Public opinion on the public option

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll is in and the results find growing public support for having a choice for the so-called “public option” for health insurance.  This comes in spite of the shrill campaign by opponents of health-care reform to scare the bejesus out of us with dire warnings of “government control” of our health care and “death panels” and “rationed” health care.

Well, what do you think we have now? We have Medicare and Medicaid (guvmint control of health care) and Hospice care (sort of a death panel — and don’t you think denied coverage for cancer treatment is as good as a death sentence? Who decides that? An insurer. There’s your death panel!) and insurance deductibles, co-pays, denied coverage and rejected applications (“rationed” health care).

Critics have already started carping about Democrats being over-represented in the poll , except that they fail to acknowledge that Democrats actually outnumber Republicans in this nation of ours. Rasmussen Reports quotes:  “In September, 37.5% of American adults considered themselves Democrats. … Still, there are more Democrats than Republicans. A total of 32.1% now claim an affiliation with the GOP. That’s the lowest number of Republicans since July 2008. Prior to this month, the number of Republicans stayed between 32.2% and 33.8% every month for a year.”

What does this all say about politics in America? Well, as Will Rogers famously said decades ago, “I don’t belong to an organized political party: I’m a Democrat.” OK, I’m quoting from memory (Not my actual memory, I’m not THAT old!!). It also says that roughly 30 percent of Americans choose not to claim affiliation with either party.

But back to the survey.

I have some firsthand knowledge and experience with the polls for WSJ/NBC.  It is a true public opinion poll, usually conducted over a long weekend, calling thousands of people across the nation. I have personally interviewed dozens of people for that poll (not this last one), and their opinions truly ran the gamut. Some folks were thoughtful, articulate and well-informed. Others were, um, well,  not. Some of the thoughtful, articulate and well-informed folks didn’t share my particular point of view, but we as interviewers could not inject our opinions into the conversation (a fireable offense — and yes, the calls are monitored).

I’m OK with folks who don’t share my opinion, especially if they can be thoughtful, articulate and civil about it.

But screaming a**holes spewing hate and lies only make the world an uglier place. Shut up already, we’re trying to make the world a better place. And you’re not helping

All the news that fits this format

Well, I guess this would be a bad time to get back into newspapers.

The Charlotte Observer recently announced buyouts and/or layoffs.

Down, down, down

Now The New York Times is looking to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs. Gannett and McClatchy companies still are reeling from advertising revenue losses, although McClatchy seems to be getting a better grip on its online ventures.

Well, at least my IRA and 401(k) investments aren’t dropping like a rock anymore.

(Chart at left is not an indicator of anything in particular. It is merely a metaphor for traditional news media)

My two dads

I’m saying goodbye today to my second dad.

For more than 30 years I had two dads. There was my biological dad. And there was my stepdad. Starter Dad, Finisher Dad.

Starter Dad didn’t finish the job. He didn’t completely leave the picture, but you know how divorce goes. No matter how you try to stay in a kid’s life, it’s never the same. I saw it from the kid’s point of view. For a long time I didn’t much like my biological dad.  I felt abandoned and those feelings were accompanied by the requisite side orders of anger and resentment and a little bit of shame and embarrassment (before 1970, Catholics just didn’t divorce, don’t you know!). But enough of that.

So when my mom remarried, I heartily embraced Finisher Dad. He was many things my biological father was not: Sober, reliable, steadfast, traditional, and Catholic. (The Catholic part I could take or leave, I’m just making distinctions here).

Starter Dad was fun, quite the partier and, well, not quite so steadfast. He had a decade or two of impressive business success. He prospered in the go-go ’80s real estate/mortgage industry. I benefited with a few nice Christmases and vacations at Lake Cumberland and summer weekends boating around the Lake Erie Islands. He married twice and divorced twice. Twice bitten, once shy.

Finisher Dad, meanwhile, spent years working in ditches, outdoors in subzero weather, building skyscrapers and high schools. He was a plumber. A damn good one at that. Licensed Master Plumber. Master of all things on blueprint. He worked his way up in the company, but always the work was in his blood.

One of his co-workers told me (yesterday) the story of the state office tower he plumbed in Columbus. Skyscraper. More than 5,000 inserts for toilets in the building, his co-worker told me. The insert (I think that’s what it’s called — a tube that guides the waste pipe) is set in concrete then the pipes are later run through the inserts between concrete floors. Out of those 5,000-plus inserts, one — one! — was out of plumb. And that was the architect’s error. Another story from Randy was about the plumbing plan blueprints Dad drew up for the house Randy was building about five years ago. The building inspector asked who drew up the specs — 2-inch waste line here, 4-inch line there — and he marveled that he’d never seen such impressive specs. So precise, so exact, so perfect.

Finisher Dad had a high school education and a mind as sharp as any mechanical engineer. He could rebuild car engines, weld  quarter-inch steel to a car’s frame, plumb a house stem to stern, work a crossword puzzle with the best of them (he did them in pen, whereas I stick to pencil because I’m kind of chickens**t that way). If he were a younger man, he’d probably have been an excellent IT guy.

Finisher Dad was also married twice. Never divorced. His first wife, Betty, died suddenly from a ruptured  aneurysm. No one to blame, just a terrible, sad tragedy. His finisher wife, my mom, outlived him.

