I'm going to do something today I've never done before. I'm going to invite you to read something somebody else wrote.
And not just anybody. Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the US Supreme Court in 1981, where she served until her retirement in 2006. One of the reasons O'Connor, one of the most popular and ground-breaking justices to serve on the nation's highest court, retired at what many considered to be an early age involved the increasingly ill health of her beloved husband who was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. He died in 2009.
Along with two specialists, O'Connor wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times this week that issues a call for aggressive federal investment in finding a cure for Alzheimer's. Virtually everybody I've talked with about death says they would prefer to go in any way but that. Yet funding for a cure lags behind many more high-profile initiatives like AIDS research and breast cancer.
Say what you will about tax dollars being used to find medical cures for diseases; there's a strong case to be made for the government's unique ability to marshall critical resources for targeted strategies that benefit the common good. Particularly when something as devastating as Alzheimer's strikes its victims regardless of their politics, religion, personal health, income, or race. Perhaps more than anything else, Alzheimer's really is an equal-opportunity killer. And that's why we need to concentrate on eliminating it.
Some people may look at Alzheimer's like they do smoking. Arguments have been made that allowing smokers to continue playing Russian Roulette with their cigarettes actually helps keep population growth manageable, and can help minimize the number of elderly people who acquire other health issues which could be even more costly than lung cancer. The key to that mindset, however, which I in no way endorse, is that smoking is a personal decision for which the government should not be held accountable.
The difference with Alzheimer's should be obvious: we don't know the causes, we don't know how to prevent it, we don't know who it will strike, but we know it will be fatal. And before it's fatal, it will be utterly awful for its victim and their family.
This is where O' Connor's plea comes in. Please click here to read it yourself. Don't consider it a diatribe of angst from a woman who's simply suffered the death of her husband. The life you save by supporting Alzheimer's research may be your own.
_____
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Fast Track to Waste
When was the last time you rode a train?
The last time for me was several Christmases ago, when my brother and eldest nephew, visiting from the frozen tundra of suburban Detroit, took me to a Dallas Stars hockey game. Hoping to save money on parking, and save time by avoiding traffic near downtown Dallas' American Airlines Center, we took the relatively-new Trinity Railway Express (TRE), a commuter train between the downtowns in Fort Worth and Dallas. And indeed, we saved quite a bit of money, because the ticket machines at both stations - going and coming - weren't working.
Recently, the local agency that runs the TRE proposed fair increases and service cuts - the conventional, if not self-defeating measures - to try and balance its budget. Oddly enough, somebody wrote an op-ed piece suggesting that the TRE simply fix its electronic ticket machines, which tells me a lot of people still probably ride free often. And the TRE wonders why it can't break even.
Granted, commuter rail gets hopper cars full of subsidies from the federal government, but then, so do Interstate highways and even Detroit's Big Three. In some ways, corporate America is as hooked on government hand-outs as right wing conservatives claim liberal Democrats are. But sometimes, the federal spending, particularly in an election year, gets too illogical to ignore.
Indeed, in a blatant effort to bolster the political standing of incumbent Democrats nationwide, US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday announced what sounds like an aggressive program to relieve highway congestion from coast to coast. A laudable goal by anybody's standards, conservative or liberal. Right?
But listen how he plans on relieving that congested traffic. It's not on actual freeways, which would probably be a tolerable federal expenditure for conservatives. Ostensibly, LaHood will be spending $2.4 billion on projects intended to pave the way for cross-country high-speed passenger rail. Not just in the Northeast, which already boasts the marginally-successful Acela. But in parts of the country where it's simply not needed.
Railing Against Rail?
For example, New York State will get over $18 million to improve existing passenger rail stations in Syracuse and prepare for an eventual high-speed rail corridor between, of all places, Albany and Buffalo.
Never mind that the beak stretch from Albany, the moribund state capital of New York, to Buffalo, one of the most-maligned rust belt cities in North America, remains locked in an unprecedented population drain as high taxation and intransigent union labor continue to cripple Upstate's free-falling economy.
Texas and Oklahoma will be getting almost $6 million to study - STUDY - the feasibility of high-speed rail between either Dallas or Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, with the possibility of extending high-speed service south to San Antonio sometime in the future.
At least the DFW - OKC proposal sounds better in theory than the New York project, if only because people are still moving to Texas by the millions - many of them disenchanted or unemployed New Yorkers. Only one freeway links San Antonio to Oklahoma City - I-35 - and it's become one of the most loathed strips of pavement in the Southwest because it's congested almost all the time.
While we can all respect the impact railroads have had on the growth and development of the United States, and while passenger rail remains a vital component of transportation infrastructure in key areas of the country like the Boston - Washington, DC corridor, can high-speed passenger rail be applied across the country?
That Train has Left the Station
First, let's consider the $18 million slated for upstate New York. In their prime, the cities of Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo were bustling, can-do champions of the Industrial Revolution. But within the past 40 years, manufacturing has virtually evaporated, nothing has replaced it, and tens of thousands of people have moved away from a region that was never densely populated anyway. Untold millions of dollars have already been spent trying to jump-start the upstate economy, but New York can't ween itself from high taxes and oppressive state regulations that simply render this region obsolete and uncompetitive.
As a native New Yorker who use to live on the north shore of Oneida Lake in suburban Syracuse, it pains me greatly to say it, but New York is a dying state. We are witnessing the quiet suffocation of one of the most beautiful and historic parts of our country. If it wasn't for New York City's surging population masking the state's overall population decline, the Empire State would be called the Expire State.
The need for passenger rail - let alone high-speed passenger rail - in upstate New York is absolutely, positively, 100% zero.
Nil. Zilch. Zip.
Especially at the billions of dollars it would take to actually lay track and buy the trains. And how can anybody claim high-speed rail would reinvigorate the economy? Are companies refusing to set up shop in Syracuse because no high-speed rail exists? Or are companies dying in Syracuse because of the state's appallingly hostile economic environment?
Sure, the city's famous university will have faculty and students who might use high-speed rail to escape central New York during breaks, but who else is there? The airport and multiple freeways - built when Syracuse was still a powerhouse - aren't being utilized to their full capacity anymore, so... the area needs more transportation options?
And speaking of Syracuse University, one of the best-respected research institutions in the world: what's keeping all of their highly-trained graduates from setting up high-tech firms around their alma mater? Many cities lust after schools like SU and the ripple effect they have on start-ups and hosting high-wage-earning creative people. Why isn't that happening in Syracuse? It's not because of the dreary weather, which would be understandable, although other places in North America have even worse climates. And it's not because Syracuse lacks high-speed passenger rail.
Red River Rivalry
Here in north Texas, the prospect of high-speed passenger rail might at least make sense when you consider our booming population dynamics. Nearly 6 million people live in the Dallas - Fort Worth area, and north of the Red River which slices between north Texas and Oklahoma, almost a million people live in and around their capital. Each of these three cities have been growing for years, and nothing points to that scenario changing - at least, not as long as states like New York continue taxing their residents to death.
But Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Fort Worth lack one key ingredient to successful high-speed rail service: comprehensive urban mass transit to service travelers once they arrive at their destination. Even if Oklahomans and Texans could be convinced to leave their cars at home and ride a fancy high-speed train, what do they do for transportation when they get off the train?
Sure, all three cities have basic bus systems. Here in what we call the Dallas - Fort Worth Metroplex, our TRE commuter train runs sporadically - and often for free! - and Dallas County has limited light rail service. But still, you need a car here to get from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time.
The factor people like LaHood don't seem to understand involves population density. Sure, north Texas has six million folks, but we're sprawled across 8 counties. No city in the Lone Star State has been designed for high-density demographics that can flourish without private automobiles. Amtrak's Acela services the most densely populated region of the United States, but the cities it serves also have dynamic local mass transit systems to accommodate car-less travelers. Neither Texas nor Oklahoma compare in that regard.
You have to take reality into consideration when implementing transportation policy. Yet liberal tax-and-spend Democrats have simply shown their hand just a few days before an election that surely will wipe a lot of them out of office. I've listed only two examples where LaHood's $2.4 billion will be wasted. Only a fool would say there aren't any more. And the real kicker? It's not even LaHood's money to waste, is it? It's ours.
Not that Republicans don't waste enough money on their watch. But like in the old movies, the stationmaster is standing on the platform, but this watch is his trusty silver pocket watch. And the train is fixin' to leave the station. But not before a whole lotta tax-and-spenders climb on board as voters ride them outta town on the rails.
_____
The last time for me was several Christmases ago, when my brother and eldest nephew, visiting from the frozen tundra of suburban Detroit, took me to a Dallas Stars hockey game. Hoping to save money on parking, and save time by avoiding traffic near downtown Dallas' American Airlines Center, we took the relatively-new Trinity Railway Express (TRE), a commuter train between the downtowns in Fort Worth and Dallas. And indeed, we saved quite a bit of money, because the ticket machines at both stations - going and coming - weren't working.
Recently, the local agency that runs the TRE proposed fair increases and service cuts - the conventional, if not self-defeating measures - to try and balance its budget. Oddly enough, somebody wrote an op-ed piece suggesting that the TRE simply fix its electronic ticket machines, which tells me a lot of people still probably ride free often. And the TRE wonders why it can't break even.
Granted, commuter rail gets hopper cars full of subsidies from the federal government, but then, so do Interstate highways and even Detroit's Big Three. In some ways, corporate America is as hooked on government hand-outs as right wing conservatives claim liberal Democrats are. But sometimes, the federal spending, particularly in an election year, gets too illogical to ignore.
Indeed, in a blatant effort to bolster the political standing of incumbent Democrats nationwide, US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday announced what sounds like an aggressive program to relieve highway congestion from coast to coast. A laudable goal by anybody's standards, conservative or liberal. Right?
But listen how he plans on relieving that congested traffic. It's not on actual freeways, which would probably be a tolerable federal expenditure for conservatives. Ostensibly, LaHood will be spending $2.4 billion on projects intended to pave the way for cross-country high-speed passenger rail. Not just in the Northeast, which already boasts the marginally-successful Acela. But in parts of the country where it's simply not needed.
Railing Against Rail?
For example, New York State will get over $18 million to improve existing passenger rail stations in Syracuse and prepare for an eventual high-speed rail corridor between, of all places, Albany and Buffalo.
Never mind that the beak stretch from Albany, the moribund state capital of New York, to Buffalo, one of the most-maligned rust belt cities in North America, remains locked in an unprecedented population drain as high taxation and intransigent union labor continue to cripple Upstate's free-falling economy.
Texas and Oklahoma will be getting almost $6 million to study - STUDY - the feasibility of high-speed rail between either Dallas or Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, with the possibility of extending high-speed service south to San Antonio sometime in the future.
At least the DFW - OKC proposal sounds better in theory than the New York project, if only because people are still moving to Texas by the millions - many of them disenchanted or unemployed New Yorkers. Only one freeway links San Antonio to Oklahoma City - I-35 - and it's become one of the most loathed strips of pavement in the Southwest because it's congested almost all the time.
While we can all respect the impact railroads have had on the growth and development of the United States, and while passenger rail remains a vital component of transportation infrastructure in key areas of the country like the Boston - Washington, DC corridor, can high-speed passenger rail be applied across the country?
That Train has Left the Station
First, let's consider the $18 million slated for upstate New York. In their prime, the cities of Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo were bustling, can-do champions of the Industrial Revolution. But within the past 40 years, manufacturing has virtually evaporated, nothing has replaced it, and tens of thousands of people have moved away from a region that was never densely populated anyway. Untold millions of dollars have already been spent trying to jump-start the upstate economy, but New York can't ween itself from high taxes and oppressive state regulations that simply render this region obsolete and uncompetitive.
As a native New Yorker who use to live on the north shore of Oneida Lake in suburban Syracuse, it pains me greatly to say it, but New York is a dying state. We are witnessing the quiet suffocation of one of the most beautiful and historic parts of our country. If it wasn't for New York City's surging population masking the state's overall population decline, the Empire State would be called the Expire State.
The need for passenger rail - let alone high-speed passenger rail - in upstate New York is absolutely, positively, 100% zero.
Nil. Zilch. Zip.
Especially at the billions of dollars it would take to actually lay track and buy the trains. And how can anybody claim high-speed rail would reinvigorate the economy? Are companies refusing to set up shop in Syracuse because no high-speed rail exists? Or are companies dying in Syracuse because of the state's appallingly hostile economic environment?
Sure, the city's famous university will have faculty and students who might use high-speed rail to escape central New York during breaks, but who else is there? The airport and multiple freeways - built when Syracuse was still a powerhouse - aren't being utilized to their full capacity anymore, so... the area needs more transportation options?
And speaking of Syracuse University, one of the best-respected research institutions in the world: what's keeping all of their highly-trained graduates from setting up high-tech firms around their alma mater? Many cities lust after schools like SU and the ripple effect they have on start-ups and hosting high-wage-earning creative people. Why isn't that happening in Syracuse? It's not because of the dreary weather, which would be understandable, although other places in North America have even worse climates. And it's not because Syracuse lacks high-speed passenger rail.
Red River Rivalry
Here in north Texas, the prospect of high-speed passenger rail might at least make sense when you consider our booming population dynamics. Nearly 6 million people live in the Dallas - Fort Worth area, and north of the Red River which slices between north Texas and Oklahoma, almost a million people live in and around their capital. Each of these three cities have been growing for years, and nothing points to that scenario changing - at least, not as long as states like New York continue taxing their residents to death.
But Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Fort Worth lack one key ingredient to successful high-speed rail service: comprehensive urban mass transit to service travelers once they arrive at their destination. Even if Oklahomans and Texans could be convinced to leave their cars at home and ride a fancy high-speed train, what do they do for transportation when they get off the train?
Sure, all three cities have basic bus systems. Here in what we call the Dallas - Fort Worth Metroplex, our TRE commuter train runs sporadically - and often for free! - and Dallas County has limited light rail service. But still, you need a car here to get from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time.
The factor people like LaHood don't seem to understand involves population density. Sure, north Texas has six million folks, but we're sprawled across 8 counties. No city in the Lone Star State has been designed for high-density demographics that can flourish without private automobiles. Amtrak's Acela services the most densely populated region of the United States, but the cities it serves also have dynamic local mass transit systems to accommodate car-less travelers. Neither Texas nor Oklahoma compare in that regard.
You have to take reality into consideration when implementing transportation policy. Yet liberal tax-and-spend Democrats have simply shown their hand just a few days before an election that surely will wipe a lot of them out of office. I've listed only two examples where LaHood's $2.4 billion will be wasted. Only a fool would say there aren't any more. And the real kicker? It's not even LaHood's money to waste, is it? It's ours.
Not that Republicans don't waste enough money on their watch. But like in the old movies, the stationmaster is standing on the platform, but this watch is his trusty silver pocket watch. And the train is fixin' to leave the station. But not before a whole lotta tax-and-spenders climb on board as voters ride them outta town on the rails.
_____
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Today's Been a Long Time Comin'
Today!
Today, something will take place half-way across our continent that many people thought would never happen.
Today, even people like me, who hardly pay any attention to sports, will cheerfully acknowledge that life will never be the same. At least here in Arlington, Texas, home to the American League's Texas Rangers baseball team.
Because today - in, of all places, San Francisco - the Texas Rangers play their first WORLD SERIES game.
"So What?"
If you've never followed the Texas Rangers, you're not alone. You also probably don't have a clue as to how big this is for us here in the Dallas - Fort Worth area, where for 39 years, the Rangers have proven you don't need to be good to have a strong fan base. And that's not really a compliment for the team. Or even, sometimes, the fans. Because if you're a real strong sports fan, there have been seasons where the Rangers abysmal performance didn't give anybody any reason to support them. Yet year in and year out, through better seasons and worse, a core of optimistic baseball nuts kept hoping that this year would be better than last year. Sometimes they were right - and many times, they were wrong.
