where have all the Gepids gone?

If you're like me, you've thought a lot over the years about the barbarian invasions into Europe, in the early centuries of the Common Era.

I'm currently reading a recent book on the history of the Silk Road(s), and came across this sentence:

"As if this were not bad enough, in the middle of the fifth century, having flushed forward a hotch-potch of tribes—Terevingian Goths, Alans, Vandals, Suevi, Gepids, Neurians, Bastarnians and others besides—the Huns themselves appeared in Europe, led by the most famous figure of late antiquity: Attila."

This is not the first time that I've seen mention of the Gepids, in similar lists.  I always quickly moved on.

This time I headed over to Wikipedia, and, as always, there is just enough information there to sufficiently plug this knowledge gap. Here's the link, for those with nothing else to do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gepids

For the rest of you, here's what you need to know today:

"The Gepids' participation in the Huns' campaigns against the Roman Empire brought them much booty, contributing to the development of a rich Gepid aristocracy."

So, they were a real deal at the time, and, apparently, Attila liked his Gepid allies.

After Attila died ("unexpectedly", which was probably to be expected), the traditional Civil War broke out and the Gepids chose the right side, which allowed them to establish a Gepid 'kingdom' (of modest size), near today's Belgrade.

Things were looking good for those Gepids, for about 100 years.  You can almost hear Gepid fathers telling their wide-eyed children, "don't ever forget that you are a Gepid, and you should be damn proud."

In 552, they suffered a 'disasterous' defeat by the Lombards (the Wikipedia page for the Battle of Asfeld is pretty spare, considering how momentous it was for Gepid history), and many moved into northern Italy.

Around 630, an invading force of Byzantines "attacked a Gepid feast, capturing 30,000 Gepids". I was at the Portland Bernie rally with 28,000 happy people, so I can begin to imagine how that day was a 'disappointment'. 

But I digress.

That, apparently, is one of the last reliable historical references.   Their 'kingdom' (which actually has a name: "Gepedia") lives on only in Wiki-pedia - kind of ironic, don't you think?  Today, http://www.gepedia.org/ seems curiously disassociated from Gepids.


What do we take from all this?  If the Gepids were assimilated into the Byzantine sphere, Gepid DNA must still be part of the European stew.  They are described as "white, tall and blond-haired," so obviously not in MY stew, but look around you.

Gepids walk among us, and frequently appear in commercials.

the persistence of memory

For many years, I have been a volunteer, playing piano for the choir at a predominantly-Jewish assisted living facility.  We do a lot of songs from the Great American Songbook, but also throw in an occasional Beatle tune (which generally mystifies the Group).

A digression:  in our current program, we are doing 'With a Little Help From My Friends', but, in the interest of gentility, substituted 'eat some pie with a little help from my friends' for 'get high with a little help from my friends'.

Where was I?  Oh yes.

This experience has taught me a great deal about Old Folks, and I often get glimpses into the rich, vibrant, and varied lives that these now stooped, often-frail, mobility-or-speech-impaired singers have had.

There are several whose European accents reveal the reality of their having experienced horrors that, thankfully, I have not.

One guy in particular has made reference to the fact that he was in the Pacific, preparing for the invasion of Japan (and his statistically-likely demise), when the atomic bombs brought an end to the War.

But an entirely-new dimension of the power of memory happened last week, when one of the ladies in the group came up to me while I was warming up before the rehearsal.  I was playing a Gershwin tune and, with a quivering voice, she said quietly "I still can't believe he died." 

She was genuinely on the verge of tears, having been instantly transported back to July 11, 1937.


Think 'Prince'.

Known Unknowns

On November 22, 1963, I was sitting in Mrs. Peachy's 4th Grade class, at Hendy Avenue School, Elmira, New York.  It was a normal day until early afternoon, when The News broke.

That night, we watched, stunned, as live TV showed the casket being unloaded in DC, and I was, for some long-forgotten reason, alone in the house on Sunday, when I watched live as Jack Ruby stepped into the picture and chaos ensued.

The Kennedy assassination has been with us a long time.  I always expected that some deathbed confession would have cleared it all up by now, but, as they say, questions remain.

When we were in Vietnam last November, we visited a Buddhist monastery outside of Hue, whose head monk, in the summer of 1963, had driven his little blue car (still faithfully preserved there at the monastery) to Saigon, parked outside the US embassy, poured gas on himself, and struck a match. 

Our Vietnamese guide proceeded to explain to us the reason why Kennedy was  killed.  It went like this:

President Diem's persecution of the Buddhists (leading to many public self-immolations that summer), increased Kennedy's fear that the bad publicity over these deaths jeopardized his re-election prospects for 1964.  Kennedy directed the State Department and CIA to take out Diem and his brother, Nhu (who was involved in the international heroin trade), who were both assassinated November 1, 1963.  Three weeks later: Dallas. 

