State of Cape Cod

Words Have Meanings

    This is about words. Words are used to conjure images, to create mental pictures. Words can often be misleading, sometimes deliberately so. Euphemisms and synonyms can deliberately obfuscate the true meaning of what is being reported. The old admonition definitely applies: when something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  
    ‘Mom’ is such a word, used as a synonym for mother. It isn’t. Each has decidedly different connotations. In many cases, ‘Mom’ brings to mind a picture of a young woman happily interacting with her children. She’s more a friend than a parent, and therein lies the difference. 'Mother’ connotes an authority figure, perhaps older and more serious about her role. As a new teacher I was advised, “Don’t try to be their friend. Kids have enough friends. They need teachers.” The same is true of parents, only more so. Children need real parents, not a cool pal called ‘mom’.
    When the media, especially here on Cape Cod, mentions a ‘leading citizen’ they're often describing a businessman or politician who is promoting a project or lobbying for legislation which he claims will create jobs, boost the economy, or accomplish some other noble goal. A new public building, named after him, might be one example. A large, luxurious hotel might be another. Such undertakings might actually succeed in doing some good but don’t be gulled into believing that this is the real purpose of the venture. Politicians thirst for power, name recognition, and reelection while ‘leading citizens' have only one objective: to make money. There's nothing wrong with that, but any collateral benefit to society is nearly always coincidental. The questions that must be asked are: “Does he expect to profit?” and “Will there be a cost to the taxpayers?” The answer to both is invariably yes. There are, of course, philanthropists who have donated freely to civic improvements of all types. Cape Cod Hospital, for one, has benefited greatly from such individuals. But they are the exception, not the rule.
    Teachers were once proud to be so designated, if they thought about it at all. Now they prefer to be called ‘educators’. What a pretentious bunch they've become! School personnel today seem to be more concerned with politically correct superficialities than with actually imparting knowledge to young people, for which they are being compensated, and not that badly, either, despite their protestations to the contrary. Perhaps they should stop trying to impress us with their importance and complaints about their jobs and get on with the task at hand. Maybe then a diploma would mean something again.
    Here on the Cape the primary concern among educators is to keep their jobs. In this, they are often at odds with taxpayers mired in a declining economy. They still expect their annual increases and smaller classes despite diminishing revenues and declining enrollments. The prudent thing for a school district that is losing students to do would be to emulate private industry in a similar dilemma – cut staff and close plants. While that is being implemented to a degree in some cases, one wonders how charter schools fit into the picture, and how empty school buildings might be used to advantage. Perhaps they ought to be sold to raise money and, at the same time, increase the town's tax base.
    'Non-profit’ is another ambiguous term. The public is often misled into believing a non-profit organization, and there is an inordinate number of them on Cape Cod and elsewhere, is by nature above reproach because people are encouraged to think its employees work for nothing. Not true. The only difference between a non-profit and other businesses is that it doesn't pay taxes and can’t show a profit at the end of the year, although it can, under certain conditions, carry funds from one year to the next. Residual income is usually disbursed. Read ‘spent’. Salaries and overhead in non-profits, except for taxes from which they are exempt, are commensurate with those in comparable corporate endeavors. Employees can do rather well while conveying an impression of being destitute. Just because one works for a non-profit doesn’t mean he's taken a vow of poverty. As one example among many, check this cancer charity. It’s a real eye opener.
    There are many other words which might be included in this list. Cape Cod is rife with organizations advocating ecological and environmental endeavors. The word 'green' alone is used to describe any number of allegedly useful, even necessary, products and programs which will impact us all. There are the wind farm and global warming controversies to name just two. The point is, when something is described as being of benefit to all of us, for our own good, it’s a good idea to find out who's behind it and how he stands to gain. Always follow the money trail. Remember, Al Gore ain't broke.

