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Book Review: THE MIRAGE MAN

2012-02-13T20:27:00.001-05:00

All of us older than high schoolers remember September 11, 2001 very well. Growing less clear by the years is the immediate aftermath, the rest of 2001, when the nation went to war in Afghanistan and the seeds of the later Iraq fiasco were sown. Somewhat forgotten in the haze and cataloging of memories of that time is the great anthrax scare, when five people died and seventeen others were hospitalized when anthrax-laden spores were mailed to media personalities and Senators. The Mirage Man is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Willman's exhaustive story of the anthrax incident, the investigation--and its almost-certain perpetrator, the now-dead Bruce Ivins.
The book takes the form of a biography of Ivins; the first hundred pages or so is an account of his life up until September 2001, and the rest of it details the investigation and Ivins' actions and the process of how he became the main suspect. But more disturbing than the man's story is the parallel narrative of a bungled, horrible FBI investigation, scared people holding the reins of power at a time of crisis that fit reality into preconceived notions in order to create a reality divorced from needs and legitimacy, and a look at how hysteria ultimately overrules reason when those in leadership positions succumb to the hysteria. To take the latter two points first, there is more than enough evidence to hang the Bush Administration on the gallows of history for their response to 9/11--but it can be argued that it was the anthrax attacks that pushed them over the edge. Despite rather persuasive evidence very early in the investigation that pointed at the true source of the letters--the Army's biowarfare lab--scared and clueless people seized on the notion that Iraq was responsible, and it become a chain-reaction clusterfuck that led to the deployment of troops there and the eight-year nightmare that just concluded. It is heartrending--and intensely maddening--to read of one rigid-minded neo-con after another hearing what they wanted to hear and making wild leaps of logic in order to justify the preferred view they held that Saddam Hussein needed to be removed via American action.
But even this disgusting tale of stupidity tinged with evil pales with the story of the investigation, when the FBI somehow ignored the presence of a bacteriologist who stood to gain from the need for a new anthrax vaccine, who was vigorously pointing the finger at others, who had a long history of unstable behavior and obsessions, and who had been alone in the "hot zone" where the lethal microbes were kept at Fort Detrick for three weeks immediately prior to the anthrax letters being mailed. Instead, the FBI focused on a virologist (anthrax is a bacterium) who had not been in the building for two years as the main suspect, and then fingered him in the press and media as the culprit for years, eventually resulting in a lost $5 million lawsuit for defamation and other charges against the agency. It wasn't like the FBI was totally bent on railroading the guy, either, but there were a few people convinced that the guy was the guilty party who overrode their own investigation units that told them in no uncertain terms that he wasn't. Another instance, in other words, of Bush appointees who refused to let facts and reality make them deviate from what they "knew" to be "true." Frightening stuff, and all a matter of record.
And this ties into today's world, too. The phenomenon of Republicans who refuse to let facts and reality get in the way of ideological belief is a big reason why Obama, despite his many failures, is likely to win reelection. The just-concluded war in Iraq was completely and totally unnecessary, just a waste of lives and money and good will that will cripple this country for decades to come (and all this after Al Fucking Gore didn't have the balls to resist for more than a few seconds an election being stolen from him). I sat after finishing this book silent with outrage, and with a new determination to give right-wing morons no slack at all any longer. These people are not only stupid, but a significant number are evil, and they need to be stopped and beaten back before they end up doing even more irreversible damage. How have we gotten to this point, where up is down, where the innocent are hounded and the guilty looked to as experts? How can we be so willingly stupid?
The mirage in the title referred to the mask Ivins put up in his life. But it can equally serve as a metaphor for the line of crap we've allowed ourselves to buy into in part or in whole about the "War on Terror." What a fiasco and a crime against humanity, perpetrated by many who knew they were peddling bullshit and lying about their motives. I hope some country, somewhere, has the balls to pull what Spain did to Pinochet if people like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Powell ever leave the country--and puts them in the docket for crimes against humanity. Because as time passes, it is clear that they were guilty of them, on small scale and large, and that as much as they would like to plead ignorance and stupidity, it was a conscious choice to embroil us all in their mess. And they should be held accountable. Period.
Ivins committed suicide when the net was finally closing in him. If only some of those his crimes allowed to justify evil acts committed as a reaction to them would also fall on their swords.
As always with books reviewed in this space, click on the title in the post and go to Amazon.com to see more reviews and/or purchase the book.

Grammys, Golf, and Hockey: A February Sunday

2012-02-13T06:20:00.001-05:00

1) A headline that most of the world was expecting for many years finally greeted the world yesterday, as Whitney Houston expired from causes that so far have not been made public. I was more interested in this celebrity death than I would be in most others, because Houston was my age and because she struggled with the very same substance that took me down years ago. While it is not certain that Houston's death was drug-related at this time, it is clear, from reports that have surfaced, that substance abuse was an issue that she had never been able to put behind her. And for me, that is the most salutary bit of information about the entire melodrama that was Houston's life: that without profound changes in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, it never gets put behind you, and the end results are "jails, institutions, and death." And unfortunately, the third option happens much more frequently than one might think. There's no guarantee that anyone is ever going to a second or fourth or fifteenth chance to put it down. Even if the autopsy report doesn't show that drugs were an immediate cause of death for Houston,--well, let's put it this way: the way she has led her life for the last twenty years certainly didn't help.
1a) That she died on the eve of the Grammy Awards cast a pall over the entire spectacle. To be honest with you, I felt a lot more sorry for Adele than anyone else connected with this. Last night was supposed to be the crowning achievement of a career, the celebration of a remarkable story--and instead, most of the people there and most of the country want to talk about someone who essentially committed suicide over two decades. And the accolades and outpouring of emotion that were all over the public and private mediums yesterday got a little irritating after a while. Did anyone give a shit about Whitney Houston last Thursday? I didn't think so. It just goes to show that George Carlin was right: if you want people to speak well of you--then die. And maybe I am just sensitive to this sort of stuff because I have faced down addiction and been able to rejuvenate my life and take care of my responsibilities--but I have very limited sympathies for those who have every opportunity and every reason to put it down and don't do so, or maybe it's more that a lot of the same people boo-hooing about Houston wouldn't cut you and me that kind of slack. It just rubs me the wrong way.
2) On the curmudgeon front...I usually don't pay a lot of attention to what happens in the world of golf. But the fawning coverage of Tiger Woods that has characterized sports media over the past few years has gotten beyond the point of nauseating. Woods' behavior and double life was perhaps one of the more awful examples of ego run amok, and his half-hearted "apologies" and resolute refusal to even acknowledge that a reappraisal of his value system might be in order have made him, in the eyes of most ordinary people I have talked to on the subject, a pariah, someone who is, on a general level, not well regarded or liked. And yet the sports media treat his every tournament, his every appearance, with the sort of (positive) coverage that used to be reserved for someone like Joe DiMaggio or Wayne Gretzky. And it is manifestly undeserved. Woods remains, as far as anyone can see, a creep of the first degree, a bully-type personality, who folds like an accordion now when things don't go his way. Yesterday, the media was all over the PGA event in California because Woods was in contention--and for an added bonus, his foil for much of his career, Phil Mickelson, was in the same group in the final round. But the hype was so manufactured, it was beyond disgusting. For starters, Woods was never at any time closer than four shots to the lead. For another, watching him play, it is clear that his game is the same as it has been for the last two years--more than the occasional errant tee shot, he can't make a putt anymore, and he gives away a shot or three every round because he blows a comebackers that 23YO Woods never would have.
But yesterday was great to watch for people who don't like Woods, because as he suffered through another final round implosion, his playing partner had one of the rounds of his life, posting the best round of the day by three shots and winning going away right in front of Woods. It was great to see the grimaces and clear annoyance on Woods' face as Mickelson went around the course with the precision of a surgeon, to see him visibly deflate when every decent shot he made was answered and then some. And while much has been made of Woods' determination and drive and alleged will to win--look again. It isn't there. What has become clearly apparent over the last couple of years is that Woods doesn't have the temperament of Michael Jordan, to whom he is often compared. Jordan had a drive to excel, to be the best, to beat back all opposition--but Jordan also was not afraid to take up a challenge (remember baseball?), and Jordan never stopped trying, even when the glory days were past (remember Jordan as a Washington Wizard?). Woods has the temperament of a bully; he cannot really deal with adversity well anymore, if he ever could. In short, he gives up after a certain amount of time. And that is why I feel certain when I say Woods will not catch Jack Nicklaus's majors record. Nicklaus, even when Watson and others had clearly passed him as the game's best player, never gave up on a tournament, never gave away strokes--and the result was that he was never one that could be safely ignored. Woods has the look of Arnold Palmer more than Nicklaus--Palmer never was able to accept the challenge of Nicklaus as a way to drive himself to greater heights; once he figured that the cheers weren't going to stop coming, for whatever reasons, whether he won or not, he stopped winning. I think Woods is dangerously close to that place now.
And it was good to see Mickelson develop a killer instinct. He is now 41, and his career will always be regarded as never what it could have been, but it isn't like he hasn't done anything; he has 40 wins and 4 majors and by all accounts is a more successful human being than Woods ever was. But there was no mistaking that he was enjoying shoving his success yesterday down Woods' throat. Maybe this is the beginning of a fundamental reordering of Mickelson's career. I hope so. He's not perfect, but he's a hell of a lot easier to root for than Woods is.
3) The remarkable story out of New York city continues unabated. And no, I am not referring to Lin-sanity, which does not have the looks of a long-running show (I will show my age, but to me, this is the Billy Ray Bates story of this era). I am talking about the season that my beloved New York Rangers are having. Yesterday, on national TV, they handled their erstwhile nemesis, Washington, in a game that in past years they would have found a way to lose, and in general this team's progress--not the way they play, but the results--is very reminiscent of 1994. But this is a lot better than 1994, because it doesn't feel like that they are another team in Ranger uniforms; these are mostly home-grown Rangers, with two major pieces coming via free agency. But the elements of a championship team are starting to be apparent. Lundquist is having the best season of a very stellar career. Del Zotto is resembling Brian Leetch more with every passing game--and depending on your tastes, may be no more than the Rangers' fourth best defenseman when everyone is well and healthy. It speaks to how good a player you really are when you have seven game-winning goals during a season that everyone agrees is not one of your best--and that is why Brad Richards is one of the best players in the game. The erratic Gaborik is lights out this year. The younger guys have all more or less come through, and while the role players are not exceeding expectations--well, maybe John Mitchell is--they are not wasting minutes when they play, either--guys like Boyle and Prust and Fedetenko carry their weight. And most importantly, there is no dead wood. In past years, guys like Christianson and Wolski were given prominent roles that they manifestly did not deserve; this year, they can't get on the ice. And that's a good thing.
The one great unknown is whether they will make a trade for someone before the deadline. I wouldn't make one just to make one, but there is one I would make in a minute: if Columbus is really willing to part with Rick Nash for Dubinsky, Chad Kreider, and a number 1--pull the trigger! Nash...scores....goals. If you can get a guy for whom 30 goals is an off-season for nothing more off your current roster than a decent second-line center, you have to make that move. But for the first time in years, it is fun to be a Ranger fan again, and to dream about a deep run in the spring.

Winter Softball

2012-02-12T07:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the third week of the winter open gym softball clinic for the Binghamton softball programs, and by now enough word has gotten around that pretty much everyone with a future in the game in the school district was there yesterday. I haven't been staying for the entire practices, but I see enough to get a good idea of each kid's skill sets, and I have seen confirmation of what I knew at the end of the summer last year: my daughter has a very bright future if she works to achieve it. Her fundamental skill set is very good; the ability to catch, throw, and hit is all there, without flaws, without major remedial work. She is not a fast runner, but she is not terribly slow, either, and given the position she plays, it's not a necessity to be able to run quickly. Her footwork is very, very good, and she is quick with reactions and first steps, so that kind of makes up for her lack of speed.
And of course, she is a catcher, and a good catcher at that, and anyone who was around City League softball the last few years knows that. Apparently the JV coach was not at the clinic yesterday, and given what the politics of the local softball situation is, I don't really think she would make it this year because she hasn't played travel team yet; if she gets invited to try out, she might stick, but she might not get invited. But I honestly don't think there is any way she is not going to be the West Modified catcher this year, not unless there's some prodigy out there that hasn't played anywhere yet. I got more confirmation of that idea yesterday when I talked with Ed, the father of Kayla, the main pitcher for the East All-Star team the last two years, who was at practice yesterday. Ed said, matter-of-factly, that Sabrina was the best catcher in the league, in his mind, for the last two years; he said that "with a good pitcher, nothing gets by her. And if the shortstop gets the tag down, she throws runners out. No one else really could do that." And then he sort of smiled and said, "And then she can hit, too." We talked a little bit about travel teams; he managed to get Kayla on one this year for a relatively cheap price through some lucky circumstance, but he said normally it costs about a thousand dollars a kid, which is going to be very, very hard to do for me unless something changes. More motivation to write a fantastic grant later in the year...
Sabrina asked the coach, the guy running the clinic, whether she should buy a catcher's glove, and he thought she should. She was leaning toward spending her Dick's gift cards at least partially on a glove, anyway, and even though the coach told me better stuff is available on-line, I think for this year that will be the route we go, simply because I'm not sure I want to spend that kind of money online. Starting in two weeks, Mondays after school there is going to be a practice for just pitchers and catchers, which doesn't bode well for her because she has BCMEA viola practice after school from 3:30 to 4:00, too. But we will make it work somehow. Especially since it is clear that the pitchers she is likely to have pitching on her team want her to be there; KK was at practice yesterday, and Emily apparently is going to be playing for the school teams this year, too (Kayla is still only in sixth grade). I did find out that Sabrina is going to have decent competition as she gets older; her friend Hailey, who is a great player, has been learning to play catcher, apparently. But Hailey goes to East, and it's not a given that Hailey is going to be there come high school--her family almost moved to Endicott this year, and who knows what else might happen in the meantime. I have a good kid with good grades and such, and even I have seen some stuff happen this year with her I never thought would happen. It only takes one knucklehead boy or one bonehead moment to derail a career. I'd like to think that's not going to happen, but you can't be certain...
But one of the things about this age is how much different kids look in a matter of months. I had not seen KK in softball gear since August, and she appears to have grown about 4 inches in six months, to take the most obvious example from yesterday. Her friend Tanaya was at the practice yesterday, too, and she's grown at least an inch (the most changed, though, isn't a softball player; Sabrina's friend Talia has sprouted, from this time last year, a full head taller, almost an entire foot). The last time I saw Hailey, actually, was around Christmas, and she was a good inch or two taller than when I saw her in the summer. Even Sabrina had to get new clothes at Christmas. It's inevitable that children grow at this point in their lives. It's just kind of disconcerting when all of them are doing it at once, it seems.
Anyhow, it's going to be an interesting spring and summer. As I said, with my own future uncertain, I'd like to think that the next few years are going to be wonderful in that aspect, but it's serving as motivation for me to do the best I can do to make that happen. The challenge has been given, and the gauntlet laid down.

Book Review: PLASTIC OCEAN

2012-02-11T19:04:00.001-05:00

By now, most of the world has heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the area of that ocean where apparently a great deal of discarded plastic has accumulated. Plastic Ocean is written by the man, Captain Charles Moore, who made the first recorded observations of a lot of plastic debris in that area, and the book is a fairly in-depth and revealing look at the breadth of the problem of the pollution of the oceans. Plastic takes a long time to completely break down, and its effects in the environment are not totally understood--but the data, much of it collected by Moore over the last twenty, rather convincingly points out that is not a good thing for any living marine creature that there is this much plastic in the ocean, and the problem is getting worse, not better (and isn't limited to the Pacific, either). The narrative skips around a lot, delving into topics such as the way plastic is manufactured, how so much of this crap gets in the ocean (the answer appears to be "through rivers"), the incredible common prevalence of plastic ingestion by marine animals, the ineffectiveness of attempting to limit plastic pollution, and the stalling tactics of economic interests who have inundated the world with plastic over the past 40 years (summarized as "if people won't throw the stuff away, there would be no issue", which completely ignores that the basic appeal to the consumer by those same interests of the plastic products is their disposability, that the consumer not only needs these products, but needs to replace them. Seen a milkman lately?).
I found the jumping around in time a little annoying, and some of the chapters got very technical, but overall this is an informative and disturbing book. This is a real issue, and if the real pessimists are right and the marine food chain collapses because the bottom of it (plankton) are overwhelmed by plastic pollution, it would be an apocalyptic event. And for those who think that a solution somehow will come to hand--well, the most common plastic object found in the oceans now are the screw caps to beverage containers. There are a trillion of them made every year. Even if only 2% eventually end up in the ocean, and even if they are a half-inch diameter-- still , that's "Uh-oh." And they are hardly the only thing out there. It's bad, getting worse, and no end is in sight. And plastic is still a relatively new product; there is a lot of data pointing in the direction that outgassing and breakdowns of the molecules are actually poisonous to human beings. There is a link between certain compounds being used and the lack of male offspring, to take one intriguing and disturbing bit of information. Some think that the ubiquity of plastic is going to essentially the human race within four or five generations. And it won't be fun to find out.
And as always, if a reader clicks on the title of the post, you will find yourself on the Amazon website, either for further information or to actually purchase the book.

Another Interesting Meeting

2012-02-11T06:41:00.001-05:00

We changed the format for the candlelight meeting a few months ago, and the second week of the month is now given over to a step speaker, with the step being discussed the same as whatever month of the year it is. So last night's speaker was to talk about their experience with the Second Step. Kate is the speaker seeker for the group, and when she told me before the meeting who she had asked to share, I was a little surprised, because the guy has a significant amount of time--I think it's 17 years now--and she had talked before about "saving" people with a lot of time for the later months and steps because the number of people out there who have worked the steps drops off dramatically once we pass Four. I also had a little bit of trepidation, because obviously I am well aware of the guy, him having been around the entire time I've been around, and I had not been impressed by his program up to this point in time, with the caveat that I've barely seen or heard about him in the last three years or so.
But I have to say that the Kevin who spoke last night was not the Kevin I remember from the first decade I was here: it was a strong, positive, substantive message of recovery. I found out more of his background than I had ever known before, but I also heard a guy who shared a good part of my story after getting and staying clean--a guy who basically has not only matured in the rooms, but has done so in part by taking his role as a father in his daughter's life seriously, by identifying some of the things he didn't like about his own childhood and making a commitment to do things differently. Which he has, according to visible evidence. His daughter is a few months younger than Sabrina, and she was part of the Binghamton East All-Star team last summer; she was one of the less rambunctious, more reserved members of that team, and I remember thinking that she seemed to be a pretty good kid. He was in the stands with his current lady friend, who is also in the rooms, and said hello to me at the Windsor tournament, and I didn't think a lot of it at the time, but I do remember now that he gave his daughter a little encouragement between innings and cheered in an appropriate manner--and I remember thinking to myself that he and Linda were quite the contrast to that moronic blowhard Franco Southee, who also has roots in recovery and whose kid was also on the East all-stars, and who generally made an ass and spectacle of himself in the stands at both summer tournaments last year.
And listening to him last night, I also got a reminder that it takes what it takes. Kevin has had a pretty spotty record about being loyal in his relationships (and to be totally honest here, some of my not liking him for some time has been because he acted like a total shit to a woman that I had been rather fond of in active addiction that had been, at the time he was with her, trying to get and stay clean; instead of helping her stay clean, he basically treated her like a whore and fed her disease. At least according to her), but to all appearances he seems genuinely committed to Linda, and I know they went through the hardest situation parents can suffer through a few months ago-- the death of a child--and some of the time, enduring such painful hardship makes a bond stronger and brings out the better angels of our nature. Maybe that's gone on with him, as well. But even more than anything he said last night, I noticed a difference in his non-verbal communication. The player's strut, the air of being on the make, the performer's affectations when addressing a crowd, the little tics and giveaways that a person is lying or fronting--all were very clearly absent last night, and all of them had been part of his projected persona when he spoke at meetings and events for over a decade. Whatever has gone on with him in the last couple of years, it's genuine.
And we are all the better for it. Kevin is now the chair of the A&E Committee, taking over in the wake of the Messagemaster/RFE fiasco last summer, and he acknowledged last night that whatever his personal desires might be on some days, his foremost role there, and his primary motivation in running the committee, is trying to heal a fellowship that has badly splintered. He made reference that surrounding regions used to look to Binghamton for examples in how Area service worked--and how sad it is for those of us who have been here for a long time to see the interest in Area service and Area events withering away.
And he is absolutely right, even though, in his newfound role as conciliator, he was too polite to assign responsibility for that state of affairs. I'm not so reticent, not because I am so eager to place the blame but more in the spirit of identifying a problem in order to be able to do something about it; it is the Messagemaster and his cult of disciples, who have turned off virtually every other well-meaning recovering person in the area with the dishonesty, clannishness, and unpleasantness that accompany every Tribe foray into Area service, every Tribe speaker jam, every Tribe event. And of course it comes from the top; I just got confirmation yet again of what a piece of shit the Messagemaster really is, when Sarah told me recently that he had vowed, in the aftermath of her blowup with him over the entire RFE situation in the summer, to make it "impossible" for her to remain in Narcotics Anonymous through his usual bag of tricks including character assassination, ostracism, and outright lying. This was said, by the way, to a 29YO woman with six months clean who had done nothing more than stand up for herself as a woman (and as an aside, by being friendly with her I have begun--begun, mind you--to reassess my feelings on RFE. The maturation process, the lights coming on, seem--seem--to be happening a bit for him, too. We will see, but he wouldn't be the first one who bloomed in the absence of the malign shadow of the Messagemaster, whom he remains more or less happily estranged from, and that he is carving out his own identity in Narcotics Anonymous. Good for you, Richie, regardless of how it all turns out; you needed to do that for your own well-being). As is par for the course, all of the Tribe have shunned involvement in any Area business or activity since their terms ended in the summer, and since a substantial number of us that have been around for years long ago gave up on the service structure because of the ugliness that ensues invariably when any attempt to get involved is made that doesn't involve abject surrender to the will of the Messagemaster, the Area is really suffering as a result. It's like those of us who feel as though they might want to get involved, and who have much to offer if they wanted to, aren't going to step forward until we know that the asshole isn't coming back.
And then after the meeting, I talked for a good ten minutes with one of the Tribe, a guy who was part of my original generation who has been in and out for virtually the entire time I've been here--a guy who has always looked to the Tribe for sponsorship and guidance and who has been sponsored by the Messagemaster himself for the last year. And who now has twenty days clean. When he first came back last winter, I had a conversation with him about perhaps him needing to go in a different direction, and that it has always fractured me that guys will go back to the same sponsor and "support group" even though they repeatedly relapse--not making the connection that the "support" they are getting 1) isn't working for them, because they keep relapsing, and 2) just might be a big part of the problem. I brought this up to him again last night, after essentially another year of his life has gone by without result, and he seemed a little more receptive to the input, especially when I pointed out to him that while the Messagemaster seems to stay clean (although more and more people are openly questioning whether he actually does so, because he sure doesn't act like he's clean, much less clean for two decades), few of the people around him seem to be able to--most of the Tribe seems to be prone to relapse, even with long amounts of clean time. And conversely, few who have worked the program with sponsors who--provide a strong contrast with the Message, let's say, once they get to a certain level of progress never seem to go back. The two exceptions recently, Brian and Rich A., 1) had stopped working a program with the sponsorship circle they had gotten the long period of time with, and 2) started spending more and more time around the Tribe in the last few years. Relapse after fifteen and seventeen years was unexpected, but it wasn't, considering the company they were keeping at the time, a total bolt from the blue. That made an impression on the guy, and he took my number, not for the first time. I told him with a smile my number hasn't changed since the last two times he asked for it and I've yet to hear from him, and he said this time was going to be different.
I hope so. Underlying all the personality conflicts in the fellowship--and I've certainly had a share in a number of them--is something Kevin alluded to last night. For some of us, the motivation isn't power and control and influence; it's a reaction to practices and behaviors exhibited that ultimately lead to people not staying clean, and to people eventually dying--needlessly--of this disease. I don't dislike the Messagemaster and the Message because I want to stand in his place. I dislike what it is and what it stands for because of the damage it does, because it undermines the strength and unity of the fellowship that all of us need to get and stay well, that we all need to be able to rely upon in order to keep what we have been able to gain. And that's what I really took out of Kevin's message last night; we're all in this together. There was a time when he said the words but didn't act on them, but that time has passed; I really think it was genuine and from the heart last night. And it certainly resonated with me and with everyone there.

King Ain't Satisfied 'Til He's King of Everything

2012-02-10T06:40:00.000-05:00

As is my wont, last night, after another good home group meeting, I posted an update on Facebook about it. One of my friends who is not in recovery commented about the effect I have on so many other people. My first thought was "the hell I do." In Narcotics Anonymous, it seems to me that my influence is very limited. I go to two meetings a week, one of which is tiny and the other of which I hardly ever get a chance to talk anymore. I only have one sponsee, and that's not entirely by choice anymore; I haven't been asked to sponsor someone for some time now. The circuit speaker types are not fans of me, nor I am of them; I don't often attend NA events such as speaker jams, and have stayed away from that monument to the Messagemaster ego the Spiritual Awakening Campout for over a decade. I wasn't a big fan of "dances" when I was younger, and even less so now, especially since someone I have come to loathe is usually the DJ for these events and insists on playing music I can't stand at volumes that make it impossible to carry on a conversation with anyone within a square mile.
But visibility is not the only component of reach and effect. I have had a pretty fair role in a lot of people's lives over the years. The role has changed in some ways, and the longer I have stayed around, I have passed from young buck to elder statesman. I actually shared about that last night; one of the reasons I keep coming back is that for anyone who is genuinely interested in recovery, my experience is very valuable. There aren't many who have actively sought to find a God of their understanding--but I think I have had significant conversations with all of them, many of them repeatedly. I do know, even when I feel most ignored, that there a lot of people that have paid attention to my parenting--I have been told so dozens of times. I know that the particular circumstances of my journey--walking away from a very lucrative but morally challenged business to make a living helping the less fortunate--has been noticed and, in many quarters, admired.
But admiration does not necessarily inspire imitation, and most of the time I accept that. But not all of the time.
One of my defining characteristics all my life has been ego. I was talking with someone the other day about my youth sports career, and there were a lot of the same patterns I just wrote about expressing themselves even then. I was a 5-7, 155 pound linebacker that had a fabulous stretch of play when I was a senior, to take one example; I remember one of my friends telling me, quite seriously, "nobody has ever done what you're doing before," which captured my sentiments about the whole thing pretty accurately. But all I could focus on at the time was the fact that other players were getting coverage in the paper and the attention of the coaches, it seemed. As a hockey player, I remember one kid on my team in college coming up to me at a falloff and just saying, "Goddamn, you're good"--but it seemed like all anybody in a position to do anything about it wanted to focus on was my size and the lack of ability to plant someone in the boards. In track, everyone remembers who breaks the tape, and no one remembers who led off the relay and and let the other three guys run on the lead--and for two years, that was my role, getting out in front (it is no accident that my favorite memory from the years I ran track was a race I didn't win--I came from 40 yards back to just miss at the wire. But it was the final leg, which I never got to run in any other event, at least that I can remember).. I never felt like I got my due, and when I eventually did my Fourth and Fifth Step here, exploring the toxic effects of that feeling became several month's worth of work.
But that doesn't mean other people didn't notice. I remember being somewhere with my sister who is two years younger than me several years ago, and one of her kids asking me what it was like for me in high school. Before I could answer, my sister piped in, "He was like a god--he had his own cheering section at track meets," and she mentioned a couple of other things that had been very flattering and indicative of the regard I was held in--and that I had chosen, for whatever reasons, not to remember until she reminded me. And I paused, because she was telling the truth--but it sure as hell didn't feel that way at the time, and that's not my prevailing memory of it, even now . And I kind of feel that way about being in recovery today. I've done some incredible things during my time here--not just walked away from a lot of ill-gotten money, not just raised a very good and well-adjusted kid in some trying circumstances, not just sponsored a lot of people for a long time, but I am perhaps the most visible member of the recovery community in certain places. People have noticed, and people have said things to me about it--my own brother, who tosses around compliments like manhole covers, has told me that I am frequently held up in Family and Drug Court circles as an example that the rehab and outpatient process can work. But typically, my reaction to that, when he told me, was "It would be nice if they told me that."
It is the nature of the disease, I guess, to never be satisfied, to always feel like something is missing or being withheld. And I've learned enough over the years to dig and try to find out what the core issue is here, and I've got a pretty good idea. It's the age-old, very human condition of wanting to get tangible, visible rewards, and wanting vocal, obvious validation. Respect is wonderful, and from some people it's good to get--but when a woman you're attracted to very obviously respects you and values you, it goes, at least on my part, at least for a moment, "then why don't you want to sleep with me?" If Judge so-and-so thinks I'm such a shining example of recovery, then why aren't you moving heaven and earth to get me on your Treatment Teams? If my own agency thinks I'm indispensable and do such a great job, that's great--but I'd rather you showed me the money. And on and on...
Those thoughts are there. They are not front and center; they are not even what I feel most of the time, because I am very grateful for the life I have and for the respect and affection that I do get. But I'd be lying to you if I told you if sometimes my mind didn't go to these dark places. I think I've matured enough to realize that it's unavoidable to a degree, that it is simply part of being a human being to think and feel this way sometimes; you can't help what goes through your head. And on balance, I think I've learned, most of the time, to appreciate what is rather than focus on what is not; in many ways, that's the ultimate barometer of the state of someone's recovery process.
I'm not sure how much sense any of this made. The title of this post comes from a Bruce Springsteen song that was part of one of my favorite all-time albums that hits right where this post is residing-- Darkness on the Edge of Town. I guess what I'm trying to convey is that the intellectual part of my mind knows that I have had a substantial reach, that I have positively touched a lot of lives. But there's a part of my heart, really deep down, that wants to be made a BIG DEAL of. And I think that deeply buried worm is the actual core of the disease--because just like the drugs that were the most obvious manifestation of it for a long time, that worm can never be satisfied, never be fed enough. No amount of recognition, no reward, would ever suffice to keep that feeling quenched for long--or at least it seems so. That's become my personal quest, to get to a point where that completely is eradicated from my makeup. It's a long shot, and chances are it will be an unsuccessful endeavor.
But there's nothing wrong with aiming high. And if the reach exceeds the grasp--well, I've managed to hold onto a lot of good things along the way, and managed to pull myself to a higher perch than I ever dreamed possible. And almost all of the time, it's enough to make me grateful.

Prepping for Surgery

2012-02-09T05:56:00.000-05:00

I had my pre-operation checkups with both my primary doctor and the foot surgeon yesterday, and it's starting to slowly dawn on me that I am going to out of commission for almost three weeks starting on the 17th. I am having major, bigger-than-golf-balls bunions removed from both big toe joints, and titanium implants put in both; I am assured that when all is healed properly, that my big toe joints will have a full range of motion--meaning I can do things like stand on my toes, do pushups, and get my feet into ice skates that aren't three sizes too big--for the first time since the mid-1980's. I am excited about the end result; it will be nice to be able to run properly, play hockey, at least attempt to play basketball, and most other physical activities that I am limited in my ability to do now. I also look forward to hopefully not being able to predict weather changes by the level of pain in my feet any longer. I honestly have not had a single day, other than the times I was high on crack, without my feet hurting all day every day since about 1986. It has gotten to the point where I hardly notice it anymore; it's just there. I am very seriously wondering what it is going to be like if that constant dull ache (and occasionally more) is absent.
I most definitely am not excited by the surgery and recovery process, staring with today's blood work (reason 788 to be glad to have quit smoking over nine years ago; I am not required to get a chest x-ray prior to surgery). The anesthesia doesn't seem like it will too bad; the only time I ever had anything done requiring it was getting wisdom teeth removed, and I was told this will be fairly similar, more sedation than anesthesia. But I have been warned that there will be swelling and pain for several days (I have already been issued scrips for Toradol and some synthetic narcotic that allegedly does not produce a high that I've never heard of, but I've had Toradol before for migraines and it most certainly works, so I'm not anticipating needing the second one). I've been told that I am going to have to shower for two-plus weeks with my feet wrapped in plastic bags and duct taped at the top around my leg. I've been strongly urged to go to physical therapy as soon as I am able. And I have been told that the first couple of days I am home, I am not going to do much other than sit around with my feet up with ice packs on them. I've been told by others who had both feet done at once that at some point on Saturday, I am likely going to have to crawl to get somewhere in the house. On the other hand, the doctor is telling me that I am not going to need crutches or a walker, and I have always been one to not baby myself. Granted, it was 1977 and I could never get away with it now, but I remember going back in a freshman football game after getting my bell rung not knowing where we were even playing. I played against Vestal as a senior with a neck sprain that I refused to acknowledge even hurt, also refusing to wear the collar. I tore my hamstring in college, and didn't even go to the infirmary even though the entire back of my left leg from the knee to the butt cheek was as purple as a Concord grape. I will manage, and I get to practice what I preach to many others--it's only a few weeks out of my life, so just take a deep breath and get through it.
I don't hardly ever think about it, but I am very much blessed in that I have never really had major physical issues. I have had several concussions and a hairline fracture of the skull, and some other ailments, but no surgery or major alterations to my body. It helps to have a high tolerance for physical pain (if it doesn't have to do with teeth or my head; I have had thoughts of suicide during some migraine episodes in the past), but the fact is that I have gotten almost to 49 years old without operations, without any major recuperation or time out of commission. I have had two stays in the hospital in my life, once for pneumonia when I was 6 and once with mono when I was 33. I was even lucky with my addiction history; most people who abuse cocaine at the levels I did lose a lot more than one tooth by the time they are my age, I did not sustain any lasting heart or other damage (EKG yesterday was "perfect"), and the major ass-stomping I endured probably is but one factor in the general arthritis I have in my knees and back--but it isn't like I have serious functionality issues with anything I want to really do. Even with my toe joints being as bad as they have been, I still have been able to do things--just not as long as I would like and not as well as I am capable, even at my age, of doing them.
Predictably, I am worrying more about work than about the physical aspects. February is generally not a hugely busy month, especially this year with the Community Foundation grant cycle devoted entirely to flood relief (and hence not for anything we could get), but March usually is. I supervised my subordinate earlier in the week and laid out a heightened list of expectations and needs, and while she is capable of stepping up, until it actually happens I am going to be nervous about it. But most of all, I'm beginning to feel the awesome responsibility for writing the federal grant that will be dominating my life in the late spring and early summer, and the nervousness that accompanies the knowledge that if it is not awarded, I'm out of a job. Two reasons I am finally getting this done now are that I have insurance that will pay for almost all of it--and in case I need to look for work in the fall, that I am capable of physically-intensive work. Such is life in the United States of America in 2012.

