In the Meantime, Maybe We Should Just Talk About Movies.

I developed symptoms, and took my first coronavirus test, this past Friday, on December 24.  It was a home rapid test which I got from the drug store, and it was positive.  Hence, canceled trip to family.  But I was looking for some angle, so I tried two "professional" tests at the public testing center in North Miami.  That was Sunday, December 26.  The rapid test came back positive a couple of hours later, and the PCR, which is a better quality test, came back positive the next day (yesterday).  I've been reading that tests may convert to negative in as few as 5-7 days in vaccinated people, one of whom I am.  So, my plan is to go back to the NoMi center on Thursday or Friday this week, which will be about one week after I developed symptoms.  I'm hoping by then, I might be negative.  If I am, I can get the fuck out of here, and try to rearrange some kind of time with my family.

But since the crash of last Friday, it's been whatever work I could do from home, and movies.  Ones I've seen plenty of times.  Which ones they've been on which days is becoming a blur.  "A Mighty Wind" was recent, but I don't remember if it was yesterday or maybe the day before.  (I love all Chris Guest movies.)  And then, of course, there were the two movies I streamed on Netflix and Prime, which one of my friends installed on my Roku.  (When I say one of my friends installed them, I mean she set me up with her sign-in credentials.  I don't have to know her user name or password.  It's all already activated.  I don't watch Prime movies unless she's here, because you usually have to pay for Prime movies, and I don't ask my friends to pay for my entertainment.  But "Being the Ricardos" was free, even on Prime, so I watched it.)

I've had continuing conversations with other friends and BP neighbors about the two movies I streamed and didn't like ("Being the Ricardos" and "Don't Look Up"), and they certainly had perspectives that didn't come across that way to me.  Hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But I must admit that I was surprised that anyone wouldn't have loved "Big Fish," and that Mac Kennedy was as disappointed as he was.  (But then again, he, and BrambleWitch, loved "In America," which I just found depressing, and an essentially bad, if well-deserved, commentary on America and life here.)

Mac seemed to conclude that "Big Fish" had it right as a story, but he didn't like so much of the imagination, and maybe some of the mystery, controlled by a film-maker, instead of imagined by the reader.  He didn't say he read "the book," but he thought it would have been better left in book form than converted to Tim Burton's preferred fantastical imagery in a movie.  That's just how Mac felt about it.

Anyway, until I can get a negative coronavirus test, so I can qualify to fly on an airplane, I'm sort of stuck.  I've finished all the work that was available to me (except hooking up my new VCR, which I'm too annoyed to do right now), and I had no appointments scheduled this week (because I wasn't supposed to be here), so I'm looking for more movie recommendations.  Absent that, it's back to my regular stash.  Which isn't bad.  (That's why I've kept them.)  I could just use some less familiar stimulation.

You got anything?

PS: I already said I love Chris Guest movies.  I also love Kevin Smith movies, and I even like the stupid ones, like "Clerks" and "Clerks 2."  The off-the-charts best one is "Dogma."  I never tire (well, I might have to start amending "never tire") of watching Sherlock Holmes movies -- the old Basil Rathbone ones, and the new Benedict Cumberbatch ones.  And I have at least 100 or more other movies, all of which are great, and a significant number of which are on videocassette, which means I can't watch them until I set up my new VCR, which is a huge pain, because of the need to spend an hour or more snaking wires.  Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, I do understand there was a somewhat recent TV series in which either Holmes or Watson was played by a woman, and it had a modern setting.  But since I don't have regular TV, I've never seen it.  I don't even know the name of the series, or for how many seasons it lasted.  If it's available for free on Hulu or Vudu (which are on my Roku), I could watch that.  I watched one of the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes movies, and I didn't like it.  Too modernistic, and too violent.

Come To Think About It, What Do I Care?

I was supposed to leave here early this morning, to go see my family in Massachusetts.  I was supposed to be there all week.  My Massachusetts family are my daughter, my son-in-law, and my grandchildren.  I'm very hungry for those people.

But I had to cancel my trip, because I got what I thought was a cold on Friday, and it turned out I tested positive for the coronavirus.  Some self-absorbed and rebellious idiot who was most likely not vaccinated was prancing around unmasked, blowing coronaviruses out of his or her mouth.  And because of that antic, I couldn't see my family up north (I've been eagerly awaiting this for months), and I can't interact with anyone else, either.  Because I have what feels to me like a minor cold, but which is accompanied by a positive coronavirus test.

And that's how it's said to be right now, with the omicron variant.  Vaccinated people, like me, who get infected, wind up with something that feels like a normal cold.

Not so, though, for the unvaccinated people.  They can get sick, or very sick.  They can wind up in the hospital, in the ICU, intubated, or they can die.  

And I wouldn't want that.  I wouldn't want to be the cause of someone else's misery.  Or injury.  And certainly not their death.  At least in theory, I wouldn't.

But if I'm being entirely honest with myself, and looking at this clearly, it appears this kind of concern is a one-way street.  Somebody else didn't care what happened to me, or what consequences this created for my life.  They cared only about their twisted selves, and their bizarre and as yet unexplained theory that somehow, public health measures were an unfair imposition on them.  And tragically, the governor in this state enables this kind of distorted thinking.  (I'm still curious to know what they think about the legal requirement that they got vaccinated in order to go to school, and that they get their children vaccinated, at least for the same reason, and that the government requires them and their children to wear seatbelts in the car, and that the government requires them to have automobile liability insurance, and that the government requires them to obey speed limits, and STOP signs and red lights, even if in their judgment, it doesn't look like any other cars are coming, so there's really no reason to stop.)

I still don't want to be around my family now, and I don't want to be around anyone else (people I know and care about, or any normal and decent people) until I convert to a negative test.  But as for the other people, who prance blithely around, unprotected and unprotecting, smugly infecting others, what do I care what happens to them?  They might get infected, and sick, and possibly die?  Because they chose not to get vaccinated?   Apparently, according to their theory, that's not my problem.

And if matters could be made any worse, since I wasn't packing for today, and I had a "cold," I watched two movies yesterday: "Being the Ricardos" and "Don't Look Up."  I didn't like either of them.

Do You Feel Like Going Anywhere For New Year's Eve?

Here's what Orchestra Miami has cooked up:

"– On December 31, 2021, Orchestra Miami presents the ultimate New Year’s Eve Celebration- an unforgettable, family-friendly, beachfront concert of Beethoven’s iconic Symphony N. 9 (Ode to Joy), performed by Miami’s premiere professional orchestra, Orchestra Miami, led by Miami native and Artistic Director Elaine Rinaldi with an allstar line-up of soloists. Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco has crafted a bilingual translation of Schiller’s poem, which will be sung by a 60-voice community choir accompanied by the orchestra."

They go on with this description:

"Culminating with a New Year’s Eve fireworks display, this concert will be the top family-friendly New Year’s Eve event in Miami, with anticipated attendance of 10,000 in-person guests, plus many thousands of online viewers. The event takes place on the beach, east of Collins Avenue between 21st and 22nd streets (Collins Park) in Miami Beach. The festivities start at 7 PM with performances by members of the orchestra, and a special screening of the documentary 'Following the Ninth' about Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and what it represents to cultures around the world. Orchestra Miami takes the stage at 10 PM and the performance ends with a spectacular fireworks display sponsored by the City of Miami Beach."

So, you get that we're talking about trendy SoBe, on the actual beach.  If you need any more details, there's this:

"Four world-class artists join Orchestra Miami as the soloists in the choral finale of Beethoven’s 9 th Symphony. The soloists are Miami native and internationally acclaimed soprano Elaine Alvarez, one of the world’s great Verdi mezzo-sopranos Marianne Cornetti, Miami native and internationally acclaimed tenor Russell Thomas and Metropolitan opera bass-baritone Kevin Short."

What's supposed to happen between 7:00 and 10:00?

Orchestra Miami’s performance begins with The Star-Spangled Banner, and also includes the “Champagne Trio” from Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, and the “Champagne Galop” by Danish composer Hans Christian Lumbye, followed by Beethoven’s iconic Symphony N. 9 in D Elaine Rinaldi, Founder and Artistic Director PO Box 7598 ~ Miami, FL 33255-7598 info@orchestramiami.org ~ (305) 274-2103 www.OrchestraMiami.org Minor, Op. 125."

You're inclined to worry?  You should be.  You and 10K people at a concert?  Elaine...?

