School Daze And A Few Choice Bricks For A Wall

I now hear the loudspeaker voice lead the kids in reciting the pledge of allegiance at the junior high school here in the land of Colonel Baker. The first couple of days of this ritual echo always takes me by surprise when I'm out skimming the pool and watering the plants. When I went to public school in this town, back in the days when a nickel was still worth a penny, the semester always began after Labor Day, but now classes for the masses convene in August. Everyone involved in education still gets Labor Day off, but now it comes about two weeks into the school year. God knows people need a break from each after getting just recently introduced.

My lads have been out of school for awhile now. They may have been the last pair to actually have gotten a decent deal in the California higher education arcade. They made the usual stops in the book gaming halls for the cash strapped, popping quarters into various junior college machines before ending their obligatory stay at two California State University campuses where the final level school-game bosses punched them out their hard fought prize, the paper diploma of no cache.

September always brings out the ranking lists of America's finest colleges from the self serving periodicals promoting themselves as the arbiters of academic taste for the discriminating parent, the worried collegiate administrator, or for the dental office patient stuck waiting in a tight fitting chair with a handful of mags to peruse while some root canal procedure in the back spaces runs long. The lists I saw this year waiting for my tooth cleaning came from Forbes and  U.S. News & World Report.   

Forbes could find no public college or university in their Top 25 list of best academic places. UC Berkeley and UCLA made the U.S. News & World Report  Top 25 at numbers 22 and 25 respectively. Cal and UCLA could not break the Top 50 for Forbes. You can check the criteria on how the lists were made through the links if you wish. They both read like Charlie Brown's teacher sounds to me.

All this windup for the obvious pitch, which finds the wealthy taking their dollars directly to where their familial descendants will go- to a carefully cultivated private school where a building might have the same last name as a well heeled rush student or two of year 2022. When you see what the endowment picture for some of the top tier private colleges and universities on the Forbes and U.S. News & World Report lists look like compared to what the public universities total you get a clearer idea of how class warfare is truly waged in this world.

Stanford University serving about 19,000 students showed an endowment fund of $12.6 billion at the end of 2009 . The University of California system serving ten times the number of students (191,000) carried an endowment fund of just under $5 billion by the end of 2009 for its 10 campuses, but none of that money can go to pay salaries for teachers or defray other education costs. The California State University system, which serves more than 400,000 students, possessed an endowment fund of just under $900 million at the end of 2007, and given what the typical losses have been for the past two years a conservative estimate would put that figure at about $750 million for the end of 2009. Cal Tech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena has a private endowment fund almost twice the size of the largest public university system in the nation.

With all that endowment money (gift dollars as tax write-offs opposed to tax dollars for public benefit) at so many institutions of higher learning  a person might start to wonder why student fees keep going ever higher. I ask myself the same question concerning my energy bills as I keep setting the thermometer higher in the summers and lower in the winters but even with lower usage pay a much higher cost each month over the previous year.

Harvard made a big splash a few years back by utilizing their huge endowment fund to underwrite qualified students at their school with a free ride for all those admitted whose families earned $60,000 per year or less. About 20% of the student body at Harvard utilizes this benefit today, but do not think those who chose this path feel all that comfortable while attending this very elite school.The gulf between the rich and poor today now seems as vast a distance as separate galaxies are from each other throughout the universe. 

You certainly do not see the U.C. system, or the California State University system, underwriting the poor any longer, although more than 50% of C.S.U. students do receive some financial aid. The citizens of my home state now spit fire in full tax revolt, and have no desire to help underwrite a college education for their neighbors children at this time. These modern Libertarians either will send their brood to a private school, or on the other side of the socio-economic door will never send any family member to any college. Fees have skyrocketed the past couple of years at both California higher learning institutions where the cost of education for students spiked up more than 30% over the last couple of years. KCET reported that state supported per student aid has plummeted 50% this decade for college students while the cost of tuition rose $2,500 over the same time frame.