Funny thing about second marriages is you typically hear about nightmare scenarios featuring the evil stepparents imposing their dark wills upon unsuspecting innocent children. Think Cinderella. Ours was not such a case. Oh, sure, we had our share of conflict (I mean, really, who doesn’t?), but I also have many happy memories of those days at 91 E. North Broadway. Big house. Big family.  Friends, neighbors and extended family came and went. Holidays were boisterous, festive affairs. My mom and Finisher Dad were deeply involved in community and neighborhood – when they weren’t fixing up our own house they spent countless hours fixing up other peoples’ homes with a pipe wrench or paint brush.

At yesterday’s visitation, time after time, people I haven’t seen in 20 years told me how much they admired my parents — mom and Finisher Dad — and they invariably had a story or memory to tell me about. Some stories I’ve heard dozens of times, and others were completely new to me. One example of affection for him and by extension to the rest of our family: His first wife Betty’s siblings, Pam, David and Bobby came to the visitation. And they said to several of us, You are family. This is nearly 40 years after their sister died. To me, that speaks volumes. That is love. It is genuine affection.

Neither of my dads was especially adept at expressing himself in emotional or relationship terms. Starter Dad could to a degree, mainly after having had a few belts of booze, but Finisher Dad wasn’t built that way. Maybe in part a product of his generation, in part that stoic German stock, in part just because he was not a big talker. He let his actions speak for him.

He was passionate about commitment. Commitment to family. Commitment to cause. Commitment to the job at hand. And commitment to God. He had a deep, deep faith. Because he didn’t talk a lot, when he did talk his passion and articulation could surprise you. And, Dear Lord, don’t get him started on Christmas trees!

As I drove down to Columbus today (yesterday), I kind of searched for an appropriate way to honor my Finisher Dad, the stepdad who in many ways became the father figure I felt missing in my early life. And then it came to me: Live the kind of life he lived. Live a more exemplary life, accepting that I am not perfect but continually striving to be more perfect.

That is how I will try to honor my Finisher Dad. I will strive to live a more exemplary life.

Do you recall?

Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil unit is recalling a few varieties of Children’s Tylenol because of possible contamination in some of its ingredients. J&J seems to be operating out of an abundance of caution, with one eye looking back almost 30 years ago to one of the deadliest consumer-product tampering incidents in recent history.

From MSNBC:
The recalled products include: Children’s Tylenol Cold MS Suspension 4 oz. Grape, Children’s Tylenol Plus Cough & Runny Nose 4 oz. Cherry, and Infant’s Tylenol Suspension Drop 1 oz. Grape.

Consumers with concerns about the recalled products are asked to call McNeil Consumer Call Care Center at 1-800-962-5357.
Lot numbers can be found on the bottom of the product’s box and on the sticker that surrounds the product’s bottle.
A full list of the 21 recalled products and their lot numbers can be seen at: http://www.tylenol.com/page.jhtml?idtylenol/news/subpchildinfantnews.inc.

In 1982, Tylenol makers Johnson & Johnson rewrote the book on crisis management when it staged a huge recall after seven people died from cyanide-laced Tylenol pain reliever. Tylenol’s massive recall was unprecedented, and J&J’s handling of the crisis and its subsequent release of “tamper-proof” bottles, became required studying in PR schools as a case study on how to properly deal with a PR crisis.   It is also widely believed to have saved J&J and the Tylenol brand, which many onlookers thought would be doomed by the poisoning attack. Subsequent concerns about liver damage from Tylenol, particularly in conjunction with alcohol use, continue to dog the company but the products remain on the market.

BlakRoc generating some buzz

I admit to some bias here. I’ve watched these guys for the better half of this decade and I’ve known Black Keys drummer Pat Carney’s dad, Jim, for even longer. Cool doesn’t begin to describe these cats (Ooh! Jazzspeak!), but I worried that they might find themselves marginalized as just “blues” guys.

Worry no more. Dan Auerback and Carney have been busy expanding their horizons with all kinds of side projects, and it looks like they have struck gold with this project, Due in stores on “Black Friday,” Nov. 27:

And then check this out:

Of course, there is plenty more at YouTube. Check it out.

Instead of continuing to fragment and marginalize music genres, The Black Keys and their hip-hop collaborators (RZA, Mos Def, Jim Jones, Raekwon, Nikki Wray and Q-Tip are among rappers on the ticket) are reversing that trend. Check out the NPR story.

Even a blind pig gets an ACORN now and then

Ding-dong! ACORN calling!

A guy posing as a pimp with his, um, employee got himself and a video camera into an ACORN office and produced a rather incriminating bit of video evidence against the politically polarizing group.  As Jon Stewart so poetically said, Ruh-Roh! Once again, “real” journalists have been scooped by an enterprising faux journalist pimped out in a fur coat and some really swell sunglasses.

CNN was all over it today, and you can bet Fox got all fair and balanced and then some.

Some ACORN apologists are claiming the video was taken out of context. But, um, well, that’s some pretty fancy out of context we’re talking about.

As I might have said in my youth: Busted.

ACORN has been a favorite target of the Right for a while, and the folks caught on video in three ACORN offices seem to have handed the ACORN haters plenty of ammo.

