I Hope You (Fathers) Have a Happy Fathers' Day

I have theories about parenting.  A lot of people do.  But I have to actualize my theories.  There are two groups of people to whom my theories about parenting are important.  Those are my offspring and my patients.  If you're not my offspring, and you're not my patient, then you don't have to care what I think about parenting.

Both my offspring and my patients have heard my theories about parenting many times.  And here's my theory:  It is the job of children, from as soon as they're old enough to start doing their job, to become capable and independent, including independent of their parents.  It is the job of parents to permit, and even encourage, capacity and independence, including independence from parents, in their offspring .

Parents provide support and encouragement, and they set an example.  Parents who are doing their jobs as parents do not dominate or control, or leave their children with the impression that the children know nothing, and can't do anything, and only their parents are reliable.

This means that parents encourage their children to think through situations, consider various angles, and make their own decisions.  Parents permit, and even encourage, if reluctantly and with apprehension, their children to do things the parents wouldn't do.  They tolerate mistakes their children make, knowing, or even just assuming, that children will learn from their mistakes, just as the parents learned from theirs.  Parents watch children make mistakes the parents already made, and wouldn't make again, because children making, and learning from, their own mistakes is worth vastly more than relying on parents to tell them what to do.

And I tell parents, and "children" (most of whom are adults), that if they have no other way to think about this, they should realize that if everyone gets his and her wish, the offspring will outlive their parents.  If offspring are not capable and independent by then (when they're in their 40s, 50s, 60s, or maybe even 70s), they're in very deep trouble when their parents die.

The conspicuous, and legendary, times when children declare their independence are times like "the terrible twos," when two year olds rebel, refuse, and say no, and adolescence.  (This most definitely includes hearing from one's children that they hate their parents, who are the worst parents in the world, and certainly worse than their friends' parents.)  But children spend their childhoods (if we're good parents) establishing themselves and their autonomy, and figuring out what works best for them.    It's certainly not necessary to want, or hope, that children go in directions that are different from the directions their parents took, but inclinations and decisions like these should be welcomed and supported by the parents.  Sometimes, children's/offsprings' decisions to follow in the footsteps of one or another parent, in the same profession, and the same office/practice/firm, can appear adaptive and successful, but can camouflage a failure to be independent.  This can work, if it gives the adult offspring at least a fiscal basis for independence, but there's an unfulfilled component about it.

My offspring are very capable, and very independent, including independent of me.  So, I'm quite satisfied, and I pat myself on the back for having raised them the way I think they should be raised.  They don't need me, and they shouldn't.  (One will be 43 in two months, and the other is 40 1/2.  And the younger one is married and has two children of her own.)

I have said to my offspring, I say to my patients, and I will say to you, the day one's parents die should be a sad day.  It should not be a tragedy.  If it is, the parents failed.

So, I hope you succeeded, and if you did, and you're a father, Happy Father's Day.

Well, Doesn't the Beat Just Go On. (Rhetorical. Not a Question.)

It was years ago that then Commissioner Bob Anderson took Chuck Ross and me on some "field trips" in the Village.  One was to the not yet redone Public Works yard.  On that yard, in addition to lots of debris, was a garbage truck that no longer worked.  We had two others, one of which worked intermittently, and the other of which "worked" all the time.  They were old, they needed repairs we couldn't afford, and the one that "worked" all the time also constantly leaked stinking garbage fluid all over the streets.  That's when we ran our own solid waste collection and removal program, that "worked" well for some people (especially the Village residents who tipped and gave presents to the Village's sanitation PW employees), and not as well for other people.  Our first professional manager, Frank Spence, who started with us in 2006, had neither the devotion (he was worried about his elderly mother, and he spent more time with her than he did at work with us, and he already planned to move to the Pacific northwest to be near his ex-wife and children after his mother died) nor the patience or bandwidth to deal with the solid waste issue.

But our second manager, Ana Garcia, did, and she got to work.  We were overstaffed, including with people whose job descriptions were hard to identify, and she began paring.  Or chopping.  Ana did Village finances and the functioning of the sanitation part of PW some big favors.  The employees who were made redundant no doubt didn't appreciate it, but Village functioning, and taxpayers, did.

Our third manager, Heidi Shafran/Siegel, took the deep breath, and lifted us out of a situation that was marginal, at the very, very best.  She encouraged us to outsource the whole function, which the Commission did in 2014.  We had a non-Commissioner committee of Village residents to review possible contractors, and the Commission visited with the front-runner (WastePro), and we pulled the trigger.  WastePro offered all of our PW sanitation workers full time jobs, as we insisted they do, for more money than we were paying them, and not one of them agreed to work for WastePro.  We ended our program, so the majority of them were no longer working for us, and I have no idea what they decided to do instead.  But that wasn't our problem.  We gave them the best opportunity we could, and better than they had here, and they weren't interested.  OK, none of our business.  We sold our trucks, and replaced our program with a much more efficient one, that had trucks on our roads fewer days of the week than we did, and it cost homeowners/taxpayers less than our in-house program.  Were there people who complained?  Are there ever not?  Certainly the people who had gotten special treatment in exchange for tips and gifts complained.  But that wasn't our problem, either.

