Walking Lower Manhattan

Yes, I know, this is the vacation from two years ago.  But it was a fascinating vacation.  Any time you spend a week in New York City, you take in a lot.  On May 28, 2009, we took the subway down to the Broadway and Nassau station; we thought we'd look at the World Trade Center site, and then walk around the financial district and see where we ended up.  Since we had gotten up late, we were past the commute, and the train was pretty empty, except for us and a solemn young man of twenty-something who spent the entire trip tying his yellow Spongebob Squarepants tie in a full windsor, without bothering to button his collar or tuck in his shirttail (at least before he left the train).

Here is a link to the photos from this day - doesn't the New York subway have the most gorgeous tile work you ever saw?



There wasn't much to see at Ground Zero;  the visitors center was closed the day we were there (closed Thursday and Friday, if you think of going).  I think I got one photo of the construction site, with the usual fence, surmounted by the tops of cranes.  But the first thing you see out of the subway is the graveyard of St. Paul's Chapel.

I didn't realize until I got there that St. Paul's was the rest stop cum sleeping barracks cum medical station for all the rescue workers in the pit, around the clock for weeks.  Volunteers fed the workers, bunked them, hugged them, gave them massages (thousands of masseurs and chiropractors), played music for them.  This is right across the street from where the towers came down.  The dust and debris are gone, of course, but the memory, as they say, lingers on.  And on top of this, St. Paul's Chapel is the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan, completed in 1766, and the tombstones in the graveyard look it.  This place was built before cemeteries out in the rolling countryside; if you went to this church, when you died they gave you a funeral, and then they took you out the back door and buried you in the yard.

Well, after that start the rest of the day was interesting but kind of anticlimactic, especially since it was a gloomy and overcast day.  We walked around the financial district, saw Wall Street (which I was amused to see is now a pedestrian mall) and Broad Street.  We stepped into Trinity Chapel, where a local orchestra was performing in the nave, and glanced at the tombstones in its churchyard.  Trinity Chapel's valiant little spire among all the skyscrapers reminded me of our trip to New Zealand; when we toured Dunedin on the south island, we noticed that the church spires were still the tallest buildings in town.  We walked down to the Fraunces Tavern (didn't go in), which was reputed to have been a hangout of the Sons of Liberty.  We stopped to look at the New York City Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where I got a photo of a blackbird splashing in the fountain.  We took a brief tour of the New York Police Museum, just because we ran across it.  It's a gorgeous old building, three times higher than it is wide and built of stone.  I got one really good photo of the Brooklyn Bridge but after all that walking, I wasn't up to tackling it.

We took a look at the South Street Seaport, but it was just a tourist trap without any interesting restaurants, so we took the train over to Tribeca and found a restaurant called Max.  You know it's genuine when you can hear the waiters arguing in Italian.  The food was excellent.

"Demagoguing" Medicare

Paul Ryan was interviewed today on MSNBC'S Morning Joe, as reported on NBC News First Read, during which he complained that the president and his party have "decided to demagogue" the issue of his plan to phase out Medicare.  During this interview he complained that the Democrats are “scaring seniors that their current benefits are going to be affected.”  Because his plan doesn't affect anyone 55 and older (the Ryan plan details are in the NBC News article), he doesn't see why seniors should have their tights in a knot about this.

It's because we aren't stupid, Mr. Ryan.  We may be 55 or older, but we don't all have Alzheimer's.  We can see this coming. 

Suppose he succeeds in passing this.  Ten years out, in 2022, all new seniors will go on this "medical exchange" plan.  They'll choose a plan and start getting a federal subsidy from something that Mr. Ryan calls Medicare (but the Congressional Budget Office disagrees).  They will pay a whole lot more for their medical care than the grandfathered seniors using legacy Medicare.  At that point the Republicans will have a ready-made constituency for the argument that the higher cost system should apply to everybody, including those of us who were grandfathered in under the old Medicare system.  And don't think they won't use it.

I'm also fascinated by Ryan's insistence that "You can't be denied" by these new plans.  What will stop them from denying people?  The Republicans' other hot item is the proposal to repeal Obamacare, which is the only thing in history that has ever forbidden insurance companies to deny care.  Does he really think that because we're old we can't think?

Finally, Mr.Ryan, "demagogue" is not a verb.  It is a noun.  It is something you can be - and I believe that you are - but it isn't something you can do.

The Debt Limit

As my fellow blogger Linkmeister just pointed out (check out the site, by the way, the new format is cool), all this debt the Republicans are complaining about represents expenditures that Congress appropriated.  Yes, that Congress - the one whose Republican members are whining that we can't raise the debt ceiling without cutting huge amounts of spending at the same time.  They approved all this spending.  Now they say we can't pay the bills because it will exceed the debt limit which (they insist) we can't raise.  What?  Where were all these fiscal hawks when those expenditures were up for a vote?

In addition, I saw a Reuters article recently in which the Tea Party faithful are about to draw and quarter John Boehner because he told them we're going to have to raise the debt limit.  The good thing is that Boehner actually recognizes that.  But I want to know where all these Tea Party types were for the last 10 years or so, when George W. Bush was running two wars off the books and pouring our money into Iraq like water - and then losing track of it.  Remember, Bill Clinton left office with a budget surplus.  Dubya promptly blew it away with tax cuts, and that was before the wars.  From the Tea Party, or the people who are now the Tea Party?  Not a peep.