Bottom line on this theory:  Kennedy was killed by the American mafia, on behalf of the French heroin mafia, who had been partnered with Vice President Nhu.  Our guide recommended to us a book describing all this: "The Deaths of the Cold War Kings".  I read it, and it was pretty convincing.  Case closed.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Deaths-Cold-Kings-Assassinations/dp/1587670321

Not so fast.

In another context a couple of weeks ago, another JFK assassination book came to my attention, and I just finished it: "JFK and the Unspeakable", complete with a jacket blurb from Robert Kennedy, Jr ("everyone should read this book").

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_11?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=jfk+and+the+unspeakable&sprefix=jfk+and+the%2Cstripbooks%2C222

Vietnam also played a key part in this book, but quite differently.  The subject of heroin is never mentioned and, instead of Kennedy approving the Diem/Nhu assassination, he is instead portrayed as having been absolutely opposed to it.  Instead, he was totally outflanked by the duplicitous hawks in the CIA and Joint Chiefs, who were fearful that Kennedy's plans to GET OUT of Vietnam (well-known but not to be released to the public until after his 1964 re-election), and find a peaceful accomodation with the Soviets (instead of escalating the Cold War), would lead to Communist world-domination.

Bottom line: Oswald was actually a patsy (as he claimed) and the CIA perpetrated a complex web of implications and impersonations that were focused on bolstering the Oswald-did-it line.  Also, a prior CIA assassination plan, in Chicago on November 2nd, was aborted at the last minute, although a patsy for that planned killing had likewise been cultivated.  Kennedy knew that he was a target and, throughout November, had the sense that his end was near.

Again, a totally convincing narrative - the CIA did it.

Finally, I remembered another massive JFK book that came out a couple of years ago and just got it at the library.  It's "Legacy of Secrecy", by Lamar Waldron and co-authored by the impecable Thom Hartmann.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=legacy+of+secrets+waldron&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Alegacy+of+secrets+waldron

This is an imposingly-hefty book (850 pages), that claims to be the definitive word.  Its conclusion: it was the Mafia.  I am NOT going to spend the next couple of weeks reading it - I am burned out.  However, I did consult its extensive index: not a single reference to Diem or Nhu.

What do we conclude about all this?  For an answer, I only had to look at my copy of the current "London Review of Books", which has a long review of a new book called "The Murder of James I".  That, for those keeping score, was in 1625.

Of interest to film geeks only (maybe)

I've been thinking about Orson Welles a lot lately.

I  recently finished the eBook version of this:

http://www.amazon.com/Young-Orson-Years-Genius-Citizen/dp/0062112481/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454123215&sr=1-1&keywords=young+orson+by+patrick+mcgilligan

It covered the years between Welles' amazing pre-natal heritage (wealth and all the associated advantages) thru his early theater triumphs, culminating in the amazing creation of 'Citizen Kane' (despite what nay-sayers say, still, IMHO, the best American film of all time, as far as innovative camera movements, long takes, writing, and general film pleasure).

'Vertigo' is #2, but that's another story.

I watched my DVD of 'Kane'  the other day, with the astute Peter Bogdanovitch commentary, and, as always, found it filled with amazing technical camera wizardry, plus the complex, multi-layered make-up, acting and script (what was Mankiewicz and what was Welles? - the evidence is scattered). 

It really is a spectacular film.  Have you seen it recently?

At any rate...

Welles' 2nd film in 'the system' was 'The Magnificent Ambersons' and I found it at the library today and just watched it for the first time in many years.  What a curious film - so old-fashioned in its costumes, period, and setting.  I don't understand why Welles was so drawn to the story.

Of course, this was the butchered version that RKO released, after deciding that Welles's cut was 'unsatisfactory'.  The final scene is indeed laughable.  Still, there are flashes of amazing cleverness in the framing, composition, and especially lighting, not to mention the astonishing performance by Agnes Moorhead (who only had a couple of scenes in 'Kane').

The main character, George Miniver (Tim Holt) is the obvious villein, smug in his self-worth and entitlement.  The whole arc of the story is his 'comeuppance'.  Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton, in a fairly absurd mustache) has made his fortune in the early automobile business, and is the sympathetic father of George's love interest (who sees him as the shallow 'affluenza' youth he is).

In a key scene, George insults Morgan by characterizing the advent of the gasoline-powered automobile as a terrible event, that will destroy a way of life (i.e. horse-and-buggy world).

Here's the thing.

In the context of 1942, when 'Ambersons' was made, George's insistence that the gasoline-powered automobile is a curse upon us was ridiculous.

In the context of 2016, it is prophetic.

Weird, eh?