Our contract with WastePro eventually expired, and we went month-to-month at gradually and modestly increasing rates with them, because the Commission changed, and it was the nuclear explosion known as Tracy Truppman, and we no longer had competent management (Tracy fired whoever was competent, and whom she herself hadn't chosen), so we sort of limped.  But we were still getting our normal service from WastePro.  But then, we got another new Commission, we could finally make an attempt at rational functioning, and we could turn our attention to solid waste collection and removal, and WastePro, about which some Village residents were still complaining (whining?).

The then Commission, with or without the participation of whichever incompetent "interim" manager we had then, decided to switch to a different contractor.  They chose Great Waste, which is our contractor now.

Great Waste (both "great" and "waste" turn out to be interesting words here) quoted us a fee far higher than we were paying WastePro.  But "the times [and the economy], they were a-changing," and WastePro, which also bid to continue to serve us, also quoted us a much higher fee than we had been paying them.  I was not part of the Commission then, and I don't know whether with a nudge and a wink, we could have kept on with the month-to-month cheaper arrangement.  But we didn't, and we switched to Great Waste, and that's where we are now.

Well, you know, nothing is ever perfect, and some people will always have something to complain about, so we had our in-house issues, WastePro had its issues, and Great Waste has its issues (apart from the cost).  The one about which I had been hearing, and experiencing, is that for some unimaginable reason, the guys who work the Great Waste trucks roll garbage cans up to a few houses away from where they belong, and they leave them there.  So, some people wonder why there's a garbage can in front of their house, and it's not theirs, and other people wonder what happened to their garbage can.  Once you realize this is happening, you learn to check with your neighbors to find out who's missing a garbage can (the one that's now in front of your house, but it's not yours), or who has yours.

And then -- and this is sort of the main reason for this post, frankly! -- there's yesterday.  Yesterday was Tuesday, I live east of 9th Avenue, so Tuesday is my yard waste pick-up day.  Monday afternoon, I put out a pile of thin branches and palm fronds, and two containers of leaves.  My immediate nextdoor neighbor and I use the same small patch of swale for our yard waste.  I don't think he had any yesterday.  So, there was a pile, and two containers.  The Great Waste guys came by, emptied the two containers into the truck, and didn't touch the pile of thin branches.  Nor a similar-looking pile across the street.  This is a problem, because there is no reason to think those piles won't sit there for a week, and get added to next week, and no one wants a pile of yard waste on the swale/street for a week. So, I sent an e-mail to our Commissioners, asking them to get this resolved.  (It's also worth noting that yesterday was the last day of work here for Mario Diaz, who in my opinion, was a terrible manager, and who, as a parting shot to the Village, unilaterally gave Great Waste permission to increase our solid waste collection and removal fee by 20%.  Mario either didn't see any reason to leave a decision like that up to the Commission -- Great Waste is under contract, and we had no obligation just to let them increase the fee -- or hiring Mario, and giving him the resume boost that allowed him to make very much more money being CNMB's manager, was one of those good deeds that didn't go unpunished.)

Anyway, as I said, I reached out to the Commission to ask for help.  I got the help, very promptly, from Mac Kennedy.  He forwarded my e-mail to Great Waste, and they said they'd be back today to pick up what they left behind yesterday.  I never heard word 1 from any others of the Commissioners.

Mac argues with me when I say he's the only one who cares, and he's the only one who does the work of being a Commissioner.  He offers excuses for the others.  And I openly admit that I am so massively disappointed in and disgusted by our recent Commissions that I have stopped attending meetings.  But apart from Mac's protestations, I have no evidence that I'm wrong.

Mac's term ends in November of 2024.  I very much hope he runs again.  Art Gonzalez's term ends at the same time.  He's already said, at the outset, that his only ambition is one term.  I hope he doesn't change his mind.  Veronica Olivera's term is two years, and ends at the same time as Mac's and Art's.  I hope she doesn't run again.  If we can hold on to Mac, and get two more Commissioners who care about any of this, and are prepared to do the work, maybe we can become more fully functional.  I hope so.

The Attack of...Social Media

I'm listening to the radio while I work out, and the host for this morning's show is Ayesha Rascoe.  She had as a guest another NPR contributor named Ayesha Harris.  Ayesha Rascoe called this "The Attack of the Ayeshas."

The topic was "social media," and the problems it causes.  It's easy to think of "social media" as facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, and maybe some others.  The Ayeshas fleetingly noted that the whole internet is a kind of social media.  Frankly, it occurred to me that a public blog like this one is, or can be, an example of a kind of social media.