It seems unkind to conclude that the Tea Party activists don't care about anything - the state of the country, the welfare of their less fortunate fellow citizens, public health, the education of the next generation, the repairs needed in our infrastructure - as long as their taxes aren't raised.  But I don't see an alternative position; that's what they say, that's how they act.  Their tax burden is more important than anything else in the country.  As long as it stays the same, or goes down, they don't care what happens to anything or anyone else.

Really?

Diverting the Mississippi

Some years ago, I read John McPhee's book, The Control of Nature, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999.  Part of that book discussed the efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, over the last 80 years or so, to control the Mississippi River and keep it flowing through New Orleans and Baton Rouge.  McPhee's theory, in this book, was that the Mississippi has changed its course many times over the centuries, and that if it were not for the levees and dams built by the Corps, it would have changed its course in the early to middle twentieth century to flow down the Atchafalaya Basin, essentially stranding the existing ports.  It was a fascinating book and it's a tribute to the power of the descriptions that I wrote all that from memory even though I probably read the book 10 years ago.  He also wrote a separate piece, Atchafalaya, in 1987, which I suspect was the basis of that section of The Control of Nature.

And here we are in 2011, and the Mississippi River has reached the highest flood levels seen in a century, and the Corps has opened the Morganza Spillway (the second time in history; it was opened once in 1973), the gateway to the Atchafalaya Basin:

Morganza Spillway has nine of 125 bays open

This will flood 3,000 square miles of western Louisiana, and displace an estimated 25,000 people.  We're talking about water 25 feet deep here.

We're really talking about allowing the Mississippi to take that changed course which McPhee argued it has been trying to get to for 50 years or more.  A Google search of the terms "McPhee" and "Mississippi" shows that he's been pretty vocal on the subject recently.  I haven't read any of his comments.  I wonder, though, if he and I are wondering the same thing:

Once you let the Mississippi River make the course change that it's been trying to make for decades - how are you going to get it back?  It isn't exactly like turning off a faucet.  Is the Corps drowning the Atchafalaya Basin permanently?  Will New Orleans now be high and dry?  We'll find out.

Big Rock Country

We drove from Cortez, Colorado to the north rim of the Grand Canyon in a single day, winding around through the rocky desert country in southern Utah.  Continuing more or less south from the Million Dollar Highway, we hooked east a bit to go through Monument Valley.

To be perfectly honest, although I'm very good at finding places, especially if I have a map, I have no sense of "direction."  If you want to know where north is or what direction we're going, buy a compass or get a GPS - don't ask me.  (A compass is cheaper.)  The new Subaru we just bought has GPS, and it also has a compass display in the rear-view mirror that tells me what direction we're going; I'm not used to such precision.  The only place I can orient myself without devices is California, where there's usually a mountain range running north-south in view - and of course, there's that ocean.

We were in desert almost this whole day; I think there was a little cultivated area around Cortez.  Then the world ended, despite the fact that we were driving through and past Indian reservations.  Monument Valley is in a Navajo reservation.  Before we got to Monument Valley, we drove through an area called Valley of the Gods, which was (a) totally desolate, and (b) absolutely gorgeous.  Click on the photo to go to the full gallery for southern Utah and the Valley of the Gods.

 


Apart from the road, and an occasional fence, there is no visible animal life.  You have to stop and look to see the critters.  And Monument Valley is even more so. My diary notes that if you expect to need anything in Monument Valley, you'd better take it in with you; and if you're smart, you'll stop at the gas station in Medicine Hat before you go in.  We passed a single Navajo site selling jewelry, pottery and rings (we didn't stop); it wasn't clear whether they'd run to indoor plumbing or not.  The visitors' center was down an unpaved side road which we didn't think the VW Passat would really like.  We carried our lunch in, and eventually just pulled the car into somebody's farm road and parked it with its back to the sun.  The amazing thing was that there was a farm road.  You'll see the photos in the gallery below.



I defy anyone to drive through Monument Valley and not stop to take at least one photo - unless you simply don't own a camera or a cell phone!  But it gets overwhelming after a while.  I've never felt so small in my life; or so vulnerable.

In case you don't believe the colors, honest - they really looked like that.  I decided on this trip that you can't really understand southwestern pottery unless you've driven through those mesas and seen the colors of the rocks and soil.  My sister has given me several Native American pots from Arizona, and the colors make much more sense to me now.

After Denver

I seem to have stopped posting about this trip after describing our stay in Denver, probably discouraged by the deteriorating state of my knee.  Let's catch up - I have a lot more photos to share.  For one thing, we spent a day at the Denver Zoo, so if you like zoo photos, you may enjoy this gallery (click on the photo to go to the gallery):



I think this guy is my favorite shot from that trip, or, let's hear it for telephoto lenses:

 

I like this little fellow too, though:

After leaving Denver we made the long and arduous drive to - Manitou Springs, just outside Colorado Springs, where we stayed for a day or so.  We toured the Cave of the Winds  (links lead to photo galleries) and the Garden of the Gods, but the real reason for coming to Colorado Springs was the Pike's Peak Cog Railway, which we rode.  Given my asthma, the top of Pike's Peak, at 14,115 feet (4,302 m), is probably the highest ground I will ever stand on.  Click on the photo for the full gallery, it was a beautiful clear day and I got some gorgeous shots.

