a beautifully woven Irish Hunting Jacket."
  - D. Cheney

"Don't fire anyone, ever, especially if they're related to you."
   - Assorted Secretaries, Mayors, Govs, etc.

The State of The Zzzzzzz.........

2011-01-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

Zzzzzzzzz

passion n 1. Any powerful emotion or appetite such as love, joy, hatred, anger, or greed 2. Ardent adoring love 3. Boundless enthusiasm.

Quick Quiz: Americans have a passion for which the following:

a) listening to an hour-long reading of what sounds like an old term-paper by a distinguished graduate of a fine university.

b) hearing an hour-long speech in which there is not a single memorable sentence or compelling new idea.

c) Expecting to receive a direct message from their elected leader, sitting in their homes, only to witness an address really meant for a roomful of people who have a well-deserved reputation for hearing one thing, saying another, and then doing whatever lame thing they like just because they can.

d) Listening to a leader who can throw away the script, dispense with the semi-canned applause, look into citizens hearts, minds, and souls across the networks and the net and energize, motivate and captivate them, because that is what they sorely need.

Well, we finally understand one thing: we know why the Kardashians and Snooki & Co are so popular. They actually demonstrate some passion and fight, even if they do not have many brilliant things to say and aren't going to being writing any term-papers anytime soon.

Let's try a 10 Minutes or Less Speech:

Trillions

1. Wars: We asked our military to fight and win two wars and they did that pretty quickly; then, we really messed up. We backed the wrong or just plain crooked "good" guys. We forgot our original mission. We actually have no idea how much money we've spent and may never know. We've sent billions to one ally-country, and they still hate us and won't help us. We promise never to do these things again.

2. "Recession:" Let's get this straight once and for all. All of us created this mess together. It was a willful act of financial terrorism that we did to ourselves. Citizen borrowers, bank lenders and traders, regulatory and ratings agencies, and federal authorities created this mess. Now, let's shut-up and move on already!

3. Wealth/Work: The Dow Jones has risen, corporate profits are up, corporations are sitting on a couple of $trillion in cash, because they are, by their very nature, not risk-takers. Unemployment remains very high, especially for minorities and for Boomers who can no longer retire. That's the good news. The bad news is that we had actually been over-employed by 2008 and those corporate jobs are not coming back, ever. Get over it, start a business, go back to school, quit whining at tea parties and get working at something, anything. Build something. Bake a pie, make a cake.

4. Health:We're going to put two moms, a dad, a nurse, two doctors, a dentist, one accountant, one child, and one "senior" in a room with people from Apple and Google. They are going to create a new way to provide and pay for healthcare. We will do what they say, and we will never speak of this again. Ever.

Renewable Resource?

5. Education: Knowledge is our most precious natural renewable resource. We take better care of plastic bottles and old newspapers than young minds. But, young minds are not the only renewable resource; we should be committed to lifelong learning. The emerging global economy demands that we be able to learn throughout our lives, to adapt, so that we can earn and continue to be prosperous. Before we can create well-intentioned "programs," before we can rate schools, teachers, students and parents, we need to define what it means to be "educated." What do we need to know, when do we need to know it, who is going to teach it, where are we going to teach it? Education is not just about school; it's about survival, security, prosperity. Math, Science, Reading, yes. What are we teaching that is a waste of time and money? Get rid of it. And, to colleges we say, enough of the full-time pay and part-time classes. Do it in 2-3 years, not 4, and stop wasting space with thousands of semi-pro athletes who will never graduate.

Well, there's a beginning, anyway.

You're welcome, and, by the way, we even like the guy. Oy, enough with the brain, speak with the heart, as the ladies in the Knish Knosh used to say.

Dear St. Peter

2011-01-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

We gathered in a small church by the sea to say a private goodbye to a friend. We love the intimacy of a small church by the sea, rather than a large one in or near a city. Still, a funeral is a funeral no matter where we are, especially in a winter, when so much around us is quiet and still.

