Essays

Rich get Richer

2012-02-16T01:06:00.000-08:00

    How would you feel if you found out one family had as much money as 120 million Americans. Let me repeat that number -- 120 million Americans. That is one third of the people who exist in America. All of them put together have as much money as the members of one family.
    Nowadays, liberty has become “Security for financial operations.” We are confusing this kind of liberty -- liberty for financial operations -- with the simple concept of Liberty. The freedom to make as much money as you can is being confused with freedom.
    If you have the Freedom to make money then what has to happen is that money accumulates in piles. The biggest pile? The Walmart Family that has as much money as 120 million Americans.
    Or, in 2005 “21.2 per cent of US National Income -- that’s one out of every five dollars earned -- went to 1% of earners.”
    It’s not rich families who have inherited money that we are talking about. Earners. These are people who earn the money that’s out there for all of us to earn. Ninety nine percent of us get four out of every five dollars, One percent of us get one out of every five dollars.
    Wow. That’s inequality. That’s somehow wrong.
    As the book I am quoting from says “In the 1970s the concept that the point of life was to get rich and that governments exist to facilitate this would have been ridiculed.” Ridiculed. Made Fun of. Just forty years ago. Government exists to secure liberty for Financial operations? You gotta be kidding me. Look at what happens in the so called Free Market. One per cent of the people rake it in. The rest of us get to split what’s left.
    That’s just not fair.
    In finance, the one per cent who are the best rake in 21.5 per cent of the money available to rake in. And don’t you out there think you’ll join that one per cent. In America, those who began in the bottom fifth in income, are less likely to get out of that rut than the bottom fifth in any other developed Western nation. You know how hard times are now. You know most people are struggling -- and yet we have laws in place to make sure the rich few get to keep what they earn and to multiply it. The gap between the rich and the poor is greater now than it has ever been before in American history.
    We need to tax the rich more -- and perhaps we even need to curb their right to earn as much as they can earn. That may sound like Socialism, but a mere fifty years ago, in the 1960s, in the good old USA, the very richest earners paid as high as 90 per cent of their income in taxes.

Graven Images

2012-02-08T00:09:00.000-08:00

    We all know that the second commandment states “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.” But precisely what is a “graven image”?
    Any bible, in Spanish, in English, in Turkish, in Greek -- is a translation of an ancient language. In a sense we will never-ever really know what was meant when the commandment, in Hebrew, says “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”
    We can guess, we do guess. If you go into any synagogue in the world -- any synagogue, you will not see carvings of humans or cows, or trees, or images of any kind. That is the simple definition of graven image -- something that represents something all of us recognize -- a Bhudda, a Christ, an image -- something we can see.
    I have just visited what is reputedly the most beautiful Synagogue in all of Europe. It is in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and it is full, blatantly full of graven images. Representations of humans? No. Images of any kind? No. So what do I mean when I say full of graven images?
    The Synagogue in Prague is carved out of gold. I mean carved out of gold. It glows. It is yellow, beautiful, splendid -- it is the most beautiful synagogue I have ever seen. It is all geometric patterns of one kind or another -- no image is to be seen. The patterns fill the side walls, the domed ceiling, the columns. The intricate patterns are varied, immensely beautiful. But all I could think of is Gold, money. These people worshiped money.
    We Jews do not place “graven images’ in places of worship because we believe only God should be worshiped. He and he alone is worthy of our worship.
    Every time Prague Jews came to pray, they could not help but think of money, of gold, of the splendor that could only be bought with a great deal of money -- money for materials, money for craftsmen, money for designers.
    They had to leave this place of worship and lust for something resembling this shimmering golden splendor in their own homes. It all glows. It shrieks out -- I am rich. I can afford all this. Isn’t this beyond belief beautiful? Isn’t this splendor on a vast scale -- and don’t I want some of it for my abode?
    Virtually every synagogue I’ve ever visited is simple, white, stark. It may have a high ceiling. It may be vast. It may be beautiful in its way, but it is totally free of graven images -- no gold, no marble, no statues, no filigrees. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images. Focus on God. You are here to worship him, not the craftsmanship of Michelangelo, or a silver & gold maker.
    I do not mean to denigrate the splendiferous synagogue in Prague. It is so beautiful that a picture of the inside of this synagogue, the dome, is now my screen saver. I can’t stop looking at it. It is so beautiful.
    But I am worshiping a graven image. I do not think of God, or the meaning of my existence. I think of beauty upon this earth. And that is not what a Jewish god would want.

Conquering Desire

2012-01-31T05:32:00.001-08:00

What if every morning for months, nay for years, you made a vow, and every day you broke that vow. When you made the vow, early in the morning, you were sure, absolutely sure, you could do what you set out to do. You had done it before, many-many times before. And it was easy, really dead easy.
    Yes, the first day might be hard, or maybe the second day would be hard, but after day three days it would be dead easy -- and you loved the result. Hated the current you.
    What I have said is absolutely true of me -- and though all of you are guessing, your guess is wrong.
    Every day I wake up & vow not to eat anything at all today. Not to eat a single morsel. It is easy. I have fasted for a single day hundreds of times. Yes, hundreds of time. There are several days in a year when a Jew must eat nothing for 24 hours. As a young & religious boy, I did it often. All observant Jew do it.
    For many years I have disliked myself because I succumb, I eat food. No, I have no wish to be anorexic; I am currently the very opposite of anorexic. I am close to obese. At the very least I’m round in the middle, need to lose 20 pounds. And I can’t stop myself from eating.
    Can you imagine, the loathing, the seething anger at that part of me that chooses to eat. I can’t stand the fact that I, like all of you, loves to stimulate his senses. A cheesy-gooey slice of Pizza would be so wonderful now, would taste so good. I haven’t eaten ice scream since last summer. Wouldn’t it be nice to eat just one big cone.
    I do not respect me. Over & over I hear in my head an old Hebrew saying that was drilled into me. Eyzehu Hagibor, Hacovesh et Yizro. Who is the strong man, he who conquers his evil tendencies, evil predilections.
    Is eating evil? No but it is something I do not wish to do. A strong man conquers himself, not others. A strong man has control over what he knows are things that are bad for him. He does not jump out of a plane without a parachute. Nor does he, or she, eat too much of all kinds of foods that are demonstrably bad, and make one feel bad.
    Though I am 73, when I am thin, I’m happy, fit & fast & I feel relatively young. As I am now, obese, overweight, I often feel tired, and slow, and I feel old-old-old.

184,000 Ways!

2012-01-24T02:52:00.000-08:00

    For days now I’ve been haunted by a piece of information in a book called Road to Ruin. The book, by Dom Nozzi, is about how cars are ruining the American landscape.
    The piece of information haunting me? If you have a grid of ten street by ten streets -- you can all envision that -- if you seek to go by car from one corner of the ten street grid to the other far corner, there are 184,000 possible ways to do that. You heard correctly, 184,000 ways to get from point A to point B.
    Stick 50,000 cars at one corner & tell them they need to get to the other corner, the far corner, they won’t all head down the same street: it would be a humongous traffic jam.
    So one car enters the ten-by-tens-street-maze, and goes two blocks one way four blocks left, then… You get the picture. They disperse, they fan out. They don’t all come roaring down one particular street.
    The point of all this? If you make one major road -- the old Town by pass for instance -- they’ll all come roaring down that wide & welcoming way -- and it will soon be stinky, clogged, overcrowded, noisy….
    But if you leave the situation alone, some will come down tenth, some will go down seventh, some will take State, others Cass, others union.
    The old way is the best way. Don’t widen roads & rush them through. Keep the roads small. It is okay if they are overcrowded at some times on some days. Make cars slow down because there is no wide & welcoming way to rush through.
    One hundred & eighty four thousand ways to get from the corner of Division & 14th to the corner of 8th Street & Rose street. That’s about a 10 by 10 block square.
    And what do our planners want to do? They want to funnel all cars down 14th street, to a place past Cass Street. Then, between the Oryana Co-op & Boardman Lake they will be funneled down to eight, and on eight, they can zoom to Garfield.
    No, no, no, no. Fan out. Disperse the cars down existing roads. Build no more new roads. Make cars slow down in town. Save money by not building a big new road and use that money for bicycle lanes & beautiful & punctual Public transportation.
    Why will continue down one road way past the time it makes sense to go down that road. Accommodate cars no more -- no more new car roads, no more parking lots or parking ramps. Enough! Too much has been done for cars, for car drivers.
    For at least the next 20 years, let us focus all our resources on making towns navigable by foot, by car, by trolley, by bus, by train, by tram. It is not so much that we will ban cars as that we will make the alternatives enticing, fun, inexpensive, readily available, safe & warm. Everything that cars are now.

Optical Delusion

2012-01-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

    In your mind, visualize a typical upper class suburb: houses set far apart, set far back of lush rolling green lawns.
    As one man wrote, satirizing the situation; “Each of these houses is understood as existing in isolation: an assemblage of little cabins in the woods.” That is how frontier oriented Americans see themselves: the lone cowboy, the cabin in the woods. Each man for himself.
    But there is perhaps a deeper reason for this separate cabins in the woods mentality. A psychologist studying human thoughts, the mind & how it sees the world, wrote that the typical American: “experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of Optical delusion of consciousness.”
    All humans are confined inside their bodies. They see themselves as something separate from the rest -- and of course that is a delusion of consciousness. We are deeply dependant on others in too many ways to begin to describe. We may think we are isolated. We may, as the psychological study says, restrict ourselves to our personal desires, to affection for a few persons nearest us.”
    This is how most of us behave. Politics, people across town, people in other cities, the country as a whole do not exist. We do not need to cooperate. Just listen to the Tea Party. We do not need government -- the very government that has given us a minimum wage, social security, medicare, libraries, roads -- we do not need government.
    Cut taxes. Cut taxes they keep saying. Spend less for education, spend less for health care, spend less supporting the poor. Just spend less. An optical delusion of consciousness.
    We need the government to do things for us that absolutely cannot be done by the few people we interact with, or by us alone. Do we want to cope without medicare in our old age? Do we want the car companies to decide how safe their cars should be, the plane companies to regulate their own behavior, monitor their skyrocketing ticket prices?
    Do we really want a world where there is minimum government regulation -- each man, or woman, for themselves? I’m scared of such a world. I’m a physically small man. Some big person could easily squash me. I want lots of police & a great deal of regulation on behavior. You may not smash small people, take advantage of stupid people, exploit the poor. You may not. If you do, government regulators will deal with you.
    I want government. I want co-operation. I feel I’ve grown up. I know we are not free to do what we want to do, we are free within a world full of restrictions. You will stop at a red light. You will not carry a machine gun around whenever you feel like it. You will not play music at a level that will deafen anyone within a half a mile. You will not & you will not, and we have laws in place -- and most important, we have a bureaucracy in place to enforce those rules & regulations -- and we have that because we’ve raised money through taxes.
    We must all chip in for the greater good. We do not live in cabins in the woods in splendid isolation.

Safe Cities

2012-01-02T23:40:00.001-08:00

    Before cars everybody knew what your neighborhood was. The joke was “Your neighborhood was the place where, when you walked out of it, you got beat up.” Of course that is an exaggeration, but the key words here are “When you walked out of it.”
    Neighborhoods were walkable -- walking was the only way to get from point A to point B, except for horses & then bicycles. Essentially, kids could walk around safely in the neighborhood, run around safely in the neighborhood.
    And all that was true because we were all out about, on the streets of our city, going to work & to shop.
    But all that changed when cars began to creep in.
    And what made me realize that? Because book after book that I am reading, about cities, needs to cite the elements that make for a good community. Well, you need people walking around a lot, and you need local stores, and you need places -- large open air places -- for people to congregate, for festivities to occur, and you need….
    Stop.    Put simply you want the places that existed before cars existed: or every city in the world, before cars, had streets for walking, places to congregate, places near other places, the effect being that working, sleeping, shopping, praying & carousing, were all close by, intermingled -- all within walking distance.
    Cars killed that. Cars made it possible for all these things to occur far apart from each other. You sleep here, you work way over there, and when you want to play, why that’s way in the other direction.
    How did this happen? It is too long a story to tell now but what is happening now is that books & books & books are being written on what makes for a good small town, what makes for a good city.
    My answer? Stop babbling and in one master stroke you can create all you wish to create. Ban cars. End of.
    All your blathering, have people walk & bike, increase density, create public transport, have theatre & shopping nearby ….   Stop, stop, stop.
    All you are doing is describing what used to exist before cars.
    In populated places, ban car usage. All around such places, build huge parking lots, temporary housing for the guns surrendered at the city limit. Inside cities, where people live, cars are not allowed.
    Leave you cars at the door, and do step into our pleasant living room our pleasant town that is yours to use, walk around in. No need to fear cars. No need to fear muggers, because other people, all the others out on the streets of our city, will watch over you.

Foreign TV Shows

2011-12-26T07:01:00.001-08:00

    America is a huge country, absolutely enormous. It is so vast and so varied that most people never leave this country. Almost 90% of Americans do not even have a passport -- which means they never have left this country, never plan to leave this country.
    One cannot force these people to travel to foreign countries, but Americans need to be exposed to another point of view, another angle of vision, and that in part, is what fascinates me about foreign TV shows -- yes, something as mundane as foreign Television shows can expose one to another culture, another sensibility.
    Many of you have heard of, or read, the Swedish Dragon Tatoo Lady trilogy. The Swedes made three movies, in Swedish of course. American movie makers know Americans will not go to foreign movies where they have to read subtitles, so they made three movies of the three books -- in English of course.
    Americans miss so much, are deprived of so much, by seeing it all from an American’s point of view. The Swedish movie contains the Swedish landscape, Swedish actors & actresses, Swedish camera operators -- the whole movie is different, differently paced, differently shot. There is so much that is different & enlightening, I despair of explaining.
    In England, on their television they air foreign made television shows -- only a select few, of course. Recently they aired a 12 part French detective novel entitled, the Butcher of La Villete. Before that they aired Swedish Wallander detective series -- written by Henning Mankell.
    What a pleasure it is to see the face of a detective that looks nothing like the American or British faces I know & see all the time. The actor who plays Wallander is overweight, middle aged, plodding, mostly silent. He is like no American TV detective I‘ve ever seen.
    And the interaction portrayed between members of the French police force is vicious -- and every single cop is corrupt. Real French police have commented on how accurate the portrait is of what really goes on in the French Police Force. Some policemen refuse to watch it because it is too much like being back at work.    How revealing. They do things differently there.
    Of course there is so much that is familiar: these are human beings with human foibles, but exactly how this all plays out in real life is different in Sweden, different in France -- and we need to see it from their point of view: shot by French Camera people, directed by French directors -- and full of classically French actors, actors & actresses, in most cases, none of whom I’ve ever seen on any screen before.

Biking? Flying!

2011-12-06T02:44:00.001-08:00

We can swim like fish in the sea. We can run like gazelles on land. We can do almost all that other animals can do -- but we cannot fly.
    From time immemorial the answer to the question “What would you like to be able to that you cannot do was “I’d like to be able to fly.”   We humans would love to be able to fly.
    What differentiates Superman -- and his many imitators -- from us mere mortals, is that they can fly through the sky.
    Airplanes don’t cut it. Airplanes enable our bodies to be carried through the sky, but we don’t really fly, something flies us.
    What about riding a bicycle -- Yes, riding a bicycle. It is low level flying. It really, really is. Birds flap their wings, we push pedals, we propel ourselves at a low level.
    I just came back from a bike ride that made me realize this quiet truth. I am flying above ground, moving rapidly, smoothly. To go faster I pedal harder -- and for long stretches, like a bird, I pedal not at all, my wings are idle as I fly through air. This is especially true when I stand on the pedals. I hover high above the bike, wind whipping past my head. I fly.
    I swoop left, am high above the ground, I glide over pavement, then sidewalk. Swoop left, swoop right, pedal harder, glide for a stretch.
    It is flying -- and some who are labeled Lycra Louts have learned to fly at speeds of over sixty miles an hour.
    We love to fly, and biking is low level flying. You can’t run that fast, and in my opinion having a machine transport you at high speeds is something totally different. We human want to propel ourselves, pedal power, in space -- and in part bicycling does that.
    Next time you get on your bike, work hard at achieving another state of mind. Actively think of yourself as gliding over ground, in a sense, flying at a low level. When you are about to turn, envision a bird, swooping left, swooping right. See your motion as eerily similar to their motion.
    Birds can do far more than humans can do. Birds can rise, soar, come swooping down. We bike riders are vertically limited, but horizontally, straight ahead, we can outswim fish, we can outbike almost any animal on earth for short & long bursts, and we fly faster than some flying birds.
    We are superman. We can fly. All we need to do is ride a bicycle.

Tourists -- We Need You!

2011-11-28T07:17:00.000-08:00

    For years & years & years my wife & I have known that the American government makes it hard for foreigners -- Brits, French people, people from absolutely everywhere -- to visit America. It is hard to get a visa -- a temporary permit to come visit America.
    How is it hard? Well, in some cases, you have to travel hundreds of miles to the only place that will issue an American passport -- London, for instance. Recently there was a big to-do in the British press about the school group that cancelled a tour to America because it would have cost thousands of pounds to transport all of them to London.
    We have known this fact -- how hard it is to come for just a visit to the US -- we have known this for years. Many of our friends knew this , and all our friends who live abroad complain of the difficulty.
    This was not deemed newsworthy by the network news. Lets face it, since 9/11 Americans are not keen to have foreigners come here: they might be carrying bombs. Best if they stay where they are. So what if it is hard to come visit America.
    But there was a big piece on the network news on how hard it is for foreigners to come here, visit the US, spend money here -- and that was the key. Spend money here. The average French tourists, in two weeks, spends so much & so much, and the average Chinese visitor -- millions of whom are dying to come here -- spends…
    Suddenly we want them to come here. We want them to come here & spend their money here -- because that would mean more jobs for us. Key words: Money, jobs. We want them here temporarily -- and most want to come here temporarily -- they want to come here on vacation -- and we want them to spend money here.
    It is all on the angle taken. Do you want millions of foreigners to come to the US, one of whom could be a terrorist? Do you want millions of foreigners to come here & spend their money here?
    And here are the stunning stastistic. In the year 2000, 26 million foreign visitors came to the US. Ten years later, 2010, 26.4 million visitors came here. In a ten year span, the number of visitors to America barely increased in numbers -- but visitors to Europe -- most likely those who couldn’t visit us -- increased by multiple millions in the last decade.
    The reporter said: we want them to come visit us. The anchorperson enthusiastically added, and spend their money here.
    There is no better diplomacy than person to person diplomacy. It is hard to hate a human being you’ve met who seems so much like you. It is easy to hate the abstract thing called a Muslim or an Arab or a Chinaman. We must encourage visits. We must try to make it easy to acquire a visa. We want them to spend money here, get to know us -- and we desperately need to get to know them. We are insulated country. We need news from abroad -- and as the ancherperson said: we need their money.

Uninternalized Externalities

2011-08-11T06:24:00.001-07:00

    Bookish people often create terminology that seems unnecessarily complex. Here is a term they’ve created: Uninternalized Externalities. Say what? I’ll say it again, slowly, Uninternalized externalities.
    Here is what they mean. Uninternalized? You, the person doing whatever it is you are doing, have not internalized, thought about, been made to feel, the effect of what you are doing -- the externalities.
    This complex term best explains the problem with cars, the problem with car drivers.
    Car drivers feel they have a right to drive anywhere they want to, as often as they want to, for as long as they want to. In cities. Across the country. And they want good wide roads, and parking spots. They want all that. And they want to burn fuel, consume resources. They feel they are willing to pay good money. What’s the problem.
    Uninternalized externalities.
    Your behavior is having a huge effect on all of us, on the cities we live in, the countryside that is now criss crossed by roads. You are not really paying anywhere near enough money for the effect of your actions.
    Your choice of transportation, is responsible for 40,000 deaths, 160,000 serious casualties, each & every year in the US alone. Have you any idea what that costs? Of course deaths cannot be counted in dollars and cents -- but the ambulances, fire trucks, policemen, the countless people deployed in controlling the carnage you cause costs a ton of money.
    Yes, you, car driver, you are directly responsible. And though I do not own a car, when I choose to drive a car, rent a car, I should be charged for the road I use, and I should be charged a high rate to park my car.
    Make me internalize the externality -- the carnage I cause, the congestion I create, should be felt by me. Felt by me? Make me pay up front for what is known by all to be the effect of my action; deaths, pollution, resource consumption.
    It seems so obvious and it truly explains to me why drivers see nothing wrong with their desire to simply drive: Uninternalized externalities. It is not their fault. The roads are there, the parking is there, the police are there to help.   How could they be expected to have internalized the externalities. What externalities? Noise, pollution, road congestion, road upkeep, traffic police, firemen.
    All these are externalities & car drivers, in many, many ways, should be made to pay more for the effect of their behavior -- and having to pay more may help to curtail their behavior: they may drive less.

Cassandra Kunstler

2011-06-14T05:39:00.001-07:00

    Perhaps one should not write when one is depressed. A Bad mood is a form of pollution. Cassandras, those who predict doom, are not well loved. And yet I feel I must say something -- and yet I know that saying something will change nothing.
    Why am I depressed? I just watched a talk involving James Kunstler predicting the end of oil, the end of the American Dream, and his audience simply didn’t get it. If you are right, Mr. Kunstler, why isn’t the price of gasoline at the pump higher? I love my car, Mr. Kunstler. I want to live in my suburban home, Mr. Kunstler. Look at America, the opposition speaker said. Most of it is undeveloped land. Why not build more highways for cars?
    Everything looks fine to us Mr. Kunstler. People may be predicting doom, the end of oil, global warming, but science will solve all problems. We will use Solar energy, electric cars. We will solve all problems.
    I wanted James Kunstler to stand up & scream: “You don’t get it people. It all looks fine, but we can’t go on this way. I don’t care if you love your car, there won’t be enough oil…. Face reality people…”
    But I am depressed. After watching this talk I went and ate Beef Stroganoff in a prepared-in-the-store package. I know prepared foods are killing me. I know I eat too much. I was depressed, so I ate junk food.
    I can’t curb my own behavior -- behavior I know is shortening my life. I know what I ought to do and I perversely do not do it. I over eat. I eat the wrong foods. I travel by car. I fly back & forth between England & America.
    I know that what I do is wasteful, is killing me, is squandering resources. I am even more pessimistic than James Kunstler.
    Those who were listening to Kunstler’s talk don’t even think they are behaving badly, squandering resources. They see solutions. They aren’t afraid. They think we are crazy Cassandra soothsayers predicting doom & gloom that just won’t happen and they are not going to change their behavior for something that won‘t happen.
    It will happen. I know it will. Deep down most of you know the wasteful American way of life is doomed. There are too many people on this planet. They want what we have, and they want it more desperately than we do. We are doomed -- and they are doomed, and I, who know this to be true, am doing nothing except enjoying myself, eating more & more prepared foods, traveling whenever I want to.
    This talk is depressing. Mankind does not like to face reality. A friend of mine had a huge banner over her bed: Reality who needs it. We don’t want to face reality. We wanna have fun and we do not want to think about the consequences.

2011-06-06T08:06:00.001-07:00

    For years now I’ve been walking into the huge stores that exist in Malls everywhere and wondering who in heavens name buys all this stuff. These are immense stores full of tons & tons of stuff. Entire villages in Europe could be supplied by just one of these stores.
    How do they all survive? Who buys all this stuff? I just couldn’t imagine that we needed all these stores -- that these stores could continue to thrive, survive.
    We now know that they can’t all survive. We know they overbuilt, but the exact statistician are staggering.
    Between 1990 and 2005 -- 15 years -- retail space in America doubled. Imagine that. Doubled. For every store that existed in 1990, another of equal space & size was built -- and filled full of stuff.
    What about consumer spending in that fifteen year period? Consumer spending rose by 14%. We spend a sixth more, they doubled the things that are there to buy. You can do the math. We did not need all those new stores -- and if the math is even close to right, almost one half of all the stores in America are ready to close their doors.
    Almost half of all stores. Twice as many stores exist now as existed in 1990, and we are purchasing only a little more than we purchased in 1990 -- and many of my purchases -- and everybody else’s purchases, are being made on line, through our computers, not in stores.
    We know we have overbuilt -- built too many stores, built too many houses. In a previous column I mentioned that we built 20 million new houses in the last 20 years. Or we built roughly one new house for every 15 Americans.
    Of course people have stopped buying new houses. There just aren’t enough people in our country to buy new houses -- especially since the new houses are not affordable houses but big houses for rich people.
    And of course stores are folding -- there are just too many stores. Or to cite another statistic, we have six times the retail space per capita than any European country. Six times the retail space. Retail space doubled between 1990 and 2005.
    Is there a point to all my ramblings? We need to build more intelligently. Of course fewer houses are being built now that the housing market collapsed & fewer new stores will open as commercial people see that existing retail space more than meets the needs of the existing population. But we need to build fewer roads for cars & fewer parking ramps & parking lots.
    Too much is being built. We are planning for a future that will not happen. People will not continue to buy new & ever bigger houses. People will not double their shopping -- and cars will not continue to dominate our landscape.
    We need to retool for the real future that is ahead. Smaller houses, more affordable houses, public transportation for the many, not private vehicles for the few who will be able to afford private transportation, and fewer big & soul less stores that are simply replicas of each other.