But this year, the Rangers kept winning, and our local press - which has never treated baseball as royally as it does football, even during baseball season - started putting last night's scores at the top of the sportscasts, instead of burying them at the bottom like other years. By the All-Star break, some people had even mused about the Rangers' playoff potential. When new owners Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan finally won the right in court to purchase the team, many North Texans were downright giddy.
Now, the Rangers haven't been so perennially awful that they've never before reached the playoffs. Under the celebrated leadership of Johnny Oates, the 1996, 1998 and 1999 teams played in the American League West championships, but they only won in '96. Still, that was better than nothing. And it gave the team's long-suffering fans hope that they could do better.
Someday.
Well, today, someday has arrived for this team and its fans. Some people may wonder what I'm gushing about, this supposedly-recovering cynic who probably can't think of enough good things to say about the sterile business America's Game has become. And yes, the stink being raised about Cliff Lee and his being wooed by the New York Yankees for next year has put a kind of pall over this season. Particularly after Lee's wife complained about being spit at in Yankee stadium, and Lee himself pooh-pooh'ed her sensitivity. I suppose Lee and his agent figure with the hundred million or so they're expecting from New York, Lee and his wife can afford some good marriage therapy.
Win or Lose, Arlington Wins
But that's an issue for another day. Today, in what there is of "downtown" Arlington, the local dive bar and grill, J. Gilligan's, is setting up tents and chairs in their only parking lot for a watch party tonight, with a mammoth remote screen on a truck parked to one side. Employees were unloading boxes of huge, brand-new flat-screen monitors for inside the joint. And of course, beer trucks were lining up around the block.
Over at the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, crisp new "World Series" banners were being unfurled over the First Base gates, and I wasn't the only person with a camera taking photos of the historic sight.
Hopefully, the history made in San Francisco tonight can be the start of a new era for our boys of summer from here in Arlington, Texas. Perhaps I'm kinda excited because Arlington has never really been in the international spotlight like this before. Maybe it's because we taxpayers helped pay for the stadium - and even bring the team to town from DC to begin with - and now we're starting to see a return on that investment. Maybe it's even because my long-time baseball favorites, the New York Yankees, were ultimately the team we beat to get into the World Series, and their $206 million payroll has been consigned to watching the Fall Classic on TV along with the rest of us.
Which just goes to prove that money can't necessarily get you into the World Series. The Yankees haven't fielded a team in years; they've fielded overpriced super-stars who insist there's an "I" in "team." On the other hand, this year's group of Rangers players have performed like a genuine team all season long. And it's paid off.
And maybe that's what I like most of all.
_____
Today, something will take place half-way across our continent that many people thought would never happen.
Today, even people like me, who hardly pay any attention to sports, will cheerfully acknowledge that life will never be the same. At least here in Arlington, Texas, home to the American League's Texas Rangers baseball team.
Because today - in, of all places, San Francisco - the Texas Rangers play their first WORLD SERIES game.
"So What?"
If you've never followed the Texas Rangers, you're not alone. You also probably don't have a clue as to how big this is for us here in the Dallas - Fort Worth area, where for 39 years, the Rangers have proven you don't need to be good to have a strong fan base. And that's not really a compliment for the team. Or even, sometimes, the fans. Because if you're a real strong sports fan, there have been seasons where the Rangers abysmal performance didn't give anybody any reason to support them. Yet year in and year out, through better seasons and worse, a core of optimistic baseball nuts kept hoping that this year would be better than last year. Sometimes they were right - and many times, they were wrong.
But this year, the Rangers kept winning, and our local press - which has never treated baseball as royally as it does football, even during baseball season - started putting last night's scores at the top of the sportscasts, instead of burying them at the bottom like other years. By the All-Star break, some people had even mused about the Rangers' playoff potential. When new owners Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan finally won the right in court to purchase the team, many North Texans were downright giddy.
Now, the Rangers haven't been so perennially awful that they've never before reached the playoffs. Under the celebrated leadership of Johnny Oates, the 1996, 1998 and 1999 teams played in the American League West championships, but they only won in '96. Still, that was better than nothing. And it gave the team's long-suffering fans hope that they could do better.
Someday.
Well, today, someday has arrived for this team and its fans. Some people may wonder what I'm gushing about, this supposedly-recovering cynic who probably can't think of enough good things to say about the sterile business America's Game has become. And yes, the stink being raised about Cliff Lee and his being wooed by the New York Yankees for next year has put a kind of pall over this season. Particularly after Lee's wife complained about being spit at in Yankee stadium, and Lee himself pooh-pooh'ed her sensitivity. I suppose Lee and his agent figure with the hundred million or so they're expecting from New York, Lee and his wife can afford some good marriage therapy.Win or Lose, Arlington Wins
But that's an issue for another day. Today, in what there is of "downtown" Arlington, the local dive bar and grill, J. Gilligan's, is setting up tents and chairs in their only parking lot for a watch party tonight, with a mammoth remote screen on a truck parked to one side. Employees were unloading boxes of huge, brand-new flat-screen monitors for inside the joint. And of course, beer trucks were lining up around the block.Over at the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, crisp new "World Series" banners were being unfurled over the First Base gates, and I wasn't the only person with a camera taking photos of the historic sight.
Hopefully, the history made in San Francisco tonight can be the start of a new era for our boys of summer from here in Arlington, Texas. Perhaps I'm kinda excited because Arlington has never really been in the international spotlight like this before. Maybe it's because we taxpayers helped pay for the stadium - and even bring the team to town from DC to begin with - and now we're starting to see a return on that investment. Maybe it's even because my long-time baseball favorites, the New York Yankees, were ultimately the team we beat to get into the World Series, and their $206 million payroll has been consigned to watching the Fall Classic on TV along with the rest of us.
Which just goes to prove that money can't necessarily get you into the World Series. The Yankees haven't fielded a team in years; they've fielded overpriced super-stars who insist there's an "I" in "team." On the other hand, this year's group of Rangers players have performed like a genuine team all season long. And it's paid off.
And maybe that's what I like most of all.
_____
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Big City Lite
As a closet urbanist, I found an article on DallasNews.com today amusing.
Writer David Flick, of the Dallas Morning News, reports that people who grew up in the suburbs and are now living closer-in to downtown Dallas are having to re-learn urban survival skills. Usually, these are the same skills their parents abandoned when they also abandoned urban cores four decades ago or more, taking their families to the brand-spanking-new suburbs.
However, now that career professionals and empty-nesters have re-discovered the energy, efficiency, and convenience of city life, they're moving back into town in droves. They're paying premium prices for new lofts carved out of old warehouses, old office towers turned into condos, or new apartments erected on what had been abandoned lots. Abandoned, ironically, back when middle America couldn't move out to suburbia fast enough.
For suburbanites who keep moving the other way - not back to urban centers, but to the new frontiers of exurbia, only the nasty problems of urban decay can be seen: bad schools, crumbling streets, high crime, no backyards, few big-box stores. But moving downtown instead of further out of town isn't as dangerous, dirty, and confining as people think. Unfortunately for Dallas, whose crime rate has been notoriously high for years, one does need to be more careful in Uptown than in Frisco, but things aren't nearly as bad in Oak Lawn as they are in Oak Cliff. And by all accounts, Dallas is still much safer than downtown LA or Miami.
Faced with a daily commute from the exurbs to Big D, which can sometimes take 45 minutes to an hour one-way if there's a wreck, many logical people from the suburbs sit in gridlock and start thinking. About how all the freeways start looking the same. About why they're living so far away from their job. About how their new subdivision is aging faster than they thought it would.
As soon as the kids are in college - or before they decide to have any, lots of people have realized that setting up one's abode ten minutes from major employment centers literally means time added to your day. Even if you buy a condo on Turtle Creek and work near LBJ & Central, your commute is against traffic, which keeps it shorter than if you had to drive in from north Plano. And if you home-school your kids - another pro-urban trend - it doesn't make any difference if you like the big-city school district or not. Which in Dallas' case, leaves homeschooling as the only way upwardly mobile parents who don't want to pay for private school will settle in town.
Indeed, young families have begun taking advantage of all that can make big cities great places to raise children: existing park infrastructure, multi-cultural neighborhoods, legacy museums and concert halls, and other social institutions that pop culture has made suburbanites forget about.
Urban Living Takes Practice
Yet, as Flick points out, all is not rosy on the new urban frontier. For one thing, higher-density populations generate higher-decibel noise. Street parking can also become an issue, since people moving downtown from the suburbs have never made mass transit a part of their lives. Where can you fit all of those BMW's and SUV's without the acres of concrete parking lots the suburbs boast?
I've seen more than my share of laugh-out-loud examples of really bad parallel parking. You know - the one thing you probably flunked on your driver's test, but that even the DMV official figured you'd never need to know. At least Dallas drivers try to not hit the cars they're squeezing between. I remember watching careless drivers in New York City parallel parking - by bumping their vehicle back and forth between the fenders of vehicles in front and in back of them, working their way into their space one bumper-bump at a time.
Sometimes I get downright angry when I see enormous pickup trucks hogging two "compact car" spaces, or full-sized SUV's squeezed into one space - but with wide-angle rear-view mirrors that render the two spaces on either side unusable. This being Dallas, however, it's not just drivers of oversized vehicles that hog parking spaces. Along Oak Lawn's Lemmon Avenue, I once saw the prototypical urban vehicle, a SMART car, parked over the line, in a compact car lot - a true testament to either the driver's incompetence or narcissism. How can there be an excuse for not being able to fit a SMART car into any parking space?
Sure, it's Big D, but...
The more I read of Flick's article, the more I chucked about how good urban Dallasites have it here. For one thing, housing costs in most inner-city Dallas neighborhoods pale in comparison to those in places like San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and New York City, where big city life can only be afforded by super-wealthy elites and welfare recipients. Dallas also doesn't have Manhattan's 18.25% parking tax or monthly garage rates that can exceed your monthly car payment. There's also no alternate-side-of-the-street parking here.
Dallas' new urbanites can choose from a good stock of relatively-new, amenity-choked apartments, townhomes, and condos that, although smaller than the sprawling homes in the 'burbs, don't lack any of the creature comforts they've come to expect. Meanwhile, back in New York City, many older apartments don't have dishwashers, the only air-conditioning comes from noisy window units, you're fortunate if your building has a washing machine in the basement, and those fancy doormen all belong to a union.
Yes, if you live in urban Dallas, you're living with over a million other folks in one of the Lone Star State's signature cities. I suppose there's some cachet in that. You're close to everything the tourists come here to see and do. And chances are, you're a lot closer to work than your office buddies who drive in from Collin County. If gasoline prices rocket past $4 a gallon again and stay there, you'll also be the envy of every poor schlep driving their Chevy Suburban back and forth from Allen every day.
Parallel parking may still be a challenge, and street noise much more noticeable, but take advantage of the fact that in Dallas, urbanity is a lot less expensive and challenging than it is in other big cities around the country. It's also a lot less crowded, as a friend of mine who lives across the street from the flagship Neiman-Marcus downtown can testify. Even though several office buildings have been converted into condos, and some restaurants and hotels attract big business, street life after dark is still nil.
Town and Country
When I drive to Dallas from my humble, aging, first-ring suburb of Arlington, sure, I enjoy the world-class concerts and chic restaurants that never seem to make it west of Stemmons Freeway. I marvel at the skyscrapers, people-watch all the hipsters and yuppies, and drool over the ultra-luxury foreign cars worth more than many homes in Arlington. But I also enjoy the fact that I can come home to a simple house with trees towering overhead and a creek in the back yard, where foxes and raccoons raise their own families. Last night, a possum waited for me to get out of its way when I got home after my walk.
I've done the urban thing already, and maybe I'll do it again someday. For now, however, at least I know that whenever I need my urban fix, Dallas is just down the freeway, ready to oblige. Even if it is only big city lite.
_____
Writer David Flick, of the Dallas Morning News, reports that people who grew up in the suburbs and are now living closer-in to downtown Dallas are having to re-learn urban survival skills. Usually, these are the same skills their parents abandoned when they also abandoned urban cores four decades ago or more, taking their families to the brand-spanking-new suburbs.
However, now that career professionals and empty-nesters have re-discovered the energy, efficiency, and convenience of city life, they're moving back into town in droves. They're paying premium prices for new lofts carved out of old warehouses, old office towers turned into condos, or new apartments erected on what had been abandoned lots. Abandoned, ironically, back when middle America couldn't move out to suburbia fast enough.
For suburbanites who keep moving the other way - not back to urban centers, but to the new frontiers of exurbia, only the nasty problems of urban decay can be seen: bad schools, crumbling streets, high crime, no backyards, few big-box stores. But moving downtown instead of further out of town isn't as dangerous, dirty, and confining as people think. Unfortunately for Dallas, whose crime rate has been notoriously high for years, one does need to be more careful in Uptown than in Frisco, but things aren't nearly as bad in Oak Lawn as they are in Oak Cliff. And by all accounts, Dallas is still much safer than downtown LA or Miami.
Faced with a daily commute from the exurbs to Big D, which can sometimes take 45 minutes to an hour one-way if there's a wreck, many logical people from the suburbs sit in gridlock and start thinking. About how all the freeways start looking the same. About why they're living so far away from their job. About how their new subdivision is aging faster than they thought it would.
As soon as the kids are in college - or before they decide to have any, lots of people have realized that setting up one's abode ten minutes from major employment centers literally means time added to your day. Even if you buy a condo on Turtle Creek and work near LBJ & Central, your commute is against traffic, which keeps it shorter than if you had to drive in from north Plano. And if you home-school your kids - another pro-urban trend - it doesn't make any difference if you like the big-city school district or not. Which in Dallas' case, leaves homeschooling as the only way upwardly mobile parents who don't want to pay for private school will settle in town.
Indeed, young families have begun taking advantage of all that can make big cities great places to raise children: existing park infrastructure, multi-cultural neighborhoods, legacy museums and concert halls, and other social institutions that pop culture has made suburbanites forget about.
Urban Living Takes Practice
Yet, as Flick points out, all is not rosy on the new urban frontier. For one thing, higher-density populations generate higher-decibel noise. Street parking can also become an issue, since people moving downtown from the suburbs have never made mass transit a part of their lives. Where can you fit all of those BMW's and SUV's without the acres of concrete parking lots the suburbs boast?
I've seen more than my share of laugh-out-loud examples of really bad parallel parking. You know - the one thing you probably flunked on your driver's test, but that even the DMV official figured you'd never need to know. At least Dallas drivers try to not hit the cars they're squeezing between. I remember watching careless drivers in New York City parallel parking - by bumping their vehicle back and forth between the fenders of vehicles in front and in back of them, working their way into their space one bumper-bump at a time.
Sometimes I get downright angry when I see enormous pickup trucks hogging two "compact car" spaces, or full-sized SUV's squeezed into one space - but with wide-angle rear-view mirrors that render the two spaces on either side unusable. This being Dallas, however, it's not just drivers of oversized vehicles that hog parking spaces. Along Oak Lawn's Lemmon Avenue, I once saw the prototypical urban vehicle, a SMART car, parked over the line, in a compact car lot - a true testament to either the driver's incompetence or narcissism. How can there be an excuse for not being able to fit a SMART car into any parking space?Sure, it's Big D, but...
The more I read of Flick's article, the more I chucked about how good urban Dallasites have it here. For one thing, housing costs in most inner-city Dallas neighborhoods pale in comparison to those in places like San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and New York City, where big city life can only be afforded by super-wealthy elites and welfare recipients. Dallas also doesn't have Manhattan's 18.25% parking tax or monthly garage rates that can exceed your monthly car payment. There's also no alternate-side-of-the-street parking here.
