Financial spin, explained:

The White House take on Chrysler's impending bankruptcy could well become a classic in the art of manufacturing BS.

Now this "surgical bankruptcy" ... is that another name for being taken apart?

Here's a conundrum: Is 'felony stupidity' illegal?

'Cause if it is, our entire executive branch of government should be indicted, along with our legislative branch ...

... and all of the public sector ...

... and much of the private sector ...

Well, you can make up your own list as well.

(Here's the news story that raised this question.)

GM to cut 20,000 jobs and shut down Pontiac. Are we in a depression yet?
~ E

'Miss Principled' title trumps Miss USA any time

You've probably figured by now that the Miss USA Pageant just isn't the forum for saying anything controversial or halfway intelligent. At least, that's what Miss California, Carrie Prejean, is figuring out.

Prejean believes her comments on gay marriage probably cost her the Miss USA crown, but to her credit she's taking nothing back. She's standing by her statements, much to her credit.

During last Sunday's pageant, celebrity gossip blogger and Miss USA judge Perez Hilton, asked Prejean about her views on gay marriage. Now, keep in mind the pageant is a pure Hollywood thing, and she is representing an extremely liberal state. But here's Prejean's answer:

"I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

Whoops. Wrong audience. Not the most prudent thing to say, especially to a question posed by Hilton, who is (as the PC crowd would say) upfront about his own homosexuality. Like, he describes himself as "the gossip queen." And Hilton has since led the attack on Prejean, ripping her in his blog.

So far, Prejean is taking these attacks in stride. "I have to laugh it off, she says. "It's so funny."

Prejean came in first runner-up to Miss North Carolina, and probably didn't get much consideration for Miss Congeniality. But she scored big on some things our society used to value.

"It did cost me my crown," Prejean says. "It is a very touchy subject and [Hilton] is a homosexual, and I see where he was coming from and I see the audience would've wanted me to be more politically correct. But I was raised in a way that you can never compromise your beliefs and your opinions for anything."

Now, that's huge. Too bad there's no such thing as Miss Principled in that pageant, or anywhere else for that matter. I guess following your heart, sticking by your beliefs, or having actual convictions doesn't "sell" anymore.

Is there a problem with making sure you don't offend the other person? You'd better believe there's a problem. Playing this trend to its ultimate, what you'll have is a bunch of people who look the same, act the same, have no opinions of their own, and have no personalities of their own. Which is a good thing, I reckon, if you want an absolutely ordered (read: dead) society that will do the bidding of whoever jumps to the front of the herd.

Standing out just isn't popular. Or easy. It takes a heaping helping of guts to do this, especially when the majority is quite content to be sheep.

I like how CNN columnist Roland S. Martin put it: "The day we condemn folks for speaking honestly is the day we become a bland society."

What scares me is that maybe we're already there.

Obammunism 101, explained by The Post

OK. So what's Obama up to now?

Here's an analysis by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Don't worry. None of us will be alive when the bill for all this stuff comes up anyway.

Sort of like counting jelly beans in a jar?

This footage was shot in Phoenix, Arizona, no surprise there. And I lost count after 24.

Freddie Mac's woes continue

This will bring out the conspiracy theorists, guaranteed:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac was found dead at his home Wednesday morning in an apparent suicide. David Kellermann, acting chief financial officer at the government-controlled mortgage company, was found dead at his home in Fairfax County, Va ...

(The news story was from marketwatch.com.)

Going mobile with submini laptop

OK, I've gone portable, kinda sorta. Here's my take on subminiature laptops (known in the trade as netbooks) in general, and the Acer Aspire One in particular.

Are netbooks hip, or are they just hype? Read about it in The Workbench, Reloaded ...

Having fun with mobility and blogs

That last post was sent via cellphone and text message, which is something I'd been playing with for some time.

Now, it appears I've cracked the combination.

I guess this now means I'll need to find another use for my Twitter account -- like, maybe twitter?

==========

[You tell me! Now that I have that experiment out of the way and it appears to be a successful one, what should I do with my Twitter account? Use the Commets section for suggestions, but PLEASE keep it clean ...]

Turn Off Technology Week is allegedly coming. I wonder if there's a Web site for it?
~ E

What really counts among generations

Don't think I can add much to this here; and the older I get the more sense it makes. This was sent to me some time ago (can't remember who; must be my Ericheimer's kicking in).

Anyway, enjoy.