Ted Talks

2011-05-15T09:53:00.001-07:00

    I’m back in school & I love it, I really love it.
    The problem with the old kind of school is you have to take notes & somebody is going to grade you. You are tense, unhappy. You are also made to sit still in a classroom full of others. I’m back in school while sitting at home in front of my computer -- and no, it isn’t that the computer is educating me, teachers, great lecturers are talking to me.
    I’ve discovered Ted Talks -- there are now over 800 Ted Talks. Capital T capital E capital D. And they are talks that last between ten & thirty minutes -- and they are wonderful, educational talks.
    Yes, you need time to listen to them. They are not short You Tube Videos, yet they are like You Tube Videos -- but they are longer, more involving and tons of fun.
    Let me explain that I love to learn, I love to be entertained & educated. If you don’t like to learn, if you want froth that does you no good, watch television. Ted Talks teach you things and introduce you to wonderful thinkers.
    I can’t possibly list all the talks and I can’t begin to guess which talks you will really like, but I can point out a few that are hilarious, moving, powerful educational.
    I’ll begin with the one that made me laugh out loud. Howard Kunstler is a man many of you have heard of. He’s come to Traverse City a few times. His talk is about cities & highways -- and he is laugh out loud funny. You must take a look at his 18 minute talk -- and I mean take a look. What is wonderful about this modern day teachers is that they have a whole raft of visuals that make their talking heads so much more entertaining.
    In fact it is a talk that contains tons of visuals that prompted this talk to all of you. A man I had never heard of, Dan Phillips, delivered an 18 minute talk about the houses he created out of left over materials, dumpster stuff. You get to see his houses, but while you look, he talks, and he refers to Jean Paul Sartre & Plato & Nietzsche -- and I can’t even remember who else. But you learn, you are entertained and you get to see these wonderful houses. He is so wise & funny. I cannot recommend him highly enough.
    And the most powerful one I’ve seen so far is a young black lady from the South Bronx, Majora Carter. I never heard of her, and yet her delivery is machine gun fast, terribly moving. Time flies as you listen to her. She is a whirlwind, a force of nature, a truly inspirational speaker.
    I am back in school & I love it. Yes, I am retired. I have the time to devote time to these videos. Truthfully, somebody introduced me to TED talks a couple of years ago. I watched one & watched no more talks for two years. Who has the time, the interest, the desire -- and yet these talks are wonderful, and best of all, if you don’t like it, stop it, choose another, or go do something else altogether.
    But the talks are there, and some are absolutely wonderful. We pay big bucks to go to be entertained & educated. This costs nothing, can be done in the comfort of your home, and lasts, at most, thirty minutes, most often 15 minutes. Do yourself a favor. T E D Ted talks. Type it into google. The best three so far? Howard Kunstler, Dan Phillips, Majora Carter. Enjoy.

2011-03-29T11:16:00.001-07:00

I must open by saying I am an immigrant, one who escaped Nazi occupied Belgium & ended up, in 1947 in the USA -- New York City to be specific. And it is immigration I am going to speak about.
    We all know about illegal immigrants, the fence with Mexico, the American backlash against those foreigners invading the USA. We see this backlash occurring in Europe as Germans torch the housing of what are legal immigrants, a work force they once wanted but no longer tolerate. And France expelled Gypsies. There is a world wide backlash against immigrants, foreigners, but I just saw figures that point to the scale of the problem here in America.
    I am giving you figures of population growth in the 20th century -- population growth in one hundred years. Population growth is not all due to immigration, but most of it is due to immigrants. The population of France grew by 52% and you know that in the 20th century families had fewer children. It must be because people love France, want to come to France to work and play and enjoy the French life style that the population of France grew by 52%.
    That is a lot of people. If there were 50 million Frenchmen, a growth of 52% means that in the same area, there are now more than 75 million Frenchmen. That doesn’t sound bad -- unless you are French and you suddenly feel that you are surrounded by Algerians -- all of whom claim to be French.
    In Germany in the 20th century the population grew by 46% and in England by 42% -- but the real shocker is the U.S.
    You know our land mass is huge. England is smaller, has fewer square miles, than Michigan. You could fit England & Germany & France into the U.S. and still have land left over. By how much did the American population grow in the 20th century. By 270%. That is astonishing, absolutely astonishing.
    No wonder Americans -- all of whom really are immigrants from somewhere elsewhere, only American Indians could be said to not be immigrants -- no wonder Americans are irritated by all them foreigners -- and I am one of them foreigners, although I’ve lived all but nine years of my 73 years in America.
    A population growth of 270%. That is unbelievable, and yet it is not that unbelievable. America’s economic strength comes from its manpower, its people who are willing to work hard, produce a great deal. Were it not for that population growth of 270% we wouldn’t be the greatest economic power in the world. Yes, we are number one, but China is gaining fast.
    I’ll end with one more astonishing figure of growth -- this time in China, and it is not immigration of foreigners, but immigration of country folk to the city.
    Ann Arbor, Michigan has slightly over 100,000 people. A city of just that size in China, in 15 years, grew from 100,000 to 3 million. I won’t even try to figure out the percentage growth. Just imagine Ann Arbor, Michigan, in just 15 years, growing from 100,000 people to 3 million people. Unbelievable -- and yet, in China, very believable.

2011-03-10T10:40:00.000-08:00

     I am interested in cities and cars, or more correctly, how cars affect cities. So I’ve been at my computer doing what I call wasting time -- and yet it is research, but not research as it used to be.
    When I was growing up, research meant heading to a library, browsing through bookshelves, looking at bibliographies. It was time consuming, required get up & go. You had to get up. You had to physically go to a library. Stand there. Go to shelves, leaf through books. It took time & effort.
    Today, I just typed words into google, words such as “City Planning,” or “urban transportation,” or any combination that might throw up books I could purchase, underline, learn from.
    I feel I am being lazy -- and yet I’ve done good research. I found several people who have listed their top ten books of city planning. I glanced at the lists, typed several titles into Amazon.co.uk -- or Amazon.com. I bought a few of the books.
    I did learn. I did do research. In fact, the last piece of research led me to the on-line copy of the first chapter of a book I am waiting impatiently to buy. Waiting impatiently? I can’t afford the current price, almost half a hundred dollars, but the book is falling in price, a paperback copy is due out any day now.
    The book? The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup, but let me explain how I found the first chapter on line.
    Somehow, in my meanderings, I came upon a long rebuttal made by the author, Donald Shoup, to a critical review of the book. As Shoup said, he doesn’t usually respond to reviews, but this one misrepresented him so badly that he felt he needed to reply.
    The reply was very long -- maybe five pages long -- and full of good information. I read the whole thing, but I’ve read so much about his ideas that I learned nothing new, nothing I didn’t already know. But at the end of this long rebuttal was the modern equivalent of a bibliography: a list of where else, on the web, there are articles about, or articles by, Donald Shoup. And there it was, available on line, available for me to read: the whole of the first chapter of his book.
    So I immediately went there, began reading, and within two pages I knew there was much I needed to copy: he was so unbelievably informative, his book was full of such good data -- which is, of course, why I want to buy his book.
    So I was doing research, not just goofing off, wasting time. This long process -- an hour or two -- led me to the information I was seeking, information about cars, parking, the impact on cities. In my next talk I’ll let you know some of what I learned, but one of the points of this talk is that research has a new shape, and what at first may look like lazy behavior -- I don’t want to do anything, so I’ll just type words into google, see what google throws at me -- is not really lazy behavior.
    Google threw at me what I was desperately looking for: data on cars & cities, ammunition with which to develop a point I seek desperately to develop: We must redesign cities, and we must control that beast that is destroying all modern cities -- the two ton car.

2011-02-28T11:07:00.000-08:00

Recently there was an article in the New York times about a book that has just been published. Title? Income Inequality and the Superstar Effect.
The first thing you need to know is “The United States is the rich country with the most skewed income distribution.” Or in plain English, in America the richest people get a bigger piece of the pie than in any other country. I could cite statistic after statistic, but statistics, especially piled up statistics, have a numbing effect. Basically, rich people get lots and the rest of us get little.
So what, most of you say, or good for them and I want to become one of them. But here’s the rub, in America, you have less of a chance of becoming one of them than you do in any other western country. We’ve always believed that America is the land of opportunity. You can become rich if you just work hard enough.
Here are the numbers: “There is a 42 per cent chance that the son of an American man born in the bottom fifth of the income distribution will be stuck in the same economic slot.” Let’s just round up the number: half the people who start out poor will remain poor. Half the people. In England, only a third of the people will be stuck in poverty. In Sweden only a fifth.
Put simply, you have a 75% chance of getting out of the rut of poverty in Sweden, a 70% per cent chance in England. In America? Only a 50% chance. Or, half of all Americans are guaranteed a life of poverty, or near poverty. You are not going to get rich.
And the rich are really-really rich. We all know about bankers bonuses. It is making us sick to hear about the bonuses.
Sometimes only statistics can make clear how sick this all is. Banks, financial firms, amassed a little less than a fifth of the profits of all American corporations in 1987. A fifth of all the profits of all the American corporations were amassed by banks. Remember, banks don’t make anything, don’t sell anything. They just juggle money, and just juggling money they managed to make one out five dollars that were there to make.
But it is much worse now. In 2007, one out of every three dollars of profits made by American corporations were made by banks.
Think Wall Mart & Sears & JC Penney, and any other American corporation making TVs & toasters, cars and camper vans -- think of all the American corporations. They make things, sell things, create products. Their profits? Two out of three dollars. Banks and their greedy employers with Billion dollar bonuses, banks take home, eat up, consume, one out of every three dollars of profit.
Of course this is obscene. As the book points out, the best paid C.E.O.’s make 1,100 times the pay of a worker on the production line -- an this was not always the case. In 1977 C.E.O.’s made only fifty times as much. Think of it. From fifty times as much to 1,100 times as much.
It is obscene. Yes, top people deserve more than bottom people -- but not 1,100 times as much. I cannot begin to explain how angry this skewed distribution of income makes me.

2011-02-19T22:46:00.000-08:00

For years now I’ve been walking into the huge stores that exist in Malls everywhere and wondering who in heavens name buys all this stuff. These are immense stores full of tons & tons of stuff. Entire villages in Europe could be supplied by just one of these stores.
How do they all survive? Who buys all this stuff? I just couldn’t imagine that we needed all these stores -- that these stores could continue to thrive, survive.
We now know that they can’t all survive. We know they overbuilt, but the exact statistician are staggering.
Between 1990 and 2005 -- 15 years -- retail space in America doubled. Imagine that. Doubled. For every store that existed in 1990, another of equal space & size was built -- and filled full of stuff.
What about consumer spending in that fifteen year period? Consumer spending rose by 14%. We spend a sixth more, they doubled the things that are there to buy. You can do the math. We did not need all those new stores -- and if the math is even close to right, almost one half of all the stores in America are ready to close their doors.
Almost half of all stores. Twice as many stores exist now as existed in 1990, and we are purchasing only a little more than we purchased in 1990 -- and many of my purchases -- and everybody else’s purchases, are being made on line, through our computers, not in stores.
We know we have overbuilt -- built too many stores, built too many houses. In a previous column I mentioned that we built 20 million new houses in the last 20 years. Or we built roughly one new house for every 15 Americans.
Of course people have stopped buying new houses. There just aren’t enough people in our country to buy new houses -- especially since the new houses are not affordable houses but big houses for rich people.
And of course stores are folding -- there are just too many stores. Or to cite another statistic, we have six times the retail space per capita than any European country. Six times the retail space. Retail space doubled between 1990 and 2005.
Is there a point to all my ramblings? We need to build more intelligently. Of course fewer houses are being built now that the housing market collapsed & fewer new stores will open as commercial people see that existing retail space more than meets the needs of the existing population. But we need to build fewer roads for cars & fewer parking ramps & parking lots.
Too much is being built. We are planning for a future that will not happen. People will not continue to buy new & ever bigger houses. People will not double their shopping -- and cars will not continue to dominate our landscape.
We need to retool for the real future that is ahead. Smaller houses, more affordable houses, public transportation for the many, not private vehicles for the few who will be able to afford private transportation, and fewer big & soul less stores that are simply replicas of each other.

2011-02-13T23:34:00.000-08:00

I do what some people think is sacrilegious: I underline books. I need to underline books or I won’t remember the important things I found in the books. But I do more than underline. I often go back and read what I’ve underlined -- which is much shorter than reading the whole book -- and I get great pleasure from my reading.
In fact, the reason I am telling you all this is that I have just been reading the underlined passages in a book of quotations. And I’ve been having so much fun. I’ve been laughing out loud, I’ve been reading the best quotes to my wife. I love reading the well chosen words of others -- so let me read you some of the quotes from “A Word From the Wise, by Rosemary Jarski.
“Committing is hard for men. I can’t even commit to one TV program. I get this nervous feeling that there is something better on the other channel.” “An expert is a man who knows more & more about less & less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.”
“It’s like magic: when you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone.” “Life is like a cow pasture. If you walk through it with your head down, you’ll avoid the crap but never find the gate.”
So far I’ve chosen to read you only funny quotations, quotations that are easy to understand, easy to laugh with, and at the same time they do carry a message: don’t walk through life with your head down. If you do you’ll never escape, you’ll never find the gate to get out.
But the quote that prompted this whole talk is a quote that suddenly made me see the benefit of what I do daily. I always, every day, ride a bicycle. Here are the words of the creator of Sherlock homes, Arthur Conan Doyle: “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle, and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”
What wise words. I knew bicycle riding cheered me up, made me feel good, but he says it all -- just mount a bike, just ride, just clear your head -- and driving a car won’t do that. Or as another quote in the book says, bicycles have no walls.
Often other people’s words, help us live wiser lives. I love reading the wise words of others. Here is one final quote by the great Playwright August Strindberg, “ I find my joy of living in the fierce and ruthless battles of life and my pleasure comes from learning something.”

2011-02-11T22:23:00.001-08:00

In the past I’ve scoured Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk in search of interesting books on cars & cities. I mentioned that one small, fascinating, 80 page long book entitled Energy & Equity by Ivan Illitch was so rare that Amazon was asking for, in one instance, $150 dollars for a paperback copy. One hundred and fifty dollars for a small, slim, 80 page paperback book. Back then I thought that was unbelievable.
I have since learned it is not that unusual. For some reason, books on city planning are extremely expensive. Any book that seems interesting to me is no less than thirty dollars and often it costs 60 & 70 dollars. But that is chicken feed compared to the books I just came across.
A paperback book published in 2006 with the scintillating title The 2007 Report on Airport Car Rentals is selling for 795 pounds new, 693 pounds used. That is a paperback, and that is pounds, not dollars. In dollars that is 1,272 dollars. I started laughing. One thousand two hundred and seventy dollars for a paperback book. And the next one on Amazon, again with a scintillating title, The 2007 Report on Passenger Car Tires was selling at the same price, one thousand two hundred and seventy two dollars.
The next one, The 2007 Report on in Car Entertainment, same price. All these were published in 2006 -- a vintage year for paperback books. There are two more, one on non-airport rentals, and one on boats. Total if you buy all five paperback books -- more than $6,000. I was laughing uncontrollably. Who buys such books -- and then I knew: committees studying such questions, big companies, buy such books. Not people. People can’t afford such books. Committees can. It’s not their money. They don’t even see it as money. It is part of a budget, and we will budget six thousand dollars to buy these books.
It is not funny and it is very-very funny. I never came across such sums of money for what are not antique or rare books. This is crazy -- and it is also crazy that books on cities and cars cost so much. Why do they cost so much? Because so few people buy them? More people should study such books. Such books are talking about the lives we lead in cities, in cars. Cars kill cities, and cities, polluted, car-congested cities, are killing us.
This is not funny. It is tragic, and only if a great many of us read such books that we will band together and do something -- and something must be done. That something that must be done is to curb car use inside cities and to offer alternative means of transportation. As one writer wrote about Switzerland’s largest city, “With a superlative train network that is clean, safe, warm, punctual, there is little reason to travel alone, little reason to own a car, when, for a few francs, one can be transported across a city at a level of comfort an emperor would have envied.”
A level of comfort an emperor would have envied. When we drive our iron cages in car congested streets, stopping & starting, hating traffic lights, we are not transported at a level of comfort an emperor would have envied.
We need to see that there are wonderful alternatives to private car ownership, and we won’t realize that until more of us read the wonderful books out there on cars & cities.

2011-02-07T15:07:00.001-08:00

2011-02-02T03:18:00.000-08:00

More & more I am haunted by the three part division of transportation suggested by Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking. The three part division? Part one, mode of transport -- car, bus, train, plane… Part two -- what the mode of transport travels on, by land by sea & by air. Part three -- storage at the end of the trip -- a seaport, a parking space, a train station.
Each of these three parts determine what mode of transport we use. If there were railroad tracks criss-crossing this country, criss-crossing our cities, rail travel would be easy, convenient, and probably cheap because there was so much of it. But railroads are not readily available. Railroad stations are usually one to a town. Most of us don’t even think of traveling by train.
Of course traveling by sea is severely limited. If you want to travel by boat, you must go to a place that is attached to water.
But what is most fascinating is car & bicycle travel. As professor Donald Shoup points out, 99 per cent of all car trips end with a free parking spot -- at a mall, at your house, at the school you attend, at the dentist, at your favorite restaurant, at your apartment building.
Of course the parking spot is not really free. The Mall had to buy all that land for parking, has to maintain the parking lot. Of course rolled into the price of the apartment is the price of the free parking spot the developer had to create, needs to maintain. Free parking is paid for by all of us. You may bicycle to your store, but the prices at the store take into account the need to provide parking spots for cars.
Essentially, we encourage people to use their cars -- when you get to wherever you are going, you will be able to park for free. Even when we charge for parking, metered parking on the street, parking garages nearby, the cost is low so that we encourage people to use their cars.
We encourage car travel; we do not encourage people to use bicycles. Even when parking for bicycles is provided, it is a lousy-looking bike rack, outdoors, exposed to the elements & exposed to thieves. In England, a bicycle is stolen every 71 seconds. Did you hear that? Every 71 seconds.
Who would think of using a bicycle if he or she was sure that sooner or later the bicycle will be stolen. We don’t provide safe roads for bikes. It is unsafe to ride the bicycle. Your chances are high that your bicycle will be stolen. Even if it is not stolen, you must leave your bicycle outdoors, exposed to wind, snow rain.
Two parts of the equation are lousy for bicycle: roads & storage at the end of the trip. And two parts of the equation are absolutely dreamlike for cars -- plenty of wide & welcoming roads and free parking when you get there.
Who wouldn’t choose to use their car always to go everywhere given the current situation. Solution? Better bike roads & better bike storage at the end of every journey. Worldwide, new & startling buildings are being built to store bicycles. The most fascinating is a Japanese facility that allows you to retrieve your bicycle from a vast automated bicycle garage in less than a minute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE4fvwTBtno. Or just type bicycle parking into You Tube.

2011-01-21T22:47:00.000-08:00

I was just reading a blog called Strong Towns. Like everybody else, they were trying desperately to come up with a formula that would make modern towns look like towns used to look like: places full of people, full of local stores. The blog was realistic. It admitted to that we have many benefits now -- computers, cheap consumer goods -- that we did not have then. The wish for the past was not a stupid wish to be transported to a golden time. We are better off now, but our cities are soulless.
Is there a single solution to our soulless downtowns? Is there a silver bullet, a way of making the downtowns of all cities more vibrant, more alive? In short is there a way of making a social life exist inside cities?
“Our urban life does not throw people into the street. It rakes them up, shuts them into office buildings and houses….instead of squares & fields, modern cities devise means to keep crowds moving rather than gathering. Streets work as thoroughfares, channels…social circulation, ventilation, not congregation…Architectural means to disperse, direct crowds.”
That says it all. I have always known that architecture creates the environment we live in, but I never fully realized that our streets are the architecture of our lives. Wide streets, streets devoted to cars, not people, create the life we live. We are dispersed, herded, moved through. Loitering is not encouraged. Stand still or walk slowly & dreamily & you will be dead.
Or, to sum it up, “The way we get around determines how we live.” How we live means how we shop, who we befriend, what we eat. The list is endless. A car culture is radically different than a subway culture. Think of cities that have subways & trolleys. What you see is people on the street, in subway cars. You see crowds, you encounter people -- some of whom are bound to become your friends -- or at the very least acquaintances. One way or another you will get to know them, recognize them.
Think of a car oriented city. People hurtle buy in closed containers. Life on the street is zilch, zero. Life on the street is dangerous, non-existent.
If you want to bring back vibrant downtowns, local shops, street life, you must change the way people get around. “The way you get around determines how you live.”
There is only one way to go back to what we love about the past, towns that are full of people & local stores. Change the way we get around -- and instead of focusing on banning cars -- and we must eventually ban cars -- we must first focus on alternative means to get around -- busses & trolleys, bicycle pathways & pedestrian paths. If, and only if, there are efficient public ways to get around, can we begin to do what must be done, is already beginning to be done. Just today I read that Paris (& many other French cities) are considering banning SUVs. As the article says, “SUVs are not compatible with city life.” Truthfully, cars are not compatible with city life.
We all want city life. We really do. We are sick of our current landscape: deserted city streets because city streets because, nowadays, are pieces of the highway. We want towns that are full of people & shops & cinemas & our friends & our neighbors.
What can we focus on to make such cities live again? “The way we get around determines how we live.”

2011-01-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

BIG NEWS!! BIG NEWS!! Jacqui, my techie wife, has made it possible for you to hear some of my radio talks. Yes, hear them!

Here is the link: http://henryandjacqui.com/Radio/index.htm

Only one is there now. More will be posted in the next few days.

2011-01-06T04:06:00.000-08:00

By now, all of you know I’ve become addicted to crime fiction. I’ve defended my passion for these novels in a variety of ways, but perhaps the best defense is that these books give us an insight into the daily life of people in other countries. Great novels sometimes do that, but great novels aim at fiction on a higher scale. Crime novels present the nitty gritty of daily life.
I’ve just read the first book in a series. The writer is Matt Rees, who began his career writing a factual book about the Arab Israeli situation, but he knows that few people read dull fact filled books, so he began a detective series. Omar Youseff is his detective -- and unlike American detectives who are strong & invincible, he is meek, mild, 56 year old school teacher who is afraid of guns & all things violent
The setting is Bethlehem, Palestine -- occupied territories. Here are some of their daily greetings: “Morning of Joy” May Allah lengthen your life,” “all the year may you be well,” “May allah accept from us & from you” “consider yourself with your family and at home,” “God Bless your hands.” You truly get a sense of their daily rituals, their small talk.
In the book, the Israeli army is only periodically visible. The books are not about Israeli oppression, it is about the fabric of daily life for these Arabs in occupied territories, the gangsters -- no, not mafia, but Hamas, and the Martyrs Brigade.
And the names: Jihad Adwe, Habib Saba, Mahmoud Zubheida, Dima Abdel Rahman. They greet each other by Abu -- which means father of -- and then the name of the oldest son. Omar Youseff, the detective is greeted as Abu Ramiz, the mother is Umm Ramiz. There is Abu Walid & Abu Adel.
How very interesting. People greet you by saying, hello father of so & so. For a long time in Traverse City people asked my son if he was Henry Morgenstein’s son -- but soon, very soon, people asked me if I was Ethan Morgenstein’s father or Ben Morgenstein’s father.
I could go on & on about how this books takes you into the daily lives of these people -- there is no better way to know their daily lives than through great foreign crime fiction writers -- and Matt Rees is one of the very best at given you a sense of their lives.
In addition the book, the Bethlehem Murders, is not like many murder mysteries you will read. There is very little sleuthing, and the falsely accused murderer is killed brutally, even after the detective tries, all book long, to save his life. In some sense this isn’t fiction, it is real life in this hellish place, Bethlehem Israel.
I always loved International folk dancing because you heard Greek music, moved in the way Greek people moved. You heard Bulgarian music, heard the Bulgarian language, were in a strange way steeped in that culture.
All of you should read Italian crime fiction and Scandinavian crime fiction -- and the crime fiction books of Matt Rees. Terrific reading -- and truly educational.