Thank you, taxpayers of Elmira, New York

I was born in Elmira (1951) and called it my home thru High School (go, Blue Devils!).

As part of the Elmira diaspora (I only get there now and then, for the periodic family funeral), I have often felt a noticeable degree of guilt about having benefited from that peaceful, comfortable world that our parents created in the 1950s and 60s, but left when I could and never gave back.

This is my effort to recognize one small aspect of that world, that made all the difference to me.

Her name was Crystal Ewing and findagrave.com tells me she died in 1989 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.  She was employed by the Elmira Public Schools and her job, which was performed with enthusiasm and commitment, made all the difference in my life.

Miss Ewing (as we always called her) traveled around town to all the public Elementary schools, with a record player and a stack of records.  Believe it or not, taxpayers in those days had no problem with their money going to support a regular class for their children, that was simply called 'Music Appreciation'.

Her mission was to open up for us kids, in that pre-Vietnam world of Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet, the world of Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky (I still remember how to spell it, thanks to her), and others, for no other reason than that it was the common opinion of the School Board that it would be good for us.

For me, as a beginning piano player, the depth and complexity of Fugue in G Minor was a revelation.  She would play the recording and ask the class to signal each time they heard the theme.  Around Christmas time, of course, the Nutcracker would appear.  You get the idea.

I think we might have mocked her smiling cheerfulness a bit, but, to me, the weekly (?) hour with Miss Ewing was a great thing. I doubt many of today's kids know much about poor Franz Schubert.

She stuck with the Big Classics, which was fine - it wasn't until years later that I was ready for Mahler and Stravinsky, but I had CONTEXT when I was.

So, thank you, taxpayers of Elmira, New York, in that post-WWII world, who didn't object when someone thought it was a good idea to pay a single woman enough to enable her to have a career insuring that their kids could tell Bach from Brahms.

And thank you, Miss Ewing, for expanding my world, at exactly the right time.

Yes, this is too little, too late.

I Remember Mommies

After many centuries of my family kicking around Poland and Lithuania (and Spain, before that), my European grandparents settled in Elmira, New York, where, in the early 20th century, both my parents were born.

My brother and I came along after WWII, and it was a swell place to live and grow up.  The synagogue and our little Jewish community was, without any doubt, the absolute center of our lives, with all my conscious years filled with Hebrew School and weekly attendance at services.

My father made late, irregular appearances at services.  I always sensed that he regarded Jewish ritual with bemused, minimal involvement.

On the other hand, my mother's apparent belief in God was undoubtedly totally sincere and deep. There was no question that Saturday mornings (and often Friday nights) were going to be spent with Mom at the schul, where we had our usual seats.

The sequence, words, and melodies of the service were absolutely, totally imprinted in me, and I am still astonished at my continuing total familiarity with Hebrew. However, despite a sincere and deep fascination with both Jewish history and the music at services, I never quite got with the God program. 

I remember Mom handing me a children's book entitled, "Let's Talk about God", and, after reading it, I think my reaction was pretty much, "you're kidding, right?"  Sorry.

This is not to say that I have rejected Jewishness.  On the contrary, how could my basic identity be anything other, even though my ritual participation in our Portland congregation hovers just above Absolute Zero.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a letter from my congregation, reminding me that my mother's Yahrzeit (translation:  annual anniversary of a loved-one's death) was coming up, and, that her name would be read at services on December 6th.  I put a note in my phone calendar at the time, and was slightly surprised when the reminder went off around 8 this morning.

Naturally, my first impulse was to guiltily delete the reminder, but I got dressed and made it to Saturday morning services today, and it was totally and uncannily familiar.  My mother has been gone now for several years, but, as I was driving downtown, I remembered that this week is also the one-year anniversary of Sylvia, my mother-in-law, leaving this world, at 102.

Their death-dates are separated by four days.  A hospice nurse told us, "there's something about 'two weeks after Thanksgiving'".

So, when it came time to say Kaddish, I was filled with the memories of Two Mommies, and I now know that this sense will, for the rest of my life, always be an event of early December.

Here's Sylvia, Thanksgiving 2013, two weeks before she died.

And here's a 1987 photo of my mother, Dorothy Barcus Lavine, happily holding her grandson Benjamin (who I named after HER father, Ben Barcus).

August 1962

I grew up in a little town in Upstate New York.  The recent photos from Buffalo reminded me of epic snow-storms of my childhood, staring out the window at the delicately-carved canyons created by the wind howling around the corner of our warm, secure house.

Every morning, my mother would listen to the 'CBS World News Roundup' on the radio, as we ate breakfast. I vivdly remember the one magical morning, when Richard (C.) Hottelet announced that 'this morning, the coldest place in the country is Elmira, New York', before moving onto the next story.  We glowed with the sense of being, for a brief moment, nationally recognized.

