F***ing Human Nature

Chuck Ross called me this morning.  Early.  Too early.  My mother had just died, I couldn't sleep, and I was distracting myself, including by writing an e-mail to Chuck and Rox to tell them that my mother's death finally, mercifully, happened.  But when Chuck called, I needed at least to pretend to try to get some more rest, because I have patients today.  So, I told him I would get back to him later.

When I called back, Chuck and Rox and I talked about a number of things related and unrelated to my mother's death, and one of them was what I was going to do with myself professionally and geographically, now that one of my employers was drastically cutting compensation, and I had no further reason to live in south Florida (my mother lived in Surfside, and it was necessary that I be available to her on a regular basis).

Chuck has a recurring piece of advice, of which Rox reminded me (as if I needed to be reminded), which was to charge higher fees.  I had resisted this for decades, in spite of Chuck's droning urging, until I was dating a psychiatrist in 2015, and she suggested something that hadn't occurred to me: that if my fee is unusually low (which it is), people might be reluctant to seek treatment from me, concluding, perhaps, that they would get what they paid for.  So I reluctantly and somewhat grudgingly agreed to raise my fee, starting in the first half of 2015.  But last year, for a number of reasons, the higher fee (still very low by general standards) was starting to bother me, even though I discount the fee to anyone who can't easily pay it, and I lowered it back to where it was.  I told that to Chuck today.

This, of course, got Chuck going again, and he urged that I re-increase my fee, and don't work for the employer that was preparing to make a drastic (40%!) cut in compensation.

Chuck is a genius, he's deeply devoted, he's generous to a fault, and he's also very highly opinionated.  He is, as I put it to him and Rox, a pain in the ass.  But I also pointed out that this combination of traits of his is why people like Rox and me and others love him.

I have a version of the same conversation with couples when I do marriage counseling, which I do a lot.  People choose each other, from among many choices, for a reason.  And that reason is in more or less 100% of the cases, neurotic.  We all have conflicts, and those conflicts play a major role in determining whom we choose as a partner.  What we love about our partner also makes us crazy about them.  What drives us nuts about them, and makes us want to scream, hit them, or get a divorce, is part of why we chose them to begin with.  It's easy, and convenient, to forget one part of the conflict, so we can focus on the other, but it's all there, all the time.

So, thanks, Chuck.  Yes, I agree that if the employer in question reduces compensation by 40%, I'm going to quit.  But no, I'm not going to re-increase my fees.  And I'm going to continue to discount them if it's not easy enough for the patient to pay my preferred fee.  Sorry.  I still love you, though.

No.

Last Friday, July 9, one of our neighbors wrote to me privately.  The title of the e-mail was "Were You at Tuesday's Meeting?"

The content was "I think Dan Samaria is becoming increasingly addle-brained.   It's just painful to watch and listen to.  Not that he ever had much in the way of cognitive skills, but it's getting worse.  As long as the majority of voters in this city(sic*) stay uninformed and/or treat electing someone to the commission as the equivalent of a participation trophy in little league, we are so screwed."

*Municipalities in Florida can be either cities, towns, or villages.  Biscayne Park has chosen to call itself a Village.  We are either a village or a municipality.  We are not a city.

I responded as follows: "You answered your own question.  Did I listen to Tuesday's meeting?  'It's just [too] painful to watch and listen to.'  And it's not just Dan.  It's also Ginny and Judi, and I'm disappointed in Art's minimal participation.  Mac is great, but he can in no way contain himself."

To which our neighbor replied: "Agree on all counts."

We've had good Commissions and not as good ones.  But we crashed badly at the end of 2016, and we have not recovered.  If some of us thought Ginny O'Halpin would help us get back on an adaptive path, we were wrong.  And if we thought Dan Samaria would somehow find a way to stay on the adaptive path onto which he had stumbled, and was being propped up, we were wrong about that, too.

And we've had the same problem with managers.  We stumbled at first with Frank Spence, but it was an honest mistake, and we had to figure ourselves out, in terms of turning over functioning and a good deal of decision-making to a manager.  But then, we had three excellent managers in Ana Garcia, Heidi Siegel, and Sharon Ragoonan.  And we gave it all up for meaninglessness and mediocrity.  If we thought Mario Diaz would get us back on track, we guessed wrong again.

