The Opinionator

County Fair

It ran four days, from the Friday before Labor Day to Labor Day itself.

It was one of the biggest deals of my boyhood, rivaling Christmas and my birthday. My parents would allow my sisters and me to attend the fair all the time…morning, noon, night, every day for all four days. Often we would create a fifth day by going to the fairgrounds the day before the opening and watching the trucks and farm equipment and animals arrive. Because my father had friends among the directors and other officials he received admissions passes, tickets to rides, and a variety of other things. My mother, aunts and grandmothers would prepare baked good and crafts to enter in the fair. I was always amazed they would win so many ribbons. I recall wandering through the two exhibition halls that smelled of flowers and fresh varnish.

For small boys, the main place to be at the fair was the midway. Carousels, Ferris wheels, sideshows, eating-places and games all adorned the midway. Often the same barkers and vendors would come back each year. I remember “The mouse lady” who ran a roulette game which released white mice to run about the wheel deciding what numbered hole to enter. I recall riding on a carousel when I was less than five years old, while my young parents lovingly watched. The wooden horse on which I sat would gracefully rise and fall, rise and fall. The organ music gave it a majestic air and I thought everyone in the world was looking at me and enjoying the ride as much as I.

The food always tasted better there. The smells of French fries, candy apples and cotton candy were everywhere. My parents disliked candy apples because they dislodged tooth fillings. Cotton candy was always tolerated although the sticky fingers annoyed.

An important part of the fair was the vaudeville and aerial acts. There was usually a trapeze, high wire and “sway pole” set up in the track infield and we would hang around the equipment to catch a glimpse of the performers coming and going from their nearby trailers. The stage acts always had acrobats, trained animals, and musicians. On Fridays the venue included automobile smashing, crashing, leaping through flaming rings and rolling over. The master of ceremonies was a comedian and, since often the same acts and comedians returned from year to year, we felt we were part of their “following.”

I recall going to the fairgrounds early one morning with my cousin. We had some type of job assisting the cattle judges and felt quite important. I can remember the sweet aroma of cattle feed and manure. There was a building on the grounds which was used by the directors and when I would go by that building on afternoons or evenings, there were often adults enjoying a cocktail and chatting. These were the fair “insiders” and I was happy to be near them.

One of the fair highlights occurred on Sunday and Monday afternoons. It was officially called the “Grand Cavalcade of Prize Winning Stock” but we knew it simply as the “Cattle Parade.” It was a march around the half-mile race track by all the animals, farm equipment, local beauty queens, bands, new automobiles, fire trucks and just about anything else which was available. The governor usually was there to watch the parade from the reviewing stand. You could make $.50 if you agreed to lead a cow around the track, but you missed seeing the parade if you were in it. Parade spectators filled the grandstand, and lined the edges of the track.

When I was in the fifth grade, my cousin and I and two girls from the neighborhood produced a puppet show in the barn loft of one of the girls. We sold tickets and made a few dollars. Our mothers helped us make the puppets, my cousin and I built the stage, and we all worked together writing the script. At the end of the summer, our little show had gained such notoriety that we were invited to perform it in one of the exhibition halls. How proud we were to rush into the hall for the 2:00 performance and the 4:00 performance.

It was sad when my mother and father would take us home on the final night. We would look back at the lights one last time. It was late in the evening and a northern New Hampshire September chill would often make us shiver. The cool evening signaled the end of another year of a wonderful thing.

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Gubernatorial Stalemate

I wish we could have candidates running for office who were not millionaires

It was interesting to read in yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe the poll on the three
way race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

At this point it is virtually a dead heat among Patrick, Reilly and Gabrieli. Most of the TV ads are subtle but sometimes negative. Sometimes I think we learn from the tone of the ads. For instance, I get a good feeling from Gabrieli taking out the garbage and joking with his kids. I get a cold feeling hearing about Patrick being raised by his mother alone in a one bedroom apartment and seeing Senator Obama and President Clinton in the background of his ads. Reilly is a puzzle. He picks a deadbeat as his Lt. Governor candidate, says he is not good at politics, and lives in a middle class Watertown rental. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “What is it with that Reilly?”

