Metro Journalist Blog

Thanks, But No Thanks for Your Advice

2012-01-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

After my second son, Jonathan, was born, I received lots of presents for him. Never mind that he will be wearing and playing with his older brother's hand-me-downs. (Don't take it personally, Jonathan. We registered with Handmedowns R Us before your brother was born.) As I was snipping off the tags from the clothes, I noticed this from a garment made for Little Me Essentials:

Welcome Baby Home with:

10 bodysuits
2 bodysuit/pant sets
10 footies
2 bib and burp cloth sets
2 take me home sets
4 sleep gowns
4 receiving blankets
1 plush stroller blanket
2 towel and mitt sets
6 pairs of socks

Who came up with that? A man or a woman with a nanny? I do laundry at least five days a week and the most popular items that get washed are bibs. Every time I feed Jonathan, I need another bib. I use the bib to wipe his lips and chin and then toss it in the laundry chute. Hello! The smell of formula is vile and bacteria grows on the wet bib. No, I'm not being paranoid. The instructions on the formula container warn parents and caregivers to discard any formula that remains in the bottle after one hour.

Not to be picky, but the suggestion about body suits isn't that great. Most of the bodysuits I've seen have short sleeves and end at the thighs. They are just cute underwear for winter babies.

By the way, I don't know about other people who do laundry, but I have a tendency to lose socks. Especially tiny ones. Six pairs is simply not enough.

Thanks, but no thanks to the advice dispensed by the people at Little Me.

The Plain Truth About Apple

2012-01-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

There is no denying it. Apple is the most innovative company in the world. Yes, Steve Jobs, who was almost beatified until just days after his death, made people want to spend a fortune on Apple products. Even when people admitted he wasn't such a nice person, they couldn't resist the seductive design and brilliant uses of Apple products. But here is something that everyone who even thinks about buying an iPad or iPhone should think about seriously.

Apple, like every American company that has manufacturing overseas, exploits people. It isn't just about the low wages. If the going rate is $1.00 a day or whatever, there isn't much to argue about. However, when Steve Jobs demanded a superior screen for the iPhone, the manufacturer he used with in China pulled people from the dorms and gave them a biscuit and a cup of tea before they started a 12 hour work shift. That is sheer exploitation. It is a step above slave labor. How stunning does that tablet or smartphone look now?

The irony is that Americans consider China a Communist country and the exploitation of labor was the whole point of a country's choosing Communism.

Steve Jobs, you died with blood on your hands. And those in your company who went along with what you said and did are also guilty.

Bradshaw Smith, RIP

2012-01-23T12:54:00.000-08:00

Bradshaw Smith, producer of Broadway Beat, died Monday, January 16 of a massive stroke. He was 57.

Born on April 14, 1954 in Derby, Bradshaw attended Ansonia High School and Western Connecticut State University. He moved to New York in the mid-1970s and did cabaret at Don't Tell Mama. He received the first MAC award for Best Male Vocalist and the Backstage Bistro award.

Bradshaw also thrived behind the scenes with his award winning cable television show, Cabaret Beat and later with Broadway Beat, which documented thousands of theatre professionals during rehearsals, performance, interviews and fundraisers. Funeral services are private and a memorial is being planned. Contributions may be made in his memory to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

We Spooked The Grey Lady!

2011-12-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

Recently, the Grey Lady sent me a rather seductive email, inviting me to be a trusted commentator I thought the timing was a bit odd because one of my most recent comments had been purged. It was in response to a Harvard professor's column that we all have to expect to work past the traditional retirement age and that employers are going to have to keep older workers on payroll. I I wrote, "With all due respect, The New York Times needs to revamp its policy on op-ed contributors." I mentioned that some of its staff columnists and contributors are woefully out of touch with the real world. I wasn't the only commentator (some of whom I trust) who have posted similar items before.

OK, so I ticked off The New York Time and they deleted the comment. But the thing about inviting me to be a "trusted" commentator turned out to require my hooking up my comments to my Facebook accounts. I interpreted this is as getting more digital ink for the Grey Lady. That, too, is odd because I use Facebook briefly when I do. I just like to keep up to date on friends' birthdays and occasionally feed my account with what's happening (a new baby!) or to post a sympathetic comment on someone's woe. No, thank you.

