I Got a Beef With PETA and Mercy For Animals

I have tremendous respect and affection for animals.  I appreciate all of them, the human ones and the non-human ones.  I think all animals should live as nature intended, if nature intends anything.  I don't tell other people how to live, and I don't try to exert power over the ways non-human animals live.

I donate, automatically and every month, to PETA and Mercy For Animals.  I agree with them when they try to confront the mistreatment of animals.  Those two organizations and I diverge over only two issues.  Both organizations are strong advocates of vegan diets for human animals.  I, however, accept that animals eat other animals, and people eat other animals.  I have restricted to a vegan diet in the past, and it was fine, but I decided that I could be ethical and merciful to animals without so restricting.  What I do is try to restrict to eating meat from animals that were treated ethically and mercifully during their lives, and killed humanely.  I don't say PETA and MFA are wrong.  And there have been deeply revered thinkers and philosophers who agreed with them.  I admit I do not exist on the very highest possible ethical plane, when it comes to eating animals.  I accept my own failing, and I hope that the caveat I impose is in some sense good enough.  But I do acknowledge the lapse.

The other area where PETA and MFA and I diverge is about the domestication of animals.  I think it's rank cruelty.  I think it's inexcusable.  I have asked both organizations to adopt as part of their overall mission a crusade against the domestication of animals.  They won't do it.  PETA's position (excuse?) is that the animals people domesticate have been bred so that they are incapable of living without the stewardship of human owners.  What a load...!  Even if you could try to make that argument about Yorkshire terriers and maybe pomeranians, you couldn't really make it about any other animal people domesticate.  And PETA and MFA do advocate against "puppy mills," pet store animals, and, up to a point, breeding in general.  So, up to a point, they get it.  But they won't pull the real trigger.  And if you want to know if I think PETA and MFA members and staff have domesticated animals themselves, yeah, I think they do.  I think they think they love animals, and they love, and show love to, their pets.  At that point, they stop getting it.  It's like the time several months ago that Donald Trump or one of his people said slavery wasn't bad, because the slaves were treated well.  Setting aside that that isn't remotely true, no normal person would have any trouble recognizing what was wrong with slavery, even if the slaves had been treated well.

I was out walking this morning, and I encountered a man with two Siberian huskies.  It was about 8:10.  We had a brief conversation about his two beautiful dogs, and it was he who mentioned how much they don't like the "humidity."  He takes them out early, to avoid it.  (He was a bit late today.  I guess it wasn't convenient for him to take them out earlier.)  I assume that means he walks/relieves them twice a day, before it gets "humid," and after it's not so "humid" any more.  This is the life he, or anyone, thinks dogs want?  Never mind that they get spayed/neutered, "docked," and whatever else people want to do to them.  And sent to "obedience school."  They have to be "trained" to be obedient to whom?  Why?  Large dogs, bred for the life of Siberia (isn't that that place people always say is so cold?), kept in Miami (isn't that that place people always say is so hot?), and cooped up inside all day.  (He also told me-- he told me, like he heard it said!-- that people think these dogs, these Siberian huskies, are supposed to be outside.  Wrong, he said.)  Raise your hand if you allow yourself to urinate twice a day, early in the morning, and after dinner time.  No?  And his parting explanation to me was "It's like with any dog: it depends how you train them."  If you can "train" a large and thick-coated dog to stay inside in a hot environment all day, and urinate twice a day, then it must be OK.  Like if you can "train" a slave to work in the fields all day, and not to run away, then it must be OK. 

Is there anyone who hates animals more than a pet owner?  Dogs, cats, birds, fish, or whatever.  It's a terribly cruel way to treat animals.  PETA and MFA should know that better than I do.

I Owe Tracy Truppman an Apology. And So Does Mac Kennedy.

It's a weak excuse, I know: Mac and I are "not the only ones."  Maybe we're the most vocal, or maybe not.  I can name other people who say the same thing.  But I really do know.  It's no excuse.

Mac and I have incessantly accused Tracy of having no vision for the Village.  We've cited what we thought were examples of Tracy's lack of vision.  Tracy won't do this, or she won't do that.  She won't move the Village forward.  And Mac and I, and some others of us, concluded that this is proof that Tracy has no vision.  She refused to have the standard visioning conclave.  See, more proof.