The sad fact for the world remains that we create many more poor each day than we do the very wealthy. At some point, and that point may be nearer than anyone imagines, the poor are going to revolt against the current economic and social systems that have created such huge earnings discrepancies between the chosen few and the neglected multitudes. The likelihood becomes so much greater for violent upheaval when all opportunities for advancement have been taken away from the lower class. Lottery scratch tickets may not convince enough folks that they too can have untold wealth and happiness. Drugs and alcohol may no longer pacify all those trapped in meaningless low paying occupations. In truth no one needs a college education to make these assumptions. It is the law of physics when you apply too much pressure for too long a time the reaction can be rather messy.

A thoughtful electorate might try to remove some of that pressure, and particularly those who fly in the gilded skies above the masses, and who might have the most to lose. Chip in a little more for tax purposes to ease the pressure. Allow the dollar disadvantaged some hope through affordable higher education costs without years of debt to tie them down and dispirit their dreams. Let the Bush tax cuts expire on the top 2% of earners, and allow a tax rate of 20% on capital gains. Instead of having the biggest portions of government money go to the few defense contractors and data stream computer-spy companies, allow some public money to go to places and people where unemployment sits at 15% or above with median per capita earnings at close to poverty. Maybe those shiny gated communities might be saved, instead of potentially becoming little prisons surrounded by mobs of  angry unemployed and uneducated gun-toting freedom fighters searching for the good life, or at the very least the slightly used high-def 50-inch monitor of their choice.  

Roger Waters may have been on to something about those walls and bricks thirty years ago.
Thanks for stopping by.

Historical Fiction

I open the two doors in the morning to catch the breeze, and watch the sun rise a little later each day. I peer through the two doors in the late afternoon, and catch sunset just a tad earlier each evening. Augustus has once more followed Julius on our sturdy rock's yearly revolution around the sun, and I find myself knee deep watching The Tudors these  late midsummer evenings. The fictional license blend of historical people, places and events all set within a great story snares my pea brain every time. I loved HBO's Rome and Deadwood, and this Showtime offering certainly captivates my imagination.  

Since I'm just through season two of The Tudors, I'll reserve final judgment when I finish the series. Both Rome and Deadwood suffered the fate of having too high quality, and thus too costly, productions that were forced to finish their runs before the creators really wanted them to end. Rome's ending was far too abbreviated, while Deadwood just closed like a brilliant play in mid-act because too few asses found the seats and channel each week. Art be damned if ratings points be too small.

The sets and costumes of this current history-as-fiction series I'm engrossed in are the stuff of eye candy. The many intricate plots to advance one group and punish other alliances blends a stew of ancient, modern, barbaric and sublime elements that makes a person ponder if certain animosities can ever be overcome. And really, this makes historical fiction a keen recipe for exploration of our current inescapable dilemmas.

As the news of our every day unfolds with the same unending conflicts between the same unending rivalries it becomes a real struggle for any idealist to imagine peace and harmony for even the briefest consecutive periods of moments. As I watch Henry VIII decide Catherine has lost her value, then remove Anne for failure to deliver, and cozy up with Jane, I visualize these real women of yesterday as the representations of corporate entities, and maybe Microsoft plays the King in our world today. The King's ladies are cast as the various necessary acquisitions to maintain balance, power and deliver a specific type of  product advantage by giving birth to a technological successor of the original. Anyone can conjure from the corporate giants of our digital media communications age the various major nation state leaders to assume the dominion roles of our 16th Century drama. A  collection of the privileged who cajole, bicker, battle and vie for virtual control over the lives and destinies of the common folk.       

The consequence of failure in the corporate world today has been transformed since Henry's time. No one tied to a stake and set ablaze, or submerged in a boiling vat of water if caught working on behalf of the wrong allegiance happens today for those on top. In this era we have the golden parachute for thieves and scoundrels of the court who betray the public and private trusts.  For common people in many places today you simply are not allowed the device, the access, or the ownership of content without major compromises.
 
