Unreasonable People

Vladimir Putin

Place your military on display over peace loving nations. Rattle your sabers near NATO military training maneuvers, and send your military fighter jets into attack mode over US ships on training missions with NATO. Say it is OK for you to do so. But what then would you say, Mr. Putin, when one of your pilots makes a mistakes and either crashes his plane or accidentially fires upon the US ship? What then would you say about defensive response by NATO nations and the US military? Would you blame them for the result when you and your policies were the cause of the error in the first place?

Yes. I suppose you would. But I understand. Vlad, you have to maintain your popularity among your citizens so you can continue to be the president for life of mother Russia. Too bad when a mistake begins World War III and your people no longer exist. But mutual annihilation of everyone else means no one will be left to gloat or sneer.

You see the childish game you are playing, Vlad? I know you get it. Too bad for you that everyone else does, too. Just not your citizens who have little access to the world press to learn what shenanigans you are up to.

Well, I guess that leaves other adults to take responsibility and do the work you refuse to do. Too bad. Peace is so near.  But now?...

Chicago Teachers’ Union

Let’s see what is unreasonable about the teachers’ union demands:

• Past contracts provided salary increases that were not fully paid for unless vacant positions were kept vacant, or a small percentage of positions were eliminated. As long as no one lost their job, then no one complained. Now they are complaining because they haven’t been paying attention for how many years?
• The independent Chicago Public School System with its elected board was chronically unable to balance its budget without help from the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois. Generations of this practice were silently allowed by all who should have known better. When the system was hopelessly broke, the City of Chicago took it over and managed it with nationally selected talent.
• Still, budgets were held hostage by union contracts. Union delegates assumed power broker positions and frustrated the CPS management team to really solve endemic problems.  Even systemic problems were glossed over by union personnel daring the CPS and the City of Chicago to keep them quiet and pay their demands.
• The State of Illinois bailed out this broken system for another generation. The union sat silently aside raking in generous salaries and benefits ignoring judgment day which inevitably would arrive.
• Judgment Day is here. The state is broke. The city is broke. The union is not yet broke but will be if it strikes. 

Here’s the deal: teachers in Chicago and in many other school districts in the state have their personal portion of survivor insurance benefits and pension contributions paid for by union contracts from the school district’s tax levies. Most other public employees covered by state and university pension programs still pay their 8% gross salary contribution into the benefit programs. Just like the rest of the nation’s working class, they pay their share of such benefits just like FICA levies for employees and employers.

Not so CPS employees. Theirs is paid by the CPS. 8% of gross salaries. This should not be. The employee ought to pay this cost. Saving 8% of salary on the budget would likely balance the CPS budget. But the union doesn’t want this to happen.

Everyone in the nation has bitten the bullet on benefits, vacations and insurance plans, to say nothing of pension plans. Everyone. We now receive lower benefits, lower insurance coverage and lesser pensions. Some pensions are broke and no benefits or as little as half of the expected defined benefit will be paid out. Not so teachers. They are protected in their mind and in the mind of their union to be spared the pain of what everyone else is experiencing.

Yes, Chicago teachers have it good in many ways and bad in several other matters. But they could count their blessings and work toward common solutions to the problems. This is not a union/management problem. It is a greed problem. And teachers need to be held accountable to the standard.

They are no longer the lowest paid workers in America. Many others take that dubious prize home with them; remember the minimum wage battle? Those are not teachers fighting the fight. Those are hard working people who pay taxes and earn damn little income.

Not so teachers. They earn between $70,000 and $120,000 annual salaries. And they have contract provisions to earn more for taking on additional tasks and programs. They also earn very good insurance benefits, hefty vacation benefits and sick time allowances. Pensions are good but then they don’t pay for them. And still they complain.

There are salary and wage problems in the CPS. There are professional standards problems in CPS. There are effective teaching result problems in the CPS. All are worthy issues in need of solutions.

If teachers are the professional educators they say they are they ought to be setting their inventive abilities on solving those problems for everyone in the system. Let management people solve the budget and salary/benefit problems.

Act as a team member and not a spoiled child!

April 19, 2016

Naps and Other Pastimes

The news is filled with articles on sleep habits. How much sleep is needed for a healthy kid, adult or even pets. How much is too little? Indeed, how about the quality of the siesta? If it is done in complete darkness or quiet, doesn’t that improve the depth of the rest and sleep? Doesn’t the body gain more rejuvenation from deep sleep?

What happens if I sleep in bouts of 2 or 3 hours a few times during the 24 hour cycle? As long as it adds up to 7 hours or so, isn’t that good enough? Well, science says otherwise.

