Havin' a Heat Wave

The first sign we had that anything was wrong was when we pulled into the driveway after dinner yesterday evening.

It’s been hot here, and Martin’s kitchen door was standing open.  It opens out onto an exterior staircase on the west side of our house, so you can’t miss it as you turn into the driveway.  Usually the only time it is open is when he’s been cooking something smelly.

It was odd because nobody is cooking right now – it’s just too hot – and most people are hunkered down inside trying to keep cool.  Windows and doors are closed as air conditioners hum discordantly through the neighborhoods.

We’d been having issues with that very thing – keeping cool – and had in fact made a side trip to Super-Mega Hardware for a window air conditioner to help take a bit of the stress off the big central model that keeps our own upstairs cool.  We just happened to have a nifty little unit, along with the installation accessories, in the back of the car when we got home.

As I was schlepping it into the house, Martin came down from the apartment literally in meltdown – sweat was pouring off of him, his clothes soaked through and him all agitated and spouting off in his own dialect of Spanglish.

It woulda been the perfect excuse to slap him, had there been an inclination.  In reality, though, it was just too darned hot to touch anyone else for any reason.

When we sorted the translation out, it seemed that his door is open because his air conditioner has stopped working.

Two days ago.

TWO DAYS AGO!!  

And not a word to us about fixing it.  We didn’t notice anything different because it apparently didn’t occur to him to open the windows, much less to pop down the stairs and say, “Hey, it’s a little warm upstairs.  Think you could take a look at it?”

No mention at all during either of the two business days, when repairmen are available and can get parts and, with sufficient financial incentive, be convinced to come to your home to fix things.

Instead, he’d suffered in silence as the thermometer topped 96 each day and the heat index was well into triple-digits, choosing to bring the matter to our attention at 8:00 on a Friday night.

It’s not as though he’d done nothing -- he had dragged every fan in the basement – including the “power dryer”-- upstairs to the apartment and was running them, effectively turned it into a large convection oven for him and the dog.

Yoko needed no urging to come down to the kitchen and visit, probably hoping for a popsicle.  After all, he was wearing a fur coat through the entire ordeal.

Now, it’s not unusual that we don’t have close interaction with Martin for a day or two.  Like neighbors, we smile and wave sometimes, each involved with our own projects and without time to stop and visit.  We’d heard enough sounds and seen enough to know that everyone was alive and mobile.  That’d all been sort of ordinary.

Well, as ordinary as things get around here.

But c’mon, it should have been obvious to anyone that when it’s that hot in your apartment that more than a mere social niceties are warranted.

He is somewhat confounded by the programmable thermostat, and just assumed that technology had gotten the better of him.  That doesn’t explain why he didn’t ask me to come and reprogram it, though.

My HVAC (Heat, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) classes in law school were about as limited as some of the other topics we’ve discussed – first aid, rabid bunnies, basic accounting – so other than “jiggling the handle” and checking what I think are probably the correct breakers for the unit, my solutions were about as effective as opening the hood of the car alongside the road.

It signals others that help may be warranted, but I don’t know a damned thing about what I’m looking at there, either.

Instead, I pulled out my favorite tool – my cell phone -- and found the number for the guy who usually comes and fixes our air conditioners.

Being a smart man, he doesn’t answer any of his telephones at 8:00 on a Friday evening.  That’s just a way to get dragged out of your own air conditioned comfort and into someone’s hot attic to “. . . .take a look at it.”

There’s no parts available.  It’s dark and hot.  There’s nothing that he can do, other than have his evening spoiled.  I don’t blame him, I don’t answer my phone at certain times, either.

So 8:00 on Friday saw us assembling and installing a window unit in the bedroom of the apartment.

It’s much easier than I remember it being when dad used to stuff them into the windows of our house growing up, although my fabrication of “filler parts” around the windows wasn’t as neat a job as his.

After all, it’s just a temporary fix, I hope.

It was plugged in and putting out cool air even before the installation was complete, and Martin's bedroom was down to something livable by the time we were cleaning up the boxes.

Of course, OUR bedroom window was still vacant and wanting, so I had to go BACK to the Super-Mega Hardware Store before they closed.

As luck would have it, the Super-Mega Hardware store 200 yards from the house was all out of the one I wanted.  We’d bought the last one during our earlier trip so I dashed across town to the sister store to get one from them.

Experience is a great teacher.  The second unit went in even more quickly than the first, and is trimmed out better.  By 11:00 our own bedroom was enjoying it’s version of a cooling breeze.

This was good, because after 30 minutes of the window open into the 90+ degree heat, even at 10:00 at night, I was sweating like a wh….

