Reelpol

LARGER-THAN-LIFE MARILYN AND FOLLIES MOVING ON

Published in the April 9, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

Had she lived, the infant initially christened Norma Jeane Baker would be celebrating her 88th birthday on the first day of June.

I don’t know if Marilyn Monroe would have chosen to blow out her veritable forest fire of birthday candles in the city of Palm Springs, but, regrettably, the 26-foot “Forever Marilyn” statue, once located on the corner of South Palm Drive and Tahquitz Canyon Way, is no longer there to honor her.

For the past two years, downtown Palm Springs boasted a sculpture by J. Seward Johnson that preserved a page from “The Seven Year Itch” (1955) in a truly colossal way. Johnson’s larger-than-life tribute, considered the height in kitsch, has been dismantled, loaded on a flatbed truck and is headed out of town — bound for Trenton, N.J., to be exact, where it will go on display along with 150 other pieces also sculpted by the heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune.

Also on its way out of Palm Springs is the 23-year-old phenomenon known as “The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies.”

The Historic Plaza Theatre, where “The Last Hurrah! Our Farewell Season!” is currently playing out its closing weeks, is located within 96 feet of “Forever Marilyn.” The follies, to its devoted fans’ collective dismay, has proved yet another victim of the recession.

According to follies’ co-founder (along with Mary Jardin, sales and marketing director) Riff Markowitz (an MC who is in no manner PC), “The philosophy that we’ve always endeavored to demonstrate is simply, it ain’t over ’til it’s over. The ability,” he added, “to continue to use one’s skill or craft should never be restricted based solely upon age alone.”

“We must find an outlet — whether modest or grand — to continue to practice all or part of that which we have mastered over our long careers,” continued the 76-year-old Markowitz. “I believe it is the secret of maintaining a continuing balance in our life and then our happiness.”

The highlight of the three-hour performance (replicated nine times during each week) pays homage to the Ziegfeld Follies.

In case you don’t remember Flo’s annual stage extravaganzas from 1907 to 1931, the impresario would assemble a personally selected bevy of beauties and dress them in elaborate headgear, expansive back-pieces (think: the wings on Victoria’s Secret angels), and jewel-encrusted lingerie.

They would gracefully descend a mirrored staircase assisted by tuxedo-clad young men to the strains of “A Pretty Girl (Is Like a Melody).”

The Palm Springs Follies, likewise, follows suit. In fact, each season’s wardrobe can contain up to 1,500 individual garments with some reaching 11 feet in diameter and costing up to $35,000.

Although little was left to the imagination — costume-wise — Ziegfeld’s idea was to “glorify the American woman” — not to appeal to men’s baser instincts (even though he failed miserably with the latter). These days, however, you’ve probably seen more skin on the silver screen at the local Bijou, than you will at either Flo’s or the Palm Springs Follies.

Still, the Palm Springs ladies do something Flo’s girls would never do. They confess their real ages. On stage. With pride.

Additionally, the headliner at the plaza proved just as special as Ziegfeld’s Billie Burke. If you watched the Academy Awards last month, Darlene Love would have caught your attention.

Instead of delivering her thank you speech, the star of the “20 Feet from Stardom” documentary sang “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” She was rewarded with a standing ovation.

Not only is Love famous for backing up Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen, but as a soloist, she can also steal the show, especially when belting out “He’s a Rebel” and “Today I Met the Boy I’m Gonna Marry.” Her remarkable set of pipes (she couldn’t wait to announce) have served her well for 72 years.

You also couldn’t help but be impressed with the strenuous dance numbers by the follies cast. Not one of the oldsters cheated the routine — kicks were head-high, tap shoes set off seismic vibrations and sweat equity was honestly earned. I suspect that each hoofer’s commitment to give his or her “all” was inspired by such senior dancers as 84-year-old Dick France and 78-year-old Leila Burgess.

Although Marilyn Monroe once appeared on a calendar, she could never manage to arrive anywhere on time. And Monroe, who once advised, “We should all start to live before we get too old,” met her maker at the tender age of 36.

The follies, on the other hand, advises exactly the opposite. According to Markowitz, “Our cast of performers — all of whom are working decades longer than they had ever hoped — have proved that ‘old age’ can be vibrant, rewarding, sexy and perhaps, perhaps even successful.”

There’s a great lesson in there somewhere.

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

DRINKER TO EMERSON TO SALK: WIPING OUT POLIO

Published in the March 26, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

No device is more associated with polio than the iron lung.

Its image is still horrifying — appearing more medieval than medical — yet, it was all physicians could provide to keep patients breathing once the poliomyelitis virus attacked the nerves of the respiratory system.

The (usually) young patient, who, regrettably, drank from an unclean glass or employed the same doorknob as somebody who failed to “lave sus manos,” could find himself occupying an airtight, steel and drumlike cylinder nearly the length of a subcompact car.

He could only view the world upside down and backward from the mirror mounted above his head. He could only speak when the negative pressure ventilation device — designed to mimic breathing by using air pressure — was in exhale mode (if, at all).

Harvard’s Philip Drinker, Louis Agassiz Shaw and James Wilson came up with the first iron lung for the treatment of polio victims in 1927. Yet, the cost was prohibitive for most hospitals. The price tag equaled the average charge for a new house.

But that, fortunately, is not the end of the story. Along came biomedical contraption genius John Haven Emerson, who greatly improved the early design.

His lighter, quieter and more efficient machine also halved the cost.

This being America, however, Drinker and Harvard sued Emerson, claiming he had infringed on patent rights.

Emerson’s defense was quite simple. He argued first that lifesaving machines should be freely available to all, and second that every aspect of Drinker’s patents had been published or utilized by others in previous years — in other words, the Drinker iron lung was not unique. Not only did Drinker lose his suit but he also lost all of his patents.

Although numerous celebrities including Alan Alda, Donald Sutherland, Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur C. Clarke, Judy Collins, Joanie Mitchell, Neil Young and Itzhak Perlman were stricken by polio — Franklin D. Roosevelt may not have been one of them.

While the 1921 diagnosis by FDR’s doctors for his below-the-waist paralysis was poliomyelitis, a 2003 University of Texas at Galveston study contends the 32nd president was actually afflicted with Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Polio usually claimed its victims during the warm summer months, with epidemics sweeping through towns every few years. The first recognized U.S. polio epidemic occurred in 1894, and by 1950, the year I contracted the virus, America was in a state of panic.

Cities closed public pools and parks. Parents ordered their children not to drink from “bubblers” (water fountains). Schools canceled graduation ceremonies. And the March of Dimes, founded in 1938 by FDR, was frantically trying to raise money for a cure.

Even though most of those exposed to the virus, like myself, recovered without any lasting infirmity, during 1952, when this sneaky disease (which still has no cure nor identifying causes) was at its peak (3,000 died and 21,000 became permanently paralyzed), parents were understandably terrified.

The next year, however, brought good news. On March 26, 1953, exactly 61 years ago, Dr. Jonas Salk announced the creation of a vaccine that would eradicate poliomyelitis. When asked if he planned to patent the vaccine and make a fortune, Salk, essentially reiterating Emerson’s argument, responded that his vaccine belonged to everyone.

Despite specious anti-vaccination arguments attempting to link Salk’s vaccine with HIV and/or cancer, by 1994, polio was essentially eliminated from the Western Hemisphere via widespread vaccination.

The last case of polio in India was reported in January 2011. Since then, the country has remained wild polio virus-free. This is an unparalleled achievement for a nation, which until 2009, reported more than half the world’s polio cases.

In fact, the entire Southeast Asia Region of the World Health Organization should be announcing a historic polio-free certification by the end of this month.

The poliomyelitis virus only continues to circulate in a handful of countries. As of 2013, those nations included Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Yet, every cloud ultimately yields a silver lining if you bother to look for it. As they matured, polio survivors grew into one of the largest disabled groups in the world. According to the World Health Organization, they remain 10 million to 20 million strong.

When these folks placed themselves at the forefront of the disability rights movement, they provided enough clout to pressure Congress into passing such sorely-needed anti-discrimination legislation as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

While the only place you can now find an iron lung is in a museum, you can probably locate a copy of Candy Land in any residence with young children.

What you may not know is that in 1945, a schoolteacher named Eleanor Abbott designed the wildly popular board game (“A Sweet Little Game ... for Sweet Little Folks”) while she was recuperating in a San Diego hospital — from polio.

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

HARBORING DOUBTS ABOUT FEDERAL CASH FOR COAST

 

Published in the March 12, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

What’s the old proverb? “Half a loaf is better than none”? Yet, you would have a thorny time convincing anybody to express appreciation for half a parking space or half a lifeboat or especially half a brassiere.

When the Navy built the jetties at the Port of Hueneme in 1940, they interrupted the littoral flow of sand to Hueneme Beach while also creating a corrosive eddy current that scrubs away 1.25 million cubic yards of seashore annually.

Two federal laws mandate that the Army Corps of Engineers replenish the lost sand.

The River and Harbor Act of 1954 authorized the creation of the Channel Islands Harbor sand trap, whose contents were to be used to nourish down-coast beaches.

The Water Resources Development Act of 1996 sanctioned a 100 percent federal cost share split between the Department of the Navy and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Since 1960, however, the federal government has been behaving like a typical deadbeat dad. The volume of sand transported by the Army Corps has steadily declined from an average of 1.5 million cubic yards during the first decade to the 600,000 cubic yards delivered during the last replenishment cycle.

In addition, the sand trap at Channel Islands Harbor is choking on 3 million cubic yards of sand, a good million more than it was designed to handle. Furthermore the buildup, according to Lyn Kreiger, director of the Ventura County Harbor Department, threatens to cause a navigation hazard in the small boat harbor.

The next biannual dredge was not scheduled to occur until fall 2015. However, according to a news release by Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, she “worked with her House and Senate colleagues, including Sen. Feinstein, to provide additional funds in the (fiscal year) 2014 Omnibus Appropriations legislation for the backlog of harbor maintenance projects across the nation.”

While the powers-that-be with the city of Port Hueneme and Channel Islands Harbor expressed their sincere gratitude when asked to comment on Brownley’s March 4 announcement that nearly $12 million in federal funding to dredge Channel Islands Harbor and to replenish sand at Hueneme Beach would be available — what they diplomatically kept to themselves was, “it’s not enough.”

First of all, the actual allotment translates into less than $11.4 million. Add it up: the Navy’s 19 percent (or approximately $1.8 million) plus $4.4 million from the Army Corps of Engineers Fall 2014 Work Plan (minus 2 percent in administrative costs) plus the $5.3 million from the White House’s fall 2015 budget request.

Secondly, the Army Corps of Engineers hires the dredging company and apparently only one of three concerns worldwide does business on the West Coast. You’ve all played the game Monopoly. Apparently the sand dredging business is a textbook example of unfettered capitalism.

So what’s the harm in that? Up to half of a dredging budget can disappear down the pit of unspecified “set up costs,” leaving colossally inadequate capital to pump.

The ideal situation would be one in which oodles of competition exist, negotiation by the concerned parties replaces the Corps’ lowest bidder process and fees charged were simple, straightforward and evenhanded.

Not only is Greg Brown the city of Port Hueneme staff person who has been dealing with the two-year sand replenishment cycles for nearly a quarter of a century, but he has also researched the Corps’ abstract for bids that apply to the fall 2014 dredge cycle in which the emergency sand replenishment allotment will play a role.

He estimates that the full $12 million would only provide 2.152 to 2.328 million cubic yards of sand to Hueneme Beach. That’s about 1.2 million cubic yards less than the 3.5 million cubic yards that have already built up in the Channel Islands Harbor sand trap and $4.8 million to $6.48 million less than the money required to pump the 3.5 million cubic yards of sand necessary to restore the beach.

Third and finally, this emergency harbor dredging and sand replenishment effort doesn’t do anything about 2016, when 2 million to 3 million cubic yards of sand will have again disappeared.

Without a permanent biannual allocation, or better still, a permanent allocation plus a redesign of the jetties to minimize scouring of beaches to the south, it will be déjà vu all over again. It is interesting to note that a 2001 feasibility study (costing $100,000) got through a congressional committee in 2001 but died in the wake of 9/11.

Perhaps Congress, content to dole out half a loaf once again, might learn from that esteemed philosopher, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) of AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” who opined, “The moral of the story is, I chose a half measure, when I should have gone all the way. I’ll never make that mistake again.”

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

ANGLOPHILES LOVE ALL THINGS 'DOWNTON ABBEY'

 

Beverly Kelley, Columnist

Published in the February 26, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

Americans love to queue up for all things English---from Charles Dickens' 1842 rock-star tour of the States to the Beatles' 1964 mop-headed appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.

Anglophilia is still on the rise, in large part, thanks to the cheeky success of "Downton Abbey" from PBS. In fact, public television deserves much of the credit for exposing Americans to British culture, claims Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.

Not only did the fourth season premiere of this period soap (set during the 1920s) attract a record-breaking 10 million fans, but the Masterpiece hit has even inspired cookbooks, fashion trends and thousands of dinner parties. Not even the 2014 Super Bowl, the most-watched TV telecast ever, could knock "Downton Abbey" out of the competition.

In "England, My England," culture critic Mark Dery posits the tongue-in-cheek question, "Are Anglophiles born or made or cultured in a medium of suet and sentimentality, romanticism and Marmite?"

"From my perspective," responds John Rampe, a card-carrying member of the English-Speaking Union (a group dedicated to the preservation of English language, literature and culture)  "the English culture represents a strong sense of tradition, a tradition of courtesy, manners and gentility in how one leads one's life."

 As we all know, America is a land of immigrants, and many of those who arrived on our shores at the turn of the 20th Century, decided that their offspring must assimilate as rapidly as possible. The native tongue was verboten in the home (English only) and parents jettisoned the foods, traditions and cultural trappings that would have made their children different in any way. 

So what remained after all the deliciously different diversity disappeared into the melting pot?

The debate over what to call our first chief executive might furnish a spot-on insight into the long game if and when time-honored customs are summarily discarded.

Despite their lengthy litany of gripes (See: Declaration of Independence) and contention that George III had exceeded his sell-by date, some colonists were still quite willing to crown George Washington as king. He came to office, as you remember, by unanimous consent.

His Vice President, John Adams, whose credentials as a proponent of democratic principles could not be questioned, still strenuously argued for "His Majesty" or "His Highness." Adams felt that "Mr. President" not only showed too little deference but also lacked the proper prestige.

Washington, who was also a big fan of democratic principles but no fan of royal elitism, eventually agreed to "Mr. President" yet frequently allowed himself to be publicly crowned with laurel wreathes.

While laurel wreathes may be a bit much these days, doesn't America seem a little deficient in the pomp and circumstance department? At least compared to the UK?

"An indissoluble connection now seems to exist," writes Christopher Hitchens ("Blood, Class and Nostalgia:: Anglo-American Ironies in the American Mind") "between the idea of England and the idea of heritage, royalty, pageantry and good taste."  

The telly served up plenty of heritage, royalty, and pageantry accompanying the high-profile wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011, Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 and the 2012 Summer Olympics.

In fact, Facebook was flooded with selfies by fans adorned in fascinators and tiaras as they sipped Twinings (pinkies raised) out of English bone china cups. Twitter also reported (literally) millions of personal impressions of Brit upper crust in 140 characters or less.

"It is the essence of anglophilia that the object of its desire is unattainable," writes Hitchens. "The cult of something at once vanished and superseded is secure against any too abrupt swing in fashion. It is reliable and time-tested."

Self-proclaimed Anglophile Tim Harnett offers a simpler explanation, "It's that whole grass-is-greener effect." An avid collector of UK memorabilia, he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "It's not where you are every day. I just love the music, the clothes, the booze---everything that makes life there different from over here---and better, in my opinion."

Well that's certainly true of the accent. Polls consistently show that folks who sound British are judged by their listeners as smarter, more refined and even more honest.

David Goldberg, the president of Digital Waterworx (a company that produces customized telephone messages) says that clients often ask him for British voices. '"Usually the customer feels that hiring talent with an English accent is a little classier, a little more regal," he told the New York Times.

I know someone who programmed his GPS to sound exactly like "Downton Abbey's" Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith). Now if only he could get it to say (as the Countess did when employing the telephone for the very first time) "Is this an instrument of communication or torture?"

You don't have to be an Anglophile to love that.

Beverly Kelley, who writes every other week for The Star, is professor emerita in the Communication Department of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.  Email her at kelley@lunet.edu  Her "The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo:  A Hunter Triplets Mystery" can be found at Amazon.com

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SERVING UP A MIXED MENU ON LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

Published on Wednesday, February 12, 2014 in the Ventura County Star

So what’s traditionally served at a Lincoln Day dinner? While folks expect to chow down on turkey at Thanksgiving or Buffalo wings at a Super Bowl party, Republicans are likely to eat just about anything (including rubber chicken) at one of these annual fundraisers.

What we do know for a fact, however, is that on Feb. 12, 1950, the featured speaker, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, served up a platter full of fear.

Speaking before the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling, W.Va., McCarthy claimed that the long white sheet of paper he grasped in his hairy fist contained “a list of 205 (State Department employees) that were known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.”

During the following months, the number of so-called communists named by McCarthy fluctuated wildly — at times as few as 10 or as many as 81. The 1962 film “The Manchurian Candidate” (based on Richard Condon’s 1959 best-seller) managed to skewer McCarthy’s numerical capriciousness in the bumbling character of Sen. John Iselin (James Gregory).

When Iselin’s highly placed communist-agent wife (Angela Lansbury) refuses to settle on a specific number of communists, she explains that Iselin is missing the point — nobody is questioning whether or not there are communists, they are only quibbling over how many.

Still, Iselin begs for a simple figure he “can keep in his head.” Glancing down at a bottle of Heinz ketchup sitting on the breakfast table, she sweetly replies, “57.”

Despite McCarthy’s inconsistent numbers, his refusal to name names and his inability to produce one piece of credible evidence to back up his charges, “Tailgunner Joe’s” message seemed to resonate with the American people.

He had managed to solidify a powerful coalition of religious conservatives (especially Catholics), dispossessed military hawks, isolationists, including the powerful Joseph P. Kennedy, and the lobby that supported Chiang Kai-shek over Mao Zedong.

America has seen a number of military heroes who have served as president but not one of them ever arrived in the Oval Office via a coup d’état. The 1964 edge-of-your-seat thriller “Seven Days in May,” however, speculated on exactly how that might happen.

Still, even when U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Frederic March) is confronted with incontrovertible evidence that the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is planning to oust him by any means necessary, he refuses to believe that Gen. Scott (Burt Lancaster) is “the enemy.”

“The enemy’s an age,” Lyman replies, “a nuclear age. It happens to have killed man’s faith in his ability to influence what happens to him we look for a champion in red, white and blue. Every now and then a man on a white horse rides by, and we appoint him to be our personal god for the duration.”

Unfortunately, many of the men on white horses are accompanied by unwanted saddle baggage — a seemingly unquenchable thirst for power.

And, largely due to a prevailing climate of fear and paranoia — especially during time of war (declared or undeclared) — they get it.

These “too-good-to-be-true” saviors are especially to be rejected if they offer to strike what will be a lopsided bargain — asking voters to sacrifice civil liberties in exchange for the promise of security.

But that can never happen in America, you say. Think: President John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798.

McCarthyites also managed to pass two such odious pieces of legislation (the second over President Truman’s vociferous veto) with The 1950 Subversive Activities Control Act (whose control board was granted absolute power to determine which organizations would be labeled “communist”) and the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act (which invested the State Department with the absolute power to prohibit foreigners with alien political beliefs from entering the county).

But that’s not all. Don’t forget FDR’s Executive Order 9066 (Japanese-American internment camps) issued on Feb. 19, 1942, the USA Patriot Act signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26, 2001, and President Barack Obama’s Patriot Sunsets Extension Act taking effect on May 26, 2011.

Even Abraham Lincoln, whose 205th birthday we celebrate today, violated the Constitution, according to Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, when he suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War.

So let’s change the subject. Did you ever wonder what kind of birthday cake Mary Todd would have baked for Honest Abe? Kim O’Donnel of the Washington Post has unearthed the white cake recipe that supposedly won Lincoln’s heart here.

In addition, according to the Huffington Post, Lincoln’s second inaugural dinner — which evolved into a sidesplitting food fight — featured poultry, tarts, jellies and, most notably, an abundance of oysters. Oysters? Lincoln?

Make of it what you will.

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

PRODDING CONGRESS TO PLAY BALL ON IMMIGRATION

Published in the Wednesday, January 29, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

Experts agree, if there is any way to unlock the immigration stalemate in Washington, Esther Olavarria (presently charged with finding a feasible compromise by the White House) and Rebecca Tallent (presently working as the top policy aide to Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio) just might find it.

Both women sport impressive credentials. Democrat Olavarria was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s former top immigration lawyer and Republican Tallent was Sen. John McCain’s former chief of staff.

“They understand how this works,” Angela Kelley, a longtime immigration activist and friend of both women, told The New York Times. “They never deviated from standing by their boss. But they always treated each other with a lot of respect, and they never got to this point of personal breakdown where they couldn’t come back from it.”

Perhaps they might find inspiration in the American League. It was on this very day, 114 years ago, that the ragtag Western League was reborn as the American League (of Professional Baseball Clubs). The new league was the creation of Cincinnati news reporter Ban Johnson, who ruled as its president for more than a quarter century.

On opening day in 1901, the eight American League franchises consisted of the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Americans, Chicago White Stockings, Cleveland Blues, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Athletics and the Washington Senators.

The Detroit Tigers were the only team left over from the minor Western League, and to this day remain the only team in either league to have held fast to their original team name and city.

Despite being denigrated as the “Junior Circuit” during its early years, the American League has burgeoned from a renegade baseball organization into an opponent worthy of doing battle with the National League. In fact, of the 109 World Series played since 1903, the American League has come out on top in the substantial majority of games — 63 to be exact.

Today, not only have we the American League to thank for breaking up a nasty monopoly (exclusively benefiting team owners in the National League), for making a larger-than-life icon out of Babe Ruth and for introducing the odious designated hitter rule, but also for a most positive transformation of America’s pastime by immigrants to this country.

In the first comprehensive study of baseball and immigration, Stuart Anderson and L. Brian Andrew of the National Foundation for American Policy concluded, “Americans have benefited from our nation’s openness toward skilled immigrant baseball players, just as the country has gained from the entry of other skilled foreign-born professionals.”

More than 23 percent of Major League Baseball players on active rosters in 2006 were, according to the study, foreign-born, the highest then in baseball history.

In the American League, seven of the top nine batting averages belonged to foreign-born players, while the leading home run hitter (David Ortiz) and the two leaders in runs batted in (Ortiz and Justin Morneau) were foreign-born.

Furthermore, foreign-born players accounted for 31 percent of the players selected for the 2006 All Star Game, higher than their proportion (23 percent) on major league active lists. Seven of the 16 starting position players at the 2006 All Star Game — some 44 percent — were also foreign-born.

Despite claims by anti-immigration proponents, increased competition from foreign-born players did not result in lower salaries for native ballplayers. Since 1990, average major league player salaries more than quadrupled from $578,930 to $2.87 million, while the proportion of foreign-born players in the league more than doubled (from 10 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 2006).

Furthermore, according to the study, a sustained or increased quality of play, to which foreign-born players have significantly contributed, may have helped boost revenues, as major league ballpark attendance rocketed from 54.8 million to 74.9 million between 1990 and 2005.

In both 2005 and 2007, Olavarria and Tallent spent months in grueling backroom deal-making sessions that came to naught. They repeatedly attempted to find consensus among lawmakers on such proposed overhauls as granting legal status to those already here, safeguarding the border and opening the door to more legal workers.

Their struggle to chart common ground was preserved for posterity in a series of documentary films called “How Democracy Works Now.” In fact, last year at the New York Film Festival, Olavarria and Tallent saw themselves fail up on the silver screen. Twice.

Even though their carefully crafted proposals succumbed to partisan bickering and entrenched special interests, the powers that be are again tasking them with exactly the same job.

Instead of forcing Olavarria and Tallent to pound out legislation that will ultimately expire, I have a better idea. Take the entire Congress to a Red Sox game. Give them the chance to see Papi Ortiz smack a homer. And then ask, “How can you vote against that?"

SOCIAL MEDIA GROWTH SPURS LANGUAGE REVOLUTION

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote: “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

No limits, however, seem to apply to the Internet-based Urban Dictionary created in 1999 by Aaron Peckham during his freshman year at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. By November 2013, Peckham had already archived more than 7.3 million words.

The first entry he accepted was “The Man” — you remember that one — which the contributor defined as “the faces of ‘the establishment’ put in place to ‘bring us down.’”

The legitimacy of the Urban Dictionary was recognized in 2011 when agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, seeking to document the criminal threat inherent in the word “murk,” cited the source during a court case.

“People have always been inventive with language,” Katherine Connor Martin, head of U.S. Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“In the 19th century, if young people were using slang terms among themselves, those worlds had to become very well entrenched before anything came into popular use,” she added. “Now, if someone invents a new word on Twitter, it can go viral.”

Social media has goosed the growth of the Urban Dictionary more than any other factor. Imagine the number of people who decided to Google “twerk” after Miley Cyrus demonstrated the lascivious move at the Video Music Awards and ended up at www.urbandictionary.com.

Still, even though the Urban Dictionary predates Instagram, Snappchat, Tumblr, Twitter and even Facebook, “it does not,” according Jenna Wortham at the Economic Times, “garner the double-digit stock price and billion-dollar bids from eager buyers that are standard fare in Silicon Valley. It is a more modest business, run by Peckham, its 32-year-old founder, out of his home in San Francisco.”

Peckham is presently in the process of gathering votes for the 2013 Urban Word of the Year. Don’t feel badly if you don’t recognize the finalists — it’s a generational thing.

The phrase “said no one ever” has racked up enough votes to qualify for fifth place. Often employed as a Twitter hashtag, “said no one ever” has been used to mock something that is generally unpopular and disliked on image macros or in the text of such e-cards as “Thank God it’s Monday — said no one ever.”

In fourth place is “selfie,” a photo taken of oneself (deliberately not looking into the phone camera lens) and subsequently uploaded onto a social networking website. Supposedly originating on Myspace, the “selfie” is usually disparaged as the act of a soul so friendless that he or she is forced to DIY.

I once witnessed a teenager leaping into the air in front of the Mona Lisa. In the “selfie” snapped on her iPhone, she was actually blocking out the most valued ($772 million) painting in the world.

In third place is “YOLO,” the acronym for “you only live once.” YOLO has become the time-honored yet uber-lame excuse for making but another stupid decision.

Example:

Inquiring Mind: “Hey, I heard u broke ur leg falling off the balcony at that party last week.”

Born Loser: “Ya, man, but YOLO!”

Like LOL, LMAO or ROTFL, which also got their historic start on Usenet, YOLO has grown pervasive among computer-mediated as well as face-to-face communication. And like LOL, LMAO and ROTFL, YOLO has proved just as annoying when employed as an oral knee-jerk response that allows a twenty-something communicator to avoid any semblance of critical thinking.

In second place is “please advise” or the conventional corporate jargon for “What (the heck) is wrong with you?”

Example: “Dear Jim, I have not yet received the case files I requested last week. Please advise, John.”

While other text acronyms might seem more to the point, “please advise” appears more professional if/when attorneys get involved.

In first place is “ratchet,” which the Urban Dictionary has defined as “A diva, mostly from urban cities and ghettos, that has reason to believe she is every man’s eye candy. Unfortunately, she’s wrong.”

She can be recognized, according to various Urban Dictionary’s crowd-sourced definitions, by her overuse of “YOLO,” “actually” or “twerk;” her thrice-dyed weave, torn fishnets or unpolished 8-inch heels — as well as her mind-numbing stupidity. Raps by LL Cool J and Juicy J only fueled the further mortification of the so-called “ratchet” woman.

Yet, such megastars as Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, via songs and Instagram “selfies” featuring door knocker earrings inscribed with the r-word, are attempting to morph the insult into a compliment.

The working-class South meaning of ratchet is “not necessarily negative. You could say ‘I’m ratchet’ to say ‘I’m real. I’m ghetto. I am what I am,’” Earl Williams, a producer known as Phunk Dawg, explained to New York Magazine.

And there it is — the elasticity of meaning — allowing our minds to know no limits.

Except for the 140-character limit on Twitter, that is.

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

FLYING HIGH IN 2014? CHANCES NOT LOOKING GOOD

Published in the Wednesday, January 1, 2014 edition of the Ventura County Star

So where’s my flying car?

In 1928, Popular Mechanics introduced the flying car in concept only. It wasn’t until 1957 that the magazine actually announced, “A new kind of flying machine is being designed (by Hiller Helicopter) that sounds like the answer to your desires for a personal aerial vehicle. It is almost like a flying carpet.”

The vehicle would boast air speeds up to 50 mph but would only cost as much as a “good car.”

Popular Mechanics got into the prediction business way back in 1902, when the publication was first launched. And although the editors might not have been able to glimpse the year 2014 with total accuracy, it didn’t stop them from making the attempt.

Over the years — as electricity replaced steam engines, brick buildings were overshadowed by glass, concrete and steel skyscrapers and the globe kept shrinking thanks to advances in transportation and telecommunications, Popular Mechanics continued to publish annual prognostications by scientists, inventors and other visionaries.

As to the precision of their prophesies, Popular Mechanics predictors didn’t make out much better than the assorted psychics who make their yearly forecasts on New Year’s Day.

Although we have yet to acquire flying cars, to give Popular Mechanics credit, our mail is presently sorted by robots (1921), rickets no longer cripples little kids (1925), cars emit fewer noxious fumes (1928), our clothes are made of milk (1929) and our buildings can revolve (1930).

Also, our food is cooked by microwaves (1937) and fortified with grass (1940), push buttons replaced dials on telephones (1942), full dinners are available in the freezer section of supermarkets (1947) and we currently hang our television sets on the wall (1954).

Yet, when the Popular Mechanics forecasters missed the mark, they missed it by a mile.

Chicago never became another Venice as imagined by planners in 1928. Air-conditioning buildings via rooftop lakes (1928), making clothing of asbestos (1929), radio-controlling farms (1939) and turning wristwatches into “total communication centers” (1968) — all flopped.

Furthermore, the world is still awaiting the highly accurate weather prediction machine that was touted to Popular Mechanics readers in 1950.