“'Now that the majority of people in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties have been vaccinated, we felt that New Year’s Eve was the perfect occasion for a big celebration' says Orchestra Miami Artistic Director Elaine Rinaldi. 'I was sorry that we couldn’t celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday as originally planned in 2020, but moving the celebration to 2021 in our 15th anniversary season gave us an additional reason to celebrate! I am most proud of the fact that with this performance, Orchestra Miami will have performed all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies outdoors in our public spaces for free!'” 

It's hard to argue with that woman.  And in case the last two words didn't make it clear, they're doing this show for free.  Well, you don't pay.  CMB and some other funders spotted you even the idea of a ticket price.  Although...

You have to find your own parking (23rd St is closest), and bring your own folding chair, and bring your own food and drinks, and not in glass bottles, unless...

"For patrons who wish to have reserved seating, VIP packages are available for purchase. There are two levels available: for $300 per person, patrons will receive a reserved complimentary parking space, reserved premium seating at the concert, bar access throughout the event (alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages), and self-serve buffet and light bites during the concert, sponsored by Tripping Animals Brewery, Total Wine and More and Wy Not Eat Miami."

It seems like a helluva way to spend NYE.  How much were you going to spend anyway?  For more info, and to snag the VIP accommodations to which you are entitled, you can go to www.orchestramiami.org, or call them at 305-274-2103.

I can't join you, because I'll be up north with my family, but if I were here, I'd mask myself up, and go to this.  And it would be worth the $300.  Or $600, if I got lucky.

So, Mac, You Wanted to Talk About Movies.

This is not an answerable question, but it's not hard to wonder from time to time, when you're appreciating a movie, what's the best movie ever made.

Obviously, the answer, if there were one, would depend on the tastes of the viewer.

And there are thousands of movies from which to choose.

There are old classics, and new classics.  (I hope we have agreed that no remake comes close to making the list.)  There are great movies that might not be classics yet.

There are genres, within which some movies are better than others.  And there's no way to compare the "best" movie in one genre with the "best" movie in another genre.

I have a lot of movies.  I have more than do some people, and fewer than do other people.  I've acquired more movies than I have now, because I get rid of the ones I don't want to be bothered to keep.  I particularly like the ones I do keep, and I watch them repeatedly, although some more often than others.

Tonight I watched a movie I've seen several times, but not often.  And I would ask you to consider that it is well in the running for the best movie ever made.  Have you ever seen "Big Fish?"

"Big Fish" is unique in that it's structured like a fantasy in the way all Tim Burton movies are structured.  And like all or most Tim Burton movies, it includes Helena Bonham Carter.  The biggest star is Albert Finney, and the other big stars are Jessica Lange, Ewan McGregor, and Billy Crudup.  There are smaller roles given to people who would otherwise be bigger stars, like Danny Devito and Steve Buscemi.  And Robert Guillaume, who might already have had a stroke by the time this movie was made, is a featured actor.

Another interesting feature of "Big Fish" is that Albert Finney and Helena Bonham Carter, who are both English, and Ewan McGregor, who is Scottish, all have American southern accents.

As I said, what's the best movie ever made is not an answerable question.  But I'm curious if you know this one, what you think of it, and what movie most appeals to you.

You're Not Going to the Movies Tonight, Are You?

On Wednesday, I saw a "free screening" of the Steven Spielberg remake of 1961's "West Side Story."  Before we go on, let me make two assumptions: 1) you've seen the 1961 "West Side Story," and 2) you've seen remakes of at least some movies.

Tonight is the official opening (the one that's not free) of the remade "West Side Story."  You might know about this.  You might be anticipating this opening.  You might be planning to go, either tonight or some other time.  So, let's talk.

No one in the world will dispute that "West Side Story" is a classic.  It was Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim at perhaps their best.  It was a great movie.  Is it dated?  Sure it is.  It's now 60 years old, and it was not dated at the time.  My guess is that almost all of the performers -- certainly the main characters -- are now dead.  Except for Rita Moreno, who has an important acting role in the remake, and was one of the Executive Producers.  It turns out that setting aside anything else, Rita Moreno has a bit of an axe to grind about the '61 movie: she is in reality Puerto Rican, she played the second leading female part (behind Natalie Wood, who played a Puerto Rican woman and was not Puerto Rican), and Rita Moreno was required to use make-up to darken her skin a bit, to make her more conspicuously Hispanic.  She still views this as racist.

So, let's talk about the remade "West Side Story."  I haven't seen the original since maybe around the time it came out, but as I recall the details, the remake is the same story as the original.  The music is the same, although replayed by current musicians.  And somehow not as prominent.  (If you're asking me if I think someone toned down Leonard Bernstein, yes, that's what I think someone did.  If you're thinking "but this is a musical, and the music was a central point, and no one should tone down the music," I won't disagree with you.)  I didn't detect any changes in the lyrics, but I read somewhere that there were some minor adjustments.  What I noted was the word "fuck" a few times in the remake.  I don't remember that from the original.  I don't mean "hey, Officer Krupke, krup you."  That was preserved.  It was somewhere else.

In my opinion, the remake was what I call overproduced.  There was too much stuff in it.  There were too many people in it.  The dance at the gym was horribly crowded.  Tempos were adjusted, to make them more dramatic.  And those are the least of the problems.

Parts of this movie were in Spanish.  With no subtitles.  I've read Spielberg's explanation of this bizarre decision, and he claims it was his effort to be respectful to Hispanic people.  I don't object to Hispanic people speaking Spanish, or French people speaking French, or Russian people speaking Russian.  But if you're making that into a movie, which you're going to show in the United States, and which some people who don't speak those languages have to pay to see, then it seems to me you have to let them know what's being said.  Spielberg had to decide whom he was willing to disrespect.

I wish I could ask Rita Moreno what was going through her mind.  No, no darkening make-up for her this time.  She played the part of an old Puerto Rican woman whose gringo husband had died, and who now owned by herself the hardware store where Tony worked.  I don't know if the woman who played Rita Moreno's old part -- Anita -- wore darkening make-up, but if she didn't, she didn't need any.  She was the darkest of all of them, except the very few African-Americans.  And the dialogue continued to refer to mainland Americans as "white."  Rita Moreno's whole complaint about racism came crashing violently down.  If she, as an "Executive Producer," had no more influence than that over Spielberg and whomever else, she should have quit.  I was 11 in 1961, and I don't remember having been offended.  I was offended this time.  If the point of Moreno's complaint was to reduce stereotyping, and racist portrayals, I agree with her.  This remake failed badly to do that, even setting aside that that was the whole point of "Romeo and Juliet" and "West Side Story."

The singing was mostly good, or good enough.  The dancing was mixed.  So was the choreography: some was great, and some barely passable.  The acting was variable, with some of it -- Riff and some of the others -- having been excellent, and others of it having been weak.  The guy who played Tony is very good-looking, and he's a nice singer.  But he's a bit of a stiff as an actor.

The costumes were good, and sometimes excellent.  The dresses and frilly skirts on the women were very colorful, with nicely textured fabrics (great effect in the dance moves and some of the other actions), and they looked every bit as sexy as you would have expected them to.

The setting was still '50s NYC, including old cars and contemporary styles.

The bottom line is this: I have no worldly idea what led Spielberg to want to do this remake, and I wish he hadn't.  He added nothing at all, and some of his decisions made things worse.  It is extremely rare that a movie remake is not worse than the original.  'Nuf said?

Now, if you want to watch something very interesting, watch a movie called "Across the Universe."  It's a novel story, and the music is Beatles music.  There are considerable, and very interesting, adjustments made to how the music is performed.  I forgot at the moment if my copy is on videocasette or DVD, but I'll be happy to loan it to you.  Do yourself a favor regarding the "West Side Story" remake, though.

Eww! Is This the New Scam?

Twice, a couple of days apart, I've gotten e-mails supposedly from USPS.  That's what they say.  And they're notated as "no reply."

The e-mails have a long code for what "USPS" claims it tried to deliver to my house, and it says it was unsuccessful in making the delivery.  They gave various possible reasons for the failure of the delivery, but none of them applied to me.  And the first day I got this e-mail, I had in fact already received my USPS mail that day.  So clearly, they were able to deliver mail to my house.

What these e-mails were proposing was that they would try again to deliver to me, but I would have to pay $1.99 for the second attempt.  (On those occasions when USPS needs something like a signature in order to deliver something, and I'm not home, they leave a sticker on my door telling me either that they'll try again the next day, or that I have to go to the post office to sign for and pick up whatever it is.  They have never charged money for a second attempt at delivery.)

So I wanted to see what this process was like.  If you click on whatever button it is, to say you want them to make the second attempt, and it's worth $1.99 to you to have them do it, you're taken to a screen where you enter your payment information, including your credit card number.  Yeah, right.  End of project.

