Random Misfirings

'Twas Ever Thus

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 19:50:00 +0000

As another sixty-somethingth Christmas approaches, I’m reminded of how fortunate I am to have stuck around this long. For my family and me, on balance, this has been a good year. We’ve managed to stay mostly healthy, we’ve stayed afloat financially, and we celebrated our daughter’s wedding amidst some extraordinary and challenging weather-related events. If we avoid looking beyond our happy little bubble, life is good.

But if we peer into the abyss that is the real world, things are a bit more grim.

Around this time last year, I wrote about the challenges we had faced as a society in 2022, and expressed optimism about the likelihood of a kinder, gentler 2023. “Green shoots,” I said. I was wrong. With a scant seven days left, I don’t think we’re going to get there.

Part of me struggles to understand why not, given historically low unemployment, inflation that is trending in the right direction (albeit from uncomfortably high levels), booming financial markets, ever-increasing advancements in medicine (gene therapy for Alzheimer’s? A weight loss drug that works?) and technology (AI for the masses? Free?) …and on, and on. By many measures, the kids are alright, or will soon be.

But most of me knows full well why not: two major wars are dragging on, humanitarian crises abound all around the world, and the bifurcation of our country along multiple dimensions seems to worsen daily. We are facing a mental health crisis, an immigration crisis, near-daily mass shootings, and the highest suicide rate since 1941. “Devastating storms” are now a nightly segment on the national TV news. Our journey toward a despondency borne of tribalism and mistrust has been underway for several years, and was/is still being amplified by the effects of the pandemic and by the pathetic, deteriorating state of political discourse in this country. The Atlantic recently published an article called “How America Got Mean.” As much as we may want to believe otherwise, these things are not getting better.

So, this is the part where I’m supposed to switch gears and deliver a heartwarming holiday message of hope for a better future. I’m not sure I’m all-in on that, but I’ll offer a few observations:

One of the benefits, or perhaps curses, of getting older is the acquisition of longer-term perspectives on many things. What we once may have called déjà vu feels more like “wait a minute, I’ve seen this movie before.” Fashion, for example, is famously cyclical. Bell bottoms become boot-cut jeans, mom jeans, skinny jeans, ripped jeans, relaxed-fit jeans, flood jeans, bell bottoms. “Vintage” is in, until it’s not. Shag carpets were back, for a minute and a half. History neither repeats nor rhymes, but it does inform.

Today, we face a ‘housing affordability crisis.’ Houses are in short supply, prices are high, and this is all exacerbated by “high interest rates” on home mortgages. As of today, the average interest rate on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage is 6.34% (Source: Business Insider, 12/23/2023). Compared with rates across the past decade, that is indeed relatively high. But… when I bought my first condo, in 1983, the average rate on a 30 year fixed was 13.24%. That was down from the previous year’s average, which was 16.04%. I mention this, not to minimize the difficulty that young people face today when trying to buy a home (my daughter and her husband are among them – it’s not easy); but rather to convey that the sense of despair that many feel due to what, in their experience, are unprecedented levels of borrowing hell, like everything, fits into a larger context.

I can’t in good conscience, nor do I want to trivialize the countless real problems that we collectively face. But I will suggest that if we reflect a bit, we may find parallels in our history that can contextualize our experiences in way that both validates and also, importantly, normalizes some of our own reactions, as aberrant as they may feel within our own lived reality. We are right to recoil in horror, to viscerally experience and internalize the inhumanity of wars that are served up on the big screen daily. We should be concerned about what our future will look like if climate change continues to accelerate. It is understandable that we struggle to reconcile our fear of the unknown with our compassion for others.

But in most cases, we’ve seen some version of the movie before; and in all cases, the movie eventually ended, and life went on. To live in today’s world is to experience pain; but to lack, or to lose perspective would be so much worse.

It’s a sad fact that the holidays tend always to magnify the suffering of those experiencing anxiety, depression, hunger, loneliness, or a myriad of other ills. I would love to be able to say that I’m brimming with unbridled optimism for the future, but that would be a lie. Still, there’s a small child within me who wants to believe in some version of Christmas magic. Maybe it’s simply this: As a parent, grandparent, and plain old “old guy,” I want the younger folks in my orbit to understand that things will eventually work out. I do believe that.

The world is scary, but really, it always has been; the scariness waxes and wanes, changes shape, and sometimes even reverses (see, for example, widespread fear of “overpopulation” and the perceived imperative of “Zero Population Growth” in the 1970s… today, we are told, we face the opposite problem. History inverts?)

So hang in there, my people. I once again wish us all a better year ahead. And if you find yourself in despair, or you’re feeling hopeless, please reach out. I’ll be here.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas (there, I've said it).

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 19:13:00 +0000

Well, here we are again. 2022 is drawing to a close. Not gonna lie, the past few years have been psychologically brutal for many, if not most of us. You know all the reasons why. One could make the argument that things are getting worse now, not better: There’s a trifecta of viruses going around – the resurgence of COVID, the plain old flu, and “RSV” whatever that is. There are shortages of multiple medications. Children’s Tylenol is the new toilet paper. Inflation has soared, even as Jerome Powell and crew, woefully late to the party, continue to jack up interest rates. The resulting, inevitable widening of the so-called “wealth gap” continues to stoke societal bifurcation and thinly, if at all veiled class warfare. And let’s be honest, how many of us could even have placed Ukraine on a map before February of this year? Yet the atrocities there are depicted on the TV news night after night, stirring recollections of this old-timer’s youth, when one might have asked, who among us could have placed Vietnam on a map prior to the Johnson Administration’s escalation of that war?

And yet…

I see green shoots. Call it the spirit of Christmas, if you will, or perhaps it’s just a reflection of very real collective exhaustion; but I am seeing signs, some barely perceptible, of an emerging kinder, gentler time. I think – I really believe – we are witnessing something akin to a fragile truce in the Culture Wars. I first noticed this in the political realm. [Spoiler alert – stop reading now if you’re going to get all twisted about political opinions.] Several weeks ago, one of my far-right Facebook friends, IRL a friend from high school who is a bona fide alt-right conspiracy theorist type, posted that Donald Trump had finally lost his vote. My friend may be Captain Obvious at this point, but it was a notable concession nonetheless. At the other end of the spectrum, when was the last time you read anything about “the Squad?” It feels to me as though Bernie and AOC and the rest of the extremist lefties are slowly fading into relative obscurity. We can, and no doubt will, argue about where the delineation lies, but in broad, general terms, I believe we are witnessing a renewed appreciation of the merits of centrism, perhaps of moderation in all things. There have even been a couple of instances of bi-partisan cooperation in Congress lately, including the recent passage of the “Respect for Marriage Act.” While hardly a Kumbaya moment, it’s been years, it seems, since we’ve seen anything other than hard-core party line cement-shoes votes.

Outside of the purely political realm, I have recently been noticing something quite remarkable: People are freely saying “Merry Christmas” again. Now, before you react negatively to that, hear me out. For the past several years, there has been a perceptible, just-below-the-surface rancor around holiday greetings. And let’s be real, the fact that there would be rancor about this particular thing (that being, ostensibly, expressions of good will toward others) is disappointing at best, and clearly reflective of societal dysfunction. So, it went like this: some time back, “Merry Christmas” fell from favor, as it was seen by some as excluding those who do not celebrate Christmas. “Happy Holidays” became the politically correct alternative. So far, so good, whatever floats your boat.

But then, as with so many other things in the past few years (see also: COVID vaccines), holiday greetings became weaponized, politically charged. There were only two sides, two extremes. You had to choose. You were a Merry Christmas person or a Happy Holidays person, setting aside for the moment that there have always been Happy Hanukkah people and Happy Kwanzaa people and Merry Festivus people and non-celebrants and all manner of others; this, like everything else in recent American life, became an angry, bilateral battle of wits. And so was born the ridiculous notion of a “War on Christmas.” During this ugly time, nobody seemed willing to accept a well-intended greeting at face value. The words, when spoken, were spat out as though gauntlets were being thrown down: “Happy Holidays” was delivered with a glare. “Merry Christmas” was returned as though with an unspoken “fuck you.” Absurd, combative memes abounded.

But recently, seemingly from out of nowhere, a level of warmth began to re-emerge. At first I thought it was a fluke, but the pattern repeated: I came face-to-face with someone in daily life – a supermarket cashier, a neighbor in a parking lot – who simply smiled (and to be clear, I am distinguishing a smile from a grimace) and said “Merry Christmas!” And in those moments, I was actually taken aback by what would have been, at any point in the first fifty years of my life, an utterly unremarkable encounter. It was… nice. Nothing more and nothing less.

Not having lived under a rock for the past decade, I of course began questioning all of this. Yes, I’m a privileged white male, culturally Christian but non-religious. What if I’d worn other shoes? What if I were Jewish, or Muslim, or Seinfeldian? Would I have / should I have been offended? And the answer was clearly a resounding “no.” Because – and this is perhaps the most important part – it was clear to me in each case that these “Merry Christmas” wishes were delivered without a trace of irony or challenge. They were simple and genuine expressions of good will. Only the most unobservant or thin-skinned person of a different belief system would have found reason to take offense.

So am I suggesting that “Happy Holidays” is now passe? Not at all. In fact, it may surprise some young folks to learn that “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” holiday cards are hardly a new thing – they were just as common fifty years ago as they are today. They just hadn’t been twisted into swords in some bogus Culture War. When the evil Red Baron called out to Snoopy, “Merry Christmas, mein friend!” he was calling a truce. Nobody demanded a generic rewrite. Life went on. People smiled.

Let’s keep smiling. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Jolly Everything. It’s all [meant to be] good. You are all [presumed to be] good. I wish you the very best as we move forward into what will hopefully be a much better, happier 2023.

A Year Like No Other Draws to a Close

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 17:45:00 +0000

Sit on your hands on a bus of survivors / Blushing at all the Afro-Sheeners / Ain’t that close to love?

It’s not exactly “Silent Night,” but as Christmas approaches, that improbable lyric has been kicking around my brain. We’re all sitting on that bus. Survivors, bruised and butt-hurt by the bottomless sack of ennui that is 2020. COVID has kicked our asses. As though that weren't enough, our discomfort (or rage, depending on our personal value systems) at the current state of race relations, and politics in general, is also front and center once again. 2020, in a word, sucks.

And yet, we try. We do our part. We wear our masks and stand in our much-longer, slower, socially distanced queues. We get our sinuses probed to the point where we’re sure to have alien abduction nightmares. We cry along with the long-suffering front-line workers on TV, who have held the hand of one too many dying COVID patients. Ain’t that close to love?

Bowie’s line from “Young Americans” resonated with me in a fresh way when I heard him perform it the other night in a taped 1974 appearance on the Dick Cavett Show. I’ve been entertaining myself late at night by exploring the libraries of old TV shows that are now on streaming services. You can catch Dick Cavett on Amazon Prime. Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, too. Lots of old content that folks of a certain age find entertaining. Like so many others, I’m experiencing 2020 in a way that blurs time. I’m gravitating closer to becoming a nocturnal being who is increasingly unaware of what day it is.

My immediate family and I have been very lucky – we’ve managed to stay healthy this year, and for that we are very, very grateful. Our personal touchpoints with the pandemic have been pretty typical, and thankfully benign. I had the odd experience of traveling to Maryland for a reunion with old friends during the second week of March – which was precisely when the media bubbled over with panic-inducing coverage of the “Coronavirus” (or China Virus, depending on your sources). The wearing of masks was, at that point, discouraged; reason being that only N-95 PPE masks were of any use at all, and those were in short supply and should be reserved for medical personnel. The evolution of guidance throughout the year has been fascinating.

En route home, I spent one night in New Jersey, where local NYC TV news outlets were blaring warnings about potential imminent closures of state borders. The hotel parking lot was empty, as though the building had been evacuated and closed. Except for me. Literally, there was my car and one other, also from out of state. It was creepy. My one regret is that I didn’t stop to see my beloved 94-year-old Aunt Helen while I was in town. I had planned to, but in light of the news it seemed more prudent to put it off for another time and get the hell home. That ‘other time’ never came, and she passed away in October.

Back home, my wife, Lana (an elementary school special education teacher) was scrambling, together with her colleagues, to figure out how to teach remotely. About a month into that, parents in the city where she works arranged a parade to show their support for all the teachers. We decorated our car with banners and I drove, so that Lana could wave to all the families standing and cheering on their front lawns and sidewalks. They all seemed so appreciative; it was touching.

But as the months wore on, and schools reconvened for the Fall session, support seemed to wane. Lana’s teaching job became a crazy-quilt of bureaucratic directives and reversals, with no constituent group (parents, teachers, students, administration, state government) ever being satisfied.

There were no more parades. While some parents and families continued to express their appreciation, others called to complain because they no longer had baby-sitting coverage, or couldn’t figure out how to work their students’ laptops, or wanted their particular children to receive in-person rather than virtual special education services (the scheduling of which is entirely out of teachers’ control). This was nobody’s fault; for these parents, the initial spirit of “we have a crisis, we’re all in this together, I appreciate all that you do” had given way to “this has gone on too long, I can’t take it anymore, you have to do something.” We are seeing that phenomenon far beyond education, in pretty much every context. People are exhausted. Fuses are short.