After the Pike's Peak expedition we set out for the Grand Canyon, by way of Monument Valley - I'll get those photos up later.  First, we went through the San Juan Mountains over U.S. 550, sometimes known as the "Million Dollar Highway."  With apologies to Ouray and Silverton, Colorado, this is the road from nowhere to nowhere - except that it goes through a mountain range that once had a whole lot of silver in it.  We weren't actually going to go that way, but in The Tattered Cover bookstore, in Denver, Jim picked up a copy of The Road That Silver Built, by David P. Smith, and decided to drive it.  Gorgeous country, though:

Click on the photo to see the rest of the gallery.  As you can see, the road has no frivolous extras like, say, guard rails.  At the bottom of the slope to the right is the Uncompaghre River.  The speed limit on this elegant route is 25 MPH!  

Even at that speed we were going too fast to get a photo of the mine entrance that opened right on the road, at the beginning of an outside curve - an evenly chiseled hole cut in the rock, going back into the mountain, almost large enough to stand in, about 3 feet wide, with an arched roof!  The arched roof was what startled me - it was so obviously man-made.  I almost thought I saw someone standing in it.

My Fellow Californians

The San Francisco Chronicle published a survey this week on people's opinions on the California budget situation, and Gov. Brown's plan to balance the budget through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.  The survey showed that everyone is really worried about the state of public education (as they fardling well should be!).  I will quote two paragraphs that about sum the results up:

Overall, the poll found that 61 percent of those surveyed supported closing the state's deficit through roughly half spending cuts and half extending and increasing taxes if that meant K-12 education would face no further cuts, as Brown has proposed.

However, Brown's proposal would restore a 0.25 percentage point increase in the personal income tax that expired in January and when asked about raising personal income taxes to fund K-12 education, 62 percent of those surveyed opposed the idea.

Nobody wanted to "raise taxes" by keeping the existing 1 cent sales tax that will expire in July, either.

Really, people?  A "0.25 percentage point increase" is too much?  Do you know how much that is?  Let's leave out the wealthy - how much is .0025% of the median salary in California?  According to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, the median salary in California for a family of four is $76,488. That's for fiscal year 2010-2011.  A quarter of one percent of $76,488 is - $191.07.  That would be for the whole year.  It's $15.92 per month. 

You spend more than that on Netflix, if you have any kind of subscription package.  That's about 3 lattes at Starbuck's.  But 62 percent of you can't spare $16 a month to keep the schools from being cut any further?  

California has one of the worst education systems in the country.  I think 3 or 4 states are worse, it depends on who's counting what.  And we have that because we are too cheap to pay for schools.  We say we care about our kids, but we don't care enough to put any money into the schools they attend.  We've convinced ourselves that "taxes are BAD."  Sixteen bucks a month is gonna break you if you make $76,000 a year?  If you make $50,000 a year, it's $10.41 a month.  Just for curiosity, I ran the percentage for $250,000 a year - it comes to $52.08 a month.

Don't give me this crap that we can't afford a .0025% tax increase to support the schools.  We can't not afford it.  We all have to live with the children these schools turn out - if they can't read, can't do math, can't use a computer, can't think, then they can't get a job, and they'll be mugging you on the street or breaking into your house.  Is that what you want?  I don't. 

Oh, yeah, and those rapacious unionized teachers that everyone has been ranting about?  Do you know how much they really make?  The site TeacherPortal.com shows average salaries by state.  I think these numbers are about 3 years old based on the dates on the comments.  This table shows that the average starting teacher salary in California is:  $35,760.  The average salary overall is:  $59,825.

What was that median salary for California again?   Oh, yeah - $76,488.  So the average teacher in California makes $16,663 a year less than the state median income.  And they spend some of it on supplies for the classroom because we don't pay enough to support the schools. And it's about to get worse, because we're too cheap to raise taxes.

In the Depths of Medicare

Yes, folks, for those who didn't know, I recently rolled the odometer over the Big Six Five, which means I'm dealing with what starts to look like the weirdest bureaucracy I've ever dealt with.  My situation is complicated because I'm not just going on Medicare - I'm covered under my husband's employee health plan, and I stay on that (regardless of my age) until he retires.  However, before he retires (which will be next month), I had to sign up for Medicare parts A and B - while telling Medicare that I really don't need them yet, thank you.

Getting signed up was relatively simple; then I logged into mymedicare.gov, and ran into the IEQ (Initial Enrollment Questionnaire), which I tried to fill out on line.  This is where you explain about that employer coverage and its end date.  I got about half way through and ran into a form that required a number I didn't have (our health coverage doesn't have a "group number"), so I couldn't complete it.  And apparently they Really Want You to complete it - I got two successive emails suggesting that I should finish it.  So I phoned them.

I talked to a nice lady who walked me through the remain s of the form, helped me figure out where the information they wanted was, and said, "You're all done."  Great, I thought, thank you very much.  That was about 10 days ago.