But I digress.

The flip-side to the brutal winters was the endless, humid, firefly-filled summer.  Our best friends had a house on Keuka Lake, and many weeks were spent there - just the Moms and kids.  The Dads continued working, of course - we never thought about them, just trusted that they would appear on weekends.

The world of adults rarely had any impact on the daily swimming, boating, and explorations that filled our days.  This is appropriate - meals and calamine lotion just appeared, as needed.
 
Every once in a while, we got a glimpse of a world beyond the lake. One summer, the original cast recording of 'West Side Story' showed up, and we played it over and over, amazed at both the music and Anita's inflection as she snarled 'A boy like that, who keeled your brother..'.

Among the abundant child-centered memories, I can only bring-up two where the adults were front and center. 

One weekend, several of our parents' friends came out, to spend an afternoon at the lake.  I had some long-forgotten reason to intrude on the adults. They were all sitting down by the water, no doubt laughing along with my own entertaining father, who was endlessly cracking jokes and smoking the Parliaments that would eventually murder him.

I approached and noticed one man sitting there who looked vaguely familiar, but, then again, not.  I sort of knew the face, but who was this slightly-chubby man, in the sun-glasses, colorful shirt, and bermuda shorts, chuckling along with the others? 

A pause, and a Revelation.

It was our Rabbi, James I. Gordon, who I had never seen outside of the dark-suit, solemn-intonation, divinely-infused world of our Conservative schul. The world expanded at that moment. 

A footnote:  Decades later, after I had moved to Portland, Oregon, I happened to see a VERY young Rabbi Gordon in an old photograph.  Turns out that, before he went to Elmira, one of his first posts was out here.  At that moment, he and I were strangely linked, both having made a transfer between Portland and Elmira, at different times, in opposite directions, for entirely different reasons.

I digressed again.

The next memory has me in the water, looking up at the dock, where adults were sitting in the sun.  They were quietly talking and one of them held up the newspaper, whose very large headline said 'MM DEAD'. 

I was 10 at that time, and, now, at 63, it's easy for me to imagine folks of that generation getting conversational fodder out of the question 'do you remember when you heard that Marilyn Monroe died?'.

1962 was the time of their middle-age: kids, work, friends, the daily news.

Last summer, the family gathered in Elmira for three busy days, for the funeral of my 101 year-old uncle.  After the burial (full military honors), I walked around the cemetery and visited my parents, all four grandparents, and several of our family friends, many of whom were at Keuka Lake the day Marilyn died.

My only memory of that day is that headline. 

I no doubt went back to enjoying the water and looking forward to dinner, not knowing what I now know:  that Soviet missles were heading towards Cuba, that Lyndon Johnson would be the next President, that John, Paul and George had just replaced Pete with Ringo, and that, more than fifty years later, I would understand the inevitability of my time becoming the quaint, innocent past.

It's only natural to look back at earlier times and wonder 'what the heck were they thinking?'.  Imagine the incredulity of our descendants, when they do the same.

thinking about my 'Uncle Mordechai'

I don't remember where that name came from - I think he referred to himself that way in one of his many letters to me, years ago.

Sanford Zalburg was my mother's first cousin, and was, by far, the most incredible figure in our family circle.  I remember, as a child, his infrequent appearances in our Elmira, New York home - an impossibly tall man, who my mother clearly admired, who was always either departing for or returning from the world's exotic places.

He grew up in Elmira during the dismal 1930's, and was, understandably, extremely eager to get away from the poverty and his stern step-father.  He had little nostalgia for Elmira, referring to it in his letters as the 'Queen City of the Southern Tier' (always in quotes, emphasizing the irony).

He settled in Hawaii after the War, and married a local Hawaiian beauty, the vivacious and outspoken (an understatement) Vivian, who blew everyone's mind when she swept into town in 1964 for my cousin Steven's bar mitzvah, bearing the most amazing flowers that provincial Elmira had ever seen.

Sanny (family nickname) was a journalist, based in Honolulu. He started out as a reporter there and ended up as the City Editor of the Honolulu Advertiser for many years.  Read about that here.

He traveled the world, often sending us clippings of his entertaining, informative columns. After his death, his daughter, Noni, sent me a giant box of his papers, including some of his many scrapbooks and two unpublished books, one a war novel of Korea and, most painful, a searing chronicle of Vivian's decline and death from lung cancer ('all the publishers said it was too grim', he told me).

I exchanged letters with both him and Vivian for many years.  I could write to them about things that I couldn't talk to my parents about, and they were not shy about expressing opinions (another understatement).

