...in the mirror

Traveling to a another country exposes you to a mirror with a new and different lens:

Listening to Dutch reminded me of German, which stirred up some childhood fears of German(y) I didn't recall I had.   I own a German car, just made some Dutch friends.....but the language still gave me a pretty good dose of unease.

This is not an active syndrome for me, but took the trip to Europe to expose and reflect.

Things that are different in Brussels

.....per BHEB

Computer keyboard arrangement
Very few obese people
Mostly no tipping
Charge slip has no place for tip (consistent}
Charge slip has no signature line
Cobblestone streets
Accordion players (roumanian) on the streets
lots of bookstores
Lots of collector stores: stamps; coins; toy models
young people wear white lab coats decorated with graffitti
French is easier to understan (for me) than in paris
Stores that carry 250 kinds of beer
Waffles sold from street stands
Great public transportation
Biycles rented from automated street stands
Tea houses....mostly in arab neighborhoods filled with men only
Two languages for everything
Whole neighborhoods without MacDonalds

That's progress....

In 1979 63.3 percent of recent high school graduates had employer-provided healthcard.  By 2004, only 33.7 percent did.     

from the Nation

Newark and Fairmont

I thought it might be good to tell a story less than 40 years old:

About the year 2000 our family was traveling through New Jersey, so I persuaded them to tolerate me showing them the house I lived in  Newark from about age 5- 10.   It's the place I think of when I think of where I grew up.   88 Huntington Terrace, half way between Hawthorn and Lyons Avenue, almost backing up to Beth Israel Hospital.   We lived in the second floor of a two and a half....house with three floors, three apartments, the third one (the half) being the smallest.

The Goldbergs lived upstairs and the Macklisses (our landlords) lived downstairs. My father and I thought it was a pretty good joke to call them (not to their face) the Mackelberries.   (He also called the bridge from Brooklyn to Staten Island the Verra Not So Bridgle.   He renamed the famous Russian compuser Dmitri Rip Your Corsets off.)

The Goldbergs were the first people I knew to get a TV.   That was sharp.  Our apt was bigger than the house we later moved to in Springfield.   It had a screened porch and a jalousied sun parlor, a walk in pantry, and a shower with black and white tile on the floor and nozzles that shot water at you from the sides.  I still own the bathroom cabinet under which I hid the books I retreated to read in the bathroom....usually when I was supposed to be practicing piano, or doing some chore.

This formerly Jewish neighborhood is now pretty much African American.   So the Becker clan drives by the house and we're all gawking out the window, moving pretty slow.   On the porch of 88 were 4-5 young men.   I could see we were getting their interest......white family, cruising their street, staring, etc.   So I called out, "I grew up in that house."   They said something like, "That's cool."   And then one of the young men saw our West Virginia license plate.   He said, " Are you from West Virginia."   I said, "Yes."   He said, "Cool, I'm from Fairmont."   And that was it.   Pretty amazing.

My first automobile....

was not a car.  It was a 1948 chevy pickup truck with an icebox on the back out of which I sold ice cream in Newark NJ.

It was the third summer I was working for Good Humor (approx 1965) and I really enjoyed the work.   I made lots of money for a college kid, made kids happy.   I'll never forget the look of the little kid running up to my truck, holding his clenched hand up to me, slowly opening his fingers and saying, "Mister, do I have enough?"   I gave away a lot of ice cream and still felt pretty rich.

Well my dad had a buddy who had a repair shop on rt 22 in Union.   His name was Charlie.   I believe my dad frequnetly stopped off at Charlie's on the way home from work for a little shot of friendly whiskey.   Charlie and his shop were pretty funky.   You definitely could not eat off his repair shop floor. 

Somehow Charlie had this old ice cream truck sitting on his lot.   I believe I bought it for $200 made off Good Humor.  So now I went down each morning to the Eskimo Pie ice cream distributorship and bought my own ice cream and sold it wherever I wanted.   There was a neighborhood called Ironbound (or Down Neck) full of ethnic portuguese who loved their ice cream.   And they knew me as their ice cream man.   So I went back to my old route in competition with Good Humor.   They were not thrilled.....and probably could have gotten me stopped for not having a sales license.   But they didn't.

The truck was ok.   The best parts were the hand throttle that allowed me to truck along at less than 5 mph, and the real brass bells with a string coming through the cab roof that announced my imminent arrival.   Less fun was the fact that the gas tank had a leak about 2/3 way up, so I could never get a fillup or I'd be sloshing out gasoline.   Also those trucks had a finicky linkage for shifting the gears.   They would tend to hang up in second, and not budge until you stopped the truck, opened the hood, and pulled them apart by hand.   (I once had another old chevy truck do the same trick to me in stop and go traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.   The New Yorkers were not thrilled as I stopped in traffic and got out of the truck to pull the maneuver..)

