1526 Disability

1526 Disability

One of these hangs on my rearview mirror:

To be completely politically incorrect about it, I am, therefore, a State Certified Cripple or SCC.  I can barely walk even with a cane and when I do, it’s agonizingly slow.  I can’t remain standing for what most people would consider a reasonable length of time.

And I hate it.

But slow and painful as ambulation can be, I still say far too much is being made of this kind of thing.  It’s a fact of life for many of us.  But it doesn’t have to be a center of life.

It’s not as hard to get around as it was before the Americans with Disabilities Act. But it still can be difficult, though we the SCCs shouldn’t be carping about it all the time.

But there is one thing that’s bothersome. A disability is a disability, not a character flaw.

Some people don’t believe that.  They think in terms of “God punished this guy for something he did or failed to do”  or “This guy is like that because he’s bad.” Or a freak.  Or stupid.

Scorn is worse than gratuitous pity.

Disability is not proof of bad living.  At least not most of the time.

And disability is not catching any more than is the cancer or aids or heart disease or old age in people you may awkwardly avoid.

Physical disability is not a mental illness.

It’s just a lack of ability.  Sometimes it’s even temporary.

But let’s get back to those hang tags.  Long before achieving SCC status, some of us saw red every time there was a car in a handicapped spot with no credential -- either the hanger or a license plate with a wheelchair or DAV logo.

“Oh, I’ll just be a minute.”  Or “I applied for a tag and it hasn’t come yet” or “I left it in my other car.”

Yeah. Sure.

Call the cops and you get no satisfaction, unless the offending driver is parked at the precinct… or at the donut shop.  And even then, maybe not.

Leave notes on the windshields or in the door slots of violators.  It probably won’t fix anything, but you’ll feel better.

Shrapnel:

--Microsoft has upped its “get Windows 10” popups which now appear every time you log on.  Popup blockers don’t stop them… after all, they’re Microsoft. But the more often many of us have to “x” out those annoying come-ons, the less chance you have of “selling” the free software, which is worth no more than you’re charging.

--The real estate association, Realtor, is out with its rankings of the “hottest” zip codes in the country, places where people are likely to move and buy.  Top spot on the list: Melrose MA (Greater Boston.)  Others include Fargo, ND; Austin TX and Novi, Michigan… but not Beverly Hills.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1525 Banjo Rant

1525 Banjo Rant

The five string banjo made a comeback during the folk music fad.  The fad has faded but the instrument lingers on and that pleases those of us who play.

But in recent years, the banjo has fallen victim to a dismal affliction that affects many aspects of our lives.  We confuse musical virtuosity with complexity and speed.

With each new player we get less of the first and more of the rest.

The early icons were Earl Scruggs and Pete Seeger. Scruggs was fast. Ho-boy was he fast.  But he was also musical.  If you listen to his recordings, even those he made at the beginning and end of his career, you hear actual music.  Yes, it’s complicated, yes it’s “folk music in overdrive,” as someone put it. (The someone is unknown, but the phrase is generally attributed to song “collector” Alan Lomax.)

Seeger wasn’t a soloist like Scruggs.  But he was an innovator none the less. (You want to know what he innovated, drop me a line.)

In recent years, we’ve welcomed a new generation of players.  Maybe welcomed isn’t the right word.  But each has tried to expand the reach of banjo music and most have failed.

Bela Fleck was the first of them. A breathtaking technician.  He makes sounds no one previously imagined coming from a simple instrument assembled mostly using parts you can buy in a hardware store.

Breathtaking, yes.  Musical?  Not so much.

Latecomers like Tony Trischka and Jens Kruger have traveled the same path.  Expand the repertoire. They dazzle.  And they have good acts.

Tony looks like your favorite uncle. His stage show is filled with self effacing talk.  He’s the genuine article. But his playing, brilliant as it may be, is often tiring.

Jens is a jolly Swiss with a loveable lopsided European command of English that makes him attractive.  But the same about his playing.

This is not a recommendation to return to roots.  There were problems in the good old days, too. Bad playing. Lyrics that used what has become an outdated vernacular even in the mountains of North Carolina and the flatlands of Kentucky. Monotony.

If you want to hear a good compromise artist slightly below the earning level of what passes for banjo superstardom, try “Mean Mary” James.  She’s modern, makes good music, makes good videos.

Guys, it doesn’t have to be jet-fast, jazz- complex and Flamenco percussive.  It just has to be nice to listen too.