Obviously, I wasn't the only one who thought the invitation was about as gratuitous as the one sent at the end The Razor's Edge to the dying snob who was miffed at not being included in a society party. A lot of people made it clear that they thought it was unacceptable to have their comments suddenly come under a new set of rules by someone who may or may not be qualified to judge things in proper prospective (meaning: intelligent readers who are perhaps more knowledgeable than the people who write articles and columns).

It turns out that our instincts were correct. We were not being paranoid at all. Someone referred to this as "big brother." Today, three days after having a new baby, I got to read the new comments format on my laptop instead of my smart phone and I don't like it a bit. Instead of "All Comments," "HIghlights" and "Readers Recommendations," we now have a choice: "All," "Readers Picks" and "NYT Picks." The timing for me could not have been better than to verify my initial feelings. The story I chose was the one on how the unemployment numbers fell dramatically. To paraphrase some comments, the Grey Lady is now a flack for the Obama administration by writing such stuff, that the numbers are outright bogus, that the article means nothing because well under 10 percent of those who got jobs got better paying ones and, finally, that this new format is nonsense.

Ouch! There hasn't been such decision-making since Bank of America decided to impose monthly fees on customers who had the nerve to use their debit cards. Perhaps the powers that be behind the Grey Lady (or Wizard of Oz) will learn from BOA and reverse its bad.

Phone Phobia

2011-11-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

I run a writer's group and need help. The problem is that most of the people who say they are willing to help have become phobic about using the telephone to contact speakers for our programs. Regardless of age, they rely on email. They think it's faster and quicker. Shoot off an email and wait for a reply. And wait. And wait. And wait.

The truth is that many emails do not get to their recipients, especially if the intended recipients rely on corporate emails. The term blacklisting has not been retired since the days of Joe McCarthy. I've been working at the same newspaper for more than 10 years and my emails are sometimes lost in the company's email system. Similarly for a magazine for which I freelance regularly. In fact, the managing editor's daughter's emails get lost in the company's spam folder. Why? Some domain names are automatically classified as spam. Some services, such as Constant Contact, are classified as bulk emailers and, therefore, get automatic rejections. Sometimes emails from people and organizations I've accepted for years go into my spam folder. I don't know why it happens, but it does. What was most annoying was when I had AOL as my email provider and I would get daily emails about Viagra and penis-enlarging pills. Despite that, AOL would reject emails sent through Godaddy.com domain names in the days when some people still used dial-up only. Go figure.

When I get a chance to look at journalism boards, I see the postings of writers who ask the same questions all the time. What's the email format at Such and Such publication? At The New York TImes, it's often lastname at nytimes.com. But not always. How do you get the correct email? Pick. Up. The. Phone.

What I find so surprising is that this issue is huge among writers. What do they do when they have to interview people? Unless they're doing a face-to-face interview, they have to disclose in the article that it was a telephone or email interview. Person-to-person is preferable because the interviewer can note body language and, depending on the locale, get a better handle on his subject. Even phone is preferable to email, even with the risk of not getting a quote accurately. The interviewer can at least get a sense if the subject is trying to evade an answer or is articulate and well-prepared.

Journalists, like artists and salespeople, often expect rejection and perhaps that's a main reason for their phone phobia. The vast majority of people are insecure about what they're doing, especially in fields where every assignment is new and perhaps different. We never really know what to expect. The upsides of that are that it's hard to get bored and that we always get another chance to improve our technique.

The Prince and the Super Committee

2011-11-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

It's complicated. That's the only way to describe the debate on where and how to raise taxes. Unfortunately, the pundits have a tendency to paint everything with a broad brush and the reality is that there is no quick or easy solution.

Take the estate tax, for example. Whether a person's estate is valued at $30 thousand or $30 million, that's double taxation, unless the income was solely from municipal bonds. If a couple a total of 120 hours a week and earned a high income and saved and invested wisely, they've already paid taxes on the money they're leaving to their heirs. Another example is a tax on financial transactions. Since the stock exchanges were created, it was drilled into people's heads that in the long run one can make more money by investing stocks than by having a savings account at a bank. Until Glass-Steagall was repealed and Wall Street turned into the world's largest casino, that concept held true in most cases. Here's another thing to consider about a tax on financial transactions. What about employees who contribute to their 401(k) plans? Would that tax apply, as well? Would it apply to corporations that match contributions, or would corporations be exempt from this tax?

