A Slow Death

This oil catastrophe is a slow death.  It is also a particularly jarring wake-up call to us all.  For those of us who blithely go through our day with the expectation that someone will solve this problem, we can't fathom why a country that put a man on the moon can't throttle a 22 inch leak in a pipe at the bottom of the ocean!

This moment is an epiphany in other ways however.  What we are also seeing on display is something much more unnerving.  We are seeing the impotence of big government.  With all the conservative flailing about the growth of government and institutions taking over American life, now they scream loudly that the government isn't doing enough.  Sorry fellas, can't have it both ways!  Add to that the intrinsic inefficiency of bureaucracy and you have too little too late.

Also on display in the most pornographic way is the hijacking of our society by large corporations that have no interests other than their shareholders and the politicians that they are giving money to.  BP is slow to act in the cleanup, stingy in its doling out of monies to finance cleanup crews and is more concerned with reassuring its shareholders that it still intends to distribute over $10B in dividends!

Then there is the destruction of natural resources and the assassination of a way of life for literally millions of people.  Imagine living in New Orleans now, or coastal Mississippi and Alabama.  The smell of oil taints the very air you breathe.  Do you move?  Where do you go?  Is this whole area simply going to degenerate into poverty because no one can make a living?

Been watching TV lately?  The resignation of the pelicans is the most disturbing.  They are just sitting in the gooey mess waiting to die.  Our food chain is in mortal danger from this.  Think of what a hurricane would do by aerosoling this mess inland over a few hundred miles.  Health problems will spiral out of control, and people will die.  It's starting already.

Can it be any clearer why we need to break our dependence on oil?  The experts say that of the thousands of wells in the Gulf of Mexico, there are most probably at least 10% of them that have structural problems and are potential risks as bad or worse as the Deep Water Horizon. 

A new consciousness needs to arise.  Maybe this event will be the trigger.

Drill Baby Drill???

A Memorial Day Surprise!

One of the biggest fears we all have as parents is that our kids grow up somehow deficient and with no moral compass.  I am blessed in that both my girls have turned into grownups with empathy and a strong sense of right and wrong.

I wish I could say the same for my sons!

This morning, as is my wont, I arose at 7:30pm on another beautiful day here in South Florida, and sleepily put on my shorts and T-shirt.  My wife was silently dozing as I closed the bedroom door and was being led by my "son" Cody (100lb Labrador Retriever), toward the back door and outside for his morning constitutional.

He has always been a pretty regular guy, albeit with some rather strange bowel preferences for a dog.  He really doesn't like the grass very much, so as we amble down the brick paver driveway, when the urge hits him, he gingerly puts his front paws only as far onto the grass as necessary to delude himself into thinking that he is completely off the driveway.  Then he assumes the position, and lo and behold,  50% of the time, his morning deliverance winds up on the bricks.  This was one of those mornings.

I had passed him by on my way to the end of the driveway to retrieve the morning paper.  I bent down to pick it up and when I turned around, I noticed that he was still giving it all he had, and finally after some extra effort to expell what looked like something foreign trapped in the deposit, which is not by any means unusual, he completed the task.  I realized that I had come all the way down the driveway without my trusty pooper rake, and needed to go back to the garage to get it.  Starting back up the drive, as I glanced over at the 'challenge' waiting for me on the side of the drive I noticed something unusual sticking up out of the 'bowels' of the pile, so to speak.  Upon closer examination I was shocked to realize that I was seeing the number 10 sticking up on a green piece of paper!  As I gaped in horror, I saw that there was yet another piece of paper with a 5 on it at another spot in the pile, and also what looked like a picture of the father of our county peeping at me from beneath a rather brown smudge.

I stared at it for a moment or two not able to believe what was before my eyes!  It suddenly dawned on me that my concern, only yesterday, for the sudden disappearance of several bills that were laid out on the kitchen counter to dry after they got soaked when I jumped into the water with my wallet was now justified and explained!

What a cruel epiphany to discover that your dog has eaten your money!  I tried to imagine how he would have been able to a) know the money was there, and b) get at it by snatching it off the five foot counter.  Even for a Labrador, the amount of effort to get it was beyond his physical capability.  That's when I was horrified to realize that he must have had a co-conspirator in this fiendish plot.  Meese the cat!

