Danielle in Nicaragua

Danielle is a family friend.  She’s in Nicaragua.  In a really rural, poor-as-dirt part of Nicaragua.  Danielle is in the Peace Corps.

Danielle graduated from college recently, and she could be doing just about anything a normal twenty-something would want to do.  She’s smart, extremely athletic, musically inclined, has a great personality and is vastly more beautiful than I could ever have been handsome.  She was one of New Hampshire’s top track athletes in high school, highly motivated and successful.  Yet all the things she’s been gifted with left her wanting for something else.

So she did what few of us would ever be willing to do; she left home and for the next two years is going to teach and farm in the lower-class region of a third-world country.  I couldn’t be more proud of her.

I write about Danielle because I want others to read about her.  She does not have it easy.   This is a huge transition and a greater learning experience for her than it is for those she is trying to help; and worse, she’s gone to a part of the world where the spiders are, like, the size of your hand.  She hates spiders.

She started a blog.  It’s called (surprise) Danielle in Nicaragua.  Her writing skills are not necessarily perfect but grammatically and phonetically close enough to get the point across.  What’s neat about her blog is its endearing nature.  It’s a quirky and fun read.  She only gets a chance to write maybe once a week at most – I believe she has to travel to some larger town that has a wi-fi connection – but her letters weave a story vastly different than the stuff we usually read and write about in the world we live in.  Her stories are about how most people on Earth live, not how we live.

Danielle in Nicaragua is worth a visit.  The embedded video above and the one below (which includes musical references to The Godfather and Radiohead) were taken and produced by one of her fellow Peace Corps volunteers; they are funny and educational.  Notice what they do with the few tools and materials they have to work with.

So read her blog and leave an encouragement or two in the comments section.  She’ll appreciate it.

What Jenny Sanford Should Have Said

Well, yet another politician whose brains are in his pants.

It is one thing to preach about the sanctity of marriage, wholly another to practice that sanctity.  My husband, like so many other politicians, lives in a world where egos are stroked at every turn and power is more addictive than cocaine.  He obviously felt that he needed more stroking than I could give him.  The sense of entitlement that comes with political office carried over into the rest of his life, and he failed to keep them separate.

I’m sure his biggest regret is getting caught.

If I were a bit less civil my first reaction would be to Bobbetize him.  Instead, for the sake of our children, I will try to work through this.  But you can bet that he’ll be cut off for a long, long time, maybe for good.  I may love him, but he’s a jerk and like so many other jerks, could not keep a commitment he promised to keep, twenty years ago.

Going forward, Mark’s words will be repeated in the press; but they are just words.  I and others will from now on be vigilant of his actions, and the effect that every one of those actions will have on regaining his trust.

That will take a long time, probably longer than one election cycle.  This is something you too should consider the next time you vote for governor.

Society tends to reflect the morals of its leaders.  Those who decry the loss of family values and the failures of society – especially those in office – should look no further than themselves as the starting point for re-establishment of those values.  This post is not really about Mark Sanford’s failure or the failures of those other high-ranking politicians – God knows they’re only human – it is about the failure of government to adhere to tough ethical standards that have teeth, that hold politicians accountable for immoral or unethical behavior.  Instead, we find ourselves all but disregarding any political rhetoric because the person behind that rhetoric has no credibility.  We are more likely to do as he does – and not do what he says.  We’ll follow our leaders all the way down that amoral pit.

This all leads to the fiasco that is New York State government, a government that has established new lows in ethics, where a political official currently under investigation for fraudulent campaign tactics is one heartbeat removed from the Governor’s mansion.  Whose Legislative Ethics Commission in its 20-year existence has never filed a notice of wrongdoing and whose findings are specifically exempt from the state’s Freedom of Information Law.  Whose Senate is so beholden to the Party that not only can they not conduct the people’s business, they can’t even find cordiality in the same room.

Many of these politicians will be re-elected to office.  They are doing nothing that the majority of Americans have not come to expect of them.  The real failure of our society is our own unwillingness to hold these guys accountable for the very societal standards demanded of us.

It’s been interesting to watch the slow disintegration of my state government and the short-lived furor over national political figures who have strayed.  We’ve been on this slippery slope for a while, and we’ve got only a short distance to go, I hope, before it becomes so revolting that society revolts against the system.