The question, then, is whether this is just some latest scam (if I gave them my credit card information, would they bill me $1.99, or would they bill me hundreds or thousands of dollars?), or if it is, in fact, the result of new levels of dysfunction imposed on USPS.  And if you want to know the cause of those new levels of dysfunction, I can offer you two words: Louis DeJoy.

My more confident guess is it's the former.  But there's a limit to how much I would bet it's not the latter.

"Anonymous," and Louis Diraimondo,

Please note that this blog is called "Biscayne Park -- a Village Voice."  I started the blog in 2011, and most of the voice is mine.  But not absolutely all of it is mine.  There are other authors of posts, and there are many commenters.

You are both very wrong to think this blog is about me.  Or about Chuck and Roxy Ross.  It is not.  It's about Biscayne Park.  Topics of posts are about the Park, or they are intended to appeal to the interests of people who live here.  I gather the BP parts of this are way over your heads.  Understood, but still, please butt out.

The two of you are breathtakingly childish, and unable to pay attention to the matters at hand.  Please try to understand that this is your problem, and that no one else cares about your limitations and fixations.

I have let you both know that you are not welcome to participate here, because your participation is meaningless and childlike.  And I have told you both that when you comment, I delete your comments without looking at them.

If your lives are so empty that you have time and interest to shit on this blog, then I'm sorry for you, and I hope you both find something more productive to occupy yourselves.  (I also hope you take to wearing diapers.)  But this is not my problem.  It is not the problem of people who read this blog, and are interested in discussing the topics raised.  It's just your problem.

Best of luck.

Fred

PS: "Anonymous," if for any reason you think of yourself as an adult (I know, it's hard to imagine why you would), then tell us who you are.  If you (correctly) think of yourself as a child, this is not the right place for you.  We have a recreation center, with a park, and children's toys, and you should go amuse yourself there.

We Should Probably Pave "Paradise," and Not to Put Up a Parking Lot.

It turns out we have a few problems that we can correct with one solution.

This morning, I watched a car drive over a median, so that instead of driving a half block to an opportunity to make a U-turn, the driver could just much more directly enter the lane that goes in the desired direction.  The people who live in a house more or less across the street from me do this all the time.  And lots of people use the medians for temporary parking.

Also, the medians look terrible.  There's a disorganized collection of mismatched trees, and no understory.  What's beneath the trees is irregular patches of various kinds of grass, weeds, and raw dirt.  No self-respecting municipality would ever tolerate foliage like this.

And our streets are very narrow.  When there's a mail truck, or a lawn service truck, or a (Sc)Amazon truck, they stop in the street, and drivers behind them have to drive on the medians to get by.

So maybe the answer is just to pave the medians.  We'll officially make them into what they get used for, and stop pretending they're what the name is supposed to suggest.  They look awful anyway, so it's really no loss if we replace the irregular patches of various kinds of grass, weeds, and raw dirt with macadam.  If we want to, we can keep the trees, so we can continue to pretend we're a "Tree City USA," and that we care about taller foliage.  No real municipality would have a tree arrangement like this, but we're not a real municipality.  We've even had some recent Commissioners who have called that spade the spade that it is, and lobbied for us to unincorporate, on the theory that Miami Shores, for example, would absorb us.  As if Miami Shores would want this, and us.  Why would Miami Shores want a place, and people, who are as un-self-respecting as we are?

 

Something to Be Proud Of.

I was a Commissioner for three years, from the end of 2013 to the end of 2016.

Being a Commissioner is often ponderous work, and it frequently involves some very mundane and not particularly interesting things.  Most of it is usually simply a matter of keeping things going.  The individual issues, which include things like variances, can be interesting, and problematic, but they don't happen often.

I moved here in the middle of 2005, and the Village election at the end of that year included a decision to turn running of the Village over to a professional manager.  So that was a different kind of project for the Commissions, and we generally did well with it, including when there was a reason to have to get a new manager.  The only times we botched it were after 2016, when the Commissions were, and still are, dysfunctional, and could not agree to choose a competent manager.  Their majorities really never wanted anything, and they never made an attempt at adaptive functioning.

Also, the first new Commission I experienced completed a project which had already been begun, which was to erect a Public Works building on 109th St.  So that was an unusual accomplishment.  Some time before 2013, a Commission and manager erected an entry sign at the bottom of the Village, on 6th Avenue.

But the Commission of which I was a part did some very unusual things.  And it could not have done those things without the participation, guidance, and leadership of our then manager, Heidi Siegel.  It should be noted, by the way, that Heidi Siegel was like most of our managers in never before having been a full municipal manager.  So some of what she did was on-the-job learning.

While I was on the Commission, we did a dramatic renovation of the log cabin.  We built an administration building.  We outsourced sanitation.  Roxy Ross continued her annual "Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service" events.  Dan Keys supervised his most dramatic and conspicuous landscaping project, around the lower 6th Avenue entry sign.  We got several other new Village entry signs at the top of Griffing Boulevard, 10th Avenue, and some other spots.

Not every Village resident agreed with each of these initiatives, and the five member Commission was not always unanimous about them.  But this was a noteworthy and unusual collection of improvements made by the Commission of which I was a part, and I'm very proud to have participated.  Frankly, I haven't heard stories of any Commission that accomplished as much as we did.

My motto was always "For the Best We Can Be."  We certainly didn't get all the way there, but we made some noteworthy improvements for the Village.  I hope that even some non-Commission Village residents, as well as some Commissioners who may have resisted these improvements, are proud of the ways the Village has been made better.  I hope they feel that way about our prominent southern entrance sign, our other entrance signs, the log cabin, and the administration building.  We were trying to perfect the functioning of WastePro, when a new Commission came in and ignored the problems and any attempts to solve them.  I don't consider that the fault of the Commission of which I was a part.  We did the best we could.

My Mistake. The Net Metering FPL Problem.

Net metering is a two-way electric meter.  When you buy electricity from the grid (FPL), the meter moves in one direction.  When you sell electricity to the grid, the meter moves in the other direction.

It was my understanding that when FPL buys electricity from someone who has it to sell (like someone who produces his or her own electricity with solar panels), it pays less for the electricity it buys than it charges for the electricity it sells.  This turns out not to be true, for the moment.  For some reason, FPL buys for the same price as it sells.  This would sound like a system whereby FPL couldn't make any money, except for the fact that only a tiny proportion of the population produce electricity to sell to FPL.  FPL make their money on everyone else.  And this arrangement is about to come to an end.

It turns out that one Florida legislator (Senator, if I remember correctly from the radio story I heard today) has introduced legislation that would allow FPL to pay producers only the amount it would have cost FPL to produce the electricity it no longer has to sell to the consumer, because the consumer is producing his or her own electricity.

I have to say that as much as don't like this, because it means I won't be able to continue to pay $10.05 a month, every month of the year, I must admit there's something fair about this proposed/impending new arrangement.  The old/current (excuse the pun) arrangement actually sounds a bit stupid, although it's compensated for by the minimum bill, even if I use zero net monthly electricity.  FPL still has to produce electricity, for me, too, when the sun isn't shining, and it has to have and protect the infrastructure to get it to me.

Of course, the alternate reasoning could well be that I'm already taking care of FPL by producing so much electricity that I'm way behind, and FPL is getting from me plenty of electricity it then sells to someone else.  But still, if it pays me the same amount it then charges someone else, then it's not making the profit it would need.  The Florida Public Service Commission should be monitoring this, to make sure FPL makes the profit it needs, but a fair and not excessive profit, but in a far right wing state like Florida, it's unlikely the PSC makes decisions that are protective and in the interests of consumers.

Also, and remembering the far right political leanings of this state, it's most likely that this move is intended to inhibit consumers from installing solar panels, because once a rule like this takes effect, those solar panels are of significantly less value to the consumer who paid for them.  Or to look at it the other way around, it will take a lot longer to pay yourself back for the cost of the panels.  But still, you do save something, and you do decrease the need to burn non-renewable sources of energy -- you feel more like a solution than like a problem, if feeling like a solution instead of feeling like a problem is your thing.  And those non-renewable sources of energy are going to be depleted and go away at some point anyway (in case you ever wondered why they call them non-renewable).  If you're like an ostrich, and you keep your head buried far enough in the sand, you can try to ignore that reality for a while longer.  Although with water tables rising, you can't keep your head buried too deep.

So, part of the party -- part of my party -- might at some point be over, maybe before too long.  But it won't all be over.  Am I going to have to pay $15-$20 a month, instead of $10 a month?  So what?  It's a lot less than the up to $150 a month I used to pay during the summer months, of which there are around five or six per year here.