<td style=’padding:2px 1px 0px 5px;’ colspan=’2′The Audacity of Hos

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A thought or two on health care

The Senate has a health-care bill to dissect. You can examine it here. americas_healthy_future_act_(PDF)

There’s been a lot of hyperbole, hyperventilating, name-calling and silly teabag-wearing know-nothings spouting their know-nothing, fear-mongering nonsense about what “health-care reform” might  mean. There’s been a lot of confusion. A lot of anxiety. A lot of misinformation. Some of it may be innocent ignorance, but of lot of it is willful lying. You lie!

Well.

Let’s all take a deep breath. Another. Doctor’s orders. One more. Deeeeeeeeeeep breath. Better? OK.

Let’s acknowledge that doctors are smarter than the average bear. Maybe even smarter than you and me (or I). Let us also acknowledge that not all doctors are right all the time. Let us also acknowledge that most practicing doctors, especially primary-care physicians, have extensive experience in dealing with health insurance and insurance-related issues. They are probably well-acquainted with Medicare and Medicaid. Bear in mind that Medicare and Medicaid are guvmint-run health care.

If you can accept these truths, then you also must accept this well-informed opinion: Most doctors favor having a “public” health-insurance option. In other words, most American doctors (that is, licensed physicians, not phony spokespersons) think some version of “Obamacare” is a good idea.

As reported on NPR:

“Among all the players in the health care debate, doctors may be the least understood about where they stand on some of the key issues around changing the health-care system. Now, a new survey finds some surprising results: A large majority of doctors say there should be a public option.

Survey says!

“When polled, ‘nearly three-quarters of physicians supported some form of a public option, either alone or in combination with private insurance options,’ says Dr. Salomeh Keyhani. She and Dr. Alex Federman, both internists and researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, conducted a random survey, by mail and by phone, of 2,130 doctors. They surveyed them from June right up to early September.”

Of course, certain parties might accuse NPR of having a liberal bias (Fox, of course, remains steadfastly fair and balanced – my arse – oops, did I just type that out loud?). But I don’t think you could take such wild-eyed accusations against the New England Journal of Medicine seriously. Not even on Fox.

And here is what the New England Journal of Medicine found in its survey of nearly 5,000 American physicians (again, NOT spin doctors or phony talking heads):  62.9 percent of American doctors favor having some sort of public health insurance option. Note that it clearly states “option.” Meaning choice.

And now I’m going to inject a bit of informed opinion. I have personal experience as the policy holder of several health-insurance programs. I have been in very good employer-sponsored health-care plans, and they were far from perfect. You had to wrangle with claims and idiot bureaucrats and idiot claims representatives. And that was just to get a doctor’s appointment! I have purchased health insurance as an individual. And let me tell you: It is not a good deal. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I heard some clown on the radio claim that 85 percent of private health-insurance clients  are happy with their insurance. That is an absurd falsehood, unless you define “happy” as “Well, I don’t really have any better choice, so I guess I’ll take what I can get even if it sucks.” And those were the sentiments among my co-workers at a unionized employer with excellent benefits.

I have participated in meetings with insurance company executives who referred to their actuary as “preventer of sales.”  In other words, they say “coverage denied” to applicants. Been there too. And I’m a healthy guy.

I have been uninsured. That’s not a good place to be either. Luckily, I am a healthy guy.

I haven’t heard many people discussing the cost to society of people being uninsured. If you believe the insurance industry (forgive me for being skeptical), caring for uninsured patients costs the average insurance buyer about $1,000 per year in excess premiums.

That’s not factoring in the cost of Medicaid (for those who qualify because of low income), the de facto insurance for the poor or Medicare, the insurance for those lucky enough to live past 62.

I know these things because as a formerly licensed life and health insurance representative, I had to know these things. And I read a lot.

To those who keep spewing their suspicions that this is all a diabolical plot among Democrats to put insurance companies out of business, I have to ask you: Really, do you think Democrats, of all people, are capable of putting together and successfully executing something that smart and that cohesive? Really? Do you realize that insurance companies are among the most generous contributors to campaigns of both parties and that they spend kabillions (not an official word) of dollars on lobbying in Washington and in every state in the union? Why, then, would even insurance companies now support health-care reform? Because even health insurers recognize that the current system is unsustainable.

The health-care system in this country is broken and it needs to be fixed.

And now on a different note …

This is a really cool video that started with a bit of inspiration from a newspaper photograph. It was a feature shot (sometimes called “wild art”) of birds sitting on utility wires. Check out what happened next.

Less menacing than Hitchcock ...

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Thanks to Very Short List for this tip!

Here’s the newspaper article (better brush up on your Portugese!)

Happy anniversary, Lehman Brothers

This decade has not been kind to September. You have Sept. 11, 2001. And last year Sept. 14 and 15 weren’t so hot. That’s when the financial crisis had reached its peak and fear was the primary driving force for all things on Wall Street.

Not having a good day

Storied giants that were “too big to fail” were suddenly failing. We bailed some of the giants out. Others, including Lehman Brothers, well, not so much.

Here’s what the NYT’s Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote a year ago today: “But even as the fates of Lehman and Merrill hung in the balance, another crisis loomed as the insurance giant American International Group appeared to teeter. Staggered by losses stemming from the credit crisis, A.I.G. sought a $40 billion lifeline from the Federal Reserve, without which the company may have only days to survive.”