Shrapnel:

--Guy in Alaska puts on a bear costume, head and all, goes into the woods and annoys real bears.  Chased by wildlife cops, he then started to annoy people who came to watch the bears.  Cops say he wouldn’t identify himself and they still don’t know who he is or why he did what he did.

--Sesame Street moving to HBO and PBS only gets first runs second?  After 45 years?  And now you have to pay to watch it?

--The Sesame Street move would be bad enough on its own, but with the breakup of Miss Piggy and Kermit, it seems like the end of the world.  Piggy told us she was ready to hit the social scene. Kermit has not returned repeated phone calls or emails.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© 2015 WJR

1524 School for Scoundrels

The major universities are missing out on a golden opportunity. They’d better act before the for- profit career institutes realize what’s going on.

What’s going on?  There are so many criminals in jail -- organized mobsters to street level bookies and drug dealers -- that there’s nowhere reliable to learn the trade.

Time was, you started as a numbers runner.  If you caught on and were a “good earner,” you got promoted.  Eventually, you might be a “soldier” or a “captain,” or even higher.

Time was, you started as a sports customer service telephone representative and  you could learn and rise through the ranks high enough to open your own bookie joint.

Now… as in journalism, law, music, art and advanced agriculture, it’s up to the universities to fill in the gaps left by the end of the apprentice system.

So, how about The Harvard School of Criminality? Or the Michigan State Institute of Gaming Management. Or the Capone School at the University of Chicago. Or the Sandusky School of Pedophelia at Penn State.

It’s tough for an ambitious, young shoplifter to rise through the ranks to anything bigger these days and American higher education doing its share.

One could argue that an apprenticeship -- was far more an effective teaching and learning experience than, say, some Whiplash Willie dump of a law school in the middle of flyover country.

True as that may be, there just aren’t enough places to “read for the law” and school is the only alternative.

This is fast becoming the fate of the would be criminal. Amateurs, most of them.  They don’t have Vito Corleone or El Chapo to rely on anymore.

So we have to find retired or otherwise out-of-action criminals to hire, design curricula and teach.

Help wanted: The University of East Acne, Idaho seeks candidates for a tenure track professorship in loan sharking.  Excellent salary. Benefits include legal services, health insurance and a defined benefit retirement plan.  Please send your CV and rap sheet to the address below. Applications accepted through 12/15/15 for the spring 2016 semester. No calls, please.

You can expect a lesser class of graduates from these places than you would of someone tutored by an established team of professionals.  That’s generally the case in any college level trade school.

But at least they won’t be total greenhorns and amateurs.

The higher education system better latch on to all this before Ace Technical and Mrs. Skinner do.

Shrapnel:

--For all the reasons you already know, it’s good to say we’re “not in Kansas any more” (And thanks again, Dorothy and Toto.) Here’s another: a proposed  law would bar people from voting if they can’t prove citizenship.  If you have trouble proving you’re a citizen there’s a good chance you are (a) black or hispanic, (b) poor and (C) a democrat.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1523 Post Party Depression

1523 Post Party Depression

A few words about the Fox TV encounter among the top ten Republican presidential wannabes. (Fox called it a debate, but it wasn’t.)

You can put the ten of them neatly into five categories.

Louts/Gavones: Trump, Christie.

Smarmy/Whiney: Huckabee, Kasich.

Dopey: Bush, Walker, Paul.

Self Lobotomized Brain Surgeons: Carson.

Tokens: Cruz, Rubio.

There’s some potential bleeding among the categories.  For example, you could put Carson in “tokens” and move Paul into “Self Lobotomized” though you’d have to change the category name to “Blind Eye Doctors.”

What a sorry lot.  Who won?  Fox News and Hillary Clinton.  Carly Fiorina and Bernie Sanders were the runners up.

The differences among the republican candidates are microscopic.  Pour some hand cleaner over the crowd and you kill the microbes.  It was Trump's show.  But even he didn't score any real points except drawing fire from the moderators and laughs from the audience.

As usual, the dems don't know how to fight back. Their responses to the GOP debate:  "No mention of income inequality."  "No mention of climate change." The only thing said about gay marriage was from Kasich, who said we should all love one another.  Very effective.

Each Republican has his own peculiar flaws. The basics are pretty much the same.

But the dems' message is ineffective.  You can't see, hear, smell or touch climate change.  Yet.