A horse.  Yeah, that’s it.  Sweating like a horse.  Not one in church or anything, just a horse.

And today, when the parts suppliers are safely closed and the repairman’s plans for the weekend cannot be disrupted, he’s safely returned my call (from his boat on the lake, I suspect) and scheduled us for a meeting at 8:30 on Monday morning. 

I’ve worked with him in the past, and know that he generally works in “earth time” rather than “contractor time”, so I look for him sometime between 8:30 and 9 that morning.

And I’ll go back to Super-Mega Hardware and get a simple thermostat – one that says “hotter” and “colder” to replace the programmable model that’s there now and stand sweating in the hallway of the apartment installing it while listening to the little engine that could humming through the closed bedroom door as it keeps that Martin and Yoko comfortable, at least for a little while.  

The Fruits of Summer

I cooked this weekend.

That, in itself, isn’t all that unusual. I like to cook. Except when it’s about a thousand degrees out, when just the idea of standing in a room with large windows facing the west and turning on a device designed to generate heat makes me kind of lightheaded.

Then we eat out a lot.

The weather broke on Saturday, though, a client had brought by a bag of goodies from his garden and we’d been to the Farmer’s Market, so the kitchen was overrun with produce that would go to bad if not used and given all the starving children in China – well, something was going to get cooked.

What’s somewhat ironic is that one of the things I cooked was fried green tomatoes.

Now, for those that don’t know, this is a southern delicacy. Unripe tomatoes are breaded and pan fried. They are very good with a bit of pimento cheese on top.

I didn’t always have such a sophisticated palate. If it wasn't beef and potatoes, I wasn't all that interested in it.

Growing up, we had friends who lived up the street who also had 3 little boys, all of us stair-stepped (I was #3) with dark hair (buzzed in the summer) and back and forth to each other’s house. We did vacations and trips together and looked enough alike so that when one set of parents had all the kids while the other parents took an “afternoon nap” the mom of the day frequently got looks of sympathy for being stuck with that team of boys.

There was one major difference between our family and theirs, though. They had a standing rule that, “. . . you will try some of everything on the table and eat everything on your plate.”

As an adult I see the value of this rule. Some foods are an acquired taste and need frequent exposure to get used to them.

Like dark beer, or blended scotch or certain mixed drinks. Nobody can drink their first Manhattan without a bit of a shudder. Persevere, though, and they start to taste pretty good.

This "try everything and clean your plate theory" works fine if you start it off with an infant understanding this is the rule of the house. Trying to impose it on a 10 year old is somewhat more problematic.

Especially a somewhat opinionated 10 year old who was a "good eater" according to grandmothers who were willing to tailor the menu to the child's taste, or a "picky eater" according to a mom who had to deal with the issue on a daily basis and refused to fix multiple dinners to accommodate the varying tastes in the house.

It was at about this age, at one of those joint family dinners, that I was confronted with that most vile of foods, the fried green tomato.

I suppose I should also explain that I wasn’t a fan of any kind of tomato, other than those that had been processed into ketchup.

So green ones, even if fried, were not about to touch my lips.

Mom was determined to stick to the rules though, and one went on my plate.

About 6 hours later I was still sitting at the table facing a then cold and coagulating fried green tomato, swearing that I could sit there until I died but still wouldn't eat it.

I don’t remember how the standoff ended, other than that I didn’t eat it, certain that it would, “. . . make me puke.” I suspect that Mom finally just decided that in all the battles to be faced in life, this one simply wasn't worth it.

I suspect that she wasn't especially a big fan of them, either, because I don't remember ever having them any other time when I was growing up.

So it’s a bit ironic that on the first day that I’ve cooked in a couple of weeks or so that this should be one of the things that I made.

They were pretty good. Enough so that I've saved the recipe and decided that we'll be having them again, despite the mess that comes with pan frying anything in the kitchen.

Oh, and the rule about ". . . try some of everything and eat everything on your plate," -- it ended a few months later when the other family moved away.

Ralph's commentary on my Independence Day Blog

Ralph's contribution is too long to fit in the comments, so here it is as a post:

Another one of Larry’s awesome blogs on a very complex, but poignant subject. One that I can’t keep still about or answer in just a paragraph or two.

There is no question in my mind that this country is rapidly deteriorating and it is happening for a multitude of reasons – hopefully we  might agree that there aren’t any simple answers to complex problems.

I will, respectfully, contest your assertion that “we now seem to be more polarized than ever.”