Those of us who visited the Monsanto House of the Future were thrilled at the sight of such labor-saving appliances as the microwave oven and the sonic dishwasher. We oohed and aahed at the thought of modular bathrooms, telephones featuring presets, pushbuttons, and hands-free transmitters as well as climate control centers that filtered, cooled, heated and scented the air in each room independently.

While all that futuristic stuff may have fascinated Disneyland crowds from 1957 to 1967, the Monsanto House faced the demolition ball after only 10 years. Considered passé even though the future it predicted, namely 1986, wouldn’t be reached for nearly two more decades, it was relegated to the ashcan of history.

In 1962, we started aspiring to live life like the Jetsons — an animated family residing in Orbit City some 100 years into the future at the time of the television show’s debut. All residences and businesses, rendered in Googie-style architecture, found themselves butting up against clouds as they pivoted on adjustable columns.

Any household task that couldn’t be accomplished by pushing a button was relegated to robot maids like Rosie. Audiences especially relished the notion that George Jetson’s space-age technology regularly broke down and inconvenienced his family in 2052, in much the same manner it did during the ’60s and ’70s.

But what I really want you to note is that George Jetson commuted to his two-day-a-week, one-hour-a-day job in a saucer-shaped, bubble-topped aerocar.

So where’s my flying car? If you can believe what you see on YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuXbM0kaD7k my vehicle should arrive in one short year.

Terrafugia recently announced that the world’s first flying car will go on the market in 2015. Not only is no runway required for takeoff, but Terrafugia also claims that the Transition runs on premium unleaded gas.

The driver operates the two-seater with a steering wheel, gas and brake pedals while on the ground and where the vehicle can attain 149.3 mph. A pilot with a minimum of 20 hours (according to CNN) has the option of switching to stick and rudder while in the air where the cruising air speed is 107 miles per hour mph.

And in case you were concerned about space, the Transition’s wings fold up so that the flying car can be parked in your garage.

Prepare yourself for sticker shock, however, since the base purchase price for the Transition is $279,000. You can reserve your very own vehicle right now, however, with a measly $10,000 deposit.

Sign me up. In 2024, that is. I might be able to cough up the deposit by then. Happy New Year, dear readers.

  © 2014 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

DON'T GET CAUGHT UP BY FRAUDULENT ONLINE REVIEWS

 

Published in the Wednesday, December 18, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

The time-honored bromide “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” has been erroneously attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Would-be innovators, however, still insist on taking the adage literally.

According to author Ruth Kassinger, (“Build a Better Mousetrap”) since 1828, when the U.S. Patent Office was founded, not only have more than 4,400 mousetraps been patented, but with an average of 40 patents granted each year, the mousetrap remains “the most frequently invented device in U.S. history.”

So how many mousetrap moguls are actually making money? When was the last time you had a problem with rats?

Yet, across the fruited plain, we can’t help thinking of ourselves as innovators.

We are convinced that any one of us could hatch the “next big idea.” In fact, we believe a super-creative problem-solving gene is wired into our DNA — right alongside the much-touted American can-do spirit.

A hilarious holiday season video is currently making the rounds (more than 12 million hits) on YouTube, that, at least, musically, makes my point. Fourteen hooded students from South Kitsap High School, posing as a contemplative (silent) order of monks, are performing the Hallelujah Chorus.

How is that possible, you ask? Answer: the clever and creative use of flash cards — but please, see for yourself. 

You and I were not present in December 2008 when a proud parent from Port Orchard, Wash., shot the original video.

Yet, via YouTube, millions can now experience and appreciate the ingenious interpretation of the G.F. Handel classic by the Silent Monks — for free.

Not really free. A 20-second commercial precedes the video. YouTube needs money to keep the lights on but what I find disconcerting is that these talented kids doing the work receive zero compensation. Nada.

Let’s return to the mousetrap moneymaking question. Manufactured by Reckitt Benckiser, d-Con seems to have cornered the rodent control market.

It, in turn, bestow much of the credit and millions of dollars on Euro RSCG New York, the ad agency that devises its 30-second seductions for the boob tube, which also (coincidentally?) show up on YouTube.

Yet, Itamar Simonson, lead scholar on a new Stanford University Business School study, now claims that Wall Street is being seriously undermined by consumer evaluations like those on Amazon, Yelp or Google Local.

His research concludes that the wealth of online product information and user reviews has ultimately caused a fundamental shift in consumer decision-making.

Today, Simonson told The New York Times, products are being appraised according to their “absolute value, their quality.” His research suggests that not only should corporations spend less loot attempting to shape consumer opinions with traditional advertising, but also spend more studying consumers and the values that shape their purchasing decisions.

If you consult the 11 (total) user reviews for the d-Con “No View, No Touch” mousetrap on Amazon, you will find that ratings for this item averaged 3.7 out of 5 stars. Since the two dissatisfied buyers didn’t make much of a case for submitting abysmal scores, most buyers won’t be deterred.

But what about those who would game the system by paying for positive reviews or negative reviews of the competition?

Although neither is allowed on Yelp, MarketWatch (Wall Street Journal) reports that 20 percent of Yelp reviews appear to be fraudulent — typically written by freelance writers from the Philippines, Bangladesh and Eastern Europe who receive between $1 to $10 for each review.

In fact, according to Reuters, 19 New York City companies that specialize in boosting online search results to combat negative reviews were caught submitting bogus evaluations on such websites as Yelp, Google Local and CitySearch.

Snared in a yearlong sting operation dubbed “Operation Clean Turf,” these search optimization firms finally agreed to pay $350,000 in penalties.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office argued that faux evaluations breached laws against false advertising and deceptive business practices.

“Consumers rely on reviews from their peers to make daily purchasing decisions on anything from food and clothing to recreation and sightseeing,” Schneiderman told the Huffington Post.

“This investigation into large-scale, intentional deceit across the Internet tells us that we should approach online reviews with caution,” he said.

Two ways Amazon hopes to boost the credibility of its reviews is by verifying an actual purchase and publishing every response in full.

Although the better mousetrap aphorism actually popped up some seven years after Emerson’s April 12, 1882 demise, what he, in reality, wrote, according to John H. Lienhard’s “Inventing Modern,” was “If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”

True? That’s what Jeff Bezos hopes we believe.

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

Christmas of 2013

 

Dear Family and Friends,                                                                                    

As you can see, the theme for this year’s Christmas card is music.  Elliott is tickling the ivories, Max is holding his new string bass and Chloe is tooting the horn of Beverly’s year-old Chrysler convertible (The Gray Lady). What you can’t see is Beverly (who is deploying Spotify on her phone) or Jon (who is warbling Grateful Dead lyrics) as they attempt to keep their No. 2 grandson distracted, if not amused.

 

Retirement suits Beverly quite well, even though she claims to be far busier than during her working days.  When she’s not sketching nudes for her Life Drawing class, she occupies her time keeping up with Friends of the Library activities, penning her bi-weekly column, tutoring adults in the library literacy program, and, accompanying Chloe the Therapy Dog, chatting with the mentally challenged daycare patients at Oceanview Pavilion.  She has also hosted Elliott during a sufficient number of overnights to personally testify that he is, indeed, an actual genius.  Not only does he giggle at all her jokes but can’t get enough of her mashed potatoes.  Beverly also managed to publish two books this year:  Reelpolitik Ideologies in American Political Film and The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo: A Hunter Triplets Mystery.  Guess which one is raking in the royalties?  She has also finally agreed to two total knee replacements now that she’s run out of pain-reduction options.  The first operation will take place two days after Christmas with the second following in two months.  She would greatly appreciate your prayers.

 

Jon is up with the dawn each day as he meets with something like ten county boards and working committees.  He shudders to think he has evolved from the pony-tailed radical elected in 1994 into the institutional memory for Ventura County politics.  And, but again, Beverly will be forced to embroider “Hizzoner” on his shorts.  This is the fourth time Jon has been tapped to serve as Mayor.  Apparently he can’t get enough of Goodyear chicken, greasy hors d’oeuvres, watered-down cocktails or crises.  The city is actually making a federal case out of the erosion emergency at Hueneme Beach Park.  The Army Corps of Engineers so shorted the sand nourishment allotment this time that Surfside Drive is in serious danger of washing away during the winter storms.  Fortunately, we reside on the third floor but, seriously, folks, we really don’t need our already up-close-and-personal view of the ocean to get closer.

 

Both Trevor and Brendan have become homeowners.  Trevor and his growing family (Elliott was born 11/29/12) are already occupying their newly renovated 3-B house in Echo Park while Brendan is busy documenting the construction of his 3-B condo on FB and preparing for a January move.  Angie is now a full-time homemaker and doing a fantastic job with Elliott.  Trevor is a devoted father as well.  Just recently, Trevor was promoted to Disney Music Group Vice President of Digital Marketing so we weren’t exactly flabbergasted when Elliott was dressed as Mickey Mouse for Halloween.

 

Brendan shared his passion for all things Frank Lloyd Wright with us this June.  The three of us (plus Chloe) set out on an eight-day pilgrimage starting in Oak Park, IL and spiraling out to the surrounding Chicago environs.  Brendan was able to add 45 FLW structures to his life list.  In addition, Bren, who has never been much of a reader, stunned Beverly by devouring her murder mystery in three days.  Of course he had an ulterior motive. Beverly had already confessed that she based the character of Anne, the sleuth with the photographic memory in her novel, on him.  In addition, Brendan is still writing graphic novels and creating music when he isn’t putting in oodles of overtime @ QBE First/B of A Home Loans.

 

Naomi and Max have relocated to Chandler, Arizona.  Max loves his new school and has progressed so rapidly with his bass lessons that his teacher invited him to join the elite Chamber Orchestra. Naomi is gradually adjusting to her 12-year-old son asking to go out alone with his friends rather than hang out at home but they will always be close.  Max still relishes anything scientific (especially explosions on “MythBusters”), is getting quite proficient on his flight simulator, dreams of the car he will drive at sixteen, and thrilled Jon (who was present) by scoring a basket during the championship game.

 

We remain most grateful for all of our many blessings and for all of you.

 

Jon, Beverly, Chloe, Nat, Naomi, Max, Brendan, Trevor, Angie, and Elliott

'BOOKIES' ARE DREAMING OF A GREEN CHRISTMAS

Published in Wednesday, December 4, 2013 edition of Ventura County Star

 

Question: “When is a fundraiser not a fundraiser?”

Answer (as provided by a smart aleck who shall remain nameless): “When nobody shows up at your fundraising event.”

But “nobody showing up at your fundraising event” certainly doesn’t describe this Saturday’s Holiday Book and Gift Boutique sponsored by the Port Hueneme Friends of the Library.

Every year, for the past five years, hundreds of bargain hunters (and not just folks from Port Hueneme) crowd the specially marked tables (25 cents, 50 cents, $1, $3-$5 and $10) inside the Ray D. Prueter Library, 510 Park Ave., Port Hueneme, from noon to 3 p.m.

The Port Hueneme Friends, you see, keep dreaming of a green Christmas. Every year, our “Bookies” (volunteers who sort, clean and price used books) set aside Christmas novels, boxed sets, teen and children’s books, holiday crafting magazines and the most recent cookbooks for the sale on the first Saturday in December.

It all started in 2008, when the Port Hueneme Friends decided to do something special for the community right before the holidays.

In her Port Hueneme Pilot column, city librarian Cathy Thomason once talked about the value of presenting books as Christmas gifts. In fact, she shared her own childhood experience with a beautiful anthology of children’s literature.

She said she kept returning to read her favorite Little Red Hen story so many times that the hardback eventually fell to pieces. How many of you can relate?

Given the financial downturn closing out 2008 as well, it was especially important to the Port Hueneme Friends that parents desiring to share a cherished volume with an offspring could find an affordable option at our sale. Most of our stiff-covered children’s books cost less than a dollar. Buying new at a bookstore could well run into double digits.

In addition, our adult customers were delighted with a matchless value-added aspect of biblio-stocking stuffers. They realized, like Thomason, that books, especially if read aloud, rarely fall out of favor or get broken before Christmas or Hanukkah is over.

And while books alone would have flown off the tables, the Port Hueneme Friends believed they could expand the outreach to further ease the financial burden of a largely blue-collar community.

You see, while Port Hueneme may seem like just a sleepy little beach town to Ventura County, demographically, it is unique. Our population of 21,856 seems to be concentrated at the age spectrum’s extreme endpoints.

Port Hueneme residents are either very young children (and their parents) or over-65 retirees. The middle of the range, which is usually packed with individuals in their peak earning years, barely exists in Port Hueneme. Such a singularity, however, comes with a significant economic disadvantage.

According to city data, the estimated per capita income for Port Hueneme residents in 2011 was $22,208, making the “Friendly City by the Sea” one of the most financially challenged municipalities in Ventura County.

So we asked ourselves, “How can we be of help?” The answer we found would prove as beneficial to us as it would to our customers.

During November, we (and all of our friends, and friends of our friends) scour our jewelry boxes, closets, toy chests, video or DVD collections and garages in search of nearly new yet gift-quality treasures — something that might make the perfect inexpensive present.

Those of us staffing the tables during the sale particularly look forward to assisting our fledgling shoppers. These youngsters show up, their quarters and dimes tucked securely into a back pocket or purse, with a long list of people to buy for — many of whom are shopping as well.

We not only assure them that we can be counted on to keep their acquisitions secret, but we also provide bags so that mommy and daddy will be suitably surprised come Dec. 25.

In addition, the naming of the “white elephant in the room” has become an unexpected tradition as well. Each year we find a contribution that we, collectively, are quite positive will never find a buyer — at least not somebody in his or her right mind.

Last year, the designated white elephant was a toilet plunger decorated in appropriate greenery for display on St. Patrick’s Day. Sure enough, one of our adult consumers snapped it up, allowing that it would be ideal for some unsuspecting Irish relative.

So whether you’re focused on the wearin’ or the savin’ of the green this Saturday afternoon, the Port Hueneme Library is the place to be.

And as to a more appropriate answer to the question posed in the initial paragraph, “When is a fundraiser not a fundraiser,” how about this? It certainly can’t be considered a fundraiser when charity begins at home.

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

BROWN AND HIS TOP AIDE EXHAUST THE POSSIBILITIES

Published in the November 20, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

 

“I would say sometimes he is exhausting,” 55-year-old Anne Gust Brown told the New York Times, as she scratched her corgi “Sutter” behind the ears. “Sometimes,” she added, seated in the state capital courtyard, “I have to foist him onto other people and say, you go talk to someone else about that, because he has a sort of insatiable appetite about these things.”

Anybody who has spent more than a photo-op minute in the company of Jerry Brown knows exactly what his diminutive, dark-haired wife of eight years is talking about with “these things.”

I got my chance to learn in the spring of 2002. Mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland had arrived at Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel to deliver a keynote address to the Local Government Commission.

It wasn’t exactly a speech — it was sort of a rhetorical ramble liberally sprinkled with quotes from Adam Smith, Francis Fukuyama and C. Wright Mills. Brown also included a soupon of self-deprecating humor, a formal recognition of the tough job local elected officials do, and such “the emperor is wearing no clothes” truisms as “politics is nothing more than raising money to buy enough votes to win.” I believe he employed the word “sustainable” 24 times.

Just before his stint at the podium, however, he sat next to me furiously scribbling notes he never used. I found it odd that so few recognized him before he arose.

Still, Brown had changed. Since his fruitless run for president against Bill Clinton, his waist had thickened, his shock of chestnut hair had thinned to a friar-like fringe, and he was decked out entirely in black. While the piercing brown eyes were still striking, the once-vibrant countenance appeared doughy and pale.

I was, however, to get more up-close-and-personal face-time in the cafeteria of the Yosemite Lodge. Since Brown, Gust and several of her relatives plopped down at the next table from me, I was able to indulge in an hour of delicious eavesdropping.

You didn’t have to be a body language expert to discern that the former two-time California governor, three-time presidential candidate and then-mayor of the state’s eighth largest city was incredibly uneasy making small talk. He kept picking up his conference materials and clutching them to his chest — an involuntary effort that seemed to grant him a modicum of comfort.

Obviously bored with the humdrum that passed for table talk, he also appeared bewildered that none of his breakfast-mates had heard of Arthur Schopenhauer.

When Gust’s family started to gang up on him, persistently pestering him to go hiking, he threw up all manner of excuse, and, in desperation, launched into an impromptu lecture about the cannibalistic Donner Pass Party.

Yet, to me, it seemed obvious — even at a table sticky with maple syrup and crowded with plastic trays — Gust was more of a dynamo than she seemed to be. While rock legend Linda Ronstadt may have inspired the ’70s-era “Pop Politics of Jerry Brown” once deconstructed by Newsweek, Anne Gust had accomplished the impossible. She had gotten Governor Moonbeam to grow up.

Brown’s political Wendy shook up his hippy-dippy dream world, reminded him that governing at the local level meant dealing with practicalities like potholes and pensions and, most importantly, reshaped him into the hard-edge realist who might, someday, confront California’s unmanageable budget woes. Gust played no small role in Brown’s transmogrification from philosopher to pragmatist.

A decade later, the New York Times’ Jennifer Medina agrees. Gust “is the first person to whom advisers turn if they need to anticipate the long list of questions the governor is likely to pepper them with ... she is one of the few people who can predict his often unpredictable thinking. And she is the one most likely to tell the governor it is time to end the Socratic seminar and make a decision.”

Gust, who wed Brown in 2005 at a ceremony officiated by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, swapped the title “first lady” for “special counsel to the governor.” And instead of pushing women’s issues as her predecessors had, she opted to head up the successful Proposition 30 campaign and keep contributions flowing into Brown’s $10 million war chest.

As the Brown entourage was vacating the cafeteria in 2002, I watched closely as the “waste not, want not” mayor of Oakland paused to pop a leftover piece of bacon and a couple of discarded over-toasted crusts — from one of the kiddies’ plates — into his mouth.

What I hadn’t realized is that his wife is equally parsimonious. When the governor took office, not only did Gust surrender the first lady’s wing but also led the effort to penny-pinch the governor’s staff by 25 percent. Furthermore, she boasted that she regularly cut Brown’s hair herself and they split an entree whenever they dine out.

Now that I find exhausting.

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

CREATING POSITIVE CHANGE THROUGH COMPASSION

 

Published in the Wednesday, November 6, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

Who best attracts your attention?

1. Somebody with less social power than yourself?

2. Somebody with more power?

3. Somebody with the same?

A growing body of research reports that individuals higher up on the status totem pole tend to essentially tune out anybody beneath them.

In a 2008 study, social psychologists studying pairs of strangers relating such difficult life experiences as death or divorce found that the more powerful were not only less compassionate toward their partner’s hardships but also actually played down any suffering being described.

Dacher Keltner (UC Berkeley) and Michael W. Kraus (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) discovered that the underprivileged are so much better at interpersonal relationships than the affluent because they have to be. While the prosperous can pay, the impoverished must depend on the generosity of friends or relatives.

Emotional intelligence (EI) guru Daniel Goleman contends that the aforementioned studies demonstrate profound implications for societal behavior and government policy. As he wrote in “Rich People Just Care Less,” (New York Times) “in politics, readily dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing inconvenient truths about them.”

What with House Republicans cutting food stamps and/or impeding the implementation of Obamacare, it would seem that Goleman might be on to something — yet, as former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich pointed out, there is plenty of culpability to spread around.

“It’s easy to blame Republicans and the right-wing billionaires that bankroll them,” Reich noted, “and their unceasing demonization of ‘big government’ as well as deficits. But Democrats in Washington (must) bear some of the responsibility. In last year’s fiscal cliff debate, neither party pushed to extend the payroll tax holiday or find other ways to help the working middle class and poor.”

Why not? According to Reich’s analysis, the top 10 percent in net worth are presently tickled silly. Not only do they own 80 percent of the market, but also this year stocks rocketed a whopping 24 percent. Did I also mention that 10-percenters are the ones who contribute to political campaigns and fund “independent” ads as well?

But here’s Reich’s kicker that links directly back to Goleman “Congress,” — consisting of 100 percent 10-percenters, according to Reich — “doesn’t know much about the bottom 90 percent.”

So how does money trigger fat cats into turning a blind eye toward the less fortunate? If a causal link exists, Goleman hasn’t found it.

All he can say is that “tuning in to the needs and feelings of another person is a prerequisite to empathy, which in turn can lead to understanding, concern and, if the circumstances are right, compassionate action.”

So it would appear that the actual variable Goleman is after is “empathy.” However, not everybody buys his doctrine that empathy can be learned.

While emotional intelligence training has been warmly embraced by both academia and the business world in an attempt to address such pesky problems as bullying, sexual harassment, hate crimes and “going postal,” eliminating insensitive habits or behaviors is the only change with EI.

For example, a boss might be trained to silence his pager or smartphone when he sits down to speak to an employee. He is, in essence, forcing himself to pay attention to a subordinate. The question remains — is paying attention actually empathy?

Andrew Carnegie was one of many self-made men who comprised America’s newly minted upper crust. In “The Gospel of Wealth” (1889), he argued that it was up to the rich to deal with this new phenomenon called wealth inequality — since they were the ones who really understood money.

Carnegie pointed out that piling up lucre to overindulge oneself or to pass down to one’s progeny “encourages the slothful, the drunkard, the unworthy” and subsequently fails to benefit society. He urged the creation of a philanthropy that inherently generates opportunities for the deprived to better themselves — and to better America.

To that end, Carnegie funded the construction of public libraries across the fruited plain. Not only does evidence of Carnegie’s benevolence still exist in Ventura County, but the former Carnegie Library in Oxnard — constructed in 1907 to resemble a Greek temple with Doric columns — was repurposed as a public art gallery in 1986.

To Carnegie’s bitter disappointment, none of the other Gilded Age millionaires responded to his invitation. Yet, his “Gospel of Wealth” took on new life in 2010 when Warren Buffett and Bill Gates announced their Giving Pledge campaign.

Signatories promise to donate at least half their wealth to address society’s most pressing problems. According to the Huffington Post, as of July, 113 billionaires signed the commitment.

In fact, Americans, well-heeled and not so well off, routinely make the astounding personal decision to give away, in the aggregate, the equivalent of about 2.2 percent of America’s gross domestic product every year.

Somebody must be paying attention.

 

PIONEERS, THE GLASS CEILING AND DECISION-MAKING

Published in the October 23, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

This is the second part of a two-part column. — Editor

The 1960 presidential debates provided the ideal venue to test Paul Rosenthal’s theory that the visually-heavy medium of television was going to turn campaign persuasion upside down. No longer was a candidate’s stand on selected issues the key to the ballot box but rather the voter’s response to the candidate’s flickering image on the boob tube.

In addition, another factor entered the mix — the so-called “illusion of intimacy” that resulted from inviting people on television into the privacy of one’s home. They became almost as intimate to us as our Facebook friends today.

Since, in 1960, media dominance was teetering on a tipping point between radio and television, scholars studied the presidential debates on both media.

They found John F. Kennedy won the hearts and minds of television viewers, while the statesman-sounding Richard Nixon prevailed on radio.

Without such negative visual cues as Nixon’s gaunt, sweaty and shave-stick-white face or his gray-suited figure disappearing into the background — it was, for the folks listening on radio, as if Nixon and Kennedy had auditioned behind a screen.

Yet, millions of political advertising dollars are still spent on television, even though millennials don’t watch TV. Or vote — at least, not until they find themselves with families of their own.

So what can be done about the seemingly impenetrable glass ceiling in the Oval Office?

In a recent Huffington Post column, Marie C. Wilson argues, “Having spent 30 years working to change the culture and conversation — from Take Our Daughters to Work, to Vote, Lead, Run — I know there is only one way to permanently change the discussion: numbers of women in leadership. Or more specifically, a critical mass of women leading in each sector, with the end goal of women leading in parity alongside their male peers.”

To that end, the White House Project not only encourages women to run for office but also trains them to compete successfully.

Hollywood also got into the act in 2005 with the ABC series called “Commander in Chief.” And although the show’s bigwigs denied the claim, a number of conservative commentators and right-wing organizations criticized the series as a thinly-veiled attempt to lay the psychological groundwork for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Polls had been suggesting that the sticking point with American voters, both male and female, is the perception that a female commander in chief is an oxymoron. Fortunately, the citizens of 19 countries in which women are presently large and in charge do not share such an unsupportable view of female leadership. In the U.S., however, a majority of voters still contend that a female president doesn’t possess, to employ Al Campanis’ language, “the necessities” to strategize in the War Room.

Since we can’t exactly audition our presidential candidates behind a screen, how can we prevent gender bias from being thin-sliced into the ballot box? How can we shift perception to include both men and women when we talk about the candidate who “looks presidential?” Maybe what is needed is unisex attire that has evolved far beyond the pantsuit.

Hillary may well be the only really experienced presidential candidate out there. Surely as first lady and secretary of state, she has logged the requisite 10,000 hours that, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” is the secret to mastery of any field.

In addition, in his latest best-seller “David and Goliath,” Gladwell contends that “being seen as an underdog opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.” Perhaps the press corps who bashed her in 2008 didn’t realize they were gifting Hillary with an advantage.

Yet, only last month, during the Grano Speaker Series in Toronto, Gladwell threw out a McLuhan-esque “probe” to the effect that we will not see another African-American president in our lifetime — or, for that matter, another female president, if Hillary wins.

The reason, he offered, is tokenism. “Pioneers,” Gladwell said, and supported his point by ticking off 30 female heads of state who were not succeeded by other women, “don’t necessarily blaze trails.”

“The door is let open,” Gladwell told the audience, “but then the door gets shut behind them. Those people who get through,” he added, “become fetishized for where they came from. They are too visible.”

Maybe tokenism barred the door for the African-Americans who followed Jackie Robinson.

The hot-water-free response by Al Campanis to Ted Koppel’s query about the dearth of black managers should have been “I really don’t know, but isn’t it a huge loss for baseball?”

A year later, with the perfect vision that hindsight provides, Al Campanis was able to employ more clarity in his thinking. “Time has diffused the immediate hurt of April 6, (1987)” he told the Los Angeles Times. “It has turned to a plus for baseball and myself.”

THE POWER OF 'THIN-SLICING' ON DECISION MAKING

Published on Wednesday Oct. 9, 2013 in the Ventura County Star

The year is 1987 and Al Campanis is appearing on “Nightline” with Ted Koppel. Coincidentally, America’s favorite pastime is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s Major League Baseball debut.

Campanis knows that Ted doesn’t toss out softballs and his next question will be no exception. Since Campanis is the general manager of the Dodgers and a close friend of Robinson, Koppel questions why there are so few black managers in MLB or why none have been hired at Campanis’ level.

Granted, Campanis was not himself that April evening. In fact, he was, in his words, “wiped out,” but opted to shake off the fatigue because that’s what professionals do.

Fumbling around for suitable language to answer Koppel’s follow-up “to peel it away, a little bit — is there still prejudice in baseball today?” the best Campanis could come up with was admitting that “blacks may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.”

In his best-seller “Blink,” (which is shorthand for “rapid cognition”) Malcolm Gladwell describes the experience of a female trombone player named Abbie Conan. She was the hands-down choice of the Munich Philharmonic selection committee.

The auditions, you see, were held behind a screen so the old-school musicians were certainly surprised when Frau Conan emerged, instead of the Herr Conan they had been expecting.

Since her orchestra colleagues wouldn’t overcome their ingrained bias against women, she was demoted without explanation to second trombone.

Conan had no choice but to go to court. In their legal brief, attorneys for the orchestra argued, “The plaintiff does not possess the necessary physical strength to be a leader of the trombone section.” After eight years of testing by experts, she was finally reinstated to first trombone, but she spent the next five years battling all over again — for equal pay.

In “Blink,” Gladwell also examines “The Warren Harding Error” or why we, as voters, keep falling for tall, dark and handsome men.

Most historians concur that Harding was one of the worst presidents in American history, yet his was that name that attained consensus in 1920 as Republican Party bosses gathered in the smoke-filled backrooms of Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel.

Even though Harding chiefly occupied his life with poker, alcohol and women (not necessarily in that order), he continued to rise from one political office to another, but without ever actually distinguishing himself.

His oratory, in fact, had been depicted as “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.”

So how did this intellectual pygmy ever attain the presidency? Because to voters, Harding “looked presidential” — decades before TV became a major player in politics.

Deciding that a candidate “looks presidential,” according to “Blink,” is a perfect example of what Gladwell calls “thin-slicing” or “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.”

While thin-slicing occurs both instantaneously and outside of our conscious awareness, it’s best understood as the distillation of years of experience into some sort of split-second reaction that usually proves eerily accurate.

Gladwell provides a case in point with John Gottman, a psychologist from the University of Washington who studied more than 3,000 married couples in his “love lab.” Gottman’s hypothesis involved predicting whether or not a couple would still be together after 15 years.

Gottman would observe a videotape of husband and wife as they discussed a controversial topic — factoring in dozens of nonverbal cues. His predictions proved 90 percent accurate after 15 minutes; 95 percent after one hour.

According to Gladwell, “when our unconscious engages in thin-slicing, what we are doing is an automated, accelerated unconscious version of what Gottman does with his videotapes and equations.”

Yet, not all nonverbal factors proved equal with Gottman. If a husband or wife demonstrated (even briefly) defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism or contempt, Gottman would predict that the marriage was doomed.

So what might have happened had Gottman been asked to view the “Nightline” interview? Would he have zeroed-in on the not-so-hidden contempt leading to Campanis’ ham-handed choice of words?

The press certainly did — they started grilling Campanis about his seemingly black-or-white decision to replace Walter Alston with Tommy Lasorda rather than Jim Gilliam the very next day. The story would grow legs and would end with Campanis relegated to the unemployment line.

Yet, Campanis was a veritable genus at thin-slicing. In fact, his role as general manager demanded it.

The sad thing is that he will always be remembered for his ill-considered words on “Nightline” instead of his 19 years overseeing the Dodgers.

Or as his friend Robinson once observed, “How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.”

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

FACING THE PAINFUL TRUTH ABOUT KNEE SURGERY

Published Wednesday September 25, 2013 in the Ventura County Star

You are not your mommy, said my friend. She was right. I had allowed fear, despite FDR’s Depression-era warning, to trump reason.

My mother died almost two decades ago after knee replacement surgery. She contracted two different infections by antibiotic resistant bacteria, and then she was gone.

Now, with osteoarthritis causing the deterioration of both knees into a bone-rubbing-against-bone reality, and my physician running out of pain-reducing medication options, I could face the same fate.