Dallas' new urbanites can choose from a good stock of relatively-new, amenity-choked apartments, townhomes, and condos that, although smaller than the sprawling homes in the 'burbs, don't lack any of the creature comforts they've come to expect. Meanwhile, back in New York City, many older apartments don't have dishwashers, the only air-conditioning comes from noisy window units, you're fortunate if your building has a washing machine in the basement, and those fancy doormen all belong to a union.
Yes, if you live in urban Dallas, you're living with over a million other folks in one of the Lone Star State's signature cities. I suppose there's some cachet in that. You're close to everything the tourists come here to see and do. And chances are, you're a lot closer to work than your office buddies who drive in from Collin County. If gasoline prices rocket past $4 a gallon again and stay there, you'll also be the envy of every poor schlep driving their Chevy Suburban back and forth from Allen every day.
Parallel parking may still be a challenge, and street noise much more noticeable, but take advantage of the fact that in Dallas, urbanity is a lot less expensive and challenging than it is in other big cities around the country. It's also a lot less crowded, as a friend of mine who lives across the street from the flagship Neiman-Marcus downtown can testify. Even though several office buildings have been converted into condos, and some restaurants and hotels attract big business, street life after dark is still nil.
Town and Country
When I drive to Dallas from my humble, aging, first-ring suburb of Arlington, sure, I enjoy the world-class concerts and chic restaurants that never seem to make it west of Stemmons Freeway. I marvel at the skyscrapers, people-watch all the hipsters and yuppies, and drool over the ultra-luxury foreign cars worth more than many homes in Arlington. But I also enjoy the fact that I can come home to a simple house with trees towering overhead and a creek in the back yard, where foxes and raccoons raise their own families. Last night, a possum waited for me to get out of its way when I got home after my walk.
I've done the urban thing already, and maybe I'll do it again someday. For now, however, at least I know that whenever I need my urban fix, Dallas is just down the freeway, ready to oblige. Even if it is only big city lite.
_____
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Portraits of Economic Parallels - Part 3
For Part 1, please click here.
For Part 2, please click here.
It has been said of New York that there are eight million stories in the naked city. At least.
These two, however, stand out to me as exemplary portraits of opposite ends of the economic spectrum, over which heated arguments are being waged across the United States. On the one hand, right-wing websites and blogs overflow with vitriol against people who don't champion the profit motive, while on the other hand, their liberal counterparts claim they're the only people who truly care about humanity.
To hear some right-wingers tell it, the poor have no business expecting any protections since they didn't have enough common sense to get wealthy in the first place. And left-wingers say that profits stay in the hands of too few people, which means the government is the only entity able to help everybody else.
If this isn't the scenario you see, then please tell me what I'm missing. Because the closer we're getting to election day, I'm seeing very little common sense among extremists on both sides of the political and economic aisles.
Evaluating Leona Helmsley
Economically, Harry's second wife started out with very little. Through hard work and gritty tenacity, before she'd even met him, Leona had become a respected Manhattan apartment broker during a time in the city's history when more people were moving out than in. That, my friends, is strong testament to the value of personal initiative.
Even if she hadn't vamped Harry to claim half of his prized real estate portfolio, she served his business interests well by the way she built up the Helmsley Hotel chain. She focused on customer service and amenities, as well as solid advertising savvy, to re-cast the profile of a previously little-known brand. She also encouraged Harry to ditch his rental apartment properties and focus on commercial real estate, which proved to be a wise financial move.
She helped him better market his iconic skyscrapers to the point where many New Yorkers continued to hold the firm's premiere property, the Empire State Building, dearest in their affections, regardless of any other additions to the skyline. And the Helmsley's provocative Flatiron Building became recognized world-wide as the gateway to Manhattan's burgeoning high-tech corridor.
Would the Helmsley's business empire have blossomed into an estimated $8 billion powerhouse without Leona's input? Perhaps. But to her credit, nothing she touched lost money. After Harry died, she sold most of the Helmsley holdings at the top of the market. Not bad for a Brooklyn hatmaker's daughter, huh?
Yet didn't Leona also personify the worst of capitalism? Money and the power to make more of it ruled her life. She held an egregious contempt for what evangelicals should consider to be the Biblical imperative of taxation; namely, that you "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." She got what she wanted however she could and despite whomever's career or personal life she had to destroy. And her Darwinian hubris regarding the survival of the richest actually convinced her that helping to build a multi-billion-dollar empire proved she was right.
Interestingly enough, her trial and incarceration for tax evasion met with tepid amusement - and even faint admiration - by conservatives. It wasn't so much that she broke any laws, but that she got caught doing so. Billing the company for clothing you wear in your apartment, which also happens to be located in a company property? How wonderfully cunning!
But her ethical rap sheet runs even longer than her criminal one.
She devalued her business partners' shares in the company by billing it millions of dollars worth of upgrades to her country home.
She exposed her business partners to unnecessary financial risk after arbitrarily firing two employees because of their sexual orientation, incurring two indefensible lawsuits.
She allegedly defrauded company shareholders of an estimated $83,000 monthly in secret "consulting" fees.
She held no mercy for her son's family after he died. We won't even talk about the casualty of Harry's first marriage in Leona's scheme for advancement.
And as if to mock the justice system, she forced her staff to perform some of the community service punishment she was expected to do herself. Indeed, it seemed that in every area of her life, Leona assumed only chumps play by the rules.
Evaluating South Street Annie
At the end of the day, Gloria Wasserman was no better than Leona.
Apparently, although she provided well enough for her family throughout her life, she rarely worked jobs where she paid income taxes. Not that income taxes are a good thing, but not having taxable wages suggests only one thing: she earned everything - literally, even - under the table.
She got so much money panhandling, selling counterfeit goods, and prostituting herself in the Fulton Fish Market that her family claims she sent as much as $4,000 a month to them. She lived in welfare housing and ate at soup kitchens, instead of trying to pay for her living expenses.
She stubbornly refused requests from daughters in both New Hampshire and California to move closer to them so they could look after her. She prized her independence, initiative, and gutsy intuition more than moral integrity, honest labor, and family responsibility. Sure, she bought a granddaughter a used car and helped pay her college education, but whenever family visited New York, she furtively ordered them to call her Annie. She enjoyed the game of deceit and free money.
Because that's what she got, wasn't it? She managed to procure illicit cigarettes and Chinatown junk (which is really saying something about how bad it was) from the black market to sell along South Street. Even her family concedes she probably was a prostitute for years. She apparently "earned" a decent amount of money, yet never bothered to give up her rent-subsidized apartment to a more needy family and get an apartment on the open market - or move to a less expensive place to live, like her daughters kept encouraging her to do.
She took full advantage of the clothing room at her local Catholic charity, sending boxloads of used clothes to her daughters who simply handed them out to needy folks where they lived. Everything, it seems, was hers for the taking and she didn't have to pay for it if she didn't want to.
Leona and Gloria Shared More than a Manhattan Address
By now, the differences between uptown Leona and downtown Gloria can be readily seen. Yet surprisingly enough, a number of similarities also exist between the two. Yes, both were Jewish, approximately the same age, and from humble origins. But they also both assumed the rules only applied to other people. Both saw their individual wiles as a way to get men - and money: Leona saw Harry, and Gloria saw the boys at the fish market. Neither one paid taxes, they both placed their own personal agendas over family concerns, and both have been celebrated because of their fierce independence and ingenuity.
Not that they didn't have their soft sides: Leona for Harry's care, and Annie for other women on the streets. But something tells me neither one of them would have tolerated competition: Leona of another mistress for Harry, for example, or Annie of a younger woman making moves on her fishmongers.
Can it be that capitalists and socialists are more similar that they like to think they are? Can it be that both poles of the economic spectrum reflect narcissistic, self-aggrandizing robots, simply rooting their snouts in the trough of greed? They say they want different things out of life: Leona wanted the high life, while Gloria reveled in the low life. And they both had to take different directions to get where they were headed. Even though something tells me Leona would have been a lot less happy being middle class than Gloria would have been, they both eventually got to where they wanted to be.
So I guess maybe it all depends on what you want your greed to pay for? Either way, the folks in the middle get left holding the bag. We're the "little people" Leona left to pay the taxes, fluff the towels in her hotels, perform her community service sentence, and even be minority partners in Harry's company. We're also the "boys" to whom Annie sold her "creatively acquired" collection of trinkets and vices, all while enjoying welfare programs being paid for by, well, taxpayers and kind-hearted Catholic parishioners.
Meanwhile, neither extreme actually benefits society in the long run, does it?
So why do pundits on both sides of the aisle rant as if theirs does?
Is it because the capitalists' love of money really is the root of all sorts of evil? And the socialists' love of appearing as though they're better than money still puts money at the center of their existence?
Sure seems that way, at least from the lives of these two iconic New Yorkers.
And maybe even more people than that.
_____
For Part 2, please click here.
It has been said of New York that there are eight million stories in the naked city. At least.
These two, however, stand out to me as exemplary portraits of opposite ends of the economic spectrum, over which heated arguments are being waged across the United States. On the one hand, right-wing websites and blogs overflow with vitriol against people who don't champion the profit motive, while on the other hand, their liberal counterparts claim they're the only people who truly care about humanity.
To hear some right-wingers tell it, the poor have no business expecting any protections since they didn't have enough common sense to get wealthy in the first place. And left-wingers say that profits stay in the hands of too few people, which means the government is the only entity able to help everybody else.
If this isn't the scenario you see, then please tell me what I'm missing. Because the closer we're getting to election day, I'm seeing very little common sense among extremists on both sides of the political and economic aisles.
Evaluating Leona Helmsley
Economically, Harry's second wife started out with very little. Through hard work and gritty tenacity, before she'd even met him, Leona had become a respected Manhattan apartment broker during a time in the city's history when more people were moving out than in. That, my friends, is strong testament to the value of personal initiative.
Even if she hadn't vamped Harry to claim half of his prized real estate portfolio, she served his business interests well by the way she built up the Helmsley Hotel chain. She focused on customer service and amenities, as well as solid advertising savvy, to re-cast the profile of a previously little-known brand. She also encouraged Harry to ditch his rental apartment properties and focus on commercial real estate, which proved to be a wise financial move.
She helped him better market his iconic skyscrapers to the point where many New Yorkers continued to hold the firm's premiere property, the Empire State Building, dearest in their affections, regardless of any other additions to the skyline. And the Helmsley's provocative Flatiron Building became recognized world-wide as the gateway to Manhattan's burgeoning high-tech corridor.
Would the Helmsley's business empire have blossomed into an estimated $8 billion powerhouse without Leona's input? Perhaps. But to her credit, nothing she touched lost money. After Harry died, she sold most of the Helmsley holdings at the top of the market. Not bad for a Brooklyn hatmaker's daughter, huh?
Yet didn't Leona also personify the worst of capitalism? Money and the power to make more of it ruled her life. She held an egregious contempt for what evangelicals should consider to be the Biblical imperative of taxation; namely, that you "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." She got what she wanted however she could and despite whomever's career or personal life she had to destroy. And her Darwinian hubris regarding the survival of the richest actually convinced her that helping to build a multi-billion-dollar empire proved she was right.
Interestingly enough, her trial and incarceration for tax evasion met with tepid amusement - and even faint admiration - by conservatives. It wasn't so much that she broke any laws, but that she got caught doing so. Billing the company for clothing you wear in your apartment, which also happens to be located in a company property? How wonderfully cunning!
But her ethical rap sheet runs even longer than her criminal one.
She devalued her business partners' shares in the company by billing it millions of dollars worth of upgrades to her country home.
She exposed her business partners to unnecessary financial risk after arbitrarily firing two employees because of their sexual orientation, incurring two indefensible lawsuits.
She allegedly defrauded company shareholders of an estimated $83,000 monthly in secret "consulting" fees.
She held no mercy for her son's family after he died. We won't even talk about the casualty of Harry's first marriage in Leona's scheme for advancement.
And as if to mock the justice system, she forced her staff to perform some of the community service punishment she was expected to do herself. Indeed, it seemed that in every area of her life, Leona assumed only chumps play by the rules.
Evaluating South Street Annie
At the end of the day, Gloria Wasserman was no better than Leona.
Apparently, although she provided well enough for her family throughout her life, she rarely worked jobs where she paid income taxes. Not that income taxes are a good thing, but not having taxable wages suggests only one thing: she earned everything - literally, even - under the table.
She got so much money panhandling, selling counterfeit goods, and prostituting herself in the Fulton Fish Market that her family claims she sent as much as $4,000 a month to them. She lived in welfare housing and ate at soup kitchens, instead of trying to pay for her living expenses.
She stubbornly refused requests from daughters in both New Hampshire and California to move closer to them so they could look after her. She prized her independence, initiative, and gutsy intuition more than moral integrity, honest labor, and family responsibility. Sure, she bought a granddaughter a used car and helped pay her college education, but whenever family visited New York, she furtively ordered them to call her Annie. She enjoyed the game of deceit and free money.
Because that's what she got, wasn't it? She managed to procure illicit cigarettes and Chinatown junk (which is really saying something about how bad it was) from the black market to sell along South Street. Even her family concedes she probably was a prostitute for years. She apparently "earned" a decent amount of money, yet never bothered to give up her rent-subsidized apartment to a more needy family and get an apartment on the open market - or move to a less expensive place to live, like her daughters kept encouraging her to do.
She took full advantage of the clothing room at her local Catholic charity, sending boxloads of used clothes to her daughters who simply handed them out to needy folks where they lived. Everything, it seems, was hers for the taking and she didn't have to pay for it if she didn't want to.
Leona and Gloria Shared More than a Manhattan Address
By now, the differences between uptown Leona and downtown Gloria can be readily seen. Yet surprisingly enough, a number of similarities also exist between the two. Yes, both were Jewish, approximately the same age, and from humble origins. But they also both assumed the rules only applied to other people. Both saw their individual wiles as a way to get men - and money: Leona saw Harry, and Gloria saw the boys at the fish market. Neither one paid taxes, they both placed their own personal agendas over family concerns, and both have been celebrated because of their fierce independence and ingenuity.
Not that they didn't have their soft sides: Leona for Harry's care, and Annie for other women on the streets. But something tells me neither one of them would have tolerated competition: Leona of another mistress for Harry, for example, or Annie of a younger woman making moves on her fishmongers.
Can it be that capitalists and socialists are more similar that they like to think they are? Can it be that both poles of the economic spectrum reflect narcissistic, self-aggrandizing robots, simply rooting their snouts in the trough of greed? They say they want different things out of life: Leona wanted the high life, while Gloria reveled in the low life. And they both had to take different directions to get where they were headed. Even though something tells me Leona would have been a lot less happy being middle class than Gloria would have been, they both eventually got to where they wanted to be.
So I guess maybe it all depends on what you want your greed to pay for? Either way, the folks in the middle get left holding the bag. We're the "little people" Leona left to pay the taxes, fluff the towels in her hotels, perform her community service sentence, and even be minority partners in Harry's company. We're also the "boys" to whom Annie sold her "creatively acquired" collection of trinkets and vices, all while enjoying welfare programs being paid for by, well, taxpayers and kind-hearted Catholic parishioners.
Meanwhile, neither extreme actually benefits society in the long run, does it?
So why do pundits on both sides of the aisle rant as if theirs does?
Is it because the capitalists' love of money really is the root of all sorts of evil? And the socialists' love of appearing as though they're better than money still puts money at the center of their existence?
Sure seems that way, at least from the lives of these two iconic New Yorkers.
And maybe even more people than that.
_____
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Portraits of Economic Parallels - Part 2
For part 1, please click here.