Fidrych had too much fun to fit in

In some ways, The Bird's coming-out party may have been the last great moment in baseball. The game just hasn't been the same since.
Let's flash back. It's 1976, and I'm finishing high school. My California Angels (OK, this is a real flashback; this was two name changes ago) are in for another lousy year. Things were so bad that their manager said they could stage batting practice in a hotel lobby without breaking anything.
Meanwhile, up in the Motor City there was this goofy-looking kid mowing down the American League's best hitters, and doing it with a sense of style and enjoyment that you just don't see anymore.
Mark Fidrych may be the answer to a trivia question now, but back then he was on a whole 'nother planet. Somehow he cracked the Detroit Tigers' starting rotation, and before long he became the talk of baseball.
It was on a nationally-televised Monday night game that The Bird pitched his best game, and this became his coming-out party. The Tigers beat the New York Yankees, 5-1, but that was secondary. Fidrych had his best stuff, and showed that being special had nothing to do with throwing the ball.
Kind of a goofy-looking guy; tall and gangly, with hair like Harpo Marx, he did look like some character from Sesame Street. He'd start each inning by getting down on his hands and knees, landscaping the pitcher's mound. Getting it just the way he liked it. Then he'd stand up, not much of a windup, rear back, and dial up a 90-something mph fastball. Of course he would lead cheers from the mound, bouncing around after every out. The Energizer Bunny had nothing on this guy.
He explained that his habit of fixing the mound was because each pitcher tended to dig his own hole from which he could push off for maximum effectiveness. The problem was, not all pitchers put that hole in the same place, and Fidrych said he didn't want to fall into some other pitcher's excavation. Which makes sense, by the way, but it was the way he did his landscaping that captured attention. And baqseball is really a conservative sport; anyone who does things just a little bit differently is a flake, especially if he enjoys being different. Fidrych brought enough naivete into the picture to become a real flake -- as if he didn't understand what all this brouhaha was about.
But there was more. Between pitches you'd see his lips move while he was holding the ball in front of him. Fidrych swore he was just vocalizing, reminding himself of what he needed to do next, but it sure looked like he was tallking to the baseball. Of course, with a zany-looking hyperactive guy like him, you're naturally going to believe he was really talking to the ball. In all, he was a refreshing character, an unspoiled kid playing a game while most of the other players acted like they were on the job or something.
After that great game on national TV, the fans called him back onto the field for a curtain call. Fidrych had already taken off his shoes but came back out anyway, in his stocking feet. The TV cameras gave baseball fans a panoramic view of his stockinged feet, adding to the legend of The Bird.
Here's Wikipedia's account of that game:
June 28: Fidrych was in the spotlight, as the Tigers faced the Yankees on Monday Night Baseball. In front of a crowd of 47,855 at Tiger Stadium and a national television audience, "The Bird" talked to the ball and groomed the mound, as the Tigers won, 5-1 in a game that lasted only 1 hour and 51 minutes. After the game, the crowd would not leave the park until Fidrych came out of the dugout to tip his cap. In his book "No Big Deal," Fidrych said: "Everyone picks out that game. Why? Why is that game -- just 'cause it's on national TV and I won? Say it was national TV and I lost. Right?"
Back then, teams used four starters instead of five, and they were expected to finish their games. In his rookie year he threw 24 complete games (with an earned-run average of 2.34) and 250 innings -- now, a pitcher with 200 innings in a season is considered a real horse, and Johan Santana, regarded as a real tough guy among today's pitchers, has thrown nine complete games in his entire career.
In spring training of 1977, he'd blown out his knee while shagging fly balls in his enthusiastic manner. Then later wrecked his shoulder. He stuck in The Show five years, all with the Tigers. His won-loss record in that first year was 19-9; the remaining four years he was able to scrape together another five wins and five losses.
During The Bird's heyday, there were rumblings about changes coming to The Game. The Supreme Court had already dealt a death blow to the reserve clause in the Curt Flood case, ruling that the Cardinals outfielder was free to sign with anyone. Other court decisions made pitchers Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith free agents, and Messersmith signed a scandalously huge contract to pitch for the hapless Atlanta Braves. Already that was high-dollar stuff compared to Fidrych's rookie salary of $16,500. (A man of simple tastes, Fidrych told sportswriters then that he owned three dishes -- a plate, a fork, and a knife.) But it wasn't until the end of 1976 that guys like Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Don Baylor, and Wayne Garland became free agents and, eventually, millionaires. Garland, a young pitcher, built his free-agent case on the strength of one good year, and signed something like a 10-year contract just before blowing out his pitching arm. Prior to the 1980 season, Nolan Ryan signed baseball's first contract calling for $1 million a year, and the game had undergone some real sea changes.
After a few attemped comebacks, Fidrych left the game for good in 1983, taking his damaged shoulder and knee with him. He later owned a trucking business and worked his farm im Massachusetts.
His story wasn't that unique. Baseball lore is full of guys like Herb Score and Karl Spooner, players who were brilliant one minute and gone the next. And back then, pro ballplayers couldn't consider themselves set for life. Most players had some other work that kept the income flowing in the off-season. The Floods, Messersmiths, Jacksons, Baylors, and Ryans saw to it that off-season work became a thing of the past for major leaguers. But for his shoulder and knee miseries, Fidrych would have been at the top of some free agent class, commanding some highly improbable salary. But he wouldn't have fit into baseball's new jet set. He was enjoying himself too much to ever fit in.
Earlier this week, Mark Fidrych was killed in a farming accident in Massachusetts, at the age of 54. From news reports, he was found underneath a dump truck he was working on. Somehow, that seems to be a Bird thing. It's not a way you'd expect to see most spoiled gazillionaire ballplayers go out. I'm even having trouble picturing A-Rod crawling underneath a dump truck.

Here's a Sports Illustrated piece on Fidrych, published in 1986 -- 10 years after his big league debut.

Duke Ellington in your pocket?

While some of my friends are collecting the whole set, I've been a little lukewarm about the states-of-the-union quarters set that's been in circulation for nearly a decade. I've paid attention when a new one came out, but that quarter would find itself in a vending machine or bus fare box eventually.