Meltdown! Liquidations! Bailouts! Securitized debts! Ah, the memories. So many lives ruined. So many fortunes lost.

Sorkin was  bit reflective today. He writes: “I’ll go a step further: it is quite likely that the financial crisis would have been even worse had Lehman been rescued. Although nobody realized it at the time, Lehman Brothers had to die for the rest of Wall Street to live.” Hmm, Jesus Lehman died for us and took sin away. How noble!

And how does all that stuff affect us regular guys? Well, for starters, my Citi credit card magically became a Bank of America card, joining my wallet among several other BoA cards, which used to be Fleet or some other name before BoA swallowed them up. I didn’t apply for all those BoA cards. They just “happened.”

There are, of course, “tax implications” as well. Somebody has to pay for all these bailouts. Guess who?

That is right: You and me.

Bummed out in Buckeye Country

So what else is new? Bucks blow it in the fourth quarter on national TV and the Clowns — ahem, Browns — well, they continue their losing ways.

Glad I went into the office today so I wouldn’t subject myself to the agony of watching the Browns succumb to another bout of mediocrity.

I think I’ll come into the office next Sunday too. Good excuse avoid pain.

McClatchy: We’re not dead yet

My former employer, McClatchy (very briefly after it acquired Knight Ridder and until it sold off the Akron Beacon Journal), has apparently learned a few lessons from its predecessors and peers in terms of adapting to changing market conditions and the reality of modern media. The company has even managed to take advantage of its lessons and some more favorable conditions to preserve its spot on the New York Stock Exchange.

Pretty neat trick for a company that had seen its share slide to 40 cents per share at one point. It’s back up to about a $1.80 per share now.

To get an idea of how far things have slid,  I sold a chunk of my shares of Knight Ridder stock a few years back for $80 per share. That’s right. Not sure how splits factor into those price differences, but I guarantee I sold at top price. It started sliding not long after I pulled the trigger on that deal. I don’t claim to be a Nostradamus or even a Buffett, but that $80 per share price didn’t seem realistically sustainable to me.

I wish all my financial deals had been so fruitful. Track record since then:  not so hot.

Inglourious updates

Yaaawwwwwn!

Just got back from late Sunday viewing of Inglourious Basterds, the latest Tarentino bloodfest. Funny in unexpected ways. A little sloppy at times and there was a bit where the story kind of ground to a halt (The Pub scene went on way too long, although it had a fairly satisfying crescendo), but the penultimate scene (Chapter?) was spectacular. Talk about going out in a blaze of glory! Ha! I made a funny.

Busy, busy, busy!

Lots going on these days. In addition to working full-time, I have several projects in the works, including promoting a book I edited, How to Sell Your Privately Owned Company by Eric R. Voth.

You can ensure my continued success with this project by buying the book at this site (Thank you!).

We’ve had some pretty amazingly good weather lately and I wish I’d taken greater advantage of it. I did go for a nice bike ride the other day. Might go to the movies tonight. My 14-year-old wants to see Inglourious Basterds (their spelling).

Here’s a tease:

What happened to August?

Well, this summer is just flying by. Seems like the Fourth of July was just … ummm, a few weeks ago. Suddenly the kids are back in school. There’s a nip in the air. Fooooootball.

Meanwhile, election fraud once again is in the news, this time in that lovely garden spot of Afghanistan, which pundits 20 years ago called “The Soviet Union’s Vietnam,” which is fast becoming our Vietnam II (or III), which George Will is now soberly telling us we need to abandon ASAP. Apparently Karzai’s goons are not very subtle about this election fraud. Nearly 24,000 forged votes isn’t subtle.

It’s a little late now, but if the Bush Boys had listened to me, we’d have sent all the firepower we squandered in Iraq and killed every last one of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan dead before they could scatter like cockroaches on the Pakistani border. But they didn’t listen to me. Come to think of it, I guess I didn’t try very hard to tell them about my brilliant plan. Not that they would have listened, but I could have tried harder. Then my “I told you so” would have been a little more satisfying.

Instead, the current White House occupant is stuck with two unpopular wars and the situation in Afghanistan (Quagmire, anyone?) is getting worse, say folks there.

Not good.

I know, I know, there isn’t really much I can do about the sitch in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Berzerkistan or any of the other Stans (LaurelStan?). I guess it’s the old newshound in me.

I am, however, going to do something about the health-care reform thing. We need  a major overhaul of the system. We don’t need more multimillion-dollar insurance executives telling us what’s good for us, or worse, whispering into the ears of congressmen or spin doctors. I want read doctors, not spin doctors, in charge of the system.

I can sense that there’s a rant growing here, so I’ll stop now and save the rant for another day.

It’s a nice day out today. I think I’ll go for a bike ride. Back to work tomorrow!

Now that we’ve run out of homes to foreclose

Some actual good news on the economic front and in quality of life issues in my particular neck of the woods: Property values appear to be on an upward trend after a long slide that dovetailed with a huge spike in foreclosures on homes in Northeast Ohio. That giant sucking sound you heard in Cuyahoga County seems to be abating as property values climbed 4.2 percent in Cleveland from May to June, according to my friends at WCPN-FM, Cleveland’s NPR station.

