Tag: politics

Turning space into money

An advantage of the dog park being open again is that I get to
talk to people who do things I wouldn’t normally be involved in. A couple of nights ago,
the owner of a sprightly two-year-old terrier named Demon was
talking about all the good deals in used motorcycles you can get
this time of year.

Apparently, if you don’t have the space to store your
motorcycle for the winter, you sell it in the fall for very little money to
someone who does.

So my friend, who doesn’t personally have any more space than
anyone else who lives in a Cambridge apartment, was salivating
over the deals he’s been seeing in the used motorcycle market, and
wondering how many bikes he can convince his parents to store for him.

Pretending to go a Maying

The new piece the Cantabile
Renaissance Band played last night was by Thomas
Morley from the Triumphs
of Oriana. This is a collection of madrigals by most of the
famous composers of the day (1603). They must have been the sort
of music that was played for Queen Elizabeth when she went to
visit her nobles to keep them spending their money on
conspicuous consumption rather than on raising armies to rebel
against her.

You can read what I said about the music on the
Serpent Publications Blog, but we found the words
interesting as well, particularly the lines:

A Prince,
of beauty rich and rare,
for her delighting,
Pretends to goe a Maying,

We weren’t quite sure what that meant. One idea that occured
to us during the beer-drinking part of the meeting, where we
were discussing our gardens, was that it wasn’t May, but the
prince had too much zucchini in his garden, so he was leaving
them on his neighbors’ doorsteps and ringing the doorbell and
then running away.

Another idea I had was that it was the kind of Maying that led
to teenage pregnancy that he was pretending to do, which the
Queen wouldn’t have really wanted to do, but might have enjoyed
having a beautiful man pretend to want to do it with her.

In any case, your guess is at least as good as mine, so feel
free to leave your ideas in the comments.

RIP, Senator Kennedy

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Ted Kennedy since he died
a couple of days ago. I grew up in Massachusetts, so via the
miracle of television, he’s spent a lot of time in my living room,
even though I didn’t know him personally, and I only remember once when
we were in the same (large) room together.

Many other people have been analyzing how his work in the
senate shaped America as we know it today. I’ll just tell you a
couple of personal stories.

Chapaquiddick

The speech he gave where he offered to resign is the other
television event I remember from the summer of 1969, besides the
moon landing.
It was a well-delivered speech, and an effective piece of persuasive
writing. The person who is usually credited with writing it,
Theodore Sorenson, was proposed as head of the CIA in the Carter
administration, but the appointment was withdrawn. I remember one
of the arguments against it being that he had written that speech,
which may have contained some lies, and certainly didn’t tell the
whole truth. At the time, I was surprised that the opposition
would have been stated that way, since I don’t see how never
having told a lie or suppressed a truth can possibly be a
qualification for being head of an intelligence agency.

Money from an insurance company

The only time I actually called on him for help as a
constituent, his staff was quite effective. I had been using what
was then called Harvard Community Health Plan (HCHP), one
of the original
manged care organizations, for my health care for about 15 years.
I had been fairly satisfied with the care I’d received, but once I
became a contractor and no longer had my coverage paid for by my
employer, I found dealing with their billing organization
increasingly annoying. The last straw was when they wrote that
they were cancelling my policy because they hadn’t gotten my check
on time. (It had actually crossed that letter in the mail.)

I went into a frenzy of letter writing, and wrote to their
billing that they
weren’t cancelling me, I was cancelling them, and wrote letters to
the two doctors I had a relationship with explaining what was
happening.

When they didn’t return the check I’d sent after a month or
so, I wrote to Senator Kennedy, explaining the situation. In
fact, I was more concerned that he be aware that individuals were
having this kind of problem retaining coverage than that he get me
my check. I had both a diabetes and an asthma diagnosis at this
point, and I suspected HCHP of cherry-picking, and also of not
really wanting to deal with billing individuals. His office sprang into action and called both the
HCHP billing office and the Massachusetts Insurance
Commission.

