Something to think about

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

These are the first and last stanzas of Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” The last was written when his father was going blind, but it’s really the first that is of greatest interest to me. You see, the 21st Century appears to be the province of the young. Youth appear to be creating all of the new inventions that make our lives, if not easier, at least, less complicated. We alarm our houses, talk to the teachers of our children, order food, find mates, teleconference around the world and perform myriad chores simply by tapping icons on a ‘smart’ phone. It seems impossible that less than half a century ago, I heard Kenneth Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment, ask the question, “Why would anyone ever want a computer in their home?” I later heard that he indicated didn’t it wasn’t what he said…even though these two ears were paying rather close attention. He maintained that his statement was, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” Pure bullcrap, Ken, pure bullcrap.

I am not attempting to downplay what has been created by the likes of Olsen, Jobs, Gates, Wozniak, or Zuckerberg or any others, but I also believe that the elderly who have raged against the dying of the light have made contributions that too many of us take for granted or credit a younger person for the invention. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, (NBER) “Innovative thinkers are innovating later than they used to. While conventional wisdom holds that creative thinkers do their best work when they are young, a study by NBER researcher Benjamin Jones shows that over the past century the average age at which individuals produce notable inventions and ideas has increased steadily. Jones considers data on Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, and Economics over the past 100 years, and on outstanding technological innovations over the same period. For comparative purposes, Jones also considers the ages of track and field record-setters and ball players who have received Most Valuable Player awards.”

Perhaps one of the classic examples of inventions by the elderly is that of bifocals, created by Benjamin Franklin at the ripe old age of 78. Galileo was the same age when he perfected the telescope. At the time he invented the printing press, Gutenberg was in his early 50’s, considered quite elderly for the period in which he was living.

It doesn’t really matter whether one is old or young, just as long as men and women remain curious throughout their lives. Remember the story of Thomas Edison conducting experiment after experiment, until finally an assistant told him, “It just won’t work, Mr. Edison. We’ve tried and failed in all 999 different ways.” Supposedly, Edison succeeded on the 1,000th try. It’s old, it’s tacky, and it’s probably untrue, but it makes a hell of a story. Just think, however, if Edison had stopped inventing when he created the electric light bulb at the age of 22. He went on to invent the phonograph, motion picture cameras, batteries, and during his life received no fewer than 1,093 patents for his inventions.

If you know young people or you yourself have ideas, don’t let anyone stop you from promoting your thoughts. The success of others just might be your springboard to the world’s next great life-saving or life-affirming invention. Don’t forget, even Albert Einstein was once a clerk in a patent office.

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The choices we make

Choices…What an interesting word. Are you aware that the average adult makes 35,000 choices in a single day? That’s right; you read that correctly…35,000. Heck, we make 226.7 choices just about the food we’re going to eat in a single day. By contrast, children make only about 3,000 choices in a day. Much of the research, particularly about the food, was done at Cornell University, which is appropriate considering they have one of the best schools of hotel management in the country.

But…once more I digress, only to be pulled back to the subject at hand; in this case, “choices.” I’m willing to bet that without half trying, you could list 1,000 choices you make in a day. Consider your clothing, your mode of transportation, your job, your career, the television you may or may not watch, and of course let us not forget about the food you choose…or not. I suppose we could add the choices you make about what to do on the computer or, if you use a smart phone…oy, let’s not get started on those choices

I’d like to consider myself as a pretty average adult. Stop laughing right now! Okay, so I’m a bit older than average. Maybe I’m a bit taller than average even with my age-diminished-height. I could also be thought of as a bit heavier than average – although I have just lost 25 pounds, with 25 more to go. But here are some of the choices I have to make first thing in the morning: Gym clothing or street clothes; water or fruit juice; a protein bar or some fruit; go to the gym or not; if not, what will we be doing today and how do I dress for it; if going to the gym, is the battery charged on my I-pod or should I charge it while I’m getting ready to go. I could go on and on and on and I haven’t even been to the gym yet! Geez, all these choices, most of which we make without even considering that we are doing so. Are you getting my drift here?

If you remember Newton’s Third Law…”For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” then you will, perhaps, understand why we make those 35,000 choices each and every day. Making a single choice influences so many other choices that they quickly add up, and the number doesn’t appear quite as large as it initially did.

Along the line we may make some choices that don’t affect us at the time but that have a huge impact on us later. My decision to smoke for 51 years of my life has now resulted in emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). As a result, my choices of exercise are quite limited. On the other hand, my choice not to get involved in any criminal activities – yes, it was a choice – means that I didn’t have any kind of a record that would have prevented me from getting a security clearance or pursuing any number of professions.

Are there choices that I made that perhaps I should not have? Absolutely. Let me cite college as an example. In my undergraduate years, I never took the classroom all that seriously. That was a choice that, in hindsight, was about as dumb as I had to have been. Don’t get me wrong, I had wonderful collegiate experiences. They just weren’t in the classroom. By the time I got to graduate school I was married, had a full-time job, and truly recognized the value of higher education. To this day, however, I look back at my undergraduate days with some regret.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about you for a few moments. What choices did you make today? Were they choices that affected only you or were the effects felt by others? Were the effects on others positive or negative? Did your choices affect the choices made by others? The choices you make as an individual, ie, breakfast, clothing, etcetera, these only affect you. Supposing, however, that you are the head of a small or even large organization. Every choice you make may affect the lives of hundreds or even thousands of others. The choices you make compound over a lifetime and lead to who, what, and where you are. Your choices define you, and they define how others view you. This latter may not concern you at all, but you’d be wise to consider it. Let us return to you as leader, president, CEO, or whatever title you wish to hold. Your choices now become decisions and those decisions always affect the choices and actions of others. So how do you make those decisions? Do you go with the first choice that is offered and to hell with the consequences? Do you make the choice to go with what will please the majority, even though it may have long-term negative consequences? Or do you carefully weigh what is good for the organization, the employees, the community, and a host of others that will be affected by this one decision that is made up of complex choices?

