Balto, the Iditarod and Centers of the Universe

The more I hang out in crowded areas, the more I understand the world's problems. Many people are oblivious to their surroundings. After spending a Saturday afternoon in a Costco, I understand bad drivers. I see how people drive their carts, like they are alone. They stop in the middle of an aisle and chat with a friend coming the other way oblivious of the fact that they are blocking everyone in a crowded marketplace.

The advent of the cellphone makes this even worse. I was in a crowded movie theater in Manhattan last week.  I had the pleasure of paying $21.00 to see Iron Man III on the IMAX. It was good fun, but on the way out, a few hundred people had to pile out of the theater into the rain via a revolving door. We lined up. In line approaching the exit, the man in front of me approached the door and then stopped to write a text on his phone. Of course, I walk into him and like dominoes, the crowd behind me walk into me. Apparently, he is the center of the universe and we were supposed to have read his mind to avoid hitting him. Next time you see someone do something really stupid in traffic, that almost kills you, it is easier to forgive them when you realize that the person doing it is the center of the universe. Since everything revolves around them, it doesn't matter that the actions of the oblivious few waste our time, cause us harm or even, threaten our lives.

I mention this because while in New York City, staying at a hotel on West 79th Street, I wanted to find the statue of Balto, the heroic sled dog, in Central Park. On Saturday, on my walk to the zoo, I found it. Everything that is right about this city can be found in the Central Park on a Saturday afternoon. It is crowded but manageable, diverse and friendly. You have joggers, runners, walkers and chatters. If you miss your dogs while traveling, the park is where to be. The dog I was looking for was a bronze one, Balto, the famous hero of the Iditarod. I was surprised to find a crowd of people at Balto. Since it is near the children's zoo, apparently it is a favorite spot for picture taking. It is obvious by looking at this gorgeous statue, that the children climbing on it, are destroying it. Bronze holds up fine in the elements of rain, snow and wind, but it does not hold up to the natural oils in the hands of humans. Kids climb on top of the statue for pictures and they touch his ears, his saddle and his mane. You can see the damage in this picture. The bronze has become discolored. So instead of telling their kids "no," they let them climb up on it and contribute to its destruction. This is where the next generation of oblivious citizens come from (the offspring of the Centers of the Universe). In a decade or so, the statue will be without ears or a tail.

Balto, in Central Park, NYC

Who is Balto? In 1925, the diphtheria epidemic hit Nome, Alaska. The only serum in the area was in Anchorage (which wasn't even a city at the time) , 674 miles away during blizzard conditions. With a temperature of −23 °F, the only plane available had a frozen engine. The children of Nome were dying so the people of Anchorage did what they had to do, they crossed the wintry tundra by dog sled. Balto's team (he was the lead dog) was the first team to arrive in 5.5 days in what is now called the "Great Race of Mercy" or the Iditarod. This was worldwide story and Balto was the most famous dog on the planet.

The Iditarod sled dog race is now run annually. They alternate two routes, every other year, tracing the original routes from 1925. A team can have up to 16 dogs with minimum of 12. Siberian huskies are bred to run and seem to love doing it. The dogs that compete get better health care than most Americans with yearly EKG's and veterinarians stationed along the race. The race has changed over the year.  Now you can follow the racer via GPS on Iditarod.com.

It is too bad not everyone has a little bit more respect for the public artwork and for our history.

The Universal They and the Non-inclusive We

Considering the poor communication skills I see exhibited each day, I am amazed that actual communication ever happens. Yet it does. In reading on-line message boards and social media, it seems people are very interested in expressing themselves and connecting with others, but don't want to spend the time to be clear, to spell correctly (not only pass spell check but actually use the correct words as well) and proofread. I still get correspondence from people who confuse "since" and "sense" and who think "alot" is a word. But the miscommunication goes beyond this, the use of cliché and vague tropes are ubiquitous. I am talking about the Universal They and the Non-inclusive We.

The Universal They is the use of the pronoun "they" when you want to blame someone, but you are too lazy to research the specifics. This particular trope is handy for the paranoid among us. Certainly, just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean no one is out is to get you, but at least you could specify whom you are talking about when you share this with the world.  The paranoid use the Universal They to describe the government "They are tapping our phones," to describe corporations "they are poisoning us," or the world in general "they want to steal my poetry." The last one is from a friend who once asked me to help him setup a firewall for his computer to protect his poetry. "You setup a firewall to protect your computer from viruses, not protect your poetry. No one wants your poetry," I said. I am not very tactful, but subtlety rarely works with the paranoid.