I always regretted, or complained, that Village residents who had been Commissioners stopped attending Commission meetings once the meetings were no longer about themselves.  And at this point, I myself have stopped bothering.  I was faithful through the Truppman et al years, and at the beginning of the next phase, but the whole thing has become too frustrating, too infuriating, and too tragic, and I've just quit tuning in.  Would I go if I could go in person?  I don't know.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  The stalwart of all stalwarts was Dan Keys, and he's quit going, too.  Although I think he quit because he was no longer a member, and Don, of the P&P Board.  Bob (and Janey) Anderson also used to come after Bob retired from wanting to continue to be a Commissioner.  As far as I know, they still watch virtually.  So maybe Bob will take the torch from Keys.  But whoever is there to observe is doing no more than watching a train wreck happen.

The person who wrote to me said it seemed as if voting for someone to be on the Commission was like giving them the empty prize that otherwise represents a "participation trophy in little league."  Yeah, that's one way to put it.  And in its way, it's not wrong.  But I think it misses the point.  The point is that some kids really like little league, and either they're good at it, or they're not.  Other kids are bored, or they want to do what their friends are doing, or their parents urge them to play.  Others maybe just want that participation trophy.   And that's our problem.  That last thing.  We've had way too many Commissioners, especially lately, and now, who don't want anything.  At least they don't want anything that has anything to do with the Village.  What they want is that participation trophy.  So they can pat themselves on the back.

I've seen it elsewhere around here, too.  There are some people who join boards like high school students who want to go to good colleges join clubs: it pads their resumes, and makes them appear more than they are.  Do you want to know what they do once they get appointed to a board?  Nothing.  That was never the intent.  I know of one new board member who, after one meeting, which was attended "virtually," decided that s/he should be the vice president of that board.

We do have some neighbors who talk as if they wanted something (for the Village).  Some of them join boards.  And they criticize the successions of Commissions and Commissioners.  But the ones I have in mind steadfastly refuse to run for Commission.  Claiming to know the right answer to everything, and wallowing in criticism of everyone else, is easy.  Being at the place where the buck stops?  Um, apparently not.  I know people who bitterly criticized the Commissioners who preceded me, and they supported me in my first campaign.  Then, once I became a Commissioner, they criticized me exactly as they had criticized my predecessors, and they advocated for the Truppman wrecking crew.  Then, they criticized the Truppman squad, just as they had criticized me, and just as they had criticized my predecessors.  But never, not once, will these people themselves show us all how it's done correctly.

So, no, I did not tune into last week's Commission meeting.  If you did, I hope your life is empty enough that it didn't seem to you to be a waste of your valuable time.

Many More Than Two Can Tango. (Especially If There's No Dancing.)

This coming Friday night -- July 9 -- Orchestra Miami is putting on an extremely interesting tango concert.  It's a tribute to Astor Piazzolla, who was the undisputed king of modern tango music.

Piazzolla was an Argentinian musician whose instrument was the bandoneon.  This is a small instrument that is closely related to the accordion, except the accordion has keys, as does a piano, as well as buttons, and the bandoneon only has buttons.  The bandoneon is considered an extremely difficult instrument to master.

Piazzolla was classically trained, and he went to France to learn composition.  His main teacher told him not to try to learn to compose European-style classical music, but to stick to his tango roots.  So Piazzolla took his teacher's advice and became the master of modernized tango.

A collection of exceptional musicians, and a conductor, will be performing Piazzolla's music on Friday.  The venue is the Scottish Rite Temple at 471 NW 3 St in downtown Miami.  Ticket prices -- Orchestra Miami does not charge enough for what they do -- are $15 regular adult admission, $12 for seniors, $5 for children, and $36 for a "family pack," which is intended to include two adults and two children.  There is also a "live-streaming" opportunity, and the minimum requested price is $5.  If you want live-streaming, you can sign yourself up through orchestramiami.org.*

The ensemble will be 24 strings, a bandoneon, a guitar, and a singer.  That's aside from the conductor.

If you're not familiar with Piazzolla, or not terribly familiar with tango music, this concert is not to be missed.  If you are familiar with tango, modern tango, and Piazzolla, this concert is not to be missed.  I would say probably to bring tissue.