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Don't Stifle Them With Plenty

In an essay for his middle school English class a grand-nephew compared his life with that of his grandmother at the same age. He enumerated all the technological advantages he enjoys in contrast to those with which, in his mind, she suffered in 1948. Flat screen HD color TV instead of a ten inch black and white set. Cell phone rather than party line rotary instrument. The internet as opposed to “snail mail”. He missed at least one far more important difference.

No matter where you lived back then, whether in New Jersey as I did or here on Cape Cod, your neighbors were of similar ethnic and religious background and many were relatives. In or out of the home, parents worked hard and had little time to oversee their children’s every activity. Consequently, youngsters enjoyed a lot more freedom from intrusive adult supervision than kids do today.

The positive influence of that freedom during their developmental years was far more beneficial than contemporary parental micro management and overindulgence. Unlike the ultra dependent “gimme” adolescents of today, many of whom will grow up looking to government to satisfy all their needs, the children of the WWII generation developed into resourceful and self sufficient adults.

Nowadays every childhood activity is organized. Parents are involved in, provide for, and supervise every facet of their youngsters’ lives. To some degree this is necessary in our perilous world. Apparently the bountiful existence and technological progress that children enjoy has encouraged predators as well. On the Cape there is the further potential hazard of water, water everywhere. Little mass transit is available, hence the evolution of parents as recreation directors and Mom as chauffeur.

In the old neighborhoods everyone knew and looked out for all the kids. They were as often taken to task by some other child’s mother as by their own. There were always adults around, but aside from that eternal passive vigilance they were on their own. That wasn’t a bad thing.

They organized their own sports teams. They didn’t have uniforms or much equipment, No manicured regulation field with umpires. No coach. They may not even have had a full team. They simply gathered at the local empty lot, chose up sides, and played. They didn’t know they were deprived. They accepted what they had and made the most of it.

Games weren’t scheduled – they were arranged. “My guys can beat your guys.” “Oh yeah? Be at the field after school.” That afternoon both teams would show up, the ground rules negotiated to accommodate conditions and the number of players available, and the game was played. No parents. No spectators. No officials. No scoreboard. Just a lot of enthusiasm, and, more importantly, independence.

Sports were seasonal, and were often adapted to fit existing conditions. Baseball became stickball if a broom handle and a pink rubber ball were all they had. Soccer was unheard of, but there was “kick the can”. Same objective but no headers. Football could be touch or tackle, depending upon whether there was a grassy field, a rocky field, or only the street in which to play.

Both sexes played hide and seek together. In a team version, one group would hide while their opponents tried to find, catch and tag them. Often played on summer evenings, while parents watched and shouted encouragement from their porch rockers, the game never really ended, usually degenerating into a lot of chasing and shouting around the neighborhood until bedtime.

Boys played box ball, like tennis with sidewalk squares as the court and their hands as racquets; and stoop ball, bouncing the ubiquitous pink ball off the point of the porch steps. Some activities encouraged gambling, even at that tender age. Marbles for keeps. Pitching baseball cards (or pennies) for keeps. Having something at stake helped teach concentration.

There were also individual games for girls, who had little opportunity for organized sports. The schools had few, if any, teams for them. They had to be satisfied with activities like jumping rope. Sound like sissy stuff? Take a look at Double Dutch. They also played games with a ball, like Jacks or some rhyming, bouncing games that were quite intricate. Hopscotch was a big female favorite, demanding coordination and body control.

For many, the corner store was their youth center. It didn’t cost anything, was easy to get to, no one had to be driven, and there was always something to do. A kid was sure to find some of his friends whenever he stopped by. There was no adult supervision at the store except for the proprietor, and none was needed. Whoever got out of line would be banished, and then what would life be like?

Most free time was spent outdoors in games that involved running, jumping, throwing, and other physical tasks. Each group had maybe one overweight member, and he was looked down upon. Obesity was unknown. Fat, yes, but obesity? A fancy word for a serious problem in children? Not to be imagined in those active years.