Whenever anyone invokes the Universal They, for clarity's sake (and sanity's), always follow up with "Who are they?" When you push for deeper specifics, you usually find kinks in the armor of their paranoia. Who is tapping your phone?  The government. Who specifically? The FBI. Why would they be doing that? Are you a member of a cartel or a mafia family? Why would the federal government exert any money or energy on you? Political discussions on social media can be fun but also scary at times. People believe this stuff.

The Non-inclusive We is less innocuous. Those who use it are not paranoid, just self-righteous. Those who use the Non-inclusive We want to say something about society at large, but want to exclude themselves. They say things like this "We are a selfish society" then go on and talk about how unselfish they are.  They say "We are obsessed with material goods" and then continue to tell you about their low-budget DIY holiday season. They are a less scary crowd than the Universal They folks but more annoying. They are usually more educated, so should know better. You can see this in a lot of editorial writing. I see it sometime with writers I actually like. Here it is from Barbara Kingsolver in her essay "Jabberwocky" which is full of the Non-inclusive We:

    "But we bought the goods, or we kept our mouths shut.
    If we felt disturbed by the idea of pulverizing civilizations
    as the best way to settle our differences --- or had trouble
    explaining it to our kids as adult behavior --- we weren't
    talking about it. "

This is from page 222 from her fabulous collection of essays High Tide in Tucson from HarperPerrenial. I agree with everything she has to say in this essay. I just wish it was a better essay and less self-righteous.

While in casual conversation, how do you respond to the Non-inclusive We? We assume it is inclusive. "We" is a collective pronoun after all with the assumption that the speaker is included in the "we."  So next Christmas, when one of your self-righteous friends says to you: "We are a selfish, materialistic culture," respond by asking them, "Why are you so selfish?" That should get the conversation going! 

Income Tax Irony

History and politics are full of ironies. One of my favorites is the income tax. The majority of the Federal income taxes collected in America is in the North and from states that are generally considered Democratic leaning. Much of the wealth in our nation is still in the North. Yet, most of the complaining about taxes comes from the conservatives and/or Republicans ... the South.

In 2007 numbers, California and New York (Texas and Florida being next) paid the most taxes for obvious reasons, they are huge. Because of this per capita numbers make more sense to use in this discussion. The highest tax payers per capita are all Northern states (in order Delaware, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island).  The opposite is true as well, the lowest tax payer per capita are Southern states and/or a Republican states (in order West Virginia, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina and Montana).

Those who complain the most, pay the least. Something to think about the next time a tornado wipes out a trainer park in the South and FEMA comes to the rescue.  The North is paying for it and the South is complain about it.

The further irony here is that if it were not for the South attempting to secede from the Union, there would be no income tax.  President Lincoln introduced the Federal Income tax to pay for the Civil War.  At the time only the wealthy were taxed and it was public information. Anyone could find out how much you paid by checking public records. The Confederacy also instituted an income tax but had difficulty collecting (imagine that). After the war, the income tax was declared unconstitutional in the 1890's.  We went 30 years without a Federal income tax. The government's main source of income were tariffs. The problem with tariffs is that they are not very stable during war time because ports are no longer safe.

The nation needed a revenue source to pay for World War I, so we made it constitutional by passing the 16th Amendment in 1913. We have a Federal income tax ever since.  Up until the George W. Bush administration, war was usually a good excuse to raise taxes.  He was the first President to actually cut taxes during war time (for his two wars).  I guess you could call it ironic that Republics complain about Obama's spending after the debacle of the Bush years, but that isn't ironic, that is just politics ... and a little bit of stupidity.

We Are Boylston

Before moving to Vermont, I lived in the Boston area for ten years. For five of those years, I worked in Copley Square in Back Bay.  It was a great location to work. Lunch breaks were spent walking to the Public Garden or doing a loop through the brown stones of the South End.  On Thursdays, during the summer, members of the Boston Symphony would give a concert (in quartets etc.) in the Square in front of Trinity Church.  After work, I could walk to Fenway to watch a game. Every New Year's Eve, while I lived in Boston, was spent in Back Bay for Boston's First Night celebration (Boston founded this event).  At First Night I was exposed to some of my favorite musicians like  Vance Gilbert and Jim Infantino.  I also saw Reeves Gabrels (guitarist for David Bowie) jam him guitar with a vibrator in one of Copley Square's specular churches. First Night is also where my wife and I had our first kiss. So yes, I do have some emotional connections to this place.