Doctors and researchers are claiming that 7 to 8.5 hours per 24 hour period is the norm and each of us should try to achieve this daily standard of rest.

OK. But life often doesn’t accommodate this regimen. When I was pursuing my career, I commuted 4 hours each day, worked approximately 12 hours on site, did the usual household tasks, read, ate, watched the news, exercised and what not. Additionally I often worked Saturdays. My job involved some evening meetings, some travel, and events held at other sites over the weekend. No way was my job a 40-hour routine.  It was more like 80 hours plus commuting.

And commuting in a large urban area gets complicated. If money is tight (and it usually is for young marrieds) homes are located far from work sites and involve lengthy commutes. Public transportation involves getting to and from the train station, the train ride both directions, and getting to and from the downtown train station to the work site. For me that involved 2 hours each direction including waiting for trains to arrive or depart and allowing enough time to walk between home and office to and from the train stations.

This commuting pattern and time consumption is not abnormal for urban dwellers. I know when I formed my own business and commuted to and from a third bedroom converted to my office, I enjoyed a much less harried life! Furthermore, I visited clients only when necessary and the appointments were usually made to avoid rush hour hassles! What could have been more perfect?

Ah well, when I worked from home I worked very intensely for 7 hours then broke for lunch and a nap. After the nap I continued to work for another 2 hours and then broke for dinner and an evening free for personal interests. Night time sleeping hours were quite normal – 9 pm to 5 am. There’s your 8 hours.

Today I am retired. I go to bed usually at 8:30 (asleep by 9) and arise at 5 am. During the day I often have a mid-morning nap of 30 minutes and an afternoon nap of 40 minutes. I do volunteer work involving writing, communicating, planning and meeting with clients. Activity is in bursts of 2 to 3 hours. Naps are a good rejuvenation from such activity. You see the pattern?

At any rate, my pastimes beyond naps are spent wondering about issues and ideas that need either more research or at least clarified thinking and writing. This raptly consumes my time. It is a very pleasant way to live for me. Very pleasant!

And of it I have no complaints. In fact, I am writing this after having awakened from a 30 minute nap. I worked hard for 4 hours before that. I am writing this piece now. And in a few minutes will make a conference call to discuss developing an educational program for minorities in business. The call will take only 20 minutes. Then lunch and an afternoon free for whatever.

Being Friday, I have the entire evening and weekend to spend conjuring. What could be better?

A nap or two or three beckons!

April 18, 2016

Answer to April 5th Post

Where are we? The post on April 5th described a place throbbing with activity and purpose. The post ended with the question, "Where are we?"

The answer is: a business incubator.

Go back and read it again with that answer in mind. Incubators are fascinating places!

April 16, 2016

Spirituality Vs Religion

With Holy Week just passed I can address the topic of religion versus spirituality.

This is a vast topic. Spirituality as a term makes the discussion a whole lot easier. For one there is very little regimen or catechism relegated to spirituality. That makes it much simpler to deal with. A do it yourself, thing, right?

Religion on the other hand has much more to learn about. Calendars of holy days, saints and prophets of mighty sagas, interactions with God with thousands of people amassed in unlivable places like deserts and mountain tops and flooded expanses. Golly! The complexity boggles.

Of course there are stories writ large in unspeakable languages and dialects. Usually these are found in the Pentateuch, Torah, Koran and Bible. Turns out these four are mostly the same thing although there is discussion – argument actually – about the relative anchorage of these texts.  Of course argument is a rightful term when it comes to religion. Seems people have been arguing over religion for thousands of years. All in the name of love!

Yes, it is a puzzle why mankind attaches such loyalty to a matter of creed. When each of these religions speaks of God’s love for Man, and his exhortation that Man is to love each other as himself, mankind goes dumb. He patently gets it but doesn’t live it. And then wonders why such troubles ail the earth! Well, Duh!

I found Holy Week to be meaningful. Personally it was a good time to be quiet, thoughtful, and open to fresh thoughts of inner peace as well as personal housekeeping with which I might find fresh ideas and serenity. That’s what Lent allows me; space and quiet to think. Good Friday services remind us of how serious life is, the passage of it, and death and finality. Even with that we are called to ponder what comes next. Regardless of our answers we are challenged to think and believe and rethink and re-balance our creed. It is a good exercise of mind and spirit. And life.

Spirituality is a natural pondering of all of the above. Only it is more accessible to our human minds. We need not recall creed or catechism or Sunday school. We only have to respond to what matters the most to us. And in such things stuff doesn’t matter. Not money, time, houses, cars or fashionable clothing. No. This is about the mind and feeling.

