Frustrations in the Social Security application process

Okay, now I'm a geezer.

But there are advantages. Such as the Senior Pass that'll get in in free to national parks, national monuments, national recreation areas, national wildlife refuges.

And Medicare, but that's a whole 'nuther story. Plus there are a few others, like small discounts at lots of retailers .... Think hard, and they'll come to you!

Plus, oh yeah, Social Security.

Except getting to Social Security is a surprisingly frustrating process.

For instance, when you apply online, you have to wade through a lot of web pages while dredging up a fair amount of personal information you hadn't used in a long, long time. But finally, you reach a point where you get to choose the month in which you want our benefits to start. So in mid-December, I chose January.

Then, nada. No word from Social Security. And no check from Social Security.

Every day I checked SSA's online application status page. Every day I was informed that no action had been taken.

After several weeks of this, I called their 800 number, and after a wait of almost an hour, I got through. To discover that although although my benefits would start in January, the checks wouldn't start until February. "Why," I asked. "Because the checks don't start arriving until the month after benefits begin."

Hmmmmm. One wonders what benefits applicants seek other than the checks they've earned? No answer was forthcoming.

But the thought is intriguing. What other Social Security benefits might there be? Membership privileges in the Social Security gym? A personalized parking space in the Social Security garage? A 10% discount at Social Security shops? Not being required to remove your shoes at Social Security checkpoints? Non of these seemed terribly likely. I give up - what benefits do Social Security applicants generally seek, other than the checks they've earned?

The not-so-helpful person at the 800 number wouldn't hazard a guess. Nor could she tell me anything about the status of my application I didn't already know. But she did thank me for calling the 800 number.

So I continued to check my application status online every day. Always the same answer. Or non-answer.

Finally I screwed up my courage and drove in to my "local" Social Security office. Understand: my local Social Security office serves an area encompassing thousands of square miles - its easily a drive of several hours and hundreds of miles for many of the people for whom it's the "local" office ... and that's assuming they're even capable of driving several hours and hundreds of miles to get there.

However, that was the right choice. After a wait that was shorter than the wait on the 800 line, I got to talk with a knowledgeable and helpful individual. Who was able to quickly discover that notwithstanding what the online status page was telling me, my application had been approved, and the checks would begin arriving ... in February. He even gave me a direct line telephone number to reach him if they didn't arrive on time. (However, when I asked him what benefits come that month before the first check, he laughed wryly, and admitted it was a good question.)

So the moral of the story is that although the application process is frustrating and is rather opaque, one can find helpful, caring and competent folk at the office. If you can get there.

Oh yes, the online status report on my application is still telling me that no action has been taken on it yet ....  

Ebola panic

Ebola is a nasty disease and the world needs to mobilize its resources and work to control and prevent it.  Worldwide, the fatality figures from this disease are pushing 5,000.

Alarm and even hysteria about it are rife even in the U.S., but we need to put our Ebola panic in perspective. In the U.S. a grand total of one person, who travelled here infected but asymptomatic, has died.

Meanwhile, in 2011 (the latest year I could easily find stats) the CDC reports that in this country alone, 11,068 people were the victims of firearm homicide. Another 19,990 committed suicide by firearm. 

Where's the outrage? Where's the panic? Where's the wall-to-wall media coverage? Where's the call for governmental action to stop the slaughter? Where is the finger-pointing in the halls of government and the organs of the mass media? Where's the mass condemnation of the agents pushing this particular disease? If we're concerned about a deadly epidemic, why don't we focus on this one?

Fortune for naught, in the face of tragedy

Last week, a locally important two-lane highway was closed for several hours, due to a two-car collision which killed an 86 year old woman. It caused a lot of congestion, being the only east-west highway in the area.

Apparently, the accident occurred when the driver of a west-bound SUV inexplicably crossed the center line and smashed head-on into a minivan. The elderly victim was a passenger in the van; she was not wearing a seat belt.

The driver apparently at fault, according to Forbes magazine, is the seventh richest woman in the world, a former corporate president and a noted philanthropist.

One hears this story and must invariably reflect on the nature of our existence, on how the tiny choices we make can have enormous consequences, of how little importance so much of what we measure counts when facing mortality.

Had whatever caused the millionaire to swerve across the road - a moment's distraction, a moment's inattention, an error in judgement that on another occasion might have been of seemingly no consequence - not occurred, a tragedy would have been averted, the lives forever changed would have continued unchanged instead., enduring senses of loss and guilt would never have been engendered.

A moment's pause to fasten her seatbelt may well have saved the elderly victim. Who was she? The mother of the driver? The grandmother? Almost certainly somebody important to him or her, for they were all assembled to attend a wedding. One suspects the driver of that minivan will forever regret not having required that special passenger to buckle up.

What of the driver who crossed the line? Most of us would probably envy her riches - the seventh wealthiest woman in the world! - but all those riches will do nothing to extinguish the sense of guilt that momentary mistake must surely have engendered within her.

In the end, we are frail beings; in the end,  we are all slaves to the caprice of chance, and we live, feel and die as the frail beings we are. Our material possessions are of little effect in comparison.

Reflections on an international tragedy

The New York Times yesterday published an article describing an "international adoption" of a Russian child by an American family which went horribly wrong, "World of Grief and Doubt after an Adoptee's Death," and the paper asked families with their own international adoption stories to comment.

As an adoptive parent, the article hit hard, and I have mixed feelings about the article and, more broadly, about the process.

Don't get me wrong: adopting my daughter was the best decision of my life, and I have never regretted bringing her into my life, not even during those darker moments of adolescence which bring angst to nearly every parent. She has enriched and enlarged my life in ways I could never have imagined; the journey has been - and continues to be - a wonderful journey.