When we attend a wedding, our minds might wander afar about many things ; a funeral focuses us on two big issues: Mortality and Eternity, which tend to cloud our thoughts of friendship, love, and loss of the departed.

Mortality is an inarguable issue, except for those who are clinically warped, and they are not likely to receive a day's pass to attend a funeral. Five hundred or even two-hundred years ago Eternity was not a big issue either, since nearly everyone from Borneo to Madrid believed in an afterlife. Granted, the Christian/Roman Catholic view of afterlife may have been very different from the pagan ones, but the end result was faith in a spiritual eternity.

See how a mind wanders at funerals!

Perhaps we have come to a time, when there are really only two kinds of humans: those who believe in an eternal spiritual life, and those who do not. A quick review of our current cultural trends says that we might have more of the latter than the former. How else do we explain the high level of disregard for moral/ethical standards in business, politics, media, academia, or, most sadly at times, organized religions themselves?

Since my friend was a virtuous person, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that she was already in Heaven getting things organized and implementing new work schedules.

L & Fs' bow ties

She was a woman who had the audacity to use a single excellent set of values for both business and her personal life. Imagine! And they were sound ones: honest, compassionate, fair. She was once surrounded by CEO's and others who used one set of values in their personal lives and another to enrich and further themselves in business life. They never quite measured up to her with their pedigrees and degrees, although she never would have said that.

She was extremely self-confident without being arrogant. She was very prosperous without being an ounce pretentious. She was smarter than just about everyone around her, but (mostly) didn't tell you so. She worked harder than anyone else, longer than anyone else, and, most days, better than anyone else. She really did love her family first.Those photos in her office were not just camouflage.

If you worked for her, you had to get it right; you might get a three-page memo correcting your half-page one. But, her idea was nearly always better than yours. You could make a mistake or fail, but you did not want to ever not tell the truth, be afraid to say you were sorry, or compromise your own personal values (or hers).

Once upon a time, we worked in a company which we liked, in jobs we liked, with people we liked or even loved. I am not making this up. This is before synergy, stock options, burst bubbles, and despicably greedy practices in high places by decidedly mediocre people, who could not have shined the very high-heeled shoes my friend wore so perfectly.

Did I mention that she was also attractive and stylish in ways that made much younger technocrat women in the company look frumpy much of the time, and that she enjoyed every minute of that? It's true.

prosecco

She taught me and others to aim very high in everything and to work hard enough to reach your aim. Once in a while, I even managed to meet her expectations. She demonstrated what love and compassion and devotion to family and work were all about by doing, not merely saying. She included my family in her family, but I still knew who was boss. And she did too. And that was fine with me. Still is.

Dear St. Peter, I know how you feel, but do not worry because you will also have a lot of fun despite being exhausted at the end of each day, except, of course, your days never end or begin. She will like that. Please make sure to stock plenty of dry white wine, especially prosecco. In eastern Long Island, NY there is a store called Loaves and Fishes. No, I'm not making this up either or being disrespectful to You Know Whom. Please arrange for them to make special deliveries.

Finally, just relax. After all this time, Heaven will be as perfect as it was meant to be. I'm betting that she's already made it so. Join a heavenly gym, drink a lot of water, use Spell Check and just go with it.

Respectfully and Sadly Yours,

Civility, Yes, But First Reverence

2011-01-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

JDavis, Lincoln, USGrant

Passionate calls for dis-order in the republic have been replaced overnight by a call for a new civility, based on the tragic events in Arizona. This is a fine thing; however, we would go a step further and say that without reverence, which is a much deeper commitment to the ideas, ceremonies, and beliefs of other people, there can be no true and lasting civility among people who either agree or disagree.

Why do we think this? As it happens, we were cleaning the bookshelves late last year, when we came upon a small forgotten book titled Reverence: Renewing A Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodfruff. Oxford University published this book in 2001, a year in which we sorely needed it as it turned out.

As you know, we draw the line here at offering rants, sermons, speeches, and lectures, which you can find elsewhere simply by turning on your phone, TV, and soon probably your microwave. Our usual purpose and aim is to be amusing; it's just that there are certain times when, as the teacher Dainin Katagiri says, "You have to say something."