Eventually, he stopped flying due to severe vertigo, so the only way to see him was to come to Hawaii, and I did so several times, enjoying his company and conversation immensely.  One time, long after Vivian died, my whole family went to Kauai.  I left them a couple of days early and flew to Honolulu to spend time with Sanny.  We talked and talked for hours, and on the final day, he drove me to the airport and stayed around to wait for Karen and the boys to arrive, prior to our flight home.  He seemed genuinely pleased to meet my mishpocha.

Why am I thinking about him today?

One day, in the bright Honolulu sunshine, sitting on the breezy lanai of his 10th-floor condo overlooking Waikiki, he patiently sketched out for me, on a paper napkin, a drawing showing the position of the German guns that were pointing directly at him, and the path up the bluffs that he was hoping to reach, as he hit Omaha Beach.  He didn't want to talk about the carnage surrounding him, but there was, apparently, plenty.

He also bequeathed to me his treasured recipe for tandoori chicken, involving (now it can be told) yogurt, sherry, and mango chutney.

'The Greatest Generation'?  You betcha.

slightly Out-of-Synchronicity

This post is silly, but I had a startling 'ain't-it-odd' experience this morning.

It started when I happened to glance at Paul Krugman's current blog posting, where he mentions a song by Alison Krauss, an artist I don't really know too much about.

Then, a couple of minutes later, I happened upon Digby's post about the anniversary of the Kent State tragedy. Accompanying that post is a link to a video showing scenes from that event, with the famous CSNY song.  I watched the video and it was very moving (I was a freshman in college that Spring, and had been arrested a month before at an anti-war protest in Baltimore, but that's another story).

The jarring moment came when we see a photograph of the memorial to the 4 students killed, and the name at the top of the list is Allison Krause.  Here's her Wikipedia page.

I thought that the synchronicity was especially strong with that connection, but was even further spooked to note that, as it says in the 'References' at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry, her eulogy was given by Ms. Krause's boyfriend, Barry Levine.

Yes, these things are happening all the time.  And yet, ain't it odd? 

W's for Jesus

So, tonight, (thankfully former) President W is speaking before the "let's all convert the Jews to Jesus" conference in Texas.  Rachel Maddow has been covering this since the story broke last week.

Without belaboring the 'peculiarities' of this group's beliefs, I, too, am trying to figure out his motivation, and it comes down to the following possibilities:

1)  He doesn't really believe in the group's stated goals, but the money is too good to pass up.

2) He does believe in the group's stated goals, and the money is just a nice bonus.

3) He does believe in the group's stated goals, and the money is totally irrelevant.

And now, my choice for most-believable explanation:

4)  It doesn't matter whether he believes in converting Jews or not.  He made up his mind to do this gig, and The Decider does not ever change his mind.


By the way, I hereby award Rachel Maddow's writers the 'Best Use of Yiddish Today' prize, for accompanying this story with a slide with the words 'Meshugganah Accomplished'.

Well done.  

science (and dread) in everyday life

Karen has a small but impressive collection of antique salt-and-pepper shakers.  One had such an encrustation of salt on its inside that the holes were mostly blocked.  She had been soaking it in water for a couple of days, but the salt remained.

This morning, she asked me if I could get the salt layer removed.  "Easy," I said, "just add some vinegar to the water."  I did so and, an hour later, the salt is mostly gone.

The NY State Board of Regents (funded by the 1960's taxpayers of Elmira, New York) insisted that my Liberal education include basic chemistry. Sodium chloride is a base.  Lower the ph with an acid (acetic, in this case) and the base commences to dissolve.

My moment of self-congratulation was short-lived, as I immediately thought of the escalating acidification of our (one-and-only) planet's oceans.  Calcium carbonate cannot stand up to Carbon dioxide - same principal.  Goodbye shell-fish, coral, and the web of Life that depends on these.

Nothing will be done - we will collectively just let it happen, and try not to think about our grand-children looking at us with the same incredulity as us looking back on World War I and the Spanish Inquisition (to name but two).

Applied Science - how easy to do on the micro level - not so easy on the macro.

I've heard this story before

As a computer guy, I have some understanding of the incredible complexity of the Federal Exchange, and a lot of sympathy for the developers charged with the task of building the plumbing to support real-time connections with multiple insurance company databases (many probably having home-grown systems, each with its own unique protocol for querying data and pulling it across the various firewalls).

This is what each State-run Exchange has to do, for the Insurance providers in that State.  Now multiply that complexity by 36 (the number of States who said "we don't want to build our own Exchange - let the Feds do it").

It's no wonder that many of the State Exchanges are working quite well, while the Federal Exchange is 'challenged'.  However (not surprisingly), I have a couple of thoughts on the current situation:

1)  The lead-in on NPR this morning, to the segment covering the controversy, stated something like: "There are hearings today in Washington into how the White House bungled the implementation."  Um, maybe the "White House" might have been able to devote more time to overseeing the roll-out if it hadn't been preoccupied during most of September in dealing with a group of wacko Republican representatives (sic) determined to shut down the friggin' government. Just sayin'.