It cannot be denied that the differences between the young teens of the WWII era and today’s junior high set are profound. Neither progress nor technology can, or should, be blamed. Contemporary young folk expect to be provided with their every want. Rampant unbridled indulgence is the rule and must be reined in. Children should be encouraged to cultivate independence. Society would be well advised to seek a viable way to accomplish this along with the courage to implement it.

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Retest If You Must, But Be Fair About It

There was a report on the news the other night about a traffic accident. Someone had struck a child, who subsequently passed away. The driver was a man of about eighty. The reporter, in an account that couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, perhaps a minute and a half, mentioned the word elderly and/or the driver’s age no less than six times, including the very first sentence. That’s once every ten to fifteen seconds.

In the Cape Cod Times of August 5 there was an account of a traffic accident in which a gentleman drove his car into the harbor. The first two words in the headline were ‘elderly driver’. His age was also noted in the brief account. The cause of the mishap? He spilled an ice cream float in his lap. As if age had a bearing on it and no younger person has ever done something similar, or worse.

The same issue of the Times presented an account of a traffic accident in which three people were hospitalized. Nowhere in the story was the age of any of the victims mentioned. Presumably, they weren’t “elderly”. Fair and unbiased? Hardly.

There’s a big disconnect here. If the driver’s age is relevant to one incident involving motor vehicles, then it should be pertinent to all such accounts. If one didn’t know that news reporters, who arrogantly  refer to themselves as journalists, were fair and unbiased, one might suppose that they were engaged in a campaign against drivers of a certain age.

In Massachusetts, from publicity hungry legislators on down to the wannabe journalists (many, if not most, apparently just rewrite wire service stories) and television news readers (really just actors who recite from the teleprompter), there is a continuing effort underway to legislate the retesting of older Americans starting anywhere between ages 65 to 85.

All of which embraces and disseminates the misconception that elderly drivers cause more accidents than any other age group. This is simply not true, and the news media should be, and probably is, aware of it, as this study from Pennsylvania clearly shows. As for our own state, the statistics verify what other states already know, that fewer accidents are caused by elderly drivers than other age group. But those who interpret this fact deliberately skew the findings.

They base their argument by admitting that, while older motorists have fewer accidents, as verified by the U. S. Government Accountability Office, it’s only because they drive less. But, they add, elderly drivers have more accidents per mile driven. So what? It really doesn’t matter to the victim whether he was killed  by someone of an age which has fewer mishaps per mile, than one who has fewer mishaps, period. In fact, no matter how you present it, the odds of getting killed by an eighty year old are far less than of being done in by a twenty year old. Check the section of this article entitled Looking At the Research to find the truth. 

One of my favorite sleight of hand locutions is that elderly motorists cause accidents because they drive too slowly. This, the younger, more aggressive drivers try to convince themselves, makes it necessary to pass them illegally, causing accidents. Evidently they never heard of personal responsibility.  If some fool passes unsafely or illegally for whatever reason, and has an accident, then it’s his fault, not that of the law abiding slower driver he passed. The speed limit is the maximum, not the minimum.

If driving too slowly is the best argument the selfish “Get the Q-Tips Off the Road” crowd can come up with, then refuting it is a cinch. Take the hot topic of the day: what age group engages in the idiotic practice of texting while behind the wheel? While that by itself is enough to make the case for our side, there are many others.

Older people tend to know their limitations and are self regulating for that reason. Many don’t drive at night, let alone in the wee small hours. A lot of them avoid left turns when possible. As a rule, they don’t tailgate. Few drive while intoxicated. You won’t find many oldsters laying down rubber from a red light, or making donuts.

Who do you suppose is more likely to provoke a road rage incident? Not many octogenarians are suicidal enough to flip off a car full of teens. Neither are they likely to be caught with open containers of adult beverages in the vehicle, nor under the influence of controlled substances.