When I met her twenty years ago she was 18 months of age, living in an orphanage in northeast Moscow; she's now starting her senior year at a good, small liberal arts college in the mid-Atlantic region. It's been a long road with more than a few potholes along the way, but it's been a good journey. There were thirteen years of ballet and several years of softball - oddly, the love of baseball endures the more. There was an assortment of the other sorts of activities typical of a bourgeois American child, too, from gymnastics to scouting to horses; you name it. She was a high school cheerleader who earned praiseworthy academic awards. Her social life was probably a little cloistered but not terribly unusual for her day and age. All in all, a childhood seemingly typical of her community. Through it all, she's always known - and been proud - that she is Russian.

Some of those potholes along the way were my fault. There really is no school or standard text for parenting; for such an essential task one is remarkably dependent on extemporized, seat-of-the-pants learning, and I certainly made my mistakes along the way. Still, I think the worst of the potholes stemmed from those first eighteen months. The staff at the orphanage were clearly loving care-givers, but they were overwhelmed by the numbers and she naturally didn't get the sort of parental care and nurturing that every infant deserves, and that has echoed down through the years as she's dealt with feelings of rejection, abandonment and loneliness, as well as delayed intellectual, emotional and even physical development. Her road has been the harder for that, and she has had to work hard and continues to work diligently to overcome those shortcomings. Perhaps she never ill, although I am optimistic that she's been developing the coping skills to manage the problems she can't overcome. Still, by this point in her life, I do believe that she's on a par with her "biological" peers, and she (rightfully!) feels loved by her parents.

For her, I think the "bottom line," such as it can be stated now, is that her future looks good, and she'll be ready to face what it brings. Moreover, it can safely be said that her life to date and her future are immeasurably better than the prospect faced by the scores of children she left behind at that orphanage.

But her and my very positive outcomes should not blind prospective parents to the dangers involved in international adoption, and probably in adoption generally.

Let's face it: babies born into loving families capable and willing to raise them as they should be raised simply are not placed for adoption. No, they become available because their birth parents cannot or will not care for them (think: the pernicious effects of poverty, or nonexistent prenatal care, or simple abandonment), or because their own shortcomings, habits and failings carry consequences that reach far into the children's futures (think: fetal alcohol syndrome or physical abuse).

So the children who do become available for adoption come with onerous baggage that will impede them all along their journey, and their parents will need to reach deeper into themselves - and to develop a larger repertoire of parenting skills, and require greater emotional reserves - than they will ever have imagined. Quite probably, more than most "biological" parents ever need.

That is most definitely not to say that the rewards aren't there, for they are - more than I ever imagined. But would-be parents who in their naivete or ignorance never bother to learn these realties and honestly assess their own ability and willingness to deal with them will do themselves and their children real and lasting harm. The parents will face disappointment, frustration and failure, and their children will suffer for it through the rest of their lives.

Running dog, trotting

I had a long ways to go, no need to get there fast, and wanted to save a few bucks. Will admit to some curiosity, too; maybe I just wanted to go looking for America.

So I booked on Greyhound to cross the country. Boarded in Flagstaff, Arizona at 8:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, to arrive in Washington D.C. at 3:50 a.m. on a Friday. Packed a bunch of books and a Nook reader, and brought along a lot of food (though none of Mrs. Wagner's pies), some bottles of tea and a gallon of water.

Downsides

     For reasons which escape me, but probably reflect the short-sighted perspectives of the company's bean-counters, Greyhound seems committed to emulating the airlines' seating innovations. As in, ya gotta love your knees. And your neighbor's breadth. I rode on two different designs of buses. The older had a lot more leg room than the newer; the difference was between reasonable comfort and acute pain. At 6'1" I'm taller than most, but shorter than many; I cannot imagine how somebody half a foot taller than me can cope (but, of course, that's true on airliners too, although the agony there is admittedly of far shorter duration). The seat backs on the older model also reclined more, and it seemed to have slightly wider seats. (One little mystery: both types had useless little footrests whose only function seemed to be preventing one from sticking cramped feet into the space beneath the seat ahead.)

     The company needs to focus on their customers' needs a lot more attentively. Airports and train stations routinely have informative displays giving arrival and departure times, gates and on-time status. Not so at Greyhound terminals. Nor do they have circulating staff enlightening confused travelers. Result? Crowds of confused passengers milling about, hearing rumors, wondering what's going on, alternating between anger and resignation. Aggravating the problem, many drivers ignore the PA microphone at their elbows, preferring to make important announcements in conversational voices totally unintelligible to passengers rearward of the front few rows.

     For a little extra credit, Greyhound could even arrange to have spare drivers and buses available to quickly respond to breakdowns occurring out on the road. I did not particularly appreciate standing on the side of Interstate 376 just outside of Pittsburgh for an hour and a half while our bus leaked coolant into a ditch along the shoulder as semi-trailers roared by scant inches to our left.

     My bus arrived too late to make connections in both St. Louis and Pittsburgh. Well, that's a bit of a mis-statement; we arrived in St. Louis three minutes before my connection was due to depart ... but there were 120 ticket-holding passengers trying to board a bus seating just 46. Meaning I couldn't board that bus - first-come, first-served, after all - or the next, so I didn't board a bus bound for my next connection until four hours later. In this day of computerized ticketing, it is impossible to comprehend how that happened. I understand the concept of over-booking, but by a factor of three? Not too surprising, therefore, but after that I missed my connection in Pittsburgh, too ... and then came the joy of the roadside breakdown. Needless to say, I arrived in Washington long after I should have.

Upsides

     It's cheap. Far less than airlines, much less than Amtrak. Less than one's own car, too, if one is realistic with assumptions about cost. There's simply no other way to travel long distances for as little. My complaining aside, Greyhound does the job pretty well; at their worst, the buses were reasonably tolerable; the air conditioning always worked; we did arrive where we were heading, and we arrived there safely.