Decades ago, the thinking was that one started out by investing in 10 shares of a blue chip company and reinvesting the dividends and investing more as one's income grew. By retirement, one's portfolio was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not at least a million and the dividends would be taken as cash to supplement Social Security, annuities, IRAs, KEOGHs and personal savings accounts. People also had realistic expectations, then. Now being comfortably well-off isn't good enough. Two weeks or one month's bonus isn't enough, either. Nothing counts unless it starts in the millions. When I worked in the marketing department of a real estate firm, luxury housing was anything that was priced at $1 million. Now every condo and house is marketed as luxury. It's the financial equivalent of Prince Metternich's quote, quote, "For me, mankind begins with barons." (Note: some people attribute it to Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Graetz.)

The bottom line is that the secret Super Committee failed in its mission to figure out a way to reduce the deficit, something that everyone with half a brain knew could be done without raising taxes on the rich. Even if it capitulated and raised taxes, deficit reduction is not the same thing as creating jobs, which is what concerns the millions of people who are unemployed and underemployed. Americans have been swallowing the Kool-Aid about tax cuts and job creation. Now that drink is rising painfully in their throats like acid reflux. What's the solution? The only thing I can suggest is to impose taxes and tariffs on imports and make it as expensive to produce goods and hire services overseas as it would to have it here. Even that's complicated. When a corporation moves into a building, every cost is factored in, including how much desk space, utilities and workers comp costs. They can make adjustments, if necessary. Let it become necessary.

Advice on Patient Relations

2011-11-27T15:51:00.000-08:00

Most people who go to the doctor or hospital do so with reluctance, often even with trepidation. Many, but not all, doctors and nurses understand that. Sadly, most receptionists do not. I never really thought much about that until Friday, when I was becoming stressed out after learning that parking would cost us $10.00, my four and a half-year-old son was starting to get restless after a 45 minute car ride and I needed to find the nearest Temple of Relief.

I don't think that it was the receptionist's having to work the day after Thanksgiving that made her rather unpleasant. It might have added to her lack of compassion for nervous patients. When I think back to other doctors' offices, I recall some of the receptionists and clerical office staff members who actually made me change doctors. (I even blogged about it last year in the post, "Firing Squad.") When I've interviewed some of Connecticut's top doctors, many of them credited the success of their practice to having a "truly wonderful team" or "fantastic office staff." One doctor noted that they are the first people patients see and their friendliness makes a huge difference. He's absolutely correct.

My gripes in the aforementioned blog were more about their lack of cooperation than their lack of friendliness. Over a six year period, different receptionists for the same doctor at separate practices failed to tell him that at least two patients left messages for him. One patient had been released from the emergency department just a few days before. He never called them. Either he didn't get the messages or he is just an uncaring doctor (and there are some like that). My biggest issue was with a doctor who refused to call my insurance company to authorize a treatment. This came up because I had a bill for $1,600 for out of pocket treatment. As the bill kept running up, I assumed that his outsourced billing group messed up yet again. I was unaware that my insurance policy no longer covered the treatment. I gave him the information that the insurer needed, in addition to a telephone number. His office staff was quite large and they were always chatting with each other. The receptionist had ample time to read many books while "working." The irony is that he asked me to settle the bill by making an offer so that he would get something for the treatment. I offered him just under one-third the amount and he accepted it. I was pleasant about paying him (and why not since I probably gave him more than the insurance company would have reimbursed him had the treatment been covered?). After that, I fired him and his replacement turned out to be exact opposite of him. I lucked out.

