It Took Almost Four Hours For the Power to Come Back On. "When the Elephants Fight," the Alleged African Saying Goes...

The power went off at about 11:15 this morning.  I soon got an e-mail from FPL saying they hoped to have it restored by 12:15.  Eventually, they sent another e-mail saying they expected the power to be back on by 5:00.

It was unclear to me what happened, but I was told by others that there was a line down at the corner of 119th St and 9th Avenue, just several yards from my house.  I'm sure that was right, in part because there were a few FPL repair trucks and some BP police cruisers at that intersection, which was closed off.

Those trucks spent the first part of their time at that intersection, but at some point, they were in front of my house.  I could see the repair workers testing the tension in the lines, and putting on something that I supposed was a gauge, to see if power was running in them.  (It wasn't at that point.)

Once the trucks were no longer in front of my house, but the power still wasn't on, I decided to go get some food.  (FYI, Vega's Burger now doesn't open until 6:00.  Bummer.  They have very decent veggie burgers and "seasoned fries.")

I settled on prepared food from Whole Foods, and I sat outside there to eat it.  My plan was to get my car washed after that.  While I was at Whole Foods, I got another FPL e-mail saying the power was now back on.  So, I finished my lunch, got my car wash, and went back home.  No, the power was not back on.  That happened at about 3:15, with no further updates.

But here's the thing that caught my attention today.  The trucks in front of my house were jockeying for position (two of them had cherry pickers), and to get their spots, they would drive across the median.  Setting aside what frustration and resentment this excites in me, I was thinking about other medians I know.  For example, I thought about the ones along Biscayne Boulevard in Miami Shores, south of about 106th St.  Those medians have royal palm trees, and probably 18-24 inch shrubs.  What would trucks, or any vehicles, do if they were on one side of those medians, and wanted to be on the other side?  Drive to the end of the block or piece of median, make a U-turn, and come back the other way.  Or, if they were emergency utility vehicles, like FPL repair trucks, and they both had to be on the same side of  the street, but facing opposite directions, one of them would back along until it got to the desired spot.

This really isn't rocket science.  It's not complicated at all.  It's a matter of having medians that anyone wants to be nice, and to look nice, and making it happen.  It costs money, but it doesn't have to be Village money, or not much of it.  The people, like me, who live on those medians would most likely donate to improve their own medians.  Some people would donate to improve other medians, maybe just because they want to live in a nice place, instead of a skanky-looking place.

There was no need for the FPL repair trucks to drive on the median in front of my house.  There's no need for the people who live sort of across the street to drive on them, which they do all the time.

But people will drive on the medians, if the medians don't look like something on which people shouldn't drive.  "Keep Off the Medians" signs?  Yeah, how's that working?

It's just a step we've never taken, and something we've never done for ourselves.  And we should.  We should live in a nice place.  We should want to live in a nice place.  It's a curiosity that we seem not to want that.

The MacDonald Kennedy Show

To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, who was talking about a different Kennedy, "I know Mac Kennedy.  Mac Kennedy is a friend of mine."  He's also a very dedicated BP resident, and he's an excellent Commissioner.  Mac is very smart, supremely well-organized (well, no one is as well-organized as is Roxy Ross, but no one could be), focused and goal-oriented, and he's very hard-working.

Are there any imperfections about Mac Kennedy?  Yes.  Two, that I know about.  He talks a lot -- he dominates most conversations, including with me, and most certainly on the Commission -- and he makes too many irrelevant references.  The latter imperfection is most commonly exemplified by his reminding people that he's a Commissioner (yes, Mac, I know you're a Commissioner; I voted twice successfully to contribute to making you one), that he does his homework, and that he's dedicated (yes, Mac, those are among the reasons I voted for you, twice, and will again if you run for re-election), and that he has a husband (gay pride: good -- not relevant to the Commission or to improving the Village).  And I have to say that the same observation about referring to a spouse could be made of Chuck Ross, who rarely omitted to point out in his public statements that Roxy Ross is his wife.  Every word that came out of Chuck's mouth, or Roxy's, or Mac's, was pure gold.  The three of them are immense treasures to the Village.  It is completely unimportant to be reminded to whom they are domestically connected.