Caution: This part of my essay includes some less-than-wholesome material
After reading about the Queen of Mean, some of my die-hard conservative friends may be crying "Foul!" and insisting on a time-out.
"I can see where you're going with this, and it's simply not fair," they'd be protesting. "So, Leona Helmsley is your 'parallel portrait' for capitalism? Well, she's so atypical of conventional capitalists that it's disingenuous, picking a caricature of Cruella DeVille as the poster child for prosperity."
To which I reply, "Just wait until you see my poster child for socialism."
South Street's Fulton Fish Market
In 2005, New York City managed to achieve something many native Gothamites considered impossible: city authorities moved the storied Fulton Fish Market from its home along South Street in Lower Manhattan to a state-of-the-art fish warehouse in the Bronx.
Old-timers decried the end of an era. Restaurant owners cheered the relocation as a triumph of common sense, since they could now shop for fresh fish in a more sanitary - and sane - environment.
Tourists to South Street Seaport will recall the smelly, dank fish market housed in an ancient brick building in the shadows of an elevated freeway along the East River. I only ever went inside once, and was so disgusted by the rank odor, slimy floor, and fishmongers smeared with blood and guts that I never went back. Anybody who ate fish for dinner in any reputable New York City restaurant knew that just that morning, their meal had been on ice in this wholly undesirable place, but due to both intransigent tradition and a mish-mash of union rules, waterfront logistics, and no other neighborhood being willing to tolerate the stench, this is how it was.
For decades, even after most fishing boats abandoned the nearby wharves and office towers crowded its site, the Fulton Fish Market stubbornly stayed put, both to the consternation of commercial developers running out of prime Manhattan real estate, and the delight of residents and visitors alike who relished the historical aura of the place. It was so... anachronistic, this freeze-frame from the 19th Century amidst cosmopolitan Manhattan, like immediately stepping back in time the minute you smelled it from a block away.
Gloria as Annie (no, not that Annie)
It was into this primal setting that a singular woman named Gloria Wasserman stepped a couple of decades ago. Not that anybody knew her real name, however. Nobody can even remember when she became a fixture along South Street. But she called herself Annie, and she projected the persona of a licentious bag lady to the men who labored there. Indeed, Fulton Fish Market was virtually an all-male bastion of burly, macho, coarse-talking testosterone, and Annie seems to have chosen South Street for her pursuits precisely because she knew how to survive in such a rough environment.
She would show up daily when the morning was still pitch black night. She would hawk illegal cigarettes, run errands, and even sell herself, as long as the men didn't care that her looks had faded long ago. Even into her 70's and 80's, she proudly proffered her, um... chest for the new, young guys to kiss for good luck. She would also flash the workers every now and then, just for a laugh.
Unbeknownst to her boys at the fish market, Annie had always led a life of curious provision, and as one of her daughters told the New York Times, the family didn't want to guess at where the money came from. Granted, she provided adequately for her loved ones, but chastity and propriety could never have aptly described their mother. She died several weeks ago in California, of all places, at the age of 85, but only now are the fish market's old-timers beginning to learn who she really was.
Living Off Others
Prowling the aisles and stalls of the fish market, Annie would feign cuteness with a sing-song "Yoo-hoo" which became her signature call. The stuff she'd sell her guys - including herself - was never expensive or first-rate, but feeling sorry for her, they'd usually pay extra, figuring she was desperate for a way to survive.
Little did they know that Annie, according to the Times, lived in a city-owned rent-subsidized apartment and took her meals at a Catholic charity kitchen. And that she sent upwards of $4,000 a month to relatives in New Hampshire and California. And that she helped pay for a granddaughter's college tuition. And that she'd scour the Catholic charity's clothing room for items to send - by the boxload - to family on both coasts who apparently didn't need it. When doctors told her she needed to get off her feet, fishmongers raised $3,000 to help what they thought would be Annie's impoverished "retirement."
Little did they know.
While the Times piece paints a poignant, wistful picture of an enterprising woman making the best of challenging circumstances, what we really find is a how-to manual for exploiting and stealing, don't we? Gloria Wasserman had learned from a young age that men love a flirt, and she was able to parlay that into a lifetime of bawdy deceit.
Sure, she may be a hero to feminists who detest what they perceive as the subordination of women in a male-dominated society. Urbanites will consider her a martyr to individualism and self-sufficiency, simply winking at the creativity with which she survived life in the big, bad city. Even a worker at the Catholic charity quoted in the Times describes Wasserman as a type of "grandmother" to other women on the street.
Well, "Granny Annie," even though speaking ill of the dead rarely holds the speaker in high regard, your gig is up.
_____
Next: Conclusion
Caution: This part of my essay includes some less-than-wholesome material
After reading about the Queen of Mean, some of my die-hard conservative friends may be crying "Foul!" and insisting on a time-out.
"I can see where you're going with this, and it's simply not fair," they'd be protesting. "So, Leona Helmsley is your 'parallel portrait' for capitalism? Well, she's so atypical of conventional capitalists that it's disingenuous, picking a caricature of Cruella DeVille as the poster child for prosperity."
To which I reply, "Just wait until you see my poster child for socialism."
South Street's Fulton Fish Market
In 2005, New York City managed to achieve something many native Gothamites considered impossible: city authorities moved the storied Fulton Fish Market from its home along South Street in Lower Manhattan to a state-of-the-art fish warehouse in the Bronx.
Old-timers decried the end of an era. Restaurant owners cheered the relocation as a triumph of common sense, since they could now shop for fresh fish in a more sanitary - and sane - environment.
Tourists to South Street Seaport will recall the smelly, dank fish market housed in an ancient brick building in the shadows of an elevated freeway along the East River. I only ever went inside once, and was so disgusted by the rank odor, slimy floor, and fishmongers smeared with blood and guts that I never went back. Anybody who ate fish for dinner in any reputable New York City restaurant knew that just that morning, their meal had been on ice in this wholly undesirable place, but due to both intransigent tradition and a mish-mash of union rules, waterfront logistics, and no other neighborhood being willing to tolerate the stench, this is how it was.
For decades, even after most fishing boats abandoned the nearby wharves and office towers crowded its site, the Fulton Fish Market stubbornly stayed put, both to the consternation of commercial developers running out of prime Manhattan real estate, and the delight of residents and visitors alike who relished the historical aura of the place. It was so... anachronistic, this freeze-frame from the 19th Century amidst cosmopolitan Manhattan, like immediately stepping back in time the minute you smelled it from a block away.
Gloria as Annie (no, not that Annie)
It was into this primal setting that a singular woman named Gloria Wasserman stepped a couple of decades ago. Not that anybody knew her real name, however. Nobody can even remember when she became a fixture along South Street. But she called herself Annie, and she projected the persona of a licentious bag lady to the men who labored there. Indeed, Fulton Fish Market was virtually an all-male bastion of burly, macho, coarse-talking testosterone, and Annie seems to have chosen South Street for her pursuits precisely because she knew how to survive in such a rough environment.
She would show up daily when the morning was still pitch black night. She would hawk illegal cigarettes, run errands, and even sell herself, as long as the men didn't care that her looks had faded long ago. Even into her 70's and 80's, she proudly proffered her, um... chest for the new, young guys to kiss for good luck. She would also flash the workers every now and then, just for a laugh.
Unbeknownst to her boys at the fish market, Annie had always led a life of curious provision, and as one of her daughters told the New York Times, the family didn't want to guess at where the money came from. Granted, she provided adequately for her loved ones, but chastity and propriety could never have aptly described their mother. She died several weeks ago in California, of all places, at the age of 85, but only now are the fish market's old-timers beginning to learn who she really was.
Living Off Others
Prowling the aisles and stalls of the fish market, Annie would feign cuteness with a sing-song "Yoo-hoo" which became her signature call. The stuff she'd sell her guys - including herself - was never expensive or first-rate, but feeling sorry for her, they'd usually pay extra, figuring she was desperate for a way to survive.
Little did they know that Annie, according to the Times, lived in a city-owned rent-subsidized apartment and took her meals at a Catholic charity kitchen. And that she sent upwards of $4,000 a month to relatives in New Hampshire and California. And that she helped pay for a granddaughter's college tuition. And that she'd scour the Catholic charity's clothing room for items to send - by the boxload - to family on both coasts who apparently didn't need it. When doctors told her she needed to get off her feet, fishmongers raised $3,000 to help what they thought would be Annie's impoverished "retirement."Little did they know.
While the Times piece paints a poignant, wistful picture of an enterprising woman making the best of challenging circumstances, what we really find is a how-to manual for exploiting and stealing, don't we? Gloria Wasserman had learned from a young age that men love a flirt, and she was able to parlay that into a lifetime of bawdy deceit.
Sure, she may be a hero to feminists who detest what they perceive as the subordination of women in a male-dominated society. Urbanites will consider her a martyr to individualism and self-sufficiency, simply winking at the creativity with which she survived life in the big, bad city. Even a worker at the Catholic charity quoted in the Times describes Wasserman as a type of "grandmother" to other women on the street.
Well, "Granny Annie," even though speaking ill of the dead rarely holds the speaker in high regard, your gig is up.
_____
Next: Conclusion
Monday, October 18, 2010
Portraits of Economic Parallels - Part 1
I love New York City.
You know that already, of course. And you know why I love the Big Apple: as I've said before, its utterly cosmopolitan vibe hosts a world of anachronisms. Minute by minute, its kaleidoscope of perspectives can be both baffling yet intensely logical.
So it came as no surprise that as I read a couple of recent articles from the New York Times about two of the city's more iconic women, I saw parallels between their vastly separate lives and the economic arguments being posited by frustrated voters during this election season.
But before I launch into my tirade on the economic polarity being expressed by bloggers and editors on both extremes of the political spectrum, why don't I introduce both of these ladies to you so you can make up your own mind.
Actually, I use the term "ladies" quite loosely here, since as you'll soon discover, both of them were anything but.
The Queen of Mean
In 1972, for her third husband, she married one of New York's most powerful real estate tycoons. After convincing him to divorce his wife of 33 years.
Harry Helmsley owned several celebrated Manhattan towers, including the fabled Empire State and Flatiron buildings. He also owned a chain of upscale hotels, for which his new, 52-year-old wife became a famous spokesperson. She ended up going to prison after an employee complained about how company money was being lavished on such excesses as a $1 million marble dance floor at the couple's Connecticut estate.
She, of course, was Leona Helmsley, who perhaps is most famous for her indisputably elitist quote, "only the little people pay taxes." She died in 2007 at age 87, after attempting to cheat her husband's business partners out of millions of dollars, being sued for firing at least two gay employees because of their sexual preference, and leaving $12 million for her dog, Trouble, in her will.
Leona was back in the news recently after her Connecticut estate, Dunnellen Hall, sold for a paltry $35 million. I say "paltry" because the original asking price for her exquisite 40-acre spread clocked in at an admittedly optimistic $125 million in 2008. For Greenwich, arguably the most extravagant of New York City's numerous silk stocking suburbs, such a closing price probably wouldn't even make the legal notices if it weren't for the legacy of its previous occupant, who died on the very site which heralded her public downfall.
Money Money Money Mon-ey
A successful real estate broker in her own right, she hit the jackpot upon seducing Helmsley, who until meeting her had led a relatively quiet life. Although acquaintances believed Leona truly adored Harry, her blatant use of matrimony for climbing the social ladder and her unchecked temper earned her few friends. Her imperious management style made for great Helmsley Hotel publicity, but she could barely muster enough maternal affection for her only child born during a previous marriage. When he died at the early age of 40, Leona kicked his family out of their house and called a $100,000 loan.
Dragging Harry along for the ride, Leona went on a spending spree, pushing legal envelopes almost for sport. To avoid paying $40,000 in sales taxes, she got salesmen at an exclusive Manhattan jewelry store to say they'd mailed her purchases to her Connecticut country home, even though she'd walked out of their Midtown boutique with them. She itemized personal clothing purchases as uniforms for their Park Lane Hotel. Millions of dollars in upgrades to Dunnellen Hall were invoiced as business expenses.
When prosecutors managed to amass all of her tricks for tax evasion in court, 235 counts in all, she ended up owing various government entities $4 million. By this time, Harry had succumbed to senile dementia to the point where he was deemed unfit to stand trial. She ended up spending nearly two years in prison, and was supposed to serve 750 hours of community service, but Leona got hauled back into court after her employees complained she was making them perform her community service hours.
One of the Little People
My brush with the Helmsleys came, oddly enough, by one of their maids. When I worked in Lower Manhattan, our office building had a cleaning contract with the same firm the Helmsley's used to clean their New York real estate portfolio.
And wouldn't you know it, but the same cheerful, short Jamaican woman who cleaned their personal apartment at the Park Lane Hotel also cleaned our office. I forget her name now - I think it was Daisy - but I can still remember her round, full, sunny face, and her happy yet breathless voice, since she was quite stout. Particularly, however, I remember the stories she would tell!
By choice, I would often linger in the office after hours, trying to learn the ropes in the niche trade of freight brokerage. Daisy would show up at about 5:30pm, since back in the day, most New York offices closed at the stroke of five (so employees could line up in subway stations, waiting for trains). She would come straight from her day shift in the Helmsley's duplex penthouse in Midtown.
If she was married, she never talked about her husband, although she had a son she was trying to provide for with her extended workdays. Her English wasn't great, but we managed to communicate well, although at first, neither one of us really talked much. She'd just come in and empty the trash cans while I explored the company's recently-acquired customized freight forwarding software.
It wasn't until the beginning of Leona's trial on tax evasion that I learned Daisy worked in the Helmsley's private apartment. Humming softly to herself, Daisy would gently shuffle into the office pushing an industrial trashcan with a large feather duster sticking out of a side compartment, its feathers splayed upwards. She always greeted me with a muted, melodious hello, and questions about how wonderful my day must have been. But suddenly, she began coming to our offices in a state of grave concern. The contrast from her previously cheerful demeanor was too pronounced to ignore.
I asked her if something was wrong, and that's when she told me she cleaned the Helmsley's home during the day. At first, I really didn't believe her, but she would tell me things that I'd hear about the next day in the media. Nothing wildly confidential, of course, but attitudes of the Helmsleys, Harry's physical condition, and the like. Daisy constantly expressed personal angst about Harry's health and the toll his wife's trial was taking on the couple. According to Daisy, Harry would want her to sit and simply keep him company in their sumptuous penthouse whenever Leona was in court and he was too frail to attend. He didn't seem to understand that she was supposed to be cleaning the place.
Harry would sob to Daisy that people were making up dastardly lies about his beloved wife, and he couldn't understand what was happening. Being the kind-hearted woman she was, Daisy would sometimes get emotional as she unburdened her own soul to me in the privacy of our empty office. After all, some evenings, apparently I was the first person she talked with after spending her day with the confused, weepy, feeble owner of the Empire State Building.
Daisy claimed never to have seen the ugly side of Leona. The purported Queen of Mean, as New York's excitable tabloids dubbed her, would arrive home exhausted from her days in court, anxious for status reports about Harry, which Daisy sometimes delivered herself. Yet even though the stress must have been consuming her, Leona never treated the hotel staff harshly or even impolitely.
To Daisy, the Leona she heard about on the news wasn't the Leona she personally interacted with. The court's prison sentence confounded Daisy, and made her wonder aloud about the criminal justice system we have in the United States.
_____
Next: Part Two - South Street Annie
You know that already, of course. And you know why I love the Big Apple: as I've said before, its utterly cosmopolitan vibe hosts a world of anachronisms. Minute by minute, its kaleidoscope of perspectives can be both baffling yet intensely logical.
So it came as no surprise that as I read a couple of recent articles from the New York Times about two of the city's more iconic women, I saw parallels between their vastly separate lives and the economic arguments being posited by frustrated voters during this election season.