Today I got a letter from Medicare.  The cover letter said, we don't have all your information, please fill out the information marked with a double star below and return within 10 days.  What?  Apart from the "attorney's name and address" (I don't have an attorney), it was all information I remembered giving to the nice lady on the phone.  So I phoned them again.

The nice lady I talked to this time said something that totally set me back on my heels.  You don't need to respond to that, she said.  We have all the information, that's just for your confirmation.  But, but - it says, respond within 10 days, I gibbered.  Ignore that, she said; we have all your information that we need.  They should have told you this when they talked to you before.

I logged into mymedicare.gov and looked at the IEQ online.  It still stopped at the page I couldn't complete.  Do I need to complete the online form, I asked?  It's still not done.  No, she said, it is done, we don't use that system.  (What??)  So I wrote on the cover letter, "ignore this, they have all your information, this is just for the record," with her name and the date; and I filed it.  I shredded the paper questionnaire.

And I've now learned that if you want to deal with Medicare, you have to phone them. It's the only way to get things done; only they understand it....

Mr. Ryan's Budget

I won't be affected by Paul Ryan's budget directly, even if it passes, which God forbid.  I'm in the group that is grandfathered into the single-payer Medicare system as it stands today.  But that doesn't make me any less queasy when I consider it.  Besides, I figure this is just the first salvo in a serious attempt to totally eliminate the "safety net" this country has built over the last hundred years.

Believing that we can't afford Medicare as it now stands, Mr. Ryan wants to eliminate single-payer health care for seniors and give them vouchers to buy health insurance on the open market.  Since he also wants to eliminate Obama's health care reforms, this will result, and about twenty years, in a group of people trying to buy health insurance with an inadequate amount of money, on a market that can and will refuse to insure them because of the "preexisting conditions" accumulated by anybody who reaches the age of 65 alive.

And he won't even have to worry about this, although he's 41 now, right in the age range that will be hit by his changes (if they pass).  He'll be covered under the best health plan in the country, the one Congress gets, even after he retires.  (Note:  I couldn't establish that for sure.  Does anybody know if retired Congress members continue to get the Congressional health coverage?  I think they do.)  So he's screwing his constituents, with no effect on his own health care coverage.  Isn't that nice?  If Congress is to be honorable about this, they have to start using the same health care systems the rest of us use.  They won't; but they should.

The deficit isn't only the cost of Medicare and Medicaid.  Those are just the entitlement programs Mr. Ryan thinks he can get away with gutting on this round.  I don't see him talking about cutting defense spending; and of course, perish the thought that we should raise any taxes on the wealthy, in spite of a recent poll from McClatchy-Marist which shows 64% of registered voters support raising taxes on people with incomes over $250,000.  And 80% of registered voters oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid.  Sixty-eight percent of conservatives oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid.  If you agree with the majorities in the poll, let your congressperson know today.

Credit Ratings

I have just one thing to say about Standard & Poor's recent announcement about the U.S. debt rating:

You guys have a lotta damn gall.

This is the same Standard & Poor's whose AAA ratings of questionable mortgage-backed securities, a couple of years ago, encouraged buyers to invest in debt instruments based on home mortgages issued to anyone with a pulse.  The high ratings stayed in place right up to the time the foreclosures began to hit the news and the markets began to disintegrate.

And they now increase the possibility of a run on U.S. debt, by threatening to downgrade it "in a couple of years" if the politicians don't "do something.

I'm less concerned about the deficit than I am about other things.  We have a deficit right now because - surprise! - we have a recession, with unemployment just beginning to level off.  Many people have no jobs, many people who have jobs are feeling pinched; nobody's spending money.  And if you don't have a job, guess what?  You won't be paying as much in taxes!  A couple of years of full employment and a truly recovering economy, and the deficit would look much less scary; but we aren't going to get that, because the Tea Party is determined to cut spending until we all bleed.

If the S & P announcement will get Congress' attention and make them all sit down and negotiate, it could - maybe - have a long-term positive effect.  I don't claim that the deficit isn't a problem; just that it's being blown into more of a problem than it really is.  The real problem is the economy, which isn't recovering anything like as well as the news reports imply.  But the constant screaming I hear from the Republicans (for which read, from the Tea Party, since there is now no visible difference) makes me fear that we're about to revisit 1937, when the Federal government reduced spending because of deficit fears, and a slow recovery slid back into more depression.

I wouldn't trust anybody in Washington to manage the financial affairs of a sidewalk hotdog stand; how do these people get elected?

Hospitals - Another World

Whenever I have to spend time in a hospital, I remember how strange it is.  It isn't part of  "the real world" (whatever that is). Unless your bed is placed just so and someone leaves the privacy curtains open, you don't know what time it is; the clocks there are for the staff's convenience, not yours, and they don't let you wear a watch.  Also, unless you're very lucky in your bed placement, you don't have a window available; all the light is artificial light, and I couldn't turn mine on or off.  Casinos are the other place where clocks and windows aren't common; and that's just such a strange comparison that it makes me shake my head.

You have very little control in a hospital.  I learned this time that you can actually refuse a drug.  A couple of my normal prescriptions say twice a day when a later verbal agreement with the doctor has reduced it to once, and they were OK with that; but they always tried to give me the second dose.  And of course, if you have an IV, you get whatever it's delivering.  They're acutely careful about drug allergies, but other allergies don't get much attention. I'm allergic to the adhesive on the paper tape they use, and I have half a dozen rectangular, itchy rashes where I had things taped to me while I was unconscious.  And of course, there's the "hospital gown," a total symbol of subservience!

