Plan B

The other day the US House narrowly passed a cap and trade bill in an effort to reduce CO2 production. Some government agency projected how CO2 production would significantly decline over time as a result of this proposed legislation. Unfortunately, those numbers are the stuff of fantasy.

It's telling that other advanced nations have spent well over a decade trying to significantly turn the clock back on their CO2 production. None, to my knowledge, have been successful. They have passed laws. Those laws have been ineffective.

I don't mean to be entirely dismissive. It's a good thing that laws are passed, even if they are mostly warmed over spit in terms of effectiveness. No, they won't get the job done. International treaties are bound to be largely ineffective as well. But they will have a partial impact on keeping CO2 production in check. A little bit of mitigation is better than none at all.

The world is wed to the use of fossil fuels. They are cheap. They provide for short term prosperity. Short term prosperity motivates people far more than vague long term negative outcomes.

I don't know what the impact of our fossil fuel use will be on our planet. It could be devastating. It could be mild. Forecasts of changes are based on predictive computer models. I know a lot about computer models. They are worthless for making climate predictions. And I'm certainly not going to enter the fray and make ad hoc predictions on how warm the earth will get or how high sea levels will rise.

But I will make a prediction that we will be unable to reduce fossil fuel production for the next 30 years. I'll make a prediction that CO2 levels will continue to increase. Developed nations will continue to pass laws that restrict CO2 production. But those laws will have no real teeth. Developing nations will continue to look to cheap fossil fuels to propel them out of poverty.

It's an odd thing, this prediction of the future of mine. It says that the rich will flail themselves a bit. The poor will ignore the flailing option; they don't have the luxury of symbolism. And we will continue to proceed to potentially influence our climate to disastrous levels.

I happen to think that sometimes it's a good idea to admit failure especially when the alternative is delusion. Right now, we delude ourselves that somehow, with little real effort, we can significantly reduce our global carbon footprint. The delusion ironically tends to be promoted by very wealthy people with incredibly large individual carbon footprints who have done little to alter their own behavior. They still drive a tremendous amount, fly a tremendous amount, and live in large houses.

It is likely impossible to expect us to do so, but I would like to move away from delusion to something approaching rational problem solving. Step one would be to be realistic about the level of our energy addiction. We are not going to use less energy as time marches on. We are in fact going to use more. Because carbon is so cheap, we'll use more carbon as well. I'd like politicians to admit that despite all of their efforts, the problem of CO2 production is not one we are going to conquer.

Plan A has been to put together treaties and laws to tackle this problem. They are solutions by proclamation.

I would argue that it would be better to move to Plan B. It's an acknowledgment that we are going to fail in reducing fossil fuel consumption unless we manage to create economically viable alternatives. It focuses on trying to use creativity and innovation so that alternatives to carbon are cheaper in the long run. It focuses on coming up with contingency plans to deal with the possibility that something close to the worst case scenarios of our impact on climate come to fruition. Those contingency plans will include partial engineering solutions - from the creation of reservoirs, containment structures and the like - and the prospect of resettling people out of harms way.

We've done the equivalent to my so-called Plan B, which is essentially one that focuses on the back end of a problem, with other addictions. Drug addicts aren't all going to go clean as a result of arrests and public service announcements. We have made the decision that it's better to have them be HIV-free addicts and give them clean needles (which also of course partially limits HIV exposure to those that aren't addicts). With regard to HIV and AIDs, we know that abstinence policies, Bible thumping, and ads on busses aren't going to dramatically change behavior either; so we promote the use of condoms and make them available for free for certain at risk populations. On the front end, we work on trying to develop vaccines for HIV rather than expecting people stop engaging in casual sex.

Are the back end policies 100 percent effective? Certainly not. But they do help. Every little bit helps. Is the front end focus on innovation effective? Not yet, but it seems far more viable in the long run.

Similarly with regard to climate change, we need to prepare for our collective failure to root out the problem at its source. I happen to think that's a far better alternative than pretending we won't fail. On the front end, we should try for the Hail Mary approach and invest in potential breakthroughs. But expecting to eliminate this problem by making carbon prohibitively expensive is simply not going to work.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 60

A Tour of Munich, Part 2

My mother's DP camp was unusual in that it consisted of standalone homes. Originally built for mid-level Nazi officials in the 1930s, it was ironic that the Americans had kicked the Nazi's out and replaced them with Jewish refugees.

But there was also a little personal irony related to this visit. The neighborhood had cul de sacs just like an American subdivision. Most of the original homes, modest bungalows, had been either expanded into or torn down and replaced by modern McMansions, albeit a bit more modest than the ones my parents built. I wondered if the subdivision had a name. Maybe it was Woodridge. Or was it Ridgewood?

We drove to the block where my mother had lived and surprisingly, her yellow clapboard bungalow was untouched. "It's the same color and everything," my mom noted. Did she want to go inside? I asked. She had no interest in knocking on the occupants door. We did walk around the house a bit.

Above is a picture of it with my daughter, wife and mom. Three generations. And this house was in a way a part of all of them. As we walked and later drove away, one story after another came forth from my mother. It was a blizzard of words and memories.

The stories were mostly depressing. Here's one. The DP camp was self policed. In other parts of Munich, Nazi sympathizers from the Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere, all of whom had been kicked out of their homelands, lived in DP camps as well. They would threaten and beat up the Jewish refugees on buses and in public places. There were rumors that one group of Ukrainian Nazis planned to raid my parents DP camp.

In response American agents came by to give special instructions to the Jewish police on the "art" of killing intruders in ways that looked like they died of natural causes. I asked if they actually had implemented these techniques. "One Ukrainian came by in the middle of the night," my mom said. "They did what they had to do. Then they took the body and dumped it on a street in Munich."

The same day we went to try and find my grandfather's storefront. She had a good sense where it was in Munich. It had been near the Jewish gymnasium where she studied. She talked about walking to her father's business - he sold chocolates, coffee, tobacco and other hard to get items in bulk in addition to black marketeering - after school. In her voice and in her eyes, you could sense the pride that she had in her father about his business. We took the subway in a lazy kind of way to the eastern central part of Munich. We stopped in front of a nondescript gray building three or four stories high.

"This is where the English Counselate was," she said. "We'd protest in front for them to open up Palestine. My father was so angry when he found out I was there."

Late in the day, we got to the street where my mother remembered my grandfather had his business. But the block had changed. In place of the shops in the area, stood a Hilton Hotel complex. Had I known, I might have booked a room on the same piece of land that my grandfather had once owned or leased. My mother was disappointed that she couldn't see her father's old building. I think she had acquired more than a bit of optimism from the morning visit to her old house. But she wasn't sad.

That night, though, she had a very dark and gloomy look on her face. "I'm ready to go back. I don't want to see Dachau. I don't want to see anything. I've had enough of this place." She looked emotionally exhausted. I can barely imagine what was going through her head.

We drove back the next morning. She was tired, sleeping in the front passenger seat of the car until we got to the Italian border and stopped for some coffee. For the next two hours, she was energized again and talked in a constant stream - talking about absolutely nothing really, just gossiping about people I barely knew. It was literally non-stop, this nervous babble as we drove. This was so unlike my mother part of me thought. I didn't understand it.

Somewhere near Padua, about a half hour away from Venice, my mom doze off again and I remember the feeling of intense relief over the silence in the car.

To get back from the central parking lot in Venice - where most residents seem to park their cars- to our apartment, we had to take a rather long boat ride. My mother loved these boats. Venice is a town of people in their 50s and 60s - the young ones move away because it's too expensive and there are no jobs - and my mother felt comfortable around these vigorous, golden agers who walked and took boats everywhere. Apparently, she looked like someone who lived in town because women would occasionally come up to her on a boat and start talking to her in Italian. She loved the attention. "Give me a few Yiddishe yachnes and I could fit right in here," she said.

On this boat ride home, though, the Italian women weren't a concern. Instead, my mom heard a group of Russian tourists a row or two in back of us. She turned her head and looked at them. Then she started to talk to them in Russian. I could make out what they were saying. My mom was asking where they were from, how long were they staying in Venice, and where else they were visiting.

My mother was more than a bit surprised to see middle class Russians traveling anywhere. It's one thing to hear about the fall of communism and the break up of the USSR. It was quite another for her to see exactly what that meant in terms of the mobility of ordinary Russian citizens. Still I knew what was going to happen next. She would launch into her speech, the speech she always gave when she talked to Russians:

"America treats me like a princess. I have everything I want and everything I could dream of. If you know what's good for you, you should leave Russia any way you can and come to America. It's the best country in the world."