"Energy Vampires"

I read an interesting story on my homepage today.  I know about this, but it was a nice compilation.

They were talking about those electric appliances that continue to consume electricity even when they're turned off.  They called them "energy vampires."  It seems like a very apt categorization.

The suggestion was that consumers plug these devices and appliances into energy strips (or unplug them when they're not actively in use), and turn off the energy strip when you're not using whatever it is.  That will stop any electricity from coming to them, which will reduce electricity consumption, and therefore reduce your electric bill.  I've done this with many devices and appliances in my house.  When I need them, I plug them back in, or turn back on the energy strip.

Fish pond equipment is not a practical example, because you can't turn off the pump and aerator when there are fish in the pond.  They suggest you get a high efficiency and energy-saving pump.  And few people have fish ponds anyway.  Some people have indoor aquaria, and you're sort of stuck if you use a heater.  The fish might not survive, if you don't use one.  But they do suggest putting the aquarium in a room that's not cool, and insulating it.  And you can unplug the light when you're not watching the fish.

Almost everyone has a hot water heater.  It keeps the water hot 24 hours a day, and one of the things that allows that to happen is a recirculator.  They suggest putting your recirculator on a timer, so it's not heating and recirculating water let's say in the middle of the night.  I'm not sure how good an idea this is, because it only saves an estimated $28-$93 per year.  However, what you can do, if you don't have many people in the house, is switch from a tank-type water heater to one of those heaters (electric or gas) that doesn't have a reservoir, and heats only when you turn on the hot water.  You can save a significant amount of money that way.

A "set-top box" appears to have something to do with audio-video electronics.  The cost savings per year is only in the range of $16-$57 per year, but a power strip costs less than that, and you only have to buy it once.  That's what I use.  The individual components also use power, even when they're off.  So I plug everything, including the TV, into one power strip.

Did you know you can save $111 per year by unplugging an electric fan when you're not using it, even when you've turned it off?  Most of mine are wired ceiling fans, which use very little power, so I can't do more than turn them off.  But I have one in my garage for when I work out.  That one gets unplugged when I'm not working out, which is almost all the time.

They had one entry called "24/7 lights."  I don't know who burns lights 24/7, but it can cost you anywhere from $4 per year to $104 per year to do it.

It would be a real pain to turn off your computer when you're not using it, and if you don't turn it off, the good news is that it will cost you only $1-$49 per year.

Here's what they say about your modem: it will cost $5-$17 per year to run it (very little), but "unplug your modem before going to bed.  You don't need internet access when you're asleep."  It's very little savings, but the theory is good.

All chargers should be unplugged when you're not charging something.  Not a ton of savings with each one, but they add up.

I don't know anything about video games, but they do say the consoles are "another energy vampire."  You should unplug those consoles, and take your video game out of "instant-on mode if you don't need it."  As I said, I know nothing about this, so I don't know what constitutes needing instant-on mode.

A very big offender is central AC units, but I'm not sure anyone can unplug them down here at any moment during half the year.

An electric clothes dryer costs $.33 an hour to run.  You can't do much about that, unless you want to get a gas dryer, or hang your clothes on a line, to let "god" dry them in "his" spare time.  But you can unplug the dryer when you're not using it (that's what I do), which is almost all the time.

CFL and LED light bulbs cost a lot, but they save a lot, too.

"Your coffee maker requires a lot of energy while in use, so it's best to keep it unplugged while it isn't."  Words to the wise there.

Purists that they are, they also suggest unplugging your microwave (if you can) when you're not using it, because you have a watch or something, so you don't need the microwave on all the time just to know what time it is.

The rest of the stuff mostly applies to up north, or it's small potatoes.

As an aside, my electric bill sank to $10.05 a month sometime in early 2020, and it's never gone higher, even in two summers.  If you can afford to throw some solar panels up there, I highly recommend you do it.

If It Makes Anyone Feel Better, I'll Take Some Responsibility.

In the comments from two posts ago ("Doesn't Know the Word Catercorner? Sheesh!"), Commissioner Art Gonzalez was making a point about waning enforcement on 6th Avenue.  Presumably, he was connecting the problem about which all of us complain -- an increasing frequency of car accidents on that avenue -- to the apparent fact that we're not enforcing the speed limit on that avenue as we did in the past.

Art had seemingly finally gotten the statistics he said he had long been requesting, and he showed us dramatically decreasing enforcement, at least as illustrated by a dramatically decreasing rate of speeding tickets written.  As I said, the vast majority of speeding tickets in BP have always been written on 6th Avenue, but there were vastly fewer of them in the past eight years, according to the statistics Art reprinted.

Art began with 2013, when there was an average of 15 tickets per day written in the Village, crashing (excuse the pun) in 2014 to an average of only five tickets a day, and ending in 2016 and thereafter with an average of only two tickets per day written.

We had a few other changes during those years, especially starting in 2013.  We got a new manager, we got a new Commission (it was elected at the end of 2013), we got new Village entry signs, and those old "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs were removed.  I'm not sure I know this for a fact, but I have an impression that the "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs were posted where the newer entry signs are now.  So, it's as if we replaced one kind of "welcome" with another.  We replaced a stern and forbidding "welcome" with a friendly one.

I was elected to the Commission at the end of 2013, and my term ended at the end of 2016.  Because we switched from running our own Village-only elections to piggy-backing onto the general election, all Commission terms were extended for one year.  So my term, which would have been two years, was three years.  Other Commissioners' four year terms became five year terms.  Just that one time, to reset us to the general election schedule.

So, just as enforcement was declining dramatically, and, according to BrambleWitch (and others, I think), accidents were increasing dramatically, I was there, in a position of some authority.  It's true no one brought to my attention the dramatic increase in the frequency of accidents on 6th Avenue, and I didn't know about the dramatic decrease in the frequency of tickets being written there, but I suppose I could have asked for these public records, as Art Gonzalez did.  I wouldn't have known to be looking for anything, but I could just have been blindly curious.

We had not long before all this erected the fancier welcome sign on the corner of 6th Avenue and 113th St, and that was a nice change for us.  We began a very major restoration project at the log cabin, and erection of the new administration building next door.  We outsourced sanitation.  We chose and installed the other welcome signs.  It was not conspicuous to me that we essentially replaced the "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs with the newer signs.

What was less conspicuous (more subtle) was that we might also have replaced a caution, or a warning, with a pretty picture.

So, I apologize for having failed to recognize what was happening on 6th Avenue, especially if, as it appears, it was happening "on my watch."  I don't know if we were all distracted by other projects, or if the people who knew best -- the Village residents who live on 6th Avenue, especially at the corner of 119th St -- were either not clearly enough communicating what was happening, or simply not being heard, or just not being responded-to.  There were five Commissioners at a time, a manager, a police chief, and several police officers.  And a collection of increasingly apprehensive and imperiled Village residents living on that Avenue, near that corner.  Someone should have picked this up.  We didn't.  We failed.  I didn't pick it up.  I failed.

I'm sorry.  But we get it now.  The drastic proposal appears not to be realistic.  But if all we did was patrol, and enforce, as we used to, and add back the "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs, it seems there's every reason to expect a good, satisfying, and reassuring result.  So I hope the current Commission and management correct the mistakes of the past eight years.  We'll all appreciate it if they do.

"Can We All Get Along?"

Rodney King is quoted (misquoted, paraphrased) as having said "Can't we all just get along?"  He didn't say that.  He said "Can we get along?  Can we all get along?  For the kids...?"  The misquote is a very small matter, but there's nothing wrong with getting things, especially quotes, right.

Jake Tapper of CNN was interviewing Jon Stewart, who was talking about various things, when Stewart said "I think the media does a terrible job at de-escalation."  I listened to this bit of interview while I was exploring a publication called The Daily Beast, which had run another story about how the mainstream media in a sense brought us the reign of Donald Trump, in part by having suppressed or distorted some comparatively "non-liberal" things some liberals said, or trying to bury reasonable things some conservatives said, and then setting up everyone for the backlash when the "whole truths" came out later.  And the worst part of this backlash, according to The Daily Beast, was the introduced, then amplified, proposal that the "mainstream media" were not to be trusted.

It turns out that this kind of reaction or response from people is very common.  Individuals are limited -- sometimes much more limited than they would be willing to admit -- and they latch onto whatever is presented, and sometimes react with resentment if they find they were misled.  Or they have a vague sense of their limitations, and they react automatically and initially with rejection of what is presented, because they somehow sort of know it's over their heads, or don't want to be "pushed around" by better informed people.  This would be a great place for one of my favorite jokes -- the "keep your f***in' jack" joke -- but it takes too long for the space of a blog post.  The point is that people commonly either adopt or resist, inordinately for the circumstance, and it's not an adaptive way to address things.

