It’s Been a While Mom

A while ago, my brother left this world and I wrote a little tribute to him, my appreciation for a life well lived.  It is now coming near to another birthday of old—my mother. She left this world a while ago—in 1980, having rented a space here since 1899.  So she managed to traverse parts of two centuries.

But much as my brother exceeded all my expectations of a brother, husband, father, and all around good man, so too did my mom surpass any reasonable expectations for the good mother.

Many women who become moms manage to get some help in this enterprise called family and child-rearing, the help coming from folks called fathers/husbands. In our case, the father-husband of the household was mostly missing in action. I have never been sure why he was only rarely present. Nobody ever seemed to talk about it. But it is a fact that he was gone more than he was around.

Now, until my brother decided on his own to not only graduate from high school, but went on to complete college, no one in our family, to my knowledge, had ever gone beyond high school and most never reached high school. To be fair, we are talking late 19^th and early 20^th century life, when education was more the province of the upper classes than now. So, with no education or trade skills, my father became a drifter. He drank often and to excess on more than one occasion. I am told that at one time he played a violin well enough to land a job at the CBS radio orchestra. However, although I once spied a violin in our apartment flat, never did I see or hear him play . . . not a note. So, whether he was just not good enough, or more likely that he drank too much and so lost his precious position, I cannot say. However, raising three kids during the 1920’s and 1930’s cannot have been much fun for the lower classes, the group to which we were firmly affixed, so perhaps the stress got to him.

My mom managed somehow to get enough training in bookkeeping to get herself employed during the war as a bookkeeper for Gibbs and Cox, as best I understand it, a naval architectural firm that designed surface warships for the US Navy. Apparently, the job she held paid well enough for mom to pay for a “railroad flat” on Second Avenue in Manhattan, near 71^st Street. We lived in several such places as I remember it, but this one actually had a bathroom within the flat. The previous unit in which we lived had a bathroom in the hallway between two flats.

Each time my father came home for one of his brief stays (generally by whining) we would have some brief periods of calm, followed by another storm after which Rudy, the pseudo-father figure would depart. But in between all these bouts of sturm und drang, my mom kept on truck’n. She went to work every day, without fail, and brought home a paycheck routinely. She managed even to buy war bonds and thereby to put away about $3000 during the war. This all without financial help from Rudy. See, when he left, he never sent home any money. Mom had to keep on by herself.

And Mom did all this, continuing to raise her three kids by herself, while also periodically having to care for her aging parents, who were fast running out of money, thanks to the Republican banking and stockbroker-induced Great Depression. Mom never once complained about her life, which, seen in retrospect, was a tad depressing.  She never bad-mouthed her deadbeat husband. She just worked, and tucked me in at night.

After the war (WW II for those still paying attention) my mom had these war bonds which she had accumulated. She thought that maybe life in New York City wasn’t such a hot idea for a family with little money. Mainly, she was afraid what the city would do to her kids.  Our sister was by then married, but my brother and I remained within her care. And she worried.  We were, I guess, the original latch-key kids.  So, she took her savings and went upstate a bit to look for a place to buy. She found a little place in Rockland County, in a little village called New City Park. There was a little house that had been a clubhouse for this little village by a lake.  My grandpa—Grandpa Inglis, who had been a carpenter and sometime house-builder before the Depression, agreed to fix up the place and convert it into a two-bedroom house, with a proper kitchen and bathroom.  So, buy it she did and fix it up he did, all of course, with no help from Rudy.

Then my mom extracted my brother and I from our life in Manhattan, and moved us to “the country”. But, the move was accompanied by yet another of Rudy’s home-comings. He came home just before the move. He agreed to get a job in New City or Nanuet and to take care of us, while Mom continued with her job in New York City. She even bought him a car, so he could go to work.  Wow, we were to become a two-income family.

So, Bill and I enrolled in the local schools—me in Chestnut Grove, a K-8 grammar school, and Bill in the Spring Valley High School.  Bill had been going to Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, so Spring Valley would be quite a change from his high-performance, big-city high school. But, we began life in “the country.”

That pastoral period lasted about six months. One morning, during a very cold winter, our oil heater failed. Rudy, not one to solve problems, decided that it was obviously time to leave again. So, without even a fare-thee-well, Rudy took off in Mom’s car and left his two sons to cope.  Bill did the obvious. He called Mom in the City. She did what she always did. She dropped whatever she was doing, left behind her life in Manhattan and came to New City Park. She quickly got the heater fixed and almost as quickly got herself a new job, this time with Widman’s Bakery, a local firm in Spring Valley.  And Mom just kept on truck’n. Again, she never bothered to complain. She just did what was necessary for her kids. In that, Mom never waivered.

