Reflections on a Year of Blogging

                  With last Friday’s post, Out of Glendale completed its first year of publication, or whatever it is a blog does. When it started last February, I didn’t know if it would make it this far, so I suppose the occasion could be called a pleasant surprise.

                  For several years, in what seems like another age altogether, I wrote four editorials and a column each week for the newspaper I edited. Over the past couple of years I found myself yearning to write opinion again, and since no one would pay me to do it, I chose this route. No regrets.

                  In its original concept, this blog was going to be more or less of a public affairs commentary, and for the most part it has been. But just a couple of weeks into it, I deviated from that goal and wrote a personal essay about selling the 1977 Volkswagen camper I’d owned since 1982. It’s probably generated more comments than any other post over the past year, which proves beyond a doubt that we care more about our rides than we do about our politics. Ever since, I’ve felt free to do a personal piece whenever I feel like it and to mix the personal with the political when it can help make a point.

                  Another factor that seems to generate a spike in page views, if not actual readership, is a post with cultural references. The blog on the Golden Age of mystery novels, which mentioned Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, got an above-average number of hits. So did a piece reflecting about John Ford’s Western classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I’m guessing the extra hits were a result of people Googling those names.

                  When I began to get serious about this blog, the idea of writing two 600-word essays a week seemed a bit daunting, despite past experience. It hasn’t really turned out so. With one exception, when I wound up on a jury and had to tend to my business after hours, there has been a fresh post every Tuesday and Friday. In one case I started writing at 4 p.m. on Friday, but that sort of procrastination has been the exception rather than the rule.

                  There’s one aspect of my original manifesto that I’ve tried hard to honor, which is that this blog will not try to be on top of current events and up to the minute. When a controversy moves into the public eye, there is far too much dreck written and spoken about it at the time it’s out there. I’ve occasionally written a piece about something in the news at the moment, then held it a few weeks, until the din has subsided, and reworked it a bit to have it reflect thoughts I didn’t see expressed while the debate was occurring.

                  At the beginning I made the decision not to have a space for comments to be posted. Part of the reason is that I feel this is my space, and I don’t want to have to patrol it for other people’s verbal misbehavior. I also have an abhorrence of anonymous commentary, dating back to my newspaper days when I worked very hard to verify authorship of letters to the editor. By all means, e-mail me if you have a comment.

                  So far there’s no evidence this blog has changed or even affected the national dialogue, and I’m fine with that. It’s been good for me to draw on my reading, memory and observation, and I’ve found that the discipline of writing twice a week has helped the writing I do professionally — sort of like a pianist practicing scales. I guess I’ll keep it going a while longer, and you’re all welcome to check in as you like.

                 

                 

A Hypocritical 'Solution' to Abortion

            One slow afternoon in the late 1970s a reporter was going through the “exchanges,” the out-of-town newspapers that arrived at our office in each day’s mail. He picked up a paper from several hundred miles away, where he once worked, began reading, and after a couple of minutes said, loudly enough to wake up everyone else in the room: “Hah!”

            Not being overly busy at the time, I asked what prompted the exclamation. He pointed to a front-page story and asked me to read it. It was an obituary of a prominent family practice physician who had practiced in that town for decades, won numerous community service awards, was widely beloved, and had died surrounded by his family at a ripe old age. I looked up, and said, “So?”

            “So,” he replied, “what they left out of the story was that he was the town abortionist. Everybody knew he was the guy to see if you had a problem.”

            Once upon a time in America there were hundreds, probably thousands of doctors like him. Some were highly respectable and some ran seedy back-alley operations that threatened the lives and health of the women they served. Everybody knew about them and nobody talked about them. Abortion, though ubiquitous, was nonexistent as a political issue.

            Lately I’ve been having some nostalgia, no doubt unwarranted, for those times. I’m pro-choice, with reservations, but find myself more and more believing that our political dialogue is being poisoned by debate over an issue that consumes far too much attention and can never be satisfactorily resolved.

            Resolved? It can’t even be satisfactorily debated because there’s no common ground for framing a debate. Activists on one side say it’s murder; on the other side a personal moral decision. Too often, neither side respects, or even acknowledges, the other’s fundamental premise.

            Between those two extremes is a broad middle, probably 70 to 80 percent of the population, which is conflicted. There are pro-lifers who would make an exception in the cases of rape, incest or medical danger to the mother. There are pro-choicers who would support a reasonable parental-notification law for minors seeking an abortion. They have no chance of being heard, and, as the issue is highly situational, they often tune out the debate, except when they or someone they know is facing the decision. In the end, most people don’t want abortion criminalized, and whether it is or not, people will make their own decisions.