2010-12-22T08:13:00.000-08:00

I must open this talk by saying that I do not sing nowadays. I have a pretty good voice and I used to love to sing, but American songs are not my childhood songs. The songs of my childhood are Hebrew songs, and I am no longer a part of that community. When, on a rare occasion, I join that community & sing, I understand the words I am about to quote to you.
“ In singing together our differences dissolve. For a blissful moment we are relieved of the strenuous need to be ourselves.”
How beautifully said. We are relieved of the strenuous need to be ourselves.” Being me, being you, whoever you are, is difficult. We need to keep up appearances, to act in character. It is strenuous; it is often boring being me. But when you are singing, you are, actively, in song, in words, a part of a large group singing together: our differences dissolve.
Another way of saying the preceding -- and you know I read books of quotations -- is “Singing is one of the few proven ways people can be of one voice.”
An even better quote I found is “ Music is going the way of meals, drink, sex. No longer occasions for bonding, they are now a source for solitary addiction.”
Now that’s a brilliant quotation -- one that sees a clear trend. Those activities that used to bond us together -- meals, music, drinking, sex -- are now solitary addictions.
Let me begin with the one you probably disagreed with. Sex is now solitary? Well, for many people it is. They use the internet to get aroused, to satisfy their sexual needs. This is sad, solitary and addictive.
Music used to be produced by people together -- singing together. Even if they were not part of a group singing, they sat & listened to others sing. But now music is solitary -- from gramophones to ipods to headphones: we do it alone, and again we are addicted. How many people walk around, jog, bicycle, oblivious to the world, a pair of headphones glued on to their ears.
And meals? We eat alone. The family dinner is a thing of the past. We eat addictively, secretly, alone. One person opined that obesity can be linked to eating alone. If we are at a table with others, we are reluctant to stuff our mouths, to take seconds & thirds & fourths. We eat alone & often, and we are getting fatter & fatter & more isolated.
And we drink alone. It is unsafe to go out there. We could get mugged. Bars are dangerous places. We’ll get caught driving drunk. So more & more people drink alone, at home.
It is sad & no, I have no solution, only the words I read that made me see the trend.

2010-12-10T02:50:00.000-08:00

Quote “I read like Moses seeking burning bushes in Sinai: how do men hold themselves together.” Those words are by Bernard Malamud, a novelist. I copied those words down into my notebook -- and I’ve used those words many times -- so many times I know them by heart: like a man seeking burning bushes in Sinai..
What does he mean when he says “seeking burning bushes.” Moses, in the bible, saw a burning bush, and from within that bush, God spoke to him. We have given up looking for God in bushes -- but we still seek guidance -- how should we lead our lives, what should we do with our short time on this planet. We are seeking burning bushes in Sinai.
I read books of quotations for guidance. Just the other day it became clear to me that the words I read & copy down into my notebook have a clear impact upon my life.
I’ll begin with a seemingly small, insignificant, example: “Never give a gift that is not beautifully wrapped.” I have never wrapped gifts. I think a gift is sufficient and the task of wrapping is time consuming, onerous, unnecessary. And yet these words struck a cord: “Never give a gift that is not beautifully wrapped.” In the future, not in all cases, but in some cases I will make sure to beautifully wrap a present. After all, the beautiful wrapping denotes care, and denotes that this is special. Next time, Henry, take the time to wrap the gift, or at the very least, pay someone to wrap it.
“When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go.” The statement stunned me. I suddenly realized I am always -- absolutely always -- the first to let go. Why, Henry? Why am I embarrassed to keep on hugging. Why am I always the first to let go. I will try to change my behavior -- to try to make sure that sometimes, they are the first to let go.
The words I read do change my behavior. Long ago Rabbis, Priests, told us what to do. Our parents, uncles & aunts gave us advice on how to lead our lives. But today most of us lead isolated lives. The messages we hear are mostly messages to buy products which are guaranteed to bring us happiness, or messages to protect our territory by killing people far-far away. How should we lead our daily lives? Where does one go for guidance?
Before I go to bed I often read crime fiction, or watch some violent show on TV -- and too often, lately, I have had nightmares. Then I read “Read something cheerful before bedtime.” Now that’s good advice, 7 it came in a book of quotations.
“Next time you are asked to someone’s house for diner, bring a book as a gift.” What a great suggestion. Everybody brings a bottle of wine -- which is drunk and forgotten. Bring a book, maybe even a book of quotations. Books might change a person’s way of looking at life. Bring a book, not a bottle.
“Never mention being on a diet.” What a great piece of advice. Far too often I tell people I can’t eat such & such because I am on a diet -- and then they ask about the diet & the conversation turns to diets. Never mention being on a diet. Eat, or don’t eat, but don’t tell people you are on a diet. I, and everyone else, is sick & tired of talks about diets.
I could give you a dozen more quotations but you got the picture. How the heck is life to be lived. I read like Moses seeking burning bushes in Sinai.

2010-12-05T21:35:00.001-08:00

Because my wife is a techie, I get to use the very latest devices that I would never have used if I had been a man on my own. I am 72, way past the generation that is familiar with these new-fangled devices
And what new-fangled device am I talking about? Something called Dragon Naturally Speaking. It is, for me, one of the most revolutionary of all the devices that have occurred in my lifetime. This very talk you are listening to was created by me talking into a microphone and my computer is typing the words I utter out loud. Dragon Naturally Speaking has been around a few years but it has advanced by leaps and bounds on what it used to be a few years ago
A few years ago I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking and the system had some trouble recognizing my voice and I had some trouble operating the system, so I dropped it. But now it recognizes every word -- well almost every word I utter into it. For instance, it just typed rises instead of recognizes -- but I can, and did, correct it manually -- you know, the old system, you hit a key on a keyboard.
Before we got started, the system, Dragon Naturally Speaking scanned every document in my computer to see what words I use often, what words I use when I write. It now can recognize almost anything I say, unless, of course, I throw a product name or a foreign word at it. In fact, it just typed the word edit (E D I T) instead of at it.
What has it done to my style, my writing, I do not yet know. Long ago I used to write into a notebook -- hand gripping a pen, forcing written words on to a piece of paper. I then had to type my column so it was legible to others -- so it was legible to me.
Twenty years ago I learned to type my talks, to sit at a typewriter & compose. The rhythm of writing is very different if you are using a pen on paper than it is if you are typing with 10 fingers, or in my case, if you are typing with one finger.
I learned to compose my talks at the speed that I could type -- and remember mine is the Columbus method of typing -- find a key and land on it. Now all I do is say a word and it types the word. You are listening to perhaps the 10th column that was spoken into a typewriter rather than typed. It goes without saying that the whole rhythm of my writing must be different than it was when I typed away with one finger, and it must be different than it was when I wrote with a pen on paper. What the differences are only time will tell.
Again, the name of the program is Dragon Naturally Speaking. It is not very expensive and it is miraculous. You talk it types. At this moment my hands are clasped in front of me, fingers intertwined. I am not typing, words are forming in front of me on a computer screen. Welcome to the New World, the world of Dragon Naturally Speaking.

2010-12-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

My sons often compliment me. Here is the most recent compliment. One of my sons was driving somewhere and he was in a hurry. He had to buy some fish and he was afraid he was going to be late getting back home. He was rushing around, driving recklessly. Then he remembered something I told him long ago. It is not that unusual a saying -- nothing matters that much -- but I made a game of it & he remembered the funny game.
Long ago I told him that on my tombstone I wanted that line to be engraved four times. The first time, the emphasis would be on the first word which would be in big bold letters: NOTHING matters that much.
In the second line, the second word would be in big bold letters; Nothing MATTERS that much. The third line would have the third word in big bold letters: Nothing matters THAT much. And the fourth line would have the fourth word in big bold letters: Nothing matters that MUCH!
He remembered my humorous way of playing with those words. He chanted the line to himself -- Nothing matters that much -- and he drove more slowly. After all, what’s the big deal? He was going to go get some salmon, he was going to be all of two minutes late.
Slow down, nothing matters that much, is a good piece of advice. It is advice I have often given to others, but as we all know, we often are very good at giving others advice, but we are very bad at following the advice that we give to others. As some wit said -- “I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with good advice.” Or he was not about to follow the advice, but he would be happy to pass it on.
As my wife pointed out, I don’t follow my own advice. I am often in a hurry, rushing-driving recklessly.
I even have a second tale to tell about rushing around, driving recklessly. Some good ole Southern boys were driving around, showing their territory to Indians from the country of India. They loved racing around at break neck speed. They were approaching a railroad crossing and the train was coming, bells clanking, warning everyone to stop. The good old boys told the Indians to hang on, they would beat the train across the track, save a few minutes. The Indians were frightened out of their minds as the car raced and barely beat the train to the crossing.
The good ole boy turned around and said: See, we saved a few minutes, and one Indian asked quietly, “and what are you going to do with those minutes?’
Wise words that I often pass on to others. It is hard for me to follow my own advice. I am a man who is almost always in a hurry. I don’t condone my behavior; I don’t defend my behavior. In fact I believe, as another man said, that no civilized person is in a hurry. I am always in a hurry & I fear that I am less than fully civilized.

2010-11-21T23:30:00.001-08:00

I have no hope for mankind’s behavior when I look at my own behavior. We are all told we should conserve we should not use the Earth’s resources. It sounds good. It is what we should do, but then as I said, I look at my own behavior.
When I have something that I love, I use it and use it and use it until the last moment when there is so little left of it that I finally begin to budget it. But it is only in a crunch that I budget it, otherwise I over eat, I over do I over consume I travel too much. I often do something until I am literally sick of it. But that’s not the point.
If I consume and consume until there is almost nothing left to consume, how can I ask the rest of mankind to conserve, to be frugal amidst what still seems like abundance.
Many people have stopped & told me they know they should give up one of their cars & travel more by bicycle. Others tell me they try to emulate me, to live without car, bicycle everywhere.
The lure of the car is too strong. You must be forced to not own a car Voluntarily, no one gives up cars.
Why did I give up cars? They kept breaking down on me. I could not afford a new one, could not repair the old ones I bought that kept breaking down.
Forced by circumstances, I gave up cars, made do with bicycles, learned I loved to bicycle everywhere.
Several students have returned to tell me they are now full-time bicyclists, but in each case the story was that their license was taken away from them, or they had too many accidents, or they had some kind of illness that did not allow them to drive.
None of them did it voluntarily none of them did it on principle; they did it when they forced to -- and then they learned they loved it.
People won’t do what deep down they know they should do -- until it is almost too late, until it is almost all gone. We are sensate creatures. We love to be able to do as much as we can do -- drive everywhere we want to, consume as much as we can consume. It is only when circumstances force us to cut down on consumption that we cut down.
We will consume and consume and consume and hope that somewhere along the line someone will come up with a solution that will allow us to continue to consume & consume. We will not consider conservation until we are forced to, until there is so little left that we must conserve. Soon it will all be gone including us greedy little creatures.

2010-11-16T03:20:00.000-08:00

I did not bother to read the article because I thought the headline said it all: Is the cell phone the new cigarette”? My immediate answer was yes yes yes that is the solution. Ban cell phone use wherever cigarette smoking is banned.
The problem is the use of the cell phone by everyone everywhere. Cell phone users often do not consider the people who are physically in the same place as they are. They blank out these people and that is not a nice thing to do. Solution? Whereever there is a no smoking sign you may not use your cell phone dissolution
This solution is a really terrific solution because no new signs need to be created. Only one law needs to be passed whereever you see a sign that says you may not smoke a cigarette, you may not use your cell phone.
Cigarettes pollute, cell phones pollute. You know they pollute. They make noise where their should be no noise: in restaurants in concerts in public places. I won’t even try to make the long list. When you are not allowed to smoke you should not be allowed to use a cell phone.
The most recent case, the most recent example that set me off, was when I was in an airport terminal. Almost everywhere I went someone was talking loudly on a cell phone, half yelling into a cell phone. It polluted my space. I found it very hard to read the book I had brought along.
Perhaps my reading is also antisocial -- I have my nose in a book, I really don’t want to talk to total strangers -- but my reading does not impinge on their space.
Setting aside the fact that I am not a very social person, it is precisely in these places where we are all thrown together – almost forced to socialize – that we have found a way not to socialize not to be there – and to antagonize all around us.
We isolate ourselves – we exist elsewhere – and that is not nice to the people around us. I object strenuously to cell phone use in my presence. I can do nothing about the great outdoors – it should be free of restrictions and anyway I can walk away from the cell phone user – but indoors, where secondhand cigarette smoke can kill me, I want to kill cell phone use.
You are somewhere, be there, and stop trying to have access to elsewhere. If you just must use your cell phone, step outside, as cigarette smokers step outside.
It is a simple request, a simple plan. Cell phone use is forbidden wherever cigarette smoking is forbidden and I finally went back and read the article that made the analogy between cell phones and cigarettes. The article says nothing about banning cell phone use in certain places. The article is all about the negative health effects of cigarettes and cell phones. Nevertheless I feel we should ban the use of cell phones wherever there is a no smoking sign.

2010-11-13T03:55:00.001-08:00

Every once in a while I wonder why I bother to watch the news, why any of us bother to watch the news. When real news is delivered to us we listen to it, it goes in one ear and out the other. We can’t really comprehend the immensity of what we just heard.
I need a couple of examples to explain what I mean. Recently, on the news, the commentator mentioned that 8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion dollars of Iraqi oil money which was earmarked to help rebuild Iraq cannot be accounted for.
Let me repeat, out of the 9.1 billion earmarked to help rebuild Iraq, 8.7 billion, or 96% seems to have disappeared.
Who said this? A government committee created to study the question. Who was it who collected the money? The US Defense department, who conveniently lost all the paperwork -- relating to 8.7 billion dollars of money that belongs to Iraq.
Example number two. Forty one dollars out of every one hundred dollars spent by our government is borrowed money. Imagine the head of a household who decides to spend, this year, 100,000 dollars, forty one thousand of which he has to borrow.
Our government is doing that. Our government, you and I are spending Billions of dollars and forty one per cent of what we spend is borrowed money.
Borrowed money? You owe this money to someone -- in our case the Chinese -- and they will someday want some of it back. Meanwhile we must pay interest on the money.
This is crazy, cannot be sustained.
What kind of people are the American people? Ninety seven per cent of Iraqui oil money, 9.1 billion dollars, is unaccounted for, should have been spent rebuilding their country. It was their oil money. Earmarked for them.
Oh well, what’s next on the news. We borrow 41 cents of every dollar we spend. Ho hum. Tell me another one.
We are swamped with so much trivial news -- and every piece of news gets two or three minutes, that 2 or three minutes of news that really is news is soon forgotten.
Information overload means lots of information is lost in the shuffle of too much information -- global warming, depletion of resources, corruption, too much spending.
Fifteen minutes of world wide fame for every person. Two minutes of network news for every supposed piece of news. Then we tell that piece of news to move on, get to the back of the bus. Let more people on, let more news onto the news half-hour.
Packed sardines, an over informed populace.

2010-10-28T07:19:00.001-07:00

Traverse City has pondered & pondered, wondered & wondered -- said yes, said no, gone on & on. About what? About roundabouts.
What’s a roundabout? A traffic circle, a rotary. You know those things that are all over Europe -- and we Americans hate them. When do we get on this spinning carousel? How & where do we get off? We have a tendency to go round & round, as if on a merry go round. We Americans hate roundabouts, rotaries, traffic circles. At this point The City of Traverse City is not about to build any roundabouts.
And yet the city of Carmel, Indiana -- that’s Indiana in the United states of America, built sixty of these things since 2001. Sixty roundabouts in 9 years. Why did this city of Carmel, Indian, which was one of the first cities in America to build traffic lights -- and they are now in the process of tearing down many traffic lights in Carmel, Indiana -- why did they build so many roundabouts?
“In revamped intersections there has been an eighty per cent drop in crashes involving injuries.’ Did you hear that? An eighty per cent drop -- and those last four words are very significant -- in crashes involving injuries. Not fender benders, but those kind of crashes where somebody gets hurt. What was the percentage drop in such crashes? Eighty per cent. Wow! Not thirty per cent or fifty per cent. A 30 or 50 per cent drop drop would be significant. But this is much more significant: this is an eighty per cent drop in crashes involving injuries. Again, Wow!
And here is the second statistic -- and all this is from a very short article in Newsweek magazine, October 11, 2010, written by Tom Vanderbuilt: “Roundabouts can reduce fatal accidents by as much as 90%” And we thought an 80% drop was significant. What about a 90% drop? “Reduce fatal accidents by as much as 90%.”
I should stop repeating myself, yelling figures at you -- and Traverse City should get on with it now. If not sixty, we should build at least forty roundabouts in the next ten years.
My reasons are simple, I want to live in, I want friends & family to visit, a city that has reduced car-related injuries by 80 per cent, car-related deaths by 90 per cent.

2010-10-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up my father often explained to me that being rich simply meant that, if you needed money for something, you could just reach into your pocket and get the money.
He was speaking metaphorically -- nowadays we don’t reach into pockets, we write checks, credit card purchases -- but basically, he was right -- and it took 72 years of my life to fully understand what he meant.
I am rich. I know I am because a few months ago I made a stupid mistake that ended up costing me close to a thousand dollars.
I was unhappy. I brooded -- if only I had… If only I had…. Then I stopped brooding or thinking about this mistake. I said -- you’ve got the money. One thousand dollars is not a problem. Pay it. Move on with your life.
When I was not rich, a stupid mistake that cost a thousand crippled me. I brooded & brooded: you idiot. If only you had thought harder. If only you had hesitated. If only. If only. You bloody idiot. Where will you get one thousand dollars.
Well, you’ll need to economize. Economize where? I’m already down to the bare bones -- and I don’t want to economize. I want to enjoy life. Well you could enjoy life if you hadn’t made that stupid…
Being rich is so much better, and people don’t properly explain the concept of “being rich.”
I wanted a bigger TV. I lusted after a bigger TV. But there was nothing wrong with the 27 inch High definition TV we have & we can’t really justify the purchase of….
I am rich. I bought a new TV. It cost almost $700. I don’t care. I suddenly understand how soothing money can be.
We are fools not to believe that money matters. You do not need millions of dollars -- that much money should not be your goal -- and the world has limited resources, so much money for just for one family is greedy & harms the environment -- but sufficient money to meet needs, and meet emergencies…
I cannot explain how soothing enough money is. We are all so twisted when it comes to money. We are told that what we want is millions and millions of dollars.
No, to wish for millions is greedy, stupid, and warps one’s life. But to be able to stick your hand in your pocket & get the money you need -- is bliss.

2010-10-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

I wrote half of an essay that I was going to post on “Mywheelsareturning” when I was derailed. I was recommending to all of them a very small, very short, book in my library of books on cars & cities, Energy & Equity by Ivan Illich -- a man way ahead of his time.
How was I derailed, stopped in the middle of the flow of words? I decided to see how much a copy of Energy & Equity would cost all of them. After all, I wanted them to buy it, read it cover to cover.
How does $36 dollars a copy sound -- or $268 dollars for a hardback copy? I was stunned. It is a slim book, an even-smaller-than-usual paperback. There are perhaps 70 pages of text.
Why does it cost anywhere from $36 dollars to nearly $300 dollars to buy a copy of this small book. Many of you already figured it out.
High price equals Scarcity. That’s right. Eight copies are available on Amazon in the U.S.A.
Since I live in two countries, I tried Amazon in England. Unbelievably, two copies were available in England -- and the price was five dollars. Five dollars! I could make a killing
I tried to buy both copies. After selling me one copy, they said there were no more copies. Sun of a gun. Somebody was buying the other copy just as I was buying my copy.
But really all that is a side issue. Why is this brilliant book no longer being printed? Why are all of us not able to pick up a cheap copy of Ivan Illich’s book “Energy & Equity” written in 1974?
“The United States puts 45 per cent of its total energy into vehicles: to make them, run them and clear a right of way for them when they roll, when they fly and when they park. Most of this energy is to move people who have been strapped into place.”
No one has quite said it this way. It is how it is said as well as what is said: “ forty five per cent of total energy to make em, to run em, to clear a right of way for ‘em when they roll -- and all for people strapped into place.
“Participatory democracy demands low energy technology and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle.” Again, so well said -- and it needs to be said loud & clear 40 years after Ivan Illich first said it; “true democracy demands low technology, needs social relations to occur at the speed of a bicycle.”
When I am on my bike, people in cars, people on the sidewalk, people on bicycles, talk to me. No one talks to me when I am surrounded by two tons of steel -- when I am inside a car.
Ivan Illich is a genius. Borrow the book from a library. Almost every page contains a gem of an insight said in such a way that you are made to see the situation from a wholly new angle.
And finally, Gary Howe, whose blog “Mywheels are turning” I’ve mentioned before, found the whole book on line. Visit his blog -- My wheels are turning, if you want the book on line.

2010-09-17T02:59:00.000-07:00

I was told that people used to say about my great-grandfather on my mother’s side “If you don’t slow down, you’ll get a ticket.” No he was not driving a car, but he sped around, he buzzed from place. He was in danger of getting a speeding ticket.
I, his great grandson, am in the midst of doing a daily dose of prescribed exercise. They do not take long -- a few minutes -- they do not hurt….and yet I try to rush through them. I try to make them go faster -- when faster is the totally wrong approach. It says, Lower your arms slowly, do it ten times, slowly. Hold that pose for five to ten seconds.
I try to get through ten seconds in less than ten seconds -- which is insane. You are supposed to take the full ten seconds. In a rush Henry figures there must be a way of doing this faster -- of doing ten seconds in less than….
I am not excusing or accusing. I am depicting a character trait. I am constitutionally incapable of doing things slowly -- constitutionally.
Great grandpa was in a hurry. His great grand son can’t stop trying to hurry things that by there very nature cannot be hurried -- and he does damage to his body, and he does damage to the environment that he speeds through on his way to god knows what.
I despair of mankind’s future when I realize that I, who some of you look up to -- that man has no car -- I am a polluter. I take airplanes to & from England each year -- and so does my wife. My hurry-up-life-style does the environment no favors as I spill, forget to recycle, slash & trash my way through life.
Here’s a statistic about me which is true of all of you too. In a normal lifetime, we North Americans damage the environment 10,000 times as much as a person in a developing nation. Ten thousand times as much. Stop me and the equivalent of me -- and nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine third world people, can live and pollute their whole life -- and not do as much damage as I would do.
My hurry up lifestyle is funny to me -- but my life style, and the life style of all of you listening to me, must change. We are doing too much damage to the planet. In one lifetime we pollute ten thousand times as much as some others who live on this planet.

2010-09-10T03:34:00.000-07:00

All of you must have heard of the speculation, the weird belief, that if you placed a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters, eventually one of the monkey will type some words that will be as brilliant as the words written by Shakespeare.
Of course no one really believes that, but I believe that I have definitive proof that a billion monkeys typing away at a billion typewriters will never come up with anything that even remotely resembles Shakespeare.
My proof? A billion monkeys creating billions of video clips on YouTube. I am serious. Just go to YouTube and look at what monkeys -- me included -- upload to YouTube. Are any of the video clips any good? Are they as good as the lousy movies we see in theaters & TV?
YouTube clips are terrible, absolutely terrible.
I’ve got to get specific so I will choose an area in which I have some expertise. My wife & I go Contra dancing and English Country dancing -- a little like what you see in Jane Austen movies. In fact, the people who make the Jane Austen movies consult people in our group in an attempt to get it right. The dancing in the movies is great, beautiful, flowing. The camera angles are perfect, faces are in focus, etc., etc.
You Tube clips of our kind of dancing are a joke, monkeys pecking at typewriter keys. I cannot believe how bad the 20 second clips or the 10 minute clips on YouTube are. Many are so dark you can’t see a thing, all are just full of people milling around.
You can’t figure out what they are doing. There is no pattern, just chaos on the screen
Okay, a monkey or two has attempted an explanation, an essay that at least does more than point a camera and scream lookee, lookee, that’s me & my monkey friends dancing.
But all the essays are the same: a bunch of people dancing, a bunch of people talking at the camera -- talking heads -- saying “I really love this kind of dancing -- all my friends love this kind of dancing -- it is sooo much fun this kind of dancing, -- you should try this kind of dancing….
Unbelievable. Monkeys at typewriters. Is this the best the monkeys can do? Yes. And I & my wife are two monkeys that attempted something a little better. We spent well over a year creating a 30 minute video clip -- ten minutes of which are on YouTube-- explaining contra dance, where did it originate, who does it…
I had to write a script and my wife had to teach herself the movie tricks: how to slow motion some moves, how to blend from one scene to another, how to create titles and how to write words on screen, how to coordinate the moves & the music…
Did we two monkeys approach Shakespeare or more relevantly, Scorsese or Hitchcock? As my wife, a Brit, often says with great sarcasm: “You must be joking.”
We are better than just a monkey pointing a camera, but we are eons away from anything truly creative, anything that approaches the sophistication & ability of movie makers.
Don’t waste a lot of time looking at YouTube clips. Some are fun, most are junk. Go see a good movie.

2010-09-01T03:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a few words say it all: " "Forget the damned motor car, build a city for lovers for friends."
Whoa. What a thought. Forget the so and so motor car. That says it all. All our cities are built to accommodate cars. Our college campuses are built to accommodate cars.