2)  And here is where I do put some blame on the "White House", if this report is true.  It appears there was a late-in-the-game spec change, where, contrary to the original design (which would let people browse options without having to first create an account, like you can browse Amazon before signing in to buy), it was decided that, no, people will have to register BEFORE being able to browse, instantly creating a massive bottle-neck right at the beginning of the entire process.

How many times have we developers seen this?  Hint: over and over and over, and it seldom has a happy ending.

Once a design for a complicated system is agreed on, and work commences on all the components, changing a fundamental step almost always leads to a disaster down the line. Sometimes a critical design flaw is detected and you have no choice.  But, if it's not a no-choice-we-MUST-change-that situation, they never learn.

If, indeed, someone in the Administration dictated to the developers that this change HAD to happen, after considerable work had already been done, someone on the construction team HAD to reply, "well, if you insist on this change, keep in mind that it jeopardizes the entire schedule."  And, if some WH individual then said "I don't care, change it", that person should be the scapegoat for the current witch-hunt.

As a developer, I say "confiscate his/her suit and tie in public".

As a developer, who would like to see the ACA implementation succeed, I say to America "cool it, and let the developers do whatever triage is necessary to get it working".  This is a long-game project.  Problems in the first 2 months are going to be forgotten once it's running smoothly and many people find, to their astonishment, that they are able to buy health insurance for the first time in their lives.

My advice to people desperate for Health insurance - call the damn 800 number and talk to a facilitator, instead of venting your anger at your computer.

To the Republicans, I say, "since you have no interest in contributing to the program's success (a program, by the way, which originated in YOUR conservative Think Tanks many years ago), please STFU and get out of the way".  Yes, I know, never happen.

'Nuff said.

fire 'em all

Of course Chuck Todd should be retired, for both his frustrating, lazy-ass reporting and his insufferable smugness.  I think we all can agree about that.

My beef, this morning, is with NPR, to which I have been a loyal listener and supporter since its birth around the time of the Watergate hearings.

At the top of the hour today, NPR mentioned that Obama spoke this weekend at a memorial service for the recent DC mass shooting.  The reporter hastened to add that this was in the face of the recall of Colorado lawmakers who had favored some modest curbs on gun accessibility, then quickly moved on.

Thank you, we have been reminded that the National mood will not tolerate any changes in gun laws.

If you google 'colorado gun recall' you'll see dozens of stories that use phrases like 'big victory for the NRA' and 'loud and clear message', etc.  I had to dig before I found this page, which tells you that John Morse lost by 319 votes, with less than 22% of eligible voters showing up.  Nice work, Colorado.

Yes, I know only the final tally ultimately matters, but a little perspective, due diligence, and very little effort among reporters might have lessened the false message of  'big victory' and 'loud and clear message'.

Which brings me to Cokie Roberts.

Cokie's voice has been in my ears for decades. During her glib summary this morning of the current preposterous House Republican chicanery, she said (paraphrasing) 'the Republican-passed bill reflects polls showing that the majority of Americans do oppose Obamacare.'

Why, oh why, did she not take a moment to add 'of course, there is a calculated, overwhelming lack of public understanding about what Obamacare actually is, and when people are asked about specific actual provisions of the law, polling is always positive.'

But no.  In the current world of NPR News, the pulse of Americans is definitively against toughening access to guns and the (sic) government takeover of health care.

At every opportunity to provide perspective and counter the determination of the Wreckers (a handy term originally used in the old Soviet Union), the opportunity quickly passes. It's the way 'news' is handled in all the highly-visible outlets - the Corporate view must not be challenged.

Following these few minutes of news 'summary' (i.e. castration), NPR Morning Edition then spent the majority of the half-hour on a detailed story concerning the science advisor to the 'Big Bang Theory', with interviews, audio clips, and many details reflecting the thorough reporting that went into this story, which closed out the half-hour with this final stab into my heart: 'This is NPR News'.

Fire them all.

then and now

In the summer of 1967, I traveled to Europe with a group of students from my home town.  As I look back on the experience, I've often wondered what those Europeans made of us well-fed, naive tourists, a mere 20 years after they had experienced horrendous destruction and death.

Here is the group, at the Chemung County airport prior to departure. That's me on the left - yes, people back then actually wore coats and ties on airplanes.

One of the nice features of the program was that we stayed with families in 4 places: England, Austria, Denmark, and Holland.  For the Austrian home-stay, we were in a tiny village in the country.