The best day of the year in Boston is Patriots' Day.  The Red Sox have an 11am game always at home in Fenway.  Provided that they don't go into extra innings you could leave the game at the end to catch the Kenyans cross the finish line of the Boston Marathon or at least some of the better runners... if you are tall enough to see over the crowd. Everyone is in a good mood which is rare in this city. An air of good feeling and generosity is in the air. If I didn't have the day off, I could watch the crowd at the Marathon from my office window. I could see the tops of the heads of the runners bopping over the crowd as they headed down Boylston Street approaching the finish line.  At lunch a group of us would head down into the crowd to join the excitement.

In the recent years, we (Americans) have witnessed some horrific events on our shores, like 911, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Newtown shootings (to name only a few). None have affected me like the bombings in Boston earlier this week. The mix of emotions that filled me while watching the event unfold, through my tears, ranged from rage, sadness, fear and paranoia. I felt paralyzed by the event for quite some time not able to work. As the ashes settle, as we mourn our dead, tend to our wounded and acknowledge our many heroes, you have to wonder the long term affect of this event.

For many people of the world their only exposure to Boylston Street will be the images of a bomb going off and the carnage thereafter. For me, Boyslton will be always be a street of excitement and commerce, of bustling crowds, lost tourists and bad drivers. It will always be the home of the Boston Public Library, the first library in America to allow private citizens to borrow books for free.

It is home of the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) and Hines Convention Center.  Boylston not only has great bars like the Pour House, McGreevy's and Whiskey's but it has probably the happiest Dunkin' Donuts in the New England (at least it was when I frequented the place).

Boylston is a common name in Massachusetts.  Many towns have a Boylston Street, there is a town and a hall at Harvard called Boylston. When I lived in Boston, a friend once told me that Boylston was the name of a doctor, Zabdiel Boylston, who helped immunize the city of smallpox in 1721 which isn't entirely true. Dr. Boylston indeed immunized 247 people with a revolutionary technique he learned in abroad.  Of these patients, six died, three of whom were his oldest patients. Boylston was great uncle of President John Adams and philanthropist, Ward Nicolas Boylston.  Adams' mother was a Boylston.  It is Ward Nicoloas that the street, town and hall are named after.

Perhaps the legacy of the Boylston Street/Boston Marathon bombings will be a positive one. In addition to all the death and calamity, we saw great heroism. In the videos of the event you see just as many people running into the mess as you see running away. You saw crowds of people huddled around each other helping, pitching-in however they could.  You hear stories of runners who after finished the marathon and ran a few more miles to donate blood. I heard of someone creating a spreadsheet on their smartphone of names and address of local who opened their homes to displaced individuals. Let the name Boylston be known for what for what it originally was known for on this continent, for philanthropy and generosity of spirit. We humans, we Americans, we New Englanders and Bostonians are not those two young scumbags that caused the calamity.  They are one-off's, oddities, strangers. We are much better than that.  We are Boylston!

Luck and the Marshmallow

I don't believe in luck, not much anyway.  I used to have a track coach in high school that used to say in his speech before our meets, "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. You've been preparing all week, now is your opportunity." If we succeeded, we were not lucky, but because we had worked at it.  In any competition, unless dice are involved, very little has to do with luck. It actually has to do with training or practice. Life is a lot like this. Life is more like chess than it is like craps.

I have a great situation for employment at the moment. I work for one of the greatest entities on the planet, a world renowned organization known for intellectual prowess and philanthropy. I work out of my home, telecommuing.  I enjoy my job, I have no commute and I am paid well. I get a little annoyed when I am told that I am lucky.  I have this position from working extremely hard for a very long time. I have worked many jobs lots of them with low pay, long hours and on off-shifts. I approached everyone of them as a learning experience even working the loading dock and coaching high school track. They were an opportunity and a stepping stone to something better. I put myself through college by working these crappy jobs sometimes with obnoxious bosses and awful working conditions. I partied some in college, but not as much as others. I always had a paper to write, a program to code or a textbook to read. I have always had my eye on a long-term goal as opposed to short-term gratification. Now, here I am. I am goals met, feeling gratified. So don't tell me that I am lucky. Prior to my last job, I had been laid off four times in a row. I saw the layoffs coming so I left my last position for my current position, an organization known for having a lot of money and not laying anyone off.  That wasn't luck but planning or as my coach used to say "preparation."