Report Card

2012-02-08T06:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I came home around lunch time for, oddly enough, lunch, and saw that Sabrina's report card had come in the mail. She had been telling me for weeks that she was worried that she might not be in her customary place on high honor roll, but I wasn't too worried about it, because this quarter, in the 10-week class slot, she had replaced Art (with its attendant witchy teacher; bottom line is, if you've grown tired of dealing with kids, you really should find another line of work) with a home-ec class that she both liked and was grading well in. And so it turned out; she actually ended up with a 96 average, a point higher than last quarter. And the comments were uniformly excellent.
And I gave thanks again that while she looks more like her mother than me, in important ways my genes seem to have bubbled up to the forefront. Yesterday morning, I noted that her now-18YO half brother was posting on Facebook that he was outside Manley's at 3:30 AM on a Tuesday morning; he has just become a train wreck in the last couple of years, allegedly preparing for GED but mixed up in all sorts of worrisome things. Her younger brother is even more of a mess, and in another time and place probably would have been institutionalized. Her two sisters have also inherited their father's academic aptitude; I admit that it is a little unsettling seeing, vicariously, what I was actually capable of if I had tried harder when I was younger, because all three of them sport higher grades than I had. Rachel, of course, is on track to be valedictorian at Johnson City this year, Jessica is on high honor roll, and Sabrina's 96 has got to be one of the higher averages at West. While I did well enough when I was in school, I didn't score on that level, and that was because I didn't put the level of work in that they do. Every Sunday when Rachel and Jess come here, they bring their backpacks and do copious amounts of homework, and Sabrina, too, spends a lot of time every day with her work. I honestly don't remember ever doing homework on weekends before dark on Sunday nights, and judging from the amount of television I can remember watching, I didn't exactly spend hours each night studying.
But there is something I am even prouder of. Given what I do for a living, I am well aware of what can happen with teens of these ages. I am profoundly glad that Rachel has never gotten caught up in the drama that some circles seem to be suffused with. Jessica is less mellow than Rachel, but not to the point where she is in the vortex of major problems. And Sabrina resolutely avoids getting dragged into a lot of crap that is washing through West. She told me yesterday that one of her friends, who has had problems controlling her temper for two years, is in even more trouble because the last kid she got in a conflict with, who is an even closer friend of Sabrina's, fabricated an entire fake Facebook page of the kid, and used that identity to post threats to herself and of course has alerted school officials; and enlisted another of her cabal to stay home from school claiming she was afraid of the kid with the temper issue. This is the kind of crap that Sabrina has shown, repeatedly, since early grade school, no tolerance for. She says she is starting to avoid the fabricator, and very visibly refusing to reject the temperamental kid while at the same time not condoning violence. She has grown closer to a few kids this year that are part of this neighborhood, and I simply don't see any real danger signs about the way she conducts herself in the mini-society at school (boys are another matter; she seems to have an affinity for older boys that does worry me. But that's the price of having an intelligent and relatively mature kid, too; emotionally she is more akin to 16YO boys than those her own age).
And I certainly am more grateful with every passing day that I moved to the West Side before middle school. I hear reports from some of the parents of kids she went to Roosevelt with regularly, and see the status reports of some of her friends that now go to East, and without being overly cruel, East is a zoo compared to West. Many more of her friends from elementary school are having problems academically and socially; there's one that is regularly posting things like "I want to die" and "Fine, I'm never talking to [her parents] again." I am not gloating, don't get me wrong. But I am also aware that there are reasons why my kids aren't doing things like that, and that the way I have chosen to parent--not only with discipline and boundaries, but the values I exhibit every day and the way I live my own life--has turned out to be a better way for my adolescents.
And I also have a reminder that anything is possible. Sabrina cannot go to the first scheduled school dance of the year on Friday, not because of any issues with her mother or I but because she was suspended for that one day back in September for that stupid pranking incident on the recess playground. She is grumbling in a major way about how "unfair" it all is, but also recognizes that ultimately, it is a price she is paying for a very poor decision. Rather than catching a main resentment, she has used it as motivation to make better decisions in the future--just the lesson a parent hopes that they take from such experiences.
It's nice to see that my own decision-making processes over the years have been validated in such visible and rewarding fashions. But even more so, I am very happy that my kids have decided that the responsible and hard-working way they have chosen for themselves is the way they want to be, because it is not the way of instant gratification and it is not the way that most of their peers have taken. All the guidance in the world is beside the point if the kid themselves decides they'd rather go in another direction. So far, at least, that has not happened with mine, and I am grateful and happy that it has not.

A Dream for the Ages

2012-02-07T18:44:00.001-05:00

I have been having some very odd dreams recently, some of which I posted on Facebook to general merriment and puzzlement. But the one last night took the cake, both because of its length and my startling clarity of memory (to be fair, I cheated--I wrote down as much as I could recall as soon as I woke up). I was feeling pretty creative when I got up, and have been working on this little tale all day long. It is a totally accurate rendition of what I remember, as far I can tell, in the chronological order of the dream, too. And no, I have no idea what it means; there were so many damn images and events that it probably, if I lived alone on an island and had witnessed a moral giant being martyred forty years ago, could keep some fourth-millennium Timothy LaHaye busy for years if he ever gets his hands on this.

I can't read what that says, I said, waving the page,
I never could read music; I just liked being on stage
A relic of a more youthful and bygone golden age
All I knew how to do was rhyme words
Sitting on a bar stool, getting silently fried
Staring at some people I thought had already died
That were shouting at some weeping future brides
As others gathered round, forming a herd
Never an unpleasant word was loudly spoke
But it was clear some sacred bond had been broke
One guy was very clearly aiming to provoke
A fight between two sets of brothers
One guy reached across the bar to the cook
And showed him something on a Kindle or a Nook
And then saluted him, pirouetted, and then shook
The left hands of all of the others
The short one shouted the night of destruction had begun
And that their only enemy was the rising sun
There seemed to be no limits concerning damages to be done
Then I heard Ed's mom calling my cat in
I went outside and saw a silhouette arrive
Carrying a briefcase that contained a small archive
I swore that I had known him in our previous lives
Then he started singing "Nights in White Satin"

Now I don't know how I was supposed to feel
But I was concerned when he asked me to kneel
And I stepped backward when he started to squeal
And starting talking about Aesop's Fables
The crowd spilled outside, and he soon had a welt
On his cheek when he was hit with someone's black belt
He shouted that he was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt
And that he was visiting from Coral Gables
I started to get frightened, and I started to trot
I wanted to sprint home, but my knees suddenly were shot
I started choking on my thick and congealed snot
"What a way to die," I stammered
Then I was sliding down a slide and picking up speed
Trying to slow down my progress by trying to grab onto weeds
I hit the bottom, and a crazy man shouted, "Suffer for your deeds!"
And beat me half to death with a hammer
There was a window opened, and I was looking for a tomb
Inside was a laughing lady, who offered me her womb
"You drink too much," she cried, "but we only consume"
And I spent the night in that humble abode
I couldn't seem to offer up what she wanted the most
And was soon turned out by my ungracious host
I raised my wine bottle, pronouncing a profane toast
And found myself back on the slick road

I saw a billboard flashing brightly some genocidal plans
Then saw two Indians trying to pass with pasty fake tans
I asked them, "Why not run while you still can?"
They muttered, "White man, it is written"
Then a woman I once knew came back from a desert town
And proceeded to turn my life totally upside down
And I seemed to gain back some status and renown
By saying publicly that I was smitten
I gave her a ring while sitting on a bench
She asked for some tools and a yellow monkey wrench
And said something about how I needed to dig some kind of trench
And that she needed it dug by Sunday
I became angry, and spewed forth slurs
I built a snowman, and named it after her
I refused to be placated with frankincense and myrrh
"Sure," I said, "that's what they all say"
I fell through a door and found myself on a beach
Sand in my mouth and holding onto a peach
With some guy pointing at me and saying, "That's the guy that used to teach
Shop Class while drinking Guinness Stout"
I sat down on the sand and started to cry
Wondering when it was that I had gotten high
And given up thirteen years without even remembering why
Then I sat up, and the alarm clock sang out

Yes, I really wasn't sure I hadn't relapsed until about 5:30. I think it was reading P.J. O'Rourke; not only is he incapable of not including a reference to his drinking on every single page of his work, but I was definitely remembering chapters in Parliament of Whores about trying Ecstasy and in Age and Guile about his college partying while I was reading the recent book. I guess I haven't forgotten about those days, after all.

And I have to say that it was nice to be finally dating Dawn Mooney, if only in a dream and only thirty-one years after circling around each other like buzzards around roadkill during a very long and hot summer in which we were, unfortunately, dating other people. I swear I thought about buying a ticket to Phoenix for about five hours today...

Book Review: HOLIDAYS IN HECK

2012-02-07T05:48:00.001-05:00

It's hard to convey the excitement I felt when I saw Holidays in Heck on the "New Books" shelf at the library recently. P.J. O'Rourke has been one of my favorite authors for over two decades. I have an O'Rourke shelf in the mini-bookcase on my computer desk. When I was younger, and when I first started this blog, the two writers I most tried to emulate were O'Rourke and HST; O'Rourke's sense of humor is one of the finest the English language has ever produced, and even some of his less noteworthy projects in his career still had some side-splitting asides and silly scenes that defy the reader not to laugh out loud. O'Rourke reminds me not to take politics too seriously; he is as adept at skewering left-leaning politicos as anyone since Mencken and Rogers, but is well aware of the absurdities of those on his side of the aisle and doesn't spare them when they have ridicule coming. And underneath the joker's suit is a real level of insight a surprising amount of the time. My views on the Arab-Israeli conflict, to take one example, were forever altered by O'Rourke's reporting from the occupied territories two decades ago, with the immortal summing up, after viewing the indignities the Palestinians went through on a daily basis, "This is barbarism. This is bullshit. I've covered a lot... and there is no excuse for this kind of civilian-hammering by the police." O'Rourke is the closest our generation has produced to a Mencken; an unapologetic hedonist and curmudgeon whose innate sense of decency does peek through enough to take a stand against nonsense of all stripes.
This book is promoted as a sequel to Holidays in Hell, his late-1980's masterpiece of reporting from some of the world's then-hottest spots. It is a collection of reedited and largely rewritten pieces he has written for various publications over the last decade of alleged "fun spots." Some are hilarious--such as skiing in Ohio, trips to Hong Kong, and a horseback ride across Kyrgyzstan (how many other words have the -yz spelling?). Some aren't as funny, but still are fairly informative. O'Rourke married rather late (I think it's a second marriage, actually) and has three children younger than mine, which is also a source of ongoing amusement as they grew over the decade, as he struggles with raising school-age children while crossing sixty years of age himself. And when he wants to be, he can still be devastatingly accurate in his assessments of politics and politicians--no one but no one has ever been more accurate about the shortcomings of the Clintons, for example, and his throwaway lines in 2008 about the presidential race that year alone are worth the price of the book.
In short, this book, although not quite at the level of Holidays in Hell or Give War a Chance, is still a worthy addition to the canon. I intend to purchase this book as soon as it is in paperback.

Giants Win

2012-02-06T05:51:00.000-05:00

Another football season is in the books, and improbably, the New York Giants, for the fourth time, are the holders of the Lombardi Trophy. I could be churlish and say that collectively, this year's team has a collective horseshoe stuck in their butts, but even as true as that statement might be, there is no denying that the team that won four games in the playoffs bore only the slightest resemblance to the team that played the first 14 games of the season. And the game yesterday was, from the Giant standpoint, a thing of beauty. Although they caught a couple of breaks with a very questionable safety call and two recovered fumbles that could have just as easily bounced to the other team, it also must be said that they played a tremendous game--no missed tackles, no big plays against, no bad decisions, no tipped balls, nothing at all. The Patriots played a pretty damn near complete game themselves, with few mistakes, and didn't win. How often does that happen?
And that was what struck me watching this game. So often Super Bowl contests don't look like they involve championship teams, because of all the mistakes made. I've watched five Super Bowls involving the Giants now. They lost one, back in 2001, and looked pretty amateurish doing it, and the first half of the first one they were in back in 1987 wasn't terribly pretty, either. But the second half of that game was nearly perfect (Phil Simms had three incompletions all game), and the other three they have won have been notable for them playing nearly perfect games--and they had to be to win three games against teams that were probably, on balance, better than they were. The game against the Bills remains the best-played football game I have ever seen; neither team made a turnover, and the Bills were at the height of a sustained run of excellence (what an oxymoron that sounds like in this day and age), with six Hall of Famers playing prominent roles. It took a missed field goal at the end for the Giants to win, but they played a great game against a great team that also played a great game. In 2008, the same two teams that played yesterday played, and the Giants beat a team that had not lost up until that point. Granted, in that game the Patriots clearly were feeling the pressure of trying to go 19-0 and the Giants got some of the most bizarre lucky breaks of all time--but they still played a great game on the big stage to do so. And they did so again yesterday.
I don't do it anymore, but there was a time when I did football analysis well enough so that some people paid me for it. I remember enough of the methods to be able to use them to look at a playoff field and figure out contenders from pretenders. There have now been 46 Super Bowls played, 42 where meaningful comparisons can be made between the teams (the first four were between teams that played in entirely different leagues and hence accumulated their statistics against two entirely different groups of teams, making comparison impossible to gauge relative to one another). Of those 42, 40 have met a group of statistical standards that I won't repeat here; the two exceptions are the last two Giant champions. Of the 42, this is the first champion that has not finished in the top eight in the league in either points scored or points allowed. The two Giant teams of the Parcells era also did not fit the champion mold as well as any teams up until that point in time had... which doesn't take away from the accomplishments at all.
Basically, what it does now is to add a caveat to any predictive significance--"does not apply, necessarily, to the New York Giants." It isn't the first time a team has consistently bucked significant trends; I can remember at two other teams that did so regularly as well, even though they did not win Super Bowls. One I don't remember seeing much of on TV because I was a kid, but the Cleveland Browns were good for the first thirty years of the team's existence, and the last several years of that period were in the late 1960's up through 1973. They were a veteran-laden team with a very old coach that, in the absence of great stats, clearly won a lot of games because they knew how to win. It all fell apart in 1974, and took a decade to right itself. The other were the Bills post-Super Bowl teams; the Bills remained relevant up until the turn of the century because they were another veteran-laden team with an old coach that knew how to win in spite of a team statistical profile that suggested a .500 record. The Bills fell apart in 2000 and still haven't recovered. This Giant team, despite the presence of young stars like Cruz and Nicks, fits that profile rather well--there were a lot of players yesterday wearing white that were on the field during the last Super Bowl win.
The Giants may well fall apart in the next few years. They have a rather pedestrian group of linebackers and running backs, and the offensive lines that are uniformly excellent tend to be very difficult to replace as they age out--it's tough to replace four really good guys within a year or two of each other. It was the biggest factor in the decline of several dynasty teams, most notably the Cowboys of the Johnson years, and it's a reason that the Patriots can't get back over the hump--their offensive line of the championship years all wore out within a couple of years of one another, and it's been hard for them to get back to where they were.
But the Giants and Giant fans will worry about that another day. For now, they are celebrating the accomplishments of a remarkable team, one that is historically unique but at the same time really didn't have the look and feel of a team that was fortunate in the least. Because with the possible exception of the 49er game, you can't look at any of their run through the playoffs and state that the better team lost.

Dogs and Predators

2012-02-05T08:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the final basketball game of the season for Sabrina's team, against their rivals from East, at the high school itself. East had a fuller squad this game, and although it still wasn't much of a contest, it wasn't the kind of rout that made one wince like the game a few weeks ago. West ended up 13-1, with the loss by two points, and it's becoming clearer with every passing season that at least in basketball and softball, the Binghamton school district has a very talented generation of kids en route to the high school level. Before I get into the main part of this post, I want to add that Sabrina attended the winter softball clinic in the afternoon yesterday, and there is a possibility she is going to be asked to try out with the JV team this spring; two of her former teammates in City League have talked her up to their coach enough so that he is coming for the clinic next week to see her work out with the 6th and 7th graders. I'm not getting my hopes up too much for her, but obviously she would be pleased and delighted, and so would I, to bypass Modified entirely. We will see.
Back to regularly scheduled blogging... one reason the game was closer yesterday was the presence of one of Sabrina's friends from Roosevelt on the East team, who missed the first game because of a doctor's appointment. I know her parents very well; both were part of my life since very early recovery, and both have been more or less part of the recovery community here all along, although she has stepped out a few times and he currently is a guest of the county. I saw the mother at halftime sitting on the other side of the stands, and I spent the second half getting caught up with her. She has been through hell the last six months, and obviously so has her daughter, and I'm not here to air their personal pain this morning. It's never pretty when relapse occurs, and it's even worse when it occurs after a significant period of time.
But one thing she told me did draw my attention. Her marriage ended as the result of the events last summer, and she recounted for me, both in wonder and disgust, how many men in recovery immediately began to hit on her. She gave me four names, and hinted there were others. Three of them were good friends of her husband. Three of them have significant amounts of clean time, two of them nineteen years or more and a third who had gotten to nearly two decades a few years ago before relapsing. Part of me was dumbstruck--aside from the fact of the closeness of the relationship between the woman's husband and these guys, the woman was--and still is--a near-total mess emotionally and mentally, who quite literally struggled not to lose her mind (and the battle still isn't over yet). What kind of self-centered, morally vacant animals try to bed a woman in this situation? What kind of deficient wiring courses through their minds? How do they sleep at night, or real? How can you possibly justify this kind of behavior, when it's just you and your own thoughts? Have they any sense of decency?
But part of me was not dumbstruck, because in a couple of the cases it was typical behavior. One guy I've written about before, for physically abusing women; at the time she told me she was being pestered by him, he was playing two (much younger) women off against one another, one of them pregnant with his child. Another I've never mentioned, because he had checked out of the rooms several years ago after two decades clean, in large part because he had invited a using woman into his home; that situation became the most morally challenged atmosphere I have ever seen, as the man's daughter ended up prostituting out of the home with his full knowledge and approval. A third guy she mentioned has also been around for a long time, although I barely see him anymore; I got the impression he wasn't as skeevy as the other two, but still, inquiring about a woman that is the wife of one of his best friends' availability as her marriage is imploding and her sanity is teetering on the edge really doesn't speak well for one's character.
It is a long-standing problem in NA circles, the predatory male. And even though everyone has their own set of character defects that we bring in the door with us, that take even longer to deal with and change than the actual drug use, there still needs to be a point where accountability is demanded. For one thing, it's not just about the men themselves. Like it or not, we are all part of a larger fellowship, and we represent that fellowship by our actions and behaviors to the world at large, and by indulging our character defects--especially in this particular area-- we are not only harming those in the rooms we are preying on, but we are affecting those just coming in or those yet to come. I've been aware for years that many chemical dependency treatment professionals try to steer women in early recovery away from Narcotics Anonymous, and even though their motives are based more in their own latent fear-based racism than anything else (and even though there's just as much predation in AA), it's guys like these that provide justifications for that stance. For another thing, it is an article of faith in recovering circles that spiritual principles are unchanging and eternal--and there is no way that this behavior can be rationalized as being spiritually based in any way. Even those who vaguely cop to having "issues" with womanizing never give voice to the details--and one reason why is that it is completely indefensible at this level. There is a reason why these pursuits take place away from prying eyes and in one-on-one situations. Then there are the children to consider, too. Most women in recovery have kids, and most of the men do, for that matter, as well. One of the aims of being in recovery is to ultimately break the unhealthy cycles, the values and beliefs and imprinting that led to addiction in the first place. Children learn what they see, and when what they see is hypocrisy, predation, and the inflated value placed on sexual gratification--what do you think is going to happen as these children get older? Kids end up practicing what they have learned and seen from their parents. And fourth, the women themselves already suffer from serious self-esteem and self-worth issues. Preying on them in times of distress and upheaval certainly doesn't help them recover, and the last thing we should be doing is adding to their burdens by causing them to lose faith and trust in the very group of people that we are supposed to be depending on for help and support.
I want to make clear that I am not a saint, and that I am quite sure that many actions of mine that have involved women over the past thirteen years does not meet ideal standards of behavior. I have indulged in casual sex; I have gone back for more with women that I knew I had no future with; and I know that doing things like spending money on people you're having sex with, though an exchange does not take place as you're getting dressed, is morally ambiguous in many cases--and I have done all those things, some quite recently. But I can tell you without a doubt that I do not and have never stooped to the depths of behavior this woman described to me. I simply cannot live my life in thrall that much to the great god Penis, and I honestly do not know how other men can.
This is the second time this week that I saw this kind of moral nihilism on display. The other night, a young woman that goes to a meeting that I frequent told me she stopped at a restaurant that the boyfriend of one of her friends works at--and that he went on break, came out and sat at her table, and within moments was pestering her for her phone number. Granted, the behavior wasn't quite as egregiously bad as hitting on someone who just came out of a DV shelter, but still, I'm sure he didn't go home and tell his girlfriend, "Hey, guess who I saw at work today?" either. And the sheer delusion of a lot of this behavior, too, kills me at times. In this particular case, what kind of thought process would make the Lord of the Fries think that a college student with magnificent job prospects in the future and no shortage of suitors is just dying to get with his skinny 115-pound ass? I see guys with no jobs, no cars, no prospects at all of anything significant happening in their lives regularly hitting on women with jobs, with houses, with children, with functional self-esteem. Do you really think they're just dying to mate with your foolish, transparent, nothing-going-for-you selves? And yet they keep at it, every time they see someone come in the room. As I mentioned, this sort of stuff hurts everyone in the long run. It turns women in recovery off men in recovery, which kind of sucks for men in recovery like me who aren't like that. It means those women just coming in the rooms with very fragile senses of themselves who do succumb to blandishments end up with more baggage than they came in with. It means that guys coming in the rooms get the idea that it's OK to be a satyr, as long as you stay clean while doing it. It means that the kids of those in the fellowship are getting marginally better, if at all, role models than those whose parents are still addicted to drugs.
And most of all, it perpetuates the misery that we came into recovery to escape from. It would be nice if some of the men around here had Higher Powers that were not located two inches below their navels.

Book Review: THE VIRAL STORM

2012-02-04T19:29:00.000-05:00

The Viral Storm, subtitled "The Dawn of the Pandemic Age," seemingly promises a stirring and adrenaline-packed account of a world poised on the edge of a killer outbreak of some exotic disease. But academic Nathan Wolfe has devoted his career to the study of viruses, and the book he has written is a rather sober and matter-of-fact--and fairly thorough--expedition into all aspects of modern study of the smallest life forms on the planet--mostly viruses, but a few other odd particles as well. Wolfe has been in the forefront of epidemiological research for many years, and his insights into well-known (such as HIV, Ebola, HPV, and influenza) and not-so-well-known viruses, and their effect and potential effect on human beings, makes for some fairly compelling reading without being sensationalized. And I love books with interesting footnotes, and Wolfe peppers the text with about a hundred of them, all offering some snippet of enlightenment that add to the narrative in some way. The book will not scare the pants off you--while acknowledging that a deadly pandemics are possible, Wolfe lists and details so many factors happening in the field that will help prevent them from getting underway, and also gives the reader to understand that the nature of viruses tends to work against that possibility. Global travel has made a widespread infection more likely, but it has also made it more likely than immunity to any particular bug spreads faster, too. There will be no equivalent of the smallpox epidemic in the Americas during the Age of Discovery in today's world; there is simply no real segregation of immune and unexposed populations any longer. And viruses with huge mortality rates end up killing themselves off, which defeats the purpose of all life--and since viruses are alive in some fashion, it's not a winning strategy to pursue.
But by far the most interesting premise, and it is information not generally known, is that most viruses cross into humans from animals, and most often chimpanzees. I did not know before reading this book that HIV is a major cause of chimp mortality, too. It would seem logical that human viruses can cause havoc if they cross into animal populations, too--and in fact, as Wolfe shows, that has happened as well. It's a very strange and fascinating world under the powerful microscope, and the author provides an excellent window into it, as well as patiently and accessibly detailing a lot of the nuts-and-bolts fieldwork of research into microorganisms. Even for the non-scientifically inclined, this is a very readable and interesting book.

Pushing Back

2012-02-04T06:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in this space, I wrote about the nation receiving some nasty reminders that while the forward momentum of the American Taliban might have been blunted recently, they still have a huge voice in the national agenda and are not going to go away. Yesterday itself was an extremely eventful day on the national political stage, and for once the items in the news had nothing to do with Primates Flinging Poo.
The major story was the climbdown executed by the Susan Komen Foundation on the matter of distributing funds to Planned Parenthood, after the outrage generated across most segments of society over the past three days. Komen at first gave conflicting reasons why they were going to stop doing it, then basically gave up and copped to it being a bad idea yesterday and rescinded the decision --because the decision was made in the first place simply to placate an American Taliban Representative from Florida who is trying to end the exercise of abortion rights in the United States. Whatever your views on abortion--and I honestly believe that most Americans are genuinely uncomfortable to a degree with the practice--, picking on Planned Parenthood is a different matter. The American Taliban is driven to apoplexy by widespread practices of sex outside marriage, but the fact is that for most Americans, sexual activity outside marriage has become by far the norm, and organizations like Planned Parenthood that help people with birth control and routine reproductive health matters are seen as beneficial by the vast majority of the population. It is a bit of a culture war thing, but the horse is way out of the barn on that issue.
And it presents the American Taliban and their wealthy benefactors with a bit of a Catch-22. One of the reasons that economic inequality has taken such root in the United States over the past 32 years is the bread-and-circuses strategy that we have been subjected to--and the inundation with sexual activity and sexual imagery in the cultural outlets we all are exposed to and participate in is perhaps the biggest circus we have. In plain English, people obsessed with getting laid are not as likely to pay attention to matters like vanishing economic opportunity and concentration of wealth at the upper end of society, and people like Rupert Murdoch figured this out a long time ago. But if the powers that be start making noise about taking away the diversions from the peons, the peons start paying attention, not just to the attempt to remove the diversion, but to the whole picture--and suddenly there's a lot more awareness of just how messed up the world has become, and more thought about who is responsible.
And that's not working to the American Taliban's advantage. One other piece of news yesterday was that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.3%--certainly nothing wonderful, but a lot better than 10%, and a sign that it's going to be more and more impossible to paint the Empty Suit as a failed President. Generations tend to last roughly 30 years, and I've been wondering for a while now whether Obama is this generation's Reagan. I was in college during most of Reagan's first term, and I distinctly recall the glee with which a pile of Democrats announced they were running for President in 1983, because the economy was so bad through late 1983--and then when it started perking up in 1984, eventual nominee Mondale was left with nothing to point at as the election approached, and he got his head handed to him. A similar scenario appears to be playing out 28 years later; while the economy likely is not going to be healthy, perhaps ever again, it is somewhat better than it was two years ago, and it is improving. The doomsayers on the right are looking sillier by the day, not only because what they are proposing to do isn't going to be helpful, but their assessment that the current bunch is in over their head doesn't appear accurate any longer, and they have to resort to rhetorical gymnastics to try to stay relevant. It was amusing to watch Paul Ryan, who has complained long and loud for two years about how the economy is stalled and not growing, suddenly become concerned that the economy is growing at too fast a pace.
It's all politics. The Taliban doesn't care about the economy or indeed the well-being of most of us. The Taliban's primary focus in economic matters is to give even more money to rich people; they really don't have any other ideas, and are actively opposed to any initiative that doesn't serve that purpose. And people are wising up to that fact, and they are not going to vote for people who espouse those views. Even if the alternative is voting for a black guy, which, truth be known, has been a huge largely unspoken factor in the opposition to the Empty Suit since the day he announced he was a candidate for President years ago. For many people, the evidence is becoming clearer that whatever their reservations about Obama or government in general, what the Taliban is proposing to do is not something they want to see. Period.
Another example came in the national transportation appropriations bill now being put together in the House of Representatives. The proposal is to eliminate mandating a percentage of the money raised through transportation taxation--gas taxes and the like--on mass transit, and instead have it appropriated annually. The catch is that it can be held hostage to the whims of future Congresses, and it will make much easier to cut such funding. The reality is that it is designed to foster our continued dependence on fossil fuel consumption and the culture of the automobile-which is the aim, again, of most of the American Taliban agenda, to keep the money flowing into the coffers of the corporate behemoths that fund it. It bears repeating--the purpose of the entire Taliban agenda--or, just so there is no confusion, to call them by the name they prefer for themselves, the conservative Republican agenda--is to make sure that the money keeps going upwards and that anything that hinders the upward flow of money must be curtailed or stopped. That's it; there is nothing else. They don't give a shit about morals; they don't give a shit about values; they don't give a shit about the future; they don't give a shit about anything other than the continued ability of their business elites to squeeze every last cent out of the American population. Many of them believe that planning for the future is a waste of time because Jesus is coming back soon; even if they won't say so publicly anymore (some of us remember James Watt), that is the agenda driving far too many of them and the ideas they are espousing.
Are these the people you want running the country? I didn't think so.
And I noticed that our local Republican Representative has, twice in two days, been exposed as part of the problem. Richard Hanna's district reaches down from Utica to the borders of Binghamton, and he displaced a Democrat last fall. He's kept pretty quiet this past year, and there was some hope that he was not as obnoxious as the Tea Party bozos that make up the majority of his freshmen class. But this week, when pressed, he came out in favor of drug testing those on unemployment, and yesterday he displayed a real lack of foresight by saying that just because the current proposal in the mass transit bill gives New York a slight increase, he doesn't see a problem with it. That's the kind of short-sighted tunnel vision that we most emphatically do not need in positions of responsibility. The important part of legislation is not what is in a particular appropriation. The important part of legislation is what it sets as national, long-term priorities--and by eliminating long-standing commitments to maintaining and creating mass transit, it is inimical to the long-term interests of the nation--and to the people who depend on mass transit for their transportation needs. Many people in large cities don't drive. Many poorer people in smaller cities don't drive. They need some way to get to work and to participate in society. Unless the aim is to bring back a culture where the vast majority of people spend their lives within ten miles of the house they were born in, the commitment to mass transit needs to remain high. And that's not even taking into consideration that a commitment to mass transit lessens the dependence on fossil fuels and all the benefits that lessening that dependence brings, at least in theory.
What is encouraging in all of what is going on recently is that the Taliban is being pushed back. The aggressive pushing of conservative agendas is meeting sustained resistance--because when all is said and done, the large majority of us are not conservative. And in the last several months, it almost is possible to be guardedly optimistic, because there has been a dawning of--not quite widespread activism, but at least a sense that "these people need to be stopped." From Occupy to the general disgust with Primates Flinging Poo to resistance to attempted coups like the Kamen mess to things like the Wisconsin recall election brewing--pushing back is becoming more common.
And not a moment too soon.

Wingnuts Strike Back

2012-02-03T06:11:00.001-05:00

In the last few months, it's been become marginally easier to forget that our Congress was inundated with a whole bunch of Republican newcomer nitwits last winter, and much of 2011 was spent in the sort of gridlock experienced when ignorant, doctrinaire American Taliban-types filled with self-righteous zeal to cleanse the world of its sins by imposing a sort of faux-Christian sharia on the country (with the LORD hanging on a dollar sign and the Apostles in an armored personnel carrier) gather in numbers. In the fall and winter, the Empty Suit found the courage to challenge and stand up to them on a few matters, which is welcome (it's wonderful what sort of balls some people can grow when it's their own position of power that's now at risk), but even more so, the reality show fondly known as Primates Flinging Poo has shown the two-thirds of the country that is not hopelessly locked into bigoted dogma what they wrought in November 2010, and the result has been a Congress with the lowest approval rating ever and an increasingly likely prospect of a second Obama term. And it is also becoming increasingly likely that the supposed watershed changes in the makeup of the House and Senate as a result of the 2010 elections will turn out to be as ephemeral as the 1964 wave of liberals entering Congress. As long as elections remain even partially honestly contested, this bunch is simply too much for too many people to long endure holding positions of responsibility. There are regions of the country where the wingnuts are concentrated enough so that there will always be a substantial number of them in Congress--any state that seceded from the Union in the nineteenth century, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. But elsewhere, ordinary people who filled out their ballots out of frustration or latent racism in 2010 are seeing that what they have inflicted on the country is even worse, and aren't going to prolong the nightmare.
Of course, the wingnuts are not going quietly away. There have been two items in the news this week that drove home that the American Taliban and the architects of the New Gilded Age have not folded their tents. Earlier this week, the Susan Komen Foundation, the outfit responsible for the ubiquitous pink breast-cancer awareness ribbons and related apparel, cut off its funding to Planned Parenthood under pressure from American jihadists--and ignited an absolute firestorm of criticism and invited a much more critical eye on its own operations. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the particulars to write in detail, but from what I've read, the decision came shortly after some Congressional wingnut put pressure on the foundation because in some places Planned Parenthood provides abortion services, and the director of the foundation--who ran (and lost badly) for governor of Georgia last year with the support and endorsement of America's Bimbo Sarah Palin--immediately did his bidding and cut off PP's money. Abortion is one of those subjects where minds are not going to be changed, but the fact is incontrovertible that it is a legal practice, and that despite 40 years of trying, those opposed to it have not been able to make it illegal again (for the record, although I definitely am not in favor of abortion as a method of birth control, I am not in favor of any more restrictions than there currently are. But then I live in a state that has moved beyond the sixteenth century ideologically, and it's never been a lightning rod issue here like it is in other parts of the country). The harm that is going to come out of this politically-motivated (there have already been three changing-story justifications for the decision issued in four days, all denying the obvious) retreat is that it has made it possible to be against the pink. I honestly doubt we are going to see NFL players wearing pink cleats, women's basketball teams wearing pink uniforms, and other manifestations of one of the most successful branding of a cause that has ever been devised again. And for no good reason other than catering to crypto-Fascists.(Note: four hours after this was posted, the Komen Foundation caved and announced that it was all a big mistake, that they will continue to fund Planned Parenthood after all. And I sincerely hope that nary a pink ribbon is seen this year, as testimony to the fact that no, we did not forget whom you regard as your lord and master)
The second greeted me with today's morning news. The House is taking up the jobless benefits legislation passed by the Senate recently, and of course, the House being the chamber where the true believers hold the balance of power, there are some very disturbing noises coming out of there. I'm not going to get into all the details, some of which are actually reasonable, because topping the list of demands is that favorite golden calf of conservative thought, The Drug-Addled Public Benefits Recipient, which is this generations Cadillac-driving Welfare Queen. Boner's Army want to give states blanket authority to require drug-testing for getting unemployment benefits. Never mind that drug use requires disposable income, and people who have lost their job almost by definition don't have it. Never mind that people on drugs aren't likely to even bother with the onerous burdens in time and effort to access benefits. The fact is that at least one state did implement this staple of conservative thought--and it's costing Florida far, far more to drug-test everybody than whatever they are saving by denying benefits to the 1-2% of applicants that have been caught. I've written about this two or three times this past year, and others with a much wider audience have repeated a lot of the same arguments, but all to no avail--these asshats just know that most people lose their jobs because they're firing up on their breaks and when they are home, and they'll be goddamned if any of these Dangerous People are going to get the public's money so they can enjoy their weed and their crack while they lay around the house on the dole. The actual evidence showing that the idea is a crock of shit doesn't interest them; it's become an article of faith, a litmus test that shows Which Side You Are On. And so we are likely to get stuck with some sort of provision for this in whatever gets passed, and the only people who will benefit will be whatever corporate behemoth makes the drug screening units.
Which was probably the intention all along.