When my bone doctor first suggested a couple of knee-replacement operations, the pain was manageable. I told him I had no intention of ever considering going under the knife. The orthopedist just grinned and said, “You’ll be back.”

The odds were in his favor. Not only has the number of total knee replacement surgeries soared 161.5 percent over the past 20 years, but the yearly demand is also predicted to reach 3.48 million procedures by 2030.

According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, 90 percent of patients undergoing knee replacement experience a dramatic reduction in pain and a significant improvement in the ability to perform daily activities. The 30-day mortality rate, in fact, is .04 percent with less than two percent of patients suffering complications.

As to antibiotic resistant infections, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials reported only last week that while hospital-borne germs infect around two million Americans every year, only 23,000 die.

The recent number is considerably lower than previous CDC ballpark figures — the estimate was 100,000 in 2007 — because researchers deliberately stripped out cases in which a drug-resistant infection was present but not necessarily the cause of death.

One particularly lethal type of drug-resistant bacteria, known as CRE, is impervious to nearly all antibiotics on the market. While still relatively rare — causing just 600 deaths a year — it’s still been identified in health care facilities in 44 states.

“We are getting closer and closer to the cliff,” the CDC’s Dr. Michael Bell told The New York Times.

Now it wouldn’t take much for somebody as apprehensive as I am to obsess about CRE — becoming convinced, based on comments like Bell’s, that the bacterium will do me in.

Do you remember Barry Glassner? Although it’s been a dozen years since the sociologist who is now president of Lewis and Clark College penned “The Culture of Fear,” he still spouts the message that most major anxieties of the American public are wildly misplaced.

Glassner, who regularly slams the mainstream media for fear-mongering to boost ratings, reports that three out of four Americans admit to being more afraid now than 20 years ago — even though the crime rate is at an all-time low, people are living longer and capitalism is under no viable threat.

“If we ask why so many of us are losing sleep over dangers that are very small or unlikely,” Glassner told the Oregonian, “it’s almost always because someone or some group is profiting or trying to profit by either selling us a product, scaring us into voting for them or against their opponent or enticing us to watch their TV program.”

He advises that whenever we find ourselves exposed to “fear-filled” news, we should investigate the claims.

Is an isolated incident (like my mother’s experience) being treated as a trend? Just asking the question, Glassner suggests, can be reassuring in itself.

Second, Glassner recommends that we think about the person conveying the scary message (even if it is ourselves) and determine how the communicator might benefit. In my case, it allowed me to avoid a thorny decision.

So I hit the books. I learned, of all the superbugs, the most pervasive is MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) but according to a JAMA internal Medicine journal article published only last week, MRSA infections in hospitals have dropped by more than half from 2005 to 2011 due to vigorous hygiene measures.

But that’s not the most remarkable finding. According to the same study, while hospitals may have cleaned up their act, the probability of picking up MRSA at such outside health care setting as clinics or rehab centers is still high. That (and the money) are why Medicare prefers you recuperate at home.

While “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” is sage advice, I was more persuaded by “The Daily Shower Can Be a Killer,” a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Jared Diamond.

The 70-year-old author of “Guns, Germs and Steel” confided that “the biggest single lesson that I’ve learned from 50 years of field work on the island of New Guinea was the importance of being attentive to hazards that carry a low risk each time but are encountered frequently” — like slipping during one’s daily stint in the shower stall.

My sturdy new knees should diminish that risk considerably.

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

GOING BANANAS OVER PORT'S COMMUNITY FESTIVAL

Published in the September 11, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

When Stan Freberg introduced satire into the field of advertising, he revolutionized the entire industry.

Yet, to hear him talk about the pitted prune commercial he created for Sunsweet in 1967 — it was all about solving a marketing difficulty.

According to the Madison Avenue guru, his clients’ ardor for their own product had so removed them from the realm of reality, their big plan for stepping up sales was printing instructions for stuffing prunes with whole almonds on the side of the box.

“Gentlemen,” interrupted Freberg, in an attempt to disabuse the executives of the obvious fallacy in their logic, “America is a long way from prune hors d’oeuvres.”

The problem, as Freberg saw it, was not what housewives could do with the boxes of prunes already sitting on their pantry shelves. There were no prunes sitting on their pantry shelves. Why not? Nobody, it seems, but the desperately constipated purchased prunes on a regular basis.

Freberg’s resulting 30-second seduction, which featured British actor Ronald Long as a finicky prune critic, not only increased awareness of the Sunsweet brand but also earned Freberg one of his 21 Clio awards.

The powers that be at the Port of Hueneme are likewise wagering that their Second Annual Banana Festival on Sept. 28 will also raise awareness of their brand. Unfortunately, the existence of a deep-water harbor in Ventura County’s own backyard is one of the best-kept secrets around.

The idea for a festival celebrating the musa sapientum (banana) was the brainchild of former Port Commissioner Jesse Ramirez — a notion he had been kicking around for two decades before being brought to fruition on Sept. 29, 2012.

While the Port of Hueneme could have chosen to celebrate liquid fertilizer, heavy agricultural equipment or the plethora of automobiles (Mazda, BMW, Mini Cooper, Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Land Rover, Jaguar, Volvo, Saab, Hyundai and Kia) welcomed at Hueneme, “bananas,” Port Executive Director Kristin Decas told The Star, “we felt were sort of something that people could relate to.”

I should hope so. The average American consumes 27 pounds of bananas each year.

Initially, back in 1979, it was only Del Monte Fresh that opted to locate its West Coast distribution hub at the Port of Hueneme. Yet, once Pacific Fruit and Chiquita Fresh also arrived on the scene, more than 600,000 metric tons of bananas started coming here from Ecuador, Costa Rica and Guatemala. Not only do bananas constitute nearly a third of the port’s business but Hueneme has also become one of the busiest banana gateways in the entire nation.

“You are standing or sitting in one of California’s primary economic resources,” Port Commissioner Jess Herrera informed festivalgoers last year. “All this property you’re standing on has been acquired through time, through money, through effort and through no cost to this community or Ventura County. We’re very proud of that.”

Indeed, the Port of Hueneme, which handles cargo valued at $7 billion a year, is not only the second largest employer in the area but also claims to impact the regional economy to the tune of more than $700 million a year.

Visitors to the 2013 Banana Festival can expect to divide their time among sampling banana-based foods and beverages, tapping their feet to the music of local bands, being transported on organized tours of the port or shopping at the Vendor Marketplace.

This year, the Saturday event also features a Kids’ Zone where offspring can expend energy while exploring a climbing wall, getting creative with banana crafts, enjoying tons of inflatable fun in a bounce house, meeting animals courtesy of the Reptile Family and participating in an interactive experience from Gull Wings Children’s Museum.

The Friends of the Port Hueneme Library, inspired by last year’s festival, researched and tested 139 recipes for their “Going Bananas! Cookbook.” While they haven’t forgotten your favorite banana beverages, desserts or breakfast fare, these “don’t like to fuss much” cooks also included easy main dishes from Central and South America as well. Donations for the book are tax-deductible and support children’s programs at the Prueter Library.

Finally, not only is admission free at the event but Chuck Caulkins, port manager for Del Monte, reported that last year his company gave away more than 5,000 bananas, 1,000 leis and innumerable chunks of pineapple.

Freberg’s tag line for his pitted prune commercial was “Today the pits ... tomorrow the wrinkles. Sunsweet marches on.”

What you probably don’t realize about the humble banana is that in addition to being a rich source of vitamin B-6 and potassium, you can use the inside of the peel to erase those pesky facial wrinkles that accumulate as time marches on. What? You say that last factoid isn’t actually true? Now, that’s the pits!

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

CHAPTER AND VERSE BEHIND E-BOOK SELF-PUBLISHING

Published in the August 28, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

So you want to become an author? I hate to break it to you, but what you really want is to become a publisher. Relax, it’s not as impossible as you think.

While my last book, “Reelpolitik Ideologies in American Political Film,” achieved “respectable sales” (the average U.S. nonfiction book now sells fewer than 250 copies per year), I was little comforted when a royalty check for 66 cents arrived in the mail.

I then started researching self-publishing, which has tripled, according to Bowker since 2006.

Readers are being seduced by the lower cost. A traditionally published fiction trade paperback averages $16.92 and a fiction hardback at $28.73. Contrast that with an indie fiction paperback averaging $6.94 or an indie e-book at $3.18.

Moreover, self-publishing is no longer burdened with the negative vibes of the vanity press. Today, such established authors as Pulitzer-prize winner David Mamet or romance novelist Eloisa James have decided to publish themselves.

First, veteran writers are simply fed up with the lopsided division of royalties. While independent author/publishers get no advance, they now typically end up with 70 percent of sales. A standard contract with a traditional house not only stipulates that advances must be paid back, but also that royalties can only amount to 25 percent of digital sales or 7 percent to 12 percent of the bound book list price.

Second, there’s virtually no marketing for any but top-tier authors. Publishers stayed solvent in this deteriorating marketplace only by shifting more and more responsibility to authors. In fact, most book proposals now require an extensive section detailing the author’s platform, reader community and social media profile.

Third, traditional publishers insist that an author surrender too much creative control. A mystery house that shall remain nameless would have published “Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo” had I deleted sections that reviewers now identify as the book’s most compelling scenes.

Luckily for folks like me, the Big Six New York publishers created a vacuum when they decided to price their e-books too high. Jeff Bezos, never one to muff a financial opportunity, stepped up with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and Createspace (his print-on-demand operation).

Bezos’ dirty little secret? He demands that the author/publisher do all the work. But he also returns almost all of the profits.

So merely penning a 90,000-word manuscript is only the beginning, dear author. While Microsoft Word’s bells and whistles makes life easier for the amateur scribe, all those nifty shortcuts to style or structure must be manually removed before your magnum opus can morph into an e-book.

And while in a perfect world all e-readers would employ the same format, sadly this is not the case today. If you want to make your book available for the Nook, Kindle and Apple e-reader, your manuscript must be converted three ways — and flawlessly. Are you ready to tear your hair out yet?

Yet, no indie author/publisher stands alone in this brave new world. While I was laboring on “The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo,” I ran across a blog that doggedly argued for taking one’s Word manuscript down to bare bones before coding the paragraphing, italics, bold, diacritical marks, chapter headings, title page and photograph insertion into proper HTML.

While HTML was not the only four-letter word emanating from my mouth during the challenging procedure, Guido Henkel () was right. After my editing program ground out the final product — it was mistake-free. No gibberish appeared in the text, no gigantic print suddenly sprouted up, and all of the hyperlinks between chapters and the table of contents operated seamlessly.

Next, when my cover artist dropped out, I stumbled on step-by-step instructions for creating a single-image cover in an online post by Joleene Naylor.

My murder mystery takes place — don’t tell anybody — in a sleepy little beach town that coincidentally resembles Port Hueneme. All I had to do was dip into my iPhoto archives for a sunset shot of our pier, manipulate the color balance, superimpose the title and voilà, a sufficiently creepy cover at zero cost (not counting the Oreos I devoured to ease my ensuing frustration).

But no book can be a total DIY project. My best advice? At least hire a professional proofreader. Reviewers, you see, will call you on any typos or misspellings. Don’t let subsequent sales suffer for a few measly dollars.

If you decide to invest in a print version of your book, which the majority of author/publishers still forgo for reasons either philosophical (to harm no trees in the print process) or economic (print-on-demand setup costs can range from $300-$800), Createspace, the most popular player (57,602 titles), provides a viable option.

And just to let you know, my royalties from “The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo” have already exceeded 66 cents.

Beverly Kelley, PhD, who writes every other week for The Star, is professor emerita in the Communication Department of California Lutheran University in Thouand Oaks. Email kelley@clunet.edu

 

WILL DOGS SIT UP AND WATCH A CANINE CHANNEL?

Published in the August 14, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

I wonder if James Herriot would have prescribed DogTV?

Dogtv.com claims its service ($4.99 a month) provides pooches, especially those with separation anxiety, with “relaxing, stimulating and behavior-improving content.”

“We have created programs,” claims Ron Levi, founder and chief content officer, “where every frame, second and sound have been tailored to fit the way dogs see and hear the world.”

James Herriot was the nom de plume of real-life Yorkshire veterinarian James Alfred Wight, whose little anecdotes about the animals he treated became a beloved BBC television series called “All Creatures Great and Small.”

Herriot practiced at a time of significant change. The economy was transitioning from an agricultural to an industrial age — greatly hastened by a worldwide depression.

Science was making inroads into farming productivity as well as in veterinary medicine. And folks were on the move — rapidly relocating from family farms to urban centers — and as they secured employment there, they not only found life more convenient with electricity and horseless carriages, but also more satisfying with added discretionary income and leisure time.

Veterinarians such as Herriot, instead of urging their jalopies across muddy roads to assist ewes, mares and sows into bringing new life into the world, found themselves confined to surgeries, inoculating puppies or dispensing pills, prolonging the lives of elderly cats.

Even the way people fed their animals was altered. In 1860, Jack Spratt (no relation to the fat-adverse nursery rhyme fellow) came up with a bone-shaped biscuit of wheat, vegetables, beetroot and beef blood that flew off grocery shelves — first in England; then in America. Inexpensive horse meat (readily available after World War I) paved the way for canned dog food.

Right from the beginning, however, pet food manufacturers, who currently turn out 12 million pounds of food an hour, managed to convince consumers that feeding table scraps was tantamount to animal abuse. They should leave, these businessmen maintained, a pet’s nutrition to the experts.

The persistent persuasive power of their message can be demonstrated not only by the grocery store shelf space devoted to canned and kibbled dog food — more than breakfast cereals or baby food — but also by the average pet food bill still hovering around $183 a month, despite a recent recession when so few diners ate out that major restaurant chains were shuttered.

Think about this. During the past two decades, the dollars devoted to pets has more than tripled. We will spend $55.53 billion this year — with a staggering 25 percent going to pay the vet bill. Yet, today’s vets aren’t getting rich — not any more than Herriot did. High-tech equals high costs.

Everybody in Herriot’s Yorkshire community used to laugh at Mrs. Pumphrey, who seemed to have more money than brains. In fact, she treated her Pekingese like an oriental potentate. A favorite episode features her Tricki-Woo close to death, obese from such rich and exotic cuisine as lobster and pheasant.

Herriot immediately realizes the dog needs to go on a medically supervised fast, so he brings Pumphrey’s pampered pooch home for a couple of weeks. And after romping daily with the pack at Skeldale House, Tricki-Woo returns, svelte and energetic.

While Mrs. Pumphrey views the transformation as a miracle of modern science, Herriot eventually straightens her out in much the same way Cesar Millan does the masters and mistresses of out-of-control curs appearing on his “Dog Whisperer” television show.

Millan, who claims he doesn’t train dogs as much as owners, sums up what’s wrong with American mutts: “Many dogs grow up without rules or boundaries. They need exercise, discipline and affection — in that order.”

Too many puppy parents, like Pumphrey, are all about “loving,” but refuse to admit that “love” includes long walks, healthy diets and just saying “no” to annoying antics as well.

According to Millan, “A dog’s mother begins training puppies from birth. She makes them wait for food; she controls when they play and how far they travel. Adult dogs need these same rules, boundaries and limitations from you, their pack leader.”

Television isn’t going to teach your dog not to gnaw on the coffee table. Television isn’t going to stop him from eating out of the garbage can. Television isn’t going to silence his howling.

When Gilad Neumann, the CEO of DogTV, was asked if he owned a dog, he said, without hedging, “no” — his job has him traveling 50 percent of the time. Apparently, DogTV has its limits.

Lastly, do dogs really watch TV? While YouTube might boast more than 5,000 videos of dogs glued to the boob tube — the accompanying photo shows my Yorkie cheering on contestants from Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl” — and a AKC/Iams survey reports that more than half showed “some interest” in the big screen.

Here’s another question I’d put to Herriot: “Do we really need but another family member competing for the remote control?”

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

NAME RECOGNITION STILL DRIVES PUBLISHING WORLD

Published in the July 31, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

Joe Klein had 6 million reasons (green in color) to release “Primary Colors” as Anonymous.

You may remember the brouhaha back in 1996, when his roman à clef (based on President Clinton’s 1992 presidential primary campaign) spent nine weeks at No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list. Not only did determining the author’s actual identity serve as an appetizer at inside-the-beltway dinner parties but, like St. Peter, Klein issued public denials (at least) three times.

On July 17, 1996, however, the jig was up. Klein was outed by Maureen Casey Owens, the expert in literary forensics who helped the FBI identify the Unabomber. The Washington Post hired her to compare handwritten corrections to an early manuscript of “Primary Colors” with samples of Klein’s handwriting.

In response, Klein called an immediate news conference and appeared before his peers sophomorically removing a pair of Groucho Marx glasses. His colleagues, though, remained unimpressed with his tepid mea culpa and questionable ethics.

Fast forward 17 years. According to Sarah Lyall of The New York Times, readers described “The Cuckoo’s Calling” as “complex, compelling and scintillating.” They also compared the author thought to be a former military police investigator named Robert Galbraith, to P.D. James, Ruth Rendell and Kate Atkinson. One even called the writing “almost too assured and sophisticated to be a first novel.”

As it turned out, not only wasn’t “The Cuckoo’s Calling” a first novel, but Robert Galbraith was a pseudonym adopted by J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter novels made her just another billionaire.

Rowling, who denies her pen name was a “marketing ploy by me, my publisher or agent,” was unmasked on July 14 by Richard Brooks, the arts editor at The Sunday Times of London.

Acting on an anonymous Twitter tip, Brooks discovered that not only did both “The Casual Vacancy” (Rowling’s 2012 novel for adults) and “The Cuckoo’s Calling” share the same agent, publisher and editor in Britain but, according to computer linguistic experts he employed, significant literary similarities.

Yet, why would someone whose writing life has been as transparent and whose work has been as enthusiastically anticipated as Rowling’s — not want to take advantage of her advantages?

“I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer,” she explained in a press statement, “because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”

Rowling isn’t the first best-selling author to write under a nom de plume. Stephen King scribbled a couple of thrillers as Richard Bachman. Earl Stanley Gardner penned detective fiction as A.S. Fair. And, Nora Roberts dabbled in science fiction as J.D. Robb.

While Doris Lessing’s 1962 “The Golden Notebook” would sell 900,000 hardback copies and Lessing would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, the novels by her alter ego, Jane Sommers, were DOA. Yet, Lessing’s intention with Sommers was to make a point. “I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that ‘nothing succeeds like success.’”

Today, with America’s up-and-coming generation proud to be bibliophobes — more than half will not read another book after college — publishers are even more reluctant to take a risk on untried writers.

Aping the mistakes of the music industry, the so-called “Big Six” New York publishers are resolutely engaged in deck-chair arranging instead of figuring out how to make money with e-books, which now constitute one-third of the market. Did I mention they cost virtually nothing to publish? Still, these guys keep the printing presses humming.

But just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does the economy. E-book distributors such as Kindle Direct Publishing or Smashwords, among others, have crafted a whole new future for self-published digital writers.

These e-book distributors invite anybody with a manuscript in an acceptable format to upload it for free — allowing the market to sort out the winners. Much depends, however, on how much of the marketing a writer is willing to do.

And marketing doesn’t have to mean a half page ad in The New York Times. E-book scribes have already earned big bucks from works priced well under $9.99 — a figure intended to undercut the Big Six. Some attribute their success to maintaining a Facebook page or posting daily on an author’s blog or to giving their books away (for a limited time) on sites like Pixel of Ink or Bookbub.

Keep in mind that publishers never advertise second-tier published authors. Their efforts must also be DIY.

While Klein figured out a way to engage the mainstream media into spreading the word about “Primary Colors,” I don’t believe Rowling is nearly as avaricious or ethically challenged. At least I hope not.

Harry would be so-o-o disappointed.

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

NOT EVERY MOTHER DREAMS OF A CORNER OFFICE

Published in the Wednesday, July 15, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

“I must have been mad. I could have been an air hostess. I could have been a model. I could have moved to Paris. Or been a concert pianist. I could have seen the world.” So goes the introduction to the first episode of “Call the Midwife,” a 2012 BBC series based on memoirs by real-life nurse Jenny Lee Worth during the postwar, pre-pill ’50s.

Surrounded by bombed-out buildings and squalor, she and the nuns from Nonnatus House assist 200 women a month to give birth to baby after baby in London’s East End — often with no running water, electricity or alleviation of pain. With the pill, however, their number will trickle to fewer than 60 per year.

The most important social change, courtesy of birth control, was the opportunity for women to work outside the home. They got their first honeyed taste of money and freedom during World War II, when they replaced soldiers serving their country.

While they were forced to relinquish their positions once the survivors returned, by the late 1950s, two out of every five married women with school-age children would secure employment.

During the late ’70s, when I became a working mother, we were told that we could have it all. In fact, lyrics from a 1977 television commercial for Enjoli perfume seduced my generation with “I can bring home the bacon/Fry it up in a pan/And never, ever let you forget you’re a man.”

It was a big fat lie.

Now Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook chief operating officer and former Google executive, recently published what Oprah Winfrey calls “the new manifesto for women in the workplace.”

In her best-selling “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” Sandberg bemoans the scarcity of females heading up major corporations and admonishes the gentler sex to be much more forceful with respect to career goals.

“It is time for us to face the fact that our revolution has stalled,” she scolds. “A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and men ran half our homes.”

Sandberg also suggests that employed mothers commit — completely — to competing for a top spot, acquire a supportive partner to assist with child care, and constantly lobby for titles, raises and promotions.

Yet, is Sandberg — whose net worth runs nine figures and who is ranked by Forbes as the 10th most powerful woman in the world — really the right person to dole out career advice? Especially to mothers struggling to fulfill the daily demands of employers and family members?

According to USA Today’s Joanne Bamberger, not only is Sandberg’s book “the latest salvo in the war on moms” but Sandberg’s reproaches (like claiming that equality in the workplace just requires women to pull themselves up by their Louboutin straps) are as unsupportive of women as Marissa Mayer’s recent ban on telecommuting at Yahoo! has been.

“The message coming from these C-suite moms (Sandberg and Mayer) is less about empowerment,” Bamberger observed, “than it is about guilt.”

For today’s working mothers, especially the more than 10 million single mothers with children under age 18, reality is more about trying to “hang on” than “lean in.” In fact, they are far more concerned with making their careers accommodate their personal lives, than vice versa.

Further, since unlike Sandberg and Mayer, they don’t have access to nannies, in-office nurseries, personal assistants or limo drivers, they’ve had to become extremely resourceful in balancing job demands with what’s important to them as parents.

Perhaps it was seeing mom and dad consumed by their careers or suffering an after-school schedule that cobbled together a series of dubious child care providers or premature latchkey setups, but today’s young parents want something radically different for their kids.

According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, among all mothers with children under 18, only 25 percent would actually choose to work full-time.

Furthermore, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more mothers are deciding to remain at home or only work part-time — at least until their children enter elementary school. This trend, in my opinion, should bring hope to us all.

This generation of working mothers is significantly different from the way we were. One in three are employed by companies that encourage telecommuting, their husbands participate much more with child care and household chores and, as a whole, they make “me time” a healthy priority in their lives.

In an ideal world, employers would count motherhood years as bona fide work experience. Doesn’t every mom serve an unpaid internship in which every managerial skill (motivation, delegation, coaching, communication, performance management and leadership) is forged in the crucible of real life?

Jenny Lee Worth, who considered the East End mothers her true heroines, would quite agree.

 

PORT HUENEME HUNTS FOR SAND, EROSION SOLUTION

Published on July 3, 2013 in the Ventura County Star

The 5th Annual Sand Sculpture Contest in Port Hueneme has been canceled this year — but not for a lack of participants. Hueneme Beach, you see, is rapidly running out of sand.

In reality, Hueneme Beach Park itself could be considered a 20-acre sand sculpture — fluctuating in size and shape from year to year.

When the Navy built the jetties at the Port of Hueneme in 1940, they interrupted the littoral flow of sand to Hueneme Beach while also creating a corrosive eddy current that scours away 1.25 million cubic yards of seashore every year.

Two federal laws mandate that the Army Corps of Engineers replenish the lost sand.

The River and Harbor Act of 1954 authorized the creation of the Channel Islands Harbor sand trap, whose contents were to be used to nourish down-coast beaches.

The Water Resources Development Act of 1996 sanctioned a 100 percent federal cost share split between the Department of the Navy and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Since 1960, however, the powers that be have been behaving like a deadbeat dad on the run. The volume of sand transported by the Army Corps has steadily declined from an average of 1.5 million cubic yards during the first decade to a current 600,000.

Since Army Corps activities are subject to the congressional appropriations process, during this recession “It’s the economy, stupid” has become its tired mantra.

Granted, sand replenishment is expensive. It costs more than $5.35 million to move just 600,000 cubic yards.

Yet, Army Corps representatives don’t seem at all concerned that their dwindling sand deliveries — coming up various degrees of short during past decades — have now created an emergency situation for the second time.

When Hueneme Beach eroded to Surfside Drive after a significant deficit in 1994, emergency funding came through. Now, however, city of Port Hueneme has been told that it’s on its own.

Since January, ferocious winds, abnormally high tides and killer waves have washed away nearly 1 million cubic yards of the sand transported last year. And destructive winter storms have yet to descend upon the Friendly City by the Sea.

The Army Corps, however, only plans to move 600,000 cubic yards of sand during the next three cycles. This amount totals less than 25 percent of the replacement rate identified in the 1996 Water Resources and Development Act. Try paying one-fourth of what you owe your creditors, and see how that goes.

It only works, apparently, if you are the federal government.

So let’s talk about money. One of the complications with this share-split business is that the smaller the appropriation by the Army Corps, the smaller the amount coughed up by the Navy, since they pay a fixed percentage of each allotment. Port Hueneme has been asked to play limbo — how low can you go?

In the meantime, nobody is leaning on the Navy (who caused the problem in the first place) to insist it pays a fair share.

Furthermore, when you look at who actually benefits from the jetties (which were ostensibly constructed to keep the harbor entrance calm as well as silt-free), who isn’t paying at all?

The first entity that comes to mind is the Port of Hueneme. In addition, it will definitely have something to lose if Hueneme Beach Park disappears.

The port recently rebuilt a riprap revetment along the Lighthouse Promenade. Once the sand is history, its sea wall will be subjected to a life-shortening pounding.

Perhaps a cost-benefit analysis might convince the port to pony up.

The second, Channel Islands Harbor, actually benefits from having its sand trap relieved every two years.

Yet, with less sand being transported because of cost, its sand trap will eventually overflow and create a navigational hazard.

Perhaps throwing some money in the pot will also pay off for Channel Islands Harbor in the long run.

So what can be done long term? I’d like to see one of those brilliant military engineers redesign the jetties so as to minimize scouring of beaches to the south.

That’s the best solution, and like the parent paying child support, when his kid turns 18, all parties would be released from fiscal responsibility.

And think about how happy it would make Mother Nature.

The city of Port Hueneme plans to armor what is left of Hueneme Beach with strategically placed boulders — yet, rocks don’t roll for free. Their cost will lighten the already stretched-to-the-max Port Hueneme coffers by a cool million.

Elected officials are also attempting to coax another million from California Boating and Waterways.

Thursday, Port Hueneme, which will be enjoying a balmy 69 degrees, will welcome hundreds of day-trippers celebrating the Fourth.

In addition to roasting weenies or braving the water, we hope you will be sculpting sand castles as well.

We only ask one thing — please bring your own sand.

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

THE WRIGHT WAY OF CONSTRUCTING A REPUTATION

Published June 19, 2013 in the Ventura County Star

“The Big Year” should have been a bigger movie. Not only was the cast (Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson) stellar but a $41 million budget is nothing to sneeze at.

Still it went bust. That’s because the subject is no laughing matter — not among bird watchers who compete to identify the most bird species during a calendar year.

Would you be surprised to learn that there’s a similar competition among fans of Frank Lloyd Wright? According to the FLW Field Guide, buildings designed by the charismatic architect still survive in 35 states and number over 300.

We set out on a pilgrimage to Oak Park, Ill., (and surrounding environs) with son Brendan, who counts himself a committed FLW aficionado. He’s added more than 84 FLW structures to his life list — 54 during this week alone.

So why Wright?

1. Wright always described himself as a genius. His genius, however, was in making folks believe in him.

Nobody was ever better at self-promotion. Even as early at 1901, when Edward Bok (Ladies’ Home Journal) invited architects to suggest modern house design improvements, Wright alone responded, submitting two articles that paid off handsomely in future commissions.

Wright insisted that rules never applied to him — not only with respect to architecture but morality as well. He abandoned his wife and six children for the spouse of a client.

When jobs dried up as a result of the subsequent scandal, Wright and his mistress just headed for Europe to publish his portfolio. His designs won him international acclaim, and, once again, a queue of paying customers.

When the Depression found him back in America and again facing bankruptcy, he responded by publishing an autobiography that clearly belonged in the fiction section. The book, however, convinced well-heeled Americans that they couldn’t pay enough to own a FLW home.

To boost his bottom line, Wright also included, whether ordered or not, FLW-designed furniture, geometrically-patterned leaded glass, minimalist landscaping and, even in one case, the ideal hostess ensemble — in his final bill.

2. When your own mother gives you the ultimate gift — a boundless faith that you will succeed — it can’t hurt. When Anna Wright was expecting, she was convinced her baby would grow up “to build beautiful buildings.”

Not only did she decorate his nursery with engravings of English cathedrals clipped from magazines, but she also purchased a set of educational blocks called Froebel Gifts as his elementary curriculum. Wright credited the smooth maple cubes, spheres and cylinders for teaching him the geometry of architecture.

3. Timing is everything, and with the devastating Great Fire in 1871, Chicago was virtually a tabula rasa that could provide full employment for ambitious architects.

After interviews with prominent firms, Wright was hired as a draftsman for Joseph Lyman Silsbee but it was the progressive vision of Louis Sullivan that riveted Wright. Furthermore, Wright and Sullivan were united in their disgust with Chicago’s neoclassic White City built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

Wright worked for Sullivan until 1893, when he betrayed his mentor’s trust. Not only did he accept independent commissions for nine houses in Oak Park, but he won them by taking credit for Sullivan’s work.

After Sullivan gave him the boot, Wright shared a Steinway Hall loft space — and here’s the Ventura County connection — with several like-minded architects. Along with Wright, Robert C. Spencer, Jr., and Dwight H. Perkins was Myron Hunt, the architect for Sen. Thomas Bard’s Berylwood Mansion. They would later be recognized for founding the famous Prairie School.