I wish we could have candidates running for office who were not millionaires. I’d like to send an ordinary person, not a rich aristocrat, to a position of political power. Making millions can mean special competencies, but it makes me jittery. The Kerry Healey crowd has a real problem with the wealth image. I heard her referred to as “Olive Oyl” on talk radio once, but to me her financial portfolio has her as Marie Antoinette. Apparently her husband can sell something or agree to a merger and they come out of it eight or nine million dollars richer. The fact that her mom was a teacher and her dad a disabled veteran helps offset that image, but it doesn’t really do it for me.

Christy Mihos’ main claim to fame is as a Big Dig whistle blower. That may not be enough to get him there. On talk radio he comes across like an average Joe trying to make the world a better place. That can’t hurt. He, like most of the others, is worth several million dollars.

I’ll make up my mind in the next few weeks. For me, I hope the new governor can relate to ordinary people and has the work ethic of a mule along with a desire to stay governor for as long as the people want.

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Predator Priests and Public School Teachers

I detect a new trend in some Catholic papers and journals to discuss the belief that the predator priest problem is no worse than what goes on in the public schools. It came up in the Archdiocese of Denver when the bishop led an attack on the state legislature to kill an ill-advised proposal to extend the statute of limitations on offenses committed by priests. This seems to me to be a troubling form of denial which puts the truth at severe risk. The belief is that anti-Catholic prejudice is so strong that legislators, lawyers and social workers will not let go of this and use it as a way to lambaste the church they hate. They argue that people will give a break to public school teachers but not to priests.

As a serious Catholic all my life and as an ex-seminarian, I have only experienced anti-Catholic prejudice once. In the sixties, walking around Ottawa, Ontario in a cassock and a Roman collar, a man spit on the ground as I passed.

I am sure that other isolated instances of this hatred exist, but I read with skepticism the fiery press releases of Bill Donahue of the Catholic League and other who are committed to speaking out about bias against the church.

These advocates seem to confuse disgust with film and television sleaze with anti-Catholic prejudice. There is plenty of pornography which is not connected to anti-Catholic hatred. I am hard pressed to define Ron Howard  or Madonna as the anti-Christ, and I am personally concerned when I hear this new charge that “public school teachers get away with it all the time”.

I am a retired school superintendent, having spent 35 years as either a principal or a superintendent in four school districts in three states. Some of my assignments have been in small rural schools, other have been in large suburban places. I figure that in my career I have overseen the public education of about 15,000 children.

I dealt with fewer than five incidents of adult sexual predators with school children, none of which were even remotely as egregious as the ones I have read about Catholic priests. I may have not known about all instances, but generally I was on top of these controversies.

Unlike what has been done by some Catholic bishops, transferring personnel to make the problem go away was never an option for me. It seems terribly unfair to the public schools to assume that this goes on a lot. It almost never happens, and if it does, it does not involve people who have made a professional commitment to spiritual perfection.

Catholics who believe otherwise seem to have a problem accepting the evil of predator priests. It has nothing to do with anti-Catholic prejudice, and serious Catholics would do well to carefully consider their position on this backlash phenomenon.

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First Day of School Jitters

 For the kids in our lives, New Year’s Day is just around the corner. In a few days school doors will be opening again and the big yellow busses will be lumbering down the street full of kids, some of whom are not tall enough to see out the window.

There are an incredible number of anxieties and concerns at loose in these small citizens as the bus rolls by. What might appear as a scene out of Norman Rockwell may well be better situated in a ward in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Consider this: When you are six years old and have to go to the bathroom, it is very important to know exactly how to get to one, and if you are tall enough to reach the urinal or toilet. If you are not, what do you do? Who do you tell?

I remember once in second grade I had a stomach ache. I whispered this to the teacher and she idiotically scolded me by explaining that I should say “belly ache” not “stomach ache.” What if you are hungry? All summer if you needed a snack you got one. If this is your first time at school, you have had almost immediate access to snacks all your life. Now food will not be there.

Schools are huge buildings. Particularly if you are going from a neighborhood elementary school to a middle school or stepping up to a high school. You might wonder, “How will I ever figure out how to get around in there?” or “There will never be enough time for me to walk that distance between classes.” On a personal level there are concerns such as, “Will my teacher like me?” “With whom will I eat lunch?” and “Will there be bullies on the bus or in the classroom? How about, “Will anyone care that I am here?”