I did make sure to grab a few of the quarters and hang on to them: California, Arizona, Nevada, South Carolina, and Tennessee were my "keepers," as these were places where I've lived or worked, and places that hold a piece of my heart. The Hawaii quarter was a keeper, too -- I fell in love with the Big Island after spending a week there for a family reunion. Too bad I can't drive there with a U-Haul.

I was surprised to see that Washington, D.C. -- not a state, really -- has its own quarter. I received one in change a couple of days ago, and that went into a different pocket, separate from the bus change. That's because, instead of the Washington monument or something governmental on the back, it had a rendition of Duke Ellington, who hailed from D.C.

The Duke.

As far as I know, this makes Ellington the first jazz artist to be depicted on our money. About time. Jazz has been called the only purely American art form. We had a series of postage stamps with jazz performers in circulation a few years ago, but never on coins or currency.

There are some other viable candidates for such an honor. Louis Armstrong (who has an airport named after him). John Coltrane (who had a church in San Francisco named after him). Jelly Roll Morton (who claimed to have invented jazz in 1902). Dizzy Gillespie. Charles Mingus. Charlie Parker. Miles Davis. Art Tatum. Fats Waller. Even Duke's contemporary Count Basie would have been a good choice. But the Duke -- that man was what jazz is all about.

Duke wasn't the best piano player ever, or even the best of his time. In a one-on-one piano showdown with Basie at high noon, I'd have to give my vote to the Count, with his leaner, stripped-down attack and ability to "feed" chords to his band. And Count had the foresight to deploy Hershel Evans and Lester Young together on tenor sax, letting the contrast speak for itself. Evans was from the Texas tenor school, a brawling tone, all bluster and power, kind of a Coleman Hawkins on steroids. Young, who'd recorded some great stuff with Billie Holiday, was soft-focus, lyrical. He tried to whisper on tenor while everyone else was shouting on theirs.

But Duke was absolutely the best at working a whole band. He'd had falling-outs with his personnel, but it seemed they always came back to work with him. Nobody could arrange music to his players' strengths as Duke could. And few had the kind of influence on jazz that Duke Ellington had.

Even Mingus -- a maverick bassist whom Duke once fired -- went through his Ellington period. On the album "Oh Yeah," Mingus played piano, put Doug Watkins on bass, and put trombonist Jimmie Knepper to work, playing lines that reminded me of Lawrence Brown. If you listen to the song "Invisible Lady" from that album, you can hear how it was influenced by "Satin Doll."

My parents and I are in general agreement about jazz, though our approaches are different. They love to dance to it, while I love to listen to it. And we all consider Duke's "Take The A Train" as one of the best songs ever recorded. But then, nothing wrong with "Satin Doll" or "Black And Tan Fantasy" either.

I was fortunate to come across a recording of Duke's band at the 1956 Newport Festival. Not the strongest rhythm section he'd fielded, but all of his best players were there. Johnny Hodges, who has one of the most recognizable sounds on alto sax. Lawrence Brown, who redefined trombone as a lead instrument. Cat Anderson, who learned trumpet at Charleston's Jenkins Orphanage. And a tenor sax player named Paul Gonsalves.

Duke's show at Newport didn't start off well. The weather was crappy. People were leaving. Duke had trouble finding all his musicians. The band wasn't at its best. Duke was losing relevance. Until he called for one of the oldest songs in his book, "Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue."

That piece, Duke told the audience, was actually two songs, with a sax interlude tying them together. His band first performed it in 1938.

Not quite four minutes into the piece Gonsalves stepped up to the microphone -- the wrong one, it turned out -- for his solo during the interlude. And blew.

And blew.

And blew.

For six and a half minutes, over 27 choruses, Gonsalves blew. Swung like mad. And the solo built on itself. Since he was on the wrong mic, his solo sounds kind of muted. But you can hear every nuance of what he's doing. You can hear Duke shouting encouragement. Three minutes into the solo you can hear some real audience response. They're clapping, cheering, and getting louder.

It's one of those moments that every human being should experience. It's crunch time, and you're called to perform at something -- a job, dealing with family, facing the outside world. And you're performing at a level that you didn't know you had and you don't remember how you did it. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar described one of those moments during the closing seconds of a playoff game when he was at the baseline, in the corner, those seconds ticking away. Abdul-Jabbar said time just slowed down for him, kind of like you're watching the world in slow motion. A teammate got him the ball, Kareem put up the hook shot, it went right in, and immediately the world went back to real time. I'm sure it was that kind of moment for Duke Ellington and his band.

I've studied Gonsalves' solo (and of course I'm listening to it as I write this), and there was nothing really outlandish about it. It didn't challenge the boundaries of time or harmony as many jazz players have been able to pull off so successfully. You won't confuse it with Coltrane. It wasn't particularly forceful; it wasn't the kind of fiery solo that would blow the bell off that sax. It wasn't radar-gun fast like Charlie Parker. But it was so brilliantly executed, building, building. And it swung throughout. Musicians who don't know how to describe "swing" or even have an idea what it is, should sit in a room and listen to that solo until they get it figured out.

Funny thing, the band sounded a little out of it during much of the concert and in the first few minutes of the Diminuendo/Crescendo. After Gonsalves' solo, it's like they were all breathing fire, and they were suddenly all young men. Live music is like that. One person can put on a stellar performance and energize the rest of the band. But then, you can see that same phenomenon in "real" life, too.