With fortunate timing, I had retired from the corporate world a short while back, which made things easier for me than they otherwise would have been. In the early going, back when we were all wearing gloves, afraid to touch our mail or doorknobs or groceries or whatnot, I started getting up very early(!) to stand in line at supermarket “senior hours”(!!) to buy toilet paper(!!!)

There are so many wrong things to unpack there, starting with that “senior” designation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I squeaked past the cutoff, but I’m in denial about the old age thing. I’ve been ripping up AARP solicitations for ten years, and reality notwithstanding, I refuse to accept the label “grandfather.” I’m a Goom Goom, because that’s what my granddaughter calls me. In any case, I abandoned “senior hours” fairly quickly. I don’t do alarm clocks or early mornings anymore, so I’ll take my chances with the regular people. Thankfully, we never actually ran out of toilet paper.

Our daughters have carried on with their lives, making necessary adjustments like everyone else. Our granddaughter amuses and entertains us. Her awareness of others has grown at a time when "normal" involves everyone wearing masks and keeping distant. I wonder what she'll think when we revert to our "old normal."

So this is Christmas / And what have you done / Another year over / A new one just begun

There it is – an actual Christmas lyric. John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over).” A more obvious musical selection to fit our current situation. War is over, if you want it. The war against COVID has taken more American lives than the Vietnam War, by orders of magnitude. But now, as then, there is hope. Vaccines are already rolling out. My daughter, who works in a nursing home, has been designated a front-line worker and will receive the vaccine next week! Teachers, like my wife, will follow soon after in the vaccine pecking order. I’m happy to wait my turn (seeing as how I’m not really a “senior” after all).

My heart goes out to all who have lost loved ones to this horrific pandemic. Truly. There is nothing more to say. My wish for you is that, with time, you will find some peace.

2021 will be better. It has to be.

A very merry Christmas, and a happy new year / Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear.

President Trump

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 01:31:00 +0000

Like virtually everyone I’ve spoken with today, I’m in shock. I simply can’t believe that our nation has elected this miscreant, Donald Trump, to be the leader of the free world. Trump’s victory represents a triumph of ignorance over reason, hatred over tolerance. His campaign has brought out the very worst in us as a people, and I fear we are heading down a treacherously dark path.

The first person I spoke with at work this morning was a colleague who had, like me, arrived at the office early. She was visibly upset and angry. As a thinking person, and a married lesbian, she spoke of deep concerns that she and her wife shared – will a Trump presidency coupled with Republican control of both chambers of Congress spell the end of marriage equality? Will the hard-fought gains of every disenfranchised group since the civil rights era begin a long, backward slide toward oblivion? How can any woman have voted for Trump? We pondered that question together and came up empty; it was incomprehensible to both of us.

What lessons has this election cycle taught our children? That the meanest bully wins? That no matter how reprehensible one’s words and actions may be, they won’t matter in the end? We’ve elected this man to the highest office in the land; the only logical conclusion to be drawn is that it is acceptable to brag about having sexually assaulted women, to describe these assaults in the most vulgar imaginable language, to have all of that recorded and made public, and to still expect the job – whatever “the job” may be – because after all, every other job in the country is of less importance than the presidency. There simply are no consequences for egregiously misogynistic words and [self-described] actions.

What can we expect in the foreign policy arena from this man whose narcissism compels him to brag about the size of his penis during a presidential debate, or to send 3 a.m. tweets about Saturday Night Live skits that displease him? How will he behave when sitting across a negotiating table from Kim Jong-un? Maybe, with great luck, we as a nation may manage to avoid sending our soldiers to fight and die in yet another pointless, unwinnable war on foreign soil. Or, alternatively, maybe my daughters will be among the first women to be drafted when our all-volunteer military has been spread too thin to deal with an onslaught of self-inflicted foreign threats. The possibility is not beyond the realm of imagination.

Today, my social media feeds are awash in Monday-morning-quarterback comments about the election. Amidst the vitriol, there are many noble, conciliatory posts along the lines of “give him a chance.” Okay. Fine. We will give him a chance. We really have no choice, have we?

As I ponder this, I’m reminded of two memorable, long-ago presidential elections:

1980: Ronald Reagan won in a landslide victory over Jimmy Carter. I remember being stunned. Being 21 years old, Reagan was, to me, some ancient B-Grade film actor who had done a stint as governor of California, whose politics were reactionary, far-right, and dangerously hawkish. He seemed, to me, a joke. I was astounded – and very upset – by his victory. I couldn’t believe that this cartoon-character buffoon with a head full of Brylcreem was to be our new president. If I'd had a blog at the time, I probably would have written a post very much like the one you're reading. For the record, I “wasted” my vote on third-party candidate John Anderson, for reasons that made sense to my 21 year-old self, which I can no longer recall.

So yes, I see parallels between Reagan in ’80 – or at least my perception of him – and Trump today; although I think we can all agree that Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan. Still, I suppose the possibility exists that Trump may surprise on the upside. We’ll call this the Happy Path.

On the other hand… the other long-ago election that comes to mind was 1972, Nixon vs. McGovern, at the height of the Vietnam War. Nixon was re-elected in an absolute rout. McGovern carried only one state – Massachusetts. By the time of the election, the seeds had already been sown for the Watergate scandal that would soon unfold. Nixon resigned in disgrace. When I first arrived in Boston to attend college in 1977, there were still many cars on the roads bearing my favorite bumper sticker of all time: “Don’t Blame Me, I’m from Massachusetts.”

The Trump / Clinton race was far from a landslide, so I doubt we’ll see a resurrection of that particular bumper sticker anytime soon. Still, with Trump facing multiple active lawsuits on countless fronts, stemming from his business practices and personal conduct over the course of many years, it’s conceivable that he may one day soon face his own Waterloo (or Watergate,) and that history may more closely associate him with Richard Nixon than with Ronald Reagan.

Time will tell. Until then, we can engage in catharsis – I feel better already - and, hopefully, healing.

Rinse, Repeat

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 01:49:00 +0000

“’Round here, we stay up very, very, very, very late” --- Adam Duritz, Counting Crows: “Round Here”

It’s no secret that I’ve long dreaded and loathed Sunday nights, nor that in so doing, I’ve had lots of company. Well, tonight is the Mother of All Sunday Nights for 2016. The Mother of the Year, so to speak.

The holidays are over – that’s the good news. My personal and familial rituals have been completed. I’ve passed the inspection and received my sticker, so I’m good for another year. Another predictable, fungible year of being Jerry.

This is traditionally New Year’s Resolution season. At lunch tomorrow, we’ll find that the lines at salad bars everywhere have tripled in length. And we will know, as always, that they’ll be back to normal by February. We humans are downright silly when it comes to deluding ourselves. We are overwhelmingly creatures of habit. I know this well, and so, some time ago, I abandoned the annual pretense of practicing self-deception with regard to self-betterment. In the immortal words of the sage philosopher, Popeye, “I Yam What I Yam.”

Here’s what I already know about 2016:

- It will snow heavily at some point, soon. The winter storm(s) will be timed such that I will need to suit up in late-1990’s Gore-Tex ski clothing and snow-blow our 200 foot driveway in the middle of the night, repeatedly, so as to ensure that we’ll all have adequate egress to get to work in the morning. Frankly, I am getting too old for this activity, so I’ll daydream about moving to a warmer climate as I go about my thankless chore, but I’ll do nothing to make that daydream a reality. Well, I’ll continue to receive Trulia e-mail updates about Sarasota condos, but they’ll accomplish nothing except to further fuel my ennui.

- During 2016, I’ll be summoned to New Jersey multiple times by my nonagenarian mother, who is increasingly afflicted by dementia, to perform such tasks as replacing smoke detector batteries in the “That 70’s Show” house in which she still lives; or – my personal favorite - installing / removing a single window air conditioner. Yes, a 500 mile round trip for a five minute task, necessitated by her perception that I, and only I, am capable of completing this intricate mission correctly. There’s water in those things, you know; make sure to drain it… center it on the plastic sheet, it’ll ruin my [40 year old] carpet…

- I’ll try to convince my wife to take a “real vacation” – like a Caribbean cruise or somesuch - during her April break from teaching elementary school, to celebrate our 20^th wedding anniversary – which took place six years ago. She will initially agree, but as the time draws closer and I start saving trip itineraries on Travelocity, she’ll back away and refuse, on the grounds that she hasn’t yet completed her “MCAS-Alts” (Massachusetts special needs teacher / standardized testing stuff, “no child left behind” and all that) and that she’ll need to spend the week doing that work, and also that she believes she’ll come down with the flu during her break – which, eerily, will actually happen. She’ll be sick as a dog. There will be no trip. In 2017, the tally will be seven years. Rinse, repeat.

- There will be at least one, and more likely, several unanticipated, significant expenses that will effectively negate my progress toward saving for retirement. These may take the form of home repairs, car repairs (or more likely, given the composition of the fleet, car replacement,) electronics (laptops / smartphones / TVs / whatever,) major medical bills, supporting-adult-child expenses (D2 will be in Australia for half the year; that’s got to lead to something beyond what we’ve planned for,) or supporting-elderly-parent expenses. Yes, we are the poster children for the Sandwich Generation. One step forward, two steps back. Again.

- I’ll continue to be increasingly disappointed by escalating, extremist posts and rants from friends and family members at both ends of the political spectrum on social media. I’m all-in for free speech, but the distance we have collectively placed between ourselves and the civility that our society once enjoyed troubles me deeply. Blame our political leaders if you want, but [channeling Smokey the Bear] you and only you are responsible for your use of the “enter” key. I’ll toy with the idea of going dark, seceding from the Social Media Circus for a while… but in the end, I’ll continue to check for updates, continue to shake my head, continue to jump in… it is what it is, and I Yam What I Yam.

- In November, 2016, there will be an election. It will be anticlimactic. Hopefully, casualties will be minimal.

- In December, 2016, I’ll tally up my unused vacation time, only to discover that, despite my best efforts to spend as much time as possible on Cape Cod beaches during the summer months, I will once again be left with an embarrassingly large stash of “use-it-or-lose-it” time off at year end. Now, this is a very nice problem to have; and it’s one that I habitually share with a considerable number of my colleagues, based on observed year-end staffing levels. While my down-time preference would have been three weeks in July on the boat that I no longer own, I will nonetheless welcome the two weeks or so at the end of the year. This extended time way from the rat-race provides me with a glimpse into what life may be like, should I actually live long enough to retire (If I were a Vegas odds-maker, I’d place this at around 50-50.) It looks something like this:

My body reverts to its natural circadian rhythms, which I have been mightily battling for 35 years. For contrarian reasons that defy rational explanation, I’ve been among the ‘first people in the office’ throughout my working life. This has translated to rude awakenings to the tyranny of a 5:30 AM alarm clock for as long as I can recall. But I am, by nature, a night person. For a couple of weeks each December, I am afforded the luxury of watching old (or, thanks to streaming video, new-ish) movies until 2:00 am, and sleeping until 10:00 am. That’s the real me. During my waking hours, I feel more alive, less fatigued. This is definitely a change that I need to make. Sadly, it will end – again – tomorrow morning; but I remain optimistic that I’ll live to see a time when I’ll be able to stay up very, very, very, very late, every night.

By virtue of having the time to do so, I get organized. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve updated software all over the place (did I mention that, as a card-carrying member of Sandwich Generation Nation, I am Tech Support for three generations’ worth of electronic devices?) I’ve shredded mountains of paper. I’ve updated financial plans and forecasts (mixed results there.) I’ve gotten the “fleet” of four vehicles up-to-date on maintenance and car-washes. I’ve cycled our gasoline reserves (out with the old, ethanol-laden July “summer” gas; in with the new, preservative-protected winter-formula gas for all manner of small engines, from generator to snowblower to leaf-blower to tractor.) I’ve spent quality time with my dog. This kind of stuff is priceless.

I’ve maximized my online reach with regard to buying stuff. I finally broke down and joined Amazon Prime (I’d been a long-time holdout, but the free shipping finally got to me.) Now I’ve gone a little crazy with Amazon Music playlists, updating my newest toy (er, smartphone) with music. I’ve saved search profiles on Craigslist and several other, more specific sites, in search of the perfect boat / car / real estate investment / deal-of-a-lifetime. Sure, none of that may come to pass, but what the hell? It’s not gambling if you haven’t spent a dime, right? If there’s one skill I’ve honed over the years, it’s how to spot a deal. And so I’ll keep looking.

There’s food now. Time for decent restaurants. And draft beer. And good bourbon. Contrast this with daily black coffee for breakfast, PB&Js for lunch, and Cheerios for dinner, with everyone too busy to produce or await much else, and the alarm set too early to indulge. Self-explanatory.

Somehow, amidst all this quasi-narcissistic busy-ness, I’ve managed to dispatch holiday-related familial obligations, including the obligatory in-law and distant family-of-origin visits (with dog along for both!) If we’ve slighted anyone in the holiday merriment process, it was not by design. For example, we sent virtually no Christmas Cards this year… basically, only the elderly, non-social-media users in our sphere got them; so if you’re reading this, we beg your forgiveness… just think of the trees saved.

And with this, I need to wrap… it’s 2016, and it’s almost bedtime. To those who haven’t yet heard it from me, Happy New Year. Odds are, we’ll be right back here again, a year from now, ready to take on 2017.