 There are a few dos and don’ts for parents who want to help their kids with first day jitters. If you can do it, a “lay of the land” school tour is always helpful. It gives child and parent a chance to see where places like bathrooms, cafeterias, nurse’s offices, and classrooms are. Possibly you might run into a teacher or an administrator who can ease the tension with welcoming words. These visits are also a time to get clear on where you might drop off your child in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. Some kids worry a lot about how they will get home at the end of the day. How can the bus driver remember where everyone’s house is?

Spare your child if you did not like school or had a bad experience. Horror stories about mean teachers or naughty kids can give a negative tone to what should be a positive experience. If you loved school, tell your children and be specific about what you liked. I always loved the smell of newly varnished floors, chalk and new books fresh out of their boxes. When you drop off your kids, get out of the way fast and let teacher take over. And please, if your child is off to middle school, no public displays of affection at the final parting. Sometimes a misplaced PDA can cause a kid to be ridiculed for years.

Parents and teachers need to send the same message to kids about to go to school:

 1. This is important.

2. You can do it.

3. I won’t give up on you

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How Long Do Razor Blades Last ?

There's never a dull... blade?

One of the greatest kept secrets is how long do razor blades last? I know it depends on the thickness of your beard or the frequency with which you shave, or whether your wife and daughters sneak your razor into the shower to do their legs and underarms, but there really is no consensus I can discover about how long a razor blade lasts or should last. I sometimes use the same blade for weeks. Then it dawns on me that I am getting rotten shaves or cutting up my face more easily than usual. If I replace too soon, however, I could be wasting hundreds of dollars.

Ordinarily, this would not be a big deal, but have you priced razor blades lately? I bought four for my Gillette Mach III razor the other day and they cost $8.99! That’s $2.25 a piece! I quit smoking when cigarettes cost $1.00 a pack! These items are so small and expensive that the drug store avoids shoplifting by carrying them behind the counter instead if in one of the aisles.

They practically give away razors so they can get you hooked on buying their particular blades. It is something like computer printers and ink cartridges. You can get a decent printer for as little as $50.00 but once you get it, you are condemned to paying about $23.00 a month for ink cartridges.

A friend of mine changes razor blades every Sunday morning. He has a well trimmed beard and usually looks neat, so perhaps I should use him as a guide. Better still, it would be good if the company would print on its package the recommended number of times their product could be used.

Years ago when I started shaving, razor blades, double edged Gillette’s, cost next to nothing. You used them two or three times and then stuck them in that slit in the back of the medicine cabinet and they fell to the razor blade graveyard between the studs in the bathroom wall. Then marketing started. It was not enough that the Gillette Friday Night Fights were almost an American institution on radio and television. There were specially lubricated blades, double blades which tipped over your whisker with the first one and cut it with the second, and even triple and quadruple blades which could make you feel that the whisker was public enemy number one. They started making razors in colors to attract the female buyer. I could never shave with a pink razor.

There were disposable razors you could pick up in a bag of twelve. I never thought they worked very well, and it seemed that if you really cared about your face you would not shave it with a plastic disposable razor, often a generic brand. There is too much of a ritual involved in a good shave to waste it on cheap disposables. The occasion calls for metal, shiny, rich looking. Hardware with some heft to it.

Some people get caught up in an electric razor kick. I wanted a battery operated one to carry in the car or brief case and shave on the run. Alas, it was an infatuation and lasted only for a few weeks. I missed too much the bathroom ritual, soap, hot water, sweet smelling lotion. Sometimes I even treat myself to lather made in a mug instead of in an aerosol can.

When my grandfather died many years ago, we discovered several straight razors in his stuff. The kinds barber use. If modern razor blades are so great, why do barbers still use straight razors? The public at large stays away from them because we are afraid we will slip and cut our throats. Strangely enough, we are willing to let a barber we may hardly know use a straight razor on us. These straight razors usually need to be “stropped” with a leather strap every few minutes. I never knew if that was to sharpen the blade or to heat it.