Recently, my mother had a nightmare of a health issue. Her first doctor, who represents a division of Stamford Hospital, misdiagnosed her big time. In 10 days, he saw her walk in with some discomfort and ended up in a wheelchair and bedridden. He refused to give her a pain killer. He told her that she must be in bed (which she did) and that she "would just have to live with the pain." I had bad vibrations about him from the get-go. Three doctors later, she finally had the right diagnosis, but it was with "I think I know what it is" and that doctor threw her hands in the air and put the onus on us to find a specialist who might be able to treat her very rare condition. The Internet wasn't helpful, even my three go-to sites: The Mayo Clinic, the CDC and the NIH. I picked up the phone to get leads on medical centers, clinics and research centers that treat it, and got the runaround about how they don't recommend doctors. I reiterated my purpose. I finally got a lead to an organization and heard the same spiel. That receptionist finally agreed to let me send an email to her and she would pass it along to the board of the organization. She sent me the names of two doctors, one in New York City and one in Boston, who have had experience with this disease. Meanwhile, I found the names of two doctors in Washington, D.C. and one in New Haven. That's how rare the disease is.

When my mother called for an appointment, she was told there was a five to six week wait. I spoke to the practice manager rather than the appointment maker and found out what we had to do in order to make her a priority patient. (I remembered another top doctor who told me that at his practice, they try to see patients quickly so that that they don't have to be in pain.) What was required? We had to fax her medical records (from two hospitals) and a referral on their form marked "URGENT." I took her 75 pages of medical records and created a four-page Excel spreadsheet in which I logged the dates of visits, levels of pain, whom she saw, diagnoses, treatments and outcomes. She got a call from the practice manager who said that the doctor could see her in two days. What a difference! And he was the only doctor who did a biopsy to verify his diagnosis.

The moral of the story is that everyone in a health care practice should know what he or she is doing and do right by the patient -- even an outsourced billing group.

One Out of Three and Counting

2011-11-24T18:53:00.000-08:00

On this Thanksgiving Day, The New York Times published an editorial called "The Poor, The Near Poor and You." In a nutshell, the article stated that "One in three Americans -- 100 million people -- is either poor or perilously close to it." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/opinion/the-poor-the-near-poor-and-you.html

That statistic may be visible in some parts of the country and a total surprise in others, such as affluent Fairfield County where I live. What I found even more disturbing, though, were the comments by many posters, especially those whose comments were highlighted. Some of them dismissed the statistics because so many of the "poor" have air conditioning and should fault themselves for having had children and buying "toys."

It seems to me that many of them missed not only the point of the editorial, but are in denial of what has happened over the past 30 years, and especially since the mid 1990s. Standards have changed. In many areas of the country, air conditioning is not a luxury. During the summer, hospital staff will make sure that the person who is being released goes home in an air conditioned heart to avoid a relapse in the patient's condition. Sure, many people can get building permits for outhouses in their back yards, but is there anything wrong or immoral for everyone to have indoor plumbing?

Many crises bring out the best in people. Think of the footage of terrorism attacks. People helped each other escape to safety. During this economic crises, the cry was let it rip! Anyone who was a casualty of investment losses (as most of us were) were foolish. Anyone who lost his job was just plain lazy or undereducated. It was the 1 percent versus the 99 percent.

Actually, that's a fallacy. Eighty percent of the people are gainfully employed and I daresay that the majority are hardly smug about that. Which makes the rift even bigger and more dangerous. Occupy Wherever may go into hibernation soon, but it will come out roaring again.

Welcome to 21st Century Magnet Schools

2011-11-16T07:30:00.000-08:00

I grew up in New York City, where there were specific high schools for the gifted. If you were talented, you could apply for admission to The High School of Performing Arts (on which the movie, Fame, was based). If you were exceptionally good at science, there was The Bronx High School of Science. Students would take public transportation to attend these schools.

Fast forward to life in the suburbs many years later. I heard about magnet schools that "drew" students who had an affinity for IT or whatever, and I assumed that they were suburbia's answers to New York City's specialized high schools. People -- even teachers I know -- were rather vague about discussing Stamford's magnet schools. This week, as I started the process of orientation and open houses for my son's kindergarten, I learned -- I think -- about Stamford's versions of magnet schools. I attended orientations for The Hart School, located in one of the poorest neighborhoods and Toquam School in Springdale, which almost closed a few years ago. The former is about math, science and IT; the latter emphasizes social studies and language arts. Both schools have a mix of controlled lottery winners (more about that in a moment) and kids who are already districted for them.