How do we speed them in, park them, get them out in the least amount of time.
Cities are built around cars: streets, sidewalks, signage, parking ramps, parking meters, traffic lights. Everything revolves around the car, is designed to accommodate cars. Build a city for lovers, for friends. What a concept. Forget the car What if there were no car, and you were trying to design a city that is good for people -- good for lovers, for friends.
For friends? Since there are no cars, and we all want friends near enough to walk to, city density must be high -- but nearby, absolutely everywhere, there must be small parks and large parks -- and there will be room because there are no parking lots. Let's us say three story high houses (nothing too tall) surrounded by other houses and a great deal of greenery.
How quiet it all is. Forget the car, build a city for lovers. Lovers lane -- which is simply a word for a meandering garden path, a place few people get to because it is so overgrown, out of the way.
We will build lots of out of the way, meandering paths. We can. No cars. Build a city for lovers & friends.
I will stop talking -- or say little more -- so you can think. What would the city you build be like if you were building a city for lovers -- a city designed for friends.
There are so many possibilities if the roaring, life threatening monster -- the speeding metallic death dispensing... I'll stop.
Let's focus again on the city we would build. Of course parks & green gardens, but what about theatres & ice rinks & roller blade ramps. There is room, lots of room. Build more. How about several small, local swimming pools, & off-road bike paths --
Suddenly I see it It is all similar to our State Hospital grounds -- with even fewer cars than are there now.
Oh what fortunate people are those who live in a city built for lovers and for friends -- and I know of almost no such cities in the USA. Because Europe is older, many cities were built before there were any cars, and some seem to be built at least with lovers & friends in mind. I squares with magnificent fountains, like the Fontana Di Trevi and....
(Our only hope, we citizens of TC, is to retrofit. Ours is a compact town, a town that -- if we eliminated cars & turned car centered buildings into people centered gathering places, could be a city built for lovers & for friends.)

2010-05-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

New York times columnist Bob Herbert wrote about how the Republican party was in power when “The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy,“ and how we now “have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.
This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.”
What a powerful indictment of the party that is now out of power, the party that so hated the health reform bill that just passed that not one single Republican, not one of them, voted for it.
As Bob Herbert said, they are committed to hatred & bigotry. They call President Obama a white racist. During the debate on the health reform bill they “spit on a black congressman and shouted racial slurs at two others, including John Lewis, one of the great heroes of the civil rights movement.”
The Republican party is committed to the death penalty, committed to tax cuts for the rich at a time when, according to another article in the New York Times “Real incomes at the 99.99th percentile have jumped more than 300 percent since 1980. At the 99th percentile — about $300,000 today — real pay has roughly doubled.”
Can you believe that? Real income for the very richest few has jumped 300% -- and real pay for those earning over $300,000 a year has doubled.
I get sick when I read such figures -- the pay of the really rich is doubling, the income of the very richest of all of us, those in the 99.99 percentile has increased 300 per cent!
The Republicans were in power during the depression of 1929, and the Republicans were in power when, recently, there was a near-total collapse of the overall economy.
Please, I must apologize to those of you who are Republicans and are listening to this talk, this rant of mine. Most of you are not responsible for the acts perpetrated by the people who lead your party -- as I am not responsible for what is being done by the party I support, the Democratic party. Nevertheless, we should all be ashamed when people spit on a black Congressman; we should be ashamed when we see the rich getting richer & the poor getting poorer. We should be ashamed of some of what is being said on right-wing talk radio.
Yes, there are two sides to every story, but one side is not reasoning, not acting in good faith. One side is spitting, shouting racist slogans. Such behavior should not be tolerated.

2010-05-04T08:12:00.001-07:00

Here is my dilemma. I have some information on a crucial question that I would like to disseminate to the people in charge and to all the people who are interested in the question.
The people in charge? The City Commission, the planning commission. All the people interested in the question? The citizens of the city of Traverse City.
Traverse City is considering a series of roundabouts, traffic circles -- on one major thoroughfare, Division street. People in America are afraid of roundabouts, those maddening things they encounter when they go abroad to foreign countries. But worst of all people in America don’t really know what roundabouts do. Bicyclists and pedestrians think that roundabouts help them. Car drivers think that roundabouts are bad for cars. And it is really the other way around: roundabouts are great for cars, lousy for pedestrians & cyclists.
But how do I get this information to the people who need to know?
I could send it to the City commissioners, or I could publish it on one of the many blogs on the web that bicyclists read, or I could try to write a letter to the editor in the local newspaper, or I could send it to the blogs about roundabouts that is being hosted by one of the City commissioners, or I could…
What popped into my mind as I sought hard to figure out where to send the information is the term the Diffusion of information. Information is all over the place: in newspapers, in blogs, in the minutes of a city commision meeting, in you tube videos…
It is good that there is so much information available, but it has become so diffuse that it is hard to keep it all straight, to know what one should read, to know where one should publish relevant information.
The terrific blog I’ve been referring to in my recent talks, the blog Mywheelsareturning, in an entry that focuses on roundabouts, sends the reader to eleven different sites which give information on roundabouts -- and one of those sites contains over 100 pages of information.
Eleven different sites? One is called Myths & Facts; another is titled consideration for the Blind, another is on pollutant emissions & roundabouts, still another is about roundabouts worldwide, and another is on bicyclists, pedestrians & roundabouts -- and no, I haven’t read more than one or two of the sites he recommends. There is just too much information -- information overload -- and back to the dilemma I have: the diffusion of Information.
Where do I send my information -- and I know that one of your answers is send it everywhere -- to the blogs and the newspapers and the city commission and …. In fact the keeper of the blog I keep talking to you about, Gary Howe, tried to get interviewed on a local radio station so he could present his views, but he was refused access.
The diffusion of information accompanied by information overload is making decisions difficult, but I guess too much information is better than not enough information.

2010-04-29T21:59:00.001-07:00

A great many of you know what a “blog” is -- but for those of you who do not just think of it as an open-to-the-public daily journal. Anybody can tune in to your daily thoughts -- and the key here is daily thoughts, and what are you thinking about.
Daily thoughts? Well, you don’t need to write in your journal every single day, but if you do not do it often -- three four times every week -- people will stop visiting your journal. Why bother when nothing new is there.
All this is a preface to my comments on an absolutely wonderful blog, a wonderful almost daily journal, that originates right here in Traverse City. The URL address of this blog is -- and this is all one word -- Mywheels are turning -- and it is all about bicycles and all about Traverse City.
I cannot begin to tell you all that is on the blog. The man, GLHowe is industrious, a busy little bee. He is searching the world wide web for information on bicycles. There are dozens, and I mean dozens, of YouTube clips about bicycles and car free streets, and experiments with bicycles & experiments with streets that are being tried in all corners of the world. You can learn so much about what it is that is possible.
For instance, in a recent post he focused on a video of a street in Dallas Texas that forced bicycles, cars & pedestrians to share the street. They narrowed the street to one car lane, built a buffer zone for a temporary bicycle lane & placed chairs & tables on the street. The street became a mixed use street & hundreds of people poured out to eat at sidewalk cafes, shop, listen to music. This did not cost millions. It cost almost nothing. It was not permanent, but it was a day of joy, of life lived at a different pace. A little like our Friday night live.
On another post he visited an experiment in Peru, and on another blog he talked of a bicycle ride on a six lane highway in Detroit. He also quoted articles, showed videos, on what it takes to entice women, young girls, to ride bicycles. The man is all over the place gathering information for us to ponder & perhaps implement.
But the blog it is not solely about bicycles. GLHowe is deeply involved in Traverse City, his town, our town. Recently he listed all the city committees that needed volunteers -- Historic District Commissio0n, Housing Commissions, Parks & Recreation commission… He updated us on developments on Barlow street, eighth street. He suggested what we might do once the construction on eight street is finished.
I could go on & on -- he goes on & on. His blog is tremendously informative, a fund of information. You need to visit his blog. The address again is, and remember it is all one word -- my wheels are turning. Or, just enter the separate words My Wheels are Turning into Google. Gary’s blog will pop up. Read it, you’ll enjoy it.

2010-04-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

I must open this talk by saying that I do not sing nowadays. I have a pretty good voice and I used to love to sing, but American songs are not my childhood songs. The songs of my childhood are Hebrew songs, and I am no longer a part of that community. When, on a rare occasion, I join that community & sing, I understand the words I am about to quote to you.
“ In singing together our differences dissolve. For a blissful moment we are relieved of the strenuous need to be ourselves.”
How beautifully said. We are relieved of the strenuous need to be ourselves.” Being me, being you, whoever you are, is difficult. We need to keep up appearances, to act in character. It is strenuous; it is often boring being me. But when you are singing, you are, actively, in song, in words, a part of a large group singing together: our differences dissolve.
Another way of saying the preceding -- and you know I read books of quotations -- is “Singing is one of the few proven ways people can be of one voice.”
An even better quote I found is “ Music is going the way of meals, drink, sex. No longer occasions for bonding, they are now a source for solitary addiction.”
Now that’s a brilliant quotation -- one that sees a clear trend. Those activities that used to bond us together -- meals, music, drinking, sex -- are now solitary addictions.
Let me begin with the one you probably disagreed with. Sex is now solitary? Well, for many people it is. They use the internet to get aroused, to satisfy their sexual needs. This is sad, solitary and addictive.
Music used to be produced by people together -- singing together. Even if they were not part of a group singing, they sat & listened to others sing. But now music is solitary -- from gramaphones to ipods to headphones: we do it alone, and again we are addicted. How many people walk around, jog, bicycle, oblivious to the world, a pair of headphones glued on to their ears.
And meals? We eat alone. The family dinner is a thing of the past. We eat addictively, secretly, alone. One person opined that obesity can be linked to eating alone. If we are at a table with others, we are reluctant to stuff our mouths, to take seconds & thirds & fourths. We eat alone & often, and we are getting fatter & more isolated.
And we drink alone. It is unsafe to go out there. We could get mugged. Bars are dangerous places. We’ll get caught driving drunk. So more & more people drink alone, at home.
It is sad & no, I have no solution, only the words I read that made me see the trend.

2010-04-16T06:19:00.001-07:00

I have become conscious that now, in old age, after airing these talks for 30 years now, I have nothing new to say -- but I must say what I have said before. One, because it needs to be said again, and two, because I have found the words of others who say it so well.
In his most recent book titled, “Ill fares the land” Tony Judt, a historian who is dying of Lou Gherig’s disease, says: “For 30 years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose.”
We need to unpack and repeat his words. The pursuit of material self interest is our main pursuit, almost our only goal in life -- the good car, the big house, the wonderful vacation. There is nothing wrong with pursuing pleasure, but it becomes wrong when it is the only part of “whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose.” We should be seeking something other than personal pleasure -- and of course all of you expect me to say that we should pursue the good of all people, not just our own personal pleasure.
And Tony Judt does say that. As the reviewer of Judts book says, Judt “repeats Burke’s celebrated conservative maxim that society is ‘a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.’”
All of you listening know that most people do not care much for those who are yet to be born. We are polluting the world to the point where they may not be a world available to those who are yet to be born. To quote an old maxim, “we are pissing in the pool and passing it on.” What a powerful metaphor, one I have used before; we are pissing in the pool, we are polluting the air, the sea, absolutely everything, and we are passing it on to generations to come. We are doing that & also passing on a debt of money that will cripple the next generation & many generations thereafter.
But aside from polluting less, what should we be doing? Tony Judt’s words again: “Individuals have always sought to do well materially & flourish accordingly. What went wrong, it seems to me, is the 1970s and afterwards was that we lost sight of the need to create a public arena in which to live.”
The crucial words here are “lost sight of the need to create a public arena in which to live.” A public arena -- our streets, our parks, our places to congregate. We have neglected those so now they are dangerous places. We no longer live out there: we live at home, in steel encased cars; we live privately, secretly, virtually secreted away in private places. One strong example of that is gated communities. Those who live in gated communities pay a lot to keep those within the gates safe -- and fight every attempt at taxing them to keep others safe.
The vicious debate about health reform for all is another example. We fight viciously to save our money to keep us healthy, and we virtually say the hell with all the rest of you.
To end with some of Judt’s words” we supposed that mere private success would, in the aggregate, constitute public well being. It doesn’t.”

2010-04-03T01:02:00.001-07:00

Stereotypes, which are sometimes simply brilliant generalizations based on tons of evidence -- stereotypes are frowned on nowadays -- and yet here is a stereotype about men & women that I totally believe.
The crime fiction writer Fred Vargas has a female pathologist say that the murderer is definitely a woman. Why a woman? QUOTE “a concern to see that the job was completely finished….impeccably performed….a desire for perfection, a wish to check everything in the world. The percentage of men displaying these symptoms is negligible.”
What a cutting remark -- what a huge generalization: The percentage of men displaying these symptoms is negligible. What symptoms? A desire for perfection, a wish to check everything in the world, a concern to see the job completely finished, impeccably performed.
Let me immediately say this rings true for me because my wife checks & double checks everything. She makes sure the final product, whatever the final product is, is impeccably performed, as perfect as she can make it. I, on the other hand, am a slob, hardly ever seek perfection.
Fred Vargas, the crime writer I am quoting, is a woman, a French woman -- despite the name Fred. She is an absolutely brilliant writer whom I’ve recommended before in one of my previous talks.
Fred Vargas goes on to explain why women are more likely to be perfectionists because “The striving for excellence is always a form of defense against a threatening external world. And it is essentially a feminine trait.” The world is more threatening if one is a woman. Men are those who threaten; women are threatened. They are the weaker sex.
In the book the female pathologist goes on to say to the male detective, “See, tonight I checked that my car door was properly shut. You didn’t. And I also checked that I had the keys in my bag. Do you know where your car keys are?” He replies “Hanging on the nail in the kitchen, as usual, I suppose” -- and of course, when he goes home he checks, and the car keys are not hanging on a nail in the kitchen.
Again, the generalization, the stereotype, rings true. My wife always checks that the car door is properly shut. I am beginning to do that because she is unhappy if I do not, but I do it to please her.
Men and women are different and it is foolish to think they are not. The world is far more threatening to a woman, and they act accordingly. Wise people pay attention to stereotypes: intelligent stereotypes, generalizations, contain a great deal of truth.
Again, the name of the crime fiction writer: Fred Vargas. She’s written a half dozen books that have been translated. Buy any of them. She is brilliant.

2010-03-28T09:49:00.001-07:00

We do not know what to do with our prison population, it is large, it is out of control. Every country finds that it is jailing too large a proportion of the population & paying too much to keep them in jail.
The Russian jail population is currently in the news. Their solution is the one I would suggest, but like communism, they’ve made a mess what might be a good solution.
They’ve gone back to a biblical solution: penal colonies. Wikipedia defines penal colonies as “a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general populace by locating them in a remote location.”
The horror of most prison systems is that the prisoners can do harm to civilized human beings -- guards & nurses & doctors -- who have to come in contact with them -- or civilized human beings who live near them. Penal colonies are set in places far away from civilization and until recently, at least at night, the prisoners in Russia were locked up in large, 100 person barracks where they dealt with each other: no civilized human beings anywhere near them. We let them take care of each other.
In other words they police each other & yes, the death rate is high -- almost 500 per 100,000 which is double death rate in American prisons -- but 500 per 100,000 is really not that bad, is it? These are criminals, murderers, rapists. Let them take care of each other, kill each other if that’s what they want to do. By being criminals they have forfeited the right to protection, to civilization.
So in what way have the Russians messed up this system? The problem is that first time offenders, minor offenders, are thrown in with murderers & rapists -- and that’s why the Russian prison system is in the news. The Russians have finally realized that “career criminals should be separated from the general prison population.”
That is the way it should be. For career criminals, prison should be a scary place, a place you could get killed by other career criminals. I do not wholly approve of the Russian prison system -- I do not know enough about it -- but they’ve got the right idea: let them take care of each other.
And all my words were prompted by a character in a novel talking about America’s silly modern solution: we’ve made taking care of prisoners yet another business. Business corporation now run prisons, and they run them badly, horribly. I will not go into all that can & has gone wrong -- they are sloppy & criminals escape, or they go over the top & house criminals in the most inhumane way -- solitary confinement that can make sane men insane -- I will simply quote from the novel that made me think of all this madness yet again: “It’s like you have badly behaved kids, so you give them to neighbors and move out of town….Prisoners are suddenly part of the ‘profit motive’ equation. They lose their rights & become numbers on a board…a board with the only numbers that matters are the line on the bottom.”
I approve of career criminals taking care of each other, no matter how brutal that care is, I do not approve of handing career criminals, in fact all prisoners, to a corporation that cares only for the bottom line, who cares only about profit.
We should not hand our problem kids to a neighbor, to an uncaring corporation, a company that cares only for profit. Career criminals -- not corporations -- should care for career criminals.

2010-03-19T10:13:00.001-07:00

There really are no new ideas -- all we are doing is recombining old ideas -- or raising thoughts we’ve had before, but bringing them to the forefront.
You’ve all heard the saying that people who are in love forget to eat, forget to think about food. They are obsessed with their beloved. They are so focused on the love object that food simply recedes into the background.
I’ve said before that we need to think of “being love” in a broader context. When you are in love with whatever you are doing -- research, or your hobby, or anything that absorbs you deeply, you forget to think about food, you skip lunch because you forget it is actually lunch time.
The most compelling example that springs to mind is the story of a mad scientist -- and this is a true story. He met a colleague in the cafeteria and began a deep intense discussion on what he was working on. When the discussion ended he asked his colleague “when I started my talk with you, was on my way to lunch or was I leaving the lunchroom. What direction was I headed in?”
Food simply was not on his mind. He was obsessed, deeply in love with what he was doing. Food was a distraction. It took time away from what he was doing. He ate to stay alive, but he hated the time it took to eat. He was in love.
Another old saying is “to grow thin, reestablish a purpose in life.” In other words, have a focus, a desire, if possible, an obsession -- and that way you won’t think of food. Or “Gluttony is a sign that something is eating you.” I am retired. I have almost nothing I must do. I am obsessed with food because food is a pleasure. So I am fat; I eat too much.
I’ve said the preceding before, but what struck me today is that the escape to food is very much like the escape to drugs. People turn to drugs because their life has no purpose, no direction. They are not needed. They are not deeply involved in their work or hobby. They are directionless & they therefore turn to drugs (or food) to give them a thrill. When we are bored, we eat -- or take drugs.
Once again, to cover old ground, taking drugs, eating too much, are symptoms. They are caused by something else. We should not focus on eating or drug taking. We should focus on what it is that causes people to eat too much & take drugs.
But it is so hard to focus on causes. How do you give people a focus in life. How can you make them fall in love with something, be so obsessed that food & drugs do not tempt them. One would have to restructure the world: give everyone a purpose, unretire retired people.
We cannot do that, so we focus on the symptoms: Say no to drugs, say no to fattening foods. Eat healthy, your body is a temple.
We work hard on curbing the symptoms, drug taking, over eating, because the root cause is so difficult to tackle. How does one create a world where life is so wonderful, second by second, that we are not tempted to eat too much, drink too much, take drugs that stupefy us.

2010-03-12T02:20:00.000-08:00

For many-many years I’ve been feeling bad about the fact that I do not telephone my two sons every week. Now that they are adults and live hundreds of miles away from me, I am not deeply involved in their lives. My guilt about this seeming lack of interest in their lives has intensified now that they each of them has a child and I am now a grandparent.
I feel guilty that I do not phone more often, do not get in touch more often. Shouldn’t I be a doting grandparent? Aren’t I remiss in my duties?
I’ve been feeling quite guilty until the following struck me.
If they needed me, I’d be there like a shot. If they had financial troubles -- or any other kinds of troubles that needed my presence, my aid, I’d drop everything -- after all I’m retired, foot loose & fancy free -- and I’d be there for as long as they needed me.
But meanwhile I have a life of my own, interests other than interests in my kids & grandkids. It is not that I neglect them, it is that I am involved in my life. Someone once said that we have no absent friends. Friends are the people you interact with in some regular way. My sons & grandsons are too far away for a meaningful daily or even weekly interaction. I love them. I will do anything for them, but phone calls -- even skype phone calls -- are very superficial.
Yes, I use skype: visual phone calls on my computer -- and I love seeing my kids & grandkids in the flesh, so to speak, in real time. I absolutely love it -- but I feel so guilty when a few weeks pass and we have not been in touch.
In some sense they should be pleased & I should not feel guilty. I have a life of my own that does not demand their presence & they have a life of their own that does not demand my presence. We do not impinge on each other, make demands of each other. They know that I am there if they need me; I know they are there if I need them.
Guilt is such a useless emotion. I feel I am not a good person, I am remiss -- and yet I am not. In the past year one of my sons suddenly thought his insurance did not cover a house disaster that occurred. Fortunately, he was wrong, but in the interim I offered him every cent I had available -- thousands upon thousands of dollars.
I am there if they need me, but truthfully, though I love them & love my grandkids, I must stop feeling guilty when I am not in contact with them. My life goes on, their life goes on. We are aware of each other, we communicate when we can, but they have obligations, I have obligations. I love them deeply, but I (and some of you listening to this) are not good at the superficial niceties of social contact: phone calls & letters, good wishes & small talk. We need to feel less guilty.

2010-03-09T06:58:00.000-08:00

It is always a puzzle to me that the rest of the world trusts the American dollar. We owe so much money. We spend as if there is no tomorrow. Why do they trust us so? Why do they look up to us?
Well here are a few statistics that will make it all a little clearer -- and all these facts are from the book “On Paradise Drive” by David Brooks.
“Americans are the hardest working people on the face of the earth….The average American works 350 hours a year longer than the average European.” 350 hours a year! If we posit a 40 hour week, that’s almost 9 weeks more of work every single year. That’s a fifth of the year more -- a fifth more! And that partially explains the fact that although we are only 5% of the world’s population we are responsible for 31% of the world’s Economic activity.”
We all know that statistics are skewered, somewhat meaningless. How does one measure the world’s economic activity. I don’t know, and finally it doesn’t matter. The statistic may be slightly wrong -- but whatever the exact number, we produce, create, make, are responsible for a heck of a lot.
There is little doubt about one statistic -- we are only 5% of the people in the world. Well, that 5% works like heck & produces somewhere between a quarter to a third of all that is produced in the whole wide world.
No wonder the world trusts us, trusts the dollar to be the world’s currency. Those Americans work themselves to death. On average they work 350 hours a year more than everybody else.
When the book was written we earned an average of $72,000 a year, which made us richer than 95% of the people on the planet and 99.99% of all the people who ever lived on the earth.
American houses have an average of 718 square feet per person. Canada 442 sq feet per person. Holland 256, Japan 170.
I’ll stop hurling statistics at you. It all becomes a blur, but a few things are crystal clear: we work very hard, we produce a lot, we are very-very rich -- and we live in huge houses.
Or as the book goes on to say “Probably no people on earth with whom business constitutes pleasure -- or, our industry, our work, is a form of amusement, active occupation is our principle source of happiness. To say it another way, business is the very soul of Americans, our fountain of human felicity. With us, success is taken as a sign of virtue.
No wonder the world trusts us, trusts the American dollar. We are, as the book says, “the locomotive of the world.”

2010-02-28T05:50:00.000-08:00

All of you know that somewhere in the world is someone who looks almost exactly like you. After all, the human face & body is not infinitely malleable. It stands to reason that somewhere out there is someone who looks almost exactly like you.
Last night I had an eerie experience -- though it should not be eerie. A man spoke to me -- and his story was so similar to mine that I felt I was listening to me talking to someone else.
How could all he said & did be so similar to all I would say to someone else? Of course there were some differences, but what he said & thought was so-so familiar.
He spoke of being way overweight many years ago. Every day he woke up and something hurt. He knew he faced a future full of pain, and a death that was sure to come sooner than he wanted it to come because he was so grossly overweight. The choice was simple, stark. Either learn to live with pain until you die, and expect to die not long from now, or do something drastic.
His description of his attitude & even the specific pain, was blindingly similar to what I was going through. I have been having shooting pains in my right leg, and my left leg is full of torn ligaments. My back hurts, and I am grossly overweight. Just the other day I lay in bed and thought that I must face the fact that because I am so overweight I am doomed to pain…doomed to a death that would come far sooner than I would wish it to.
And he mentioned waking up with a pain in his shoulder, a pain that would not be ignored, a pain that distracted him from all other tasks.
Ten years ago he did what I did long ago and plan to do again. Like me, he admitted his plan was crazy. He admitted he did what no doctor would ever tell him to do, would ever allow him to do. For days on end he ate nothing. And when he did eat, he ate very little.
What he described -- and he described his behavior in some detail -- was exactly what I did: eating only fruits & vegetable -- but on some days extremely large quantities of fruits & vegetables. He admitted he was not eating the right foods. He was simply obsessed with the need to lose weight -- and he also focused hard on everything but food.
He talked to me for probably half an hour, and everything he said ran a bell. It was me preaching to me which you can imagine could be quite irritating. But I knew I needed the lecture, the talking to, so please, please tell me more, although this is all so embarrassing.
We think we’ve arrived at profound personal conclusions based on what has happened to us in our life, and that what we‘ve decided is unique. The progress of this man’s life, his consequent behavior & perceptions, mirror mine so closely that I knew I was doing what many have done before me.
As one grows older we grow fatter & this is especially true in our society which is so full of junk food. We suffer more & more from illnesses that are brought on by age and by being overweight. The solution is blindly obvious, and what is also obvious is that many will take the very self same paths to wellness. If we are wise, we know we are far from unique.