It’s at this point that you begin to think, “Damn, I never looked at my choices this way,” or words to that effect. Our simple choices that only affect us are one thing, but when your choice has a ripple effect (damn, there’s that word again), well, that’s when things become complicated. If you’re on the top rung of the ladder, the choices you make cannot be made impulsively. Every single factor must be weighed. It doesn’t become a breakfast choice or a clothing choice, or the choice of a television program to be watched. Your choice becomes your decision. Can you live with it?

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We will survive

It’s difficult to understand why law enforcement, city, state, and federal, as well as the President of the United States, took so long to state the obvious about San Bernadino. I just don’t comprehend what is so difficult about seeing this couple, dressed as they were, not being immediately identified as ‘terrorists.’ However you wish to slice it, this was a terrorist act. It certainly terrified the crap out of the people who were being shot and those ducking for cover. With the discovery of the ammunition and pipe bombs in the house occupied by that couple and their baby would indicate preparation for a ‘terrorist’ attack. So we’re at war. Is there anyone in the USA who doesn’t understand that? Are there actually people whose heads are stuck so far up…in the sand that they aren’t aware that Americans are considered by some people who actually live and work here, as the enemy. Take a look at Dylan Roof who thought that blacks were taking over America. Can you understand why an ignoramus like that would think such a thing? Who does he see on television when the President speaks? Who does he see when the Director of Homeland Security speaks? Granted, the kid is probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s probably just a wee bit prejudiced against black folks in the first place. Someone said to me the other day, “I saw a family of Muslims in traditional dress coming in the store and I didn’t panic,” as though that was a major friggin’ achievement. It’s clue time…this country is filled with all sorts of people; some came here to escape terrorism and want to live peaceful lives. Others are here but are nothing but crazy fucking assholes who are influenced by other crazy fucking assholes and who will go out and kill anybody they see who is not dressed or look exactly as they do. They do have sufficient smarts to make certain they kill at a gathering…just walking up and down the street is not going to give one maximum exposure nor maximize your kill rate…riiiight!

To top off our understanding that we are at war, we have public panic purveyors like Donald “I-can-fix-everything-but-I-won’t-tell-you-how-because-I don’t-really-know-what-to-do” Trump. I find it truly difficult to understand how this man became a billionaire. The only thing I can think of is that he bullied his way to riches; he was the loudest shouter in the room; his face got so red, his opponents thought he was going to literally explode and shit would be flying everywhere since he was so full of it, so they gave in. It’s all I can think of. He speaks such ridiculous bullshit that no one in their right minds could possibly believe what he says. And yet, what is he doing? He’s appealing to the frightened, the uninformed, people who don’t know, or care to know, understand or care to understand other cultures. These are the folks who believe that blacks eat only fried chicken and watermelon; they may see hummus in the store so that’s what “they’ eat; Asians eat only fish and seaweed or some other shit like that. They don’t know, and one who preys on their fears such as Trump becomes their hero. The media is proving to be just as gullible. Trump speaks; it’s a sound byte they have to get on the air before the competition. Don’t react; don’t cover, and see how long Trump stays in this race. The media are “feeding Seymour” and he continues to grow. If the media ignore him, Trump will be within his rights to demand an equal amount of time as is given to other candidates; that is his right. However, the minute his talk becomes inflammatory, as it has been through most of his campaign, cut off the microphone; he has overstepped his bounds.

On November 8, 2016, America will go to the polls to elect a new President. That is eleven months from this very day. Should this country, in its ultimate stupidity, elect Donald Trump, I will make every effort to move to Nova Scotia and to renounce my American citizenship. I have little doubt that the world will become a nuclear wasteland before his term of office has ended.

Lone wolf terrorists on American streets will become more identifiable and stopped as we move along in our war. At some point, they will be identified before they enter the country. ISIS or some offspring of it will continue to function in the Middle East. It is only when America says, “Enough, solve your own problems,” that we will be able to breathe easily again. If “secure the homeland” is a dirty turn of phrase, forgive me. However, I don’t want to see more gold star flags hanging in more windows than are already there. We can “preserve, protect, and defend” the United States of America by putting our own nation first and let other nations solve their own problems.

The United Nations appears to be a useless group of foreign representatives suckling at the American teat and little else. Let us move their headquarters to someplace like Belgium, Luxemburg, or Lichtenstein, and see how quickly they dissolve or get their collective acts together to solve the world’s problems. America is too rich and too developed a nation to be playing host to a bunch of spies and neer-do-wells. Is this laissez-faire attitude going to work? No, because it will never receive bi-partisan support, nor will Wall Street allow it to happen. It would be nice to give it an honest try; to attempt to make other nations wholly responsible for their actions. We can’t; we’re America. We’re the supposed 800-pound gorilla in the room. That’s why poor families raise cannon fodder and we cry crocodile tears when they’re blown to pieces. If we really cared about our young men and women, we’d be expanding our efforts to keep them out of harm’s way rather than putting them directly in its path.