Here's a little of what Woodruff says about reverence:

"Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control - God, truth, justice, nature, even death. The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting other human beings, flaws and all."

"Voting in a democracy is a ceremony, and the peoples who turn out in large numbers to vote, unlike Americans, have a strong feeling for the value of ceremony. That feeling comes from reverence."

"To forget that you are only human, to think you can act like a god - this is the opposite of reverence. Ancient Greeks thought that tyranny was the height of irreverence, and they gave the famous name hubris to the crimes of tyrants. An irreverent soul is arrogant and shameless, unable to feel awe in the face of things higher than itself. As a result, an irreverent soul is unable to feel respect for people it sees as lower than itself..."

"It is a natural mistake to think that reverence belongs to religion. It belongs, rather, to community. Wherever people try to act together, they hedge themselves around with some form of ceremony or good manners, and the observance of this can be an act of reverence. Reverence lies behind civility and all of the graces that make life in society bearable and pleasant...."

And that is just in the first two chapters; there is much more and we recommend it, not just for reading, but for absorption into our lives.

But, how do we get to reverence? We repeat: we make no sermons here; however, our friend, Teacher Katagiri, may be helpful: Listen:

"When you really understand your life - when you really understand what makes it possible for all beings to exist - there is nothing to say. You just keep silent. But still you have to do something. This is why I always tell you to keep your mouth shut and act with true heart. Buddha-nature is the state of your life as you stand atop a hundred foot pole. you have to do something. Take one step."

Happy Landings.

Ed Note: You Have To Say Something by Dainin Katagiri, Edited by Steve Hagan, Shambala, 1998:
http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-57062-462-9.cfm
Reverence: http://www.amazon.com/Reverence-Renewing-Forgotten-Paul-Woodruff/dp/0195157958
Photo of Lincoln between Memoirs of both Jefferson Davis and US Grant from Thirdgarage's library. Collages by the author

Walking Around: Like a Glock With Them Fries?

2011-01-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

One: Number 31, Jackson Pollack

©copyright2011TWMcDemott

"Those who understand the mysteries of art are made happier by doing so"- Roy R. Neuberger

There is a planet on which inhabitants feel a real sense of comfort in being able to grab a cheeseburger, fries and a Glock with ammo in the same store with little difficulty. They just never know when some rabbit or deer is going to jump their nuclear pickup on the way home. They want to be prepared for all eventualities, of course, but it also just feels great for them to know they're packing and can blow something to smithereens. This gives them a sense of clarity in a chaotic universe. Talk about aliens.

Reportedly, these folks live in our galaxy. I am one Silly Rabbit who hopes they don't visit Earth anytime soon.

Admittedly though, we all live in that same chaotic universe. When I get a little frazzled, I grab the 9:46 to the city, rather than my holster, and head for a museum. This week it was for a return visit to MOMA's Abstract Expressionist show. Funny thing, but the more abstractly weird our "real" world gets, the more these AE artists seem to be painting with focused clarity.

Where I once saw confusion in Jackson Pollack's One: Number 31, shown above, I now see more rhythm than blues. Where it once seemed like a canvas full of questions, it now seems like a google full of answers. It looks to me like a picture of life, true love, a snow storm, landscape of bare trees, and just colored lines of paint perfectly dropped. Well, after all, it took 31 tries.

Above right, is a picture of a piano I saw at MOMA. If you look closely, you will see that it has a hole in its middle. The hole allowed Guillermo Calzadilla to stand inside the piano. Why would he want to do that? To play the 4th Movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony backwards and upside down that's why.
Did I mention that he does this while walking around? He does. Talk about Silly Rabbits.

Is this great art? Who cares, it's fun, like the circus. Performance art is the reality TV of the museum world, and much of it is pretentious, boring or downright sacrilegious. It is the product of having too many curators with too much time on their hands and too many other curator friends to impress.