Now it all made sense!  I knew that Meese had been pissed off at me for the last three weeks  since I forbade him to go outside because of his allergy to fleas.  His constant mewling was driving us crazy!  Understanding how his resentment had finally devolved into the pursuit of revenge and escape, it was clear that he had jumped onto the counter top and pushed the bills to the floor.  Maybe his devilish plan was to use the money to get a bus ticket to Immokalee or points north, and he had undoubtedly talked Cody into going with him, but whatever the plan, the fact that the two of them had turned against me was greatly discouraging.

I can only surmise that when the bills hit the floor, Cody, who is actually a goat in disguise, and has no short term memory, lost all pretense of cooperation with Meese and just couldn't resist the salty taste of a $16 treat that had just come out of the ocean (who knew he liked seafood!).  He gobbled them down--

Ergo, what I was seeing in front of me was the unfortunate but inevitable result of his greedy penchant to eat anything.  As he trotted beside me back to the house, he didn't seem the least bit concerned that he had just been revealed as 'just another son who steals from his Dad's wallet'.

After donning bright yellow rubber gloves, I faced the task of extracting the money from the organic clutches of Cody's indescretion.  Imagine my dismay when my first attempt to parse the pile resulted in only shreds of paper, not the whole bill!  Apparently the acid bitterness of the Cody's gastric channel had left the bills in tatters!

So, after I thought I had seen the last days of money disappearing mysteriously from my billfold during the years when the kids were younger, I guess I can still claim the dubious honor of being the world's smelliest human wallet! 

When I got back into the house I thought I could hear the Meese saying under his breath, "Foiled again!!"

Our Horizon Looks Darker and Darker---

I have emerged from my self imposed blackout to offer my thoughts about the unfolding ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. All my life, I have seemingly been on the periphery of major catastrophes, never experiencing first hand the traumas that all of us watch on the daily news broadcasts. They always seem to happen to others.

Now suddenly, my little slice of paradise is in the path of this sinister oil spill that won't stop growing. We have not seen any real physical impact yet, although two days after the explosion of the BP 'Deep Water Horizon' oil drilling platform in the Gulf, there was a whiff of petroleum odor over the city for a day or two....just a hint of anxiety in the air. As this disaster continues to grow, it is occupying more space in everyone's consciousness, and the cries of "Drill, baby, drill" seem like a laughable remnant of some bad nightmare.

As I start to think about the impact of this spill on our daily life here in SW Florida, I am fearful. I can visualize a slow death for the West Florida coastal communities as their beaches..the real draw for the billion dollar tourist industry here...are fouled with a sheen of oil that covers everything with an insidious creeping shroud that won't go away. The local paper here reports that hotel reservation desks are starting to get cancellations, just when the tourist business was beginning to revive after the long dark night of the recession gave tourism revenue a black eye last year. If the oil begins to wash up on our beaches a few weeks from now, I wonder if I will smell it all day in my back yard just a mile and a half from the beach. I wonder what will happen to all waterfront related businesses like shrimpers, crabbers, tour guides, fisherman, boat rentals, all marina services, wildlife refuges and sanctuaries, seafood restaurants, et al. What will happen to all the people who make their lives and a living here, not to mention the animals? It is almost too dramatic and horrific to consider how this life style will change. The local price of gasoline has already increased by 7% in the last week and is predicted to increase steadily. The impact of this promises to be so large that we haven't really gotten our heads wrapped around it yet....and the pollution continues to pour forth into the Gulf unabated.

The headline in the local paper this morning is "Does This Kill the Drive to Drill Baby Drill?" A Republican state representative actually proposed last year that we open drilling fields three miles from the Florida coastline. Now he is agreeing with Sen. Bill Nelson that we institute a moratorium on future drilling plans.

In the letters to the editor in the Naples Daily News, there was a terse piece from a man who equated this current spill with water-sprinkler damage in a high rise apartment: "After you replace the drywall, everything will be fine! Is a leaky water pipe a reason to move everyone out of the building? Leaks will happen-get used to it!" Another brilliant writer blamed the whole mess on President Obama:" After working 40 years in the industrial-maintenance field, I find it amazing that this oil platform failure was not backed up with shut-off valves. Isn’t it incredible that under President Barack Obama’s watch we have this huge environmental disaster.  Let’s see if his administration accepts full responsibility for this failure!"