The hairiest part was a daily routine I had for getting onto rte 22 in the eastbound direction.   I had to enter the fast lane from an island.   The entry was at such an angle that the mirrors didn't give me any clue to oncoming traffic and the icebox blocked the view looking backwards.   So I stopped the truck, put on the emergency brake, slid over to the passenger side, leaned out the passenger windown, waiting for a huge break in traffic, hurled myself back to the driver's side, slipped the emergency brake, threw the poor thing in 1st, and roared onto the highway.....totally blind to what was coming.   If I'ver ever prayed for something specific, it was probably then.    Never did get hit, but heard a few horns.

One day the truck broke down completely.   I was facing total ice cream meltage.   So I called all the kids in the neighborhood and gave away all the ice cream.   That was really fun.

Selling ice cream was one of my best jobs.   I was really good at it.   Maybe I'll do it again.   Good Humor watch out!

Too many plugs (or why you can't have too many plugs)

So I tried to download to computer and ultimately this blog a cellphone picture of the previous described sailing canoe.  All that was needed was the right usb to phone plug.  I know I had one at work, but now I'm home.   So all need to do is find one of the many I have at home.

Well I used to swim in these multiple device plugs till I organized them by wrapping each one up in an rubber band.   So that makes them easy to sort without untying knots every time.  However, I currently have seven of these cords, and none of them fit the blackberry.   Now I know no one else out there has ever had that experience.   What would it take for manufacturers to standardize on one size plug.   Remember in the olden days, hifi sets all used RCA plugs.   You didn't need a different size for each manufacturer.

Well here's just a little reminder of how the greed each (corporation) outweighs the interest of us the many.   Rembmer, capitalism is the system of choice!   I wonder how many different size device plugs are really out there......and I'm sure glad that they are giving me this beautiful choice!

The power of varnish

I'm trying to reduce the numbers of things I'm storing and not using (while raising a bit of funds for present endeavors.)   One project has been to sell a beautiful sailing canoe I bought perhaps 15 years ago.   I used the canoe on one trip to lake Huron, and perhaps sailed it two or three other times.   That should send a message.

The canoe is a beautiful end of 19th century design, hand built (not by me) and beautifully finished bright (natural mahongany plywood) all around.

To get it ready for sale, I thought I'd refinish the bottom which was getting pretty grotty.   So I invested many hours stripping to bear wood, sanding smooth, sealing with expoxy, and multiple coats of varnish.   If you don't look too closely it appears a a functional piece of furniture that can glide through the water.   All that work was pretty gratifying.   And of course the reward for all the hard sanding is the smooth stroke of the brush laying on the last shiny coat of varnish.   Ummmm.   Pretty much equiavlent to eating comfort food without the calories.

So the point is.....looking back, I could probably have sold the canoe as was.   Maybe I would have gotten $100 less for it.   But I just wanted to pass it on looking great.   In one sense I wasted 40 or so hours of work.   In another, I'm glad.  Both Abby and Roz asked if I now wanted not to sell.   Actually I'm still glad to sell and feel better about how I'm passing it on.

At another level I was cipherin' on this experience trying to see where my desire to refinish came from.   Out of the deep subconscious floated my father's occupation for 30+ years.....refinishing floors....beautiful oak floors in fancy mansions, and durable floors in old fashioned factories.   The apple don't fall too far from the tree.    That becomes more and more evident the longer I'm around the deeper I reflect.

PS.  When I figure out how to download from my blackberry, I'll load a picture.

Congress Speaks with one voice....the lobbyiest (literally!)

NY Times reports speeches by more than 12 Congressmen published as part of the Health Care debate were ghost written by one lobbyist working for Genentech.   The lobbyist even provided different versions for Democrats and Republicans.  However the language was essentially the same and Congressmen showed remorse for repeating word for word the statements of others, but no remorse for lobbyist ghost writers.   This is not a Republicrat single party, but a lobbyist single party.

The influence of lobbyists under different "regimes" illustrates the story of the crows sitting in the tree, the farmer coming along and beating the tree with a hammer, the crows fly up, make a lot of noise, carry on with a certain amount of chaos and confusion, and then settle back onto their perches as of old.    They call that political change in Washington.

Wrong again again!

Latest white house estimate is $1,000,000 per year per soldier in Afghanistan!

Spritualism vs Religion????

Many years ago someone said to me.   I'm not religious, I'm spiritual.   I was very impressed, probably because I didn't understand what this person was trying to say.   Now I realize this is a pretty common blow off to religion based on all the negative things that sometimes occur in religion's name.....materialism, war, child molestation, etc.