We have a great many problems in our own country that are in dire need of solutions. We need solutions to our problem of poverty. We need solutions to our problem of racial injustice and profiling. We need a unified, national police force that is fully trained and fairly paid. We need to stop teaching our children to pass some damned standardized test and teach them what it means to be a citizen of this country. We need more, better trained, and again, fairly paid, teachers. We need term limits for members of Congress to weed out the do-nothings, hangers-on, and radical assholes who somehow find their way into Congressional seats every now and then. We don’t need equalization of wealth, because if you’ve got the brains and ideas, God Bless You for making the money you’ve made, but we do need workers who are paid above a poverty level to build what you’ve designed or to sell what you have made. We need equal pay for equal work. We need to stop treating women like second-class citizens by telling them what they can and cannot do with their bodies. Our problems are tremendous; they’re hard to solve and they will continue to get harder until and unless we take some positive steps to address them. However, remember this: Over half of the Pilgrims who made the voyage on the Mayflower died before a year had passed – OVER HALF – yet the rest didn’t just lay down and die. Seventy-five thousand colonists died in the Revolutionary War; that’s 1 in 20 what we now call Americans. Yet, the men who signed the Constitution didn’t give up and say, “Screw this; take it back England.” No, the problems of their day were no more or less complex than the problems we face today. Sure, the world’s a smaller place, and the problems are terrifying. Problems of the magnitude facing the Pilgrims and the colonials and that guy who lives down the street from you today are daunting, but they can be solved. That’s our job – yours and mine – to chip in and ask what we can do to help solve those problems. No, I won’t give you the Jack Kennedy tag line; you can do that for yourself. I will say a couple of things: “If you see something, say something,” and “Don’t listen to fear-mongers and loud mouthed know-nothings like Donald Trump, because he’s not worth your time.”

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It should be the duty of society

“It should be the duty of society to take care of the very young and the very old.” Fella said that some years ago. Can’t recall who he was or even where I first heard it, but it seems like reasonably good advice, should anyone care to ask me. You take care of the very young because you never know which one, if any of them, might grow up to find the ultimate cure for disease or discover another earth-like planet that can be colonized, or perhaps even find a method for eliminating those horrible traffic jams that many, many, too many people face every day they head off to work. As far as the elderly are concerned, it’s something like “they’ve served their time in hell,” and rather than just discarding them, we should reward them, not only for surviving, but for the contributions they may have made and for the ability to tell us what mistakes we made in the past…so we won’t repeat them…which we will anyway.

Awful lot of people out there who don’t agree with any of what I say, and there are too damned many of them who don’t believe we – society, that is – have any responsibility for caring for either group. “Screw ‘em,” they say. “It’s your own damned fault for bringing a kid into this world, and if you can’t raise that kid and take care of it, tough tomatoes; that’s your problem.” As far as the elderly are concerned, there is that group that would just as soon put them on an ice floe and let it drift until it melts. I think you might be a bit surprised at just how uncompassionate – or dispassionate; take your choice – some of our fellow citizens can actually be when any part of their own normalcy is threatened. It’s not unlike those folks they used to show on television; they called them “doomsday preppers” or something like that. They were prepared to take care of their own and would shoot to kill anyone who asked for help…nice folks.

Don’t get me wrong; if someone behaves like Red Skelton’s old hobo, Freddy the Freeloader, and is unwilling to make any contribution to society, I don’t believe society has any responsibility to take care of them. Maybe I’m starting to sound a bit like Rodney King and his, “Why can’t we all just get along,” but in truth, that’s not such a bad idea. In a Utopian society we could do that, but the earth is not populated by Utopians. It’s populated by so much fragmentation, so much anger, so much hate, and yes, so much love that I begin to wonder if the inmates have finally taken over the asylum.

I read a piece recently that said people in the Scandinavian countries are a great deal happier and satisfied than people in the United States. Of course they have fewer people, higher taxes, higher cost of living, and a few more troubles than we have so I don’t really believe that they are a hell of a lot happier. Someone living in San Diego reads that and they’d probably laugh out loud…”How the hell can they be happier with the winters they have to suffer through?” It’s just further proof that surveys don’t mean crap or the while figures don’t lie, liars sure’n hell can figure.

Anyway, back to our situation with young and old. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “In 2014, 15.5 million or approximately 21 percent of children in the U.S. lived in poverty.” That’s an awful lot of children and a lot of poverty for a country that claims to be as rich as ours. In addition, “According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 15.3 million children under 18 in the United States live in households where they are unable to consistently access enough nutritious food necessary for a healthy life. Although food insecurity is harmful to any individual, it can be particularly devastating among children due to their increased vulnerability and the potential for long-term consequences. Are there federal programs to feed these children under 18? Sure there are…if they’re in school. A lot of these kids aren’t in school because they don’t have shoes to wear or clothing that would be appropriate. In other words, the federal and state programs, while they work for some, aren’t working for all. We do not, as a nation, do a good enough job of identifying and jump-starting the poor in our country. Most of the folks I know don’t wish to be poor; they’re willing to work. All most of them want is what all of us ever want, and that’s a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. If our infrastructure is so fragile, maybe the poor can help to change that; let’s put them to work. I’m not talking about welfare here; there are too many slackers on the welfare rolls already…no work; no welfare. Who is going to pay for it? Damned good question. If we could make some sense of the federal and state budgets, perhaps we could cut some pork and create an infrastructure fund that would damn near cover all costs. Hell, we might even have a bond issue that would help to underwrite a program to help the poor.

So now we have cured all of the ills of the very young and the very poor. What about the elderly? “The number of older adults is projected to increase over the next decade and continue to rise in the following decade. In 2040 there will be 79.7 million older adults, more than twice as many as in 2000.  Additionally, the senior population is becoming increasingly diverse.  Between 2012 and 2030, the white population of 65 and plus is projected to increase by 54 percent compared with 125 percent for older minorities.” This could certainly be called a growing market.  People are living longer because of healthier lifestyles, advances in medicine, and just in general. Do we owe these people something or should we just abandon them? I hope that I hear a resounding, “No” to the last part of that question.