The adventurous asks timeworn questions: Why am I here? What is the purpose of Life? Is there a God? What is death? What happens after death? Does all of the good we do in life somehow accumulate to ‘credit earned’ after death? And if so, how does it count?

Watch it! Too many questions create an agenda to write a creed, and that leads to dogma, and written texts, biblical sayings and quotations, and entire catechisms to be followed in Sunday school. You see where this leads us, and where we gathered such history in the first place? Ah yes. Mankind’s curiosity has led us to strange places.

Thousands of years later we have religious wars, jihads, misreading of various religions and a confusion of prophets, holy people and creeds. The confusion confuses further. And people die in the name of God.

Only God is weeping over such folly! Surely he/she does weep!?

I prefer to think of spirituality in which I am responsible for what I believe and how I believe it. Without involving others in the fray, my spirituality nourishes me and directs me to treat others well and with respect. Even if they don’t believe as I do, at least I don’t know what they believe and they don’t know my beliefs either.

See what a peaceful world this would help create? If only.

April 15, 2016

Cleaning House

Decluttering: I’m a neat freak. My spouse is not. I put things away. He does not. I wipe down surfaces as I use them. He does not. I keep my bathroom clean and tidy, gleaming in fact. He does not.

This is why we searched for an apartment with two bathrooms. We each get our own private loo and of course we are each responsible for our space. My selection of bathroom focused on visitors. I wanted their visit to be pleasant so I chose the bathroom on the main hall. It is clean and shining and welcoming. I like the décor as well. You’d have to appreciate gay memes to understand but it is a nice space.

Not so his. I try to avoid entering his bathroom. I enter only to return fresh towels and bathmats to his loo. Just saying!

More on decluttering. When we moved to the apartment we had to rid our home of a ton of stuff. Extra kitchen gadgets, endless unused clothing, and boxes of untouched items we forgot we had. By the time we were settled in the new home we had less to tend and a lot less stuff. Still, stuff remained; now it was crammed into a much smaller space.

What this means is that the unobserved rule – if you bring in something, you have to toss something – is in need of enforcement. Food items is easy: buy it, prepare and eat it. It disappears and makes room for fresh viands.

But the rest of the house is plagued by an ever present mound of stuff placed on every horizontal surface imaginable. Dust accumulations actually push off stacks of unread material! Imagine our surprise when we learned the cause of the middle of the night noise! It wasn’t the dog, after all; it was stuff falling on its own dust power.

Gosh!

House Cleaning: Well that leads handily to the task of cleaning house. It needs to be done. But both of us have never met a vacuum cleaner we loved. So it sits idly by lusting after our carpeting wondering soulfully why it isn’t being used. But we know why. Using it is too much like work. Now with the Silver Sneakers program perhaps we will see it as exercise and take it up again. Weekly, you know; like a regimen of exercise.

Perhaps dusting would be the natural follow up with furniture polish a close second. But you see that leads us back to stuff and clutter. With all of that stuff observe how much has to be moved out of the way to polish and dust surfaces! No way can that be defined as an exercise routine!

We’ll just have to come up with another thought on this.

Wood Floors or Carpet? I’ve lived with carpeted homes for decades. Used to be wood floors were the standard. So were dust mops in those days. And that task was easy and pleasant, sort of like mowing the grass without the worry of bad weather. Somehow it was satisfying.

Today most hard surfaces – floors, that is – are carpeted. I’ve come to regret this trend. Although silent and muffled, carpeting is a chore to keep clean and presentable. Vacuuming regularly is a must if the surface is to be kept clean. Then at least an annual shampoo is needed to keep the carpet color pleasant and clean. More often cleaning is needed if you have pets or high traffic.

None of this cleaning routine was much of a concern when cleaning crews were a normal part of our budget. But in retirement there is no budget for such things and so it is done by us if it is done at all.

Of course the latter is the problem, you see. Quite naturally we tend to put off cleaning the carpet, vacuuming it or spot removing from pet accidents. So, the carpeting is loathsome. I yearn for the days of wood floors and area rugs. At least the latter could be rolled up and taken out for cleaning when needed. And the wood floors only needed an occasional swipe of a dust mop and maybe a little polish in traffic areas.

Well, there was a time when the family was young that I pined for an all concrete home capable of being hosed down from time to time. That isn’t a bad thought still!

I wonder…..

April 14, 2016

Aging and Medications

I remember a time when I rarely visited a doctor. Never visited a hospital unless it was to cheer up a patient. Took no prescription drugs except for asthma attacks. Not a lot of contact with medical industry.