     Most important, Greyhound serves a very real need. The proof was in the occupancy: all of the buses I saw were full, or nearly so.

     It does that in part by serving a lot of little towns - especially in the west and on the Prairie - that aren't served by any other form of long-distance public conveyance. (I found the same thing to be true of Amtrak even in California, where the train serves as a valuable conduit between the small towns of that state's central coast.)

     More than that, the bus offers affordable interstate travel to people who could not afford it otherwise. I've traveled a fair amount by air and train, and the folks on these buses come from a distinctly different public. It's a pretty varied population, but I got the sense that most were employed somewhere but worked near the bottom of the ladder ... or, if not, were riding their hopes to someplace where they might find work. Among my fellow travelers, I met a very personable, generous young truck-driver heading home to Pittsburgh from Phoenix for his first vacation since starting his career. There was a middle-aged couple who obviously fit together like an old pair of gloves, with lots of unspoken tenderness for each other but probably not much money, traveling from Arizona to New York. There were a bunch of early-twenties, bound for distances short and long. No gabardine suits. Or spies, that I could tell. In the west, the ethnic mix was pretty varied, but further east the west's Hispanics seemed to be replaced by African Americans. A substantial proportion of whites the whole way. Always, though, it was quite a mix ethnically. But apparently not economically; these seemed to be people with the same need or urge to travel as their more affluent fellows, but without the means to use the same (more convenient) modalities, so the bus is the only way I suspect they can meet those needs and wishes. To me, that seems pretty important.

Recommendations to Greyhound:

     Treat travelers as customers, not cattle. Emulate Amtrak's practice of providing comfortable amounts of space to compensate for the lengthy time the passenger must spend there. It wouldn't take much - maybe remove one row of seats and boost prices by a compensating 8% if need be - traveling with the running dog would be a lot more comfortable yet still a bargain.

     Provide riders with the same sorts of information airlines and railroads routinely offer. The desk clerks have schedule and boarding information at their finger-tips, so it wouldn't be difficult to devise a system of monitors dispersed around the terminal to display it to the traveling public.

     The company (and Amtrak, for that matter) could take another page out of the airlines' book (excepting Southwest) by giving folks an opportunity to select seats when they purchase tickets. That shouldn't be difficult; obviously the necessary software has been around for a while.

     Greyhound could also teach drivers to use their PA system effectively. Some do, but others don't, and that suggests the problem is one of training. Easy to correct.

Occupations of the bored

     No matter how good or how bad the service and accommodations, bus travel means sitting in one place for a long time. Anticipating that obvious condition, I brought a small library of books, both hardcopy and electronic. I was surprised to see that I was pretty much the only reader ... and after the lights went down at night, the only reader. A lot of passengers had smart phones and small electronic game players. A few had laptops. Some were quietly listening to their MP3 players. But nobody seemed to be reading. Maybe that has something to do with class, or its handmaiden, education; I don't know, nor do I much care. The key was that just about everybody brought along something to while away the hours.

Additional lessons:

     1. The drivers don't seem to care what size bag of groceries one brings, so I could have - should have - brought a bigger, stronger bag for provisions. And chosen a better, more interesting supply of food.

     2. Wish I brought a pillow. A must: the seat backs just aren't formed quite right, and the window glass vibrates too much. Need that pillow.

     3. Load more books on the Nook. Easier to carry than a paper library, and the only way to read at night. And trust me: the nights can get long.

The future?

     Yes, I would travel by Greyhound again. It is cheap, and it does provide a different view of America than air and rail travelers see. But don't plan on getting there quickly or all that comfortably.

     Beyond that, I would like to try the new bus lines serving some of the denser corridors, like MegaBus.

People Power in Istanbul

I'm watching with great interest and concern the current developments in Istanbul and elsewhere throughout the Republic of Turkey. 

I have long distrusted the government of Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP). Most of that comes from my general wariness of politicians who exploit conservative, religious populism, and not from any personal knowledge of Turkey. 

But following the increasingly alarming news being reported in the better press outlets available in the U.S., I have become more and more troubled. It has seemed to me that much as rich American ideologues pull the strings manipulating both the seemingly similar strains of right-wing, religious populism in the Republican Party, so it is seeming that Erdogan and the corporate interests and investors backing him are using pious conservatives and traditional to advance a political and economic  far removed from the interests of the masses providing the AKP with its votes.

That said, it is extremely heartening to see the multitudes mobilizing to resist Erdogan and the AKP, and I wish them well. (I also wish we saw their like in the U.S.!)

But don't listen to my views. Turn to the reports flowing from Turkey, from the people challenging the autocracy of the AKP ... flowing, it must be said, through social media; the AKP controlled and intimidated formal media of Turkey have been all but ignoring what is happening under their very noses, while the mainstream press of the west is only beginning to pay attention.

On that note, I recommend recent postings by a dear friend who brings intimate personal knowledge of Turkey combined with considerable wisdom and scholarship, in her own blog, Reflections and Meditations on the Path. 

Limits

Limit. 

Noun. A prescribed maximum or minimum. Websters.

Not a difficult concept.

Except, perhaps, when used as in the photo above.

Well, folks, that's meant as a maximum. Definitely not a minimum.

No matter what a lot of drivers believe.

Okay, the numbers. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that in 2009 there were 10,951 speeding-related traffic fatalities in the U.S. That's roughly comparable to gun-related homicides (CDC reported 11,078 of those in 2010).

We've heard a lot about guns and homicide, but the tragic reality is that speeding is just as deadly. That means trying to get to that next red light a little quicker. Using the gas pedal to express your frustration with the complexities of life. Or your failure to deal sensibly with schedules. Or voicing your contempt for some other driver by leaving them in the dust. Or doing the same thing, to stroke your ego.

Speed kills. It really does. Often. Much too often.