This was the last time I ever saw my mother give that speech. My wife had been right about my mom's weight loss. It wasn't due to her diet. My mom would stay for 10 more days, going to the bathroom at least once a day to vomit. She said nothing was wrong, it was just a nervous stomach.

She was slowing down. After our trip to Munich she couldn't walk mile after mile nonstop. She started to complain of fatigue. I started to think that adrenaline had buoyed her over that Munich trip. Now the adrenaline was gone. Her activity level was normal for someone about 70 years old, but not normal for my mother.

I told her to go see a doctor when she got back home. She said she would, but didn't. I'd talk to her on the phone weekly, occasionally reminding her. She said she didn't feel the need. But really she was just waiting for me to come back to the US in January. Part of her was in denial. But it was also true that she was worried that she was so sick that once she received the diagnosis, I'd have to drop my job and come home. She didn't want that to happen. So she waited.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, June 25th, 2009

Here's the Jazz/AAA chart for the week. Kurt Elling is playing in Santa Cruz in a couple of weeks promoting his new CD and I'll likely go see him. Elvis Costello's new CD isn't doing for me, but that's personal taste. Someone who reads this blog likes Roman Candle, which is from the Triangle and is on an interesting boutique label run by a Nashville behind the scenes legend, Frank Liddell. He picks what he likes and doesn't care at all about finding the next big thing or even the next medium size thing. Liddell writes, “I can’t help but believe that, sooner or later, the public is going to want its own music—music that is made by them and for them, not at them." Amen to that prayer.

1 Kurt Elling Dedicated To You Concord 2009
2 Joe Locke & David Hazeltine Mutual Admiration Society 2 Sharp Nine 2009
3 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
4 Sophie Milman Take Love Easy Linus 2009
5 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
6 The Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band I'm BeBoppin' Too Half Note 2009
7 Grant Stewart Grant Stewart Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn Sharp Nine 2009
8 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
9 David 'Fathead' Newman The Blessing HighNote 2009
10 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
11 Bobby Broom Bobby Broom Plays For Monk Origin 2009
12 Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Glassnote 2009
13 Stanley Clarke Jazz In The Garden Heads Up 2009
14 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
15 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
16 Scotty Barnhart Say It Plain Unity 2009
17 The Resonance Big Band The Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson Resonance 2009
18 Christian McBride & Inside Straight Kind Of Brown Mack Avenue 2009
19 Roman Candle Oh Tall Tree In The Ear Carnival 2009
20 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
21 Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Yep Roc 2009
22 Eels Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire Vagrant 2009
23 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
24 Branford Marsalis Metamorphosen Marsalis 2009
25 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue 2009
26 Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool Futurism 2009
27 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle 2009
28 Son Volt American Central Dust Rounder 2009
29 Tori Amos Abnormally Attracted To Sin Republic 2009
30 Wilco Wilco Nonesuch 2009
31 Jack Wilkins Until It's Time Max Jazz 2009
32 Sean Jones The Search Within Mack Avenue 2009
33 Thomas Marriott Flexicon Origin 2009
34 Louis Hayes The Time Keeper 18th & Vine 2009
35 Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band Outer South Merge 2009
36 Buckwheat Zydeco Lay Your Burden Down Alligator 2009
37 Lynne Arriale Nuance: The Bennett Studio Sessions Motema 2009
38 Melissa Morgan Until I Met You Telarc 2007
39 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia 2009
40 Dave Matthews Band Big Whiskey And The Groo Grux King RCA 2009

This Just In From The AP...Remember Where You Heard It First

US News and Playboy Announce College Issue Merger

June 24, 2009 (Washington, DC) In an effort to bolster the sagging sales of both publications, US News announced that they would be working with Playboy on their annual Best Colleges issue for 2010. "We feel that the synergy will be perfect," stated Mort Zuckerman, owner of US News. "Besides after Madoff took all of my charity money, I've been real depressed and need a pick me up."

The issue will rate both institutional quality and sex appeal. Breast size of females and males will be included in the institutional rankings this year. "Just in case you're wondering, female boobs are a plus. Man boobs are a minus," stated US News ranking coordinator Robert Morse. "We're excited to include such valuable information in our rankings. After all, they are no more bogus than our other criteria."

In addition to the actual rankings, there will be a 300 page pull out pictorial section allowing buyers to evaluate co-eds from each school. "We feel that the new pictorial section will enhance our visibility. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words," said Zuckerman.

Both Playboy and US News have suffered financial losses although for different reasons. Sales of US News' annual rankings issue have declined because of lack of interest and reports that the ranking methodology has no validity. As for Playboy, founder Hugh Hefner stated, "Quite honestly, you can find better and raunchier stuff for free on the Web. That's been true for years. I have no idea why anyone buys my magazine."
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You Can't Improve Upon Perfection

I get the Hollywood Reporter for free. It takes about 20 seconds to read each issue. The language is at a fifth grade level, which is about the intelligence level for the movie industry in general. The other day I was reading through a backlog of issues (they come fast and furious), and came upon this sad note: a remake of the movie The Incredible Mr. Limpet was in the works.

I understand the need for remakes. They make money. You don't have to come up with a new idea. Given just how brain dead Hollywood is, new ideas are rare things.

But there are some movies that are so perfect that no one in their right mind should do a remake. Gone With the Wind. The Wizard of Oz. Bambi. The Godfather. Movies like that, like Hall of Fame baseball player's numbers, should be retired for forever. You can't improve upon perfection.

One of the funniest movies I've ever seen is a 1970s comedy, The In Laws, with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. Several years ago, some dummy decided to update it. They had Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks as the leads. Those two aren't in the same class as the originals. The script stank. The acting stank. The original In Laws should go into the movie Hall of Fame and its script should be retired.

I hearby nominate The Incredible Mr. Limpet for the movie Hall of Fame and request that it never be remade. The original came out in 1964 with Don Knotts in the lead role as a man who wants to become a fish. Miraculously, he does just that. He finds love (va va va voom what a hot fish he hooks up with!), happiness and even becomes a US military hero. A misfit on land, he finds his true home in the ocean.

I can't begin to tell you how this movie affected me when I was eight years old. I already knew I was a nerdy sort. I was never going to be hip in the least. And this movie gave me hope. This was great stuff for someone at the age of eight. Like Mr. Limpet, I knew that one day I'd find my true place in the world. Anything was possible. Thanks Don Knotts. Thanks to the scriptwriter and director, whomever they may be.

This one really is right up there with The Godfather Part II (which oddly is better than Part I). You can't improve on Al Pacino. And you can't improve upon Don Knotts, either. Why he didn't earn an Oscar for his unforgettable portrayal as Mr. Limpet is a mystery.

There's talk of Jim Carrey or Robin Williams taking on the lead role in the remake. The bar is too high my friends. I suggest you find yourselves another movie to save yourself embarrassment. Maybe Lassie. Either of you would make a great...um...collie.

IKEA Food Is People

I went to IKEA the other day to buy a lamp. I hate IKEA. I hate IKEA. I hate IKEA. But I looked at a wall lamp I liked in a real lighting store. The price tag was 146 dollars. I'm going to be using this for reading at night next to our bed in the tiny loft of our cottage up north. The level of usage - and the fact that no one is going to see this thing - doesn't merit that kind of purchase. I asked the salesman what he had in the 50 dollar range. He said, "You'll have to go to IKEA for something like that."

An IKEA was built a few years ago in East Palo Alto. It's been a great tax boon for the city no doubt. But something about the layout and all those lights and signs hanging suspended from the high ceilings makes me feel uneasy. I lose all sense of direction. I get anxious and nervous. Then there is the music, oh lord. Abba for the 1990s. I hate IKEA.

This time I decided to try something new. To dull the sensory overload, I wore very dark sunglasses. This helped immensely. I still hate IKEA though.

I picked up a lamp that fit the bill for 20 dollars, paid for it, and then walked by the IKEA Food section. They have ridiculous prices on food. I bought my unhealthy lunch - coffee, hot dog, and cinnamon bun - for two dollars even. The cinnamon bun tasted very strange. The hot dog and coffee were OK, though. As I ate the dog, sipped my coffee and took two bites out of my cinnamon bun before throwing it away, I thought of the movie Soylent Green with the inimitable Edward G. Robinson. The movie fit my antiseptic setting like a glove. I now know why this hot dog is 50 cents, I thought. It's from people. IKEA Food is people.