One of the noteworthy, and toxic, features of social media mentioned by the Ayeshas was anonymity.  (If you hear sirens blaring, so do I.)  I have been part of online communities in which many participants use aliases.  One of those communities was a doctors' site called SERMO.  I did a post about anonymity (the use of aliases) on SERMO, and there were hundreds of comments.  One I will never forget came from an unidentified doctor who said that if s/he had to reveal her or his name, s/he wouldn't comment.  S/he would say things under cover of an alias that s/he wouldn't say if s/he had to identify her- or himself.  And that's a big part of the problem.  I would never in a million years make a public comment under cover of an alias.  If I have something to say, you're entitled to know who's saying it.  If I can't bear to let you know, then I should keep my mouth shut.

Getting back to the internet as social media, it is very common that a patient I treat will ask me, or tell me, about something they looked up (they think it's an important discovery, and they've armed themselves with information and facts) online.  I am very clear with them about this.  I tell them I will beg them, on my knees, if necessary, not to look things up online.  They don't know who said it, what that person's real credentials and expertise are, why the person said it, and certainly not if it's true.  If my patients want psychiatric advice, they should ask me.  That's what I'm here for.  That's what they pay me for.  And if they feel they can't trust me and what I tell them, they should find someone who seems to them more trustworthy.  Of course, if they think that all of my training and experience can be duplicated by looking something up online, then they have another problem besides the one for which they consulted me.

In the medical world, there are people called drug detail people.  They're young, employees of the drug companies, and their job is to meet doctors, and tell the doctors why they should prescribe such-and-such new drug.  I call these people drug cuties or drug hunks, depending on their gender.  I don't know what, if any, credentials or training they have, but they're not hired at random.  They're hired for the appeal the drug company thinks they'll have.  They have a rap they give, which includes various kinds of thin information (including allegations like "this drug is approved for X, but I've been hearing from many of your colleagues that they're finding it also shows effectiveness for Y, which would of course be an 'off label' use"), reprints of articles, and the offer of samples.  Generally speaking, I refuse to talk to them.  But I do remember an interaction with one guy about 20 years ago, and he showed me a reprint of an article.  I recognized the lead author's name, because he was a very well known psychiatrist, but the journal that published this paper was what we call a "throw-away" journal.  I asked about that.  This psychiatrist could get published anywhere.  Why was his paper in a two-bit journal?  The drug detail guy said he didn't know, but he'd get back to me.  Not in about 20 years, so far.  I later became aware that drug companies pay well known doctors a fee to allow the drug company to list the doctor's well known name as the lead author on a paper with which the doctor had no involvement.  Later than that, a former editor of the highly esteemed New England Journal of Medicine revealed that drug companies pay journals to publish papers (which might otherwise not have met the editorial standards of the journal).

I'm just giving you medical examples, but the "social media" problem is vastly more pervasive and insidious than that.  And there's less and less anyone can trust.  "Anonymous?"  Don't make me piss my pants.

If you have something to say, feel free to say it.  And grow up, and take responsibility for what you say.  I do.  If you don't have the nerve to be associated with and responsible for what's in your mind, then keep your mouth shut.  No one gives a shit about you and your drivelings.

A Rock and a Hard Place

The first time Dan Samaria ran for Commission, he didn't win.  He worked very hard on his second campaign, and he did well.  He got elected to a four year term.  As best I understood, Dan also availed himself of the advice, counsel, and mentoring of people like the Rosses and the Andersons.  Frankly, Dan was surprisingly steady, unflinching (while under constant attack from Truppman and her posse), and he seemed to keep his eye on the ball.  I was impressed by him.

But then, something happened (it might have been Roxy Ross' agreement to fulfill a term that had been abandoned by someone), and maybe Dan didn't feel he was free to confer with the Rosses (he was free to confer with Chuck, but not with Roxy, once she became a Commission colleague), and he also stopped relying on the Andersons.  His performance on the Commission deteriorated badly, and he just became resistant to what the rest of the Commission, especially Mac Kennedy, wanted.  There were rumors about whose (very bad) advice Dan was then taking, but the result was that he was no longer a credit to the Commission or to the Village.

Judi Hamelburg was never going to be a creditable Commissioner, and she wasn't.  All Judi ever did, and all she does, is complain and cite herself, and how the Village mistreated her decades ago, about any issue (that had nothing to do with her).

So, when Dan and Judi ran for re-election, I didn't favor or vote for either of them.  The remaining choices were not good, because they were people who had lived in the Village a short time and/or never been involved in Village functioning in any way.  There was nothing promising about them, with the pathetically only redeeming feature being that they weren't Dan or Judi.  There were actually four candidates who weren't Dan or Judi, and if it was possible to consider one of them even less promising than the other three, that was the task.  So, I held my nose, and voted for the three who won.

The Commission is now Mac Kennedy, Art Gonzalez, Jonathan Groth, Veronica Amsler, and Veronica Olivera.  Mac does all the work, Art has never shown any interest or activity, and the other three are essentially dead weight.