2010-02-19T06:05:00.001-08:00

Woody Allen called it “My second favorite organ.” In old age, it is far and away my first favorite organ.
I have truly entered old age -- and I mean that in a good way. I am seventy years old & perhaps can finally get my priorities right. Or, I finally have all the clothes I could ever wear, all the gadgets I could ever use, all of the everything this over abundant world has to offer. I’ve bought enough -- and yet there is one thing I continue to buy.
I continue to buy books. I will spend substantial sums of money to feed my current very-favorite organ -- my mind. I want to be stimulated to think….I want to laugh…I want to be informed, entertained. In old age, it is my mind that I seek to stimulate.
Information, which is what good books contain, can be endlessly new, endlessly entertaining, endlessly stimulating. Through the mail I receive books on the effect of music on the brain; I recently received & read a book full of funny, perceptive, stories by an Iranian lady: Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas, who transferred, as a child, from Iran, or what was once known as Persia, to America.
“It seemed to me that life in America was one long series of festivities, all of them celebrated with merriment & chocolate.” Later on she says “We made plans for a celebration that unites all religions, the after Christmas sales.”
She stimulated my mind; prodded it; tickled it, amused it. My mind loves to encounter insights presented by another human being -- especially if those insights are well presented, well packaged. Firoozeh Dumas uses good words, the right words to describe the world we all inhabit.
I try hard to stimulate the one part of my body that has not decayed with age, my eternally inquiring mind. I may, in old age, perhaps forget more than I used to, but that is partly because more is there to forget. However, my ability to comprehend has not diminished with age. If anything, my ability to comprehend has increased. I know so much more, am so much more able to understand, to absorb.
Woody Allen called it his second favorite organ. It is far and away my favorite organ, the one part of me that has grown with age, my mind. I love it -- and I will continue to spend money to entertain it. It is what makes me alive: I think therefore I am.

2010-02-03T23:39:00.000-08:00

I am here to defend something I do -- and I will label what I do with its derogatory title: To Vanity Surf. To vanity Surf is to enter your name into an internet search engine. What you are hoping for is that there are a large number of entries written by you & a great many people who refer to you.
There is no doubt one is being vain, staring into a mirror to see how good you look -- but this mirror has strange offshoots.
Part of the reason I google me is to find out what is being said about me, or who is referring to my words. After all, anybody who quotes me is probably writing about a subject dear to my heart and has therefore chosen words written by me to bolster his case.
And that indeed was the case with my most recent discovery of a reference to me when I googled “Henry Morgenstein.” Squarez, a teacher of square dances who had written for his constituents, square dancers, about my web site, squarez, his web nickname, quotes some words I wrote about preparing to call an evening’s dance.
He had decided to call a contra dance, so he consulted some experts on what to do. He quoted two others aside from me -- and what they said was fascinating -- and he then outlined what dances he chose to introduce new-to-this-form dancers, and he explained his choices.
I learned a lot -- and I would never have even known about this had I not vanity surfed. I will use some of the contra dances he used, and I plan to write several pieces incorporating his wise words.
In fact I am this very second using him as an example of someone who has educated me over the internet. Someone I have never met, may never ever meet.
Which leads me to example two. Someone I did meet. Five years ago, while vanity surfing I came across a reference to some essays I have written. The woman who referred to my essays was a dance caller in Atlanta who was part of a group called the hatchlings: callers who are just coming out in public. Hatchlings.
Two weeks ago, at a week long dance camp, this tall red headed lady bent down to look at my name badge. It was she, my contacted perhaps five times in five years internet buddy. I had read some of what she had written; she read my essays. We were already easy friends and we talked some more, danced some.
Vanity surfing brought us together.
I won’t go into more & more examples. The point should be clear; this funny machine in our hands can make some strange and educational connections.

2010-01-27T05:55:00.000-08:00

Martin Low, Westminster City Council’s head of transportation, recently said about having no traffic lights at all at certain junctions, QUOTE “When lights are out we have noticed that drivers are far more considerate and show more care and attention than they are when they have the reassurance of traffic lights.”
When lights are out, drivers show more care and attention. That makes sense. There is a sense of reassurance, safety about traffic lights.
At a red light we are utterly motionless. But as soon as it turns green, I put the pedal to the metal. I have the reassurance of traffic lights -- those other guys now have a red light. I rely heavily on the law. The reassurance of traffic lights. But what if no one coming from any direction has a traffic light, well drivers will show more care and attention.
This principle explains what seems like an often recorded seemingly puzzling finding. When there are separate lanes for bicycles, cars end up coming closer to bicycles than when there are no bicycle lanes.
Let’s reword the principal above “when there are no clear cut lanes for bicycles cars drivers are far more considerate (read give wider berth) and show more care and attention than they are when they have the reassurance of separate lanes for bikes.
Reassurance of separate lanes for bicycles. When there is no lane for bicycles who knows what the bicyclist will do? He or she could swerve anywhere. They are a menace. There is no clear demarcation.
I’m gonna make sure by giving them twice the room I really need to give to a bicycle..
When there is the reassurance of lanes I know the bike will stay on that side of the line -- it can come as close as it cares to, but it will stay on that side of the line. I, in my car, can zoom as close and as fast as I please -- as long as I stay on my side of the line. The reassurance of bike lanes makes the whole process scarier.
But back to the real experiment that has now been carried out in several cities -- and the results are all alike: When there are no clearly demarcated lines -- no sidewalks for pedestrians, streets for cars for instance, or no traffic lights at certain junctions or in certain areas -- when the clear demarcation ceases, people are more careful, accidents decrease -- and the severity of the accidents decrease.
Give people back responsibility for their action. There will be no green or red light, just a place where you & other cars, trucks & people have to negotiate your way safely. And if there is an accident we will asak questions like: at what speed were you traveling? Were you aware of the others around you, those who were involved in the incident with you.
We will see who might be to blame & then we will punish them accordingly

2010-01-20T13:37:00.001-08:00

I began writing this talk in July of 2008 -- but I never finished it or aired it. This talk is particularly relevant now that President Obama’s healthcare plan is in jeopardy. Long ago I read a quotation that a country, a civilization, should be judged by how it cares for those who have no voice, those who have no power -- namely children and the poor.
Page one of the British newspaper, The Guardian, July 17th, 2008: “U.S. fails on human index: Study reveals America ranks 42nd in global life expectancy and has a high infant mortality rate”
Because I live in England half of each year, read British newspapers, I am often made aware of how little there is in the American press about study after study that shows the U.S. ranks very low in many categories that you would think we would rank high in.
Yes we earn a lot per person. In fact we have the second highest income per person in the world -- the second highest -- but although we have that, we rank 42nd in terms of life expectancy.
Forty one countries have people who will live longer, on average than we live. How much longer? Japanese outlive Americans, on average, by more than four years. In other words, many outlive us by six years, ten years, twenty years.
They may not earn as much, but they live longer, many years longer.
QUOTE “The U.S. infant mortality rate is on a par with that of Croatia, Cuba, Estonia & Poland”
All of you listening know why we rank so low: one in six Americans, almost 50 million people, are not covered by health insurance, have limited access to health care.
Or, everything is okay, hunky dory, for the rich and the very rich -- but those who are poor in America, live shorter lives. We rich don’t really care about averages. We are doing okay.
Of course we live longer lives than the generation of Americans that preceded us -- but on average, other countries are doing better -- living longer, being cared for better. They are less likely to die by gunfire, less likely to be abandoned when sick.
Many of them lead better lives by many standards of what constitutes a good life. But we few who are doing very well don’t really care about others. We are doing okay, and our recent attitude towards the national healthcare plan that would raise the average life expectancy by caring for the poor amongst us is clear: we don’t want to spend money to care for all the citizens in our country. We voters, we who have power, are rich, live long lives. Let others fend for themselves. Shame on us.

2010-01-12T07:11:00.000-08:00

My wonderful wife Jacqui believes that nothing exists until it exists in two places. In fact the mantra of any good computer planner is “nothing exists until it exists in two places.” Computer geniuses know that anything can fail -- especially the sophisticated machines they work with: so nothing truly exists until it exists in two places.
Jacqui has transferred onto my computer the dance music on every single disk or cassette I own. My dance music now exists in two places -- it exists on the disks I bought, and it exists on my computer.
I need to listen to perhaps thirty dances of the hundreds upon hundreds of dances that I have on CDs & cassettes & in my computer. I decided to go to my back dance room and put each Cd into the CD player in the back room, listen to the music, and then begin categorizing the music…
Suddenly I realized, I can put the CD in my computer, right here where I am sitting right now. If I put the CD in my computer, the CD is much easier to manipulate -- start it, stop it, get the CD to play the right tune… insert, eject -- and all this without ever having to get up from my seat -- why didn’t I think of all this…
In all of this back & forth thinking I forgot the easiest of all the choices -- the choice I finally availed myself of. Since all of the tunes have been transferred onto my computer, I can just go to a list of all the tunes, click on the tune, hear the tune. It take seconds, and you don’t need to insert anything or eject anything…
Nowadays life offers so many choices that when it comes time to choose, one often forgets half the available choices.
You can play it in your CD player in your back room, or you could play it on your portable CD player, or, alternatively, the CD player in the living room, or the CD player in your upstairs room, or the very Computer you are sitting in front of right now -- or you can take your computer to any room in the house.
Too much choice is driving all of us slightly nuts. Data does not exist in two places, it exists in 10,000 places, and if we count the internet, an infinite number of places.
Do I have a point? Many points, among them, the fact that we are surrounded by trivia, in duplicate & triplicate. Proliferation, multiplicity, madness. The modern triumvirate. If it doesn’t exist in at least two places, it really doesn’t exist.
By that definition, we humans don’t exist -- and really, we don’t. We are here temporarily, data can be here forever -- or at the very least, for long after we die. No wonder we are seeking to clone ourselves. Data doesn’t really exist unless it exists in two places.

2010-01-07T03:09:00.001-08:00

The British actress Joanna Lumley said:
“if I had been a raging beauty I would have gone to America I imagine, and made a career out there.”
If you look at any show on American television, all the actors & actresses are stunningly beautiful people. Genetic freaks someone once called them. Tall, slim, trim, stunningly beautiful. Well buffed people. On American television & in American movies faces don’t come in odd shapes. Everyone looks good. All planes are straight & smooth
Joanna Lumley goes on to say
you can't do that over here; this country slightly despises beauty, and so all our lovely, lovely ones go and make a hit of it over there.
She is British. People in her country slightly despise beauty. What a great insight into the British people. To say British people “slightly despise beauty” is to say a lot about them.
Brits don’t boast, don’t like people who have unfair advantages over others. They don’t much like people who are stunningly beautiful, or tremendously tall or tremendously talented.
Well, good for you, they think. God gave you an unfair advantage. Don’t be so puffed up about it, and don’t expect us to pay much attention to you just because you are beautiful. Most of us are ordinary looking, and in fact, many of us are quite ugly.
Brits are more interested in slightly ugly, or interesting-unusual faces, than they are stunningly regular, outrageously beautiful people.
My British wife Jacqui complains that in American movies she has trouble telling American actors & actresses apart. They all look the same: tall, handsome, high cheekbone, beautiful smile with lots of white teeth.
British films are full of character actors with odd shaped faces and what we would call irregular bodies. Brits are more impressed by what you’ve done with what God gave you than with what God gave you.
Eccentricity interests Brits. Pluck. Courage. Grit. Things people do, not how they look. Brits slightly despise beauty. They see beauty for what it is: a God given disadvantage. They admire acquired ability, not gifts granted by God or man.

2009-12-26T02:32:00.000-08:00

A recent article I read spoke of how Americans live in QUOTE “An environment of fear….A fearful paranoia that the outside world is conspiring through its massive terrorist force to destroy us.”
If you listen to Sara Palin, or George Bush, or any of the people who support them, they often say that the terrorists hate our life style, hate our politics. They just don’t like us, these terrorist. They are hell bent on bombing us to smithereens.
If we act as if every single one of them foreigners is out to get us -- if we act that way year after year -- search ‘em, frisk them, delay them, eye them suspiciously, put them through reams & reams of paperwork before they can enter our country -- they will, all of them, end up hating us.
What is wrong with us -- well the article I got the words from talks of an “environment of fear’ that the former advisor to President Nixon, Brzezinski says has made American “more susceptible to demagogy.”
After spending a few years in America, my British wife commented on how afraid all Americans are -- and afraid when they have very little to be afraid of. We lead the safest lives of almost anybody on this planet.
Americans are afraid of crime in big cities and small cities. They are afraid that terrorists are everywhere. If one airplane is blown up by terrorists, Americans will cut down on flying for years.
Americans are deeply afraid. Yes, 9/11 was a spectacular attack, but since then, can you name a single terrorist attack on American soil?
Jacqui, my wife, was struck by how Americans are kept in a constant state of terror. They are so scared of the rest of the world. They are afraid everybody wants to mug them, rob them, shoot them. They believe terrorist are everywhere and that they will blow up whatever café an American sits down at in Paris or Peru or Palestine. They are out to get us.
Just think of it. If that is how we treat the rest of the world -- every single funny looking foreigner -- they will soon come to hate us. We are feeding the fire of hatred by our irrational paranoia. What is it with us & why are we making ourselves irrationally afraid?
Again, our lives -- even when we go abroad -- are the safest of lives -- far safer than the lives led by most of the people who lived on this planet who truly have to fear lawlessness and robbery. Our lives are the safest of lives yet we live in constant fear of a terrorist attack even in my small & remote city of 15,000 people. We are slightly nuts but others have conspired to keep us nuts & afraid, and if I were to guess who, I would say the military industrial complex that benefits greatly from our fear, from our paranoia & from world turmoil.

2009-12-14T23:36:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the quintessential American city is a city that is all shops. No houses, no bedrooms. People go home to sleep elsewhere. The city I am about to describe does have other things than stores.
I once read a definition of a city as a place that has its own jail. This city has a jail, and a police force. It is a modern city, it has surveillance cameras. This city of 11,000 people is one of the most successful cities in the world. Last year it had 40 million visitors -- which is more than Disneyland, The Grand Canyon & Graceland combined. Can you imagine that -- more than the combined number of visitors to Disneyland, Graceland, and the Grand canyon.
They come here because there is more here than just shops. This city has a seven-acre theme park with 24 rides, an aquarium with hundreds of sharks, an 18-hole miniature golf course, 520 retail stores. You can take a virtual submarine ride, or scare yourself silly on a roller coaster.
You cannot imagine the number of places there are to eat -- dozens of fast food places & dozens of gourmet food places. Almost always there are mildly famous entertainers at the stage show, or hundreds of high school cheerleaders. You can get married in the chapel -- thousands come to get married here.
No, this is not Las Vegas, I am talking about the largest Mall in the world, The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. It was a destination point for 40 million visitors, and in a year where everyone’s sales went down, this Mall registered a 2% increase last year, 2008.
I may seem to be praising this strange town -- 40 million people visit -- it is entertaining, profitable, fun for everyone -- but I am neither praising nor accusing. I am recording a phenomenon, and an odd phenomenon. In -part our problem is we spend too much, shop beyond our means -- and yet commentators, wise men, say that the way out of this recession is for all of us to go out there and shop.
Say what? I’m in debt, I’m in deep trouble -- I spend more than I earned, and in some cases I no longer earn anything, I‘m unemployed.
And you are telling me, telling all of us, to go out there and spend or the economy will tank?
Yep. It is the greatest catch 22 of all time. You got into trouble by spending too much. The only way out of this is for you to spend some more money.
This is nuts and yet that is what every writer in every paper I read seems to be saying: we gotta spend our way out of this recession.
Is there another way? Yes, learn to live on less. Learn to economize. Buy less, reward the efficient -- and for goodness sake, don’t listen to all those idiots who say the only way out of this situation is for all of us to spend some more.

2009-11-28T23:45:00.001-08:00

Some old sayings are very powerful, do not seem to disappear from usage. I am thinking of Pandora’s Box. To open Pandora’s box is to let out a whole host of troubles.
What one needs to do is keep the lid on. Open up the lid ever so slightly, and a whole bunch of trouble will follow shortly thereafter.
Someone just recently explained to me a new way in which that is true. In order to become a really good flute player they had to let go, they had to open up the lid just a little. Specifically, in order to play the instrument well, instinctively, they had to let go, they had to let the subconscious take over for long stretches.
But that led to the opening up of Pandora’s box in many other ways. You can’t let your subconscious take over in one area only. The rest of your heretofore conscious behavior is perhaps loosened by the presence of your subconscious in all future decisions.
You’ve opened up Pandora’s box.
They immediately explained that your behavior would not be immoral; it could better be described as amoral. You would not rob, or steal, but your subconscious might ask, “Exactly what is moral behavior? Is killing people in war moral? Is true morality, fidelity to one person until he or she dies?
Pandora’s box. A funny thing happens when you pry it open even a little.
Is that perhaps why parents scream at kids, tell them not to listen to that music -- because musicians are tapping into the subconscious and we don’t want children to go there, to tap into a subconscious that might question the behavior they see all around them?
Is that perhaps what jazz can be accused of causing -- a rise in behavior that one might say is more subconscious than conscious? Jazz is script-less, free-form, to be done once, unrepeatable. And didn’t jazz lead to smoking certain illegal substances, and to who know what else?
Any accusation of long standing often has a nugget of truth somewhere within it. Jazz musicians, almost all creative artists, are people who tapped into their subconscious. These people, who think outside the box one way, often end up thinking outside the box in many other ways. They acquire such labels as rebels, anti-establishment, long haired, freaky, you get the picture.
There is some wisdom in parent’s reaction to this newfangled, chaotic music. It open up avenues that parents do not want opened up. They want to keep the lid on Pandora’s box. They do not want the subconscious to take over, dictate behavior or question behavior.

2009-11-23T22:53:00.001-08:00

A short preface. Recently, for a couple of weeks I became, again, a bachelor. I lived alone. Jacqui went back to England for her younger sister’s wedding and for a few other events.
So I lived alone for two weeks. Any lessons? I’ve rediscovered the human being who for a long-long time lived alone. He is not very different than the individual who now lives with Jacqui, but he is different, and the differences are interesting.
I am more of a slob as I strew my clothes around the house. Not a big mess, but a little less tidy because it is my mess, I am not aware of the needs of another.
And my daily schedule is a little wackier. I nap at any time of the day. I go to sleep earlier, get up at weird hours of the morning -- 4 a.m. 5 a.m,. -- and I can make noise. I don’t have to creep around quietly because I might wake her up.
In essence, the boundaries are looser as I need not be aware of the needs of another. I eat when it pleases me, and believe me, that is at weird hours, and the food is strange too.
Don’t I do all this when Jacqui is here? Of course I do. I nap, eat, go to sleep when I want, but I am aware of her wants & sometimes eat with her & I stay up later so we can watch a video on TV.
As I’ve said, the differences between the me who exists alone & the me who exists with her are small, although one interesting difference is a little bigger: I get more done. I write more, read more, research more. The only needs I must meet are my own, and somehow, more gets done.
She said so too. Jacqui, in England, is amazed at how much she is getting done. As we agreed, we get underfoot, we trip over each other. It can’t be helped.
Are we saying we want to be apart? Heck no. I cannot begin to explain what we have accomplished as a couple -- or most simply, what she has accomplished for me.
I would not know how to create a web page, I would be almost computer illiterate, my house would be shabbier & smaller: she designed the back dance room, she designed the new upstairs bathroom, she….she….
There is no desire on either of our parts to live apart. What is interesting to me is my descent, temporarily, into the world I once inhabited full time. I do not want to go back to it, cannot really conceive of returning to it, but can relish the idea of repeating this temporary separation.
It is good to rediscover parts of one’s self that, because of circumstances, often improved circumstances, no longer exist.

2009-11-12T22:00:00.001-08:00

When I was growing up, there was one author we kids were allowed to read who had very-very suggestive sexy scenes in his books. We were really turned on by certain passages, and I remember one reviewer wondered why this man bothered writing books -- he could have so much fun just sitting there and just thinking these sexy thoughts.
I thought of this when, while swimming, I was, in my head, writing one these talks. My face just broke into a big grin as I thought of something funny, something very-very funny, but something that was too personal to use in a radio talk for public consumption.
Then I thought of the comment made about the author -- he could have so much fun just sitting there and thinking. Why bother writing?
There are a million answers to that question, but finally, just sitting there and thinking is masturbating, penetrating into the minds of others is having intercourse.
I do want to interact with all of you. I do want to share my thoughts because I long ago learned I’m sometimes good at writing these talks.
I am a lousy spontaneous talker. Long ago someone said that writers are sticks in conversation. This writer is a stick. I can’t think of anything to say when I am standing there facing people.
I had two friends who were tremendously witty in conversation. I envied them deeply. They could make people laugh. They were extremely good at using words. One of them once said he was surprised by what came out of his mouth. He talked because he wanted to hear what he would say.
That is what we writers say. We say, “I don’t know what I think until I hear what I say” but in our case, we develop our ideas, our thoughts, our words, far away from any human beings. I’m good at a prepared delivery, lousy at conversation in real time with real people.
Writers are sticks to talk to. It makes sense they would be. They spend a great deal of time creating sustained pieces, they’ve lost the art of back & forth small talk.
While those who are good at back & forth talk, are often not good at writing: one of my witty friends never wrote, the other soon stopped writing because he was nowhere near as funny in print as he was in real life.
Why write? Because to just sit there and think is lonely, anti-social, not a benefit to anyone except to the idiot quietly sitting there & grinning. Sharing gives meaning to thinking -- because once I share I can hear if you agree, disagree, don’t care, or wish you were elsewhere.

2009-11-04T22:17:00.001-08:00

“The role of banks is to circulate the savings from deposits, from pensions and from companies to those that need to spend or invest them.”
In all of this turmoil, I simply lost track of the “role of banks.” I know they charge us money to get out our own money from a cash machine, I know they charge interest on loans. I know they caused all this trouble.
But what, exactly, historically, do banks do?
They circulate our deposits, our pensions -- our money. We gave them money. Why did we give them money? Well partly because they give interest on our money, but primarily all of us gave them money so that they could give the money back to us.
Of course they will someday give back the money we gave them, but meanwhile we expect them to lend the money -- to us & to others who need it.
We gave them the money so that I could buy a house -- with a great big loan from them. So my company could buy equipment, with a great big loan from them. They are supposed to circulate our savings, the money we gave them. All of us depend on it.
Or as the article goes on to say: “ This paralysis of lending from loss of confidence jeopardizes the flow of money to every family and every business in the country…The banking system is fundamental to everything we do.
So that’s the plain and simple root of the problem. We gave them lots & lots of money -- so that they will wisely lend this money. Okay, so recently they lent the money foolishly.
And now they are so scared, or scarred, they won’t lend anyone money. They won’t give any of us -- individuals, businesses, companies, anything at all.
First they squander, lose money, and overpay themselves. Now they hoard it all, enfold it all.
Most glaring example. Central banks have poured tons of new money into regional banks in an attempt to get the regional banks to do their duty: make loans to worthy individuals & businesses. All that happened was that every cent the regional banks received was deposited back into an account at the Central bank -- the only place these frightened out of their wits bankers are sure won’t let them down, will so to speak, repay the money on demand.
This is ridiculous. We gave them our money. They need to circulate the savings from deposits….pensions….companies to those that need to spend or invest them.” Do your job, a job for which you pay yourself far too much. Invest wisely, invest, invest, invest. You are killing all of us by not investing in anything but a dead still bank account.
These bankers are starting to get me mad. Nationalize all banks immediately. Let’s get our money out of their hands and back in circulation amongst all of us.

2009-10-28T00:16:00.000-07:00

I am misremembering, and emending -- that is changing -- a quotation I read long ago. The quotation said that starting to read a book is a lot like walking into a living room and having a man hold forth on a subject. In the case of some books, some living rooms, you sit down, you stay, you listen. In some cases you close the book, you leave the living room: you are not interested in what the man, or woman, is saying.
In a sense, I am saying the obvious, different people like different books, but because I am deaf, this idea of sitting & listening to another is very-very true. We cannot hear others. But we do want to hear their stories. So we read books: thank god I am not blind.
And all I have said is a preface to a short comparison between a father 7 daughter duo -- both writers of Crime fiction. Once, only once, I listened to a whole book by James Lee burke. You did hear right: I do listen to books on tape on long car journeys. James Lee burke’s book was ultra violent. I could barely tolerate -- and have totally suppressed the memory of -- the violence in the book.
I will never-ever walk into that living room again. I will not read any more -- or listen to any more -- books by james Lee burke.
But I read rave reviews of the books by his daughter: Alafair Burke. I have just been on a two-day, twenty hour long car trip; and once again I listened to a book, one by Alafair burke.
There were long stretches when I was bored -- young brother sister interaction, young men & women interacting, misunderstanding -- but she did have some knowledge to impart, about law, criminals, the police & criminals who behave psychotically.
She had something to say -- but did you notice my constant use of the word young? She is, by my standards, young. I am 71, and young people’s stories are not full of wisdom on relationships.
Bottom line. I will return to Alafair Burke’s living room in 20 years. She knows a great deal now, will know much more in the future.
Meanwhile I’ll visit other living rooms, and once again may I point out two absolute masters of the crime fiction genre: Michael Connally -- who also writes novels about lawyers. Michael Connally. Michael Connolly. He is the very wisest & the best story teller.
And one the very weirdest & wisest -- you might not like her and run shrieking out of her living room, is a French writer with what sounds to us like a man’s name. Fred Vargas. Again, Fred vargas. V. A. R. G. A. S.
Do try those two: Michael Connally & Fred Vargas.