Income inequality solved by income "redistribution" won't fly.

People don't hate billionaires, they envy them.  They strive to be one.  They've bought into the myth that it's possible. (It is. But not on a mass scale.)  People don't hate cops who beat up or kill black people unless they're black, much white pretence to the contrary notwithstanding.  

People with drivers' licenses or state photo id s don't care about people who don't and therefore can't vote.  People don't care how much Lockheed or the Kochs give to super pacs.  

Maybe “don't care” is inaccurate.  Maybe it's they care but they don't want or think they can't make an effort to change things.  

People want more money for education, but not if their taxes go up.  People don't care if the next guy doesn't have medical insurance.

People don't want another foreign war.  But they feel they can't do anything to stop one.

Chuck Schumer, influential and likely to be the next Democratic leader of the senate comes out against the Iran deal.  If enough other democrats follow (and they may,) there will be enough votes to override the promised presidential.

Okay, now what?  Is there a way to frame these issues so that people will see a benefit?  The dems appeal to goodwill.   That's idol worship. There IS no good will.  The republicans appeal to greed even while they're pulling a reverse Robin Hood on the people least able to withstand a robbery.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1522 A Ghost's Story

1522 A Ghost’s Story

The following recently materialized on the Wessays™ computer hard drive and is being posted as received:

You have to wonder what's wrong with people.  Here I've been “living” peacefully for a long long time and now new people move into the house.

I try to scare them off. It's not that I don't like them. It's just that this is MY personal space.

So I turn down the thermostat.  They can't figure out why it's cold.  I float up behind them and tap them on the shoulder and they jump.  I move things around, drop dishes, slam doors in the middle of the night.  And what finally happens?  They figure the place is haunted.

Well it is, and I'm what's haunting it.  My name is Alburtis Cullen. But you can call me Al. I died in 1883 and was given a choice whether to "live" here on earth or on what you people call "the other side." I never much liked other dead people so I checked "earth" on my destination form and I've been here ever since.

There isn't much to do, so you'd think I'd find this invasion of the flesh-wearers interesting, if not fun.  And it does have its curious and amusing moments.

I try to stay away from the little kids because I suspect they can actually see me, which the adults can't.  But every once in awhile I play a little joke. Like taking the boy's baseball bat and beating up the girl's rag doll.  I always get a little chuckle over that, especially when one kid goes crying to mommy, blaming the other kid for the damage.

The haunting instruction book instructs us to make strange noises in the night.  That, too, can be fun.  But I prefer to make my strange noises in daylight.  It's slightly less frightening -- I really don't want to hurt anyone -- but it frustrates these carpetbaggers just as well.

They'll go running into a room where they think they heard something and find nothing touched and nothing out of place and nothing out of the ordinary.

Last time there were live fleshists here, they called in a "ghost buster."  Fellow came in with all this fancy equipment, recording machines, video machines, and supposed energy detectors.  Such scientists!   Such phonies. I put them out of business right away.  I got some old paint from a can in the basement and smeared the lenses of their cameras. I turned off the electric power, stole all their batteries and stuck them in their car.

Being able to walk through walls and closed doors and locked cars isn't all bad.  You should have heard them argue among themselves about whether they left the car unlocked.

But at the end of the day, these people have to go. I'd call them pains in the a*s, but I can't feel pain.  Still, you know what I mean.  So I have to figure out a way to scare them off without doing any permanent damage to them or to the house.

After all, even a ghost has to have a roof over his head.

I’m Al. My opinions are my own. Refute them at your peril.

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© Al 2015

1521 So Long to the A&P

1521 So Long to the A&P

If dingy were a fashion statement, the A&P would be Coco Chanel.  From its lofty perch as a retail pioneer to its long road down to bankruptcy, there’s no more familiar a name than this first generation and possibly actual first supermarket.

But it’s been decades since the original grand opening in 1859 and almost as long since there’s been anything great about the “Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company.”

Mention this outfit and a frequent reply is “oh, are they still around.”  Yes.  Sort of.

They’ll be closing or selling off most of their stores.  This will mean a boom in the population of homeless rats and roaches whose breeding grounds will thus be freed of inspection.

Along with their A&P Stores, the company owns Waldbaum’s, Pathmark, Food Emporium and some other less nameable names.  They are the 34th largest retailer of any kind in the US. At their peak, they operated 4,000 stores.  And that peak was in 1950, when competition was slimmer and some newer mass marketers weren’t yet a gleam in anyone’s eye.