More numbers. Traveling one mile at 45 mph takes 1 minute, 20 seconds. The same distance at 55 takes about 14 seconds less. Fourteen seconds - worth raising the risk of killing someone?

Even over a longer distance, is the difference that important? A hundred miles at 60 mph takes an hour and forty minutes. Seventy saves less than 15 minutes. That's maybe the time spent dawdling over a cup of coffee, knowing the clock is running but pretending it's not. Is the life of that stranger in that Chevy, or maybe your lovely spouse sitting next to you, worth that little time management faux pas?

How much time is your life worth? Your spouse's? Your kids? Somebody else's kids? Believe, me, they're all worth a lot more than the few seconds you're trying to shave.

Driving a school bus, I see it all the time. Drivers rushing to get around me, and up to that red light moments before I do. Racing to get ahead of me before the road narrows to two lanes. Or running up behind me, flashing their lights to speed me up. (Sorry, a single speeding ticket would cost me my job, to say nothing about how speeding might endanger "my" kids.) Even cursing me for going "too slow" (yes, it's happened).

Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last.

That, and the lives of the people you endanger. Including your own.

Oh yeah, and you'll also be saving money, a lot of money -- on the tickets, on your auto insurance, on taking the taxi after your license gets suspended. Maybe on repair costs, medical bills, lawyers' fees and court judgments, too. Speeding can cost you a lot, an awful lot, and I'm not talking just money.

Besides, do the limit and driving becomes so much easier, 'cause all the fools passing you by invariably leave the lane empty in front of you. And you can listen to your music in peace.



P.S. One more set of numbers. In 2010, 197,616 drivers got speeding tickets in Virginia. That's three and a third per cent of all Virginia drivers. Why chance being one of them? Especially when running all the risks won't gain you much?

I Like Ike

There's been a lot written by the punditry on the Republican Party's generation-long lurch rightward and the bankruptcy of their ideology. But few have said it better than the last Republican President to seek consensual governance, Dwight Eisenhower.

Commenting on his party's right wing, Ike said ....

     "The Republican Party must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk. I believe that so emphatically that I think that far from appeasing or reasoning with the dyed-in-the-wool reactionary fringe, we should completely ignore it and when necessary, repudiate it." 

     "I don't know why anyone should be a member of the Republican Party." 

Such a tragedy that the Dwight Eisenhowers of our era don't exist, having been replaced by the likes of Ted Cruz whose fealty is to their radical ideology and personal fortune, and not our common nation.


----------------------
Source: Quoted in Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace, Random House, 2012, pages and 672 and 649, respectively.

Robbed by the bulldozer

I live in an area now experiencing the emergence of Brood II of the mid-Atlantic's famed 17 year cicadas.

Or, to be more accurate, I live in an area that should be experiencing Brood II's emergence.

I hear them in the forest behind the school where I park my bus. I hear them in what's left of the forest near the local elementary school. I suspect I'll hear them if I go hiking this weekend. But I'm not hearing them where I live.

Why not? That's a good question, but I'll be it has a lot to do with the fact that this community (if I dare use that term) didn't exist in 1996, when they last emerged. This area was mostly farm and forest back then, but nearly all the farms are gone, and only vestiges of the forests remain. All else has been churned up by bulldozers, transformed into a landscape of cookie-cutter townhouses interspersed with variations on the McMansion theme.

Did the bulldozers wreak so much havoc that they annihilated Brood II? That's my guess.

Sad. I miss the beady-eyed little critters. Along with their incessant song. And the farms and fields that have disappeared, too.

---------------------------------------
Update: A wayward cicada flew into an open window on my bus and landed near a first grader. She wavered between disgust and fascination, so I leaned overand asked her age. "Six." I mentioned that the next time she saw one, she'd be 23. She looked puzzled, as though the very idea of ever being that old was utterly incomprehensible. To me, that's fundamental to the sense of wonder these insects engender; they stretch our sense of time beyond the constraints of the ordinary.

Update: The photo above replaces the "borrowed" original; this one was shot in the forest remnant bordering the lot where I park my bus.

It's a fragile thing

I saw a dead man today. Splayed out on the roof of the car that killed him. 

Two minutes earlier, he had been a living, thinking, feeling being, probably full of plans and hopes and concerns for his future -- maybe with a lot on his mind, or maybe just looking forward to getting home from work and relaxing. In the blink of an eye, all of that died with him. gone, in a blinding flash.

Two minutes earlier, the person who killed him may well have been heading home after a day's labor, too, perhaps thinking about plans for the evening, perhaps trying to cut a few seconds of the commute, perhaps just enjoying a song on the stereo. But now, he or she will spend the rest of their life reliving that moment, wondering why they hadn't been paying a little more attention, hadn't been a mite more patient, a tad more cautious. Living with it, living with the knowledge that willingly or not, culpably or not, they had killed another human being, snuffed out another life of possibilities and dreams. And wishing - wishing passionately, desperately -- that they could have that moment back, to do it right, to make it right, knowing they cannot, and knowing they will always live with the regret, the guilt, the remorse.

I didn't see it happen; I arrived a tiny bit later, to see the dead man lying in a position no living person would hold yet looking strangely peaceful and quiet in his deathly repose; lying alone while good citizens diligently directed traffic and talked into their cell phones (to the police? their friends?) while others stood by and took photographs ("my, what an interesting story to share over the dinner table!") or ran about, trying to help but doing nothing. The dead, lying alone, untended, as though none could summon the courage to approach something that moments ago had been so much like themselves but was now forever different, forever foreign, forever, until they themselves reach their own unimagined and unimaginable terminus.  

In a flash of a moment, it all changes. A moment that should have been unremarkable, and even was, for people going about their daily business only a few hundred yards away. A moment that should have been unremarkable but wasn't, a moment that utterly changed forever those two people, ruining the life of each, one instantly, and one over interminable moments that will haunt his or her existence to the end of time.