Tone Deaf

2012-02-02T06:02:00.000-05:00

Even as Primates Flinging Poo took on a more orderly shape the other night, after Mitt Romney won the Florida GOP primary, Americans were given a stark reminder of just what kind of option other than the Empty Suit we are likely to have in nine months. Romney has said and done several things in the last few weeks that make it clear that he has not a clue as to how financial insecurity is a major issue for Americans of voting age this year. For a candidate running for the office of President of the United States to refuse to authorize release of his tax returns going back several years doesn't play well, and plays even less well when that candidate is one of the wealthiest Americans. To admit that his tax rate is less than most voters' is even more astonishing, and to be quoted as saying he likes having the ability to "fire people" pushed the envelope into "Can you believe this guy?" territory. And his latest faux pas painted him even more securely as just the epitome of the child of privilege looking to become President because he thinks he's entitled to the job. For a prospective Presidential candidate to say "I'm not concerned about the very poor" indicates a degree of tone deafness that is truly staggering to behold.
Romney apologists have already feverishly begun to point out that the quote is somewhat taken out of context, and to be fair, the sound bite is worse than the full quote. But Romney's point is less objectionable only by a matter of a few degrees. To summarize, Romney claimed that there is a safety net in place for the very poor, and that if it "needs repair, I'll fix it." The problem, beyond how that sounds, is that Romney clearly has no idea of just how close to the ground that net is. New York has a reputation as one of the most generous welfare states--but I can tell you from prolonged exposure to those who have bounced on the safety net that it doesn't provide a lot of safety. The amount of money for food stamps doesn't really allow one to buy anything other than processed foods and the cheapest, least healthful groceries. There is a really small amount of actual cash benefits--something like $78 a month. Rent assistance does provide a roof, but the ceilings on that ensure that the apartment is going to be small and in one of the worst areas of town. The income guidelines regarding eligibility for public assistance are almost absurdly low--I have heard time and again that single people who work minimum wage for even eight hours a week find themselves over the eligibility threshold.
I am not suggesting that we need, as a society, to make the life of the very poor Fat City. But I think there is a misconception rife in all circles--but most openly in conservative ones--that a life on the dole is life "high on the hog." It is not, and has never been. The stereotype of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen is reprehensible for a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that few if any of those on welfare have cars, and if they do they are beaters. And with the number of bus routes and times buses run being seriously curtailed this year, it is becoming much more difficult for non-drivers to get anywhere beyond a few blocks from home in this area. And Broome County is actually more committed to helping the less well-off than many upstate New York counties; Tioga County, a few miles to the west, doesn't do half of what this county does for its poverty-level citizens.
Romney was trying to say he was more concerned that the lives of "ordinary" citizens need to be improved, and I think that's incontestable. But his tone deafness on such issues really points out that, even giving him the benefit of the doubt that it is not just a posture adopted for the campaign, he has literally no idea what life is actually like for the vast majority of people in this country. Obama isn't exactly a child of the ghetto or truly one of the less fortunate, but at least he has some idea of what life is like for the less fortunate--and it's taken three years for him to realize that life, for a great many of us, sucks and that a lot of things need to be changed. I'm not sure we can afford another period of time for a new guy to get a clue, especially one that seems to change his views on a disturbing number of subjects on an almost-daily basis. Which is another Romney trait that isn't playing well, truth be known--the perception that he has few if any core beliefs beyond naked ambition is becoming widespread, and even those inclined to vote conservative do not like it.
I have not been a fan of the Empty Suit since he first started running for President, and I'd actually welcome a legitimate other option. But to be fair to him, the last year, there have been some accomplishments that I am wholly in favor off--"goodbye Iraq" most prominent--, and as I mentioned, there at least seems to be a dawning awareness that for most of us, something has gone seriously and horribly wrong. I don't get that sense regarding any of the Republican candidates, and probably Romney is actually the one that scares me the most, precisely because he is the most clueless, the farthest removed from the reality of life for most Americans, of all of them.
We simply cannot afford to have a child of privilege running the country at this point in time.

Book Review: 100 THINGS YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW

2012-02-01T19:49:00.000-05:00

My daughters know me well enough to know that I find collections of odd facts and little-known information fascinating, so for Father's Day last year, they bought me Russ Kick's 100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know. And that's exactly what it is: a listing, with accompanying documentation and detail, of a hundred "dirty little secrets" of life in the modern world, many of them having to do with items of interest that the government of the United States does not see fit to publicize and that corporate America does it best to not let see the light of day. Near-nuclear explosions, little known legal facts (such as the police not legally being obligated to help you when you are in danger), biological oddities, and gems of information about religion (the LORD's actual name is given at Exodus 34:13, if you're interested, and it isn't flattering). I love these kind of books and hearing this kind of stuff; it inspires independent thought and a distrust of all accepted wisdom, which can be taken too far but in general is the healthiest way to live in an intellectual sense. There's knowing, for example, that the Bush Administration was full of shit about the effectiveness of the War on Terror, and there's the actual (shockingly low) number of actual terrorism arrests made in the ten-plus years since 9/11: 131 of the 174 the Justice Department claims turned out to not be about terrorism, according to their own case histories. This book is full of little nuggets of information that will help the reader sort through the waves of nonsense and bullshit that are pumped at us each and every day..

Taking Stock

2012-02-01T06:01:00.003-05:00

I'm going to be very careful about how I word what I am writing about this morning,. I met with my supervisor for a couple of hours yesterday, and I walked out of there almost skipping--I felt as though, finally, after almost ten years of working where I do, that I had the unqualified support of those I answer to, and that I was appreciated not only for the job I do, but also for the person that I am by those who matter. I reviewed my annual performance evaluation with her, and it was very high, the highest it's ever been--high honor roll, if you will.
All it took was one email later in the day to deflate that balloon. And it did not come from anyone over me in the corporate hierarchy.
I'm not even going to go into the particulars. It's gotten old, but it is what it is, and I can only say I am very glad that boundaries have been erected.
But the larger question is not any of this minor, picayune stuff. It's honestly becoming more about "how do I want to wind my life up." I enjoy my job, and as I mentioned, on many fronts it's never been better for me. But I am also uncomfortably aware that it is dependent on continuing to receive funding, and that funding is not a given. I am uncomfortably aware that there aren't a whole lot of other employment opportunities available to white-collar skill sets at the age of 49 (which I will be in the fall). I don't necessarily mind having points of accountability, but there's a part of me that would like the freedom to set my own hours, work my own schedule--and most of all, not have to worry about whether someone else thinks or feels, in any way that affects my livelihood.
Today is February 1, and although I'm normally not a big one on milestone dates or "this is the first day of the rest of your life" type of stuff, it nonetheless does mark a natural stepping-off point of sorts. I've been talking with a couple of people about re-starting a couple of literary projects I have begun. I'm never going to be a J.K. Rowling or a John Grisham, but if I could make enough to keep the bills paid with my writing, that would be something I'm sure I could live with--and certainly my fate would be more in my hands.
I am going to have some time off here soon; I am going to be out of work for a few weeks after getting my feet operated on (and there's the flip side; working for a large outfit makes things like surgery, without going into hock for the rest of your life, possible), and I will be home during the day for a few weeks with a lot of time on my hands. I've been mulling over what shape some of these projects will take, and how far and eagerly I should be pursuing them.
But yesterday's events kind of gave me a bit of a nudge further down that road. It is a reminder that I do not want to spend the reminder of my working life looking over my shoulder.

Book Review: COVENANT

2012-01-31T05:56:00.000-05:00

Suspense/thrillers is a category of literature that has exploded in popularity in the last few years. The reasons for this are many, but an important one is the notoriety and success surrounding The Da Vinci Code several years ago, which also led to a mini-boomlet regarding "hidden" history theories and historical anomalies. Covenant fits squarely into both genres, and first-time author Dean Crawford has constructed a worthy and gripping tale that engages the reader's attention from the first page until the last. I don't like to give away too much of the plot in these reviews if I can help it, but the current and topical is mixed well with the offbeat and "off-range," to use a phrase from the book: unsavory aspects of the modern world like the kidnapping rackets in world trouble spots, private security firms, and evangelical Christian fantasies are welded with care to theories and ideas about alien contact in the past and the mysteries of pre-history. I happen to know a great deal about those theories and secrets, and so I wasn't surprised by what I was reading, but there is a lot of food for thought for the casual reader here, presented in a very absorbing manner, and the issues raised are very legitimate to ask.
There were other novelties that I liked. This is the first book in some time that I have read that takes place in the Middle East where the villains are not diabolically sneaky and fanatical Muslim jihadists; the Muslims in the book are portrayed sympathetically and with a great understanding of how the "War on Terror" and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict looks from the other side of the fence (no doubt a result of the fact that Crawford is British, not American, and therefore is largely free of the hysteria of the Bush years that infected nearly all Americans to some degree). Crawford's degree of knowledge about the anomalous nature of the dawn of civilization is impressive, accurate, and focuses on areas far beyond an infantile fascination with Chariots of the Gods trivia; in particular, he is very cognizant of the fact that the beginnings of civilization around the world are underwater, after the Great Melt at the end of the last Ice Age. Crawford's view of the obsessions of the evangelical Christian leadership in this country also are accurate and are followed to the logical conclusions--that preconceptions shape views in ways that do not allow the evidence to speak for itself, and even more importantly the intense and very real desire of many fundamentalists to keep the fires of conflict burning in the Middle East because it is, according to their interpretation of the Bible, necessary for Armageddon to occur.
There were also a few things that were minor irritants. There were a few idiomatic errors instantly obvious to American eyes strewn throughout the book (the one I recall most vividly was a character referring to the Redskins being "in the bottom of the ninth," but there were a few others) that British eyes no doubt missed. The characters tend to give explanatory speeches, necessary for plot development and information to the reader, in places in the narrative where it simply makes no sense to give ten-minute dissertations. The hero, a burned-out bum at the beginning of the book, instantly reverts to his former Marine self when tested, and absorbs an incredible amount of physical punishment that apparently has no effect on his ability to perform wondrous feats requiring tremendous dexterity and strength. There is the usual high body count that is common in these thrillers, although this is mitigated somewhat by the action taking place in venues (Gaza, the Washington DC ghetto) where deaths by violence are less unusual than most places. And most annoying to me was the last two pages being used as a prop to begin what Crawford obviously wants to be an ongoing series a la Steve Berry's Cotton Malone canon.
But overall, I thought this was very credible first effort, and a refreshing new entrant in the genre. And if the reader is interested in finding out more about the book or might be willing to purchase the book, this is a reminder to click on the book title; you will be linked to amazon.com

Shameless Commercial Announcement

2012-01-30T05:44:00.000-05:00

As regular readers of this space know, I read a lot of books, and I review what I read here. Few if any are ever going to be New York Times Book Review material, and yet I try to find something to say about everything that crosses my threshold. And I have received generally positive feedback for doing so. Yesterday, a friend of mine suggested that I register as an Amazon affiliate, which would would make eligible for a 15% bonus fee if someone bought the book at amazon.com after getting to the site through this blog. I checked out the program and it seemed relatively straightforward, so I did in fact register. So in the future, if you read about a book in this space and think you might want to purchase it, click on the book title, and you will be taken to the Amazon website, where hopefully you will decide to buy the book.
I'm not going to get rich through doing this, but if it picks up a few bucks over the year, I'll be happy. And it's another step toward moving toward trying to broaden my income base and move toward making a living with my writing. The publishing game has changed beyond recognition during the last twenty years or so. The idea of writing a best-selling novel has become infinitely harder; I've started a few projects, but I haven't really stuck with any of them. I've been mulling for a couple of years finishing the project that I've posted several pages of on this site; I've thought about a more sweeping panorama encompassing a grander theme than just a coming of age story. I've also tentatively explored free lance writing--although not in any serious way to date. And although I am part of writerscafe.org, I hardly ever use the site beyond linking it to this blog--and I do have a couple of ideas for short stories that I want to pursue at some point.
What is starting to motivate me is the idea that after nearly ten years, in the fall there is a possibility I may not have the job I have anymore. Grant-based positions are always somewhat tenuous, and even though there appears to be more resistance to major cuts than there was at this time last year, it would be foolish to count on the status quo from here on out. I also am not sure whether I like some of the other developments happening in my field; there are changes at the county level that I do not know how they are going to play out, and the direction the agency I work for is going in is not 100% comfortable for me, either, at least with some of the current command chain in place. And I am absolutely positive that writing is more agreeable to me than anything else would be, and I've been hearing for decades how one of the secrets to happiness is doing something you love.
So anyway, this Amazon thing is a baby step in that direction. I've been reading a lot lately--I always do in the wintertime--and in the future, feel free to go to the Amazon website through this blog. I"m still trying to figure out how the linking and stuff works, but there is also a link to Amazon on the bottom of the blog page itself, and that will always work. I am considering other changes to the blog, too--I had blue backgrounds last week, but decided I didn't like it and changed it back yesterday. But more changes may be coming.

Book Review: THE UPRIGHT PIANO PLAYER

2012-01-29T16:32:00.002-05:00

The Upright Piano Player is a gem of a first novel by a retired English advertising executive named David Abbott. His protagonist is, not coincidentally, a retired (not voluntarily) advertising executive, but the tale he tells is a beautifully nuanced tale of mortality, motivations, the randomness of human life, and working through loss and guilt. Every character in the book is dealing with some sort of injury, and the way they interact through some deadly serious events that nonetheless are totally random occurrences deeply explores, all pretentiousness aside, what it is to be a human being. And the kicker, the plot twist, is placed in an extremely unusual place which highlights another facet of human reality: that reconciliation and redemption are not etched in stone as truly as the barriers erected by tragedy, loss, and injury are not--that those defining boundaries of human relationships are merely painted lines on the highway of life, and that it is possible to veer back and forth over them as circumstances evolve. I tore through this book in a day, but will be thinking about it for many days to come.

Random Notes, End of January

2012-01-29T07:30:00.000-05:00

As the first month of the new year draws to a a close:
1) For whatever reason, there is not the open gym softball school on Sundays that there has been for the last several years in Binghamton--it drew a lot of kids, making it a major investment of time and effort, and maybe Dale Cook got tired of doing it. But yesterday, the JV coach started with a smaller scale open gym at East Middle, which drew a fair number of kids of varying skill levels. I'm always interested to see how Sabrina stacks up against her peers, and yesterday she might well have been the most skilled kid there--there was a girl she's friends with there that's on the basketball team that's pretty good, but no one really has her total package. Given that she plays the most difficult and important individual position and plays it well, I've never been worried about her chances of making the team this year--but after not having picked up a bat and ball for months, I was pleased to see there was no rust at all, that she hasn't lost a thing. Her coordination has gotten even better in the intervening time, and she is totally comfortable with her hitting mechanics. I really can't wait, for her sake, for the spring.
2) About six weeks ago, I noticed that there was a new radio station on the air here, 104.5 "The Drive," that actually played songs that I liked--a lot of what used to be called "alternative", but also some newer songs that aren't metal and aren't pop and aren't rap. And I have to say that I am totally enraptured by actually having a radio station I like again--it's been years since I didn't have to put in a CD when I was driving. They will even play stuff that makes the air on pop stations on occasion--Adele most prominently, but also Foster the People and Celo Green are in the frequent play mix-- but for the most part, they play bands that I liked in the mid and late 90's and early aughts, and newer songs and bands that would never get played in a million years by the mainstream stations here. This was the play list one recent afternoon:
Kids, MGMT
Uprising, Muse
Creep, Radiohead
Paradise, Coldplay
Rain Man, Counting Crows
Panic Switch, Sliversun Pickups
Got You Where I Want You, The Flys
Never Met a Girl Like You, Edwyn Collins
Love Song, The Cure
Lonely Boy, Black Keys
Can you imagine even one of these making a pop station playlist (other than perhaps Coldplay)? Some of you reading this may not know most or even any of these songs (they are all on You Tube, if you are interested), and that's the point.. American music, if you listen to the radio, is one big American Idol tryout, with a Eminem Imitator-of-the-Month thrown in for a sideshow on occasion. It's been great to discover bands like the Decembrists and rediscover stuff like the Breeders and Oasis....and maybe this is catty, but the best thing of all about 104.5 is that there are no annoying "personalities." I actually like Louie G as a person, so I guess I would exempt him from that assessment (and he's fairly low-key, anyway), but the twit on the other pop station can't go away fast enough along with all the sidekicks on all the stations, and some of the other stations have guys that were on the air when I was growing up. If I wanted to hear chatter on the radio, I'd listen to AM talk shows.
3) One unexpected development coming out of my discovery of 104.5 is that I am now adamantly opposed to moving back to the Holiday Inn as my main office. The rest of the agency went back two weeks ago, including the other worker in my program, but I still spend 98% of my time in the other office, and don't really intend to spend a great deal of time elsewhere. I can listen to the radio (to the station I like and play it loud if I want to) while I work; there are no annoying side conversations and people flitting in and out all the time; there isn't the endless discussion of what overpriced hideous bistro they are going to get lunch at today; If I feel like coming in at 7 AM and leaving at 3 PM, no one gives a damn. If I feel like taking ten minutes to check out the hockey highlights from the night before, I don't feel six pairs of eyes staring through the office doorway as Rick Jenneret is losing his voice. And when I do get work done, it's with no interruptions and no distractions. I still have to go to the main office on occasion--for instance, my supervisor is coming Tuesday for her monthly review--but by and large, I am going to stay where I am for the most part. It's like working from home, in a lot of ways.
4) Speaking of work matters, there was a note in the paper this morning that the governor and other personages in the state government are starting to make noise about raising salaries in the legislative and executive branches. They are not so stupid as to do so before the election, but I think they are paving the ground for one of those December Christmas bonuses to themselves. This is beyond irresponsible; while there are programs being cut and unions being told that they have to cut back on what they deliver to their members, this should not even be on the table or whispered about. I can't wait to see where this one goes, and no one is saying that it is imminent. But both Cuomo and Silver said that raises are "needed." What is "needed" is a reordering of priorities and some effective governing. I will grudgingly admit that Cuomo is a better governor than I thought he was going to be, so I am going to hold the bile for now. But this is not something that should even be whispered about.
5) On a national level, Representative Gabrielle Giffords resigned this week, a year after being shot in the head. There are good reasons why she did so now, not least because she really isn't up to the job anymore. Which means, in essence, that the neo-Fascists got what they wanted; a reliable progressive seat up for grabs in a part of the country where progressive voices and seats are few. The national paralysis is going to continue for some time yet. As I explored last week, the White House is going to remain in the hands of the less-objectionable grouping of the Oligarchy, but the Congress is going to become even more a tool of the extremist wing of that cabal. I'd love to see any signs of hope that anything is on the horizon that offers a way out. But there isn't. It's going to get worse, which will eventually lead to two scenarios--either meek submission to the erosion of a meaningful participatory democracy, or an actual bloody revolution that will lead to a tyranny of one sort or another. The history of the world shows no long-lived example of broad-based republican or democratic government. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was an acknowledgement of this fact; it baldy asked the question whether ours was a viable form of government, and his famous "four score and seven years ago" was an unspoken nod to the historic life span of relatively broad-based governments. We've already beaten the odds by having this form of democracy endure as long as it has. It could have easily went by the wayside in the 1790's, the 1860's, or the 1930's, and there have been other periods where what we think of as the benefits of democracy were severely curtailed--and that doesn't even take into account that for groups like African-Americans and Amerindians, "the land of the free" rhetoric has always been a sick and cruel joke. But the surety of even twenty years ago is gone; this form of government is, in the long term, doomed. I just hope it doesn't all blow up while I am still alive.

Book Review: CLARENCE DARROW

2012-01-28T18:31:00.000-05:00

Most Americans are at least dimly aware of Clarence Darrow as the lawyer who argued the side of evolution in the Scopes monkey trial nearly 90 years ago, and most people in my generation, at least in this part of the country, were given Inherit the Wind to read in high school and were made well aware that the Henry Drummond character was based on Darrow. But I did not know a whole lot about him other than that trial until I read Andrew Kersten's Clarence Darrow. And although there is nothing wrong with the writing or the book, I almost wish I hadn't read it, because Darrow embodied most negative stereotypes about lawyers. He often claimed to be highly principled, but often either did not live up to them or bailed out when money came calling. His conduct during the First World War as the Wilson Administration's chief cheerleader concerning the suppression of dissent during that conflict was shameful. He was far from invulnerable in the courtroom; he actually lost as many as half of his high-profile cases.
And more than anything else, I was deflated, even though I should know better at this point in my life, by the revelation that he was, with rare exceptions, an asshole--cold toward his family, philanderer on his wives, jealous of those did not share his ideas and had some success with them. Few if any people had long-term relationships with him that did not go sour. Being an effective defense attorney involves, necessarily, having a huge ego--but this hardly makes them ennobling characters. Even his core beliefs underwent constant revision, and there was always an excuse in his mind when he did so...these are the kind of people I try to stay away from in real life. And as talented and important as Darrow was, he left a very mixed legacy of accomplishment and character mixed in with some very tawdry and, in the case of the Great War bombast, reprehensible conduct of his affairs.
It does make for an interesting read, though.

Dad Goes to the Mall

2012-01-28T06:26:00.000-05:00

My daughter's birthday is 15 days after Christmas--or enough of a break so that she gets birthday presents, too, as well as Christmas presents. Between the two events this year, she got quite a haul of Mall gift cards, and she has become reasonably diligent about hoarding her (increased) allowance money, too, not spending it within hours of getting it for months now. So earlier this week, she decided it was time to cash in, and off I took her to the Mall.
I was never much of a Mall shopper, even when I lived in Johnson City. I've never been much of a fashionable man. I dress well enough to observe the dress code at work, and I've gotten lucky in that between inheriting my father's wardrobe after he died and getting donated about three dozen dress shirts by a former supervisor's husband who didn't want to take them with him when they moved to Cleveland (what does it say about Binghamton when Cleveland is seen as a step up?), I haven't had to invest a lot of my own money to take care of a basic necessity. But Sabrina is at the age where the look and image she presents to her peers is very important, and the last couple of years has seen my role in helping outfit her all but disappear. I'm not a huge fan of everything that she buys, but I can't really say that there are fashion trends that drive me to distraction--at least in clothing. I'm less rigid about tattoos than I used to be--part of the reason why is that everyone between the ages of 16 and 30 seems to have at least a couple of them anymore-- and I have gotten used to used to nose piercings and tongue piercings, too. But I still think multiple facial piercings are a turn off (not to mention other parts of the body), and I really don't get gauges in the earlobes--if there has been a stupider form of self-mutilation that has been devised by the teenaged mind in my lifetime, I can't think of it. Another thing I don't get is hats. It was bad enough when every male youth under the age of 25 seemed to have a baseball hat cocked sideways or backwards on his head. But now winter skull coverings are a fashion statement, it seems, and it's a unisex phenomenon--which is one Sabrina has come to share. To be fair to her, she doesn't take it as far as many other girls I've seen--there was a kid on the Owego modified girls basketball team the other day that was wearing a red winter cap on her head during the game--but I still find it a little odd to see several seventh-grade girls skating at Skate Estate with hats on their head. Maybe it will pass as she gets older, but for now, I've accepted it as just one more generational difference. After all, she's seen pictures of me and my generation when we were in high school, and she absolutely does not get 70's hair and wide lapels, so I guess it's all relative.
So my self-image is of a rather open-minded parent, and I was prepared to be find with however she spent her money and whatever swag she ended up with. Our first stop was Mandee's, a store where Crosby has worked for the last year and one Sabrina has bought stuff in before. Crosby was not working that day, and Sabrina tried on a pair of jeans. $50 jeans that were so thin I could have torn them into rags between my thumb and forefinger. I was very relieved when she didn't like the way they fit, and left them at the store. Then she stopped at the T-shirt kiosk in the walkway, and bought a $15 T-shirt--honestly, not all that outrageous.
Then it got funky. Somehow, we ended up in Journeys, home of Converse and Uggs. I do have to say I like the Converse neon colors that are out now, but I still balk a little at $40 for Converse sneakers--which were about six bucks when I was a teen and not even fashionable as recently as a couple of years ago. But Converse are a bargain compared to Uggs boots. Yes, they look nice and are no doubt warm--but I will be dead before I would ever purchase, or allow her to purchase at 13 years of age, a pair of boots that cost $250. And at other stops along the carousel, she bought one of those hats for $20, and a belt for as much, and then she dropped $55 on a bottle of Justin Bieber perfume... what I found disturbing was that she didn't even go in the real high-end stores like Hollister and Abercrombie. I was pleased that she didn't want something that was so outrageous I would have had to intervene (if she had had enough for the Uggs, it might have been different, but she didn't).
But I was like, "Holy shit!" I cannot imagine how people shop retail more than once a year. I was texting with someone while I was there who does not make a whole lot of money, and she said that she hasn't bought anything there in many years. Yet the place is filled with teens and younger types, and I can't imagine that they or their parents have that much disposable income. And more than a few were eating from one of the dozen food establishments up there, and they're all fairly expensive, too... I don't get it. Maybe it's just a result of my having been poor a decade ago, but I cannot understand where the money for these people comes from to spend at that level. Sabrina has a few bucks left, but I'm pretty sure we're not going to be able to go back there for some time, and it's been made clear that when it comes to things like $50 jeans and $70 hoodies, she might get my help about once a year.
And yet none of this stuff is made here, and even corporate apologists admit that it costs a lot less to make this stuff overseas because labor costs are less. So where's all the mark-up going? Not in my pocket, I can tell you that...

Growing Up in NA

2012-01-27T06:35:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine is currently going through a Family Court Drug Treatment program that one of our local judges has overseen. Unlike the Drug Court run by the City of Binghamton, which has been running for several years and is a qualified success story, the DC in Family Court has a very low completion rate, and if my friend's accounts of what happens there and what she is directed to do by the people there are even half-accurate, it's not at all surprising, because they clearly not only have no idea of what early recovery is actually like for the person going through it, but have some seriously erroneous ideas about aspects of "normal" life, too. You would think that people associated with Family Court would have some clue about what constitutes effective parenting, to take the example I am going to write about this morning, but in this case they have none whatsoever.
One of their major concerns seems to be my friend's son level of exposure to recovery. The "Treatment Team" is adamantly opposed to the kid attending any meetings she goes to, and indeed I have seen and heard variations of this theme for years, from everyone up to and including my own daughter's mother. The ostensible reason almost always given is that the kid will "hear things" that they should not hear. This is a crock of shit for a number of reasons. One is that kids of addicts have already heard much, most of it not good, and chances are if they were placed in a family member's home rather than foster care, they hear a lot of ugly things said about their own parent(s) on a regular basis and in a fair amount of cases are in an environment only marginally better than that of the using addict. I know that it is cheaper for Family Court and DSS to place a youth with family members rather than foster care, but I wish that this illusion that Grandma's house or Big Sister's house is an improvement would be dispensed with. My reaction is almost always, "Well, Grandma didn't do such a hot job with her own kids, did she? Why are we giving her a chance to fuck up a second generation?" And in practice, with people in early recovery, trying to keep kids away from meetings is used as a weapon, as a way to reinforce to the kid that there's "something wrong" with their parent, that something unspeakable sets them apart from the "normal" members of the family that the kid can't know about. The imaginations of grade school kids are naturally going to lean toward the forbidden as something bad in any event, and to kids who have already been exposed to the life of an active addict, it's even worse--in fact, to a kid, the end result is exactly the same: Mommy or Dad isn't there for them part of the time. You would think that authority or family would jump at the chance for the kid to get a chance to understand, even in a very rudimentary and simplified sense, that it's different now, that where the parent is going is a good place for them and that life is different than it used to be.
But even more, this idea that meetings are no place for kids belies a basic misunderstanding on the part of non-addicts about what the true nature of recovery is. It's not like going to the doctor or like going to the therapist or psychiatrist. Recovery is not only a process, but it's a community, a fellowship of people with similar problems who are committed to not only helping one another, but constructing an entirely new way of life. People not in recovery don't get this, at all; they think that meeting attendance is a "phase" that has to be gone through, but that otherwise the person in early recovery is just going to go back to the life they used to live--and spend their time around the "normal" people that they used to. If that's the goal--and I've seen enough over the years to say categorically that this outlook is, at the least, not discouraged--then the entire Drug Court or rehab process has been a big fat waste of time and money. Recovery is a lifetime commitment, and it is based on the necessity of lasting changes in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors--in practice, changing people, places, and things. The person in early recovery can't go back to the people they used to be around, or they will do what they always did--get high or drink. They need to build an entirely new network, support group, whatever you want to call it.
And for both the recovering person and the children of the recovering person, it is necessary to incorporate all aspects of their lives into a recovering framework. The people in recovery are not bacilli that youth cannot be exposed to; they are the very people that are going to help the parent of those youth not only stay clean, but become fundamentally healthier people and parents. I have no idea why (I"m going to assume) well-meaning outsiders would deny a person's children access to the place where the people the parent is learning from and to depend upon gather.
Well, I do, actually, and the reasons are based in ignorance and fear. The stated reason is that the youth might hear something inappropriate. My answer to that is 1) in most cases, the kid has seen and heard a lot worse when the parent was in active addiction, 2) the youth certainly gets a fuller idea of what havoc comes with using drugs by hearing other people's stories, and 3) the cultural messages of our current media are more damaging in the long term to the values and mindset of children. There are a lot of positive messages and people to be found in recovery settings, as well, and those are the people that a parent who is recovering is hopefully going to incorporate into their lives. Kids are going to hear inappropriate language when they go to Weis or the gas station or at school or in ten thousand other places. Kids see people with evil and base motivations every time they turn on a television or pop in a movie. Kids already know the bad things that happen as a result of drugs, and need to hear that it is possible to put it behind us.
My darker side suspects that there are more sinister motivations behind this prohibition. One is that there is a fear of losing control of access to the kid's mind in the formative years. Even though usually something quite different comes out of other family members and "Treatment Team" mouths, quite often there is a determined and marked reluctance to let the parent reassert their natural role--there is a conscious or unconscious desire to make the parent pay for their sins, for the damage they caused in active addiction, by not only making all sorts of unending and unrealistic demands upon them, but also to deny them any sense that they actually are changing for the better. Bluntly, it is in the interest of family members and courts to make the recovering addict feel inferior and broken and something less than whole for as long a time as possible--and the most effective way of doing so is by interfering with and placing restrictions on their parenting abilities and roles. Family members usually do it because they are not only "getting back" for their own pain that the addict caused them, but it also helps deflect legitimate questions about their own parenting and the attitudes and values that they hold. Courts and "professionals" do it because their livelihoods depend on it. Having been through the recovery process, I can tell you that almost all lasting recovery takes place outside formal settings; courts and treatment processes are almost totally irrelevant at best to a person's recovery, and do much more harm than good most of the time.
And there are even darker aspects to it. There is a marked and thinly disguised objective that is not based in any positive motive, and that can be described most bluntly as trying to limit a youth's exposure to people of color. There are a number of ways this is danced around and the code words vary at times, but you will never convince me, after seeing it for 13 years, that this is not true. The treatment fields and court programs are overwhelmingly, in many cases exclusively, white; recovering populations are not. The rooms of Narcotics Anonymous are the one place, in fact, that a "diverse" society is close to actual reality. Interracial couples raise absolutely no eyebrows; there are cross-racial and cross-ethnic friendships all over the place; and class and ethnic divisions matter a whole lot less in recovery circles than they do anywhere else I've ever seen. AA locally tends to be rather racist, but I've been reliably assured that around the country, it isn't so pronounced in general. The directives to keep kids away from meetings is not based in any concern for the kids; it is an expression of deeply rooted fears and prejudices on the part of those "professionals" issuing them.
Which they might make some progress on combatting and changing if they actually went to a few meetings. I don't know how many times I've heard "professionals" try to establish their bonafides by saying,"Well, I've gone to a meeting at some point." And maybe they have; about twice a year, you see college kids with notebooks at a meeting or two. But the core idea of a fellowship, of a way of life, does not come across in an occasional meeting. And that's what recovery is--not just abstinence, but abstinence as a starting point, a place to begin, an identifying characteristic.
And the proof of all this is that kids who have been exposed to recovery all their lives turn out to be pretty damn good kids, healthier than many of their peers. My daughter literally learned to walk in NA meetings, and has learned almost all of her positive values from them--not just from me and not just in the home. Her own mother is not a positive role model; what Sabrina has had in her life for positive female role modelling has come almost entirely from Nancy and Kathie (Sabrina has told me, quite seriously, that if something happens to me, she would rather go to live with either of those two women than her own mother or my sisters). Sabrina has never gone to church regularly in her life, and doesn't profess to believe in God--a religious one, at any rate--and yet her sense of integrity and her basic good-heartedness shine through, unusually so for a kid at her age. She is more comfortable with herself than most 13YOs, and I have noticed for years that she is the kid who is friends with most everyone, who is the bridge between different groups, who is the one who puts her foot down and says, "this drama stops here." She's not perfect; nobody and certainly no 13YO is. But she is an unusually well-adjusted young lady who is a pleasure to parent. Most non-recovering people tell me what a great job I've done.
Maybe I have. But if I have, it's been because of my presence and hers in meetings for all of her life. Not only have I learned a better way of life there, but she has learned what positive values are and how to conduct yourself and what it means to live a life based on the application of principles there. NA meetings are one of the best places for kids to go at the ages when they are developing their value systems and their morality. And this world would be a better place if alleged "treatment professionals" would lose their own prejudices and fears and recognize this fact. And we'd have a more stable and well-adjusted teen population, too.