This is not to say that all accidents are the fault of younger people, nor that elderly drivers are paragons of motoring virtue. The truth is that accidents happen to all drivers, with greater or lesser severity, regardless of age. Retesting is not a bad idea, but it ought not be determined by age. A bill that would give doctors more freedom to report people with impairments to the state’s licensing authorities is in the works, and appears to have merit. The bill, as shown under A Call for Stricter Rules, expands on medical-reporting rules already in place in many states, including Massachusetts, and is sponsored by, among others, Safe Roads Now and the AARP. It makes more sense and is cheaper and more extensive than simply testing all the old guys every few years.

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Try A Couple of Fori

In my dotage, circumstances have dictated that a great deal of time be spent at home and none on the golf course. It soon became apparent long hours had been devoted to that fine, if frustrating, game. Those huge blocks of time had to be reassigned so the magnificent iMac was chosen to fill the gap. It didn’t take long to learn that emails, web surfing, household bookkeeping, two blogs, downloading music for the iPod, compiling slide shows of family events, and interminable games of Solitaire weren’t up to the task. So discussion forums (fori?) were elected to take up the slack.

There are more than enough sites available for even the most prolific purveyors of male bovine excrement. Just Google any occupation, area of interest or other topic followed by the word ‘discussion’ and you’ll find a discussion group at or near the head of the list. The Apple support group, for instance, is a must for Mac owners to discuss technical problems and to praise or gripe about some of the new programs and innovations. Comparable sites exist for Windows wonks. For day to day discussion of current events, local or national, nothing is quite as thought provoking as those sponsored by newspapers and magazines everywhere, and Cape Cod is no exception.

Posters come in several personas. There are those who seek to engage in thoughtful discussions about news events and editorial opinions. They are, unfortunately, in the minority. More prevalent are those who want nothing more than to force their views down the throats of everyone else. It is this latter group that detracts from much of the pleasure which more reasonable people derive from the activity.

Particularly galling are posters who, when confronted with disagreement, resort to insults and ridicule. Some of the derogatory comments are not only crude and vulgar but can be downright hurtful. Those who use this tactic fail to see that it merely highlights their inability to mount a cogent argument and emphasizes not only their lack of intellect but a complete absence of courtesy or respect. To put it bluntly, they’re not only dumb but they have no manners.

The sense of security fostered by the anonymity of user names encourages rude and unprincipled behavior. It’s akin to road rage. People feel safe in the confines of their vehicles so they shout epithets and make rude gestures to drivers who annoy them. Posting under a pseudonym provides a similar feeling of invulnerability.

Many believe the sponsor of a forum has a responsibility to see that it is conducted with a modicum of decorum. The fact that disciplinary action is rare leads one to believe that rude behavior is acceptable, if not outright welcome. It could very well be that management encourages controversy in order to liven things up. The problem is that this could very well discourage serious posters and drive them away, leaving only a bunch of ill mannered boors calling each other names.

There is also a deeply rooted suspicion that some sponsors are not above planting a few shills among their posters in order to keep the pot boiling with outrageous and provocative comments. Again, anonymity plays into the hands of the unscrupulous.

Nor are posters blameless. It is well known that some people, perhaps more than we know, adopt different identities, often at the same time. Occasionally their style betrays them, but it’s perfectly possible, even probable, that many lively online arguments have taken place with the same person on both sides, under different names, and no one the wiser.

With all the drawbacks inherent in online fori, why do so many get so involved in them? The easy answer is that they have a great deal of time on their hands. Retirees come to mind, and certainly many posters are in that group. So might people with free time, sanctioned or surreptitious, at work. Students and stay at home moms might participate. All of the above, plus others unknown, might be spending hours in conversation, often adversarial, sometimes rude, occasionally belligerent, with a gang of strangers. What attracts them, and keeps them coming back?

If you are among the large population of forumites on the Cape, and your presence on this site would indicate that you very well could be, then you already know the answer. If you haven’t visited one, you certainly should at least take a look at this latter day phenomenon. You may find it’s not for you. Or, like so many, you may become addicted and endure great pains and some insults in order to contribute your two cents about events here on Cape Cod and throughout the world.