So, Daisy—Mom, your birthday’s coming around again. You would have been 113 years old on this February 23^rd.  You didn’t make it that far—almost no one does.  But I wanted you to know that we all noticed. You always performed. You were a great Mom and when the going got tough, you always remained firm. You stuck by your kids, always, always. And we noticed. As a family, we weren’t much on talking, so maybe we never got around to telling you how much we appreciated you as our Mom.

You were great. And I will always remember that about you. I have not forgotten you Mom. None of us forgot you. We all loved you much. I’m the only one left, so I wanted you to know that, wherever you are, you were a Mensch while here.

Braindead GOP

Quote of the Day

"Garry Wills, NYR Blog
Wills writes: "Rick Santorum is a nice smiley fanatic. He does not believe in evolution or global warming or women in the workplace. He equates gay sex with bestiality (Rick 'Man on Dog' Santorum). He equates contraception with the guillotine. Only a brain-dead party could think him a worthy presidential candidate."

Happy Valentine's Day

Today marks our 57th Valentine's together. So we wish to send Valentine's greetings to all the lovers out there.
And to mark the occasion further, Slate Magazine had a lovers photo contest that we won along with 19 other lover couples. It was to tell a love story in three pictures. Here is our picture below, and here is the URL to the Slate article. We appear on the second page.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/02/valentine_s_day_love_stories_slate_readers_as_told_in_three_photos_.html
Again. Happy Valentine's.

The McIntosh Model Industry

In 1968, I bought a new stereo system, soon after arriving back in America after four years living in India. For that system, I went to the very best on the market—a McIntosh power amplifier and a McIntosh stereo receiver, both made by the legendary McIntosh Labs in Binghamton, in upstate New York State.  It is important to note that McIntosh Labs has nothing to do with Apple. Apple was not yet a gleam in Steve Jobs’ mom’s eye when our system was purchased. We bought a McIntosh MC 2505 power amplifier, and a McIntosh MX 512 tuner-preamplifier, the first fully solid state equipment the McIntosh Labs had developed.  In the old days, when dinosaurs still roamed freely, McIntosh equipment employed very large vacuum tubes. These new units left all that behind in the dust.

Now, guess what? These units continue to work their magic today. Yes, 43 years later. The McIntosh equipment continues to function and function beautifully. It makes me wonder how many of Apple’s I-Pads/Pods/phones will still be functioning in 2055. Oh, but to be fair, the Apple stuff is made in China.

In 1969, I purchased a Rolex “Oyster Perpetual Date” wrist watch—remember wrist watches of old??? It is a self-winding watch that, guess what, still self-winds and still keeps accurate time.  The same can be said for my Rolex gold pocket watch, one of the Cellini collection, purchased in 1966. It is an old fashioned wind-up watch. But, it still keeps accurate time. But, again, to be fair, neither of these watches were made in China.

So, what’s the point of this discussion? Well, I have been thinking for some time about Crap—made in China—and quality, mostly made elsewhere.  And I’m tired of all the crap.  So, I have been wondering whether anybody else in America is tired of all the crap, made in China, foisted off on us by pseudo-American companies who make believe they actually make things, but mostly import them from China.  It really does seem to be the case that we have no industrial capacity to make much of anything (aside, I guess, from nuclear bombs) any longer. Once US industrialists (we will really have to come up with a different term for these guys) discovered that cheap was the sole criterion of interest and that cheap meant high profits to them, even if it also meant no jobs for the middle class, it was “Katy bar the door.” I guess American industry has been moving to other shores for decades now, but it seems to have been accelerating in these early decades of the new century. It seems almost impossible to buy anything now that is not made in China. And what about all these goodies made in China? Well, my take is that they are mostly all just crap. China now is the world’s largest producer of crap—merchandise made expressly to fill land dumps.  Not too long ago, I was shopping at Sears, looking for a leaf blower. I asked a salesman whether he could help me find a leaf blower not made in China. His response? “Sorry sir, I can’t help you there.”

So, now, I’m thinking of a new department in, say, Home Depot (pick your own store). It would be called, “Not Made in China”. They would have tools and other products that are high quality, reliable (remember those characteristics?)  AND NOT made in China.  And after Home Depot proves the marketing success of such a venture, I can see stores springing up all over America, many featuring quality, reliable products actually made in the good old US of A.

Now almost assuredly, these quality, reliable products would cost more than the crap made in China. Such products always did cost more. So, the profit margins might not be as high per unit as the crap made in China. But those products might begin to recreate the American middle class, and we might once again have pride in Made in America.  Doesn’t that sound good??

I should note that this idea should probably await the end of the great Gong Show known affectionately as the Republican Presidential Primaries, since anything that might be good for America would be dismissed by the Republican candidates as Obama’s Folly.

Just a thought.