Sometimes, though, inordinate, and incorrect, reactions are the goal.  "It doesn't take a rocket scientist" to understand why the media do a terrible job at de-escalation.  They literally make money on escalation.  And that's setting aside if the media outlet in question wants to promote a liberal agenda or a conservative one.  That was The Daily Beast's point.

So, why am I talking about Rodney King, Jon Stewart, The Daily Beast, and one of the best jokes ever?  Because they all refer to the same problem, and we have that problem.  For a collection of reasons, people seem to have a tendency to adopt polarized positions about things, and it's not an adaptive or successful way to solve problems.  It replaces working together with fighting.  And all of the people at any of the extremes are wrong.  If they're not wrong about the substance of their argument, then they're wrong to make adversaries out of people who should be their partners, at least of sorts.

There are probably enough examples, but let's take, again, 6th Avenue.  Some of us conceptualize what amount to drastic changes in 6th Avenue in BP.  I'm relieved to report that no one, to my knowledge, goes to the other extreme, and says there's no problem.  I certainly don't say there's no problem, but in a way, I represent a position that is fairly far from the the other extreme: I say we should only pursue the least changes that I, for one, think will be effective at solving the problem (which I more than agree exists, and which I wholeheartedly want to solve).

But it becomes interesting when someone like BrambleWitch, who started out advocating for the more drastic changes, offers conclusions like "Just to be clear, the State (FDOT) is not going to reduce the lanes on 6th...Some of the local Commissioners seem to think that they can get FDOT to put in stop signs.  In my opinion, that is delusional and would not help anyway."  And when she tells Commissioner Art Gonzalez, who has lived in BP for five years, "I have lived near this corner for 28 years...[and] when we had the attitude about 'don't even think about speeding' this street was a very minor problem.  We probably had less (sic: she means fewer) officers then, it was the intention of CARING."  And she advocates for enhanced enforcement, and presumably to instill again the "Don't Even Think About Speeding" mantra, and the signs to go with it.

What's curious about that kind of movement from BrambleWitch is that it doesn't seem to move others.  We're more devoted to these crusades, and adhering to extreme demands, fruitless though BrambleWitch says they are, than we are to working together, compromising, and getting along (with each other).

And to complicate matters, perhaps, we have to get along with more than each other.  We have to get along with everyone who passes through here.  Most of them use the PUBLIC STREETS that are here, and some of them might like what they see enough to want to come live here with us.  We don't have enemies, except for the mischief-makers, and the people who forget that they're driving through someone else's "home."  That's why we, as is true of more or less all municipalities, spend half our budget on the police.

We have a Village that's hard to support, because of the low tax base, and we have hurricanes, and we have streets that flood, and we have train tracks that are too nearby, and we now have airplanes flying low and directly overhead.  We have problems enough.  We don't need to be problems to each other.  "Can we all get along?"

Doesn't Know the Word Catercorner? Sheesh!

You remember very recently we were talking about accidents on 6th Avenue.  Well, one of our neighbors wrote to me yesterday to tell me there had been two of them on Friday (yesterday), very near his house, and one of them involved four vehicles.

In his e-mail to me, our neighbor specified that one car ran into the fence "catty corner" from him.

I was already aware of one of the accidents, because I saw the debris from it when I was coming home at noon Friday.  (I'm now even more bionic than I was before, having visited CVS to get my coronavirus vaccine booster and a flu shot!)

So then, I told our neighbor that we certainly need much more enforcement on 6th Avenue, and that, by the way, it's catercorner, not catty corner.  So he wrote back to say that where he grew up, they called that kind of relationship among buildings "kitty corner."  (So what's with the "catty corner," which he then wrote was the "only truth?")

Imagine that: he's incorrect about English language usage, and he can't focus on the best solution to our 6th Avenue problem.  If I didn't like this guy so much...  But I did offer to settle the matters with him behind the bleachers after school.  Now that I'm bionic and all.

I wonder if Mario Diaz and Luis Cabrera read this blog.  Nothing else so far appears to have gotten their attention about the 6th Avenue traffic problem.  Maybe I should invite them, too, to meet me behind the bleachers after school.  The three of them against me is more or less an even match-up, if I can get Luis to put down his gun.  It's not completely clear to me how bionic I am.

Who Knew?

This started with Ricky Thai Bistro, and it was a couple of months or so ago.  I was talking to Giuliano, who, with his Thai wife, who is the chef, owns Ricky Thai, and I mentioned that I generally prefer to order vegetarian dishes from his place, because I don't like eating animals that were not humanely/pasture-raised.  Well...  Giuliano told me that in fact, that's precisely the kind of meat he uses.  I told him I had no idea, no one else will, either, some people (like me) would need to know that, and he should make this clear on his menu.  So now, I'm willing to eat meat dishes from Ricky Thai.  (Actually, I already occasionally ordered the Larp appetizer with pork, apparently wrongly thinking I was cheating.  It's a spectacular dish, and better if it's on the spicy side.  If I get it for myself, I can order it as hot as I want.  If I have company, I have to keep it toned down.  It's large enough for more than two people.)

I've become acquainted with Alex, who, with his wife, Laura, owns Vega's Burger Bar less than a block from Ricky Thai Bistro.  Alex is the chef at Vega's Burger.  Vega's Burger, by the way, is also on NE 123rd St, also on the north side of the street (as is Ricky Thai), and it's several store fronts (and a veterinarian front) east of Ricky Thai.  I go to Vega's Burger from time to time, when I want a veggie burger.  That's all I ever get there, and I order it with "seasoned fries" instead of regular French fries.  They're not very seasoned, but they're good.  Anyway, I know the serving crew at Vega's Burger, and they know what I want to order.  But Alex doesn't.  So the day a couple of weeks ago that I went in there, and Alex was sitting out at the bar, instead of being in the kitchen, he asked me if I wanted a hamburger.  I told him no, that I only get veggie burgers, because I don't like eating animals that were not humanely/pasture-raised.  Yup, Alex said that's the kind of meat he buys, from some place up in Palm Beach County.  He wouldn't tell me the place.  It was hard to tell whether he was protecting his source, or he wasn't being...truthful.  It wasn't Gaucho Ranch, which is down here, and he said it wasn't Florida Fresh Beef.  But I decided to believe him, and get a meat hamburger next time.  Which was yesterday.

So, there are two very local places that sell the meat I'm willing to eat, and neither of them proudly and prominently advertises the fact.  They really should.  I told that to both of them.  But if they don't, it's their problem, and maybe their loss, if it prevents people like me from ordering certain dishes.

In my opinion, it's a wonderful thing that fewer animals are being mistreated, and are healthier.  Until that "one bad day."  But I do wonder if there are any other places doing the "right thing," and just not letting their customers know about it.  I tell lots of places to get meat from Pablo at Gaucho Ranch.  I hope they do it.  Florida Fresh Beef is somewhere around Ocala, and the meat tends to be more expensive.  I don't know what Alex at Vega's Burger pays for meat, but the hamburger was good.  It was 10 ounces, with fries and a pickle, for $13.  That's 100% in line with common restaurant prices for a hamburger with fries, and maybe it's even a bit lower than some casual places.

My only complaint about my Vega's Burger order was that it was the "Fireman" hamburger, which supposedly meant it was spicy.  When Alex asked me how spicy I want it, I told him to go for it.  I told him I wanted to be sorry I asked for that much heat.  But all he used was jalapeno peppers, so it wasn't very spicy at all.  I'll make myself clearer, and challenge him a bit, next time.  I always tell people like Alex that I like to eat food that bites back.  He's going to have to step it up.  He and I will talk about what other peppers he can use for someone who wants a "Fireman" hamburger.  If I have to put out a fire, he's going to have to work harder to start one.

"Because We Belong to Each Other."

I took the title of this post from the last line of a story on NPR this morning.  The story was about the efforts of a woman named Priya Parker, whose book is called The Art of Gathering, to figure out how to make gatherings of people, usually at celebrations, deeper and more reflective.  She focused on the idea of constructing topics of toasts made, and how to encourage gatherers to make them more incisive, and appreciative.  She ended her NPR discussion as I said, with the quote that is the title of this post.

And this concept is critically important, and not to be forgotten.  Sometimes, we belong to each other by accident, like the families, or cultures, or societies or countries into which we happened to have been born.  But mostly, we choose our surroundings, and the people in them.