Cape Cod Today is a good place to begin. Register, if you haven’t already done so. Leave some comments. Start a little fuss - but be polite. Cape Cod Talk has fewer participants but you may find it’s just what you’re looking for. Of course, there’s Cape Cod Online, the oracle of the Cape Cod Times and perhaps the largest and most controversial of local sites. There are others, but try these first. You may swear off fori for life. Or you may become a forum junkie.

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As the Song Goes, Don't Blame Me

“The federal indictment of former Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi — the latest, if convicted, in a long line of elected servants who have violated the public trust — is an indictment of every one of us…”

So began the lead editorial in the Saturday, June 13, 2009 issue of the Cape Cod Times. Well, Times, if you want to accept a share of the blame for the alleged misdeeds of Mr. DiMasi, or any other politician, then beat your breast all you like. Most of the rest of us will plead not guilty, thank you.

Not that there isn’t plenty of blame to go around, but in the end there is still, or should be, something called personal accountability. So Mr. DiMasi must face his tribulations on his own despite what we may presume are the well intentioned efforts of our local media to mitigate his responsibility. So, while no one else is truly responsible for the misdeeds of another, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that we, the voters of Massachusetts, are guilty of placing them, and keeping them, in temptations orbit.

There are many examples of instances where the legislature, our alleged representatives, were sent clear and distinct messages from the voters, and wilfully ignored them. Here are a few, in no particular order.

There is the overwhelming vote to roll back the state income tax to 5%. If you recall, Mr. Dukakis, noted tank commander, raised it as a temporary measure. Here is a direct quote from devalpatrick.com: “In 2000 the voters of the Commonwealth voted to roll-back the income tax to 5%, the level of taxation prior to Mike Dukakis' "temporary" increase. The legislature has not allowed this to happen. “

Were all, or any one, of those legislators who blocked the will of the voters sent packing at the next election? Not on your life. Or, if a few were replaced, you can rest assured it was by someone who takes orders from the same party leaders.

Of course, the more recent gay marriage fiasco is fresh in our minds. Everyone who circumvented our opportunity to vote on the issue should have been summarily impeached, let alone voted out of office at the next election. And what happened to the death penalty? Did the legislators who voted it down no less than three times in a five year span get voted out? You know better.

Then there are our own local pols, Mr. O’Leary and Mr. Turner, who voted to Keep Evacuation Day and Bunker Hill Day as holidays for a select few, and then offered weak explanations for doing so. Do you think there will be a hue and cry to unseat them when the time comes?

The editorial makes a number of accusations which are supposed to illustrate our culpability for official corruption. This is a palpably naive attempt to prove a point which, while idealistically appealing, has no basis in reality. Discussing each and every one of these blame-boosters would be an exercise in futility: a look at a representative few, however, might be enlightening. Here are those of us who the paper claims are responsible for official corruption, along with some opinions on this conclusion.

“those of us who fail to vote and wonder why there is little accountability.” There are several things wrong with this way of thinking. For one thing, we have the right to vote, not an obligation to vote. For another, by not voting we are, in fact, still expressing an opinion. Abstaining is, in a real sense, a vote. Don't legislators do it all the time? Perhaps neither candidate appeals to us. Why should anyone be forced to choose between two people he dislikes? Maybe some voters genuinely don’t care who wins. Voting just to cast a ballot accomplishes nothing for the country, and could skew the results. Most importantly, there are some people who honestly don’t know much about the candidates and feel unqualified to make an intelligent choice. These people should be praised for not voting.

“Those of us in school departments who hire a friend over a more qualified applicant;” or “Those of us in town government who treat a friend more favorably than another citizen;” Isn’t this what Affirmative Action is all about? Haven’t we been told that this is a good thing? Doesn’t the Cape Cod Times support Affirmative Action? The Supreme Court does.

“The next time you get disgusted about how our government works, and want to find the source of the problem, take a look in the mirror.”  What we ought to do is, next time we get disgusted about how government works, check through back issues of the newspaper in the candidates' districts and see if the official(s) in question were backed by that editor. Then we'd know where a share of the blame really lies.

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