* Please note comment.  Ticket prices are not correct.  The actual prices are higher than the e-blast showed, but they're still low for a concert like this.  If this is disappointing, you can bring less tissue.

"When You Hear Hoofbeats, Think Horses, Not Zebras."

There are several sustaining medical maxims, and the title of this post is one of them.  It means that when there are indicators of a condition, think first of the most common cause of the complaint.  Don't first think of the rarest possible causes.

For years now, we've had increasing collections of flood water in the streets after even normal rains.  The drains don't work as they did.  We have increasing erosion of the streets, including cracking.

Very recently, one ocean front building in Surfside collapsed, and last night, another was evacuated for what was considered imminent danger.  And Miami Beach has more, and more sustained, street flooding after rains than we do.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist," as they say, to conclude that with climate change, and rising seas and water tables, there is less opportunity for water collections to dissipate, and increasing damage is done by this increased water, from above and below the streets and buildings.

But still, there are people who can think of all kinds of possible reasons for the increased water, or they deny that there is increased water, and attribute the water damage to something other than water.  

Either they say they don't hear the hoofbeats, or they're pretty sure those hoofbeats are caused by, you know, the zebra population.

It's nice living in south Florida, near the ocean.  It has advantages.  It also has disadvantages.  We need to be grown up enough and responsible enough to recognize those disadvantages, and confront or accommodate them.  

This isn't the zoo, where we get to amuse ourselves observing the zebras in their pens.  It's the open plain, where we're going to get stampeded by wild horses, if we don't do something about it.  It's inconvenient, and it costs money?  Yeah, and your point is...?

"The Long and Winding Road"

The fact is, I'm not generally a fan of Paul McCartney songs, at least not the later ones.  But the title works, so it was the way to go.

My mother lives in Surfside.  She's 94 1/2, and she's been rendered totally nonfunctional, because of strokes.  We have aides for her, because there's nothing she can do for herself, and I see her once or twice a week.  The most regular of those times is Sunday mornings.  I get food, I bring it over, I make coffee, and we have breakfast, for at least a little while until she wants to go back to bed/sleep.  We try to do video visits with my daughter, son-in-law, and my grandchildren (my mother's only great grandchildren), but she can't pay much attention, and she can't hear what people say to her.  But it's part of my ritual.  She knows who I am, and every indicator I have is that these visits are important to her.

Normally, I go down to the 79th St causeway to go to Miami Beach (because I resent that Bay Harbor Islands didn't take away the toll as they said decades ago they would -- they increased it), and then, I come north on Collins to Surfside.  But last Sunday, I already knew that wasn't going to work.  I (rightly) assumed the streets would be closed because of the building that collapsed on Collins at 87th St.  So I had to work my way around some other way.  I was trying to get to 88th St and Abbott Avenue.  It wasn't easy.

Many streets have long been closed or capped, and egresses from them, like the southern end of Abbott Avenue, are one way at the end (not the one way I needed for half a block), and you have to turn.  I had to go a different way, and many blocks out of my way, to work my way north of 89th St, and then south on Abbott.  There were several avenues I couldn't take north, because there were no turns into those avenues.

The Town of Surfside did this years ago, because they didn't want people driving -- or "cutting" -- through Surfside streets, on their way north from Miami Beach, or south from BHI or Bal Harbour.  It's made a mess of trying simply to get from one place to another.  And it's no easier for residents of Surfside.  If you want to go south, you can really only do this by going to Harding.  If you want to go north, you need to get to Collins.

In the past, there have been partial and temporary movements to do a similar thing, for the same reason, in BP.  Fortunately for us, and everyone else, these little crusades generally peter out without any action taken.  About a year ago, we had another version, and this one proposed changing the character, capacity, and rhythm of 6th Avenue.

These are public streets, with "public" meaning everyone.  If people don't want to live in Surfside, then they should live on Indian Creek Island.  If people don't want to live on open BP streets, or on the one with four lanes and a 30 MPH speed limit, then they should live in culs-de-sac.  I know Indian Creek Island is more expensive than Surfside, and a cul-de-sac is more expensive than 6th  Avenue.  But if that's what you want, then go live there.  Don't make your fiscal limitations everyone else's problem.