But before I launch into my tirade on the economic polarity being expressed by bloggers and editors on both extremes of the political spectrum, why don't I introduce both of these ladies to you so you can make up your own mind.
Actually, I use the term "ladies" quite loosely here, since as you'll soon discover, both of them were anything but.
The Queen of Mean
In 1972, for her third husband, she married one of New York's most powerful real estate tycoons. After convincing him to divorce his wife of 33 years.
Harry Helmsley owned several celebrated Manhattan towers, including the fabled Empire State and Flatiron buildings. He also owned a chain of upscale hotels, for which his new, 52-year-old wife became a famous spokesperson. She ended up going to prison after an employee complained about how company money was being lavished on such excesses as a $1 million marble dance floor at the couple's Connecticut estate.
She, of course, was Leona Helmsley, who perhaps is most famous for her indisputably elitist quote, "only the little people pay taxes." She died in 2007 at age 87, after attempting to cheat her husband's business partners out of millions of dollars, being sued for firing at least two gay employees because of their sexual preference, and leaving $12 million for her dog, Trouble, in her will.
Leona was back in the news recently after her Connecticut estate, Dunnellen Hall, sold for a paltry $35 million. I say "paltry" because the original asking price for her exquisite 40-acre spread clocked in at an admittedly optimistic $125 million in 2008. For Greenwich, arguably the most extravagant of New York City's numerous silk stocking suburbs, such a closing price probably wouldn't even make the legal notices if it weren't for the legacy of its previous occupant, who died on the very site which heralded her public downfall.
Money Money Money Mon-ey
A successful real estate broker in her own right, she hit the jackpot upon seducing Helmsley, who until meeting her had led a relatively quiet life. Although acquaintances believed Leona truly adored Harry, her blatant use of matrimony for climbing the social ladder and her unchecked temper earned her few friends. Her imperious management style made for great Helmsley Hotel publicity, but she could barely muster enough maternal affection for her only child born during a previous marriage. When he died at the early age of 40, Leona kicked his family out of their house and called a $100,000 loan.Dragging Harry along for the ride, Leona went on a spending spree, pushing legal envelopes almost for sport. To avoid paying $40,000 in sales taxes, she got salesmen at an exclusive Manhattan jewelry store to say they'd mailed her purchases to her Connecticut country home, even though she'd walked out of their Midtown boutique with them. She itemized personal clothing purchases as uniforms for their Park Lane Hotel. Millions of dollars in upgrades to Dunnellen Hall were invoiced as business expenses.
When prosecutors managed to amass all of her tricks for tax evasion in court, 235 counts in all, she ended up owing various government entities $4 million. By this time, Harry had succumbed to senile dementia to the point where he was deemed unfit to stand trial. She ended up spending nearly two years in prison, and was supposed to serve 750 hours of community service, but Leona got hauled back into court after her employees complained she was making them perform her community service hours.
One of the Little People
My brush with the Helmsleys came, oddly enough, by one of their maids. When I worked in Lower Manhattan, our office building had a cleaning contract with the same firm the Helmsley's used to clean their New York real estate portfolio.
And wouldn't you know it, but the same cheerful, short Jamaican woman who cleaned their personal apartment at the Park Lane Hotel also cleaned our office. I forget her name now - I think it was Daisy - but I can still remember her round, full, sunny face, and her happy yet breathless voice, since she was quite stout. Particularly, however, I remember the stories she would tell!
By choice, I would often linger in the office after hours, trying to learn the ropes in the niche trade of freight brokerage. Daisy would show up at about 5:30pm, since back in the day, most New York offices closed at the stroke of five (so employees could line up in subway stations, waiting for trains). She would come straight from her day shift in the Helmsley's duplex penthouse in Midtown.
If she was married, she never talked about her husband, although she had a son she was trying to provide for with her extended workdays. Her English wasn't great, but we managed to communicate well, although at first, neither one of us really talked much. She'd just come in and empty the trash cans while I explored the company's recently-acquired customized freight forwarding software.
It wasn't until the beginning of Leona's trial on tax evasion that I learned Daisy worked in the Helmsley's private apartment. Humming softly to herself, Daisy would gently shuffle into the office pushing an industrial trashcan with a large feather duster sticking out of a side compartment, its feathers splayed upwards. She always greeted me with a muted, melodious hello, and questions about how wonderful my day must have been. But suddenly, she began coming to our offices in a state of grave concern. The contrast from her previously cheerful demeanor was too pronounced to ignore.
I asked her if something was wrong, and that's when she told me she cleaned the Helmsley's home during the day. At first, I really didn't believe her, but she would tell me things that I'd hear about the next day in the media. Nothing wildly confidential, of course, but attitudes of the Helmsleys, Harry's physical condition, and the like. Daisy constantly expressed personal angst about Harry's health and the toll his wife's trial was taking on the couple. According to Daisy, Harry would want her to sit and simply keep him company in their sumptuous penthouse whenever Leona was in court and he was too frail to attend. He didn't seem to understand that she was supposed to be cleaning the place.
Harry would sob to Daisy that people were making up dastardly lies about his beloved wife, and he couldn't understand what was happening. Being the kind-hearted woman she was, Daisy would sometimes get emotional as she unburdened her own soul to me in the privacy of our empty office. After all, some evenings, apparently I was the first person she talked with after spending her day with the confused, weepy, feeble owner of the Empire State Building.
Daisy claimed never to have seen the ugly side of Leona. The purported Queen of Mean, as New York's excitable tabloids dubbed her, would arrive home exhausted from her days in court, anxious for status reports about Harry, which Daisy sometimes delivered herself. Yet even though the stress must have been consuming her, Leona never treated the hotel staff harshly or even impolitely.
To Daisy, the Leona she heard about on the news wasn't the Leona she personally interacted with. The court's prison sentence confounded Daisy, and made her wonder aloud about the criminal justice system we have in the United States.
_____
Next: Part Two - South Street Annie
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Throwing Good Money After Bad Parents
For years, New York's unique tier of stratospherically-rich denizens has tried to do a very good thing.
They've tried to educate the city's vast population of woefully impoverished schoolchildren.
It's been said that the best place to panhandle in Manhattan is just outside the New York Stock Exchange after the trading floor closes. Then, hundreds of stock brokers leave for the evening, shackled with guilt over how they've bet against their fellow human beings that day. Their angst compels them to try and buy some peace of mind at the hands of the city's down-and-out. At least, that's the story. And it's not hard to imagine that a charitable cocktail of altruism tinged with remorse isn't a soothing elixir for Wall Street's less noble players.
But some businesspeople and corporate titans have far more practical motivations for their largess. If New York City can't graduate its own kids with a savvy mastery of basic life skills, where are the city's many companies going to find the workers they'll need tomorrow, next year, or in ten years? Sure, periods of high unemployment cycle through the towers of Manhattan like they do everyplace else, and corporate belt-tightening means that fewer people do more work than ever before. But there isn't a corporation yet that has gone entirely virtual.
One of the Big Apple's best assets has historically been it large, well-educated, and industrious workforce. But, like has happened in all major urban centers in the United States, that supply of prepared workers has been evaporating during the past several decades. It's a phenomenon that could decimate our national productivity if left unchecked, because we're talking about millions of kids matriculating through their high school years with little marketable knowledge and even less intelligence to show for it.
Yet Another Big Idea Grows in Harlem
Sometimes, the aid lavished upon New York's "least of these" by those who've made their fortunes downtown has proven be worth it, perhaps not in sheer volume, but at least in the brilliance of graduates who go on to leave poverty behind. But the very fact that institutionalized poverty continues to grind away at the core of urban America proves that inner-city education initiatives have yet to meet the full-scale challenge of producing educated kids.
It's in view of this bleak backdrop that I've read an account in the New York Times today about yet another chic Harlem-based great-intentions program designed to salvage some of the city's poorest kids from the clutches of poverty. The brainchild of Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children's Zone consists of two charter schools featuring ultra-low student-teacher ratios paid for by a privileged roster of wealthy New York benefactors, including two billionaires.
It's enough to make your heart swell up with admiration, as long as you don't read too far ahead in the Times' article. For in describing Canada's intentions for his program, reporter Sharon Otterman unintentionally reveals why, ultimately, Harlem Children's Zone won't work:
"Mr. Canada, 58, who began putting his ideas into practice on a single block, on West 119th Street, in the mid-1990s, does not apologize for the cost of his model, saying his goals are wider than just fixing a school or two. His hope is to prove that if money is spent in a concentrated way to give poor children the things middle-class children take for granted — like high-quality schooling, a safe neighborhood, parents who read to them, and good medical care — they will not pass on the patterns of poverty to another generation.
"'You could, in theory, figure out a less costly way of working with a small number of kids, and providing them with an education,” Mr. Canada said. “But that is not what we are attempting to do. We are attempting to save a community and its kids all at the same time.'"
Wow - did you catch that? Canada isn't so much interested in actually providing an education as he is negating the role that parents should be playing in the nurture and development of their children.
Parents Remain the Key
Now, maybe Canada himself hasn't realized that yet, but chances are, he knows he's operating with a view towards treating education as a supplanter of the family. Because we've all known for years that the problem with urban education isn't so much the quality of the teachers, the physical condition of the classrooms, or even the availability of current technologies, but the involvement of parents in the instructional development of their own children.
Yes, some suburban kids from dysfunctional parents fail at school. But some urban kids with loving parents who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods manage to succeed brilliantly. Do safe streets, clean schools, plenty of computers, dedicated teachers, and compelling curriculum help kids learn better? Of course they do. But the fact that kids can learn well without these tools, and that even with the tools they can fail, the lesson seems perfectly stark: you need the parents!
Now, at this point, readers of this blog who either homeschool their kids and/or were homeschooled themselves are saying to their computer monitors: "Homeschooling frees you from the institutionalization of education so you don't have to worry about all of this!"
But even the most ardent supporter of homeschooling must admit that not every family can homeschool. We need to all agree that public school is here to stay, and that even if you choose not to use it, you're still paying taxes to fund it. So we should all want it to work well for the kids who, for whatever reason, get their education there.
Yet I have to concede to the homeschoolers one of their most cherished assertions: educational success significantly depends on the parents. And in his Harlem Children's Zone model, Canada is trying to defy that proven fact. Sure, he's got small class sizes and he strives to employ only the most student-focused teachers. Sure, he's dealing with a discouraging cohort of kids whose parents will not play a significant factor in their education - indeed, they may act as a significant disruption in their education. Some would come to Canada's defense, saying he's trying to make the best of a really bad situation. And all of this is accurate.
But he's just plugging a hole in the poverty dike with his index finger, isn't he?
Without a viable model for integrating parents - however poor or uneducated they may be themselves - into the time-consuming, emotionally-intensive, self-denying, long-term investment of their children, the quality of that child's education will only serve as a reflection of how well you've been able to mask the child's intuitive sense of parental disconnect, and what that really means: that their parents really don't love them.
All You Need Is...
There. I've said it. The "L" word.
Liberals have danced around it for generations. It's not politically correct to question the quality of parenting in ghettos. And yes, dysfunctional urban parents exhibit the same callousness towards their children as dysfunctional suburban ones. But until parents who blame everything else for their problems to avoid confronting their own narcissism proactively insert themselves into the educational process of their children, public education as we know it - particularly in impoverished communities - will continue to unravel.
And if Canada and his patrons actually love these kids more than their own parents do - which, judging by the effort, time, and money they're expending, may be the case - there still aren't enough people like them to go around for all of the kids whose parents are AWOL, either emotionally, physically, or both.
Indeed, sometimes, it's not even about money.
Generally speaking the parent who lives to work and hardly ever carves out enough time to check homework, attend parent-teacher meetings, quiz their child on multiplication tables and vocabulary words, and marvel at baking-soda science projects will most likely end up with the same type of kid whose parents slept with different partners every other night, used drugs, participated in domestic violence, was in jail, or got shot robbing a liquor store. Maybe your kid will turn out to be a well-adjusted genius anyway, but most likely, they won't.
They'll be just like you. Because that's what you taught them.
_____
They've tried to educate the city's vast population of woefully impoverished schoolchildren.
It's been said that the best place to panhandle in Manhattan is just outside the New York Stock Exchange after the trading floor closes. Then, hundreds of stock brokers leave for the evening, shackled with guilt over how they've bet against their fellow human beings that day. Their angst compels them to try and buy some peace of mind at the hands of the city's down-and-out. At least, that's the story. And it's not hard to imagine that a charitable cocktail of altruism tinged with remorse isn't a soothing elixir for Wall Street's less noble players.
But some businesspeople and corporate titans have far more practical motivations for their largess. If New York City can't graduate its own kids with a savvy mastery of basic life skills, where are the city's many companies going to find the workers they'll need tomorrow, next year, or in ten years? Sure, periods of high unemployment cycle through the towers of Manhattan like they do everyplace else, and corporate belt-tightening means that fewer people do more work than ever before. But there isn't a corporation yet that has gone entirely virtual.
One of the Big Apple's best assets has historically been it large, well-educated, and industrious workforce. But, like has happened in all major urban centers in the United States, that supply of prepared workers has been evaporating during the past several decades. It's a phenomenon that could decimate our national productivity if left unchecked, because we're talking about millions of kids matriculating through their high school years with little marketable knowledge and even less intelligence to show for it.
Yet Another Big Idea Grows in Harlem
Sometimes, the aid lavished upon New York's "least of these" by those who've made their fortunes downtown has proven be worth it, perhaps not in sheer volume, but at least in the brilliance of graduates who go on to leave poverty behind. But the very fact that institutionalized poverty continues to grind away at the core of urban America proves that inner-city education initiatives have yet to meet the full-scale challenge of producing educated kids.
It's in view of this bleak backdrop that I've read an account in the New York Times today about yet another chic Harlem-based great-intentions program designed to salvage some of the city's poorest kids from the clutches of poverty. The brainchild of Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children's Zone consists of two charter schools featuring ultra-low student-teacher ratios paid for by a privileged roster of wealthy New York benefactors, including two billionaires.
It's enough to make your heart swell up with admiration, as long as you don't read too far ahead in the Times' article. For in describing Canada's intentions for his program, reporter Sharon Otterman unintentionally reveals why, ultimately, Harlem Children's Zone won't work:
"Mr. Canada, 58, who began putting his ideas into practice on a single block, on West 119th Street, in the mid-1990s, does not apologize for the cost of his model, saying his goals are wider than just fixing a school or two. His hope is to prove that if money is spent in a concentrated way to give poor children the things middle-class children take for granted — like high-quality schooling, a safe neighborhood, parents who read to them, and good medical care — they will not pass on the patterns of poverty to another generation.
"'You could, in theory, figure out a less costly way of working with a small number of kids, and providing them with an education,” Mr. Canada said. “But that is not what we are attempting to do. We are attempting to save a community and its kids all at the same time.'"
Wow - did you catch that? Canada isn't so much interested in actually providing an education as he is negating the role that parents should be playing in the nurture and development of their children.
Parents Remain the Key
Now, maybe Canada himself hasn't realized that yet, but chances are, he knows he's operating with a view towards treating education as a supplanter of the family. Because we've all known for years that the problem with urban education isn't so much the quality of the teachers, the physical condition of the classrooms, or even the availability of current technologies, but the involvement of parents in the instructional development of their own children.
Yes, some suburban kids from dysfunctional parents fail at school. But some urban kids with loving parents who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods manage to succeed brilliantly. Do safe streets, clean schools, plenty of computers, dedicated teachers, and compelling curriculum help kids learn better? Of course they do. But the fact that kids can learn well without these tools, and that even with the tools they can fail, the lesson seems perfectly stark: you need the parents!