I'm not optimistic about the state of this country and the state of capitalism right now. I'm actually very happy personally, but when I look at the economic numbers and the inability of state and federal governments to do anything substantive that isn't beneficial to big business and the wealthy, I get gloomy. I feel we've entered a new era in this country where opportunity exists only for the already rich and connected, and where the distance between the rich and the rest keeps widening. Politicians will continue to be beholden to those with big bucks and assume the public is too ignorant and too busy paying attention to Brangelina et al. to understand that government is no longer for the people. OK, enough depressing rhetoric.

But as I drove out of the expansive concrete bunker that is called IKEA I now felt I understood what this place was all about. When capitalism has run its course, the middle class has disappeared, and the poor assemble their troops to try to get some crumbs back, IKEAs will become capitalism's last stronghold. Those with power and wealth will use these huge structures as their impregnable forts, launching the creme de la creme of military explosives from their walls. What was once a bargain shoppers creepy paradise will be ground zero for a class war. Too bad Edward G. Robinson is long gone; he could have been the scrappy brains behind the lumpen proletariat's assault on IKEA's walls in this movie I've just conjured up.

Where will I be during this apocalypse? Probably on the inside of one of those IKEAs. Eating my hot dogs. Drinking my coffee. No, no, no not the cinnamon bun, though. Those things are dreadful. IKEA Food is people. I really do hate IKEA.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 59

A Tour of Munich, Part 1

"This is where the bastard gave his speech when he got out of prison in 1924." We were standing in front of the Isartor, a 14th century arch in central Munich. I looked at my guidebook and it described the arch and its history quite well. But nowhere did it mention that Hitler gave a rousing speech to thousands of fascists here when he resumed his political career.*

Then again, my wife, daughter and I weren't having a typical tour of Munich. My mom was our guide. It was 1997. We were visiting the sites of her post-war teen age years. The mood was mostly bitter, but sometimes sweetness entered. "This is where I was free for the first time since I was nine years old," she said of Munich as we walked along. "I grew up here. I went to school. I had a normal life again."

My mom was skinnier than she had been in a decade. She said it was because of a new diet. "I did what your friend Marion told me to do. Only eat when I'm hungry. No sweets."

But my wife was skeptical. "She keeps going to the bathroom. What's that about?"

In 1997, I was living in Venice with my family. My mom was excited about the prospect of coming over for a visit. She always mentioned it on our weekly phone conversations. Then in September out of the blue when we were talking about what sites we would see with her in Italy she said, "I want to go to Germany. To Freiman. I want to see my DP camp."

I literally was taken aback. My mom had never expressed any interest in going back to anywhere she had lived in Europe. She had never said a positive word about anything German. For the most part the word "German" was kind of a prefix in her lexicon. It was almost never mentioned without following it with the word "bastard."

She'd been back to Europe, but never anywhere further east than France. In the late 1980s she took an ill-advised trip to Europe with my father, whose mind was already gone. She was stubborn about this trip. "Sure, he's sick, but I can make sure he's OK." My father had developed the habit of wandering off toward the end of his life. You'd turn your head and somehow he'd be 100 yards away going god knows where. In Paris, my father took off from the lobby of a hotel when my mother was talking to an acquaintance. Three hours later, the police found him two kilometers away in the store of a Yiddish speaking tailor. That was pure luck.

She'd been to Italy as part of a tour in the 1990s. She loved to travel. But Germany? This was not going to be a pleasure trip.

We decided that we'd stay for three nights, but keep it open ended if she wanted to stay for more. Did she want to visit Poland as well? Absolutely not.

I had access to a late model sporty Volkswagen sedan and we drove north to Munich. It was about a six hour drive. In two and a half hours, we were at the Austrian border. The gate was open. The border guard smiled and waved us on as we crossed without stopping. My mother's eyes opened wide. "That was it?" She asked.

"Europe's like one big country now. All the borders are open," I said.

"If only that had been true back then," she said. All of a sudden, my mother started to sing in Yiddish. My wife and daughter were in the back seat of the car. They didn't know what she was singing. I'd never heard the song before. Here it is in translation (mine):

Will we ever leave here?
Who can answer me?
Will we ever leave here?
Will we ever be free?
The world is so big.
But for us it disappears.
We don't have a home, we're trapped in a tomb.
Will we ever leave here?

My mother was tone deaf. But for some reason, as she sang this song, the notes were mostly on pitch. "Where did you learn that song, mom?"

"We used to sing it in the DP camp. It was popular back then."

I had decided to book us rooms at the Munich Marriott. The idea was that at the end of the day, my mom would be in a place that had the feel of America. She could decompress.

"I want to see where I grew up," she had said simply. But clearly, there was more than that motivating her. She was sixty eight years old. This was the first time since her breast cancer scare that when she talked I got the feeling that she had a sense of her mortality.

The first day we just went to see the typical sights of the central part of Munich. It was a warm up for the next day. She wanted to see the clock tower. She remembered a cafe across the way where she wanted to have a cup of coffee. This was the day that we saw the Isartor and were given our little history lesson. We walked across one of the bridges that crossed the Isar River. "This is where there was a black market," she said. "You'd come here with jewelry, cigarettes, schnapps, anything that was worth any kind of money."

She talked about the blocks upon blocks of destroyed buildings and how rubble covered the streets and lawns of Munich when she first came after the war. "The German bastards cleaned it all up in a hurry. Every one helped. Old ladies. Young children picking up the stones and carrying them. 'Alles muss genau sein,' they said. You’ve got to hand it to those bastards. They know how to fix things up."

The weather cooperated with us, which is unusual for Munich in November, as we walked many kilometers all over town. It was sunny, bright and in the fifties. My mom reminisced about buying fruits and vegetables in the central market, dancing to music in the English Garden with Jewish boys while the elders like my grandfather stood near the bandstand and made sure no Gentile boy got within 10 yards of any Jewish girl.

As we walked along, she kept going back and forth on the subject of visiting Dachau. "Should we go?"

"It's up to you, mom." She'd never been to any concentration camp. When she had lived outside of Munich in the suburb of Freiman, she had purposely stayed away.

"We'll go then," she said. "The day after tomorrow.”

Then later in the say she said about Dachau, “But I don't know if I can. It will be hard, but we should go."

The plan for the second day was simple. We would try to find her teenage home in Freiman and her father's store in Munich. We didn’t know if we’d be successful in either of these searches, in particular her home. She only had a vague memory of where she had lived. Her sense of direction was always lousy. But she knew how to engage strangers. "We'll go to a coffee house, find some gray haired lady and ask her where the Jews lived." It sounded like a plausible plan to me.

At first, it didn't look like this plan would work. We sat in a Freiman coffee house for fifteen minutes. My mother hesitantly went from gray haired lady to gray haired lady. No one seemed to know where the DP camp had been and if it still existed. My mother's mood was sinking fast when a youngish grey haired woman - someone who hadn't even been born when my mother lived in Freiman - walked in. She had eyes that were luminous gray and a kind, but reserved smile.. You could tell that this woman was very intelligent. "Oh yes, I know where it is. It's still there," she said in perfect English in response to my mother's bad German.

This woman's sense of direction was as bad as my mother's but I managed to eke out a sense of where this place was. We drove out on the edge of Freiman past some open fields. My mother said, "It doesn't look like any place I remember." I circled around some streets in the general area of where the woman said the homes of the DP camp were located.

"We'll never find this place," my mother said. Her mood sank again. But three seconds later she shouted out, "Turn left. I know where it is now."

"It's been 50 years, such a long time," she said as we drove into the neighborhood.

I wanted to finish this all up with one big swallow, but I’m at 1500 words here and nowhere near done. I’ll continue and wrap this entire series up next week. I hope!

*I can't find a record of that speech anywhere online. Maybe someone else can. Near the Isartor, Hitler was introduced to the book, Protocol of the Elders of Zion. He was almost assassinated after he walked through the arch in 1923.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, June 17th, 2009

Here's the Jazz/AAA radio top 40 for this week. My laptop is in the shop so I haven't listened to anything new on this list.