I started complaining about what I thought was Tracy's lack of vision for the Village even before she got elected.  Even when we were running, I pointed out Tracy's refusal to specify any one thing she wanted for the Village.  She did say she was offering finally to "listen to residents," but that turned out not to be true.  And after she won, and commandeered complete personal domination over the Village, she wouldn't advance any agenda at all.  The only partial exception was her claim that policing needed to be improved.  But since that was already under way, it wasn't a real initiative.  So I thought, and Mac thought, and some others of us thought, Tracy had no vision.

But Mac and I were wrong.  Tracy does have a vision.  Her vision isn't to move the Village forward.  It is, if you can forgive the split infinitive, to not move the Village forward.  Tracy's vision is to hold the Village where it is.  Nothing is to be demanded of Village residents and property-owners, except that they shouldn't roll through stop signs, and nothing is to be done to improve, or change in any way, the Village.  If it has faults, or limitations, or failings, they should remain that way.

I'm saying this as if it was purely negative, but I suspect Tracy doesn't think of it that way.  I suspect Tracy thinks the Village is in some sense quaint, and that it is a laid back and homey oasis amid change, progress, and gentrification.  And I think Tracy would say she's protecting Village residents and property-owners who are satisfied with their situations, and the Village as it is, and don't want anything demanded of them.  Or they're not financially disposed to make or even capable of making improvements, or even doing normal maintenance.  Tracy's Biscayne Park is a haven for the unambitious, and the less endowed.

When Mac and I talk with each other about Village properties, we have visions that are different from each other.  My view of the Village is that it is changing, as I accept and expect that it would, and that some of those changes include contemporary looks, and two-story houses.  I like it like that.  To me, it's part of the Village's eclectic theme.  Mac doesn't agree with me.  He likes a more old style or old time Village look.  He thinks properties should be kept up well, as I do, too, and he and I agree that landscaping should be improved, but Mac would otherwise not want the Village and its properties to look more modern.

Tracy goes further than that.  She's satisfied if nothing at all changes.  She does not support stronger Codes, or more Code compliance.  If the Village looks like what someone else would call run down or poorly kept, Tracy has no problem with that.  But that's not the absence of vision.  That is Tracy's vision.

Every month, every property in the Village receives a copy of The  Egret, a publication of the Miami Shores Chamber of Commerce.  Our most recent former Mayor, David Coviello, and the Mayor before him, Roxy Ross, produced without fail a Biscayne Park column, which the Mayor in Biscayne Park is always invited (and desired) to do.  Tracy refuses to produce a column.  I've reminded her about it.  And again, I made the mistake of thinking Tracy was failing to do part of her job as the main spokesperson for Biscayne Park, because she refused to produce the BP column.  But my mistake was thinking the Mayor in Biscayne Park should provide connection to our neighboring municipalities.  Based on my theory, any Mayor who didn't do that was failing to do part of his or her job.  But connecting with neighboring municipalities is not Tracy's wish.  She's much more isolationist.  She doesn't care about Miami Shores, or El Portal, or North Bay Village.  She has no use for them.  Where I think her refusal to produce a column for The Egret is a failure, I suspect Tracy would call it a success.

So I now think I was wrong about Tracy and what I interpreted as lack of vision.  I think Mac was wrong, too.  I think Brad Piper was wrong.  I think any of us who saw stagnation, and thought it represented apathy or disinterest, was wrong.  It's just laissez-faire.  Stagnation and unaddressed decay are not evidence of Tracy's lack of agenda for the Village.  They are her agenda.  And she's been unwavering about executing that agenda.  So I apologize for having misunderstood.

What Makes the World Go 'Round

I attend lots of cultural events.  I subscribe to most of the organizations whose presentations I attend.  I donate, beyond the cost of the subscription, to most of the ones to which I subscribe.  You have to donate.  Ticket sales provide less than half of what cultural/arts organizations need to survive.  Any arts organization that could do no more than fill a performance hall would go out of business.  And if they charged enough for tickets to pay their bills with the gate, no one would buy the tickets.  They'd be too expensive.  It's up to the devoted patrons to make up the difference with donations.  And grants from the Knight Foundation, the County, and other funders are critical.