Our manager, who has always been useless to the Village, is leaving.  Next week.  So, we have to find a new manager.  Advertisements about the imminently open position were posted in early May.  There are various places to post ads like this, and people who want this kind of job have very active antennae to find these openings.  We've typically had more applicants, but this time, we got only 10.  Yesterday, Mac sent out an e-blast about progress thus far.  "At the Tuesday, June 6, Commission meeting, the Commission held its first discussion about candidates for the manager after the June 2 application deadline.  Several Commissioners had not been able to meet/talk to all candidates in which (sic) they were interested based on resumes and other application materials."  Mac goes on from there, but the rest of the blah, blah, blah is not important to this discussion.

I was very pointed with Mac about this, and I asked him if he interviewed, spoke with, or otherwise contacted the 10 applicants, or those who he thought were most promising.  Yes, he did.  Mac communicated about the fact that he completed the assigned task, and the others did not, and in his response to me, about the conversation the Commission had at its meeting, and how his suggestions were received, he used terms like "I was shot down," "I was not happy about that," "I never understand such a casual attitude when it's time to get something done, particularly something of such import," and his "prepared[ness] to discuss all the candidates and take next steps, which is what I thought was the intent of the agenda item."  (I told Mac it seemed unimaginable to me that I would not write a blog post about this, and he did not ask me not to, or not to quote him.)

I suggested to Mac that the rest of the Commission were mutinying against him.  He's capable, knowledgeable, and determined, and they're not.  Mac was either gentlemanly or resistant, and he disagreed with me.  He said he did not think they were mutinying against him.

Have you ever heard of the "Peter Principle?"  If you haven't, it's a management theory that says that in a hierarchy, people are promoted for their good work, and they're promoted to the point that they reach their level of incompetence.  Four of our Commissioners are exemplars of the "Peter Principle," or Mac's wrong, and they really are mutinying against him, because they're embarrassed and jealous.  Either way, the Commission is not doing the Village any good.  It has no vision, no concept of the Village's strengths and weaknesses, no "institutional knowledge," and no way to forge an adaptive path.  It can't, or won't, even follow Mac's lead.

We could have gotten Dan Samaria and/or Judi Hamelburg back, but we got the three people who beat them, plus Art Gonzalez.  If you want to know which is the rock, and which is the hard place, I don't know.

"Don't Worry, Be Happy." Or "What, Me Worry?"

"Don't Worry, Be Happy" is a song made famous by Bobby McFerrin.  The lyrics are sort of vapid, as you can guess from the title, but the song is very catchy.

There must be BPers around who are familiar with "What, Me Worry?"  It was the slogan of Alfred E Newman, who was an idiotic-looking cartoon mascot on "Mad" magazine.  And the slogan is as intentionally idiotic as is Alfred E Newman's cartoon existence.  I very much doubt "Mad" magazine exists any more.

There are several current movements that support ideas like "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and "What, Me Worry?"  These movements center on dumbing Americans down, and discouraging them from stressing over slavery (and its current and ongoing echos), and certainly from having to think about much more complicated and subtle concepts like "Critical Race Theory" (this is upper level law school stuff, and not intended for college students, high schoolers, or earlier students), or gender-related issues, or sex at all.

I get loads of e-mails every day, from various sources and about various things.  Knowing me as you do, you can (correctly) guess that they're all liberal-leaning.  One I got yesterday comes from some organization called "Civic Shout" (I don't know anything about them, except I get their e-mails, and they're all liberal-leaning), and this one was complaining about the Ohio legislature's plan to prohibit college professors from teaching about climate change.  You really have to think about that.  College professors would be prohibited from teaching about anything, including something that is objectively true, and a huge and increasing problem?  "Don't Worry, Be Happy."  "What, Me Worry?"

In our state, it's the governor making fun of people who wear masks in an epidemic of an infectious disease, rules not to say "gay," and to adjust textbooks, and ban library books, to eliminate references and topics to which Ron DeSantis and his stooges don't want students and others exposed.  "Don't Worry, Be Happy."  "What, Me Worry?"

There are sort of two, or maybe three, or perhaps four, problems with this approach.  One is that topics like these are true.  Why should people not know what's true?  Related to that is that if we in this increasingly weird and backward-hurtling country could succeed in dumbing down the public, they would be...dumb.  In whose interest is that?  What, because ignorance, or denial, is blissful?  I don't think it is.  Watch Jordan Klepper interview the MAGA crowd.  You don't think those people know what fools they make of themselves?  Third, there's a saying, or variations of it, reportedly, or possibly, coined by George Santayana, that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," or "those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."  (Although a 2013 article I read from Culture and Religion has the subscript "history shows that both those who do not learn history and those who do learn history are doomed to repeat it."  I don't think that's a reason not to learn history, or not to learn anything.  If you know where this is going, at least you have a fighting chance.)