Time

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 03:54:00 +0000

“Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say” --- Roger Waters (Pink Floyd, “Time”)

I drove almost a thousand miles over the weekend, to reunite with a handful of friends I had not seen in a very long time – in some cases, 40 years. I’d decided to make the trip despite a great deal of trepidation. Much of the time that had passed since I’d seen most of them had not been particularly kind to me. I thought I’d have nothing to say that could possibly be of interest to these people, high achievers all. I feared that the connections we’d once made had grown stale. I imagined that it might be awkward to come face to face with the woman with whom I’d shared a home and the most intimate details of life, a lifetime ago.

My fears almost won out; but in the end, the prospect of missing out on what would likely be a once-in-a-lifetime experience proved too high a price for the comfort of avoiding the unknown. And so I climbed into my time machine, and I drove.

Recently, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, in character as Marty McFly and Doc Brown from the iconic 1985 film Back to the Future. The occasion was “Back to the Future Day” – 10/21/2015, the date on which the film’s protagonists arrived in their DeLorean car/time machine, 30 years into the future.

On the Kimmel show, there was a humorous skit in which the time travelers compared their circa-1985 expectations of what 2015 would look like against reality. 30 years is a long time, and much had changed, in ways that were not quite in line with what they’d imagined. Adding a decade to that approximates my frame of reference and mindset as I stepped out of my own time machine, into the driveway of my old friend’s home in Maryland.

I arrived with no expectations. Surely I wasn’t going to find the same people I’d hung out with back in the Disco / CB Radio era. As with Marty McFly, nothing could have prepared me for the reality that was about to unfold: Hugs all around; a few wrinkles that I stopped noticing after about five seconds, as they faded from view, becoming invisible as if through some mysterious alchemy, leaving only familiar faces that I’d have sworn I’d seen just last week.

None of us had stayed in our hometown. Some had relocated far and often. Others, like me, had simply put down roots and built lives elsewhere. We had taken a rich variety of paths. Among us were a chemist, an engineer, a professor, a librarian, and an artist. The presence of the professor, and the demographics of the rest of our little cohort, briefly tempted me to draw a Gilligan’s Island analogy; but no matter how I configure the cast, I end up being Gilligan, so that’s a no-go.

There were so many stories. Those that most inspired me were about overcoming incredibly painful situations, and about personal transformations – emerging from former identities so as to become truer to ourselves. These resonated with me, I think, because I am standing somewhere between the two. There were truly impressive tales of success, and tears of regret. Time, once gone, cannot be reclaimed.

Our weekend together was great fun, and I hope we’ll follow through on our promise to each other that we’ll do it again. I was moved, at an emotional level and in a way that I hadn’t experienced in a long while. To a degree, I’m still trying to sort out ‘what just happened.’ I know this: for a few days, I experienced the magic of time travel. It involved great joy as well as great pain.

Too often, it takes a tragedy of some kind to remind us to hold our loved ones just a little closer; we react, but our responses are fleeting, and our memories short. Like the addict who knows full well that his actions will kill him one day, we become addicted to our own lives, our routines, our ways of being. The older we get, the more true this becomes.

Time is our greatest gift, but just as the top of an hourglass slowly, inevitably drains, time is also a thief, robbing us of itself. Our DeLoreans have now plopped us squarely back into the reality of the present day. What we do from here is on us.

If any of my dear friends who attended NTBC1 happen to read this, thank you for everything.

Question Authority

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 04:52:00 +0000

The Grand Jury’s failure to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo in the Eric Garner case is, I believe, fundamentally different from the outcome of the Darren Wilson / Michael Brown case, and arguably different from the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case and any of a number of other white-on-black police killings of civilians in which the officers involved claimed to be reacting out of fear for their own lives. Whether we choose to believe any or all of them is, of course, a personal decision.

Eric Garner had no gun. He didn’t put his hand in his pocket (not that there would have been anything wrong with that, of course, other than that it would have provided a convenient excuse for the aggressive cop, Pantaleo, and his four – count ‘em, four – fellow officers to claim that they “feared for their lives.”) He made no threatening moves whatsoever.

This guy's "crime" was selling untaxed cigarettes. Let’s pause right there and ask ourselves whether the crime rate on Staten Island is so low that selling loose cigarettes on a street corner warrants dispatching five officers to the scene. Weren’t there at least one or two auto body shops laundering money for the mob that might have made better targets for investigation that day? But, putting that aside for the moment, Garner was put in a chokehold, in clear violation of NYPD rules. No one disputes this, and if they did, the entire incident was captured on video to set the record straight. In case you haven’t yet seen the video, here it is.

Eric Garner had asthma. He said the words “I can’t breathe” to the officers eleven times. He couldn’t breathe, and he died. The medical examiner labeled the cause of death “homicide.”

That this happened is wrong on so many levels; I cannot conceive how a Grand Jury fell for Officer Pantaleo’s semantics-and-remorse story (‘it wasn’t a chokehold, it was a takedown’) so hard that they failed to indict. Failed to indict! An indictment is not a finding of guilt, it simply means there is an accusation that warrants a trial. This cop was clearly in the wrong. There should have been a trial.

I am fortunate to have friends who align themselves all across the political spectrum. We know that we’ve chosen to associate with each other because we like each other, regardless of any political disagreements we may have (and, given the breadth of the spectrum, I am always in disagreement with somebody.)

On this issue, perhaps unsurprisingly, some of my friends who hail from the right (and who, not coincidentally, are white) have been playing down or outright denying the existence of a racially-based pattern among fatal police encounters with civilians. They’ve been focusing on behavior patterns of the victims – which is to say, the dead.

They believe cops have a difficult job (no argument there – they most certainly do.) They believe that cops, and authority figures in general, deserve to be shown respect (more on that in a moment) and that the only pattern connecting the dots between Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and all the others is the victims’ own failure to “comply with authority.”

I’m going to offer up a partial quote, actually a passage taken from an oath that public servants once routinely recited, that I suspect my friends who hold these beliefs will find appealing. I’ll fill in the remainder of the quote later. No peeking:

“I shall be loyal and obedient [passage deleted], respect the laws, and fulfill my official duties conscientiously, so help me God.” Loyal and obedient. A plug for the Almighty. Good stuff.

If I had to summarize, in just two words, all that I learned during my four years at college, the summary would be “question authority.” Not reject, not despise, not provoke, but question authority. To question authority is, I believe, to actively engage in critical thinking; a skill essential to our survival as a species.

Authority is power, and with power comes responsibility. We all have a certain level of authority within our personal domains, if nothing more than the authority to make our own choices. We are obligated to ourselves to make good choices. That is the responsibility we all bear by virtue of being human.

People who occupy positions in which they have power over others, in whatever form, for whatever reason, have a concomitantly higher level of responsibility than those who do not. The impacts of their decisions and actions extend beyond themselves, and can therefore have far-reaching consequences.

When I was a child, medical doctors were considered authority figures. They were the all-knowing, Buick-driving Marcus Welbys of the world (apologies to younger readers with whom these ancient pop culture references will fail to resonate.) We normal, which is to say relatively powerless, humans never questioned the judgment or actions of a doctor. We didn’t ask for second opinions. We didn’t sue for malpractice when things went terribly wrong. Such things could never have been the fault of doctors, because, well, they were authority figures.

So, when my father was paralyzed by a botched spinal surgery, my parents never questioned the surgeon. He was a doctor. Years later, when our family’s avuncular family physician – a true Marcus Welby type who still made house calls – came to the house to diagnose my bedridden father’s sudden flu-like symptoms, he declared that it was, in fact the flu, and recommended the usual remedies. Within a day, my father was dead. The aortal aneurism that Dr. Welby had failed to diagnose had bled out. But he was a doctor, so naturally the concept of “fault” never crossed my bereaved mother’s mind. She Respected Authority; she did not question it.

The world has grown tremendously more complicated. As a corporate manager, I am viewed as an authority figure by those I manage. I am constantly vigilant with regard to my own behavior, hyper-aware of that reality. My statements and actions may have exponentially impactful effects involving other people in meaningful ways, positive or negative. I hold myself to stringent standards of behavior, and go out of my way to ensure that my directions, my comments, my motives are not misinterpreted. I am an authority figure, so I’m held to a higher standard of responsibility than would otherwise be the case. This is as it should be.

Doctors are sworn to abide by the Hippocratic Oath (or, I learned by Googling, some modernized version of it.) The legal and moral obligations of corporate managers are laid out in various internal and external policy statements and employment contracts. Police officers take an oath of some sort (“to protect and serve” or something similar) and wear a badge as a visible symbol of their power and authority. There are countless other examples (teachers, firefighters, attorneys, EMTs, clergy members, and on and on) of professions that require symbolic expressions aimed at ensuring that practitioners are worthy of the public trust. And, as all are human, there are inevitably “good” and “bad” professionals of every stripe – those who live up to the commitment they’ve made, and those who do not.

Power and authority can save lives, ruin lives, cripple, or kill. Power and authority, counter to appearances, are not conveyed in full at the moment an oath is taken or a badge is awarded. Power and authority, all of it, flows from those who are not in power: the governed, the citizenry, the patients, the students, the taxed, the voters.

One who abuses his/her power is destined to lose it, sooner or later. This can happen at the individual level, swiftly (as when one is indicted and convicted) or it can happen at the macro level, with time, when critical mass is reached – as when, for example, the countless childhood victims of clergy abuse {perhaps the ultimate abuse of power} finally came forward, shattering years of silence and nearly bringing down the Catholic church. Those victims were not only right, they were morally compelled to speak out and – wait for it – Question Authority.

We are witnessing another groundswell. Whatever the underlying reasons may be – and people can and will continue to disagree as to what they are – there have simply been too many incidents involving unjustified, fatal white-on-black encounters with police. We are reaching critical mass. We have already seen rioting. We will see more. The Eric Garner case will ultimately prove to be a tipping point. It was clear-cut, unambiguous. It was documented with videotape. And still, the guy with the badge walked. I question his authority. So should we all.

“I shall be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and people, respect the laws, and fulfill my official duties conscientiously, so help me God.” --- mandatory Oath of Loyalty for public officials, enacted into German law, August 20th, 1934.

Genesis - a Parable

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 00:34:00 +0000

In the beginning, Mr. Morse created the telegraph. Crude, costly, and rare. And Mr. Morse looked upon his creation, and saw that it was good.

And Mr. Bell said, “Let there be voice, that travels across the wires.” Mr. Bell called it the telephone. Then Mr. Bell said, “Watson, come here, I need you.” And there was voice, and it was good.

And Mr. Cooper held a brick into the air and said, “Begone the wires.” And he called his brick the cell phone. And there was voice, and there were no wires. And it was good.

And Mr. Gore said, “let the wires and the bricks, and the larger bricks called computers, come together in cyberspace. And the thing shall be called the internet. And it shall be everywhere." And Mr. Gore looked upon his creation, and saw that it was good.

And Mr. Ayyadurai said, let the postal mail travel across cyberspace so that all mankind may be instantly contacted, even he who has no voice and no brick. And thus the internet begat e-mail, and it was very good.

And the corporations said, “let us replace our postal mail with e-mail, reducing costs while increasing throughput and efficiency and morale.” And so it was. And it was pretty good.

But the young, those not yet shackled to the corporations, said “send and receive not from the tree of e-mail, for it is evil, and ye shall be uncool.” And the young instead communicated in an obscure language of tongues known as texting. And it was fast, and it was kewl, and it was blasphemy unto all spelling and syntax.

The corporations beheld the young texting, and asked, “who told you that you were illiterate?” And there was silence, for they did not understand the question.

Lo, in the early days before cyberspace, graduate students in the distant and foreign land known as MIT had said “let our messages traverse the wires of yon mainframe instantly, to inform and enlighten each other without delay.” And this later became known as Instant Messaging, or AIM, or the Serpent in the Garden.

And the young looked upon the Serpent, and called it cool. And AIM begat Skype; and texting begat sexting; and Skype begat Webcam Girls, and it was all very, very bad.

Then the corporations, seeking to harness the superior technical knowledge of the young so as to maximize profits, purchased licenses from the Serpent, thence known as Microsoft Lync. And they looked upon Skype, and repurposed it as Web Conferencing. And the corporations saw all that they had co-opted, and saw that it had saved money. And they called it good.

Then all the workers in the land became users of Instant Messages and Web Conferencing.

And lo, there were no more face-to-face meetings, except online. And it came to pass that they could no longer focus on their work, for e-mail, which had replaced the telephone, had itself been replaced by the IM. And the tyranny of the Serpent known as IM demanded instant and constant attention. Productivity was lost. Money was lost. And the Consultants looked upon this, and declared that it Was Not Good.

And the Consultants, Pharisees of the corporate world, said “I give you every tool of empowerment on the face of the whole Earth, the fruit of every keyboard and the wisdom of every gigabyte; go forth and heal thyself.”

And the workers said, “Watson, come here. I need you.”

And it was good.

Where are you from?

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 20:49:00 +0000

Since former senator Scott Brown lost his re-election bid in 2012, I had lost track of his career; so I was quite surprised to read press accounts of his announcement, earlier this week, that he has formed an “exploratory committee” to evaluate another possible senate run – in New Hampshire.