The concept of long term goals over immediate gratification isn't a new one, but it is obviously not for everyone. According to the Marshmallow Study, it is something we learn at a very early age and it is one of the biggest determinations of success.  The study, done at Stanford University in 1960's and 70's, took 32 preschoolers (16 of each gender) and offered them a treat now or a treat later (15 minutes). The treat would be a pretzel, a marshmallow or a cookie. The kids were told that if they waited for the treat later, they would get two. They repeated this a few time increasing the reward and the time interval each time. They made note of which students choose what and followed up on them years later.  By 1990, the delayed gratification students had a higher average SAT scores. Later follow up showed the delayed gratification groups to have better police records, lower BMI's, more financial success and education.  The delayed gratification group scored better, as an average, in every aspect of life.

I hope there is a student reading this right now, who is in the middle of writing a difficult paper or struggling with some a difficult concept in school. The student is taking a break from their studies and on the net looking for a distraction.  He/She is looking out the window at the beautiful spring weather and thinking of hanging it up. They have a friend urging them to go to throw a ball around or head to party or bar.  I say to you: hang in there, it will pay off. You get plenty of marshmallow later if you don't eat it now. Luck has nothing to do with it.

The White Rose

Growing up in the 1970's and 80's in the USA, as a young liberal, I couldn't help but romanticize the Civil Rights Movement and the young radicals of that era that resisted the war in Vietnam. The protesting and getting arrested to help further a cause, it all seems so noble and brave.  I don't want to minimize what these folks accomplished, but in comparison to the White Rose and what they faced, it seems tame in comparison.

The White Rose was a non-violent resistance group at the University of Munich during the World War II.  From June 1942 to February 1943 a small group of college students produced and handed out pamphlets urging peaceful resistance to the Nazis. They also used graffiti to spread their message. Six of them were eventually caught, tried for treason and executed (via guillotine).  The first three (Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans Scholl and Christof Probst.) were arrested in February 1943 after the Scholl's were caught spreading pamphlets on campus and the printing press was found in Probst's possession days later. Three more were arrested and executed in a couple of months later.

Whenever I see a film or read something about Germany in WW II, I always wonder what the people knew and thought about the situation. How conflicted were they? Or were they conflicted at all? How much did the citizenry know about what was happening to the Jews and what could they do about it if they did know?  How would I react in the same situation? Many people must have felt like these courageous college students, but these few actually did something about it. It not only takes courage, but tremendous foresight and self confidence. Some of these student grew up as members of the Hitler youth. Indoctrination into the Third Reich started at a very young age and their influence was so strong that students spied on their own parent and were urged to report any activity against the cause. It is so impressive that these young people came out of that environment with such strong convictions.

It is difficult to see how much, if any, affect that they had on anything. Members of the The White Rose expected their death to cause a revolt; it did not.  They are considered as heroes in modern Germany appearing on postage stamps and are the subjects of movies. Sofie Scholl has become an icon for what is good about Germany. The text of the sixth pamphlet urged Germany soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender to the allies.  It was smuggled out of Germany into the UK and was air dropped over Germany by allied planes in July 1943 with the title: "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich."  Perhaps they didn't die in vain.

Hawaiian Mongoose

If I ever moved to Hawaii, one thing I would miss is the lack of large mammals. The largest mammal (other than the human) is a wild pig. There are no deer, moose or bear like we have here in Vermont. One of our first wild life sightings, while vacationing in HI, was of a tiny creature that looked like a fuzzy ground squirrel.  

On second sight, it looked like a mink or an ermine, but it was actually a mongoose. Mongooses are not native to Hawaii, but are from Asia.

In 1800's the Pacific Islands had a huge rat problem.  The booming sugar cane crop attracted vermin without enough natural predators on the island to control their population.  The rats were destroying crops at such a rate that something needed to be done to control them. In 1883, 73 Indian mongooses were introduced to the island of Hawai'i. The problem here is that not only doesn't the mongoose have any natural predators but mongoose hunt during the day while rats are nocturnal. Mongoose did eventually control the rat population but it took a very long time. In the meantime, mongoose became a pest rivaling the rats. A male mongoose reaches puberty in four months and the female has litters of two to five a year. The mongoose also feeds, among other things, on goose eggs.  The Hawaiian state bird, the nene, is now driven to the edge of extinction mostly due to the mongoose.

Human beings are the only predators of the mongoose in Hawaii. Residence are urged to trap them. One interesting way of killing a mongoose ... beeping your horn at it while it is in the road in front of you. In order to turn their heads and look, they have stop. I think I would have a hard time doing this, but in the long run, it seems like the right things to do.