A recent article in the Forward (originally a yiddish language Daily) by Jay Michaelson, posits that religion is actually spirituality.  He means not the organization, church or synagogue, but the experience....and not all the experience at that.   But people practice religion voluntarily.   He argues that the piece of religion that attracts people to practice is spirituality, and that the easily adopted dichotomy between religion and spirituality is misleading.   I'll have to think about this a bit, but tend to agree.

big bank credit card usury

Yesterday I got notice from Citi that interest on my credit card debt would rise mid December from 8.4% to 29.9%. No, that's not a typo.

Turns out the House passed a bill waiting to be passed or not in the Senate regulating the companies' ability to raise fees on existing balances. So the bums are sneaking in before the proposed deadline.

The letter was unclear on several counts. Was this only on new purchases? If I "opted out" by Dec 10, what would that mean?

I called and, honestly, I was so furious that I was actually nice to the poor agent who took the call. Turns out if you opt out, you can't use the card, but they can't raise the rate. That's what I did. Who would want to send their business to them anyway after that?

Consumers' Union is organizing a campaign to the Senate on this issue:

https://secure.consumersunion.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=2173&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr003=iu8i84jvy4.app44a

Little League Blues

For all the good team sports do for kids, there are the occasional cases where children's well being is sacrificed to adult testosterone. Here's one that happened to me:

At age ten, my family moved from Newark to Springfield, NJ. This was 7 miles in distance, but light years in social economic cultural conditions. In Newark we "hung out", climbed garages, pitched trading cards (and occasionally pennies) played mumbly peg, and stoop and stick ball. I had no experience in organized or competitive team sports.

So in Springfield, I joined the little league, not even knowing the rules of baseball. I was the worst player on the worst team in the lowest level division. But still the rules said I had to play my innings.....this was recreational baseball of course.

Last game of season. We haven't won a game, and are in last place. We are playing next worst team. If we win, we lift ourselves out of the cellar. About 3 innings in, after sitting on the bench (I played second base) coach sits down next to me. Tells me how important the game is. Says, will you squeal if I don' play you, to give this team a chance? Of course what would a 10 year old do. I didn't play (we still lost.)

Some wounds teach us lesson. When I coached recreational soccer, I felt parental pressure to bend the rules so the best players could help us win. I held fast.

"U.S. Will Order Pay Cuts at Firms With Bailout Aid"...New York Times

If you haven't read Calavin Trillin's poems (jingles?) in the Nation here's a good example:

The government has moved to intervene
To make the pay scale slightly less obscene.
The Wall Street types consider this unfair.
They say they earned their money fair and suare,
And 20 million, say, is only middling
For someone who's so good at money fiddling.
Of course, if things, again go not as planned,
They're back to Washington with hat in hand.
These fiddlers do deserve some admiration:
They've found themselves a win-win situation

Ways in Which the World Divides

There is something in our makeup that goes for bimodal stuff. Of course we have two arms, two legs, two functional halves of brains. Simplifications into "two's" suffer from being exactly that.....gross simplifications. Having said that, they are fun. I sometimes go around thinking about the weird ways into which human preferences and habits can be observed to divide. That's my new feature: Ways in Which the World Divides. You arewelcome to submit suggestions through comments or email to me at Paul.becker@mail.wvu.edu.

water juice

I'm in Long Beach nursing Nina post op for surgery she had on Thursday. This morning read article in LA Times re: high sugar content in juice....as high per serving as soda.

Reminds me that I became aware of this when Nina was still on a bottle. A friend's baby developed serious dental problems from keeping a bottle with juice in her mouth. So now when Nina asked for juice, I gave her "water juice." She went for it. Hehehehe.....probably the last time I was able to pull one over on that girl!

Geography Challenged

Ok. I knew that Moldavia was variously a region of Ukraine and/or Roumania. I missed the fact that in the 1992 breakup of the Soviet Union, it became an independent nation named Moldova, belonging to the UN, wishing for the EU, etc. It's even enough of a nation to have its own breakaway.....Transnistria.

Americans are geography challenged, and I'm always proud to be an American!

How about a J Street for Jewish Community Newspapers

Here's an idea that has been rolling around in my head since I worked on a tabloid newspaper centered on the trial of Daniel Elsburg and Tony Russo for making public the Pentagon Papers which revealed the failures of strategy and tactics in the Vietnam War. What they "outed" were analyses conducted by Santa Monica's Rand Corporation, but kept secret from the American public.

After helping to author and edit this paper, it bothered me that the local Jewish community papers around the country were incredibly conservative and seemed in thrall to major wealthy jewish philanthropists in their communities. I am not sure but I believe that many are not independent business operations, but instead are supported by their local Jewish Federations.

Whew! Long introduction.

