Archive for February, 2010

UNHINGED

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

The latest act by another disenfranchised citizen has come in the form of a small plane being crashed into the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas.  The resultant fire spread quickly through the entire building and it is a miracle that only one person inside was killed.  Sadly, he was a well-liked family man, a Vietnam Veteran, and known to all as one who would be the first to offer aid to anyone in need.  Isn’t that always the way it goes?  The pilot, Joseph Stack, an unemployed civil engineer who was unraveling over the past weeks, also died in the crash.  That part, of course, is as it should be.

What, exactly, is this ever-increasing act of violence that includes taking innocent people with you during your self-imposed “flame-of-glory” exit?  Family murder-suicides are rising dramatically, now often based in financial stress that finally reaches the breaking point.  A pure litmus test of the degree of stress that many families are feeling, and when it comes to the point where you’re losing, or are about to lose, everything, we are seeing that those who are even slightly pre-disposed to “snapping” are doing so at an alarming rate.

Even in our tiny state of New Hampshire there has been a spate of murder-suicides in neighborhoods, and involving families, that you wouldn’t expect to see that kind of violent end.  Even Stack, lit his house on fire, family still inside, before he left for the airport for his final flight.  Why he did not simply fly himself into the side of a mountain is beyond me, but like many before him, he decided to take, or try to take, a few along with him.

Are there any among us who are not frustrated with our tax bills and the obscene spending by our elected officials, while our struggle to keep our homes and keep our families fed becomes more and more difficult?  Still, have you ever considered such an outrageous act?  Did Joseph Stack give any consideration to the aftermath of his attack, to the damage done to innocents? My first thought was…”the guy owns an airplane…things can’t be that bad…”, and yet that irony seemed lost on him.

Workplace murder is common, let’s be honest, as are school shootings.  Let’s brace ourselves for the “normalization” of the notion that an increasing number of us will become unhinged and commit some heinous act.  We seem to take it in stride as a culture.  Remember Timothy McVeigh?  Similar story.  We become the enemy when we allow ourselves to become terrorists, and if the rest of us, as a society, continue to ignore warning signs amongst friends and neighbors, than we can expect the trend to continue to fester unabated.  To think you can go through life, one tumbler click away from shooting your co-workers or flying a plane into a building, and none of your friends or family notices something is wrong, seems unlikely to me, but we are loathe to speak up and unsure when or what to do other than that.

I’m not looking forward to a world where we have to avoid the unhinged in the same way we watch for children when a ball rolls in front of you while driving.  I’ve got enough to worry about…or then again…maybe I don’t.

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AND THE OSCAR GOES TO….

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

Hopefully, not you, if you’re a patient at the Steere Nursing Home in Providence, Rhode Island.  I’m not talking about the prestigious award given to actors and actresses of high rank.  I’m talking about a different Oscar.  Oscar the Death Cat.

For quite some time Oscar has held the fascination of doctors and scientists for his uncanny ability to sense impending death. Indeed, Dr. David Dosa, a professor at Brown University Medical School, wrote a piece about Oscar in 2007 in The New England Journal of Medicine.  Oscar is drawn to the bedside of patients about to die, usually within an hour or two of their demise.  His batting average is about 98%.  Certainly, an intriguing little kitty.

There was the time that nursing home staff were sure a patient was about to meet his maker, and they placed Oscar on his bed.  Oscar, though, would not stay put and it turned out that the patient rallied for several days.  Then, an hour before passing, Oscar joined the man, curled up at his side.  Other similar stories abound.

One must wonder, though, how do they keep the business coming in at this place?  I would think that the nursing home chapter of one’s life is rather grim enough, without having Dr. Kevorkian’s cat gnawing at your door all night.  And the idea that staff would bring this corpse-inducing beast into your room, seemingly hoping that you will die soon, seems contrary to common sense.  Aren’t they supposed to be keeping people comfortable?  How do you get comfortable with this creepy cat curled up at your feet?  Is there nobody in the neighborhood with a can of tuna that could lure this creature away from the building?

I understand the fascination, but at some point you would think they might get a little sheepish about it.  I mean, these doctors and scientists running around with clipboards and sketch pads, meanwhile, this place has more chalk outlines than Einstein’s first blackboard.  Patients must avoid tuna sandwiches like the plague.  Anything that smells remotely like catnip is out of the question.  Speaking for myself, I would have a hungry German Sheppard tied to my bedpost.

Dr. Dosa remarked that Oscar was helpful in that staff could notify relatives early.  I’m serious.  Who makes that call, and how exactly does that go?  “Why don’t you warm up the car, Oscar is sleeping on your uncle’s head…”  Or, maybe, the staff simply calls and whispers “meow” into the phone.

I’m going on record right now, to my friends and family.  Should I make it to the nursing home, make sure it is a home with a zero-tolerance “No Pets” policy.

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POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Anyone remember Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island?  Jim Backus was the actor, I believe, and much like our President he spoke with his chin elevated and with that elegant, aristocratic drawl that is so often used to mock the dialect of the inexplicably wealthy.  Backus’ character and his wife, were the wealthy couple in the cast of misfits shipwrecked on a deserted island.  Constantly put upon by the lack of amenities and comforts, luxuries and pleasures that they had become accustomed to.

If only Backus had lived long enough to become Speaker of the House.  He would have found himself having to adjust to the excessive showering of amenities, comforts, luxuries and pleasures bestowed upon him.  Our beloved Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has recently had unearthed to the public her penchant for no-holds-barred travel on military aircraft, most notably the gorgeous and opulent Gulfstream IV.  Any pilot, myself included, genuflects in awe at the passing of a G-5 either on ground or in air, because they are the Rolls Royce of corporate air travel.