The same is true of other settings.  The reason politicians don't want to have to rely only on public funding is that they want to spend much more money than the public will give them, either governmentally or by limited personal donations.  They rely heavily on the big donors.

One of the invariable features of public or community radio is that it relies on donations from listeners.  And the fund drives always make the point that it is a small proportion of the audience who donate to keep the station in business.

Someone recently told me about an amazing public museum somewhere in Arkansas.  From what I gather, it's a museum of Americana, from the earliest days to now.  The building is fabulous new architecture, and the collection is impressive.  The museum is free to the public.  This project was organized and paid for by Alice Walton (a Walmart heir) and several of her very rich friends.

Bill Gates, with support from Warren Buffett, have pooled a tremendous amount of money to effect public projects (education and otherwise) here and in other countries.

We see more modest versions of that here in BP, too.  We charge ourselves almost the highest ad valorem property tax rate we easily could, because we are a unique, and uniquely limited, community, and we need to support ourselves in unusual ways.  What we charge ourselves isn't enough, and even if we don't, for who knows what reason, decide to charge ourselves more, we make part of it up in other ways.  We charge ourselves non ad valorem fees, too.  We have to, because we need the money.  But even that isn't enough, which limits our ability to be a proper municipality.

One thing we have done, which is like the arts/culture organizations, or political candidates, is relied on the extra efforts, and extra devotion, of some of our neighbors.  We have public sculpture, because some of our neighbors have given of themselves financially to buy it, and donate it to the Village.  We have a Foundation, and it provides what it does, because many more of our neighbors make personal donations.  All of that is what has to happen, because taxes don't cut it, like ticket sales don't cut it.  Sometimes, public policy or vision is lacking.

Very recently, when I was on the Commission, I asked my Commission colleagues for a few things.  I asked them to task the Parks and Parkways Board to give us a unified median plan.  I also asked them to approve renaming the streets in BP, to reflect the old names these streets had, as well as the numerical names they have now.  I was disappointed, and surprised, to have had both requests declined.  To the extent that I could explore the feeling against these two requests, the answer seemed to be that the Village could not afford to improve the medians, or to buy new street signs.  But I wasn't asking for that.  I wasn't asking for money.

My vision was that we-- some BP residents, selected BP residents, many BP residents, maybe most BP residents-- would donate to create these improvements.  The Village recently improved a median in 114th Street.  But the money for the new plantings didn't come from Village coffers.  It came from personal donations.  I live on 119th Street.  There's a median in front of my house.  If there was a plan for what could and should go in that median, I would donate to provide it.  I'm sure a number of my neighbors would, too.

Maybe it's sad to say that many good things wouldn't happen without the extra dedication of a relatively few people, but that's generally true.  And we have those few people living right here in BP.  We have people who are interested and dedicated, and they show over and over how reliable and generous they are.  It's true that many people don't have that kind of vision, but that doesn't stop the people who do.  And it's those kinds of dedicated extra efforts that seem to make the world go 'round.

Can We Buy Back Guns? Should We?

No one disagrees that there's too much gun violence in this country.  No one disagrees that there's too much gun violence in south Florida.  Some people think the answer is that no one should have a gun.  Others think the answer is that many more people should have guns.

What we can all agree about is that too many people who shouldn't have guns do have them.  And they shouldn't have them in part because the use they intend for them is antisocial.

Gun buy-back programs work.  They have worked in Australia, Great Britain, and at least one of the Scandinavian countries.  The result of them is lower rates of gun crime.  Presumably, the theory is that some people who have guns have them for impulsive and marginal reasons, and that given the opportunity, those people would rather have some money than the gun.  That gets the gun out of the least serious and responsible hands, and off the street.  No one can have a problem with that.

We in Biscayne Park have our own problems.  Some of those problems have to do with crime.  Some have to do with our limited fiscal resources.  We do the best we can to confront crime.  We don't do the best we can to improve our fiscal status.  But we do something.