Life is such a fragile thing. Beautiful, and precious, but terribly fragile. We hold it in the cup of our hand, all our lives, in everything we do. 

It would be well if we held it with care, always mindful of our awful responsibility.

Privatized community

I live in a privatized community. It's a new community, not just built by a passel of large developers but more important, planned and designed by a passel of large developers.

It's not a town; towns are a type of political entity largely absent from my state. In most places, it's the county that matters, and for a variety of reasons the county here doesn't care, or bother. No, it's not a town; it's a conglomeration of housing developments.

The results are curious. What in most places would be public responsibilities are private ones here.

Roads, for instance. By in large, neither the state nor the county builds them or maintains them. So the developers build them as suits their purposes. A country road built long ago that has become a major arterial reflects this limitation: it's now a four lane divided road as it passes the developer's project, but reverts to its old, narrow, rough and poorly maintained nature as soon as it's past that project ... until it reaches the next developer's project. 

In new residential developments, roads sometimes don't quite connect between developments, as neither developer seems interested in incurring that last expense needed to tie their development to a competitor's. The disconnection is apparent even in roads that connect; if a street passes from one development to another, it's sure to change its name as it crosses the boundary - that makes if difficult for a stranger trying to find an address, but I wonder if it might also create potentially fatal delays as emergency service providers attempt to respond to calls for help.

Sidewalks are the same way. They're largely absent along state-maintained roads, and there is no consistency - and rarely connection - between the sidewalks of different developments. Which means that pedestrians suddenly run out of sidewalk when they reach the boundary of a development, and are forced to navigate as best they can along the roadway or its shoulder or the rough ground beyond. Sometimes the gaps are a matter of a few feet (again, the failure of developers to connect their sidewalks to each other's) but they sometimes stretch a mile or more.

Then there's the lack of planning for non-automotive users. Long stretches of road lack any accommodation for pedestrians, and road design ignores bicyclists - there are no bike lanes, nor are the right lanes of multilane roads widened to accomodate bicyclists. There are a few meandering shared-use pathways for pedestrians and  bicyclists, but they're clearly designed for the casual recreational rider and walker, not for people who want to go from somewhere to somewhere else under their own power.

Local governance is also privatized, and it matters. Homeowners belong to the "proprietary" that substitutes for local government, but renters don't. Some public amenities which would normally be public, such as community pools and local elections, are restricted to land-owners. Other public amenities most citizens take for granted, such as libraries, post offices, governmental offices and social service agencies are simply missing. We do have a public safety office, but it closes at 5:30 p.m. There is no public transportation whatsoever; if you don't have a car, you simply can't get there.

Formal taxation is low, of course, but de facto taxation isn't, in part because the "proprietary" spends an inordinate amount of effort on beautification efforts tax-supported local governments cannot dare to attempt. But of course, those beautification efforts aren't free; rather, their cost is built into the fees paid directly and indirectly to the proprietary ... but without the oversight that is normal with public entities.

Overall, the residential areas are well planned. The neighborhoods are attractive, in a sterile, plasticized way. Small, tasteful shopping areas abound ... but there's a frustrating limitation and a stultifying sameness to them; they're populated just about exclusively by chain stores, but with whole sectors of the consumer-oriented retail industry are missing. It is impossible, for instance, the buy shoes, clothing, pots and pans, bicycles, hobby goods, books, electronics and a whole lot more without jumping into your car and driving at least ten miles to shop in "normal" communities across the county line.

If this is the privatized future that neocons desire, come visit it here. I have seen their future, and I don't like it.

Sultry night

I meant to get ice cream and forgot. Tonight would be a good night for it too.

Washington joins the list; why doesn't everybody?

Yesterday the state senate in Washington passed a bill which would permit same-sex couples to marry. Passage is apparently expected in the Assembly, and the governor has indicated that she will sign the bill. Washington will then join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia is permitting such marriages.

However, opponents in Washington are already threatening a referendum to overturn the law, although a similar effort in 2009 failed to overturn a civil union law. Prominent among these opponents is the Catholic Church.

This reminds me of a discussion a friend and I had last week. An acquaintance of hers had fulminated against gay marriage, and she was dismayed that her defense hadn’t been a coherent as she would have wished.

In light of these two events, I thought I would commit my thoughts to paper, or at least electrons flitting about the web.

Let me start by noting that I have a number of close friends and relatives who collectively personify all four letters of LGBT, and I've thought about related issues quite a lot.

It seems to me that there's a good chance my friend’s acquaintance was blurring the distinctions between marriage as a legal institution and marriage as a religious institution. That's easy to do, since for most couples the two occur simultaneously; most American couples are married in religious ceremonies officiated by clerics empowered by both the church and the state to perform both functions, and from then on, everybody views the couple as being simply "married."

However, the two aspects of marriage are quite different. The preeminent earthly aspect is, of course, the secular one, as marriage is a unique contractual agreement that conveys specific legal rights and privileges (e.g., preferential tax and inheritance rights). Granted, a civil union law can conceptually be tweaked to fully mimic the legal rights of marriage, but what's the purpose? If the goal is to have exactly parallel legal ramifications, why maintain the separate status? That makes no sense. And at a gut level, my friend’s interlocutor probably realizes this ... and since he perceives a difference, he wants the legal definition to reflect something of the antipathy he feels for "gay marriage."

But of course, civil union laws do not fully mimic marriage laws. The federal "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and other federal statutes prevent individuals in civil unions (or even same-sex marriages legally sanctioned by states) from enjoying the same rights and privileges of marriage (again, for example, federal tax treatment, and for federal employees, insurance benefits). As was the case with public schools in the era of legal segregation, "separate" is in fact unequal.