            A while back I was talking with a local police chief about prostitution and how his department enforced the laws. He told me that the trade is now almost all outcall, and that given all the other crime issues in his town, prostitution is handled on a low-priority, respond-to-complaints-only basis.

            Part of me would like to deal with abortion that way: Declare it illegal again then never enforce the law. Sort of like Senator George Aiken’s suggestion in 1967 that we declare victory in Vietnam, then pull out. Planned Parenthood could stop doing abortions and do discreet referrals instead, and everybody could support it for the other 97 percent of what it does. Politicians on both sides could stop pandering on the issue. A little hypocrisy here could be a good thing.

            But it wouldn’t work. There would always be prosecutors who would see votes in going after the providers; there would be women outside the loop who couldn’t get served, and so on. It’s a pipe dream born of frustration over a political war that will probably still be fought a hundred years hence, with no winner in sight.

           

           

           

Clubs I Don't Want to Join

            Excuse me here while I have a bit of an Andy Rooney moment.

            Have you ever noticed how many retailers have been going over to a membership business model? It’s getting harder and harder to just walk into a store and buy something for the price shown on the shelf. In fact, it’s getting harder and harder to just walk into a store and understand the price shown on the shelf.

            I’m not just talking about Costco and other organizations of that ilk. Grocery stores like Safeway and drugstore chains like Rite Aid and CVS have gotten into the act. This is a bad idea if for no other reason than it adds an extra layer of time to the checkout process. Plus it creates a template for confusion at best and frustration and anger at worst.

            The other morning I ran out to get a pastry and decided, since I was going right past it, to stop at the local Safeway and get some Vitamin C. I had to have the car back home by 7:30 a.m. because Linda needed to leave for work then, so Safeway was my only option.

            As a rule, I avoid Safeway for a variety of reasons. The one near our house was built nearly 50 years ago and has been remodeled a couple of times with the apparent purpose of making it look older and crummier. The lighting is so dingy it would be a mugger’s paradise, except that the mugger would be hard put to find his way out. It’s chronically understaffed, so you generally have to wait in a long line because only two of a dozen registers are open, and the employees have apparently been instructed that under no circumstances are they to call for more checkers, regardless of how many people are in line. More often than not the employees are surly and uncaring, but I try to cut them a break. After five minutes in that place, I’m hardly Mr. Congeniality, and they have to be there for eight hours at a stretch.

            But I digress. That early in the morning the store was fairly empty and I was able to reasonably quickly locate a brand-name bottle of 100 Vitamin C tablets for $7.79, which the ten-spot I brought would nicely cover. The line wasn’t bad and the checker seemed reasonably good-spirited. I was counting the experience as a win until the checker swiped the vitamin bottle and rang me up for $15.16, nearly twice the posted shelf price.

            When I mentioned that, she asked for my Club Card number and swiped it again. Same result. “I think it’s a two for the price of one,” she said. “If you want to go back and get another one, we can try again.” At that point I looked at the line that was forming behind me and thought I discerned some homicidal intent in the facial expressions there. So I said, “Forget it,” and left without the vitamins.

            That night I went to a CVS pharmacy and bought 100 Vitamin C for $8.49 plus tax. The price rung up on the register was the same as the one on the shelf, but that may have been a coincidence.

            My question, after all this, is why stores bother with the club memberships. Wouldn’t it be easier and fairer and make for a quicker checkout if they simply gave every customer their best price every time? Of course it would, but then they couldn’t track our purchases as easily and pretend to offer great deals to insiders. All I can do is vote with my feet for as long as I have the option, and my vote is anti-club.

           

Loving Business From a Distance

            One of the more amusing aspects of American political debate is the reverence shown, in some quarters, for business. I can only conclude that the people who make the biggest and loudest claims of being pro-business either haven’t been in the business world themselves for a while, or have seen it only from an owner’s perspective.

            (And while we’re on the subject, does anyone else agree with me that the term “pro-business” should be removed from the political debate altogether? Aside from a few strays in a few college towns, there’s no such thing as an anti-business politician in America. The debate, such as it is, turns on the question of what counterbalances, such as labor unions, worker-safety regulations, and environmental laws, should be imposed on a business’s inherent desire to make as much money as quickly as possible, regardless of consequences.)

            For a few years in my early middle age I was an executive in charge of a small division for a Fortune 500 company so dysfunctional it could have served as the inspiration for Dilbert. Corporate headquarters was more than two thousand miles away, which was both a blessing and a curse.