By controlled lottery, the school system means that if a child is economically disadvantaged (a euphemism for coming from a poor family), he or she has a better chance of getting in. If a child already has a sibling, he or she has a better chance of being granted admission. Not that I play the cash lotteries, but I think I would have a better chance at winning a dollar or two or three playing that than getting my son into a magnet school based on the school system's controlled lottery.

I still have two more magnet schools to tour, but I'm leaning towards sending my son to the school to which he's districted. I've heard good things about it. It seems to be a natural transition for him based on our community and his current preschool. Hopefully, we'll be able to get him the proper schooling he needs when he's old enough to know what he wants to do with his life. I just hope that the powers that be in the school system doesn't drive me crazy with unproven philosophies, studies and other issues I dealt with when he attended his first preschool with unqualified staff.

Children's Museums & Families with Special Needs

2011-11-13T06:08:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year, my husband and I joined the Association of Children's Museums (www.childrensmuseums.org). We enjoy taking our son to family-friendly places and we liked the idea of reciprocal complimentary admission to many museums. We find that while all them have similar themes -- animals, science, technology, art and play areas -- they each offer something slightly different, and it is worth driving even 90 minutes from home to see them.

Yesterday we went to the Imagine Nation Museum in Bristol, Connecticut. For the first time, I saw a family with a special needs child (actually, a young teen) and it occurred to me that none of the seven children's museums we've seen have much to offer for kids with special needs. I know that our local library has occasional programs for children with sensory and other issues. I don't know how much demand there actually is for such programs or museum exhibits because in my humble and cynical opinion, there isn't enough money to be made by museums. I just felt sorry for the boy. He was miserable and whined and cried that he didn't want to be there. "There" was actually an interactive exhibit which included a swinging table that had weights and a holder for markers. It was like a Spirograph on steroids and made interesting and beautiful drawings. I don't know that that boy's problem was. Retardation? Autism? Auditory processing issues? It was painful to watch his misery. Personally, I thought that particular exhibition would be perfect for some kids who suffer from autism.

Perhaps all the organizations, such as The Friendship CIrcle, could help fund monthly museum programs for families with special needs children. Sadly, it seems to me that many programs for kids with special needs just fulfill the financial needs of bloated staffs, and the real needs of those who are afflicted are not met. I know I must sound hard-nosed to some people, but those I know who have severely autistic children understand my point of view. A child who is truly autistic (not just a bit quirky or awkward socially) needs to go to the hospital to have his dental work done under full sedation. Most of that cost comes out of a family's disposable income because even the most generous dental plan is capped low and health insurance doesn't cover it. Various therapies, including speech, are often necessary for kids with special needs. Hearing aids are expensive. A friend of mine claims she spent $86,000 years on various dental and therapies for her son, who is autistic and tends to be physically hyperactive. (She and her husband had to put safety latches on the upper cabinets in their kitchen. If they opened, a high jump could cause him to injure his eye.)

Whether not anyone or any organization steps up to the plate, I am still grateful that there are so many children's museums. Perhaps the way to help afflicted families is to have a brochure (digital and print) to help their special needs children feel more comfortable and get the most out their museum visits. That shouldn't break anyone's budgets.

The Real Reasons Healthy Eating is Hard

2011-11-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

Recently a family friend gave me her recipe for a delicious banana bread that she makes with just three tablespoons of oil and 1 and a half cups whole wheat flour and absolutely no sugar. Sounds healthy, no? Actually, it's just a start. The dessert bread is still loaded with the carbs from the flour, bananas and dried cranberries she uses to make it palatable.

But that's the whole point. Few people want to eat food that's considered truly healthy. Steamed vegetables just don't taste very good. Steamed or boiled rice is bland. White chicken meat is dry. Fish usually isn't very filling. Add to that the advice that people should drink lots of water -- coffee and soft drinks don't count, even though they have lots of water -- and would-be healthy eaters are looking at a nutritional prison sentence. There is little motivation to eat healthy than to hope that one will be thin and disease-free.