4. Everybody can recognize Wright’s unique architectural signature. The entrances to his houses are usually concealed for privacy, cantilevered rooflines may soar above, and the structures are laid out horizontally since lots in the Midwest allowed for plenty of elbowroom.

Inside, his houses subject folks to low ceilings (FLW only stood 5 feet, 7 inches — coincidence?), are painted the muted colors of the harvest, and instead of boxy rooms, Wright’s open plan focuses on a fireplace as it invites guests to converse with the hostess/cook once households operated without servants.

5. Finally, Wright, like so many artists of his day (Norman Rockwell, Robert Frost, Aaron Copland) yearned to celebrate American.

With the Prairie School, Wright would realize Sullivan’s dream of defining a uniquely American style of architecture.

Additionally, in answer to his less affluent fans, Wright, who revered democracy, was persuaded to think small. The Usonian home — a name Wright borrowed from satirist Samuel Butler — refers to the United States of North America. The price tag for a Usonian? Supposedly $5,000 but, as usual, Wright never even came close.

During the introduction to “The Big Year,” the following words appear on the screen: “This is a true story. Only the facts have been changed.”

Funny, the same could be said about Wright.

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

LET'S STOP BEING TRASHY; SACK PLASTIC BAG OPTION

Published in the Wednesday, June 5, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one from Animal Planet makes a most moving argument for eliminating the plastic option at the supermarket.

It shows an unfortunate gull that naively dined on trash and got more than a tummy ache.

Those favoring single-use bags claim that those who want to rid the planet of their pesky presence rely too heavily on such “emotional” appeals. The plastic industry wants you to believe that if banned, in addition to resulting in horrific job loss, we are throwing out the more cost-effective choice.

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, reusable bags not only require four times more energy during the manufacturing process, but also produce four times the greenhouse-gas emissions. In fact, says the United Kingdom Environment Agency, to break even energy-wise, you would have to tote your reusable bag to the market for more than three years. How long have you toted yours?

Then there’s the suspected health hazard.

Research by Jonathan Klick (University of Pennsylvania), and Joshua D. Wright (George Mason University) found that food-borne illnesses in San Francisco County increased 46 percent after the city’s plastic ban went into effect. Apparently, San Franciscans didn’t realize you could toss a reusable bag into the washing machine.

At present, 20 percent of Californians enjoy life without plastic bags, and soon Ventura County, Ventura, Oxnard and Port Hueneme will be considering prohibitions as well.

Personally, I hate the flimsy things. Unless more than one bag is employed, they support no more than a couple of cans, usually fall over and divest themselves of their contents on the ride home, and although I have a cute sock-like device to collect them, I rarely remember to return them to Ralphs — where they’re routinely discarded, anyway.

Most of us already realize how detrimental plastic bags can be. They constitute nearly 25 percent of the litter or “urban tumbleweeds” piling up beside roads and highways, floating in waterways or hanging from trees and bushes — where they can choke or poison wildlife, domestic land animals or, eventually, marine creatures.

Furthermore, plastic bags don’t break down in landfills for centuries, they add to the demand for oil (100 billion plastic bags annually equal 12 million barrels), and they’re neither easy nor convenient to recycle.

Plastic bags, in fact, are the bane of recycling plants. Many folks deposit them in “general plastic” bins. Big mistake. Plastic bags subsequently jam and break the expensive sorting machines. Your taxes are then diverted into repairing equipment, instead of, say, filling potholes.

California could have been the first state to prohibit plastic bags had not legislation failed in 2010, and then again on Thursday.

Business interests linked with the plastic bag industry provided formidable opposition in 2010, despite then-Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, the author of AB 1998, getting the California Grocers, fed up with a hodgepodge of regulations, on board.

The writing, however, was on the wall long before the 14-21 defeat. Tim Shestek of the American Chemistry Council knew exactly how to get the lawmakers’ attention.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Shestek argued, “This bill will result in increasing consumer grocery prices with the requirement to pay for paper bags. They will cost at least a nickel, and it could be higher,” he added. “We think recycling is the answer. Burdening Californians with a new tax or putting people in an unemployment line is not something the Legislature should be doing.”

Essentially the same buzzwords (“new tax,” “unemployment line,” “recycling”) led to the demise of Senate Bill 405 (authored by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles) last week. Like Brownley, Padilla had garnered support from retailers wanting to eliminate the uneven patchwork of policies across California.

It wasn’t enough. The plastic people, who had signed up two high-profile lobbying firms in Sacramento, spent nearly $300,000 to defeat the bill.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, who voted against SB 405, told CBS News, “If you think plastic bags are single-use, you have not met my mother” while Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, who also voted “no,” pointed out, “All you’ve got to do is go to a local park where someone’s taken their dog and you can understand how you can actually use the bag twice.”

Sounds like recycling bags works. Wait a minute, though, while California retailers distribute more than 14 billion plastic bags each year, state officials report only 5 percent are actually recycled. Sounds like recycling bags doesn’t work.

Did you know that a 2006 California law prohibits cities from requiring fees for plastic bags? That’s absolutely backward. If you want plastic bags, you pay for plastic bags.

And next time you see a gull, try to warn it about empty plastic calories.

 

NOT-SO-SMOOTH SAILING AHEAD FOR GOOGLE GLASS

Published on May 22, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

 

If you think folks look dorky talking into a Bluetooth headset as they stroll down the street, wait until you run into an early adopter of Google Glass.

Recognized by Time Magazine as one of the Best Inventions of the Year 2012, Google Glass is a wearable computer that’s lighter than the average pair of Oakleys.

Glass, which allows users to access the Internet, snap photographs and record video clips to be shared with friends via Google+ or gmail, is an attempt to liberate data from desktop computers or portable devices. The idea is to get the information you need — directly in your line of vision.

The Explorer edition, being beta-tested by 8,000 lottery winners willing to cough up $1,500 for the privilege, isn’t actually a pair of specs at all. It’s actually a titanium glasses framework — with a small square screen on the high right. The digital display is attached to a curved piece of plastic (available in charcoal, tangerine, shale, cotton or sky) that contains a camera, bone-conducting speaker and battery.

The device looks less cyborg when the wearer snaps on either the sunglass or clear visor. While those who wear regular glasses will have to fit the current Explorer edition over them, Google promises to come up with a designer (more expensive) frame to accommodate prescription lenses.

The Explorer edition receives data through Wi-Fi or can be tethered via Bluetooth to either an Android device or an iPhone. If you want to know how it feels to wear Glass, check out the YouTube video.

Google confirmed that Glass would be available to the public just in time for Christmas at a cost less (but nobody knows how much less) than the $1,500 beta users paid.

Still Apple, Sony and Microsoft as well as Vuzix, Oakley and Baidu fully intend to become Google’s rivals. A significant cost savings will come to those who wait.

Beta testers have already complained — as testers are wont to do — about the seriously short (1-2 hours) battery life, the lack of volume control that makes phone conversations in noisy locations impossible and their dashed expectations. Google Glass doesn’t yet actually augment reality even though it’s highly touted as such a device.

For example, augmented reality would actually integrate a patient’s chart or vital sign information with the surgical field while a physician is operating. While Google Glass offers certain elements of augmented reality, it’s not quite there yet.

The future of Google Glass rests with a so-called “killer application” actually being developed in somebody’s Silicon Valley garage. But geeks bearing such gifts as apps for news, facial recognition, photo manipulation, sharing to social networks, language translation, flight information and map directions won’t be allowed to charge for their creativity. Sergey Brin’s device; Sergey Brin’s rules.

As personal technology becomes increasingly invisible, however, the prospect of Google Glass prompts some crystal-ball-gazing-type questions. Will Glass make us all paparazzi? What will happen to the First Amendment as it comes in direct conflict with the right to privacy? How more socially isolated can human beings actually become?

The 5 Point Cafe, a seedy bar in Seattle, was the first business to explicitly ban Glass. In part a publicity stunt that garnered worldwide attention, the sanction was also a harbinger of regulations to come. Las Vegas casinos, where computers and recording devices are already verboten, have already weighed in.

Crime-fighting shows have accustomed us to the idea that surveillance cameras catch (almost) our every move. In fact, the average American is videotaped at least 30 times a day. Just for giggles, total up the instances in which you spot the probing eye of Big Brother as you trek through the next 24 hours.

Still, the prospect of being videotaped, having private conversations recorded or a facial recognition app readily available — to individuals not involved in law enforcement — makes most of us uneasy.

Google Glass is an early technology that’s clearly still in the experimental stage. What interests me most is not how useful Glass proves to be in the present, but how Glass — as an evolved augmented reality device — creates seismological cultural shifts in the future.

When my son presented me with an iPhone for Christmas 2011, he insisted it would change my life.

It did. With all the apps on my phone, I find myself equipped with email, Google, a turn-by-turn driving guide, 1,263 photos, Spotify, a 4-in-1 calendar, a calculator, Facebook, a tipping guide, a plant identifier, a GPS-enabled star/planet guide, Amazon, solitaire, 381 e-books and this newspaper — all contained in a 2.25-inch-by-5-inch-by-.25-inch gadget.

I did draw the line at a hands-free headset, however. I didn’t want to look like a dork.

BIGGER CANAL, BIGGER SHIPS AND PORT OF HUENEME

Published in the May 8, 2013 Edition of the Ventura County Star

The day after we transited the Panama Canal, the ship’s painters were busy covering the damage, albeit cosmetic, to the ship’s sleek white exterior from the rough concrete walls of the locks. The 24-inch clearance on either side of the vessel was obviously not enough.

Behemoth ships, referred to in shipping jargon as “post-panamax,” just don’t fit. Size does matter, however, since the bigger vessels are more cost-effective — carrying nearly three times the 20-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers as the less-than-lock-sized ships.

Back in 2006, nearly 77 percent of the Panamanian voters approved an ambitious third set of locks project. The reason? More and more ships were transiting a canal built in 1914 that just couldn’t keep up — capacity-wise. Their $5.25 billion expansion solution should be realized in mid-2015.

As of last month, the deepening and widening of Atlantic and Pacific entrance and approach channels as well as the dredging of Culebra Cut, the narrowest part of the canal (located on the Continental Divide) were finished. Yet, work on the innovative locks that feature water-saving basins and rolling gates is only 42 percent completed.

In fact, the project is already eight months behind schedule because of heavy rains, labor strikes and problems with the concrete mix. What also remains is the dredging to increase Lake Gatun’s operational level from 26.7 to 27.1 meters.

All this expensive excavation, construction and material-removal should, according to Panama’s then-President Martin Turrijos, double the capacity of the canal and subsequently generate enough income to not only reduce poverty by 30 percent but to also transform Panama into a First World country. This was a Big Dream.

The U.S. East Coast, you could say, endlessly indulges in trade envy. It lusts after Asia and South America. Why not? The Pacific Rim is home to 29 of the world’s 50 busiest container-shipping ports. The West Coast has been geographically blessed.

Yet, after 2015, when the Panama Canal should be able to accommodate post-panamax ships, Gulf and East Coast ports may appear more appealing to shippers. In fact, many of these harbors have already started investing serious money into infrastructure — betting on a paradigm shift in trade due to the expanded Panama Canal.

So should the powers that be at the Port of Hueneme be concerned?

Kristin Decas is the 44-year old, first female CEO at the fourth-busiest port on the West Coast. But she isn’t exactly shaking in her designer boots.

The Port of Hueneme, according to Commissioner Arlene Fraser, is unique in that it serves niche markets that include the import and export of automobiles, fresh fruit and produce. Consider that bananas — 30 percent of Hueneme’s business — don’t have to come through the Panama Canal. And while cars make up a hefty 60 percent, they don’t have to make the voyage on post-panamax-sized vessels. Nothing may change for Hueneme.

Moreover, Decas — who loved launching the popular Banana Festival last year but loathed hiking tariffs for automobile customers this year — is cautiously optimistic about the economy. The economy is a critical factor to any bottom line.

“Right now, we are seeing healthy recovery,” she told me. “This has been the fourth-best cargo year, and we are continuing to see increases in overall trade.”

The Panama Canal expansion would definitely impact the Port of Hueneme if the ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach, which boast more land and lower operating costs, tried to purloin Hueneme’s customers by undercutting fees.

So what would it take for Los Angeles and Long Beach to go after Hueneme’s automobiles? Without a crystal ball, says Decas, there is really no way of knowing what their diversification strategy might be.

Long Beach and Los Angeles, however, probably won’t be tempted by Hueneme’s 600,000 tons of bananas. According to Port Commission President Jason Hodge, “Here at the Port of Hueneme we continue to modernize with the future in mind.”

To that end, Hueneme is investing $12 million in shore-side power outlets so that refrigerator ships (like those toting bananas) can turn off their engines and plug into zero-polluting power. The bigger ports to the south, however, haven’t yet acquired technology to meet the more stringent air quality standards being required in 2014 for refrigerator ships.

With economists polarized and railroads resistant to change, Decas believes the debate has only just begun. The sea-level canal at Suez, of course, is the elephant in the room. Without locks of any size, it’s a perfect fit for any ship.

Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping line, has already given the Panama Canal the brushoff. To add insult to injury, in 2011 Maersk ordered 20 container ships from Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding. They’re too large for Panama’s brand-new expanded locks.

Perhaps, Maersk is the one with a crystal ball.

  © 2013 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

AMERICA'S CAN-DO SPIRIT TURNED DREAM INTO REALITY

Published on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 

PUNTARENAS, Costa Rica — When boomers add the Panama Canal to their bucket lists, patriotism isn’t usually a deciding factor.

Yet, it was the prowess of our Army Corps of Engineers, Dr. Walter Reed’s fingering of the annoying mosquito as the source of yellow fever and malaria, an expenditure of $8.6 trillion in tax dollars and our indefatigable can-do spirit — that picked up where French hubris left off.

The Panama Canal story begs for a Cecil B. DeMille close-up. Ferdinand de Lesseps is both the hero and villain of our 19th century morality play. With an ego the size of Montana, he carried the charisma of a realized Suez Canal with him into the 1879 Congres International d’Etudes de Canal Interoceanique.

Yet, his unrealistic Panama pipe dream resulted in needless deaths, the loss of nest eggs by French pride-blinded investors, and a political scandal that rocked confidence in capitalism as well as the French Republic itself.

Leading authorities in engineering, naval science, economics and exploration from 22 countries arrived in Paris to supposedly debate “in the impartial serenity of science” the most expeditious Central America location for a canal. Unfortunately, however, the French fix was in and a 74-year-old megalomaniac took charge.

The American delegation pushed for a canal across Nicaragua. While reports of their extensive field research got a polite listen from the other delegates, there was no doubt that the majority of voters would be backing de Lesseps and his “sans locks” canal across Panama. David McCullough, in his award-winning “The Path Between the Seas” described the sham balloting as “a consensus of one.”

After forfeiting approximately 22,000 lives to accidents, malaria or yellow fever and running through $287 million, the bankrupt French put their remaining assets up for sale in 1890.

Not only had de Lessep’s management team lacked training and experience, but their equipment, especially the steam shovels that had served Suez so well in the easy-to-move desert sand, immediately rusted out. Furthermore, rain-induced landslides poured nearly as much material back into the steep-sided cuts as had been removed.

Finally, fiscal mismanagement and political bribery eventually landed most of the principals in prison.

Yet, the French flag could still be flying over one of the seven wonders of the modern world had the delegates not snubbed a diminutive aristocrat and engineer named Baron Godin de Lepinay. His ingenious yet practical solution put people first.

In 1862, while constructing a railroad between Cordoba and Veracruz, a third of his workers perished from yellow fever. Since he considered Panama to be equally “poisonous” — the link between the mosquito and disease was not yet known — staying out of the jungle was his No. 1 priority.

Echoing the less digging advantage argued by the American contingent with Lake Nicaragua, de Lepinay proposed building a bridge of water, instead, across Panama. He would construct dams on the Chagres near the Atlantic and the Rio Grande approaching the Pacific. Connecting the two resulting lakes and building flights of locks at either end would complete the project.

The pluses to de Lepinay’s proposal included minimizing expensive excavation, being able to control the constantly flooding Chagres River, providing an unlimited water supply, allowing ships to transverse (in either direction) in only 12 hours, reducing the completion date to six years and (excluding the purchase of the Panama Railroad) being accompanied by a price tag of only $100 million.

Most important to de Lepinay, however, was the preservation of life. Not only would his plan disturb as little of the noxious jungle as possible, but terrain that produced disease-bearing mosquitoes would be sealed off in the future by the lakes.

Incredibly and tragically, the delegates didn’t even give his proposal a token discussion.

In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt became a fan. After the Americans bought out the French, Roosevelt asked John Frank Stevens, the engineer who designed the Great Northern Railroad, for a proposal.

Stevens’ strategy, which was more than faintly reminiscent of de Lepany’s, so impressed the rough-riding president, he instructed his newly appointed Isthmian Canal Commission “to make dirt fly.”

After several chief engineers appointed by Roosevelt resigned, though, the chagrined president turned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They, he quipped, couldn’t quit. Eventually, the Corps would finish all the breakwaters, locks, dams, reservoirs and complete the challenging Gaillard Cut as well.

After 10 years of backbreaking effort, they had succeeded — minimizing the threat of disease with extensive mosquito abatement, relocating/upgrading the Panama Railroad, excavating more than 200 million cubic yards of earth and constructing the (then) world’s largest dam and lake.

So, as we transit the Panama Canal on Friday, I will lift a glass of gin and tonic (to ward off malaria) and toast a nation where, more often than not, no dreamer ever becomes more important than the dream.

 

CRUISE THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL

April 16, 2013

We won’t be giving “A Taxi” (listed first in the Oxnard/Port Hueneme Directory Yellow Pages) a five-star rating even though the driver (female) did show up on time (6:15AM).  She never bothered to help with the luggage.  She just pointed at the open door of the van and grunted while we had to struggle with the bags ourselves.  Jon, as a former taxi driver, didn’t scrimp on the tip either.  Her driving also left something to be desired---screeching the brakes at every stop sign or light as if the need to halt the vehicle always caught her completely by surprise.  Unfortunately for us, the van hadn’t come equipped for straps to hang on to.  Talk about Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride!

Ever since we took the train in Europe, we talked about the civilized nature of travel via railway service.  The seats are comfortable and you have the opportunity to stretch your legs.  Jon sprang for Business class, which also offered a complimentary continental breakfast.  We also appreciated the unique view of Ventura, LA and Orange Counties---especially along the coastline.  Arrived at the Port of San Diego at 12:30 PM.  We were going to take our time and hoof the four blocks, but a Pedi-cab guy took one look at my cane and decided to offer his services for $10.  He even found a way to make room for all our luggage. His leg-power was definitely Olympic caliber.  We also got special treatment boarding the ship so, all in all, we can’t complain about having to stand in line for hours like all those folks whose reviews I read before the cruise.

Jon had told me that we had a porthole in the cabin but it was more like a picture window.  I can’t wait to see the sunrise tomorrow.  The first item on the agenda today was the mandatory lifeboat muster.  Our meeting place was the Rendezvous Lounge that was serving $5 rum punch.  Jon also wanted to change our dining time to the early (6:00PM) seating as he had requested.  We had been assigned 8:30 PM which would have meant finishing dinner around 10:30---just in time to go to bed.  He stood in line for one hour only to be told nothing could be done.  We couldn’t even pay extra for open seating.  Our theory was that the big groups (the cruise line’s bread and butter) got the highest priority, and alums from the University of Massachusetts held very little clout.  Actually the booking went through Alumni Cruises and there was only one couple—the Stewarts from Cape Cod---who actually graduated from U Mass.  We had a couple of drinks with them and discussed all manner of things in common including arthritic knees, travel adventures and our adorable Yorkies.

We grabbed dinner at the buffet and it was what you would expect.  Jon enjoyed Indian food, sushi and pizza while I settled for a paper-thin, very well done steak, baked potato and grilled veggies.  There WAS homemade ice cream for dessert, however.  I was, however, looking forward to breakfast at the real restaurant.

April 17, 2013  

We got up early enough to breakfast in the Trellis Restaurant.  Met two couples from England (Birmingham and Surrey, respectively.)  All four of them were professional cruisers and had been virtually everywhere.  In fact, one couple was extending their stay 12 more days while the ship was repositioning.  They were wonderful storytellers and we enjoyed trading travel anecdotes with them while enjoying Eggs Benedict (Jon) and Greek Frittata (Beverly).  We chatted so long we ended up being 20 minutes late to my watercolor class.  The teacher caught me up, though, and I was really impressed with the quality of the art supplies we got from Celebrity.  Really nice.  We all did the Cabo San Lucas Arch but there wasn’t enough time left in the class so I just sat there and finished my painting---even though the room was being used for Cruise Critics.  Jon learned a great deal about good and bad excursions as he sat next to me.  After that, we changed into our swimsuits and headed for the pool.  The water temp was not the 80 degrees I am used to---probably somewhere around 62.  A little nippy for everybody but us.  We had the whole pool to ourselves so we did laps to warm up.  It was a great workout.  The prime real estate around the pool was all taken but on the upper deck we found a quiet corner with a great view and lots of sun.  Maybe too much sun---even though it was only a couple of hours.  While they were serving hamburgers and hot dogs poolside, in the solarium Jon found a healthy chicken and grapefruit section salad for us.  We are trying not to eat lunch so we can really overindulge at dinner.  Soon it was time to get ready for our special dinner at the SS United States, a specialty restaurant that requires a $40 a person cover charge. 

The décor is from the original ship that was commissioned during the late 40s.  Lots of art deco effects in the lighting and etched glass panels.  The menu is French and it was even better than Paris (Las Vegas or France).  We enjoyed a glass of Tattinger champagne with a sliced strawberry on a tiny glass plate as well as diminutive French rolls in the shape of a snail.  The background music at that point featured Edith Piaf and I just knew Jon would get tears in his eyes with her rendition of “Je regret rien.” He did and embarrassed the waiter. The butter was shaped into a 2.5-inch pyramid.  After we selected our starter and entrees, we received a special duck pate petite bouche.  Then came the Foley Pinot Noir Jon selected.  It’s from the Santa Rita Hills (near Buellton). 

Every Pinot we’ve had from Santa Rita has been spectacular so we promised ourselves we would do a wine tour up there soon.  My starter was arugula and quail with caramelized goat cheese puffs that were to die for.  Jon had a smoke salmon, crab and avocado “parfait.”  My lobster was prepared by the maître de, personally, at the table. It was a lobster flambé that melted in your mouth.  It was almost too good to eat. Jon had a rack of lamb with an interesting but not overwhelming curry sauce.  Since it took some time to bake the Grand Marnier soufflé we ordered for dessert, the waiter brought us half a dozen assorted cheeses and dried fruit to try as well as four divine chocolate truffles.  Dinner took almost three hours, but it was probably the best dinner either of us ever enjoyed.  We adjourned to our stateroom for X-rated activities.

 

April 18,2013

Back to the Trellis Restaurant for a lovely breakfast.  This time we were seated at a table for two---which meant no new friends---but we did enjoy ourselves anyway.  I thought I’d try to eat English-style, piling up a little bite of everything on the back of my fork.  Big disaster.  Now, those who know me are laughing already because I’ve never been known as a fastidious eater.  Crumbs regularly collect on the front shelf I carry around and Chloe invariably finds little snacks when she cleans me up.  The restaurant got really crowded and we soon figured out we weren’t going to be offered a second cup of coffee, so we headed for the buffet restaurant.  We went out on the stern deck to see if we could sight land.

Got out too late to make the watercolor class, so decided to try drawing the Cabo San Lucas Arch in charcoal while Jon snoozed.  After a few false starts I think I got something I can show my drawing teacher.  We had to catch the tender to get out to our Catamaran/Scenic Bus tour, so we changed our clothes and headed down to the first deck.  As we were approaching the Cabo dock we saw a three-story mega-yacht with a slide that went from the top floor, directly into the water.  We decided that was the height of decadence.

Cabo is overbuilt with hotels and tourist traps.  Our boat was called the Cabomar and I gamely climbed the stairs to the top level.  We were offered water, juice or soda, and spent 45 minutes sailing around the Land’s End---it is the last outcrop of rock that separates the Sea of Cortez from the Pacific Ocean.  Jacques Cousteau (on tape) narrated the trip with all kinds of information about the sea creatures that included everything from krill to blue whales to electric rays.  Around Lands End is one of the richest environments for fish.  We saw all sorts of glass-bottom boats, snorkelers and even a yellow submarine.  But that’s not all.  Once we returned from our 45-minute tour, we walked through the town and boarded a bus that toured the city including such American businesses as MacDonalds, Starbucks and Wal-Mart.  We ended up on top of a mountain at the Mona Lisa Italian Restaurant where we were served beer or soft drinks and marveled at the view.  Also found some interesting items to photograph that might make interesting (shadow-wise) drawing subjects---one was a spiral staircase and the other a cabinet with crooked legs.

Back onboard, we were delighted to find we had a new table at the early seating.  Our dining companions were two former university librarians who had lots to say at dinner. 
We look forward to spending the next two weeks with them.  Our dinner tonight was quite good.  I had shrimp cocktail, French onion soup, and a chicken Cesar salad with molten lava ala mode for dessert.  Jon had a beef ragout starter, pan-fried steak and crepes Suzette for desert.

Found out that the journal I had been keeping on my phone disappeared when I tried to retrieve three days of email.  I was ready to burst into tears but decided that this new version should be even better.  Looking forward to hitting the hay and getting rocked to sleep by the sea.  Tomorrow is Puerto Vallarta and swimming with dolphins.  Hopefully my bathing suit will be dry and my sunburn---a golden brown by then.

April 19, 2013

Jon missed the time change so we were turned away at the Trellis Restaurant but we found the funniest couple (David and Margaret) at the buffet.  We were chatting about how difficult it is to remember names when David talked about a Dale Carnegie course he took that advised associating the person’s name with an image.  Of course the speaker got everybody’s name right at the end of the day.  Then I shared my favorite story about the downside of image association.  You meet a man named Bowman and you associate him with a man holding a bow and arrow.  Then the next time you see the guy, you say, “Hi Mr. Archer.” Well the other couple started cracking up.  In fact, David laughed so hard, he started to cry.  Then he told us---their surname is Archer. We all thought that was---cue the theme from Twilight Zone.  When we told them about our dolphin tour and that it included lunch, David was quick with the quip---he asked if they were serving tuna-free dolphin burgers. They were finished with breakfast and had to change their clothes, but in their honor we ate the English breakfast complete with undercooked bacon and baked beans.  After breakfast we headed for the Celebrity Theatre and listened to geologist Dr. Bruce Bakerby talk about tectonic plates—“Five Plates for the Price of One.” If only he were as witty as his title.  He really did, however, broke down tectonics for the audience and we all walked away feeling like we knew a little more about the geology of the places we would be seeing.

After the ship docked at Puerto Vallarta, we met with the Dolphin Adventure people who took us by bus to their facility about 20 minutes away.  We then traveled by boat to the training tanks and really got to spend much more up and personal time with our dolphin Yoshuri that I had figured.  The trainer was very knowledgeable and easily answered questions that ran the gamut from food to communication.  Yoshuri (must look that name up) was very easy to love—the first thing she did was give me a big kiss on the cheek and I kissed her back.  We danced together; me holding on to her flippers.  At the end I got to give her a big hug.  She did lots of jumps, swam backwards, came when called, and waved goodbye with her tail.  She seemed to love to be petted and even turned over so I could rub her tummy. After we showered, we were given the opportunity to buy photos and then took a boat to the lunch place.  The buffet included nachos, guacamole, rice enchiladas and BBQ ribs and even brownies for desert.  When I asked the guy behind me if it was okay to eat the salad, he said with some pride, “Of course, this is Mexico; not Costa Rica.” The ride home was on a catamaran that gave us a waterfront perspective of Puerto Vallarta.  We were tired but happy as we returned to the cabin and got ready for dinner.  Our companions must have gone to the SS United States to eat, so we ended up having a romantic dinner for two.  The entrée this evening, was fork-ready lamb shank.  I got a little sad when I realized Chloe wouldn’t be enjoying the bones.  As we were walking back to our cabin, we ran into David and Margaret and they bought us a drink.  Margaret and I compared swollen ankles and our evaluation scale for an outstanding mai tai while the guys traded jokes.  David wanted to know if Jon got a big chain around his neck when he served as mayor, as is the custom in London. He is a really funny guy. When we finally got back to the room, I opted to work on my journal while Jon decided to take a walk on the deck.  He really wanted to see the magician that was scheduled for tonight but the Archers waylaid us so we missed the show.  I’m just ready to put up my tired dogs and finish a couple of chapters in my David McCullough book.  I keep thinking that I really should start thinking about the column I am going to write for next week.  Since we are in Mexico, though, “manana” is going to be my credo.

Where's the iguana? 

April 20, 2013

This was a day of shopping and lectures and drawing.  Found a little something for each of our family members as a souvenir from counters filled with jewelry, scarves, wallets, ties and hats.  Jon got himself a new bathing suit that “fit his package better.” His old one must have shrunk.  The first speaker was Dr. Bruce Blackerby, who told us all about the volcanoes in the countries we would be visit on the cruise.  Actually most of them seem to be in Guatemala and some are actually active.  The second speaker, Al Goldis, was a former baseball player, coach and scout.  He talked about what to watch for in a game.  Like I’m going to need instruction.  All I have to do is wear all the regalia Jon got me, munch on peanuts and root for the Red Sox.  Mostly Goldis rambled. He flipped over an art pad and used red ink so it was difficult to comprehend the visuals, but Jon was enthralled.  I liked what he had to say about training, though—that everybody needs flexibility, strength and aerobic exercise.  The third speaker was Uncle Marty, who is beloved by cruisers.  He is from Panama and does a five-part lecture on his country including narrating our passage through the locks and canal.  His voice is so smooth and soothing however, I caught myself falling asleep at every lecture.  He is aware of this tendency by most of his audience members, though, and every once in a while he throws a hilarious headline into the Power Point “to take the pulse of the audience.”  Learned a great deal in this lecture about the origins of Panama, indigenous tribes, the Spanish Conquistadors and the Panama Railroad.  Was hoping he would give me a good lead for my column---which is going to be a “what if” Baron Godin de Lipany had been in charge of the French effort instead of de Lesseps.  Our dinner companions are going to be at the SS United States tonight (they came in late from their shore excursion yesterday) so we had another romantic dinner alone.  Too much wine for me—Jon ordered a full bottle of French Pinot Noir.  The rest of the evening is X-rated.