The audience? They almost started a riot. They were so hyped up by what they'd heard that Duke spent the rest of the concert trying to get them to cool it. Finally, he closed out with "Skin Deep," a percussion-driven song with Sam Woodyard taking a long drum solo. Good call; let 'em blow it out of their systems.

Really, this moment of magic extended Duke's career. He was relevant again. From that post-Newport period came two of my favorite Ellington albums -- Far East Suite and Money Jungle. The latter album has Duke in a trio setting with his former bassist Mingus and Max Roach on drums, playing the edgiest stuff I've ever heard from The Duke.

It's good to see The Duke on our latest 25-cent piece, and you might just see me hoarding them as they show up in my change. And I'm still holding out for the Miles Davis $5 bill.

How the old neighborhood has changed ...

I had a bit of a shock the other day when I saw some demographics for my old grade school. First, I was amazed it was still standing -- I thought they had to gut the whole building to get rid of asbestos or some other substance that is objectionable to the People's Republic of California.

According to the new numbers, 73 percent of the student body at Mountain View Elementary School in Riverside, California, is Latino.

A shock? You bet. It's like, whatever happened to the neighborhood?

Oh, yes, there's more, according to a study by the L.A. Times:

Enrollment: 924 students
Free and reduced-price lunch: 75%
English language learners: 38%
Diversity rank: 4/10
Total teachers: 39
Median teacher experience: 12 years
Student-teacher ratio: 24:1

Interesting ...

I completed the sixth grade in 1970, and at the time Mountain View had a really slim Latino population. We had the Aviles brothers and Gary Macias. Although this was a fairly good-sized grade school, that was about all for Latinos. I knew these people. Gary was the class clown in fourth grade. And there was Eddie Filho, of Brazilian parentage. Eddie was my best friend during that time; I understand he's in Colorado now.

In sixth grade, Lawrence Mejia transferred to our school. A fairly big guy then, he was always first pick in our choose-up baseball games. Lawrence could really swing the bat; so powerful he was scary. It's anyone's guess what became of him; word was that he was in some gang activity before our class graduated high school.

We had a number of black students at our grade school, mostly from the Hillside Ave. neighborhood. But most of the students -- I'll guess at least 75 percent -- were white.

I didn't really know many Latinos until high school, and that was because Ramona High School served parts of Casa Blanca, a rough neighborhood that made it on the nightly news quite often. Casa Blanca had a couple of families that were constantly feuding, and every so often someone would end up getting shot up on his lawn.

But even figuring in Riverside's barrios, it's pretty surprising to see how the population figures have shaken out in recent decades.

Signs of a life frittered away: TV quiz

Signs of a life totally frittered away: TV quiz

I've never been a big TV watcher, but I still scored a 19 on this quiz. Not half bad, and none of the questions (except the one I missed) seemed difficult. Must be an age thing.

My brother, a.k.a. Captain Video, put together a perfect score. He writes: "Here is an absolute sign of a wasted life. I got 100%. Thanks, Mom & Dad, for letting me waste my formative years watching the tube!"

Thanks, Rick. Anyway, here's the drill: 

This is NOT a pushover test. There are 20 questions, and the average score is 12. This one will be difficult for the younger set. Have fun, but no peeking! Good luck,   youngsters.

 1. What builds strong bodies 12 ways?
 A. Flintstones vitamins 
 B. The Buttmaster  
 C. Spaghetti 
 D. Wonder Bread  
 E. Orange Juice 
 F. Milk 
 G. Cod Liver Oil 
 
2. Before he was Muhammed Ali, he was...
A. Sugar Ray Robinson 
B. Roy Orbison  
C. Gene Autry 
D. Rudolph Valentino  
E. Fabian 
F. Mickey Mantle  
G. Cassius Clay 

3. Pogo, the comic strip character said, 'We have met the enemy and...  
A. It's you 
B. He is us  
C. It's the Grinch 
D. He wasn't home  
E. He's really mean 
F. We quit  
G. He surrendered 

4. Good night David ... 
A. Good night Chet 
B. Sleep well  
C. Good night Irene 
D. Good night Gracie  
E. See you later alligator 
F. Until tomorrow  
G. Good night Steve 

5. You'll wonder where the yellow went... 
A. When you use Tide  
B. When you lose your crayons 
C. When you clean your tub 
D. If you paint the room blue 
E. If you buy a soft water tank 
F. When you use Lady Clairol 
G. When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent 

6. Before he was the Skipper's Little Buddy, Bob Denver was Dobie's friend... 
A. Stuart Whitman 
B. Randolph Scott 
C. Steve Reeves  
D. Maynard G Krebbs 
E. Corky B. Dork 
F. Dave the Whale 
G. Zippy Zoo  

7. Liar, liar...
A. You're a liar 
B. Your nose is growing 
C. Pants on fire 
D. Join the choir 
E. Jump up higher 
F. On the wire 
G. I'm telling Mom
 
8. Meanwhile, back in Metropolis, Superman fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and...
A. Wheaties  
B. Lois Lane 
C. TV ratings 
D. World peace 
E. Red tights 
F. The American way 
G. News headlines 
 