Here are some statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau that outline a few of the problems facing society with regard to the elderly:

• In 2014, 3.0 million (9%) households with seniors age 65 and older experienced food insecurity. 1.2 million (9%) households composed of seniors living alone experienced food insecurity.
• In 2013, 5.4 million Americans over the age of 60 were food insecure. This constitutes 9 percent of all seniors.
• Food insecure seniors are at increased risk for chronic health conditions, even when controlling for other factors such as income:
  • 60 percent more likely to experience depression
  • 53 percent more likely to report a heart attack
  • 52 percent more likely to develop asthma
  • 40 percent more likely to report an experience of congestive heart failure

Yes, there are, currently, a number of federal and state services that provide meals and general care for the elderly. It is imperative that we continue to see these programs both expanded and funded to meet what is a growing societal crisis in elder care in this country. It’s predicted that the last of the Baby Boomer generation will reach retirement age by 2025…ten years hence. I cannot help but wonder if it won’t be until that year is upon us that we will decide to take action.

Yes, “It should be the duty of society to take care of the very young and the very old.”

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Who has the plan?

It’s thirteen months before the next Presidential elections, and I’m already sick and tired of the promises being made by candidates from both sides, promises they have no intention of keeping because they don’t honestly know how. That, my friends, is a 37-word sentence, a fierce violation of the “writers’ code.” Frankly, I don’t give a damn. If the politicians can lie as blatantly as they do, I can violate a few of the inviolable rules of journalism.

What the political hacks seem to conveniently forget is exactly what Barrack Obama forgot when he assumed the Executive Office…you do not work alone in governing the United States of America. The Founding Fathers made this very clear when they proposed a system of checks and balances for each of the three branches of our government; the Legislative, Executive, and the Judicial. While it is the function of the Legislative Branch to propose and enact laws that will benefit a “great majority,” these can either be vetoed by the Executive Branch or ruled unconstitutional by the Judicial Branch. The President, while he – no she yet – may bluster and bitch, he can veto what Congress sends to him for signature, ergo, he thinks he’s top gun, but Congress may override his veto. In addition, they control the purse strings, thus limiting his ability to spend monies on projects of which he may approve but which Congress does not. Oh, yes, and if they believe he has done something illegal or immoral, they can also impeach him. The judicial branch, while controlled by a systems of lower courts, is basically exempt from the checks which apply to the other two branches, and the rulings of the Supreme Court will stand until challenged by new justices.

As a result of the checks and balances that our Founding Fathers included in the Constitution, it doesn’t really matter what tripe and braggadocio is uttered by wannabee Presidential candidates. Their key attribute should be the ability to get those from their own and their opposition parties to work alongside them for the common good of the nation. This might just be a novel concept for the Executive leadership branch of government; after all, the Legislative Branch does not know how to work in any kind of harmony for the betterment of the country. I’d like you to think about that for just a moment. We have a chief executive who, when he doesn’t get his own way with the Legislative Branch, attempts to go around them through executive action rather than work with them to determine what they see as the problem with what he is attempting to achieve. (You may have to read that sentence a couple of times, but you understand what I’m saying, don’t you…sure, I thought you did.)  On the other hand, as you may have read in The Selling of America, we have a Legislative Branch that is so torn apart internally that it cannot even decide on the correct time of day or whether or not the sky is blue! Meanwhile, back in Kentucky, a clerk is telling the Supreme Court to go straight to hell, because she doesn’t care about the laws of America; she’s a law unto herself. The Founding Fathers knew that governing wouldn’t be easy, but I’m not so certain they ever envisioned anything quite as tragically comical as what we are seeing in the early part of the 21^st Century. Where the hell is common sense when we need it…yep, you’re right; common sense truly is not all that common.

This is why I am already sick and tired of the banalities of these people who believe they are qualified to lead the United States of America. Here is a question that I would like to ask each of the candidates: “how can you be so certain that you are qualified to run the nation?” They would, no doubt, begin to respond immediately and I would interrupt by saying “SHADDUP FOOL!” as loudly as possible. If they continued to speak, I would have them ejected from wherever our meeting was taking place. If you don’t have to stop and think, think, think about the questioning of your own abilities, say nothing until you can speak with genuine authority. I could take each candidate currently in the running and dissect them piece by piece but then this essay would go on forever. Let me just say that governing a state does not qualify you to govern a nation, no matter how successful you were in doing so. Being in Congress most assuredly does not qualify you to be the chief executive of the United States. Having been a business person who achieved a modicum of success hardly qualifies you to the pressures that you will feel when you enter the Oval Office. Let’s see, have I left any area uncovered? Nope, don’t think so. To me, the best person to run the country is the one who has all sorts of reservations about his or her ability to do so, but who is willing to put forth a best effort to keep the nation growing, to reduce the national debt; to keep our country free from attack by foreign powers or individuals who would attempt to destroy us, and who is actually willing to sacrifice his or her life to do these things and so many, many more. Show me that person, the one who is free from bluster and bullcrap, who is willing to work with and/or around the idiots currently occupying the halls of Congress like a goddamned childish sit in, and who can demonstrate openly the ‘how’ of their plan, and that my friends is the person who gets my vote. The saddest thing of all is that that person has yet to come forward. Because of that, I fear greatly for the future of my nation.

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Why save the planet?

Why is it so difficult to think of the world 200 years from now? Hell, you, your children, and your great-great-grandchildren will all be dead. Therefore, why should we even care? Why recycle, for example; why worry about the rain forest, species extinction, overfishing, or global warming or any of that stuff? After all, we’re just going to be a pile of dust by that time. Screw the future; there are already enough people who don’t give a damn about it anyway, so why should we care? But…we do recycle; we do attempt to do our bit to keep the earth as pure and pristine as our little efforts can do so. For some strange reason, whether it’s perpetuation of our species or what, we attempt to prevent the world from destroying itself through some combined effort.