What an idiot! I wonder if people like this know that the shutoff valves for this platform, and (tens of other by the way) were manufactured and installed, along with the cement support pilings by Halliburton--Dick Cheney's company--and that the cement pilings are failing because the standards pushed for and approved by Bush and Cheney were too lax to insure secure shut off valves on these platforms. In fact the inspection on the destroyed platform just prior to the explosion showed that the safety valves and pilings were insufficient in the event of an accident.

We are all waiting here with increasing anxiety as this catastrophe unfolds. I think Floridians are realizing that our lifestyle here is endangered and about to change. There is almost nothing we can do at this point to avoid the approaching storm clouds. All actions now are defensive against this encroaching horror.

This incident is a huge wake up call. The oil nuts need to be silenced. If ever there was a time to wean ourselves off petroleum, this is it. If we don't, you can expect more spills, more environmental catastrophe and more economic disaster. There is no fail-safe technology in oil drilling. All it takes is one mistake, or one greedy politician to eviscerate standards, and the lives of millions are affected.

Right now I am trying to breathe in as much fresh air as possible, before it all goes away!

Do It Now!

As I watch this Health Care reform drama unfold on our TV screens and listen to all the commentators and editorialists describe positions both pro and con, I am struck by the simple fact that if we do nothing, there will be an additional 10 million people who will not be insured over the next five years.  In addition, the abuses perpetrated on all of us by the insurance companies will continue unabated and we will all be paying more and getting less.

Dennis Kucinich, the representative from Ohio got it right when he said that even though this bill may have big problems, it is at least a beginning, and he couldn’t in good conscience vote against it.  It is a way to insure 30+million more Americans, as well as end some of the egregious practices of the insurance companies. 

Nicolas Kristoff writes in the New York Times today about the life expectancy of Americans and the periods in our history when life expectancy increased most.  It turns out that the period of the largest increase was during the War years in the 1940s when many more Americans had to have physicals when they entered the armed forces or were screened to do a variety of jobs for the war effort.  Diseases and problems were diagnosed early and treated, and lo and behold, we as a nation became healthier!

It is so patently obvious that preventive care will save us money and increase our productivity as a nation, that those who stand in the way of initiating this reform could easily be considered principled morons or in the most extreme, traitorous!  Where is our moral obligation to our fellow countrymen?  Why is it that when we are dealing with others in a one-on-one relationship our compassion and generosity comes forth with ease.  Yet when we are faced with relationships that are group-to-group, we become covetous, stingy, competitive and morally questionable.

I have always felt that the provision of health care and reform is our moral responsibility as human beings.  Our country’s success now depends on our finding a way to support our less fortunate countrymen so that we as a nation can rise to a new level of caring and productivity. 

My experience just since I have started writing this blog has shown me example after example of serious problems with the current system, both personally and anecdotally from friends and acquaintances.  This morning at the dermatologist’s office, for example, the receptionist asked me if I wanted to pay the whole bill for my last visit.  I said, “Didn’t my insurance cover most of it?”  She said they had covered $84 of a bill for $350 for exam and freezing removal of a variety of little lesions.  I am paying $23,000 a year for insurance, and the best they can do for this kind of procedure is $84?  Better yet, I went for lab work and a physical 6 weeks ago, and the bill was $169.  My insurance paid $.83 (yes, that’s 83 cents!). 

Something is wrong with this picture!

So I ask you again, can we not find it in our hearts, person to person, to reach out with some compassion and support for those who need the help.  Health care reform needs to be passed now, not later.  If we fail to do this now, it will be at least a decade before we will have another chance, and by then my friends, I fear it will be too late for all of us.

Make your voice be heard.  Can’t you take a minute to write an email to your congressman?

Feeling Good!

I am on a new mission.

About 3 months ago we started a new business called Paradise Coast TV. It’s an in-room hotel channel that provides visitors with options for shopping, restaurants and attractions in SW Florida. It’s part of a national service called the Visitors TV Network.