9. Hey kids!  What time is it?  
A. It's time for Yogi Bear 
B It's time to do your homework  
C. It's Howdy Doody Time 
D. It's Time for Romper Room 
E. It's bedtime 
F. The Mighty Mouse Hour 
G. Scoopy Doo Time 

10. Lions and tigers and bears...  
A. Yikes 
B. Oh no 
C. Gee whiz 
D. I'm scared 
E. Oh my 
F. Help! Help! 
G. Let's run
 
11. Bob Dylan advised us never to trust anyone... 
A. Over 40 
B. Wearing a uniform 
C. Carrying a briefcase 
D. Over 30 
E. You don't know 
F. Who says, 'Trust me' 
G. Who eats tofu 

12. NFL quarterback who appeared in a television commercial wearing women'sstockings... 
A. Troy Aikman 
B. Kenny Stabler 
C. Joe Namath 
D. Roger Staubach  
E. Joe Montana 
F. Steve Young 
G. John Elway 

13. Brylcream... 
A. Smear it on 
B. You'll smell great 
C. Tame that cowlick 
D. Grease ball heaven 
E. It's a dream 
F. We're your team 
G. A little dab'll do ya 

14. I found my thrill... 
A. In Blueberry muffins 
B. With my man, Bill 
C. Down at the mill 
D. Over the windowsill 
E. With thyme and dill 
F. Too late to enjoy 
G. On Blueberry Hill 
 
15. Before Robin Williams, Peter Pan was played by... 
A. Clark Gable  
B. Mary Martin 
C. Doris Day 
D. Errol Flynn 
E. Sally Fields 
F. Jim Carey 
G. Jay Leno 

16. Name the Beatles...
A. John, Steve, George, Ringo  
B. John, Paul, George, Roscoe  
C. John, Paul, Stacey, Ringo  
D. Jay, Paul, George, Ringo 
E. Lewis, Peter, George, Ringo  
F. Jason, Betty, Skipper, Hazel  
G. John, Paul, George, Ringo  

17. I wonder, wonder, who.
A. Who ate the leftovers? 
B. Who did the laundry? 
C. Was it you? 
D. Who wrote the book of love? 
E. Who I am? 
F. Passed the test? 
G. Knocked on the door?
 
18. I'm strong to the finish... 
A. Cause I eats my broccoli
B. Cause I eats me spinach 
C. Cause I lift weights 
D. Cause I'm the hero 
E. And don't you forget it 
F. Cause Olive Oyl loves me 
G. To outlast Bruto 

19. When it's least expected, you're elected, you're the star today
A. Smile, you're on Candid Camera 
B. Smile, you're on Star Search 
C. Smile, you won the lottery 
D. Smile, we're watching you 
E. Smile, the world sees you
F. Smile, you're a hit 
G. Smile, you're on TV 

20. What do M & M's do?  
A. Make your tummy happy 
B. Melt in your mouth, not in your pocket 
C. Make you fat 
D. Melt your heart 
E. Make you popular 
F. Melt in your mouth, not in your hand
G. Come in colors

Bonus Question: who is Mary Martin's famous son?
 
Below are the right answers:  
1. D - Wonder Bread  
2. G - Cassius Clay 
3. B - He Is Us 
4. A - Good night, Chet  
5. G - When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent 
6. D - Maynard G. Krebbs 
7. C - Pants On Fire 
8. F - The American Way  
9. C - It's Howdy Doody Time 
10. E - Oh My 
11. D - Over 30 
12. C - Joe Namath 
13. G - A little dab'll do ya 
14. G - On Blueberry Hill 
15. B - Mary Martin 
16. G - John, Paul, George, Ringo
17. D - Who wrote the book of Love
18. B - Cause I eats me spinach
19. A - Smile, you're on Candid Camera 
20. F - Melt In Your Mouth Not In Your Hand

-----

What say you? OK, so how did you do? Did you beat my score? Did you surpass my brother's score, and how did you do that without cheating? Did you solicit the help of some old person? Let me know via the "comments" section.

Here's a thought o'the week, begorrah!

According to legend, St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland.

Neat trick? You bet. But here's a better trick that I'd especially like to see:

Will someone please chase the baboons out of Congress?

Lowcountry facing trash disposal issues

It's all just a part of living in this thing we call a civilized society. Growth happens, and then trash happens.

In Charleston County, a gang of consultants and committees are trying to figure a way around that truth.

I like how consultant Mitch Kessler put it: "Garbage is kind of special. We all produce it, but nobody wants it."

In this county, 70 percent of the trash is shoved into an incinerator on the banks of the Cooper River and burned, with a bit of electricity being generated in the bargain.
Now, there's talk of shutting the incinerator down. The nearby residents (amazingly, there are some) don't want it, and Kessler's consulting firm says the county doesn't need it. Time plays a role here, as the county's 20-year contract with Montenay Charleston Recovery Resources to run the incinerator expires this year, and the area's Green Committee on Thursday recommended the county opt out now rather than re-up for another 20 years. Better to figure out some other way to get rid of the trash.

OK, like what? The county's big landfill on Bee's Ferry Road has, according to Kessler Consulting, another 12 years of space in it without the incinerator. With it, capacity can be stretched out to 20 years.