2009-10-21T04:50:00.001-07:00

A seventy year old former teacher can now admit that, though he was an English teacher for 30 years, he hated grammar, he was never good at it himself, and suddenly I remembered a phrase I hated: Unclear referent.
All of you listening to this took a class in English: remember the teacher scribbling on your paper, unclear referent? I hated those words. You know what I am referring to dear teacher, you really do. Stop being so picky: Unclear referent. You scored another point, but you seem a picky person to me.
But now, 70 year old me knows what they meant. In any given ten minute discussion between my wife and I, we suffer terribly from “unclear referents.”
“THAT is exactly what I mean” I yell. THAT is exactly??? WHAT is exactly. Are you sure she knows what you are referring to? Or she says to me “IT makes clear that you do not…” Whoa. Whoa. IT? IT makers clear?
What did I just say a second ago, or more likely twenty seconds ago. She walked away, thought about it, came back & said “IT makes clear… Unclear referent.
I could go on & on & on with examples. It suddenly seems to me that in common everyday conversation, “unclear referent” is the root of all evil.
I exaggerate? Perhaps, and perhaps not. We live inside our minds. We guess about what the other person based upon what the other person says. Both of us are not sure about what we really mean to say; both of us are not sure we understood what the other said -- and the problem is compounded by scientific research that shows that men 7 women are exceptionally good at misunderstanding each other. We tend not to understand what a member of the opposite sex was trying to say, not that he, or she, knew exactly what they meant to say… Unclear referent is a big part of the problem.
You need to hear ten minutes of conversation between us. Invariably I say, wait, wait, what are you referring to, because she began a sentence with the word words “your attitude…or what you said earlier makes me think… My attitude? What attitude? What I said earlier? Good grief, what did I say earlier? I can’t remember.
Or I say, what you said earlier makes me think” Or in the heat of conversation “she agrees with you.” She? She? I explain I meant her sister, or daughter, or… I know who I mean, but the referent is unclear to her & soon we will be screaming at each other: I thought you meant….No, I thought you meant….
Unclear referent is the root of all evil -- but what a horrible mouthfull -- unclear referent. Let us make clear that in common conversation, many people are not sure what, or who, you are referring to -- or in plain English -- what are you talking about. Please be clearer. Do not say “it” or “that “ or “she” or “he” Who are you talking about, referring to, what are you talking about, explain more, don’t shorten with “That is why I…” That” what? Speak using more words so I will know your referent & misunderstanding, though inevitable, will be less frequent.

2009-10-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

It is not new to say the pendulum swings from one end to the other until it settles in the middle.
Or we always go too far one way, come galloping back the other way, find we’ve gone back too far.
Or, the example will make the point clear.
I always passionately hated one aspect of modern communications. It was them throwing stuff at me. I had no way to talk to them -- except by letter. They created TV shows, radio shows, movies and records. The street was a one way street. We were the dead end that all was being poured into. And we could vote with our feet so to speak, buy or not buy, listen or not listen, go to the movies or not go.
But we couldn’t really react -- and worst of all this top down technology did not allow me to communicate with all those around me. My friends, relatives, near & dear.
And then came the web. The answer to all my niggling objections. The very thing I longed for. The communication was not top down, it was between all of us, email & Skype. We didn’t need to tune in to their chatter, to the constant bombardment from above. We could, and did, talk to each other.
But we weren’t satisfied with that. We wanted to talk to a lot of other people. Or we wanted everyone to be able to tune in to us, Blogs and twitter, My space & Facebook. And the most powerful & intrusive of all -- You tube -- your picture, your house, your face, your space. For all to see. A million can come to see it daily -- if they wish.
We have achieved the ultimate in communication. Whereas before a million of us tuned in to them; the big three TV Networks, the Hollywood moguls, now we piddling people, if we package ourselves correctly, can draw a million viewers to us.
Great. Right? Well not exactly. Exposing ourselves to millions of others, and exposing our details to thousands of greedy corporations, is beginning to creep us out.
Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to carry this medium this far. Maybe me talking to my friends & neighbors, near, dear, far & foreign, is wonderful enough. We need to rethink this new toy. It sure the heck beats the old way -- all them, nothing from us, but us being visited & viewed by all & sundry, no entrance pass required, maybe that’s not such a good thing.

2009-10-04T23:24:00.001-07:00

As an observant, hard studying little Jewish boy, one of the great and odd Jewish sayings that stuck in my head was “He who lifts his eyes from the printed page (and the printed page was always some holy book, no other) -- to look at a tree, deserves hell. Did you hear that? If you observe nature, if you look up from a holy book to look at nature, you deserve hell.
All of my life I’ve lived inside my head. Stick me in a canoe in Costa Rica and I don’t really appreciate the scenery -- I really don’t see it, one tree looks just like another tree, I’ve never looked at trees -- stick me in a forest, I’m living inside my head.
I’m in a canoe, thinking. I’m wondering why I don’t see my surroundings more, why I’m not enjoying the scenery, the weather, the location, the vacation. I’m thinking, thinking, thinking. Living inside my head.
That’s my upbringing. Example two. My father was angry when he found out that in graduate school, my roommate and I had a cat. You shouldn’t have a cat in the house he said. Looking at cat will distract you from your studies. He meant it. He was serious -- and of course he was right. Cats are gorgeous creatures, they are wonderful to watch. And for us Jews, living inside your head is good, the world out there is full of suffering, persecution, distractions like sex and cats. It is best to live inside your head.
My wife is out west, photographing the Canyons -- Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon. She is a highly visual person. Compared to me, she sees so much. She is deeply aware of her environment. Ten hours later you can ask me what the weather was like ten hours ago and I don’t remember. Flora? Fauna? Describe the scenery? Forget about it.
She sees. For years we argued the fact that she claimed she thought in pictures. I, and many other leading lights in the intellectual field, disagreed. They said, and I said, you need words to think. She said no. First there are pictures. Then I search for words to describe it all to you, or whoever else wants to know.
And she is right. I’ve finally understood the truth of what she said, that she thinks in pictures -- and how different we are. I think in words, I live most of my life inside my head. She thinks in pictures. Yes, she lives for long periods, inside her mind. But when she emerges & ventures outdoors, she sees, react records.
When she takes pictures there is a twofold process of seeing. She looks, chooses, frames the picture, takes the picture. She appreciates and records.
Once she gets home she not only looks at all the digital photographs she has scanned into the computer, often she will work for hours & hours cropping photographs: the digital equivalent of a dark room.
When she is involved in her second round of seeing: she will see details she could not see the first time, because this time she can enlarge the image, look at every nook & cranny and, for instance, see a hot air balloon she did not see when she was snapping photographs of her absolutely beautiful surroundings.
Images, seeing, are a big part of her world. Most of the time I live inside my mind. So long

2009-09-29T23:10:00.000-07:00

Recently a few people, working people, commented on how computers have made their life harder than ever before. They’ve talked about it with others. They all agree: computers make life more difficult, more complicated.
I listened. I was somewhat puzzled initially. Then I figured it out from my perspective.
You see, for us retired old folk who can navigate around a computer, a computer is an absolutely wonderful tool.
We write emails, we skype our children & grandchildren. We keep in touch with friends. We pay our bills. We read newspapers. Everything is available on a computer; we can play games, watch you tube videos. It is our life. We spend hours & hours on it & we love it.
It fills our life -- and that’s the point.
Young working people have children, jobs, spouses -- and now, on top of all that the internet draws them in, mesmerizes them.
Long-long ago, before we could communicate via the web & email, France had a sort of experimental email-web. It was called Mini-tell, teletell. Anyone could trade their telephone in for a telephone computer that had access to other people with a telephone & computer.
It was an instant hit, a disastrous success. Almost immediately it was used for sexual liasons, but worst of all, the time on line was charged for: it was a computer through a telephone. People wracked up bills of thousands & thousands of dollars. They went bankrupt. They were addicted, could not stop themselves, left their spouses for total strangers & in one case a woman left her husband & met her lover -- who turned out to be another woman.
The internet is addictive & even if not addictive, it is a wonderful world to live in if you are retired. Easy to visit, learn from, interact with others.
I feel so so sorry for young working people. Yes, they have all the pleasure (& more -- they know how to use it more) than I, but it does lead them to live hyperactive lives: job hours are longer -- you can be contacted vis email, and messages can get to you & you must respond to them or be deemed rude.
Future shock is here now. They are harassed & overworked. For them computers make life more difficult, more stressful.

2009-09-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

“A bankrupt belligerent superpower with a thirst for water and oil, just what the world needs.”
Listen carefully to the words. A bankrupt superpower. Those sound like contradictory terms. How can we be a Superpower if we are bankrupt. You know the world we live in. You can borrow money -- America owes the rest of the world trillions & trillions of dollars -- you can borrow money and buy weapons of mass destruction. We are the world’s only superpower & we are bankrupt. We will have a tough time ever repaying all that we owe.
Are we a belligerent superpower? One could say we use our superpowers to rescue those in need: we save the innocent, we depose dictators, we keep world peace, we are, to some extent, the world’s policeman. So we are not really belligerent (although some would say we already are belligerent).
But what if those we owe money to ask for their money back? They start to worry that we will never pay them back. After all, we owe trillions & trillions of dollars. We are a superpower. What if we say, the heck with you. We got problems & we need the money. If you want to, you can come here, try to get us to pay you what we owe you.
But we, the superpower, have decided we are not going to pay you what we owe you.
We are a bankrupt belligerent superpower with a taste for water and oil.
The future looks bleak: global warming, a shortage of vital resources, oil and water heading the list -- and we could become a truly belligerent, truly cantankerous superpower. Many countries already think of us a belligerent superpower.
The rest of the world is afraid of us, and they have good reason to be afraid. We feel we have used our superpowers for good, we have rescued the innocent, deposed satanic dictators -- but the rest of the world hold’s its breath as we become more and more annoyed at pesky suicide bombers, people who hate us, foreigners who invade our shores. We are getting annoyed and you never know what an annoyed superpower will do.
Beware of bankrupt belligerent superpowers, you never know what they will do.

2009-09-21T02:59:00.000-07:00

Any of us who watch detective shows on TV know that one of the ways to trace the bad guys -- or for that matter, to trace anyone you want to trace, is check on their credit card activity: what did they buy where. That’s how to locate them.
But us normal people can’t access such information -- we can’t access what credit card was used by someone -- and where they used it. But why would we want to do that?
My wife is out west photographing the canyons. Normally, she stays at motels that have email access but she chose a few cheap motels that did not allow her to contact me via email. After a few days of not hearing from her -- we are cheapskates, we won’t spend money on long, expensive phone calls -- I began to get a little worried. I knew that her second motel did have email access & yet I had not heard from her.
I did not need to worry. I actually had, in my computer, a daily record of some of her activity. I didn’t discover this detailed record until a few days later.
For a variety of reasons we are a little fed up with credit cards & this trip she decided to pay for everything using our bank debit card. She & I have online access to that account. A few days later, while checking for something in the account, I suddenly saw several small withdrawals, seven dollars at a breakfast place, 7 12 dollars at a dinner, forty two dollars at a gas station.
I suddenly realized I can track her movements -- how much she spends where. And immediately I hear some of you saying -- I don’t want my spouse to know how much I spend and every place I spend it.
Of course we wouldn’t want that -- none of us want that. We want to spend spontaneously & not be accountable -- but in this instance -- husband & wife are separated by thousands of miles -- wouldn’t it be comforting to know that she spent the night at such & such a motel in Moab, Utah, ate rather frugally, spent eight bucks at the Moab Brewery.
How comforting. She had a couple of beers. Great. She got to unwind after a hard day driving & photographing in almost 100 degree heat.
We do correspond daily by email, which virtually every motel in America offers access to. In fact, we often skype each other: I see her in her motel room, she sees me in our house back in T. C.
But back to the discovery I just made. If you are separated from someone and you both agree you’d like to keep track of each other’s movements, use your kept-in-common bank account debit card. Each can let the other know they are okay.

2009-09-16T08:43:00.001-07:00

I am back to not owning a car -- and I absolutely love it -- and I am writing this when it is bitter cold outside, April 6th: snow & bitter cold winds. I love riding my bicycle in the winter.
How can I say I love it? Am I nuts? I just got back from a three mile bicycle ride to & from Meijers -- and in a few minutes I will mount my bike & ride over two miles to the Northwestern Michigan College to record these very talks you are listening to. And then I will bicycle back home.
As I biked out to Meijers I thought, ‘this is so much fun I should be paying someone to do this. This is a terrific ride. The wind is blowing in my face, I’m not really cold because my legs are pumping, my whole body is involved in this very necessary exercise. If I don’t do this I won’t have food to eat. Well, I could go to a grocery store closer to my house, but I love the long bike ride to Meijer.
Again, am I nuts? Not really. I didn’t consider riding a bicycle on such a day when I owned a car. On a day like today I would have hopped in the car. But the car is gone, kaput, broke down -- and we’ve decided to live daily life without a car.
Once I made the commitment -- no car -- I dressed appropriately for the weather: outdoors, on a bicycle, layers of clothing are needed. Then, when I’m out there, I feel so good. Everyone who rides a bike feels good after awhile. Your heart pumps harder, you use your muscles, and you are getting somewhere -- literally getting somewhere, getting something -- under your own power. What a great feeling!
Life is good when you function as an animal -- humans are animala, and have functioned as animals for most of mankind’s history. If you want to get somewhere, use muscle power to get there. Personally, I hate to walk, but I love to ride a bike -- it’s a kids kind of thing to do, and I’m still a kid, and can act as a kid on my bike. And biking keeps you supple.
But what if we want to go to Ann Arbor, or Cleveland or New York City. Then we rent a car. People are very willing to rent us cars, and when we are done, we just hand the car back to them. Here, you take care of this, take good care of this. I will need it, or another car just like it, soon. Meanwhile, you keep it running, you look after it.
Me? I’m gonna have fun on a bicycle -- I and my wife Jacqui. She doesn’t love bicycling as much as crazy old me, but she loves being forced to exercise. She sees the good that comes from bicycling and she is truly game. She wants to live without a car too. Part of her relishes having, as she, a Brit, puts it, “the moral high ground.” We can feel righteous because we don’t pollute, we bicycle everywhere. I am so pleased that I no longer own a car in America. So long

2009-09-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

I just told a friend I would put on my blog a talk on two books that changed my thinking:

A warning to all you listeners -- I am going to sound a little insane, over the top, nuts, round the bend.
From time to time I recommend books. The two books I am currently reading have my highest recommendation. They are absolutely unbelievable. They give an insight into how all people think. They are great for parents raising children. They are great for husbands trying to understand wives, or wives trying to understand husbands. They are great for people who have pets. They are great-great-great.
Temple Grandin. Thinking in Pictures and Animals in Translation. Subtitle. The Woman who thinks like a cow. Now there’s a catchy title, The Woman who thinks like a Cow. And she does. And she is Autistic, but writes some of the clearest prose I have ever read.
You wouldn’t think of buying her books. A woman who thinks like a cow? A woman who writes about autistic children? A woman who is autistic? She makes me see the world I live in in a whole new way. She makes me understand my wife better.
For years & years my wife & I have had some nasty misunderstandings. I think she is picky beyond belief. We design a flyer, or try to create a video. We do things together. I think the final product looks pretty good. No, she says, we need to change this minor detail, and that minor detail. And this doesn’t look just right. She drives me nuts. It looks good enough, I yell. Let it be. You are taking way too much time trying to correct what I think is a very minor detail.
Temple Grandin writes: “Visual thinkers of any species, animal or human, are detail oriented. They see everything & they react to everything….The worst thing that can happen to a designer is to work with a sloppy contractor. The designer will see every little flaw….They go crazy. Visual people feel horrible when little details in their visual environment are wrong.”
I think my wife Jacqui is way to picky about little details. I have learned to let her get on with it because she seems so upset until she gets it just right. I could never understand what was the big deal, but as Temple Grandin says “Visual people feel horrible when little details in their visual environment are wrong.” So that’s it -- and yet Jacqui is not autistic.
Because Temple Grandin suffers from autism, she sees a different world than we do. As the title of her book says, she thinks in pictures -- and for years I argued with Jacqui. Jacqui said she thinks in pictures. I, and many other people got furious. No one thinks “in pictures.” We all use words to think. George Orwell claimed that the concept of freedom exists because we have a word for freedom. If you didn’t have a word for a thing, you can’t really think the thing. Or “Thought needs words, it runs on them like a long wire.”
I have finally come to realize that word oriented people might be wrong. Many, many people think in pictures and these people work hard to use words to tell people what they initially saw as a pictures.
In the beginning was the word? No. Not for these people. For these people in the beginning there are pictures, then words are created.
Temple Grandin is a terrific writer: Thinking in Pictures & Animals in Translation.

2009-08-31T07:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve mentioned before that sometimes a small phrase sums up a whole situation. Here’s the phrase: “The gas company has me wiping their windows.”
This is the last line of a short essay where a man is moaning about the fact that he has to pump his own gas. He remembers when there were gas station attendants who pumped the gas, wiped your windshield. And he thinks back to the days when you went to a grocery store and the grocer took the items down from shelf while you just read a list of what you wanted.
After he has pumped the gas he goes to pay for the gas, and there, behind a filthy window is a lazy attendant, feet propped up, reading a comic book. He has trouble communicating with this man & he finally picks up a cloth to wipe the window to talk to this man -- and it hits him. They got him, the gas people have him wiping their window.
That struck me as so funny, so true. It summed up the whole situation -- and it summed it up in humorous and alliterative way. Alliteration means that something is easier to remember -- wiping window, rather than cleaning the window. So I always remember -- wiping their window -- and it applies to so much else.
It all came to me as my wife is phoning around to find out if part of her medical treatment is covered by our insurance company. The doctor phones her with the diagnosis. She phones the insurance company to ask if this procedure is covered by them. They say they need a code number and then they can tell her if they cover it. She calls the doctor back to try & get the code number. You get the picture, we are wiping their window. They don’t do all of this tiring work, phoning around, waiting for answers- We do it for them. And this is so true for so much else.
More & more stores have self-checkout aisles. We’ve eliminated the middle man: we go choose the products, we pay for them, and we take the products out to our cars. Their job? Stock the shelves, slap on prices.
I know the most obvious benefit to us of this process -- if we do a great deal of it ourselves, they will pass on the savings to us in the form of lower prices.
To some extent this is true, but our lives are being consumed by processes that used to be carried out by others. We now have time saving machinery, and self checkout lanes, and fill-it-out-yourself forms & do it yourself -- and soon the self is consumed in tasks that used to be performed by others.
In other words, they’ve got us wiping their window.

2009-08-19T08:12:00.001-07:00

A long time ago I internalized the following concept: Ability equals responsibility. There are many things I would rather not do, but I am good at it, therefore I should do it, and I serve my community by doing it.
A friend of ours in the dance world is a lovely lady who is almost a walking encyclopedia about the dance form we are all involved in: English Country Dancing. She knows all the new dances, the moves in the dances. She is perceptive, articulate, funny, but like me she hates to call dances: she, like me, doesn’t like the pressure to call well, the lengthy preparation that is necessary if one is to do well.
I do believe ability should lead to a responsibility to use that ability, but not in all cases. I don’t do many of things I know I could do, should do; one must pick & choose or go crazy. She has chosen not to call dances.
But all these thoughts were twisted by an article I just read, an article about a sad, sad, woman. Her problem? She can’t forget anything. She remembers everything that ever happened to her. She remembers so well, that in a couple of cases she corrected information in articles, in printed books. She remembered and she turns out to be virtually infallible.
But why is she sad -- and I mean really-really sad: she sometimes cries uncontrollably seven times a day. She is sad because she remembers, and remembers vividly, as if they are happening to her right now, sad events, a prime example how she felt when her only two years long husband died suddenly. She felt devastated, and to recall that memory is to feel devastated.
Ability? Responsibility? This lady has an ability found in perhaps four other people in the world, or so far, scientists have only found four others, and none is sad like her, but all have this phenomenal “can’t forget anything memory.”
She has a can’t forget memory? I could use her at least one day a year: the day people vote in her voting district. Place her there. She will be a video camera you can’t erase -- without physically killing her.
But that is one day a year. Can’t people figure out how to employ her? Her ability is an unbelievable ability. If only people could figure out how to employ her. If only she could focus on how to hire herself out -- she might stop being sad, she might begin to realize that her ability, though a curse in some ways, is a phenomenal ability, an eminently marketable ability.
Ability equal responsibility, ability also makes one marketable. Or, as someone once said, find out what you like to do (or are very good at doing) and get someone to pay you to do it.

2009-08-07T14:18:00.001-07:00

Long ago, in the midst of what was probably my most successful stretch of teaching a troubled student came to me and asked me to discuss, in class, what it is that makes people happy.
I was stumped. I could say what it is that doesn’t, necessarily, make people happy -- it is not money, it is not success. Yes, money helps. Yes, successful people are often happy, but I didn’t want to stand in front of my classes and say that money is the road to happiness or trying to achieve success in one field or another is the road to happiness. I knew that a great many people who were not, so to speak successful, were happy.
So what is the road to happiness.
Of course I could not then, or now, come up with an easy answer. There is no easy answer, or more important, there is no single answer. What I came up with then was the idea of being needed: we need to be needed. We need to feel that others depend on us and that what we do matters. Yes, that is a part of happiness: being a good parent, a good friend, a good child, a good citizen. We need to feel that our life matters.
But that is not all of it, or even most of it.
Here is what Mike Nichols, the great comedian, play & movie director, said: “Process is the great happiness. It takes us up and time passes like the wind and we still have time for consideration, reflection. It is the great bargain in satisfaction, while the highly advertised achievement brings a certain emptiness since it is very hard to experience or believe.”
He said so much in those few words. Process is the great happiness. That is so true. When I get caught up in a project, time passes like the wind. I am working on something, intensely working on it, and before I know it, five hours have passed, the whole day has passed -- and I didn’t notice time passing. I didn’t look at the clock; I didn’t know what time it was. I was deeply involved in what I was doing: time passed like the wind. I loved what I was doing. I was happy -- without being conscious of happiness. I just was deeply involved in the moment, happy to be doing what I was doing -- and the proof was that I was doing it, not thinking about doing something else.
Process is the great happiness, and as he says “It is the great bargain in satisfaction.” It doesn’t cost us anything to be doing.” We are using our body, our mind. Usually, that doesn’t cost anything -- except mental effort or physical effort. We are in the midst of a process, thinking about how to solve a problem or create a product, or playing tennis, or golf: Process is the great happiness.
And, as he goes on to say, “the highly advertised achievement brings a certain emptiness.” Once we’ve finished the process, achieved our goal, won the prize, the tournament, the award, the accolade, it is very hard to experience success, or experience triumph, or to even believe it. The fun of winning, or achieving, wears off very quickly. We don’t believe in our own success, The only thing that will bring us happiness is the next process, the next game of tennis, because process, doing, is the great happiness, and time passes like the wind. So long

2009-07-06T05:23:00.000-07:00

Big Newspaper Headline in America: “Banks Sought Foreign Workers.” In other words, banks hired foreigners rather than Americans. And why are we so angry? We Americans have just paid good money to rescue these banks that have hired foreign workers.
QUOTE “The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years.”
If you read this carefully, you realize that these hirings were over a six year span. In this six year span, twelve huge corporations, 12 humongous banks, hired almost 22,000 foreign workers.
You are seeking the brightest & the best -- in many cases you have branches in foreign countries -- of course you would choose to hire 22,000 foreign workers.
Newspapers are pointing fingers, stirring up resentment; those banks hire foreign workers We Americans bailed those banks out. Maybe they should get rid of their foreign workers.
In brutal Europe -- they burn the houses of recent immigrants, they physically throw them out.
We are more civilized here, we just stir up resentment: those banks hire 22,000 foreigners, brought em here. How many? 22,000 workers. How many companies? Twelve of the largest companies in the world. What was the span of time? Six years, six years in times of expansion beyond imagining. Truly prosperous times.
Headline? Banks sought foreign workers. Can you believe that? They actually sought a foreign worker when they could have hired a good ole American. Buy American -- especially since we Americans just bailed you out.
That’s the point. You just now bailed us out, and you are pointing to our behavior over the past six highly prosperous years.
Yes we hired foreign workers. It made good business sense to hire foreign workers, and the article lists the kinds of foreign workers: “senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists.”
Of course they tried to pick the very best senior vice president in the world -- foreign or domestic. Of course they tried to hire the best corporate lawyer in the world, foreign or domestic.
We must beware of our drift towards, ‘throw them foreign workers out.’ towards buy American, hire American workers. Civilization is a thin veneer beneath which lurk animal longings: throw the bums out. We must beware of newspaper headlines that stir us up to do just that.