1 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
2 Wilco Wilco Nonesuch 2009
3 Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool Futurism 2009
4 Dave Matthews Band Big Whiskey And The Groo Grux King RCA 2009
5 Stanley Clarke Jazz In The Garden Heads Up 2009
6 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
7 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
8 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue 2009
9 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
10 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
11 The Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band I'm BeBoppin' Too Half Note 2009
12 Christian McBride & Inside Straight Kind Of Brown Mack Avenue 2009
13 Son Volt American Central Dust Rounder 2009
14 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
15 Diana Krall Quiet Nights Verve 2009
16 Deer Tick Born On A Flag Day Partisan 2009
17 Scotty Barnhart Say It Plain Unity 2009
18 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
19 Branford Marsalis Metamorphosen Marsalis 2009
20 Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Yep Roc 2009
21 David 'Fathead' Newman The Blessing HighNote 2009
22 Sophie Milman Take Love Easy Linus 2009
23 The Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Out Columbia 1959
24 Eels Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire Vagrant 2009
25 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
26 Sean Lyons Roar Of Lyons Posi-Tone 2009
27 Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career 4AD 2009
28 Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong The Complete Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong On Verve Verve 1997
29 Kenny Burrell Live At The Downtown Room HighNote 2009
30 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
31 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia 2009
32 Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band Outer South Merge 2009
33 Todd Snider The Excitement Plan Yep Roc 2009
34 Booker T. Potato Hole ANTI- 2009
35 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz 2009
36 Derrick Gardner & The Jazz Prophets Echoes Of Ethnicity Owl Studios 2009
37 Melissa Morgan Until I Met You Telarc 2007
38 Iron & Wine Around The Well Sub Pop 2009
39 Sean Jones The Search Within Mack Avenue 2009
40 Freddie Hubbard Without A Song: Live In Europe 1969 Blue Note 2009

The Year of Living Convertibly

It all started out with an article in the NY Times about the newly proposed federal “Cash for Clunkers” law. My sweetie has a very old Subaru with more dents than George W. has holes in his head. I consider it to be a prime example of a clunker. But the legal definition of a clunker according to this law to be is that the car must get less than 18 miles per gallon. That’s not a clunker. That’s a guzzler. Congress can’t get anything right even diction.

Anyhow, the idea is that if you have a clunker you can get $4500 off the purchase price of a new car. The dealer takes the old car and sends it off to be crushed. You get a spanking new thing with four wheels and everything.

Now that’s a great incentive. So I came up with an idea. I’ve always wanted a convertible.* In fact, the last time I shopped for a car I looked at a couple of late model used Porsches. I ended up with a Prius partly because I was buying at the time of the last great government car giveaway; they took $3400 off my taxes to buy a hybrid. I’m nothing if not a sucker for government giveaways. Plus because I’ve reduced my carbon footprint I get to tout my moral superiority!

The Prius is a great car in every respect but one, handling. Oh here’s another related one, fun. Someone else has aptly described driving the Prius as driving a toaster oven on wheels. One of the reasons for this is the tires Toyota chose for the car; Goodyear Integritys are designed for mileage not gripping the road. In the auto business they are called a “low roll resistance tire.” In the rain, these tires are a nightmare.

I eventually replaced the original model tires on my Prius with four that knock a couple of miles per gallon off the drive but actually are designed for driving, not maxing out mileage on an EPA mileage machine. The improvement is significant, kind of like driving a waffle iron on wheels.

OK, back to the “Cash for Clunkers” law to be. I want those 4500 dollars. I’ve always wanted a convertible. So I come up with this idea. I’ll buy a gas guzzling clunker of an old convertible for cheap, drive it for the summer, then trade it in for a replacement for my sweetie’s Subaru. There are two complications, well three. One is that my sweetie doesn’t want to give up her dent covered Subaru. She’s grown attached to it. She’s loyal. She’s grown attached to me, too, dents and all. It’s a good thing.

The second is that I have to find a gas guzzling clunker of a convertible for cheap. It turns out that this isn’t easy to do.

The third is that this law hasn’t passed yet so I don’t know the details. The devil is in the details.

But let’s ignore one and three. I go on craigslist and lucky me, I find just what I’m looking for, a 12 cylinder Jaguar convertible heap for $1880. It runs. The tires have absolutely no tread left, but I’m sure I can find some decent used ones for about $150. The top is in tatters, but I’m only going to drive this thing for one summer. I drive it around the block. It purrs. It’s so much fun! I want it, all 4200 pounds of it.

I talk to the owner after my test drive. He can’t remember the last time he’s changed the oil. But I don’t care. I figure I have 2K to work with before I get this thing crushed and once I get 4500 dollars back (if I can convince my sweetie to dump her ancient Subaru) I’ll still be ahead. “I’ll buy it,” I say.

The owner equivocates. A restorer is going to come look at it for possible purchase the next day. He’s going to bring this thing back to its former glory. I can see the dreamy look in the owner’s eyes describing this restorer’s future efforts. “Well, I’m not going to restore it, but I will have fun driving it along the coast,” I say. I neglect to say that come October, I plan to turn this thing into a two-ton cube of metal.

The next day the owner calls. The restorer offered him $2200 cash. He couldn’t turn him down. I’m SOL.

I spend two weeks looking on craigslist for something else like that’s like this dream heap of a Jaguar. I come up with nothing. Then I read the up to date details about this cash for clunkers law. You have to own the clunker for 12 months according to the latest iteration in the Senate. These politicians can’t do anything right! What’s the point of a government sponsored cash giveaway unless I can use it?

But by now I have convertible fever. I’m on to Plan B. There’s a recession going on. People need cash. Cars aren’t selling, especially frivolous things like used convertibles. There are some wonderful deals out there for great cars. Then there are ridiculous deals out there from people who need cash quick. I’ll buy a decent convertible for way below Blue Book. I’ll drive it around for one summer and mostly garage my Waffle Iron on Wheels aka my Prius. Then I’ll sell the car when summer rolls around again after satisfying my convertible desires and go back to driving my morally superior waffle iron.

One convertible. One year. If all goes well, I’ll be out no more than 2K when all is said and done. Sounds like a good plan to me.

Above you can see what I bought, a 2001 BMW 330ci convertible in blue. Here are my expenses so far:

Car: $8002
Missing grille on hood (stolen the day the former owner put the car on the street with a For Sale sign): $62 on Ebay
Missing bumper reinforcement (stolen, see above): $112 on Ebay
Insurance: $247
California tax and registration: $755

I still have to get the AC looked at (it blows only faintly cool). But according to the fancy shmancy BMW on board computer, I don’t have to change the oil for another 8850 miles. The tires – not low roll resistance things, but real ones designed for real driving – are good for another 5000 or so.

So far I’ve driven this thing for about 300 miles. It’s a lot of fun (although it doesn’t quite have the purr of that 12 cylinder Jaguar). The top is almost always down even when it’s cold outside (I just turn on the heating coils in my leather seats). It’s the height of decadence. Oh I know my moral superiority is now in question. The thing gets about ½ the mileage as my Prius. Screw moral superiority at least for the summer.

My math says that I’ll be able to sell this thing at $9500 come next May if I am patient and the economy doesn't tank more than it already has. Right now I’m into the car for about $9200. Unless this car becomes a true money pit (which is a definite possibility), I’ll have the best of all worlds. A mid-life crisis car for a year with only a light hit on my pocketbook. My year of living convertibly is starting out sweet.

*I like the open air thing. It’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed motorcycles and scooters. But my reflexes aren’t what they once were (it happens), and riding on two wheels is starting to seem more and more ridiculous. My current two wheeler, a 1983 180cc scooter, died in November. I spent about six hours trying to get it to work this spring to no avail. It’s in the shop right now and when it’s ready to run again, onto craigslist it will go. My two wheel days are over.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 58

Everybody's Jewish Mother

When I think of what it was like to visit my mother's home in the 1990's, the first thing that comes to mind is noise. The TV would be on CNN many hours of the day. The phone would either be ringing or my mother would be talking on the receiver. By the mid-1990s my mother also had a cell phone so it was entirely possible for her to be talking on one line while the other one rang. She was a busy lady.

There were apartments to rent and maintain, a social calendar with friends, selling lots in her subdivision, and then something new came along. The lots were selling, but not fast enough to her liking. She decided to follow in her husband's footsteps and become a builder. How many women developed subdivisions in Milwaukee in the 1980s? My guess is no more than two including my mom. How many women were building McMansions on speculation in the 1980s and 1990s? My guess is again no more than two. She was an unusual woman in many ways.