The Bees Ferry landfill was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. Even 12 years ago, there wasn't much out that way. Nothing but forest, anyway, and Bees Ferry itself was a two-lane road that didn't see a lot of use. I used to see a lot of whitetail deer and the occasional bobcat out there. Now, it's a whole different matter. Bees Ferry is one of the new growth centers of the Charleston metro area. Several neighborhoods sprouted up there over the past decade, with thousands of new homes. Wal-Mart set up a supercenter there, and there is talk of building what amounts to a second downtown at Bees Ferry and the Glenn McConnell Parkway. All of this is within sniffing distance of the landfill.

The landfill itself can be stacked to a height of 172 feet, which Kessler said still can't be seen from the nearby homes. This part is important, you understand. If it can be seen from the neighborhoods, then folks might guess that big hill is really a garbage dump and think twice about buying a home there, while the existing residents will be screaming for the city fathers to vaporize that landfill, move it somewhere else, do something with it. I hate to say it, but while the People's Republic of California has more or less cornered the market on NIMBY types, a few of them have leaked out to the Southeast along with all the people from Up North.

Grab and growl

Of course, I like the idea of recycling. For years I've railed about man's wasteful nature, and I try to put my money where my mouth is whenever I can.

Currently, about 10 percent of Charleston County's waste stream (I keep visualizing rivers of trash here) gets recycled. Kessler believes the county can bring that number up to 40 percent in five years, though I honestly don't see how. Not without great expense anyway.

According to figures by Kessler Consulting, the current trash configuration (incinerator, landfill, 10% recycling) costs about $15.5 million a year, while taking out the incinerator would bring the cost down to $14.2 million. With recycling stepped up to 40 percent, annual costs would be $13.2 million with the incinerator and $11.2 million without. I don't know where the consulting firm gets those numbers, and it's obvious they're seeing something I'm not (as I'll explain later in this essay). Maybe it's because they're inhaling all that methane gas.

Charleston County does have an interesting setup for trash collection. Every Tuesday the garbage man comes by (and of course I feel duty-bound to tell him I don't need any, thanks) and bulky waste is also picked up at that time. A good part of the local recycling goes on with the bulky waste, though the county probably has no numbers to support this.

It goes like this: In Charleston County, if you have something too big to go into the trash can, you set it at curbside. The tacit understanding is that if someone else sees something interesting in that curbside pile, he can dive in and snag it. No questions asked. In-the-know county residents know when the bulky-waste days are in the more affluent neighborhoods, and then go exploring. The neighborhood is important here; you're more likely to find good stuff on the Isle of Palms than, say, Stall Road in North Charleston. But you get the idea. Grab and growl, no questions asked. We're talking about major bargain shopping where you don't even need to bring your wallet.

For someone like me (OK, I'll say it -- cheap!) this is a great source for all sorts of household goodies. I've outfitted apartments from the piles. That's where I got the desk I use now (never mind the fact I broke my ankle hauling it to the house). And I've picked up several computers, fixed them up, reprogrammed them, and given them away. (Personal note: My eyes are now peeled for a laptop, but I'm not giving that one away. As soon as I rebuild and reprogram it, I'm keeping it.)

Lunch at the dump

Years ago, when I was a distinguished member of the press in California, I sat in on a luncheon held at the San Bernardino County landfill. Odd place for lunch, sure, but the county's solid waste section was under new management and they had something to show us.

A bit of background here: Back then (late 1980s), California was faced with its own trash crisis. The Inland Empire was the fastest-growing region in the nation, and landfill space was dwindling fast. Because of this, some really interesting scenarios were being tossed around, and some were more harebrained than others.

One company proposed building a trash-to-energy incinerator (which sounds an awful lot like the Montenay facility here), but the residents didn't want it. Something about air quality. Another company talked up the idea of a plant to burn waste tires for energy. The company went so far as to say that waste tires collect rain water, which becomes a fine breeding grounds for mosquitoes -- and suggested those critters can carry the AIDS virus. No kidding. One of the company's executives tossed off one of the best quotes I've ever heard in the business: "The mosquito that bites you tonight may have spent last night in West Hollywood." That angle didn't help the company's cause any; once everybody stopped laughing and regained their collective breath, they shouted the whole proposal down anyway.

Another idea that was under serious consideration was to reopen an old exhausted coal mine in the desert and turning it into the mother of all landfills. Send the trash out there by the railcar. To this day, I don't know if this trash-by-rail proposal is still being bandied about, but it was one of the better ones.

Of course, someone had to suggest stepping up the recycling efforts, and that's why we were having lunch at the dump.

Again, this was in the late 1980s, so things may be a bit different now. But the folks running the San Bernardino County Landfill had set up a demonstration of how on-site recycling would go. Set up a conveyor belt. Have a few movable bins within tossing distance -- for different kinds of paper, for plastic, for kitchen waste, for whatever categories of trash you wish to recycle. Have a bunch of people at the conveyor belt rummaging through the piles, picking and tossing. In fact, that's what these employees would be called -- pickers. Anyway, all the trash that was dumped on the conveyor belt ended up in one of the recyclable bins; nothing left over. I was quite amazed. Even the butt of my after-lunch smoke went into one of the bins, though I can't remember which one.