My kids’ school, Miller South, scored Excellent with Distinction, the best you can get. The rest of Akron Public Schools didn’t fare as well, but public systems are often unfairly saddled with scores that must include kids who will never do well in tests or in school for a variety of socioeconomic reasons and because kids with learning disabilities are counted in those tests.

So we have a bright spot or two. But it ain’t all wine and roses just yet. Newspapers and other media continue to hemorrhage money, former media types (such as yours truly) still struggle to make a decent living in this new world, and I’m still seeing houses being foreclosed or selling at deep discounts. I’d give more serious thought to moving out of here if I could afford to sell the house. But I’m stuck, and the simple math is it’s cheaper to stay in the house than rent a similar sized house or even an apartment.

I’ve been lucky enough to fall in with one of the few local employers actually expanding locally, but I now face a huge crater of debt to climb out of. Can somebody throw me a rope?

I gotta say, the first decade of this millennium has pretty much sucked for a multitude of reasons, from terrorist attacks and disastrously mismanaged wars to magically disappearing careers to all those little things that drive me crazy. Maybe things are turning around. Finally.

Farewell to Les Paul

The great guitarist and inventor Les Paul

The inventor of the electric guitar has gone off to the great amplifier in the sky. Les Paul was 94.  The legendary guitarist remained active as a musician, guitar hero and will always be known by his namesake Gibson guitar, The Les Paul.

Paul had apparently already achieved a degree of fame as an accomplished musician when his desire to amplify guitars led to his innovation of wiring a microphone directly onto the body of a guitar and run that signal through an amplifier. Of all the innovators of the 1940s and ’50s who gave rise to the advent of rock ‘n’ roll, Les Paul certainly deserves a big pile of credit for making it possible.

Paul told his story to Spinner.com, including this excerpt”

“And there was no such thing as amplifiers, so I had to build my own — I took my mother’s radio and I turned it into one. I did the same thing with a guitar. I just took the guitar and said, ‘Hey, it’s not loud enough.’ I was playing a little barbecue stand halfway to Milwaukee and some critic that was sitting in the backseat of a car, ordering a sandwich, wrote a note that said, ‘You know, what you’re doing right out there is great, but your guitar is not loud enough.’ So I went home and told mom about it. She said, ‘You’ll figure it out, you’ll figure it out.’ What I figured out was how to make that guitar louder and better. First, I took an acoustical guitar and ended up filling it with Plaster of Paris. I tried everything, and it finally worked. I said, ‘I’m gonna make two guitars, one out of wood and one out of a big long piece of railroad track and make both of them identical.’ I used the same telephone for a pickup, the part that you listen to on the telephone, the magnet and the coil. I placed that under the string and I was just playing through my mother’s radio. Between the wooden guitar and the metal one, the railroad track was much better. I ran to my mother, saying, ‘I found it! I found it!’ My mother said, ‘The day you see a cowboy on a horse playing a railroad track,’ and she blew me right out of the water with that. I said, ‘It’s got to be wood. Okay, we’re gonna make it the most beautiful piece of dense wood that will be as close to that railroad track as we can get with that good sound.’ “

Paul was clearly ahead of his time: “In 1930, I was already playing on the electric guitar, playing in a little bar in Cleveland, in Rochester, some state fairs.”

Ahhh, Canada

Yes, we are just retured from Pelee Island, Lake Erie’s Canadian getaway, with a new sunburn to peel away in the next few weeks. Here’s Lindsey re-creating a certain famous scene from a certain disaster movie (Titanic — in case you really didn’t know):

More to come at another time …

Pushing pills and dollar bills

Well, the old medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industrial complex is fighting like, um, heck to preserve its golden geese: us. It likes us to be just sick enough to need their goodies, not too sick to earn a living/cash the Social Security check.

And to prove how much they love us, they’re spending millions of dollars in Washington to make sure the health care reform bill (your metaphorical pig) now clogging the digestive tract of your metaphorical legislative snake keeps things pretty much the way they are. Which is great for medical-pharmaceutical-insurance industrial complex. Not so great for must of us. But hey, we helped make ‘em rich and they’re exercising their self-awarded right to continue enriching themselves.

And now that the bill is stalled in the Senate, I’m worried that the lobbyists and lawmakers will not play nice while the president isn’t there to supervise them.

We need health care reform. The existing system only works in spite of itself, when it works. Too often it fails, or it operates horribly inefficiently. Ask any doctor or hospital administrator. We’d all be better off if doctors were allowed to practice medicine as they saw fit, rather than adhere to protocols that exist to appease insurers, know-nothing bureaucrats and trial lawyers

Invader from outer space???

What manner of freakish creature is this emerging to wreak havoc upon us?

Well, it’s only a cicada, sometimes incorrectly referred to as a locust. This particular bug was spotted on my garage, just emerging in its adult form, big ol’ bug eyes and all!

Cicadas are the musicians of the summer, wooing members of the opposite sex with their alluring love songs. This particular cicada is probably not of the 17-year variety, which tend to emerge every – yes, you guessed it – 17 years in certain regions and emit an eerie hum that is unmistakable. Others live on different cycles – consult your local entomologist for more details about cicadas and other six-legged critters. The more common annual variety make kind of a buzzing noise that the ladies find irresistible (they must, or the species would last long, would it?).