When I say “we,” I don’t necessarily mean the United States of America. Shucks, we’re way down the list when it comes to ecological friendliness, or as I like to put it, “Preserving the planet for Cap’n Kirk and his Enterprise buddies in the 25^rd Century.”  According to one article that I read, “You’d think with all of the smarts and resources this country has, it would rank a bit better than Number 2–afraid not. Although it did rank a respectable 211 for natural habitat conversion–that honor is pretty much negated by the country’s abysmal ratings in other areas. Ringing in at 1st place for fertilizer use, this country’s excessive application of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (NPK) fertilizers can result in the leaching of these chemicals into water bodies and remove, alter or destroy natural habitats. The USA also ranks in 1st place for CO2 emissions, 2nd place for water pollution, 3rd place for marine captures, and 9th place for threatened species.” Sometimes, our braggadocio isn’t so warranted after all.

I suppose that by the time the big blue marble becomes inhospitable to human life, somebody, somewhere will have discovered a place where all human life can be transported. It may even be a possibility that those people, with the species of animals they wish to take with them, will also have found a way of keeping the new planet somewhat cleaner than the manner in which we’ve treated this one…but I rather doubt it. You see, I don’t think that man, as a species, evolves as rapidly as we’d all like to believe he does. We may have banned DDT, creosote, and a few other dangerous things, but as it says up above, we surely have a long way to go. To digress for just a moment, I should tell you that I am now wearing the plastic bottles that only a few months or years ago I was drinking from. That is, I now have sweat pants that are made from recycled plastic bottles…and they’re great!

When I look at all of these ‘studies,’ reports,’ ‘analyses,’ etcetera, about countries and even cities that are good or bad in terms of this statistic or that, I find that the criteria, rather than clarifying the situation, only serve to confuse it.  Smaller countries, on the whole, seem to do much better than larger ones. Russia, China, and the United States have such vast areas as to make some judgments more harshly than they necessarily have to be. As another aside, my son was credentialed to attend the Olympics in Beijing but opted to stay back at Olympic headquarters in Colorado Springs. “I’d been there once,” he told me, “and I wasn’t certain my lungs would every clear up!”

Who are the clean, green, ecologically-conscious countries throughout the world? Yes, you’re right; the Scandinavian countries lead the way. Why is impossible to say, but they were the first ones that came to my mind, and they, along with Germany, Costa Rica and Spain round out the top ten.  These are countries that make a genuine effort to lower their carbon footprint and work at maintaining a partnership with the planet’s resources.

It puzzles me that our commuting problems in the United States are as bad as they appear to be. Some time ago we were caught in the rush hour between Hartford, Connecticut as far south as the New Jersey Turnpike. Between the amount of traffic and the word that was going on to expand the highways, it was rather obvious that by the time the new, widened highways are complete, the traffic will have expanded to keep pace and to keep the traffic jams just as they are today. A mathematician might say that the highway system is expanding arithmetically while the number of vehicles attempting to use those highways is expanding exponentially. The thing is that I’m not certain newer and wider highways are the answer. However, as long as the automotive industry controls Congress, along with a few other industrial giants, we will continue to view automobiles as our major source of transportation.

I’m fully aware that there are people from other parts of the country who believe that those of us who live in New England are as soft as a newly-minted cow flap, and to some extent that might just be true. However, I see industrial park after industrial park with ‘For Lease’ signs on better than half of the buildings, and it leads me to wonder why some companies insist on keeping their businesses in downtown Boston. This is the age of technology. You can be connected to anyone, anywhere in the world in less time than it takes to snap your fingers. Parking in cities such as Boston is a hassle that no one wants or needs. These industrial parks have tons of parking. Why do some of these huge operations insist that the ‘city’ is the only place to be? Years ago, a friend of mine had a consulting business in the heart of New York City. One day, he announced to his staff of 10 or 12 that he was moving his operation to Keene, New Hampshire. He had been commuting from Greenwich, Connecticut into the City, and had enough. How many people did he lose to this move? One…one person could not make the transition, not because she thought it was too “country-bumpkin-esh, but because of her spouses commitments in NYC. He has long since retired, but the business is still in Keene.

We ask that those who lead our businesses have vision. Perhaps part of that vision should include where the company can most efficiently be located. At least here, in the Northeast, visionary leaders should be looking at the suburbs with their unused and probably one hell of a lot cheaper-per-square—foot rental rates as places for their employees. The buildings are already there, in anticipation of a boom that never seemed to take place. Let’s use the space we have and stop destroying more of our land. Who knows, some employees might begin cycling to work or begin to feel better about their commute. After that, more companies might begin recycling programs. Lord only knows what innovative and planet-saving things may happen after that.

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Protecting the home front

I’m attempting to put my teaching hat back on as it relates to law enforcement. The police officers whom I taught over the years ranged from the very, very serious to those who looked on what they were doing as just another job – I never really understood the latter group – that they would get up and go to each day. I could have been reading them all wrong, but perhaps it was just that they didn’t believe I couldn’t understand them because I wasn’t a ‘cop,’ a word more common among them than ‘police officer.’ Be that as it may, my job was to teach them to understand how to work in teams, rather than as individuals, and how to understand the underlying problems that contribute to the larger and more visible problems that they see on a daily basis. When asked to describe the major problem in their community, I would always ask, “Why,” why is that the major problem? What causes that to become the major problem? In other words, we would break the problem into its various elements, finally reaching the point of understanding that the perceived problem could not possibly be solved until the underlying problems had been taken care of.

As I watched the 60 Minutes report on the terrorists who have been attacking in France and in Denmark, it occurred to me that these types of attacks will become as great an epidemic as ISIIS or ISIL or whatever the hell you wish to call them because there is an underlying problem that first must be solved within each country…Why do these homegrown terrorists have such hatred for the nation that spawned them? What has caused their anger? Do they feel that their nation has rejected them? Persecuted them? Done nothing for them (and what do they expect the nation to have done for them)? At some point they have been radicalized against their own nation. Why? How? What is at the very root of their hatred?  It’s quite easy to say that there is a certain part of the population in any area that feels the world has forgotten about them or doesn’t give a damn about them. They drop out of school the minute they turn 16 because they don’t see the value of education. In addition, there is money to be made on the street and “It ain’t flippin’ burgers at the arches.”