Give credit to the good folks in the San Bernardino County solid waste department for trying. I could see, though, that the concept needed an awful lot of work to be anything viable. The trash-picking process was slow, and incredibly labor intensive. To keep up with the mounds of swill being generated in San Bernardino County you'd need a lot of conveyor belts and an army of people to do the picking. Even with economic times being as they are, you'd be hard pressed to find enough people willing to pick through the garbage. And even if you rounded up all of Southern California's illegal aliens, put them at a conveyor belt, and paid them the prevailing illegal-alien rate, the cost will still be enormous.

For recycling to be done right, it has to be at the individual or family level, and that's where you'll see some pitfalls. Many people just want to dump the stuff, not analyze it. Even I'm guilty of this; once something makes it to my wastebasket it's just trash anyway.

But I did find some interesting Web sites on recycling all sorts of random things a few years ago. Some of these sites lean toward the hippie-dippie audience, but you might get a few ideas on how to reuse or get rid of at least some of your junk there. A Google search might, uhh, unearth a few of these if you're interested.

Meanwhile, I'm looking for that slightly used laptop ... at least 256M of RAM and a wireless card ought to do it, but I can be talked into 512M ...

 

Spring rites: Glow-in-the-dark legs curable

I'm ready for spring, and it looks like it may have already started in Charleston.

Never mind what the calendar says. It's spring when people start venturing outdoors with looks of wonder on their faces. It's like, hey, I lived through winter, and the world is a beautiful place. The coming of spring is intoxicating; people will wander out into the middle of the street, just taking in all the seasonal changes and never noticing the grille of the SUV bearing down on them (and of course the driver of the SUV is not paying attention; same reason). I have no statistics to back my claim up, but I'll bet there is more human roadkill during the first "real" week of spring than at any other time.

As for me, I'm loving it. As I write this (Saturday, about 1 p.m.), the sun is out. The temperature stands at 76 degrees, with a humidity of 43 percent. My front door is open, and I've got shorts on. About time. My legs are now so white they glow in the dark. Must do something about that.

I knew this was going to be any day now. A couple of days ago I was doing some preliminary spring things, sitting out in the front yard, cool drink and a book in hand, door open, stereo playing loudly enough for me to hear outside. With the dog outside on her run. That's when I noticed the weeds that were overtaking that growth I call a lawn. So I was up, in a rather inspired (for me) frenzy of activity. A half hour later I'd filled my garbage can, and the weeds were gone. They pulled out easily, and the lawn now looks like a herd of wildebeest passed through. Oh, well. It'll grow back. 

But I'm loving it. Enough of this freezing my butt off. Enough of the below-freezing weather, with wind bringing the final temp lower than that. I was ready for spring since December, even before winter started.

All of y'all north of the Mason-Dixon line -- not to mention those living above the snow line -- are probably laughing right now as I give my account of winter here. I do have some regular readers in Minnesota, and I'm thinking about them as I write this. Well, kinda sorta.

The only real problem with the cold weather -- besides the fact I'm less tolerant of it as I get older -- is that I spend much of my day out in it. Most of my work is outdoors, catching the full blast of wind. Yes, my coworkers and I have been seen huddling over idling truck engines to keep warm. I'm not going to deny that. Plus, I bicycle to work, but that's not as much an issue as you might think. After about the first half mile I've got some personal heat going.

Earlier this week we had what (I hope) is the last blast of winter. Even a few snowflakes floating around, and those sightings are extremely rare in the Lowcountry. And, of course, I have been dressing for it:

- Long johns
- My standard jeans and T-shirt
- Sweatshirt
- Hooded camo jacket, military issue
- Hard hat on the job, worn over a do-rag. This last part is espeically crucial at all times of the year, because the plastic liner of the hard hat gets pretty uncomfortable on a head that gets balder every year.
- Scarf around the neck.
- Two pairs of gloves -- a fingerless leather pair, plus a full-sized glove on my right hand. No, I didn't lose my left glove, but I tried running my handheld computer with a gloved hand and it just doesn't work. The keys are about a quarter of the size of a desktop computer's keys, and I really need to feel them when I'm working. Of course, after a few minutes my exposed left hand won't feel anything anyway, so that probably doesn't make any difference. On extremely cold days I've kept a handwarmer in my left coat pocket, and it's like a campfire in there.
- Plus in my locker I keep a few other things: an extra sweatshirt, and my "monkey suit," zippered quilted one-piece coveralls.

A few days ago, the morning was particularly chilly, so on my way to work I was dressed out to the max -- including a black ski mask. Now, on my way in I'll usually stop on a bridge overlooking the rail yard to get a handle on what I may expect at work that day. I'm sure the folks are used to seeing me up there at a few minutes past 7 every morning. But ...

... with the ski mask I figured it might not be a real good idea to stop on top of that bridge. I'm not sure exactly what led me to that conclusion, especially because I'm not all that lucid at that hour of the morning. But instead of stopping I kept moving, looking over my shoulder at the rail traffic, hoping railroad security doesn't shoot me off the bridge. With my luck that'll be the day security is actually paying attention.

The sweatshirt is in my dirty-clothes hamper now, along with the scarf and ski mask. The camo jacket is hanging on the back of my office chair, and I may soon wash that and put it away. The extra sweatshirt and monkey suit are still in my locker, and I should probably keep them there through the rest of the month. If nothing else, Lowcountry weather changes a lot.