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Get Ready to be Fleeced

There's nothing neutral about “Net Neutrality”

Keep your eye on the “Net Neutrality” issue which comes before the senate in September. It is a move to make cable companies richer than ever and K-street lobbyists are drooling all over the place about this effort to turn the Internet into a toll road instead of a highway available to everyone. If ever there was an example of high powered lobbying intensity trying to pick our pockets, take a look at this one. It is not simple. “Net Neutrality” is not a label that packs in all the problems in one word. Big cable is trying to make us think they are taking care of us. They are in bed with dozens of Republican lobbyists and law makers. Caveat emptor!

Read the Wikipedia definition here.
Read the Google explanation here.

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Tax Cheats Steal from Everyone

Tax Cheats Steal From Everyone

We know people who are paid “under the table” or who take it as a matter of personal pride that aspects of their income are sheltered from taxes. There is a sense that if you are smart and daring, you may be entitled to give the government as little as you can get away with. The country was founded by people who were mad as hell about what they thought were unfair and confiscatory taxes. “No taxation without representation” was the war whoop they shouted at King George III. Well, today we have representation and still scream loudly about taxes. Everybody hates taxes. No politician ever got elected to anything at all by supporting increased taxes. There are people out there who sincerely hope for the day when all types of all taxes will be gone, banished, and verboten; just as slavery is today. These folks tend to see things in a pay as you go way.

If you are mugged and the police intervene, expect a bill in the mail. If you are unfortunate enough to have a fire, lending institutions will probably be generous about advancing you tens of thousands of dollars to pay for your fair share of the fire department’s rescue of you and your home. If you raised three kids and they went to public schools for the full 13 years, your fellow citizens have spent about $350,000 on your family in terms of today’s dollars. So why don’t we stop all that and have parents pay their own kids’ tuition every year?

Years ago when I was in the army we would all be assigned to different jobs taking care of trucks and jeeps in the motor pool. Working there it soon became understood that if you saw a wrench sitting on a truck fender which looked good to you, you could take it and keep it. Similarly, if someone had a Jeep with a heater in it, a highly desired commodity in European winters, you could come out at night and detach the heater and re-install it in your Jeep. It never occurred to any of us that this was stealing; our thinking was that everything belonged to everyone since it was actually owned by the government. This “motor pool morality” followed me through the service, and extended to stealing each others’ ponchos, tires, even highly technical pieces of radar equipment. Strangely enough, it never extended to weapons. Uncle Sam had a complex system involving serial numbers and signing in and out which defined the ethics regarding the care and handling of weapons.

Now motor pool morality is not the same as trying not to pay your taxes, but there is a connection. Both philosophies set up an entitlement mentality which seems to have no scruples about taking from, stealing from, the faceless entity we call “the government.”

A new 400 page Senate report states that high level tax avoidance schemes are so frequent and extensive that law enforcement cannot control them. According to the report, cheating counts for about $70 billion dollars a year, $.07 0n every tax dollar collected. The article mentions a couple of billionaires who are getting richer and richer by using offshore accounts. The idea is for these accounts to lose money, then profits from other ventures can be written off against them and the tax man is avoided.

One of these billionaires is Robert Wood Johnson IV who owns the New York Jets, and to buy the team had to sell assets in 1998 and pay 20% in capital gains. He appears to have ducked that tax by an offshore account and he blames his accountant. Another billionaire, Haim Saban produces the kids TV show Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. He sold his half interest in the Family TV channel for $300 million and sheltered it offshore. He paid the advisers who set this up $54 million.

The Wyly brothers of Texas were the 9th largest contributors to President Bush in the 2000 election. They made at least 190 million in stock options offshore and have yet to pay taxes on it. They too, blame an adviser and take the fifth amendment.

These shady characters are among the beneficiaries of the recent tax cuts enacted by the government and extended virtually to people earning more than $200,000 a year.

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It's All About Marshmallows

Plodding is good, delaying  gratification is the key

In my years as a school teacher I have noticed that the students who achieved the best were more often than not, the “plodders.” These were the kids who worked slowly and steadily on problems, staying with things until they were as close as possible to what the student felt was the ideal answer or solution. These students usually not the first to finish tests. Often they stayed until the time was up, working on their answers, polishing, editing, changing until the very end. The papers done by these students were rarely neat, erasures and rub out of all kinds took care of that. These kids used every minute they were allotted to improve their work, they were in no hurry, they could wait until the bitter end.