Pelosi, it seems, likes to block one off for her own use nearly every weekend.  Indeed, emails from military personnel at Travis AFB where the Gulfstreams are based, contained complaints regarding Pelosi’s heavy use of the aircraft.  “She blocks one off for the weekend, and then cancels at the last minute, as one might do with a car service.  We have crews drive in, caterers deliver food, pre-flights performed on aircraft…and then she cancels.”  Sounds like a dream, doesn’t she?

It doesn’t end there, though.  Our mouse-like Speaker has spent over 2 million dollars of our tax money on private air-taxi service in just two years.  She has spent over 100 thousand dollars on food and booze. Think about it…$1,000. every week.  The list of liquors reads like something from a high-end Manhattan club.  Fine cognacs and vodkas and brandy.  Only the best.  On over a third of the flights she had family members on board.  How impressive she is, commanding such service from the underlings.  Imagine, having a Gulfstream at your disposal, and yet being so intellectually inept, that you don’t even consider the cost and inconvenience of having one “on hold” every single weekend, “just in case”, I suppose.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of my tax dollars being spent on as much as a single peanut for that abhorrent woman just makes my blood boil.  In her usual dismissive style, her response to the release of this information is that her “use of military aircraft is in line with what other Speakers have done.”  Fantastic.  Let’s just hope and pray that prior behavior of politicians does not become the universal benchmark for the rest of us.  Can anyone say “John Edwards”?  “Hey, the last guy that ran for President also had a little action on the side while his wife was battling cancer, extorted money from the aptly named Bunny Mellon to keep his girlfriend in clover, and then paid a sycophant-aide to take the fall for him…so…why shouldn’t I do it?”

The reason, Minnie Pelosi, is that Americans have had it up to here (I’m holding my hand just below my nose) with the cavalier spending by government and government officials.  While telling the rest of us to continue “tightening our belts”, until our legs are pinched off, apparently, their spending continues to expand and grow like a mutant octopus.  Pelosi, ever-watchful of the less fortunate, seems able to forget their plight with ease as soon as the gear goes up on her G-5.  Well, let me correct myself there…”our G-5″.  Let’s not forget, dear, that those aircraft were bought and paid for by the American people with money borrowed from the Chinese, and we want some respect.  We also would like to see a rapid decompression under her seat, but hey…you can’t have everything.  Unless your name is Nancy Pelosi.

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WHEN LESS IS MORE

Monday, February 1st, 2010

As a young musician playing in a band I remember being told that “less is more”.  In other words, it wasn’t the quantity, but the quality of what you were playing that was important.  I’m sure there are other analogies, but generally speaking, from a mathematical standpoint, less can’t be more, or it wouldn’t be “less” in the first place.  My head hurts.

And your head will hurt, too, if you keep reading.  In Portland, Maine, businesses are outraged that after having been regulated into using less electricity, to diminish their corporate “carbon footprint”, they found themselves in a different rate group with their providers and ultimately were paying more money for less electricity.   Ouch!  Talk about cruel irony.  It’s hard to imagine that in this dire time for the economy, when most businesses are struggling to remain afloat, that having to pay a higher electric bill for less product would be met with much enthusiasm.  And it wasn’t.

I’ve written before that I believe a cleaner planet is a better planet.  I believe, pragmatically, that it is not beyond belief that “man” has impacted the environment negatively.  Just the burning of fossil fuels over the last hundred or so years, at such an enormous rate, could plausibly, in my humble opinion, have some detrimental effect to our environment.  Call me a nut.

However I don’t buy into the global warming hysteria, nor do I subscribe to any political affiliation that demands I adhere to a pre-determined position.  I don’t believe the argument is strengthened either way when it becomes a political football.  Political footballs don’t move, they hover.  Nothing ever gets agreed upon, and consequently solutions are rarely manifest.

The case in Maine, though, demonstrates how knee-jerk policy often comes back to bite you in the buttocks.  It reminds us how the electric companies weren’t born yesterday, and are already anticipating ways to maintain revenue levels in a world where everyone is being told to “use less”.  There isn’t a father or husband in the world, including me, who is not well versed in the flamingo-like dance of running around the house turning lights out behind other occupants who are less familiar with the electric bill.  Still, on a global level, solid solutions come from reasoned thought that already considered things like “rate groups” and “unintended consequences”.

Another example of bitten buttocks comes in the form of the increasingly popular LED traffic signals.  They look nice.  They are brighter and use much less electricity to operate than the old-fashioned traffic lights.  They also don’t emit any heat, like a regular bulb, and this created problems in parts of the country where snow and ice are part of the weather menu.  During snow storms, the lights became covered with snow and ice and completely ineffectual.  So, in many towns and states that found themselves with these lights at hundreds of intersections, public works and highway crews were forced to go around to these lights during bad weather, and thaw them out with heaters from a bucket truck.  In some areas, they installed small make-shift heaters to keep the lights from icing over.  In other places, they undertook the more (though not much more) humiliating task of replacing the units altogether with…you guessed it…the old ones.  Consider the energy wasted, the muddy “carbon footprint”, as a result of hundreds of utility trucks and crews having to be dispatched to “thaw traffic lights” every time there was inclement weather and the temperature was below freezing.  What’s the old saying about cutting off your nose?

There is something to be learned here and most of us learned it in kindergarten.  Someone wrote a story about it involving a tortoise and a hare.  I’m not sure that book is still available, or if PETA has had it removed from libraries as it depicts turtles as slow-moving, but smart, and rabbits as fast, but not all that bright.  From a pet’s standpoint, it uses the worst stereotypes imaginable, but if you can find a copy it’s worth the read if only for the valuable lesson.  And read it slowly.  Haste makes waste.

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