My mother had strength. She possessed ambition. She didn't need to make money anymore, but it gave her a great deal of satisfaction to sell land and homes. She'd look at her IRS forms every year, look at the number in the earned income box, and smile. She'd call me on the phone about it. "Guess how much money I made this year?" She'd ask me. It was one thing to be part of a partnership with my father in business. It was quite another to do it on her own. She'd sell the homes she built without a realtor, and the conviction in her voice when she was selling these things - telling potential buyers the she built the most beautiful and best damn homes money could buy - was so real that even I - who knew most of the flaws in these homes - completely believed her.

She was on her own in the 1990s. After my father died, she built a new home for herself on what she considered to be the best lot in her subdivision. The thing was huge, and she loved every square inch of it. Most of the rooms had sweet views of the surrounding rolling countryside with horses, cows and red barns dotting the landscape.

Was she lonely? I know she was at night. She told me how hard it was to live alone sometimes. But in the daytime, she was truly a whirlwind. She said to me once, "I don't see why all these people complain about getting old. I still feel like I'm 40." Now that's an unusual statement to make for any person in their sixties. But let's back up a bit. In Jewish shtetl life, it was considered anathema to praise yourself like that. It's a fundamental rule never to do such a thing. Even in the 1980s, my mother would feign spitting on the ground three times if she heard anyone make such a boast. "Don't give yourself a kinahora," as they say in Yiddish. That word is essentially untranslatable into English; roughly it means a boast or a toast. When I first heard my mother make such a claim about her health and energy level, I wondered who stole my mother and replaced her with this Americanized clone.

But my mother was different in the 1990s. It wasn't an easy transition for her of course. In the span of two years, her husband, her father and her mother died. She certainly did grieve of the loss of these people she loved so dearly. But there has never been a person I've met as emotionally strong and resilient as my mother. She loved life more than anyone I have known. When she saw something pretty - whether it was a sunset on a lake or a painting - she would usually say simply, "It's so beautiful." But whether she said it in Yiddish or English the emphasis on that last word was so emphatic that you could sense that beauty entering her entire being.

With the loss of her parents and husband, my mother had lost most of her ties to the Old World. But she didn't withdraw. Far from it. At an age when most people seldom venture outside of the familiar, she was still stretching. Her friends were no longer only Jewish women. She even started to go to churches for the baptisms and confirmations of the children and grandchildren of her Christian friends. My mother in a church? Going willingly? That was even more amazing than her giving herself kinahoras.

There was a certain kind of gentile woman who'd come by regularly. She'd be in her late twenties or early thirties, married for ten years or so with young children. Their husbands were doing well in their businesses and they lived comfortable if not luxurious lifestyles. My mother always seemed to have a couple of women like this who'd visit and with whom she'd go shopping. They adored my mother. To them, she was a shining example of how a woman could be a lady and still be fully confident and in charge of her life.

These women would say things to me like, "I wish I had a mother like yours. You don't know how lucky you are." I'd nod and smile. "Yes, she's a wonderful woman, I know," I'd say. Then they would tell me about their own mothers. How they could never talk to them like they talked to my mom. How their mothers didn't understand them like my mom. I'd think but would never say, "She's a Jewish mom. That's how Jewish mothers are." My mother had always wanted a big family and she'd frequently lament that she didn't have at least one more kid, a daughter. These women were my mother's surrogate daughters to some degree, but she did hold back a good part of herself as I might talk about later.

Why weren't there young Jewish women who came by? Duh. They already had Jewish mothers of their own.

Sometimes I'd eavesdrop on the conversations with these young women. My mom would be sitting at the kitchen table or maybe standing at the kitchen counter making tea. The surrogate daughter would be sitting down drinking a cup of coffee flavored with something like amaretto while noshing on my mom's apple tort.

For a few minutes, the conversation would be about nothing in particular, perhaps where my mom got her coffee or just what was in the apple tort (it was heavy in cinnamon, the pastry was very thick and the apples were from a nearby farm).

I'd be sitting in the living room ostensibly reading, but I knew what was going to happen. It was only a matter of time. The young woman was going to spill. That's why she was there. For instance...

"My husband doesn't seem to want to talk to me anymore."

Now my mother would of course instantly have that motherly look of concern. "Does he stay at home or does he go out a lot?"

"No. It's not that he's running around."

"Good. You should be happy he stays at home. How's his job?"

"Oh, he complains about his boss, but I think he's going to get a raise soon."

"Who doesn't complain about bosses? That's why a man should go to work for himself. He sounds like a good man. He's just quiet is all. Most men don't like to talk. Women are talkers, not men. If you need to talk, call up a girl friend. Talk to your children. Let me tell you, when men talk a lot, who wants to listen? You really want to know how the Packers are doing? That's what men who talk talk about. Football. Baseball. Basketball. You want to talk about games?"

"No."

"You've got a man who stays at home with a steady job. How is he with the kids?"

"He kind of ignores them."

"He shouldn't ignore the children. You should take a vacation together all of you. Find a hotel on a beach or a lake. All of you together. You need to remind him that he has a family."

My mother would be their life coach more or less. She'd espouse her core values: children need love not material things; husbands are inherently emotionally weak and immature and need a smart woman to guide them and prop them up when they are feeling down. These young women would leave my mother's house inspired. One of them said to me once, "I love your mom so much. She doesn't take shit from anyone." That assessment wasn't entirely accurate. She didn't take shit from non-relatives, yes. As for those whom she loved, that was an entirely different story.

The conversations with these women were always one way things. My mother never really revealed herself or any of her emotional struggles. Ultimately, she didn't deem these women worthy enough to be a confidante. They were too young. They didn't share her life experience. They couldn't possibly understand.

These women didn't realize this. They thought they indeed had a special bond with my mom. When my mother got sick with cancer, many of these women wanted to give something back. They wanted to come by, help out around the house, and bring food. They truly did love her. And here's the interesting thing. My mother wanted nothing to do these women once she got ill. She wouldn't return their phone calls. "Why are they bothering me?" She'd say with disdain.

One time, I happened to answer the phone when one of these gentile women called. She was in tears. "Why doesn't your mom want to see me? What doesn't she want me to help? Why won't she talk to me?" I told her that my mom was so sick that she just wasn't herself. But the truth was that these relationships - so meaningful and intimate to the young women - were superficial to my mother. She was happy to provide advice, sure. She certainly loved to go out shopping and go out for lunch. She was having a good time playing surrogate mom, certainly. But these women weren't blood. And there was no way that she was going to allow them into her life and let them see her in her weakness. My mother had developed many American ways, but she still had that European formality and sense of privacy. I have it too.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, June 11th, 2009

Here's the Jazz/AAA radio chart for this week. I just got Elvis Costello's new CD, but haven't listened to it fully yet. There's not a whole lot of new stuff here that is enticing me right off the bat. But no doubt there's a nice cut or two from the CDs on this list.

1 Booker T. Potato Hole ANTI- 2009
2 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
3 Death Cab For Cutie Narrow Stairs Atlantic 2008
4 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
5 Ratatat LP3 XL 2008
6 Diana Krall Quiet Nights Verve 2009
7 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
8 Thomas Marriott Flexicon Origin 2009
9 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia 2009
10 Melody Gardot My One And Only Thrill VMG 2009
11 Dosh The Lost Take Anticon 2006
12 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
13 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
14 Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! Lost Highway 2009
15 Hoots & Hellmouth The Holy Open Secret MAD Dragon 2009
16 Stanley Clarke Jazz In The Garden Heads Up 2009
17 Todd Snider The Excitement Plan Yep Roc 2009
18 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
19 The Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Out Columbia 1959
20 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
21 Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Yep Roc 2009
22 Wilco Wilco Nonesuch 2009
23 Bobby Sanabria Conducting The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra Kenya Revisited Live!!! Jazzheads 2009
24 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue 2009
25 Dave Matthews Band Big Whiskey And The Groo Grux King RCA 2009
26 Scotty Barnhart Say It Plain Unity 2009
27 Charles Mingus Mingus Ah Um Columbia 1959
28 Jimmy Greene Mission Statement Razdaz Recordz / Sunnyside Communications 2009
29 Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career 4AD 2009
30 Eels Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire Vagrant 2009
31 Linkin Park Hybrid Theory Warner Bros. 2000
32 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
33 The Resonance Big Band The Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson Resonance 2009
34 Sean Jones The Search Within Mack Avenue 2009
35 Bell X1 Blue Lights On The Runway Yep Roc 2009
36 Freddie Hubbard Without A Song: Live In Europe 1969 Blue Note 2009
37 David 'Fathead' Newman The Blessing HighNote 2009
38 Melissa Morgan Until I Met You Telarc 2007
39 Rob Thorsen Lasting Impression Pacific Coast Jazz 2009
40 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle 2009

Intelligent Design

Consider the creature above. I "own" it or at least am part "owner" of it with my sweetie. I played no part in selecting this creature. Let's call it a cat. That's much easier to type than "creature." Fish, dog, cat. These things tend to have very simple names. My daughter selected this cat and then eventually moved away. Kids tend to do that.