You certainly have no control over roommates.  I was lucky this round, my "worst" roommate was the woman who snored like a sawmill and spent endless hours on the phone.  (She got phone calls for a day and a half after she was discharged.)  But in previous stays I've had roommates who:

• Complained constantly and loudly to everyone in earshot about the awful treatment she was getting, including to the largest collection of visiting relatives I've ever seen, all of whom stood around for hours and encouraged her to rant and threaten to sue.  The staff eventually gave her a private room, I think because her relatives were causing traffic problems.
• Went totally off the rails and tried to remove an IV stent embedded in her neck.  Older woman, concluded that the nursing staff were all dope dealers and were trying to kill us.  She then tried to remove the stent herself - I was terrified her jugular vein would come out with it.  I've never pressed a call button with such energy!  The nurses removed her to another room.
• Threw a world-class, CAT-5 temper tantrum.  This was during my stay over Thanksgiving week in 2005, when the hospital was (shall we say) understaffed; call buttons were answered in maybe 15 minutes if you were lucky.  This older woman of Middle Eastern extraction (I met her son) was screaming, cursing in multiple languages, throwing things at people, throwing food and food trays on the floor, because she wasn't getting the response she thought she deserved.  I asked the charge nurse if one of us could be moved to another room and thank God, they moved her.

My roommates this time were much less, um, startling. In fact, they were all quite nice.  But it is very odd to talk to someone through a privacy curtain all day and then discover that she thought you were someone else.  I was moved into the 3 bed room at 6 AM, and she thought I was the woman who'd been there the day before!  I finally saw this woman's face on the second day, shortly before she went home.

Hospitals aren't silent, even in the middle of the night. Your IV pump (or your neighbor's), clicks steadily away.  I told one nurse it was an "irregular" noise and she said no, it's very regular; and I explained that it wasn't musically regular.  And I had another personal pump, since my surgery carried the risk of deep vein thrombosis - they put velcro wrappers on my calves which massaged them alternately with air pressure, around the clock. I got used to it, but at first, I'd be just dozing off,  no one else in the room, and something would start rubbing my calf.  It woke me up.  And when it finishes a cycle, it expels the air with a sigh that sounds just like a person.  The first night, I kept thinking it was me sighing and it actually affected my breathing (I was pretty stoned).

The hospital bed wasn't too bad, but the pillows were terrible.  The hospital bought pillowcases that were too small for the pillows, so nice puffy looking pillows, rammed with effort into the cases, became rock-like lumps, impossible to sleep comfortably on.  I understand why they run things that way; but frankly the less time I spend in the hospital, the happier I am. 

Aftermath

Several people have kindly asked about the outcome of my knee replacement surgery, so here is the status.

The operation went well, I came home from the hospital last Friday, and I'm currently doing rehab at home under supervision from the Kaiser Home Health Care team.  The surgeon said the xrays look very good.

The amazingly good news is my low pain level.  Anyone who's ever replaced a knee winces at the thought of the rehab exercises, especially in early days.  My surgical team used a new procedure called a femoral nerve block:  they insert a tiny catheter in the leg and feed painkillers just to the femoral nerve.  I came out of anesthesia with a pain level of zero in the operated leg; I couldn't believe it.  They leave the nerve block in place for about 2 days, during which you rest quietly and have basically no pain at all.  When they remove it, your pain level is still MUCH lower than what I used to consider "normal."  I will probably be able to get through rehab with only a couple of narcotic doses per day, to let me exercise; when I'm resting, I don't need narcotics at all.  I can't praise this new method enough.  In both earlier surgeries I took narcotics around the clock for several weeks.

I'm less sure about my long-term prognosis.  There was more damage than we hoped, and one leg is now slightly longer than the other.  But each day my leg feels stronger and more stable, and I'm feeling more and more positive at least about the near term.  Many thanks to all my friends who have asked about my status, and sent good wishes my way!

The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao

We finally got around to watching this movie, which I chose on a whim from Netflix.  I can't recommend it enough; it's amazing on multiple levels.  This 1964 production stars Tony Randall in at least eight distinct roles (each with different makeup and costuming), plus at least four different interpretations of the mysterious "Dr. Lao" (pronounced "Low", if you please).  You've never seen a Western like this.  There are no gunfights (although there's a little rough-housing); as many people ride bicycles as ride horses.  It's about a small town, which the local rich man wants to buy up; it's about a fighting newspaperman and a lovely widowed librarian with a plucky little boy.  And it's about the Circus of Dr. Lao, who rides into town one day on a donkey, with a goldfish bowl containing a catfish balanced on his saddlebow, and buys full-page ads in the newspaper... 

If I tell you any more I'll blow the plot, which would be a shame.  You can look it up on IMDB if you're curious.  But the camera work is marvellous, the acting is good (Tony Randall is better than good) and the special effects -  wow.  George Pal, the director, used to work with Ray Harryhausen.  Harryhausen didn't work on this film, but I've seen some of the films he did, and this one is a match for any of them.  It got an Oscar nomination for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects, but was beaten out by Mary Poppins.  I've seen both films, and I'm not sure I buy the vote.  Rent this one and treat yourself to a magical evening.