When the original owners -- mostly a family trust -- sold the whole mess to an outfit in Germany, no one noticed a difference. At least not right away.  When the company went on that buying binge, Pathmark, Waldbaum’s etc., things began to slide.  Wal-mart’s entry into the field didn’t help. Nor did the warehouse and “club” stores.

Understand a few things about supermarkets:

-they work on the narrowest of narrow margins.

-many are in high rent districts.

-many are unionized which means higher wages but smaller crews, often inadequately smaller.  Baggers who work only for tips in some locations often out-earn regular part timers and don’t pay taxes.

-worker turnover reaches highway speed.

And, yes, you feel squeezed at the register.  Why are prices so high when the growers and ranchers and markets make so little?  Because there are a million middlemen lopping on added costs.

As in the clothing business, a piece of uncooked food goes through dozens of hands before it lands on your back or your dining room table.

So operating a supermarket is usually a register to register hand to mouth operation. What’s most surprising about A&P’s exit is not that it’s happening but that it didn’t happen decades ago.

But there’s an upside to this story.  Awhile back they spun off their coffee division and it now supplies independent and other mass marketers nationwide.  Which means fans of Eight O’Clock will still be able to buy it.  “Eight” has a lot of fans and for good reason.  

Meantime, anyone want a large collection of Plaid Stamps?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1520 Coming Down from Olympus

Okay, take out your pencils and papers, kids, it’s time for a quiz.  Just one question today: What’s more mindless than football, duller than baseball, and more boring than golf and tennis combined?

Right! The Olympics.

Endless days and nights of … nothing.

It’s time to rethink this lumbering and useless draining of international resources.  

What sparks this not-too-diplomatic tirade?  Two recent developments, Rio- 2016 and Beijing- 2022.

The worst first.

When you think of Brazil, what comes to mind?  Pretty women, brilliant music and dance, good coffee, bright sunshine, beautiful beaches.  What’s pushed beneath your radar? Gangs.  Dead street urchins, poverty and now, disease.  Raw sewage in which the world’s supposedly greatest athletes are expected to swim.

If they awarded a gold medal for countries that don’t treat human waste and grow viruses, Brazil would be a sure winner.  If there were one for countries whose olympic participants’ winning ceremonies will need to be held in hospital wards… again, it’s Brazil.

They have a year to clean up a death trap that was a century or more in the making.  They won’t make it. This is an olympics that will honor survival more than ability to swim the backstroke or sail over the bounding main.

Then there’s the recently announced 2022 winter games in China.  Here’s a country with a billion people spending money it doesn’t have on building a village from scratch.  They have a lot of experience building future ghost towns.  Dozens of them over the years.

Great buildings with no people, no jobs and with the former residents of the little villages that used to be there wandering off into the mountains searching for their next meal.

Oh, the Olympic Village will fill.  And then it will be abandoned.

The people who put on this kind of carnival are too smart not to know that once the hoopla ends and the money leaves town (but not their own bank accounts) all those assets will just sit there and rot.

Take a look at Sochi.  Or Beijing after 2008.  Athens, 2004. Munich 1972.  Sarajevo 1984.

And we’re just talking about venues.  What about the people.  Like the East German women shotputters who turned out not to be women.  Or the bladerunner who killed his girlfriend in South Africa or any of a hundred lesser crimes.

No. The Olympics is an advertising event.  And it’s a money printing machine outdone only by the accompanying money burning machine, which it also is.

It’s yet another chance for snooty European old white guys to lord it over us lesser beings.

And it’s an endless bore. Think watching grass growing or paint paint drying.

Shrapnel:

--At around the time we were all in a knot over Cecil the lion, someone in the Carlisle PA area shot a dog in the face and left it for dead which it isn’t.  The lion was beautiful and the dog ugly.  But really… what’s the matter people these days.

--And alas, poor Rowdy Roddy Piper, we knew you well if not for long enough.  The one time professional wrestler died of cardiac arrest at the age of 61. He put on a good show and that’s what they paid him for.

--Since this is Wessay #1520, a salute to the former WFYI, 1520 on the am radio dial, in olden times owned by the New York Herald Tribune.  Struggling, it changed formats as often as an average woman changes shoes, those fools gave a kid $85 bucks a week to play records and do news on the air. And for which that kid will ever be grateful.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015