Anyhow, I'm told the domestication of wild animals provided advantages for both humans and the formerly wild animals. Cats have been domesticated for a long, long time. For all I know, they might have been domesticated before dogs. The idea is that the cat sees advantages in hanging around a house or cave with a human. The human sees advantages in having some furry creature around their house or cave. It's supposedly a win win situation. Voila! We have domestication.

Now that may be. But this cat - which I repeat I did not play any part in picking out and who my daughter took to calling "spawn of the devil" - has some quirks. She has some positive aspects, too. She's furry. Purrs. And is very cute. But let's get back to those quirks.

The cat for some strange reason has for many years decided that I am in charge of mornings. Morning for her means 5:30. And at about that time she'll start to walk all over my body. If that doesn't work to wake me, she'll give a light flick of her left clawed paw - just a gentle, but still sharp, reminder to be sure - across the bridge of my nose. Sometimes, she'll just put her head within a millimeter of my face and start to purr. I open one eye. And her eye is right there up against mine. I mean truly eyeball to eyeball. Five thirty in the morning is no time to looking at anyone's eyeball, purring or no purring. It's actually a frightening thing.

Now I happen to think something is wrong with evolutionary theory in the case of this cat. I mean there is nothing to be gained by me personally when I wake up at 5:30 in the morning. By insisting I wake up, this cat is coming perilously close to being sent off into the wild. The only reason - I swear - she wasn't sent off already is that my sweetie would be...um...very upset. Then again, if this cat would be clawing my sweetie's face at 5:30, she might be thinking the same thing as me.

So what is to be done? Well this cat is essentially my alarm clock. But she is a non-adjustable one. And that's a problem.

Perhaps in a few thousand years, cats will evolve into creatures that sleep until noon. Actually, it's inevitable that they will. Such an arrangement would be mutually beneficial. Cats that don't this would be discarded in favor of cats that do if sweeties wouldn't muck up the situation. Right now, though, we aren't there yet.

But let's say I decide to forget about waiting a few thousand years and jump start the process. Since this cat is an alarm clock she should have the essential feature that all good alarm clocks have: a snooze button. Right on top of her head. It wouldn't have to stick out very much. I could turn it off with a little twist during the day. But I'd turn it on at night. And then in the morning when the "walking all over my body" begins I could reach up on top of that cute little head and press. zzzz. Cat sleeps for another half hour. I call that intelligent design.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 57

Ridgewood or Woodridge

Above you will find the last home my father ever built. He was already very sick, and mentally he was starting to lose it either from Parkinsons or from all the pills he was taking. This was in about 1980. He'd been building mostly single family homes ever since he came out of retirement, and then he built a few small multi-family apartments. But he had lost his business acumen. He was buying lots in neighborhoods that would have been perfectly decent in 1960, but were getting seedy in the 1970s. He didn't seem to recognize how they had changed for the worse.

That meant that the homes sold for modest profit and the quality of the tenants that my mom had to find for the new apartments wasn't the same as it was in the other buildings. What was going on wasn't a disaster - my father was just building as a hobby now and didn't really need the added income - but it wasn't pretty to watch. I'm sure it wasn't easy for my mother to hold back and let my father be in charge of these decisions even though she knew they weren't particularly good ones. But she and I both knew my father needed to do this work unchallenged to at least partly keep his depression at bay.

Before he got sick, my father did have one last business related hurrah. He found a cheap piece of land on the edge of a hot, fast growing northern Milwaukee suburb, Mequon: fifty eight acres of rolling farmland for a thousand dollars an acre. In his mind, there was something romantic about buying a piece of property like this in the middle of nowhere. But there was also the high probability that this nowhere would soon become part of the urban sprawl that defines all of American (and world) cities. Money could be made.

My father loved the idea of owning a farm even if he didn't farm it himself, but leased it out. He'd drive out there at least once a week just to walk the land. There was something Old World about it to him I know. This was what wealthy people in Poland did, owned vast acreage. OK, this wasn't thousands of acres of forest and and fields of wheat like real gentry owned back in the old country, but it wasn't a one acre strip covered in astroturf either.

My father always talked about building his last home on that piece of property. He waited year after year for the city sewer line to come out that way so he wouldn't have to put in a septic field. When he bought the land, he knew it was only a matter of time before this would happen. Across from him, someone had put in a small subdivision in the late 1960s. The soil had too much clay to drain well and every summer, the septic tanks would fail; the subdivision stank to high heaven. That's why my father bought the land across the way. It was inevitable that the city of Mequon would have to extend the sewer line to deal with this esthetic disaster and minor health hazard. That was the kind of thinking that made my father such a good businessman; when he was healthy, he saw opportunities in pieces of land that others didn't.

In 1978, the sewer line was indeed extended. My father started to build his final house in 1979. Had he built it when he was healthy, he wouldn't have been so conservative and pinched pennies he didn't have to pinch. In a lot of ways, this was the worst quality house my father had ever built. He took an existing plan for a modest smaller home and blew up all dimensions to make it bigger. The resulting design was ungainly and awkward visually; it was an odd home to live in as well. But my parents were out in the country surrounded by farms with cows in the distance, a place where my father dreamed to be one day. My mother enjoyed it as well. They built the house on a one acre parcel. The idea my father had was to one day create his own suburban subdivision on the remaining land, something he had never done before.

By 1980, though, my father was simply too far gone to try to do such a thing. He was tired. His medications weren't helping much. And his mind was going.

Up until that time, the hierarchy of my parents relationship in business was the same as always. My father made the decisions on what to buy and what to build. My mother did the interpersonal side of the business, getting loans, paying bills to subcontractors, getting zoning approved, and finding tenants. But it was clear that this way of working just wouldn't hold.

My mother still had the ambition that was once shared by her husband. She still had tremendous energy, especially for someone her age. She looked at those remaining acres that surrounded her house and one day decided that she'd develop them herself. I remember when she made that decision. She was so excited about it from day one. She'd call me up every week about what she was doing, show me maps, and asked for my advice. She asked me to site the well for the subdivision - a key aspect of the subdivision getting approval from the city was that there would be a community well - and was so happy when the well produced four times more water than required. Finally, her sonny boy could use his education in a way that was helpful to her!

I think, though, that it was more than ambition that drove her during this time. She needed a distraction. My mother's parents were getting frail. My grandfather had retired at the age of 85 and moved with my grandmother to a condominium chock full of elderly Jews, walking distance to my parents' apartment complex on Lovers Lane. It was clear to all now that my grandmother was completely crazy although she was harmless and could sort of keep up their condo. My grandfather - with whom my mother had been so close ever since she was a little girl - was changing not just physically but emotionally. He was losing that strength that defined him. No longer laconic, he craved even idle conversation with anyone. Talking with him, I could sense he was in constant fear of death.

Then there was my father, who was becoming less and less coherent. He could barely speak. He was losing his English. And gradually, he was losing the ability to take care of himself in any way. Eventually my mother would find an illiterate Polish woman to live with her and take care of my father in their house, at times literally carrying him around from room to room like a sack of potatoes.

My mother and I became very close for the first time in a long while. She, like my father, was a very powerful personality. If you're a teen of if you're in your early twenties, parents like that can limit your ability to grow despite their great love. But now, she needed someone to talk to more than ever. Family was by far the most important thing to her and she was losing bit by bit the two most important men in her life. I'd finally developed the equanimity not to feel threatened by her huge personality. I had confidence and an outsize personality all of my own.

I think she recognized that I had needed that time alone, too. "I was shy like you when I was young, but look at me now," she said to me more than once when I was young. "Just wait until you get to be 40. You won't give a damn about what anyone thinks about you," she said to me later when I was in my twenties.

A map of the subdivision was made, 27 or so lots on the remaining 57 acres. The well was sited and drilled. There was only one thing left. According to her, the subdivision had to have a name before it went for approval. A name wasn't actually required, but she thought it would help the chances of getting a thumbs up.