But there's a curious and unexpected fourth adverse consequence of adopting the "Don't Worry, Be Happy," or "What, Me Worry?" approach to life.  I'm assuming here that people who adopt this approach sort of know they're kidding themselves.  Monday through Friday, I receive a post from an online publication called "Now I Know."  It's curious and usually interesting things most people don't know.  (But now, they do.)  The founder of this site and author of the posts is a guy named Dan Lewis.  Wednesday's main post was about Bazooka chewing gum, a 1957 contest to predict scores of two baseball games that year on July 11, and indirectly about baseball cards (Bazooka was/is owned by the Topps baseball card company), and one card in particular.  But what was interesting was the "Bonus Fact."  It reads "Baseball cards can help predict the future, maybe.  In 2010, researchers at Wayne [State?] University reviewed 230 baseball cards from the 1952 season, aiming to categorize the smiles on the players' faces.  As Time [magazine] reported, 'players who had more authentic[-looking] smiles -- conveying a deeper level of contentment -- were more likely to live longer than those who were only partially smiling, or not grinning at all.'  And the lifespan differences were huge -- genuinely[-looking] smiling players lived, on average, seven years longer than those who weren't smiling whatsoever." 

It turns out that if you're not being genuine, and you're faking it, and lulling yourself into a "Don't Worry, Be Happy" or "What, Me Worry?" mantra, and you sort of know it, you're not only kidding yourself, but you're killing yourself.

PS: Dan Lewis' posts are NowIKnow.com.  You can subscribe for free.  If you like them, you can contribute.  But you don't have to.  Check them out for a couple of weeks, and see what you think.  I've been following them faithfully for probably over 10 years.  You get a new story almost every Monday through Wednesday, a re-run from the archives on Thursday, and a new discussion about something, recaps of the week, and some weekend "long reads" on Friday.  The "long reads," of which there are usually three, are estimated to be less than 20 minutes each most of the time.

Would It Help to Look at It the Other Way Around?

Everyone is more than aware, and some possibly sick to death, of the commotion regarding Clarence Thomas.  You don't have to read much to find out that the same issue affects John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch.  And more so that a version of it affects, or can affect, all Supreme Court Justices, not to mention any other judges.

The problem is absence of impartiality, from whatever cause, and the presence of bias.  Everyone sees things in certain ways, and has personal preferences, but judges and Justices are expected to set that aside when they have to oversee hearings.  Ideally, they wouldn't have much, or any, basis for conflict of interest, but if they do, they're supposed to be aware of it, and consciously block it from affecting their judgments, and even their behavior on whatever bench they occupy.

Anyone who has trouble understanding what's the problem with Clarence Thomas, for example, and his wife being treated to a luxury lifestyle, by someone who advocates for certain outcomes on the SCOTUS, and Thomas invariably and without question voting for those outcomes, would have much less trouble understanding the problem if George Soros, to take a caricaturish example Reps/cons like to imagine, provided a luxury lifestyle for the late Ruth Ginsburg and her husband, and submitted amicus briefs and other examples of preferred outcomes to the Court, and Ginsburg, without having to ask any questions of litigants, always opined as Soros advocated.

So, here's a situation in Broward County in which the judge had her own leanings (which is fine, as long as she keeps her personal opinions to herself), and she could not run a hearing in a fair way.  That is the one and only job of judges and Justices.  Commission: Florida judge should be reprimanded for conduct during Parkland school shooting trial (msn.com)

In this case, there is a movement to have this judge reprimanded, but she's already figured out into what corner she painted herself, and she's resigning, at age 46, in three weeks.  She couldn't do her job, and either she figured that out, or she's just trying to avoid the consequences.  Frankly, my guess is that if Thomas has any brains, he knows the same thing about himself, but he feels confident he can get away with it, and besides, he likes the tit.  Harlan Crow has done much more for the Thomases than Thomas' SCOTUS salary could do for them.  No, the American public, and the US Constitution, are not Thomas' constituents.  Harlan Crow is.

Nikolas Cruz is a convicted and sentenced criminal, and I haven't read anything that would lead me to think he doesn't deserve to be.  But he also deserved a fair trial, with an impartial judge, and he didn't get one.  (I have also not read anything to suggest his lawyer is planning to ask for a conclusion that there was a mistrial, although I think s/he should.  I can't imagine the outcome would be different, which may be the reason no one is talking about a mistrial, but Cruz was entitled to fair treatment from the judge, and he didn't get it.)  Litigants before judges who are either burdened by conflict of interest, have their minds made up in advance, or just want to promote their own ideology also don't get a fair trial.  If these judges want to advocate for their own opinions, they should run for legislative office, and see if they can get the voters, and legislative colleagues (if they win) to agree with them.  Otherwise, imposing an agenda is not their job.

It Could Possibly Be Better Than That? Well, I Suppose the Seats Could Be More Comfortable.

Not long ago, it was sitting with John Holland, et al, at South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center.  Last night, it was joining the Cabans, and basking in a sort of unbelievable evening at musimelange at the M Building (corner of NW 2nd Ave and 30th St).  Lauren said she sort of expected to see me there.  If she had called me, she and Robert and I could have carpooled.  Although it's a vastly shorter ride than to Cutler Bay.