Blah As It Gets

2012-01-26T05:48:00.000-05:00

This is perhaps the worst week of the year to be working for me, because all of the high schools in the area are giving the January Regents exams all week. Most of the kids are off for most of the week, and it's like all the momentum just starting to build after the return to school after the Christmas break grinds to a halt. I haven't been in the office looking at the walls--there was a grant proposal and some paperwork to complete--but here it is Thursday morning, and I've got two days where there isn't a lot going on facing me. I'd actually take a mental health day, but the one thing I do have scheduled for today is something I really can't blow off if I can help it.
Maybe it's just because of the season, too. It's winter, but so far it's been an uneventful sort of winter, with only one mid-major snowfall to date and a lot of gloomy days and rain--the sort of weather we used to get in November, not January. At least when it's snowy and real cold, one knows that it is winter and doesn't feel particularly off-kilter about a reduced level of activity. But with this, it's hard to escape the feeling that you should be more active or that more should be going on. It's just cold enough most days that outdoor activity is affected, but not cold enough to make being outdoors an ordeal. In the fall, that doesn't bother me, because there's a lot more going on in my life. But in what is supposed to be mid-winter--it doesn't fit or sit well.
I've sat and made a to-do list of busywork type of stuff to do today--check with the insurance company to make absolutely sure my foot surgery is going to be covered, get back integrated into the restored office (I'm not going to spend a lot of time there, but I need to get printing hooked up, set up voicemail, get Office 2010 installed, etc), get a color cartridge for the printer at the other office. But that will take care of a few hours, not take all day. And even though we have seven clients at the moment, and another four on aftercare, every one of them is off school and not easily reachable, so it isn't like there's stuff to do with them this week. Next week will be crazy, of course, but that's next week.
I suppose there are worse problems to have, and that I should be happy I have a job. I am happy that I have a job, but you can be grateful to have one and be in a generally good situation and still not like a particular stretch of time. That's where I am at today.

State of the Union Address

2012-01-25T05:38:00.000-05:00

I guess The Empty Suit had his Presidential moment last night, and I guess we should be thankful that no crypto-Nazi from South Carolina was in the congressional gallery to heckle him last night. But I cannot, and will not, get excited over a political speech, not in a country where those holding office are almost universally out of touch with those they ostensibly represent and when half the country is seriously ignorant and bigoted to the point where the belief system they hold is completely repugnant to me. And I especially do not wish to invest even an hour of my time watching such a spectacle in a year where there is a presidential election, because it becomes essentially a campaign speech.
So I'm not going to post some detailed analysis of what was said last night and what our resident Brownshirts had to say in reply, because I didn't watch it. I am sure that in the days and weeks to come, whatever was referred to last night will be discussed ad nauseum like it actually matters. The things that would have gotten my attention were not said because even a cursory glance at the headlines would have told me about them--namely, we're getting out of Afghanistan and the Justice Department has decided to actually pursue prosecution and incarceration of those who lied to us about getting us into our Iraq adventure and of those whose financial transgressions looted and ruined the middle class of this country. Short of that, it's all window dressing, more of the same bullshit, and I'm not interested anymore. I will do my patriotic duty in November and cast a ballot, even though there is no guarantee anymore that it will be counted the way I cast it, because believe it or not, it could be worse if some of the people who want to be in charge actually get to be in charge. But I have given up hope of ever having a candidate to vote for that I actually like, and I have nearly exhausted any hope that I once held that there will be substantial change in the direction this country is going in short of a 1790's-in-France-style bloodletting.
And for the second time in a year, I got a glimpse of what the future may hold yesterday. I went home for lunch at about noon, and I discovered that there was no power in the house, and then, checking around outside, I found it was out over a wide area of the West Side and Johnson City. It was quickly restored--something blew in the substation about a mile away on the JC line-- but as I wandered around the house opening shades so that I could see, I realized that I am not really prepared for such a situation--one half-gone candle, a rather weak LED flashlight, and I still haven't gotten a way to get in the garage when the door is down and the power is off. It was only an hour, but God forbid something happens when it is off for a while. And not for the first time, I realized just how much life as I know it depends on electricity. And how catastrophic it really would be if the grid gave out.
And yet I am willing to bet than when politicians talk about repairing and upgrading our infrastructure, they are talking about highways and bridges. Not that they aren't important, but our top priority really should be that the lights stay on. There have been voices for years telling the world that the current grid is overworked and is not going to meet the needs of the country much longer, and we just keep not doing anything to rectify it. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Empty Suit said nary a word about the nation's electrical network last night.
I am sure that the White House and the Capitol have world-class emergency generator systems. But I don't. And that's the difference between the top and the rest of us in a nutshell; they don't have to worry about the same things we do, so our worries and needs are not a priority for them. The smart ones realize this--but there are fewer and fewer smart ones in positions to do anything about it. That's why last night was a pointless spectacle, a waste of our time.

Book Review: BAD REPUTATION

2012-01-24T19:45:00.000-05:00

Bad Reputation is a phrase associated, in people of a certain age, with a particular individual, and rock writer Dave Thompson's book is indeed a biography of Joan Jett. Jett is largely overlooked as an influential figure in American rock history, yet Thompson makes the case that she, as both part of the Runaways in the 1970's and as a solo artist in the early 1980's, was perhaps the first true American female rocker--not necessarily rock star, but woman who played rock music. And as someone who was very into Joan Jett when he was in college, I tend to agree with that assessment. Jett was not a lyrical genius and didn't even play lead guitar, but she played--plays; she's still in the game--basic hard-edged rock that, when done right, lends itself to classic riffs and memorable tunes. Jett's personal life is not detailed--it's been no secret for 30 years that Jett is lesbian, and perhaps because of that, it's never been much of a public matter--but the story of her musical journey is compelling enough to keep a reader's attention--at least this one's, since I have been a fan since I was a teenager.
And yet there was much to this I wasn't really aware of. The Runaways are probably more in the American consciousness now than they were when they were playing, because of the Kristen Stewart/Dakota Fanning movie a few years ago. I bought the debut album sometime around 1979; it was in a cutout bin at whatever the record store on Washington Avenue was (it's killing me that I can't remember the name of it). I played it some and liked it, but at the time, when I was getting into things like the Dead Boys, Joy Division, the B52's, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and a zillion other New Wave bands, a band that couldn't get a record in the stores was soon lost to my consciousness, especially since they broke up by time I was a junior in high school. But Jett soon reentered it in a big way when "I Love Rock n' Roll" was all over MTV and radio in the winter of my freshman year in college, and one of my great memories of that year is going to a Jett concert at Binghamton University--it was a great show, even though the bass made my healed-for-only-ten-months collarbone ache every time a particular note was played. I was pretty lubricated by the end of the concert, and somehow ended up backstage after it, watching a lot of people get messed up. I think I spoke to her for about two minutes; I'd love to tell you I hit her off with all these wonderful words, but I'm afraid I stammered out some nonsense like "What a great fucking show" or something similarly profound. Didn't matter: she was gracious, completely and totally at ease, and accepted the adulation of about twenty people there with equanimity. But at the same time, even though she was clearly coming down off a performer's adrenaline high, she remained intense--not tense, but possessed of an aura, almost a visible force field. I've never forgotten that ten minutes.
And this is the Jett that is portrayed throughout this book--not manic, not bitchy, not miserable, but always possessed of a certain intensity and lust for what she does. I am so glad that the book confirmed my experiences, because many times biographies do not measure up to fleeting memories of brief encounters. And her love for her music shines through her story; she has been treated rather shabbily by not only the American rock media, but even her peers--I couldn't figure out at the time why Jett was not asked to play at Live Aid, to take one example touched on in the book. But she isn't in it for the money or the fame, and never has been.
She plays because she likes it. And has since she was 14 years old. How many of us can say the same, that we have done what we wanted to do for nearly 40 years?

Miley Cyrus Grows Up

2012-01-24T06:17:00.000-05:00

I am reading a book about Joan Jett, and that led to a discussion between my daughter and me about the movie about the Runaways, Jett's teenage band, which led to a (brief) interest in You Tube videos of the Runaways on her part. As into music as Sabrina is, I can't really seem to get her interested in anything that might, by my lights, be considered actual rock music. I suppose Paramore and Evanescence could be considered actual rock bands, but she tends to more commercial offerings such as Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift. I try to remember that when I was 13, I was into Queen and the Moody Blues; my discovering punk and New Wave didn't happen until the tenth grade, and getting into Dylan didn't happen until college.
But it led me into cruising around You Tube for an hour or two, as I sometimes will, checking out old Runaways performances. There aren't as many as you might think. For one, their day was well before MTV; most of what's available are concert performances. For another, the movie that came out a couple of years ago means much of what is out there means it's of Dakota Fanning playing Cherie Currie, not the original band (I have not seen the movie, I realized much to my chagrin; I fully intended to, when it was in theaters, but decided to wait until it got to DVD, and then I forgot about it. I will be pestering Redbox for it now). And for three, like many pioneer bands, there are legions of one-time fans who have gone onto careers of their owns who have covered the songs themselves.
Which led me to discovering that Miley Cyrus was performing, on her foreign tour in 2010, a medley of Jett/Runaway tunes. When Hannah Montana was on the air, I couldn't stand the show or anybody associated with it. I thought it was almost perfectly symptomatic of everything that is wrong with American culture today: the infatuation with "fame" and "success" guaranteeing access to exposure (does anyone remember that Billy Ray Cyrus was a joke?); the pervasive influence of Disney in shaping child culture; the merchandising tie-ins that make zillionaires out of teens; the awful moral premise that deceit is not only OK but necessary; and, not least, the fact that the show was based almost entirely on put-down humor. I would add that it was hugely derivative of The Beverly Hillbillies as well, but since almost no one under the age of 40 ever saw the original show, I don't push that one too much...Cyrus, whatever her talents may or may not be, has definitely tried her best to get out from under the Montana brand the past couple of years. She definitely has become a fan of low-grade escapist drugs; the salvia episode didn't fool many, and it's now generally accepted that she likes her pot--like about a million or two other 20YOs in America. She has always pushed against the white-bread wholesome stereotype, showing some skin and doing some rather provocative dancing even in the Montana years, and much more overtly now that she is no longer tied to Disney's image police. And her repertoire of songs has expanded a great deal, and You Tube is full of songs Cyrus performs that certainly never would have been on Hannah Montana.
This isn't the first time I've discovered this; a few weeks ago, when I was putting together the cover song compilation, I found a video of her singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and made fun of it on a post on Facebook. I now wish I hadn't. Granted, the cover was not good--in fact, it was pretty much terrible. But at least she had the guts to try it, and as I now see with her Jett and Runaways covers, what Cyrus is doing is what most young performers in the business do--she is trying her hand at covering the work of those that she liked when she was growing up. Every kid in the United States does the same thing, and has for fifty years. Cyrus is in a position where she can do more than sing along in her room, and I grew very agitated reading some of the comments last night on some of her cover songs.
Look, I'm not a fan of her or her musical talents, at least up to this point in time. But I will give her credit where it's due. You can make a valid point that she did not deserve the forum she got to pursue her ambitions, but I do not think you can fault her at all for taking advantage of it. I do not think that she deserves nearly universal ridicule for attempting to redefine her image and shatter the box she has been placed into (the dislikes well outnumber the likes on most of her videos on You Tube these days). This is a kid pursuing her dream, no more and no less than any other fledgling young person in the business. Are we really expecting her to be singing "Best of Both Worlds" until she's 60? I'd rather see her trying to sing songs like "I Love Rock n' Roll" than "GNO" anytime or anywhere.
My first thought watching her singing "Cherry Bomb" and "Bad Reputation" was that it wasn't very good. But then I remembered that there is a film out there somewhere of me and my friends covering songs that probably wasn't half as good as what I was watching. I remembered thinking when I was watching Hannah Montana that the saccharine, everything-is-wonderful message being pushed was more harmful than not. I remember thinking, too, that Cyrus herself showed almost no signs of being what her public image was from the time she was 14 or 15, and it become abundantly clear that she found it as much of a pain in the ass to live up to as most of those subjected to it found it to endure. I don't know if she has the talent to make the transition to whatever it is that she wants to be as an adult. But I do know that she should not be excoriated for trying.
It's her life, after all. If you don't like it, that's fine. But the mean-spirited, nasty stuff that I saw posted in the reaction boxes to those videos was sickening. And even though what I posted on Facebook was rather tame by comparison, I am still sorry, now that I did so. She just turned 20 years old, and she is actually trying to make her dreams come true. I won't rip a first-time author when I do book reviews; I don't put down the youth I work with when they indicate that they want to pursue a career choice I never would; I don't hammer people coming out of active addiction about their past endeavours. Why the hell would I hold Cyrus to a different standard?
I'm not going to anymore. Go for it, Miley.

JoePa Dies

2012-01-23T05:44:00.000-05:00

The Penn State scandal had not exactly gone away after the firing of Joe Paterno and the formal filing of charges against Jerry Sandusky, but it had gone onto the back burner somewhat during December. But then news came that Paterno, 85 years old, had lung cancer, followed in short order by his interview with Sally Jenkins. The interview made clear that Paterno felt that he had done what he thought was right at the time, but some of what he said also didn't meet the smell test--his level of ignorance about what men are capable of didn't seem kosher, and Jenkins did not push him either on the allegations that Sandusky quit in 1999 because of an accusation of the same nature or the fact that Paterno's job was hanging by a thread in 2002 when this all took place. I'm not blaming Jenkins, necessarily; Paterno clearly was an old and sick man who was on the way out.
And yesterday he did in fact check out. I guess I am not surprised by the fawning, adulatory reaction in much of the world today, but I am not joining it. Yes, Paterno probably deserves to be recognized for his accomplishments, and there is no doubt that in the sordid world of college football, Penn State's program was free of some of the sleaze that accompanies major college football elsewhere. But what he did and didn't do when faced with the biggest challenge of his career cannot be ignored, and really should not be glossed over just because he died. The fact is that boys--who knows how many, but certainly at least ten and probably a lot more--were betrayed by men who they and their parents not only trusted, but looked up to as mentors and paragons of virtue in the most vile and degrading manner possible. And as I mentioned, we know Paterno dropped the ball in 2002, and there are allegations that he knew a few years before, and certainly he continued to drop the ball by allowing Sandusky access to campus facilities and to more boys in the last nine years. I don't care how many goddamn games you won or how many millions of dollars you brought into a university--you don't get a pass or "on the other hand" for allowing kids to sexually preyed on repeatedly and without remorse.
Between my vocation, my experience as a recovering person, and my being a parent, I am more knowledgeable about the effects of abuse in children than I ever wanted to be. And even more damaging than the abuse itself to the kids that suffer through it is when other adults who are aware of it and have the power to stop it don't do so. The kid understands what is happening is wrong, but also has been taught and needs to believe that adults will intervene on behalf of the powerless if they can and right the injustice that is occurring. It is devastating beyond words when that does not happen; the kids it happens to are never quite whole again at best, and some are damaged beyond healing. And Paterno knew--if not before 2002, certainly after; and yet still allowed Sandusky to use the facilities and have access to youth through the foundation for nine more years. And he shouldn't get a pass for that, even if he did other good things in his life. Jails are full of people whose acts of good far outweigh, in the balance of their lives, the acts that weren't good.
In a way, it's probably best for Paterno himself that he died so soon after his firing. I don't think there's any doubt that his will to live was sapped; his entire life and legacy had vanished in a blink of an eye. I also think he certainly could not have been looking forward to having to testify in Sandusky's trial and to see the sordid saga unfold to the end. He has escaped, for now. But paradoxically, his reputation is likely to suffer even more, because with the man now dead, he becomes an easy target for those looking to pass responsibility for the problem elsewhere. I predict that Paterno's name is going to be dragged through lots of mud by Sandusky's lawyers when the trial comes, and that he is going to be portrayed as extremely complicit in the travesty. And regardless of whether what that level of complicity was or wasn't, Paterno is now powerless to make a counter-impression.

Book Review: INSIDE MS.

2012-01-22T20:29:00.000-05:00

Ms. magazine was one of the cultural icons of the decade I grew up in, the 1970's. Mary Thom was part of the staff for most of that time, and her Inside Ms. is a revealing look at a publication that had an influence far beyond its time, even if it did not accomplish all that it wished to. The nuts and bolts of creating and maintaining a magazine are gone into with sometimes-numbing detail, but the more interesting and cogent parts of the book deal with chronicling the feminist movement of the decade--a movement that largely succeeded in freeing American women from the suffocating stereotypes and lack of opportunities for growth that were a staple of American life before the feminist movement. I would not venture to say that life in America today is totally equal for both sexes, but women are much more free in many fields than they were in 1972, and Ms. was a major reason why the growth took place.
It's kind of sad to note that the magazine is going the way of the typewriter in the digital age. But there were many influential and important ones in American cultural history, and this was one that directly impacted the world we now live in. The book drags in spots, but it does convey the story of not only a magazine, but a movement, quite well.

"Primates Flinging Poo" Gets Extended

2012-01-22T08:28:00.001-05:00

Despite the fervent wishes of the national media, the Republican presidential primary season was not cancelled last night, as the former (and apparently formerly disgraced) ex-Speaker of the House and three-time divorcee Newton Gingrich resoundingly defeated erstwhile front-runner Mitt Romney With the news two days ago that Romney's "win" in Iowa a few weeks ago actually wasn't (Rick Santorum garnered more votes, after further review), the "inevitable" coronation of Romney looks like anything but a sure thing now as the circus moves to Florida.
I am beginning to have all sorts of cynical thoughts on this entire process--not the field and the candidates, which I will get to in a moment in earnest seriousness, but the way the process unfolds in the media. The 2008 Democratic contest was the first one since 1976 where one of the parties had a convention that wasn't a guaranteed coronation, and I am now believing that, unlike what would seem to be logic, the press and other media absolutely did not like it. With a candidate in place, "news gathering" becomes easier; narratives are easier to construct, and information flow is tightly regulated and fits into narrow parameters. I am a cynical person by nature, but even I am becoming struck by the apparent disinclination of the mainstream media to actually cover what we would consider "traditional" news--events that are not scripted scenes in a scripted narrative. When it happened in the Clinton/Obama race four years ago, I really didn't see it for what it was because I really thought that they secretly wanted Obama to wrap it up, because the idea of the first black President was so compelling that they could mine the angle right up to Election Day. But I now see that although my perception was right, I didn't properly account for the motivation.
It's part generational and part laziness. It's generational because today's media, for the most part, consists of members of the microwave generation, whose attention spans rarely run longer than days for even matters of colossal importance. The idea of a contest stretching months with total uncertainty of how it is going to turn out does not excite them or even interest them; it scares them and irritates them. We have become so inured to the quick resolution in any "drama" that when we are faced with the real thing unfolding in front of us, it makes us profoundly uncomfortable. The media are no different than the rest of us in this sense. People have complained for forty years about the media, but one complaint rarely if ever heard anymore is that the media won't let go of a story; far more often, it's that one isn't pursued that is worth pursuing past the headline stage. The idea that the Republicans, who have already been debating and running for a year, might go another five or six months before they decide who the eventual nominee is going to be, makes the media very, very nervous. They don't like not knowing the answers ahead of time.
And that only isn't the lack of an attention span at play. I am becoming convinced that it is symptomatic of generational laziness, too; the unwillingness to actually work hard at a job that is seen all over the map in the United States of America in 2012. Covering a campaign that is proceeding free-form, without a script, is hard work; there are stories to be uncovered, attention that must be paid to every primary and caucus, more space devoted to results and analysis, more fact checking, more of everything. It's the easier (and, to be a little more sympathetic to the media, cheaper for the organizations) way to be able to fit the story into a box, sit at home and write what are essentially screenplays and opinion pieces, and most importantly, to not have to actually cover "news." This is reaping what we've sown over the years--the centralization of news conglomerates to the point where there are only a few media companies; the work force having grown used to having its news packaged for it to report on (or as the Bush administration famously pushed out there, "created reality"); and a work force that has grown up in an educational system and society that does not promote inquisitiveness, individual initiative, or problem-solving capability. The media would like the parties to anoint a front-runner, essentially, because it will be more work than they want to do to continue to cover the actual process as it is supposed to work to the end.
What we are beginning to see, in this race, is the evolution of two distinct characteristics of the American society that were set in motion by the epochal events of 1980--the Reagan Revolution, if you will. On the one hand, the microwave generation has a short attention span, thinks less hard and less often about matters of substance, is not as capable of critical thought processes as previous generations, and is used to both having its work objectives clearly delineated and also has learned not to stray outside the lines lest they lose the job (this is tangential, but I am simply amazed by the amount of job turnover in the two generations following mine. I have had six jobs in my life, and two main ones--one for fourteen years and this one for over nine, and I am increasingly a total dinosaur among people I know. The idea of a "career" is fast becoming as outmoded as cassette tapes). The mainstream media of today does not want to be--and may not even be capable of--reporting on actual news in a traditional sense. This is the result of a long-term trend of basically having someone else think for us, of ideology and the needs of other entities trumping what actually happens in the hierarchy of importance.
The second is that part of that winnowing of information and narrowing of interest has necessarily led to, over the years, a polarizing effect on the political process. It would take more effort than I'm willing to invest this morning (see how ubiquitous this tendency has become?) to go over in detail why our politics have become very polarized in the last few decades, but suffice it to say they have. To vastly oversimplify, the effect has been to leave the two-party system in place in a country where the political consciousness--and voting patterns--has shifted to a dynamic more often seen in parliamentary democracies with a plethora of smaller, narrow-focus parties. In a system where there are seven or eight viable parties ranging in constituency size from middling to tiny, coalitions are possible and extreme views are either muted or, at most, passed into law very infrequently. But in a system where there are only two parties, and one has become a party with views and policy preferences more commonly seen, in other countries, on the far right side of the spectrum, what you end up with in practice is gridlock. On local and regional levels, the one party can prosper, because it can elect sufficient numbers to the national legislative bodies to significant affect its operations. But on a national level, there simply is not enough appeal to win a nationwide vote.
And that's what we have on the Republican side at the moment. None of these candidates are going to win in November, unless the economy completely implodes and/or Obama gets caught in a serious moral lapse. Romney is being exposed not only as essentially without any viable strengths and as an out-of-touch 1%er, but his ultimate cross is going to be his Mormonism--it is a religion that will not survive any sort of intense scrutiny, and if he is one of two candidates for President, that scrutiny will inevitably come. Gingrich left one of the most powerful positions in the land under threat of arrest, and has proven to be utterly without scruples--which most of the voters in a national election will not, in the end, overlook. Santorum is less objectionable as a person, but quite honestly is so extreme on many issues that he cannot be stomached by a majority of voters--and religion will become an issue if he is the nominee, as well (he is a very rigid Catholic, and most of the deep conservative element in the country still will not vote for a Catholic. Gingrich is nominally Catholic, as well, but doesn't set off the same alarms among the same voters because he clearly does not pay the slightest bit of attention to the Church's morality guidelines; Santorum, on the other hand, does). And Ron Paul's world view has some attractions, but taken in its entirety, it is a vision of America that most of the electorate simply rejects out of hand.
And those are their choices. That's it; there is no one else. And not one of them can win a national election; probably the only one that can come close, ironically, is Santorum, because of his religion; Catholicism is less of a burden nationally than it is in Republican circles.
The Democrats, as a left/left-center party, leave much to be desired. Actually, let me get real; they're not leftist at all, but simply less right-wing than their counterparts. This is why they have such trouble regionally and locally in many areas of the country; the way our government is set up gives a disproportionate voice to states in the national legislature, and many smaller states are more polarized. But nationally, the Democratic candidate is almost certain to be more appealing than whoever the Republican nominee happens to be, and there is a perfect alignment between the degree of polarization in the Republican party and the strength of the Democratic candidates for President nationwide. I worked for the Jesse Jackson campaign locally in 1988, and I ended up holding my nose and voting for Dukakis that November--and feeling profoundly depressed at the time because it looked like that we were doomed to Republican control of the White House indefinitely. But 1988 was the last election where a Republican candidate was capable of winning fair and square (even if Lee Atwater didn't conduct the campaign that way):
1992--Perot undoubtedly hurt Bush in the general election. But Bush lost for two main reasons. One--the crappy economy--is well known. The other--his having to go against his natural inclinations in moving to the right to fend off Pat Buchanan's challenge in his own party--is not. But Bush's embrace of the less savory aspects of modern Republican views turned off a lot of people.
1996--Dole wasn't going to beat Clinton even if Perot hadn't run again, and for largely the same reason Bush failed; he had to go hard right to hold off Kemp, and it cost him across the country.
2000-- Bush II ended up in the White House, but the 2000 election was openly hinky, and he did lose the popular vote.
2004--It was less obvious than in 2004, but there was electoral manipulation in Ohio and New Mexico in this election, as well. And Bush came the closest any sitting President ever has to losing an election when the country was at war; Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Nixon all not only won, but won very handily. That Bush did not is more a reflection of how far off the center his party has become than anything else.
2008--The economy was terrible, and the war was still going strong. The Republicans put up their most moderate candidate since Nixon, but by national standards, he still wasn't moderate--and he got beaten pretty soundly, and it would have been a landslide if the Democrat had been white.
To put this in unmistakable English: the way the primary system is set up, the Democrats are almost guaranteed to nominate a rather conservative Democrat that will win the White House every time, because the Republicans are guaranteed to nominate a candidate that over half the electorate simply cannot stomach. The great benefit for President Obama today is that with the contest on the other side going on for a long time, the amounts of money they will have to spend to defeat each other--and the canards and weaknesses that will be hammered on in their attempts to dispose of the opposition--can only help show how unpalatable to the general voter the eventual candidate will be. In the long term, this doesn't help ; there will be enough crypto-Fascist votes in both houses to ensure near-gridlock. But it is better than one of these guys actually being in charge of the executive branch.
Bring on another episode!

Middle School Division

2012-01-21T06:24:00.001-05:00

Binghamton is a small city and getting smaller every year, it seems. But there is enough of a population to support two middle schools (creatively named West and East), but the two, it is becoming apparent more with every passing year, serve almost entirely different populations. West serves the West Side. the First Ward, Ely Park, and half of the South Side. There are parts of the West Side and the First Ward that are not great neighborhoods, and Ely Park is nominally income-controlled housing (it is, in practice, turned into a magnet for Binghamton's substantial non-Hispanic immigrant population; you are as apt to hear Russian as English in some subdivisions up there), but with the exception of the really drug-addled area between the river and Jarvis Street on the West Side, there isn't really a sense of grinding poverty, of a neighborhood that has turned into a dumping ground. East serves the remainder of the City, and with the exception of parts of the other half of the South Side, the small subdivision of Sunrise Terrace, and some parts of the East Side, it is composed of the rougher neighborhoods of the city, with a poorer, less educated base of adults and pockets of third and fourth generation not-doing-so-wells. The two public housing complexes are on this side of the city, as well as the deteriorating area around where I used to live on the South Side and the never-good areas between Eldredge and the highway on the North Side.
I moved to the West Side almost five years ago, but I was shielded to a degree from recognizing the depth of the differences between the sides of the city by keeping Sabrina at Roosevelt, the school serving the North Side, for the remainder of elementary school. I was struck at the time by the culture of responsibility and nurture that the principal of Roosevelt instilled; it was an oasis in the midst of a pretty arid environment surrounding it. But even in City League softball, at that time the differences were apparent; there has not been an East Side-based team that has been champion of the league for years, even though there are seven of them versus five on the West, and all of the CYO basketball teams on the junior levels that are any good serve West Side parishes.
And in middle school, it has become even more apparent; East just doesn't have the resources or the parental involvement that West does. I think that one reason the City school district has not published honor rolls in the school newsletters this year was the really small numbers of East kids that were making high honor roll last year; the last issue published in the spring had only nine eighth graders and about a dozen seventh graders on it. The boys football teams were merged for most of the year, and split only when they played each other in the last game of the year; West ended up winning by two points, but only because they gave away three touchdowns in the second half on turnovers. The spring sports probably aren't going to be much different; baseball and softball are time intensive activities that require a fair amount of monetary investment, too, and there are a lot fewer families on the East Side that are able and/or willing to invest that kind of time and money.
And yesterday, the girls basketball teams of East and West played each other at West. Sabrina was the last cut from the West team this year, but even she wasn't too upset about it because there are eight 8th-graders on the team, meaning she should have no trouble making the team next year (and she agreed to be team manager this year), and all eleven kids on the team play regularly because all eleven kids can play reasonably well. The team has having a great year, too; their record is now 8-1, with the loss by two points to U-E at U-E. But I expected East to have a decent team, too. I remember the elementary school basketball tournament a couple of years ago, and Sabrina's Roosevelt team was the best squad participating, and basketball is a sport that both doesn't require a lot of layout monetary--sneakers is basically it--and the teams are relatively small, so you don't need wholesale involvement. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Sabrina would have been the best player on the East team had she been on it, and East only had seven players. I don't know if more were missing for some reason--it was a make-up of a game cancelled earlier in the year--but it was painful to watch. The final score was 46-6, and it wasn't that close. And the body language of the kids and the coach was depressing; the coach sat slumped in his chair like he wanted to be anywhere but there, and the kids looked totally lost and clueless. I've seen some softball games where teams were overmatched that were painful to watch, but this was worse, a lot worse. There were a couple of kids on East that were familiar to me from Roosevelt, and what saddened me was that their skills have not appreciably improved since they were 4th and 5th graders. I don't know enough to say with any certainty why that is; it isn't necessarily a function of coaching--you normally keep getting better by playing against quality opposition, and I am positive that few East kids can afford to attend clinics and instructional camps, as well.
It was eye-opening. And it will be interesting to see what happens in the spring with the softball teams. The East all-star team last year was pretty good, but I am curious to see how their modified team is this spring. There are a few kids I know of at East whose skills are very good who probably won't be able to play because of poor grades and/or school discipline issues; Sabrina has maintained contact with a lot of kids she went to Roosevelt with. But there are already two kids from the East All-Star team from last summer that no longer live in Binghamton. The only four kids on Sabrina's all-star team that won't be on the modified team this coming year won't be on the team because there are either in sixth grade (or, in one case, fifth) or already on the JV team because of their skills.
I am very glad that I moved off the South Side for a number of reasons. But I knew at the time I was doing it that West was going to be a better environment in all areas for Sabrina, and it has proved to be. Not putting East down, and no reflection on the kids themselves, but it is what it is.

