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.

"Great Day In the Morning!" Or Great Scott.

To paraphrase Richard Nixon, we won't have WastePro to kick around any more.  Nope, now it's going to be Great Waste and Recycling Service.  (It's still not clear what the "recycling" bit is about, but there's probably no point in going there.)

Mario Diaz was proud to announce that on June 10, the Commission approved his recommendation to switch solid waste contractors.  (New managers love to change things.  It's how they make their mark.  They view it as innovation and improvement, not disruption.  One thing they normally love to change is police chiefs, but since Mario and our police chief were already BFFs, Mario wasn't going to change that.)  This will involve new bins and other equipment, for which I assume we will be asked to pay, and it will result in garbage trucks on Village roads four days a week.  We started out with trucks on the roads five days a week when we ran the program ourselves, we got it down to three with WastePro, and now, we're up to four.

The flyer from Mario doesn't specify if the new equipment and containers means we now have automated service, which some Village residents very much didn't want, but if I had to guess, I'd say it does.  And I'm not complaining, because I don't really care how they get rid of the garbage, and how "quaint" is the process.

Here's your new schedule (you already know this, because you got the same flyer I did): if you live on 9th Avenue or west, you have garbage pickup on Monday and Thursday, yard waste on Monday, and recycling on Friday.  If you live east of 9th Avenue, you have garbage pickup on Tuesday and Friday, yard waste on Tuesday, and recycling on Friday.  Everyone's recycling day is Friday, and there will be no garbage trucks on Village roads on Wednesday.  For now.  So we're told.

The flyer did not say anything about cost, so I don't know if we'll now be paying less, the same, or more.

The other possible approach I could have used in choosing a title for this post was "Meet the new boss: same as the old boss."  Remains to be seen.

"Juneteenth"

Tomorrow is June 19.  This date is verbally contracted, in a cute little device, to "Juneteenth."  June 19 is the date in 1864 or 1865 when the last of the slaves were freed.  Black Americans -- African Americans -- informally celebrate it as what feels to them like the real marker of emancipation day, or independence day.  As of this year, the day will be made a federal holiday, now that it's about 150 years later.

And there's some resistance to the idea that Juneteenth should be dedicated this way.  For the purpose, and benefit, of this discussion, I'm going to set aside what group of people are moved to resist this dedication.

The fact is that we here in the United States already have an "Independence Day."  It's July 4.  "We" were all subjects of the British crown, until many of "us" no longer wanted to be, and we felt mistreated and unappreciated.  We suffered indignities like "taxation without representation."  We thought that was unfair, and it occurred to us that since we were here, doing all the "heavy lifting," we shouldn't have to take orders from, and diminish ourselves in fealty to, the British crown.  Even though we all started out as Britons ourselves, and all we wanted was a little more liberty.  Specifically, we didn't want the British crown imposing its religious approaches on us, since we didn't happen to share the crown's religious approach.  We wanted the liberty to choose our own religious approach, or maybe none.  So we chose, accepting all the risks, to come here.

Not all of us were dissatisfied with being subjects of the crown.  But most of us were.  So we fought for our independence, won it, cemented our victory in 1812, and have never looked back.  We're now very close allies with Great Britain, we've made whatever accomplishments we wanted to make, and we're much appreciated -- even adored, and very highly esteemed -- by our old masters.  Neither we nor they would have it any other way, and certainly not the way it was.  The fact is that if any Brits were here on July 4, they'd not only get it, and appreciate it, but they'd probably enjoy the celebration with us.

And after that, we as a country have invited other unhappy people to come here and be free with us.  It's true we've been a little selective, and sometimes grudging, about the invitation, but we mostly keep stirring the "melting pot."

In fact, everyone who's in this country came here looking for freedom and a better life.  Everyone, that is, except the people who were already here, and whom we have horribly manhandled, and except the Africans.  They didn't choose to come here, looking for a better life and freedom.  They already had a better life and freedom.  We just kidnapped them, forced them to come here, gave them a worse life, and took away their freedom.  We also took away their dignity, their sense of family, and generally any idea most of them had that there was any possibility for them here.  Their most glaring opportunity here was to be mistreated.  This opportunity was partially regionally accentuated, but parts of it were nationwide (like their opportunity to be subjected to laws, but not to be allowed to vote for the people who made the laws), until the biggest push to end the mistreatment of them, which was represented by the Civil War.  And they weren't mistreated by "us" the way "we" were mistreated by the British.  Oh, no, they were treated vastly worse than that.  In fact, "we" continued to mistreat them even after "Juneteenth," when they were "freed," and we continue generally to mistreat them today.  The way "we" were treated by the British, leading to the American War of Independence, was not nearly as bad as African Americans are treated even today, 150 years after "Juneteenth."  And when they complain about the continued mistreatment, with the civil rights movement, or "Black Lives Matter" movement, some of us punish them for being disruptive.  And ungrateful.  They are disadvantaged more or less at every turn, and we expect them to...know their place.  We don't whip them or lynch them with abandon, as some of us did in the past, but some of us still shoot them on sight, or otherwise execute them, when they have have often done little or nothing wrong.  (And certainly not enough to deserve summary assassination.)  They're given the message that they shouldn't complain about that, either, because the people who shoot them or otherwise execute them are designated as protectors.  Not their protectors, of course, but supposedly someone's protectors.

It's sad, and unfortunate, to say that we still have a very long way to go in this country.  A recent Executive initiative to make special loans available to black farmers was met with derision from some who proposed that caucasian farmers were thus disadvantaged, and who conveniently forgot, or simply didn't know, that loans made available to farmers a few decades ago were selectively withheld from black farmers.

The currently amplified suggestion that school students should learn about the systematic suppression and abuse of black people, who were critical to many of this country's accomplishments, is also getting a lot of resistance.  The Germans very clearly understand what they did wrong.  They have apologized.  They paid reparations.  They can't undo it, but they can not do it again.  What's wrong with us?

There are a lot of things black people in this country could very properly want, and demand.  They are very much owed.  If one thing that would make them feel very slightly better at the moment is their own independence day, we should declare the one they want, without question and without thought.  And with humility and our own embarrassment, for putting them in such a position in the first place.  Let that be a very tiny gesture, and a miniscule part of our effort to rebuild with them all that we have spent such a long time destroying.  We can't undo what we did any more than the Germans could.  But if we understand what we did wrong, apologize, and stop doing it, it's the best we can do.  For the sake of declaring a position, I, for one, am not in favor of paying reparations.  First, there's not enough we could pay anyone for the damage we did.  Second, if we chose some number, like $1B, or $100M, or $10M, or even just $1M per black person in this country, it would be too much to handle, and they would only lose it, like most people who get too much money they can't handle, like lottery winners, athletes and others.  The best we can do is re-provide what we took away, and finally get out of the way.  They can make their own way, if we let them.

Happy Juneteenth.