We've talked before about musimelange.  It always occurs in the M Building, which may at one time have been sort of a factory, but I think was a house after that, and is now a function building and gallery of unusual art.  (People have weddings and stuff there.)  musimelange is an evening with hors d'oeuvres, a sort of light (but unlimited) dinner, unlimited wine, whatever musical program musimelange's founder and artistic director puts together, as much socializing as you could want, and unlimited dessert.  The hors d'oeuvres are always bread and cheeses, and water.  The wines are variable, depending on what the supplier wants to bring, but always top shelf B&G, last night's dinner was sushi, and the dessert was fruit cremes.  They did have a chocolate one, and I always gravitate to chocolate, but the kiwi was better.

musimelange has been on hold for three years, because of the coronavirus, and it was resurrected last night with a vengeance.  There were lots of presentations, from duets to sextets, spanning modern to Baroque music, and someone said there were 18 different musicians (including Amanda Crider and some other woman singer I don't know).  I think there were four different pianists.  And two violinists.  And a violist.  And two cellists, both of whom I know, and one of whom was my son's best friend in early school years.  And a bass player.  And a clarinetist.  And a woman who usually plays oboe, but who played English horn last night.

The founder of musimelange is French, and she gets all of her French friends to come, as patrons or helpers.  One French guy whom I have never before seen there, but who knows the founder, is Corentin ("Corey"), whose last name I don't know, and who owned Cafe Creme on 125th St (immediately next to MOCA), until, as he told me last night, he sold it in December.

It's worth noting -- it was certainly worth noting last night -- that in recent years, Marvin Sackner and his wife have both died.  Marvin was a doctor -- pulmonary, if I remember correctly -- on Miami Beach, and he invented some medication, started his own pharmaceutical company, sold it for a lot of money, and became a very appreciated donor around town.  His name is near the top of the list of big donors to several arts organizations, including Seraphic Fire, GableStage, and musimelange.  Marvin used to choose one musimelange performer every year, and bring them here, not infrequently from Europe.  He paid for everything for that presentation.  Everyone was grateful to him, and one performer last night dedicated the performance to him.

Because of the nature of the room, it's always crowded at musimelange.  This makes maneuvering tricky, but it allows for lots of interaction, including with the performers.  The feel is very intimate, as if someone was presenting a concert in your living room.  There might have been about 100 people there, and the seating was close, and wood.  So...

The food was spectacular, as it always is.  Anne Chicheportiche, a local, but French, professional violinist, who is the founder of musimelange, has settled on always using a local (French, of course) chef whose first name is Vincent, to create the dishes.  They're always magnificent.  So was last night's sushi, except -- who knew?! -- Robert Caban happens to be allergic to seafood, so he didn't get to eat any of the dinner.

The music.  I didn't know any of it, and I loved it all.  I had gotten there early, while they were rehearsing, so I knew there was Vivaldi, who is my favorite composer.  The program started with modern music, then worked its way back through the Romantic and Classical periods, ending with the Baroque and Vivaldi.  The joke about Vivaldi is that he only wrote one concerto, but he wrote it 200 times.  Nyuk, nyuk.  Yes, it's true that Vivaldi is very recognizable from one piece to another (the "Red Priest" taught music to girls and young women in Venice, and he was more interested in writing pieces from which they could learn to play than he was in writing a range of music within the Baroque style), but for me, it's totally captivating.  Rossini did some of the same stuff in the Classical period, "sampling" himself from one piece to another.

The cost to attend musimelange is an interesting matter.  In a sense, it's not cheap.  I pay in cash at the door, so it costs me $85.  I could have paid about $10 less in advance, but that would have cost musimelange the credit card commission, and it would have been $10 less income for them.  So, I do it this way.  But for what you get -- as much food and wine as you want, spectacular music, and great companionship -- it's actually sort of a pretty good deal.  I haven't been to musimelange for over three years.  No one has.  But last night, there were smiles, hugs, catching up, and a genuine feeling of being among friends.  $85 is not a high price to pay just for that.  One of the pianists didn't look like a classical pianist.  He was a casual-looking young guy, and he had an almost cocky style to him.  And it seemed clear he was playing his piece while chewing gum.  (This is not what you expect at a concert of classical music.)  So, when the concert was over, and we were all having our dessert and champagne, I told him I had never before seen a classical musician chewing gum while performing.  He said he wasn't chewing gum, and he was disappointed that it looked that way.  He had taken piano lessons for two years as a young kid, given them up, and returned to piano in high school!  He hadn't yet gotten over being nervous, and as much water as he drank all day yesterday, because the anxiety makes his mouth dry, his mouth was still dry while he was playing.  He was unaware of the mouth movements that looked to me like chewing gum.  And he was a really nice kid, and good to talk to.  Where else do you get interactions like that?

musimelange very typically happens over a short, four-event, season, usually starting in January, and ending in about April.  This one was special for a number of reasons.  I don't know when the next presentation will be, but I'm on their list.  So are the Cabans.  If this sounds appealing to you, you can let me, or the Cabans, know, and we'll tell you when the next presentation is.  Or, you can probably find musimelange's website, and get yourselves on the list.  You'll be very glad you did.