What if we started our own gun buy-back program, and we agreed to pay anyone with a gun some amount of money, and they would give us the gun.  We would then turn the gun over to law enforcement with more fiscal reserves than we have (probably the county), and they would destroy it.

I have no idea what a gun is in any sense worth.  I don't know what we would have to pay someone to get theirs.  What a gun is worth is whatever we would have to pay to get someone to sell it to us.

Should we designate a certain amount of Village money to be used to buy people's guns?  Someone would have to figure out what it would take to get someone to sell us their Saturday night special, or Glock, or AR-15.  What if we started out with a relatively small amount of money?  Let's say we started with $10K.  What would we have to pay someone to get them to give us their Saturday night special?  $50?  $100?  The kinds of people who would sell a Saturday night special to us are the kinds of people who didn't pay much for it.  Maybe they bought it on the street.  Maybe they stole it.  How much would we have to pay for an AR-15?  $500?  $1000?

If a program like that worked, maybe we could fund it with more than we have in Village coffers.  Maybe someone would make donations to our gun buy-back fund, to keep it going.

I'd be interested in a BP program like that.  I'd set aside Village money to start one, and see where it goes.

A Dumb Game.

It was a long Commission meeting tonight.  It lasted about two hours.  That doesn't seem long, except there was about 45-60 minutes of material.  No one I consulted was sure where the time went.

A presentation that could have taken a lot of time took almost no time.  The Consent Agenda was reasonably quick.  A few Commissioners commented that they expected a bigger crowd for discussion of the sanitation fee, and some of us in the audience were surprised, too.  But few were there, and there wasn't much to discuss.

The fact is, I was going to call this post "The Sublime, and the Ridiculous," to illustrate the contrast between Roxy Ross and the the four stooges.  It was frankly breathtaking.  Roxy was serious, detailed, exploratory, well organized, and clearly concerned about Village residents.  The rest were bumbling, inept, and ultimately had no meaning.  But I decided to focus on something else.  I wanted to focus on the discussion about the sanitation budget.

At one point, a propos of nothing in particular, Tracy "Big Mama" Truppman was trying to explain the increase in the sanitation charge, and she talked about how the Village was essentially padding the bill, for the sake of general Village finances.  She didn't want anyone to think they were being scammed, but just that this was a way to recover some money for Village staff expenses.  And she wasn't wrong about that.  She was right, and I agree with her.  She was addressing the Village's limited fiscal resources.

But here's the problem.  The Village has for some years now charged Village homeowners a property tax millage of 9.7.  For years, no one has wanted to change this millage.  Apparently, it feels consistent to Commissioners, and maybe to non-Commissioner residents.  It's the same number-- 9.7-- year after year.  But this number of mills-- 9.7-- has no meaning.  It's just a number.  The same number of mills every year is not the same tax to homeowners, and it's not the same revenue to the Village.  It's 9.7 mills, but that millage is applied to property values, which change every year.

Even if property-owners get a homestead exemption, which is what 80% of Village property owners do, the value of their properties can still change every year.  And they do.  If property values go down, as they did in 2008 and 2009, the tax goes down.  If they go up, as they do most years, the tax goes up.  The value in getting a homestead exemption is that if assessed values go up, the assessment on homesteaded properties, for taxation purposes, can only go up by 3%.  So a 9.7 mills taxation one year is a different tax than the same 9.7 mills tax another year.

The reason it's important to remember this is that when someone like Tracy "Big Mama" Truppman talks about fiscal constraints, which she would like her neighbors to know can be slightly ameliorated by a manipulation in the sanitation tax, the fiscal constraint is a self-inflicted problem.  It was Tracy and her stooges who did not increase the ad valorem tax rate above 9.7 mills.  They could have.  Any Commission could.  It's odd and a little grating to hear Tracy complain about fiscal constraints, when she has taken a role in imposing those constraints.  And that idiotic discussion took up a certain amount of time in tonight's meeting.  For one thing, we paid our attorney $165 an hour to listen to Tracy explain to her neighbors why she advocated for charging them an inflated sanitation fee, which was in consequence to deciding not to charge them the taxation rate they should have been paying anyway.  It was, as I said in the title of this post, a "dumb game."