The "Death or Glory" Ethos

2012-01-20T06:31:00.000-05:00

Last night at my home group, the topic was one of the NA Informational Pamphlets called "Youth in Recovery," which acknowledges the unique challenges facing young people who are trying to put and keep down drugs, including alcohol. We had nine people there last night, seven of whom at least in their mid-thirties, and most of us ended up talking about how we got started using drugs and drinking, about how we ended up not being a "youth in recovery."
Nick, as usual, was there, and we grew up in very similar circumstances--he's three years younger than me, but we went to the same school district, to many of the same places, and in some cases even hung around some of the same individual people at different points in our twenties, even though to our knowledge, we never used or drank together. But as he talked about some of the influences in his teen years regarding "partying" and the direction his life took, it unsurprisingly sounded very familiar to me, as I was a product of the same environment and subject to the same influences. I am not making excuses for my eventually becoming an addict, but--and I have made this point when I have talked to health classes in Union-Endicott over the years, as well--it was a much different world when I was growing up than the world kids are growing up in now.
For one thing, the sheer variety of substances to abuse is much greater now than it was in the late 1970's and early 1980's. I was one of the last classes that could legally drink at eighteen, and drinking absolutely dominated the teen party scene when I was growing up. I was regularly drinking at 16, in bars regularly at 17, and my drinking was far from a solitary pursuit--everybody did it to some degree, or at least almost everybody, and there were nearly 2000 kids at my high school. And in addition to the ubiquity of alcohol, there wasn't a lot else to choose from--there was a significant percentage of kids that smoked pot regularly, and a few brave souls were allegedly into Quaaludes, but that was truly all I remember. We heard of people using things like heroin and cocaine--in other places, New York City mostly or people on television. The popular perception at the time was that heroin was a drug that rock stars--think Keith Richards circa 1977-- and derelict Vietnam veterans were into, and coke was another thing that was for stars and models (this was the heyday of Studio 54)--even in the much more affluent Endicott of the late 1970's, coke was simply out of our price range. I never tried cocaine until I started hanging around kids from Long Island at college, and my experience with other drugs never did extend much beyond cocaine--I smoked other people's pot while at college but never got into it, and never moved past brief experimentation with acid, mushrooms, and PCP. My drinking got much more pronounced when I was at Geneseo, though, to the point where I started reconnecting with people from that point in my life through Facebook, almost all of them were not surprised that I ended up in recovery--and almost all of them were surprised that it was cocaine that ended up bringing me to my knees, and not drinking.
Because the hard-drinking, hard-partying guy was the cultural icon of my formative years, and there was a strong and conscious emulation of some of those role models. Nick mentioned Keith Moon when he was talking last night and a few of the people of the previous generation like Hendrix and Morrison as guys who partied hard and died young, and no doubt he is as surprised as I am--and they are, for that matter--that people like Richards and Iggy Pop are still around, because they sure as hell were partying like there was no future ahead. There were others who died young because of their partying--John Belushi comes to mind as an example I remember very vividly,-- and even those that didn't die seemed like they were trying to crash and burn, and they were admired for it. People made jokes about Richard Pryor and David Crosby, but there was also an element of admiration in it, a sense that these people not only took it to the edge but went over it, and somehow kept fetching up at the bottom damaged but ready to go back at it.That was a huge influence on young people; even if you died from your drug use, at least you went out living your life to the fullest. I mean, setting yourself on fire while freebasing? There wasn't anyone I knew that, even as we joked about it, didn't secretly think "That's taking it to the limit and beyond. That's partying hearty."
I wouldn't say that the dominant culture of the time glorified addiction; if anything, acknowledging addiction--I remember Dennis Weaver going public with his issues with cocaine when I was in college, and our universal reaction was he must have been a pussy--was a copout, a chickenshit move. The preferred examples were the Belushis, the Moons, who continued to the very end to do what they wanted, who took on the world on their terms--and those terms included getting fucked up all the time. This sort of ethos was everywhere, it had a profound influence on a great many of us, and it showed up in the culture in many forms. A huge number of people were fans of Hunter S. Thompson, even though his writing, in retrospect, clearly started to go downhill in the 1970's--because he was devoted to the party-all-the-time, authority-can-go-get-fucked lifestyle. Books and movies like Bright Lights Big City had a very profound influence on a lot of kids, and the ultimate message of stopping somehow wasn't taken as seriously as the experience of getting high with all your energy and resources. It was very much a culture of instant gratification, of only the moment mattering.
I term it "Death or Glory" because that was the name of a song by the Clash that talked about the mindset. It didn't dawn on me at the time that the song ultimately calls it a phase--"just another story"; many of us chose to operate under the conscious decision to pursue "glory" and die trying, rather than plan for a future or tone it down or even be less self-centered and self-absorbed. I can attest that I never pictured middle or old age when I was young, not even when I was starting to creep into middle age after I got clean. That mindset was part of the fuel that fed my addiction when it got out of control--I really thought that I was going to die out there in 1997-8, and when there is that tacit acceptance that the end is coming, there is absolutely no incentive to change your behavior. And I am convinced that if I had not gotten arrested, I would have died out there, and my story would have been a narrative that read as I wrote it.
Because, as Nick and I both shared about last night, part of the ethos was that those who had prodigious talents and gifts were supposed to exhaust them in the service of the partying. Many of my role models and heroes of my teen years and early twenties that I consciously remember having had tremendous talent--Thompson, Dennis Hopper, Iggy, Ian Curtis, (later on) Sam Kinison--seemed to view that reservoir as a pool of flammable material, as something to be drawn on in order to maintain the using. It was a badge of honor to succeed as well or better than others in spite of being hammered or fucked up almost all of the time. Every semester I was at Geneseo, I used to get a charge out of all the people who were blown away when they found out I was on the Dean's List, in spite of being the biggest party animal they knew--indeed, I remember one very studious girl in my dorm seriously almost quit school when she found out I had a higher GPA than she did even though she never went out and I was out all the time. And I am almost ashamed to cop to it now, but I loved it when I found that out; it was like a thumb in the eye of every responsible, sober killjoy I had ever run into. I used to get a charge out of pulling stuff out of my ass at the last minute, of making it to work with a few minutes of sleep, and (much later) fitting in partying when I was married with no one the wiser. It wasn't a game; it was simply part of the mindset, of doing it because I was capable of doing it. I didn't think of it as wasting potential; I thought of it as maximizing potential, of being able to function and make my way in the world while still doing whatever the hell I wanted.
Eventually I crashed--and no one was more surprised than me that I survived. And over the last 13+ years, I've actually come to see and believe that colossal self-indulgence was not the right way to go, that I hurt myself more than I hurt anyone else--and I hurt plenty of other people, too--when all was entered in the ledger. But still, I'd be lying if I told you I regretted it all. And from what I was hearing around the room last night, I'm not the only one who feels that way, far from it. Almost everyone in my generation that was there last night is glad they are clean today--but admitted to a certain sense of pleasurable recall about "back in the day" before it all fell apart. Some may feel that it points to a certain innate depravity in the addict mind. But I've become a fanatical believer in nurture over nature, and the fact that there are a lot of young people in recovery today points more to a change in environment than anything else.
There simply isn't the widespread acceptance and admiration for those who burn out. Neil Young's anthem of my teen years is still a great song, but I don't see or hear the sentiment that "it's better to burn out than to fade away" anymore. Or at least, it isn't as common and prevalent as it was in 1979, and today's kids don't really own that viewpoint. And on balance, it's probably better that they don't.

Book Review: WITH OUR BACKS TO THE WALL

2012-01-19T21:24:00.001-05:00

I have mentioned in this space before that I am a World War I buff, and With Our Backs to the Wall is British professor David Stevenson's exhaustive look at the final year of the war, 1918. All aspects of the year's campaigning--which began with the Germans trying to take advantage of their defeat of Russia to beat back the Allies on the Western Front before the Americans could arrive in force, and ended with the Germans in headlong retreat and suing for peace--are covered in detail, but other aspects of the conflict--the other fronts, the war at sea, effect on economies, political concerns--are also reviewed, almost on the level of monographs. For a serious student of the war, this is a great book, even if it does get a little bogged down in minute particulars. For the casual reader of history the entire book is going to be tough to slog through, but if one stops at the end of the (long) first section, which was the chronicle of the military campaigns, the book will be an enjoyable experience. I liked it as is, but even I had a lot of trouble getting to the end. But this is a worthy addition to any serious student of the war's library.

Hinchey Calls It a Career

2012-01-19T05:55:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the Southern Tier of New York got a little bit of national attention, as long-time Congressman Maurice Hinchey announced that he will not be seeking re-election in the fall. Hinchey has had recurring bouts with cancer in the last few years and is 73 years old, so the announcement was not a bolt from the blue, but it is another sign that the political landscape that has been in place in this area for decades is shifting in a direction that may not be for the best.
New York has to shrink its congressional delegation by two as a result of the last census, so the chances are that the 22nd district, Hinchey's, will cease to exist after this election cycle anyway. At the moment, every surrounding district is held by Republicans, although several of those seats are not as Red as, say, South Carolina's; in fact, all of them were held by Democrats fairly recently. But one thing that has shaped my own political consciousness for most of my life is that this area has had a Democratic congressman since 1974; I really am not looking forward to having to grit my teeth when my own Representative is on the news. In my professional life, I and colleagues in other non-profits could always count on at least tepid letters of support from our congressman's office, and Hinchey was a reliable vote on the important matters, like last year's budget battles. It's going to be very difficult to not be able to count on that anymore.
I've never met Hinchey in person, so I can't give any personal impressions of him. I know my sister, when she was younger, interviewed for an internship with his office, and while she likes Hinchey's politics, she didn't much care for Hinchey the man. But then my sister much of the time doesn't much care for me, either, so it's hard to read a lot into that... If I had a beef with him, it was that he didn't seem terribly effective in the pork-barrel game; we didn't get a lot of stuff coming our way from federal contracts and the like, and he certainly didn't come across as powerful when the presidential helicopter contract fiasco engulfed Lockheed Martin in Owego a few years ago. But part of that was no doubt because Hinchey's home was from the other end of the district, in the Hudson Valley, and maybe he seemed more of a presence there; I know IBM still has some presence in that area, even after abandoning this one.
But it's certainly possible that major changes could be coming. The 2010 Republican onslaught in the House may well be reversed, as they are (rightly) seen as the major problem in a Congress that has approval ratings nationwide in the teens. The Republican candidates for President are as lame a group that has ever been gathered in one spot; it is literally a gaffe-of-the-day anymore, and the incredible luck of Barack Obama will continue probably until 2016. But the increasing dissatisfaction of an already-cynical public is not a good sign. Every four years, there is a great hue and cry that the early primaries and caucuses have a disproportionate influence on the process of presidential selection, and this year is no different. Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are 1) in the grand scheme of things, not important on a national basis, and 2) they are all small states that don't represent a significant portion of America; two are incredibly white and all three are conservative. And yet the national media are ready to anoint a nominee when something like 3% of the delegates to the eventual convention have been chosen, and the media are merely reflecting the desire of the political establishment that a candidate be selected and promoted. It's a more complicated, but no less effective, version of the smoke-filled room.
Which has little to do with Hinchey, I know. I have few illusions left about my vote and my participation having any meaning in the political system, and I think that the thing that is bothering me about Hinchey's retirement is that he was the only consistent officeholder that I could vote for every couple of years whose politics I largely agreed with. It's a terrible thing when you look over your ballot and there is nobody on the ballot whose views you can honestly share, or anyone who has any chance to win, anyway. And with Hinchey gone, that's a distinct possibility.
And when you don't feel like you have a voice at all, despair and hopelessness set in.

Terms of the Debate

2012-01-18T05:50:00.000-05:00

The Occupy Wall Street movement has begun to peter out nationwide, as the onset of winter has removed the romance from camping outside in public places over much of the country, along with the inevitable (in this day and age) moving on to other things for the microwave generation. It's probably premature to issue an autopsy report, as the spring may revive the protests both because of the weather breaking and because the campaign for President will be crystallizing. But there is one result of the movement that undeniably succeeded, and for which it should be given credit by even those violently opposed to it.
The issue of income inequality is now at the forefront of American politics, and seems unlikely to disappear. While the Republican establishment and the mainstream media are doing their damnedest to make sure Mitt Romney is the "inevitable" nominee, so far he is looking awfully shaky, and one reason why is that he is constantly on the defensive for being a billionaire, through no discernible abilities and gifts of his own. His day job for much of his life has been "venture capitalist--" a fancy word sounds better than "corporate raider," which was a substantial element in what his firm did, and he has caught all sorts of heat for claiming his "investments" created jobs, a dubious at best proposition. He also made a statement recently that $362, 000 "isn't a lot of money"-- even though it is an amount that exceeds the annual income of between 98% and 99% of us, and created an uproar yesterday when he disclosed that he pays a tax rate--on "earnings" of many millions of dollars a year--of 15%, the same percentage that people who earn from $8K to $47K pay; Romney can do this because most of his "income" consists of capital gains, which is taxed at a much lower rate than regular income--and doesn't that say volumes about who makes our laws and whom they benefit. Romney is guarding his personal tax returns like a state secret, promising only to release his return from last year, and only that much after intense media scrutiny and much noise from his Republican rivals.
Which was ultimately the point of the Occupy movement--that the country was being run by and for the benefit of the wealthy. Romney is in no way representative of any kind of "average person"--he is the son of a famous politician far removed from the reality of daily life of most of us for every moment of his. He is the quintessential "child of privilege." Combined with his Mormonism--which to a significant number of people is a heretical quasi-Christian sect--, he has major liabilities for an "inevitable" nominee. Obama is far from an "ordinary" American in reality, but for many, the novelty of his skin color gives him instant credibility when he says he is in touch with the life most of us lead.
None of the Republican candidates are "ordinary people," but without the Occupy movement of the summer and fall, it is very doubtful that this fact would have been given the attention it has been getting. While I am sure that is no secret to the vast majority of voting Americans that the political system is full of people out of touch with ordinary Americans, there is knowing something and knowing something--and a benefit of the Occupy movement has been that it is now impossible to ignore the obvious without a willful effort to do so, that pleading ignorance is no longer an option. And even six short months ago, that didn't seem to be possible. I knew Romney would spend a lot of time on the defensive from the moment he announced he was running for President (two years ago), but I honestly thought he was going to be getting hit hard about his religion and his dubious qualifications for the office. I never thought that the fact that his life of privilege was going to be a major issue, and unlike the religion issue, there is little possibility of a backlash among the general public for harping on it. Romney may still become President anyway, but even if he does, he will have a very hard time professing to speak for "ordinary" Americans and not being presented as a guardian of his upper class' interests.
Which may be unfair to him, to a degree. But the entire point of the Occupy movement was that American life isn't very fair for most of us, all day every day. And Mitt Romney will never have to worry about paying his bills, putting his kids through college, or even staying employed. I wish that the extent of the unfairness in my life was merely on the scale of not getting a particular job I wanted for most of my life, in no small part because my father wasn't able to get the job when he tried for it, too.

D-Day

2012-01-17T05:54:00.000-05:00

Today, two weeks earlier than last year, the Governor of New York is going to give his budget speech. Once more, there's a "gap" to close, although it is significantly smaller than last year, which I suppose is good news, and this year, at least, there is not the insane proposal to cut taxes for higher-income people as part and parcel of the proposal. But it's not going to be good news. Last year, the funding stream that our program receives a significant amount of money from was originally slated for complete elimination; the eventual compromise was that it would be hit 25% last year and another 25% this year, and nothing I've heard indicates that that is going to change. We didn't end up getting cut 25%--the county prioritized its outlays, and the team in place last year realized that what we do is a priority, so that the actual cut ended up around 17%. But there is a new administration in place over in the county office building, and they may not share the priorities that the previous team did, so I have not a clue what's in store.
But a look at my Outlook calendar shows what I think I am going to have to do, and basically in a month's time, because I am scheduled to have surgery on my feet in a month: start beating the bushes for every possible funding source that I can find. I've gotten a few proposals funded from some local foundations in the last couple of years, but one of the problems with getting money via that route is that very rarely do they approve funding for personnel costs, and that's what the money we get from the state goes towards. A few outfits have indicated that they may change usual guidelines in these tough times for non-profits, and I certainly hope that they are serious. This year, at least, it does not appear that the entire funding stream--almost $30K--is at risk, which is relatively good news; if it was entirely gone, we might as well fold up shop. At least something like $5K or even $7K is an achievable, albeit difficult, target to reach.
But I know more about budgets than I ever thought I would when I got promoted two-plus years ago, and one thing I know is that there ours is already pretty lean; I've shuffled things around and reallocated non-personnel costs so that I'm pretty sure there isn't much wiggle room left anymore. In one way, that's good; the end of September (the end of our budget year) was not frantic last year, like it had been for years before. But it does mean that any significant cut is going to be very difficult to live with.
But what is amazing to me is the lack of true anxiety I'm feeling about it. Last year, Cuomo's budget was like poleaxed, and the spring ended up being one long professional panic attack. I"m not feeling like that this year. Maybe it was the experiencing of an actual disaster with the flooding, and maybe it's just that having gone through it once, I know that the fear is more damaging than the reality in most cases, but I'm not getting that empty feeling in my stomach. It is what it is, and one way or another, I'll figure out a way to deal with it. And if the actual worst-case scenario happens--getting significant state cuts and losing the federal grant in October--well, I've gotten almost a decade out of this job, and at least have something significant on my resume. I hope it doesn't come to that, of course, but it is, ultimately, a job. There are very few people I know who have had the longevity I have had, and I certainly can't complain about the big picture in a personal sense.
But I'm not going to passively accept the possibility of professional extinction. All sorts of ideas are percolating in my head, and it may become the summer of the huckster around here. Our agency's informal motto is "Whatever it takes." Within reason, of course--I'm not about to go around knocking off Hess stations at night--I take that very much to heart.
If it were easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.

Giants All the Way?

2012-01-16T06:31:00.000-05:00

This has always been Giants country here. The Bills made some inroads during the Kelly years, but even then, there was no doubt that the Giants had a deeper and more passionate fan base, and Jet fans have never been more than a small, albeit noisy, presence around here. But the last couple of years, as football has become something of a universal obsession--I have never in my life seen so many women who are this involved with a sport--the level of interest in Giants football has erupted. Sundays when the Giants play, I am convinced that someone could rob a bank around here and no one would notice.
And they will have another week, at least, to be totally absorbed. The Giants took out the favored Packers yesterday rather easily, and earned the right to face the resurgent 49ers for the NFC Championship yesterday. It was hard to believe that the same team that lost twice to the Redskins wore the same uniforms as the one on the field yesterday, and yet there was never one minute yesterday where the outcome was seriously in doubt. This team, when motivated and in full mental frame to play, can play with anyone. They have already played the 49ers tough this year, although they lost, and the 49ers are in the playoffs for the first time in a decade. Can the Giants really go all the way?
Well, anything's possible. But it sure seems unlikely. Why?
1) The Giants were outscored for the season by 6 points. While there have been some Super Bowl winners whose point differentials were not overwhelmingly good, none have been negative previously, and most are hugely positive. However, the current lowest point differential for a Super Bowl champion is held by the 2007 Giants, who were merely +22, so it is at least remotely possible.
2) No team has ever won the Super Bowl that won less than ten games during the season. The Giants were 9-7. Even the 2007 Giants were 10-6.
3) Every Super Bowl champion but one has finished in the top eight of the league in either points scored or points allowed, and most have finished in the top eight in both. The one exception was, again, the 2007 Giants.
4) There have been a few teams that have won four games to claim a Super Bowl title. The Giants would have to beat at least two teams, and maybe three, that beat them during the season to win the Super Bowl. That would be unprecedented. The Steelers in 2005 beat two teams that had beaten them, but they had also beaten one of the teams they defeated in the playoffs, as well.
5) Of their prospective opponents, all three of them fit the profile of past champions much better than the Giants do.
Still, they've gotten this far, and many of the same players that bucked historical trends in 2007 are still on the team. But I don't think it's likely. They've caught two breaks thus far--they got to play an Atlanta team that plays poorly on the road at home by virtue of winning their lousy division, and they got to play a top seed whose defense was historically bad for a quality team--the Packers thrived to an unnatural degree on turnovers generated by their otherwise awful (or at least not championship quality) defense. While turnover differential is a generally positive statistic for championship teams, it almost never is the major determinant of a championship team's success, and there have been a few championship teams that have actually had negative turnover differentials for the season.
The most positive things about this team are that they do two things exceptionally well--throw the ball and get pressure on the opposing quarterback with four guys. There has never been even one Super Bowl champion that depended heavily on blitz packages for pressure on the quarterback--the Steelers and Packers in recent years had linebackers as their primary pressure guys, but they rarely rushed more than four at a time. But the next Giant opponent is not going to be as affected as the last two they've played--the 49ers get pressure with four rushers as well or better than the Giants do, and they are a team that does not depend on the pass to move the ball on offense. The 49ers fit the profile of past champions a lot better than the Giants do, in any event.
And even though the Giants have the 2007 exception to rely upon, the 49ers have one historical exception in their favor, too. Almost every Super Bowl champion has knocked on the door at least once before winning. There was only one team that won a Super Bowl after not being in the playoffs for as many as nine years prior to the Super Bowl-winning season--the 1981 49ers. This team is making its first appearance in a decade.
The two teams that fit the championship profile best are those coached by the Harbaughs--Baltimore and San Francisco. The Patriots defense isn't good, but their offense is historically exceptional, and their defense is as healthy as it has been all year. There are good reasons to believe that the Giants are not going to win another two games. But you never know. And I have to say that the prospect of the Giants winning doesn't really bother me the way I would be bothered if the Cowboys or the Jets or the Packers were. I like most Giant fans; I just don't share their interest. I hope they can pull it off; I just don't think they can.

Much Ado About Nothing

2012-01-15T07:52:00.000-05:00

This is what happens when you play against a major-league team, Timmy. Tebowmania came to an abrupt, overdue, and overwhelmingly deserved end yesterday, as the Patriots sent the Broncos home with a 45-10 victory that wasn't that close. And I fervently wish that everybody in the world can go a few days without saying the words "Tim Tebow."
Tebow's uber-Christianity isn't what annoys me about him, although it's certainly not something I find appealing, either. I realize he can't choose his parents, but his father is frankly one of these unctuous religious bigots that is the worst that fundamentalist Protestantism has to offer. Tebow himself has softpedaled his religious beliefs since becoming a pro--I can't remember the details, but there was some sort of backlash over a TV commercial he made after Florida won its second national championship with him at the helm a couple of yeas ago--and his "Tebowing" after scores is something, frankly, I'd rather see than most touchdown celebrations. It isn't Tebow that is making a huge bit out of his religion, anyway. I heard twenty times if I heard once this week about "God's team" and cracks like if Denver won, he would wear a halo next game. I would really hope that God has much better things to occupy His time than American football games, much less choose sides and favor players.
No, my issue with the Tebowmania was that he isn't any good. What he really should have done, most of this year, was go to Las Vegas or something; I have never seen a sustained run of luck like this team enjoyed. Let's review the dossier:
Week 5: Tebow comes in the fourth quarter and leads the Broncos to two touchdowns, making a 26-10 game close. against a San Diego (8-8) team that was playing like it had a big lead. Tebow's big contribution was completing a screen pass that a running back took down the field.
Week 7 (after bye): Terrible for 58 minutes, Tebow catches a break when the Broncos recover an on-side kick, and shock Miami (6-10) at the gun.
Week 8: Terrible for 60 minutes as the Lions (10-6) kick Denver's ass, 45-10 (a game a lot like yesterday's).
Week 9: Tebow essentially is a third running back as the Broncos beat the Raiders (8-8) 38-24. The Raiders were starting a quarterback in his second week on the team, and the go-ahead touchdown was scored on a punt return.
Week 10: Tebow completes two passes in a 17-10 win against Kansas City (7-9).
Week 11: The Broncos come back to beat the Jets (8-8) 17-13, aided by an interception return for a touchdown. Tebow's offense gains 80 total yards before the final drive.
Week 12: Tebow has a fair game as the Broncos beat San Diego (8-8) in overtime, after San Diego missed a field goal to win the game.
Week 13: Tebow and the Broncos are all out to beat Minnesota (3-13) 35-32. Minnesota was in the middle of a nine-game stretch without intercepting the ball.
Week 14: Tebow's team is all out to beat Chicago (8-8), who is playing without their first-string quarterback and one of the best running backs in the league, and who missed a chance to run out the clock when their running back ran out of bounds to stop the clock with the lead.
Weeks 15-17: Tebow is generally terrible as the Broncos lose three in a row.
Playoffs: Pittsburgh is playing with a hobbled quarterback, second-string running back, has five second-stringers on the defensive side of the field by time the game ends, and employs a curious game plan that essentially allows Tebow the freedom to do the one thing--throw deep--he does well, repeatedly. And the Broncos still almost lost the game.
I'm sorry. This is not a good quarterback, and this is not a good team. The Broncos did not beat a single team that won more games than it lost until the Pittsburgh game, and it caught a huge number of breaks in those it did win. Quality almost always wins out in professional sports: one reason I have no objection to four rounds of playoffs is that it is impossible for a team to get lucky four weeks--or in other sports, four series--in a row. The Broncos were perhaps the luckiest team of the twenty-first century this year, but were in no way a real playoff team. And given that next year, they will have to play the Patriots, Ravens, Texans, Steelers, Bengals, Saints, Falcons, and Panthers, they will have to be exceedingly lucky just to reach .500 again. Will he get better? Actually, most NFL quarterbacks plateau or regress in their second season as starters, so that history is working against him as well. It is very likely that one of the main stories of the 2012 NFL season is going to be "Tebow stinks, after all."
Which would be somewhat unfair, because he does do some things well. But not enough to be considered an elite quarterback. And the Broncos, a team that didn't belong in the playoffs to begin with, mercifully have been put out of the nation's misery.

Some Different Voices

2012-01-14T06:51:00.000-05:00

The recovery community in the Binghamton area has rarely been as vibrant and diverse as it is right now. Part of the reason is simply the natural maturation process of any organization. When I first got clean 13 years ago, it had only been a few years since Narcotics Anonymous meetings had become available to recovering people on every day of the week, and there were maybe four or five people around whose clean time went back ten or more years. It was a rare meeting, during that first year, when a majority of participants put their hand up at the point in the Chairperson's report when the crowd is asked "Who has a year or more?". That isn't the case anymore; there are hundreds of people who attend meetings regularly around here, with over twenty meetings every week, and there are a significant number of people who have at least a glow-in-the-dark (denoting one year clean) keytag.
In those formative years, speaker meetings and fellowship events tended to feature the same people repeatedly, and NA members from out of the area were regularly imported to share their messages, as well. It was understandable, at that time, because of the rather shallow pool of recovering addicts with extensive experience available in the area. But those tendencies remained in place even as the number of people with significant experience increased. This is not going to be a rant about the Messagemaster and his flunkies monopolizing the Activities and Events subcommittee for years, but it is a fact that because of that iron grip--and because of the second speaker-oriented clique that has sprung up around Danny A-ness--there are a large number of recovering people around who have strong programs and who have a lot to share with people just entering the program whose voices who rarely got a chance to be heard at events or for more than five minutes at a meeting.
And it hurt the fellowship in a couple of ways. One was that NA become less attractive to those who were just entering the program. I took meetings into the rehab for years, and I can't tell you how many times I heard variations on the theme of "if more NA meetings have people like [me and the people I took into the rehab to speak] I'd go to more of them, but most of the meetings don't feature that kind of message." There is little more disillusioning in this world when someone who is loudly and often professing their commitment to a new way of life is exposed as petty, selfish, and hypocritical. You can't be talking about how honesty and integrity have primary place of importance in your life--and then lie repeatedly, up to and including celebrating clean time you don't have (it just happened again in the Messagemaster circle, with his blessing), for everyone to hear and see. You can't be talking about how much more openminded you are now--and then actively denigrate those who don't agree with you, to the point where you go to silly lengths to keep their voices from being heard and undermine their relationships with others in the fellowship. You can't be talking repeatedly about how willing you are to change from what you were in active addiction--and then get stuck, in public, in the same cycles of chaos and ugly behavior patterns for years at a time, of engaging in jealousy and ethical shortcuts and predatory behavior and lousy parenting and then just shrugging and saying, "It's a process and I'm not there yet." People notice these things, and get turned off by them. And when counterexamples are not readily visible--and this is what the practical effect becomes, when speaker events are dominated by the same circle and when the A&E committee is in the same hands, that there is an overwhelming perception that this is all the fellowship has to offer--people get turned off, and we lose a bunch of them.
And the second thing is that those we don't lose are reluctant to get involved in the service structure of the fellowship. This accounts for the sad fact that although the number of people with significant clean time has never been higher around here, the number of people willing to take on service commitments--to staff the various subcommittees and take on positions in the Area Service Committee--has never been lower. And the reason is quite obvious: there is a certain element surrounding that one group that makes service on that level an ordeal for anyone not part of that group. I have held three Area positions over the years, and each term was shorter than the previous one because of the flak emanating from a few people for whom the willingness to do a job was less important than pushing their own agendas and stifling any input other than their own preferred view was. I am more open than most about my feelings about it now, in that I freely say there is no way I will ever serve on an Area-level position again around here until the Messagemaster is dead or moves out of the Area; it's not worth the aggravation and agita to me. And there are a lot of people around who share that sentiment, who just are not willing to strap a bullseye on their back for trying to give back what was freely given to them.
Recently, though--maybe in the last eight months to a year--there have been signs that changes are occurring, that the evolution of the fellowship is taking it in a different direction. The signature event of the Messagemaster clan was a fiasco this year, and for the moment at least, they are not in charge of the subcommittee they've historically dominated. A few meetings have decided to have speaker weeks that previously had not had speaker weeks, giving members with strong programs chances to share their messages, chances that were not available for many years. I'm not the last word in recovery programs, to be sure, but I went several years without speaking other than at rehab facilities--and there were and are others with even more time than me and with strong programs who also never got invited to share anywhere. That's changing. I can't complain anymore because I've been asked to speak at three meetings in the last year, and others with strong recoveries are getting a change to share their messages, too. Last night at the candlelight meeting, my good friend Nikki got a chance to share her experience, and I have rarely been happier to listen to a speaker. Nikki has been around roughly as long as I have; she had a couple of timeouts along the way, but she's now gotten several years behind her, and she's always been one of my favorite people. Nikki has a lot to offer, by any measure--she has dealt with a basketful of secondary issues in addition to drug addiction, and has come enormously far in all those areas. We were part of the same home group for years, and I can't tell you how uplifting it has been to see someone go from consistently morose, depressed, and defeated to vibrant and optimistic--and as she will tell you, it is entirely the result of actually working the program of Narcotics Anonymous. Newcomers need to hear experiences like hers--and more importantly, to see the evidence that is so obvious, to see someone who is happy and smiling talking about the days she was so depressed she couldn't leave the house, to hear someone talk about the wonderful people around her rather than her car or her bank account or her house. It's great to hear someone talk about overcoming co-dependency--and then not leave the meeting with some asshole who's fighting with her every other day. It's gratifying to hear messages that aren't defined by setting themselves against others in the fellowship, that focus not on talking but on doing something about the issues we face.
In short, it's good to hear messages, rather than The Message, in Narcotics Anonymous in this area again. It is testimony to the power of the real message of recovery that it finds a way to be heard, whatever else there is surrounding it.

Book Review: WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS

2012-01-13T05:39:00.000-05:00

When the Game Was Ours is a couple of years old, but is still, for any basketball fan or fan of the 1980's, a timely and interesting view of the career of the authors, a couple of guys you might have heard of named Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, with the able assistance of sportswriter Jackie McMullan. A lot of these athletic memoirs are full of gee-whiz, everyone's-great pap, but this one definitely is not. The relationship between the two is covered extensively, from the time they were bitter rivals that could not stand each other to their place now as two parts of a whole. Their playing careers are examined in great detail, but the off-court things and the post-playing careers are also examined honestly--Magic's HIV announcement and his comeback season, and the coaching careers of both. And most of all, the personalities of both are given full rein--both come across as real men, not icons on pedestals. Their importance to the game of basketball--most obviously the NBA but also the NCAA--is emphasized, almost to the point of absurdity, but that emphasis does not make it any less real. Every player that enjoys being on television, much less making money playing the sport, should be praying at a shrine devoted to Bird and Magic every day.
And it is more edifying for me to read about pro basketball than I ever thought it was. Basketball is not my favorite sport, and I still don't get caught up in it--while I have sort-of, kind-of liked the Spurs since the ABA, it's never become one of my passions like my teams in the other three major sports have always been.
But I have always paid attention, and the Celtics-Lakers rivalry in the 1980's was something I remember rather vividly. At the time, it was hard to escape the relentless Bird/Magic promotion of CBS, but this book is a reminder that they were a part of teams, and there were some people associated with those teams who were, frankly, assholes. I had forgotten about M.L. Carr and Paul Westhead. It was refreshing to read, after reading two books by Kareem last year, perspectives on him from another perch, and remembering what he was at the time. And even though I think the selflessness of the two is a bit overdone in the book--Steve Nash is every bit as the playmaker as these two were--there is no doubt that the game has changed to the point where the all-around superstar isn't as prevalent or regarded as necessary as it once was (an unstated legacy of Michael Jordan). This was a good read, and one that might feed a bit more interest in the pro game, as Bird's team (he is the GM of the Pacers) is off to a good start this year for the first time in ages.

Regression of the American Dream, Part 67

2012-01-12T06:21:00.000-05:00

I was meeting with one of my Johnson City kids yesterday, and she mentioned that she had not been in school the previous two days because her grandfather had just gotten out of the hospital and she was the only one in the house healthy enough to move things around to accommodate his having to be on the first floor. And God help me, but the first thing that went through my mind was the first Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, where both sets of grandparents are living in gigantic beds in the middle of Charlie's (tiny) house. For my generation, it was extremely unusual to have grandparents living in the home; I can't think of anybody I knew in high school (and my graduating class numbered 525 kids) who had family members living with them. Of course, I don't recall more than half a dozen people who lived in single-parent homes, either (and one of the six' father had died); there has been a 9.0 Richter scale upheaval in the social fabric of this--and, I suspect, a whole lot of other places--area. There is simply a new paradigm, a new normal, that needs to be taken into account when working with this generation.
And it even has hit much closer to home. My 18YO niece is now living with my mother, having moved here from the Albany area. She has bounced between my sister and my former brother-in-law since those two split up almost five years ago, and although the dynamics of the relationship with both had something to do with her moving down here, part of it was that both her father (rather dubiously, because he wants to use her room in the former family home for some other purpose) and her mother (rather legitimately, since she simply cannot afford an apartment large enough for all four of her children to have their own rooms; my other two nieces already share a room there) claimed they didn't really have room for her. Several of my friends have seriously considered going back to living in their parents' home (and some have actually done so), as did I a few years ago, and other friends have had a parent come live with them. With the proliferation of single parents in recent years, too, the idea of a single-family home is receding farther and farther into the background as a realistic possibility, even aside from the problems in the housing and financial sectors of the national economy. Unless you have a really good job--and few do--it is next to impossible to be able to afford a single-family dwelling.
And with people living longer, and learning to live while sick with chronic ailments, and the catastrophic cost of health care for the elderly and sick, what I ran into the other day--elderly relatives being cared for in the home of another family member--is rapidly becoming the norm, too. Two of my closest friends have had to put their mothers in assisted living facilities within the last few months, and I am simply appalled at the cost of such placements. I am really hoping that my mother doesn't get to the point where she needs that; she needed placement in a nursing home temporarily a decade ago, and it was hideously expensive then. Not for the first time, I feel grateful that my father dropped dead--not that he's dead, but that there was not this lingering, ruinously expensive twilight period that drained all the resources of the family.
But aside from the financial costs, there are other ones. This particular kid has hopes and dreams for herself--she actually showed me her own personal 5-year plan yesterday--but freely acknowledges that the biggest obstacle to achieving them is middling-to-poor grades, which is a result of both spotty attendance and lack of time to get work done--which is significantly impacted by the issues at home of caring for ailing relatives. This kid just turned sixteen years old. I have another client who is also sixteen who is essentially the parent figure for her younger siblings; her mother is gone (I think dead, but not positive) and her father is an invalid, so she is caring for him, too. I can think of two other kids I know that have similar home situations, and several others in a small high school where one parent is absent and isn't going to return.
We are committed, rhetorically, nationally to the idea that education is the key to achievement, and I don't have a problem with that concept. The problem is that the model of education we are operating under assumes a two-parent, single-family household with steady income. That model is as dead and gone as the Roman Empire. What I actually think most of when I see kids like the ones I see in Johnson City and other high schools is my own father's childhood. Dad was the tenth of ten children, born over a period from 1907 to 1930--and he was the only one who finished high school. A couple of my uncles left school before they finished grade school, and every one of them was working by time they were 15. And I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say we appear to be headed back in that direction as a society--except there aren't as many jobs to be had.
I'm having trouble seeing a way out of this on a society-wide level. And for those who object to any sort of income redistribution, I say, "All right, come up with an alternative idea that actually has a chance of working." You can't tell me that a concentration of available resources in an extremely narrow section of the population is the best we can do for all of us as a whole... I really hope my kid achieves her goals. Not least because they involve going overseas, and not in a military uniform, in her early twenties.