 

April 21, 2013

After a nice breakfast, I got to work on my column.  Jon busied himself with hearing Uncle Marty’s next installment, looking at the watches on sale, and going to the presentation on Guatemala.  When I finished my work, we put on our suits and headed out to the pool. Today it was much warmer.  And crowded.  Did get my laps in but then covered up my legs that seemed to be inordinately swollen.  If things don’t improve with the water retention, I will be going to sickbay.  Had dinner tonight with our companions.  They had so much to report about their excursions and, of course, their wonderful dinner at the specialty restaurant.  Afterwards, we caught up on the news in our room and did some reading.  Neither one of us is big on attending the evening shows.  People really raved about the iBroadway Review.  The singers, dancers, comedians and magicians were all crew members.  What we do like to do every evening is before dinner.  We have a drink (the $5 specialty of the day) in the Rendezvous Lounge and watch the couples dance.  Arthur Murray must be doing a bang-up business now with all these Dancing with the Stars shows.  For the most part the dancers we see before the 6:00PM seating are  quite graceful but do seemed determined to show us everything they learned. We also stopped by the Internet Lounge so I could register our account.  Need to send off my column before 10AM on Monday. Took a couple of minutes and the column sent right away.  I also downloaded the two photos of us with our dolphin.  That made Jon very angry as he thought they were charging by the mega-bite.  I had signed up for $.75 a minute and it only took four minutes. Still won’t download on my phone, however, so our wonderful photos will have to wait until we return to civilization or a reasonably priced internet café on land.

April 22, 2913

Headed for the Sick Bay after dinner.  My legs were not only swollen but also the water retention so stretched the skin that the capillaries burst under the surface.  I had allowed myself to get totally dehydrated.  Bottled water on ship costs $3.  Tap water is pretty much undrinkable---taste-wise.  I declined to see the doctor ($110) and opted for pounding water all day and keeping my legs elevated.  Worked like a charm and we still managed to get off the ship even though my legs looked like an elephant’s.  I had read in the reviews that the best shopping in Guatemala was at the end of the pier---lots of original artisan work.  It was incredibly humid but we were distracted by all the different kinds of goods.  We knew we wanted at least one of the beautifully carved flutes and I paid $4 for my work of art.  I love to bargain and know that the unwritten rule is that the salesmen usually quote a price twice that which they are willing to take.  I was pretty much successful with that formula. I also found some gorgeous weavings—bought a set of placemats in blues and purples that will be gorgeous with our recycled glass plates.  A hand-embroidered tee shirt with jungle animals will be perfect for Elliott in a year or so.  Jon found a really nice Panama hat for ten bucks and a leather belt for $15.  We were not impressed with the paintings—not quite as whimsical as the one we found in Ecuador.  The street scenes were nicely executed but lacked humor and soul.  We didn’t have enough cash in my purse to purchase anything more.  Jon treated himself to a rum and coconut juice drink served in a real coconut for $3.  Back in the room, I did lots of reading, watched a movie called “Hope Springs,” and we just shut out the world and enjoyed each other. 

We usually don’t eat lunch but thought pizza or a burger might be good and ordered room service.  How decadent!  I found my secret stash of money and sent Jon out with it to purchase more placemats and flutes.  He was gone for such a long time, I was beginning to worry.  When he finally returned, he triumphantly set down the bag.   Unfortunately instead of placemats he had picked up a couple of table runners.  The colors were very nice. I managed to forgive him even though I couldn’t see how he would be so confused about what to buy.  Even though he fought me on it, I had made him take a sample place-mate.  Oh, well.  It made a cute story when we told it at breakfast the next day.  He did find a flute, but didn’t bargain.  He did, however, get a good deal on a Gallo beer.  Our dinner-mates were very late tonight.  They had to have their cabin safe replaced.  We all loved the Chilean Sea Bass and the Bananas Foster for dessert.  Jon gave me a great massage and I immediately fell asleep while Jon watched the Bourne Legacy.  Not sorry at all that  I missed that flick.

 

 

April 23, 2013

My niece’s birthday.  Happy Birthday, Lisa. We have no internet or I would post on your FB wall. We got up at 6 AM.  We need to be out for our excursion tomorrow early, so it was good practice.  I started a drawing of a Mayan carving while Jon got ready.  He always takes three times as long as I do.  We met some nice people at breakfast—a couple from Tennessee and another from an island in Lake Erie, Ohio near Marblehead.  Isn’t it interesting how you can always find something in common with another person at our age?

Was so pleased to find the pool empty after breakfast, that I raised the number of repetitions with my workout.  The weather was balmy but there were little tsunamis in the pool because of the rough waves outside.  Made it interesting to swim---first, must overcome the resistance and then you got a mini-surf ride.  I made some more progress in the McCullough book.  Jon took off for another Goldis lecture on baseball.  We met for lunch at the Bistro (that had been highly recommended by a dinner-mates).  Both of us ordered the hot and spicy steak crepes.  Very yummy and soooo French.  We went back to the room so I could shower off the salt water (the pool is fed directly from the ocean, hence the temps from 62-72 degrees.) 

We hurried to get a good seat at Uncle Marty’s next installment on the history of the Panama Canal. He showed some great archival photos from 1904-1914.  His voice, however, lulls me to sleep every time.  We returned to the room and I drifted off for a nap while Jon attended a tour of the recycling and refuse operations of the ship.  VRSD (Ventura County Regional Sanitation District board, of which Jon is a member) should be really impressed with his dedication.  Maybe we can write off that day of the cruise as well. 

When I woke up I decided to finish a drawing of a Mayan sculpture I had started that morning.  It came out pretty well but I have to keep telling myself not to remain in any one position for too long.  I feel the sciatic nerve trying to get my attention once again. Dinner was formal tonight so I put on war paint, my gold and black sparkling top and gold button leggings.  I was so pleased that I could once again wear my dressy shoes.  We headed for the Rendevous Lounge where we love to watch the dancers and order the drink of the day.   Tonight it was a whiskey sour.  Not bad but every special seems to taste like a margarita.  Why is that?  Dinner, however, was very special.  Chateau Briand and Grand Marnier soufflé. Our dinner-mates were full of stories about their day.  Derrie complimented Jon and I on our happy marriage.  She said she loved the way we shared bites of our meals or just acted lovingly toward each other.  She lost her hubby in October and said the only thing she would tell people who asked what they could do for her, is to just love and appreciate their significant others every single day.  Good advice. 

 

Linda who is a Type 2 diabetic being controlled by diet and exercise was talking about how she shouldn’t really eat dessert but just couldn’t help herself.  We could certainly relate to that.  There was temptation all throughout the day with high tea and a little coffee bar with special cakes and the ice cream bar and the gelato counter.  So far we limited ourselves to dinner desserts and the portions are usually small.  That’s one thing I appreciated about the cruise line—they do the discipline for you and you still don’t feel deprived.  After dinner we went back to see if we could find some sundries I forgot to pack in the Emporium but the cupboard was bare.  Most people bring whatever they need with them.  It’s always nice to get back to the privacy of our cabin.  We are not big on the evening shows.  I guess the entertainment staff is quite talented but we prefer each other’s company. TBS Spanish was showing Gremlins but neither one of us could think of the name—Goonies? Gizmo? Gonzo?  Too funny.  Jon is pretty apprehensive about me being up to the challenge of tomorrow’s rain forest hike.  I’ve been trying to get by on one magic pill a day so that if I need two or three, I’ll simply take them.  As to the choice between one pill makes you larger; one pill makes you small---all this food should be making both of us larger.  Perhaps Weight Watchers will make us small again.

 

April 24, 2013

My column was published in the Star today. 

Beverly Kelly: America's can-do spirit turned dream into reality

By Beverly Kelley

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

PUNTARENAS, Costa Rica — When boomers add the Panama Canal to their bucket lists, patriotism isn’t usually a deciding factor.

Yet, it was the prowess of our Army Corps of Engineers, Dr. Walter Reed’s fingering of the annoying mosquito as the source of yellow fever and malaria, an expenditure of $8.6 trillion in tax dollars and our indefatigable can-do spirit — that picked up where French hubris left off.

The Panama Canal story begs for a Cecil B. DeMille close-up. Ferdinand de Lesseps is both the hero and villain of our 19th century morality play. With an ego the size of Montana, he carried the charisma of a realized Suez Canal with him into the 1879 Congres International d’Etudes de Canal Interoceanique.

Yet, his unrealistic Panama pipe dream resulted in needless deaths, the loss of nest eggs by French pride-blinded investors, and a political scandal that rocked confidence in capitalism as well as the French Republic itself.

Leading authorities in engineering, naval science, economics and exploration from 22 countries arrived in Paris to supposedly debate “in the impartial serenity of science” the most expeditious Central America location for a canal. Unfortunately, however, the French fix was in and a 74-year-old megalomaniac took charge.

The American delegation pushed for a canal across Nicaragua. While reports of their extensive field research got a polite listen from the other delegates, there was no doubt that the majority of voters would be backing de Lesseps and his “sans locks” canal across Panama. David McCullough, in his award-winning “The Path Between the Seas” described the sham balloting as “a consensus of one.”

After forfeiting approximately 22,000 lives to accidents, malaria or yellow fever and running through $287 million, the bankrupt French put their remaining assets up for sale in 1890.

Not only had de Lessep’s management team lacked training and experience, but their equipment, especially the steam shovels that had served Suez so well in the easy-to-move desert sand, immediately rusted out. Furthermore, rain-induced landslides poured nearly as much material back into the steep-sided cuts as had been removed.

Finally, fiscal mismanagement and political bribery eventually landed most of the principals in prison.

Yet, the French flag could still be flying over one of the seven wonders of the modern world had the delegates not snubbed a diminutive aristocrat and engineer named Baron Godin de Lepinay. His ingenious yet practical solution put people first.

In 1862, while constructing a railroad between Cordoba and Veracruz, a third of his workers perished from yellow fever. Since he considered Panama to be equally “poisonous” — the link between the mosquito and disease was not yet known — staying out of the jungle was his No. 1 priority.

Echoing the less digging advantage argued by the American contingent with Lake Nicaragua, de Lepinay proposed building a bridge of water, instead, across Panama. He would construct dams on the Chagres near the Atlantic and the Rio Grande approaching the Pacific. Connecting the two resulting lakes and building flights of locks at either end would complete the project.

The pluses to de Lepinay’s proposal included minimizing expensive excavation, being able to control the constantly flooding Chagres River, providing an unlimited water supply, allowing ships to transverse (in either direction) in only 12 hours, reducing the completion date to six years and (excluding the purchase of the Panama Railroad) being accompanied by a price tag of only $100 million.

Most important to de Lepinay, however, was the preservation of life. Not only would his plan disturb as little of the noxious jungle as possible, but terrain that produced disease-bearing mosquitoes would be sealed off in the future by the lakes.

Incredibly and tragically, the delegates didn’t even give his proposal a token discussion.

In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt became a fan. After the Americans bought out the French, Roosevelt asked John Frank Stevens, the engineer who designed the Great Northern Railroad, for a proposal.

Stevens’ strategy, which was more than faintly reminiscent of de Lepany’s, so impressed the rough-riding president, he instructed his newly appointed Isthmian Canal Commission “to make dirt fly.”

After several chief engineers appointed by Roosevelt resigned, though, the chagrined president turned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They, he quipped, couldn’t quit. Eventually, the Corps would finish all the breakwaters, locks, dams, reservoirs and complete the challenging Gaillard Cut as well.

After 10 years of backbreaking effort, they had succeeded — minimizing the threat of disease with extensive mosquito abatement, relocating/upgrading the Panama Railroad, excavating more than 200 million cubic yards of earth and constructing the (then) world’s largest dam and lake.

So, as we transit the Panama Canal on Saturday OMG it should say Friday (that’s the last time I leave fact-checking to Jon), I will lift a glass of gin and tonic (to ward off malaria) and toast a nation where, more often than not, no dreamer ever becomes more important than the dream.

Breakfast this morning was fantastic.  We had cheese blintzes with raspberries, bacon and a fruit plate.  We also got a seat with a terrific view of the sun glittering in the water and lots of fishing boats moving around.  This is the excursion that Jon has been dreading because it will be eight hours of fairly challenging standing, walking and riding in a bus—all of which are not great for the old knees. The first stop after an hour and a half bus ride was to the Rain Forest Adventure on an aerial tram that rose above the canopy of trees in the rain forest. 

Our guide tried to shape our expectations by saying that most of the mammals only came out in early morning or late night.  The same was true of the butterflies and moths of which there are 2000 species alone.  He said visitors don’t always see the birds but we would hear the calls.  Everybody was to be on the lookout as the tram inched along. 

First of all, the experience was so tranquil and awe-inspiring.  Both Jon and I are afraid of heights but there was no apprehension this time. We were surrounded by a heavy metal cage and the tram proceeded very slowly, pausing at every tower to allow riders to see everything around them.  

The guide explained the medicinal facts about the trees that the native Indians had discovered—the kerosene tree that can be used as fuel; the sand box tree that cannot be cut down because of the acidic sap and grenade-like seed pods; and the balsa wood tree that is used to build airplanes with the seeds serving as stuffing for pillows.  After the hour tour we were treated to a simple lunch base on chicken, yellow rice and black beans.  The lettuce looked so fresh, I asked for mainly salad.  They put the slices of pineapple, melon and oranges right on top of the lettuce so we thought Costa Ricans (Ticos or Ticas) used the fruit itself as a dressing.  Later we saw the usual condiments on a side table but we thought the fruit was a delicious and healthy alternative. 

 

 

For dessert we enjoyed sautéed plantains with brown sugar. Reminded me of all the entrée recipes I tried to find for our Friends of the Library Banana Cookbook.  After lunch Jon went on a mile long nature walk while I strolled through the medicinal plant garden and made friends with another woman (Becky) from Ontario who had just recently had a hip replacement.  We had a great time trading stories.  Next on the agenda was a bus ride to Jungle Crocodile Safari on the Tarcoles River.  This was the highlight of the trip. 

Our guide knows his birds and we were able to check off 19 species on our life lists between here and the tram ride including the Magnificent Frigatebird, the Brown Pelican, the Roseate Spoonbill, the White Ibis, the Boat-billed Heron, the Tricolored Heron, the Snowy, Cattle and Great Egrets, the Western Sandpiper, the Black Vulture, the Mangrove Black Hawk, the Scarlet Macaw, Yellow-naped Parrot, Mangrove Swallow, Great Kiskadee, Baltimore Oriole, and Great-tailed Grackle.  We also saw a couple of iguanas and the Jesus Christ lizard that apparently walks on water. 
The big moment was spotting a mama crocodile that had just given birth to 45 babies three days before.  She was in the water, guarding her young ones on the shore and we were able to see two of them moving in the grass.  There were also Brahma bulls and cows sharing the shoreline with Cattle Egrets. They were so anorexic (this being the dry season) that one women behind me quipped, “they must only give non-fat milk.”  This was the most amazing day and we rode back to the ship with a beautiful sunset to keep us company.  There was also a full moon rising at the same time.  We were right behind Uncle Marty as we walked to the ship.  Because of my cane, I was told to use the handicapped ramp that went to the second deck.  The angle of the first three feet was 80 degrees.  It was tougher to pull myself up than if I climbed the stairs.  What were they thinking?  I can’t even imagine a wheel chair descending down that steep a ramp without the poor occupant ending up in the ocean.  At any rate, we were too late for our 6:00 PM seating so we returned to the room, freshened up, changed our clothes and headed up to the buffet where we got a big salad and a couple of slices of pizza.  Jon was in heaven—he sampled all three kinds:  pepperoni, four-cheese and vegetarian.  I was so exhausted that I didn’t even brush my teeth or take my pills---I just crashed and woke up at 7AM.

 

August 25. 2013

The time had changed again so we missed out on the Trellis restaurant that closed at 8:30.  Jon was moving really slowly today and I was too.  We finally showered and dressed around 9:15 and made our way to the buffet.  Jon has to wait on me at the buffet since I can’t handle a tray and a cane.   He really does love the variety so we have been choosing the buffet even when we do get up in time for the restaurant.  This morning we found a seat with Becky.  She was trying to avoid her room-mate (a male) who doesn’t share her love of silence, coffee and a newspaper in the morning.  We shared a leisurely breakfast of a chocolate croissant, fruit plate and one egg Benedict as we traded life stories.  She has a daughter who is dying which must be a very difficult burden to bear.  I think this trip was a way for her to get away for a while.  She has her contingency plans in place if the situation requires it but other than the talkative engineer room-mate, she’s been having a ball. 

Wish I hadn’t checked my email.  Got a final rejection from Five Star on my book.  The letter was quite positive and I could tell the senior editor really fought for me. but the market in mysteries and everything else, for that matter, is pretty tough.  I’m not sure if I’m going to pursue a publisher or perhaps publish myself (if I pull get together a marketing plan.)  The beauty of Five Star is that they only sell to libraries so you do get hardcover sales but only limited to a couple of hundred books.  The downside was that I had to get rid of every reference to a real person place or thing.  It sometimes took away from the story.  There also wouldn’t be an e-book issued. I just need to think this through when I feel less fragile.  

This was a day for preparing for the actual transit tomorrow.  We attended a lecture by Uncle Marty about how the locks work and a Nova documentary based on David McCullough’s book, “The Path Between Two Seas,” a 900-pager I’ve been attempting to plow through.  We also went to Al Goldis rambling about his experiences in baseball.  Not really my cup of tea but it insured a good seat for Uncle Marty’s lecture, which is so popular, the guests are hanging from the rafters.  Dinner was great.  We enjoyed Chilean Sea Bass and a great conversation with our table-mates.  They have such great stories to share.  Was also touched that they were worried about us when we didn’t show up after the Costa Rican excursion.  They knew I had a tough time getting around but I did surprise everybody---including myself.

 

April 26, 2013

This is the day we have been waiting for.  The tugboats approached around 5:45AM.  We were supposed to enter the first lock at 8:00AM but we got an early start.  We sailed past so many ships waiting in the Bay of Panama.  We were given priority because we pay a steep toll—something like $340,000.   The first set of locks are called the Miraflores.  Each step is a rise of about 27 feet.  Each lock is 1000 ft. long or the equivalent of three Statues of Liberty set end to end.  It was really interesting to look out our stateroom window when the lock was filling with water.  You could really see the progress against the cement wall---three feet a minute.  We were eating breakfast at the buffet at a table between two floor portholes---a really good way to perceive the scant two-foot clearance we had on either side of the ship.  We did see them painting the side of the ship after the crossing so we did scrape the side from time to time.  Also we got a good view of the work being done on the new expansion locks---my topic for the next column.  Panama is investing billions in order to accommodate the post-Panamacs that are too big to fit in the present locks.  The new locks will be 427 meters long and 55 meters wide—the size of four football fields.  Unlike the present locks, however, the new locks will boast water-saving basins, a lateral filling and emptying system and rolling gates.  Experts are sure that the expanded route will modify trade patterns and great expand globalization.  Panama hopes to become the transportation hub of the world.  The Maersk Else that is presently being built will, however, be too big.  The expansion locks are set to be completed by the 100 anniversary of the Panama Canal or in Fall, 201t5. They don’t look like they will be ready right now.  We recognized lots of birds we had seen on the Costa Rica excursion.  They were being attracted by the churning water and the promise of fish.  What is so compelling about the engineering of the Canal is the elegant simplicity of the design.  The flow of water is based on gravity and the gates were designed to close into a “V” in order to resist collapsing from the pressure.  There were three in all sets of locks before we sailed through Miraflores Lake.  There are actually three lakes in Panama—one is a storage facility up in the mountains and the other was created when the Chagres River was dammed---the biggest artificial lake at the time.  Right before the Culebra Cut (formerly known as the challenging Gaillard Cut and the site of so many landslides that more fill went in and then was dug out) is the Pedro Miguel locks.  Gatun Lake was really beautiful.  The dam created a series of beautiful little rainforest islands that are home to waterfowl, crocodiles, iguanas, and tree sloths.  Soon we were going through the Gaton locks (70 minutes early) and out into the Caribbean.  More than 14,000 vessels transit every year.  It was an amazing experience and we even received certificates suitable for framing that attested to our experience and signed by the captain.  The entire time, Uncle Marty narrated from the bridge and those who didn’t want to stay out in the sun could enjoy a view from the bridge on our stateroom TVs.  It was, I believe, the same picture our friends and relatives could see at www.pancanal.com but Naomi later messaged me that she kept getting kicked off when she selected English.  We did purchase a DVD about the canal we can send her.  Also during the crossing, we sailed under the Millennial Bridge and the Bridge of the Americas.  I was in the swimming pool for the former.  Thought I could finally get my laps in with the hoards elsewhere but a crowd of rude French people didn’t cooperate.  After they left, however, I did follow my regimen and felt better for it. 

Jon and I also visited the therapy (Velasoraptor) pool which no only did nothing for my arthritis but the roller bars seriously hurt my sciatic nerve.  Bad idea.  Lunch at the small portion and healthy buffet, however, was a good idea.  Greek salad and a portabello open faced sandwich for me.  Jon tried the apricot soup and rhubarb dessert.  While he was running around the ship trying to find the best view, I went back to the room to do some drawing.  I did a reasonably executed portrait of Ferdinand d Lessups---the hero and villain in the French attempt at the Panama Canal.

Dinner was a Moroccan lamb shank with couscous, raisins and apricots.  A little dry and not much of a sauce was the consensus.  First disappointing meal.  We talked about a whole range of subjects once again.  Linda and Derri are going to Colon tomorrow to see the locks.  They hadn’t realized what a show Uncle Marty was going to put on.  Hope they get some time to shop—that is their real interest now that the trip is nearly over.  We are just going to hang out at the pool tomorrow and maybe catch the “Trouble with the Curve” movie.

 

April 27, 2013

Port of Colon, named for Christopher Columbus.  We didn’t have an excursion planned as we decided against the yellow fever shots.  Apparently if you are over 60, you have a greater chance of actually contracting yellow fever from the shot itself.  You have to get permission, in fact, from the CDC.  We had read that there really wasn’t much there to see in Colon anyway.  The shopping, according to a woman from Rhode Island I met in the pool, was shitty.  We had a nice breakfast for two at the main dining room.  It wasn’t very crowded and the waiters were super attentive.  We lingered until they threw us out, nicely, of course.  Then we changed and headed for the pool.  Had the lap pool all to myself most of the time so I got in a super workout for a change.  The water was refreshing instead of 80 degrees.  Jon and I always try to forgo lunch but a waft from the hamburgers grilling did us in.  We made the concession of splitting a cheeseburger with bacon, onions and mushrooms.  Then we went back to the room to shower and dress for the film.  The theater, even though it takes up two decks, is always crowded and I like to get a seat near the top so I don’t have to try to navigate all the stairs.  We got there early enough I had time to work on my “drawing for the day” of a couple of barrels.

I must be improving because I got to where I wanted to be with only one false start.  The brick wall behind the barrels was giving me problems, however.  My version looked like the masons had been pretty drunk.  The film was an entertaining romantic comedy.  All the bad guys got their comeuppance and all the good guys were blessed with more options in their lives---not the least of which was telling the boss to go to hell---than they had ever had.  Clint Eastwood did a great job and now I know why Justin Timberlake is such a star.  The baseball backdrop may have been incidental but I really learned a great deal from the film, which is always a plus for me.  Jon said it was pretty accurate as well.  In fact he missed a couple of the baseball trivia questions the girl asks the boy and vice versa.  After the film we went to see the ice sculpture demo.  Since the film ran late, the ice melted before we got there.  We decided to visit the Rendezvous Room to find out the special drink of the day.  It was a Greyhound—vodka and grapefruit juice.  Very refreshing.  I finished my drawing while a big group assembled there played musical trivia.  Dinner was French Onion Soup, Artichoke Dip with pita, Coq au vin and apple pie ala mode for dessert.  Jon had a Tofu Tikka.  Why I don’t know.  He had a peach torte with pistachio ice cream for dessert.  We went back to the room for some X rated entertainment.  Best part of the cruise.

 

April 28, 2013

We still hadn’t docked at Cartagena when we woke up.  We were looking forward to the cruise of the harbor on a Spanish Galleon.  Had a nice breakfast at the buffet.  Mostly fruit and cereal but we also split a freshly baked pecan roll.  The couple at the other table was from Sydney.  When this other couple sat down next to them, they did the usual “Where are you from?”  When the lady said she was from Kansas but had been raised in Sydney, the guy said, “Why would you leave the greatest harbor in the world to be land-locked in the middle of a corn field?”  I loved her response.  She said, “Because I met the greatest man in the world.”  So refreshing compared to all these bickering couples in the public areas.  It seems to me, and maybe I’m doing a great deal of rationalizing here, but the folks with the most money, at least the ones who were wearing it, seemed to be the most miserable.  Cruises are great democratizers.  In the public spaces, it doesn’t matter what you paid for your room.  Even if you are in Aqua Class (they have suites with verandas and their own exclusive restaurant) you still have to rub elbows with folks who buy their resort wear at Target.  The just plain folks don’t have to worry about losing their sapphire bracelets or $2,000 designer sandals.  Actually it’s been perfectly safe to leave your stuff on your lounger while you swim.  There is, believe it or not, pool butlers who keep their eyes on everything.  I like the fact that there is a dress code on the ship because everybody makes an effort to look nice all the time. Yet as Jon likes to say in Latin, “de gustibus nom diputandum est”---there’s no accounting for taste. We almost went blind at breakfast this morning with a couple in neon green and neon orange shirts.  If they do fall off of the ship, they won’t be difficult to spot.  

It was a very hot day in Cartagena when we disembarked.  We were supposed to find our Spanish Galleon moored behind the tugboats—a good half a mile away.  I had just taken a magic pill so I was up for the walk.  Actually I was feeling pretty good—shocked and awed Jon as I climbed up and down ladders on the ship without assistance.  The cruise was only supposed to be inside the harbor but the guide gave us an extensive history lesson about the different places the occupants (first, monks and later, post revolution occupation forces) chose as a fortress.  Old town was quite lovely with the ancient cathedral and several other picturesque churches.  The Lady of the Harbor was a marble statue of Mary literally in the middle of the new harbor.  On board the galleon were four dancers as well as a flutist and two drummers.  They were quite lively, loved posing for pictures and changed outfits three times.  The dance they did was called Cumbia but they did all sorts of variations, some of which included great leaps in the air.  Halfway through, the captain served Aguila Beer. Most everybody thought it hit the spot along with Frito Lay products geared to a South American audience.  I chose Cheetos, which, here were big yellow puffs of a very mild cheese. 

After we got off the ship, we walked over to the shopping center.  The prices in the Duty Free shops were way too high but there was Wifi for $3 an hour, a coffee shop called the Juan Valdez Café and a wonderful collection of creatures including an iguana, dozens of pink flamingoes, ducks, Macaws, Toucans and Blue Parrots.  Jon bought me a cappuccino that was excellent.  I did figure out how to get on the Wifi and uploaded a few photos to Facebook before the system went down.  Jon somehow got the wrong time to be back on the ship so he hurried me back before I could send more photos.  He felt badly because I didn’t get my full hour and I really wanted to enjoy the grounds of the shopping center.  At any rate, we got into a little bus in time to stand in a long line to board the ship again.  One nice touch that Celebrity does is to welcome you back, hand you an icy cold towel for your face and neck as well as a cup of punch or water.  Cartagena was the last chance to shop so everybody was loaded down with bags of souvenirs.  A shower was a must after the long muggy day.  Some people even claimed they would be throwing away the clothes they had worn that day because of massive BO.  Not us, of course, we smelled like roses.

Dinner (Salmon and Lamb) was wonderful as usual.  I am really going to miss our little cocktail hour and watching the dancers.  This time, before the Sonny Rose (Jon can’t stand his singing) trio came on, there was another music trivia contest.  Every song was a Beatles hit. Jon and I would have cleaned up had we played for prizes.  We usually had the title after the first few notes. 

 

April 29, 2013

This was the last formal night and an at sea day.  We went to the special brunch in the
Trellis Restaurant.  There were the usual breakfast items, sushi, a carving station, waffle station, an omelet station, a pasta station and ice sculptures at either end.  It was very crowded even though the event was not well publicized---on purpose.  We sat a huge table with mostly Germans who weren’t very talkative. 
Jon brought me a very cheesy ham omelet but had to spend a long time in line.  He went back and got a pasta dish with tomatoes and olives that was dinner-sized.  I asked him if he might get me a Belgian waffle with strawberries and whipped cream.  He was gone forever but returned triumphantly with two little waffles—one with raspberries and the other with blueberries.  I couldn’t believe he couldn’t find the whipped cream---but then felt like an ingrate as I was expressing my frustration.  There was just no way with the ship rolling back and forth I could have managed a plate and my cane at the same time or I would have.  I just hate having to depend on the kindness of others.  The pool was really overcrowded so we returned to the stateroom to draw and read.  I fell asleep and napped for two hours.  The pain had been pretty bad that day so I was grateful to wake up and feel decent.  I finished a couple of pictures of the dancers from Cartagena after dinner.  This was the last formal so everybody gussied up.  The menu was quite impressive—Oysters Rockefeller, Blue Cheese Salad with Tomatoes and Onions, Caribbean Lobster Tail, and Baked Alaska.  My mother made Baked Alaska for my sixth birthday party.  I’d seen it on a television show called “I Remember Mama” so she figured out how to cover a brick of Neapolitan ice cream with merengue and actually dyed the bread for finger sandwiches.  She was such a great Mom.  I wish she could have met Jon.  She would have loved him and have been so happy for me.  We are delighted with our dinner-mates.  They are so well read and made every conversation interesting and thought-provoking.