There was one other dumb game during the Commission meeting tonight.  It was about board appointments.  I applied to be on the Public Safety Board, but suddenly, there were seven new applicants-- gee, I wonder how that happened-- so I withdrew my application.  I knew Tracy and the stooges wouldn't appoint me to the Public Safety Board-- they no longer had to, since there were these suddenly interested Village residents-- and I decided to apply to be on the Parks and Parkways Board instead.  It was my impression that that board needed members, and I needed something to do.

But I was wrong.  It turned out P&P already had what was essentially a full complement of members, except that Randy Wagoner's membership had lapsed, and he had to reapply.  Which he did.  So there was only one real opening, and Randy and I both applied.  There was great confusion about the count of which Commissioners voted to seat which one of us-- me and Randy.  The Clerk said twice that three Commissioners chose me for first choice, and two chose Randy.  I thought this was very odd, since it was announced that Roxy Ross, Big Mama, and Will Tudor chose me for a first choice.  Will Tudor gets confused sometimes as to what Big Mama demands that he do, but Big Mama never gets confused.  Why would she have voted for me as a first choice?  After some fumbling around, the vote was re-announced, and this time, Randy got three first place votes, and I got two.  So Randy was back on the Board, as he should have been.  What was funny about this, apart from the long time it took to count the votes, was that I later learned that Big Mama had asked for a recount.  It was as if Big Mama somehow knew in advance how the vote was supposed to come out.  I wonder how she knew.

I'm Such a Charmer!

It's like bees to flowers around me.  I guess it's kind of flattering, really.

Two or three months ago, I applied for one of the two open seats on the Foundation.  And my application was all it took.  Two days before the Commission meeting to approve (or not) my application, four people suddenly applied for the two seats.  On Easter Sunday!  Well, of course it only made sense to seat people who had shown no prior interest in the Foundation, or any other area of Village functioning.  I totally understand that.

This month, I applied to be on the Public Safety Board.  Two people had applied back last year, but since there can't be a Board, and there's no quorum, with only two people, their applications were never approved.  There wouldn't have been any point in approving them.  But with my application, the Board could function.  Damn, if after I applied, seven other Village residents weren't suddenly overtaken by an inspiration to apply for that very same Board.  It's kind of like magic.

I think I must have some sort of voodoo power in the Village.  I can fill any Board, just by applying to be on it.  And I stimulate way more applicants than are needed to fill seats.

I don't know what to say.  You're welcome?

The "Right of Way"

If you haven't seen the movie "The Station Agent," you should.  It's a terrific movie.  It's about, among other things, a guy who loves trains.  He's an expert on them, and on the rail industry and its history.  At one point, he explains to another character about his habit of "walking the right of way."  The train track, and the land under it, are called the "right of way," because in the 19th Century, the US government seized land, and gave it to the railroad companies, so they could build tracks on it.  It's a strange and dissonant use of the term "right of way."  It was land taken (no doubt by eminent domain, and with compensation to the owners) by the government, and given to someone else, for what amounts to their private use.  "Right of way" sounds friendly.  Taking someone's land, and giving it instead to someone else, isn't friendly at all.  Although presumably, the government thought it would be in the common interest to enable the rail industry.

Here in BP, we have two concepts that are subsumed under the term "right of way."  One is about land.  The medians and the swales are designated as rights of way.  So are the alleys behind some of the houses here.  And there were other tracts, essentially walking paths, that were also rights of way, until they got absorbed into property owners' landscape schemes, and you couldn't find them any more.  But the other rights of way, including the swales in front of all of our houses, do not, in fact, belong to us.  They belong to the Village.  They can be used for whatever the Village wants to use them for.  They can have utility installations on or under them.  The use of them is not our call.  But we have to maintain them as we maintain what is our property.  We can landscape them, with restrictions, and we have to cut what grass we put there, trim what shrubs we plant there, and assume all the maintenance responsibilities, even though we property owners don't own them and cannot determine their use.  So again, there's something unfriendly about the real concept of those rights of way.  They are intended for the public good.