There is another, more abstract issue here, as well. Formal marriage carries an imprimatur that is socially valuable. Let's face it: marriage means that we accept without reservation the right of two individuals to engage in behavior which would in any other context be subject to some opprobrium. Further, spouses enjoy a higher social status than “partners.” Granted, standards are more lax now than they once were, but members of a couple desiring to be wed wants the world to recognize their partner as their spouse, and any form of civil union less than marriage fails on that measure.

What then is the basis of the opposition to legally recognizing same-sex marriages? Some argue that the purpose of marriage is procreation, but of course that is a specious argument since our laws and our culture happily embrace the marriages of heterosexual couples unable or unwilling to have children. (For example, who would criticize my 90 year old father if he were to wed his 81 year old "girlfriend"? Or the marital plans of a much younger friend who is sterile because of her endometriosis?)

The other major argument is that homosexual marriage is "wrong." That might be a convincing argument if there was societal unanimity on the subject (as there is, say, with murder or pedophilia), but clearly there isn't. The views of large numbers of citizens who view such marriage as acceptable are just as valid as those who oppose it, with the difference that the former group would not prevent the latter from exercising the right, while the latter group would prevent gays in the former group from doing so.

The core of the argument that it is wrong has religious roots, yet even there we have a good deal of diversity of opinion. A number of faith communities feel very strongly that same-sex marriage is wrong. I have no problem with that. But if we acknowledge the relevance of that perspective, we must also acknowledge the relevance of the opposing perspective, since a goodly number of faith communities and non-faith based value systems embrace the concept, and many of them celebrate such marriages. Examples include the United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalists (Unitarians), most meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and Reform Judaism.

That being the case, it is inappropriate to cloak within the law the perspective of one or more faith communities to the exclusion or denial of the beliefs of other faith communities and non-faith based value systems. It is inconsistent with our standard of the separation of church and state, for example, for the Catholic Church to use the power of the state to enforce its concept of marriage and prevent the Unitarian Universalists from celebrating theirs.

In other words, the state has no valid reason to limit this class of contractual relationship to heterosexuals, and any attempt to do so should be seen as violating the first amendment's establishment clause, as well as the fourteenth amendment's standard of equality before the law.

This is not to say that homosexual marriage is "right" any more than it is "wrong," since both are value judgments held by members of our society. It is merely to say that in this pluralistic society, such value judgments should be reserved for private entities and not be given the force of law by the state. Nor should one faith seek to use the law to codify its perspective to the negation of the perspectives of other faiths.

However, were same-sex marriage be universally permitted, non-state institutions would still be free to continue to hold such values as they choose, and if they wished to prohibit extending the religious aspects of marriage to homosexual members of their own communities, they could continue to refuse to perform such marriages. If the Catholic Church, for example, refused to marry same-sex couples, that would be fine. Marriage-minded gay or lesbian couples within religious communities prohibiting same-sex marriages would then be able to change religions if religious marriage were still a goal, and they would be free to obtain a state-sanctioned marriage (e.g., before a judge) if they so wished.

Of course, there is yet another argument raised in opposition to same-sex marriage, that somehow such marriages would weaken the traditional institution of marriage between men and women. But that argument is specious; in no way would the ability of two men to marry or two women to marry in any way impinge upon the right or ability of a man and woman to marry. And if one needs proof of this assertion, one merely has to look at those states already permitting same-sex marriage. In all of them, straights still marry straights, and nobody objects.

Not your hospital room

Today's New York Times has a story about hospitals catering to the ultra-rich which is definitely worth reading, for it raises some very disturbing questions beyond the simple arrogance of the 99.9% and their contempt and disdain for the rest of us.

The article describes how many hospitals have established special wings for the very wealthy with butlers, gourmet menus ("mushroom risotto with heirloom tomatoes", or maybe lobster tails) prepared by dedicated chefs, plush furniture (antique mahogany to contemporary sleek, with polished marble in the bath), sophisticated entertainment systems, fancy linens ... and direct access to the best physicians.

Yet these are the hospitals which also serve the poor, and the ordinary schmucks who think they're "covered" by health insurance. These are the same hospitals where regular patients, the article reports, can be stuck in the emergency room for three days, or lie in pain on a gurney for two days without even a bed pan.

It isn't the elitism or even the financial cost of this that is most bothersome, but the opportunity costs. To the extent that hospitals pamper the ultra-rich, they are de-emphasizing their care for the rest of us, whether they admit it or not. Resources which could and should be going to improve the care for the entire patient load are being siphoned off to pamper the very wealthy, and preserve their "splendid isolation" from the "common people."

Two lines in this story really stand out: New York-Presbyterian statement that it "is dedicated to providing a single standard of high quality care to all of our patients” when they obviously aren't (haven't we long known that the patient's state of mind matters a lot?), and the one ultra-rich patient's comments that she feels “perfectly at home here — totally private, totally catered,” with “a primary-care physician who also acts as ringmaster for all [her] other doctors," so she sees "no people in training — only the best of the best.” The converse is perfectly true: everybody else gets a lesser level of care.

Is it any wonder that 99% of us are finally starting to resist the tenth of one percent?

DWT

Waiting for a left turn signal, heading north waiting to turn west. Signal turns; I've got the green arrow. Same for the line of cars headed in the opposite direction.

Car southbound jumps forward as I begin my turn; my guess is that the driver saw the cars to his immediate left starting up so he hit the gas too. Problem, of course, is that he still had the red, and my big yellow box was starting to turn across his bow.

I hit the brakes hard. Also hit the horn hard. The guy stops, fully in the intersection. I look at him, but he's not looking at me or around at the rest of the traffic. No, his attention immediately returns to the electronic device cradled in his lap. Texting.