Change is all around us, even though so many things seem to remain fixed. Sunset arrives and the two doors close.

Thanks for the visit.

Reunion Reflections

Three weeks ago today I was sitting in Sacramento at a Mel's Diner table with my good friend, Mike Farrace. I had the keys to the highway ready for my four hour drive home, but at that moment was chowing down a tasty omelet with big splashes of Mel's java reliving thrilling days of yesteryear while we were both coming to terms with the mundane realities of this year. Getting old is not golden, and rust never stops.

Mike's a really bright guy who created Pulse! Magazine for Tower Records, and oversaw our Internet business model for many years. Never mind that as a home grown Sacramento lad he had just spent the last half-an-hour cruising through midtown completely lost trying to find a little breakfast restaurant on C Street, which after a stop or two for directions from bemused locals sweeping walkways and pruning hedges in the McKinley Park area of Midtown, we discovered so full that a wait of the entire morning was going to be our ultimate reward. Hence, Mel's flavorful cups of boiled coffee with grilled broken eggs amid conversations of technology, music and the man we both revered.    

I made the trip that mid-July weekend to Sacramento to see my friend, mentor and  former boss, Russ Solomon, get a small commemoration at the location where he started his once immense recorded entertainment empire. The Mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, delivered some warm and heartfelt words of thanks to the man of the hour. A band comprised of several old Tower Records employees serenaded the hundred or so music-business-refugees who gathered in the blistering heat of the mid-day sun paying their respects to a true visionary of the 20th Century. 

It felt like home again with all the familiar faces and voices. Heads now etched with a few more lines under a little less hair bobbed and weaved in the afternoon glare shaking more salt than pepper trying to find the shade. All the eyes danced as youthful as ever, those bright ocular organs suspended in the marvel of life's design, which thankfully masks the wear of time to all but the most keen observers.  The sounds of patchwork dialogs the gathered fans engaged in waiting for the main event soothed my ears like a cool lotion rubbed into parched skin.

The morning of the event I spoke with Russ in the kitchen of  his lovely home, a conversation just like the hundreds of talks we used to have in his office, which was always open. Nearing 85, and with his beautiful wife, Patti, Russ still looks like Russ, loose around the edges but as sharp and keen as the finest blade of cutlery you could find in any kitchen nook when you peer into his eyes and listen to him speak.

We took turns pointing out the obvious business failures of industries over the last age, and the whys. We updated each other on some figures of note we had news of, talked of schisms and current passions while sharing some funny lines along the way. In every conversation  I have ever had with Russ I have always  come out of the discussion with a better understanding of the world around me.  Our two hour chat that Saturday July 17 morning ended too soon, but as was usually the case when the king held court during his long reign as the record guy, he had an appointment to see a host of friends who also hung on his every word.

As I walked out through the big double door entrance of his "two bedroom pad" and looked at the many pieces of sculpted art in the front of the home, memories seemed to escort me to my car. I remember bringing my two now-grown sons to this place many years ago as very young boys to the Stanley and Wendy Goman wedding reception. I still see Wendy putting some cake on Stan's face with laughter and oohs simultaneously erupting from the crowd.  A host of dinners and parties cascaded behind those broad and sturdy doors over the years when any, and almost every, idea seemed conceivable and doable when taken with the right amount of Opus One, or with some other lovely Meritage.

Many of the sculptures, now staring at me in this quiet setting, lived as anti-corporate signposts during a previous existence and adorned the halls of the offices on Del Monte Street for many years. In that past life they gave off an irreverent charm, much like Russ himself, to the people doing business with MTS. The art displayed at 2500 in many ways was the public persona of the  man- complex, intelligent, modern in all respects, and filled with humor. The culture of the company for so many years reflected this amalgam of motive and charm. Be very serious about your work, but don't take yourself too seriously.