Less than a week after writing that letter, on the same day I got a letter in
the regular mail from Senator Kennedy’s office saying what they’d
done, and how I should follow up if I didn’t receive my check in a
week, and an express delivery of the check from HCHP.

Cancer diagnosis

I heard of Senator Kennedy’s cancer diagnosis while I was on my
way to pick up Bonnie’s
belongings from the hospice two days after she died. I remember
wondering how much difference it would make that he was richer,
more powerful, and maybe more knowledgeable about the health care
system than Bonnie had been.

The answer seems to be quite
a lot. He was getting out of bed most days until the actual
day he died; he was at home with his family and friends and dogs
until the end; and while the brain surgery did affect his vision
and motor skills, he continued to do what he loved doing,
including sailing and writing letters until almost the very end.

Of course, it may well have been just the luck of the draw that
his surgery left him relatively unimpaired and Bonnie’s left her
unable to speak or move her left side, but it may well also have been a
difference in quality of care. If it happens to me, I hope I get
closer to the kind Kennedy got than the kind Bonnie got.

Little House at the New Yorker

If you enjoyed the
Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder,
there’s a New
Yorker article about Wilder and her daughter,
Rose Wilder Lane.

I haven’t reread the books in a while, but here are some
thoughts that occur to me reading the article:

  • I hadn’t remembered that the Ingalls family were illegal
    settlers in Little House on the Prairie.
  • Part of the article is a survey of other literature about
    the books. There’s a lot of material for research here, since
    the original pencil-written legal pads on which Laura drafted
    the books have been preserved. It’s not clear whether we have
    the typewritten versions that Rose submitted for publication,
    but apparently the scholars are assuming that most of the
    differences between Laura’s drafts and the published versions
    are Rose’s editing. It gives one little confidence in
    literary scholarship as a whole that there the scholars who
    have examined this material come to drastically different
    conclusions about the extent of Rose’s contribution. Some of
    them apparently believe that Rose was the real author, using
    Laura’s drafts as raw material, and others believe, “Wilder
    demonstrated a high degree of writing competence from the
    beginning, and her daughter’s contribution to the
    final products, while important, was less significant than has
    been asserted.” (Quoted from John Miller in his introduction
    to Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder. )
  • Another big part of the article is the history of the Wilder
    family reaction to twentieth century politics. They were
    supportive of the William Jennings Bryan free silver
    movement. Rose became a supporter of Eugene Debs, a
    socialist, later flirted with communism, and after that
    espoused what we now call libertarian principles, and in fact
    may have been one of the first people to use that term. Laura was a
    Democrat until the late 1920’s, but decided that the party was
    committed to taking money from the farmers and giving it to
    the urban poor, and was quite upset at the election of
    Franklin Roosevelt. She believed (ignoring railroads, free
    schools, and government-backed credit) that the Ingalls family
    had accomplished what they had with no government assistence.

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Crime in the Broadway Building Condominium

I got home last night after band rehearsal and the sidewalk in front of my house was crawling with
policemen.

The yappy little dog that my next door neighbor was taking care
of for his parents was yapping his head off, and one of the
officers asked me if I knew whose dog it was, because someone
had complained that it was barking and they were worried that it
was dehydrated. I told them, and
gave them his phone number. At this point I saw that they had
opened the door, so I was a little confused that there was still
a problem with the dog. The neighbor, arrived as I was
going into my unit.

I walked my dog, and when I got back there were still lots of
policemen around, and my neighbor was sitting on the steps looking glum
and explaining to a woman about where the dog’s pills were. I
kept thinking that this was an awful lot of police attention for
a crabby neighbor complaining about a barking dog.

When I got up this morning to walk my dog, there was a police
officer standing in front of the building, and she was still
there when I returned from the dog walk. I asked her what was
happening and she said that she couldn’t tell me, but they were
watching the building today, and we’d be very safe for the day.
When I looked out during the morning, there were frequently lots of
police officers and other onlookers.