2009-07-03T22:53:00.001-07:00

All of you know that I write a great deal, but some of what I write has to be edited -- has to be toned down at times, or tweaked in one way or another.
My editor is my wife. Suffice it to say that she writes as well as I do -- but she does not like to write. She does, however, like to read some of the things I write -- and her editing, her tweaking, always improves the final product.
The point I wish to make? The best way for her to edit words I have written is to send her my words. Send her. I write the words, place them in an email, and I send the email to her. Specifically, my computer in my room upstairs sends the email to her computer in her room downstairs.
Once she corrects it, she zings it back to me.
We are less than a 100 yards from each other and yet the best and clearest way communicate is to send an email. I yell down to her, “check your email, there is something I want you to read.”
Sometimes the something I send her is an article I read that I want her to read, an article in the New York Times, or the Guardian. I send her the URL and she can click on that, read the whole article.
It may seem a strange way to communicate. You are in the same house, you talk through your computer, but I am sure that many-many-many people do what we two do.
Long ago we used to physically hand our spouse a newspaper article or a magazine article. Physically hand it to them; manually hand it to them. We didn’t want to try to explain the article because our explanation would be biased, incomplete -- and often the article explained it all so well. So check your email, read the article.
This means at our disposal is unbelievable. I just read an article on bicycle repairing & the sudden blossoming of bicycles in New York City. So I sent the article to my son who is helping to run a bicycle repair & social skills class for troubled teens.
His students, his class, needs to know that their skills are needed in the big bold city, the greatest city of all, New York City.
My other son has a food blog. I sent him the list someone made of the ten best food blogs.
You used to have to sit & type the whole thing out. Now? Here’s the web address. Read it all, print it if you want to.
Communicating through this machine, communicating through this piece of steel I’m taping out words on, communicating is unbelievable -- and I have only begun explaining what is possible.

2009-06-30T23:05:00.000-07:00

This is being written for fans of the game of tennis. I expect the rest of you won’t be that interested.
Andy Murray, the British tennis player, the player known in England as the Scott, Andy Murray is a Frankenstein monster, a huge man who soon will absolutely dominate men’s tennis. I am writing this when there is no certainty about who will win the Australian Open. I predicted Andy Murray would win, and I turned out to be wrong: Rafael Nadal beat him for what I think is the last time Nadal will ever do that.
I have watched Andy Murray play. I have watched him get ready to hit a backhand and suddenly a snake snaps out, a whip appears, and the tennis ball is propelled at seemingly a hundred miles an hour. The opponent is dumbstruck, caught flat footed, especially since Andy Murray can also slice & dice his backhand return.
When this backhand stroke appears, it leaves a viewer open mouthed. How can anyone ever get to this stroke. They can’t. It is a dominating shot.
But that is only one part of this man’s repertoire, this creature whose wing span seems that of a large bird whose body is a small part of two vast wings stretching each way. He is a tall man, well over six feet, but it is his reach that is so frightening. When he gets to net, nothing gets past him.
And he has a steady deadly forehand.
I could go on & on, in fact I’ve already gone on & on. Why do I go on so? I am impressed by this man. He has worked hard to get to where he is, where he soon will be, number one in the world. He was scrawny kid, gifted but fragile. He got tired, he couldn’t keep up the grueling pace necessary to compete at the top level. In fact, early on in his career, he retired from several matches.
Now he is the hulk. He has a Frankenstein body: wide, wide shoulders, slender waist, wide-wide win span. There is no false modesty. He is a decent man but he has a killer’s instinct.
Yes, a killer’s instinct. None of the greats in any sport got to be great without a killer’s instinct. You must kill your opponent, dominate him if possible, dispatch him swiftly when the moment comes. ‘Can he finish him off, can he close this out,” the announcer says. Closing a game is so difficult. You cannot have any mercy. You must dispatch your opponent ruthlessly, embarrass him if possible.
Basically, watch any match with Andy Murray in it. He is a stunningly good tennis player. Long ago john McEnroe said, “Watch Andy Murray’s hands, he has great hands.” Murray is Roger Federer on steroids, Murray is King Kong among mere mortals. Andy Murray will soon be #1.

2009-06-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

Quick History -- for those who might need to know what is now truly something that happened long-long ago, in this case WWII.
During WWII the Germans were unbelievably cruel to the Polish People. They killed millions of Poles. The Poles have not forgiven them. Many Poles hate the Germans, hate them with an undying hatred -- a hatred you can be sure they tried to pass on to their children.
So when I traveled to Poland right after Poland no longer was part of the Soviet union, Polish people were afraid of one thing. They were afraid that the Germans, who could not conquer them militarily, were about to conquer them economically.
They tried to conquer Polish territory militarily, make it part of Germany. Subsequent to WWII they had a simpler plan: make Poland part of Germany by buying Polish land.
The Polish people were very-very poor. They just emerged from the hell of Russian Communism. They had no money, no way of making money. No industry. There was only one thing they could sell -- and get lots of money for it They could sell their farm, their house, their apartment at what -- for a prosperous German -- was a ridiculously low price.
Soon the Germans were achieving economically what they could not hope to achieve militarily.
So Poland passed a law limiting the percentage of Polish assets that could be held by German People.
It’s been said repeatedly that if you look at simple economics, it looks like the German & the Japanese won WWII Look at how they’ve prospered since! And now look at great Britain & America & France & Spain and…and… Their economies are in ruin, their population is unemployed.
This observation dawned on me as I read the tag line that appears in every Toyota car ad on TV: Toyota, America’s Number one car company.
When I was growing up in America, after WWII, German cars were king, especially the spunky Beetle. I owned one, was the first in my family to break the taboo against all things German. I comforted myself by thinking -- well, I own a used one.
German cars dominated the car market after WWII, Japanese cars dominate now. My wife broke her family’s taboo against Japanese cars. An Uncle of hers was in a Japanese prison of war camp. Horrors happened. Her family shunned all things Japanese.
Economics has achieved what physical aggression could not achieve. Grabbing is frowned upon; buying things is encouraged. You may pay me for what I make, for the house I live in -- and then all of it is yours. You are not allowed to march in and grab it, expropriate it. That’s rude, uncivilized.
They learned, they became civilized, and soon they will own it all free & clear. Goal achieved.
They’ve learned to play by our rules. True, it took them almost a hundred years to learn, but they took a hell of a beating when they tried to grab the stuff -- Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden Fire bombings.
Did someone once say Money is the root of all evil? No it isn’t. Money is civilized thievery. Long-long ago Proudhon said “Property is theft.”

2009-06-09T02:50:00.001-07:00

I am in the midst of searching the internet for cheap -- or shall we say inexpensive -- airplane flights between Traverse City & London & between New York City & London. I’ve been at it for around seven days now.
I need to explain that I am doing all this relentless research because we are leading a group of 24 Americans on a twelve day tour of England. I won’t explain the tour -- but they need to buy round trip tickets between here & there in June of this year -- and we, personally, need to buy tickets to leave Traverse City in early May, return in early July.
My point: Every single day, sometimes three times a day, I ask the same people the same question: how much will it cost to fly round trip from….
But these are not people. These are web sites. They won’t get angry at me. They won’t think I’m silly. They won’t yell “I just answered your question twice today. Why the heck are you asking me, yet again? Go to bed. Leave me alone.”
Thank goodness I am talking to machines. They don’t care. Ask them again & again & again. They will tell you -- they don‘t care how often you ask them.
Recently I asked, what is the cost, round trip, from Traverse City to London, leaving here May 5th, returning here July 7th. Answer, 580 dollars. What? I’m used to paying 800 dollars for airplane tickets that involve June & July. 580 dollars is really cheap.
I did a little more research. What would it cost if I drove to Detroit & took what is our connecting flight from Detroit to London, returning London to Detroit. Answer 770 dollars.
What? If I took a much longer flight, Traverse City to Detroit, Detroit to London, then return London to Detroit, Detroit to Traverse City the cost is 580, but if I start in Detroit it will cost 200 dollars more? In essence, you are paying me 200 dollars to take two extra airplane trips?
Yes. Of course I immediately bought the TC London, London TC tickets for 580 dollars. Good thing too. The next day & for six days after that (and yes, I checked several times a day), the cost of the ticket was $660 -- still 100 dollars cheaper than usual & 100 dollars cheaper than the shorter trip that starets in Detroit.
For many days now, I’ve been checking on airplane flights for my friends, the people coming from NY City to England -- and in just six days, the price has jumped up & down in a 200 dollar range. From, on some days, a low price of 920 dollars, to a low, on other days, of 720 dollars.
My search began when one person in Boston was ready to buy a ticket at what he thought was a great price --840 dollars, Boston to London -- but with a connecting flight in Dublin.
I emailed back immediately - No, No, No -- a connecting flight is a pain the neck, 840 is not a good price, Don’t, don’t, don’t.
He didn’t. Since then prices of direct flights have dropped to $660, but I’ve told them all, wait, wait, wait. You need nerves of steel, you need to check every day, but there are bargains out there.

2009-05-28T04:10:00.001-07:00

QUOTE “Hospitals and schools throughout the country are under threat of closure.“ Why? Why would you close hospitals, close schools? Why would you do such a thing?
Because foreigners have lent you money, too much money -- because you are broke. And now, in order to be able to repay them, the foreigners who lent you money, you must close hospitals, close schools.
You must economize, the money lenders say so.
The money lenders? The money lenders? They are dictating the terms. In order to repay what is owed to them, you must cut back on your spending. It is up to you how much you cut where, but cut you must or you will not even be able to repay the money lenders what you them.
I remember how angry I was when the lender was the International Monetary Fund, and the borrowers who did not have enough money to care for their sick or to educate their children were African countries or South American countries.
How dare we do this to them. Yes, they borrowed too much, but we were so willing to lend it to them -- and now, human suffering is being caused because back then, they could not even pay the interest on what they owed.
But that was then. It is no longer Africa, South America, third world countries far away full of people who are not really like us.
It is us now. Iceland, the whole country of Iceland, collapsed. It was forced to borrow, and the money lender dictated the terms.
The words I quoted at the opening of this talk -- “Hospitals and schools throughout the country are under threat of closure” -- were written about the latest country to go bankrupt, the most recent example of a country that had to go, hat in hand to the money lenders. Here are the words in the Friday February 20th International Herald Tribune. The country in question is Latvia, or Lithuania, a western European country.
“The crisis led the government last fall to secure an aid package worth €7.5 billion from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and other sources. It came with strict conditions, and now the government is cutting spending wherever it can. Hospitals and schools throughout the country are under threat of closure.”
The money lenders are in control. They dictate the terms of daily life -- medical care and education.
I scream, I rant & rave. Do I have a solution? No, I don’t. Problems are problems because they are not easy to solve, but this problem rankles: there must be a better solution to this monetary bind than to cut back on absolute essentials --medical care and education.
And since I wrote the above, I’ve begun reading a frightening book that explains how the money lenders do indeed run the world, do indeed dictate the terms we live by. The book, The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is a depressing book, but more on that in another talk.

2009-05-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

“For a long-long time everybody seemed to believe that the growing chasm between the super-rich and the rest didn't matter that much, so long as everybody else is getting a bit better off. Huge amounts of money went to the privileged few. What these few wanted & were ready to pay for, fueled our economy & wrecked our economy.”
Example one. The rich wanted & could afford to buy, big houses. So builders built bigger & bigger houses. Most of the ten million new homes built in the past seven years were very far from what we would call “affordable homes” for the middle classes & the lower classes.
Part of the reason is that real estate agents could make more money, sell more houses, to the very-very rich few.
Example two, cars. You could make more money making & selling big cars, gas-guzzling SUV’s, than you could selling lots & lots of small fuel efficient cars.
The market responds to demand, and the demand came at the high end. Why would you bother to cater to the low end.
Part of the reason the housing market collapsed is that most Americans could no longer afford to buy more house than they needed, and the smaller, more fuel efficient, earth friendly, affordable houses were not out there for the American people to buy.
So often it was said that the growing gap between rich & poor didn’t matter. The rich will spend money and all of us, especially those who cater to the needs of the rich, will prosper. Give the top few lots & lots of money was the mantra we heard. It will trickle down, we heard.
And all Americans seem to feel that someday they will be very, very, rich and they don’t want to be taxed heavily.
This attitude poisoned our economy. Money & time & manpower that should have gone towards solutions for the many went for toys for the few: super fast cars, humongous, lavish, mansions. Their needs sucked up our manpower.
We have not focused on public transportation, busses, trains, trolleys, bicycle paths. Our economy is skewered. We devoted factories to producing hummers; no factories were devoted to producing the kind of car just produced by an Indian car company: a basic, basic, basic car which costs around 4 thousand dollars. You heard me correctly: a new car for 4 thousand dollars.
And the money of the rich few is already twisting that effort to keep costs down, to produce a car for the many who cannot afford a car. The whole world has turned to this Indian car company and said -- we’ll buy these from you if you make them a little sturdier, a little more this…a little more that…
Or, the people with more money are once again crowding the people with less money out. The rich are saying we’ll pay you more for a slightly more expensive version of your basic model. Forget about your basic model. Ditch it. You’ll make more money catering to our needs than to the needs of your population that has less money than we do.
Build for us, say the rich. Soon Indian cars will be the size of a hummer, just as family homes in America are the size of what used to be town halls.
The rich poison the economic system. The ever widening gap between the super rich & the rest does matter, it matters a heck of a lot.

2009-05-16T07:32:00.001-07:00

Twitter. Have you heard of it? Sounds like trivia. Twitter. In fact Twitter is trivia.
It is text messages, on your hand held device. The message is limited to some miniscule number of words -- forty five shall we say.
You can’t develop an idea, you can’t think. You can’t expand. All you do is twitter -- and in fact, its most common usage is to tell people -- anyone who you think wants to know or everyone on the internet -- that currently you are shopping at Macy’s, or at this moment you are looking at Niagara Falls.
I have read that often it is used in classrooms, during lectures. The national newspapers featured the fact that during President Obama’s message to Congress, many Congressmen & Congresswomen, twittered -- and often it was along the line of, can you believe it fellas, can you believe it dear, I am here in the middle of history. President Obama is talking, I am listening -- well half listening. Almost immediately my wife pointed out that they liked it because it allowed them, like students listening to a lecture, to talk in class.
Bingo. That’s it. Yes, it is an interesting speech, but hey, I can read it tomorrow. Meanwhile I can twitter.
And then I flashed back to a time when I, indeed, would have used twitter in class.
Long ago, in one of the first classes I ever attended as graduate student in English, I went a lecture by the most famous Shakespeare scholar at the graduate school I was attending. He was a world renowned Shakespeare scholar. A star in a field of high powered stars. And his lecture was a disaster. I never returned to his class after the first lecture.
I remember well the most distinctive mannerism he had, a mannerism that drove me crazy. He lectured intensely, you could see it in his measured delivery. He was thinking hard. He was a big burly man who gestured with his hands. So he would be trying to remember certain words and he’d gesture to the left and say “Romeo and uh…’ moving his hands to the right and pausing, and “uh…” So he’d move his hands back to the left & start again, “Romeo and…. uh…”
It was maddening. I wanted to scream Juliet…Juliet…but I did nothing, except never return.
The preceding was only one of his hilarious gestures. He was a riot -- brilliant, but a riot to watch-- and it would have been wonderful if I had twitter. I would have sent a continuous record of his bizarre mannerism to my friends via twitter.
Adult me now knows he wasn’t “absent minded” he was present elsewhere --trying to think of the next brilliant thing to say after “Romeo and uh … Romeo and uh..
But if I had twitter I could easily see me jotting down his mannerisms, But couldn’t I have done that in my notebook? Well, my notebook is me talking to me, Twitter is me talking to everybody else. This phenomenon is here to stay. Who knows how twitter will be used in the future?

2009-05-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

In a long, long lifetime, I am almost 71 years old, one begins to understand words -- their true meaning.
I’ve often heard it said that “Life is full of small victories.” The words suddenly popped into my mind this morning -- and I finally understood, finally truly understood.
Life is full of small victories. That sounds so pathetic. Small vistories. We all want big victories, epiphanies, big projects completed one right after the other. We don’t want a life full of small victories.
I never understood those words; I never liked those words -- but now I know them to be so true.
Example number one. You know us old folks. We can’t remember what we did two seconds ago -- and that is exactly the information I was trying to retrieve. I felt good. I felt I had accomplished something -- but durned if I could remember what I just did -- a task that took my full concentration for twenty to thirty minutes.
And then I remembered; I composed two very important short letters -- email messages to be precise -- one was a very short message, the other was a little longer, needed to be diplomatic. I was asking a man if I could hire him, etc, etc, a small victory over my immediate future need.
I want to organize a full weekend of dancing a year from now, or two years from now. Yes, once it happens it will be a big deal, a big victory -- but life is composed of many, many small victories, seemingly insignificant victories before any big victory can be achieved.
Small victory? For days & days I’ve put off composing this message -- it must be worded just so, he is so good, I really want him to say yes…on and on -- and I kept puuting it off.
Small victory. Okay, that’s done. I’ll wait for his answer and they I must co-ordinate the schedules of…small, small victory. No one cheering, no one even noting. You take these small steps if you want to create any event of any significance.
No person is ever an overnight success. Every single overnight success was preceded by thousands & thousands of daily, unobserved by others, small victories.
I’ll tell two stories that I’ve told often because they summarize the sacrifice that precedes all such things as an overnight success. Someone said to a world famous pianist “I would give my life to play as you do” -- and the pianist answered “ I have Madam, I have.’
Another great musician was on his way to one of the greatest Concert Halls in the world, Carnegie Hall and a passerby asked him, “How does one get to Carnegie Hall” and he answered “Practice sir, practice & more practice -- or daily small victories. So long

2009-05-12T09:12:00.000-07:00

Headline, “woman mauled by chimp has surgery her vital signs improve. Headline: “Half eaten remains of 5 year old found inside killer Crocodile.” Headline, “Shark attacks frogman who will lose his left arm.”
Every single day somewhere in the world, some wild animal has had just about enough of man’s encroachment on his territory. We impinge on them, interact with them -- in zoos, in the wild, in waters off shores all over the world. What do we expect. Sooner or later some animal somewhere will say that’s enough.
And then, of course, we hunt it down and destroy it. If it has attacked once, it is highly likely to attack again.
Why am I pointing this out? Because newspapers pick up all such incidents, make them into sensational headlines.
My current favorite form of reading is on my computer. I’ve mentioned this before: I look at four newspapers every morning: The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, and The London Times. What do I mean by I look at? I glance at headlines. If the headline interests me I click on the headline & read the article.
Do I read the articles with the sensational headlines about animal attacks on human? I’ve read one or two, but I’ve stopped: they are all fascinating, morbid, predictable. Some human is interacting with, or in too close proximity with, what is essentially a wild animal.
Think wild. Think animal. Think fear, hatred, defensiveness. That’s my territory, my child. Or just think -- I’m a meat eating animal. You are meat.
Perhaps we need fewer such headlines, then again perhaps we need to be reminded more often. These are wild animals. You move around them at your own peril. This is their territory. Often, no human should be there. We shoul give them room, give them space.
But since when do we humans give space to any other species? There is no new frontier, no place to We’ve encroached on everything we can encroach upon.
Cornered animals will lash out.
Your are crowding me, you are not giving me enough space. We should all be prepared for more such painful to man-animal encounters.
Eventually we will do to all animals what we we do to anything that annoys us: corral it into reservations, ghettoes, zoos, until whatever it is that we do not like ceases to exist.

2009-05-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

I am here to talk to you about the Blog. Yes, the Blog. B L O G. Blog. No, it is not a creature come from the deep come to attack you. It is a written journal of your thoughts that everyone, or no one, can read. You keep a journal. You post today’s thoughts on your very own site, your blog, and anyone who wants to can drop in & read it.
It is only specifics that can make all this clear. I am in Traverse City, Michigan. I have a relative in London, England. She has been encouraged by her French husband -- and by me & many others, to write a journal entry each & everyday. She never thought of herself as a writer.
She’s always been a talker, a witty woman who pokes fun at everything. But writing? Writing is a chore and she never ever wanted to do that.
But ours is a modern age. She is computer literate. One thing led to another & suddenly she is writing in her blog everyday.
So today I read about her visit to her local -- for you Americans, a local is the pub the people in the neighborhood go to. You walk there because drinking & driving is a big no-no. Anyway, she’s in her local pub, telling the story of her family, its lineage, but she is sure the man listening to her thinks she is telling a pack of porkies.
Got that? Telling a pack of porkies. You’ve never heard the term before -- it is British English --but you know what it means --telling a pack of lies. But she says, pack of porkies.
I tune in to her thoughts, her turns of phrase daily. She is funny, insightful, and lives 5,000 miles away. The modern world is bizarre.
I tell you this in part because for me, written thoughts are so much more interesting than conversation. In conversation too much of the talk is of the trivial kind.
Written words, words that you can read before someone else reads the words, written words almost demand that you say something meaningful --all the trivia that inevitably comes out of your mouth is trashed.
I love to read her thoughts, and there are several others out there whose thoughts I want to read. My son Ben & his wife Sarah’s blog. What a wonderful way to tune in to the lives of my son, my daughter in law, my grandson. I interact with them in an electronic way, but I know they are well, I know some of what they are doing.
In both cases, truly private matters remain private -- one must add to all this eavesdropping real private contact, telephone calls, visits, Skype. But a tremendous amount of information about daily life & daily thoughts are out there for me to see.

American Football on UK TV

2007-12-28T05:47:00.001-08:00

I am an American who married a Brit & for the past eight years we spend half of each year in England, half of each year in America.

I have watched American football for over fifty years on American television; I’ve watched American football, on Channel Five, for around six years in England. I’ve learned more about American Football watching it on British TV than I ever learned watching it on American TV. And it is ten times as much fun to watch it in England (no commercials on Channel Five) as it is to watch it in America.

Before each game most American commentators mutter predictable inanities. “There are three keys to this game. One, keeping their offense off the field. Two, establishing a running game. Three, making sure your team doesn’t get into a “third & long.”

These are stupidities: anyone idiot can utter such words. I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard a commentator say: turnovers are key. You can‘t expect to turn the ball over and win games. Teams that turn over the ball over frequently have a worse record than those who do not.

Gee. No kidding. If you often lose the ball to the other team, they are more likely to win the game than you are. Oh my God. What a revelation. I am now better informed, ready to intelligently watch the game I am about to watch.

Mike Carlson is the American commentator on Channel Five’s twice-weekly American Football broadcasts in England. In my opinion, he is better than any commentator, than any sports analyst, I’ve encountered on American TV.

Before every game Carlson has a short “Inside the Game” feature. I’ve chosen his comments before a December Washington Redskin, Minnesota Vikings game, but I could have chosen almost any of his “Inside the Game“ presentations. They are always full of good insights.

“One of the keys to Washington’s offense with Joe Gibbs has always been the tight ends. He uses them as Fullbacks, H backs and as tight ends, and Mike Sellers has been a great contributor for the Skins this year.”

Tight ends are often the key to Joe Gibb’s offense? I didn’t know that! I am sure that some American football commentator has said that at some point on American TV, but crucially, no one has pointed that out right before a Washington Redskin game so I could focus on the tight end and how Joe Gibbs uses the tight end -- and no American commentator has, just before a Washington Redskin game, stood to the side of a big screen that is filled with players frozen in time and focused on one player -- in this case the tight end, Mike Sellers.

Mike Sellers, the tight end, is circled and roughly ten seconds go by as our eyes adjust, take in the scene where no one is moving a muscle. All the while Mike Carlson is talking: “Take a look at Sellers when he is playing in the tight end position and what he can do. This is a guy who is 278 pounds. He can block like a tackle but watch what he does when he goes downfield and catches a pass.”

The first time through, Mike Carlson runs the play at normal speed, from a camera that catches the whole scene, all twenty two players, and we sort of see what we are supposed to see. The second time Mike Carlson runs the play in slow motion, the camera is now much lower, and we are literally peeking over the shoulder of this huge man as he runs downfield and annihilates the man trying to tackle him.

“And when you watch the replay, watch Kenoit Kennedy not only go down, but make the tackle with his feet. This is illegal, it’s tripping… as he brings down Sellers, all 278 pounds of him.”

“Sellers likes to line up as an H back because he was a running back. He came straight from Jr. College, Walla Walla Wash, to the CFL, and he was a running back there.”

A new “frozen scene” is up on the screen. We are listening, watching. There are no distractions: only Carlson & the still scene, the calm before the storm. “So take a look at what he can do as a lead back here playing fullback. He is going to take the quick counter….[Sellers] knocks Chris Samuels out of the way, Ernie Simms makes contact but can’t stop him [another ten seconds have gone by while the scene unfolds in real time].” The play is run again in slow motion: “Two more players try, but he’s in the end zone, and he can push the pile.“ Another seven seconds have gone by as we now see clearly, up close, what is happening.

“Finally, the key point for the Washington offense, [Sellers] running as an H Back. Again from the fullback set, here [Carlson puts his finger on the screen] … Watch as he comes out. He’s going to make an effort to pass block, just to sell the play even better. He’s going to hit the linebacker on his way out, then catch the ball.

This is a game we did. I went crazy when he did this [we see Sellers vault the player who tries to tackle him]. Craig Dahl put his head down. You cannot put your head down when 280 pounds is coming at you. You can get hurt. We’ll watch again [this time from behind Sellers, literally over his shoulder as he running away]. Craig Dahl’s head goes down. Sellers goes up & over. He was a running back in the CFL & a good one. Now he’s a lineman turned running back, turned tight end, for the Redskins.”