I do a certain amount of couples or marriage counseling, and one theme that is never out of focus is that the people involved chose each other, from among many possible choices.  Sure, they're complaining about each other now (that's why they're seeing me), but however long ago it was, they wanted, and preferred, each other.  The time bomb in these situations is that everyone in the world has neuroses, and every choice contains a conflict.  So, the basis for complaint now actually contains the reason for having chosen the person in the first place.  For example, "So-and-so is so controlling, and ignores my suggestions."  "What attracted you to so-and-so when you met and were getting to know each other?"  "So-and-so is so well-organized and self-assured."  There are loads of examples, but they all distill into personal and internal conflicts like that.

The same can be said for things like where we choose to live.  If we consider, say, Biscayne Park, no one is forced to live here.  We all chose it, and each of us for our reasons.  And as small as is Biscayne Park, each of us chose one part, or one street, or one house, instead of another.  "I'm dissatisfied with my house.  It's too small, or plain, or on too small a lot, or on too busy a street."  "How did you choose that particular house?"  "I could afford it much better than I could a larger, fancier, more up-to-date house, on a bigger lot, and a quieter street or cul-de-sac."  It's the same thing as the relationship complaints and conflicts.

But having made these choices, we commit -- to a place and to each other.  They're not commitments that can't be reconsidered, or changed, or abandoned.  But until we conclude that we've somehow made a mistake, and should save ourselves from it, we do belong to each other, and to the setting or place that contains us.  And our continued belonging is not without the conflicts it contained when we first made the choice.  We just have to remember what we intended to gain from this choice, and what we agreed to sacrifice to make it.

Now, it's fair to say that not every situation in which a choice is made was fully evolved, as it is when we become dissatisfied, when we made the choice.  "S/he wasn't a drug addict when I met her/him, but s/he is now, and I can't live like that."  "Biscayne Park didn't use to be directly under the flight pattern from MIA, but the flight pattern was recently changed, and BP is under it now, and I can't live like that."  Then, you make changes, or you appeal to someone else to make one.

But absent changes like that, we belong to each other, because we chose to belong to each other, for our conflicted reasons, and it's in our interest to find the value in belonging.

To Illustrate the Point of Some of Our Neighbors

I was nearing home from my walk this morning at about 7:45.  On 6th Avenue, there were two cars which had crashed, and two more from people who stopped to help.

The easy car to explain was facing north in the northbound lane at the north part of the 119th St intersection.  It was badly damaged in front, and the driver was standing outside the car, sort of walking around, on her mobile phone, and she had only a superficial laceration -- really just an abrasion -- on her left forearm.  She said she also hit her head, but it wasn't bothering her much, and she seemed generally OK.  While I was there, our officer, Frank Arellano, arrived, and as I was leaving, another cruiser was arriving.

The car that's hard to explain was facing north in the southbound lane of 6th Avenue, several yards north of the other car (had apparently jumped the median, but it must have been in the intersection, because there was no significant piece of landscaping that was destroyed), smashed against a power pole, and with airbag deployed.  That driver was holding her mobile phone, but not using it at the moment I got there, and was physically intact, but definitely "shaken up."

So, here's our problem.  If everyone driving on 6th Avenue goes 30 MPH, or even a little faster, doesn't use a mobile phone while they're driving (or uses voice-activated bluetooth only), and pays attention, we have no problem.  But clearly, there's a breakdown somewhere.  And for the record, neither driver today appeared intoxicated.  The question, then, is what is the solution to our problem.

There's already a speed limit, and that fact, in itself, does not prevent these accidents.  We can wonder what leads drivers not to pay adequate attention to what they're doing, and I will take the liberty to suggest that the overwhelming distractor is the mobile phone.  The last I remember, using a mobile phone while driving can only be a "secondary offense," which means it can only be cited if there's some other reason to pull over a driver.  I would suggest that it needs to be a primary offense, and that if the backward state in which we live can't pull itself together to make it one, then the Village should make it one.  Even if all we did was pull over drivers using mobile phones (which they're holding in one of their hands, so that hand cannot be available for driving, and holding to their ear, so they are disinclined to turn their head to see what else is on the road), and have a safety talk with them -- even if we didn't issue a citation -- this would be very effective at getting the message across: when you get to Biscayne Park, put your phone down, or discontinue your call, because if you don't, Biscayne Park is going to aggravate you, and waste a good deal of your time.

So, maybe it was the phone(s), or maybe it was something else that distracted one or both of these two drivers.  How else can we get their attention, or at least prevent them from driving onto other people's property?  The state can do one or both of two things to help.  One is that it can erect barriers along the side of the road.  The barriers can be no more than break-away metal.  But you hit one of those, and you'll know it.  That will get your attention, and so will the bill for the body work on your car.  If we (the state), want to be a bit more subtle, and a bit more elegant, but still be very effective, while preserving the character of 6th Avenue, it can extend the edges of the pavement about 6-12 inches, and groove that extra pavement.  You drive over that, and the noise and discomfort will get your attention, or awaken you, fast.

The fact is that I don't really know what happened this morning.  Frank Arellano and his partner will figure it out.  Maybe the drivers were drag racing.  Maybe one got mad at the other for who knows what reason, and gave her the finger.  But that kind of thing can't happen often.  It's a short uninterrupted (lights at the bridge at about 112th St on the south and at 123rd St on the north) stretch of 30 MPH road in a quiet neighborhood.  I'm still betting on the mobile phones.

Beatles Vs Stones.

I have a book called Beatles vs Stones, but this post is unrelated to that book.

The post also has nothing to do with Biscayne Park.

This post is about two, or possibly three, or perhaps four, songs.  One is the Stones' song "You Can't Always Get What You Want," (although I could equally well have gone with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction") and the other is either the Beatles' cover of the Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford song ("Money, (That's What I Want)"), or the Pink Floyd song "Money."  But because the book exists, and I have a copy of it, I thought it would be cuter to call this post "Beatles vs Stones" than to call it Stones and Pink Floyd.  And it's all British Invasion, except for the original of the Beatles cover, which was written by the Motown originator.  Oh, well...

So this started when I got to the Ft Lauderdale airport too early today -- for a small collection of reasons -- and I suddenly, as the Brits would say, came over all peckish.  I needed something to eat, and I wanted decaf coffee to go with it.

I bypassed Jack Nicklaus' restaurant, because it looked too slick, and I went next door to a place which I think was called Heavenly Grounds.  I asked for their (overpriced, of course) "breakfast sandwich," and a large, black decaf.  How a place that has the name Grounds in the title, strongly suggesting that coffee is an important item they sell, doesn't sell decaf -- "not in the airport," for who can possibly imagine what reason -- was completely beyond me.  So I canceled the order, and decided to go to Nicklaus'.

The second piece of bad news -- the first having been that it looked too slick to begin with -- was that I couldn't see the menu by focusing my camera phone on the two-dimensional bar code.  It didn't work.  But a waitress, who may already have known this doesn't really work, came by very quickly with a physical menu, and there were two things I was willing to buy.  One was a shockingly overpriced "breakfast burrito," which cost $13.62, and the other was coffee.   Only one price was listed for the coffee, so I figured they just keep refilling your cup, as normal restaurants do.  So OK, I was hungry enough to eat a $13.62 breakfast burrito, however big that was going to turn out to be, and I ordered that and decaf.  At this point, I was seated at a table, which was more formal than I wanted.

What?!  Again they don't serve decaf?!  So does this mean you can't get decaf at Ft Lauderdale airport?  I need to talk to someone about this.  But by this time, I was about as hungry as I was frustrated, and I decided just to get my overpriced, and probably too large, breakfast burrito.  OK, fine, that and a glass of water.

If they had charged 1/3 the price they did, it might have been a fair price.  Since it was the airport, which is always rip-off city, food-wise, they might have charged 1/2 of what they did.  But that puny little thing, and most certainly not what anyone who's ever eaten one would call a particularly good breakfast burrito, for $13.62?  And up to $17.02, by the time they demand an 18% tip, and tax?

The Stones' song says that you sometimes get what you need.  Not this time.  And Berry Gordy, Janie Bradford, the Beatles, and Pink Floyd sure were right about the focus on taking people's money.

The New Bosses Are Not the Same as the Old Bosses.

A friend and BP resident told me about his experience with leaving out yard waste.  It's not a happy story.

In the old days, with the old contractor, if you left out more than an estimated two cubic yards, someone would take a photograph of your estimated excessive leavings, the refuse would be picked up the next day or so, and you would be billed for the estimated overage.  That is apparently not the new deal.

