Krystol Lite

Amazingly, Jon Stewart the other night, braved the elements to have William Krystol on his show. Krystol, best known as the orchestrator of the 1993 republican plan to kill health care reform, is now embarked on the 2009 campaign. His refrain, “what health care crisis” in 1993, coupled with Harry and Louise, managed to derail the Clinton effort before it ever left the station. Apparently, Krystol doesn’t consider 50 million people without health care to be a crisis. He also doesn’t view being denied care by a corporate bureaucracy because of a “pre-existing health issue” to be a crisis. Clearly, Krystol has never been denied anything in his precious life. He also, in his last battle, suggested that his real aim was to deny Democrats another triumph like Medicare or Social Security. The only thing that terrifies him more than a democrat for President, is another large, successful program that benefits millions of Americans. He prefers smaller, albeit more expensive programs benefiting the insider group known colloquially as multi-millionaires.
And when he isn’t decrying “Obama socialism” , his other preoccupation is boosting the stock of Sarah Palin, aka Sarah Barracuda, aka Sarah the Impaler. Now that Sarah has left the stage to begin her main focus in life, raising money from stupid people for her run for the Presidency in 2012, Krystol is behind her all the way. See, the thing is, Krystol and his right-wing gang, love stupid presidents. That way they get to control what’s done. The last thing they want apparently, is a smart republican candidate. I look at the evidence here—Ron Reagan, the two George Bush’s, John McCain, and now Sarah Palin. Together they are still a few beers short of a six-pack. But Krystol, et al, were fully in control during those Republican glory days—you remember those days—high Federal deficits due to stupid taxation policies, illegal/unnecessary wars, the collapse of the entire S&L industry (George I) and the collapse of what remained of the global financial system (George II). Yeah, those were the good old days, when people like Krystol manipulated the puppet strings behind the curtain.
So, now little Willie is setting up for the next round of battles to protect his personal fortune and those of his mega-wealthy friends.
Stewart got him to acknowledge that a Government-run health care system was the finest (that care system delivered to troops). Since those of us on Medicare Also think that the Government runs a much more efficient and more caring medical system than the private corporate goons, we can only wish him ill in his benighted effort to kill this second attempt. Unfortunately, he seems to be succeeding this time around also.
We can only hope that, as Mr. Winston Churchill once said of us, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities."

Summer Camps

My wife and I are constantly amazed at the number of summer camps our grandkids are able to attend during one summer (and at the ability of our daughter and her husband to afford these camps). I remember only once growing up that my brother was scheduled to attend a summer camp. He apparently didn't want to go, so he argued with my Mother about going until she finally relented and he didn't have to go. I worked one summer at a camp, as a counselor. This was a camp that families who normally live in New York City, but moved to Spring Valley for the summer, would send their kids. They attended for the entire summer. It was a day camp, and featured games, movies, swimming, baseball, and other harmless activities, freeing the parents for the day (well, freeing the mom's, because the dad's generally had to commute into the city to continue working).
But I digress. Our grandkids attend week-long camps for basketball, soccer, gymnastics, football, and one called "running with scissors", a science camp for 6-8 year olds. This is but a small sample of their camps.
But we just completed one part of a "cooking camp" for our teensome grandson. His idea for the camp is that he wants to learn how to cook (he's a true "foodie"). And he wants his grandma to teach him some of the mysteries of her cooking arts. So, he is now enrolled. The "camp" will be run as a set of cooking classes, each devoted to a specific dinner menu, selected by him. So far, he has selected chicken curry, sour meat, and chicken paprika.
Let the games begin!!. Rev your engines, so to speak, and warm up the stove. The cooking camp has begun.
For his first camp, chicken curry was on the menu. Actually, the whole menu was chicken curry, cheese and pea curry (matar paneer), rice, and some samosas (purchased from the local Gandhi International market) and some tandoori nan.
Michael and his grandma worked for most of an afternoon, with Michael, cutting, chopping, mixing, frying, simmering, and of course tasting as he went, with GM supervising. The best part of this particuar "educational camp" is that it includes the dinner at the end of the day. Michael's siblings were away at their own "camps" in Chapel Hill, so they missed this event.
The final meal was enjoyed by Chef GM, Chef Michael, his parents, and me, the GP. As you can see, a wonderful time was had by all. Next camp may be beamed at chicken paprika. I will report the event fully.