The Supremes Strike Again

The “Ministerial Exemption”

The Supremes have done it again. Churches no longer have to obey secular laws regarding discrimination against the handicapped. It may still turn out that their ruling has a limited effect, i.e., that churches should have the freedom to choose their own ministers and that is all.  But it is by no means clear that they have not opened the door to a gradual change under which churches are allowed to adopt their own legal system, avoiding secular laws. It may seem absurd to extrapolate this ruling to mean that, sometime in the not too distant future, Islamic mosques will be able to institute their own Sharia laws to overwhelm secular laws in many areas. Or, to take a more current example, that Mormon men may once again be able to practice polygamy openly.  Or that the Catholic Church will be able to ban family planning.

Yes, it is a stretch.

But who in their right mind would ever have even considered as a remote possibility that the Supremes would have given us corporate-people (pseudo-people)? That decision surely is the most absurd and destructive decision ever rendered by our high court. It has already transformed our electoral process, turning “free speech” into a bad joke. Speech is no longer free, it is rather open mainly to the “pseudo-people”, since they have all the money.

It is hard to imagine that our highest court has turned into this enemy of our Constitutional safeguards against the imposition of religious bigotry. But it seemed equally hard to imagine that the Court would  pollute the main democratic process by which we elect our leaders.  

So thanks Supremes. You now pose an even greater danger to our democracy than Newt Gingrich . . . and that says a lot.

Our Ship of Fools

It is getting more difficult to even comment on this increasingly bizarre election season. We have Obama attempting to make a case for the Nation’s betterment, while the royal, loyal opposition continues to make its case that he must be stopped at any cost, really without regard to whatever it is he is saying or proposing.

The republican party apparently has taken leave of its senses, and seems no longer an American political party.  I am uncertain who they represent, but it certainly is not the American people. Perhaps they now belong—are owned by—that collection of global financiers who fancy themselves Lords of the Universe. They succeeded in bringing the universe to its economic knees, but continue themselves to bring in the big bucks. Romney thinks it’s just fine that he paid less (percentage-wise) in taxes than most blue collar workers. He says, correctly that he should not be expected to pay more in taxes than the law requires. But then, of course, he and his fellow rich people lobby ferociously to block any and all attempts to correct the tax code so as to require him to pay what many would describe as his “fair share”.  No, he isn’t about to let that happen. And he wonders why people find him a tad . . . “out of touch with reality.”

And speaking of out of touch with reality, we also have the delusional sociopath, Newt Gingrich. He thinks nobody should care that, although he preaches family values, he thinks he shouldn’t actually have to live them.  And because he is a pathological liar, no one will ever be able to understand when he is lying and when he speaks the truth. Remember that true sociopaths are so good at lying that they are even able to fool lie detector machines.  And the Newt is very skilled. He seems even better at the lying game than Shrub.  He was forced to resign for unethical behavior the last time he held public office and he seems to have continued on his unethical path ever since. He may be the true danger to our American system, perhaps the most dangerous candidate we have ever seen.

Ron Paul wants to return to the gold standard, and Rick Santorum thinks it’s just dandy that women should not have full control of their bodies, even if raped. He thinks it’s unfortunate, but, hey, treat it all as one of life’s grand adventures.

Yeah, what a great panel to oppose everything our president wants to do to right this ship of fools called America.  They yell about his regulations, when in fact we need serious regulatory reform—meaning that we have an entire financial system that is seriously unregulated. The practitioners are now most closely akin to mafia online gamblers, who are willing to risk the entire global financial system if they can make a few more bucks at it. And they don’t mind risking the entire global climate system as long as they can make a few more bucks.  The problem is that it is by no means clear that, even if Obama is re-elected he will be able to reverse the damage already done to the world through these fools. I keep wondering, is this what is being taught in the Stanford and Harvard schools of business these days???

The SC Clown Show

It is now Saturday afternoon and the great South Carolina game show called Clowns, Clowns, Clowns, is almost over. I look forward with great interest to see whether the mostly Christian Taliban voting bloc will display its utter cynicism, by voting for Mr. Gingrich, our friendly neighborhood delusional sociopath. Here is a man who changes his religion as often as his wives—presumably when he tires of one or another and looks outward to the multitude of potential wives and religions he has not yet trashed.  I published some time ago a listing of the characteristics of sociopaths. Let’s see, they included:

• Glibness and Superficial Charm 
• Manipulative and Conning  -- They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used.  
• Grandiose Sense of Self -- Feels entitled to certain things as "their right." 
• Pathological Lying --Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests. 
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt -- A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. 
• Shallow Emotions -- When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person.
• Need for Stimulation -- Verbal outbursts are common.  
• Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature 
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability -- Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. 
• Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them 
• Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them 
• Authoritarian 
• Paranoid 
• Incapable of real human attachment to another 
• Unable to feel remorse or guilt
• Extreme narcissism and grandiose
• May state readily that their goal is to rule the world 

  Any of those seem familiar???