We’re so sorry, Uncle Walter

The journalist in me gets a little misty-eyed thinking about the passing of Walter Cronkite, long considered the Gold Standard Anchorman.

Americans so trusted him that he came to be known as Uncle Walter, the guy you could count on to find the truth and spell it out for you.

Uncle Walter is gone. His successor, Dan Rather, never quite found a comfortable fit in that chair as CBS’ anchor. I don’t think anchoring suited Rather. He seemed a little too tightly wired to be tethered to a studio chair.

And this is not a knock on Dan Rather. He just was better suited for the field. It’s where he thrived. I was a desk jockey. Copy editor for most of my career – not the investigative reporter digging up stuff. Could I do it? Well, yeah, but there are people better suited to that particular gig. We each had our fortes. There are far better reporters than me. Not a lot of better copy editors.

I still get oddly amused at the bizarre attack on Rather in the street and the song it inspired, “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” (R.E.M.’s Monster). But I digress. Again.

Ahem. Walter Cronkite. Yes. He was Old School. Never tried to be hip or cool. Twitter? Cronkite? Please. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong or bad about Twitter, I’m just saying, Not Walter. He was a news guy, pure and simple. And when he made his opinion known, which wasn’t often (“News” shouting heads everywhere, are you listening?), it counted. When he said the Vietnam War couldn’t be won, it meant the war could not be won. Period.

I had already decided to pursue a career in journalism by the time Cronkite was pushed to the sidelines by the deep thinkers at CBS, but even then it didn’t seem right. The universe made sense with Cronkite in the studio and Rather in the field dodging bullets. It was in some ways a grand symbiotic relationship: Dan in the foxhole, Walter back in New York, the two of them (and a then-vast CBS news staff) making sense of it all. Dan seemed a little lost without Walter. Maybe I’m imagining things. Maybe it’s scenes from Broadcast News (Jack Nicholson as The Anchor, William Hurt as the Vacuous Young Correspondent – roles later perfected on the Daily News/Colbert Report – and Holly Hunter as the Beleaguered And Slightly Neurotic Producer) that I recall. Whatever.

Of course, many things have developed in the interim. CNN. Fox News. The explosion of the Internet and its bazillions of bloggers and news aggregators that have sucked the life right out of “old” media. Two wars in Iraq. Terrorist attacks, mass hysteria, 10-second attention spans. Too long? Sorry.

Things change. I can deal with that. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Life and how to live it

Too often the last few years I’ve found myself dwelling on the crappy stuff in life — what with the terrible economy, financial mayhem and so forth. So perhaps the best thing I’ve done in a long time was taking that weekend jaunt up to Pelee, leaving all the crap behind and just being. No worries, no hurries. Just hang for a couple of days, get a sunburn and suffer the indignity of a few mosquito bites.

Ah, life and how to live it. That’s the name of an early R.E.M. tune, going waaaay back to the Fables of the Reconstruction. Or is it Reconstruction of the Fables? The album harkens back to the days of vinyl LPs, when artists took license with which side was the first side (A) or (1), One Side or Another Side. It’s a far different sounding R.E.M. from the height of their fame in the early ’90s with Automatic for the People and Out of Time, or their often anemic post-Bill Berry years (2008’s Accelerate stands out as a dramatic exception). The song features those jangly guitars that earned R.E.M. its early success, full of hope and wonder.

But I digress.

I guess the thing I’m trying to get at is sometimes when you’ve been bashing your head against a brick wall (metaphorically, we hope) the best thing to do is leave the wall alone. Go somewhere else, somewhere that’s a little more hospitable. With no bricks.

As tempting as it is, most of us can’t really take a permanent vacation. Responsibilities and all that. Mortgages to pay, mouths to feed, angry wives to appease. Whatever.

But just in case I lose sight of the good things in life, here’s a little reminder.

And if you wanted a refresher on that R.E.M. tune, here’s a blurry video of that tune:

An excerpt:

Raise the walls and shout its flaws, a carpenter should rest
So that when you tire of one side the other serves you best
Read about the wisdom lost, a knock, a knock, a knock
A secret knock one hammer’s locked the other wisdom lost

My carpenter’s out and running about, barking in the, listen to the holler
My pockets are out and running about
Barking in the street to tell what I have hidden there

Listen, listen to the holler,
If I write a book it will be called “Life and How to Live It”

Trick of the light?

Maybe it was my imagination or maybe it was something else, but in the early morning light, right before and just during the dawning of the new day, I could see stuff on the eastern horizon from Pelee Island that usually isn’t visible. I’ll post a photo I shot between 5:30 and 6 a.m. on July 4, 2009, that clearly shows silhouettes or shapes of buildings far, far to the east. I couldn’t tell you if it’s Lorain or Cleveland (??).  I think it’s east of Vermillion.  Pelee is situated at roughly 41 degrees north, parallel to extreme northern California, according to Wikipedia. A look at a few maps seems to confirm that. Anyway, there are buildings that are clearly visible in that early morning light that you cannot see the rest of the day. It could be refraction of light in the early morning sun, it could be shadows cast by the structures, it could be reflections in the water. It could be combinations of all of those things and more. But see for yourself.

But click on the photo and view it at full size. It may take a little bit to load, depending on your bandwidth and computer speed, but check out the buildings on the horizon, particularly on the right side. Recognize anything?