R.I.P Dick Bob

I’ve never been good with eulogies, especially for those dear to me.  At times of death I’m generally at a loss for words, not knowing how to convey my thoughts or bring comfort to those in grief.

This past week my colleague and friend Dick succumbed to his battle with cancer.  Anyone with more than 10 or 15 years in Buffalo’s manufacturing circles probably knew this guy.  He was a whirlwind of energy, not easily forgettable.

To the very end he insisted on coming to work – it was his passion – never complaining about the chemotherapy or the radiation, treating each day like all the others.  He did not bemoan his fate, but rather reveled in his life’s accomplishments.  He had many.

Two days before he went into hospice he was still calling clients, weak but alert.  Six days later his life ended.

I can only hope that I face my mortality as bravely as he faced his.

The Tenderest Moments

The most touching moment of my life was looking into my fiancee’s eyes as she recited her wedding vows to me.  Witnessing the birth of our children were close seconds.  Those tenderest of moments embody humanity’s great beauty and are unforgettable.  They are as clear to me as the day they occurred; I have but a handful of them to cherish.

Last Saturday I walked a young woman down the aisle and gave her away to her husband-to-be.  This was an unexpected gift – one that a father of boys does not normally receive.  And looking into her eyes as we reached the altar, I realized that she had just added one more tender moment to my life.

Thanks, J.

30 Years Old

In Cheektowaga, what should one do to celebrate a 30-year-old’s January birthday at the office?

Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Men

On Christmas Eve my friend the Foreign National got ticketed for rolling through a right-on-red.

He did not have his passport with him.

The cop immediately called the local Homeland Security office, who took him into custody and after a few hours decided he was not in the U.S. legally.  He thought that if they allowed him to get his visa, at his apartment, it would prove that the U.S. is his legal home.

It didn’t.  Homeland Security said they had never seen a visa like his, so they took him back to the holding center and held him for a few more hours before finally agreeing that it had all been a mistake and he was free to go.

Only they had his car towed in the interim.  All this on Christmas Eve.

So now my friend is $190 poorer with little recourse but to put up with the harassment of a U.S. agency beholden to no voter, an agency that if he attempted to sue, could (and might) retaliate against him.  An agency that puts guilt before innocence and whose paranoia makes those it touches paranoid.

Sometimes I hate what we’ve become.

NYS-sanctioned Social Programs for Inmates

There was an article on this past Saturday’s Buffalo News opinion page describing the ways in which New York State is trying to reduce prison recidivism.  These programs, social and educational in nature, try to help inmates nearing parole to transition back into society without relapse.

Many of these parolees spend a long time without freedom as we know it; but they do get free room and board, and they make friends (we are, after all, social animals).  Many regain their freedom with no clue how to find a job, how to hold a job, how to reintegrate into a society that generally wants little to do with them anyway.  Many find that they have more friends (or their only friends) behind bars.  The stigma attached to them and the very limited opportunities work against many of them from day one on the outside.

Re-entry programs don’t always work but even a modest goal of reducing the rate at which parolees end up back in jail is something to shoot for.  It is more than a humanitarian gesture:  The cost to incarcerate someone in a state prison is currently $32,000 per year.  And each court case resulting in conviction costs an estimated $50,000.  Reduction of recidivism by just a few percent pays for these social programs many times over.

This is also the kind of program that will be on next year’s chopping block as New York looks to trim billions of dollars from the budget.  Penny-wise, pound foolish.

Why are the Roads so Bad?

This post is in response to South Buffalo Blogger, who wrote this post bemoaning the slow collapse of South Buffalo’s infrastructure.  I couldn’t leave the type of comment that I wanted to leave there, so I’m doing it here.

SBB writes:

Having lived in Buffalo all of my life, there’s love for this city…. compassion, understanding and sorrow in feeling like there’s so much to do in so little time. Of all though, there’s frustration from the (election grandstanding) lies, frustration from the waiting & wondering when our time will come for new changes, for new focus…. for that feeling of splendor I had as I sat on a bench down at the Commercial Slip.

South Buffalo’s time for new changes and new focus, I’m afraid, has to wait for the revitalization of a much larger segment of Buffalo than what the Commercial Slip might bring to Downtown.  It has to wait for a revitalization of this house:

and this area:

and this business:

Aside from a very small mansion district, the city has nowhere to turn to generate the revenue needed to do what you want done for South Buffalo – that is, without completely shutting out other neighborhoods.  Neither does the state (and, as we shall soon hear from Governor Paterson, not for a long time).