What a tremendous amount of information about one player and about football positions. Of course I will not, cannot, remember all this information, but it is all fascinating: that he was running back, that he went to a Jr. College, then the CFL, then the NFL -- and best of all, all this information is being given to me just before a game in which he, Mike sellers, will be playing, and all this information is being given to me while I am not distracted by crowd noise, motion on screen, time passing in a game I am trying to watch.

In the actual game that followed this pre-game analysis, the second play of the game was a pass to Mike Sellers -- “the bruising Mike Sellers” Al Michaels, the American commentator, called him. Then Al Michaels gave us information about the player who tackled Mike Sellers: “Chad Greenway, their number one draft choice, the linebacker out of Iowa, number 52. It will be third down and seven.”

John Madden: “You know one of the guys who is fun to watch is Pat Williams. He is so big & strong he just takes Casy Rabach, the center, and just shoves him right back into Todd Collins the quarterback” We are watching the same play in slow motion, but we are watching a totally different player, Pat Williams, and a totally different camera shot of the same play. Meanwhile five names have been thrown at us in quick succession, and bits of information about several of the players: (the bruising) Mike Sellers, Chad Greenaway (number one draft choice, linebacker… out of Iowa), Pat Williams, Casey Rabach & Tod Collins.

To a certain extent, we are getting some of the same information that Mike Carlson gave us, but the information is swamped by all that surrounds it -- including the almost deafening roar of the crowd. We are told so & so was a number one draft choice, and came out of Iowa. But we are also told that his Jersey number is 52, and that he is a linebacker, and that we are now in a third and seven situation. And before we can absorb any of this, we are, so to speak, watching a totally different play: Pat Williams shoving his way into the backfield.

When I watch all of this in the U.S. I am barely aware of the words being uttered by the commentators. John Madden is one of the very-very best, but as someone said, on TV, words are background music: we are focused on the picture, the action, and so much is going on so fast: a play is running, people are getting up, shoving each other, going back to the huddle & preparing for the next play.

Meanwhile a “new” snippet (Pat Williams) is being run from the previous play, and we are trying to absorb “third & seven” because we “Monday-morning-quarterbacks” want to guess what the next play should be given the situation: third & seven. The amount of information (visual, verbal & imaginary) is huge and unfocused.

Mike Carlson makes us focus on one player, Mike Sellers, and we see three different plays that focus on him alone, and three of the six times that we see these plays, we see them in slow motion. And while the scene is in front of our greedy, all absorbing eyes, Mike Carlson explains what is happening and gives us a short history of this player.

Back on American television, after an interception by Washington, and in only the second series of plays, we hear John Madden say “two tight ends, Mike Sellers & (mumble, mumble). Mike Sellers is the deep guy.” Al Michaels, in a loud, excited voice calls out, “And they give it to Sellers. He puts his head down & is in for the touchdown.”

The “touchdown” was challenged by the Minnesota coach and we all had to wait for a decision by the officials who watch it all carefully on a special slow motion TV. While we wait for the referees decision, in America they cut to commercials. In England we get more lovely slow motion analysis from Carlson -- but the first thing the smiling (he almost always has a wry smile on his face) Carlson says is, “Didn’t look like a touchdown to me.”

On American television we were shown the earlier interception four separate times: Four Times. Why four? Because it is a big, obvious play. A player leaps high, grabs the ball & almost runs it all the way back for a touchdown.

Carlson goes back to the interception, but he doesn’t focus on the catch -- we’ve seen that. What more is there to see or say? The ball was thrown to the wrong guy. He makes what is really a rather routine (albeit dramatic) catch, and runs like hell. Carlson makes us fortunate viewers (not commercially-bombarded viewers) focus elsewhere.

“The key play was the interception. We saw Tavaris Jackson [the quarterback who threw the interception] throw some bad balls when he throws flat footed under pressure, and when we take a look at this [frozen scene] where the pressure is going to come from -- look at the inside linebacker coming around there, we get the safety coming up on a blitz. He [Jackson] rocks back on to his foot & throws the ball high. He had the receiver open but he overthrew it because he rushed the throw.”

The play is run again, up close & personal & in slow motion. Carlson comments as we see a tackler crush Tavaris Jackson, the quarterback. “You see right there. That’s what he saw. He got hit as he released it; the ball sails away.”

When we viewers are transported back to the game in progress, Carlson’s call was upheld: the referee Leavy rules it was not a touchdown. Al Michaels says, “Leavy could have ruled that either way because it looked to me as if the side of the ball got to the goal line.”

Back now to Carlson & his pre-game “Inside the Game.” Carlson always focuses on some player, or players, on both of the teams. “In Minnesota the key to the defense is the Williams brothers although they are not really brothers: Kevin & Pat Williams. Kevin Williams is the more active guy, Pat Williams is the space eater. Take a look at Kevin Williams. Now he’s going to push the pile, you’re going to have a zone blitz….’ And while Carlson talks, he uses his hands to roam all over the “frozen” scene to his side, visible to all of us, wherein the two Williams “brothers” are circled.

“Kevin pushes a bit, then the ball hits him in the chest (the play is running), and he’s off to the races. This is a guy who is six five, 310.…” As I watched, I could not really see the ball hit him in the chest, but of course the play is run again, in slow motion, and I see all that I was supposed to see.

Carlson again: “You think, okay, this is just chance, Kevin Williams isn‘t really playing smart, they‘re getting a rush. But watch what he does on this one.” Another frozen scene, Carlson pointing, helping, analyzing. “Virtually the same kind of thing….He’s not going to make much penetration, but he’s going to occupy two blockers and then he’s going to read the quarterback’s passing lane.” We see Kevin Williams again batting a pass down, gulping up the ball, running for a touchdown. “You think, that’s not a great play. Watch from the quarterback’s point of view. The way that Kevin Williams cuts off his passing lane, watching his eyes.”

The play is run again, this time from behind the quarterback, and in slow motion, and we are prepared. “There he is, moving off to the side, and there he is up in the air (And we see him! Up in the air! Swallowing the ball!) as he sees the quarterbacks arms go into motion. It’s a great play by Kevin Williams, and its another touchdown. He and Pat had touchdowns & interceptions in the same game.”

“Pat Williams is a big space eater and a load inside. That’s him (frozen screen, he points to the circled figure). They list him at 310, he’s probably forty pounds heavier than that, and he started his career in Buffalo as the sub for Ted Washington the nose guard….” The frozen scene begins to move. “Pushes the center back. You cannot man block Pat Williams because he just pushes most guys back into the quarterback if you do.” We are shown the scene, in slow motion, again.

In the second play of the game we are watching, Madden focused on Pat Williams pushing two blockers back into the quarterback, and Madden said some of what Carlson said -- but he said less, and little of the less that he said stayed with us because we viewers were thinking about so many other things.

Carlson: “I don’t know why Buffalo ever let him go. But maybe because he was undrafted they didn’t appreciate what they had, but he makes Kevin Williams better by occupying space next to him & the ideal situation is what you are going to see right now [scene on screen, frozen, Carlson pointing]. There they are next to each other. You’re going to see Pat Williams occupy two blockers. If you double team Pat you cannot double team Kevin….Kevin gets to work one on one. Pat Gets to push two guys out of the way.”

No distractions. No motion on screen except Carlson’s fingers pointing. No crowd noise. No other players to focus on. No third down and seven. Nothing to worry about but what you are being taught to see -- and we do see it, especially the second time it is run, in slow motion, and from a much better angle: we seem to be inches away, on top of them. “You get a good view of it here. Look at that. He lets two guys take him in the direction the play is going…”

It is so wonderful to see all this in slow motion, and to hear Mike Carlson’s words. “So keep your eyes on the middle of the Minnesota line….”

Mike Carlson helps me watch the game I am about to watch. He focuses on actual players in the teams we are about to watch: he analyzes in detail, and best of all, he runs the play slowly, he runs the play twice or thrice -- and he waits a few seconds and allows my eyes to focus.

You do not know how rare Mike Carlson’s excellent analysis is. He does what I have never seen done on American TV -- and remember, I’ve been watching for over fifty years, and I’ve watched many-many different TV channels, & many-many games. On Sundays I often watch three full football games in a row (One “TV widow” quipped that “any one who watches three football games in a row should be declared legally dead.”)

I am not saying American commentators don’t “freeze” the screen & then run the play, or don’t circle certain players, but on American TV the play is frozen for one or two seconds, and then it is run just once, not twice. And no American commentator stands to the side of a screen and lets his hands roam over the screen as the scene is stock-still. In America the scene fills the whole screen and a few, usually unhelpful remarks, are made by the only half-prepared ( I wanted to say half-intelligent) commentator.

In England Carlson allows the frozen scene to sink into our eyes for at least eight seconds and sometimes for as much as twenty seconds as he explains what we are going to see. In America, before we can see it, it is already gone.

As I was writing this article I realized that American TV does run certain scenes over & over & over -- but the scenes they run repeatedly are “dramatic” scenes: a crushing hit, an interception, a long & brilliant run. Americans like dramatic moments. They don’t seem to be interested in in-depth analysis, close observation. Americans like Big Dramatic moments, Big Explosions.

Analysis? Explanation? Close observation that will help with the next play, the next game? Nah. Give us someone being almost decapitated. We are not interested in a history of where this player has been, how he has switched positions, who he replaced…. We are interested in big numbers: “ He has caught more passes than…Last year he ran for…averaged 4.2 yards per carry, the highest per carry average in the AFC. Not the NFC -- that‘s also the NFL -- but if you divide statistics into most in AFC, and most in NFC, you have double the number of useless statistics.

American football on British television is wonderfully educational, and largely free of any meaningless & temporary statistics.

I haven’t even focused on the best thing about American Football on British television. Every single time we in America have to suffer through a bombardment of inane, insulting, and very-very loud commercials -- and sometimes there are two minutes of commercial for every two minutes of actual action -- Carlson & his British co-commentator take time to analyze the very plays we just saw in our game.

I love to watch American Football on British television.

TV Ads US & UK

2007-12-27T07:56:00.000-08:00

It is nothing new to say that every Brit who goes to America is shocked by the number and frequency of ads on American television. As an American man who six years ago married an English woman -- we spend half of each year in each country -- I finally decided that I needed to sit down with a stop watch & calibrate the exact difference.

I always watch the “prime time” evening news in America, a half hour show that the big three (ABC, CBS, NBC) air simultaneously (in my part of the country), at 6:30 p.m. Here is the breakdown for Nov 6, 2006, and though I am only giving you one day on one network, it is typical of every day on all three networks.

The news begins with a list of “tonight’s top stories.“ That took a little less than one minute. Then they aired eleven minutes and twenty seconds worth of News. Then the massacre begins: Ads 2:30, News 3:18, Ads 2:45, News 2:36, Ads 3:00, News 2:26, Ads 1:30. In the last 18 minutes there are almost ten minutes worth of ads, eight minutes and twenty seconds of news.

For long I sensed the above was true (lots of news followed by lots of ads) because as soon as the ads began, I would leave whatever channel I was watching & try to find news on one of the other channels. Invariably, whatever channel I surfed to was also in the midst of ads. My research revealed that all three news networks begin with roughly ten minutes worth of news, and the final twenty minutes are 50% news, 50% ads.

As I did more & more research, I found the ten-minute-suck-em-in pattern to be true of almost every half hour show I watched. The last twenty minutes of every half hour show is often more ads than show. Or, for every minute of “program” there is a corresponding minute of ads, and as was revealed in the network news show, they kill you by drips & drabs: two minutes and thirty six seconds of program, three minutes of ads, two minutes twenty six show, two minutes forty five ads.

The worst case is two-hour-long movies. Often they begin with twenty minutes of movie, and then, in the last half hour, there is one minute of movie, two minutes of ads, one minute of movie, three minutes of ads. My British wife swore to never-ever again watch a movie on network TV after she encountered this bizarre, yet common phenomenon. She did not even finish the one movie she began watching. As she said, “she couldn’t be bothered.”

So what is the situation in England on the three channels (3-5) that are regulated and do allow ads? Theoretically, “publicity broadcast on behalf of someone other than the licensee” is limited to twelve minutes per hour. I say theoretically because this does not include “Intervals of more than five minutes between programs.” And this does not include “information to viewers about or in connection with programs” on the same channel.

Basically, I found that in every clock hour American television had 19 minutes of commercials, in England there were 14 minutes of commercials. But the situation is far more complicated than that. In the “Rules on the Amount and Distribution of advertising,” Section 5.4, the stated rule is “a period of at least 20 minutes should normally elapse between each successive internal break.” In my experience (stop-watch in hand) this is not followed strictly, but the spirit of this law -- lots of minutes of show before you dare bombard the viewer with a commercial interruption -- is what differentiates British television from American television.

An American television show transplanted to England best illustrates this difference in approach. Desperate Housewives is aired on channel four and unfortunately, as is the case on American TV, there were 19 minutes of commercials, 41 minutes of program -- but the breakdown was very different.

The first 12 to 13 minutes consist of roughly four minutes of ads, five minutes of program, followed by four minutes of ads. In England we then have 13 minutes of program, four minutes of ads, thirteen minutes of program, four minutes of ads, ten minutes of program, four minutes of ads. When you watch Desperate Housewives in England you can see places where, for just a second or two, the screen is completely black: that is where, in America, there would be ads.

The difference in the number of minutes of commercials, 12 vs. 19 or 14 vs. 19, does not give you a real feel for “the difference.” The difference is that your programs are allowed to run for 15 to 25 minutes, uninterrupted. In America, except for the first ten “suck-in-the-viewer” minutes, interruptions are constant, overwhelming. In many cases, in most cases, there is more “interruption” than program.

American TV drives us crazy; there is no program flow. It is all bitty, constantly interrupted by inane, over-loud, commercials. As one man said, you can’t present a serious idea when every three minutes your program is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits selling toilet tissues.

Prostate Biopsy

2007-12-27T07:55:00.001-08:00

Before you read my article, here is my conclusion: If you must undergo a Prostate biopsy, “There is no reason for pain in a modern, well equipped room.’

You will not find this advice on the internet. What you will find are painful words describing the procedure: A little like being “sodomized with a knitting needle.” “Sometimes the pain is so severe that the men jump off the table.” “A dozen needles” are inserted where the sun don’t shine” Those dozen needles pluck fifteen separate samples from your prostrate because five separate samples were found to be not enough to be sure.

One doctors answers the question “Does it hurt? with the words, “It is painful…local anesthesia is useless…it hurts.’

The title of another, lengthy article, seems to offer relief: “What causes Men Pain in Prostrate Biopsy and Best Method To Alleviate it.“ The articles lists three kinds of pain relief, One, injection between prostrate base & seminal… Two, Intrapostatic injection… Three, injection… Good grief: pain relief in the form of an injection which the article admits “caused more pain.”

Relieve pain by causing more pain! And after all this pain & more pain, the writer of this article says “pain…may never be completely overcome by anesthetic.”

I disagree strongly. When it comes to a Prostate biopsy, “There is no reason for pain in a modern well equipped room.“ Do not accept anything less than the kind of sedation all men receive during a colonoscopy -- you are awake during the procedure but you will remember nothing. Ask for it. Demand it!

My story -- which took place in America.

There was a clear need for a prostrate biopsy -- two separate readings, eight months apart, revealed a sharp rise in PSA levels. Coincidentally, it was time for a colonoscopy. Good. I asked them to do the two together. My last colonoscopy involved no pain, no memory, no nothing. I’m all for that.
No, we can’t do it, they said to me, the two can’t be done at the same time, they said to me. Lots of excuses: you need to be awake, we need to talk to you, you need to be moved….blah, blah, blah… Essentially, the answer was no way Jose, and you can do nothing about it because we make the rules.

(Much, much later I found out that it was a “scheduling” problem… the equipment is in two different rooms…. When each procedure can bring the hospital almost fifteen hundred dollars, what incentive does the hospital have to combine procedures? They will always choose to double their income -- and double your fun.)

I hate pain. I am a devout coward, and I let every medical person I encountered (doctors, nurses…) know my feelings, my fears. Sorry, they all said silently. Pain is part of the procedure, they all let me know. “Take it like a man” was the unstated sub-text of all communication with me. (An article, by a doctor, in a medical journal, even said that doctors know the procedure is painful, but they believe we should “take it like a man.”)

I voiced my fears so often that finally, over the phone, the nurse who phoned from the hospital to “take my details” suggested I ask my doctor for an “anti anxiety’ pill. I did. He prescribed it, I took it, and showed up on a Monday morning at the appropriate room in the hospital, still out of my mind nervous.
I continued to let all & sundry know how afraid I was, how I wish I could be sedated, how I wish I were elsewhere.

After about five minutes into my by-now-well-rehearsed litany of fears, the nurse prepping me for the doctor who was about to perform the procedure said: “Well we could sedate you. It would be less painful. You would be more comfortable.” I said, “You can sedate me?” She said, yes, but we would have to re-schedule your appointment. “That’s okay with me“ I almost yelled gleefully. Reschedule me, and why wasn’t I offered the sedation option before?

She couldn’t answer that. No one answered that. I wonder, still wonder, why I wasn’t offered sedation by my doctor, or by one of the almost half dozen nurses who heard me voice my fears. The best I was offered was a prescription for anti anxiety pills.

Anti anxiety pills? That is nowhere near enough. I want to be unconscious, not there, not able to remember. I want to be in another universe -- and when you are finished, invite back into this universe.

My Prostrate Biopsy was rescheduled. I was given the very same kind of intravenous feed I had received just three weeks earlier for my colonoscopy, but I was told it was a lower dosage.

While I was in the recovery room, the nurse told my wife why the sedation option was suddenly being offered at this hospital. It seems that recently a Radiologist at the hospital had a Prostrate Biopsy. After the biopsy he said “Okay, that’s it. No more. We will offer sedation. I know how painful this procedure is. We have solutions. If someone asks for it, we should offer sedation.”

If someone asks for it! If someone asks for it!!

All men everywhere should demand sedation during a Prostate Biopsy. Accept no less. Demand sedation -- unless you like knitting needles being inserted where the sun don’t shine -- and 15 samples (or more!) being extracted by a circle of eleven needles, from a place that does not usually have needles pricking it & poking it.

I think what makes me most furious is that in this day & age of instantaneous information available on the internet, the “sedation” option for a Prostrate biopsy is almost not there.

Almost not there? Far into one article the writer says, in a very vague way, “general anesthesia helps….but your insurance company might refuse to pay.’ Saying “general anesthesia helps’ sounds like saying that an aspirin might help a headache. No, no, no. General anesthesia obliterates all pain at time of contact (later you will feel some soreness). General anesthesia doesn’t just help, it annihilates all memory of the pain.

In Modern Times there should be an addition to the Doctor’s Motto: “If at all possible, inflict no pain,” should be added to “Above all do no harm.’
I really am furious at the state of affairs. Everyone needs to know that in the case of a Prostate biopsy (a very-very common procedure for older men), “There is no reason for pain in a modern, well equipped room.’

The situation, on the internet in England & Ireland, is even worse. I could not believe the words I read in almost the first article that popped up in Yahoo UK/Ireland: “By some accounts, a prostate biopsy hurts -- but not as much as you might think.” Liar. Complete liar. Many, many doctors (and others) have admitted it is painful, and recent research reveals that certain areas of the prostate are more sensitive to the extraction of a “pound of flesh” than other areas.
“Some doctors will take as many as 45 samples.” Oh my God. Forty five samples, and he has the gall to say, it hurts, but not as much as you might think.

The tone of this article makes me foam at the mouth: “ A prostate biopsy is a simple procedure…takes about 15 minutes…does not require any anesthesia.” It takes all my will power not to say, “Up yours 45 times with a knitting needle.”

On the internet in England, I find no mention of the use of any sedation or anesthesia. They want you to keep a stiff upper lip.

Maybe there are benefits to living in America. Please sing this lovely song along with me: “There is no reason…”

Modern Slavery

2007-12-27T07:20:00.000-08:00

In the past few months newspapers and television have been filled with articles & shows on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. I have been only mildly interested -- I grew up in America and am well acquainted with America’s horrible history of slave abuse & segregation that really exists to this day -- but last night a television show finally crystallized my thinking and made me very, very angry.

There was the age old confrontation between a descendant of slaves & the rich white plantation owner & once again the question was asked “Don’t you, a rich plantation owner, feel guilty about what your ancestors did & the fact that you now benefit from their sins?” The young girl asking the question was naïve & self satisfied & so deeply self righteous. She had just been confronted with the specifics, leg irons for children, boiling vats & horrific metallic contraptions for the adults. She was horrified.

She wanted a lot of breast beating from the sincere but unmoved, immaculately groomed young man facing her. He acknowledged he was a beneficiary of the horrific practices his forbears might have joined in, but he was not ready to grovel & divest himself of the privileges he inherited.

Suddenly I was sickened. Everybody was turning to the past & being asked to do something about the past. One side is so self righteous & demanding, the other side is repentant but largely unmoved. Nobody is focusing on the present because the present contains equally horrific exploitation and no one wants to focus on that & try to do something about that -- something which can and should be dealt with.

Equally horrific exploitation? “Money is a new form of human slavery, distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal: there is no human relation between master and slave.” I am not condoning or downplaying past sins. What some slave owners did was so horrible that I cannot detail it: I am a squeamish man. The description of brutality sickens me. Torture, humiliation, the splitting up of families, daily degradation, bestiality. I cannot, will not, catalogue the brutality. How could one human being do such things to another human being?

But there were also kind people who owned slaves. Yes, they used them, benefited from their labor, their enslavement, but there is much evidence that many treated their slaves humanely. Slaves, in some cases, were members of the family. Perhaps in some cases the treatment was good, kind, for self serving reasons. You don’t want to damage the machinery that you rely on to earn a living. But for whatever reasons, kindness & cruelty, even in such a thing as slavery, lived side by side.

But now, slavery from afar, does not allow for acts of kindness. We do not see what happens, we are not in control of what happens. Out of sight, out of mind -- and horrible things are happening.

Once again, I do not need to catalogue, all of you know what is happening. Child labor, Africans & diamonds, wages that are so low that employment & starvation sometimes go together. Women who go blind sewing super-fine material. Essentially, we exploit millions of people who live far away in countries we do not want to know anything about, and who are our slaves in every sense of the word. We benefit from their suffering, and some of their suffering is every bit as cruel as the suffering of slaves long ago.

I must stop now & say I am no better than all of you. In fact, I am worse than many of you. I buy cheap because I cannot afford to buy the best. So I buy the best products I can afford at what I know are ridiculously cheap prices. Somebody somewhere must be receiving a horrible salary & working long long hours if I can buy this terrific television set, or car, for so little money. I am perhaps worse than many of you because I am fully aware that I exploit others -- and do nothing about it; in fact, I promote it by buying such “cheap” products.

And I am well aware that the simple solution is in some cases worse. If I do not buy, they have no work at all, the best example being when some country banned child labor which then relegated that child & the whole of his or her family to grinding poverty. Exploitation, horrific though it be, is preferable to starvation, death.

The problem is complex, yields to no easy solution, demands dedication & sacrifice on all sides -- sons & daughters of slaves & slave owners -- and that is why we won’t confront it. We all prefer to accuse or cry crocodile tears: You are to blame…. I am so sorry…

Get over it. Face the present. Both of you acknowledge present sins & both of you try to do something about contemporary exploitation and about contemporary inequality of the most horrific kind.

In 1995 I read that “The richest 225 people on the planet have as much money as the combined wealth of the poorest 47%” and that if we taxed these 225 people 4% -- pocket change as far as these billionaires are concerned -- we could “achieve and maintain universal access to basic health care for all women, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all.”

I can hear all of you saying “but that isn’t going to happen. We can’t get the money from these rich people. They earned it, have a right to keep it. These 225 people live in so many countries, are ruled by so many different rulers. How can we force them to….” There are always excuses, explanations why nothing can be done. We prefer to focus on the past: Don’t you feel guilty? I, of course, am not only not guilty, I deserve compensation…

I have only focused on one possible solution -- work on redistributing what is obscene inequality -- but my point is that we need to focus on present slavery, present exploitation, present inequality. Regretting or blaming past behaviour is silly, sentimental, and it is especially so when current behaviour is ignored, goes unacknowledged because solutions are hard and personal sacrifice is necessary if anything concrete is to get done. Taxing the richest 225 is in its way too easy: “let’s get them!” We need to look inside ourselves. Are we not to blame for current working conditions that exist because “money is the new slavery”?

I do realize I am addressing all this to the one nation in the world that has shown itself to be ready to confront its behavior & do something. You, who are responsible for only two per cent of another & more horrific problem (global warming), are willing to set goals that will involve personal sacrifice, hardship, and yet you know that what you will be asked to do will only have a small impact on the over-all problem. But you know you should set an example, you know your behaviour may affect the behaviour of others, and you know the essential truth: blaming others, seeking contrition from others, is useless, simple & silly.

Look to your own behaviour, modify that. You can do that, you should do that. Others may or may not follow. You cannot control them, you can and should control yourself.