As anyone who has ever started a business knows, there is so much to do that it is impossible to do it all. What is so amazing about this process is that both my partner and I feel incredibly energized…..again! I am trying to analyze what has made the difference.

I have been in the workforce since I was 20, and that was 40 odd years ago. When we moved to Florida, I sort of expected to ‘retire’ after 30 years in the TV business and live a life of leisure. I was wrong. There is no retirement. In fact, I have discovered that the only way for me to feel productive and active is to be using my brain and creating something. For the past 7 years I have been involved in several enterprises that have been way stations along my path of life. They were interesting, modestly revenue producing, and exciting for very short periods of time. However I felt like I was trodding through life with no real direction for my talent. I kept having this internal dialog, “What am I supposed to be doing with myself?”

Don’t get me wrong, life is good! I am living in paradise, and there is something very soothing about being massaged with balmy winds in December and January while the rest of the country is shoveling snow. But the excitement was hiding. We were marking time.

For the last two years we have struggled with a business that was completely unrewarding. We tried everything we knew how to do to make it work, but it was just not happening. It was horribly depressing and enervating.

The good news is that just when things are the bleakest, a ray of light will appear and a path away from the darkness is suddenly visible.

That is what has happened to me and my partner with this new venture. For the past 40 years, that has been my pattern. As horrible as things may get, there is always a path. Circumstances change and if you are on the lookout, there is always a path. Some might say I am just lucky, but I think it is not about luck. It is about recognizing that change is a part of life in the most integral way. When you understand that, you are able to be alert for the opportunities that appear on your path. Then it is a matter of using your judgment and intuition to choose the right opportunity.

When we were on our vacation in Hilton Head last fall, I spent the day with a friend who had been very successful in the electrical contracting business. We were discussing why people succeed and fail at certain enterprises or ventures, and he told me about something he had done years earlier that had been a disaster. He made a very simple but obvious statement that I will never forget. He said, “I was doing something I knew very little about and that was the problem.”

If you think about it, we all have something (or many things!) that we know a lot about. When you get involved in those kinds of activities, you feel empowered, knowledgeable, and competent. Isn’t that the essence of success?   So, clearly, the secret of it all is to pursue those opportunities that you know something about. It all sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Well, we all know it isn’t, but nonetheless, choosing to pursue something that is familiar and well within your skill set does make it easier to succeed.

Anyway, that is what we are doing now, and I can tell you that I am excited, energized and productive. And I am learning new things at a rate that is dizzying. My industry has changed over the last 10 years so completely, that we have had to learn how to use a completely new set of tools. But the thing I know something about—the telling of stories in video and film---hasn’t really changed at all. There is my competency, and I am now exercising that muscle again.

It feels good!

Do We See It?

When is that moment when you actually see the 'light at the end of the tunnel"?  We continue to peer into the future, hoping to experience that moment when we confirm that we actually see it, for that is the moment when hope is born anew.

I had that moment yesterday morning as I read the New York Times.

There was a front-page article about the latest NYT/CBS poll that found that President Obama has a slight edge over the Republicans with the general public across a whole range of issues.  Maybe the general populace as a single unit does have the intelligence to see through the obfuscation and deceit.

The poll's results point to the dawn of realization that while the President may have been stumbling along the path of trying to accomplish the major goals of his agenda, the public as a whole appreciates his concept of equality and fairness and sees his attempts to protect the country from the scourge of special interests.  That gives me hope.  It frames the approaching midterm elections with an atmosphere of awareness.   Unless we can rid ourselves of the obstructionist forces attempting to return us to the programs and philosophy of the Bush years, we will head further into decline as a society.  People really do understand at the most basic level that the pettiness of the partisanship exhibited by the lockstep Republican mentality of opposition to anything Obama or Democratic cannot continue.

Then I read an editorial by Paul Krugman exposing the Republican hypocrisy embodied in Newt Gingrich's warning:

"Don't cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong."

It made me gag. 

Republicans have been trying to kill Medicare for 50 years, and now all of a sudden they are Medicare's protectors?  Krugman exposes the argument for what it is-fear mongering and subterfuge.  The proposed Republican alternative is offered up under "Roadmap for America's Future," the budget plan recently released by Representative Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee.  His plan will cut more out of Medicare than the proposed savings under Obama's plan, while gutting retiree benefits over the next ten years -and yet they are pounding their chests with self-righteous indignation, blocking any Democratic effort to effect cost savings.