South Buffalo, like the rest of the city, will have to pull itself up on its own.  There may be those in office softly cooing “keep the faith, help is coming” but in reality, what help there may be can only dot the landscape with little fixes.  Wholesale changes are not in the picture.  SB’s street lamps will continue to rust and its streets will continue to crumble, as they are in the rest of the city.

That’s pretty gloomy.  The upside is that streets and streetlamps are merely facades.  What makes a true neighborhood are the people in it.  What we need to do is convince the politicians to concentrate what funds they do have on things that bring people together into a community.  This may sound hokey, but I think your focus on bumpy roads and duct-taped light poles misses the point about what made makes SB great.  If anything, pictures of people at Community Center functions, at church bazaars and at school athletic contests, and the use of public funds to encourage more participation in community collective activities (how about an open market every Saturday?  Or book parties at the library? An Irish Festival every season?) might be a better rallying cry.

Maybe, if cars are forced to go 15 mph down cruddy Seneca Street, they’ll have that much more time to observe how SB reinvents itself with festivities and events that put other Buffalo neighborhoods to shame!

Death of a Cat

Mandy, our 20-something year-old cat, died in my wife’s arms this evening.

We knew she was going; she hadn’t eaten in a week, and was barely able to lift her head today.  Yet for some reason my wife (the chaplain and nurse) decided to pick her up and hold her, and 15 minutes later the cat was gone.

Eerie, but touching.  My wife was also present at her father’s and mother’s deaths, 11 years apart, at the hospital.  We knew that they appreciated her presence.  As for the cat, I think Mandy was holding out for my wife to hold her one last time.

I hope my wife is there when it’s my turn.

Cutting Someone Loose

I hate firing people.

As necessary as it sometimes is for the sake of both the employer and employee to part ways it is never easy nor fun.  I abhor that part of my job.

My former employee and I will both go home tonight lost in thought.

Buffalo is a Closet

A generation ago I met a couple of students from the University of Buffalo, became friends with them, went to their wedding and even lived in the same apartment complex for a year or two. They were civil engineers, I developed software. Our careers took us down very different paths and although I would hear about them from time to time the years passed and we never again made contact.

A few weeks ago my company hired their son, also a graduate of UB. That led to a business connection that now links me back to the couple, to the Department of Transportation and to possible business opportunities with a civil engineering company, coincidental connections that I would not have expected to occur in any large metropolitan area.

But this is Buffalo, and re-connections like this happen frequently because this community is not just close-knit, it’s a closet.

There is a lesson in here about trying hard not to burn bridges. You cannot predict whether or not your paths will later cross in important ways.  Around Buffalo, it is likely that they will.

21

Around here most parents’ children see their 21^st birthday. My oldest saw his today.

I think this is a more meaningful milestone for me than it is for him; my work day has certainly been affected by it. The next time we get together – which may be a while, as he goes straight from end-of-semester finals to his summer job in Hartford – I think I’ll ask him to buy the drinks.

Congratulations to my 21-year-old and all those other 21-year-olds out there. Be wise, be careful, and go for that brass ring.

Chores

A friend of mine and I were chatting about how mundane life becomes as we get older, as we take on more responsibility and with that responsibility come tasks that eat into what used to be discretionary time. Funny how it mostly creeps up on you: Not the job, but the occasional dinner meeting or “social” gathering that you feel obligated to attend, and that chews up an evening. The house with its never-ending demands for maintenance; the children (bless them!) with their never-ending demands for attention. The dishes, the laundry, the bathrooms, the vacuuming, the lawn, and this past couple of weekends, the pool, and firewood.

I do not remember how I filled my day prior to having children. I do know that the number of evenings my wife and I go out, now that the kids are in college, has only marginally increased mainly because we’re too tired to go out. I also know that my week-long summer vacation is likely to be spent away from home, so that projects needing my attention will be delayed yet again.

I know only a very few individuals who do not live like this. They tend to pick up every couple of years and move on, either to a new job, a new city, a new home/apartment, or all of these. None are married. I wonder if they are at peace with a nomadic lifestyle, or if they are in search of and never finding satisfaction in life.

I, for one, will not give up my current lifestyle. It will evolve on its own, and eventually provide me with the time to do the things I want to do. As tired as I become by day’s end I am also satisfied that I have tried my best to reach a goal or two.