The home I stayed with had pigs and chickens in the courtyard, a privy rather than plumbing, and a nice family, who served me sausage, mustard-from-a-tube, and their own white wine.  They spoke little English and my German was, at best, rudimentary.  I do remember sitting in their kitchen watching the news from Vietnam, and all agreeing that it was a terrible thing.

I took some slides of the mother and father, a son, and the house.  I was there for maybe 4 days, then we were off to Vienna, then Prague, then Berlin, but that's another story.

Decades have passed.

Now Karen and I are planning a Fall trip that will take us back to Prague and down the Danube from Passau, Germany to Vienna.  I pulled out my old slides and, for the first time in many years, remembered much about that time in Austria.  After a few days, I was able to remember the name of the teeny hamlet where we stayed (Elsarn), and found it on Google Maps.  Turns out that, on the final night of the bike tour, before heading to Vienna, we will be staying about 20 km from Elsarn.

I then tried to remember the name of the family and, after a couple of days, I remembered.  I asked Google if anyone with that name was still in that village, and up popped a name and an address - I could see it was the same place.

I had some 4x6 prints made of my slides, wrote a letter in German (with the help of Google Translate) and sent it off, at the end of May.  I checked my mailbox frequently for several weeks, then gave up looking.

Last week, I received an email, in English, from the grandson of the people I stayed with.  He thanked me for the photos.  The grandparents are long dead.  My photo from 1967:

We have exchanged several emails and it is possible that I may be able to see his father, now 77 and speaks no English, when we are in the neighborhood in October. I don't remember if I met his father that summer - he would have been 21 (I was 16).

Here is my 1967 photo of their courtyard - the little boy is the younger brother of the family, who I do remember.

The grandson just sent me a photo of the house as it is today.  As you can see, much is totally recognizable.

Time warp.

feudalism, 2050

This piece got me thinking (always a dangerous prospect).  To summarize, a real-estate guy in Arizona sells 'protective services', which are actually highly-armed, paramilitary mercenaries, to private corporations.

This, of course, is a teeny bit less alarming than having official Government military forces protecting private assets, which, (not so) oddly, has happened before with the mine industry (but I digress). Let's leave aside the Fascism of government involvement for now.

No, I'm thinking about a future distopia, where wealthless masses and scarce food/water/power resources exist in a world of (largely-but-not-totally metaphorical) islands of (relatively) great wealth, luxuries, and comfort, protected by private armies of highly-armed mercenaries.

Isn't this where we are heading, with the astonishing stratification of society and wealth concentration?  Instead of today's 'gated communities', where an attendant has to push a button to open the gate for your car to enter, imagine confronting a line of 'defenders' making it clear that you are definitely not going to gain access to the resources of the privileged few behind the walls.

As long as the Master can pay/feed/arm the troops, it's a sure bet that the angry/hungry masses at the gates will be 'handled'. The upside of this is full-employment for ex-military guys who have the perfect skills for the task at hand. The downside is archetypal.

It sounds like Europe in 1100 to me.  Given the history of Greed, I expect this Wikipedia page will get bigger in time.

In other news, I have to get my car's AC fixed today - another heat wave coming next week.

finally moving in the right direction, for electric cars?

A couple of years ago, I remember seeing a presentation on what seemed to me to be an outstanding model for dealing with the issue of electric car batteries.  It is simply this:

Since the battery is one of the most-expensive components, you do NOT include the price of the battery in the purchased car.  Instead, you subscribe to a battery-swap service (monthly-fee?).

Existing gas stations (who participate) would have Battery-swap stations, where you would simply drive in, present your credit card (or subscription card), and have a quick-as-a-bunny machine pull out your low battery and drop in a fresh one, and off you drive.

Obviously, there is a chicken-and-egg issue with setting up battery-swap stations around town (and along Interstate highways!!), but doesn't this make total sense?

If you elect to ALWAYS recharge your battery at home, you can cancel the swap-service after a while, but, given that everyone is already used to pulling into a gas station to get fuel, it's the same idea, and less hassle than plugging in at home.

In fact, the innovative folks at Tesla appear to be moving exactly there.   Cool, huh?

Man-O-Manzanita

Spending a couple of days in Manzanita, with doggie. This morning, despite clouds and the promise of drizzle (a promise that was indeed fulfilled), we hiked up the north side of Neahkahnie Mountain, a trail that, amazingly, I have not ever done in the 36 years (!) I have been meandering thru these parts.

Here's the start of the hike, looking back towards Cape Falcon (all photos via cell-phone - sorry).

Big old trees and ferns along the trail.

A (more) open area nearing the top.

And, this afternoon, down on the busy, busy beach.

Back to Portland tomorrow.

not dead yet

For context, see yesterday's post.

When Karen and Eric left Santa Cruz, around 2 this afternoon, Sylvia was mostly comatose, and everyone assumed that death was near. Tears were shed upon parting.