My own opinion of Senator Brown’s record or his politics notwithstanding, and actually quite irrelevant in this context, my initial gut reaction was negative. New Hampshire? He moved there? When did that happen? Assuming he has indeed taken up residency and unpacked his boxes, what qualifies him to seek to represent the good people of the Granite State?

As it turns out, my initial reaction was shared by many. The term “carpetbagger” has been popping up regularly in social media circles that I frequent. Mr. Brown has clearly been trying to defuse such perceptions by claiming that he has “deep roots” in New Hampshire. He has owned a summer home in the wealthy beach community of Rye for many years, and beyond that, his maternal ancestors had lived in New Hampshire for centuries. Who knew?

Intrigued, I came across an analysis of Mr. Brown’s claim, “I’m ninth generation from New Hampshire” in this article at politifact.com. The article goes beyond simple confirmation of the facts of Mr. Brown’s lineage, briefly exploring what it means to be “from” New Hampshire, and by extension, “from” New England. Cultural factors come into play.

This got me thinking… and pretty much forgetting about Scott Brown. As for him, I still find his current political ambitions to be somewhat disingenuous, though certainly no more so than the Clintons’ calculated move to Chappaqua, enabling Hillary to almost instantly become the junior senator from New York; or all manner of Kennedy cousins holding elected offices while sprawled across Rhode Island, New York, and who knows where else they’re not actually “from.”

Far more interesting to me is the question of what criteria apply in determining the legitimacy of a person’s claim to be “from” a given place. We are all from someplace, right? Or are we?

People I know who were raised as “Army brats” tell me that for them, “home” is wherever their loved ones happen to be. They are, I suppose, ‘citizens of the world.’ While I can appreciate and even admire that perspective, it is foreign to me. Having never experienced it, I can’t really imagine what it’s like to feel that way. I’ve always had a powerful sense of place - an emotional attachment to a relatively small handful of specific places that have significance to me. If there is a spectrum of rooted-ness, I am at the opposite end from my home-anywhere friends.

If I strike up a casual conversation with a stranger who asks me where I’m from, in most circumstances I’ll simply answer “Massachusetts.” It’s an unrehearsed, uncritical, and for most purposes, accurate response. I’ve lived in Massachusetts since coming here to attend college, decades ago. It is my home. My children have never lived anywhere else. But I wasn’t born or raised here, and if I allow myself to over-analyze the question, things get complicated.

Facebook, in its infinite, zeitgeist-shaping wisdom, provides its users with profile data fields in which to enter their “current city” and “home town” information. I have never entered values for either, because place names are validated against a database (presumably to prevent people from misspelling the names of their own towns?) This prevents entry of multiple “current cities” or “home towns.” I imagine this must wreak havoc with the integrity of profiles for my globe-trotting friends, but even I am stymied by it, because if I were able to answer truthfully, I’d have to declare allegiance to two of each.

So, what would this mean if I were to decide to run for office? Would my options be limited by the fact that my “New England roots” run back only a few decades? In an odd twist of fate, the boat that brought my first Gould ancestors to these shores landed in Hull, Massachusetts, in 1664. Does that count for nothing? I’m sure Scott Brown could find a way to milk it.

On the flip side, If I were to uproot my family and move back into the New Jersey home where I spent most of my childhood – the house in which my mother still lives – would that make me an outsider, a carpetbagger, or might I get a pass from the populace there by playing up my “deep New Jersey roots” which do in fact reach back hundreds of years, despite the fact that I only spent a dozen or so actually living there?

And what of our summer home, Wellfleet, on Cape Cod? My wife and I have been second-home owners there since 1999 – a longer span of time than I spent living in my “home town” of Hawthorne, NJ. If we decide one day to move there full time, Wellfleet will be my Rye, albeit within state boundaries. But I know full well that in the pecking order of Cape Cod street cred, we will never be considered more than “washashores” – the caste that is above tourists but below natives. It’s that New England cultural thing again.

In the end, Scott Brown and I share a peculiar problem. We are misfits, in a sense. We are not globe-trotting world citizens; we have deep roots and allegiances to a relative few particular places. Yet we aren’t quite all-in anywhere. The problem, I think, lies in allowing others to define the answer to the question “where are you from?”

One can attempt to apply an objective formula – e.g., your “home town” is the municipality in which you spent the longest period of time as a legal resident while under age 18, or some such nonsense. But it would be just that – nonsense. The real answers, I believe, come from a more spiritual place. We aren’t limited to having just one “home town” or being “from” a single place if, in fact, we feel connected to multiple places. It’s tempting to tie these connections to other people, but in reality, people move on, and places remain. Some remain in our hearts, bound to memories that will die only with us.

I will close with a shout-out to all the places that I am “from”: The villages of Warwick and Greenwood Lake, NY; North Haledon and Hawthorne, NJ; the Jersey Shore, especially Wildwood Crest; New York City; Boston, especially the neighborhoods of Back Bay and Hyde Park; Canton, Truro, and of course, Boxford and Wellfleet, MA. Thanks for the memories.

So where are you from? I’d love to see your list of special places in the “comments” below.

Hyper-specificity

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 01:56:00 +0000

Nearly a year ago, the Boston Marathon bombing pierced our collective sense of well-being. Our nation was riveted by the news coverage - the horrific scene at the finish line, the subsequent shootings of MIT and MBTA Transit police officers, the surreal “lockdown” of the entire city as the police engaged in an unprecedented manhunt, culminating in the shooting of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the capture of his brother, Dzhokhar, huddled in a winterized boat in a Watertown backyard.

Almost immediately, the stories of heroism and courage emerged. Jeff Baumann, his legs blown off, providing an eyewitness description of the suspects that, without question, helped law enforcement to hone in on the perpetrators. Scores of others - rescuers who ran toward the bombing site to render aid, victims whose lives were forever altered, but who nonetheless persevered with dignity and incredible bravery – all etched this event onto the soul of this city. “Boston Strong” is still heard in these parts from time to time, with no small measure of regional pride.

Now, as we approach the 2014 marathon, news reports of tightened security along the marathon route are taking center stage. And this is where I lose the thread of logic.

The centerpiece of the new security initiative is a “no backpacks” policy. Also no handbags, no shoulder bags, no bags of any kind. Boston.com (2/26/2014) reports: “Bags, used in the past by runners to carry clothes and other personal items, will be banned on the buses that carry runners from Boston Common to Hopkinton, where the race starts. And no bags will be brought by those buses back to Boston.” No. Bags. At. All.

Ostensibly, because the Tsarnaev brothers used backpacks as containers for their deadly bombs last year, we will inoculate ourselves against another bombing by banning bags.

Right.

Like almost everyone over the age of fifteen, I vividly remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. I need not recount the horror of that event, nor the palpable, fully understandable fear that clouded the years that followed. One thing about those years has always – even then – struck me as bizarrely illogical: Our national reaction to the fact that airplanes had been used as weapons was to focus intensely on tightening security measures at airports. Air travel became a nightmare of silly rules and endless lines. Three ounces of liquid in transparent plastic bags. Random “pull-outs” for more intense pat-downs. TSA profilers who deny being profilers. We all accepted, and continue to accept the indignities of this treatment, because airplanes had been used as weapons, once. Airplanes. Not trains, buses, tunnels, or other transportation-related items. Airplanes, specifically.

In December, 2001, while aboard a flight bound for Miami, Richard Reid attempted to detonate bombs embedded in his shoes. In response to the would be “shoe bomber,” to this day every air traveler must remove his/her shoes as part of the TSA screening process. Shoes. Not wigs, gloves, or other particular articles of clothing. Shoes, specifically.

And now we will focus intensely on bags along the marathon route. Because two backpacks had been used to effect a horrible outcome, once.

I get it, sort of; but if I go into town to watch the marathon (running is, and always has been, out of the question) I’ll be keeping my eye on the trees, the storefronts, the manhole covers… pretty much anything but the bags, because we’ve got them covered.

Damage Control

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:06:00 +0000

Today I received a letter from the Automobile Division of American Honda Company, concerning a warranty extension for my car. I very nearly threw the letter into the trash without reading it, assuming it was one of those ubiquitous solicitations to purchase an extended warranty.

It was not. It was, rather, a classic example of the way Corporate America steps up-but-not-really these days. American Honda no doubt paid some PR wonk with a legal team a small fortune to come up with this hedge. You can read the letter for yourself below.

Let's review: Honda is extending the warranty on my 2008 Civic 'to ensure my confidence in their product.' <cool! feeling confident!> There is 'no action required on my part' <phew!> 'unless I experience a problem' <wait, what?>

Why would I experience a problem? Because my car is apparently prone to “leaking coolant from the engine block.”

So let me get this straight: if my car overheats on the highway, stranding me somewhere because of some acknowledged-but-undisclosed defect affecting the engines in my particular model/year combination, Honda will pay to repair or replace my engine block, even though the car is beyond its warranty period. But Honda is stopping short of a normal recall (bring your car in, so that we can proactively replace the {engine block or whatever,} which we know has some statistically significant likelihood of being defective.)

I am not going to find this reassuring when I’m stranded by the side of the road. Shame on you, Honda!

To be clear, I have long been a fan of Honda products. My wife and I own three of their vehicles. I'm even an $HMC stockholder. But as a consumer and loyal customer of many years, this is disappointing at best - and sadly, also typical of the way American corporations conduct themselves these days; every decision of this type consists of some combination of risk management, damage control, manipulation of public perception, and profit maximization. Rare is the company in which there is an over-arching imperative to Do the Right Thing for its customers.

Not that I would expect corporate misbehavior in Dearborn to be any less likely, my next car may nonetheless be a Ford. The Fusion is particularly appealing.

Here' the letter I received. How would you have reacted, if you had received this regarding your car?

Madiba

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 03:07:00 +0000

The wall-to-wall news coverage of Nelson Mandela's passing has been interesting. I've learned more tonight than I ever knew about the man. He truly was amazing.

Living in my little bubble, I hadn't thought about Apartheid for a long time, and for whatever odd reason, a very specific memory was triggered for me tonight: I was a young boy, in maybe 5th or 6th grade (hard to say exactly) when we learned about Apartheid in Social Studies class. I remember finding the practice so strange; but what I find even more strange now, in retrospect, is the completely matter-of-fact way in which the information was presented to us.

There it was, in our Social Studies textbook, right alongside countless other then-current factoids about faraway places. Italy was shaped like a boot. The capital of Iceland was pronounced ‘Ray-VEEK’ (not even true.) Women of the Muslim faith had to wear veils (of course, we knew no such women personally… they lived in distant lands, which was why we learned such things within the context of geography lessons.) The Dutch had wooden shoes. And in South Africa, there was a set of laws called Apartheid, which required Negroes (yes, that was the word used – it was considered more respectful than the available alternatives at the time) to be segregated from white people. Now turn to page 183 and do the exercise at the bottom of the page. Just like that. Yep, people around the world do all kinds of strange things, don’t they?

Perhaps even more strange, and this may just be a function of selective memory coupled with old age, I don’t recall our teacher ever connecting the dots between Apartheid in South Africa and the then-raging Civil Rights movement in our own country. Malcolm X was murdered in 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. I would have been in fifth grade in 1969. The wounds were fresh, the connection clear; yet I don’t recall any elementary school teacher of mine going near that Third Rail. It just… wasn’t done; not in that particular place, at that time. I suspect that, had some brave teacher reached for the ‘teachable moment,’ they would have invoked the wrath of a community of like-minded, overwhelmingly white parents. Stirring the pot, and all that.

If there’s any conclusion to be drawn here, it must be that we have come a long way since those troubled times. That we have a black president would have been unthinkable back then. And, though we’ve heard his praises sung incessantly today, it is nonetheless true that we have leaders like Nelson Mandela to thank for the progress we’ve made.

Rest in peace, Mr. Mandela.

Funny as a Crutch

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 01:49:00 +0000

I don’t like the new Michael J. Fox Show on NBC. There, I’ve said it. Does this make me a bad person? I would like to think not, yet I feel a vague sense of shame in owning up to it. We’re supposed to like the show, right? Because it stars Michael J. Fox, whom we’re supposed to like because he’s so darned likable, and because the show represents his personal triumph over Parkinson’s disease; and because it is, in fact, a show about a guy with Parkinson’s, whom, by definition, we’re supposed to be rooting for. Or something like that. Right?

So I’ve been trying to figure out why I really just can’t stand watching it.

First, there’s Michael J. Fox. I have nothing against the man, but I’ve really never cared for him as an actor, nor have I liked most of the stuff he’s been in. Family Ties? His character, Alex Keaton, was an annoying little precocious capitalist in a syrupy sitcom. I don’t much like syrupy sitcoms (hmm, that may be reason #2 for not liking the Michael J. Fox Show.) Back to the Future (1, 2, or 3)? Nonsensical science fiction comedies (I’m not big on science fiction or comedies, generally) the popularity of which I’ve never understood – with the lone exception of the DeLorean car, which was extremely cool. The fact that the DeLorean functioned as a time machine, not so much.

But my dislike of the Michael J. Fox Show runs deeper - a fact that has bothered me, leading me to question why; and here we get into some dicey territory. Various sources have stated that it’s not intended to be autobiographical; that it is intended to be autobiographical; and that it’s semi-autobiographical. Well, the plot involves a guy who returns to an on-air TV job as a news reporter following a hiatus, having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. You be the judge. Whatever.