Have we, as a society, failed this group of people? Have their parents failed them? What and where is the problem? Until the very basic problem is identified and the road is paved toward solving it, we can expect to see more homegrown terrorists in every country in the world because the terrorists abroad are way ahead of the good people of the nations in propagandizing and converting dissatisfied youth to their side of the street.

The French found out the hard way about who is and who isn’t dangerous. Said and Cherif Kouachi, along with Amedi Coulibaly were well known to French Police as young thugs who had served time for various crimes. Contacts within prisons helped to convert these three young people to violent radical jihadists who could take their hatred out on their own country. In Denmark, Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, the 22-year old shooter, was another home grown terrorist with a record as a local criminal. Okay, where are the commonalities here? What is the basic problem? All had police records from a young age; hell, plenty of kids have that and grow up to lead good lives (I happen to have a sealed juvenile record, and I haven’t done too badly); what brings these four people together or does anything? These are the questions that are facing law enforcement officials all over the world.

In the case of the French shooters, so much appears to be known about their lives that perhaps they could be used as models with certain base characteristics to help law enforcement organizations to put together some type of profile. Nah, that would be too easy, to unsophisticated. Perhaps it might also be too overwhelming a task because of the number of (a) youthful offenders who have served time, come out, and are now lost; (b) the number of recruiters in prison who have already converted some of those in the ‘a’ category who have now gone to ground; and (c) the dearth of people in the law enforcement system who are unable to keep track of the youthful offenders because they have a caseload that would choke an elephant.

“It’s impossible to keep track of all the possible,” I’ve been told. My answer to that goes back to the outset of this very essay…Why? Why is it impossible to keep track of all of the possible? Is it a lack of trained personnel? Is there a personnel pool out there that is being underutilized? How are we using our military police personnel who are being released from active duty? How about those who may be coming back as wounded warriors who are finding it difficult to adjust?  Somewhere, somehow, there is an answer to keeping better track of those who may be preparing the same thing or worse that was done in France and Denmark. The ACLU wouldn’t care for it a whole hell of a lot, but I’d rather be more protective of our general citizenry than less.

Let’s start asking the right questions and let’s begin a campaign to protect all Americans from facing more attacks on this wonderful place we call home.

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Growing up…at some point

I was six years old in 1940; sixteen in 1950; and 26 and married for three years by the time 1960 rolled around. On my fifth birthday, Adolph Hitler and his thousand-year-Reich invaded Poland. Korea was on the verge of exploding and I was still a naïve American young boy, just old enough to begin working, at least according to the labor laws of the time, when I was 16. Sputnik had gone up and scared the crap out of everyone by the time I graduated from college the first time, and it seemed that the dreaded and hated Soviet Union was going to win the “space race.” As ‘they’ say, “A lot of water has passed over the dam and under the bridge since those days.

When I was in high school, there was one Black kid…Leo Kennedy. Leo was a great athlete, something of a good friend, but I really never sat down and talked with him. He was the only Black person I knew, and, well, I really couldn’t talk about him at home. Jimmy Proctor appeared in high school when we were sophomores and he made two Black kids in school. We even had our token Jew, Freddie Ferber, but all we knew was that he didn’t go to any of the churches in town. You see, I grew up in about as white bread community as you could possibly see back in the fifties. It wasn’t so much that it was a slower time of life as much as it was just a different time. Looking back, I’m happy as hell that I don’t have to be growing up today, and someday, some old fart like me will dictate or thought transfer the exact same thing onto or into God-only-knows-what, and that person will say the exact same thing…”Wow, I’m happy as hell that I don’t have to be growing up today.”

Times were really bad when I was born. It sort of makes me wonder if my conception wasn’t some big accident. There were still breadlines in some places in 1934…hell, there were breadlines in various communities right up through 1936. What kind of crazy people would want to conceive a child during times that were that tough? Accident or not, I’m rather glad that Bud and Rae decided that I was worth the making. I guess it paid off. Dad was a shipyard worker and, when war broke out seven years after that glorious September morning when I appeared on the scene, money became plentiful once more because the shipyards were so damned busy, they were going three shifts around the clock. Overtime was just one of those things of which you took advantage.

Things just seem so much faster-paced today than they were when I was growing up. Maybe, just maybe it’s not that things are that much faster; maybe it’s just that I’m slowing down. When I was younger, it wasn’t cancer that killed people; it was polio…and car accidents…and heart attacks, although no one seemed to know what brought about heart attacks. I suppose doctors knew about cancer when I was a kid, but I don’t recall ever hearing the word tossed around. Uncle Stanley dropped dead in the shower; never did know what killed Aunt Stacy or Aunt Celia – she was the former postmistress in Cohasset, you know – but it wasn’t until my Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1968 that I ever even considered the word.

Everything has changed; in many ways you – at least if you’re near my age – and I have changed with a great many of them. We have cell phones with apps and maps and cameras and so many other gadgets that I’ve stopped trying to figure out what they all do or mean. I wear head phones to listen to my I-pod at the gym. Other folks use ear buds, but I can’t get the damned things to stay in my ears. Rather than seeing only one or two people who are Black, I find that most of my friends are either Black, gay, or from a country other than America. My next door neighbor is a rabbi, and I turn to him as much for a counselor as I do to anyone else.