The coup-de-gras was in the local paper this morning on page 22.  There was a small article that documented the GOP's cloaking of a mailed survey and appeal for money in the mantle of the US Census!  The RNC successfully raised money using this tactic, and now the House Republicans are doing the same thing.  They are asking people to participate in the "2010 Census of Republican leadership".  They claim the recipients were specially chosen to receive this "census document".  This is a clear attempt to capitalize on the name of the Census Bureau.  And there is House Minority Leader John Boehner's signature at the bottom of the letter! 

The Republicans are deliberately trying to confuse people.  Census bureau staffers are concerned that citizens who fill out this form will not fill out the real Census and that will lead to an inaccurate count.  Remember that House seats (and the distribution of over $400 Billion) are apportioned according to results of this Census.  What are the Republicans doing?  The answer is anything they can to pursue their own interests and maintain the status quo.

I am hopeful that Americans are awaking to the need to recapture our ability to govern ourselves in the interest of the average citizen.  Let's hope this most recent CBS/NYT poll is an accurate barometer of the pulse of the people.

I think......yes maybe.......I HOPE I am seeing that speck of light at the end of the tunnel........

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock!

I had a dream last night.  It was a metaphor for what is happening to all of us.

I dreamed I was sitting at my computer and trying to open the ICE (in case of emergency) file to find the combination to my safe so that I could put a wad of $1000 dollar bills in there that I had somehow extracted from the bank.  For some reason I could not call up the file with the combination.  My computer was not cooperating (seems to happen a lot these days!). 

In the other room a fellow named David was sitting and chatting with my wife while I was desperately trying to find the numbers that would let me open the safe and put the money in there for safekeeping.  That is really odd, because I know the combination by heart, but I couldn’t retrieve it for some reason. (dreams afflict us with that sense of trying to run but our legs being caught in molasses….)

Sitting behind me was David’s brother ‘Michael’.  Michael had been recently released from prison and was a chronic thief.  He was sitting behind me, silently eyeing my pile of cash while I was pounding on the computer keyboard.  I KNEW he was eyeing the cash and that made my quest for the combination all the more urgent.  As I worked on the computer with growing frustration, I could sense that Michael was becoming more tense.  I could feel him behind me and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye as I feverishly searched for the file.  Finally he gave up all pretense of being quietly sitting there, and started to pace behind me, growing more and more impatient while glancing nervously and repeatedly at my money on the desktop.  I tried to hide the pile of cash under my arms—in my desk drawer; behind the papers on the desk---but I knew that everywhere I put it, he was following my motions like a cat watching his prey.  Finally he stood on his chair and lost all sense of propriety, shaking with agitation and babbling about how “all he needed was one of the bills and he would be satisfied”.  I was terrified!

I turned in my chair and called out to David to come here right away…..in an annoyed voice he asked me what I wanted…..I then screamed his name as loud as I could ……..!

My wife said the sound that came out of me and woke her up was a word that had an “A” in it, but that is all she could make out.  She said the neighbors probably heard me bellowing.

I had a lot of trouble going back to sleep.

Don’t we all have ‘Michael’ sitting behind us trying to get our nest egg?  Don’t we all feel like someone or something is siphoning off our savings and leaving us anxious; fearing the constant presence of economic disaster lurking just around the corner? 

Where is that coming from? 

I used to be really confident that whatever ups and downs we had as a family; as a business venture; as a country we could rebound.  Bounce back.  Try again.  Today, that sense of optimism is smothered by the wet blanket of special interest, greed, and political partisanship.  Our entire civic enterprise is mired in the inability and unwillingness of our representatives in Congress to act.  Unless we figure out what to do about that as a people and a nation, ‘Michael’ will always be just over our shoulder watching our treasure; waiting for his moment to steal it all and leave us with nothing.

The time has come for people of good will and intelligence to take hold of our destiny and get rid of the obstructionists.  I read an editorial by Bob Herbert in the New York Times that hints at the beginnings of an awakening by just those kinds of people. 

We must act now before we run out of time.