Here’s what the online police blotter has to say about the
incident:

On 8/17/09 at 9:15 PM, 31-year-old *redacted* of *redacted* was arrested for Possession of Class D w/ Intent to Distribute & Violation of the School Zone. Police were dispatched to the residence to investigate a noise complaint and found a large amount of marijuana plants being cultivated on the third floor of the residence.

I still think the next time the police complain about not
having enough resources I will be thinking about all the
officers spending all this time on this particular case. I
support legalizing marijuana, and if it is going to be illegal,
and people are going to smoke it anyway,
I’d rather they grew it in their apartments for their friends
(which I would assume is what my neighbor has been doing)
than that they pay lots of money to organized crime for it.

In any case, if you live somewhere where there are crabby
neighbors, you clearly should be careful about what you do
that’s illegal. I don’t know for sure that a good lawyer
couldn’t get this thrown out of court for search with a lack of
probable cause, but even if that happens, it will still be a lot
of trouble for a little bit of marijuana. (Yes, the blotter
says it’s a lot of marijuana, but it’s an 1100 square foot
apartment, with the usual amount of furniture, clothing, kitchen
equipment, … so there’s a
limit to how many plants there could be.)

Taking financial responsibility for the dead or dying

Starting to work on Bonnie’s estate taxes yesterday reminded me
of how difficult it was when she was heavily sedated and I had to
take over the power of attorney so that her bills would get
paid.

I don’t mean the difficulty of feeling bad because your friend
is dying or of visiting someone in the hospital who isn’t able to
respond to you and not knowing what to do about that.

I mean the set of completely pointless obstacles the banks and
other financial institutions put in the way of letting someone
with a valid power of attorney get access to the resources they
need to do their job.

This didn’t appear in the first week — I took the copy of the
power of attorney Bonnie had signed to the bank where she had her
checking account and showed it and my driver’s licence to the bank
officer and she told me how to sign the checks and what the
password on her online banking was, and then I was able to use the
checking account. This is the kind of nuisance I had expected it
to be when I signed up for the job.

Unfortunately, the checking account didn’t have very much money
in it, and the next thing I had to do was get money out of her
retirement account.

I had assumed this would be the same kind of nuisance —
Bonnie’s retirement account was at Pioneer Investments
in downtown Boston, where Bonnie had worked as a phone
representative for the last decade or
two of her working career, so I thought I could just go there and
show them the power of attorney and they would give me her
money.

Unfortunately, Pioneer isn’t actually a consumer level
financial services firm — they really expect to sell their
products to you through a broker or your employer. So they don’t
have an office with people like the bank officer who can look at
your power of attorney, and you have to do it through the
mail.

Now of course, the people who talked to me on the phone about
what I needed to send them had several ideas about what I needed
to do. One option would have been to have her sign their
specific power of attorney form. This would have been
possible for a while in March or April, after she woke up from the
surgery, and
before she stopped being able to move a pencil. It’s possible that if you’re thinking about this for
someone before they get into the state where they need you to do
it, you should just have them get the power of attorney from the
institution that holds most of their resources. But really, the
one the lawyer wrote for Bonnie should have been enough, and I
started this while she was unconscious, and didn’t really finish
until she wasn’t able to write any more.

What they eventually decided I needed to do was to send a
certified copy of the POA along with a guaranteed
letter describing what I wanted them to do. This guarantee is
something a bank manager needs to do for you, and he or she is
stamping your letter with something that says he believes you are
who you say you are.

So I assumed Bonnie’s bank, which was convenient to the
hospital I was visiting her at and her house, which I was visiting
from time to time, would do this for me, and I went there to ask
them to do it.