Now times have changed. In retirement one wonders how we had time to work, mow the lawn, commute and raise a family. Now we visit doctors monthly, clinics monthly, and the ER occasionally. We know the drug store personnel as family. And they us!

This winter I made the usual rounds of annual checkups with my three primary doctors – the GP, cardiologist and pulmonologist. All three claimed I was doing wonderfully and asked why was I here? I took that as a good sign. Even the cardiologist asked if I would like to get off my meds. Together we decided I needed to lose some weight before doing this. But at least the subject is on the table.

Enrolled in Medicare Advantage, my health insurance carrier – United Health – provides the Silver Sneakers program. Not all physical fitness outlets cooperate with the program but the program helps find the closest provider to our home. It turned out that Wheaton Park District is nearest our home and we signed up yesterday for the program. It is free to us but United Health pays the park district a small stipend for each of our visits.

In return we get regular exercise in a safe environment among fitness professionals who watch over us for medical emergencies and helpful hints. Also in return United Health gets healthier insureds who have a chance to lessen their reliance on doctors and drug regimens. In my case I could reduce my pharmacy expense by $30 per month; for United Health it would reduce their cost by $400 per month. So that small stipend to the park district is eminently affordable.

I once complained to my doctor that I was on too many meds. He scanned my record and said I was on only 10 prescriptions and he thought that was light! Hmmmm. I think anything over four is heavy. How about the rest of you?

I know that aging requires more medical attention and more prescriptions. That doesn’t mean I have to like it or enjoy taking the pills. But I do take them as directed so I don’t have to take any more. That’s how I see it. Besides, if I were to prescribe my own regimen I’d end up trying to find the time to visit the doctors more often – and the pharmacy as well!  Enough of that!

April 13, 2016

Heartbreak of Spring

Maybe that’s putting it too strongly but am I the only one who feels melancholy over failed steps toward spring? I mean, really! One day it is 65 degrees and partly sunny while the very next day is gloomy drizzle with snow flurries. Two days later we have a mini spring with tulips pushing up through the soil, daffodils going crazy in garden beds, and the hint of tree buds thickening slender branches.

Then, Kapow! Sleet, rain, snow and winds pummel the neighborhood. Once green lawns are now dappled with snow and curb lines are ‘drifted’ with tiny piles of white stuff. The cars are once again salt stained and yucky.

Roadways are now wet again, then damp, then slushy, then rain and so it goes for weeks on end. Last week we had nearly seven days of gloom. And our western counterparts wonder why we are so strong! It’s because the weather is so horrid that we just persevere and that builds stamina. The Midwestern variety, of course, which means we look forward to tornado season because then we know for sure summer has arrived.

And then the Masters Golf Tournament at Augusta National. What a setting. What beautiful spring vistas of blooming gardens, flowering trees and breathtaking green lawns. Our favorite golfers are there, too, and that makes it quite social. Their talents are legendary and precision awe inspiring. And that’s coming from me, the one person who barely knows how to spell golf to say nothing of understanding any part of the game. It’s just nice to watch. Quiet and calming. Possibly nurturing of a nap?

Well then, along comes Jordan Spieth who demonstrates calm magnanimously. He marches through the course making stunning shots and controlling the leader board for days. Until he doesn’t. On the last day he stumbles and loses four points off his lead and then another point. Once up by 7 he is now down by 4. He makes a minor comeback but not enough and way too late. He loses in what will be labeled a classic clutch.

I doubt it was a clutch. I think the man was tired from carrying the tournament on his back with several golden heroes nipping at his heels. That’s enough to drain the energy out of an entire army of strong men.

But here is Jordan Spieth doing battle on his lonesome. It has to be weighty.

To be crushed late in the game in full view of the TV world makes it only worse. And as the previous year’s champion, he has to present the Green Blazer to his successor. This is more heartbreak. That it occurs in spring is not entirely by accident.

The other day we awoke to a rime of snow and ice and temps in the low 20’s. We worried that tender tree buds would be killed outright and budding flowers would be burned to extinction at the soil line.

Perhaps the best part of spring is its triumphal success in face of such diversity. After all is said and done, trees do bear leaves, flowers to bloom, and desperately brown and burned lawns leap into spring with dazzling shades of green.

But more! If one cocks one’s ears the sound of bird song astonishes. This is a miracle of spring to be sure. Just as our emotions are spent with variable miss-starts of the season, bird song reminds us we are not alone and Mother Nature provides not only the company of the birds, but their fluttering activity and gorgeous music, too.

Yes. I am a believer. In spring and its pull of human spirit into the freshness of another year of growth and yearning.

It is good.  All of it is good. But only with hindsight that knows the gift is near!

April 12, 2016