Dead in its Tracks

The current undisputed sensationalistic story du mois is chocked full of juicy things: mothers, children, underage sex, religion, polygamy and now, courtroom drama and lots of lawyers falling over themselves for attention.

The 80-year-old Tom Green County courtroom and a satellite courtroom set up in a City Hall auditorium two blocks away were jammed with dozens of mothers from the retreat, dressed in their iconic pastel prairie dresses and braided upswept hair.

The mothers were sworn in as witnesses, standing and mumbling their ‘I do’s’ in timid voices. As they sat silently, the flock of lawyers was constantly buzzing with murmurs and popping up to make motions or object as Walther tried to maintain order.

But when prosecutors tried to enter into evidence the medical records of three girls — two 17-year-olds and an 18-year-old — the lawyers jumped to their feet and crammed the aisles trying to see the papers. That’s when Walther called the recess.

Oh, the imagery. This will not end well.

The Right to Bear Arms – On Campus

An unarmed, angry, irrational, emotional wreck of a person is dangerous to me only when he’s an arm’s length away.  The same person with a gun is deadly to 50 feet.

Utah allows college students to carry concealed weapons on campus.  Nine other states are considering allowing the same.  Georgia state Representative Tim Bearden, a gun-rights advocate, recently stated “How many kids must die before we realize that firearms in law-abiding hands actually save lives?”

The key words being law-abiding.

…So 19-year-old, law-abiding college student Joe Jones, who just happens to get dumped by his steady girlfriend, decides to get drunk, then drunker, then confronts the ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend Mitch.  How might that encounter end?  I guess it might depend upon who’s carrying concealed handguns, and how freely the alcohol has flowed.

An argument occasionally escalating to a fight occasionally escalating to weapons fire doesn’t see the light of day very much; yet as emotional, irrational beings who tend to become more emotional and irrational – and less inhibited – while under the influence, we know that it happens often enough.

To have it happen on campus, even rarely, should be justification enough to take a long hard look at this issue and rationally ask if the cure is worth the price.

My Very Exciting Magic Carpet

“My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.”

Just in case you needed a mnemonic to remember all the planets (including the three dwarf planets):  Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Eris.

Some fourth-grader in Montana came up with it.

Now if only I could come up with a way to remember the spelling of my wife’s middle name:  Is it Ann or Anne?

About Photographs

I have taken roughly 10,000 photographs since my interest in photography dawned at age 14. My early photographs are catalogued, and I am ever thankful I did that as my brain would never have been able to remember all those faces or places.

None of my post-marriage photographs are catalogued and virtually all of the prints are still in the same envelopes the film processor mailed to us. We look at them only rarely.

Today I am in the process of taking that huge photographic archive plus my parents’ collection and digitizing them all, using a Nikon Coolscan V ED negative scanner. The resulting 6000×4000 pixel images (in JPEG format) take up on average about 25 megabytes apiece on my hard drive. Eventually, the resulting 250 gigabytes of digitized photographs will become the archive of my family and me. Losing that archive to a hard disk crash is not something I want to consider, so everything will get backed up to one or two different media, hopefully a media that will not be too obsolete in ten years.

And that’s a problem. Each new digital format means that some old format will no longer be supported. Floppy disks are essentially gone. Non-SATA hard disks are obsolete. CD ROMs, with their 720 MB limitations, are destined for perhaps the Smithsonian, but not the average person’s home. Even DVDs, which were introduced in late 1996, are bound to go the way of the Dodo as Blu-ray discs replace them as the recording medium of choice.

Each new generation of ever-denser but not necessarily longer-lasting media means that my archive will have to be converted again and again. Unless my children see merit in what I am doing, my last conversion will take place shortly before I die, and roughly ten years after that my photographic collection will be gone. In a sense I miss the days of silver halide and B&W prints which, when stored carefully, have a shelf life of a hundred years.

My life will have been defined by about 2.5 trillion bits. In the not so distant future, some genealogical member of my family may whittle it down to this:

• Born:
• Married to:
• Died:

Losing One’s Place

My colleague and friend is going to leave the U.S. in about a month.  He does not want to do so.

He is a foreign national from Pakistan.  He came here in 1990 to go to college, fell in love with Western New York, and has never left.  Last summer his attorney told him that based on his applications for both a green card and U.S. citizenship he would not have to re-apply for an H1B visa, which allows him to stay and work in the U.S. in 3-year increments.