The other concept that is called right of way has nothing to do with land, per se.  It has to do with primacy.  If you're driving along a road, and a driver wants to pull out onto the road where you're driving, you have the right of way.  If two people stop at four way stop signs at the same time, the one to the right has the right of way.  If four people stop there at the same time, the one coming from the north has the right of way, and can go first.

Many jurisdictions, including the municipalities in south Florida, grant the right of way to pedestrians over cars.  So if you're walking in the street, let's say crossing it, and a car comes along, the car has to stop for you, even if you're jaywalking.  Because you're a pedestrian, and you have the right of way.  That's a combination of safety and courtesy.  And the assumption, of course, is that you will expeditiously finish crossing the street, so the car can proceed.  That's the courtesy you, as a pedestrian, owe drivers.  You should also, of course, not arrogantly jaywalk, just because you have the right of way if you do.

Jaywalking is not legal, although the superseding statute says the driver has to give pedestrians the right of way.  And there are other rules that are intended to control the use of the streets, for the purposes of safety and courtesy.  For example, pedestrians are required by law to walk "against traffic," so that they will see cars coming toward them from in front of them.  If you know this is the law, and you think it's painfully self-evident, you can explain that to all the pedestrians who walk on the right, with the flow of traffic, so cars come up on them from behind them, where the pedestrians can't see them coming.

Likewise, it's painfully self-evident that if you're in the street (in BP, if you're walking anywhere except around the recreation center, you have to be walking in the street, since we don't have sidewalks anywhere else), and a car is coming, you should get out of the way.  The choice you always have is to step onto the swale wherever you are.  The choice you sometimes have is to step onto a median.  But get out of the way.

Streets are built only for one purpose: non-pedestrian traffic.  They're there for cars.  No one builds streets for pedestrians.  If you're on the street, and a car is on the same street, you should yield.  You have choices where to walk.  Drivers don't have choices where to drive.  So just move out of the way.  Step to the side, take your dog or your stroller with you, and let the car pass.  They're moving faster than you are, and you'll have the street back very soon.  Is there something you're trying to prove?

The law protects pedestrians, so drivers have to go to trouble not to hit them.  But drivers have a right of way, too.

I Just Have to Say Something About Nicole Susi

Nicole and Jared are newish in the Park.  I'm guessing something like three or four years.  Nicole will correct me, if I'm wrong.  They got a funky house that had been left unattended-to for some years, and they've put a lot into it.  I dropped Jared off at home a few nights ago, and the house looks great from the outside.  Then, they had a baby while they lived here.

Despite being relatively newish, and having loads of stuff to take their attention-- the house, the young'un, Jared's work-- they have been conspicuous for their involvement in various aspects of Village functioning.  They seem almost to have fallen in love with Biscayne Park.  They're everywhere, attending everything, participating, contributing, being on Boards.  And they're both so nice and friendly about it.  They're not pushy or domineering or demanding or high maintenance.  They just like their home and neighborhood, and they want to be good citizens. They're better citizens, in some respects, than are some people who have lived here much longer.

The other thing I would say about the Susis, and I can't imagine they would mind, because they aren't shy or embarrassed about it, is that their politics are, I would say, very conservative.  They don't spout partisan rhetoric or anything, but whenever a conversation turns to philosophy of society, matters of government, and related specific issues, they're pretty consistently conservative in their approaches.

On Thursday, Nicole was at my house.  She's never been to my house before.  She was there to receive her two new cast iron skillets.  (She left the other one for Linda Dillon, who picked it up yesterday.)  I told her I'd bring them to her house, but she chose to come to my house instead.  And she came with junior, who was a dramatic object lesson about how childproof my house is not.  He was all over the place, touching everything, and threatening the breakables.  I have to say I was in awe of how composed Nicole was the whole time.  She was alert, attentive, and gentle, in continuous motion, constantly intercepting her son, and often holding the squirming young gentleman, who only wanted to run around exploring Uncle Fred's shiny glass curiosities.  Nicole demonstrated an amazing combination of energy and patience.

Because Nicole has never before been to my house, she could not have expected the disastrous profusion of art.  It's pretty bad in here.  I recently had the inside of a window sheetrocked over, so I would have more wall space, because I got a new and relatively large painting.  It was that painting that led to my being even more impressed with Nicole than I was before.