Waiting for Surgery

I'm in a strange, limbo-like state.  In two days, on Tuesday March 8, I will get my left knee revised - that's the word they use when they have to take out an artificial knee and put in a new one.  I'm bored; I've had to stop all my usual activities, because for at least 3 months after Tuesday, my primary activity will be rehabbing the new knee.  Having done this twice before, I'm not looking forward to it.  I've also had to stop all my NSAID pain pills for the last 3 weeks, because any trace of them makes bleeding worse; and trust me, acetominaphen (generic for Tylenol for those who don't read the fine print) is not an acceptable substitute.

I also feel betrayed.  I was told these things were supposed to last 15-20 years; this is just over 5 years.  I've recently discovered there are at least three recall actions out on three different artificial knee implants, from two different manufacturers.  And I don't know whether they affect me or not, because when the failing implant was put in, I didn't ask what brand it was.  I've never gotten a recall notice; I don't know if I have a recalled device or not.  I do know that my good knee has an implant from Zimmer, manufacturer of two of the recalled items; because in 2001 I asked, what product will you use?  I didn't ask in 2005.  Mistake.  I've asked my surgeon this time but he hasn't responded.  Yet.

I may be letting my anxiety get the better of me, but it's dawning on me that when I decided to have the original surgeries, I was signing up for an unknown number of repeat procedures, at unknown intervals, which are turning out to be much shorter than I expected (and hoped).  I thought I'd be able to walk without a cane again, and for about 4 years, I could.  I read some very scary stuff about revision surgery - and then I realized it was posted by the lawyers in the class action lawsuits related to the recalls.  Oh.  I found a description on a medical site that was much more balanced and less frightening.  But I'm still not happy.  Every surgery carries major risks.  But there really isn't a choice now - I can barely walk on that leg.  Wish me luck.

Literary Echos

I've taken to frequenting my local library, largely because I'm running out of space for new purchased books.  (Someday I must prune.  After the surgery.)  Since the library has a complete bound set of Agatha Christie, I've been going through the ones I didn't buy - I have a fairly complete set of Hercule Poirots, and a lot of Miss Marples, but I never bought Tommy and Tuppence, or the non series books she wrote.  So on my last pass I picked up The Man in the Brown Suit, and it gave me a revelation.

Let me digress - there is a reason for this.  Another favorite detective series of mine is Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody books, the increasingly outrageous tales of archaeology and intrigue in Egypt, anytime between the late 1880s and World War I.  In the first book, Crocodile on the Sandbank, Amelia introduces herself as the practical and down-to-earth daughter of an unworldly scholar father, who leaves her to deal with "the butcher and the baker," and all the other details of daily life, while he writes arcane papers on Egyptology.  Eventually he dies (it takes his club 3 days to realize it) and leaves Amelia stinking rich, and off she goes on an adventure.  This book was published in 1975.  Amelia's description of her father and herself has always been one of my favorite sequences, and I've read the book at least a dozen times.

So I sat down with The Man in the Brown Suit, and read the chapter about the exotic Russian dancer in Paris; and suddenly the scene shifts to England, and I'm listening to the first-person narrative of a young woman named Anne Beddingfeld, the down-to-earth and practical daughter of an unworldly scholar father, who leaves her to deal with "the butcher and the baker..."  Does this sound familiar to you?  It stopped me in my tracks.  It made me laugh out loud.  I haven't compared the two books word for word, but the passages where Anne and Amelia introduce themselves and describe their fathers are so similar that I was floored.  The rest of The Man in the Brown Suit isn't at all like Crocodile on the Sandbank - for one thing, Anne's father leaves her flat broke, and she goes off to South Africa, not Egypt - but I feel I've met the spiritual ancestor of Amelia Peabody.  And she was created in 1924 by one of England's great crime writers.

The Man in the Brown Suit answered another question for me.  My crime library contains a 1936 hardback edition of Christie's Cards on the Table, which is basically a Hercule Poirot novel, in which a quartet of detectives (Poirot, Superintendent Battle, Ariadne Oliver, and a Colonel Race) are matched with a quartet of people who may or may not be murderers - who knows?  They all sit down to play bridge, and then the host is murdered.  Now, from my reading of Poirot novels, I was well acquainted with him, and Mrs. Oliver, and Superintendent Battle, they're all regulars - but where did this Colonel Race come from?  (Supposed to be something in the Secret Service, you know.)  Well, he came from The Man in the Brown Suit - he's a major character in it.  I'll have to see if I can find any more about him.

Where are the Jobs, Mr. Boehner?

Back in December, when John Boehner was merely waiting to become Speaker of the House, he got a lot of press by asking, "Where are the jobs, Mr. Obama?" at virtually every interview.  Jobs, said the Republicans - the Democrats haven't been Putting This Country Back to Work.

OK, Mr. Boehner, you're Speaker of the House now, your party has been in the majority for a little over a month.  Where are the jobs?