Chef Michael


Chicken Curry


Matar Paneer

Lunar Happenings

Yes.
We knew where we were in November 1963, but . . .
we know equally where we were on July 20, 1969.
To set the stage:
We had moved from Boston to Washington, after coming back from India. We were supposed to move into a new apartment house in Silver Spring. When we arrived at the apartment house to sign the lease, with our furniture arriving that same day by Allied Van Lines, the apartment developer told us that the apartment house was not yet finished construction and it would be some time before it was done. So, we were stuck. We put our furniture into storage, and rented temporarily, a hotel room in DC. Our friends from India, the Walkers, were with us, because they had driven one of our two cars from Boston to DC.
So, there we all sat, in a hotel room in DC, trying to decide what to do. Then our friends suggested that we all rent a cottage in Chincoteague for the summer and use the time to turn a bad happening into a fun, family vacation. Chincoteague was on the Virginia coast, across an inlet from Assateague Island. Each year, they had the annual pony swim, when they swam the wild ponies that lived on Assateague to Chincoteague.
So we all drove off to Chincoteague. I commuted on the weekends from DC, where I was working, to Chincoteague.
I was there, at Chincoteague, on July 20, 1969. We were partying a bit, drinking wine and eating Chincoteague oysters, when we turned on the little black and white TV in the living room. All of us, four adults and six kids, gathered around that little TV, watching in awe, as they landed on the moon, and man took those first steps onto the surface.
After . . . we walked outside and looked up into the sky, at the moon, shining there for all to see. We just stared at it, trying to grasp that fact--there were men up there, on that lunar surface, looking down on us. It was difficult to take our eyes off that shiny disk in the sky . . .

Health Care Reform

I guess we have now entered the stage of health care reform where everyone expresses concern for the health care of Americans broadly (see 1993). Democrats express their concerns about the 40-50 million people who are currently uninsured.
Republicans insist that Americans have the finest health care system in the world and we wouldn’t want to trade that marvel for a system in which government bureaucrats dictate when and how you can get health care. Wouldn’t want those mindless bureaucrats telling us that we can’t have a hip replacement, now would we?
Oh, and then there’s the third group, arguably larger than the other two and way more heavily endowed with money—the health insurance industry and its lobbyists. They are busy creating the language by which health care reform will be defeated. After all, any system with a “public option” is inherently threatening to them, their profits, and especially their bonuses and stock options. This group crafted the Harry and Louise advertisements that helped to kill Clinton’s reform initiative. They are now designing the statements to be read ritually by Republican senators and Congressmen who receive large payments from them, in exchange for acting as their lackeys. They also, of course, work closely with those super patriots, the Fox News readers and their radio patriots—you know them as Rush, the fat dopehead, and his buddies.
So, as the insurance industry execs continue to fatten their bank accounts, from charging ever higher fees for less and less health care, our American electorate continues to cheer them on, and to exhort their representatives to never, ever consider that nasty old “public option.” That would be socialism, and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?

54 Years Ago

So, 54 years ago, I awoke in our New City Park house on Collier Avenue, 20 miles from Manhattan, ready for a new adventure. The day began warm and continued warming throughout the day, til it burst forth into the 100 degree range, just when we were getting married. The church was small, seating a couple of hundred at most. A few family attended. Bill was the best man. The Schmidt's came from the Bronx, Gordon and Louise arrived from White Plains. Uncle Bill arrived from outer space. Everyone else was "from the bride's side".


After the ceremony, people gathered at the Foreman's in Nanuet. Poppy had set up their driveway as a reception area, with his garage/workshop as the bar. Everyone stood outside, sweating in the sultry heat of a summer's day. People laughed anyway. We posed for pictures, we cut the cake and posed some more.


Then we changed our clothes and were driven to New York City. We were staying at the LaGuardia motel, at the edge of the airport. We were dropped off and then we were alone, as a real married couple for the first time. We quickly caught a cab and traveled into Manhattan, where we dined at a nice restaurant, also for the first time as a couple. I had shrimp cocktail and shrimp creole. We laughed about that many times afterwards.


The next day, a Sunday, we wandered around New York, saw a movie, The Seven Year Itch with Marilyn Monroe (we also laughed about that over the years). We inhaled the city--it would be a while before we could return. Then we returned to the airport. Our plane, a World Airlines (no, not TWA) four engine Constellation, sat on the tarmac. Nana and Poppy arrived before our flight left . . . at midnight. We took off, on a very long flight to San Francisco (14 hours). Ruth and Niels plucked us from the airport and we began life as a married couple. Fifty Four years ago.
The years have melted away, each one filled with memories, mostly happy. We are looking forward to our next fifty four years of adventure. Life is good.