            It was a blessing because it meant we didn’t have to deal directly with the head office too often, but it was a curse because it reduced our operation to nothing more than numbers on a spreadsheet. To be sure, headquarters paid plenty of pious lip service to producing a quality product, but not once, in all the time I was there, did they ever put their money where their mouth was. Instead, they engaged in a form of reality avoidance all too common in the corporate world: believing they could get a Lexus on a Yugo budget.

            The product in question was a newspaper, not an automobile, and I tried in vain to make the argument that drastic cuts in quality and production would be readily obvious to the readers and advertisers. In one particularly surreal discussion, I made the point that cutting a reporter from the staff meant that about 300 stories a year wouldn’t be covered. The corporate executive I was talking to looked me in the eye and replied, “That’s the old way of thinking.”

            I never did find out what new way of thinking would cause 300 news stories a year to be generated without any human being available to research and write them, and if I’d pressed the issue, the answer would probably have been something along the lines of “It’s up to you to make it happen.”

            After a while, it became obvious that our operation was nothing to headquarters but numbers on a spreadsheet. Headquarters wanted costs cut and profits raised to ridiculously high levels immediately. I argued for more modest short-term profits and more reinvestment in the product to take advantage of an area that was rapidly growing. In divorce court, they would call that irreconcilable differences, and after three years I decided to leave while it was still my decision.

            As it turned out, we were both wrong. This was a few years before the internet arrived, and none of us saw it coming. It essentially broke up the paper’s unique standing, which we all took for granted. That standing was what allowed headquarters to pursue a goal of squeezing the news for short-term profit and me to argue for investment in expectation of a long-term future return. Three years after I left, the company realized it couldn’t get the profits it wanted and still pay even lip service to quality. So it sold the paper to another company that cut the staff in half. It was just business.

             

             

           

The Quarter Century Club

                  When you walked through the front door of the small-town newspaper where I used to work, you came into a lobby area with the main switchboard on one side and the newsroom on the other. On one wall was a set of sepia photographs that attracted almost everyone’s attention. As a young reporter I often looked up from my typewriter to see someone standing in front of that wall, gazing at the photographs in rapt fascination.

                  Above the photographs was the headline “The Quarter Century Club.” They were pictures of the men (and one woman, Virginia Peixoto) who had worked at the paper for 25 years. Time spent in the military, if served after being hired by the paper, counted.

                  At the time of my hiring in 1972, the newsroom was represented by editor Frank F. Orr (hired in 1938), managing editor Ward Bushee (1946) and city editor Howard Sheerin (1931). Quite a few of the photos were of printers and pressmen, guys without a college degree who became damned good at a skilled trade and made a life’s work of it: Gordon Littlefield, Hank Senini, Dick Heebner, Cy Crawshaw, Bill Brazil. Others went up on the wall later.

                  One of them was Sam Vestal, the paper’s first photographer, whose pictures proved the connection between the district attorney and a notorious gambler and helped the paper win a Pulitzer Prize. Sam went on the wall in 1975, and I remember being out with him on a story a few weeks before. At one point he reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a beat-up wristwatch with a broken band and checked the time. I asked when he was getting it fixed. “Not worth it,” he replied. “I hit 25 years in a few weeks, and I’ll be getting a new one from the company.”

                  They gave watches in those days, too.

                  In today’s economic and employment environment, where two-way loyalty is an alien concept, the idea of a quarter-century club is incomprehensible. It wasn’t always that way. A company with solid roots in the community could provide steady, long-term employment at a decent wage, obtained, to be sure, with some coaxing from labor unions representing the printers and pressmen. If you had a high school diploma and the willingness to learn some skills, you could make a career of it.

                  What happened in the newspaper industry is typical of what happened across America to businesses that actually produced a physical product. There are no printers any more because technology wiped out their jobs; computers enabled editors and reporters to do the typesetting and produce the pages themselves. The high cost of maintaining a press, coupled with satellite capability and the internet, has decimated the ranks of pressmen. Many newspapers no longer do their own printing; instead, the editors design the pages on the computer and send them electronically to a press at a distant location. One community newspaper has even tried moving its newsroom offshore, outsourcing reporting work to people in India, who cover the city council meeting by watching a community TV broadcast on the internet. The printed newspaper itself will no doubt vanish during my lifetime, replaced by images flickering across a computer screen or smart phone.

                  For a long time I assumed my picture would be on the wall some day, but the company was sold and I left after 19 years. I remain grateful for having had the experience of working in such a stable and welcoming environment, forever gone. Newsrooms will have typewriters again before the Quarter-Century Club makes a comeback.