Now, at this point, readers of this blog who either homeschool their kids and/or were homeschooled themselves are saying to their computer monitors: "Homeschooling frees you from the institutionalization of education so you don't have to worry about all of this!"
But even the most ardent supporter of homeschooling must admit that not every family can homeschool. We need to all agree that public school is here to stay, and that even if you choose not to use it, you're still paying taxes to fund it. So we should all want it to work well for the kids who, for whatever reason, get their education there.
Yet I have to concede to the homeschoolers one of their most cherished assertions: educational success significantly depends on the parents. And in his Harlem Children's Zone model, Canada is trying to defy that proven fact. Sure, he's got small class sizes and he strives to employ only the most student-focused teachers. Sure, he's dealing with a discouraging cohort of kids whose parents will not play a significant factor in their education - indeed, they may act as a significant disruption in their education. Some would come to Canada's defense, saying he's trying to make the best of a really bad situation. And all of this is accurate.
But he's just plugging a hole in the poverty dike with his index finger, isn't he?
Without a viable model for integrating parents - however poor or uneducated they may be themselves - into the time-consuming, emotionally-intensive, self-denying, long-term investment of their children, the quality of that child's education will only serve as a reflection of how well you've been able to mask the child's intuitive sense of parental disconnect, and what that really means: that their parents really don't love them.
All You Need Is...
There. I've said it. The "L" word.
Liberals have danced around it for generations. It's not politically correct to question the quality of parenting in ghettos. And yes, dysfunctional urban parents exhibit the same callousness towards their children as dysfunctional suburban ones. But until parents who blame everything else for their problems to avoid confronting their own narcissism proactively insert themselves into the educational process of their children, public education as we know it - particularly in impoverished communities - will continue to unravel.
And if Canada and his patrons actually love these kids more than their own parents do - which, judging by the effort, time, and money they're expending, may be the case - there still aren't enough people like them to go around for all of the kids whose parents are AWOL, either emotionally, physically, or both.
Indeed, sometimes, it's not even about money.
Generally speaking the parent who lives to work and hardly ever carves out enough time to check homework, attend parent-teacher meetings, quiz their child on multiplication tables and vocabulary words, and marvel at baking-soda science projects will most likely end up with the same type of kid whose parents slept with different partners every other night, used drugs, participated in domestic violence, was in jail, or got shot robbing a liquor store. Maybe your kid will turn out to be a well-adjusted genius anyway, but most likely, they won't.
They'll be just like you. Because that's what you taught them.
_____
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Columbus Daze - Part 2
For Part 1, click here
Christian or Catholic? (continued)
You see, it’s not good enough to simply assume the flowery Christian-esque writings of Columbus adequately testify to his orthodox Christian faith. Catholicism and the Christianity of Martin Luther – and by extension most present-day evangelicals – are two different things. While you can be saved and call yourself a Roman Catholic, you cannot be a papist Catholic – what we would consider to be a conventional Roman Catholic – and believe that Christ offers the only way to salvation.
So how do we know that Columbus wasn’t saved? Well, we don’t. But we can prove that he was probably a papist, or Roman Catholic, by virtue of his very own writings and admissions.
Historians claim that his professed favorite prayer, which he would recite in Latin, was Jesu cum Maria sit nobis in via, which means "may Jesus with Mary be with us on the way."
Any evangelical can see right away that ascribing relatively equal significance to Mary as to Jesus represents heresy. The mother of Jesus may indeed have been most favored by God, but He never made her a deity. Mary cannot save anybody, nor can she convey prayers to God which people have sent to her. Nobody but Christ is our mediator.
In addition to his supposed favorite prayer, Columbus’ personal writings betray a man of stunning narcissism and religious fantasy which make it extremely difficult to qualify his Christian orthodoxy. For example, in his Letter of 1490 to his royal patrons in Spain, in which he outlined one of his expeditions, he enumerated 16 bullet points of content. One has to do with the provision of priests for conversion of the natives, two deal with provisions for civil affairs in the “New World,” and a whopping 11 bullet points detail the ways he intends to safeguard the gold he hopes to seize for Isabella and Ferdinand.
Maybe this is simply a good example of honoring one’s employers, but the focus on material riches appears to trump what some modern evangelicals have claimed to be Columbus’ overriding burden to see natives in the “New World” redeemed through the preaching of the Gospel.
Ethnocentrism Run Amok?
Speaking of redeeming the natives, Columbus doesn’t appear to have had a very good track record when it came to diplomacy and evangelism. Historians believe they have evidence of brutality and human rights atrocities committed, if not by Columbus himself, then by his men. Was Columbus at least complicit by his acquiescence to such things? Other explorers who claimed to have witnessed some of the atrocities committed by Columbus' crew actually convinced Spanish authorities to prohibit Columbus from being a ruler in the very land he “discovered.”
Indeed, liberal historians who have been accused by conservatives of revising history have been able to find substantial evidence that Columbus wasn’t as much a finder of the “New World” as he was an exploiter of it. He seemed less interested in validating the legitimacy of heathen cultures he encountered as he was estimating everything's value. His Spanish Catholic ethnocentrism marginalized the people groups he found here and allowed him to justify the abhorrent way he and his crews treated them. That’s not exactly the type of Christian I want to celebrate.
Self-Proclaimed Prophet?
Even more troubling than Columbus' motivations and actions - whether they were for the conversion of heathen natives or the fantastical visions of riches awaiting discovery - are his own writings. In them, Columbus ascribes disjointed and marginally heretical apocalyptic prophecies to his own self. In other words, Columbus appropriates Biblical passages foretelling the end of the world, and presumes to be the heir-apparent of God’s promises to send Christ back to the Earth after His Gospel is proclaimed across it.
Finding the missing link to Asia would, in Columbus’ mind, usher in an era when the Catholic Church could proselytize across the planet. Islam had already been defeated, or so he thought. What else was left except reaching the farthest corner of the globe for the Roman Catholics?
For example, in his mystical Book of Prophecies, Columbus quotes from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, with God telling Jeremiah: "I formed you in the womb. I knew you before you were born. I set you apart. I set you as a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5).
Then, in reference to this passage, Columbus speaks to the Lord, "This is what You ordained beforehand according to Your good pleasure, such as were written in Your book about me, in conformity with your secret purpose" (Book of Prophecies, Folio 15).
Don’t you have to be mighty confident in yourself - if not a little removed from reality - to even presume to place yourself as the equivalent of Jeremiah in the year 1492?
The Legacy of Columbus
In a way, the story of Columbus represents the typical conundrum faced by succeeding generations attempting to analyze the actions and accomplishments of such extroverted, Type-A, pivotal people. Indeed, he defies simple classifications and ascriptions. And he's inordinately blamed for much that would have happened eventually anyway.
Did Columbus and his crews introduce previously unknown diseases to the indigenous tribespeople of the Western Hemisphere? Probably. Did they take back syphilis to Europe? Maybe. But wouldn’t any explorer from any part of the world have done the same thing unintentionally, back when the science of diseases remained in its infancy? What if explorers had come from Asia to the western coasts of the Western Hemisphere? What diseases might they have brought?
Did Columbus and his crews perpetrate unholy and inhumane practices on the indigenous people groups they discovered here? Did they deceive them and plunder from them? Almost certainly. Just as any other discoverer hundreds of years ago likely would have done.
Did they foist authoritarian, foreign regimes and religion on the natives? Did they establish practices to exploit natural resources to the detriment of the natives? Did they exponentially expand the reaches of the burgeoning international slave trade?
Yes, yes, and yes. But from a historical perspective, how much does it really matter that it was Columbus who did it, and not another explorer working for another empire-building nation or the already-lucrative African slave industry?
World history is as imperfect as its participants. And hindsight is always 20/20. If our world lasts long enough, what will generations 400 or 600 years from ours say about us? By no means do I mean to imply that Columbus did no wrong. Just because Columbus opened up a completely new chapter of world history doesn't give him bonus points, free sins, or the legendary indulgences of his contemporary Catholic church. None of this is to absolve Columbus of any culpability for what today we would consider crimes against humanity. We're all responsible for what we do and don't do in life, no matter who we are. My purpose here is simply to indemnify Columbus as the only explorer capable of such things. Who knows? Somebody else could have been much worse.
Columbus in Light of God's Sovereignty
Columbus' expeditions remind us of the power of history's trajectory. But the epic tale of Christopher Columbus also raises questions that black-and-white conservative ideology can't answer. By allowing Columbus to establish the trade routes that contributed to the eventual exploitation of the Western Hemisphere, was God blessing Columbus and rewarding his faith, or simply allowing a more beneficent scenario through Columbus as opposed to a tyrannical despot from Asia or England? Was God indeed intentionally moving to establish what would become the United States? Was Columbus the key component in establishing what right-wing conservatives unfortunately misquote as "a city on a hill?"
Or was he just an ego-maniacal bounty hunter, twisted by anguishing visions of salvific authority and brainwashed by vainglorious papist rhetoric? Somebody who makes for a great hero, but a lousy human being?
In the end, from the perspective of God's eternal sovereignty, how much does that really matter to us? I'm not sure. But can't we at least appreciate the stunning and completely history-changing precedent Columbus managed to set? Not as the discoverer of the "New World" per say, but as the first maritime explorer to chart his way to and from our vast hemisphere. Can you imagine what a feat that was in his day and age? For better or worse, his story rings with amazing parallels to other epic struggles of history, including the strife between Christendom and Islam, the gap between technology and the lack thereof, the blindness of ethnocentrism, and the rubric that money never buys contentment.
Does it matter if God used Columbus instead of somebody else to establish a viable trade route to the Western Hemisphere? Eventually, anybody sailing west would have hit our eastern shores and found their way back home; does it matter that God allowed Columbus to be the first? I'm not sure. That's the thing about God's sovereignty: it's His, not ours.
Evangelicals and Their New Love for Columbus
Does it matter that Columbus probably wasn't somebody whose faith modern evangelicals should embrace? Yes! That does matter!
It's been a relatively recent phenomenon, this urge by right-wing people of faith to redeem historical figures to orthodox Christianity. They've done it with Washington, they've tried to do it with Jefferson and Franklin, and Columbus has also been subjected to their own version of revisionist history.
God has allowed perfectly evil men to accomplish astonishing things throughout history. Consider Herod, Hitler, and Mao. Yet He always fulfills His perfect will no matter how heinous the motivations of mankind. Could it be that despite the fallacies of Columbus' exploits, God ordained for the United States to flourish anyway?
We don't know for certain, do we? So why bother with idle speculation? Let's just take what we do know about Columbus and marvel at how God's ageless plan for our universe continues to unfold.
Exploration exists as a God-given motivator. With it, we can learn more about His Creation, and by example, more about Him as the Creator. Just like everything else, it's what we do with our opportunities for exploration that counts. On that score, you have to ignore an awful lot of history to redeem the personal legacy of Christopher Columbus.
Maybe that's why it's best we leave that task to God.
_____
Christian or Catholic? (continued)
You see, it’s not good enough to simply assume the flowery Christian-esque writings of Columbus adequately testify to his orthodox Christian faith. Catholicism and the Christianity of Martin Luther – and by extension most present-day evangelicals – are two different things. While you can be saved and call yourself a Roman Catholic, you cannot be a papist Catholic – what we would consider to be a conventional Roman Catholic – and believe that Christ offers the only way to salvation.
So how do we know that Columbus wasn’t saved? Well, we don’t. But we can prove that he was probably a papist, or Roman Catholic, by virtue of his very own writings and admissions.
Historians claim that his professed favorite prayer, which he would recite in Latin, was Jesu cum Maria sit nobis in via, which means "may Jesus with Mary be with us on the way."
Any evangelical can see right away that ascribing relatively equal significance to Mary as to Jesus represents heresy. The mother of Jesus may indeed have been most favored by God, but He never made her a deity. Mary cannot save anybody, nor can she convey prayers to God which people have sent to her. Nobody but Christ is our mediator.
In addition to his supposed favorite prayer, Columbus’ personal writings betray a man of stunning narcissism and religious fantasy which make it extremely difficult to qualify his Christian orthodoxy. For example, in his Letter of 1490 to his royal patrons in Spain, in which he outlined one of his expeditions, he enumerated 16 bullet points of content. One has to do with the provision of priests for conversion of the natives, two deal with provisions for civil affairs in the “New World,” and a whopping 11 bullet points detail the ways he intends to safeguard the gold he hopes to seize for Isabella and Ferdinand.
Maybe this is simply a good example of honoring one’s employers, but the focus on material riches appears to trump what some modern evangelicals have claimed to be Columbus’ overriding burden to see natives in the “New World” redeemed through the preaching of the Gospel.
Ethnocentrism Run Amok?
Speaking of redeeming the natives, Columbus doesn’t appear to have had a very good track record when it came to diplomacy and evangelism. Historians believe they have evidence of brutality and human rights atrocities committed, if not by Columbus himself, then by his men. Was Columbus at least complicit by his acquiescence to such things? Other explorers who claimed to have witnessed some of the atrocities committed by Columbus' crew actually convinced Spanish authorities to prohibit Columbus from being a ruler in the very land he “discovered.”
Indeed, liberal historians who have been accused by conservatives of revising history have been able to find substantial evidence that Columbus wasn’t as much a finder of the “New World” as he was an exploiter of it. He seemed less interested in validating the legitimacy of heathen cultures he encountered as he was estimating everything's value. His Spanish Catholic ethnocentrism marginalized the people groups he found here and allowed him to justify the abhorrent way he and his crews treated them. That’s not exactly the type of Christian I want to celebrate.
Self-Proclaimed Prophet?
Even more troubling than Columbus' motivations and actions - whether they were for the conversion of heathen natives or the fantastical visions of riches awaiting discovery - are his own writings. In them, Columbus ascribes disjointed and marginally heretical apocalyptic prophecies to his own self. In other words, Columbus appropriates Biblical passages foretelling the end of the world, and presumes to be the heir-apparent of God’s promises to send Christ back to the Earth after His Gospel is proclaimed across it.
Finding the missing link to Asia would, in Columbus’ mind, usher in an era when the Catholic Church could proselytize across the planet. Islam had already been defeated, or so he thought. What else was left except reaching the farthest corner of the globe for the Roman Catholics?
For example, in his mystical Book of Prophecies, Columbus quotes from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, with God telling Jeremiah: "I formed you in the womb. I knew you before you were born. I set you apart. I set you as a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5).
Then, in reference to this passage, Columbus speaks to the Lord, "This is what You ordained beforehand according to Your good pleasure, such as were written in Your book about me, in conformity with your secret purpose" (Book of Prophecies, Folio 15).
Don’t you have to be mighty confident in yourself - if not a little removed from reality - to even presume to place yourself as the equivalent of Jeremiah in the year 1492?
The Legacy of Columbus
In a way, the story of Columbus represents the typical conundrum faced by succeeding generations attempting to analyze the actions and accomplishments of such extroverted, Type-A, pivotal people. Indeed, he defies simple classifications and ascriptions. And he's inordinately blamed for much that would have happened eventually anyway.
Did Columbus and his crews introduce previously unknown diseases to the indigenous tribespeople of the Western Hemisphere? Probably. Did they take back syphilis to Europe? Maybe. But wouldn’t any explorer from any part of the world have done the same thing unintentionally, back when the science of diseases remained in its infancy? What if explorers had come from Asia to the western coasts of the Western Hemisphere? What diseases might they have brought?
Did Columbus and his crews perpetrate unholy and inhumane practices on the indigenous people groups they discovered here? Did they deceive them and plunder from them? Almost certainly. Just as any other discoverer hundreds of years ago likely would have done.
Did they foist authoritarian, foreign regimes and religion on the natives? Did they establish practices to exploit natural resources to the detriment of the natives? Did they exponentially expand the reaches of the burgeoning international slave trade?