The painting is five feet tall and four and a half feet wide, and it's a portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama.  I would never say I think Obama was one of our greatest presidents-- I think he was good in some ways, and ineffective in others-- but I bought the painting, because it is a magnificent portrait.  The faces have such attitude, power, and humor.  I also wanted to support the artist.  I told the artist she did the Obamas a favor.  She made them even more than they are.  My inadequately educated impression is that they seem like cool people, but they really "pop" in that portrait.

Well, you don't see that painting, unless you're in the house, and facing the street, as if you were leaving.  (I blocked out a front window to make a wall for that portrait.)  That's probably when Nicole saw it.  She didn't flinch.  She didn't grimace.  She didn't let me know how disappointed she was.  She brought junior over to the painting, to point out the color red (the backdrop of the portrait is an American flag).

Talk about a cool person.  That Nicole Susi...  (And to her similarly very great credit, Linda Dillon didn't flinch, either.  Linda is another story of steadfast dedication to the Park.  And she's been cultivating her commitment here for decades.  Linda is the only person I know who has never, in my experience, missed a Commission meeting.  Never.  And she's like Dale Blanton, another gem, both of whom are soft-spoken, kind, and serious long term members of the Code Compliance Board.  We really do have some very cool neighbors.)

"The Air Is Humming. Is Something Great A-Coming?" To Paraphrase Stephen Sondheim.

In November, we have elections for Village Commission seats.  There should be three of them available, and they would be the seats currently filled by Roxy Ross, Will Tudor, and Harvey Bilt.  The only reason we wouldn't have three seats to fill is if we had more than three seats to fill.  That is, if Tracy Truppman, Jenny Johnson-Sardella, or both decided to resign, with the timing being that those seats, too, would be contested during the November election.

I have had no reason to think Tracy or Jenny plans to resign.  No one has said any such thing.  If I had to guess-- and it would only be a guess at this point-- I would guess that Roxy Ross isn't running for re-election.  She's done a stunning job for the Village, but I get the sense that she might be feeling there's nothing more she can do, since she has a Commission majority single-mindedly, and mindlessly, poised against her.  And unfortunately for all of us, it's personal.  The anti-Roxy majority don't want anything, and certainly nothing for the Village.  Their only intention is to defeat whatever Roxy suggests.  I'm saying "they," but it's really only Tracy.  The others are empty-headed stooges, who simply do whatever Tracy tells them to do.

I couldn't begin to guess what Will's and Harvey's plans are with respect to the Commission.  Will ran with only one goal: to prevent the Village, through its Commission's attention to the driveway and swale Ordinance, from making him install a driveway on his property.  I'm guessing he made clear to Tracy, when they were running together, that this was all he wanted, and she agreed to protect him.  The problem for Will is the same as the adage "you can't buy silence; you can only rent it."  Will can only succeed, if he, or someone sympathetic to him, is on the Commission for as long as he owns property here.  The tide turns diametrically as soon as there's an unsympathetic (to Will and his goal) Commission.  So Will has reason always to want to be on the Commission, at least as long as he lives here.  But it's unlikely he always will be on the Commission.  That party will come to an end at some point.

I have no idea what are Harvey's plans, and it's partly because I have no idea what Harvey is doing on the Commission.  He snagged what he must have thought would be an easy opportunity to get on the Commission-- although it turned out to be harder than he probably expected-- and he has done nothing with his tenure so far.  Nothing except listen to himself talk.  But there was never any apparent theme or agenda, and no recognizable accomplishments.  Harvey has as much reason to run for re-election as he had to run in the first place.  If it was about a thrill, or to pat himself on the back for the achievement, then whether or not he runs for re-election depends on how thrilled he's been, or how affirming he thinks this whole project has been for him.  It's not about the Village; it's just about Harvey.  And no one but Harvey can know how this feels to him.