Life--And Death--After Addiction

2012-01-11T07:09:00.004-05:00

About a year ago, I was filling up my car at the Manley's station across the road from our satellite office when a car pulled up to the island behind. A woman that had been in recovery for a time about seven years prior, when I was still living in Webster Court, and who has on a few occasions over the past decade or so done what many women do to support addiction, got out of the car and started to put gas in it, saw me and said hello, and we ended up chatting for about ten minutes. She told me she was going to the other fellowship for the most part and had gotten with a guy who she said treated her well, and I thought to myself, not for the first time, that few people, but even more so women, do not make active drug addiction a career, especially when the drug of choice is crack; you either get locked up, die,or end up putting it down because one just can't continue paying the cost that the drug extracts.
However, one of the awful truths about addiction is that you never get a "reset" button; when you relapse, it usually is only a matter of hours before you are right back at the spot--emotionally and physically, but also in a general sense--that you were when you last put it down. The next time I saw this woman was about three months ago; the car was history, and she was living in a building on Main Street that has a tenant base where drugs are easily available. I saw her pretty much daily right up until Christmas season, doing the stroll on Main Street between Price Chopper and DSS, and talked to her a few times more--a couple of times when I was going to CVS by my office, and one extended time when she was exiting a diner when I was entering. She was trying to get a waitress job, and she was pretty excited that she had gotten a start date and some hours, expressing an interest in going back to meetings and asking for my phone number. I gave it to her, but didn't think much about it; dozens of both women and men over the years have asked for my number in similar situations, and I don't think half a dozen have ever called me. She never called, but she has texted me on occasion.
She ended up getting another waitressing job, and moved to an apartment out of the war zone, which was necessary if she was going to stay clean, and said she was going to a few NA meetings, although they were meetings I don't attend and won't attend. Then I didn't hear from her for a couple of weeks and I didn't think anything of it--kind of forgot about her, actually. Until Monday, when she texted me to tell me she was some of sort of near relation to the two young kids that died in the car crash Saturday, and that she and obviously her entire family were devastated.
As I know they are. The reason I am writing this post, though, is that it brought my thoughts back to another day last year, when someone I know and I were driving up Main Street, and this person--who is very openly Christian and often talks about obligations to serve God--saw the woman when she was strolling and clucked, making a disparaging remark about prostitutes and those who engage in the activity. Aside from the general hypocrisy and lack of compassion exhibited, I thought, not for the first time, how easily many people can deny other people their basic humanity, simply because they are engaging in an activity that isn't generally approved of. The woman, as I mentioned, is not a stranger to me, and I do know a bit of her story. She is a mother who was there for most of her kids' youth; her boys are both now adults, meaning she had them fairly young and managed to keep them from suffering dislocation and discomfort. She has been one of the anonymous members of functioning society for the most part; we all take waitresses and checkout people for granted, don't we? And most importantly, people who have addiction issues have families and relations and friends, too, and they grieve when those close to them die and get hurt.
I'm mentioning this because I heard the same person talking yesterday about what a tragedy the death of those kids in the car accident must be for the families involved. And I thought to myself, "If you only knew..." and wondered what the feeling would be if the person knew who was the aunt of those kids. People are very quick to pass judgement on those they see around them, but don't make the connection that the unfortunates that are in addiction--or who commit crimes--not only have families, but are also parts of those families, and they feel and experience the pains and joys that the entire family does. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, only that we are all interconnected in some way, and that whatever we may like to believe about those in more dire straits than us, it doesn't mean that they exist on some other plane of existence. I ended up not saying anything yesterday. But that was largely because I don't think any great sense of compassion and understanding would have been awakened if I had.

Book Review: RAWHIDE DOWN

2012-01-11T05:46:00.002-05:00

Rawhide Down is journalist Del Quin Wilbur's monograph about one of the most seminal non-events in recent American history: the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. I've written in these pages before ("The Biggest What If", 4/13/11) about the impact that Reagan's survival had on the history of this country. The book doesn't focus much on anything other than the events of that day, rather than the larger picture, but it's extremely compelling to read nonetheless. Reagan came a lot closer to dying than was let known at the time; no one initially knew he was hit and he lost over half his blood while awaiting surgery. The depiction of the White House chaos, with Alexander Haig's famous grandstanding and megalomania on full public display, reinforces the sense that Haig was one of the most unstable men to ever have any position of real power we've ever had. The assassin's obsession with Jodie Foster is covered in detail; I had forgotten that Hinckley had actually shown up at Yale trying to meet her. And it was telling that politics played a huge role in the post-surgery hours; aides were willing to invoke the 25th Amendment to make sure some piece of legislation got signed the next day, should Reagan not be able to do (he was, it turned out). For those of us who lived through the event, this book is informative and interesting; for those under 30 who did not, it's a fascinating look at the last attempted assassination of a sitting President, made more relevant by the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords last week, which was the first attempt on a major political figure since John Hinckley's attempt on Reagan.

The Lingering of the Flood

2012-01-10T06:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the "official" re-opening of our agency's old office, the one that was destroyed in the flooding in September. There seem to be two schools of thought among our staff, the other tenants in the hotel basement, and those few in the community who have seen it. One is that "new is new" and without a doubt it does have a certain appeal to see unscuffed glass in the office windows, fresh paint on the walls, new desks and cabinets, and the like. The lighting is more muted with the tan paint than the old bright white walls, and it seems less like a hospital and more like--well, an office.
But there seems to be an undercurrent of, as one of the other downstairs tenants said to me when I was down there yesterday, "they really fucked the duck on this job, didn't they?" To take the most egregious example, none of our offices have doors yet, and the door to the outside is not our permanent door. For an agency with dozens of confidential case files to hand, that's not acceptable. We still have no office phone system or computer network (we do have wireless set up, but everyone with a new computer has complained incessantly about the agency wireless network being unreliable; the hope is that plugging in will eliminate freezing and getting booted off the network). There is carpet in the office, but not in the hallway--which is going to be some kind of mess when we finally get some snow. And my particular office is very cave-like, all walls and very boxy.
My subordinate was more or less ensconced at her desk yesterday, but it is going to be a while before I go in completely; I'm functioning very well out of the satellite office, and I feel there is no point in spending a lot of time down at the main office at least until phones are functional again. It's taken just over four months, nearly to the day, before a minimum of functionality was restored. I have no idea whether that should be considered quick or not; there are still places in the area where flood debris is still on the curb, and at the other end of the spectrum places like Home Depot were back up and running seven or eight weeks ago. But even more to the point is, I've realized I'm not really invested in returning, not at all. I like operating on the West Side rather than downtown; I feel much more connected to the community and the youth of the area there. While there is no one left in the Binghamton office that I overtly dislike, I still prefer fewer people around, and with eight people associated with foster care working out of that office, it's difficult for me to be comfortable there, especially since I'm not able to drop $10/day eating lunch from the downtown eating establishments every day. I realize that we need a real office phone rather than my cell, and I've discovered that as low-tech as it now is, a fax machine is a great tool to have. But even when "normal" fully returns, I honestly do not see myself there a whole lot.
And the rebuilding job is kind of typical of the sense I am getting of the area's feelings about this. We can be and are going to be functional, in a way--but something has seriously and irretrievably changed. This was devastating in a way that 2006 really was not (unless, perhaps, in Conklin). Part of the ennui I am feeling about returning to the old office is that it feels a lot like putting Humpty Dumpty together again; it just isn't going to fully take place. I sense a lot of resignation among people in the area who did have major problems that they will clean stuff out and make their places habitable--but it's not going to feel like home again for a long time, if ever. And many have decided that "a long time" is now and aren't coming back or rebuilding. Some neighborhoods, especially in Johnson City, aren't going to fill up again. BAE isn't coming back to Johnson City. The other businesses in the Home Depot plaza and where Toys R US is aren't coming back. It was a body shot, and there's been a lot of damage that can't be undone. And with that realization comes that all the talk about revitalizing this area--some of which came from me--was so much smoke. Talking to people from other regions of the state, it's clear we've been written off in some quarters, that few if any want to pour money and effort into a place like this where nature keeps hammering us--sort of like a mini-New Orleans. I disagree with the sentiment because I live here--but if I lived in Syracuse, or if it was someplace like Utica that kept getting flooded out, I'd be reluctant to put money into the place, too.
And I think this is the worst thing of all. Sometimes after a disaster of this magnitude, there is a real sense of rebirth and renewal of purpose. This feels more like a construction of a hospice, of merely delaying the inevitable. It's not a good feeling.

All Teenagers Now

2012-01-09T06:07:00.000-05:00

Today, my youngest daughter turns 13. I know that Sabrina has been, developmentally, a teen for some time for some time now, as long as three years, but still, there is something about the formality of the occasion that makes it a milestone. I'm not usually one for overt sentimentality, but this is truly a curtain closing for me, an indication that life has irrevocably passed onto a different plane.
Not a worse one--just different. I am positive that Sabrina does not view her thirteenth birthday as a negative development; as a matter of fact, she just informed me so as she is up at 5:35 AM for perhaps the first time in her life. And even more than the child evolving into a teen, I am seeing glimpses of the adult to come--an adult who will be an asset to a world that will sorely need them. Even at this age, it is clear she is essentially kind-hearted; she is very intelligent; and she has a degree of problem-solving capability unusual for her age. She's been raised that way, to be sure, but you can only provide so much in the way of guidance, and in her particular case, there's been some input pulling in the other direction, too, which she has resisted. Most of the time, I have to tell you that Sabrina is not difficult to parent. She's not perfect; nobody, much less middle-school youths, is. But she is a damn good, very motivated and self-confident young lady, not sullen and uncommunicative, and fairly independent for her age. And she is very level-headed; she told me a couple of weeks ago that she was considered deactivating her Facebook account because of the "all the drama" her friends seem to be surrounded with.
It hit me the other day when her mid-term grades came in the mail that in a few short weeks she will be halfway through middle school already, and that time is truly going by fast. My landlord and friend Nancy was here for an hour yesterday, and we were talking about Sabrina learning to walk at the noon meeting so many years ago. I recently came across a cache of pictures taken when she was an infant, and I've been amazed at how little her face has changed since literally the day she was born. I keep every year's school picture on my desk at work from the time she was in pre-K, and the progression through the years in those portraits is remarkable to behold; I remember each and every one of those picture days, each of those milestones. I took down all the Christmas decorations yesterday, and I remember each Christmas of hers, as well, from the first one when she was walking unsteadily in Shannon's apartment on Morgan Street, to the one where I barely was able to get the presents under the tree before she woke up sick as a dog, to the first one where she really believed in Santa, to the last couple here when belief has vanished but the spirit has not. It's bittersweet, as all evidence of aging is.
But this day is not about me and my feelings; it is a celebration of my wonderful daughter. She is the axis, frankly, my life revolves around; I cannot imagine my existence without her. She has become a very good person; I am sure that there are trials and tribulations coming, as there are with any adolescent, but I do not fear the coming years, because I deal with troubled youth for a living and the warning signs of serious storms ahead simply are not there. I'm not even as worried about the knucklehead boy factor as I once was; she has shown that she simply will not stand for immature and selfish behavior from anyone. The few boys I've seen around her that I know she's been interested in have been decent kids themselves. She remains interested in schoolwork and her viola and sports. She spends a lot of time with her iPod and on YouTube; she is much more knowledgeable about popular and alternative music than I was at a similar age, and her taste is pretty eclectic, always an encouraging sign. She's not all happy and joyous all of the time, but for the most part, she is content, very rarely if ever "bored" in the way that many of her contemporaries seem to be.
I don't have a lot of hope for the world's future, nor for the youth of this country; I think that short of massive bloodletting, either natural or man-made, the general downward trend is pretty much irreversible. But I also feel that my task has become providing my kids with the ability to survive and perhaps even thrive in a more Hobbesian world, and I feel encouraged that Sabrina at least has a fighter's chance to make her way in that world--she can think for herself, she is capable of discernment, she is interested in more than the gratification of her impulses. That she is a pleasure to be around now is also very encouraging, too. And even though we may not mark her birthday with big cakes and a mass of presents anymore--although next week there will be a Skate Estate event, it is much more low-key than ever before--it still is an occasion to be celebrated. I love her dearly, and she is a very special and beautiful young lady, even at 13.
Happy Birthday, Boo Bear.

Book Review: FLASHBACK

2012-01-08T20:44:00.000-05:00

I have a weakness for apocalyptic thrillers. While I'm not really buying into all this 2012 as the end of the world stuff, I do firmly believe that the current state of affairs is unsustainable, and that there is a a very rude and thorough awakening coming in the years to come. Aside from truly asinine stuff like the Left Behind series, I am willing to invest a day or two in almost any novel that shows the world of the future, and most books of the genre are not optimistic in outlook. Dan Simmons' Flashback does not buck the trend.
The novel is set a mere twenty years in the future, and the world it depicts is quite different than the one we live in now. I will state what I liked about the book up front. Most novels cannot keep a reader interested for 550 pages, but this book does. The novelty of the setting aside, it is a tightly constructed whodunit/thriller with enough plot twists to keep the reader glued to the action. The main protagonist of the novel is not any of the human characters, but rather a drug, called flashback, that allows the user to relive past experiences again as if back at the time and place, and the depiction of such a drug being cheap and readily available rings true. The depictions of the a world gone strange, of maintenance of basic infrastructure being neglected, also is sobering to behold, and the author apparently shares my personal view that in the future, cities rather than suburbia or the countryside are going to be the preferred spots to live. The book kept my attention all the way through it, and although some of the climax was easy to see coming, there were enough surprises to still pack a wallop--and the nature of flashback worked nicely at the end of the book, too, as what was real and what was not was not apparent until the very end.
And yet this book could have been so much more. Although he has written many books, I've never read Simmons before, and if his political views are accurately represented here, I never will again, despite my general enjoyment of this book. His depiction of how the United States arrived at the sorry state it is in during the book sounds like a Rush Limbaugh wet nightmare. Crushing debt caused by overwhelming entitlement spending; liberal leaders unilaterally dismantling the country's nuclear capability; easily accessible health care for everyone in the country turning out to be a disaster; global warming/climate change turned out to be totally wrong. Texas has become a capitalist haven with no taxes and a white-hatted militia that rides to the rescue at the end of the book. And most distressingly, the villains, once more in a book of this type, are the dastardly Muslims pursuing jihad against the infidels, only to be outwitted by the terminally devious Japanese. I'm glad I got this book out of the library; I would have been highly pissed if I had actually donated money to fund this Glenn Beck-with-literary-talent's next efforts and, apparently, small arsenal. He knows how to tell a good yarn; it just would be nice if it was not infused with every xenophobic, racist notion that the American right wing has ever conjured up, with the willful disregard of the evidence of the darker side of "progress" thrown into the mix for good measure.
Ultimately, this book turned out to be a more elaborate Left Behind, in that the righteous triumph over the fuzzy-headed liberal secular types. Granted, there is no rapture or Christ coming back at the head of an army here, but a lot of the same plot lines are present. I repeat that as a thriller, it's a pretty damn good book--but the ideas that support the plot are diseased and rotten. I leave it up to the prospective to decide whether it is worth their while.

Epidemic of Crashes

2012-01-08T07:36:00.001-05:00

Even as the national media are reporting (albeit in a head-scratching, how-is-this-happening tone) that crime on a national scale is down drastically, it seems that locally, and the population of the country continues to surge, locally we continue to be see people coming to untimely deaths more and more. There were a couple of suicides among teens recently, and a couple of others succumbed to disease. There was a murder here on New Year's Eve that makes no real sense, and even the police seem baffled by any possible motive, at least at the moment. And it seems that we cannot go more than three or four days without there being a serious and, increasingly, fatal car crash, a trend that started last winter and hasn't really abated.
Maybe I'm just paying better attention, and there aren't more crashes happening. But it sure seems like there are. I could speculate as to why, but I don't really know enough about any of them specifically to make any conclusions. But I do think one factor is that with how light cars are now, any crash at high-speed is going to, airbags or not, going to result in a greater chance of injury and death. Plastic, fiberglass, and aluminum simply do not afford the protection that steel did when striking something else at high speed. The overall benefits of lighter cars outweigh the negative effects, but it seems like you see more and more totally mangled vehicles in any news footage of the crashes. Even the fender benders that you drive by occasionally, where there are three cop cars and a bunch of people standing around waiting for the tow truck, I often wonder, "how the hell are these people standing around" because it looks bad from the outside.
And even though it isn't stated in every case, I am positive that driver distraction is an issue in most of these crashes. I'm not usually a fan of the legislature's "discovering" social maladies and then making things illegal, but cell phone use and texting while driving is something that I totally agree with the recent crackdown upon. The number of people talking on cell phones while driving has not appreciably diminished since it was made a ticketable offense; if anything, it is increasing, as the generation that has had cell phones since they were in grade school are now young adults and driving and constant use of the cell phone is as ingrained as breathing to them. But honestly, it isn't the younger set that causes the near-misses that I routinely see; it's the middle-aged people, the ones who still think they can multi-task like they did ten or fifteen years ago but who clearly cannot. As far as texting... it used to be that the only driver looking down that you ever saw was an old guy who was trying to read his newspaper while driving. Now, at virtually every traffic light, at least one car in front of you has a driver looking in their lap, and after you beep the horn to get them moving--well, they don't hit "send" before pulling away.
But these activities have at least come to the attention of the public, lawmakers, and police. The one that is really starting to drive me batty, and which is becoming increasingly dangerous, is the driver with the iPod buds in his/her ears, who is totally oblivious to anything not in their direct line of vision. I have seen, just in the last three days, three different drivers lost in their own world of music who did not hear and/or see ambulances with sirens blaring until the distance between them was measured in tens of feet, and in less dramatic fashion, the number of people distracted in this manner and who make bonehead decisions while behind the wheel has increased exponentially in the last year or so. And if the habits of middle-and-high schoolers are any indication, this is going to become the next big drive-to-ban.
iPods and earphones have been dangerous in public for several years actually. I remember when BU opened their new academic building downtown about four years ago. The building is next to the Galleria, where our offices are located, and I can attest that at least twenty BU students, in the first year it was open, walking from downtown to the building nearly caused accidents as they strolled down Hawley Street and through the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, totally oblivious to the traffic and traffic patterns--such as changing lights--around them. The problem hasn't really gone away; it's more like the people who regularly use the hotel lot have learned to lean on the horn while still a good 50 feet away whenever we see wires snaking down from a walking person's ears into their coats or chest. Sometimes you have to hit it again, too, as you get closer to them.
The worst part about all these distractions is that the original offender often is not directly involved in the crash; they have done something which causes another driver behind them to do something they ordinarily would not do, which leads to the crash. I'm not sure what can be done about that short of what's been done already. If nothing else, though, if municipalities really want to crack down on the use of phones and iPods while driving, any possible shortfalls in revenue can be made up simply by ticketing what appears to be a near-ubiquitous practice whenever a law enforcement officer happens to see it.

Anonymity

2012-01-07T06:43:00.000-05:00

There were a few people who shared at the meeting last night about the anonymity of being in recovery, and their experiences recently with people breaking that anonymity in public. And it's a subject I deal with every day, from both directions. Posting daily on this blog, and often speaking of recovery matters, I've had to take into account the principle almost every time I post. I believe that I've never put anyone's name in here that is not comfortable with being known in recovery, even by first name only. I have put a few people in here over the past 30 months by full name, but those who have been so named are, beyond the shadow of a doubt public recovering figures.
And that still doesn't mean that I would put something up on Facebook about them, or accost them in the Mall in front of people I don't know and start talking about something that happened in a meeting, or hug people at their job, or anything else of that nature. It's a lesson I learned the hard way during my first year in recovery. I didn't feel like there was any reason for me to hide the fact I was in recovery--considering what a small town this really is and how public my fall from grace had been, I wanted people to know that I had gotten a grip on my addiction and was trying to do something about it. But in the first summer clean, working with my first sponsor, I came to realize that other people's circumstances were different. I worked, at the time, for my father, who knew better than anyone the depths I had sank to--but other people had employers who didn't know about their addiction. Some people worked in places where the knowledge of a past filled with drug use would have seriously compromised their chances of remaining there--those who have jobs at insurance companies, for example. There were some people whose immediate families obviously were aware that they were in recovery--but whose extended families had no idea and would not have been supportive. I remember making the argument that "it's an honest program" and really feeling that for people to fully embrace their recovery, they should not keep up masks or lie by omission--and my first sponsor telling me that that decision wasn't mine to make, that everyone's circumstances and process were different and that I did not have the right to accelerate other people's process or to impose my ideas of what recovery was on someone else.
I got it and accepted it, even if I felt I was still right. Going on thirteen years later, I still think that if one is not willing to be an addict to the world, then that person has imposed limits on how much they can recover. But I've also long ago accepted that not everyone is looking for the same things out of recovery that I am. Many do not even move past the point where a difference becomes apparent between "not using" and "recovering." Many people do start to realize that a full commitment to the recovery process would involve seismic changes in their value systems and a lot of work, and decide that they don't want to go to that level or to the next level. I've had three sponsees over the years that worked diligently for a long time and honestly wanted recovery, and were able to identify some of the real core issues they faced--but simply were not willing to move past those points and preferred to deal with the pain and unmanageability they knew rather than take a chance on stepping into unknown territory. Two of those guys, to my knowledge, are still clean today, and still live very chaotic lives--but in their mind, the main point is not the chaos surrounding them because of the auxiliary issues, but the fact that they are not dealing with the chaos of active addiction. And it's not my place to tell them that they are wrong; I"m not them. My personality is such that I'm not one whose tolerance of emotional pain is high enough to sustain that sort of chaos, but I'm aware that everyone is different and has different tolerances of pain.
And even though I made the decision a long time ago to publicly identify myself as being a recovering person, and feel that it's been the right one for me, I have to say that the issue of anonymity has come up for me, too, times when I haven't just shrugged it off. I remember one time, about five years ago when my home group was the one that meets at General and has New Horizons inpatient attend it, taking a client to a doctor's appointment in one of the buildings right down the street--and being hailed from half a block away by someone who had just gotten out of inpatient. The guy bounded over and started talking enthusiastically about joining the home group and how wonderful something had played out and being clean was great--all with my client standing there. At the next meeting, I took the guy aside and explained why he might not want to make a habit of it, that although it hadn't been an issue for me, it sure would have been for a lot of other people in those circumstances. He said he understood, but clearly did not, and I heard through the grapevine that he shared at three or four meetings about his resentment with my having said something to him.
And then, like most others, he was gone within a month. The disease of addiction is characterized primarily by overwhelming self-centeredness. In this case, the self-centeredness was easy to see; this guy didn't have anything to lose, and it was inconceivable to him that other people's situations and thoughts would be different than his. And I think that's the case in most of these instances, that people who break anonymity of others aren't doing so out of malice, but rather because of myopia, of not understanding that others may think and feel differently than they do. It hasn't happened to me, but I have heard some people share before that they got angry when the issue was raised because "I needed help, man, and this individual (usually drawn out into about a seven-syllable word) wouldn't give it to me" and led to variations on the "NA people with time are assholes" rant that newcomers often voice when they don't get what they want when they want it. That's why we have meetings and why we give out phone numbers--because there is a time and a place to deal with that sort of stuff, with helping out those who ask for help. That time isn't necessarily when we're taking clients to the doctor, or taking our kids to the movies, or standing in line at Weis. It's good for a newcomer to see someone that they have seen in a meeting in a business suit or at a public fete for some politician or operating a business--but the other people in business suits and the people associated with the mayor's office or the other workers and patrons of the business may not be aware that the person you know is in recovery. They may well be, too, but it isn't anyone else's mission to make them aware of it, for no reason other than boosting the ego of someone who is new to recovery and needs some sort of internal reassurance that "normality" can return to recovering people's lives.
As I mentioned, I have found it the easier way to go to be totally open about my being in recovery from active drug addiction. It's worked out very well; to my mind, it has removed a potential higher power-- fear of exposure--from my life. But there have been some prices paid for that. When I interviewed for a caseworker's position at DSS several years ago, the distaste for my being in recovery among two of the people interviewing me was obvious. I have not been invited back to Union-Endicott to speak to their health classes in over a year because a school administrator who was not comfortable with my being openly in recovery is now in a position to prevent my coming in. More than one seemingly promising budding relationship has foundered because the woman was not comfortable with my being a recovering addict, no matter how much distance there was between then and now. I can deal with that, but I am also aware that other people draw the line in different places, and that's more than acceptable from a moral and principled standpoint, too. The principle exists for a reason, and it should be practiced by all of us to the best of our ability. There is a reason, after all, we normally do not share our last names in meetings and in other forums. Some of us choose to go beyond the guidelines, and I do--but it's only OK because it was and is my decision. Not someone else's.

Men's Group

2012-01-06T06:07:00.000-05:00

Our little men's group that meets every couple of weeks has really jumpstarted not only my recovery process since the summer, but it has had a positive effect in many other areas of my life, too. It's not like those groups that are a staple of the rehab and outpatient process: there is no moderator or obvious authority figure. What it is just five guys and a Step Working Guide, answering the questions aloud and using those questions and answers as springboards into discussions and insights on how to live our recoveries on a daily basis.
There have been five of us for about six months now, and I think it's very fair to say that it has been a godsend for all of us. Every single one of us is in a better space than we were in July, and three of us have gone through or are going through major crises or events that have been known to derail many other people. I'm not going to speak for the others, but in my own case, I can't emphasize enough the stabilizing and calming effect the group has had. It has made me justify many of the beliefs and attitudes that I possess, and change a few of them that did not hold up to scrutiny. It has served as a constant reminder that I only have what I have in my life because I made a commitment many years ago to live, as much as possible, with principles as my guiding star, and that when I get away from that focus, when that is no longer the fuel of the engine, the one that ultimately suffers is me, and then by extension everyone else around me.
This blog now has a substantial archive, and looking back at posts from a year or even six months ago, the change is noticeable. There are things that I put out there that I look at now and say, "What were you hoping to accomplish there?" Yes, anger comes, often with good reason. Yes, much more often than not I am right, especially regarding other people in this fellowship. But being right isn't the point, or at least shouldn't be. At my home group, this idea came up, and the entire point of the recovery process is ultimately to give back, to make the idea of living a recovering life not only attractive to those just starting the journey, but to outsiders, too--and spewing bile like an erupting volcano doesn't do a whole lot to further that aim.
One of the things we were talking about the other night is how our roles in our families have changed over the years we've been clean. There are the obvious changes, like being trusted to be around money in our parent's homes or being welcome at family events. But the deeper, more subtle changes take some time to take effect--like your input being considered and eventually sought out again, your presence being taken for granted, and your accomplishments valued and your knowledge gained as a result of your recovery process being taken seriously by others in the family. I think the largest effect I have had in my own family has been the last. I had to come to grips with the role my father had in my addiction--not the drug using, necessarily, but the mindset that lay beyond the using. It is safe to say that the rest of the family was resistant to some of the process, but one positive aspect to it was that it started their own process to dealing with the same issue. My father was a complex man who was not a monster, by any stretch of the imagination--but the idealized, sanitized St. Nicholas that my siblings viewed him as, or at least felt compelled to pay lip service to, continued to have negative and debilitating effects on their lives for years after his death. It is only recently that I have seen a more realistic appraisal bubble to the surface--and it has been a huge factor in the very substantial changes that all of them have implemented in their lives...the point I am making is that none of them would have taken the lead in going down that path; they followed in my wake. And I would not have gone down that road without this process.
And the men's group is now serving as a bulldozer to continue creating the path. I had been trying to get through the jungle of life with a steak knife for a couple of years, and I wasn't getting anywhere. I've got my machete back, and I definitely am moving forward again. It's a good thing, and as usual after starting moving again, I wonder why it is that I ever stopped in the first place.

Culture War

2012-01-05T06:36:00.000-05:00

Just as I was reading the book I reviewed this morning, culture warrior Rick Santorum made a surprisingly strong showing in the Iowa Republican caucuses, and is now taking his turn on the national media stage. Although Santorum is not a fundamentalist Protestant like most of the traditional "evangelical" politicians (he is Catholic, and representative of most everything about the Church that drove millions like me out of it as soon as we had a chance to bolt over the last fifty years), he certainly is representative of the genre in that he is proudly close-minded and reactionary on a whole lot of issues. Which led to a few connections being forged in my mind.
The governor gave his State of the State address yesterday, and a large part of it was devoted to New York's very disappointing standing among states in most testing and evaluation standards, leading some local school officials to complain about being targeted or scapegoated. I think there are many reasons why this state has lower standards, but few have anything to do with the quality of educators or the wasting of funding. One is that New York City drags down the state's scores, and the problem with the city's educational system is that not only are there few resources there, but there is a youth demographic that is immersed in an environment away from school that is not conducive to fostering learning. This is generally acknowledged. But there is a correlation to that upstate, too, that has nothing to do with the common perception of urban, non-white single parent households that do not, supposedly, "value" education, and that correlation is that those kind of environments exist in many "better" homes. The environment is the result of a mindset that is wilfully close-minded, that not only does not accept concepts like evolution as being legitimate, but actively encourages and mandates belief in fantasies such as Creationism. Simply put, when you are teaching your children to believe in fallacies such as a 6000-year old earth, in the face of overwhelming evidence that the idea is not true, why are you surprised when it turns out that your children are morons? You have taught them to disregard evidence, to not think critically or logically, but rather to accept and believe in an authority that is beyond questioning and that insists on total control of the information flow into their minds in the critical learning years.
In humans as in computers--"garbage in, garbage out." The loudest conservative voices--one of whose is Santorum's-- screaming about the lack of educational prowess of America's youth relative to everyone else in the world are the same ones who, if they had their way, would limit even more those same children's access to anything other than religious literature. It's cause and effect. Why would we have a vibrant sector of young people who are interested and want careers in science and technology? You've been teaching them for thirty years that the scientific establishment is jamming crap down all our throats, and that a book written thousands of years ago is the only legitimate source of information.
It is possible to be intelligent and believe in God. There are even a few people out there that are believers in the literal truth of the Bible who are highly intelligent--but those people, I've noticed, are unusually open-minded among their own kind. Pastor Ken was a literalist, but he also had an entire bookshelf full of books that attempted to reconcile what science has shown to be true and what is presented in the Bible. In other words, he and other intelligent literalists are aware that there is a conflict that needs to be reconciled and are striving to resolve it.
Most fundamentalist believers, like most people belonging to churches and indeed most people in general, are followers, intellectually lazy. They take the path of least resistance in most matters of the mind, which in this case means deciding that something is wrong and shutting out that source of information more or less permanently. As an example, there was yet another bout on Facebook yesterday of "drug test welfare recipients" posting. It doesn't matter how often you show them evidence that the problem is largely illusory and that the places that have actually starting doing it are finding out that it costs a lot more to do universal drug-testing than any savings resulting from excess benefits being paid out--these people just know there are welfare cheats out there, and by God they must be prevented from sucking on the public teat, even if we have to empty the treasury to make sure they don't get access to it. They'd rather empty the wallet so that no one has anything rather than take the chance that someone might get some pittance that they might not have "earned" (and how this jibes with the message of Jesus of Nazareth to "give to the poor" is never mentioned. I don't recall Jesus mentioning any qualifiers on this front). Their way to reconcile differences is not to keep searching, to explore and find out more about the issue; their way is to silence the other side so that they don't have to think about it. The problem is that they wish to control the flow of information to their children, too, and that's where the issue has manifested itself most visibly--and where it has done the most damage.
Bluntly, we have raised, in the thirty-five years since the Moral Majority became a force in American politics, a generation of morons. These people are now parents and adults seeking office, and they have been trained to be willfully ignorant, dogmatic, close-minded, and to believe that bullshit is reality. I realize that sort of language is not conducive to dialogue or likely to convince anyone that they are wrong.
But I don't care anymore. YOU'VE RUINED MY COUNTRY WITH YOUR WILLFUL IGNORANCE. I don't care about your feelings or your sensibilities. If you honestly believe that the earth is 6000 years old and that all the evidence of evolution is somehow illegitimate, then you are the problem, more so than the gangbangers and the druggies and the illegal immigrants and even the kleptocrats in charge of the country. And this is how we get travesties like the Republican Party of today, full of ideologues and full-fledged morons who believe in nonsense and ideas that have been proven to be wrong time and time again, and why we do nothing about climate change as the inevitable effects start to take hold, and why the looting of the country continues unabated by our kleptocrats, and why our prisons are full. We have a generation in place that actively encourages belief in nonsense, and is quite militant in defending that ignorance. If these people put half the effort into actually becoming knowledgeable about the world as they did into defending the indefensible and to maintaining the walls of their ignorance, this world would be a much better place.