The first person I talked to called the central office, which
said she needed to see one of their statements before she could
guarantee my letter. Finding anything in Bonnie’s house wasn’t
easy, but I eventually managed to find a statement and went back
to the bank. The officer I had talked to was getting out her
seal, when her supervisor got involved in the transation, and gave
it as her opinion that they couldn’t guarantee my signature
because I wasn’t their customer.

She was really unpleasant about this — I even offered to set up a
small account so that I would personally be a customer and she
wouldn’t even listen to me. It was very clearly a “We don’t want
to do business with you,” reaction. It really happened before I’d
done or said anything at all to her, so it couldn’t have been
personal. The only theory I could come up with was that she was
assuming that Bonnie and I were in a lesbian relationship and she
didn’t want to have anything to do with that.

I really meant to write a letter to that bank explaining to
them why Bonnie’s money all disappeared from their bank shortly
after that. That kind of customer service really can’t possible
be the bank policy, and there may be people there who want to know
it’s happening. I haven’t done it yet, but maybe I will. I
didn’t write some of what I thought I should to the doctors, either.

I could of course have gotten the guarantee from my own bank,
but their nearest office is downtown, and I was still using a
crutch after hip surgery. So instead of going there I
decided to try the bank around the corner first. They were very
nice, and were happy to guarantee my signature after I set up an
account for Bonnie with the money from the bank I didn’t like.

So then I had to struggle some more with Pioneer, because I
hadn’t really understood their account numbering system, and I
asked to withdraw $15,000, which was much less than she had in all
her accounts, but more than was in the specific account whose
number I had copied off a statement. I think I had two
conversations with first-line people and it was after some yelling
and screaming at the second one (who was saying something
completely different from the first one) and some “May I speak to
your manager” that they finally sent me the money.

When I had to do roughly the same thing after Bonnie died, of
course I had the tame bank manager around the corner to guarantee
the signature, and I’d figured out what part of the account number
to copy. I’d also decided that mentioning my lawyer couldn’t
possibly hurt. So that went quite smoothly.

In case you have to do this, here’s the letter that worked:

I am enclosing certified copies of the Death Certificate and my
Decree of Temporary Executor in the estate of
Bonnie J. Rogers, one of your shareholders.

I would like to close out all the Pioneer funds she owned, which
are under the account number xxxxxxxx.

Please do not deduct taxes from this money. The TIN for the estate is
xx-xxx-xxxx.

Please send the check to me at:
xxx Xxxxxx
Cambridge, MA 02139

If you have a problem with this request,
please send a copy of your response to my lawyer, *redacted*, at:
xx X St.
Rockport, MA 01966

Thank you for your assistance,

Cash for Clunkers

Here in Cambridge, our definition of a clunker seems to be
different from what it is elsewhere. So while I know many people
who are driving a car that’s older and less fuel-efficient than
they wish it were, only one of them actually went to a car dealer
to try to take advantage of the stimulus program, and he failed.
It turns out that 15 years ago, when they made his current car,
the EPA was giving really optimistic estimates of fuel milage. So
while he gets something like 9 miles per gallon in mostly city
driving, the EPA has it rated at 18.5 MPG combined. So it isn’t
eligible for cash for clunkers.

However, I think the government stimulous programs are closing
in on a number that will make Americans do something energetic
like go to a car dealer. $600 really isn’t enough, but $3500 is
more than enough. So maybe there will be new programs giving us
small numbers of thousands of dollars for other virtuous
activities. And maybe some of them will benefit Cambridge citizens.

Psalm 137

I’ve posted to the Serpent
Publications Blog what I’ve been doing about that site.

One of the items was to add the rest of the verses Clement
Marot wrote for Psalm 137.

It was actually Bonnie who always complained about the idea of
singing the rest of the psalm because she didn’t want to sing
about bashing the babies against the stones in the street. I
thought about her when we were singing the Estocart
setting last night, and was glad she wouldn’t complain if I
set the other verses, but then when I read them, I was sad because
she would have enjoyed singing them.