She asked for suggestions from me. "You're good at this kind of thing," she said. But really I was worthless. I came up with a few lame suggestions. I can't remember what they were. Part of me just didn't want to have as part of my legacy giving a name to what I knew would become 27 or so McMansions for middle Americans living their boring dreams in exurbia. I'm a snob what can I say? And maybe I'm not as good at naming things as my mother thought. She wasn't shy expressing her opinion about my suggestions. "Those names are dreck!" She was right.

She reboubled her own efforts. She didn't want some frou-frou name out of a soap opera like Somerset or Willow Manor. She wanted the name to reflect the nature of the land. Part of the acreage was what on looked to be a lateral moraine and was heavily wooded. The rest of the acres were on highlands relative to the surround terrane. "There's a woods and there's a ridge," my mother said to me. "Should I call it Woodridge or Ridgewood?"

"They're both good, mom."

"But which is better?"

"They're the same, mom. Both good. Flip a coin."

My mom didn't share my opinion. She was convinced one name had to be better than the other. She asked everyone about this for the next few weeks. I swear she must have gone to strangers on the street and asked them. She asked my sweetie who said the same thing as me. And she wouldn't take my answer as one that was legitimate either. I must be holding back, she thought. Every conversation I had with her included something about this naming. "What do you really think? Which one is really better? Tell me!"

Being obsessive is something that my mother and I share so I understood what was going on a bit. Plus this was a big deal for her. It was the first time she really was doing something business-wise entirely on her own. And this was back in 1982 or so. In a place like Milwaukee, women were just not doing things like developing subdivisions. She was a true pioneer. Still these calls about the naming of this subdivision became a running gag between my sweetie and me. Part of it was the juxtaposition between how advertising tries to protray American subdivisions - WASPy retreats of sophistication - and my mother's pronunciation of these names. "Vich is better? Vootrich or Richvoot?" I'd hang up the phone. My sweetie would always ask. "So which is better?" We'd break into laughter most every time.

I don't know what tipped the balance, but as the date for her meeting with the city planning commission approached, my mom named the subdivision Woodridge Estates. It's actually a damn good name in my opinion. Of course, the subdivision was approved. And wouldn't you know, here's a link to a http://milwaukee.kijiji.com/c-Housing-Homes-for-sale-Mequon-Provincial-Colonial-in-Woodridge-Estates-W0QQAdIdZ110315015 that's for sale as I write this. It was built in about 1990 I think. Two years ago it would have sold quickly for 20 percent more than the current asking price. But there's this thing called a recession going on.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, June 4th, 2009

Here's what the Jazz/AAA world of radio was playing this week. Remember that Uncle Stuey is a trusted name in radio reporting since, um...2009! Local boy/shrink Denny Zeitlin makes the list this week.

1 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
2 Diana Krall Quiet Nights Verve 2009
3 Tosca No Hassle G-Stoned / K7 2009
4 Melody Gardot My One And Only Thrill VMG 2009
5 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
6 Dane Cook Isolated Incident Comedy Central 2009
7 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
8 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue 2009
9 Thomas Marriott Flexicon Origin 2009
10 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
11 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia 2009
12 Stanley Clarke Jazz In The Garden Heads Up 2009
13 Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow & Antonio Sanchez Quartet Live Concord Jazz 2009
14 E.S.T. Tuesday Wonderland Spamboolimbo / EmArcy / Decca Label 2007
15 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
16 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
17 Kenny Burrell Live At The Downtown Room HighNote 2009
18 Derrick Gardner & The Jazz Prophets Echoes Of Ethnicity Owl Studios 2009
19 Branford Marsalis Metamorphosen Marsalis 2009
20 Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career 4AD 2009
21 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
22 Chip White More Dedications Dark Colors 2009
23 Buckwheat Zydeco Lay Your Burden Down Alligator 2009
24 Melissa Morgan Until I Met You Telarc 2007
25 Altered Laws Metaphora Artist Jazz 2009
26 Rhett Miller Rhett Miller Shout! Factory 2009
27 Gomez A New Tide ATO 2009
28 Denny Zeitlin In Concert Sunnyside 2009
29 Dave Matthews Band Big Whiskey And The Groo Grux King RCA 2009
30 Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Yep Roc 2009
31 Scotty Barnhart Say It Plain Unity 2009
32 Indigo Girls Poseidon And The Bitter Bug IG / Vanguard 2009
33 Helio Alves It's Clear Reservoir 2009
34 The Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Out Columbia 1959
35 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle 2009
36 Joe Lovano Us Five Folk Art Blue Note 2009
37 Los Straitjackets The Further Adventures Of Los Straitjackets Yep Roc 2009
38 Madeleine Peyroux Bare Bones Rounder 2009
39 Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool Futurism 2009
40 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009

Looking The Part

This is not a good year for me and baseball. My team stinks. Absolutely does. I went to a game the other day with a friend and just chatted, ate food and drank beer. We could have been on the beach or in a State Park (got to get to one of those things fast before Arnold shuts them down!). That's how little attention I paid to the game. There was a reason for that. Every time I looked at the field, my stomach sank. The batters were lifeless. The fielding was atrocious. It was a true nightmare out there.

The A's have about six bonafide major league players out of their roster of 25. The others are what are known in baseball as Quad-A players. They could be in the minors. They could be playing major league ball. This isn't unusual in the major leagues. Most players are Quad-A. They bat maybe in the .200 to .250 range if they are position players. They could hit 10 home runs or so if they played the entire season and knock in 40 to 60 runs.

If you look at the entire major leagues, I'd hazard a guess that two thirds of those playing today are Quad-A. I don't think that percentage has changed very much over the years although the numbers as to what constitutes a Quad-A player have probably changed slightly.

One third of all major leaguers are truly and undeniably major league material. They have the level of talent that says I'm here, deserve to be here, and I'll stay here until I get too old or injured. But as for the rest, they could just as easily be working in a meat packing plant as they could be playing major league ball. They are interchangeable with hundreds of other decent AAA minor league players.

How does a team decide which Quad-A guy to pick over another? It can't really be talent. Something else has to be at work. I'm sure personality plays a role. You want someone who is a positive emotional force on your team and who can get along with others. But there is something else at work, too. When I look at the Quad-A players that have made it in the major leagues and stick around, they tend to have a distinguishing characterstic: they look the part.

They have the physiques that say major leaguer. Or they have the name, names like Travis Buck and Ryan Sweeney. Don't those sound like ballplayers to you? Plus those two have the broad shoulders and muscles you expect from an athlete. There are many guys in the minors with the same level of talent as Buck or Sweeney, but they have names like Claude Mariposo (that's a made up name, don't go looking for it in the Baseball Almanac) and they're a little too skinny to fill out a uniform. Sorry Claude. You just don't look the part.

Then there is the issue of lineage or yechus as they say in Yiddish. If your father was an athlete, well you must be one too. I consider Nick Swisher to be a Quad-A kind of player. All these years in the major leagues - he plays for the Yankees currently - and he still can't hit a breaking ball. But he not only looks the part, big strapping guy that he is. He's got the name for a ballplayer too. Plus he's got a big personality that teammates tend to love. And then there is the kicker: his father was a major leaguer. Nick Swisher is a four tool player at least when it comes to "type" even if he doesn't have true major league talent.

It may be that Swisher has stuck around for as long as he has because of all of these esthetic issues. Swisher makes several million a year. The Claude Mariposo's of this world - whose father is, let's say, a plumber - don't stand a chance of being called up partly because guys like Swisher are hogging those plum major league spots that they don't really deserve.

It's not just baseball where this happens. I noticed this with academic hires as well. I'm going to blindly say that in any field of academic study less than 10 percent of the professors out there are making any real intellectual impact. They are the true major leaguers of academe. But what about the other 90 plus percent? Like in major league baseball, they're Quad-A types. In the sciences they could just as easily be working in a low-level research lab or working as a perennial post-doc as they could have a lifetime academic job. In the social sciences, they could be looking at spreadsheets in a cubicle in Washington, DC. In the humanities, they could be parking cars or serving lattes are Starbucks.

How does academia make the choice which "Quad-A intellectuals" to elevate? Just like in baseball, you do have to look the part. An exotic name doesn't hurt (hey, don't look at me!). You have to wear the clothing of an intellectual, the slightly rumpled outfit of high quality apparel that would be stunning on anyone else. You have to have that look of constant distraction at all times that says that you must be thinking about some big idea in the back of your brain (even your big idea is actually a very small one). You have to be more than a little diva-like and think that you're oh so important.