The Republican House has spent most of its time whining about deficits (which their party helped create), and using that as an excuse to shred the safety net for the poor and unemployed.  They've also opened an all-out attack on women's rights, redefining rape, defunding Planned Parenthood - and the WIC program!  For shame! - and so on.  I regularly read the news accounts of what Congress is working on.  I see a lot of federal spending cuts that will eliminate federal jobs.  I haven't seen one single bill considered that would actually help put anybody back to work.

I'm willing to admit I may have missed something.  I don't read Congressional Quarterly.  I appeal to my readers:  what has the current Congress done that will help increase employment??

Where are the jobs, Mr. Boehner??

Redeveloping Our Ideas

When Jerry Brown produced his first budget for the State of Calilfornia, I figured he'd gotten it about right:  enough cuts to annoy the Democrats, enough tax increases to fry the Republicans, and no hallucinations of money from the Feds that wasn't going to come.  He managed to gore almost everyone's ox, and that's good.  But apparently the most painfully gored ox belonged to the Redevelopment Agencies.

He released the budget on January 10.  It didn't take 24 hours for articles to start appearing (they're still coming, see Google) with the general theme, "Redevelopment money?  You can't take away our redevelopment money!  How can we live without redevelopment money??"  Other groups have since chimed in on the general chorus of "how can you take away our money?", some of them with more justice than the redevelopment agencies.  The argument about in-home care support is particularly poignant, because some of these people will have to stop living at home if the state support stops.  Everyone says, "but it's cheaper for the state to keep them at home than put them in a nursing home," which is true; but they miss the point that the state probably won't have to pay for the nursing home - the families will, or Medicare will. 

But I digress - back to Redevelopment Agencies.  In a print exclusive in the Sunday S.F. Chronicle (look for it online on Tuesday 2/1), Willie Brown floats a rumor that Jerry and the California mayors are privately cutting a deal on the Redevelopment Agencies, details to be revealed later.  If this is true, I think it's a mistake.  Everyone is screaming, "How can we live without Redevelopment Agencies?"  This is a rhetorical question.  The real question they ought to be asking is, "How can we live without Redevelopment Agencies?"  How can we do what we need to do, in a new way?

Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".  Redevelopment Agencies are part of doing the same thing over and over again.  We've been doing the same thing over and over again in this state for 40 years, and the result is that the state is bankrupt, the cities and counties are bankrupt, and everybody is screaming that their ox is being gored.

I'm not the first person to say this but it's still true:  We have to start asking ourselves the hard questions.  What services should the state provide, and how should we pay for them?  Ditto counties and cities - what services should they pay for, and where do they get the money?  I think most people would agree that repairing the streets is a service that cities should provide, but there are streets in Oakland in such bad shape that your car's shocks are at risk.  You'd think you were in a third world country.  Oakland has committed to paying employee salaries and benefit packages well above the local market; and they can't afford to pave the major streets; the street I'm talking about is Broadway, hardly a side street.  We used a stretch on Broadway to test the all-wheel-drive on a new SUV we just bought.  I question these priorities.  We have a new mayor in Oakland; I hope she's capable of asking these hard questions; but since she has been part of the problem for the last 5 years (as head of the City Council finance committee), I'm not optimistic.

City, county, and state:  we all have to stop and ask:  what are we doing?  What should we be doing?  Where do we get the money to do that?  What are we doing that we really should find someone else to do on a contract basis?  If we don't ask these questions, we're insane by Einstein's definition.

The Good Old Days

I decided to listen to Fresh Air on KALW this morning, because Terry Gross was interviewing Stephanie Coontz, who just published a reconsideration of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.  The show is worth a listen.

I haven't thought about the Fifties for quite a while, but that was the world I grew up in.  The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963.  I was seventeen, a senior in high school, when it came out.  As Coontz admitted herself, I've never read the book (she now has, of course).  But I know the world that produced it.  Girls going to college now probably can't even imagine a world in which a young woman in college was expected to emerge with her "Mrs." degree - any academic achievements for her were entirely secondary.

I should probably just encourage you to read both of these books (Friedan, and Coontz' Strange Stirrings), but I want to share some of my memories.  I still remember the pain when nobody ever phoned me except to get help with the homework - I graduated number 7 in a class of 750, the kiss of death for a young woman.  My sister, a C student, had flocks of friends and was always on the phone.  (There's a whole story behind her grades, since her IQ actually tests higher than mine; but this is my turn.)  Worse, I was articulate and literate - I read constantly and used "big words."  "The boys" didn't like girls who used "big words" and certainly not girls who argued with them.

I still remember the family gatherings; every time the aunts came over, they wanted to know when I was going to get married.  I used to hear, "oh, isn't it a good thing you're getting a college degree, since you haven't got a husband yet."  Now, one of these aunts married a man who beat her; another one married a man she once stood off with a kitchen knife.  So maybe they weren't the best source of advice.  But I didn't learn the truth about those marriages for decades.  So everybody was happy when Karen married an Air Force sergeant she met in a bar in Cupertino.  Of course, he had a high school diploma to my Masters in Library Science; and there were one or two other incompatibilities.  It lasted about 5 years.  I've often wondered where my life would have gone if I hadn't felt the constant pressure to get married.
 