Russ appeared that very hot July afternoon on the corner of 16th and Broadway in casual attire, and spoke with such utter humbleness about himself and his accomplishments. He thanked all the people who ever worked for him, and said it was those people who deserved any and all accolades for any lasting achievements the company merited. He handed over the keys to the new owners, Johnny and Dilyn Radakovitz of Dimple Records at the Tower corner.

The heat in the shade was obviously causing my corneas to sweat a little as Russ handed over microphone and keys. Having caught up with Chris at the ceremony, I recreated his Hopson Fade by my lonesome, and walked quietly to my car parked behind the Tower Theater phoning my sons to arrange a dinner meeting that evening, and so avoided  any appearance of being emotionally hammered by people who knew me to be so stoic at public events.

The evening found me in the company of my youngest son (my oldest could not make it due to illness) at Taylor's Kitchen, being served some fine food and some delightful Northern California micro brewed beer by my pal and former cohort in crime, Steve Nikkel. For many years Steve and I teamed up on the video side of the Tower entertainment battlefront waging the good fight for video commerce supremacy. He looked good in black behind the bar carrying on a multitude of conversations with the several dining patrons. We had a blast chatting, listening, munching and drinking.

Back in my hotel room with time to think and very little on the cable, I tried to put the day, and the weekend, into some sort of context. I thought the work choices for the younger set appear to have narrowed considerably over the past thirty plus years. Irreverent and fun are words that no longer fit in the current workplace. So many occupations, professional and otherwise, have taken on an almost militaristic quality today with blind devotion through strict chain of command models operating from centralized decision making locations. The job world has become the antithesis of everything Tower, and Russ Solomon, embraced and nurtured.

I packed my bags.

Now back in Bakersfield, CA three weeks removed from the reunion weekend, I note the progress of the new Target store being erected at the site of a former Robinson-May location at the Valley Plaza mall.  Bakersfield, like so many cities, has become a retail outpost for only the few big-box retail giants who remain, and who slug it out in a commercial war that most closely resembles a Highlander script. The mall is owned by General Growth Properties, a company $27 billion in debt and trying to re-emerge from a year long bankruptcy. The once vital shopping destination now seems in a death spiral and desperately needs traffic Target usually provides. The stores and the offerings at the Target and Valley Plaza border on dreary with an emphasis on boring. 

I also read that Barnes & Noble is now up for sale, as though any other company would want to buy the elephant in the swimming pool with the drain plug wide open. The company that may have suffered the worst blow when this announcement cropped up was Borders, which makes this year probably the last one for that once very cool book seller. It looks like the Mr. Riggio probably wants a private equity partner to take B&N off the public shares roll. The future for print-on-paper with all that devoted shelf space won't be necessary with e-readers and cellular devices. Chock up another victory for consolidation and another big loss for human beings who enjoyed getting together for cultural purposes while crossing all economic lines.

The reunion weekend with Russ and the old gang was a good way to mark the end of the social arts shopping era. The keys are in new hands, and offer a glimmer of proof that small enough and local enough can survive the toughest of times. It will be up to a new constituency to bring back real choices in the various marketplaces and the wages to support those choices.

Thanks for coming by the site for a read.



Photo by Borenstein. Pictured: J. Thrasher, Michael Moore, Russ Solomon and Mike Friedman in an office where cut ties became art.

The Real Glue of the Tattoo

 

I admit it. I don't read nearly enough books. I have no excuse. Shit, I'm unemployed, and going along these days under the various guises of self-employed Internet entrepreneur, political activist, volunteer, musician, retired executive or Special OPS man (Occupation Pooper Scooper for our four fur-balls) as calling cards for the few folks who actually inquire what I do these days. Every response filled with a small kernel of truth designed to distort the ugly reality of the day. Gosh, you would think with all these skills of disinformation I've acquired the last several years I would now hold public office, and would be dining with the small and powerful group of men who can really tell whoppers in the Boardrooms and in the halls of Congress.

The point is I have the time to read books, but hardly ever actually start and finish one at this juncture.