 

 

 

April 30, 2013

Woke up to Cuba on the horizon and a beautiful cloudy day.  There were cumulous mixed with stratus and I spotted what looked like an airplane while I was waiting for Jon to return to the table at breakfast.  He loves the buffet but this morning I waited for 20 minutes for him to get an omelet for himself.  I wanted to get to the pool before all the regulars hogged up the loungers and the water so I left him to graze---he likes to try a little of the British, German and Asian breakfasts.  The rule at the big pool is that you are not supposed to come early and leave your stuff on a lounger to “save” it but people do it anyway.  Those of us who want to do laps or exercise have to navigate between the “talkers” who are standing around and drinking umbrella drinks.  There are three pools but only one is big enough for laps.  I was pleased  that the temperature was pretty cool this morning—around 68 so the drinkers headed for the hot tubs and the bar stools.  Every morning is Zumba techno music that helps keep us swimmers motivated as well.  There is this amazing glass sculpture at the front of the pool.  It’s safely ensconced behind thick glass---the perfect piece of art for the swimmers to focus on.  Today was filled with activities but I’ll be happy just to get some drawing and reading done.  I don’t even want to think about packing.  We have to have our bags outside our staterooms after dinner.  This time I took exactly the right number of resort wear outfits---especially for a sweaty tropical climate.  I probably could have worn the same formal each time but it was nice to have different outfits.  Brought a black cocktail dress, a glitzy gold top with palazzo pants, and an elaborately jet-beaded collar from Beijing that I wore over a black pantsuit. I also had a low cut long black sundress I was saving for tonight.  Never needed my second bathing suit as with the excursions and lectures, we only swam every other day.  Plenty of time for things to dry.  Jon washed out his underwear and I my pool cover-up in the sinks.  Was so glad we brought clothes-pins.  The shower had a nice little retractable line.  All in all, we prepared well. 

 

 

 

Jon found a watch at the Emporium sale that also came with a wallet (couldn’t be leather) and a pen.  He says it’s perfect for his piano tuning.  I picked up a DVD of the Panama Canal history and crossing.  Princess Cruises.  Figures.

After our pizza and salad lunch, Jon went to see the last installment by the baseball guy Al Goldis and by Uncle Marty on Noriega and Carter.  I stayed up at the buffet and drew a stairway I had seen in the Mona Lisa Restaurant in Cabo San Lucas.  Jon took one look at two hours of work and said, “What is it?”  I probably got the perspective wrong but when I showed it to Linda and Derri they recognized it immediately.  It was a spiral staircase but very open—there was no way I was going to try to climb it---but it threw some interesting shadows on the wall. Sigh.  Went back to room to work on my journal—get it ready to publish and pick out the photos.  Jon had to change clothes for the Alumni of U Mass group photo.  All three of them.  After dinner, we girl our loins and try to pack.  This will be a case of trying to fit 25 lbs of crap in a 10 lb. bag.  And we didn’t buy very many souvenirs either.  I am hoping that Jon has more space than he thinks. We figure we will get up at 6AM tomorrow in order to get in time for a shower and breakfast.  Our call is 8:40AM in the Celebrity Theatre.

 

May 1, 2013

Neither one of us slept well last night.  We were really nervous about getting off the boat. Lots of horror stories about long lines and huge waits.  It was even worse than I thought.  I really should have insisted on getting the handicapped line.  As it was, we waited over an hour to get through customs but the real clincher was at the airport.  Our taxi driver overshot our stop and said, “uh, oh.”  We had to walk uphill about three blocks with all our luggage.  Finally I just burst into tears and Jon walked over to comfort me.  Since I had a first class ticket, we breezed through the ticket counter and the security check.  We stopped at Chili’s for an early lunch and who walks in but Linda—our dinner mate.  Small world.  Jon offered to pick up her lunch but she declined.  She only ate a few bites of chicken out of her salad.  She did send a text to Derri saying, “we are here—where are you?”  There is a public wifi here at the airport as well as a stool and table setup that allows you to plug in and type on your laptop.  I should be able to get my journal posted while waiting three hours for our flight.

 

Summary:  On the whole, I thought this was a fabulous experience.  I heard from other passengers---especially those who cruise regularly---that the Celebrity Infinity has its shortcomings.  There seemed to be too few employees in the restaurants, bars, room service, housekeeping, pool and especially the maintenance crew.  As a consequence there were long waits for everything and not everything was clean or in tip-top shape.  As we were waiting to check out, for example, the paint crew came in, taped up just the tops of a couple of doors and proceeded to paint.  The problem was that that room needed more work than just the tops of the doors.  As to the high points, I thought the crew members, although they were required to put in 12-hr days, were friendly, helpful, accessible and really enjoyed what they were doing.  Also most of the people we met had great stories to share about their lives, travels, children, etc. 

 

I especially liked meeting people from other countries---particularly those who wanted to practice their English and didn’t mind our mistakes as we attempted to express ourselves in their’s.  The food was good, especially since I didn’t have to cook or serve it.  I loved having somebody make the bed and clean the bathroom every day.  I loved swimming or reading or drawing when we didn’t have an excursion planned.  Jon was particularly sweet about finding trips that were rated “mild” in terms of exertion.  My favorite excursion was in Costa Rica where we saw all of the wonderful birds.  I loved the lectures on the Panama Canal even though Uncle Marty put me to sleep.  I even enjoyed Al Landis and his baseball stories.  I wish that www.pancanal.com had allowed Max to see his grandma and grandpa going through the canal but maybe he can get the idea from the DVD. I will be glad to be back home with Chloe and Elliott.  I really hope Mike Adams likes my drawings and can maybe offer suggestions for improvement.  I really tried to challenge myself in the choice of subject department.  All in all, I would recommend that everybody make this trip---especially if the Panama Canal is on your bucket list.  Adios and pura vida.

 

MANAGING THE IMPRESSION OTHERS HAVE ABOUT YOU

Published in the April 10, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

This column is the second of two parts. — Editor

Folks have been using the media for impression management ever since print was the only game in town. Even would-be authors knew about image.

Remember when members of the gentler sex adopted pseudonyms or settled for unisex initials to hoodwink sexist publishing houses into supposing they were men?

As many as a million radio listeners were duped into believing America was being invaded by Martians when Orson Welles interrupted dance music with mock radio news announcements.

His 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio play seemed so authentic that listeners were actually injured during the ensuing panic.

The Television Age also saw image manipulation on a grand scale — and not just by savvy politicians. In 1968, Andy Warhol famously said, “In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.”

Arguably, Warhol was echoing the “medium is the message” theory of Marshall McLuhan. The communication theorist held that of all the existing media, only television possessed the ability to thrust the ordinary citizen (as opposed to the overachiever) center stage. Fame, however, was ephemeral — evaporating as quickly as it had appeared when somebody else took a turn.

Prompted by the rise of online social networking, blogging, podcasting and uploading to video-sharing sites, David Weinberger rewrote Warhol. His “Cluetrain Manifesto” version read, “In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people.”

But is 15 enough? Probably not — if you are going to all the trouble of managing your online image. And most of us are.

A study conducted by Pew’s Mary Madden and Aaron Smith reported that 57 percent of adult Internet users have employed a search engine like Google to discover what information is available about them on the World Wide Web.

Seventy-one percent of those under 30 report adjusting their privacy settings to limit information shared online. That’s so grandma and future employers aren’t privy to what went on in Vegas. Ever.

Still, whether young or old, there is always the danger of a message intended for friends to inadvertently go viral. In 2011, Alexandra Wallace found that out the hard way when she uploaded a three-minute diatribe against Asian student cellphone usage in the school library.

While the university decided not to discipline the political science major and part-time bikini model, Wallace informed the Daily Bruin that her reasons for leaving UCLA, where 37 percent of the student body is Asian, included “the harassment of my family, the publishing of my personal information, death threats and being ostracized from an entire community.”

While Wallace only intended “to produce a humorous YouTube video,” the clip was eventually shared with millions via social media sites and email.

Question: Since popularity is the goal on Facebook and Twitter, exactly how do you maximize your fan base? Answer: Think positive.

According to Jonah Berger, author of “Contagious: Why Things Catch On,” good news usually spreads faster and farther than bad. “The ‘if it bleeds, (it leads)’ rule works for mass media that just want you to tune in,” wrote the social psychologist from the University of Pennsylvania. “They (just) want your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling. But when you share a story with your friends and peers, you care a lot more how they react. You don’t want them to think of you as Debbie Downer.”

Berger and behavioral economist Katherine Milkman devised a unique experiment to test his theory. They analyzed the content of articles making The New York Times “most emailed” list.

What they discovered was that the more emotional the stories, the more likely they would be shared. In terms of specific content, while readers seemed to be aroused by both positive (awe-inspiring, exciting or funny) and negative (anger- or anxiety-inducing) stories, they definitely preferred positive.

Brain areas associated with social cognition tend to light up the most, according to Emily Falk at the University of Michigan. She’s a neuroscientist attempting to determine the type of thoughts that gather the most buzz.

“You’d expect people to be most enthusiastic and opinionated and successful in spreading ideas that they themselves are excited about,” writes Dr. Falk. “But our research suggests that’s not the whole story. Thinking about what appeals to others may be even more important.”

But there is a dark side to impression management as well — envy.

According to a study titled “Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking,” the more time you spend on Facebook, the more you will perceive life as unfair — since everybody else seems to be enjoying the perfect vacation, perfect family, perfect life.

This quote by author Jon Foreman recently appeared on Facebook: “Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools.”

Think about the Print Age again. Nothing much has changed, has it?

GETTING AN IMAGE OF AMERICAN POLITICAL FIGURES

Published on Wednesday, March 27, 2013

This column is the first of two parts. — Editor

When asked which news source was most influential, John F. Kennedy didn’t hesitate.

He was a Time magazine man — even before becoming its “Man of the Year” for 1961. Yet, given his wow factor during the 1960 debates, he might have mentioned TV Guide as well.

Richard Nixon, on the other hand, failed to grasp television as key to what PR types call “impression management.” He considered the first televised debates just another campaign event, while Kennedy was careful to exploit the prime-time coverage to his advantage.

Nixon, already wan from a painful knee injury and staph infection, applied a stark white Shave Stick instead of makeup to cover his five o’clock shadow. He chose a suit that blended into the background. Moreover, he hadn’t made the effort to manage his chronically sweaty upper lip.

JFK, however, had gotten a good night’s sleep. Not only did he spend his prep week aboard his yacht — bronzing his face into a healthy-looking glow — but, to keep from boring the audience as just another talking head, revved up his already energetic delivery to warp speed.

It was the perfect time for UCLA’s Paul Rosenthal to study credibility. By 1960, advertisers were abandoning the formerly dominant medium of radio for the boob tube. While the unseen Nixon won three out of the four debates with radio listeners, the vibrant Kennedy achieved an equal record on the tube. However, it was TV viewers who would elect the next president.

Rosenthal predicted that television would significantly alter politics — and not for the better. Not only would voters subsequently cast ballots on the basis of image rather than issues, but only candidates with millions to spend on political spots would come out ahead during the Television Age. No longer would the best man win. It was the man who looked best on the small screen.

Despite a ringing endorsement from JFK, such newsweeklies as Time and Newsweek couldn’t compete — circulation-wise — with a paperback-sized periodical called TV Guide.

Launched as a national publication in April 1953, TV Guide cost a paltry 15 cents, was readily available at the grocery store checkout lane and featured television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip, film reviews and a most popular crossword.

Apparently, during the ’50s, the public was less interested in global news (Korea) than in the celebrities appearing weekly in their living rooms. TV Guide’s first issue featured Lucille Ball’s newborn son, Desi Arnaz, Jr., on the cover.

In fact, her “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” episode beat out all prior broadcast viewing records. On Jan. 19, 1953, between 68 and 75 percent of American families were glued to CBS.

In 1973, a very media-savvy attorney found himself facing off, David-style, against the Nixon administration. His testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Watergate was going to be contradicted by at least four heavyweight Goliaths — H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman, John N. Mitchell and Richard Nixon. If anybody needed to do some heavy-duty impression management, it was John Dean.

Dean did leak his testimony to Newsweek and JFK’s favorite, Time, weeks before his appearance at the hearings. While his tactic didn’t directly shape public opinion, it did cause those who regularly devoured newsweeklies or even newspapers inspired by the newsweeklies, to find his words even more credible. Why? They were being exposed to his testimony for the second time.

Unlike his boss Nixon, Dean realized he had to please the television camera. The Watergate Hearings were broadcast live on commercial channels during the day and replayed on PBS at night. While a few fans whined about missing their soap operas, 85 percent of U.S. households were entranced by the real-life melodrama.

Instead of being flanked by his attorneys, Dean insisted on sitting alone. He intended to ratchet up his credibility as the lone voice speaking truth to power. He exchanged his contact lenses for more sober looking horn-rimmed glasses.

He insisted his wife Maureen be stationed where the occasional camera pan would telegraph to the world — this beautiful woman was standing by her man. Dean so obsessively attended to impression management details that when Maureen decided to don a stylish turban, he removed it, admonishing “that just won’t play with Middle America.”

Now with the Internet dominating the media, I wonder if Kennedy or Dean would employ social networking to enhance their respective images.

If even Pope Benedict felt compelled to tweet, would JFK, like President Obama, maintain a Facebook page? It wouldn’t be all that difficult. JFK could consult Bartlett’s and post his own quotations as memes.

How about “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present, are certain to miss the future.” Great advice — even without the cuddly kitten, right?

IS TELECOMMUTING EDICT RIGHT OR WRONG? DEPENDS

Published in the March 13, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

Many Southern California wage earners got a taste of telecommuting in 1994, after a 6.6-magnitude earthquake dropped the Golden State and Santa Monica freeways like so many Tinker Toys.

Even after repairs were completed a year later, commuters were loathe to give up such an attractive alternative to punishing prices at the pump or wasting the annual equivalent of 15 to 25 workdays just getting to work. According to the Independent Telework Research Network, the number of telecommuters surged a staggering 73 percent from 2005 to 2011.

Yet, if you number among the 24 percent of employed Americans who work from home at least once a week (Bureau of Labor Statistics), you’re probably not too happy with a recent move by the newly minted CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, to outlaw telecommuting for her 11,000 employees.

Even Bill Gates has weighed in on her controversial decision, despite a valued partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo. With a broad smile on his face, Gates told the CNN Money interviewer that Mayer’s thinking on telecommuting seems to be running counter to the trend toward more, rather than less, flexibility.

“If you’ve got development centers all over the world,” he said, “you’ve got a sales force out with the customers, the fact that tools like Skype, digital collaboration are letting people work better at a distance, that is a wonderful thing.”

You would think that Mayer — not only ushered into the executive suite at 37, but also while pregnant with her first child — would try to make the Yahoo corner of the business world much more welcoming to working parents.

“The irony is that (Mayer) has broken the glass ceiling,” Ruth Rosen, pioneering historian of gender and society, told The New York Times, “but seems unwilling for other women to lead a balanced life in which they care for their families and still concentrate on developing their skills and career.”

To give Mayer credit, Yahoo was badly in need of a real live grown-up with a genuine business plan, when Mayer came on board July 16. The former highflying startup, whose stock prices may have skyrocketed during the dot-com bubble, failed, in recent years, to get before such obvious cyber-trends as mobile apps and social media.

Mayer found nearly empty parking lots and cubicles. Employees who did show up spent as little time as possible at the Sunnyvale campus. Furthermore, of the 200 Yahoo employees with full-time work-at-home contracts, not only were too many of them significantly unproductive, but a few had even carved out enough spare time to launch startups of their own.

To telecommute, or not to telecommute? That is the question. The correct answer, of course, to any “either/or question” is invariably “it depends.” It depends on what each individual business or corporation needs to succeed.

Many an employer has been persuaded to offer telecommuting as the result of studies claiming rises in employee productivity. To what degree it occurs, however, depends, of course, on such widely diverse work factors as hours, efficiency and intensity.

In his landmark “Making Telecommuting Happen: A Guide for Telemanagers and Telecommuters,” Jack Nilles, the management consultant who coined the word “telecommuting,” wrote that productivity increased on the average of 22 percent. On the other hand, in his article in JR Magazine, J.M. Weiss reported a 200 percent increase in output in the telecommunications industry.

But even the strongest proponents of telecommuting draw a distinction between productivity and innovation. While working at home may lead to increased productivity, no such case can be made for increased innovation.

To that end, Jackie Reses, director of human resources at Yahoo, noted in the companywide memo following Mayer’s decision: “Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

So how will Mayer square Yahoo’s policy with the multitude of surveys insisting that 80 to 86 percent of American employees want the opportunity to work from home?

Especially when the Telework Research Network points out: “if those employees who held telework-compatible jobs (50 percent of the workforce) and wanted to work at home (79 percent of the workforce) (and) did so just half of the time (roughly the national average), the economic benefit would total over $700 billion a year.”

Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici posed this question to Mayer: “Is treating your workers like they’re 5-year-olds really the best way to foster a culture of personal incentive and accountability at an organization where it’s been sadly lacking?”

Hopefully, it won’t take another earthquake for Mayer to change her mind.

DOGGY SMARTS AND EXPLORING THE HUMAN BRAIN

Published in the Wednesday, February 27, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

Chloe is back to her old self again — cocking her head as if trying to comprehend our tears. The 6-pound Yorkie was recently attacked by an unmuzzled previous offender, who, in an attempt to go for her throat, pierced her tiny chest with his two-inch incisor.

We became so crazy about this canine we decided we just had to share her with others. To that end, she became a certified therapy dog last autumn, and has been seducing convalescent home patients into spilling their woes every Monday.

We always considered Chloe a genius. At only seven weeks, she was housebroken and seemed to comprehend that when she climbs into my “purse,” she is in “stealth mode.” As a result, she’s been able to accompany us — anywhere and everywhere — without being detected.

Brian Hare, who founded the Canine Cognition Center at Duke University, has, with co-author Vanessa Woods, written the fascinating “Genius of Dogs: How Dogs are Smarter than You Think.” Their premise? Not only do dogs possess social intelligence exceeding their wolf ancestors but, in many ways, they’re more like us than any other closely related primate.

Explaining the genius of dogs is really quite simple. They use the most powerful tool on the planet to solve their problems — human beings. Just think about your pup, leash in mouth, asking to go for a walk, or requesting your help when her ball rolls under the grandfather clock, or any other “Timmy’s-in-the-well” moment of your choice.

Hare and Woods also discovered that dogs learn vocabulary much like a toddler, by employing an inferential strategy called the principle of exclusion (not all balls are red). Stanley Coren, a noted scholar researching dog intelligence, suggests that trained dogs, on average, recognize about 160 words.

Canines, like human youngsters, also implement the principle of iconicity. Since dogs can’t say the name of the object when shown a two-dimensional picture, they respond by fetching the object. We actually have to spell such words as “vet” around Chloe, or she takes out her rubber toy shaped like a doctor and tries to shake it to death.

The brain remains one of the greatest scientific mysteries. In fact, for decades, it has been referred to as “the black box.” And, as with the study of dog intelligence, scientists were limited to making educated guesses by observing behavior or by performing autopsies on the brain.

Yet, the brain of a corpse — just like the plastic see-through model of the human body inhabiting your old high school biology lab — doesn’t demonstrate the active thought process.

And while brain autopsies told us, for example, what Alzheimer’s disease looked like — before tests requiring brain imaging were developed — no diagnosis was possible until after death.

While some living patients still subject themselves to the probe, which, at its most heinous, was used by Dr. Walter Freeman and others to perform the infamous ice pick lobotomy. The goal, ethics wise, was to invent a strictly noninvasive technology.

Brain imaging subsequently led to great leaps in the field of neuroscience, but remains too limited to see the big picture when it comes to observing more than a few of the human brain’s 100 billion neurons.

Last June, in the journal Neuron, a group of nanotechnologists and neuroscientists proposed reconstructing a full record of neural activity across complete neural circuits.

Their project was christened “The Brain Activity Map” and in his State of the Union address, President Obama cited this area of brain research as a prime example of government investment in the best ideas.

“Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy — every dollar,” Obama said. “Today our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimers. They’re developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs, devising new materials to make batteries 10 times more powerful. Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation.”

The mapping project, which the Obama administration plans to unwrap next month in his budget proposal, is estimated at $3 billion over the next 10 years.

While Chloe mastered all the usual dog tricks, the only thing she still won’t do, at least consistently, is to come on command.

Whenever she hears the groan of the refrigerator door, where we keep her favorite delicacy — liverwurst — Chloe is “Yorkie-on-the-spot.” So why doesn’t she show up when her name is called?

Our theory is that Chloe is simply too smart. She figured out that every time she hears the words, “Come, Chloe,” a bath or comb-out or tooth brushing — something nasty — looms in her immediate future.

It’s not difficult to imagine our house when it’s wound-cleaning time.

Does anybody know a therapy dog that visits therapy dogs?

UNEVEN PLAYING FIELD DOESN'T ALTER GENDER OUTCOME

Published in the Wedsday, February 13, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

The Super Bowl was seen by 48 percent of American households. If yours was one of them, you might have caught the “NFL Evolution” commercial.

Its 30-second message insisted that the National Football League keeps laboring to make football safer — via helmets, face masks, rules, referees and penalties. The commercial (which is no longer available online) featured three players (Mel Gray, Rick Upchurch and the late Ollie Matson) involved in pending concussion lawsuits against the league. They are among the 4,000 players named in various injury lawsuits.

In 2000, Christina Hoff Sommers, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime critic of feminism, published a book titled “The War Against Boys.” According to her publisher’s blurb, “It’s a bad time to be a boy in America. As the century drew to a close, the defining event for American girls was the triumph of the U.S. women’s soccer team. For boys, the symbolic event was the mass killing at Columbine High School. It would seem that boys in our society are greatly at risk.”

While a few writers (Leonard Sax with “Boys Adrift,” Liza Mundy with “The Richer Sex,” Hanna Rosin with “The End of Men”) also clambered aboard the bandwagon, Sommers’ thesis — that education inherently shortchanges males — isn’t widely regarded as persuasive.

In a recent New York Times editorial, Sommers tried to buttress her case with a study authored by Christopher M. Cornwell of the University of Georgia, his colleague David B. Mustard and Jessica Van Parys of Columbia University.

“Boys score as well as or better than girls on most standardized tests,” writes Sommers, “yet they are far less likely to get good grades, take advanced classes or attend college” because “teachers of classes as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades — and girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better than boys.”

The study’s scholars attributed this “misalignment” to differences in such “noncognitive skills” as attentiveness, persistence, eagerness to learn, the ability to sit still and work independently — proficiencies, according to most researchers, achieved by little girls far sooner than by little boys.

In “The War Against Boys,” Sommers argues against the feminist contention that violence perpetrated by boys is a product of masculine ideals or societal expectations. Sommers, on the other hand, believes violence is inherent in their nature.

Yet, Sommers’ corollary claim — that girls are hard-wired to behave — is not supported by research. Evidence, instead, reveals that girls are socialized (nurture over nature) to sit still, pay attention, be teachable, finish a task and work independently — ever since the ’70s, when parents began to value their daughters’ potential on a par with their sons’.

The question Sommers fails to ask is “why such socialization?” The answer? So females can better compete against males in the job market.

Furthermore, even though women successfully complete postsecondary education programs at a higher rate than men, inequity, especially with respect to actual income and higher-paying job opportunities, still remains. There’s an attitudinal barrier in the workplace that refuses to depart.

Perhaps, it’s the same entrenched bias that denies women a desk in the Oval Office.

The Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963 to eliminate income disparities due to discrimination. Yet, 50 years later, women’s dollar earnings persist at 77.4 percent of men’s, while the representation of women on Fortune 500 boards has stalled at 16 percent.

So exactly what do we, as a society, expect from our little girls? Are you terrified as I am that Beyonce’s performance during the Super Bowl half-time show might well represent feminine ideals or societal expectations? How many preteens, right now, are practicing every suggestive move she made?

On the other hand, exactly what do we, as a society, expect from little boys? Perhaps my mind is still on the Super Bowl, but I think we envisage athletes, and seem less concerned if they are actually educated.

Just think about all the money, hours and heartache spent on young men’s sports — from diminutive 4-year-olds more absorbed with watching a butterfly than a soccer ball, to high school football players being pressured by folks with a “Friday Night Lights” level of obsession.

While a record-setting number of female athletes do graduate from college, they face such facts as 97 percent of men’s teams are still coached by men (a statistic that hasn’t budged since Title IX landmark legislation) and only 1 in 5 female teams is coached by a woman.

If you believe that better “grades,” which, according to Sommers, “open — or close — doors to higher education,” are denied little boys because of their boorish classroom behavior, what’s the actual harm? An open door to higher education has proved no playing-field leveler for females, especially when it comes to money or position.

Nor will helmets et al protect athletes — as long as blood sports keep demanding blood.

 

OBAMA SEEKS TO MAKE HIS MARK AS THE CLOCK TICKS

Published in the Wednesday January 30, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

It seems like everybody and his brother was watching the championship football games Sunday, Jan. 20. Indeed, 47.7 million viewers and 42 million viewers, respectively, were glued to their big screens.

Yet, an event of even greater import took place that same day — with only C-Span cameras in attendance.

The president, Michelle, Malia, Sasha and Chief Justice John Roberts, who managed, this time, to feed President Barack Obama the 35-word oath without a single stumble or slipup, assembled in the Blue Room, as dazzling sunlight streamed through the multipaned windows.

Since the 20th Amendment mandates a deadline of noon on Jan. 20, it was the only presidential oath of office that actually counted.

At the very first inauguration, the Bible on which George Washington placed his left hand, as he swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, was hastily borrowed from St. John’s Masonic Lodge No. 1. Warren G. Harding, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush would later swear on that same volume of Scripture.

At Obama’s second inauguration, however, he chose not one, but two different editions of sacred writ. One was the so-called “traveling Bible” of Martin Luther King, Jr., while the other Bible had been employed at Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration.

Hopefully, Lincoln’s reply to a critic incensed with the 16th president for including major political rivals — William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Simon Cameron and Edward Bates — in his Cabinet, will not be lost on Obama. “Am I not destroying my enemies,” gently asked Lincoln, “when I make friends of them?”

John Adams inadvertently included a job description for subsequent presidents in a letter to wife Abigail. “May none but honest and wise men,” he wrote on Nov. 1, 1800, “ever rule under this roof.” A century later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would have Adams’ words carved into the State Dining Room fireplace.

At the beginning of his first term, when President Obama summoned a number of historians to the Oval Office, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David McCullough told Obama, that in addition to (Adams’) honesty and wisdom, great presidents must also possess courage, integrity, patience and determination.

A Feb. 5, 2011 Gallup poll, asking, “Who do you regard as the greatest United States president?” spelled out the winners. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were rated favorably by at least 80 percent of the respondents.

Yet, to presidential leadership scholar Thomas Cronin, America’s wish list for a leader of the free world appears unrealistic.

“It seems,” he told CBS Sunday Morning, “like an amalgam of wanting Mother Teresa, Mandela, Rambo, the Terminator and Spider-Man all wrapped into one. It's a pretty outlandish job description.”

And our unrealistic expectations may well be what keeps those who dish out nasty negative campaigns in business.

In addition, even though the electorate bestowed another four years on Obama, the deadline to define his legacy will arrive far sooner.

Presidential scholars predict only a stingy 12 to 18 months before Obama’s effectiveness begins to lag. Then, as the media assign him official lame-duck status, he will forfeit the spotlight to those who would jostle and jockey to succeed him.

Whether Obama realizes it or not, the biggest obstacle to achieving his legacy is the GOP. Not only were two former presidents named Bush conspicuously absent at his public inauguration, but Mitt Romney also dispatched his regrets.

Furthermore, Charles Spies, who organized a Las Vegas excursion for nearly 100 Republicans over inauguration weekend, told The New York Times, “almost everybody (Republican) I’ve talked to has said they’re getting out of town.”

In “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power,” John Meacham observed that our third president faced politics as dirty and polarized as any seen by Obama, yet, he was extremely effective in pursuit of his vision for America. His top-secret weapon? Jefferson gathered his enemies around his own dining room table and fed them from his own garden.

Like Lincoln, Jefferson believed it far more difficult for adversaries to turn him down — especially under the Capitol dome — once they had broken bread with him. To that end, small dinner parties with members of Congress were held at the White House — every single night.

Further, Jefferson refused to allow his guests to feel abandoned in some overcrowded State Dining Room. Not only would he treat each of them to intimate face-time with the nation’s chief executive, but he would also allow them to bask in the afterglow of an uber-prestige-enhancing occasion.

I suspect GOP lawmakers might also consider a cozy culinary experience with the president on a par with scoring 50-yard-line seats to the Super Bowl, especially if the first lady agrees to leave broccoli off the menu.

Christmas Letter 2012

Dear Friends and Family                                                                                Christmas 2012

 

Sleepless in South Pasadena is an apt description of Trevor and Angie these days.  Elliott Royal St. Louis arrived on November 29^th at 5:30 PM.  Vital statistics:  7 lb., 12 oz., and 20 inches.  His Nana (Beverly, who would hold him 24/7 if she could), marvels at his calm demeanor and self-assurance.  At one week, he was grasping his own bottle.  The proud-as-punch grandparents expect even more astonishing feats in the months to come.

 

Jon and Beverly decided to leverage her university-funded conference paper on “Dr. Strangelove” in Boston into a three-week escape that included flying across the pond to London and riding the Eurostar (under the Chunnel) to Paris.  Beverly’s Reelpolitik Ideologies in American Film also made its debut at the conference.  For all the travel gruesome details see: http://beverlykelley.typepad.com/ my_weblog/bostonlondonparis/

 

Beverly, who should be on the fast track to sainthood (despite being Lutheran), surprised Jon with a 100^th Anniversary tour of Fenway Park that sorely tested her arthritic knees.  As they strolled up the street to start the tour, a broadcast journalist from the Fox affiliate, Channel 25, requested an on-camera interview.  Apparently, their striking Red Sox Nation attire attracted his attention.  The “question of the day” concerned Fenway’s steep ticket prices.  Jon, of course came up with a killer quote that made the broadcast:  “The Red Sox are a bargain at any price.”  The interviewer looked visibly impressed when Jon said he was a politician, yet he was polite enough not to ask, “Where the hell is Port Hueneme?”

 

Beverly wrangled a sabbatical as her last semester at CLU with the intention of penning a marketable who-dun-it.  She was beginning to despair of ever finding a publisher for The Oldest Cold Case in Port Cabrillo:  A Hunter Triplets Mystery, and may still not be triumphant, but Five Star mysteries has recently requested a complete manuscript---so hold a good thought.  She is already planning the second book in the series in which the murder victim will have ties to the Manson Family and Spahn Ranch in Simi Valley.