                 

Creating the Federal Government

            Article VIII of the Articles of Confederation, the predecessor to our Constitution, is the only piece of that document that deals with taxes, and it’s worth quoting verbatim:

            All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the united states in congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states, in proportion to the value of all land within each state, granted to or surveyed for any Person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the united states in congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint. The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several states within the time agreed upon by the united states in congress assembled.

            You don’t have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to see that this approach was rife with problems and horrific ambiguities. Who, for instance, estimates the value of the land, and what, if any, are the options for challenging that estimate? But the central problem lies in the last sentence, which leaves tax collection entirely up to the states, with no means provided of compelling them to pay. If a state legislature doesn’t agree with congress’ determination of its fair share, or if it can’t agree on what form of tax should be used to raise the necessary monies, nothing much is going to happen, revenue-wise.

            And that, in a nutshell, is why Washington’s Continental Army froze and starved in the midst of plenty at Valley Forge, unable to pay for food and clothing. It’s also why America borrowed most of the money it needed to fight the War of Independence; then, as now, it was deemed easier to borrow than to tax.

            We learned in school that the Articles of Confederation were too weak and ineffective to allow for a functioning government, which is how we ended up with the Constitution. In contrast to the mealy-mouthed language of its predecessor, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution is absolutely explicit about the government’s taxing power. Its first paragraph reads,

            The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Posts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

            Then, after further enumerating the powers of Congress that section of the Constitution concludes by granting Congress the power:

            To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

            Say what you will about the Founding Fathers, but they learned from their mistakes. The Constitution they wrote was vehemently attacked in its time as being a springboard to tyranny. It hasn’t delivered tyranny (at least not yet), but it has allowed for some semblance of governance, without which no nation can progress or prosper.

            Those today who profess to love the Constitution often forget that it was written for the purpose of creating the Federal Government. Its tone in the sections above is bold and assertive, compared to the passivity of the Articles. Even the capitalization speaks volumes; the Articles refer to a lower-case united states in congress assembled, while the Constitution speaks of the United States and the Government of the United States. In this case, the capitals don’t lie.

           

           

           

           

Simple Pleasures of Recuperation

            Probably the best medical decision I’ve ever made was to schedule a hernia surgery on the first Friday in January. If you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing that “procedure,” which results in some “discomfort,” allow me to explain.

            A hernia surgery — if non-laparoscopic, as mine was that January of 2007 — involves making an incision a few inches long in the lower abdomen to fix the problem. The post-surgical effect is that you learn how much you use those muscles without consciously realizing it. In other words: It hurts when you stand up; it hurts when you sit down; it hurts when you bend over; it hurts when you laugh; it hurts when you cry; it hurts when you cough; it hurts when you sneeze. And if, while making some seemingly nonchalant and innocuous motion, you strain the incision, you can achieve a level of excruciating pain that is truly transcendent.

            By the way, the medical profession refers to this as minor surgery. That means it’s done on an outpatient basis, after which you’re sent home with your painkillers to remain as immobile as possible for a few days while the wound heals itself.

            If you believe, as I do, that a positive attitude is beneficial to medical recovery, prolonged immobility and boredom are the enemies of wellness. That’s why it was a great decision to have the surgery done the first Friday of January, because we all know what that means: Seven hours of football playoffs on Saturday and seven more on Sunday.

            The weekend after that surgery, it was just what the doctor ordered. I kicked back in front of the TV and watched all four Wild Card games all the way through. There was no rooting interest in any of them, so it was fine to doze off from time to time. I was pleasantly occupied and interested without having to exert myself and was already feeling a lot better by the time Monday rolled around.

            Having been through several operations in this life, I appreciate and remember the various diversions that have helped me through those first tough days afterward.

            In one instance I had to stay in the hospital overnight and came out of the anesthesia about 7 p.m., getting progressively more awake as the night wore on. I started channel surfing and came across a five-hour Law & Order marathon on TNT. Business was slow at the hospital that day, and I had a double room to myself, so I watched all five hours all the way to midnight and still associate Law & Order with helping me get through those nasty few hours right after the operation.

            Extended convalescence after a surgery is also a great time to read a long book you’ve been holding back on for lack of time. It was in such a period that I read George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which became one of my favorite novels. With its fully imagined and realized world, vivid characters, and just happy enough ending, it was a great tonic. If there’s no football after the next surgery (and at my age, there’s likely to be a next one), I’ll be looking for another long-postponed book to read — just not Dostoyevsky.

            (The Wild Card football games the first weekend of January 2007 turned out as follows: Indianapolis 23, Kansas City 8; Seattle 21, Dallas 20; New England 37, New York Jets 16; and Philadelphia 23, New York Giants 20. I didn’t remember any of them and had to look up the scores.)