But, following a live Walkman, while he plays Ode To Joy works as long as we keep in mind that Beethoven's music is the real real thing and Guillermo is but a clever gent with an unusual talent.

If you do not have the time or the extra cash, a visit to MOMA is a very inexpensive way to visit Europe. Many of the visitors one encounters are actually Europeans and many others are Americans, who want to appear European.

You can feel pretty certain that nobody in this crowd is packing a weapon despite the amazing fact that there is absolutely no real security whatsoever at MOMA, as there is in every building lobby surrounding it.

That is the way we use to live. Talk about another planet. That alone is worth the price of admission. Ode To Joy, indeed.

Loose Change

2011-01-07T10:13:00.000-08:00

I cannot remember exactly where I was when I first heard the term "change-agent," but it was very likely in a sheet-rocked conference room in an office tower. I can say with some certainty that the term was used in a self-referential way, as in, "I am a change-agent," by someone in a drab suit, not too many years removed from business school.

We, the audience, had little doubt that we were the ones about to change and not the agent her/himself.

Shortly after leaving that room, most of us filed "change-agent" together with with other similar pronouncements like "I just want to be honest with you" or "I am truly humbled...." We knew from experience that the really honest ones don't feel a need to tell you; the truly humbled are too humble to tell you; and that change agents get to be that way by making a courageous and/or creative decision at the right moment, but we tend to only find out about it later. Much later in many cases.

Riding to the rescue. Again.

Our national and state forts are currently surrounded by people chanting about how they are going to change things. They are beating the old change drums about reducing deficits, forgetting that they already did that several administrations ago. They are going to cut spending and lower taxes, a rabbit that they've previously pulled out of more hats than Coco Chanel ever dreamt of making.

And,of course, we are also going to get better schools in order to keep up with the Chinese, who have a billion or so people still living very close to what could pass for bare subsistence living. We are going to have fantastically generous healthcare provided by the private sector which gave us free mortgages. And, we can still fight a couple of wars without knowing exactly why or whether our ally is also the close ally of our enemy, whom our leaders cannot find in the forest while they are busy directing the brave and patient troops to storm the trees.

Governor Joe?

This is all wonderful stuff. John Wayne is back in charge of the cavalry in the nation's capital. When he's finished weeping, he's going to come save us. Joe Piscopo (SNL) or someone who looks exactly like him is in charge in Albany, where members of the legislature listening to his change speech thought he meant quarters, nickels, and dimes.

Next thing you know, Al Franken will be in the Senate!

Someone has to do the laughing in the midst of all this chanting, weeping and wailing, and it might as well be us.

Meanwhile, with all this talk about change, we better get ready for more of the same. But, as FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself....unless you marry your cousin, and then you've got real problems."

Or something like that.

About Absolutely Nothing At All

2010-12-31T07:46:00.000-08:00

Kramer

copyright©2010TWMcDermott

It's much more difficult to write about nothing at all than you might imagine, although some have managed it rather well.

Seinfeld, for example, was a tremendously successful TV show precisely because it was, as George so succinctly put it, "about nothing at all, absolutely nothing." These words captivated the suits at NBC and the rest is TV history, which is pretty much like real history.

Sarte, as you know from college or your French phase, went on for some 800 pages about Being And Nothingness. His fellow countryman, Proust, whose work has become a lifelong challenge for me, is the all-time-champ. He wrote several volumes in his cork-lined bedroom from which he seldom ventured, in which nothing much happens at all: at least nothing anyone else ever noticed.

Is it merely coincidence that these two, who knew so much about nothing, were French? We do not think it is a coincidence and offer as further evidence Samuel Beckett. He was Irish, but wrote Waiting For Godot in Paris, apparently because he wanted to see if he could create an entire play, which would become famous mainly due to the fact that nothing much happened in it and nobody really understood it. He succeeded and so we must agree that the French are probably the best at Nothing. This may explain why they stay indoors a lot, have a pharmacy on every corner, and really know how to eat and drink.