Personally, I'd rather he'd been drinking a beer. Then at least other drinkers might think, "There but for the grace of God ...." But I doubt that many cell phone users would see the connection, even if the safety stats are alarmingly similar.

America first

Like many others, my daughter's university offers "study abroad" courses and even semesters of study to its students, affording them the opportunity to experience living in a different cultural milieu and interacting with people whose life experiences are quite different from their own. The selection available to the students is quite broad, with over a dozen programs on five different continents.

This is a good thing, for although the America most of us know has an amazingly diverse cultural heritage, Americans are justly ridiculed world-wide for their cultural insularity and ignorance. On one of my parents' post-retirement trips overseas, a guide told a very telling joke that played on this:

Question: What do you call somebody who speaks three languages?
Answer: Trilingual.
Question: What do you call somebody who speaks two languages?
Answer: Bilingual.
Question: What do you call somebody who speaks one language?
Answer: American.

Emblematic of our cultural naivete, we've quite recently had a President who had been born into privilege but was apparently proud of having never left the United States, save for short excursions into Mexico.

Nevertheless, many Americans avidly seek out intercultural knowledge, and programs such as college "study abroad" semesters are popular. A number of companies serve similar interests by non-collegians, and also enjoy real popularity. Rosetta Stone, for instance, offers home-study courses in over forty languages, representing Africa, Europe; the Middle East; East, Southeast and South Asia; and Latin America.

Living on the east coast, I've met many people who have traveled overseas extensively, mostly in Europe, even if they haven't seen much of their own continent. When I ask them why, they usually talk about the importance of seeing other cultures, or lands quite different from their own, or to visit places where the language and the way of life are fundamentally different from our own.

And these efforts to broaden cultural horizons are all laudable.

Yet they're all missing something vital, and very, very American. There is within our own boundaries a cultural diversity unimagined in Europe, of which most of us are utterly ignorant. What we miss is extremely important: it's uniquely indigenous to our own continent, and we must know of it if we are to truly know ourselves. Our land is home to amazing cultures and people who are almost invisible to most of us, but whose history here seems ancient compared to most of the rest of us: these are the peoples who are actually indigenous to our own continent, and still live in a cultural milieu uniquely there own and have languages uniquely their own. Theirs is a cultural and linguist world which differs from the standard "American" more than any one might find in Europe.

I'm thinking most of the Navajo and Hopi peoples of the "Four Corners" region of the American southwest, but only because I am more familiar with their story. Yet theirs are only two of a substantial number of cultures indigenous to our soil which present fantastic differences from the experience of most of us. In both cases, the languages are very much alive - well over half of the Navajo nation, for instance, speaks Diné bizaad, and an even larger proportion of the Hopi people speak Hopi. In both cases, the languages differ from English by a far greater degree than any Indo-European language. Both people have a spiritual heritage which differs in very profound ways from any Judeo-Christian religion (yet also differs significantly from each others). In both nations, many people follow a pattern of life which differs more from what an urbanized American knows than anything a visitor to Europe might experience. And both, as is the case with all other native American cultures, look back to a rich history of which the rest of us are totally ignorant or, worse, suffer from gross misconceptions. Most important, though, is that the rest of us could learn and benefit greatly from knowing.

Yet the vast majority of us not born into a native American nation are utterly ignorant of the lives and culture and history - and wisdom - of these, our neighbors.

In short, an American unfamiliar with the worlds of our country's first peoples would do well to explore the amazing diversity found within our own land. Yes, Europe (and Asia, and Africa) hold a fascination for me, but I would much rather learn more of the people who share this land I call my own.

Cell phones and driving

On December 13 the National Traffic Safety Board came out with a recommendation that all states "Ban the nonemergency use of portable electronic devices" in response to its study of a fatal traffic accident caused by a driver texting while in heavy traffic. Although the recommendation deals with all portable electronic devices, most of the media attention has pertained to its impact on cell phone usage by drivers. The recommendation has gotten a lot of press. It's also generated a lot of opposition, much of which, it seems to me, raises the red herring of other distractions to drivers.

It seems to me that the big difference is the context of the distraction. Whether it's eating or listening to the radio or carrying on a conversation with a passenger, the context of the distracting event remains the car and the traffic conditions in which it is operating. The driver and any passenger are aware of what's happening on the road, and automatically pause while the driver deals with anything requiring a reaction.

It's happened to me countless times. A conversation will halt while I deal with the suddenly changed traffic condition, and then resumes without a break when the situation permits. Or I disregard the piece of fruit or sandwich I had been considering a moment before. Or the radio is ignored until I am able to listen again. The normal sort of distracting event hardly interferes with my attention to the road at all, or with my ability to handle the car.

A phone call is different. The other person on the call has no awareness of what's happening in traffic, and indeed may have no awareness that the talkative driver is even driving. So they won't pause if somebody suddenly turns in front of their conversationalist, or the driver needs to check a blind spot while changing lanes. Worse, the driver too easily falls into the trap of concentrating on the phone call, and truly is distracted from the demands of safely driving. How else to explain such egregious lapses of attention, such as one I saw the other day when a driver at a "T" intersection when straight ahead when the light turned green, and plowed into the signal box controlling the intersection's traffic lights?

As a professional driver, I see many, many questionable and dangerous maneuvers, and almost invariably when I look at the drivers, I see that they are holding a cell phone to their ear, or are talking to somebody who isn't in the car with them.

Cell phones are wonderful conveniences. I rely on mine so much I've given up my land line. But they become dangerous when used by drivers. It's as simple as that. There can be no justification for driving while on the phone.

A little act to save jobs

More and more stores around here have installed self checkout counters. On the surface, that seems sort of interesting, an attractive and maybe even intriguing use of technology.

But don't use them.

Think about it. What's going on here? Go into a store with self checkout counters, and what else do you notice? Fewer cashiers. Which is to say, fewer employees. Which is to say, people who used to have jobs as cashiers, don't.