Book Review: PARADISE LUST

2012-01-05T05:46:00.000-05:00

Paradise Lust is an interesting little first book by regular magazine writer Brook Wilensky-Lanford. It's a (mostly, but not entirely) tongue-in-cheek chronicle of various efforts throughout the centuries to locate the actual Garden of Eden. Since two of the rivers described as "watering" Eden in the Book of Genesis are the Tigris and Euphrates, most speculation and searches have focused on Iraq--but there are chapters on those who have insisted it was at the North Pole, Ohio, Florida, China, and Africa, as well, that also served as mini-biographies of the people proposing the theories and portraits of particular moments of time and place in the cultures that spawned the individuals, which made for very interesting reading. The author does an excellent job throughout the book of reminding the reader that Eden is a world phenomenon, that non-Christian cultures have viewed themselves of having a stake in the tale of human origins, as well, and thus the quest for the Garden has not been limited to practicing or believing Christians.
The end of the book is a little more sobering. In the last three chapters, she profiles the evangelical fundamentalists of the United States who not only insist in the Bible's literal truth, but who aggressively combat evolution in the educational system; and one of the more respected but anonymous archaeologists whose views are deemed rather reasonable by even aggressive atheists (if the Garden existed, it probably is underwater now, because it was located in what we now call the Persian Gulf; seas were 200-300 feet lower before the end of the last Ice Age, and there is considerable geographic evidence that the Biblical description of four rivers, including the two existing ones, becoming one actually was an accurate description of the topography at the time)). But the chapter on the culture war between fundamentalist evangelicals and secular scientists (who tend to be just as dogmatic, in a less offensive way), and how few there are that are willing to try to bridge the gap, was actually kind of depressing, and is an often-unnoticed factor in the polarization of American society. There are a few who can manage their faith and still be open-minded, but unfortunately few and far between--and the description of trying to deal with the children brought up in the fundamentalist mindset is kind of chilling.
And the practical effect is this: a lot of the same voices decrying the poor quality of American education are the same ones who rather militantly insist that Creation is true and evolution is not. There is a strong connection there, for anyone open-minded enough to see it. And the truth is that this is the only "Christian" country in the world this happens in, and it's not a coincidence that we rank near the bottom of every conceivable measure of educational quality, and we sink lower with every generation.

New Year's Random Notes

2012-01-04T06:03:00.000-05:00

A taste test of life:
1) Primates Flinging Poo had its first true report card last night, and guess what? Almost everyone is still standing, which means we have even more of this nonsense to look forward to. For Republicans,, this really can't be a gratifying result. The anointed frontrunner, a Mormon richer than Croesus that is intent on repudiating every accomplishment of his one term as governor that seems to be his sole qualification for President (other than being the son of a career politician), won by eight--yes, that's 8--votes over a guy no one was talking about a week ago that is a failed former Senator from Pennsylvania, a guy who is, frankly, almost a caricature of the bigoted, out-of-touch free market WASP, and by a few thousand over a guy who seriously thinks that a return to the days of the Founding Fathers is the answer to our problems. The happiest guy in America has to be Barack Obama right now, because if Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are the best the other side can throw at him, he's probably going to be President for another five years.
2) I'm not a huge fan of television, as regular readers know, and even less so of "Glee." My daughter loves the show, though, and I've learned that the more I harp on its insipid plotting and over-the-top acting, the more she tunes me out. I'm actually not a fan of much of the music of the show, either, but I realize that the songs performed on the show are not going to sound either like the original versions or a true cover that a living, functioning band would perform. Every Gleek I know has said that the current season is a bad time to start watching the show for the first time, as the first two seasons were apparently much better musically and the Disney Channel plot lines were fresher and less a parade of caricatures and stereotypes. And after grudgingly watching last night's episode--we only have one television and I am in full I-don't-get-out-of-the-recliner-after-dinner hibernation mode that I will be in until March-- I have to say they have a point. It was the "Rumours" episode, where the cast played out a mini-drama based on Fleetwood Mac's classic album of the same name (and the events that inspired it). They covered five songs from the album, and I have to say that all of them were done well. Really well, as a matter of fact; by the end of the episode, I was as glued to the set as Sabrina was. If every episode was as good as that one, I'd watch every week, too. It helped that they were singing songs that I knew and liked, but those songs were very well done, too--especially Go Your Own Way, which might well have been the best version I've ever heard the song down by anyone other than Fleetwood Mac....it's nice to see, finally, what got the world excited for a time. I feel like less of a curmudgeon now.
3) After nearly four months, our flooded-out main office is almost ready for re-occupancy. There are still exposed wires in places, none of the offices have doors installed yet, and apparently the phone lines and other technological things have yet to be installed. The door to the office has been moved around the corner, too, which is going to take some getting used to. But it seems plausible that in a week or two, the regional office will be more or less back home. For me, personally, having had a taste of working out of a sterile and isolated corporate environment and more in a community, I've decided that I will continue to spend a good portion of my time at the satellite office; I get more done with less distractions. And it's becoming clear that a lot has to be done. The bedrock of our program as it now exists is our network of host homes, and I just found out yesterday one is moving out of the area in a few months. I've got to scramble to find more, especially since this is the year we have to go up for renewal of the federal grant. I am going to need to be on top of my game, and this whole office situation has been something that hasn't allowed for a lot of planning because of its ad-hoc nature. It will be good to put that behind us, even if some of the changes wrought are permanent... I'm trying not to think about some of the things that are going to be long-term concerns, such as possible funding cuts and such. I've got plenty to take care of right now. When the time is right to deal fully with that stuff, I will. I can't get bogged down in projections and worrying.
4) And as much as I can feel the subtle barometric changes that presage stormy weather, for some the hurricane has arrived. I have one friend in particular who is having an awful time finding necessities--shelter, job, transportation. I've been passing leads onto her trying to help in any way that is feasible, but her energy is clearly dissipated in mere survival moment, which is a shame because she has much going for her, when she has stable circumstances; it's not an exaggeration to say that struggling to survive, in this particular case, hurts the community, because she has some rare gifts. She said something yesterday that hit me hard; she is truly alone--her family preyed on her when she was younger, and she really has no source of support other than her friends and acquaintances, and many of them have turned out not to have her best interests at heart, either. It made me realize how lucky I am to have a still-functional family that is capable of supporting me when I hit rough patches--not support as in "take care of me", but in the sense of "help." For those that don't have that going for them, it's next to impossible to move forward, and indeed most of one's energy is engaged in mere survival. Welcome to life in twenty-first century America...I actually think that in some ways, it can become an advantage. I've written before that the future holds a repopulating of cities, as the suburban gasoline-based lifestyle becomes increasingly untenable, and in the same vein, I think a reversal of the trend of spread-out and non-nuclear families is going to reverse, too, simply because it is going to be very difficult to make it in isolation. It's unfortunate, though, that the future is now for some whose fortunes have ebbed. And it's not a pretty sight to behold.

Winter Classic--The Good Guys Win

2012-01-03T06:17:00.001-05:00

I had been looking forward to the Winter Classic, the NHL's annual New Year's outdoor game, for months--not since it was announced that the Rangers were going to be in it against the Flyers, but since it was clear that the Rangers were pretty good this year. The game itself certainly was not disappointing. The first half of the game was as interesting as a scoreless game can get, and the second half of the game showed why I am more excited to be a Ranger fan than I have been since 1979. There have been other Ranger teams that were good, obviously, in the intervening periods, but I am not sure, with the exception of the 2005-6 team, that one has ever been this good this unexpectedly.
Every move that the team has made over the last three or four years was on wonderful display yesterday. The youth movement put in place when John Tortarella became coach almost three years ago was in full force; Tortarella won a Stanley Cup in Tampa largely because he always favors a young player with promise to a veteran player with problems, even if the veteran isn't necessarily awful or over the hill, and that has been the case here. But even more than that, this is a team that is, it is becoming clearer with every passing game, extremely well-constructed. There isn't the problem of Ranger teams from years past of players filling roles that they are not capable of filling; we are not seeing debacles like Michael Roszival playing 25 minutes a game or Chris Drury on the first line, to take two egregious examples from periods of years past.
And the great thing about playing young players regularly is that, while sometimes they don't improve a great deal from the point when they enter the league, often they do. There were four players on the ice yesterday that are noticeably better than they were even a year ago-- McDonaugh, Del Zotto, Stepan, and Anisimov. Guys like Boyle, Dubinsky, and Fedetenko are not being asked to do things they are not capable of doing; it is no surprise that Dubinsky has caught fire since being demoted to the fourth line, because he's a better player than most fourth-line players in the league, even if he is not a first-line player. And the guys who are here that were not here a year ago have been put in place with care, not just shoved in there because there was a roster spot to fill. Rookie Carl Hagelin has been a revelation since being called up. Defensemen Bickel, Stralman, and Woywitka (when he plays) are not asked to do the heavy lifting; they are basically asked not to hurt the cause and play smart, and by and large they do. The holdover guys in key roles have all done as much or more than they are capable of, largely because they don't have to do more than that anymore--from scrappers like Prust to the sniper Gaborik to the stellar goalie Lundquist.
And there was one key addition that cannot be overstated. I've mentioned this before, but I have loved Brad Richards since he was a rookie on the Lightning a decade ago. He won a Conn Smythe Trophy (MVP of the playoffs) in Tampa, and has been a great player for Dallas the last three seasons, and honestly, even though they gave him a ton of money to sign in the summer and the Rangers have not had a lot of luck historically with big-money contracts, I was ecstatic that he was a Ranger, because I knew he was good and would remain so. And he has been. He scored the winning goal yesterday, the sixth time he has done that this year, but even more than the scoring, he plays smart. A perfect example occurred yesterday: Richards plays point on the power play, and Claude Giroux got the puck by him and for a split second a breakaway looked possible. Richards held him up and drew a penalty, which may not seem smart but 1) it beats the possibility of a short-handed goal, 2) it was 25 seconds into a Ranger power play, so it wasn't like there was a huge cost--4 on 4 for a while and a short penalty kill, and 3) he held him up without knocking him down, taking the possibility of a penalty shot out of the equation, which, considering the officiating yesterday, was a distinct possibility.
Having praised the victors, it's time to take issue with other aspects of the Classic. Tortarella ripped the referees after the game, which is sure to earn him a hefty fine because in the league's mind he tarnished the league's showcase event--but he was absolutely right, because the officiating was execrable, especially in the third period. Ryan Callahan got a penalty for holding the stick of an opposing player; the fact that the stick was around his throat apparently was not considered in the decision. Marian Gaborik was, as Tortarella said, "pitchforked" in the stomach, but no call was made. And the decision to call a penalty shot with 19 seconds left because McDonaugh allegedly closed his hand on the puck in the crease--if he did, it sure wasn't obvious--smacked of manufactured drama, a way to make a storybook ending. Lundquist was up to the task, but still, it should have never come to that.
And NBC's coverage of the game wasn't terribly good. There was a lot of focus in the pre-game and intermission reports about the history of the Flyers--which to my mind was overdone, although the game was in Philadelphia, so I guess it was a defensible decision. But the league clearly wants to anoint Claude Giroux as its next superstar; NBC couldn't go five minutes without another fawning Giroux panegyric, mentioning seven different times that he was second in the league in points; during the game, everything he did was commented on and showed on the replay, made even worse when he actually scored. I half expected, during one of the bench shots, to see someone in an NBC blazer on their knees fellating him. Meanwhile, aside from the usual "Lundquist is great" patter, it seemed like the only Ranger story worthy of mention was Marc Staal coming back for his first game of the season. The fact that Gaborik leads the league in goals was not mentioned until the first intermission. The fact that Richards is the most obvious addition to a team that has struggled to make the playoffs for the last five years and is now atop the standings was completely ignored, even though Richards was the marquee free agent signing of the past off-season and his unquestioned standing as one of the better players in the league. Jaromir Jagr is a nice story, but he's 40 years old; why not talk about some of the better players in the league that actually have futures? I'm not usually one to complain about this kind of stuff, but it was blatant; leave it to Tortarella to notice, when he took issue with Pierre McGuire saying, during one of those in-game interviews, that the Rangers had been "dominated" up to that point.
You'd think NBC would be happy that a New York is good. I have a sneaking suspicion that someone far up the NBC hierarchy wanted some kind of special favor from the team and were told no. It will be interesting to see what kind of coverage the team gets as NBC eases into its season of hockey coverage. My guess is going to be that not much is going to change. It's pretty sad when the Rangers' biggest booster on the analyst team is Mike Milbury, who, as a former Bruin player and Islander coach, isn't exactly a gushing fan of the team. But in true melodrama fashion, the good guys won.

More Time Warner Follies

2012-01-02T07:47:00.000-05:00

I got two more reminders over the weekend why Time Warner Cable is one of the worst outfits in an industry not known for sterling customer service or value for the money. Saturday, there was a brightly-colored notice that stated boldly on the outside that they were thanking me for my business--and on the inside, stating that the cost of my cable service was increasing 16% this coming month and presumably forever and more. There were the usual excuses as to why, and in my particular, being I gave up on the big cable package a long time ago, it wasn't much of a dollar increase. But I have seen other people on Facebook complaining about it being a serious increase--and if you're getting one of the premium packages, I imagine it's got to be close to $50 more a month they will be paying.
And then yesterday, we went over my mother's house for a family dinner, and I was flipping through the channels and noticed that the two Madison Square Garden channels were gone. There was a self-serving blurb on the screen stating that when MSG was willing to be reasonable, Time Warner would contract with them again. I've read what I can in the media about the dispute, and my honest view is "a pox on both of them." I have to admit that MSG isn't carried on Dish Network, either, and I know that the guy who runs MSG is a jerk (he owns the Rangers and the Knicks, and has not exactly covered himself in glory during the time he has done so), so ordinarily, I would be inclined to lean to Time Warner's side of the dispute.
But there is such a thing as a track record, and for twenty-five years, TWC's record has been one of unrestrained rapacity, of charging more and more for delivering less and less. Not wanting to deal with Time Warner any longer was a major factor in my deciding back in 1996 to get Direct TV, and my ex-wife and older kids still have it at their home. The biggest reason I have not is that most of my current Time Warner bill is for Roadrunner, and I honestly am not any more thrilled about giving Verizon a larger role in my life ($2 fee to pay your bill? Really? That may have been the most blatant eff-you to a customer base that I have ever seen), and I am not sure what other wireless options are out there.
But I think I am going to start exploring it. I get seven channels on TV and high-speed wireless, and will be paying $65/month staring in January for it. I really cannot afford to be paying any more for this kind of stuff, especially since I got a notice from the state telling me that the child support I pay my ex-wife is going to go up for a cost-of-living increase and Sabrina's mother got her child support to me reduced because she remains unemployed. The basic package for Direct TV runs $30/month, at least for the first year, and I'm not sure that includes MSG, which would be the main reason I would want to get full cable again. I could also get access to NHL Network through the Internet, but that would be $119 for a season's worth--which, come to think of it, I could probably pull off. I don't really want cable for anything else except for maybe NFL Network--
Oh, wait, Time Warner doesn't carry that, either, and that dispute has been going on for two years. So I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for MSG to come back.
The larger point is that we're going to find out as a society whether or not we're as addicted to television as the media conglomerates seem to think we are. I know that $200/month is not something that a lot of families can afford anymore. With the advent of stuff like Hulu online, and other distractions such as iPods and iPhones out there, more and more people that I know are just saying "the hell with it," and either getting one of the dish outfits or simply going without. With times lousy and more and more people coming to grips with declining income and no real prospects for improvement, this trend is only going to grow. Television is not really a necessity, as many are finding out, and if it's going to cost a substantial portion of a week's salary to have it in the home, people are going to see how easily they can do without it. I haven't paid for cable since 2003 (I had it, through no doing of my own, twice in the intervening time, when Time Warner's policy of hiring outside technicians to do their work backfired when they got sloppy and didn't put the right blockers in feed box), and I can't say I personally have missed it all that much. Sabrina has adjusted very neatly to the loss of Disney and Nickelodeon, and from my perspective, I would much rather she was into her friends and You Tube music and the occasional Hulu than parked in front of the TV for three hours or more a day watching iCarly and Wizards of Westward Place and whatever other crap the tween/teen networks are putting out there.
While nothing is ever 100% foreseeable, there are some trends that in general are easy to see coming. The decline of major media is one of them. If companies like Time Warner keep charging more and more and providing less and less, the consumer eventually is going to stop coming back. This is one area where the near-monopoly conditions that have prevailed in an industry have certainly not worked to the public's advantage. It's a cliche, but it's very possible to kill the golden goose, especially when most of the content provided can be had elsewhere.

Book Review: RAILROADED

2012-01-02T06:48:00.000-05:00

I was pretty excited when I saw Richard White's Railroaded at the library. Subtitled "The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America," I thought it was going to be a tale of the the legendary building of the transcontinental railroad that helped bring about the integration of the West into the nation. That's the story ingrained in popular mythology, and I was looking forward to seeing how accurate the myth really was.
But that's not the story of the book. With names of people and companies changed, this could be an account of the financial services industry in the last twelve years-- arcane schemes that enriched the corporate officers of the railroads while failing to produce profits; unabashed pouring of money into politics to maintain the looting ability; the signal failure of the railroads to provide what they promised. None of the transcontinental railroads made money; it remained cheaper for people in California to ship goods to Panama, cross the Isthmus and re-ship from there to the East Coast than it did to ship by rail. Rates were arbitrary and devoid of reason--much like wireless and cell phone rates are now. The money to be made in the railroads was in the grants of land to build, not the actual lines. Society's less savory aspects--racism toward Chinese labor, anti-unionism toward the railway workers, stealing Indian land--were put on full display with the building of railroads.
It was so depressingly familiar, in fact, that I found it tough reading. And the unrelenting focus on financial matters, the prose as obtuse as the obfuscated schemes they described, finally lost me about halfway through the book. I'm sure that the story of financial mismanagement and looting is an important one, but the truth is that the book is just very dull for those who don't really understand stock manipulations, dummy corporations, and the bond and security markets. I didn't finish the book, because every time in the last three days that I started reading, I was dozing off within five pages.

A Silly Holiday

2012-01-01T07:54:00.000-05:00

I had no idea, when I was growing up, why New Year's Day was a holiday (and why the Catholic Church had it as one of the Holy Days of Obligation, along with the Ascension, Assumption, All Saints Day, and Christmas. Do they even have HDOs anymore? Are they considered mortal sins if you don't go to church on those days, like they used to be? Does the Church even distinguish between mortal and venial sins anymore?). And now here I am, 48 years old, and I still don't know why New Year's Day is a holiday. I guess, looking back into history, you could make the case that with life expectancies somewhere in the thirties, making it another year was a big deal, but that certainly hasn't been the case in my lifetime. It just looks as if it's a big excuse to get seriously drunk and/or messed up on New Year's Eve, because you don't have to go to work the next day.
Except many people do. Every store is open, and I heard from one of the kids I work with asking for a ride home from work today because the buses stop running at 5 and she has to work later than that. Even more are working tomorrow, I presume, even those of us in the social service field, among others, are not. I might go to the office this morning before Sabrina comes back and might not; I took care of most of the outstanding paperwork last week. I definitely am not going there tomorrow; the Rangers are on in the Winter Classic at 1 and there's a BU women's game at 5. But all this doesn't answer the basic question: why is this a holiday? And it isn't even just an American thing or a Christian thing--there are Chinese New Year, Rosh Hoshanna, Al-Hirja, and Diwali around the world that many people are at least dimly aware of, and I'm sure the Buddhists, Shinto, Australian Aborigines, and God knows who else have their own celebrations, too.
Maybe I'm just churlish in my old age, now that I don't party hearty on New Year's Eve anymore. Maybe I've experienced one useless week too many of going to the office during the week between Christmas and New Year's and not really being able to get anything done. I half-think it's because there are so many college bowl games now that playing on New Year's Day, which used to have the major five bowls which were a natural culmination to the college football season, is no longer a mark of attainment or excellence for a college team, and I'm not parked in front of a television watching ten hours of quality college football like I was thirty-five years ago.
And this New Year's resolution bit--I've kept one for longer than two months in my life; I lost 40 pounds on a New Year's diet in 2005, weight which has, in seven years, crept almost all back on. I am starting a diet this morning, after eating enough yesterday to feed an army for a week, but I have no illusions; I would love to be back at 170 pounds, but I would also love to be twenty-five again, and that's not happening. I will settle for being able to wear 34-waist pants without being afraid the buttons are going to pop if I lean forward while sitting down. As for others--I'm generally pretty happy with myself and what I am doing, and those elements that I didn't like I started addressing months ago. I'm not a big fan of artificially imposed deadlines to alter behavior. I remember the tail end of active addiction, when I had vowed to quit using and go into treatment; I even managed to secure a bed at the ACC four different times--but somehow I never managed to get there, and I ended up stopping using because I got arrested and they wouldn't let me out of jail right away. But I have vivid memories of saying, at least a half-dozen times, "this is the last day" or "this is the last time I'm copping," and it never turned out to be. Same thing with quitting cigarettes: it was the easiest thing in the world to do, because I did it a hundred times. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I said "This is the last pack" or "I won't smoke when I get up tomorrow," and it never happened that way. When I quit smoking, it was because I just decided I wasn't going to light up the next one; there were 14 cigarettes left in the pack that was given away.
Anyhow, I was glad I was not out and about last night, and I'm glad I'm not hungover this morning, and I'm glad this is more or less a normal Sunday. Even if I don't understand why it's a holiday, I'll gladly take the day off. I'm going to see Rachel and Jessica today for a while, and Sabrina comes back from her mother's, and I'm sure with the Mall open I'll be badgered to take her there for a while so she can do her part to become a Consumer-in-Training.

Cover Countdown #1

2011-12-31T19:12:00.000-05:00

This one blew me away the first time I heard it, and still blows me away almost two decades later. The original suffered a bit because the band that performed it got a reputation for being clowns that really didn't do their body of work justice. I always liked the song, but this cover--by a band I have never heard of before or since--was like a completely different song. It's a little faster, a little harder, and emphasis in different places. It's a sort of one-hit wonder of cover versions.

1. Girl U Want
Original Version: Devo
Cover Version: Superchunk

Year's End

2011-12-31T06:36:00.000-05:00

Today is the final day of 2011, a year where, for better or worse, much happened. For myself personally, it ended up being a decent year. I managed to stay employed, for one, without any real concerns or problems. Part of it is growing in the job and learning the limits of what can and can't be done. Part of it is that some changes took place that were beneficial. And part of it was that one good hire can make a very positive difference, and I've been able to change roles and become more of what is expected of an management type rather easily now We've got a difficult year ahead, but honestly, I feel almost hopeful about our chances to get our funding renewed. We've done and continue to do a good job.
On other levels, too, although it was a year of peaks and valleys, I came out of the year in good shape, probably the best I've ever been. I got into three major hassles this year, two with people in recovery and one in the community. The community one was the only one I truly regret; a guy trying his best was hurt by some things I wrote that were not motivated by the best of intentions, and there was fallout to be paid. I learned from it, and I think that I've been more careful about expressing myself and how I do so since then, because I realize that people do pay attention and the ripples go far enough to affect a lot more people than I ever thought. The two in recovery I feel ambivalent about. The long-standing disgust with one has kind of receded into quiescence; our paths don't cross much, and some of the feedback that does reach me indicates that after a dozen years, maybe a little is changing on his end, too. I kind of hope so; it seems impossible to recall most of the time, but we actually got along once, when we were newcomers. The other guy is what he is, and nothing's changing, as was demonstrated as recently as last night, but it's background noise at best--I don't regret what I did and said, and I hadn't even thought about him for months until yesterday.
But on a bigger level, I settled into more manageability and responsibility. Finding another home group was key; not only has it allowed me to remain a part of the candlelight in better humor, but it has simply revitalized the entire recovery process--for a decade, I have done much better with two meetings a week than only one. It opened the door to a number of good people-- Nick, Amanda, Dan, Kristen-- entering my life on a regular basis, and you can never have too many of those in your life. It also opened the door to the step study group, which has really gotten my stalled process moving again. I can feel the difference, and the results, too. I take input a lot better than I did even six months ago, and I am also much more aware of my deficiencies than I have been in a long time--and yes, it softens attitudes towards others. Last night, I had conversations with--and was genuinely glad to have had those conversations with--Eric and Darryl, two guys who have been around for a long time without being able to stay and whose sharing has gotten to me in the past. A year ago, I would have dismissed them as "OMG, wasting our time again?". But they are just guys are trying, who (God bless them) are still coming back for more after repeated stumbles, who want to get well more than anything else in the world. They deserve to be encouraged and supported for the perseverance and willingness they are showing, not quarantined because they haven't made it work for themselves up to this point.
In the last three-four months, I think I've become less judgmental than I have been in a long time, and I have no doubt that repeated, extensive exposure to others who take their recovery seriously in the step study group has been the reason why. We all need points of accountability, and for a few years now, I hadn't, in the recovery process, really had one. I don't think I was so arrogant as to believe that I was a finished product, but there was an arrogance that no one around me had enough to offer me for me to learn from. That particular delusion has, I am certain, passed. I've written about this before, but the great thing about the group is that with five guys with functional programs and extensive recovery experience in one place, it serves as a point of accountability that serves as an effective sort of sponsorship. I am sure that there are book-thumpers that would decry this idea as wrongheaded, but the proof is that it is working. We've all been going through things since the group started that we've managed to keep our equilibrium during, and the group has had a great deal to do with that. And my own sense of serenity and spiritual fitness has increased markedly; I feel like that trend of getting angry more quickly and staying angry longer that had been becoming increasingly apparent since about 2008 has been definitely been reversed.
There are still some things I would like to see change. I've not been in a serious relationship for a long time, and I didn't even hardly date this year. I'm not putting any real effort into it, either, and I'm still not willing to sacrifice manageability to be in a relationship. But as my kids get older, I'm increasingly unwilling to accept that this is going to be how it is from here on out. I'm not sure what's going to happen this coming year, but I do know I would prefer that the status quo change. And it isn't like I can wave a magic wand and have it happen; some positive action is required. Like losing weight and actually keeping it off, for starters; the New Year's diet is going to be adhered to until a target weight is reached, and I don't care if I have to eat grass to do it. I've also made a decision to finally get my feet operated on; I'm waiting on a call back to schedule it. And maybe, just maybe, this general acceptance of people and their weaknesses as well as strengths so apparent in the rooms lately can carry over to other areas, too--like this one.
All three of my children remain remarkable young people. I am so glad that, at least for the present, I am not beset by the worries and problems that I see in parents of children. It is an affirmation, too, that whatever the flaws I might have exhibited over the last few years, I've done a lot of things right, too. This is tweaking, a tune-up, not an overhaul or a complete rebuilding. And in an increasingly difficult world, my three have been given a better chance than most in their generation to not only materially succeed, but also have been given less baggage than most, and have a good chance at being happy and fulfilled, as well.
Some others did not have as good a year as I did, through no fault of their own. I looked back a few weeks ago at the twenty people I was grateful for a year ago, and several of them have gone through trials and tribulations. My turn may well be coming, I know, but for now I'm glad to have gotten a chance to grow without having to go through too much pain.
And that's a fitting epitaph for the year.

Cover Countdown #2

2011-12-30T21:51:00.000-05:00

This is another beauty from "Unplugged." The original was a B-side that I always thought was a great song in its own right, but no one--and I mean no one--else that I knew had even heard of this song before Nirvana played it on the MTV show. This is a little more sparse--necessarily--than the original, but I think Cobain's voice is a better fit for the song than David Bowie's was.

2. The Man Who Sold The World
Original Version: David Bowie
Cover Version: Nirvana

The Two Days of Christmas

2011-12-30T06:07:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine posted on Facebook yesterday about how many people seemed to be done with Christmas already, and how he was still in the spirit of the holiday. I chimed right in supporting his view. For me, Christmas season goes well beyond the 25th of December, and that so many of us feel as though it ought to be dispensed with as soon as the dinner is over on that date bothers me immensely. When I was driving home from my mother's house on Sunday afternoon, I saw two trees out on curbs already--while it was still daylight on Christmas day. I heard a television ad, at one in the afternoon, stating "Christmas is over" and telling people to get ready to open their wallets for yet another Shopping Event. I'm not religious, but even I felt like there's something sacrilegious and wrong about those kind of things.
I've beaten the hucksterism surrounding Christmas to a bloody pulp the last couple of years, and I'm not going to go into another rant about it, but to me, this overwhelming focus on commerce that has thoroughly soaked the season is having a very corrosive effect on most of us. The real "war on Christmas" isn't coming from secular atheists, it's coming from the commercial sector that views a holiday that is supposed to a celebration of peace and goodwill as an opportunity to play on the public's inclination to show their appreciation for those that matter to them by trying to get them to empty their wallets. The man whose birthday Christmas is a celebration of ended up, as an adult, overturning the money-changers tables in the Temple as a protest over the commercial bonanza that his own religion's most sacred holiday had become. I don't think his reaction to what Christmas has become in the United States would be a whole different if he does in fact actually return... there's something wrong when I went to take my daughter to the mall late Wednesday afternoon so she could use a gift card she got--and had to come home because the nearest open parking spot was in another county. The "after-Christmas" sales are in full swing.
Except it's not after Christmas. Christmas, for centuries, was a twelve-day event--hence the famous song--and even if the theological myth is taken at face value, the visit from the Magi--the three wise men or the three kings, or whatever version of the story you've heard--took place twelve days after the birth of Jesus; the Christian feast day of the Epiphany, the formal name of that event in Roman Catholic and Protestant liturgical calendars, is twelve days after Christmas...I find it somewhat amusing that some of the same people who posted the "put the Christ back in Christmas" blurbs on their Facebook profiles during December proudly posted about having their trees down and all the decorations put away by the 27th. If you're very concerned about the "loss of Christ" in Christmas, at least celebrate the entire "Christian" holiday.
I have a special sensitivity to this issue because I was married to an Orthodox Christian woman, and celebrated Christmas by the Orthodox calendar for over a decade of my life exclusively, and still mark the occasion because of my children. Orthodox Christmas is January 7 (not for any good reason, I should add; it was the refusal of various Churches to accept the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582 because it was coming from the Pope), and as I have aged, I have come to appreciate the difference. Christmas on the 7th was more reflective, more family-centered, and more spiritually-based than it was on the 25th, and the gap is growing every year. But the Orthodox in me gets very ticked at the cultural indifference, that most of us do not know or care that for some of us, Christmas hasn't even arrived yet and yet the dominant culture is putting it on the curb. And you can't even blame this one on the "other", the non-believers in Christmas. Orthodox are Christians, too; as a matter of fact, Orthodox are the closest we have to the original Christians still existing in the modern world, as their rites and calendars have been nearly unchanged for over 1600 years, and some parts of the actual service quite plausibly date back to the time of the Apostles. It would be nice if the rhetoric matched the actions.
But then, that's going to be the epitaph on America at large: "The Walk Never Matched the Talk." Americans certainly don't have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but few if any people around the world are more aggressive about it. Don't get me wrong; all things considered, I'd still rather live here than anywhere else. But there are sure are a lot of things I wish were different here, and a closing of the gap between what is said and what is practiced would be very welcome.

Cover Countdown #3

2011-12-29T21:04:00.000-05:00

This is going to be an exception to the general rule of no live performances, because I'm not sure a studio cut exists on this one. However, the live version, featured on "Unplugged" on MTV in the 1990's, provided renewed interest in the careers of three artists: the guy who wrote the song, the artist who recorded it and had her most mainstream hit with it in the late 1970's, and the band who covered it in this version, whose lead singer was about to embark on a prolific solo career herself.

3. Because the Night
Original Version: Patti Smith (a song Bruce Springsteen wrote for her)
Cover Version: 10,000 Maniacs

Book Review: AMERICAN DREAMERS

2011-12-29T06:02:00.000-05:00

American Dreamers is subtitled "How the Left Changed a Nation," and veteran academic Michael Kazin makes a rather compelling case that the liberal/progressive element of the nation's political spectrum is in fact responsible for most of what we now regard as the good parts of American society. Some noteworthy evolutions that were directly the result of political activity by left-wing types include the abolition of slavery, the organization of labor during the Gilded Age, the New Deal achievements such as Social Security, civil rights for blacks, and women being able to vote and participate in society.
I think it is important to review this list, and think about what it means. In every one of these cases, neither party of the time and place was particularly interested in implementing changes on these issues. In every one of these cases, the financially secure had firm control of the government and media, and wasted considerable resources defending the privileges of the few. In every one of these cases, it took a long time (decades in some cases) for the moral force of the "leftists" to take hold in the society at large and bring about what should have been the case to begin with, to hold American society and its governing classes to their stated ideals, to purge to even a small degree the rampant hypocrisy that has dominated American political life since the republic was instituted over 220 years ago.
This is what frustrates me to no end when I deal with "ordinary" people who think and vote conservative, even though in most cases as individuals they are decent and caring people; collectively they allow themselves to become parts of a power structure that not only defends the indefensible with the energy of a mother defending their brood, but also does not serve their own best interests. As George Carlin said so memorably, the wealthy and powerful are a "big club, and you ain't in it." So why do people willingly support the those who ensure that their own caste status won't change? There is usually a healthy dose of fear involved, and elements of misuse of religious texts that serve to change the terms of debate, but the fact remains that the majority of people instinctively shy away from anything that might actually cause changes. For a nation that has "rugged individualism" as its national mythology, we are anything but; this is the biggest nation of followers and lemmings that has ever existed. We not only tend to do what we are told we ought to, but we actively deny the obvious--that this is as class-defined a society as there is on earth, only we continue to believe the myth that it is not. And by buying the bullshit, we ensure that it will always remain so.
I repeat: without leftists and their efforts, this country would still have slavery, ten and twelve hour working days every day of the week, no minimum wage, no minimal safety standards in our food and water, child labor, no right to organize unions, no workers compensation, no unemployment insurance. We would have no income tax at all, and still would have gold and silver money. There would be no Social Security, no college loans or grants, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and only men could vote. I emphasize that this is a partial list. The American left is responsible for every single one of these things that we not only take for granted, but support in overwhelming numbers.
And yet "liberal" is a pejorative term, and our supposed "leftist" major party is about as left-wing as Calvin Coolidge was.
The book itself is pretty readable; some forgotten pioneers from long ago are given a few pages to discuss their impact, and the chapter on the disproportionate impact of the American Communist Party in the twentieth century, even if I don't necessarily agree with all that is presented. But this book's major positive effect is stating the obvious: that without the leftist element in our society, this would be just another place where society was divided into lords and serfs. If it seems increasingly that way at present, it's because there hasn't been a viable and functional leftist element in American society, much less politics, for some time. That's changing, but even a cursory look at the history of this country shows that it takes decades of work to bring about any serious changes, and the realization that there is a lot of work to do to combat the iron grip of the financial elite has just been born in many. There are going to be a lot of setbacks along the way, and any real change is going to happen probably too late for my generation to enjoy.