Here’s a tighter crop of the same photo:

Pelee for you and me

Pelee Island might not be the original Garden of Eden, but there are days when it comes awfully close to heaven on Earth. It has – at least in the summer – a mild climate, an abundance of fruit and grain, snakes galore (harmless except to the fish and other stuff they eat) and a birder’s paradise of meadow, forest, lake and marsh birds. You can find all order of ducks, sandpipers/plovers, cormorants, red-winged blackbirds, robins, purple martins, gulls out the yin-yang, herons, egrets and/or ibises (I think), Canada geese, ducks, more ducks, more geese, finches, a bazillion other songbirds and God knows what else. And that’s just the birds. Between Pelee and Sandusky, there is no shortage of guano. Crap galore. Bird bombs. Poop. Doo-doo. Yeah, whatever. Still haven’t washed my car yet. Think of it as a, um, souvenir. Yeah, a souvenir, that’s what we’ll call it.

All this packed onto 18 square miles of island that finds a mellow way to accommodate its Ontario and Ohio neighbors.

Aboard the MV Pelee Islander, with Cedar Point in the background

While the island and town are pretty kid-friendly, the two-hour (yeah, the brochure says hour-and-a-half to hour-and-forty-five, but it’s more like two hours) trip might test the patience of some used to the jet express to Put-in-Bay on Ohio’s South Bass Island, and party animals will probably find the Pelee atmosphere to be a tad tame. Oh, well. There is fun to be had, just not so over-the-top as some South Bass stories I’ve heard over the years.

But people swear (and I have to agree) that as you leave the boat or plane (OK, technically, you can drive onto Pelee, but you do so from a ramp off of a ferry) your blood pressure drops 20 points within 15 minutes, and it’s not long before you shrug when you realize your cell phone is a) out of range or b) on outrageous roaming charges which you’d be an idiot or insanely desperate to use.

What qualifies as a traffic jam on Pelee these days, a couple of hours before the ferry departs for Sandusky.

Visitors who have friends/family on the island or who spend a fair amount of time on the island will discover that there is a pace to the island, in some ways as if the American South took up residence in Canada. Folks are a little less hurried (except, perhaps, at the restaurants – both of them). Locals look after one another but they don’t snoop around too much. Work gets done, but it gets done when it gets done and not a week sooner.

This postcard-perfect lighthouse does indeed appear on many postcards: the redundantly titled Historic Pelee Lighthouse (aren't they all "historic" pretty much?)

You should know, however, that the weather is always perfect the day you leave Pelee. It might be storming with 25-knot winds and boats getting tossed onto the rocky shoals as you arrive at Pelee on Friday, but by Sunday the winds have calmed, the waves are less than 2 feet and the skies are sunny and bright. It’s all part of the program.
This brings you back despite the bugs and (to some, because of, not despite) the lack of creature comforts or modern conveniences on every block or Starbucks member privileges or trendy clubs. The point of all this is it’s not just like home. If you want all the amenities and gadgets of home, go home.

Even with the elevated Homeland Security hassles, Pelee has a decidedly casual approach to the international exchange, particularly with the U.S. dollar-Canadian dollar exchange. They’ll take your American cash without complaint and give you Loonies in return, also with no complaint. Sometime the exchange difference is calculated, sometimes not.

The housing ranges from what I’d call a sprawling motel, except it really doesn’t sprawl much, to a now-closed hotel and restaurant right across the street from the MV Pelee Islander ferry dock, some bed-and-breakfasts, to a few hundred (I guess) cottages that vary in style from old stone houses the first settlers built to tiny one-room cottages to impressive new island homes – maybe not Palm Beach but really, really nice. All-in-all, you might say it has understated charm. Pretty much the anti-Put-in-Bay. Not that I have anything against Put-in-Bay. It’s just a different kind of atmosphere.

Development on the island is maintained at a. very. deliberate. pace. Part of this is by design of Canadian law. The Canadian equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency, or perhaps the Department of the Interior or National Parks, Fish and Wildlife – you get the picture – is very particular these days about how much land is cleared and how the construction will affect the various wildlife (see: “Endangered” Lake Erie water snake) and surrounding environment. Another part of this is because, well, there are 200 year-round residents, and not all of them are in the construction biz. So you either get in line with the local guys who generally do good work (my sister’s drywall guy did an excellent job, for instance) but are really busy and also find time for lives outside of work – they live on a resort island for a reason. Or you bring in you own work crew at premium price and hope you’ve cleared all the bureaucratic hurdles before you do. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Warning: Objects in viewfinder may be closer than they appear.

One of the more curious stories of Pelee are the Lake Erie water snakes. I have never seen one on the Ohio side of Lake Erie (and I spent my share of time on the Ohio side as a youth). On Pelee, though, you can hardly go anywhere near water on the island without seeing one. There basking on a rock at the water’s edge. There on the – oops, thump-thump! – road. Here, staying safely on the side of the road. There snaking through the gravevine-like leaves. There swimming along with its little snake head bobbing in the waves. Scientific name: Nerodia sipedon insularum.  Apparently they are considered an endangered species in the United States. In fact, they are protected in Ohio under the Endangered Species Act. They have a limited range, namely that of the immediate area of western Lake Erie. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service notes that while these snakes are not venomous, they “will defend themselves and may bite” in self-defense. NOW they tell me (see closeup photos shot by yours truly).