What you don't see are lower prices. The prices are the same whether you use self checkout or go to a cashier. The prices are the same whether you're in a renovated store with self checkout counters, or in one of the same company's older stores which don't yet have them.

So ask yourself: In whose interest is self checkout? Obviously not the employee's; more machines and fewer humans mean more people struggling to find jobs, more people desperate to make ends meet, more misery in the midst of a terrible recession which has brought unemployment and underemployment to millions. It's not in the customer's interest either. Do you get a price break when you use self checkout? No - any money saved goes to the corporation. Do you get a person on the spot who can quickly resolve any glitch that develops during checkout? No - you have to wait until some employee notices. Is it faster? Doesn't seem so, from what I can see - fairly often, in fact, I see customers confused by the process, or stumbling over one sort of problem or another. So who benefits? The store, only the store. And they don't pass their benefits back to either the consumer or the employee.

On the other hand, if you go to a cash register operated by an employee, you're doing your part to keep that person employed. You're doing your part to tell the management that they need to continue employing cashiers. You're even doing a little to combat this terrible recession. And you aren't paying a penny more than you would if you were in the other line.

Send a signal to the corporations. Do what you can to keep people employed. What goes around comes around ....

September 11, restrospective

We were told that it was a day that changed everything ... and in ways more far-reaching and destructive than we could have imagined when first we heard the phrase, it has been. Consider some of the changes these past ten years have wrought.

Our national fabric and political process have been twisted into a cruel parody of the hopeful statement so often displayed on bumper stickers, that "United We Stand." A cynical President we never elected, aided by the even more cynical ideologues of his party and his supporters, used September 11 to pursue a nakedly partisan agenda that has divided our country so deeply that we're probably more disunited now than we have been at any time since the Civil War. In so doing, they have hobbled our nation's ability to deal with any of the genuine crises that have arisen since, while creating levels of misery not seen in the memories of people now living, and levels of economic inequality not seen in well over a century, if ever.

We've entered a period of permanent war. I grew up during the half-century long Cold War, when we were conditioned to accept the premise that the very existence of humanity was properly subordinated to the political conflict between the superpower, and I thought that was bad enough. I grew up, too, during a period where every President had his war, be it overt, covert or proxy. I thought that too was bad enough. But now we seem to be in a period of endless war, wars with no sign of ever ending, of ever resolving anything; wars whose sole functions seem to be continuation for the simple reason we see no way to quit. The spectre of war now plagues the entire lives of nearly every living American. We are raising a generation that has never known a period without war.

Beyond that, we've entered an era of permanent militarization. I grew up in the shadow of "the greatest generation," where all the boys donned their fathers' left-over uniforms and played at war in empty lots and orchards. And I came of age when those boys donned their own uniforms and went off to the jungles of Viet Nam or the stalemate of Germany. But we never lionized all things military the way we have during this past decade, ranging from the use of military and war-related metaphors in all aspects of our lives and commerce to de rigueur salutes to all things military to the infiltration of military motifs into fashion. This deadly militarization shows perhaps most profoundly as our nation struggles through this "Lesser Depression" with all forms of effort to improve lives becomming highly suspect, but military spending remains largely sacrosanct.

And we've similarly entered an era of blind patriotism with its corollary of mandatory paeans to patriotism. The evil standard of the Bush years that political opposition was equated with disloyalty to the nation has eased somewhat, but it is still with us, as is it's closely related partner, xenophobic bigotry.

Yet despite our militarization and our constant war-making, our influence throughout the world is considerably diminished, and we have abandoned the leadership role America formerly held in global matters, be they issues of peace and war, human rights and justice, technology and economic development, environmental protection, or cultural advancement. Meanwhile, we as a nation have become impoverished in spirit as well as in wealth.

Comparing what we were to what we have become, I can only conclude that this past decade has proven that with the connivance of American leaders whose interests have not been focused on American well-being but rather their own, the terrorists of September 11 are the ones who have triumphed, and not us.


Note: At the time, I lived close to one of the sites attacked that fateful day, and knew and know personally many people whose lives were ended or affected. I've long found it troubling that the people who used September 11 aggrandizement tended to be from elsewhere; it's worth noting that the two jurisdictions most affected have consistently voted against those who rode the tragedy to power.

Thirty-something?

Was driving somewhere with my daughter, now nineteen. We were talking about the changes wrought by aging, with more of a focus on her time of life than mine. At some point, I commented that although I knew I'm sixty-two, I really feel like I'm still thirty. "Really," she dubiously asked?

Yes. Okay, I know I'm not, and there are certainly plenty of signs that I'm not - my eyesight grows steadily worse, my joints aren't as resilient as they used to be, I take longer to heal, there are creases where there used to be smooth skin, my bright red hair has faded to dull brown where it hasn't blanched to pure white ... and the list goes on.

But deep down inside, in my conception of who I am, I'm still in my thirties. I still do pretty much anything I want to, whether it's going for a 100 mile hike deep inside the Grand Canyon (see photos and commentary) or biking to work or swinging an axe. And my mind still feels the same way it always has (though perhaps I delude myself). An attractive woman still catches my eye. Most important, perhaps, I look at the future in terms of opportunities and plans, far more than in terms of restraints or memories or regrets.

I realize that in eight years I'll be seventy, that in the time it takes a newborn to be able to vote, I'll be eighty. And I look at my father - a remarkably vital and active ninety - and wonder how he sees himself? Is he still the handsome, dashing Army Air Corps pilot I never knew. Or is he the bowed, increasingly frail, easily fatigued old man with a deteriorating memory that I reluctantly see?

This aging process isn't what I thought it would be. Mostly, I happily add, it's better. Enough so, that I sometimes wonder if it's even occurring.

Until my daughter says "Really?"