His attorney was wrong.  As a result, Ali’s visa expired and now there is little chance that he will be able to continue his employment with us after January.  He is being forced to return to Pakistan in order to apply for a new visa that will allow him back in the U.S.  The process could take upwards of a year to complete.

All this while Pakistan erupts into chaos.

Did you ever see the movie The Terminal?  Tom Hanks portrays Victor Navorsky, a person stuck at JFK International Airport when his country undergoes a war that essentially wipes their government off the map.  I feel like Ali is about to be stuck in the same position.  He can’t go home, and he can’t stay here.

This story does not have a happy ending.  It will literally take an act of Congress to change the INS ruling.  So our company decided to call Congressman Higgins’ office to see if there is anything he can do to help.  This is a long shot but frankly, it’s worth the effort if it helps my friend stay in the U.S.

After 17 years in the U.S. Ali is no longer Pakistani.  I fear for my friend’s safety and for the loss that our company will face when he can no longer work for us.

Dying Young

My friend up and died on Friday. He was on a business trip to Utah, and somewhere around the time of his departing flight for home, he keeled over at the airport from an apparent heart attack. Early deaths did not run in his family.

He was my age. We graduated from both high school and college together. We were both exchange students; we joined the same fraternity; we both got engineering degrees. This is a serious bummer, for his friends and especially his family: He leaves behind a wife, a young teenage son and 10-year-old triplets.

I am still trying to sort out my feelings about this. We would get together for high school and college reunions, send the occasional email, and discuss our lives. He was easy to talk to, always upbeat and proud of his family. Now he’s gone, and I’m feeling a bit vulnerable right now, as if my turn is just around the corner.

Babble in the Melting Pot

My friend relayed this to me via email while watching Saturday’s hockey game.

A few friends are coming over for the hockey game – those few who don’t mind sitting on the floor. We decided to meet here, and I’d provide food in the form of Chinese take-out.
(ring ring)
Hi, I’d like to place an order for pick-up.
No delivery.
No, I want to pick it up.
Only take out.
Ok, I’ll get take out.
Your number?
555-2555 – (not the real number)
What?
555-2555
5…5…5…5…5
No, 5-5-5-two-5-5-5
Ok, what you want?
Um, do you still have dinner for two, and combos like that?
What soup?
No, dinner combos.
Yes, what soup?
Can you tell me what they come with?
Wonton soup?
No, I don’t want soup, I want to know what your dinners are.  (blood pressure rising)
Soup and egg roll.
Ok… what else?
You don’t order before?
Well, yes, I have, but I don’t have a menu in front of me. Can you just tell me what they are, please?
Ok, wonton soup. What else?
NO, what is with your dinners?
What?
I just want to know what I get.
Soup and egg roll.
And what else?
Wonton soup.
Never mind, I’m calling somewhere else.
(click)

(ring ring)
Hi, thank you for calling Cappelli’s, what can I do for you?
Hi, I’d like to place an order to pick up.
May I have your number please?
555-2555
Is this Kathy?
Yep.
Ok, what would you like?
A sheet pizza with cheese, pepperoni, and mushrooms, a sheet Clougher, a chicken salad with house dressing…
Anything else?
Yes, also an antipasto with Italian dressing, please.
Anything else?
Nope, that’s it.
Ok, that’ll be about twenty minutes.
Great, thanks. Oh — Fred will be picking it up.
Okay, thank you.
(click)

This is a story about assimilation.  The U.S. is the greatest melting pot in the world, but as a result we sometimes struggle with the limitations of that assimilation borne of stubbornness, nostalgia or mental agility.  In this case, the proprietor of the Chinese restaurant probably should not have been answering the phone if he were trying to sustain business from most of his potential customer pool.  It’s okay if he does not want to become Americanized or wants to hang on to as much native heritage as possible, but wouldn’t it be a little easier on everyone (and himself) if he learned the language?

The ironic part is that my friend speaks Chinese and could likely have carried the conversation in the proprietor’s native language; but she strongly resists falling back on her native upbringing.  She wants to be assimilated.  That she chose to give up on Chinese food Saturday night and settled for Italian struck me as an act of principle.  Lucky for her that foods from both cultures have nicely assimilated into the American food scene.