Also amusing are the local squirrels. I refer to them as the endangered Pelee ambling squirrel. Rather than exhibit the usual skittish squirrel behavior most of us are accustomed to seeing, these squirrels rather seem to amble across the road at a surprisingly casual pace, giving rise to what must be an elevated mortality rate among road-traveling squirrels on Pelee Island. Per capita at least. I only saw one victim, but he was sprawled across the pavement as if sunning himself. Like a water snake. Just slower.

The Pelee Island Vineyard is a pleasant surprise for wine aficionados who turn their noses up at typical Lake Erie wines.We recommend the pinot noir -- but don't bother with the "Reserve" - the regular pinot noir (at least the 2005 vintage) is better.

If you think you’d like to visit Pelee with or without local connections (folks are pretty friendly, so don’t be afraid), it’s roughly four hours from most points in Northeast Ohio if you factor in drive time to Sandusky, getting your car parked (you can park for FREE in public parking lots near the ferry launches or take your car over at costs I don’t car to repeat here) and getting tix to the island, roughly $15 per body or a lot more via puddle-jumping airplane. You MUST have a passport now, either the full-blown passport book or the slightly less expensive passport card. Apply at least a month in advance for your passport if you don’t already have one.

The ferry ride is a tad noisy above deck, although most riders seem to prefer the outdoor experience when the weather’s good. Expect a few dogs and at least one chatty rider nearby. That’s half the fun, of course. If you don’t mind spending a few extra bucks there are flights to Pelee that make the trip in 15 minutes vs. the two-hour boat ride. They also afford a fun bird’s eye view of the lake and the nearby islands including the Bass islands and Kelleys Island. You’ll also notice that much of Pelee’s interior is a patchwork of farms, much like you’d see during a low overhead flight in the heart of Ohio’s farmland.

You might run into some Cedar Point traffic in Sandusky. But then again, I had virtually no traffic on July 3, a Friday. You’d think the town would be overrun with holiday weekend amusement park warriors. It was not. Sunday egress was no worse.

Now that the sunburn is fading and the bug bites are healing, I’m ready get back to Pelee. I can hardly wait. And here’s a reminder of what awaits:

In less than two minutes the sun rises from just a tiny sliver of itself to the full orb on the horizon. Here it's about halfway there.

An Island retreat

Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the days ...

Just got back from Pelee Island, situated in the sovereign waters of Canadian Lake Erie. Very relaxing. Perfect weather, though I could do without the skeeters and biting flies. Full report to come after I’ve recovered from scorched tops of feet, where I forgot to apply sunscreen. Oops. Ouch. In the meantime, feast your eyes on this sunrise as seen from my sister’s cottage on (obviously) the east side of Pelee, and visit my Flickr page in the right rail…

Two of a kind

The Thriller is gone

Well, two icons from my youth are gone. Poof!

One we expected: Farrah. Her well-documented illness made us squirm as much from the uncomfortable nature of contemplating colon cancer as how she unblinkingly confronted her sickness, allowing the camera to roll while we watched her life slip away and longtime lover Ryan O’Neal looked on helplessly.

The other we probably could have seen coming: Michael. The boy in the bubble who created a fabulous body of work and then retreated into a fantasy world, a modern day Peter Pan whose quirks proved to be his undoing. With an autopsy pending and (no doubt) the tabloid machine launching into a frenzy, the weirdness (again, no doubt) has just begun.

Farrah launched a thousand snips and made hair stylists rich and famous with her famous blond flip (certain girls in high school during a certain era were referred to as “Farrah” – half compliment, half disparagement). She was the fave Angel for many a teenage boy, though I must admit I kind of favored Jaclyn Smith (You’re welcome, dear).

And there was that poster.

There are posters. And then there are Posters. Farrah’s was the latter. You know the one. Oh, all right, here it is! THAT poster.

I doubt I’ll get sued for reproducing it here because 1) Its original owner is reportedly bankrupt and long gone and 2) My source for this image has much deeper pockets and is a much more viable source for damages money. Me? I’m broke. For the record, your honor, I am broke. Busted. Zilch. Moths in my pockets.

Michael. Well, what can you say about the guy who elevated music video from cheesy promotion on iffy videotape to an Event, and not just an Event but one that looked and sounded great?

Michael Jackson was already a major star when Thriller came out. That blew everything else away. I wonder if my old roommate has his (still?) unopened vinyl copy of Thriller on eBay yet. Hey Brian Carpenter, you out there??

Things got a little weird from there. Speaking of Weird, Al Yankovich did a pretty tasty parody of the King of Pop, particularly with his video “Fat.”

The bizarre behavior got tiresome, even if the tabloids couldn’t get enough of it. Somebody read that crap, I suppose. But the pet chimpanzee, the Elephant Man bones, the reckless spending that Elton John could only dream of, the accusations of molestation, the marriage to Lisa Marie … I just lost interest after a while, as did most of the Pop Eating World.

The King of Pop had a big comeback tour set in Europe, and there was plenty of buzz about it. Oh, well. As my former “co-colleague” at the Akron Beacon Journal put it, those fans now hold (probably) highly valuable souvenirs. Coming to soon to eBay. Oh, heh-heh. It’s already there.