I used to read books regularly years ago. I have shelves and shelves of worthless (in today's world of commerce) bound paper I have amassed and ingested through the years, but over time, and with technology changes, I began to soften my brain more and more with music and film. Two hours, and a pack of lies to myself, convinced me that every movie based on a book with a great soundtrack behind it afforded me all the intellectual muscle needed to discourse with all the other great minds of my time. I found many compadres in this category of intellectual titan-hood to discuss philosophically the rituals of the day broken into small sound-byte segments for easy digestion.

I did begin to find topics outside of pop culture difficult to address with my intellectual cohorts as the film world became a total extension of cartoons and comic book heroes. Ultimately, I realized I had no superpowers, which might be the reason I have no job today. I also had to admit even the President I voted for had no superpowers either. He just claimed he might have some superpowers. The only big budget films made today all have characters with superpowers. If art is a mirror of society, today's mirror must be one of those circus carnival types of glass you find in the fun-houses where fat becomes thin and short becomes tall to great peals of laughter.

Given the grim economic reality of the world today, I can no longer take most of the films put up on the big screen seriously, or otherwise. There are a few feature length films I find worthwhile, and some of them actually make a little money, but I have found the lengthy time in between these pictures too great these days to wait upon. 

A case in point is the recent announcement from Hollywood that the American movie studio system has announced plans to make The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Mr. current James Bond, Daniel Craig, is set to star in this obvious big budget picture. This a masterful book, and the first in a trilogy from a man, Stieg Larsson, who died shortly after turning over the three manuscripts to his publisher. The books (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest) generated tremendous worldwide buzz due to the intricate plot matters involved in each novel, the brilliant character development of the various protagonists (all without superpowers) and to the social outrage eloquently discussed in the main subjects covered within the nearly 1,800 pages of print that comprise this epic achievement.

Hollywood generally dumbs down to imbecilic most great works of fiction, which is why comic books make for such a great alternative for a town short on new and engaging concepts. The Swedes have already completed filming this Millenium Trilogy, and all three books made into films will be available at some point this year. I might watch the series, I might not. My bet, however, is that the Swedish films will be superior in every critically thinking way to whatever Hollywood concocts for a public they now thoroughly believe is brain dead. The American film, or films if the box office on the first picture reaches critical mass, will look great. The gloss from the cinematography will shine more lovingly than the custom paint job on a Ferrari. Sadly, there will be a Chrysler product underneath all those of shimmering pixels of celluloid as the finished American film.

The original Swedish title for the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was Man som hatar kvinnor, or Men Who Hate Women.  Won't see that title on the big screen or at airport book racks anytime soon, but that is the major point of the series. Yes, the byzantine plots take the reader through financial corruption, computer hacking, ethical and moral decay, government crime and abuse of power along the many twists and turns of compelling literature, but first and foremost are the detailed systematic abuses and crimes committed against women.

A person can dream that a work of art might instill a new perspective for people to view the world, and that positive changes might happen quickly as a result. That is a pipe dream. One can realistically hope that a small chip against an ingrained and inflexible institutionalized practice might get noticed, and some other members of our society fed up with the bully tactics of the institution might start to chip away at the injustice as well, until one day there is little of the malignancy left. And so I hope that men and boys will read these important books of fiction for the greater truth found in the tales.

Maybe you would be surprised to learn, based on several surveys conducted in both the UK and US book markets, only 20% of men in both countries read fiction at all these days. That is a very sad modern day comment. When I think of it, I learned a great deal more about Southern California reading Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley and  Ross MacDonald than I ever learned watching the evening news and reading the Los Angeles Times.

Thanks for the visit, and enjoy a good read.

Have MRSA Baby, Have MRSA On Me

The Rolling Stones did a number some 45 years ago, Have Mercy, and I've got a youtube clip below with Mick and the other original Stones performing the tune to canned squeals of delight.