The sitcom family in the show lives in a huge New York City brownstone that, in the real world, would cost several million dollars. Not bad for a television news reporter facing huge medical bills. But OK, all of the fictional families on TV seem to live large, so I’m willing to suspend disbelief. So this character, Mike Henry, surrounded by his too-perfect, loving family in his amazing New York mansion, manages to soldier on despite his disabilities. You’ve got to respect that.

But then the jokes start. The Parkinson’s jokes. He plays the disease for laughs. Drops ketchup or something into his perfect son’s lap, accidentally-on-purpose, and says something to the effect of “oops, it’s the Parkinson’s.” Am I the only one who fails to find that funny?

So maybe I’m not grasping the edginess of this particular brand of self-deprecating humor; or perhaps in coming out as one who dislikes the show, I’ll be seen as bigoted against the disabled in some way. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As for self-deprecating humor, I’ve been an active practitioner for most of my life. It’s a defense mechanism that has enabled me to survive countless stressful, untenable situations. This may strike a chord with those who know me well.

And as for my street cred with the disabled world: while I have never personally experienced having a disability, I have been extremely close to two immediate family members who have.

When I was a child, my father lost his ability to walk following a botched spinal surgery. This was during the 1960s, prehistoric times in terms of disability awareness. He had one of those ancient, huge hospital wheelchairs (think Betty Draper being wheeled into the maternity ward) that he hated, and chose instead to struggle with walking, leaning on canes for balance, most of the time. I vividly remember, as a little kid, Dad calling ahead to restaurants and asking whether they had more than a couple of steps – these were days long before wheelchair ramps and such. He’d explain his reason for asking by saying “I’m a little crippled up.” If the answer was yes, we simply didn’t go to that restaurant. End of story. He accepted such things with dignity and grace. It was simply how the world was, and it was his reality. Although Dad was able to laugh at himself in general ways, I don’t recall him ever joking about his physical limitations. He certainly didn’t find humor there – none of us did. He had an expression that he’d use to describe a joke that had bombed: it was “funny as a crutch.” This was just an old saying, a colloquialism as far as I could gather, not specific to his circumstances, but it certainly seemed to apply.

When my daughter was very young, she acquired several disabilities as a result of a freak accident. But times had changed since the sixties; society had made significant progress in addressing the needs of the disabled, and the disabled had, in turn, become much more integrated into the mainstream. You can bet that my wife and I became strident advocates for our daughter, working closely with our school system to ensure that she had every appropriate accommodation to allow her to succeed. The experience was exhausting, often highly emotional, and to my recollection, almost never humorous.

Which brings me back to the Michael J. Fox Show. Here the writers (and, presumably, Mr. Fox) have chosen to put Parkinson’s disease out there, front and center, as a comedic foil. A small part of me applauds the bravery of that choice: take THAT, Parkinson’s, you won’t defeat me, you’re nothing more than a joke. But a larger part of me objects. I simply don’t find very much of the show to be funny. The sophomorically obvious attempts at self-deprecating humor just aren’t doing it for me. It doesn’t help that every episode ends with a homey little parable, delivered by Mr. Fox as a voice-over, summing up the inevitable life-lesson-learned. I half expect him to close with “Good-night, John-Boy.”

If the writers are going for hipster-ironic edginess, they’ve fallen far short. They might have gotten there with the chronic-neurological-disorder-as-comedic-device if they hadn’t been constrained by the limitations of NBC prime-time broadcasting standards, or by Michael J. Fox himself. Let’s face it, he’s Alex Keaton, he's Marty McFly, he’s Mike Henry, but an edgy, ironic hipster he is not.

If you’d like to see an example of this concept – a disability worked for laughs – that actually works, I encourage you to check out one of my favorite blogs, Smart Ass Cripple. It’s real, and the writer, Mike Ervin, is funny as hell.

The Wastrels

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Sun, 27 Oct 2013 23:55:00 +0000

Our electric utility company has decided, for reasons not quite transparent to me, to provide us with periodic infographics like the one above, illustrating how poorly we are managing our consumption of electricity relative to our neighbors. This pisses me off, and I’m not really sure why.

My first reaction, politically incorrect as it will appear to my “green” friends who nobly seek to guard the earth’s finite resources, was along the lines of “Screw you. I have paid my bills on time for the past twenty years. That makes me one of your best customers. You should be giving me a volume discount.”

Upon further reflection, I began to question the utility’s motives. Like tobacco companies that sponsor “don’t start smoking” campaigns, it strikes me as more than a bit disingenuous that this particular company is beseeching me to purchase less of its product. Are we not operating in a capitalist economy? Don’t more sales translate to more profits?

To discern the motive behind any company’s actions, one must follow the money. I am imagining the internal PR machine within National Grid’s corporate bureaucracy, calculating the ROI of a “go green” campaign. How many top-line revenue dollars can be sacrificed, to be offset by gains in other channels such as fees for “energy audits,” or the free advertising that flows from positive publicity about a socially altruistic, environmentally friendly, tree-hugging energy retailer?

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, but please, National Grid, spare me the sanctimonious messaging; you are in business to make money. Period. If you can save the earth while making more money, it’s gravy; but no private sector, for-profit company operates on altruism. I know this. Don’t insult me.

I actually found this particular infographic to be pretty humorous. Wow, we really are bad people, aren’t we? Just look at that blue line – we are off-the-charts bad! So, as I tend to do when I come across humorous visuals, I posted it to Facebook. Then things got interesting. Three of my friends commented within a couple of hours that they had received virtually the same helpful notice from their electric utilities. One friend, a woman in another state, with a different electricity supplier, opined that electric companies must send the same sort of message to everyone, as a “scare tactic.” I’m not sure why they would want to scare us, but they may well want to aggressively sell us their “energy saving products.” Hmmm.

A couple of friends suggested specific steps we can take to reduce our consumption – install fluorescent bulbs, get an ‘energy audit’; well-meaning suggestions, but I’m pretty certain that these moves wouldn’t make a significant dent in our monthly bills. The truth is, I’m pretty sure I understand what’s driving our consumption: we are pigs.

I was raised in a very frugal household, taught at an early age to turn the lights off when leaving a room. I’ve tried to instill this habit in my now-grown daughters, to no avail. A couple of decades of my ranting notwithstanding, they still seem blissfully unaware that a light switch can be used to turn a light off, as well as on. And that’s just the tip of the energy iceberg.

To be clear: I’m not putting that nasty blue bar on the chart solely on the shoulders of my family. I, too, am a pig. I refuse to be uncomfortable in my own home. That means I use the heat and the central air conditioning whenever necessary to be comfortable. It has ever happened – albeit rarely – that I’ve used both in the course of the same day.

I will not do the Jimmy Carter sweater thing. I’ll economize in other ways – I’m probably wearing the same jeans right now that I had on the last time you saw me, however many years ago that may have been – but I will not compromise on thermal comfort. I know people in this town who live in seriously large, elegantly decorated McMansions, who keep their thermostats at 64 degrees all winter. They must be my green-bar “efficient neighbors.” Good for them; I'm just glad I don't have to live there.

Our house is tight and well-insulated. We had it built, so I know what’s in the walls. Our systems are modern and well maintained. The truth is, we don’t have a “problem” to solve. We’re just pigs – fat, dumb, happy, comfortable, and paid in full.

But kids, really – please turn the damned lights off. Now.

On Demons

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 01:52:00 +0000

I recently talked with three people, each of whom is going through a difficult time due to personal circumstances. I’ve known these people forever – two are close relatives and the third is a childhood friend. I wanted to reach out, to help them in some way, but there was nothing I could do that would materially help their situations. Their challenges are quite different, and they each face their demons alone. I can only wish them the best, and hope that they know I'm here for them.

This got me to thinking about the universal nature of demons. We all face them, and we each deal with our own, in our own way. Some of us are tortured, for whatever reason, more than others. In the end, hopefully, we find a way forward.

The silent veil of night is pierced by an alarm clock. Awakening each morning is, and always has been, his very worst moment, the low point of his day. Rising in total darkness is unpleasant in its own right; the shadows will soon extend to include his entire morning commute. And his evening commute. This marks his annual reversion to a mole-like existence in which the sun exists only on the weekends, and even then, low on the horizon, casting long shadows.

His demon simmers, just below the surface of his outward self, as always. He had been relatively free of its grip for a while, owing to some combination of extreme busy-ness and friendly chemicals. But fall has returned, and this is its time.

He is acutely aware of losses, large and small. Poor decisions, ill-timed investments, loved ones gone too soon, squandered opportunities, friendships long abandoned, long-gone youth, and ultimately, the loss of his capacity to care about any of it. All gone, finis.

He has always had great difficulty with vision. Not eyesight, but the ability to imagine a future beyond today. Now this lack of vision also clouds the past. Decades that should be reflected in a lifetime of pleasant memories exist only in foggy recollections of random events. He struggles to summon meaningful contexts. Regrets alone become clearer with time.

To others, he appears as different people, chameleon-like. Some find him gregarious, others reserved. What they do not understand is that they’re watching a play unfold. Lines are recited, movements controlled, choreographed. He is not insincere; this is simply all he has to give, and going through the motions thoroughly exhausts him.

At day’s end, he wants for little more than to engage in some minor self-destructive behavior, to self-medicate, to retreat to the relative peacefulness of his bed.

Our youngest child has left for college. There is quiet now - the absence of ruckus, of disarray, of drama. This is new. The nest is empty. The house feels big, for the first time in a long time. My wife and I rather like it.

Our children are children no longer. Grown and gone, however temporary their absence, I’m left to ponder what I’ve given them. Materially, they can’t possibly have any complaints. They have all that they need and then some. But we all know that that’s just stuff. I have failed them in ways that count. My serious nature, my stoicism, the demon that has robbed me, has robbed them as well.

I have tried – truly, I have – to lead by example in matters of character. Although I am deeply flawed, as are most of us, I am honest and true to my word, always. It’s a point of pride. Whether that will resonate, or truly matter in their lives remains to be seen. I should have found a way to be more “fun.” I didn’t. Now there is a distance for which I hope, someday, to find a bridge.

My thoughts are with those who continue to wrestle their demons. May they – may we - find the strength to prevail.

The New Rat Race

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 00:05:00 +0000

A colleague, Kristin Woodman, whose values as a corporate manager I respect very much, recently wrote a thought-provoking post on her blog. The topic was work/life balance. In it, she asks why so many of us who are in leadership roles fail to practice what we preach when it comes to taking time away from the office, enjoying the unplugged, relaxing vacations that we have earned. You can read her post here:

http://www.kristinmwoodman.com/2013/08/24/work-life-balance-and-the-great-leadership-hypocrisy/

This got me thinking about why I am too often personally guilty of engaging in the “great leadership hypocrisy” that Kristin describes. I do take time off, but I'm almost never entirely "off the grid."

At face value, “Do as I say, not as I do” presents as a fairly straightforward, classic phenomenon. In other contexts, the central issue and root cause are pretty clear: the parent who is a smoker is physically addicted to nicotine, lacks the resources [motivation, capacity, support system, whatever] to kick the habit, and is acutely aware of the consequences that will prevail if the child fails to heed the warning never to begin smoking. Do as I say, or you’ll end up like me. ‘Nuff said.

The work/life balance behavior modeling scenario is far more subtle and complex. Weaved into this tapestry are the following:

Demographics: The Baby Boomer cohort elevated workaholism to an art form in the 1980s. As they entered the workforce in droves, their sheer numbers upped the ante with regard to finding a job and advancing within a career. Sociologically, this group, in typical rebellious-youth fashion, rejected the laid-back “hippie” value system of many of their predecessors, becoming instead a particularly competitive generation of workers. The three-martini lunch was out. Yuppies and Bimmers were in. Boomers, throughout their lives up to and including the present day, have had to compete more aggressively against their generational peers for finite goods, whether those be job promotions, houses in coveted locations, or anything of general appeal to their particular age group. The result? Continual, relentless “raising of the bar.” It’s no surprise that we see this reflected in rampant credentialism; the Bachelor's Degree long ago became the new High School diploma. These days it seems that the M.B.A. is the new Bachelor's Degree. Run faster, work harder, be scared.

Did I mention demographics? It isn’t that the Boomers are an evil bunch, though it is interesting to follow all that has been written about the numbers of Gen X-ers and Millennials who, in typical rebellious-youth fashion, rejected the uptight, striving lifestyles of their predecessors in favor of living more balanced lives. Although it can be argued that some of the cross-generational shift in priorities was driven by economic necessity (all those Boomers who continued to hog the good jobs well into their golden years had crowded out many who arguably should have been their successors,) I believe that each of the generations in play within today’s workforce has a great deal of wisdom to share with the others, especially on topics such as work/life balance, if only we can bring ourselves to listen.

Technology: So much has been written on this topic that anything I may add will surely be unoriginal. The introduction of computer automation, of the internet, of wireless technology, of countless other technological advances over the past 50+ years has tended to follow a common arc: initial rosy predictions of vastly increased leisure time made possible by the unimaginable efficiencies to be realized through these wonderful new inventions become perverted, with outcomes being diametrically opposite initial expectations. We have become a nation of people tethered to our jobs, “on call” 24/7, not necessarily because we want to be, but because the fact that we can be has created nearly universal expectations that we will be.