Thinking about this years later, I realize that what I was noticing in these top students was an ability to delay gratification. They rarely answered questions spontaneously or impulsively. They thought before they spoke or wrote. They could take their time. They might have wanted to give the answer as soon as they thought of it, but they had enough self control to ponder, to turn the problem over in their minds before they decided on an answer.

The other day I was reading about a social science experiment done by a man named Walter Mischel about 35 years ago. He placed a group of four and five year old children in a room with a plate of marshmallows. The arrangement he had with them was that if they rang a bell, he would come back to the room and they could eat a marshmallow. If they waited for him to come back on his own, without being summoned, they could eat two marshmallows. Some rang the bell within a minute. Others lasted 15 minutes until he came back. He videotaped the children as they decided to wait or ring the bell. He saw them squirm, hide their eyes, look at the clock and wrestle with the problem of ringing or waiting. He developed a variety of things to do with the marshmallows such as hiding them, and found that waiting was easier if the children did not see the treats. He helped them wait by suggesting things to distract them while they waited. His study was about the willpower of these children and how it fitted in with their intellectual and emotional drives and needs.

These children were followed as they grew older, and it was determined that the ones who had displayed greater self control and the ability to delay gratification were the ones who scored better on their SAT tests, got into good colleges, and, on average achieved better adult outcomes.

The kids who were the quickest to ring the bell were more likely to become bullies, or drop out of school. secured weaker parent and teacher evaluations over the years and were more likely to have drug problems. The students who were able to delay gratification were in later years better equipped to sit through boring classes and perform rote tasks to build math facts or to learn a foreign language. For those without the skills to wait for their rewards, school became more often a series of failures and unpleasant experiences.

This insight has powerful ramifications for how we might consider using resources to improve the schools. We know that self control and delayed gratification makes a big difference and these habits appear to be formed at a very young age. Promoting things like increased teacher salaries, small class size, charter and voucher schools, and standardized tests may be barking up the wrong tree by those who are trying to achieve educational excellence through structural changes.

As you might suspect, there is a correlation between children who can delay gratification and socioeconomic status and parenting style. Children from poorer homes might ring the bell quicker than children from a middle class homes. Kids from homes involved in marital discord, moving, or violence tend to think more in short term because they cannot begin to predict the long term.

Moral lectures or sheer willpower will not develop greater self control, will power and delayed gratification skills in children. These kids succeeded because they were able to resist their appetites and distract themselves with other things. They had an emotional and intellectual reservoir from which to draw. Children can learn over time that a predictable and stable environment in which good behavior is rewarded can pay off.

The big question for improving the schools might be “How do we develop these reservoirs in the very young?” The answer might be for parents to stop fighting and stay married.

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Call Me Hoagie

Nana and Grandpa, Grammie and Pa

It’s fun to think about what we called our grandparents, what our grandchildren call us, and the reasons behind these cherished family appellations. I grew up around four living grandparents. Nana and Grandpa belonged to my mother and Grammie and Pa were my father’s parents. Sometimes we called grammie Moggy, the Gaellic word for “fatso” which is strange, because she weighed 90 pounds. Pa was what my father called his dad, so that just slipped over a generation. In fact, everyone in town referred to my father’s father as Pa.

My wife and I are known as Nonie and Hoagie by our 11 grandchildren. These names were invented by my oldest child who called my parents that. I think that Nonie was a bungled attempt at Nana by a one year old, subsequently embraced by my wife because it honored the tradition of Nonni which many Italian grandmothers are called. Hoagie is a lame attempt at saying Harold, my father’s first name. It just stuck on me as Hoagie.

Once my cousin and I, when we were 12 years old, decided it would be nice to refer to our grandmother, Nana, as Grannie. This mortified her, causing her to take us aside and explain that the reason she hated it was that years ago women dealt with their menstrual cycle with “grannie rags.”

I know some grandparents who have really had a difficult time establishing what their grandchildren should call them. I have a friend who felt, at the time, that she was too young to be called a grandmother. She said, “I would rather be called Auntie Mame.” Today she is in her eighties and her grandchildren and great grandchildren refer to her as “Mame.”