Beckett

We come to the last day of the year prepared to look back on the events of the recent past: the last 364 days to be exact. Then, we try to look into the future to see what might happen; even making a few specific predictions about our own behavior, which we call resolutions, many of which will come to....you know what.

We do know some things will happen for sure. My home state will get a new Governor, arguably the first one we've had in some time. This would be a big something, except that it will happen in Albany, a "city" that was built in the middle of nowhere, by people who had no place else to go and nothing much else to do with their time.

In fact, the vacuum all around Albany is so pronounced that it creates the exact opposite phenomenon than you would think, allowing it to act much like a huge set of pneumatic tubes, sucking many forms of revenue from every corner of the state, except Albany itself.

And who better to reform this system than a son of Albany? The new gov spent many formative years there, as the son of a gov (some think a son of other things too). He attended Albany Law School, which, as its name suggests, specializes in a very particular kind of law mostly designed to protect the legal and physical aspects of the aforementioned vacuum-revenue system.

Cash Tubes

Some consider the new gov to be handsome, although it's hard to say, because he is seldom seen, and heard even less. He ran a stealth campaign and is forming a stealthy administration so far. He wears white broadcloth straight-collared shirts at all times, perhaps even as pajamas, and ties his knot in a half-Windsor like his dad-gov. With his background and pedigree, if anyone should be an expert on Nothing as practiced in Albany, it is he.

It is said that the new gov has a secret plan, which, as far as we can tell, could be even better than nothing.

Bon Courage! And, keep your sense of humor, or if you must, keep ours.

Ed Note: Some of you may have noticed the more than passing resemblance between Kramer and Beckett. This is obviously not a coincidence.

A King's Human Speech

2010-12-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

We've just seen The King's Speech, a film about King George VI's painful royal battle with a stammer. Sounds like a boring subject for a film? Wrong.

Strange, but we actually LISTEN to someone who has difficulty speaking. The struggle to form the words draws our rapt attention rather than repelling it. We also feel embarrassment in the face of such human difficulty, especially in someone so privileged, but we are listening.

George VI

We root for George VI (Bertie) in the film in part because, let's face it, this is Colin Firth and we like him. We like the wise-guy speech specialist too (Geoffrey Rush). We cheer because the new King is made likable vs. his cold royal parents and his imbecile brother the Duke of Windsor, the former king. Finally, we root for him because we're just tired of bad royal behavior and because we love an underdog.

Wouldn't it be fun and refreshing to have to wait to hear the words form, when all the TV gaggling heads put forth their political and commercial pre-packaged nonsense? Why pay attention to them when we already know what they are going to say? They will say something, anything that appeals to those who have chosen to tune in to that particular point of view or network.

We're not saying that our leaders should suddenly begin to stammer exactly. But we do think it would be great if they were forced to really think about every single word carefully, as if it will be really meaningful to us, the listeners, instead of for their own legacy, such as they imagine it to be.

Perhaps we've finally had enough of legacies, bold action, or thoughtful inaction. Perhaps we've heard enough Fairy Tales. Maybe we've arrived at a place where we are perfectly suited to a stammering, struggling leader, who just happens to honestly take his responsibility to us more seriously than his/her legacy. Maybe we are tired of the slick, the branded, the deciders, the undecided, the ones who are obsessed with how history will see them instead of really making history.

If we can imagine such a leader, can't we find her or him? We're betting that they do not have an active Twitter account, a reality TV show, a few billion, or a dance instructor.

We're betting that they've probably failed at something in the course of their lives, maybe something big: a business or a marriage. Maybe they've been fired, shot-at, seriously ill, seriously poor, seriously scared and overcome it somehow. In other words, they will speak in human terms, not comic book super-human terms.

And maybe then we'll really listen to what we need to hear instead of what we want to hear.
Until then, go to a theatre and watch George VI, a wealthy, royally privileged white European man, who once upon a time actually made a real difference, instead of just pretending. Let's see if we can find a our own stammering or flawed human, rather than a perfect "brand."

S-s-s-oon p-p-p-p-lease.