Global competition: Another shopworn topic, but one that must be mentioned in connection with the question of why we engage in self-flagellation when it comes to taking time away from our duties. All that technology has enabled outsourcing of all manner of service sector jobs on a grand scale. There’s a widespread perception that {choose a country – China is a current favorite} is about to eat our lunch. American companies, quite understandably, have responded by introducing countless initiatives aimed at becoming “lean and mean,” doing more with less. If the Baby Boomers hadn’t already killed the three-martini lunch, the emerging markets labor force certainly would have. We are no longer just competing against each other, we’re competing against – or learning to exploit the availability of – cheap labor in faraway lands. How do we accomplish this? By proving our value every day – keeping nose to grindstone, being available 24/7, not taking ‘off the grid’ vacations…

And there it is. In the end, we are simply running scared; running further, faster every day so as not to fall behind. Breaking the cycle, especially for those in leadership roles, requires acts of bravery. As perverse as this seems, it takes courage to indulge in a bit of relaxation.

The Days are Getting Shorter

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 01:24:00 +0000

Ah, summer. My absolute favorite time of year. Absent obligations, I would happily spend every waking hour (and most sleeping hours) on a beach. Unfortunately, the notion of assuming away obligations brings me back to Economics 101, in which every lesson began with “assume perfect competition.” That’s one hell of an assumption. It’s impossible – perfect competition doesn’t exist in nature. Nor does a life without obligations.

The rub is that my “obligations” each summer seem to become more demanding in direct proportion to my increasing desire to do as little as possible.

I have pretty much wasted the month of July (my favorite month within my favorite time of year.) Oh, I did a few things that were fun, but for the most part I worked – fulfilling job-related obligations, meeting the needs of tenants in my role as a part-time landlord, maintaining the family fleet, and doing what has felt like endless yard work. I went swimming exactly once. And I own a beach house. That’s just pathetic.

I remember, as a kid, counting down the days in June in anticipation of school vacation. It was the ultimate gift – two and a half months of freedom! Like clockwork, we would head for the lake the day after school ended. There we would find my uncle, who each year would wait for precisely the right moment to deliver his line (around about June 22^nd, for maximum effect): “Well, the days are getting shorter…”

I wanted to kill him.

At work, I am a victim of the Fortunate Dinosaur’s Paradox: I’ve worked for the same firm for so many years that I’ve amassed an embarrassingly large number of earned vacation days; but my responsibilities prevent me from taking them in significant chunks. In theory, I could take the entire months of July and August off. In reality, were I to do so, I’d be spending the month of September on an unemployment line. So instead, I typically take what I can, when I can; and dutifully check in via e-mail while I’m away. I will be doing this next week. Not exactly an exotic, off-the-grid safari, far from civilization, but I WILL be on that beach, dammit.

I wrote about this phenomenon a few years ago, in another forum. In keeping with the cheesy journalistic tradition of posting “rerun” columns while on vacation, I will re-post my entry from August 17, 2009 here. I am following my own advice; so should you! I’ll see you on the other side.

“No Excuses”

8/17/2009

This is for all my workaholic friends... you know who you are - all you good Company Men and Women. Monday morning bit pretty hard today, didn't it? I know, I was there and I spoke with some of you. There you were, huddled in your flourescent-lit office spaces, waiting for all those weekend corporate-network-security-patch pushes to finish up, when it hit you: it's August 17th! It is late August! And you've done nothing! Nothing! I saw the look on your faces - like you'd found a dead moth in your Starbucks latte.

You never saw it coming, did you? You missed the memo. No surprise, given how busy you are. Who has time to think about vacations, anyway? Vacations are for lazy people. The disengaged. The unemployed. Hobos. Besides, there'll always be time to figure something out. Plenty of time left. I'll sleep when I'm dead, right?

And the job... how can you leave the job for a whole [day, long weekend, {gasp} week]? What if there's no signal for your BlackBerry at [the lake, the beach, the mountains, the cruise ship]? It would be irresponsible. It just isn't done anymore. It's... unpatriotic. They need you.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating sloth, or dissing those who have a good work ethic. I work pretty hard myself, most of the time. But ask yourself: can you personally take credit for your 401(K)'s bounce back from the edge of recessionary oblivion, however partial and unrewarding? I'm betting that had more to do with [the cash-for-clunkers program, the consumer confidence index, the triumph of greed over fear, the price of... well... eggs and stuff] than with the sweat of your own personal brow. The thing is, stuff happens, with or without you. We all want to believe we're in control, but you know what? Well, you already know where this is going.

Here's a little exercise: Subtract your age from 74 (if you're male) or 80 (if you're female.) That's how many summers you have left. [source: howstuffworks.com, USA life expectancy, 2001]

So, this is the final boarding call. Summer's heading off over the horizon. A friend in Vermont reported seeing colored foliage at the top of Killington Mountain today (thanks for THAT, Willi!) It's now or never. What are you saving those vacation days for, anyway? Christmas with the In-Laws?

I'll see you on the beach. And if I don't... well, you can't say you didn't get the memo.

The Mona Lisa Smile

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 01:30:00 +0000

"Ginger" ~1999 - 2013

It had all the trappings of a clandestine drug deal: we had planned to meet after dark, in the parking lot of a remote convenience store in a nearby town. We arrived first, and waited. A rusty old Volvo wagon pulled up next to us. A woman emerged from the car, wearing grimy clothes. She had what we had come for: a young, mixed-breed dog of unknown origin that she had rescued from a “kill shelter” on the South Shore. She had described her to us by phone as a “Miniature Golden” and had given her a name: Ginger.

Ginger had not had the benefit of a bath – she smelled awful. The woman handed me a filthy leash, and Ginger proceeded to drag me around the parking lot. She was young, strong, and wild. Untamed, almost, but clearly not aggressive. There was a moment when our eyes met, and I swear we formed a bond. I glanced at my wife and young daughters. They seemed skeptical. I said “we’ll take her.” The woman, whom we later took to calling the Crazy Old Dog Lady, drove off. Ginger was ours.

Ginger, we quickly learned, loved to swim. She was drawn to the water like a magnet to a steel post. Always impetuous, she’d leap off of our boat for a swim without warning. We bought her a doggie PFD (life vest) which actually did save her life once. We were anchored in Wellfleet Harbor off Billingsgate Shoal, a spit of sand that separates the harbor from Cape Cod Bay. Someone tossed a lump of bread crust, the remains of a sandwich into the water. Ginger dove after it. She swam the short distance to the sandbar, paused long enough to look back at us as if to laugh, then ran into the water on the Bay side, whereupon she – and I, who had donned my own vest and swam out, crossing the sandbar, to retrieve her - got caught in a rip tide. A kindly fisherman in a skiff hauled us both out and drove us all around the shoal back to our boat. Our little adventure found its way into the local newspaper, in a story spun to illustrate the value of PFDs for pets.

We’ll never know which dog breeds contributed to Ginger’s heritage, but they somehow came together to produce an attractive dog (in our estimation, anyway.) Her coat was thick and golden in color. Even in old age, it never greyed. My wife has always said that Ginger had eyelashes with built-in mascara, and a Mona Lisa smile. We never knew what she was thinking, or what she’d do next, but she always seemed to be having fun.

Ginger was with us for fourteen years. The past year or so had been difficult for her. Her hind legs had all but given out, her vision and hearing had diminished, and she panted heavily most of the time. She was on multiple meds to alleviate other ailments. Still, there was that “smile.” I imagined, and still do, that her spirit was very much alive. And so it was that we agonized for months over what to do – whether to “put her down” (God, I hate that expression.) Yesterday, the decision was made. With our family gathered around a stainless steel operating table in a veterinarian’s office, we said goodbye.

Now, having the perspective of a day’s hindsight, I’m left still wondering whether we did the right thing. All I really know is that I miss her presence. We were lucky to have had her, and given her rocky start in life, I'd like to believe she was lucky to have had us as well.

There is nothing unusual about this story. This was not the first time we’d euthanized an ailing pet, nor will it likely be the last. Countless others have faced the same dilemma and have lived to tell about it. If there’s anything surprising here, it is this last point: I’ve been literally overwhelmed by the number of sympathetic and supportive comments generated by my simple, five word Facebook post yesterday, announcing Ginger’s demise. Grieving the loss of a pet, it seems, strikes a powerful chord with many people. At some level, we had been thinking we were kind of crazy for being so emotionally attached to an animal; but as it turns out, if we’re crazy, we’re certainly not alone. Oddly, there is comfort in that. So, to all of our fellow crazy pet lovers, including the Crazy Old Dog Lady whom I imagine must be resting in peace somewhere herself by now, thank you.

Plus ça change...

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:15:00 +0000

Change has overtaken us. I’ve chosen these words carefully, to reflect the somewhat involuntary, if not exactly passive nature of the swirl of activity that has engulfed our family lately. Within the course of a one week period, we have supported a loved one through a painfully emotional legal proceeding, visited an aging relative who had been rushed to the hospital amidst initial reports that she was “unresponsive,” and spoken several times with another aging relative who lives a significant distance away and has increasing physical and emotional needs that we find ourselves unable to adequately meet.

We’ve purchased a seriously expensive machine for landscaping the yard, continued our efforts involving minor house renovations, and attended two lengthy events at our local high school, the latter being our daughter’s graduation ceremony (congratulations, Sarah!) My truck has been in the shop – twice (the second time to replace a faulty part that had been installed the first time.)

We are actively discussing how and when to “put down” our beloved but elderly dog, who has become incontinent. She seems hardly ready to throw in the towel quite yet. Yes, all this within the span of seven days. Oh, and we still have our day jobs. I could write several paragraphs on that topic, describing the breakneck pace of organizational changes and resulting fallout pertinent to my job alone. But I won’t.

I do not want all this, but it’s unavoidable. We are the poster children for the Sandwich Generation, juggling the (mostly emotional) demands of aging parents and the (mostly financial) demands of newly-minted adult children. The treadmill just spins faster, both literally (referring to the one in our basement) and figuratively. There are days – lots of them – when all I really want to do is jump off, do nothing, relax. But seldom does that happen. There just isn’t time. The hammock beckons, but my butt is elsewhere, hustling, doing, checking off tasks on the to-do list.

Seth Godin semi-famously declared that “Fifty is the New Thirty.” I don’t buy it. I’d give my left nut to be thirty again. Well, maybe not, but I’d think about it.

In reality, I don’t envy the thirty year-olds of today. They are victims of their position on the demographic continuum. The leading edge of the Boomers (read: those much older than me!) who are of traditional retirement age are delaying retirement, essentially hogging jobs that should be freeing up to accommodate today’s up-and-comers. A gazillion articles have been written, outlining the reasons for this (the real estate bubble, the market crash of ’08, sloppy handling of debt all around; Boomers treating their homes like piggy banks, tapping equity in the false belief that real estate values would only ever go up, and on, and on.)

I would add only that there’s a certain chicken-and-egg aspect to this as well: our own prospects for downsizing are hampered by the very real likelihood that our college-age offspring will turn out to be ‘Boomerangs” – themselves victims of the lousy {but improving!} economy, returning to the nest that is our home in the SUVs that we still own and insure. Dad, my gas tank is empty again. Ka-Ching.

And so, we soldier on. I’m painfully aware that much more change is coming our way, and soon. The end of days is approaching for our parents who are in their 80s and 90s, and for our dog who can barely walk. The world awaits the college grads that we hope, one day soon, to turn loose.

We blinked, and somehow, now we’re here. I wish I had paid more attention. I wish I’d been more patient. I wish I had said the things for which, even now, I can’t seem to find the words. And I’m grateful for the few pillars in my life that have not changed. They are my guideposts, without whom I’d be lost.

The Gift

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Mon, 13 May 2013 01:58:00 +0000

My friend, Jack, “discovered” a local watering hole many years ago. It became our hangout. We were young, single, and relatively flush with disposable income. The place had great Buffalo Wings and cold beer on tap. It was perfect.

Word spread quickly, and the place became very popular with the “Yuppie” crowd (for those unfamiliar, “Yuppie” was a 1980’s term, an acronym for “Young Urban Professional;” we were Yuppies, and Coffee Achievers, too – Google them for a chuckle.) Every Friday afternoon, like clockwork, we’d hit “happy hour” with an ever-changing entourage of friends and co-workers. There were no spouses, no kids, no obligations; or so it seemed. It was, in so many ways, a good time.

Years passed. We grew up, I suppose - acquired families and mortgages and baggage. We had the occasional “reunion” when we were able to pull it off, but over time the gatherings became less frequent, the attendance more sparse. It was as though we’d been a part of the cast of “Cheers” for a while, but like the show itself, our ratings had dropped, and so it was over.

But funny things happen at midlife, as we find ourselves stepping onto the turf of the Back Nine. Extramarital affairs happen. Convertibles happen. Gym memberships happen. Goatees happen. You name it; internalization of the reality of impending mortality causes people to go a little crazy. Sometimes, we try to find something within ourselves that we’d long ago abandoned.