What makes food tasty are three poisons: sugar, salt and and fat. Good chefs know how to disguise these these saboteurs of healthy eating. You can eat a French onion soup and not detect the amount of salt in it, even if you are usually salt-sensitive. Some chefs use duck fat instead of butter. For years we've been warned about the health hazards of trans fats (that come from vegetable sources, by the way, not meat). Boxes of cookies, biscuits and crackers have "No Trans Fats" emblazoned on them. But the fact remains that people go for the cookies, biscuits and crackers because they want food that is tastier than steamed veggies, bland rice, dry chicken and unsatisfying fish.

Another important reason why it is so hard to eat healthy is because healthier food often costs more. There are no fast food chains that sell tasty healthy food. Chipotle claims that its Mexican food is healthy. It probably is, but it's also tasty because it has carbs, salt and fat. Its own website claims that "Foods that are unprocessed and un-tampered with (like at Chipotle) are more filling and nutritious than the synthetic foods you might find at other restaurants."
http://www.chipotle.com/en-US/menu/nutritional_information/nutritional_information.aspx

Tampered food. At other restaurants. Or in decades-old popular snacks such as Twinkies. It's not just the sugar (which was used as a defense for Harvey Milk's murderer), but the chemicals that make food taste smooth and comforting.

Which brings us back to healthy eating. People are told to eat healthy to avoid obesity (a catch-all that includes just being 10 pounds over the ideal weight) and avoiding diabetes (with its present-day wide scope because there is so much money in it) and heart disease and cancer (both of which have no vagueness in their diagnoses). Many heavy set people are stress eaters. High blood pressure, which can cause heart attacks, are often the result of stress (as well as age and too much salt). Many people argue that other diseases are causes by stress. It's next to impossible to avoid stress, but a Reese's peanut butter cup works faster at reducing stress (though not guilt) than meditation, relaxation exercises or vitamin supplements. No wonder that healthy eating can be a losing battle in the worst sense. Breaking up with comfort foods is hard to do.

Who Are These People, Anyway?

2011-11-11T06:43:00.000-08:00

The news that France is demanding accountability from the Standard and Poor's for the company's error on France's credit rating was welcome indeed. When Standard and Poor's started to downgrade so many municipal bond ratings -- including those for revenue bonds -- I started to question the validity of Standard and Poor's itself.

I knew about the credit rating agencies when I studied for my Series 7 license, but I was only taught about the slight differences in their ratings, not their history or ownership. The ownership of Standard and Poor's came out during the recent financial crisis and it turns out that it is not independent, as most of us assumed, but a division of the for-profit McGraw-Hill. Sorry, but I have a problem with that. I know, of course, that even non-for-profit organizations need to make a profit, which can be presented in different ways. But for-profit is blatant, and I can't help but wonder why Standard and Poor's, in particular, has been getting so much ink about the ratings of America's municipalities and European countries. I once had a sociology professor who was adamant that the idea of a balanced budget in government is a sacred cow. I understood what he meant. Taxes could be raised. Monetary policy could be changed. The government (at least at that time) was not going to go out of business, New York City's financial woes under Mayor Abe Beame notwithstanding. Besides, New York City survived.

So who is Standard and Poor's to harp on the credit ratings of France or Italy or Puerto Rico? I bring up Puerto Rico because my husband and I own several Puerto Rico bonds, most of which are revenue bonds. I could never understand why the ratings of those bonds have gone down. It's not as if Puerto Rico is planning to do away with tolls and other sources of revenues, which can be used to pay back the bond holders. Au contraire, some non-toll bridges and highways are under consideration to reinstate tolls, which would bring some revenue to the city and state, but would just increase traffic to already heavily traveled roads.

It seems to me that Standard and Poor's has been engaging in acts of financial terrorism by downgrading bonds that are backed by the full faith and credit of cities and states. I, for one, do not believe that California is going go bankrupt, any more than I think that the U.S. government will. Yes, there are huge deficits, but it's not as if a bank is going to foreclose on the property. They only do that for little people. Standard and Poor's must want more "market share" in the credit rating business and, thus, more revenues. If they're ruthless about getting it, well, that's business. If anyone else has another theory, I'd love to know about it.

Holier than Thou

2011-11-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

I must admit that I don't follow scandals that involve sex, harassment or just about anything else that's tawdry, but the story about Penn State's Joe Paterno really got to me. I don't need to know all the gory details. The idea that both he and Graham B. Spanier, Penn State's president, kept silent about this for so long is deplorable.