Grand Canyon or ... Dora the Explorer?

Fisher-Price's announcement that the company will no longer produce scenic View-Master wheels fills me with a pang of nostalgia.

As a baby boomer in good standing, of course I had a View-Master, with a bunch of the wheels. Those things were great, because you could see places you're probably never going to visit in dazzling, 3-D color.

You just might remember what I'm describing here. These wheels have (give or take) seven images, 14 tiny photos (actually miniature slides), and you load them into a cheap plastic viewer. The wheel typically has two notches, which tell you where to start viewing -- when they're in the up position in your top-loaded viewer, you're good to go. To see the next image, you click on the viewer's slide. The twin slides gave each frame a 3-D effect, just as twin speakers give you a stereo effect. In fact, the viewer and wheels were first sold to promote 3-D photography.

I think my View-Master was also one of the toys I did not dismantle as a kid. I can't tell you how many Etch-A-Sketches I've torn apart because I was mystified how they worked (the usual result is a gigantic mess of some possibly-toxic gray powder). But the View-Master, there's really nothing to dismantle. What's in there? The workings to the advance lever? Low tech at its finest.

But these wheels fell victim to our instant-gratification, animated, gotta-have-action society. You could go onto a computer and see just about anything you want to see (and probably some things you don't want to see) live, in action, and all that. The View-Master wheels? Boring, kids say. And the sales figures showed that much.

Fisher-Price, a division of Mattel, stopped making the scenic reels in December. But the View-Master is not dead; the company is still marketing reels of animated characters like Shrek (I know who that is) and Dora the Explorer (I'm drawing a blank here). OK, pop-culture marketing.

Maybe it's my age, but I think I'd rather check out views of the Grand Canyon, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, and the Pacific Northwest than Shrek.

Oh, well. Another casualty of our times.

I'll miss 'the rest of the story

I can't remember the first time I heard him on the air. I know it was a long time ago. He'd been a radio presence since I was soiling my diapers, and I'm not a young guy.

But last Saturday, I got word that Paul Harvey died at the age of 90. My first thought was, another real journalist left us. There are just not that many left.

I'll rephrase something here, about his longevity. Paul Harvey had been at the microphone since the 1930s, when radio and newspapers were the only media game in town. Despite battling throat problems in his later years and working a reduced schedule, he hadn't lost much of anything even as he approached his 90s. And in a society that introduces all these new technologies while paying zero respect to history, Paul Harvey stayed on the air all that time, kept himself from obsolescence, and kept a following.

It wasn't until my Arizona period that I started paying more attention to Paul Harvey. That was when I worked as a freelance writer for the Bullhead City Bee. The Bee was a small, crusadsing weekly newspaper with an all-star cast. That's where I really got to know one Richard Kaffenberger, who was in exile after being the first city manager in Bullhead City to get fired. As manager, Richard served at the pleasure of the City Council, and the council's pleasure was to carve on him with sharp objects and attach electrodes to his privates. Or something. Richard was biding his time, doing a little writing, and running a talk show out of Needles, Calif.

Anyway, one of my assignments with the Bee was to put together the weekly crime report, which was something any good journalist would call "pennance." The job consisted of sifting through the police department dispatch logs, and writing a short paragraph on each item , and compiling it into something readable. The readers love those crime reports, but they are a pain to assemble. What made things even more tedious was that those phone logs also included officers calling in to say they won't be to work on time. (For the trivia-minded, that's where we got our word "copulate." Or something.) It was a boring assignment, the equivalent of being in the seventh level of Hell, though it was an assignment where I had a lot of latitude.

I was pretty selective on what went into the weekly crime report. Anything involving an arrest, any reported burglaries and assaults, any felonies went in. Plus, I threw in all the strange police calls -- things on the order of someone being attacked by killer monarch butterflies, for example.

It turns out my editor would pick out some of my better oddities and call them in to Paul Harvey's show. I understand a few of these were read on the air, too. So, if you were a Paul Harvey listener around 1992 and remember hearing of some bizarre crimes from northern Arizona, you now know who first dug up the reports.

I always liked Paul Harvey. Although electronic (radio & TV) types are just not considered in the same camp as print journalists, Paul was a true wordsmith. He crafted his words with care, just like an old-style print guy. His "Rest Of The Story" feature, which began in the mid-1970s at the sugtgestion of his son, was a great vehicle for this skill. He was a master of building his story, with all the pauses and re-re-repeats for dramatic tension. And of course, with my own taste for what some people would call "useless information," how could I not love the rest of the story?

Of course, when someone like a Paul Harvey dies, there are plenty of tributes and perhaps his character is magnified considerably. Even if a guy was a drunken lout who regularly beat his kids with a switch made from barbed wire, you're just not going to talk about that in the days after he dies. But from what I understand, Paul Harvey was a good guy. A caring guy.

His wife Angel died less than a year ago, and they were together for more than 60 years. It says a lot about a person when he leaves this earth so soon after a spouse. For some reason I keep thinking of Johnny Cash here. His wife, June Carter Cash, died in 2003, and Johnny followed her within months. OK, theirs was sometimes-stormy relationship (and life with Johnny wasn't always easy), but you can bet his life was a lot less sweet without June around.

And without Paul Harvey around, radio is not going to be as interesting.