And so it was, very recently, that a few of us found ourselves back in our long-abandoned booth, slugging down beer and Buffalo Wings. Save for the prices, the place hadn’t changed a bit. The food and drink were great, as was the company. But there was a surreal quality to the experience. We’d become different. We no longer looked like most of the other patrons (what are Yuppies called these days, anyway?) Yes, of course we were older; but we had also grown wiser, and sadder – or perhaps just more somber. Oh, we’ve all had good lives to this point, and on balance we’ve no reason to complain; but we’d each borne unique crosses of one sort or another, and it became clear as the conversation progressed that the weight of our burdens and the years we’d spent carrying them had taken their toll. I’ve always insisted that Thomas Wolfe was wrong, that you can go home again; but I’m starting to doubt myself.

I wrote most of this post in the living room of my mother’s house, sitting on a sofa that was built in the 1950’s. She was sleeping in her bedroom, in mid-afternoon. She is 90 years old. I had traveled a fair distance to take her out to dinner for Mother’s Day; but she didn’t feel up to leaving the house. Her mind is still sharp, but her body is slowly failing. She knows this, and in characteristic fashion speaks to it directly: “I just need what nobody can give me – a new body.” I look into her eyes and see my future. It scares the hell out of me. Longevity is a blessing and a curse.

My mother is a stoic and eminently practical woman. She’s a classic member of the Greatest Generation – she’d lived through the Great Depression, and that experience had, to a great degree, formed her world view. She wastes nothing. Her demeanor is blunt and to the point. She speaks her mind, and doesn’t particularly care what others think or feel. Her background and personality, of course, played a large role in shaping my childhood. I learned at an early age not to expect anything to be sugar-coated, and nothing was.

By the time I reached adulthood, I had come to understand that there are certain topics of conversation that are best avoided with Mom. My wife quickly learned this as well, with a bit of trial-and-error in the beginning. The general theme was to avoid creating the impression that were somehow profligate spendthrifts. This was more easily said than done: buying a new car, for example, danced dangerously close to the cliff; and a car is too big to hide. But that could be alright, if we played up the terrific price bargain we'd negotiated. Discarding leftover food, no matter how small the morsel, led directly to a lecture about starving children in the Third World. When I was a kid, it was always Biafra for some reason. The starving children there must have been on the TV news a lot. Saving the food in a tiny bit of aluminum foil in the back of the refrigerator until it grew mold and then tossing it – that has always been OK.

When our children came along, the ‘thrift’ theme was extended to include a “you’re spoiling those kids” corollary; so we stepped up our game, expanding the list of off-limits topics. Our kids walked on eggshells while visiting Grandma’s house, lest they slip up and leave a wet towel somewhere, or forget to turn off the lights when leaving a room. When stuff like that happened – and, of course, it did – they would get the lecture and we would get that look – the one telling us that we were wholly incompetent parents raising unruly scoundrels.

This Mother’s Day visit was unfortunate, in that Mom wasn’t feeling well, but it was also unusual in a positive way, in that we actually had a real conversation, transcending the superficiality of the weather and the news stories of the day. It was just the two of us. Dinner had been a bust, so we’d ordered in Chinese food. She told me about how poorly she’s been feeling lately, in somewhat graphic detail. She asked me how old I was – she’d lost track – and she seemed surprised by the answer. I’m further along than she’d thought. We talked about regrets – a traditionally verboten topic. We talked about lives that feel like to-do lists, marked by endless tasks and chores, to the exclusion of most everything else (or so it seems at times.) I mentioned that my wife and I have had our noses to the proverbial grindstone for decades, that we'd sent one daughter to Europe and the other to college, yet we’d somehow managed to postpone our 20^th anniversary cruise for three years and counting. What Mom said next surprised me: “you should go. Book it now, while you’re young enough to enjoy it. You should focus on doing things that make you happy now.”

And there it was - the pleasure principle. Since I was a child, I’d heard about the virtues of hard work, that I needed to save my pennies for a rainy day, how “lucky” I was to have a steady job, and on and on. Now, spurred on by what I imagine to be her own perception of a darkening stage, my mother appeared circumspect. She went on to say, as though I needed a reminder, that life is short. From her perspective, even a very long life goes by shockingly quickly.

Driving back home this morning, I realized that my mother had given me a Mother’s Day gift – a new perspective to ponder. We are going to book that trip. We must. But beyond that, I’ve got some reassessing and re-prioritizing to do. Change is in the wind. It is time.

The Marathon

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 05:35:00 +0000

Midnight, and the television coverage continues.

Three dead, as of now. The count will likely rise by morning, so horrific are the injuries. An eight year old boy. A Boston University student. I've been both of those, at times that feel much more recent than their reality.

Copley Square. Home of the onetime “Plywood Palace,” a.k.a. the John Hancock Tower, Boston’s tallest office building. When I was a student at BU, a part-time job was offered on our school’s job posting board for a “building watcher.” The then-fairly-new Hancock Tower had a few structural issues. The giant glass panels that formed its outer skin had a habit of blowing free from their frames, crashing to the ground – a dangerous situation, to say the least. During the reconstruction effort to fix this problem, giant plywood panels encased sections of the building, essentially to hold the glass in place. “Building Watchers” were hired and paid minimum wage to sit on benches in Copley Square and gaze upward at the building, watching for any signs of misaligned or wavering glass panels. I passed on this opportunity, and I have no regrets.

Until today, to my knowledge, glass panels in free-fall were the most dangerous things to happen in Copley Square. After college, I lived on Boylston Street, just a few blocks to the west. On more than one occasion, I staggered through Copley late at night, drunk as a skunk, making my way home. I’ve hung out there with friends at 2:00 am. I've had celebrity sightings. I've marveled at the ice sculptures. For many years, I worked in an office building just two blocks to the east. And yes, I’ve watched the marathon from that very spot, a number of times. I never felt threatened in any way.

Today was Patriot’s Day, a Massachusetts holiday. My wife, a teacher, has the week off. We’re on a vacation of sorts, spending a few days at our house on Cape Cod. When we heard the news today, we were reminded of Patriot’s Day, 2007. We were on a real vacation then, having taken our daughters to Washington, DC for school vacation week. We happened to be staying in a hotel across the river, in Virginia. The day we arrived was the day of the Virginia Tech shootings. As might have been expected, this was a major news story in Virginia. The details were inescapable, and horrifying; very much like coverage of today’s Boston Marathon bombings here in Massachusetts.

Tonight, together with our fellow citizens, we’re being asked to remain “highly vigilant.” Tomorrow, Boylston Street will remain closed for several blocks as the crime scene analysis continues. Riders on Boston’s mass transit system will be subjected to random backpack inspections. With a shudder, I’m recalling the times that followed 9/11/2001. At the office building in New Hampshire where I then worked, huge boulders were placed to block vehicular access to the part of the parking lot closest to the building. At airports, security measures went over-the-top nuts. In retrospect, even the most cautious among us would likely admit that we got a little silly; but it was all somewhat understandable. The fear was palpable.

I wonder what we’ll wake up to find tomorrow. Will the hard news somehow deteriorate? Will there be additional incidents, or devices found, or connections to terrorist organizations confirmed? Will all public trash barrels again be removed from city streets, as they were in the wake of 9/11?

I’m not being cavalier about this stuff. I freely admit to a twinge of trepidation at the thought of our drive home later this week, which will take us through the long “Big Dig” Tip O’Neill Tunnel, beneath the streets of Boston.

More than anything, today’s news has brought great sorrow; I feel for the families of the victims, the injured and the dead. The accident of timing alone separates us.

The real marathon is not a footrace. It’s an ongoing, lifelong slog. It’s the thing we once rather tritely called the “War on Terror.” It has a cadence. I imagine it will continue to ebb and flow, along with our fear and our vigilance; but it will not disappear, ever.

Yet those who are inclined to wax nostalgic for the “good old days” need only look a bit further back to realize that nothing here is new. Members of the Greatest Generation will recall the fear that gripped the world during World War Two. “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” The leading edge of the Boomers may remember the paranoid atmosphere of the Cold War. “Duck and Cover.” The Enemy has always been, and will always be Out There. This marathon requires strength and endurance. Those who came before us had it. I’m betting we will, too.

The Good, the Bad, and the Gullible

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 02:26:00 +0000

I was a nervous kid. I was brainy, not athletic at all, lacking in self-confidence, and wary of new situations. I believe this was in part due to genetic disposition – anxiety is somewhat of a family trait - and perhaps in larger part due to the circumstances of my youth, which were legitimately stressful in many respects. None of this matters now, apart from enhancing the insights produced by my navel-gazing experiences in my old age.

I bought the lie – 1:

I studied very hard in school, and was rewarded with excellent grades. I was consistently the last to be picked for the gym class basketball team, but consistently the first to be picked for the classroom spelling bee team. My parents, both wonderful and well-intentioned people, counseled me from a young age: do well in school, and you’ll be able to get a scholarship to a great college. In reality, neither of my parents had attended college, and they had absolutely no idea of how the admissions process, much less the financial aid process actually worked. They truly believed that hard work would simply lead to financial reward. This was, after all, America, the land of opportunity; and in their own experience running a small business, the maxim had held true.

When college application time approached, I did my own research at the local library (there was no internet in those prehistoric times, and my high school’s guidance department was wholly incompetent – so I’d set out on my own.) Based largely on its glossy, eye-catching marketing materials, I chose a college. One college, in faraway Boston. I applied there (and only there,) and was accepted. The deal was done. The “scholarship” I’d worked so hard for, the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, failed to materialize. My mother, by then widowed, to her enormous credit found a way to finance my education. At age 17, I drove, solo, 250 miles to Boston, to check out my chosen school. I fell in love with the city, and in fact I’m still here – well, in the general area. The rest, as they say, is history.

I bought the lie – 2:

As college graduation approached, I began interviewing for jobs. Four years culminating in a double major, magna cum laude, had failed to instill a burning passion for any particular field that didn’t require years of additional schooling, and I’d had it… I was done; I wanted out. I wanted a job, in the “real world” (read: not academia,) ideally one that would allow me to stay in Boston along with many of my friends - a selection criterion just about as random and foolish as choosing a college based on the pictures in its brochure. I found a job fairly quickly, an entry-level professional position with a large company. I loved it. I’d met my goal.

There was a formal training program. I aced it. Among the many company executives called upon to share their wisdom with us in these training sessions was one old guy whose name I no longer recall. Someone had asked a question about salary and advancement opportunities. His answer was to the effect that ‘we may not offer the biggest paycheck on the block, but here at our company, you’ll have job security. We’ve never had a layoff here, even during the depression. He pounded his fist on the table in emphasis with that last statement. I was reminded of Nikita Khrushchev banging his fist at the UN. We sat, wide-eyed, silently pledging our allegiance. It was 1981.

A decade later, when the first laid-off secretary emerged, bawling, from what came to be known as the slaughterhouse (in reality, a cramped conference room unfortunately located in a rather public spot,) I realized then and there – I’d bought the lie (or rather, the one-time truth that had morphed with the corporate culture into fantasy, as the rules of the game had changed beneath our feet.)

I bought the lie – 3:

I was recently reminded of disillusionments past (the preceding are but two of countless examples.) Some say that history repeats.

My daughter, a high school senior, is at the tail end of the college application process. She has worked extremely hard in school, and has an impressive resume of achievements to show for her efforts. She applied to 9 – nine! – schools. I’m told that’s fairly normal these days. She’s been accepted at six and wait-listed at three. Not bad! This should be a joyous time, filled with the excitement of choosing among many great opportunities; but it’s not. Unfortunately we’re discovering, too late, how badly the college application and financing system is flawed.

Since she was an infant, we’ve been dutifully saving for our daughter’s education. We’ve amassed a tidy sum. We are frugal people by nature. We don’t live large. It turns out, that’s a big mistake in this twisted, redistributionist, regress-to-the-mean society. If you’ve got it, baby, you’d best spend it now, or they’ll take it from you tomorrow to subsidize someone else. If colleges don’t do it, the government will.

It’s like this: Most of the so-called ‘prestigious schools’ to which my daughter applied have adopted some version of the same lofty-sounding credo: “no student will be unable to attend xxxx U. because of unaffordability.” Doesn’t that sound grand? Altruistic, even? Here’s the translation: “We don’t award any merit-based scholarships; and ‘affordability’ will be determined by one of two incredibly intrusive algorithms using labyrinthine rules that would rival those of the IRS in complexity.”

Further translated: you may be at the top of your graduating class, with a trunkful of awards, varsity letters, a Nobel Prize and invitations to lunch with the president; but if your parents have made the mistake of saving and investing in anticipation of this day, you’re going to pay the full freight. Your choice, in practical terms, will be between paying double or triple the price paid by your likely future roommate to attend a top-tier school, and probably incurring debt that your parents have tried so hard to shield you from; or taking advantage of the merit-based awards you’ve received – which have been generous – from schools that weren’t your top choices.

Meanwhile – and here’s the galling part - your equally (academically) qualified friends are getting "need based" money left and right, and will be able to attend their choice of top-flight schools because their parents have gone the spend-it all, get-multiple-divorces, take-lavish-vacations, save-hardly-anything approach. They live in huge McMansions (not counted in determining "need" by virtue of being “primary residences” – a loophole you could drive a Rolls through) while we live in a modest house and have chosen instead to invest over the years, apart from the college fund, for our own eventual retirement (putting similar dollars in a different category.) And it's folks like us who are expected to subsidize the masses of less academically qualified but needier, or equally academically qualified but less thrifty families out there by paying the wildly inflated sticker price. We're talking $250K out of pocket over four years, minimum. Per kid.