Yes, yes, and yes. But from a historical perspective, how much does it really matter that it was Columbus who did it, and not another explorer working for another empire-building nation or the already-lucrative African slave industry?
World history is as imperfect as its participants. And hindsight is always 20/20. If our world lasts long enough, what will generations 400 or 600 years from ours say about us? By no means do I mean to imply that Columbus did no wrong. Just because Columbus opened up a completely new chapter of world history doesn't give him bonus points, free sins, or the legendary indulgences of his contemporary Catholic church. None of this is to absolve Columbus of any culpability for what today we would consider crimes against humanity. We're all responsible for what we do and don't do in life, no matter who we are. My purpose here is simply to indemnify Columbus as the only explorer capable of such things. Who knows? Somebody else could have been much worse.
Columbus in Light of God's Sovereignty
Columbus' expeditions remind us of the power of history's trajectory. But the epic tale of Christopher Columbus also raises questions that black-and-white conservative ideology can't answer. By allowing Columbus to establish the trade routes that contributed to the eventual exploitation of the Western Hemisphere, was God blessing Columbus and rewarding his faith, or simply allowing a more beneficent scenario through Columbus as opposed to a tyrannical despot from Asia or England? Was God indeed intentionally moving to establish what would become the United States? Was Columbus the key component in establishing what right-wing conservatives unfortunately misquote as "a city on a hill?"
Or was he just an ego-maniacal bounty hunter, twisted by anguishing visions of salvific authority and brainwashed by vainglorious papist rhetoric? Somebody who makes for a great hero, but a lousy human being?
In the end, from the perspective of God's eternal sovereignty, how much does that really matter to us? I'm not sure. But can't we at least appreciate the stunning and completely history-changing precedent Columbus managed to set? Not as the discoverer of the "New World" per say, but as the first maritime explorer to chart his way to and from our vast hemisphere. Can you imagine what a feat that was in his day and age? For better or worse, his story rings with amazing parallels to other epic struggles of history, including the strife between Christendom and Islam, the gap between technology and the lack thereof, the blindness of ethnocentrism, and the rubric that money never buys contentment.
Does it matter if God used Columbus instead of somebody else to establish a viable trade route to the Western Hemisphere? Eventually, anybody sailing west would have hit our eastern shores and found their way back home; does it matter that God allowed Columbus to be the first? I'm not sure. That's the thing about God's sovereignty: it's His, not ours.
Evangelicals and Their New Love for Columbus
Does it matter that Columbus probably wasn't somebody whose faith modern evangelicals should embrace? Yes! That does matter!
It's been a relatively recent phenomenon, this urge by right-wing people of faith to redeem historical figures to orthodox Christianity. They've done it with Washington, they've tried to do it with Jefferson and Franklin, and Columbus has also been subjected to their own version of revisionist history.
God has allowed perfectly evil men to accomplish astonishing things throughout history. Consider Herod, Hitler, and Mao. Yet He always fulfills His perfect will no matter how heinous the motivations of mankind. Could it be that despite the fallacies of Columbus' exploits, God ordained for the United States to flourish anyway?
We don't know for certain, do we? So why bother with idle speculation? Let's just take what we do know about Columbus and marvel at how God's ageless plan for our universe continues to unfold.
Exploration exists as a God-given motivator. With it, we can learn more about His Creation, and by example, more about Him as the Creator. Just like everything else, it's what we do with our opportunities for exploration that counts. On that score, you have to ignore an awful lot of history to redeem the personal legacy of Christopher Columbus.
Maybe that's why it's best we leave that task to God.
_____
Monday, October 11, 2010
Columbus Daze - Part 1
What you think about Christopher Columbus says a lot about your heritage.
- If you're a Native American, a Caribbean native, or a native of Central or South America, you probably consider Columbus to be a barbaric marauder who introduced previously unknown diseases to the Western Hemisphere and pillaged its natural resources.
- If you're a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant, you probably consider Columbus to be the great explorer who discovered the New World.
- If you're a super-conservative church-going WASP, you may consider Columbus to be God's gift to western civilization.
- If you're a liberal Ivy Leaguer, you probably consider Columbus to be the seminal cause of every problem western civilization has known since 1492.
- If you're Spanish or Italian, you probably gush with pride over the accomplishments this intelligent, long suffering, single-minded, and quintessentially charismatic man managed to achieve when everybody else thought the world was flat.
Sailing the Ocean Blue
Well, like most characters of history whose legacy has grown larger than life over the intervening centuries, Columbus really was a little of everything.
Except the first person to say the world wasn't flat. Greeks had been claiming the Earth is spherical since the Third Century BC. And Columbus's four voyages didn't necessarily prove the Earth is round, either. Ferdinand Magellan did that in 1521.
But Columbus did indeed achieve a stunning global feat with his exploits in search of a new spice route to Asia. He persuaded Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain to bankroll his excursions and let him share in the profits. And while he wasn't the first person to discover the New World of the Western Hemisphere (where'd all those natives he met here come from?), he did establish nautical trade routes to this land mass, even if it wasn't the Orient. That is his claim to fame which nobody can deny. A master navigator, Columbus literally charted new waters to open up new territories... for exploration, as his supporters see it; or exploitation, as his detractors see it.
Either way, "discovery" of the "New World" was unavoidable.
For even in 1492, the world was becoming increasingly smaller and global. Eventually, somebody in Europe or Africa was bound to want whatever lay west of the world they already knew. You see, "go west, young man" isn't so much an American expression as it is one of western civilization as a whole. And for the Spaniards, fresh from defeating Islamists and restoring Roman Catholicism after generations of war, the close of the 15th Century brought heady days of victory. Their newfound sense of invincibility helped grease the wheels of ambition driving Columbus across the Atlantic.
Had Asians been the first to establish a globally-relevant sociopolitical beachhead on the Western Hemisphere, world history would have taken a completely different course. America's pioneers would have said "go east, young man" in a decidedly Asian accent. The natives who were here when Columbus arrived obviously hadn't the sophistication or inclination to establish robust ties with Asia, Europe, or Africa, so our continent was ripe for incursion from across either the Atlantic or Pacific. Was it Columbus' fault that he possessed both the technological ability and the audacious determination to secure a stronghold here before the British, the Dutch, or the Chinese?
Villain or Hero?
Today, educated elites like to join in the Columbus-bashing that "New World" natives and Columbus' own rival explorers began during his day. For a man who really only plotted the coordinates to a new source for raw materials, Columbus has been vilified for so much more. It's easy to forget that if he didn't discover the new trade route which he mistakenly thought had landed him in Asia, somebody else would have. Maybe somebody with less loyalty to European royalty, yet even more narcissism in his own personal fate. Would somebody else other than Columbus have been better? We'll never know.
You see, Columbus was himself a piece of work. He considered himself an emissary of God to trigger the Apocalypse and a Biblical Heaven on Earth. His writings, which have been characterized as either delusional by critics or prophetic by admirers, depict his voyages as not only an emphatic coda to the demise of Islam (oh, if only that were the case!), but also the extension of the spreading of the Gospel. He believed that once everyone on Earth is taught Christianity, then Christ will return to reign over the world. Columbus even claims this as his motivation for exploration in his treatise, The Book of Prophesies.
Some scholars claim The Book of Prophesies merely represents his desperate bid to cajole Isabella and Ferdinand to keep financing his trips to the Americas. Others claim that it was a reverential exegesis of Columbus' personal faith, and as such represents a manifestation of divine providence in the founding of what became the United States.
Indeed, having become the caricature of New World exploration, Columbus has been enshrined by many right-wing conservatives as a Christian hero who was directed by God to establish a beachhead of Christianity upon these previously heathen shores. And while it's impossible to deny that God allowed Columbus to be the explorer who navigated the first commercially-viable route between the Western Hemisphere and Europe, it's not entirely possible to claim that Columbus believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior.
Christian or Catholic?
As a glorified emissary of the Spanish crown, Columbus would have been well-versed in the stoic imperatives and colloquialisms of the Roman Catholic Church vis-a-vis sovereignty. He desired fame. He became obsessed with end-times prophecies. Some have even even suggested he may have been Jewish and the victim of anti-Semitism. Might all of these factors have combined to make him a gifted mariner as well as a skilled salesman with extraordinary drive? Evangelical in tone, his writings gush with lavish, well-honed euphemisms from the Catholic lexicon validating his zeal and self-aggrandizement. Columbus certainly knew how to extract favors from his royal patrons.
European monarchs generally contrived their authority from misquoted Biblical texts, which the Roman Catholic Church was only to happy to promulgate as long as it fit their interests. So for Columbus to serve both the church and the crown by his voyages to the Americas, he would have to meet with their favor. Especially after his first return voyage, when he proved he knew how to get back home, contrary to the fatalistic expectations of his sovereigns. It's worth noting that the contract for his first trip rewarded Columbus handsomely upon his homecoming in part because Isabella and Ferdinand never thought they'd see him again.
Part of the problem with ascribing saintly affection to Columbus involves the murky character of the Roman Catholic Church during this time. You see, 25 years after Columbus first landed on our continent, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a Roman Catholic Church door in Germany, marking the beginning of Protestantism's split from the faith of Columbus. Doesn't this challenge the generally Christianized interpretation of his God-given destiny, the assumed parity between Roman Catholicism in Columbus' day and orthodox Christianity, and the validity of his personal faith in the Trinity?
Tomorrow: Conclusion (and it's not as anti-Columbus as you may think!)
_____
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Times, are They a' Changin'?
One of the reasons people assume I'm a fascist liberal comes from the fact that I read the New York Times. I'm not afraid to admit it: yes, I read the world's most influential newspaper.
Actually, people far more conservative than I read it, too. Something about keeping your friends close and your enemies even closer. After all, what better place to get a quick pulse on the liberal elite than reading what many people consider to be the holy grail of left-wing drivel?
For years, and through innumerable Republican administrations, the bane of afflicted conservatives has been the editorial board of the New York Times. Pontificators of the politically-correct and manipulators of information, these Ivy League muckrakers (I'm talking about the Times editors here) couldn't tell the truth from Democratically doctored spin if their evolutionary reality depended on it.
But has years of robotically championing the left begun to take its toll on the Big Apple's venerable rag?
The UN Ain't All That
For my first proof I refer you to Exhibit A, an article from October third's online edition of the Times, in which reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, whom I've quoted before, muses out loud whether or not the Republican's other evil empire, the United Nations, has lost its humanitarian touch.
Gettleman's title, "Frenzy of rape in Congo reveals UN weakness," reveals more than the atrocities continuing to dehumanize this strife-ridden African country. He lets it slip that the UN's vice-like grip on happy-days self-aggrandizement appears to be over, at least at the New York Times.
Speaking of UN peacekeepers being absurdly ineffective in Congo, Gettleman bluntly asserts, "Despite more than 10 years of experience and billions of dollars, the peacekeeping force still seems to be failing at its most elemental task: protecting civilians."
Of course, Republicans elicited a chorus of "duh!" upon reading such a succinct criticism from one of the Times' most celebrated reporters. Unfortunately, it all comes too late for the victims being brutalized within earshot of at least one UN base, as reported by Gettleman in this piece.
What a travesty. And no, I'm not referring to the length of time it's taken for the Times to even contemplate the possibility that the UN is at best a compromised organization.
Popping An Election Year Bubble
For my second proof, I refer you to Exhibit B, another article from the Times' October 3 online edition entitled "Cheap debt for corporations fails to spur economy" by Graham Bowley.
In his reporting on the trend of large companies sucking up oceans of cash at low interest rates, Bowley describes how the Federal Reserve's attempt at jump-starting the economy risks being foiled by such tactics. By intentionally suppressing interest rates, the Fed hoped to provide incentives for corporations to ramp up R&D and new hires with low-cost loans. Instead, already healthy companies are paying down debt and stockpiling cash reserves with this "cheap debt." In effect, they're taking advantage of a bad situation - which they helped create - and laughing all the way to the bank.
Now, some right-wing conservatives may have no problem with that, admiring the way corporate accountants have figured out how to have their cake and eat it, too. And the argument can be made that paying down existing debt and stockpiling reserves can make healthy companies even healthier. But what is the point at which companies actually imperil the very economy they depend on for their own viability by squandering cheap debt on their balance sheets instead of putting people - our own little economic engines - back to work?
Marveling at the Fed's assumptions and corporate America's incessant greed, Bowley admits out loud that "this situation underscores the limits of Washington policy makers’ power to stimulate the economy."
Wow - did he really say that? Did he really say that all the grandstanding, tinkering, and outright hand-tying our president and Congress have been perpetrating on our economy amounts to a hill of beans when it comes to getting businesses to do the right thing? Did Bowley actually put words in the Times' mouth amounting to a dismissal of Democratic chances for staying the course during these perilous financial times? During an election year?
Has the government-bureaucracy-loving shell of the New York Times begun to develop hairline cracks of doubt as to whether opposing laissez-faire and deregulation should be continued?
Or, considering that these two incidents of conservative hubris took place on the same day, maybe their editors had a little too much of something late into the night on October 2?
_____
Actually, people far more conservative than I read it, too. Something about keeping your friends close and your enemies even closer. After all, what better place to get a quick pulse on the liberal elite than reading what many people consider to be the holy grail of left-wing drivel?
For years, and through innumerable Republican administrations, the bane of afflicted conservatives has been the editorial board of the New York Times. Pontificators of the politically-correct and manipulators of information, these Ivy League muckrakers (I'm talking about the Times editors here) couldn't tell the truth from Democratically doctored spin if their evolutionary reality depended on it.
But has years of robotically championing the left begun to take its toll on the Big Apple's venerable rag?
The UN Ain't All That
For my first proof I refer you to Exhibit A, an article from October third's online edition of the Times, in which reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, whom I've quoted before, muses out loud whether or not the Republican's other evil empire, the United Nations, has lost its humanitarian touch.
Gettleman's title, "Frenzy of rape in Congo reveals UN weakness," reveals more than the atrocities continuing to dehumanize this strife-ridden African country. He lets it slip that the UN's vice-like grip on happy-days self-aggrandizement appears to be over, at least at the New York Times.
Speaking of UN peacekeepers being absurdly ineffective in Congo, Gettleman bluntly asserts, "Despite more than 10 years of experience and billions of dollars, the peacekeeping force still seems to be failing at its most elemental task: protecting civilians."
Of course, Republicans elicited a chorus of "duh!" upon reading such a succinct criticism from one of the Times' most celebrated reporters. Unfortunately, it all comes too late for the victims being brutalized within earshot of at least one UN base, as reported by Gettleman in this piece.
What a travesty. And no, I'm not referring to the length of time it's taken for the Times to even contemplate the possibility that the UN is at best a compromised organization.
Popping An Election Year Bubble
For my second proof, I refer you to Exhibit B, another article from the Times' October 3 online edition entitled "Cheap debt for corporations fails to spur economy" by Graham Bowley.
In his reporting on the trend of large companies sucking up oceans of cash at low interest rates, Bowley describes how the Federal Reserve's attempt at jump-starting the economy risks being foiled by such tactics. By intentionally suppressing interest rates, the Fed hoped to provide incentives for corporations to ramp up R&D and new hires with low-cost loans. Instead, already healthy companies are paying down debt and stockpiling cash reserves with this "cheap debt." In effect, they're taking advantage of a bad situation - which they helped create - and laughing all the way to the bank.
Now, some right-wing conservatives may have no problem with that, admiring the way corporate accountants have figured out how to have their cake and eat it, too. And the argument can be made that paying down existing debt and stockpiling reserves can make healthy companies even healthier. But what is the point at which companies actually imperil the very economy they depend on for their own viability by squandering cheap debt on their balance sheets instead of putting people - our own little economic engines - back to work?