Cover Countdown #4

2011-12-28T17:17:00.000-05:00

This is another one from the early punk era. I'm not a huge fan of this band, nor of songs that are covered at thrash speed just to be different. But one can make a very good case that this song needs to be sped up, and that this version is a whole lot better than the original.

4. Nights in White Satin
Original Version: The Moody Blues
Cover Version: The Incredible Shrinking Dickies

Cover Countdown #5

2011-12-28T05:59:00.000-05:00

When you fall asleep in the recliner at 8:30 PM, this is what happens; you post a day late. Today's selection is an oldie but goodie. I didn't know that there were bands named The Trashmen in 1963, and this was one of the few Ramones songs that people not into punk could stand when I was in high school.

5. Surfin' Bird
Original Version: The Trashmen
Cover Version: The Ramones

Sears/K-Mart Closing Stores

2011-12-28T05:45:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Sears Holdings, which operates Sears and K-Mart stores, announced that over 100 stores will be closing soon after a "terrible" holiday season. I would be shocked if the Endicott K-Mart, which has been closed since the flood in September, reopens, and I also would not be surprised if the K-Mart in Binghamton closes, too, simply because it's become a horrible store. The Sears in the Mall in Johnson City, for all I know, might be in danger, too; for eleven months out of the year, the Mall is not a crowded place, especially up at that end of it.
I'm no economist, and I can't go into any expert detail about the underlying problems of the corporation. I can tell you what's wrong with the ones here. I really tried my best with K-Mart here, because I haven't spent my own money in a Wal-Mart in a decade, but the last couple of years, they've sure made it hard to shop there. They were terribly undermanned all over the store--checkouts most prominently, but you were also pretty much out of luck if you needed help in the store somewhere, too. Much of the help they did have were surly teens and high-school dropouts, from all outside appearances, who were counting the minutes until their next break. K-Mart was great for clothes for little kids, but much less so for teens and adults. The electronics department has been shrinking in both quantity and quality for years. The store itself badly needs a renovation; it's dingy and hasn't been rearranged in years, and the parking lot is crumbling almost daily, to the point where it is hard to drive through at even ten miles an hour. The prices generally remained lower than other places, even Wally World, but it wasn't like you enjoyed the shopping experience, at all.
I very rarely go to the Mall, and even less often to Sears. While they seem to have decent stuff there, it is more expensive than I want to pay, in almost every case. I don't even know if they still have the automotive stuff they used to have, but if they do, they were notorious for trying to sell people things they didn't need when doing annual inspections and installing tires; they were probably the single biggest reason my father's business took off thirty-five years ago.
But even more than the convenience factor, I fear that this area is going to sustain the loss of even more jobs, a hit we certainly do not need. From what I've seen, few at the Binghamton K-Mart are capable of getting hired elsewhere, and whatever its faults, it anchors what's left of the Northside Plaza there. There are no obvious candidates to replace it, either--there are no obvious candidates to replace anything in Binghamton these days. So even though it's a crappy store, even though it really doesn't deserve to continue to operate on its merits, I am sincerely hoping that it escapes closure. And then I hope that a manager with some gumption takes over and starts to make the store something better than it is. They can't anything about the area's general decline, but they sure don't have to actively add to it.

What's Wrong With Ovechkin?

2011-12-27T18:05:00.002-05:00

I realize that not everyone is as into hockey as I am, but something has to keep me interested in the wintertime. Football is over for me; the Bills are not going to make the playoffs (the starting quarterback in their last playoff game was Doug Flutie, for God's sake), and I am resolute about my commitment to forget about the team I wasted four decades of my life rooting for--and they're even worse than the Bills. Try as I might, I really don't care about the NBA, and while in ordinary circumstances I would be ecstatic about the Syracuse Orangemen being the top-ranked team in the country, 1) they haven't played anybody good yet, and 2) the entire Bernie Fine mess has cast a very long shadow, if not yet a pall, over this season. It's tough to get excited when you're half-afraid that the next day's news is going to bring revelations that will prove everyone a big fat liar, just like at Penn State. I'm not saying it's likely, but it is a fear that won't be totally disposed of until the civil suits are dispensed with, probably years down the road.
I have posted a few times about the Rangers, who are sitting atop the Eastern Conference standings this evening and sure as hell look like the real deal this year. But that's not what I am going to write about today. The Rangers are in the Winter Classic next week, and on Christmas Day, I watched a replay of last year's Classic between Washington and Pittsburgh. The game was hyped incessantly in the media last year as "Sid [Crosby] vs. Alex [Ovechkin]," who had been the two biggest stars in the game for a few years going into last season. Crosby remains a big star, but has not been on the ice much in the intervening year, as he suffered a concussion in last year's Classic and has only been able to play in a handful of games since. Ovechkin was going through a bit of an off-season a year ago going into the game, which was remarked upon but in a way that chalked it up to bad luck or something that was going to reverse.
Well, this year has been a lot worse. The Capitals have had a lot of talent over the past few years and have come up woefully short in the playoffs, and there were some questions heading into this season whether this was the year they could put the demons behind them. Now the question has become, "Are they going to make the playoffs?;" after a 7-0 start to the season., they have won only 10 of 27 games since and currently sit in 11th place in the conference (the top eight make the playoffs). And while inconsistent goaltending and a major injury to star defenseman Mike Green have hurt (Green is the best offensive defenseman in the league, and those guys are the rarest and most valuable animal in the game, fodder for another post sometime), the most obvious problem is that their alleged superstar, all-world player is stinking it up more nights than not. Ovechkin scored his twelfth--that's 12--goal of the season last night as the Capitals lost to another huge disappointment, Buffalo; among the other players in the league with 12 goals right now are Ray Whitney (who is 39 years old), Olie Jokinen (a player who has become the definition of "talented loser" in his years in the league), and Milan Lucic (who was suspended for a couple of games and who plays five minutes less per game than Ovechkin does). This is a guy who scored 50 goals or more four times in his first five years in the league, and even last year he had 32. He is not getting old; he is 26, a year away from the age that players in all sports most often have their best season at. And a lot of people are starting to wonder if this is the new normal, if Ovie is going to be just another player now.
I suggested in this space last year that the downturn in Ovechkin's career might be because of an issue that there is no way of confirming. It is incontestable that 1) Ovechkin is Russian, 2) Russia is the most alcoholic nation on earth, and 3) there have been a number of high-profile Russian players who did not have the careers they should have, and in a few of them alcoholism turned out to be a huge factor. This is not proof or even a real strong clue that this is the problem with Ovechkin, I hasten to add; I only bring it up because he would not be the first player that this happened to; there have been others who had substance abuse issues whose production falloffs were fairly similar to what Ovechkin has endured the last two years--Kevin Stevens and Theo Fleury come to mind.
But still-- twelve goals?
I am not suggesting that all Russians are drunks, and that every Russian player who has an off-season or sees his production dip has a drinking problem. But I decided to do something I used to do a lot--I decided to check out and see if my gut feeling had any merit. Ovechkin is not the only high-profile Russian-born player struggling recently; Ilya Kovalchuk has seen roughly the same career trajectory from a similar perch at the same time (although he is a few years older), and hugely talented but also hugely disappointing players Nikolai Filatov and Nikolai Zherdev couldn't even find jobs this fall. I decided to check out all Russian players that entered the league since 1990 (roughly the time the Russian hockey powers let players come to North America as youths or in their prime rather than in the twilight of their careers) and see if there were many that have showed the trend Ovechkin and Kovalchuk have without something obvious--like the knee injuries of Pavel Bure, to take one example--to explain the decline.
First of all, I limited the cases to players who had careers of 8 years or longer; this rules out players like Filatov and Zherdev, who never lived up to potential even for a short time. And I would, looking at the results, say that I was not imagining the phenomenon; I found 44 Russian-born players whose careers started in 1990 or later that met the career length standard, and of those, 20--nearly half--had either noticeable declines that turned out to be permanent in mid-career, including some that were truly precipitous, or were so inconsistent as to be moving around the league far more often than their talent would indicate they ought to be. The list is Maxim Afinogenev, Nic Antropov, Ilya Bryzgalov, Sergei Federov, Alexander Frolov, Valeri Kamensky, Nikolai Khabibulin, Kovalchuk, Andrei Kovalenko, Alexei Kovalev, Sergei Krisakrasov, Oleg Kassia, Alexander Mogilny, Ovechkin, Sergei Samsonov, Alexander Semin, German Titov, Anton Volenchenko, and Alexei Yashin. Some of these guys were enigmas from the day of arrival in the NHL--Samsonov, Yashin, and Semin most prominent; others like Kovalev, Bryzgalov, and Afinogenev have been so inconsistent--Bryzgalov was one of the best goalies in the league the last couple of years for Phoenix, but he got to Phoenix because Anaheim waived him because he couldn't stop a beachball for two years--as to defy logical explanation. Mogilny was the Ovechkin of his time, and ended up playing for four teams and didn't come close to scoring the 76 goals he scored for the Sabres as a 23YO ever again. Federov, too, was the best player in the league for a time, and ended up falling far and fast without injuries and played out the string all over the league. Frolov was a Ranger last year, and simply looked like he had forgotten how to play the game.
There have been consistently good Russian players, too--one of my favorite players for fifteen years was ex-Ranger Sergei Zubov, and Pavel Datsyuk on the Red Wings has been one of the best players in the league for a decade. But the evidence suggests that once Russian guys start to lose it, they're not going to get it back. It does not have to be caused by alcoholism, either; maybe it is just a cumulative effect of all those plane flights halfway around the world, or annoyance with our culture, or cigarettes (I have read that a lot players born in Eastern Europe smoke even as NHL players). But the effect is real, and I would be very surprised if Ovechkin ever scores more than 40 goals in a season again. And the Capitals' window as contenders has closed--especially since Semin, another of their key players, is on this list, too.

Book Review: HOLY WAR

2011-12-27T05:41:00.000-05:00

One of the few serious subjects guaranteed to get the attention of publishing houses these days is any historical project exploring the roots of Christian/Muslim conflict. Nigel Cliff (is there a more quintessentially British name in the world) has written one of the best volumes I've seen on the subject in the last few years. Holy War thoroughly explores, to the point where it reads like a daily newspaper in spots, the events surrounding the most immediately successful enterprise at the dawn of the Age of Exploration: the voyages of Vasco de Gama to India.
De Gama was an exact contemporary of Columbus, and his exploits were the direct cause of Columbus even getting sent to the West. There are reasons we in the United States don't hear a lot about de Gama. He was Portuguese, and Portugal, except for Brazil, did very little in the New World. The Portuguese focused their overseas efforts on breaking the Muslim monopoly on the spice trade, and de Gama was the first to reach India, which largely accomplished that goal. But the exploration age also, as the book documents, the last and most successful campaign in the four hundred year conflict we call the Crusades, and the first part of this book is a pretty fair summation of just how widespread and continuous the fighting was. Cliff's purpose in the book is to show that one of the goals of the Age of Exploration failed; the Portuguese wanted to use their gains in India as a base to retake Jerusalem from the east.
Of course, this did not happen, and within a few decades, all thoughts of Crusading more or less vanished as the nations of Europe got caught up in both their new continents to colonize and their own fratricidal conflicts of the Reformation era. From an American perspective, Portugal is the forgotten colonial power, and it is easy to forget that this very small nation--about the size of the state of Maine-- had a very substantial presence in Africa, and toeholds in India and China, into my generation's lifetime, all as the results of the efforts made that culminated in de Gama's historic voyage. De Gama was the first European to round Africa, a feat that was much more significant and harder to achieve than anything Columbus ever did, and the results of his voyages allowed Portugal to maintain an outsize role in world affairs for centuries.
One also cannot help but notice that Christianity has by and large been the most intolerant religion for most of history. The list of atrocities, the regular enslavement of non-Christians, the militant evangelism--the same themes are repeated over and over again through the centuries. While there is a fair amount of bloodshed associated with Islam, a honest and sober accounting has to conclude "not as much." One can argue that the Age of Exploration was 500 years ago, and that much has changed, and no doubt it has. But one can also argue that the Age of Exploration was only another manifestation of a trend that existed since the days of Constantine, and that the list of unpalatable things about the spread of Christianity certainly did not end in the 1500's. While I do not condone the acts of a small minority of militant extremist Muslims, not by a long shot, in the modern age, one cannot reasonably state that they do not have a legitimate set of grievances.
And so, while the Crusades might be over, the struggle is not.

Cover Countdown #6

2011-12-26T20:11:00.001-05:00

This is another one in which the covering band has certainly taken a song and made it something very different than the original. In this case, the original is over ten minutes long; the way this band plays, if they had tried to cover the entire song, they'd have a stroke every time they played it. I'm still coming to grips with this version, as the song is one of my all-time favorites, but ultimately, I am all for anything that introduces Bob Dylan to yet another generation.

6. Desolation Row
Original Version: Bob Dylan
Cover Version: My Chemical Romance

Yuletide Serving of Random Notes

2011-12-26T06:13:00.000-05:00

1) Although it doesn't happen very often--once every five or six years, depending on how many leap years there are in a given five-year period--it is a bit disconcerting when Christmas Day falls on a Sunday. Much of the non-retail working world has been given today off, and yet this is also a day when every store in the world, it seems, will be open. I remember when I still went to church when I was a kid that we were supposed to go to church twice on those days, once for the Sunday and once for Christmas, but I highly doubt that is asked of American Catholics anymore. And it gets to happen again next week, of course, with New Year's Day.
2) Although it was not a white Christmas, it was, thankfully, a cold one. At least in upstate New York, it remains a decidedly winter holiday celebration. Christmas 1998 was the least edifying holiday of my life for a number of reasons, but even more than being in a halfway house a long way from home, dressing in shorts and going to the beach was pretty damn strange. I went down to the beach that day with three other northern guys, and after we all told each other for two hours how great it was, I finally blurted out, "This really sucked!"... and Rocco, Tyrone, and John all instantly agreed. I'm sure if you're a native and you've never experienced it any other way, it doesn't suck, but for me, it isn't Christmas if you're hanging around outside in shorts and t-shirt and amidst people applying sunblock.
3) One thing about the proliferation of gift cards and hand-held devices: Christmas time should be easier on trees than ever. I bought actual gifts for over a dozen people, and I don't think I used a quarter roll of wrapping paper all told. And with Sabrina being too old and cool for Santa, the laying of gifts under the tree required no subterfuge and finesse at all. Kind of miss that.
4) I saw a commercial on television yesterday shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon, on a national television station--meaning it was around ten AM on the west coast when it was seen--, that actually said "Christmas is over" and started hawking some after-Christmas sale. Can't we at least wait until it actually is Christmas night before our commercial suzerains resume their assault on our wallets?
5) Is there a sadder, more forlorn sight than a Christmas tree on the curb at 4:30 PM on Christmas Day? I'm not passing judgement; for all I know, it had been up for weeks and was shedding needles like a Siberian husky shedding fur in May. But still--getting it out of the house on Christmas afternoon? Seems a little extreme.
5a) There is one divide in American society that seems to transcend race, economic status, political affiliation, and any other normally-easy-to-discern category of difference among us. That difference is between those who prefer real trees and those who prefer artificial. To me, it is no contest--I have had an artificial tree every year but one since I moved out of my parents' house in the late 1980's. There are no needle issues, no fire hazards, no disposal problems, no worrying about the house pet or children being allergic, no sap issues, and no having to water something that's dead every few days. You get a more or less uniform symmetry, making tree decoration easier, and the branches don't occasionally break. I've had the same 6 foot tree for a decade now, and it's still as good as the day it came out of the box for the first time. I'm not a big fan of the ones that come with lights on and in them that are available now, but I can see the appeal for some people. When you add in the environmental impact of probably several million trees nationwide being sacrificed every year--well, to me, I can't understand why people still use real ones. We don't use actual ice boxes anymore, or typewriters, or beat our clothes clean in creeks. To me, it is a custom that should be relegated to the past. But there is a substantial group--probably an actual majority--of Christmas celebrants who feel differently. And there is really no middle ground; the two groups are less capable of compromise than Michelle Bachmann and Bernie Sanders would be.
And 6) I'm not a huge fan of pro basketball, but I have to say that basketball is probably the sport best suited to being played on Christmas. Even a pro game rarely takes more than 2 1/2 hours to play, from coming on the air before the game to the post-game, and so it is the one best suited to the limited attention span most of us can give sporting events on the day, given that there are two distinct time-consuming parts to the holiday--the gift-opening and the dinner. A basketball game almost always fits easily between the two.

Cover Countdown #7

2011-12-25T18:45:00.000-05:00

Tonight's offering is something I had never heard before several weeks ago. It meets the general criteria of inclusion in this collection, in that it is undoubtedly very different than the original version. I don't know a lot about the covering band, except that I like this song and will certainly be alert to other things they may do.

7. Along Comes Mary
Original Version: The Association
Cover Version: Bloodhound Gang

So This is Christmas

2011-12-25T07:40:00.001-05:00

And as John Lennon famously asked, and what I have done? Last night was one of the most subdued, peaceful Christmas Eves in family history. I'm not going to analyze why in any detail, but I know I did my part: I laid low, was courteous and helpful throughout the day, and remembered all day long how grateful I was that I was not having to deal with the work situation that I thought was going to be dealing with on this day up until yesterday. I did not have any of my kids yesterday, either, which was all right; they have mothers and families on that side of the divide, too. I will have Sabrina most of the day today, and Rachel and Jessica were here Thursday for gift exchange and a little celebrating, so it isn't like I missed anything with them.
I feel better about my contributions to the world this year than almost any other year, especially in the last four months or so. I do not lead a completely altruistic life, but I can say that I am not causing any conflict or drama with anyone, and those few that have occurred since about June have been because of my standing up for a principle or for someone who for some reason couldn't stand up effectively for themselves. And yes, I am aware the latter is a slippery slope, but I think I have managed it all right. I don't believe in a Last Judgment, but I'm not worried about the possibility that I am wrong; if our deeds on earth are the determining factor in our comfort level in the afterlife, I am growing more serene with the passage of time that the ledger shows much more good than not, and those items on the "not" side have been rectified or that the amends process continues in regard to them.
There is room for growth, of course, and I have no intentions of resting on my laurels or feeling complacent. But this year, on a day that is a celebration of the man whose message of "peace on earth and goodwill toward men" is one that is both more urgently needed and more commonly ignored with each passing year, I feel less anxious and more at peace in a personal sense than perhaps I ever have before. And the more comfortable I am with myself, the better I can serve as God's instrument to help other people.
I really believe that God's purpose for all of us is that we should be helping each other to the best of our ability. That's God's dream, God's hope for us. And I am doing what I can do to make that a reality in my own life much more than I ever have before. It truly is better to give than to receive, and having something of value to give to a spirit in need is perhaps the most satisfying feeling and emotion there is to have. And at this point in my life, I have that.
Merry Christmas, everyone.

Book Review: END OF DAYS

2011-12-25T07:20:00.002-05:00

End of Days is a vivid novel depicting the end of the world in a thermonuclear holocaust by first-time author Robert Gleason. It is Gleason's first published effort, and I don't like to be negative about first novels in reviews, and I am also mindful that I am writing this on Christmas morning. So I will brief and relatively kind. The characters in this book are not very realistic, their motivations are simplistic and shallow, and the actions engaged in beyond the pale of realism--not the bombing, but the survival of tortures with no apparent long-term effects, to take one example, simply tax credibility beyond belief. The device of having inanimate devices such as the bombs themselves and mute animals speak is an innovative idea, but lost its value early in the book as they are used as a vehicle to express the author's views on the decadence of man--which are amply conveyed through the characters as well. And I am beyond sick of the painting of Islamic villains as bozos obsessed with either virgins in heaven or wiping out infidels in American popular literature--and its even more jarring when a prison full of gangbangers are depicted as renouncing lifetimes of racism and violence after one 15-minute speech when freedom beckons.
The author got the Christmas present of a lifetime by seeing this book get published.

Cover Countdown #8

2011-12-24T20:24:00.000-05:00

Considering what night of the year this is, this selection is the only possible choice.

8. Run Run Rudolph
Original Version: Chuck Berry
Cover Version: Lynyrd Skynyrd

In a Comfortable Place

2011-12-24T06:09:00.000-05:00

It is Christmas Eve today, and so many jumbled pieces of what has been a chaotic month suddenly arranged themselves in some sort of order yesterday. Most importantly, the very difficult and heart-wrenching runaway situation that had been consuming both my and my colleague's time like a fireball was at least temporarily resolved yesterday. The heretofore intrasingent and manipulative mother gave enough ground to make compromise possible, and the young lady felt secure enough to return to a family member's house. As much as I didn't relish the prospect of having to do daily contacts over the holiday, I managed to firmly keep in mind that it was even more daunting a prospect for a fifteen-year old, and even the mother, to not be around her family on Christmas. That was averted, and even if my belief is that problems are going to start again within hours of the holiday passing, at least something good was accomplished.
I thought I was a bit of a slacker because I had not gotten my wrapping done until yesterday afternoon--then I met three people last night and saw a couple more notices on Facebook from people who did not start shopping until yesterday. Not for the first time, I was grateful that procrastination is not among my legions of character defects. Of course, one reason why is that there is never any lack of things to do. Today is Christmas Eve, but it is also a Saturday and I have my usual Saturday chores to do: laundry, cleaning the guinea pig's quarters, cleaning up the kitchen, shopping at Wegman's. I also ordered tires for my car two weeks ago, and am going down this morning to get them down. I will stop at the office and finish yesterday's progress notes about ending the placement. I have to go to the Mall and get one last gift for Sabrina that I forgot about and that she really wants. This will take me well into the afternoon, and then I will eat dinner and open presents, per the practice of most of my life, at my mother's house.
My name got drawn out of the box at the candlelight meeting last night to be the speaker, and I chose to share about coming to believe in a concept of God that works for me. Some people are not comfortable talking about that subject in meetings, but my feeling is that without the coming to belief, there is no recovery process. I've been around long enough and spoken enough in my life to know when I have a room's attention, and I did have people's attention as I talked. And it was from the heart; my belief in God--not in a particular sect or religion, not in any particular theological view of Him, but God-- is the axis my life revolves around, the fuel that makes the engine go. I was very careful to present what I shared as my experience, not the way anyone else should proceed--but I also know that many, many people come into recovery with no idea or negative ideas about God, as I did, and are struggling with ways to make the concept relevant in their lives. I don't know how many might have been helped, but at least they have heard one person talk about, in detail, how he came to believe. And it's not a subject that people in early recovery hear a lot of talk about; most of the time speakers will either share largely their war story or focus on the happy ending, but tend to be rather skimpy on the journey. I consciously was trying to give some recounting of the walk along the way to where I am now.
And as Christmas approaches, coming to believe in something of a spiritual nature is really what I hope happens for everyone. Far more people profess to believe in something than actually do in their heart of hearts, and those people are more adrift and unhappy than the openly non-believers . I know, because for many years I was one of them, and the lip service belief that was not truly felt was the root cause of a very deep unhappiness, a state of mind that it took hitting the depths of total despair to begin to heal from. It doesn't have to be that way, and when that belief comes and is firmly and honestly held, one becomes truly capable of miracles. I am useful to many others now, as was proved again yesterday. I am tolerant of others who are not exactly like me or who think differently than I do. I am not a prisoner of impulse. I am capable of truly caring about others. I am capable of feeling satisfied, and find pleasure and fulfillment in what I am able to achieve and obtain. I am not wracked with doubts or fearful of the journey of life. And it is all the result of becoming truly comfortable with an idea of God that makes sense to me and allows me to feel as though the place I occupy in this world, in the larger scheme of things, is a worthy and significant one.
And that is my Christmas wish for everyone, that they may come to share in that basic serenity, that they feel that they are worthy and significant, that their place in the world is secure and important, and that they take pleasure in their life and the way it is being lived.

Cover Countdown #9

2011-12-23T21:39:00.000-05:00

This song is another that the covering band made a signature song of their own. It is very different than the original version, and yet has become a respected anthem in its own right, especially considering the rest of the body of work of this band. It also, the way it is performed, gives an entirely new dimension to the commonly accepted idea of what the song refers to.

9. Dear Prudence
Original Version: The Beatles
Cover Version: Siouxsie and the Banshees

Approaching Holiday

2011-12-23T06:09:00.000-05:00

It just doesn't feel a lot like Christmas this year. For one, I'm far busier at my job than I normally am at this time of year. All the trends that pointed toward a worsening of family situations as the economy went south is coming to pass, and I am afraid this sort of stuff is becoming the new normal. For another, when Christmas falls on a weekend, it somehow, at least for me, tends to cheapen it, to make it less of a holiday; it's just a perception of mine, but it seems almost like a letdown, like just another day.
And for a third, without a small child in the house, the magic is gone, especially if one is not a devout Christian. What we have allowed Christmas to turn into is a celebration of consumerism unparalleled in modern experience, and like all shamelessly commercial endeavours, it has gotten to the point where you almost feel the need to take a shower when all is said and done. There is no way in the world that I will enter any retail establishment, even in this depressed economy, any time after eleven in the morning during the week before Christmas; it is like being in a zoo, I don't care where you go. I don't watch much television, but the little that I do watch is inundated with ads. I do spend a lot of time online and there is just as much hucksterism there. Without a Santa Claus, without that little bit of magic that a child's belief that gifts really do just appear from a benevolent source brings, Christmas as celebrated here degenerates into just a bigger birthday party, and somehow I don't really find that spiritually nourishing. At all.
The spiritual void is doubled by the noise and cry of those who want to use the fact that Christmas exists as a way to force their beliefs onto others; I've already addressed that in these pages a few weeks ago, and it hasn't changed any in the meantime. The most effective Christmas message of all would be if these armband Christians would actually practice what Jesus preached in the way they live their lives, instead of devoting themselves to becoming the modern equivalent of those he spent his entire ministry decrying the influence of--the Scribes and Pharisees.
I'm getting tired of getting hammered with the message that the proper way to celebrate the birth of the alleged savior of mankind is by 1) celebrating the event on a day that it most certainly did not occur on, by 2) embracing a philosophy of life--materialism and consumerism--that he explicitly condemned as the surest way to separate one's self from God, also 3) insisting that we indoctrinate our children and most of our society that the only legitimate cause for celebration this time of year is this festival, denigrating those who celebrate the holidays of other cultures, by 4) ostentatious displays of symbols--Christmas trees and lights--that Christianity took from other cultures, and also 5) public displays commemorating an event--the visit of the Magi--that almost certainly did not occur. The purposes of God are not served by the propagation of falsehoods. Period.
Whatever one's concept of God is, it is highly unlikely that the way to mark His presence in our lives is by celebrating values firmly rooted in nonspiritual ideas like avarice and materialism, and by incorporating so many untruths and deceptions into the alleged celebration of His human incarnation. And I'm not even referring to the Santa Claus tradition; that at least is based on a legitimate tradition, that of St. Nicholas, and there is a good chance that St. Nicholas actually existed and gave gifts to the less fortunate in celebration of Jesus' birth. If Jesus actually was the incarnation of God, I find it hard to believe that he himself would be comfortable with the orgiastic obsession with material goods, with the primary symbol of the season being lifted from the pagans of Germania, and with such a fantastic made-up legend like the visit of the Magi (and its accompanying Massacre of the Innocents) being such a strong part of the story.
I can get with a celebration of family and friends and goodwill toward men at this time of year. I can't get with showing my gratitude for these things by emptying my wallet to enrich the un-Christian even further and by using the occasion to marginalize and exclude those who don't believe what I do. And every year, it sits less and less well with me.

Cover Countdown #10

2011-12-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

All that really needs to be said about this one is this little fact: after this cover became a hit a few years after the original recording, the guy who wrote and first recorded the song has said, publicly, many times, "This is as good as this song can be done" and has played it this way, not the way it was recorded, ever since, for a span of time now at 40 years and counting.

10. All Along the Watchtower
Original Version: Bob Dylan
Cover Version: Jimi Hendrix

Character Assets and Defects

2011-12-22T06:07:00.000-05:00

I am holding (barely, because it has been dominating my existence for a week) onto my determination to not discuss work matters in this space. But what has gone on in the last week has led to some very basic notes on how people are and how, even if you are not religious and don't consciously think about spirituality at all, what and how you feed your soul is the determining factor in the quality of your character.
That sounds kind of pompous and dense, so I'll skip right to the point. In the Twelve-Step process, there is a point where the recovering person has to address their "character defects" and how to rectify them. I will very briefly summarize my experiences in this area (Steps Six and Seven) in a way non-recovering people, hopefully, can understand. Part of the recovery experience is coming to believe in, and learning to rely on, a loving and caring Higher Power, which may or may not come to men a religious or non-religious God. I eventually came to believe, and still strongly believe, in a loving and caring God. While I cannot in good conscience accept some of the basic tenets of Christianity--the Trinity, the actual fact of the Resurrection, and most importantly the theology surrounding the need for the rise from the dead. To me, "original sin" and the need for essentially human sacrifice to "redeem" us is rather barbaric and a contradiction. If you believe that God created us--and I actually do, at least our souls, because I really can't come up with a better reason for existence and consciousness, and you believe that God is loving and caring--an idea that almost everybody pays lip service to, even if they don't necessarily act like they believe it--then it follows, logically, that God created us as we are--with imperfections, with flaws. I do not think that God holds us responsible for having those flaws, and that any sort of redemption or sacrifice is necessary on our behalf to expiate those flaws; they were there at the very beginning, they were part of the deal. I cannot believe that a loving and caring God would hold us responsible and accountable, essentially, for something He did.
I actually take this concept further than most people, in that I have really come to believe that our flaws are the essential difference between God and man. If we had no flaws, no defects of character, we would be indistinguishable from God, and I really don't think that's possible or even desirable. Nor do I really think God's ultimate aim is for us to become clones of God. The problem, when it comes time for the recovering person to address their "character defects," is assuming that an essential character change is either necessary or desirable. I have come to believe that our character just is; what makes it our traits "defects" or "assets" is our motivations in employing those traits. To take the most obvious character trait of mine, I have been blessed with an rather sharp mind and a prodigious capacity for memory. Now, I can use those characteristics either in a positive manner or a negative manner. For much of the first 35 years of my life, I chose to regard my intelligence as a sign of superiority to my fellow travelers on this planet, and used those traits as a means to take advantage of people, to cause others distress, and to indulge myself in hedonism to a degree others could not because I could manipulate other people and events so that, for a long time, I did not have to pay negative consequences for doing so. Even after getting clean in 1998, it took a few more years before I began to essentially change my views on why I was given my intelligence and abilities--essentially, I had to come to believe not only in a loving and caring God, but that that God did not give me the traits I undoubtedly have to take advantage of everybody else around me. God wants me, I came to and still believe, to use those abilities to make life on earth here better, to not cause pain and distress, but to alleviate it, not only for myself and those that I love, but as many as I can.
The proof that this is more or less, however simplified, an accurate belief is that when I started to do so and started to employ myself in such a manner, not only did other people's lives improve, mine did. I feel better about myself; I am much happier much more of the time than I ever was before, say, 2001. I've learned to enjoy what I have rather than burn with desire for what I don't have. I have found the capacity to accept other people for what they are, and it has opened the door to some truly meaningful friendships and relationships, many more than I have ever had before. I have found the sense of purpose and direction that I had been seeking all of my life. It is possible--and believe me, it happens regularly--to slip back, to lose the more benign motivation and to indulge my more selfish and self-centered tendencies. I still get frustrated and angry at times; I do not remind others of an angelic being on a regular basis. But I can honestly and truly say that I do not spend most of my time manipulating people and situations trying to arrange my life so that I get what I think I want and to make other people miserable because they are, essentially, irritating me. I have learned to act on principle and let the results occur as they may; when I do that, the long-term results almost always are beneficial to me, and to those that matter to me. My life is so much better today than it was in the 1990's, even though my material circumstances aren't quite as good.
I am talking about all this because the last couple of weeks have been really tough in some areas. I am currently involved in a very difficult case at work, where a parent is so manipulative and concerned with the exercise of power that she has essentially not only driven her eldest child out of her life, but is incapable of understanding that her actions are making it impossible for that child to go back there of her own accord. I deal with a manipulative, immature parent on a regular basis away from the job, too, that is incapable of seeing that what she does does not inspire affection or trust in her children--and isn't exactly leading to material success, either. I have been butting heads with alleged professionals whose egos and whose need to defend their privileges have caused them to completely ignore what is supposed to be their reason for existence--protecting children and making sure that the best possible outcome occurs. It would be difficult to deal with all this in August, but it is even more difficult to digest this and deal with this during the week before Christmas, during the time of year where almost all of us are ostensibly more aware of our obligations to spread "good will among men."
But it is what it is, and I have learned that the only lasting way to affect others is by example. I am not going to call people out by name today, even though there is a very substantial part of me that would love to; I know it would serve no purpose other than to cause problems for the people involved, and ultimately cause more problems for the 15YO whose behalf I am working on; I do not further her long-term cause by winning a contest of egos with people who have made me their focus rather than the youth they are supposed to be protecting. And as so often happens, a solution to the dilemmas we are facing may have presented; it may not happen the way I hope, but it looks a lot brighter than it did 24 hours ago.
And the best part about that is that this has happened without my having done anything that the whole world can't know about. No secrets, no corners cut, no fear of exposure, no need to sow dissension. And that's a much more preferable way to go. The problem with using my character traits to try to get over on people and life in general for so many years was that eventually, all those gifts were being used up in trying to keep all the lies straight and the intricate schemes from falling apart.
It's a lot better this way.