No, I Do Not Think We Should "Defund the Police."

Crimes, and various problematic situations, occur, and I doubt there is any country on earth that does not use a police force to respond, intervene, and investigate.  And this is right and proper.  It is, or should be, orderly and efficient.  In theory, people who become police officers are trained for this work, like I'm trained for my work, and many or most people are trained for the work they do.

But we have problems.  If you remember the story of Philando Castile from 2016, Castile was driving with his family (wife or girlfriend, and child) in the upper midwest, he was stopped by police for something like a tail light that was out, he told the officer he had a legal firearm in the car, and he moved slowly to get it from his glove compartment, reassuring the officer he just wanted it somewhere where the officer could see it, so the officer would not have to worry about it.  But the officer freaked out, started shrieking, and shot Castile dead, in front of Castile's family.  Castile was African-American.  The officer later tried to excuse himself, saying he had not been trained thoroughly enough.  (How much training does a police officer need to deal with someone with a broken tail light, and who is being 100% cooperative?)  This is someone authorized by the state to intervene in any situation, carrying a gun, and who says he had not been trained enough.  If there's a flimsier story, I don't want to know what it is.  Although the open question is whether the fault was with the inadequately trained officer, and his lack of composure, or with the state or municipality that authorized him, armed him, but didn't train him enough.

We could of course ask, trained enough for what?  Derek Chauvin, and some unrelated police officer in NYC (the officer who killed Eric Garner), applied so much pressure, for such a long time, to the necks of suspects that they killed them.  It's true that they were in some way trained to be police officers, but they weren't trained to be doctors.  Is that their excuse?  How should they know that cutting off someone's circulation and breathing would cause the death of the person?  What are they, doctors?  This is assuming, of course, that they were not trained not to kneel on people's necks, and not to ignore those people's complaints that they couldn't breathe.  (That complaint was recorded in the cases of both Garner and George Floyd.)

The fact is that there's evidence that the problem has nothing to do with training or the inadequacy of it.  'A complete mess': CDC report names police violence 'major cause' of deaths but omits critical data (msn.com)  Do these police officers know they're racist, and would they admit it?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  The data say they are, and either they don't know it, or they won't admit it.  But whatever training they get apparently isn't enough to overcome their racism, and their possible gross lack of insight.  We've had our own version of it right here in BP.  And nobody involved was unaware of it then.

A couple or so years ago, there was a story from somewhere in NY about police being called to intervene because some nine year old (African-American) girl wouldn't obey her mother, who called the police.  If you know about this incident, and if you saw the video of this nine year old girl being manhandled by police into their cruiser, and was calling for help from her mother -- her mother!  the one who called the police! -- then you know that if we all accept that police have an important role in society, it isn't to intervene in situations like that, with parents who don't know how to deal with nine year olds.  A social worker or someone?  Much more likely.  But not the police.

We need to restructure the police.  And adequately train them, if there's any truth to their excuse that they're not adequately trained.  Maybe we need better human beings as police officers.  Maybe we need to pay enough to get the kinds of people we ought to have.  (Like we ought to pay a lot better for good teachers, the results of whose work will be forever critically important to us as a society.)  But "defund" the police?  As in not have any?  No.  When there's a car accident, or a 7-11 is being robbed, we're not going to call a social worker to intervene there.

Now, THERE'S Something to Feel Good About!

I'm a Black musician who has befriended and encouraged over 200 Ku Klux Klan members to give up their robes. Here's how I approach these sensitive conversations. (msn.com)

One of my first associations to this story was the song "You Have to Be Carefully Taught" from South Pacific.  But as I read on, it was clear that racism, and all prejudice, is based on careless, not careful, teaching.

Daryl Davis is an exquisitely clever, and devoted, person.  (It sounds like he's very talented, too.)  The title of this column says he befriended and encouraged to drop out of the KKK 200 KKK members.  It's a limited column, and it's not clear if he really befriended any of them, or if he just allowed them not to feel enraged, challenging, and challenged, as they expected.  And he says he didn't "encourage" anyone to change.  He was just present, real, steady, and not provocative, and they figured out for themselves that they should change.  They realized that their whole position as Klan members was built on nothing, and was entirely spurious, and they abandoned it.

I probably never told you the joke about the guy with the flat tire.  All of my patients have heard it.  This column is a version of that joke.  It's one of my two favorite jokes:

A guy is driving way out on country roads somewhere, and he hears and feels something.  He knows already what it is.  He pulls over, takes a look, and sure enough, he has a flat tire.  So, he looks in the trunk of his car, and he has a spare.  But he doesn't have a jack.  (Do you know this joke?)  So, he looks up and down the road, wasn't really paying attention to anything except the relaxing ride, and realizes he doesn't know where he is, or where to go.  He starts walking in one direction.  He's walking along, and it occurs to him that where he is is so remote that maybe no one lives out there.  It's getting a little darker, and a little chilly, and he starts to think that even if anyone lives out there, it's possible they don't have a car.  After all, there really isn't anywhere to go.  Now, it's getting darker, chillier, and it's starting to drizzle.  He says to himself that even if anyone lived out there, and even if they had a car, they might not have a jack, like he doesn't have a jack.  He's getting increasingly uncomfortable, and he thinks that even if anyone lived out there, and even if they had a car, and even if they had a jack, maybe their jack would be rusted, or otherwise not in working order.  He's now starting to get miserable, and he thinks that even if anyone lived way out there, wherever he is, and even if they had a car, and even if they had a jack, and even if their jack worked, they're not going to lend their jack to him!  They don't know him!  So, now, he's disgusted, and he feels defeated.  He's still walking down the road, and he sees a light!  He walks down the long driveway, and he comes to a house!  He knocks on the door.  Someone answers, and says, with a smile, "yes?"  And he says, in disgust, "keep your fucking jack!"  And he walks away.

It's a gorgeous joke, and it explains, among other things, how people work themselves into assumptions that have no basis in reality.  I hope you like the joke.  And I hope you like the linked column.

Mac Kennedy Talks Trash.

Mac sent an e-blast to his circulation today.  He let us know that the proposal from our current solid waste contractor is to increase the yearly fee from $660 to $791 (20%) per household.  He then set out a collection of ways we could respond to this.  He did not advocate for any of them in particular, but just let us know what our choices are.

As a frame of reference, if we go back to 2014, and all the way before that, the Village had its own internal solid waste collection and removal program.  We underpaid our employees, had too many of them who were not productive, and at least in the decade or so before 2014, we couldn't keep trucks in proper working order, and not spewing stinking liquid all over the streets.  So, against resistance that was apparently louder than it was broad, we outsourced sanitation.  We got the then contractor to offer all of our sanitation workers a job, at more than we were paying them, we got much newer and not held together with spit and scotch tape trucks, and we saved money for each home.  (It's also worth noting that before about 2006, we did not have professional management -- Commissioners managed departments -- and our second professional manager did a massive clean-up of our clean-up department.  But still, outsourcing was better, cheaper, and more stable.)

The system held until recent years.  There were some complaints about the first contractor -- WastePro -- and enough grumbling to stimulate a search for a replacement.  That's how we got the second/current contractor, Great Waste.  As it turned out, it seemed everyone's costs had gone up, and not only did Great Waste charge us significantly more than did WastePro, but WastePro would have charged us significantly more, too.

But now, there's this massive-looking increase for the coming year, which led to Mac's e-blast and suggestions for what we can do about it.

One of Mac's suggestions was that we can stop including the "recycling" service, since it doesn't appear that recycling happens anyway.  If you've ever noticed that on Friday, either your recycling bin or your garbage bin gets picked up first, and the other gets picked up later, that's two separate runs of garbage trucks.  If we stopped pretending anything got recycled, we could reduce that to one run.  (If you want to continue the fantasy that our disposables get recycled, Mac points out we could do what "green" municipalities do, and leave it to each of us to deposit "recycling" at a central location, and the contractor can go only there to pick it up.)

Or, Mac points out that for his household, which is two people and a pet, the garbage container (the larger green one) doesn't get full more frequently than once every two weeks or so.  If I waited to fill mine, it would take longer than a month.  Maybe two.  (Although if we didn't pretend anything gets recycled, and I put my "recycling" in the larger garbage bin, it would take a month or maybe a little less to fill it.)  If enough people didn't need garbage to be picked up twice a week, we could have less frequent runs of garbage trucks, thereby saving at least the cost of the run.  Although Mac points out that the largest recent cost increase is caused by increased tipping fees (the cost of dumping the contents of the truck in a landfill, or wherever they dump it), and that will stay more or less the same whether it's small amounts frequently or large amounts infrequently.  The main variable is the weight.  But it does keep trucks off the road, and exhaust out of the atmosphere.

Mac points out that there is a more attention-getting way to lower the solid waste collection and removal fee, and that's to stop charging contractors a "franchise fee."  We charge everyone franchise fees to do business in the Village.  But Mac also reminds that if we don't charge Great Waste, let's say, the franchise fee, which would allow them to charge us less, since they're not going to turn around and give us back the money, then we deprive Village coffers of that revenue, which means we pay a higher tax.  So, our net, as homeowning check-writers, probably doesn't change, or not much.

This leaves us with one strategy Mac didn't mention: produce less garbage.  That means we buy things with less packaging, and don't waste what we buy.  I saw a statistic within the past year saying that we (at least in this country) throw away about 1/3 of the food we buy.  Go to the store more often, and buy what you need for the next day or so, eat what's on your plate, and eat leftovers.  Save "single-use" bagging, so it's not single use.  Use your own non-disposable bags when you go to the store, instead of coming home with lots of paper and plastic bags.

Mac sent out this e-blast because he wants us to think about this, participate in a Tuesday, June 5, Commission meeting at 5:00, and express an opinion.  The Commission will decide (we haven't had a competent manager since the end of 2016), but they'd like our input.  It's our money.  And our streets.  And our air.  And our future.