Marveling at the Fed's assumptions and corporate America's incessant greed, Bowley admits out loud that "this situation underscores the limits of Washington policy makers’ power to stimulate the economy."
Wow - did he really say that? Did he really say that all the grandstanding, tinkering, and outright hand-tying our president and Congress have been perpetrating on our economy amounts to a hill of beans when it comes to getting businesses to do the right thing? Did Bowley actually put words in the Times' mouth amounting to a dismissal of Democratic chances for staying the course during these perilous financial times? During an election year?
Has the government-bureaucracy-loving shell of the New York Times begun to develop hairline cracks of doubt as to whether opposing laissez-faire and deregulation should be continued?
Or, considering that these two incidents of conservative hubris took place on the same day, maybe their editors had a little too much of something late into the night on October 2?
_____
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
All That Ain't Hallowed - Part 2
For Part 1, click here.
Treat or Trick?
Believers in Christ should exercise discretion with Halloween because it exists today as a component of modern, pagan Wicca. But its early years didn't lend much to its credibility as a Gospel-honoring observance either.
As ancient Celts, Druids, and other pagans would celebrate it, Samhain played on the superstitions, fears, and outright ignorance of the day in dark and mysterious practices. There was very little then that could be termed fun by modern evangelicals who consider today's Halloween a harmless diversion.
Believing that spirits and ghosts were literally wandering around during Samhaim, early celebrants of the festival would place bowls of food outside their homes for the otherworldly visitors to eat, hoping to reduce the likelihood these ghosts would want to come inside. If people had to venture outside, they'd wear disguises to avoid being recognized by apparitions which would be sharing the streets with them.
In ancient Dublin, small groups of children began roaming the streets during Samhain dressed in clothes and masks designed to startle passers-by. These children would then pester people by asking for apples or nuts to “help the Hallow E’en party.”
As time passed, the ritual of collecting food on Halloween became oriented towards older teenage boys. They'd travel considerable distances and use their Hallow E’en haul for more organized parties with music, dancing, feasting, etc.
It became customary for these young men to rove the countryside in gangs, lubricated with alcohol, blowing horns and blackmailing farmers for food or money as an honor to the deity of Samhain. Minor acts of mischief became commonplace, like removing a fence gate from its hinges and laying it on the ground, but rarely was significant damage done.
The current practice of sending costumed children out into neighborhoods is actually an American revival of the ancient Dublin tradition by early 20th century school trustees and community activists here in the United States, anxious to stem a growing tide of vandalism on October 31. Surprisingly, however, the phrase “trick or treat” is relatively new, not entering the American lexicon until the Great Depression.
Churches Try to Claim Some of the Fun
As secular society increasingly tolerated and then welcomed Halloween into conventional cultural dialog, some churches sought to parlay America's dalliance with the dark holiday into a twisted redemptive venture. Their prevailing theory held that believers should shove Halloween back in the Devil's face in an exhibition of our victory with Christ over death and the grave.
Some believers encouraged children to wear costumes mimicking devilish features like horns and a tail, all constructed of red or black velvet.
Of course, having cherubic little boys and girls become impish little scamps for Halloween actually reflected more of the fallen nature of man than a mockery of Satan, who probably reveled in the deceit believers were perpetrating on themselves.
Yes, Christ has defeated death, Hell, and Satan for us. But the victory is ours "through" Christ. The victory isn't ours because of anything we can do.
God warns us to be on guard against attacks from the Devil; He says nothing about going out and figuratively kicking his shin or taunting him. God tells us to resist the Devil, not dawdle or take one last look at the fun we could have had at his party. (Um, yeah, Mrs. Lott; I'm still talking to you).
I mean, picture a schoolyard bully being placed into detention by the principal, only to have the little kid who had been bullied sticking out his tongue at his nemesis as the door closed. Should we underestimate that bully, or the Devil?
Halloween Obscures an Event Worth Celebrating
And for a bunch of Protestants who for 364 days out of the year believe today's Roman Catholic Church is a borderline cult, it seems farcical and disingenuous to suddenly embrace a contrived Catholic holiday which celebrates the antithesis of evangelical orthodoxy.
Martin Luther is fabled to have nailed his 95 Theses onto the heavy wooden doors of Wittenburg's Castle Church on All Hallows Eve, October 31, because he knew that the next day, All Saints Day, throngs of worshipers would be passing through those doors for services.
How shameful that the very act which has been credited with establishing evangelical Christianity's pivotal break from Roman Catholicism has been co-opted by a festival which perpetuates some of the very fallacies Luther sought to condemn, including church leaders ingratiating themselves to populist ideology and minimizing doctrine for the sake of carnality.
So as a moderately reformed Presbyterian, I can think of no better way to end my exegesis of Halloween's infidelity with the Gospel, as well as invite anybody with proofs to the contrary to make their case, than to recite one of the grandest hymns in the entire evangelical praise repertoire: none other than Martin Luther's own "A Mighty Fortress."
1. A mighty fortress is our God,
a Bulwark never failing;
our Helper, He, amid the flood
of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
doth seek to work us woe;
his craft and power are great,
and armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.
2. Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing,
were not the right man on our side,
the Man of God's own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His name,
from age to age the same,
and He must win the battle.
3. And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim,
we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure,
for lo, his doom is sure;
one little word shall fell him.
4. That word above all earthly powers,
no thanks to them, abideth;
the Spirit and the gifts are ours,
through Him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go,
this mortal life also;
the body they may kill;
God's truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.
_____
PS - To corroborate the facts I've presented in this essay, I contemplated providing links to my references. But I don't want to tacitly endorse any e-connections to such vile websites, so I'll just let you research any doubts you may have about my facts on your own.
Monday, October 4, 2010
All That Ain't Hallowed - Part 1
Well, here we are: already four days into October... which means the annual rite of Halloween lurks just around the corner.
To most people – believing Christians included – the dilemma of Halloween rests not in whether we should acknowledge it at all, but what costume they’re going to wear this year.
Yet I continue to insist, after years of spouting the same logic with nobody being able to refute it with contradictory evidence, that people of faith have no business celebrating Halloween. Well, people of the Christian faith, anyway. People of the Wiccan faith can celebrate it all they want.
Why shouldn't Christians celebrate Halloween? How dare I spew legalistic drivel on your candy corn parade? "Is this just another example of Tim being a downer Christian? Boo-hoo to you, Mr. Whatever-Happened-To-Grace... or rather, BOO!"
Yeah, I've heard it all, even from my own family. Christians dance around all sorts of peripheral issues about reclaiming Halloween from the Catholic Church or paganism because of its association with All Saints Day and All Hallows Eve. Freedom in Christ has been misconstrued as a cosmic blank check or a non-expiring Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. And then there's the tired, threadbare assertion that we can have fun with the symbols as long as we don't take them seriously.
(I'm lookin' at you, Mrs. Lot. And you, Eve, and Achan, and Rich Young Ruler...)
But the plain, irrevocable truth is that Halloween is a present-day celebration of Wicca, a faith centered on the blasphemy of God. And a religion with which believers in Christ should have no affinity.
Brief History of Halloween
Halloween was first celebrated approximately 3,000 years ago as the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”), in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France (cue disparaging French joke here).
Samhain was one of five holy fire festivals, and is believed to have marked the Celtic New Year, as well as the “Dark Half of the Year.” Like many early cultures, the Celtic day began at the sunset of the night before. The day before Samhain was the last day of summer (or the old year) and the day after Samhain was the first day of winter (or the new year).
Because of its timing between the two seasons, Celts considered Samhain to be an especially magical time, or a time of no time. They believed the dead walked among the living, and veils between past, present, and future were lifted for prophecy and divination, allowing journeys to the other side. Time was abolished for the three days of this festival and people did crazy things in a temporary revolt against the ordered nature of ordinary social life and civility.
Granted, much of Celtic mythology was unwritten, both because most people couldn’t yet read or write, but also because its adherents wanted to perpetuate the mythic intangibles of their religion. This means that as the traditions of Samhain have evolved, parts of their characteristics and symbolism have either been lost or interpreted without authentication. However, we can confidently summarize the festival as a celebration of mystical events commemorating the temporary victory of the forces of darkness over those of light. Does this sound like something Christians should celebrate?
As Roman Catholicism moved into northern France and the United Kingdom, the church rescheduled its All Saints Day observance (“All Hallows”) to November 1 and All Souls Day to November 2, keeping what it considered an acceptable remnant of Samhain (rechristened “Hallowe’en”) on October 31 to appease locals and appeal to their cultural traditions. Oddly enough, the new converts weren't convinced that the festivals of their new faith were worthy of being celebrated according to a different calendar, nor were Catholics as troubled by the unBiblical baggage they were inheriting by switching dates as they were by failing to appeal to the masses. Hmmm... the more things change, the more they stay the same.
So it came to be that moreso than any other holiday, Halloween today is a vital celebration of the Wicca faith, which as it has developed from its pagan roots, itself represents beliefs diametrically opposed to evangelical Christianity. Am I wrong in thinking that to ignore this basic fact is akin to slapping the face of our Savior Who died to free us from such utterly vile satanic faiths?
Does freedom in Christ obviate our need to honor Him instead of tenets of other religions? We don't celebrate Eid or Bodhi Day in December, do we? What makes Halloween so attractive to Christians?
Putting a Historic Spin on Halloween
A popular idea enabling modern Christians to justify participation in Halloween is taking the All Saints/Souls Day aspect and remembering martyrs of the faith. After all, the Catholics have been doing it for centuries, and isn't it important to remember the example of people who have died for their faith in Christ?
Assuming that martyrs would welcome the idea of being immortalized for something the Holy Spirit enabled them to do in the first place, the theory behind an all-saints observance isn't completely without merit. There is value in being reminded of those who prized their faith in Christ so much they were willing to die for Him. That type of devotion can quickly put our own hedonistic pursuits into perspective.
Nevertheless, how fast down the slippery slope of tacky melodrama would we slide if, as some Halloween advocates have suggested, we dressed up in costumes representing historic figures like Perpetua of Carthage or Joan of Arc? What would these martyrs think if their sacrifice for their faith were remembered today by Christians mimicking traditions used by the very heathens who sought their death in the first place? How does this address the fact that we still want to do what the world does: in this case, celebrate a satanic holiday?
I'm still waiting for somebody to prove me wrong and say that none of this matters.
_____
Tomorrow: Conclusion
Friday, October 1, 2010
What's Anchored to Bone
Do you despise visiting your dentist? Does the very thought of sitting in that sterile reclining chair make you break out into a sweat? Can you recount horror stories of needles, drills, blood, and twisted teeth?
Fortunately, I've never had many problems with my teeth, and therefore, visits to the dentist have been inconvenient and uncomfortable, but hardly petrifying. I do remember one time when my jaw got shot full of Novocaine for some minor procedure when I was a child in Upstate New York, but that's been about it. I can recall coming home and having to swab drool from my chin because I simply couldn't tell if my mouth was open or closed!
Back in Syracuse, my childhood dentist didn't think I needed braces, and neither did my dentist here in Arlington, Texas. Even when I repeatedly asked, as I saw all my classmates sporting aluminum train tracks in their mouths, the dentist would say that my teeth may be slightly out of alignment, but they were too straight for braces. In other words, my teeth didn't meet the dental insurance threshold for needing braces.
And that dentist from back in my youth here in Arlington? Dr. William VanEtten is still my dentist - at least, as of yesterday, he was. He's retiring soon, and I had one last visit before he reclines that dental chair for the final time.
Contractors working for the office building where Dr. VanEtten rents space were taking preliminary measurements yesterday in preparation for renovations. My dentist has become the longest-tenured tenant in that complex, and his office still sports the dark woods and bright oranges of the late 1970's. Indeed, walking into his reception room is like taking a step back in time. But then, Dr. VanEtten has never been beholden to style or aesthetics.
After hearing me complain about my crooked teeth one time too many, Dr. VanEtten calmly told me that my teeth represent a textbook example of good natural dental structure. No, they're not perfectly straight, but they don't look artificial, either. My teeth boast healthy roots, gums, and bone, and thanks to optimum dental genetics given to me by my parents, they should remain problem-free for my entire life. Straightening them will only be putting money in his wallet while only giving me the shallow pleasure of flashing unnaturally-straight pearly-whites.
"You mean you don't want a new in-ground pool" with the money you'd make on my braces, I remember asking one time. Dr. VanEtten just looked at me and said, "If I was in this strictly for the money, I could make a haul on the bad teeth that plenty of other patients have!"
Yesterday, he reminded me of how good my mouthful of teeth really are. He told me of the calcium deposits he's had to virtually chisel off of some teeth, about the holes he's filled that go down to raw bone, about the excruciating vice-like grips he's had to wrench onto wildly misaligned rows of teeth. Yeah, sure, my teeth could be straighter and whiter, but that's just cosmetic. Underneath their aesthetic imperfections, my teeth won't need anything more than regular maintenance the rest of my life.
Basically, Dr. VanEtten reminded me that looks aren't everything. It's what's anchored to the bone that counts.
Now, if I could use what he said about my teeth as a metaphor for other things in my life, how much more content and productive might I become?
_____
Fortunately, I've never had many problems with my teeth, and therefore, visits to the dentist have been inconvenient and uncomfortable, but hardly petrifying. I do remember one time when my jaw got shot full of Novocaine for some minor procedure when I was a child in Upstate New York, but that's been about it. I can recall coming home and having to swab drool from my chin because I simply couldn't tell if my mouth was open or closed!
Back in Syracuse, my childhood dentist didn't think I needed braces, and neither did my dentist here in Arlington, Texas. Even when I repeatedly asked, as I saw all my classmates sporting aluminum train tracks in their mouths, the dentist would say that my teeth may be slightly out of alignment, but they were too straight for braces. In other words, my teeth didn't meet the dental insurance threshold for needing braces.
And that dentist from back in my youth here in Arlington? Dr. William VanEtten is still my dentist - at least, as of yesterday, he was. He's retiring soon, and I had one last visit before he reclines that dental chair for the final time.
Contractors working for the office building where Dr. VanEtten rents space were taking preliminary measurements yesterday in preparation for renovations. My dentist has become the longest-tenured tenant in that complex, and his office still sports the dark woods and bright oranges of the late 1970's. Indeed, walking into his reception room is like taking a step back in time. But then, Dr. VanEtten has never been beholden to style or aesthetics.
After hearing me complain about my crooked teeth one time too many, Dr. VanEtten calmly told me that my teeth represent a textbook example of good natural dental structure. No, they're not perfectly straight, but they don't look artificial, either. My teeth boast healthy roots, gums, and bone, and thanks to optimum dental genetics given to me by my parents, they should remain problem-free for my entire life. Straightening them will only be putting money in his wallet while only giving me the shallow pleasure of flashing unnaturally-straight pearly-whites.
"You mean you don't want a new in-ground pool" with the money you'd make on my braces, I remember asking one time. Dr. VanEtten just looked at me and said, "If I was in this strictly for the money, I could make a haul on the bad teeth that plenty of other patients have!"
Yesterday, he reminded me of how good my mouthful of teeth really are. He told me of the calcium deposits he's had to virtually chisel off of some teeth, about the holes he's filled that go down to raw bone, about the excruciating vice-like grips he's had to wrench onto wildly misaligned rows of teeth. Yeah, sure, my teeth could be straighter and whiter, but that's just cosmetic. Underneath their aesthetic imperfections, my teeth won't need anything more than regular maintenance the rest of my life.
Basically, Dr. VanEtten reminded me that looks aren't everything. It's what's anchored to the bone that counts.
Now, if I could use what he said about my teeth as a metaphor for other things in my life, how much more content and productive might I become?
_____
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