So the question is what happens as a result of the November elections.  Most likely, Tracy and Jenny stay.  But unless Tracy can arrange to control one of the other three seats to be contested, she no longer single-handedly runs the Village, which will make her unhappy.  She's highly motivated to control one of those other three seats.  If Will or Harvey or both run, and Tracy can get at least one of them re-elected, we're back to Village death for another two years.  If Roxy doesn't run, and if Will and Harvey either don't run, or neither of them wins, and Tracy doesn't find another stooge to fill Roxy's seat, or Will's or Harvey's, then the Village can function again.

And this unmasks another potentially interesting dynamic.  Because Tracy has the stifling and deadening effect she does, and exerts dictatorial power over Village administration, our manager, Krishan Manners, has also been non-functional.  Tracy has made clear to him that he does whatever she tells him, and backs her up completely, or he's history.  If Tracy is not in power any more, one of two things happens to Krishan.  Either he begins to function as a municipal manager is supposed to, but which Tracy has forbidden him to do so far, or we find out Krishan is not the right person for this job, and we get someone else.  Remember, the Village had very, very enthusiastically chosen Sharon Ragoonan as its manager in 2016, and all of us had high hopes.  Tracy simply assassinated her, presumably for what amounts to personal reasons for Tracy, and she selected and elevated Krishan in Sharon's place.  I'm not reluctant to say at this point that when we had to replace Heidi Siegel in 2016, I reached out to Krishan, whom we all liked a lot, to ask him to apply, and he said he didn't want to.  In that sense, he's like Harvey: neither of them was interested in the job, when the competition was stiff, but each agreed, when they thought it was easier.  Harvey turned out not to want or be about anything.  It's completely unclear what Krishan could or would do, if a proper Village Commission allowed him normal functioning.

So we'll see.  It could be interesting and filled with optimism, or it could just be sad.


PS: It's clear Tracy still has juice in the Village.  She was able to muster up a few stalwarts to claim to want to be on the Foundation, so she could keep Nicole Susi and me off it.  I could think instantly of at least a couple of names of people Tracy has already shown she can stimulate to be her new stooges, or she can continue to back Will and Harvey, if either or both is still interested in staying on the Commission.  She can probably lean on enough Village residents for their votes to get her old or new stooges elected, too.  Here's a funny story.  When I ran in 2016, one of our neighbors on 8th Avenue, not far from where Tracy lives, met me and agreed to have my campaign sign in her and her husband's yard.  The next thing I know, the sign has been moved back so it's hidden, and I think it later disappeared.  What I learned was that Tracy confronted her neighbor, had a temper tantrum, and demanded the neighbor not feature my campaign sign.  Does Tracy still have that much sway with our neighbors now?  I don't know.  Maybe.  Certainly with some of them.

I've Decided to Go in a Different Direction

I have lots of stuff.  It's right to say I have too much stuff.  I just get interested, and the next thing I know, I have more stuff.  But it's not entirely haphazard.  I always mean something by it.  At least, I think I do.

A few years ago, I happened to be in Tennessee, and I happened to visit the Lodge factory store.  Lodge makes, in the US, cast iron items, and particularly, they make cast iron kitchen ware.  I was very intrigued, I already had one Lodge skillet, which I think I found a reason to use once or twice, and I decided to get two new frying pans.  I think they're 10 inches and 12 inches, or maybe they're 12 and 14.  Everyone who says anything about cast iron skillets raves about them, and I had every good intention, of course.  I seasoned them properly, probably three times by now.

If it isn't obvious where this discussion is going, the fact is I didn't fall in love with my cast iron skillets, and I don't use them much.  I think I had some fantasy about what cast iron cooking would be (I read too many glowing write-ups), and that's just not what happened.

I have other pots and pans, and for whatever reasons, I'm simply more content with them.  So, I'm giving up my cast iron skillets.  Normally, with something like this that I just don't want any more, I would give them to Goodwill, around the corner on W Dixie.  But there's something about these Lodge cast iron skillets.  I don't really mean this the way it's going to come out, but they just seem too good to give away to Goodwill.  And they're the kinds of items a lot of people would want.

So, if you want them, I'm giving them to you.  Just contact me, and they're yours.  I might even throw in the one I got many years ago.  It's a low skillet, and it has a custom wood base/trivet.  It's super nice.  They all are.