An interesting exercise is to see if all the cousins in the family use the same nicknames for a particular set of grandparents. I suspect that is usually the case, but as geography and divorce variables increase over the generations, the probability is there that grandparent nickname sameness will diminish.

I know a grandfather whose grandchildren call him Bumpa. All of this starts with baby talk. I love the Jewish names of Bube and Zayde although I don’t know any people who answer to that. If you want to have some fun, try Googling “Grandparent Names” and you will find international lists of colorful names. They are all short and seem connected quite often to baby talk.

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The Passion of Mel Gibson

Offers to be circumcised to atone (see story)

I think I am having some problems with Mel Gibson. I have always seen him as a second rate actor and never thought much of his large epic movies. I always suspected that there were aspects of the funny farm in his presentation of himself.

Now we learn that when he is drunk he is an anti-Semite. “F---ing Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” This doesn’t exactly make him a soul mate of Hezbollah or Al Qaeda, but it doesn’t put much distance between him and them either. Jackie Mason, Bill O’Reilly’s favorite Jewish comic, says, “Let it go! The guy was smashed.”

I recall a few years ago Mel said something insensitive about homosexuals, like he was reluctant to go into acting because people might think he was gay. I also understand he may come by his wacky views in kind of a genetic way since his father, Hutton Gibson, is an extremist Catholic and writes books and advances views that Vatican II was a sham, the pope is phony and that the Holocaust was overstated. You can tell he is in the wing nut category.

Now Mel’s problems with alcohol and racism don’t mean that much to me. I spared myself “The Passion of the Christ” and my money did not contribute to his millions. (I chose to go to “The DaVinci Code” instead.)

What is a little more concerning is that I have acquaintances who say things like, “You know something? He has a point.” or “You’ve got to give him credit for speaking his mind!” I have to ask, are these people out of their minds? Mel was drunk when he spoke; other can’t use the same excuse.

Now Mel has issued apologies. He has sent himself to a recovery program (not rehab!) and wants to meet with Jews to do some kind of psycho-analytic thing. Skeptics about the apology wonder why it took four days to hear from him. I hope people stop going to his movies and making him richer.

Remember that scene in one of the “Lethal Weapons” movies when his partner was handcuffed to an about to explode toilet? That is the way this whole mess makes me feel.

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Town Hall Art Treasures

If you were raised in small town New England, you probably have some exposure to the interesting variety of town halls and civic buildings which are sprinkled through the hundreds of towns in our six states. If you grew up in the twentieth century, particularly in the middle decades around the wars, you went to town halls as a school child either to be part of a Memorial Day exercise or to observe and/or participate in Annual Town Meeting.

Perhaps when there, you got a chance to observe some of the hand painted muslin stage curtains which often hung in these places. They often were romanticized landscapes of Venice, the Alps, or some fictional lake with nymphs in diaphanous gowns sitting or prancing about. Sometimes they were Main St. scenes. Many remember these as backdrops at local talent shows or senior plays.

Historians have speculated that most of them were made and used between 1890 and 1940, and were largely a New England phenomenon. In those days, movies, traveling acts and local productions occurred often in the auditoriums and on the stages of civic buildings. Towns bought these drapes, but the acts stopped coming, movie theaters opened and local performances started to shift to high schools.

The curtains were taken down, rolled up or folded into boxes and stored in town hall cellars and attics. Many of them are probably still there today.

In Vermont there is a program to find and clean and repair these old stage curtains, with a view toward putting them back into service in local halls and auditoriums. Most of them had been seriously neglected and damaged by dust and mold.

The Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance began in 1998 to try to inventory the curtains in all the towns of the state and have received about $500,000 in grants to repair them. Efforts are underway in New Hampshire to do the same thing.

Many local historians are very much involved in this project and serve as “curtain caretakers.” They are excited to give new life to these old artifacts and their goal is to have them last another 100 years. So far in Vermont they have found 170 curtains and volunteers have repaired 103.

The art on these curtains carry great memories. They also tell a vital story about our past. Check the attics and cellars of your town halls to see if the Cape can get in on this important activity.

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