 

This summer Jon and Beverly drove cross-country with the objective of spending July 4^th with Nathan, Naomi and Maxwell, who reside near the nation’s capital.  Brendan also flew in from Fort Worth to join them for a week of sightseeing and spoiling at Nathan’s Inn and Naomi’s Gourmet Restaurant.  Jon and Beverly also visited Jon’s cousin Sandy and her husband Mike in Ashville, where they sat out on their deck sipping Sambuca, enjoying the rain as it drummed a relaxing pitter-patter on the umbrella, and photographing raccoons who like to drop by.  If you want more travel trivia see: http://beverlykelley.typepad.com/my_weblog/dc-by-way-of -the-entire-country/

 

At the top of her retirement projects list, (Beverly was granted emerita status after 35 years) was getting Chloe certified as a therapy dog.  She traveled to Carpentaria for testing, and despite a heart-stopping moment when she encountered a poodle with a little too much attitude, she was granted her I.D. card.  Chloe now spends Monday mornings at Glenwood Care Center in Oxnard.  Beverly is amazed at the way the little Yorkie has been able to figure out what each person needs from her---whether it be a vigorous face-washing or just sitting quietly in somebody’s lap and breathing.

 

Wishing you the happiest of holidays and the most blessed of new years.

 

Jonathan, Beverly, Nathan, Naomi, Max, Trevor, Angie, Elliott, Brendan & Chloe

ONE WOMAN'S BELIEFS SHOWED THAT GRAY MATTERS

Published in the Wednesday, January 16, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

"A chicken coop; the unlikely birthplace of a fundamental idea. It's where Ethel Percy Andrus found a retired teacher living because she could afford nothing else. Ethel couldn't ignore the clear need for health and financial security … and it inspired her to found AARP. For over 50 years we've continued that work."

While you may remember the television ad, you probably never realized that Andrus resided in Ventura County.

"As it is," Andrus liked to observe, "when you leave a job, they often just give you a gold watch, and all you can do is look at it and count the hours until you die." That had to change.

Yet, all Andrus had were her beliefs. Fortunately, they were enough.

Belief No. 1: Age is only a number. Andrus would create the National Retired Teachers Association when she was already 63. Seven years later, she would relocate to Ojai and establish Grey Gables, which would serve both as a model active retirement community and the headquarters of the NRTA.

Finally, at the tender age of 74, she would inaugurate the American Association of Retired Persons.

The birthplace of AARP, according to Jack Fay (Andrus' attorney) was the Ojai Valley Inn. During the previous decade, not only were those over 65 years old considered uninsurable by the 40 insurance companies initially contacted by Andrus, but, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, 75 percent were forced to live with relatives, and 55 percent subsisted below the poverty line.

AARP actually originated as a mechanism by which the NRTA could sell health insurance.

Belief No. 2: The greatest rewards in life come from serving others. During the time Andrus taught in Chicago (1903-10), she volunteered at Hull House, which provided educational, medical and counseling services.

Founder Jane Addams, the first woman awarded the Nobel Prize, insisted that her social workers reside in the community to learn the needs, firsthand. Andrus' Hull House experience would provide invaluable when she got the nod, in 1917, as the first female high school principal in the Golden State.

Andrus was at Santa Paula High School when she was invited to become an administrator at East Los Angeles High School. The 2,000-student school became infamous for class clashes between rich kids and poor immigrants from China, Japan, Italy and Mexico; for behavior problems then called "juvenile delinquency" and for the staggering number of dropouts.

Andrus' first task was to defuse tensions. She believed the solution was in a shared sense of purpose: "We must keep our many nationalities conscious and proud of their racial and national background" while sharing individual "contributions made to the American dream."

To that end, she asked her students to stand daily and recite: "I hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal. God hath made of one blood all races of men, and we are his children, brothers and sisters all."

Realizing that one size doesn't fit all when it comes to education, she eliminated Latin and Greek to add vocational courses, she collaborated with the Los Angeles County Community Hospital to train nurses, she encouraged civic associations to sponsor education awards and she brought back outstanding alums as coaches and teachers.

Belief No. 3: The transformative power of words. Andrus, known for her fiery scarlet hair and ramrod-straight posture, was instrumental in renaming her campus Abraham Lincoln High School. In addition, her students couldn't help but see the word "Opportunity" — writ large in wrought iron — as they entered the school building.

As actor Robert Preston told the Los Angeles Times, "The big iron scroll at Abraham Lincoln High School through which we passed said 'Opportunity.' Isn't it amazing that we didn't know until we walked out: Opportunity had red hair!"

Belief No. 4: The muscle in numbers. By the time she died in 1967, AARP had grown to 1.2 million. Today, the organization boasts 40 million and has accumulated enough clout to make congressional campaign managers sit up and take notice. One in five voters belong to AARP.

During the years Andrus led AARP, she pushed for the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, for tax laws benefiting seniors, and for cost-of-living increases in pensions as well as lobbying to outlaw mandatory retirement, to improve Social Security and to end discrimination against the elderly.

Not only did she pioneer a mail-order discount prescription drug service but, believing that retirees should be involved instead of isolated, she also negotiated the now-universal senior discounts at restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, cruise lines and car rental businesses.

When Andrus discovered a former colleague gravely ill in a chicken coop, she vowed, "I may be retired, but I am not finished living." For those of us of a certain age, neither are we.

TECHNOLOGY WILL PUT SOME FOLKS ON CLOUD NINE IN 2013

Published in the Wednesday, January 2, 2013 edition of the Ventura County Star

Remember Nostradamus? Arguably the planet's most renowned secular prophet, he penned convoluted verses known as "quatrains" to keep from being imprisoned by the 16th century French powers that be.

Because his revelations seem semantically elastic enough to stretch around any world event, Nostradamus subsequently attracted a popular following, especially on the History Channel. Yet, in 1999, when his end-of-the-world forecast failed to pass the reality test, he was dumped by academia.

Leading Nostradamus expert Dr. Edmond Fourier, however, was not dismayed. He managed to uncover, according to Weekly World News, hundreds of "lost" quatrains.

However, if you prefer a futurist who writes in English — albeit unmetered and unrhymed — allow me to prognosticate.

First, in 2013, you will live in "the clouds."

Jeff Dachis, Internet consulting legend and founder of Razorfish, once said, "Everything that can be digital, will be."

You may not realize it, but in all probability, you have already employed "the cloud," especially if you stored digital photographs online, signed up for an email account from Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, or purchased a security storage service that remembers to back up your files for safekeeping and allows you to access your data from virtually anywhere.

The idea behind "the cloud" is that neither the data generated by an application nor the software itself clogs up your computer. With everything (software and data) stockpiled on "the cloud," it's also available on everything (smartphone, tablet or laptop).

This Christmas, my son, who is convinced MP3 players will go the way of eight-track tape decks, gifted me with a year's subscription to Spotify. Launched in 2008, the music service developed by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon allows subscribers to stream any song or orchestral piece from a catalog of 20 million titles.

Not only are the recordings from major and independent record labels, but you can also simultaneously alert your Facebook friends, minute-by-minute, to the unique and impressive selections on your playlist.

As of August 2012, Pew Research Center reported 69 percent of online adults use social networking sites. The number of Spotify users reached a staggering 20 million by December 2012. Undoubtedly, before year's end, audio CDs and DVDs will be taking up space at landfills.

Yet, so-called "cloud intelligence" is also constantly evolving — not just as a cyber-storeroom, but soon taking an active role in your life by providing analysis and contextual advice. For example, according to futurists Chris Carone and Kristin Nauth, "the cloud" will soon enable families to design weekly menus — based on individual health profiles, fitness goals and taste preferences.

Second, in 2013, unemployment is not the end of the world. Help is only a Yelp away.

If you lost your job during the recession, it's probably not coming back. You can sit around and curse automation, outsourcing or even software algorithms; yet, if you develop and hone, according to financial adviser James H. Lee, a needed skill set — you can work productively and, more importantly, continuously into the future. The self-employment rate, at 10.9 percent in 2009, will only keep trending upward.

All you have to do — and this is easier said than done — is to offer a product or service people desire at a price fair to both parties.

Your secret weapon, however, will be SoLoMo (integration of social media, location-aware technology, and mobile device usage). Linking search engine results to GPS on such mobile apps as Yelp, permits local mom-and-pop enterprises, according to Constant Contact's Gail Goodman, to compete "just like the big guys" in terms of "content, deals and offers that greatly increase the opportunity for engagement."

Third, in 2013, even if you're a big girl, supermarkets will make you cry.

Not only was July 2012 the hottest month on record, but the drought, the worst since the Depression era, also desiccated most of the Lower 48 states — distending the misery from California to Delaware.

With a prohibitively high price tag for feed, ranchers were forced to sell off their herds; the Mississippi River, which neared record-low depths, threatened to curtail commerce; and drought-fueled wildfires consumed tens of thousands of acres. Just ask Colorado Springs.

Coupling predicted extreme weather with $150 per barrel oil prices (don't forget, industrial agriculture is totally oil-dependent) will cause grocery bills to go through the roof. Even urban dwellers will consider growing their own — produce, that is.

Back to Nostradamus. While the Weekly World News is a fictional online tabloid that approaches news with a decidedly satirical bent, his alleged "lost" quatrains, however, did predict: the collapse of the world economy, the end of religion, requiring licenses for wannabe parents and "when there is no more room in hell, the buried dead shall come out of their graves."

Hey, the last one could actually come true. Zombie Apocalypse, anyone?

TWEET JESUS: THE POPE ENTERS THE TWITTER WORLD

Published in the  December 19, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

Seems to me, news-wise, the Mayan Calendar Doomsday prophesy pales in comparison to "And now the Pope will tweet."

I don't know about you, but I just invested in 100 Forever postage stamps. Yet Ron Hubbard, whose Montebello, California-based Atlas Survival Shelters business is booming, told ABC News, "I don't have an opinion on the Mayan calendar. But, when astrophysicists come to me, buy my shelters and tell me to be prepared for solar flares, radiation, EMPs…I'm going underground on the 19th and coming out on the 23rd. It's just in case anybody's right."

Will the world end, as poet T.S. Eliot once foretold, with a whimper instead of a big bang? Theories continue to abound. The hypothesis unswervingly linked to the Mayan Calendar is an ancient Sumerian claim that the planet Nibiru will collide with Earth on Friday. Other scenarios attribute Armageddon to solar storms,planetary alignment, polar shift, or a meteor strike.

So great has been the 12/21/12 Doomsday hype, it's provided full employment for such Mayanologists as Tomas Gallareta, Arcadio Pveda Ricale, Marte Trejo and Leonzo Barreno.  The unanimous consensus of these academic experts, who have been making the rounds on the mainstream media, is that all the hoopla boils down to a glaringly false interpretation of the Mayan calendar. Just as the Gregorian calendar begins again on January 1---another long-count period starts for the Mayan calendar on December 22nd.

Even NASA was recently moved to debunk rumors of an impending Judgment Day on its website.   “The world will not end in 2012,” insists NASA.  “Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.”

But you've got to love Prime Minister Julia Gillard, tongue firmly planted in her Australian cheek, as she announced, "Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating zombies, demonic hell-beasts or the total triumph of K-Pop, if you know one thing about me, it is this: I will alwaysfight for you to the very end."

Eighty-five year old Pope Benedict XVI has yet to weigh in on the Mayan Calendar controversy---at least on Twitter. The Vicar of Christ, however, made history last Wednesday while employing the handle @Pontifex---meaning "bridge builder" in Latin---when he tweeted from his iPad for the first time.

Within hours, his number of  Twitter followers had comfortably exceeded one million---with more than 800,000 receiving his blessing in English alone. The Bishop of Rome's tweets, ironically reversing the objective of the Biblical Tower of Babel, will be simultaneously transmitted into eight (Arabic, French, English, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish) different languages---with more languages to come.

As out of place as it may seem for a successor to St. Peter---who delivered the Gospel on foot---to establish a presence on Twitter, Vatican officials make the case that His Holiness is merely walking in the footsteps of those predecessors who chose to employ the latest communication technology to spread the word of God.

Pope Pius XI, for example, prompted a similar dust-up when he, eight decades ago, launched Vatican Radio. Don't forget that the Holy City now boasts its own newspaper, television service, dedicated YouTube channels and a news portal on the World Wide Web.

If you have a theological question, you can gain access to Pope Benedict's personal account via the hashtag #askpontifex.  My question is directed to the Vatican instead: Is Benedict actually "the coolest Pope in history" or will his Twitter followers, in reality, be communicating with some low-level press office employee? Officials have already admitted that an unnamed scribe in the Vatican's secretariat of state will type the tweets on His Holiness’s behalf. But they have insisted that the words will be his alone---culled from his speeches, homilies  or catechism lessons.

The Twitterati couldn't wait to respond to the papal postings last Wednesday. Some, such as Jared Keller's "@Pontifex tweets from a tablet? Big deal: Moses had two," were meant to amuse; while a shocking number were intended to abuse---including some unnecessarily malicious ad hominem attacks with respect to pedophile priests, condoms, gay marriage and the role of women in the Church.

His Eminence will neither follow anybody on Twitter (not even @jesus) nor retweet messages. While Pope Benedict's 140-character tweets, as with any other communication by the pontiff, will be considered part of the Church's teachings, they will not, according to Vatican sources, be considered infallible.

Given the way "autocorrect" garbles my words, only God knows what sort of heresy the Pope's iPad might actually end up spitting out into cyberspace.  See this site for some spectacularly embarrassing possibilities.

Autocorrect and @Pontifex.  A combo that could, indeed, spell the end of the world.

 

GETTING A NEW IMAGE WITH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Published in the Wednesday, December 5, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

According to USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 48 million turkeys were consumed on Thanksgiving. Most of them, in all their succulent golden glory, showed up on Facebook.

In fact, when President Obama was faced with his most momentous executive decision, namely, deciding which turkey to pardon this year — Cobbler or Gobbler — he posted their digital portraits and delegated the thorny choice to his nearly 34 million FB fans.

Still, when you consider your favorite Kodak moment, it probably started out as an exposed piece of photographic film. Don't ask Millennials about film. They have no idea what you are talking about.

Do you remember Paul Simon's 1973 hit, "Kodachrome"? Those "nice, bright colors" are no more.

Professional photographer Steve McCurry, best known for his National Geographic cover of an Afghan girl in a refugee camp, persuaded Kodak to sell him the very last roll in 2011.  See the images.

In addition, the Kodak powers-that-be didn't have a clue that their prototype for the digital camera, which captured its first image in 1975, would nearly annihilate the photographic film market. A study by Global Industry Analysts reports that worldwide digital camera sales will surpass 138 million by 2015.

So how has digital photography contoured our culture?

First, the digital camera has democratized the art of photography. Taking pictures is no longer the exclusively elitist pursuit of those with enough wherewithal to burn rolls of expensive film and purchase pricey equipment. Digital allows anybody to indulge his or her visually creative gene.

Back in the day, the old-school shutterbug manually adjusted film speed, focus, aperture and shutter speed — and the results weren't always predictable or pleasing. Today, digital cameras are fully automated and photo-editing software can perfect just about anybody's efforts.

Since August, 150 million have uploaded Instagram — a free app that enables users to snap a shot, apply a digital filter and share the enhanced photo on any social network.

When John Nichols, whose eponymous gallery is located above the Santa Paula Art Museum, was learning fine art photography techniques, he discovered that taking pictures teaches the nature of perception and reality. One of the pathways that led to his greater understanding of reality was a fuzzy photograph made by a toy plastic camera called a "Diana."

"I explored the low-tech end of the photographic spectrum for years," he shared. What he eventually grasped was that "a meaningful photograph can be either sharp or fuzzy. High tech or low tech does not determine spiritual value in art."

Second, digital photography is more about digitization than it is about photography. The word "photography," which was attributed to Sir John Herschel in 1839, was based on the Greek for "drawing with light." Digital photography, however, also "draws" by employing sound, video and speech.

Think about the cultural impact of viral videos. Even if you weren't a big fan of YouTube's scary Brazilian elevator prank, think about the free archival footage teachers can incorporate into their classroom discussions as well as the joy in witnessing your grandson's first step.

Third, digital photography has increased our ability to share our lives with others.

Almost 40 percent of the 234 million Americans over age 13 with a mobile phone, according to comScore, belong to a social network. You may not be able to celebrate the holiday season with relatives, but Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Instagram will enable you to connect.

"This year, more than ever before, we will see how we get along as a national family," observed Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project in Washington.

Rutgers University's Mor Naaman told The New York Times that such a vast pool of documentation has staggering implications for understanding American culture — once researchers figure out how to make sense of it. When do family arguments start? How many people watch the football games? How much do people drink?

Yet, social networking can also call forth our better angels. Jeanette Van Houten, for example, set up a Facebook page to assist families in Union Beach — the New Jersey community ravaged by Hurricane Sandy — in locating precious photos and treasured keepsakes.

Photographer and author Dan Burkholder has a few words for those who would deplore the end of film. "If you don't like change," he wrote, "you shouldn't be in photography. You should be in pottery."

Undoubtedly similar naysayers showed up in 1839, when photography made its initial appearance. While these cynics might have grumbled "from this day forward, painting is dead," what followed was perhaps the single most creative century for painters.

By the way, did you happen to catch the Instagram of a Christmas tree — created totally out of adorable, fluffy kittens?

USING LIFE'S EXPERIENCES AS A PATH TO SUCCESS

Published in the Wednesday,  November 21, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

Have you ever heard of Lee DeWyze, Vienna Girardi or Whitney Port?

Neither have I, but students attending the Mathews Leadership Forum at California Lutheran University on Nov. 8 might recognize them. The name they couldn't identify was Joey Herrick — that is, before the head of Natural Balance Pet Foods, Inc. delivered the keynote address. The forum planners hoped folks would take away at least one important life lesson from Herrick's speech. He generously offered five.

First, he illustrated "the dark side of celebrity" with his personal recollection of the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire — the singular event that yanked Herrick's life back into perspective.

The avaricious owners of the Southgate, Ky., nightspot that drew talent from Las Vegas, Nashville, New York and Los Angeles crowded more than 1,300 patrons into the Cabaret Room — a venue with only one exit. Herrick, then the drummer with John Davidson's band, fortuitously opted not to play the opening act. He and Davidson escaped through a backstage door.

They were lucky — 165 others succumbed to smoke and flames.

Second, re: the old joke, "Question: How do you get to Carnegie Hall. Answer: Practice, practice, practice" — while Herrick didn't make it to Carnegie Hall, he was a regular with the "Tonight Show" orchestra. Even as a teenager, Herrick's only desire was to play the drums.

While his passion helped him say "no" to competing interests, he became a top-tier musician only by devoting every waking moment to percussion. Herrick implemented the "10,000-hour rule" decades before Malcolm Gladwell ("Outliers") discovered its validity in fields as diverse as songwriting, computer programming and skateboarding.

Third, Herrick suggests that those who aspire to unearth "The Next Big Thing" cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit. As an example, he shared his scheme for novelty toilet paper — born out of the frustration most Americans were feeling during the 444-day Iran hostage crisis in 1981.

Each sheet of his bathroom tissue would be imprinted with an image of the Ayatollah and a slogan that's not quite appropriate for a family newspaper.

He quickly realized it wasn't merely enough to hatch a clever idea. Since he lacked a viable business plan and marketing know-how, somebody else beat him to market. When another entrepreneurial opportunity arose in 1989 with Philli Dilli Chili, however, he was ready. He even came up with a slogan — "It Took (Phyllis) Diller To Remove the Filler."

Fourth, while he hoped his listeners would pursue material success, he emphasized the importance of "doing it the right way."

In 1989, Herrick and television actor Dick Van Patten ("Eight is Enough") collaborated on a healthy natural pet food developed with sound scientific principles and peddled with truth in advertising.

Not only do dogs and cats across the fruited plain now chow down on Natural Balance (manufactured in Pacoima) but so do carnivores at zoos and animal reserves.

Herrick still remembers the phone call in April 2007 that might have spelled Natural Balance's demise. He received a request from the Food and Drug Administration to voluntarily recall bags of Sweet Potato & Chicken Dry Dog Food with a "best by" date of June 17, 2011. A random sampling of the product had tested positive for salmonella.

Despite receiving no complaints and negative test results on retention samples sent to an independent third-party laboratory, Herrick recalled more than 60 trucks' worth of product, paid customer medical bills to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and spent $500,000 equipping his food safety lab with additional testing equipment.

But Herrick sleeps well at night.

Fifth, while Herrick may not know where he will end up next, when he looks back he can always see the significance of each experience — no matter how random it seemed at the time.

Since 2009, he has been awakening sleepy New Year's Eve party revelers with his record-breaking (longest, heaviest, fastest skateboarding dog) Tournament of Roses floats — starring the Oxnard-born Tillman and his amazing canine friends from "Who Let the Dogs Out."

This Jan. 1, viewers are going to get a living color look at the first national monument to military dogs — the hard-won vision of John Burnam, the military dog handler who wrote "Dog Tags of Courage," and Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C. To raise funds, Natural Balance created a jerky treat sold by Petco and the pet-rescuing Maddie's Fund signed on as a corporate sponsor.

So just who were DeWyze, Girardi and Port? Singer-songwriter Leon DeWyze won the ninth season of "American Idol." Vienna Girardi became engaged to Jake Pavelka during the 2010 season finale of "The Bachelor." Whitney Port played a Teen Vogue intern on MTV's "The Hills."

Reality TV stars — just two short years ago. Does anybody know what they're doing now?

REJOICE! IT'S FINALLY TGIN7---THANK GOD IT'S NOV. 7

Published in the Wednesday, November 7, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

In addition to exploding prior campaign spending records — presently estimated at an obscene $2.6 billion — this presidential election also upped the ante in terms of social media.

After the first presidential debate between Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, Twitter recorded 10.3 million messages — making the debate the most tweeted-about event in American politics.

On Oct. 5, a number of folks on Facebook updated their status with "Who says Romney has never performed menial labor. He mopped the floor with Barack last night."

Clever? It depends. Reason to unfriend the poster? Hardly.

Yet, nearly 1 in 5 respondents to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project polls admitted to "unfollowing," "blocking," "unfriending" or employing the "hide" button — to eliminate unwelcome political postings.

Approximately 60 percent of American adults use social networking sites, with 66 percent of those users — or 39 percent of all American adults — characterizing their participation as "political activity."

If you can't imagine social networking sites as politically powerful, the Pew study claims not only 36 percent of users find them "very" or "somewhat important" in keeping up with political news but also 25 percent admit becoming more politically active after reading posts or discussing issues on Twitter or Facebook.

With profound apologies to Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, the following are my observations of the good, the bad and the ugly in social media.

The good: social media messages can improve voter turnout. Not only did the Pew Center find that 35 percent of users (more Democrats than Republicans) employ social media to encourage people to vote, but the journal Nature also reported a demonstrable impact on voter turnout from a special "get out the vote" message on Facebook.

The bad: you're being followed. The 2012 presidential campaign was able to capitalize on increasingly sophisticated data-mining techniques pioneered by online retail advertisers. As a result, customized ads — based on the digital trails left by prospective voters as they sought information about specific political issues — popped up everywhere.

In fact, according to Evidon, during the final weeks of the presidential race, both campaigns drastically increased their use of third-party surveillance engines. From May to September, Evidon identified 97 tracking programs — far more than the average retailer employs — on Obama and Romney sites.

Consumer advocates warn that the proliferation of such trackers raises serious risks. Not only could the data concerning people's political beliefs be sold but it might also be used for purposes inconceivable by the public — like excluding someone from a job search.

The ugly: political self-expression can backfire, and cause rifts that may not be mended — even after the election is over.

"It's a cultural truism that you don't talk about politics and religion if you're with people you don't know very well," Purdue communications professor Glenn Sparks told the South Bend Tribune. "You navigate … with caution."

Yet, a politically charged Facebook or Twitter message — and 1 out of 3 users post them — may reach thousands, with the author having no way of knowing how the communication might be received.

Most consumers of social media don't object to being exposed to differing political opinions. It's the ad hominem attacks, the over-the-top negativity and the polarizing rhetoric that turns them off. The political dust-up between singer Hank Williams, Jr. and actor Alec Baldwin is a perfect example.

The precipitating event was an Iowa State Fair performance in which the countrymusic legend slammed the president with the words "Obama is a Muslim who hates farming, hates the military and hates the U.S. and we hate him." His audience, by the way, gave Williams a rousing round of applause.

Baldwin instantly responded in 140-character bursts. If Williams weren't such a "pathetic, wheezing fossil," he tweeted, "I'd have a talk with him. I think we need to call Hank Williams Jr. what he is … a broken down, senile, racist coot." His 8,789 followers agreed.

For consumers of social media who are sick and tired of propaganda polluting their news feeds, there's a Facebook page that purports to be "Open to all conservatives, liberals and moderates who are tired of the constant stream of political posts on FB. Doesn't mean that your views are not important — just means that it isn't important to us to hear you blather on. P.S. You do realize that you really aren't changing anyone's opinion, right?"

Finally, for those determined to operate off the political grid entirely, a technological solution called Unpolitic.me not only blocks all political updates from Twitter and Facebook, but also replaces them with photos of cats.

So rejoice. It's finally TGIN7. At least, be happy that the star of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" won't be speaking to any more empty chairs.

MONSTER PUMPKIN GROWERS BATTLE FOR GOURD GLORY

Published in the Wednesday, October 24, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

OK, it's not quite as perilous as sky diving from the edge of space, but don't tell that to dedicated amateur giant pumpkin growers across the fruited plain, especially those opting to take on the challenge of propagating a one-ton pumpkin.

We now know that on Oct. 14, Austrian Felix Baumgartner stepped out of a helium balloon and into history. During his gut-churning four-minute, 20-second free fall, Baumgartner not only reached Mach 1.24 or 833.9 miles per hour (surpassing the speed of sound) but he also broke two other records: the highest jump from a platform and the longest free fall without a drogue parachute.

Just before his cosmic leap of faith from 24 miles above the Earth, Baumgartner said: "I know the whole world is watching now, and I wish the world could see what I see."

We also now know that on Sept. 28, Ron Wallace stepped out of his backyard garden and into the history books.

His giant pumpkin tipped the scales at 2,009 pounds, meriting him a $5,500 check for taking first place at the New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh-off, and another $10,000 bonus for moving the goal for growing gargantuan gourds past the one-ton mark.

The Giant Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC), the official body that sanctions more than 90 pumpkin weigh-offs worldwide, estimates that each year 10,000 amateur growers cultivate Atlantic Giant pumpkins — the perfect candidate to stand in for Linus' "Great Pumpkin." Surely, you remember the toy-distributing icon awaited by the Peanuts gang each and every All Hallows Eve?

The sizable squash bulk up so rapidly, some folks claim that they can actually see them grow. In fact, it literally takes a village to pick up an Atlantic Giant these days, or at least a couple of buddies with a heavy-duty crane.

A general contractor from New Richmond, Wis., set the Guinness Book of World Records entry for the heaviest pumpkin at 1,810.5 pounds in October 2010. Chris Stevens' massive monster copped top honors at the Stillwater, Minn.,Harvest Fest — and his record score stood for two years.

With Stevens coming within 800 pounds of producing the Holy Grail of Gourds — namely, the "ton of fun" — pumpkin producers started redoubling their efforts. They studied complex biochemistry, plant genetics and microbiology as well as devising a slew of scientific strategies involving natural growth hormones, super-nutrients developed by NASA, double grafting and top secret brews of compost and soil supplements.

Pumpkinophiles invested thousands of dollars in water, fertilizers, mechanized farming equipment and a chemical armory to wage war on pumpkin-specific insects and disease. Pruning, weeding, feeding and watering became, for them, a full-time job.

Steve Geddes, a champion grower who hails from Boscawen, N.H., shattered Stevens' record last month. When he brought his gigantic gourd to the weigh-off at the Deerfield Fair on Sept. 27, experts, tape-measuring its girth, predicted that the massive orange fruit would tip the scales at 1,600 pounds — a bona fide heavyweight for all intents and purposes, but no world champion.

Geddes would not be dismayed. His behemoth beauty had been putting on an astonishing 35 pounds a day since mid-August. When the dust finally settled in the weighing tent, Geddes' pumpkin registered 1,843.5 pounds on the scale. Unfortunately, his champion calabaza would bask in the limelight for only one day.

Rumor had it that the actual record-breaker for 2012 might be ripening in the warm Rhode Island sun.

In fact, Ron Wallace, who claims giant pumpkin growers deserve their own 12-step program, was forced to fence his property with fast-growing foliage to discourage individuals engaging in pumpkin espionage from sneaking a peek.

Giant Atlantic pumpkins, like Wallace's "Freak Two," are cultivated from a seed the size of a quarter.

Two years ago, a grower purchased a seed from Stevens' Guinness record holder for a staggering $1,600. Wallace told CNN that he cultivated his record-breaking Atlantic Giant from the seed of "Freak One" — a 1,800 pound pumpkin that, regrettably, imploded on the vine before it could be harvested.

Left to her own devices, Mother Nature never intended pumpkins to swell to the size of a mid-sized automobile. Due to shape, weight or weather, growth hormone-pumped pumpkins can split or rot from the inside, shattering dreams of prize money and the coveted mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.

"These are mind-blowing numbers," Baumgartner would say during his post-space-dive news conference. "When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about breaking records anymore, you do not think about gaining scientific data. The only thing you want is you want to come back alive."

I wonder if giant pumpkins feel the same way.

FORGET POLLS--IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CANDIDATES' VIEWING HABITS

Published in the October 10, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

People who correctly predict the winning presidential candidate have employed seemingly irrelevant indicators over the years.

Some have noted that the taller of the two major party candidates tends to prevail. According to studies, tall men are perceived as more "authoritative" than diminutive males, are considered more desirable as a mate and are generally paid more money — each inch worth approximately $600 more per annum.

During the past 100 years, the tallest candidate has won in all but five races. Gov. Mitt Romney, interestingly enough, at 6 feet 2 inches, towers 25.4 silly millimeters over President Barack Obama.

Others, who realize like James Carville that "It's the economy, stupid," employ the link between women's hemlines and the stock market to predict the presidential winner. Wharton economist George Taylor established the correlation in 1926 after observing that when women's skirts are long, they aren't compelled to invest in expensive silk stockings.

Voters tend to choose the more conservative candidate during tough economic times and the electorate, according to Taylor, figure out it's the moment to vote Republican when the females they know are sporting granny dresses and, presumably, no pantyhose. This year, the average hemline is 33 inches. The last time hemlines were that long — it was during the Great Depression.

All that being said, I'd like to toss out another election marker for your appraisal. I think a cause and effect relationship exists between a presidential candidate's viewing habits and the number of Emmy Awards won by the particular television show.