Another thing Mac and Chuck have in common is that they seem to know everyone, and everything about them.  They're interested, they probe, they're good listeners, and they have great memories.  This is a big advantage to us.  Presumably, we know that, because in the last election, we lavished on Mac more support than we ever before lavished on any Commission candidate.

It's fair to say that there's one other possible imperfection, in my opinion, about Mac Kennedy.  As Mac himself generally puts it, "'that's the way we've always done it' is not [in itself] a reason to keep doing it that way."  Mac is of course technically right, but he runs the risk of forgetting to form a clear understanding of why we've always done a particular thing a certain way before he cavalierly jettisons it in favor of what occurs to him to be a better way to do it.

The philosophical question, then, becomes would we, or I, like to lose what I consider to be Mac's imperfections.  The problem is that Mac, like everyone else in the world, is a package deal.  No one can lose part of Mac's style without losing other parts of Mac's style.  So, if we asked the question in another way, and imagined losing some of the best of Mac along with what I consider to be his imperfections, then the answer is a deafening NO!  I'll take Mac just the way he is.  As we all very resoundingly agreed to do last November, and as we all always should.

Worth-Less

This is a different topic from the last "For What It's Worth" post.

I want to acknowledge the obvious.  I seem to have stopped posting about Commission meetings.  The meeting in February was so aimless and insubstantial that there was really nothing to say.  I probably made it through about 10-15 minutes of the March meeting before I quit.  There was some early blah, blah, blah, and the Agenda was faulty.

It will sound like I'm making this all about me, but I encourage anyone who reads this post to try to think past that reflex interpretation.  I tried to apply for two boards under the Truppman regime, but Truppman blackballed anyone who disagreed with her or criticized her, so I couldn't do anything to help out in any way.  About a month ago, I applied for the Foundation, because it needed members.  I figured that with a new Commission, maybe I could be allowed to volunteer my time.  I don't remember if I applied early enough to get on the February agenda, but I definitely applied more than early enough to get on the March agenda.  My application was not included, although applications for other boards were included.  I asked Mac Kennedy about this, and he said he would inquire.  Or lobby for me.  Or something.  Well, the answer was no, and the alleged reasoning, Mac was told by the manager, was that applications for the Foundation could not be considered until April.  This makes no sense, since there are openings (more than one), and there is no reason to limit which boards can be considered for new members in which months, or how many boards can be considered in a given month.

I wrote to manager Mario Diaz, and I pointed out that in each case, there were no more applications, for any board, than there were open seats, and all of these applications could simply be accepted without discussion, as part of the Consent Agenda.

I did not hear back from Mario about this, except for him to reiterate that applications for the Foundation could/would not be considered until April.  So I wrote back to Mario to remind him of the mindless and ambitionless inertia hell the Village has lived in since the beginning of 2017, when the Truppman regime started, and that despite the continuing lack of direction, ambition, desire, and competence on the Commissions (their majorities) since then, at least there didn't seem to be the Truppman raging vindictivenss.  I thought that was a good thing.  And I told Mario that the other big change recently was himself, and that we were all inclined to be happy about it.  The only thing I added was that we were still at the disadvantage of a Commission majority that didn't know anything and didn't want anything, and that Village functioning would essentially be a matter of Mario's instincts, unless the mindless and ambitionless Commission majority quashed anything Mario might have wanted to do.  Which might or might not have happened, or be happening.  I wouldn't know.

But my Foundation application was not included in the March agenda.  It seems like a very small indicator, but for me, things do not appear to be looking up for the Village.

So I've sort of lost interest in the meetings, since they're not really about anything, except Mac Kennedy talking a lot, but mostly to himself, and Judi Hamelburg telling her ongoing personal stories, and Ginny O'Halpin having nothing to contribute, and Dan Samaria being in some orbit no one can accurately track, and Art Gonzalez having not much of a role.

I'll still write about things, if I think they're of interest to BP residents, but I'm done chasing and memorializing the Adventures of the Keystone Kops.  The meetings are on Zoom, and if you're interested, you can watch them yourselves.