Here they are:

Estans assis aux rives aquatiques
De Babylon, plorions melancholiques,
Nous souvenant du païs de Syon:
Et au milieu de l’habitation,
Où de regret tant de pleurs espandismes,
Aux saules vers nos harpes nous pendismes

Lors, ceulx qui là captifs nous emmenerent,
de les sonner fort nous importunerent,
Et de Syon les chansons reciter:
Las, dismes nous, qui pourroit inciter
Nos tristes cueurs à chanter la louange,
De nostre Dieu, en une Terre estrange?

Or toutefoys, puisse oublier ma dextre
L’art de harper, avant qu’on te voye estre
Ierusalem, hors de mon souvenir:
Ma langue puisse à mon palais tenir
Si je t’oublie, et si jamais ay joye,
Tant que premier ta delivrance j’oye.

Which might mean something like:

While we sat by the shore of the River of Babylon, we cried
sadly, we remembered the land of Zion: And in the middle of our
new living quarters where our sobs flowed forth, we hung our
harps on the green willow trees.

Then, those who had led us into captivity pressed us to sing
the songs of Zion: Alas, we said, How can we make our sad hearts
sing the praises of our God in a strange land?

Now and forever, may my right hand forget the art of a
harper, before I see you, Jerusalem, erased from my memory: May my
tongue stick to my palate if I forget you, and if ever I have
joy before your deliverance.

Apparently it’s a long tradition of leaving out the rest in
public readings and performances. In the New International
Version, the part Marot didn’t translate goes:

Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-

he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

I think it’s important to remember that it isn’t just songs
about not singing songs that war produces, but people who actually
want to kill babies.

Bicycle lock

I was just sitting down to write this, when my doorbell rang.
It was a young man who said he was a locksmith and needed a
place to plug in his saw to saw the lock off a bike parked in
front of my house.

I decided I should be responsible and ask for ID, and he was
willing but also called over the owner of the bike, who was
someone I’d seen going off for a day at the beach with one of my
neighbors.

It took the locksmith a good 15 minutes even with power tools to get the
lock off, which speaks well for how secure Kryptonite bike locks
are. Kryptonite had also told the owner that they’d replace the lock
for an $18 fee, if she sent them back the pieces.

She said that she’d lost all her keys, but getting
into her house hadn’t been a problem — she just went in a
window. And then she had a duplicate key for the house, but
hadn’t had the second key for the bike lock for some time.

So there are good urban neighbor stories.

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More about the Gates arrest

I guess I should have expected it, but it surprises me yet
again that there are so many people trying to hard to sympathize
with the policeman rather than with Professor Gates.

Both the comments on the news items and the conversation after
band rehearsal last night reveal a remarkable portion of the
population (mostly but not entirely white and male) who really
want to believe in the face of all the evidence that people in
authority know what they’re doing.

Probably not all of these people have been reading the blogs
and news items as avidly as I have. But the band member who
seems to be in that category kept saying, “There might be things
we don’t know.” I pointed out that we now have the story from the
point of view of both major participants, and then someone else
said, “And one of them makes the police department look bad, and
the other one makes it look really bad.”

Here’s the police
report, which in my opinion does not justify an arrest even if
it’s all gospel truth, and here’s Gates’
story as told to theroot.com.

This is all pretty much what conversations were like during the
Anita Hill testimony about Clarence Thomas. There were a lot of
men who thought, “This couldn’t have happened because things like
this don’t happen.” And not all women necessarily believed that
everything happened exactly the way Anita Hill said it did, but we
all knew lots of cases of things exactly like that having
happened.

Of course, as a Cambridge voter and taxpayer, what concerns me
most right now is that as reported in the papers, the Cambridge
Police department seems to be most urgently concerned with
tracking down who leaked the report. Of course, in this case I’m
sure there are things we don’t know. I certainly hope one of
them is some better training and supervision of the officers on
the street.