I have never been the victim of sexual abuse, but I have been the victims of bullying, sexual harassment and just plain cruel actions. To make it worse for me, my memory is better than I wish it were and I still carry the pain for decades. I hate myself for it. I try to remind myself of the line in Bernhard Schlenk's The Reader: "You are not significant enough to upset me." I even try to channel what Georgette Mosbacher wrote in her first book about how you perceive the punch that can be worse than the punch itself. On one level, I know all this. But tell that to my vulnerable feelings, to my eroded self-esteem. I can only imagine how much worse it is for the survivors of sexual abuse. (And people think I'm strong! I am at least as insecure as the next person. I just go ahead with my life, disappointment, pain and bitterness notwithstanding.)

It is not just sympathy towards those survivors that prompted me to expose my vulnerability. I am appalled at what is at the core of the silence. In this case, it really is golden, as in a falsely ascribed value to the university: money. Spanier was credited with helping the academic profile of Penn State while he was tenured. I -- and many others, no doubt -- only remember Penn State in connection with anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, something I personally consider positive. I never thought about its academic standing one way or the other. But what Spanier did to "improve" its image as an academic institution translated into money. Spanier was reportedly one of the highest paid university presidents. (Not that Larry Summers suffered, except for his reputation among women for his remark that women are simply not good at math and science and among OWS supporters who will not forgive him for his horrible advice to the White House. Obviously, his math skills could use improvement.)

Moreover, college sports mean big money. Both sports and big money are revered in the United States. A long-time friend of mine, who comes from a blue collar background, has always defended the high salaries of athletes because "they have a limited career span." I never bought that in part because of the middle class values my parents instilled in me, which included saving for a rainy day. Besides, many athletes also make fortunes from product endorsement, films and television, book deals and even management consultant. Very few go hungry just because they hit middle age. In addition, ballet dancers and actors often have limited careers spans. Dancers' joints become arthritic and age, especially among women, mean fewer roles. My friend, on the other hand, had a limited career span. Now unemployed for three and a half years, she may well fall into the group of middle-aged people who will never find employment again, and she has a very long wait until she is eligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The idea of making money so sacred is already anathema to me, but when it comes to ignoring the pain of the victims, it is beyond the pale. If Jerry Sandusky is indeed guilty, he should pay for his crime, and Paterno and Spanier should be prosecuted as accessories after the fact.

Tea and Sympathy

2011-11-08T08:05:00.001-08:00

What I need right now is not so much tea and sympathy, but a close source of Bromley naturally decaffeinated tea. It is the only decaf beverage, other than Starbucks coffee, that tastes like its regular counterpart. Although my tastes in food are embarrassingly simple and I often can't taste certain flavors, caffeine -- or lack of it -- is different.

Forget those old coffee commercials with Andrea Marcovicci. Caffeine does have a taste. So do virtually all decaffeinated drinks. Most decaffeinated teas taste almost like herb teas. Stop & Shop's decaf tea tastes bitter. Coca-Cola without caffeine tastes weak. If it's diet decaf, it's worse Why bother drinking it at all? Sanka? Whatever undesirable elements there may be in caffeine must be safer than the chemical taste of Sanka. I know that many companies offer natural processes to reduce or remove most caffeine, but the resulting beverage still isn't as good. Bromley gets it right.

The problem is that I can no longer find it! If anyone has a lead (other than online), please let me know. Even one of my favorite tea sources, Mark T. Wendell (https://marktwendell.com), which sells Indar Tea, France's finest tea, doesn't carry Bromley. My guess is that Bromley is a staple at every British market, but I haven't been to Britain in more than decade. Tazo Earl Grey tea is also excellent, and it is increasingly harder for me to find at area supermarkets. Is there a tea conspiracy? Come to think of it, it's since the rise of the current Tea Party that I've been having a problem finding my favorite teas!

No, You Won't Get My Vote

2011-11-08T07:48:00.001-08:00

The year Ken and I were married was a presidential election. We voted for the first -- and last -- time as a couple. We were horrified that some 67 million Americans could indeed be so stupid and put George Bush back into office. Moreover, we were ticked off about the health care insurance racket, and we decided to de-register ourselves from the voting lists.