My idea was to find a liberal benefactor who might buy and become publisher of such a local Jewish weekly, and then edit it in a much more liberal and from the bottom up manner. Write, for example about the daily lives of ordinary Jews. More importantly these papers would take progressive views on Israel and the middle east, rather than acting as mouth pieces for the Likud. I will say that in the last five years or so, some of these weeklies have improved. But still they have a way to go.

Well this one I won't get to do. Hope someone else has a the wish and the wherewithal to do something like this.

Saddest Moments....

The post on Hawthorn Avenue School reminded me of one of the saddest moments in my youth. In second grade I had Miss Raisin as my teacher. She was African American, a great teacher, (and more important to me at the moment) I fell totally in love with her. I had a great year with her in 2nd grade.

Come third grade, I am on the Safety Patrol (crossing guards.) This was cool partly because of the responsibility, but also because once we went off patrol, we marched for a few minutes military style in front of the school. I later became the captain and called out the march commands. We also originally wore metal arm bands that needed to be polished once a month. Later we switched to the white straps across the shoulders and around the waist you could see from further away.

My post was corner of Nye and Clinton Place. (One good thing about this corner is that everyday I passed a local grocery store and bought a Kosher pickel for a nickel from a barrel wrapped up in waxed paper.....mmmm.)

One day a student stepped off the curb before I said go. I told him to get back up on the curb and he refused. So I followed him and "reported" him to his teacher.......who happened to be Miss Raisin. Well for whatever reason, he lied about what happened, and she believed him. What a blow! My true love, my idol, not believing me on this. As you can tell, I may have recovered, but can still remember the pain.

The years get longer

....an expansion on comments by Pam and Ralph on Facebook.

My elementary school was Hawthorn Ave. School on the corner of Clinton and Hawthorn in Newark, NJ...a typical city school that hulked up to the sidewalk on the three sides that didn't have the playground. I can remember the last day of school ritual.....you took out all your books, and opened to the faceplate where you had printed your name in the name stamp place. There were about 8 lines there for subsequent users of that book in each year. And per teacher's instructions, you crossed out your name. It seemed like an important event. And then "no more teachers, no more books..." Next year the ritual happened again.....it seemed like such a long time later. And I noticed this difference in a year's length at High School age. As Ralph pointed out a year to an 8 yr old is 1/8 a lifetime. A year to a 15 year old is much less. And each year it progresses. Do the math. It seemed, Saturday night, like last Halloween was just a short time ago.

Of course the countervailing phenomenon is the increasing rate of forgetfulness. When you forget some of what has happened, it seems to leave time-blanks of indeterminate length, that lengthen the perception of the year. Everything in balance!

As far as work and aging, I find the ability to work smarter, and more efficiently leaves me on net more efficient with less time expended than 20 years ago. If you add in the "wiser," then you're way ahead. I'm thankful for getting older. Think of the alternative!

Speaking of Tarahumara....

In 1970, Irene Wolt (my first wife) and I crossed the country to move to LA in a Chevy Suburban. We took a substantial side trip through Mexico on the way. I had built a camper into the truck which was ordered with only front seats. Under the bed was enough storage to hold everthing we owned and wanted to move. I believe we spent 10 weeks in Mexico

One of our side trips was a train trip to Copper Canyon. Copper canyon is said to be four times larger than the Grand Canyon. The only access (in 1970) was by train. We took a tourist train (we were the only Americans) with a sleeper car. My strongest memories were of indigenous Tarahumaras along the railside, and rickety appearing trestles crossing incredible gorges. The train went through 83 tunnels and over 36 bridges. Breath taking doesn't even begin.... We stayed a day and night in a motel in Creel, and then came back. Tarahumara Indians are known as the strongest long distance runners in the world.

Irene died this spring. When I visited her a month before her death she was fighting hard against pain and trying to maintain control of her life. She had many friends in a care giving community around he. She had chosen a unique path for her life, continuing to do political and community organizing to the end. Her method for getting by was to develop an incredible set of life skillsallowing her to live on very little income. She co-authored an expose book about the exploitive (of water) development of Los Angeles and the Chandler family (owners of the LA Times) before China Town the movie appeared. She spent time on a variety of environmental issues, and worked on many programs combining cultural activities with politics. She was a producer of a film about the Peace Press, a progressive print shop in LA at which both of us worked.

Irene was an explorer. She took me to places like Copper Canyon and the mountains and deserts of California. She was a rock collector and her hobby maps got us and the Suburban to many places way way way off the beaten track.....ones our four wheel drive could barely manage. A New Year's tradition was a trip with friends to the end of the road in Baja, Mexico on the Gulf Side for camping, fresh caught fish and Mexican hot chocolate. Thank you Irene.