To be clear: I don’t oppose the concept of need-based financial aid. My problem is with schools that have adopted exclusively need-based programs. My wife grew up poor, and would not have been able to attend our alma mater if not for the aid she received. That said, my wife was also her high school class valedictorian. Her academic qualifications were rock-solid. And that is my point – she worked hard to earn the privilege of attending college. For colleges today to turn a blind eye to a broad swath of highly qualified students in favor of subsidizing only those who demonstrate having met the schools’ peculiar and distorted definition of “need” is just wrong.

I realize this post is unlikely to generate any sympathy. White people problems. Sure. But if you try and view this through our lens, the system is badly broken, and patently unfair - and not just to the poor.

The hard lesson for my daughter: don’t buy the lie.

And yet, we as parents, as a society, still wish to somehow instill within our young people a belief in the inherent value of hard work. If that belief is to continue to have any relevance, we have got to move away from this steady progression toward “leveling every playing field,” no matter how well-intentioned, and restore some semblance of a meritocracy.

A Taxing Situation

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 02:17:00 +0000

"My advice for those who die / Declare the pennies on your eyes / 'Cause I'm the taxman..." ---George Harrison

The days are getting noticeably longer. This is psychologically a good thing, I think, for most of us. It’s also, rather paradoxically, an anxiety trigger – among countless others – for me. The winter has almost passed, and with it my chance to hibernate, to get some much needed sleep, and to catch up on long-deferred reading, research, minor home repairs and such.

Yet somehow, time has passed and I’ve gotten very little sleep, nor have I made significant progress on much of anything worthwhile. You see, taxes have consumed me for the past month and a half. This year, for various reasons, our tax situation is much more complex than usual, and the calculation process has been brutal. The “fiscal cliff” deliberations that resulted in delaying IRS approval of half of the forms I need didn’t help matters. I’ve been pecking away at our tax calculations for several weekends, and I’m still not done.

Setting aside the endless political debate centered around tax policy - how MUCH one should pay in taxes, how to determine one’s theoretical “fair share,” and whether we’ve become a nation of “47 percenters” or "99 percenters" (I swear, I’m not going there) – there is so much that could be done to improve the nightmare that is tax preparation.

Here’s something I’ve wondered about for years: other than (illegal) under-the-table, “shadow economy” transactions which aren’t reported anyway, virtually everything that is reportable as regular income has already been reported to the government in the form of W-2s, 1099s, K-1s and the like, before we ever fire up our copies of TurboTax Deluxe. With the recent addition of mandatory cost basis reporting, many types of capital gains are, or will soon be, in this category as well.

So why is the onus on us, the taxpayers, to apply the government’s convoluted rules to calculate what we owe? Why, instead, doesn’t the government just send us a bill or a check, as the case may be, based on all the information they’ve already amassed? They own the rules; they have what I imagine to be a big, honking pile of mainframe computers capable of calculating such arcane annoyances as the Alternative Minimum Tax and capital loss carry-forwards for the whole freakin’ population, in about a day and a half!

We could then make appropriate adjustments for our charitable deductions, write-offs, and whatnot, assuming that any of these survive the axe of “tax reform” in the coming months, and, depending on the situation, just cash the check, pay the adjusted bill, and move on. The states can and should follow the same process (or better yet, abolish their state income taxes... but that's another blog rant.)

Think about it… when you make a purchase, whether small, like a meal, or large, like a car… does the merchant require you to use your own, purchased software to calculate the netted-out bill? Hell no… the McCashier presses the little button with the photo of a Big Mac on it, then the fries-photo button, then the dollar-sign button, and your total, including tax, is tabulated. You pay, and your change comes swirling down into the little chrome SARS pit of a germ bucket for retrieval. Or, in the case of the car, the “Finance manager” sits you down in his tiny, shared office that, curiously, reeks of cigarette smoke despite being in a “non-smoking” building; offers you some bad coffee, and flogs you with an imaginary rubber hose in an attempt to get you to buy a ten year warranty and rust preventative. Depending on your own fortitude, the extra charges either are or are not added to the invoice, but in any case you are, in the end, presented with a bill, and in exchange for your check, you’re handed the keys.

OK, so the retail purchase experience isn’t always pleasurable; but on the scale of “discomfort as compared with a colonoscopy procedure” it’s much less of an imposition than calculating income taxes.

Midweek Update

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:17:00 +0000

I don’t know what it is about this week. For some reason, every time I glance at a news source, I see absurdity and irony. And sadness too, yes, plenty of that; but in the spirit of reporting the Happy News, I’ll skip over those parts.

So, here in Boston we have – rather, had, until this week, a low-buck bus company called Fung Wah. This company has been in the news with increasing frequency for at least the past year. None of the news has been good. It seems they were able to offer standard Boston-to-New York runs for a mere $15 because they kept their costs low. Very low. The buses have crashed, broken down, failed inspections, you name it, repeatedly for as long as I can recall.

Everybody loves a bargain. Earlier this week, the company’s extreme thrift caught up with it when it was discovered that three quarters of the buses in the fleet had cracked frames. They had repeatedly failed safety inspections, yet were still on the road. Now the Department of Transportation has stepped in and grounded the entire fleet.

But wait, there’s more:

It seems a Fung Wah bus broke down near Hartford, CT. The company called in a tow service, which hooked the bus to a giant tow truck and drove away. Only problem was, they hadn’t properly attached the hook. They managed to tow the bus into the middle of the highway, whereupon its bumper broke off, leaving the bus sitting there, blocking traffic, without lights, while the tow truck drove away, towing a bumper.

The geniuses in the cab were unaware that the bus wasn’t still behind their truck until they were stopped by police, three exits further down the road. Upon pulling them over, the police observed that they were somewhat incoherent. It turned out that both crew members were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

In other news this week, a $5 million class action suit was filed against Anheuser-Busch, alleging that they have been watering down Budweiser beer. Is that even possible? Perhaps the tested containers had been confused with bottled water that had somehow been tainted with trace amounts of beer? I just can’t wrap my brain around this.

A few days ago, I endured a seemingly endless radio news story about the proper nomenclature for addressing a retired pope. The official verdict seems to have settled on “"pope emeritus Benedict XVI" or "Roman Pontiff emeritus Benedict XVI." Or, to his close friends, “His Holiness.” I find all of these rather ponderous and difficult to remember. How about something more intuitive, like The Holy Diddler?

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, has come out full force against Yahoo employees “working at home.” Yes, the head of a technology company has banned a practice that virtually all other technology companies tout as the ultimate workplace perk – and from which several have profited handsomely. I can’t quite figure this one out. The primary reason cited was the notion that employees will benefit from being “physically together.”

That would be the approx. 14,000 people that Yahoo employs worldwide. Yahoo had better plan for one hell of a big addition to their building in Sunnyvale.

I’m not suggesting that “working at home” is a universally good thing. Clearly it would not work well in some industries, or with some employees (read: those likely to run up billable hours in the hot tub) but c’mon, a freakin’ technology company? This is akin to Starbucks subjecting its employees to random bloodstream-caffeine tests, and firing those who have consumed the evil bean. It runs just a bit counter to the corporate mission.

Having celebrated New Years’ Day with a partial sigh of relief for having survived, sort of, the “Fiscal Cliff,” we now face The Sequester. I’ve given up on trying to follow the particulars. The perpetual brinksmanship in Washington has led me to lose interest. I have Brinksmanship Fatigue.

The paradox here is that there are (presumably) real financial ramifications that may directly affect me, indeed, affect all of us; but I have become detached. It’s like watching the Poker Channel on an old, black-and-white TV with bad reception and rabbit ears, while stoned and wearing someone else’s eyeglasses. They’re playing for real stakes, using my money, but it’s so far away, so surreal that I just can’t bring myself to care. So go ahead and duke it out, Elected Drama Queens, just let me know how badly I’ve been screwed when you’re done. This time.

All for now. I'll be in touch, so you stay in touch. Or however that goes. Good luck, and good night.

Bring Your Own What?

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry G) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 03:01:00 +0000

The “BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device) phenomenon has caught on like wildfire in the business world. Wikipedia defines BYOD as “the policy of permitting employees to bring personally owned mobile devices (laptops, tablets, and smart phones) to their place of work and use those devices to access privileged company information and applications.” Everything I’ve read about BYOD seems to indicate that it’s wildly popular among employees, especially the “Millennials.” It’s considered a privilege, a convenience, a morale booster, a perk that’s essential to a company’s ability to successfully compete for top talent.

I don’t get it.

Earlier this week, I had an opportunity to attend a forum that was hosted by the CIO of a major American company. This company has, for years, handed out BlackBerry smartphones to the subset of its employees who were viewed as having a need for frequent off-hours contact, whether in the form of voice calls, e-mail, or access to corporate applications. Thousands of these devices are deployed. Some, of course, see more frequent use than others. All, supposedly, represent some legitimate business need that is being fulfilled by the employee who is tethered 24/7 (or some subset thereof) to the office.

The CIO went on to describe this company’s relatively new BYOD program. As is the case elsewhere (everywhere, it would seem,) the program is gaining new participants every day. A large percentage of Blackberry-holders has elected to turn in company-owned phones in exchange for being set up with BYOD access via their personally-owned iPhones or Android devices. The CIO concluded his discussion of the BYOD topic by musing aloud about what he might be able to do to entice the remaining BlackBerry-holders to jump ship. I could easily have told him: PAY FOR THE DAMNED VOICE/DATA PLANS!

This company, and according to recent surveys I have seen, a majority of others with a BYOD policy, contributes nothing toward the cost of owning and maintaining the device that the employee is willingly “bringing.”

Let’s break this down:

Behind Door #1 is a company-owned, company-paid-for Blackberry. It costs the individual user nothing – nada – zilch. All he/she has to do in order to realize the “benefit” of working while on personal time is to carry the thing around. Not a bad deal, save perhaps for the obligation to safeguard it and to actually be productive by using it once in awhile. If it gets damaged, the company replaces it. Simple. Free.

Behind Door #2 is the employee’s own iPhone (or whatever.) He or she is already paying for voice and data access (which, for those living in a cave, is not cheap, and often comes with a volume cap – think “family share plan” voice minutes - beyond which the cost becomes prohibitive.) In exchange, the device owner enjoys the privilege of having exclusive personal use of the thing (and for playing ‘Words with Friends’ on airplanes, viewing porn on the beach, whatever.) If the employee drops the phone, leaves it on a bus, or otherwise damages or loses it, he/she alone is responsible for the cost of replacing it.

Layer on BYOD, and a few things happen: to the extent that the phone owner uses the device for work, those minutes and gigabytes get chewed up - the employer gets a freebie. Additionally, there’s a contract involved (naturally) which, among other restrictions, prohibits the phone owner from lending the phone to anyone – even a family member – lest proprietary corporate data be exposed.

I ask you – which is the better deal?

Would your answer be the same if the comparison were between having a company car, all expenses paid, versus being allowed the “privilege” of using your own car for traveling on company business, without even so much as a mileage allowance?

I didn’t think so. So I’m back to not getting it.

There’s unquestionably a perceived cachet associated with being a BYOD participant. This reminds me of the early 1990s, when pagers were all the rage. Pagers functioned, in essence, like a very long leash. Paging was one-way – you couldn’t respond with any effective communication. Instead, the thing went off while you were (in a restaurant, at a ballgame, driving, wherever) and you had to, as quickly as possible, find the nearest pay phone and make contact with the Very Important Person who was summoning you. Cell phones were nearly non-existent; when they arrived on the scene, demand for pagers died, for obvious reasons.

I never wanted one of those things. Cachet? Seriously? They struck me more like long-range house arrest ankle bracelets. But they were seen by many as status symbols, nonetheless. I believe they somehow engendered feelings of self-importance on the part of their users - “Oops, excuse me, gotta run, I’m being paged {read: I am so very important that I must now drop you, dinner companion, like a hot potato, and go find a phone so as to take care of a very, very important matter.}”

I “get” that many – perhaps most – people these days are in love with their phones. I don’t get why, but I get that they are. Phones are status symbols now. Etiquette has, predictably, taken a blow in deference to the elevated social standing that they impart (Excuse me, dinner partner, redux.) No doubt this is a big factor in understanding the siren call of BYOD.

In pure economic terms, setting aside the question of “who pays,” it is more costly to operate two devices as opposed to one. So in the aggregate, there’s an economic argument to be made in favor of BYOD. It’s also less convenient to tote around two devices rather than one. As implemented by most companies that have done so, however, the programs are tilted heavily in favor of the company and against the employee.

There are a few enlightened firms out there that do offer a stipend or some other consideration that helps to defray some portion of the phone owner’s costs, but they are in the minority. It seems only fair that, to the extent that it can be calculated, a proportionate share of the costs associated with using privately-owned equipment for business purposes should be borne by the business. In my view, this should be the norm. However, as long as employees continue flocking to buy-and-bring-your-own programs, the status quo is unlikely to change.