Yechus or lineage is important, too. If you come from a top notch school or your father was a well known academic, you get a little push in the applicant pool and maybe even come tenure evaluation time.

Looking back at me in the day, I was a lot like Nick Swisher. I looked the part. I had the attitude down. I came from the right kind of school. But unlike him, I like to think that I can hit the intellectual equivalent of a major league slider. I was a true major leaguer at least in my own mind. Then again, I'm sure that Nick Swisher, Travis Buck, and Ryan Sweeney think they are too.

But what about those academic aspiring types with ordinary names, who aren't distracted all the time, who dress like they belong in middle America, and are just plain nice? Sorry. There are just too many people who look the part who want those jobs. You need to get your game face on brothers and sisters. For a fee, I'll gladly give you some pointers.

Adventures in Cause and Effect, Part 3

I'm a random kind of guy. I'm perfectly happy with the idea that there is no grand plan in this universe. When the stock market goes up and down, I'm happy with the idea that there is no underlying cause. I know my own life has been one random event after another. Sure there has been determinism at work, but right now I'm drinking tea in my home in Palo Alto. I could just as easily be hawking cell phone cards on some seedy street in NYC.

But I know that most people are not happy with the idea that their lives are the equivalent of a ping pong ball floating around in a cage in a bingo parlor. They need to believe in fate, in the divine, and they need to construct cause and effect even when there isn't any. That need, though, is some irrational thing, a longing for more comfort than a random world possesses.

In the sciences, I see this need to find cause and effect as well. Paleontologists, for instance, have found evidence for several periods of mass die-offs on this planet. They are always trying to find the smoking gun or guns for these extinctions. Maybe they are there. But alternatively, perhaps the "cause" is something very subtle. Perhaps the natural dynamics of life on this planet have inherent instabilities. Perhaps crashes in populations and massive extinctions are sometimes just part of those dynamics. Maybe sometimes there is not a smoking gun - no volcanoes or meteorites - but some little event or events that cascade.

I'm getting messy in my logic here, but recently I read an article in the New Yorker by someone who has made a healthy living trying to identify causation when there is none, Malcolm Gladwell. In a series of books which are very quick reads, he tries to find order in a seemingly chaotic world. His first book wasn't half bad, The Tipping Point. The idea there wasn't so much that there is order, but that things become popular on their own accord or with a little tweaking. It was the tweaking part of the book that annoyed me. Knowing what tweaking works and what doesn't is a shaman's game. Really what happens when you have a business or any enterprise that isn't working well is that you tweak out of desperation and you hope for the best. Success is tweaking plus a whole lot of luck. Almost always, these efforts don't work. When they do, you should just chalk it up to being one fortunate s.o.b.

In The Tippng Point, Gladwell left the impression that you could, if you were smart, know just what buttons to press to make everything all better. There were magic levers out there that could turn black to white. If only life were so easy.

After that book, things went downhill in a hurry. Gladwell started to get more and more deterministic in his views. His second book Blink made the claim that snap judgments somehow miraculously provide valuable information. Our gut instinct is supposedly a wonderful thing. Tell that to those who got married at the spur of the moment in Vegas. OK, I know that alcohol is involved in Vegas, but still. This book is silly stuff designed to pander to people's hope that they can get by on laziness. Not surprisingly it sold a ton.

His last book was another effort to pander to the public, but in a different sort of way. Yes, success is random, but not without 10,000 hours of preparation or being born in a culture of intense physical labor. Somehow growing rice makes you mathematically brilliant. Huh? I always thought it was ice cream that did it myself. Ice cream and cheese, no doubt about it, are the keys to being the next Newton. OK, I'm kidding here. But Gladwell is perfectly serious. Or he's trying to be.

I think he forgot that he wrote his second book on the value of gut instinct when he wrote his third. As far as I can tell, Gladwell writes books that are less about ideas than they are about finding a bogus idea that people will buy. He likes to placate people's fear of chaos in the universe with false causation.

His latest article in the New Yorker is another piece of glib fantasy. Gladwell focuses on how underdogs win. He's trying to inspire in this article, I'm guessing. The idea is that an underdog can win if it plays by a different set of rules than the favorite. The underdog has to be innovative.

Gladwell goes back to the tale of David and Goliath. Goliath's bigger. David can't possibly fight him in hand to hand combat. So he uses his sling shot. I don't see the point of this example really. David isn't being innovative. Of course David uses a sling shot. That's what he's skilled in doing. David meets Goliath in an open rule competition. Goliath has no sling shot. David does. I would argue that David is clearly the favorite here. The size of Goliath is immaterial. David has superior weaponry. End of story. To believe in David being the underdog is essentially to fall for something magicians and comedians use all the time: misdirection. You can argue that the writer of this portion of the Bible uses misdirection just like Gladwell. At least Gladwell is in good company.

But think about that day. A youth goes out there to battle Goliath. He isn't an idiot. The Jewish people aren't idiots either. King Saul hears this kid saying he's killed lions and bears. The kid must be one tough s.o.b. Saul sends him to battle with his blessing. David goes out there without armor because it gets in the way of what he intends to do. As Rashi, the famous biblical commentor of the Middle Ages notes, David is like Mordecai in the Book of Esther. They are both pre-ordained to win. Rashi understands that the biblical story here is front loaded to create drama when the battle is actually a slam dunk. Think of the biblical narrative as ESPN SportsCenter hype.

The focus of Gladwell's article isn't really on David and Goliath though. It's on a girl's basketball team from Redwood City. My knowledge of the Bible is rusty, but my knowledge of Redwood City - Climate Best By Government test is its slogan - is fantastic. Gladwell is getting a little too close to my home to survive scrutiny. Again, Gladwell employs misdirection. He claims that the players are not well versed in the game. But he neglects to point out that this team isn't playing in some beginners league. They are actually playing in a top notch city league. You don't do that without some degree of athletic talent.

Supposedly, this team is at a disadvantage because of their inexperience. Their coach also knows next to nothing about basketball. Yet they win. According to Gladwell, they are underdogs who win because they employ a different technique than the other teams: a full court press.

I note that a friend of mine coached in a girl's league in Redwood City a notch below the one described in Gladwell's article. He employed a full court press with a team that was fairly talented. They crushed opponents for a few games before the other coaches voted to kick his team out of the league. If you have talent and you can get your team to buy into the superior conditioning necessary for a full court press, you are going to win ball games. There is no mystery or magic here.

Midway through Gladwell's article, some important information leaks out. The coach has some helpers. And my oh my are they helpers! These aren't Santa's little assistants. They are Roger and Rometra Craig. Roger Craig is an amazing physical specimen, an NFL all star who got to where he is on the basis of a tremendous work ethic (yes, there was a good deal determinism involved in his success). Rometra Craig is his daughter, a former Division I college basketball player.

Now let's look at this team again. Gladwell claims that their success comes from innovation: using the press. But that's not really the story here. For example, let's say you took a coach who knows nothing about basketball, added some non-athletic girls and had them try to employ a full court press playing in a top notch city league. What would be their chances? Zippo.

But now take that same coach and have him bring in one inspiring NFL player and his basketball expert daughter who has a very winning personality. Have those two "assistants" inspire some naturally athletic girls to get incredibly fit and teach them the intricacies of the press. Now tell me that these girls are really underdogs. They are fit. They are well coached. They have a strategy that works well if you are fit, athletic and well coached. These girls aren't underdogs at all. They are, like David and his slingshot, favorites.

Gladwell, who tends to use a very scattershot approach to his work, then decides to change the subject and look at a naval simulation competition. One guy has a supercomputer at his disposal. The other contestants just have their well seasoned experience. Gladwell tries to make the case that the guy with the supercomputer is a know nothing. But really now. Is the guy with a supercomputer really an underdog? No, it's rather like Bambi versus Godzilla. His supercomputer can be programmed to analyze the rules of the game and look for loopholes. When those loopholes are found, the supposed underdog can exploit them. If this guy has any programming ability, and he does, there's no way he's going to lose.

I know that Gladwell wants to inspire people here. He wants to show how people just have to be innovative. But none of his examples really work. In one case, the "underdog" has superior weaponry. In another case, the "underdog" has some cracker jack coaches. In the third case, the "underdog" has massive computing power. There is no story here at all. It's one long article based entirely on misdirection.

Why do people fall for this kind of empty stuff? It makes them feel good. But intellectually, this is very dishonest work. It's entertainment really. It isn't scholarship that's for certain. File this one under "lame ideas about cause and effect that sell magazines and books."