Today's play on words directs your attention to a crisis condition many of you may not realize we find right under our noses now. MRSA is an acronym for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This is a fairly recent bacterial strain of infection that is related to an old nemesis found usually in extended hospital stays, a Staph infection. MRSA was first detected by scientists in the United Kingdom in 1961.

Staph infections, generally, have not been considered altogether too serious unless your system is thoroughly compromised due to a surgery, or due to a serious illness like pneumonia, and any infection poses a grave threat to your health at that juncture. Staph infections usually get treated with antibiotics and routinely clear up after the necessary dosages deliver the knockout blow to the bacteria.

MRSA, however, is a mutant strain that resists these antibiotics, and now poses a grave threat because there are so few drugs left in our nation's medical supply cabinet to treat this recent type of infection.

How bad is the MRSA problem?

What if someone mentioned in conversation that MRSA now kills  more people in this country than AIDS? Would that shock you? According  to the CDC more than 18,000 deaths in 2005 were attributed to MRSA, which was roughly 2,000 more fatalities more than HIV/AIDS for the same year. Another troubling fact concerning this new killer bacteria finds very little current statistical data published today to give citizens the heads up. The last major study of significance available to the public by the CDC only gives information from 1999 through 2005.

I was in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago, and spoke to several of my old business friends. I speak to people here locally. Most people have never heard of MRSA, not to mention that this mutant staph infection now kills more people than AIDS. How is this possible given the information age we now live in?

The first stumbling block in giving people vital information about their health are the hospitals and their owners. Hospitals do not give out the numbers of  those patients treated for MRSA to the public. No big surprise that one of the major incubators of the problem would prefer not to let patients know going into the place that this dangerous and lethal staph infection more than doubled in incidence over the six year study period from 1999 to 2005.

The second major blackout on information for the public regarding MRSA occurs from the factory food industry. A study published in January of 2009 by University of Iowa researchers documents finding MRSA on pigs and humans at a large hog facility in Iowa. The researchers studied two corporate hog production operations, and the one with the highest pig concentration had 70% of all pigs with the bacterial strain ST398 and 64% of all workers with this type of staph. It has only been since 2003 in the Netherlands that the transmission link between pigs and humans of MRSA was established.

The fact that one hog production establishment had 27,000 pigs spread over several smaller locations with no MRSA found might lead one to make a very compelling argument against the horrible CAFO conditions most pigs are forced to endure in this country. A second sound argument against CAFO production facilities on all livestock is the tremendous antibiotic usage that occurs on the animals caged and raised in these facilities.

The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production estimates 70% of all antibiotic use in this country goes into the livestock we eventually eat. The PBS program, Frontline, reported that Stuart B. Levy, MD estimated that somewhere between 15-17 million pounds of antibiotics are used sub-therapeutically in America each year. There is a growing consensus in the scientific community that this large unregulated use of antibiotics is directly related to human beings being increasingly at risk from bacterial infections like MRSA. The federal government under President Obama is pushing the FDA to take stronger action against indiscriminate antibiotic use on livestock, and to potentially ban many antibiotics from the food production operations.

You may wonder why I do not call these livestock operations farms, or ranches. It is because these operations have absolutely nothing in common with those pleasant terms. These are quite simply factories used to destroy and part out animals in the cheapest way possible. If throwing dead parts of other animals into the feed along with antibiotics is cheaper than allowing an animal to be an animal before it is slaughtered then so be it. But, please do not ever suggest to me these caged operations are in any way related to a farm or ranch.

There is a tremendous push back from the so call "farm" states in this country against the removal and ultimate elimination of antibiotic use for sub-therapeutic reasons on livestock. Money is all that matters to the very few companies and their paid people who control the current food industry in America today. An informed public is essential to change the unsustainable methods currently employed by the animal factory owners.

To break up these giant food monopolies will not only serve our overall health much better, but can also mean that true opportunities in food production could happen for so many of the currently displaced and unemployed.   

Thanks for stopping by.