Now, my friend said, he left out what was estimated to be more than two cubic yards, he received a notice of a $50 fine, and he had to move all the yard waste back behind the house.  No one picked it up, and no one was going to.  Pick up the yard waste, as is the contractor's job, estimate how much more than two cubic yards it was, and the homeowner can argue if he thinks someone overestimated?  Evidently not.  And this is for substantially more money than we were paying about two months ago.

Someone does not have much of a sense of courtesy, or even decency, when dealing with BP residents/homeowners/taxpayers.  We're now paying significantly more money for inferior and punitive, instead of helpful, or even accommodating, service.

"Great Waste," indeed.

PS: I don't know how to check this story without either simply believing that what my friend told me is true (which I do believe), or butting in to someone else's business, which I'm not going to do.  I was just told this story in passing, and I said I would blog about it.  My friend did not ask me to do that, nor did he request that I not do it.  We've fallen far from the WastePro days, and it's costing us a premium to take the bumpy and injurious ride.

PPS: I urged my friend to go talk to Mario Diaz, who I hope will see to it at least that the $50 slap in the face goes away.  This is not $50 to take away the yard waste.  It's not $50 to take away more than the contracted amount of yard waste.  It's a $50 punishment, for nothing, and with no adaptive component.  And if matters could be made any worse, it appears to be our own Village that is punishing us.  Great Waste had no reason to punish anyone.  They just kept driving, and had less work to do.

I'm Reminded of the Old Days, When I Used to Watch Television.

It was way back when the little mobile phones -- maybe the flip phones, or maybe before that -- were becoming popular, and there was what was understood to be a holdout demographic: men, and especially manly men, and tough guys.  So, there was an advertisement that featured a middle-aged man driving a pickup truck, and wearing a cowboy hat, and speaking with what I vaguely recall was a southern accent, and using a mobile phone.  If this was good enough for him, and he approved and saw value in it, then it was good enough for anyone.

Now, there's this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/telling-conservatives-its-a-shot-to-restore-our-freedoms-how-online-ads-are-promoting-coronavirus-vaccination/ar-AANGLpc?li=BBnb7Kz

It's very hard to understand the coronavirus vaccine holdouts.  They make their reasons clear -- there is no coronavirus, or it's all a government plot/hoax, or it's the fault of the Chinese, or the vaccine isn't proven enough, or the vaccine is dangerous -- but these reasons are entirely invented, and they don't make sense.

The whole matter, which is a medical problem, has bizarrely been politicized.  It's said to have economic consequences, which it does, but it's simply not political.  And the people who invent this interpretation -- that the government shouldn't tell people what to do -- do not advocate for the removal of speed limits and STOP signs and red lights and seat belt laws, which also represent the government telling people what to do.  For their, you know, safety.

So, it's all pretty insane.

The fact is that everyone should get vaccinated.  Everyone should.  Did you get DPT and polio vaccines when you were a kid?  They were required for you to go to school.  Do you think your parents were communists or idiots for doing this to you, or alternatively, are you glad you didn't get diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, or polio?

Just get vaccinated.  Don't be foolish.  This problem has been going on for the past year and a half, and it's now getting worse, with the surge almost entirely in unvaccinated people.  Some of them wind up sick, in the hospital, in the ICU, on a ventilator, and now, they want to get vaccinated.  They can't get vaccinated when they're that sick, and it's too late to request it.

Please do yourself, and everyone else, a favor, and get vaccinated.

A Waste?

In 2013, we had garbage and/or recycling trucks on the road five days a week.  I don't remember what we were paying, but despite paying our Village PW sanitation employees less than poverty-level wages, we were paying somewhere, I think, in the $500s per residential unit per year.  It was never explained why Village PW employees who were being underpaid weren't complaining, but we had to do something.  We had three garbage trucks, one of which was inoperable and not salvageable, and another of which was intermittent, and held together with spit and scotch tape, and employees who were not reliable to come to work, pulling other PW employees off other Village responsibilities, and whatever we could do to keep this "system" working was going to cost a good deal of money.  We were going to have to buy new trucks (even the most consistently reliable one was old and leaking), and hire more employees, and, if we cared about our own employees, we were going to have to pay them more.  The loose estimate at the time was that we would wind up paying in the $700s or more per residential unit.

So in 2014, we outsourced.  We were careful to find what we thought was the best outsource contractor, and one of our requirements was that they agree to offer full time jobs to all of our current employees.  Which they did.  And which would have been for higher wages.  And which, inexplicably, none of our PW sanitation employees accepted.  But we wound up with trucks on our roads three days a week, instead of five, and we were paying in the low $400s per residential unit.  And we restabilized our PW department.

Except some Village residents were bereft, and complained, and once we hit 2017, and the then Commission didn't care about anything, including trying to improve service, it deteriorated.  And once the contract with that contractor ended, and the then Commission still didn't care about anything, we just started with contract extensions, each for more money than the last.

We reached about $485 per residential unit, with deteriorating service, and no one to work with/on our contractor, so the newest Commission and manager decided to find someone else.  That someone else is Great Waste and Recycling Service.  They started at the beginning of last month.

So now, we're up to four days a week of trucks on the roads, and $659.49 per residential unit.  That's $178 per unit more than we were paying before July 1 of this year.  A residential unit is your single family house, or each side of a duplex, or each apartment in an apartment building.

We appear to have undone more or less all the good we did in 2014, and increased prices very considerably.

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.

Is It Foolishness, or Stubbornness?

We (the whole world) have been struggling with the coronavirus for almost a year and a half now.  Setting aside the distractions of trying to figure out whom to blame, we can't seem to agree on mechanisms to protect ourselves.

Many of us have relied on doctors whose specialty is epidemiology: expertise regarding epidemics.  You wouldn't think it would take much brains to realize that these are precisely the people on whose insights and advice to rely.  As is true of many parts of medicine, the path is not always clear, and doctors have to recognize what they don't know, how to find it out, and how to make the most informed judgments they can.  It's not always easy.  (I do a lot of work for the Social Security Administration.  I'm what they call a "Medical Expert" for appeals hearings.  But Social Security judges are not required to use Medical Experts.  It's always a curiosity to me that some judges don't want expert medical advice about these cases.  The cases are not infrequently difficult for me to figure out, and I'm a doctor of the relevant specialty.  I always wonder how someone who is not a doctor of the relevant specialty, or not a doctor at all, imagines s/he can figure the cases out without someone like me.)  Similarly, it appears there is a proportion of the non-epidemiologist and non-doctor public who think they can make their own judgments about how to deal with an epidemic, and they can declare epidemiologists and other doctors simply wrong, or in some cases dishonest.  And this is on the basis of nothing.  (Although let's not forget the title of this post.)

So, we started out, based on epidemiological advice, taking the precaution of not exposing ourselves to people who might be infected, so we wouldn't get infected.  We stayed home, we kept a distance, and we wore masks.  Some of us did.

For a while, that was the best we could do.  That is until vaccines were quickly developed, and those were thought to confer immunity, so that even being exposed to someone infectious would not cause infection.  We weren't completely sure of that in the beginning, nor did we know at that early phase, and with vaccines quickly developed without long range monitoring, how long the immunity would last, but it became the even better thing we could do, beyond isolating ourselves.  Over time, we have learned that some or most or all of the vaccines turned out to be as effective, and long lasting, as we hoped, and a sizable proportion of people in the world have gotten themselves vaccinated.  But the size of that proportion is not 100%, even setting aside all the people to whom the vaccines have not been available, and who could not have gotten themselves vaccinated.  I have read varying calculations of what proportion of people who could have gotten themselves vaccinated did get themselves vaccinated, and the numbers seem to hover around 50-70%.  It's more than a little disturbing to wonder about the other 30-50%, and what leads them not to protect themselves from a very serious epidemic.

And now, we have the "Delta Variant."  The Delta Variant is not more damaging than the regular coronavirus.  It's more easily transmitted.  So it infects, and makes sick, and kills, more people, because it is more infectious.  But it's not infectious to, or can infect, sicken, or kill people who are immune to it, because they got vaccinated.  Those people are not going to get the Delta Variant any more than they were going to get the regular coronavirus.

So we're left to wonder what's with the people who won't get vaccinated in an epidemic/pandemic.  They think vaccination is a government plot, or they don't trust doctors, or they don't trust Tony Fauci, or they think this must be someone's fault, and they want to use their emotional energy resenting whosever fault they think it is.  Instead of getting vaccinated.