Road Tripping

We just returned from another road trip. Carol and I like long drives together. This one carried us to Minnesota and back, to spend time with my brother and his family. The trip was a bit over 1200 miles each way. One of the things we like about traveling together this way is that we get to see places we might never otherwise see. We stop in little towns whose names are unfamiliar, except through browsing a AAA Tourbook Guide. Since we now live in a little town, we like to stay in other little towns and then compare. One of the things we discovered on our big road trip, the one that carried us all the way to the west coast and then back over a wandering path, is that some small towns seem to lie mostly in the past, whereas others continue to thrive, with interesting shops and restaurants. The ones that seem barely alive, or always struggling to continue, are often sitting in the shadow of another town or city. Our town, for example, struggles to breathe, because Charlotte sucks the air and much of the money out of the region. Other towns, more distant from large towns or cities, thrive because they need not compete. If people want nice restaurants, or interesting shops, they will have to frequent the small towns that provide them. Thus Bozeman, Montana, a town half the size of ours, looked to be four times as large, mainly because there seemed to be nothing within 100 miles of Bozeman to compete for attention, or money.
So, we drove and observed, spending a night in Tomah, Wisconsin, a town of 8000 citizens, and hosting something close to ten bars. Our little town has no “bars”.
Our trip to Minnesota was uneventful and our stay with family wonderfully rich and fulfilling. Dinners planned well in advance of our arrival were splendid feasts, Italian-style—the food plentiful, rich of flavor, and varied in main and side dishes. All in all, we probably ate too well, but also we consumed each other in conversation. We talked, we laughed and we admired all the beautiful children.
But then it was time to return home. We intended a quick trip, two days instead of the three we used to make the trip out. We envisioned one long day, followed by a relatively short day of driving. We set out early.
Then we encountered what I now call the “Rod Blagoevich memorial pseudo-construction network”. In these networks, little actual road work actually occurs, but it is made to look as though work might someday be done. I named the phenomenon for the past Governor of Illinois, partly because most of the encountered network occurred in Illinois, thus I saw it as a vestige of that gubernatorial malenfant. Approximately every ten miles, we would encounter a five mile stretch of highway where one lane was closed and the allowable highway speed reduced by ten mph, or sometimes 20 mph. Occasionally, a truck or two would be parked alongside the roadway, and sometimes they would tear up a stretch. Often a few “workmen” would be stationed nearby to observe the slowly moving caravan of trucks and cars, perhaps as a suggestion that someday, work might actually happen.
When we finally emerged from the Illinois road silliness, we proceeded more expeditiously for a while, finally arriving at our first day’s stopping point. We expected little difficulty and a relatively short trip on our second day.
Then, while driving somewhere north of Knoxville, traffic ground to a halt. All lanes stopped. After a while, we turned off the engine, I emerged from our car and looked up and down. An endless stretch of trucks and cars forward and behind us. I checked with a trucker—they always know what is happening. Seems a truck ahead of us had burst into flame and was being consumed, thus closing both lanes. So, I returned to our car, and stared at the line of cars and the car in front of us, also licensed in North Carolina. Both the driver, a woman, and her passenger, a man, were smoking. Both apparently thought of the world outside their car as a giant ashtray—maybe their Kia had no ashtray, much as most cars licensed in North Carolina seem to have no turn signaling system. Both people would inhale, blow out smoke and flick their cigarettes outside, then finally both tossed their lit cigarettes outside their car, onto the surrounding highway. I found it a bit ironic that we were being held hostage by a truck in flames ahead of us, while the people in front of us thought nothing of tossing lit cigarettes out the window.

Finally, the traffic began moving, our cigarette-smokers in front took off, and we resumed our journey.
All in all, we returned home more tired than expected, happy to have taken our journey, but happy also to be back home. All in all, a good time was had by all, despite the return trip from hell. Still, road trips always beat traveling by air.

American Dysfunction

I'm thinking about where we are and where we seem to be headed in this once great nation. Our daughter and her husband and kids were on a flight from Charlotte to Chicago, and then on to Minneapolis on a second flight, all American Airlines. Their first flight arrived late, and they had to rush to the gate of their second flight. The second flight was still at the gate. Whew, just in time. Except that the gate police (more American Airlines staff) refused to allow them to board the flight. Yeah, the plane is sitting there. The same airline had delayed them getting in and was now denying them a chance to board their flight. Way to go American Airlines, yet another minor piece of evidence that our airline industry resembles our banking industry, which resembles our auto industry, which resembles our mortgage industry . . . but you get the point. We don't seem to do anything well any longer . . . except maybe blow things up.
Some financial commentator (he happened to be a Republican) commented a while back that he had told everyone several years ago that the financial industry was going to collapse, because it was obvious to him that you could not operate the way they were operating without catastrophic results. Turns out he was right. He also said something I have believed for a long time now--that we cannot continue to be a nation of consumers. That we actually need to begin making things. Sounds right. For a long time now, the standard response has been, "well the American economy has shifted from making things to services--we provide services." I always thought, "yeah, but Americans are almost uniquely bad at providing services". Mainly , you need to care about your customers to be good at service. Largely, aside from the dwindling array of small shopkeepers remaining in the land, we don't.
So, we apparently we can't make anything, and we are lousy at the last remaining thing we could do--service. Oh, and by service, we don't just mean waiting on people at restaurants. Mainly, we mean things like financial services . . . you know like managing investment portfolios, and creating and managing new "creative" investment opportunities . . . you know, like Mr. Madoff's creative investment approach (Ponzi). And we all know how well the creative geniuses perform after they are sent forth from the nation's business schools and Economics schools.
So, where does that leave us?
Well, we still seem to be good at developing and producing weapons of mass destruction. So, maybe we will need to focus on that last remaining field of expertise. But to whom will we sell our WMDs? Hmmm, that's a tough one. Hey, I know. That could be our entre' to detente with Iran, North Korea, and Burma (see I'm really old, I still call it Burma). I mean, they all seem to want to possess WMDs. And we continue to believe they shouldn't be able to manufacture them. So . . . a match made in Heaven (or is it Hell . . . I can never keep them straight). We produce the WMDs, ands we sell them to our newfound friends, the Arabs, the Persians, and the more isolated Asian nations.
I mean, what could go wrong???