What will life be like in 2214 or 2314? How much will it have change? Will there still be a world as we think of it today. Will kids go to work at 16? What will that work entail? Will college still be an attractive way to further one’s education, and how will students attend college? Will they sit in front of a television screen and take online courses only? If so, how will they learn to interact on a social level? Many people, when I was growing up, believe that the year 2000 would be the age of the Jetsons. Well, that one sure blew by the boards in a hurry, didn’t it? War has certainly changed since I was a kid. Back during the days of WWII, you knew who the enemy was…and they fought like men, not using the skirts of women or children to sneak around. Today, they don’t seem to be world wars as much as they are, religious actions. At least that’s what the politicians would have you believe.

While it’s been the case since time began, I don’t believe the division between the “have’s” and the “have not’s” has been so great since the late 1800s. Conspicuous consumption or “keeping up with the Joneses” has put many a family in ruin. The idea of having a new car every so often; sending the kids to a prestigious college, even if it means refinancing the house; having the newest of this or the very best of that seems to be the downfall of too many people in this country. Job uncertainty doesn’t appear to be holding people back from this idea of wanting everything without the means to provide it. Juli and I have adopted the philosophy of, “The Joneses are in debt and we don’t care to join them.” I wonder how that will be playing out in a couple of centuries. No one seems to be too concerned about these questions, and I’ll be pretty dusty by the time they come along, so I guess I shouldn’t worry a whole hell of a lot about them either. They do, however, intrigue me.

When I was teaching a workshop in creative problem solving, I would often open with some icebreakers. The class would be split into random five-member teams…strangers getting to work together. They would be given a problem similar to the following: “The year is 2375. You and your family are spending your two-week vacation on a beautiful tropical island, once known as Massachusetts, in a country once known as America. What happened to make this a reality?” Every member of the team had to speak; the story they told had to be cohesive…and they had only fifteen minutes to come up with their scenario. To me, this kind of thinking is what we need today if we are to ensure that there will be kids growing up two or three centuries from now. My life was so simple and today’s life seems so complex. I wish you well, those who are not yet conceived. To those of us nearing the end of our time on earth…have we done the job right? Will our kids do the job right? Oh, how I hope we haven’t messed up everything!

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Shaping up the Veterans Administration

Republican members of Congress scream for smaller federal government involvement in the rights of states and the rights of citizens. Know what, they are absolutely right. We, the American people have allowed the federal government to become too much a part of our lives. There are too many living off the government teat and, in the long run, everyone suffers.

Yes, I collect Social Security and I have Medicare. So what? The Social Security program was started under Franklin Roosevelt. Like everything else about the federal government, it has become too large and too bureaucratic. It appears that every federal program has become a dumping ground for someone’s brother, sister, aunt, or uncle. While the federal – and the state governments as well – claim that they are streamlining and getting rid of red tape and bureaucratic bullshit, the tape line grows longer and longer and the bullshit piles higher and higher. Bureaucracy breeds caution and contempt at a time when the country should be throwing caution to the wind and acting a little more humble in its dealings with the average American citizen.

The scandal at the Veteran’s Administration is nothing new. In 1929, Herbert Hoover proposed bringing the agencies that were administering veterans’ benefits together under one roof. On July 21, 1930 the three agencies, the Veterans Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions, and the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers were brought together as the Veterans Administration. Remember when this was, i.e., the period of the Great Depression. I am willing to bet everything I have that not one person in any of those three bureaus lost his or her job when the consolidation took place. From that point on, the Veterans’ Administration did nothing but grow. It was Topsy reincarnate The Selective Service Act was passed creating more members of the military. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor throwing us into World War II and creating greater need for veterans’ services. How does America solve this greater need? Throw more money and more people into the mix. It doesn’t matter that the people may not know their butt from a hole in the ground, they will learn by doing. The bureaucracy just grows and grows and grows. It is not dissimilar to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Started over two centuries ago, It was an amalgam of railroad companies often chartered by the state legislature, and anyone knowing anything about the Massachusetts state legislature will tell you that one of the key words to describe it is ‘patronage.’  In 1947, the MTA was created. Government agencies began to take on transit services, consolidating many separate routes into unified system.  In 1964, the MTA became the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, serving a greater number of communities and creating an even larger bureaucracy.

Perhaps the best way to describe the Veterans Administration, the MBTA, and many other organizations that have expanded rapidly without closely examining needs is to use the old cliché, “There is never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over.” When it’s being done over, a new layer of bureaucracy is added to ensure that it’s done right.  Once whatever the task to be completed is finished, the layer of people, money, supplies, buildings, vehicles, etc. remains even though they are no longer required…”Well, we might need them again and if we get rid of them, we’ll never be able to justify bringing them back.” Eventually, the original purpose of the entire organization grinds to a halt because no one remembers precisely what the original purpose was in the first place. That is, without question, an oversimplification of the situation. However, in the case of the Veterans Hospital Administration, putting off the treatment of veterans appears to have taken a back seat to saving money in order to pay bonuses to the major decision-makers in the organization. The VA has identified the wrong problem for solution. At some level in the VA, the decision has been made that rather than solve the problem of increasing service to the customer, we have to solve the problem of appearing to increase the service to the customer without actually doing so. If we make the problem appear to go away, it will do so by a process of attrition. The hospital will look good and those eligible will receive bonuses because the hospital will appear to be well managed. In other words, “If you can say smoke and mirrors, you’re hired!”