If someone comes into your house, and takes your stuff, they're selfish, terrible people, and they don't care about you, and it's wrong, and they shouldn't do that.  So do you refuse to get locks for your doors, because locks cost money, and now, the locksmith might be able to break into your house, and what if you lose the key, and why can't the police patrol every house all the time, so no one will enter your house when you're not there?  You'd have to be foolish, stubborn, and frankly childish to take an approach like that.  But that's what people who won't get vaccinated do.

What Were We Discussing? Oh, Yeah: Publix, and How We're All in This Together.

I can almost say I haven't been back to Publix since the "Publix" post.  I went back once.  (I did not go back for the naked chicken wings, which are the Rosses' "guilty indulgence."  I almost get tempted often, but I haven't done it.)  I went back to get a prescription refilled.  I always get this prescription from Publix pharmacy, because the Good Rx price is low, and Publix is very close.  The Good Rx price for the same prescription is significantly higher (about $10 more) at Walgreens or CVS, which are a block or two from Publix.  So I'm running out, and I called for a refill two days ago.  I forgot Publix doesn't stock this medication, and they have to order it.  If I took the full dose, I'd be out before Publix gets it.  So I decided to lower the dose, to stretch it out the extra few days, and wait for Publix.  Which I do with noteworthy misgivings.

In the meantime, because I regret doing even this last bit of business with Publix, I was looking at Good Rx, and I noticed that Winn Dixie charges about $1 less, but they're much farther away.  They're at 110th St and NW 7th Avenue.  But I was thinking about it, and how much I regret doing business with Publix, and that $1 I could save, and I decided to go to Winn Dixie.  Besides, I called Winn Dixie yesterday, and they do stock this medication.  There's no wait.  My naughty plan was to get the prescription from Winn Dixie, then never pick up the prescription Publix specially ordered for me.  It's too late to tell them to cancel the order.

So I went to Winn Dixie today.  The pharmacist was partially candid, and partially whining, and he told me Winn Dixie was losing money by selling me this prescription for the Good Rx price of $61.06.  (The Publix pharmacist once made a similar, although less direct, communication.)  The medication costs them $103.99.  I asked why Winn Dixie would be willing to lose that much money on a prescription.  The pharmacist shrugged.  I figured it's because deals like that are loss leaders, and the stores hope to make customers so happy that they'll buy lots of stuff from the store, and the store will make up the loss on everything else.  But I'm not going all the way to that Winn Dixie, which is the closest one to here, to do my main shopping.  Aldi is a lot closer (although I read somewhere that Aldi might be closing all their stores in this country).  I did, however, buy myself a new jar of minced garlic, which I need, but which they don't have at Hacienda La Fruteria, where I was before Winn Dixie.  But the minced garlic was also on sale, so maybe they didn't make any money off me on that, either.  It's too bad they don't have pignoli nuts, which I also need.  They would have made money on those.

I told the pharmacist that it doesn't do anyone good -- except it temporarily does me good -- for Winn Dixie to lose $40 selling me a prescription.  I told him to charge me $103.99, which he did.

But I further decided that if Publix is losing $40 selling me a prescription, I'm going to go pick up the one they just ordered for me.  Good: let them lose money.  If they're just looking out for themselves, and not for me or the rest of the general public, why should I look out for them?  In fact, maybe from now on, I'll always go back to Publix for that prescription.  Let the $100K they gave Ron DeSantis cost them more than the profit they would have made on the food I no longer buy from them.  I bet Marky's has pignoli nuts.  And it's a magnificent store.

They Don't Seem to Get the Joke

When I moved here, I think Ted Walker was the mayor of the Commission/(Village).  I actually don't remember much of anything about him.  But after he died, John Hornbuckle was the mayor.  John was an excellent mayor, at least with respect to running tight and efficient meetings which accomplished the goals, and addressed everything on the agenda.  Meetings were typically two to 2 1/2 hours.  Frankly, it seemed a bit creepy to me, and it was even suspicious, how five Commissioners could come to quick usually unanimous agreement with little or no discussion.  But I still think John was great.

Then, Roxy Ross became the mayor.  It's a little unclear how to evaluate Roxy in her role as mayor.  She's a magnificent human being and an off the charts Commissioner, but the continuous flak she took from the two children who were then on the Commission (Steve Bernard and Bryan Cooper) made it difficult or impossible for Roxy to function normally as a mayor.  Her influence (in the Village's favor) outside of Commission meetings, like with the state legislature, was spectacular.  But she had a hard time controlling meetings, because of the children.

One of the children (Bernard) didn't run for re-election, because his wife/mother wouldn't let him, but the other one remained, and Bernard used what influence he still had left to help Barbara Watts and Noah Jacobs get elected.  These three formed a bloc.  Cooper was in some orbit no one could track, Watts was extremely flighty and disorganized, and Jacobs didn't know nothin' about nothin'.  So, since Cooper was not fully present and had no social skills, and Watts couldn't control herself, let alone a Commission meeting, the two of them and their pal Jacobs elected Jacobs mayor.  Jacobs had come in third (two year term only) in the election he won, and he had not the slightest idea what was going on, or what the Village was about.  But he took himself very seriously, and he thought he had been anointed something or other by being elected mayor, by default, by himself and two misfits.  He never appeared to have figured out that his election to be mayor was a joke.  He certainly never developed anything anyone would call humility.

Village voters came to their senses, and they did not re-elect Jacobs.  Instead, they elected Roxy Ross to another term, David Coviello, and me.  The three of us and Bob Anderson elected David Coviello to be mayor, because too many people somehow persuaded themselves that Roxy Ross was imperfect, which she is not.  David was a steady and effective mayor, and he exerted himself to be of help to the Village and its government.  Which he was.  He was no Roxy Ross -- no one is -- but he was very creditable, and everyone allowed themselves to like him.  (It was a loss to the Village when David moved away before the end of his term, but he had been displaced and made irrelevant anyway.)  Because...

By then, we had had another election, and Tracy Truppman and her stooges won.  The first stooges were Jenny Johnson-Sardella and Will Tudor, and the three of them were enough to displace David from the mayor's/middle seat, and elect Tracy.  Tracy, like Noah Jacobs, never seemed to understand that her election to the Commission, and to the mayor's position, was a joke.  She took herself extremely seriously.  She had the stooges constantly under her thumb (in part because neither of them had any agenda, nor any idea what to do), and she appeared unable to admit to herself that without the pressure of her thumb on those stooges, she would never in a million years have been elected mayor.

After David moved away, we had a special election to replace him, and that election was won by Harvey Bilt, who also didn't seem to have any agenda, except to dump on Roxy Ross, whatever that was about.  But Harvey would never have challenged Tracy's position as mayor.  Harvey didn't run in the next election, but Betsy Wise did, and Will Tudor ran for re-election.  Both of them got elected, both were extremely faithful stooges of Tracy's, and the two of them, and Jenny, and Tracy, re-elected her mayor.  And she still didn't seem to recognize and understand the joke.  Not one good thing came out of the Truppman Commissions, and a lot of damage was done, and none of these people appear able to recognize the problem.

Then, the heat got turned on, and Betsy Wise realized she might be in some trouble.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella realized the same thing about herself.  So they both quit.  The election to replace them was won by Ginny O'Halpin and Mac Kennedy, Tracy's ability to perform simple arithmetic was good enough for her to realize what this would mean about her tenure as mayor, and she, too, quit.  She quit just in time not to be re-elected mayor, and many of us (mistakenly) thought it would be workable if Ginny got elected to the middle seat.  Well, Ginny is out of touch, disinterested, or both, and that election quickly became a disaster.  But not quite quickly enough.  Because...

In the meantime, Dan Samaria, who surprisingly seemed in the two years before that to have had his head screwed on in the right direction, completely lost his bearings.  Roxy Ross agreed to sit in temporarily to finish Tracy's term after Tracy jumped ship, and all of them agreed to let Ginny continue to be the mayor.  Ginny's very considerable limitations became increasingly conspicuous, and by the end of that year, it was time for Commission elections again.  Ginny and Samaria stayed, and Judy Hamelburg got elected.  That was enough to keep Ginny in the mayor's seat, and she provides no evidence at all of realizing what a dysfunctional joke this is.

John Hornbuckle refuses to run again.  Kelly Mallette, who would make a wonderful mayor, won't run.  David Coviello and Roxy Ross have moved away.  Richard Ederr won't run.  It's unclear if we'll just agree, in an ongoing way, to have way too many ridiculous mayors, and Commissions that have trouble functioning, even with "functioning" being limited to getting through a meeting efficiently and satisfactorily.

It's a huge drawback when Commissioners think being Commissioners is about them(selves).  And they elect mayors who don't get the joke.