We have a very long history of ideologies taking over reason and it does ebb and flow. I could cite many instances throughout our history but would just highlight a few:

• After we signed a peace treaty with Britain in the early 1800s there were calls for President George Washington to be tried for treason and hung if found guilty.
• Let’s not forget the Civil War.
• Prior to our being attacked at Pearl Harbor there was a sharp divide in this country between Isolationists (some of whom were blatantly pro-Nazi) and those who would have us intervene in the European war. One could reasonably argue that the highly successful efforts of Isolationists to keep us from building up our military strength lengthened the war effort and cost innumerable lives.
• The Senator Joseph McCarthy congressional hearings
• The Viet Nam debacle.

Benjamin Franklin wrote, in the infant years of our nation, that those who governed were so enmeshed in their personal ideologies, and prejudices, that it was hard to envision that they could govern in the best interests of the nation.

How much has it really changed?

I see our demise coming from many different aspects:

Arrogance – we still believe we are the greatest country on earth and while much of our nation is deteriorating we beat our chests. We are like an addict who refuses to acknowledge the disease and therefore foregoes any possibility of rehabilitation.

Education – while we still are able to create the greatest innovative ideas, and number of patents, in the world we are rapidly falling behind in education. Our past successes are due to our competitive spirit and desire to conquer the many worlds of science. Other nations teach far more by rote and avoid creativity or challenges in much of their education. This, however, is rapidly changing as through “No Child Left Behind,” and other initiatives, we are teaching more to tests than to knowledge.

Among industrialized nations we rank 9^th in percent of population with a high school degree and 7^th with a college degree (CBS News).

In science we rank 29^th in the world (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and in math we are just as poor.

Stupidity – I don’t know of an index for this but in polls taken from 2005 through 2010 (Gallup, Pew, Newsweek and others) the following came out:

21% believe Obama is a Muslim

Only 39% believe in Evolution – others either believe in Creationism or aren’t sure

21% believe in sorcerers, conjurers and warlocks; 41% in ESP; 32% in ghosts; 25% in astrology

40% of Americans believe that The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (derisively called Obamacare by some) created a panel that makes end of life decisions – remember Senator Charles Grassley telling his constituents that this act would, in fact, “kill Grandma.”

20% believe the sun revolves around the earth

Under 50% believe that Judaism is older than Christianity. I guess over 50% can’t deal with the fact that Jesus was a Jew, born of Jewish parents and, that the Christian religion did not exist during his lifetime.

About 75% can name the 3 stooges (Larry, Curly and Moe) but only about 40% know the 3 branches of government

And so on and so forth

Health:

Face it – we are becoming a fat, lazy and overmedicated nation. The medications are not just the illegal ones but also those prescribed by physicians. Our life expectancy has already dropped to 36^th in the world (CIA – World Fact Book) and by any measure this would indicate that our population is not getting great medical care. We certainly are way behind on preventative care and with almost 40 million Americans without health insurance their primary care is for emergencies only which may, in many cases, be too late.

With the continued increases in the levels of obesity, (bringing on more diabetes, heart attacks, etc) it is anticipated that our life expectancy will actually decline in the near future – a first in our history.

As to prescription medications - this is a huge industry with over 24,000 medicines available including prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs and natural remedies (source: Drugs.com).

World wide prescription drug sales are over $820 billion annually with an annual growth rate of five percent. The United States is the most medicated, or over medicated, nation on the planet. We purchase over 290 billion dollars of this stuff annually. While we have only 4.3% of the planets population we consume over 35% of the drugs (source: Drugs.com).

On a per capita basis we are well ahead of any other nation purchasing 31% more than the average Japanese citizen and 43% more than the average European in spite of the fact that they have older populations than we do (source: Drugs.com).

If you think that the amount of advertising for drugs and remedies are more than plentiful you are correct. This category ranks as the fourth highest category after retailers, automotive and telecommunications with annual expenditures well over nine billion dollars accounting for 6.2% of all advertising dollars (source: Advertising Age).

While there are those who deride the national health plans of other nations those populations are much healthier and live longer than we. No plan is perfect but ask any German, Englishman or others if they would want to see their plan go away and you will see fire in their eyes.

Essentially the denial of health care to our entire nation is, along with other aspects, a definite form of class warfare and an argument might be made that is a form of genocide against the underprivileged.

Journalism:

We don’t have journalists anymore. What we have are script readers and interviews are almost always condescending. When I would hear the late Tim Russert (on Meet the Press) interview John McCain, the Arizona Senator, sounded like a real moderate. Russert never once brought up McCain’s voting record that was diametrically opposed to the statements he made on the show.