It's now 8:30 pm.  They arrived safely in the LA area, and are, at the moment, in the Burbank IKEA (Karen's idea, not Eric's), en route to the family house above the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

I called Santa Cruz and talked to Lola for a bit.  She said that Sylvia rallied later in the afternoon, and actually went for a (very) short walk in the neighborhood.  On speaker phone, I heard that familiar raspy voice, not at all weak, saying she was happy to hear from me.

I reminded her I am doing my once-a-month radio show next Sunday and she said she'd tune in (over the internet, as usual).  I asked if she had any requests and, without missing a beat, said firmly, "My Yiddishe Mame".

Sylvia Stolzberg: 102 years + 2 days, and continuing to amaze.

Just thought you should know.

and that was the last time I saw him

July, 1983

My father had been in poor health for a couple of years, but as the summer of 1983 began, it was clear that he was dying.  After a number of operations and setbacks, he was moved into a room in the hospital where I had been born, 31 years earlier.  Arnot-Ogden Hospital - Elmira, New York.

I am now almost 62 - so these events happened exactly half a lifetime (so far) ago.

I had taken a leave of absence from my Portland job and flown home, to be with my mother and brother.  There was nothing to do but sit in the room, read, doze, wait.

I remember two sounds, as the hot, humid summer days dragged on and on.  My father did not talk.  Each breath, in and out, was accompanied by the sounds of air bubbling thru the fluid constantly filling his lungs.  The nurses drained fluid frequently, but it soon returned, as did the bubbling sound deep in his chest.

That sound was disturbing enough, but, every few hours, we were asked to leave the room while the nurses turned him in the bed.  His cries of pain reached the corridor - no words, just hurt.

There was nothing to be done.  Each night, we'd return to the house my parents built before they were married, and was the only home I knew until I left town for college, in Baltimore, at 17.  Each new morning, we'd dress, eat something, and drive to the hospital.

There were bad days, when we were certain that the end was near. I remember waking up one morning and saying to myself, 'this is the day my father dies'.  But he kept on, without any of us trying to fool ourselves with hope.

This went on for many, many weeks, but it was eventually clear that nothing would change soon.  It was time for me to fly back to Portland, to attend to matters there.

It was my father's 75th birthday, July 8th, when I was set to leave.  It was another bright, hot, humid Upstate New York summer morning.  I went up to his bed - his eyes were closed and his labored breathing regular.  I can't remember if I held his hand, but I said something like, "I always hoped you would be proud of me."

It was over a month later, in mid-August, when I got a phone call at work from a family friend who said, "you better come immediately."  I quickly made a plane reservation, left work and went home to pack.  As I was waiting for a taxi to arrive my phone rang again.  It was my boss's secretary who said, in a quiet voice, "we just got another call for you.  Your father died an hour ago."

It took me well over a year before I felt like a human being again, and 1984 turned out to have a couple of major, very positive, turning-points in my life, but that's another story.

Why am I having these memories today?

Karen's mother, the inestimable Sylvia Stolzberg, turned 102 yesterday.  Karen has been there, in Santa Cruz, since Tuesday, as Sylvia is now in that twilight period, 'between two worlds' as a friend put it.  Very weak now, she is at times conversant, joking, and eating - at other times simply sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

Between two worlds.

Tomorrow, Karen and her brother are driving down to Pasadena, to check in with the workers who are doing some long-deferred painting and repairs at the now empty family home, where we have had so many joyous (and a couple of somber) family events over the decades.  It was originally planned that Sylvia would also be going to Pasadena for a big family birthday party, but that was cancelled when she began this last big decline, last week.

At some point tomorrow morning, Karen will have to say good-bye to Sylvia. My poor father, 30 years ago, showed no sign of knowing me the last time we were together.  I am hoping that Karen is able to have more.

Here is Sylvia, with a friend, last Thanksgiving:

it might as well be Spring

There is actual sun in Portland today, and it's positively mild - what a change!  Time to get out in the yard and do a few long-postponed chores.

Here are two of our (several) vegetable plots that, last year, held tomatoes (very good year, both for Cherry and Early Girl), bok choi (very tasty - ate 'em all), purple bush beans (meh!), squashes (zucchini and summer - moderately successful), and a smattering of herbs, which were, sadly, mostly destroyed by the cats.

Patches are now freshly weeded and spread with a lot of our abundant compost.

I'm thinking potatoes in one of them (did potatoes in the back yard last year - pretty good yield), and more tomatoes and POLE beans (quite successful, a couple of years ago) in the other.

This afternoon, compost on the asparagus bed!

(By the way, if you click to enlarge the photo, and it was a perfectly-clear day, you'd see Mt. Hood in the spot above the neighbor's chimney.)