President Obama has made no secret of the fact that watching "Homeland" is his No. 1 guilty pleasure. When he confessed to the "Hollywood Reporter" that he "requested and received four sets of Season I from Showtime" — the news went viral. And according to People magazine, the leader of the free world indulges his addiction whenever first lady and first daughter head out to the tennis courts.

But there's more. Not only was Damian Lewis, who plays Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody in the series, invited to a state dinner honoring England's Prime Minister David Cameron, but Lewis was also shocked and awed at getting quality face time that night with Obama himself. "It was a sensational, unforgettable evening," the British actor told TV Guide.

"I went down onto the South Lawn into the marquee with my wife and we were looking for table 20," disclosed Lewis, who previously played the unfaltering American major in "Band of Brothers" and the stuffy husband in "The Forsyte Saga."

"We thought we'd be (seated) by the toilets or something. And it turned out we were sitting directly opposite the president at his table. We were sort of like guests of honor."

Lewis claimed that President Obama actually questioned him about the series, but not in any great detail. "I did sort of joke with him that the creators of the show had asked him to give us a heads up on any foreign policy moves so that we could just stay current with season two," he said. "And he looked me straight in the eye and said, 'I'll be sure to do that.'"

Less than six months later, "Homeland" cleaned up at the 2012 Emmys. Nominated nine times overall, the Showtime hit brought home four statuettes including Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama for Claire Danes and Outstanding Lead Actor for Lewis. Coincidence? I think not.

Moreover, the import of Obama's ringing endorsement wasn't lost on Danes, who plays the bipolar CIA agent in the psychological thriller. Backstage at the Nokia Theater, the actress previously honored for "Temple Grandin" kidded with the press, "No pressure. It's way cool that he is a fan."

"Homeland" follows Carrie Mathison, a Cassandra not unlike Richard A. Clarke from the George W. Bush administration. Clarke was the so-called "alarmist" proved correct on Sept. 11, 2001. The Mathison character keeps insisting that Brody, now a national hero, was turned by al-Qaida while serving as an eight-year prisoner of war. The plan, she warns, is to attack America from the inside — but nobody wants to listen.

The real shocker for me, however, was discovering that "Modern Family" was Romney's favorite show. In fact, he revealed this fact on ABC's "Live! With Kelly and Michael." Is it merely coincidental that "Modern Family" also carted home four Emmys, including outstanding comedy series for the third year in a row? I think not.

Despite the significant differences that moderator "Silent" Jim Lehrer attempted to crystallize during last Wednesday's debate, the next president will be the candidate who can best influence the Emmy Awards. Was it the guy who prefers chills or the guy who prefers chuckles? We report; you decide.

Or in other words — "May the best fan win."

GO-TO DEMOCRAT RADIATES CHARISMA; IS IT ENOUGH?

Published in the September 26, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

During the 1980 presidential debate, when Ronald Reagan asked the voters, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" they said "no," and ousted President Jimmy Carter by a landslide.

The GOP, now eager to put the Democrats on the defensive with respect to the current recession, decided to recycle Reagan's issue-crystalizing query. Why? Because polls continue to suggest that Americans remain pessimistic about the state of the economy — and their own financial futures.

Vice President Joe Biden offered this response, "You want to know whether we're better off? I've got a little bumper sticker for you. Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive."

But Biden's sound bite, while entertainingly snarky, didn't actually answer Reagan's question. In fact, no Democrat did, until former President Bill Clinton showed up at the Democratic National Convention for his "Clint Eastwood moment."

Before Clinton even took the podium, he owned the room. When he looked into the television cameras, Clinton not only captivated approximately 25.1 million viewers (according to Nielsen) but his audience also exceeded the number of football fans watching the Dallas Cowboys' victory over the New York Giants.

According to a poll by the Pew Research Center, 29 percent of viewers rated Clinton's speech as "the highlight of the evening" — compared to just 16 percent for President Barack Obama and 15 percent for the first lady.

Twelve years ago, Clinton was offered a marginal role at the Los Angeles convention nominating Vice President Al Gore for the top spot and experts claimed that ignoring Clinton cost Gore several key states.

In 2012, not only did Clinton top Eastwood's showing at the Republican National Convention by nine points, but by delivering the magic words: "They want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place," he was able to sink the GOP "four years ago" strategy.

Clinton, in cunningly reframing the debate, argued that no president, including himself, could have repaired the economic damage Obama had to face in 2009. "But conditions are improving," said Clinton, "and if you'll renew the president's contract, you will feel it."

When Clinton added, "I believe that with all my heart," voters believed it, too. In fact, his words so resonated with the electorate; they are now being employed in a commercial playing morning, noon and night.

Clinton, the politician who feels our pain, has reinvented himself as a credible source. Yes, I'm talking about the same man who defiantly told the American public, "I did not have sex with that woman." Face it, not only is Clinton able to seduce women — he is able to seduce everybody.

So what does Clinton have — that Mitt Romney and Obama are missing? Charisma. And he's not afraid to use it.

Charisma is the ability to make people believe you, no matter what you say; it's uber-credibility.

When people are asked to define charisma, they employ such diverse synonyms as ability to engage, competence, authenticity, magnetism and trustworthiness. That's because each of us responds to a different signifier of charisma — so the more signifiers an individual possesses, the more charismatic he or she is perceived to be.

Bud Tribble employed "Reality Distortion Field" or RDF, a term the Apple executive borrowed from "Star Trek," to describe Steve Jobs' over-the-top aura of competence, magnetism and the ability to engage. Everybody seemed to believe everything Jobs said.

Michael Ellsburg, the author of "The Power of Eye Contact" scientifically measures RDF according to the number of people reporting that they can't resist the charismatic person's will while interacting face-to-face. Ellsburg not only claims Clinton's RDF surpasses that of Jobs' but is "perhaps the strongest in the world."

Say what you will but Clinton never embraced Obama — literally or figuratively. Yet, that's exactly why Clinton is the ideal person to address former Obama backers who are presently feeling betrayed.

Four years ago, they voted for change, but Obama failed to deliver. In his convention speech, however, Clinton gives these voters permission to mark their ballot for a candidate they no longer love. All he asks is that they consider Obama a better choice than Romney.

Finally, Clinton's use of humor was not only an amusing diversion to offset the litany of boring facts and figures his speech required, but it also gave Clinton the opportunity to borrow Reagan's credibility — for just one night.

When Clinton quipped, "As another president once said, 'there they go again,'" he was employing a catch phrase from the same debate that produced "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

Since both political parties seem eager to embrace Reagan's talking points from 1980, what's a voter to do? As Reagan also said, "trust — but verify."

PARTISAN DIVIDE DELAYS FIX FOR LEAKING CAPITOL DOME

Published in the Wednesday, September 12, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

"The parties have become so dominant in determining how individual members of Congress vote, that it doesn't really matter what the issue is," Mickey Edwards, a former eight-term Republican U.S. representative from Oklahoma, told NPR's Terry Gross.

"It doesn't matter whether you're talking about a stimulus plan, a budget, a confirmation of a Supreme Court justice," he continued, "on almost every major issue now, all the Democrats are on one side; all the Republicans are on the other side."

The U.S. Capitol dome is the image most of us summon up when we think about Washington, D.C. Completed in December of 1863 (at a cost of more than $15 million in today's dollars), the structure now sports some 1,300 known cracks.

Not only is the roof leaking but seeping water has also rusted exterior ornamentation as well as stained interior walls — within spitting distance of "The Apotheosis of Washington," the priceless 147-year-old fresco by Constantino Brumidi.

"At least 100 pieces of the dome have fallen off or been removed, including a 40-pound cast-iron decorative acorn," reports Stephen Ayers, the architect of the U.S. Capitol. "Imagine what a chunk of falling cast iron would do if it were to land on the head of someone working or visiting the Capitol?"

But despite what would appear to be a straightforward bipartisan issue, Democrats and Republicans clashed on the need for repairs. Before the August break, the Senate agreed to allocate funds, but House legislators disbelieved the need for speed.

Last month, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who chairs the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration overseeing the Capitol complex, wrote House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to request $61 million be added to a continuing resolution funding the government through March 2013.

"It would be a national embarrassment," continued Schumer's letter, "if partisan gridlock allowed this iconic work of architecture to fall into a state of permanent decay."

"There is a time and a place to debate federal spending and the proper role of government," added Schumer, "but most Americans believe that when your house has a leaky roof, you pay to fix the roof.''

Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith responded to the Los Angeles Times: "The speaker is confident we can work together to fix the Capitol dome without more political posturing from Sen. Schumer."

Of course, as every homeowner knows, the longer repair work is delayed, the more expensive it becomes to fix. "The rule of thumb is that the cost of deferring maintenance is 15 times more when (something) does break," advised Andrew Goldberg of the American Institute of Architects.

On Sept. 22, 2011, President Barack Obama spoke beside a crumbling bridge between Ohio and Kentucky to call attention to the nation's decaying national infrastructure.

"Part of the reason I came here is because Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell, the two most powerful Republicans in government," said President Obama, "can either kill this jobs bill, or they can help pass (it)."

"I can't imagine that the speaker wants to represent a state where nearly one in four bridges are classified as substandard — one in four," emphasized the president.

"I know that when Sen. McConnell visited the closed bridge in Kentucky, he said that, 'Roads and bridges are not partisan in Washington.'" Obama added, "That's great!"

"I know that Paul Ryan, the House Republican in charge of the budget process, (and now Mitt Romney's running mate) recently said that 'you can't deny that infrastructure does create jobs,'" quoted Obama. "That's what he said."

The fight to control Congress has become as intense as the presidential race.

While Republicans seem certain to rule the House, a Democratic majority in the Senate is no longer a certainty.

Obama has argued, whether you call it sour grapes or not, that two obstacles block legislation spurring jobs recovery: 1) Tea party activists taking over the House and 2) McConnell making Obama a one-term president the No. 1 GOP goal.

In his new book, "The Parties Versus the People," the Republican Mickey Edwards argues that party leaders have too much power. They decide who runs for office, what bills make it to the floor and how lawmakers vote.

"The problem is that when you (as a congressman) come down to casting a vote, you're unable to reach a compromise — to sit down and talk it through and find out where there are areas of common ground," he told NPR.

"When you're making those decisions based on your party membership, based on what you have decided is going to help your club win the next election, then you're really doing a disservice to your country and you're really being dishonest to your oath of office."

So when will things change in Congress? Maybe when the roof caves in on their heads.

  © 2012 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

VAMPIRE KIND COMES ALIVE AT MOONLIGHT GATHERING

Published in the Wednesday August 29, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

In the 1931 "Dracula" film, Bela Lugosi says, "Listen to them. Creatures of the night. What music they make."

Bela Lugosi, Jr. and Boris Karloff's daughter, Beth, will be sharing the stage with music-makers "Men in Black" at the "Creatures of the Night" edition of Moonlight at the Ranch on Sept. 22.

When I spoke to 74-year old Bela Lugosi Jr. last week, he admitted that he only agrees to one or two personal appearances a year, but on this occasion, not only was he delighted to support the Santa Paula police and fire fundraiser, but also was grateful for the opportunity to keep his father's memory alive.

Lugosi Jr. is tall like his father but favors his mother in appearance. Lillian Arch was the 19-year-old daughter of Hungarian immigrants when she became Lugosi's fourth wife in 1933. The couple divorced two decades later.

Born as Béla Ferenc Dezs Blaskó, the actor who first portrayed Count Dracula on Broadway in 1927 has now been gone for 56 years.

"My memory is still very clear," Lugosi Jr. wrote on his official website "of the sound of his voice, the look of his eyes, his long stride when he was walking, his interest in me and the magnitude of his feelings — of elation, depression, joy and sorrow. People recognized him, even walking on a dark street, just by the sound of his voice."

Even as a young person, Lugosi Jr. sensed that his father was anything but average. He found that the elder's complicated personality defied description — combining such polarities as devil and angel; royalty and pauper; student and teacher as well as lover of the limelight and devoted family man.

"Above all," Lugosi Jr. continued, his father "put a personal stamp on everything he did from carving a roast beef to playing a character on the stage."

Lugosi Jr. recalls how fascinating he found the graceful, almost ritualistic movements of his father's hands. His role as disciplinarian, apparently, also was unforgettable. When little Bela was naughty, his father's haunting eyes were all that was necessary. "He would just look at me," Lugosi Jr. said, "and it would scare me into behaving myself."

Lugosi Sr. died when his only child was 18 years old, so he missed out on knowing the celebrated attorney his son would become. His legal actions in Lugosi v. Universal Pictures led to the creation of the California Celebrities Rights Act and his victory with the Three Stooges case won copyright infringement protection for the heirs of Curley Joe.

Lugosi Jr. takes great pride in the heroic effort his father made when the actor decided to take back control of his life.

Because of injuries received during military service, Lugosi Sr. developed acute chronic sciatica that doctors were treating with medically prescribed morphine. When the drug started interfering with his work and relationships, however, he voluntarily checked himself into a state facility and, unlike 8 percent who eventually relapse, Lugosi Sr. remained free from addiction.

Lugosi Jr.'s father didn't advise him to become a lawyer, but he did recommend that his son steer clear of acting as a career. As Lugosi Sr. once wistfully noted, "Never has a role so influenced and dominated an actor's role as has the role of Dracula. He (Dracula) has, at times, infused me with prosperity and, at other times, he has drained me of everything."

Yet, the actor who, in midlife, confessed, "I'd like to quit the supernatural roles and play just an interesting, down-to-earth person" did enjoy a distinguished dramatic career in Hungary. Before coming to America, he was a professionally trained stage actor — doing Shakespeare, in fact, as well as touring with the National Theater of Budapest.

In the United States, "The Red Poppy" was his first English-speaking role, but since he didn't speak the language, he single-mindedly memorized the entire script — phonetically. That same determination drove him to educate himself by reading everything from science to religion to music to politics.

In the "Dracula" film, Lugosi Sr. set a standard for movie vampires that remains unparalleled. The "Twilight" series, in fact, seems lackluster in comparison — more like a schoolgirl romance striving too hard to be politically correct — what with vampires barely out of their teens declining to suck all but animal blood, balking at creating more immortals and sparkling like diamonds in the sun.

When I asked Lugosi Jr. if he ever wondered what would have happened if his father had gotten his wish — to play nothing but straight dramatic roles, the lively lawyer had a question for me.

"Before Dracula?"

"Yes, before Dracula."

"We wouldn't be having this conversation."

And creatures of the night would be unable to keep his music alive.

If you go
What: Moonlight at the Ranch VI: “Creatures of the Night!”
When: Sept. 22; cocktails at 6 p.m.
Where: Limoneira Ranch on Cummings Road, Santa Paula.
Details: Tastings from 40 regional restaurants and music by “Men in Black”
For additional information

OUR MATERIALISTIC CLUTTER RUNS DEEP IN REAL LIFE

Published in the Thursday, August 16, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

It was exactly like the opening scene in "Citizen Kane," only Orson Welles didn't drop the Austrian snow globe — I did.

As it hit the wooden floor, the heavy glass shattered, the thick liquid puddled, and I'm still retrieving the finely ground rice that passed for snow.

The miniature hand-painted Alpine cottage is all that remains — however, a treacherous circle of jagged glass that refuses to depart the base surrounds it.

After Erwin Perzy created the iconic movie prop in 1941, his factory in Vienna subsequently manufactured a limited number of copies. I was fortunate enough to own one of them.

For three decades, I employed the five-inch replica to address the symbolism in the film ranked No. 1 by the American Film Institute. 

If you've seen "Citizen Kane," you know that the snow globe first decorated the apartment dresser of Susan Alexander — the woman who became both Kane's second wife and a not-so-talented opera singer.

After Alexander experiences enough of Charles Foster Kane's self-serving Pygmalion act, she walks out. In retaliation, during an over-the-top temper tantrum, he trashes her bedroom. The single object he refrains from destroying, however, is the snow globe.

While most film critics focus on the "Rosebud" sled that is carelessly flung on a bonfire of Kane's discarded possessions by film's end, it is the snow globe that spoke to my students.

Passing it around the room not only stimulated the liveliest discussions during the semester, but when my "wallflowers" — the students most reluctant to speak up in class — held the prop, they suddenly found themselves both passionate as well as surprisingly (to themselves) articulate.

Not only did the snow globe act like the "talking stick" used by Native American tribes to designate the right to speak, but also stimulated and empowered them to dig deep inside and share their findings.

Many of my students recognized that the most important aspect of the film was not Kane's success as a publisher but his failure as a human being. According to their personal analyses, only as his life concluded was Kane able to recall the last time he felt truly happy — as a carefree child returning from playing in the snow to parents who possessed little more than a warm fire and their unshakable love for him.

My students also had no trouble identifying Kane as a rapacious collector, who was, in their words, attempting to fill a psychological void with artwork, sculptures and antiques.

They claimed, especially those who had toured Hearst Castle that the downside of materialistic excess can be demonstrated in the massive rooms of Kane/Hearst's estate, stacked floor-to-ceiling with crates of priceless treasures. They were shocked to learn that Kane/Hearst had never even bothered to pry them open.

Yet, it was difficult for my students to see themselves as acquisitive. While Kane/Hearst had the means to pack rat on a grander scale, aren't many of us, I would ask, likewise possessed by our possessions?

What do you mean, they'd ask?

How many of you know somebody who has been renting a storage space — for more than a year? Lots of hands went up.

What about, I continued, reality shows like A&E's "Hoarders" and TLC's "Buried Alive"?

While my students admitted to covering their mouths in awe — and revulsion — at folks who have an issue with hoarding, they, themselves were not hoarders. Yet, I went on, isn't it just a matter of degree?

How many of you cannot park your vehicles in the garage because it's already full?

All of us — not just the 1 percenters — have too much stuff. Not only have we bought into the gospel of materialism, but when we also indulge the drive to acquire more than we need, we become as upside-down, psychologically, as a post-real-estatebubble mortgage. Instead of our stuff supporting us, we are laboring — too long, considering the hours denied friends and family — to support our stuff.

My moment of Zen came in May. Swenson 206 was my fourth university office. That means that during the past 35 years, I packed this same crap in cartons — four different times. Book buyers found the texts on my shelves so ancient, they declined to cart them away — for free. Lecture notes from classes I hadn't taught in decades clogged my files. During 35 years, it appeared I threw nothing away.

Am I miserable now that the snow globe is no longer whole?

I am disappointed, but definitely not heartbroken. After all, the replica of the "Citizen Kane" movie prop worked its magic for generations of students. I cannot help but be grateful for that.

And no — in case you are wondering — "Rosebud" did not cross my lips. This isn't a movie, after all — it's real life.

 

CREATIVITY ROUNDS SAND SCULPTING CONTEST INTO FORM

Published in the August 1, 2012 edition of the Ventura County Star

What do Ventura’s Art Walk, Santa Paula’s Moonlight at the Ranch, Conejo Valley Days, Simi Valley’s Cajun & Blue Music Festival, Oxnard’s Salsa Festival and Camarillo’s Fiesta and Street Fair have in common?

You may not have thought much about this, but these veritable Ventura County summertime institutions share three important characteristics.

First, each event was once the vision of an individual who yearned to bring wider attention to what is unique or special about his or her community---whether it be art, food, music or culture.

Second, when it comes to achieving the sort of longevity enjoyed by the six mentioned above, the original organizers found a way to make “third time’s a charm” work for them. If an event is going to grow legs, or enjoy increased participation each subsequent year---the usual measure of success---there had better be a willingness to submit to a steep learning curve during the first two.

Third, it takes a village of volunteers and almost a full year of planning to pull off a “you can’t miss this” event---especially when competing with the multitude of entertaining and economical ways to spend summer weekends in Ventura County.

Just such a special event is the Fourth Annual City of Port Hueneme Sand Sculpture Contest http://www.huenemesand.com/ which takes place on Sunday, August 19—giving out-of-towners something else to do from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM at the Toni Young Hueneme Beach Festival---besides browsing the wares of vendors, grooving to the tribute bands on the big stage, or receiving a guided tour of the Port or Ventura County’s only lighthouse.

Donna Breeze, the wife of the Port Hueneme mayor, hatched her sand sculpture contest idea four years ago while brainstorming strategies to keep Hueneme Beach from remaining “the best-kept secret in Ventura County.” Since her family members enjoyed digging in the sand, she figured a competition on the beach east of the pier would provide the perfect introduction to “The Friendly City by the Sea.”

Attendance during the first two years was, in a word, disheartening. After two painful post-mortems, however, four number-boosting decisions turned it around in 2011. Since the economy still hadn’t gotten into recovery mode, Breeze and her advisory committee decided to offer big cash prizes, require no entry fee, invest in a 12-month informational website and schedule a teaching demonstration by a professional sculptor the day before the competition.

The radical ideas paid off. More than 20 teams showed up last year to create a seventh heaven of silicon statues during the Sunday competition. To see exactly who carted home some of the whopping total of $2000 in prize money as well as their jaw-dropping creations---check it out.

The bigger the event, the more people-power is needed. From 1984 through 1986, for example, a group of art, culture and merriment-minded residents of the Anacapa Condo Owners Association held annual sand sculpture contests in conjunction with Port Hueneme Harbor Days. During 1986, cash prizes totaling a paltry $295---arduously raised via $3 entry fees as well as bumper sticker and donut sales---drew a record number of teams, yet there was no 4th Annual Sand Sculpture Contest in 1987. Why? Organizers learned the hard way that volunteers tend to vanish when the workload proves too great or the payoff proves too small.

So why should you put this year’s Sand Sculpture contest on your family calendar?

No team can fail. The secret to throwing sand up in the air and convincing it to stay there long enough to be carved into something spectacular, is compaction. Port Hueneme Beach Park sand has been certified, by a bona fide geologist, no less, as the perfect grain size for sand sculpting.

The contest is free—whether you are a sand sculpture virgin or a seasoned professional, you don’t have to pay to enter or to park.

Cash prizes---a grand total of $2,000 will be awarded. First, second, and third place champions in the Family/Friends/Non Profit Category will receive trophies as well as $1,000, $600 and $300 respectively. Traveling trophies will go to the first and second place winners in the Corporate/Business/Government Division. Both divisions are eligible for the $100 Honorable Mention award.

No experience is necessary. Dennis Shives, a natural born storyteller, will be conducting a three-hour teaching demonstration on Saturday afternoon. Not only does he possess an infectious sense of humor but he also specializes in getting artists of all ages to tap into their imaginations as they use wooden forms and everyday tools to create masterpieces in the sand.

So if you don’t want to miss out on one of Ventura County’s summertime institutions, we have only one question for you. Can you dig it?

August 18 Shively Sand Sculpture Demonstration (Noon to 3:00P; beach east of the pier)

August 19 Sand Sculpture Competition Check In 8 – 9A @ Show Control Booth just inside Beach Festival

Contest 9:00A - 1:00P on beach east of the pier

Judging 1:00 - 2:00P

Awards 3:00P @ Beach Festival Stage

For rules and entry forms

A WAKE-UP CALL COURTESY OF MOTHER NATURE'S FURY

Published in the Wednesday edition ( July 18, 2012) of the Ventura County Star

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — A friend of mine pointed out last month, "You are the only person I know, given these weather conditions, that's going 'toward' Washington, D.C."

What weather conditions, you ask?

On June 29, triple-digit temperatures toppled historic weather records. The Washington Post recently reported heat-related deaths in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia climbed to 31.

On June 29, gale force winds in the same region also toppled thousands of trees.

The widespread destruction was caused by a derecho, a powerful storm system associated with briskly moving bands of showers or thunderstorms.

The ferociously foul weather forced 250 road closures in Virginia alone, and left more than 1.3 million homes and businesses without power in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

We found out about the June 29 power outage from a D.C. resident who was dining at the same restaurant as we were in Lexington, Ky. He drove across two states in pursuit of petrol.

The next day, we received a phone call from the family members we were planning on visiting in the nation's capital.

They reported no electricity and estimated that it might be a week before power could be restored.

In fact, as they were speaking to us, they were carting $400 in groceries purchased for our culinary pleasure to the house of a friend who hadn't been dejuiced.

Apparently, no rhyme or reason exists with respect to the power grid of Potomac Electric Power Co., known as Pepco.

We were amused by stories of folks who employed the last percentage points on their cellphone batteries to post "my power is out" on Facebook or Twitter — but the crisis was no laughing matter for millions.

We figured we could hole up at a motel for the duration — one with a pool and AC, of course. What we hadn't figured was all those Virginians, Marylanders and Washingtonians who sucked up the fuel within a 300-mile radius. Our gas tank indicator was screaming "extreme thirst."

Fortunately, we were able to fill up in Lexington, Va., after visiting something like six different stations that had either run out of gas or lacked the power to pump.

The whole situation, as we sat in a line that snaked along for six blocks, was more than faintly reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter days.

When we finally arrived at our destination, we were able to enjoy both cool air and home-cooked meals. We also found that broken branches (which were littering literally every highway and byway) had been raked into neat piles for the trash truck.

Actually, other than having to deal with cranky crowds still suffering the blistering heat, we had it pretty good.

The International Spy Museum, which topped our must-see list, also taught us what might happen if the entire country lost electrical power.

In addition to examining how microdots, invisible ink, buttonhole cameras, lock-picking tools, dead drops and bugs operate in the wonderful world of espionage, we were also warned that the most devastating and destructive terrorist attack on the United States would probably involve the national electric grid. It's the one spot the United States is most vulnerable.

The American electric grid is a complex network of independently owned and operated power plants and transmission lines.

According to the Spy Museum video, if the entire grid goes down, food and water supplies in any given city would disappear overnight.

If the power grid across planet Earth went down for 12 months, the video predicted, 90 percent of humanity would perish.

Fortunately, the recent storm that made life temporarily unmanageable for millions of Americans was a local event.

Workers arriving from outside the region were able to repair the damaged lines in Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland. If the entire country ever gets shut down, experts warn, energy might never be restored.

In addition, you can't fool Mother Nature. When she unleashes her fury, not only do massive trees bow down and break, but human beings are also systematically stripped of their electricity-dependent creature comforts — including residential heating/cooling, communication, media, transportation, food and water supplies.

We Americans haven't taken the Boy Scout motto ("Be prepared") seriously enough. Even here in California, where earthquakes are always a real possibility, how many of us store enough food and water for a month? How many of us own gas-powered generators?

Most of us trust that all we have to do is to dial 911 and the government will come out and make it all OK. Isn't that why we pay taxes?

Maybe hubby and I were mentally deficient to be driving toward Washington, D.C., given the weather conditions on June 29, but we did it for love. When we return home from vacation, we are going to get our emergency closet in order.

For exactly the same reason.

WHY FOURTH OF JULY ISN'T EXACTLY AMERICA'S BIRTHDAY

Published in the Wednesday, July 4, 2012 edition of Ventura County Star

WASHINGTON — More than 3,000 events are held on the National Mall, but none is so well attended as the Independence Day fireworks display in front of the Washington Monument. If all goes according to plan, our family should be oo-ing and ahh-ing alongside 200,000 others who have managed to stake out a seat in "our nation's front yard."

While we now commemorate America's birthday on July 4, in a letter to wife Abigail, John Adams wrote that the second day of July, 1776 "will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival."

You see, on July 2, 1776, Second Continental Congress delegates did affix their signatures to the (Richard Henry) Lee Resolution, which, like Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, called for separation from the British Crown, crafting of foreign alliances and planning for confederation.

Although Jefferson finished writing his magnum opus by July 2, 1776, nobody was prepared to sign it. Editing of the document continued until July 4, when it was formally approved by 12 of the 13 colonies — the New York delegation initially abstaining, but conferring its approval five days later.

Independence Day, arriving 442 days after opening volleys were fired at Lexington and Concord, was marked by the pealing of the Liberty Bell at Philadelphia's Independence Hall — at the precise moment, coincidentally, that British troops were making landfall in New York.

But the Declaration of Independence wouldn't be truly binding until Aug. 2, 1776, when 53 out of the 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress, who risked losing everything had the Redcoats prevailed, appended their respective John Hancocks to the document. Still, despite a plethora of dates, official or otherwise, the powers-that-be decided we would party on July 4.

Yet, when it came to Washington, D.C., celebrations, the observance of our nation's birthday paled in comparison to the gala affairs — grand balls, military parades and band performances — that marked the birth of George Washington, whose popular likeness graced currency, stamps, sculptures and paintings.

Independence Day wouldn't receive its due until well after Washington's death.

Again, as with Independence Day, the actual date of Washington's birthday, even before Congress voted it a federal holiday, was debatable. On the day the future president turned 21, he found, to his chagrin, that his birth date had changed from February 11 to February 22 — due to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1753.

July Fourth also was the day three presidents died and one became fatally ill.

Festivities marking America's 50th birthday were marred by the passing of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two political rivals, who, during the ensuing five decades, were only able to agree on one issue — Jefferson's eloquent wording of the Declaration of Independence.

As a Federalist, Adams found his political views at odds with the man who would become the leader of the Democratic-Republicans. When Washington decided not to seek a third term, the skirmish for a successor was wrangled between Vice President Adams and Secretary Jefferson. Adams defeated Jefferson by a slim three electoral vote margin. The contest was repeated in 1800 with the opposite result. Jefferson became our third president.

A reluctant mutual appreciation, however, matured via handwritten correspondence during their retirement years. In one letter, Adams predicted that although his political adversary was seven years younger, "I will outlive Jefferson." He was right — by three hours.

In 1831, James Monroe, our fifth president, succumbed to heart failure on Independence Day.

On July 4, 1850, Zachary Taylor, our 12th president, was participating in a ceremony laying the Washington Monument cornerstone. During the revelry, he consumed tainted cherries and expired five days later.

Scores of famous Americans as well as President Calvin Coolidge share their natal anniversary with the nation, including Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1804, Stephen Foster in 1826, Louis Armstrong in 1900, Ann Landers and her twin Abigail Van Buren in 1918, Eva Marie Saint in 1924, George Steinbrenner in 1930, Geraldo Rivera in 1943 and Malia Obama in 1999.

Perhaps, even one of you has come to believe, over the years, that the fireworks exploding in the night sky every Fourth of July recognizes your birthday. You are absolutely correct.

Back to the National Mall, do revelers like us need to acquire, albeit temporarily, a patriotic address (Pennsylvania Avenue) to truly celebrate the 236th anniversary of America's birth?

Absolutely not. And as history demonstrates, you don't even need to get the date right.