When politicians make outrageous statements they are not challenged in any way, shape or form and the uneducated listener might therefore be led to believe that the statements were true. Michelle Bachman’s assertions that a 2011 trip to Asia by President Obama cost the American taxpayer $200 million per day and that repeal of “Obamacare” would create 800,000 jobs have never been questioned or challenged.

Trying to get real news today is next to impossible unless the networks think it has “sex appeal.” It wasn’t so long ago that we were in mortal fear of North Korea and Iran developing nuclear weapons. What happened? Did they stop building them? Are we longer concerned? Well, I guess Anthony Weiner and Casey Anthony are much more important or whatever the scandal of the day is.

The Economy:

This could be a book unto itself. Yes, we still have the greatest Gross Domestic Product (GDP)in the world and we are still one of the most productive nations but we are rapidly losing our world ranking and in the near future we will be surpassed, in GDP, first by China and then India.

We should also remember that our GDP per capita doesn’t make us look all that good when compared to Japan, Germany and other industrialized nations.

The debt crisis is real and our government will not take the necessary steps to get us headed back in the right direction. Remember that when George W Bush took office we were in our third year of surplus and there were predictions that we could totally eliminate our national debt before the decade was over. Reckless spending, ludicrous tax reductions and two wars rapidly turned our surplus to huge deficits in Bush’s second year in office.

One economist has predicted that we will be the next Greece. I’m not sure that the world has enough resources to bail us out as they are trying to do in Europe. Most of Europe is facing the same problems as we are but they are taking steps to get their economies back in line and they are bravely standing up to the wildly unpopular  measures being enacted. They have determined that the national interest takes precedence over political appeasement. We may have to get to that point before we take real steps but it might be far too late.

A part of the debt crisis, that is not discussed, is the interest costs to our nation. When the government borrows money it has to pay the investors interest. As our debt rises, and questions arise as to our ability to meet our financial obligations arise, those rates will go up. We should remember that every dollar paid in interest is a dollar taken away from education, research, infrastructure, etc.

Interest expense is becoming the third largest item in our Federal Budget after Social programs and Defense.

I could write a lot more but by now you are probably sick of me if you have even gotten this far. - Ralph

Independence Day, 2011

Today is Independence Day.  The United States is 235 years old, and I have to wonder if she’s starting to show her age and there may be a bit of dementia coming out.

It’s like realizing that your elderly aunt is starting to slip a bit – putting metal pans in the microwave, setting the thermostat to 40 degrees and complaining because it’s cold, watering the artificial flower arrangement on the piano or losing her car in the parking lot and calling the fire department because it’s stolen – nothing that’s absolutely life threatening, but is somewhat cause for concern by those who care about her.

When that happens with your relative, you start looking back and seeing the signs that have been coming up for years.  Things that at the time looked like mere forgetfulness or eccentricity but you now realize that they were the early indicators of a greater problem.  As a country, we have the ability to look back to the early 1980's and see when things started to change.

In the case of the United States, we now seem to be more polarized than ever before.  Everyone is either “one of us” or “one of them”, without much opportunity for an exchange of ideas or compromise in between.  We don’t discuss, we shout over each other with the apparent belief that the loudest voice will “be right” and win.

On top of that, we have elected officials who are concerned not with furthering the legitimate business of the United States – reasonable defense, healthcare, the economy, employment and other societal concerns that affect broad sectors of the population – but rather having accepted money from what in times past would have been considered a radical fringe group are intent on pushing their social agenda in order to keep that flow of money coming to them individually.

The flash from one extreme to the other is therefore disconcerting.  Both sides not only want to hold onto the power and influence they have, but they seem to feel that they have to annihilate anyone who opposes their point of view at the same time.

You are one of us, or one of them.  If you are one of them, you must be eradicated.

I have to say here, I think that position originates largely from the conservative viewpoint since it is primarily religious based.  Extreme religions (and make no mistake, most forms of Christianity fall into that category) simply don’t tolerate either being questioned or disagreed with.  On the other hand, more liberal points of view tend to be of the “whatever you want to believe is fine, as long as you leave me alone” type.

The left is therefore precluded from reaching any type of compromise because of the right's position as holder of tactics from the Conquistadores (i.e. “Convert or die”), neither of which is a viable option from their perspectives.  The right has the religious zeal to “save the heathen” and make them see the error of their ways and change their entire way of thinking in order to reap a greater reward in the afterlife.

A position that seems somewhat antithetical to the "free will" concept to which most of Christianity  subscribes, but that's a discussion for another time.