Post-World War II, the U.S. was a man's world.  Women existed to keep house, raise children, and make men comfortable.  Women Did Not Work.  (They did, of course; I'm talking about the ideal.)  Rosie the Riveter had left the factory and was baking cookies.  Betty Friedan's book went through female society like a bolt of lightning because, for the first time, she asked publicly, "Is this all there is?"  Every college student, every young person, thinks they're going to change the world.  In the Fifties, young women were only allowed to think they would marry a man who was going to change the world.  What this produced, of course, was a generation of women who expected the man to do everything except cook and clean; and when their men died, or left them for a trophy wife, they didn't even know where the bank account was.

For the young woman unfortunate enough not to catch a man, there were few jobs available; and for all too many of them the ad read, "must be extremely pretty."  I remember, in my senior year in college, suddenly realizing that I was going to have to get a job.  I had very few options.  With my undergrad degree in English, nursing was out.  I looked at teaching, considered the classrooms I'd been in, and couldn't bear the idea.  I didn't know what a secretary was, then (given how secretaries were treated, probably just as well).  Fortunately, my mother worked in a library, and she suggested I go to grad school and get my M.L.S., so I did.  But - those were my options.  I now think I would have made a good journalist; and I know I would have made a good scientist, but "girl reporter" was something in the comics, and girls didn't major in science and math.  I later spent 19 years as a computer engineer, writing software and maintaining systems; this wasn't even a possibility when I graduated in 1968.  The field was there; but I didn't know it.  You can only take the roads you know exist.

Today's world, God knows, isn't perfect.  But at least it mostly accepts women as full human beings, with the same hopes and aspirations as men.  In the Fifties, that wasn't so.  And that was the problem.  Watch reruns of "Ozzie and Harriet," and put yourself in Harriet's shoes.  Wouldn't you ask, "Is this all there is?"

Tears of a Clown

I want to know what this is all about. 

In 1972, Ed Muskie's presidential campaign derailed when he became emotional defending his wife against slander.  We can't have a man in the Presidency who will cry when someone says his wife is a foul-mouthed drunk - now, can we?

Also in 1972, Thomas Eagleton had to step down after being nominated for the Vice Presidency, when McGovern found out he was on Thorazine; Eagleton's doctors told McGovern that they had grave concerns about Eagleton's mental health.  (Aren't you glad they can't do that any more?)  We can't have a crazy man in the Presidency - now, can we?

In 2006, Howard Dean allowed himself to scream in frustration, after coming in third in the Iowa caucuses, and eliminated any possibility of higher office.  I've often felt that we'd be in better shape if the President occasionally went into a room and screamed, but nobody listens to me.

With all this evidence that our political leaders must be Strong, Silent types who never emote in public - suddenly we have Speaker of the House John Boehner, who leaks like a sieve at the least provocation.   Why is it now Just Fine that a man who cries in public is third in line for the Presidency?  Have we really evolved that much, or is it only Democrats who aren't allowed to display emotion?  Think about it.

The Price of Freedom

I've been thinking a lot about the Arizona shooting on Saturday. My thoughts are with Rep. Giffords, but I'm betting Arizona will need to elect a new representative for her district. Nobody recovers from a bullet through the brain in a hurry.

I admit, my first response to the news was to wonder if someone would indict Sarah Palin for inciting to violence, if not for conspiracy to commit murder, because of her notorious web site with the gunsights on Democrats she wanted to remove. I've been following the story closely in the media (and I don't mean Fox News), and I've concluded that, probably, Sarah Palin and her web site weren't involved in this at all. The young man who did this wasn't listening to the Tea Party or Glen Beck; he was listening to the voices in his head.  If you put Sarah Palin on a platform in front of him, he might take a shot at her too.

Is the violent rhetoric used by Palin, by the Fox News commentators, and by a lot of people on the right, excusable? No, I don't think it is. The left was using this rhetoric in the Sixties - remember "kill the pigs!" - and it was wrong then, and it still is. You may not actually mean the violent things you say as metaphor, but you never know who is listening to you, or what they may do with your suggestions. In that sense, Keith Olbermann was right yesterday when he said we must all stop using metaphors of violence, even though I don't believe in this case that political metaphors of violence were involved at all.

No, yesterday's attack, and all the violent rhetoric we hear around us, are the price of our freedom.

Our constitution says that we have freedom of speech, which means that if we want to publish a photo of our opponent with a gunsight imposed over it, that's our right as Americans.  The fact that we have the right to do something doesn't make it "right" in the sense of just, correct, or even sensible.

Our constitution says we have the right to keep and bear arms, which means that if a troubled young man decides to buy an automatic pistol, he has every right to do so, and what he does with it is up to him.

Another amendment (I can't recall which) is normally used today to say that we cannot force mentally ill people into treatment.  This young man clearly needed treatment; he was kicked out of the local community college unless he were to come back with a clearance from a mental health professional.  The combination of this attitude with the free access to firearms allowed a deeply disturbed young man to buy a gun and kill six people.

I spent 19 years as a computer system programmer, in charge of maintaining IBM mainframe and Sun Solaris servers.  The first thing you learn as a system programmer is that you have absolute authority to do everything on the box - it's called the "God ID" - and this authority is dangerous.  You have to think about what you're doing.  You have to consider consequences.  Freedom is dangerous.  Americans have many freedoms.  We are, in fact, free to do a number of things that are totally stupid.  We have to start thinking about what we do and say.  We could start by trying to disagree with each other civilly.