Will firing Eric Shinseki solve this problem? No, it will not. The bureaucracy is already too ingrained in veterans’ hospitals across the country. Problem solving 101 says that the first step is to identify the actual problem. There may be many perceived problems, and everyone employed by the VA will have his or her own idea of what that problem is…and they will be right…and wrong. It will take an independent management group to determine the first problem to be solved; how to solve it, and then determine the next steps to be taken to solving the second greatest problem. Right now, General Shinseki is sitting atop a pile of bullshit surrounded by red tape that is not of his making. One might say that he is the heir to the bullshit and red tape fortune. By not knowing how to cut through the red tape and not knowing how to dissolve the bullshit or by being blind to both, he does bear some responsibility; however, to lay the entire mess at his door is unfair. There are a number of criminal layers between him and getting his job done. If his subordinates have been keeping him in the dark, it may well be because they have been kept in the dark. Somewhere in this vast bureaucracy that we call the Veterans Administration, there is a criminal layer. That layer has put its own welfare before the welfare of the customer, the veteran. The same has been true of the MBTA. CEO upon CEO upon CEO has been hired to “clean up” the MBTA and the job has yet to be completed. It’s one of the great truisms of bureaucracy: “Bureaucrats in numbers can generally beat down any attempt to destroy them.” They will lie, cheat, steal, and yes, they will commit murder, if their fear is great enough.

Republican leader of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, says that he is withholding judgment on whether or not General Shinseki should be forced out. I’m with Congressman Boehner on this one – don’t faint – Shinseki just might be the solution once all of the facts are known. His military background could be the key to eliminating long-time bureaucrats who feel protected because of their tenure. Shinseki knows that if the job isn’t done properly on the battlefield, soldiers die; the same could be said here…if the job isn’t done correctly, former soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and coast guardsmen and women will die. No military man worth his salt is ever going to let that happen, not on his watch!

Perhaps it is time to take a hard look at every government agency and to pare them back; force them to do more with less; eliminate all of the red tape and bullshit. Yes, it will cut jobs and it will inflate our jobless rate and no one, no one wants to see that. I would argue that it’s more important to be doing the job correctly than having a bunch of people collecting pay checks for doing nothing or for emasculating the jobs they are supposed to be doing.

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Oh, what a night!

Hey…I have a new phone!

Not only do I have a new phone, but I kept my old number. It would be somewhat unfair to tell you the name of my former provider, but Verizon was – oops, did it, didn’t I? – very cooperative in transferring my number to my new provider.

Here’s the story. Last year, Juli purchased a phone on QVC for a hundred bucks. In addition to no contract, she receives triple minutes, but she started with a promotion 1,500 minutes. Since she’s not a big caller, it works out well for her. Who knows how fast I’ll go through them, but few people call me anymore. Most are dead so I don’t expect to hear from them; the rest are living in Florida; and the kids rarely call, so I’m probably on pretty safe ground.

Anyway, the real story of this new telephone is what happened when I went to activate it. As usual, the new phones come with bells and whistles that are totally foreign to someone like me. That is to say, that had this phone been given to a child between the ages of ten and thirteen, registration, activation, manipulation, and any other ‘ation’ of which you can conceive would probably have been completed within ten minutes. For me the process required an hour and a half, and I’m still not certain that everything has been done properly.

However, to quote the melancholy Dane,” …there’s the rub,” and he wasn’t speaking of a massage parlor or sleep. The ‘rub’ came in the form of some fraud in North Carolina who had usurped my e-mail address and already had opened an account using said e-mail. How the heck he got away with doing this is beyond my computer mastery; however, I have my secret weapons. Ever the Nick and Nora North of the 21^st Century, Juli – she was Nora, by the way – and I not only managed to learn the serial number of his phone, cancel his account and change the password to one of my own, together, we figured his password question and used that to utterly destroy him. His comeuppance was complete…ta da…drum roll, please!

I make this sound like a simple process. It was not, particularly since the customer service for this particular phone is in other than the United States. I’m all for outsourcing, but not when I cannot understand the speaker at the other end. Farsi, Hindi, and Mandarin have never been my strong points, but for a while that appeared to be my wont when I was attempting to get computer questions answered. While I do not consider the English language as spoken in Guyana – it is the official language – to be without accent, Tanecca, the young lady who first attempted to be of assistance, had the patience of Job with this old man and carried me up through the first several steps of my registration and activation. When it came time to transfer my existing number from Verizon to her wireless carrier, she suggested that a transfer was in order; thus I was sent to Daryl – not that Daryl, but the other Daryl. I never learned where this Daryl was located – I think it might have been in Suriname or French Guiana. This gentleman was also extremely helpful. If I had to be put on hold, he explained that he would be gone for less than two minutes. While I never timed his absence, it never appeared more than 30 seconds. Like Tenecca before him, he had less trouble understanding me than I did understanding him – shades of the “Ugly American.” Eventually, even Daryl ran out of knowledge – this time, how to get rid of the fraud’s efforts.

Finally, it was on to Christian in Guatemala City. Christian pulled the plug on the fraud, but indicated that there was a problem with Verizon. My account and telephone number weren’t matching up. What did Christian do – I told you these folks were sharp – he called Verizon and set up a three-way conversation. Within minutes the problem was solved; my phone was activated, and all was right with the world.

“Will that be all, sir,” Christian asked, despite having been told on several occasions to please call me “Dick.”

“No, Christian, it won’t,” I told him. “I would very much like to speak with your supervisor.”

He did not question my motive or ask if something was wrong, but merely said, “One moment please, sir, and I will put him on.”

“This is the supervisor,” said an older voice.

I told him how wonderful it was to work with the three professionals who had helped me over the past hour and a half. I explained that while he might not personally know Tanecca in Guyana, nor Daryl in wherever, he certainly knew Christian, but that all three had exercised great patience in being of assistance. It sounded as if he was waiting for the “but” so I didn’t disappoint. I said, “But I’m certain you get complaints whenever your folks are unable to help; therefore, when I receive the kind of help I received this evening, I believe you should hear that also.” There really was a pause on the line before the man came back and said, “We rarely get your kind of call, senor” – yep, he called me senor – “So I say thank to you and I will certainly pass this back to Christian and his colleagues.”

We parted ways, but it made me feel rather good that maybe Christian will get an “atta boy” or however it’s said in Guatemala City. It would have been better if I could have told him in Spanish. Still kinda nice, though.

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