Compromise usually happens in the areas of overlap; without some commonality between disagreeing groups, it’s hard to forge a consensus.  Right now, our country seems to be comprised of extremes at one end of the spectrum or the other.

Those in the middle – Nixon’s “silent majority” -- are either cowed into silence out of self-preservation or exhausted from all the screaming coming at them from both sides and simply don’t have the energy to sort it out for themselves between trying to make a living, keep the mortgage paid, the plumbing unstopped and the kids to soccer practice.

They leave the fighting to others and try to stay out of the line of fire as much as possible.

So the US at 235 years of age is acting a bit demented and I’m beginning to have doubts about whether or not they make a gigantic patch of the medicine to slow the progress of the societal Alzheimers from which we suffer.

Is this the end?  Will we see our nation collapse through years of demise after such a short period of productivity?

Maybe this is the natural order of things, just as humans are born, grow, age and die.  Countries rarely stay at the top of their game forever.  Countries which might now be considered as minor players – the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Egypt – were once the rulers of the world with vast empires.  Is it possible that the United States has started its own demise?  Should we follow the precepts contained in the Living Wills that many of us sign and simply allow nature to take it's course, for our government and society to end whenever things start to exceed the parameters that a caring and conscious caregiver would allow?

The signs are there – our government doesn’t have acceptable safety nets for the most vulnerable of it’s members, a wealthy minority controls those who are supposed to take care of all of the citizens and safeguards that are intended to protect our common resources and citizens are routinely disregarded for the benefit of a powerful few.  If something doesn't change soon, I suspect that we will reach a tipping point and see a new government or governments formed to accommodate specific population groups.

One of the great casualties of the current state of affairs is education and knowledge.  Basic schools are not funded to create a workforce to feed our economy with innovative products or ideas, and the media – both liberal and conservative – spews out a series of half-truths, misinformation and outright lies in 30 second sound bites that are rarely questioned or examined closely.

Our children and young adults – and by that, I mean much of the population under 50 since more and more people seem to be experiencing an extended adolescence – no longer have the intellectual backgrounds to discuss, debate and argue ideas so that they can then accept or reject concepts as legitimate and rational.  We have grown up on tests that don’t require essays, with the organization of reasoning and logic, but rather have chosen a curriculum of classes that rely on multiple-choice tests which require only that we pick A, B, C or D and color in the dot.  

The loss of those critical thinking skills is beginning to show.

In many ways, we are very similar to Europe during the dark ages, when religious institutions controlled much of the thinking and heretics were burned at the stake.

While there are admittedly few human bonfires lately, our society has developed more devious ways to eliminate those faint voices crying in the wilderness that dare to question the tumult about them.

Character Assassination.

Denial of Employment.

Hate Crimes and Violence.

Denial of basic human rights.

So what’s the outcome?  Do we see the United States separate into a variety of smaller countries, with regional ideologies more fitting to those populations?  While that may seem appealing in some regards will it lead to border wars like we see in Middle Eastern or African nations?  Let’s not forget that religious and cultural differences (some of which seem relatively minor to the western mind) are at the heart of those conflicts as well.

More pragmatically, how do we fund those big-ticket items that only a national government can handle, like defense, highway construction, utility production, or responses to natural disasters?  One reason that the US is able to bounce-back as well as it does is that we can spread the cost of a product that may not directly help a particular region out over a broad population base.  Will we loose that and an area that’s hit with an earthquake remain in ruins, with the population living in tents and without the basic necessities of shelter, clean water and adequate food simply for years? 

One need only look as far as the devastation in Haiti to see the impact of a natural disaster in a small country.

I don’t think we’re there yet.  At least, I hope not.

But if those in the middle --  those reasonable individuals who are friends and neighbors despite our differences, who borrow things back and forth, attend each other’s BBQ’s and wave at the Post Office -- don’t begin to speak up when someone from either end of the spectrum once again goes off on some radical tangent that may not impact them directly, we could get there very quickly.

There are two ways to turn the tide.  The first is to vote.  Not just a party line, but to actively learn who is behind a particular candidate and determine where they stand on a spectrum of issues, rather than just the one or two hot-buttons that appear in the television commercials.

The next is to communicate with those elected officials – whether you voted for them or not – and make your positions known, to let them know that you are interested and watching their actions, and to make it clear that their actions with regard to a number of issues will guide your voting at the next opportunity.

Inappropriate things happen because those in charge think that nobody is watching.  It’s time to let them know that we are watching and will be holding them accountable.  We can save our country and restore it to its former position as a world leader, but not if we don’t actively start working that direction right now.