We've never regretted it.

Since 2004, everything got worse. Hurricane Katrina was proof that the leaders in Washington had once again failed to protect its citizens big time. (We couldn't help but wonder if Bush would have had a second term had Katrina hit in August 2004.) The unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were continuing with no end in site. The economy was not improving and the housing market was beginning to slump. In September 2007, the financial markets collapsed. We never bought into Barack Obama's campaign promises of hope and change. The only thing that improved was that we were receiving less junk mail because we were not registered voters.

Still, in the past seven years, we've received many calls from both parties from human beings and robots asking us to support their candidates. When pigs fly, maybe! We feel more strongly than ever that the damage done to our trust is irrevocable. So, no, Mr. or Ms. Politician, you will not get our vote -- ever.

Punching The Lights Out of Them

2011-11-08T04:31:00.000-08:00

For years I've been grousing at what seemed to me to be an excessive number of blackouts in Connecticut. For many people,it is more than just the inconvenience of not being able to surf the Internet or watch television. It's hard to believe, but there are many people, even in affluent Fairfield County, whose water supply comes from wells (sounds healthy, but it ain't necessarily so) and goes into septic tanks. What that means is when there is no power, one runs out of water. You need to dump a big bucket of water into the toilet to get it to flush and you quickly run out of tap water with which to wash your hands. It's like living in a third world country, only without any benefits of globalization.

My family moved to Stamford the year after the ice storm hit in the 1970s. (Hollywood even made a movie about. I never saw it so I don't know if they touched upon that quaint aspect of having no running water.) For many years we were absolutely paranoid about not having enough water from the well. When we heard predictions about storms, we would fill the bathtub with water. Fortunately, for more than 30 years, we were rarely without power for more than several hours -- overnight a few times -- but it was infrequent enough for us to stop worrying.

Until the year 2010 and we were without power for five days. We ran out of water. We were lucky that friends of my in-laws had city water and were happy to help us fill big buckets so we could flush the toilet. The grandmother of my son's then best friend in school let us shower at her apartment. Hurricane Irene left us without power for a couple of days and we considered ourselves lucky. My in-laws, who live ten minutes away, had no power for five days. The surprise snow storm last month has left some people in northern Connecticut without power for 10 days and counting.

Governor Dannell Malloy is feeling, well, the heat from residents and he's hinting at taking legal action against Connecticut Light and Power. "I feel that CL and P has let the state of Connecticut down," he told reporters on Monday. That's a light statement, in my opinion (no pun intended).

One thing I've never understood is why electric companies are publicly traded companies. To me, if there's no competition for basics such as electricity, there should be no privatization. That said, here is something I must disclose: my husband and I own shares in three utility companies because the dividends have high yields.

It turns out that CL and P, legally known as Northeast Utilities, is actually the merger of several companies: Connecticut Light and Power (the name among customers still stuck), The Hartford Electric Light Company, Western Massachusetts Electric Company, Holyoke Water Power Company and Public Service Company of New Hampshire. This was the first new multiple state public utility company created since the Public Utility Holding Company Act was passed in 1935. Thirteen months ago, Northeast Utilities announced its intention to merge with NSTAR and still retain the NU name. The deal is still pending regulatory approval. NU provides power (under the best of circumstances) to 149 cities and towns in Connecticut.

Here is something I noticed in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. As I passed the A and P Shopping Center just across the ramps of the Merritt Parkway (Exit 35), I saw about a dozen utility trucks. This was close to 9:00 a.m., as I was driving my son to school. Since so many areas of Stamford were still without power, I couldn't imagine that all the workers were just taking breaks. (For comparison, workers at Kohl's Department Store are not allowed breaks until they've worked six hours.) The trucks just seemed to be sitting there later in the day. Even if the workers were entitled to breaks (and I'm all for that), why weren't they staggered?

I failed to mention that about three years ago CL and P managed to get a 22 percent increase in rates. Where did all that money go? Executive compensation? Probably. What they should have done was have a plan to bury the old wires underground. Old wires can be a problem. I notice that in my mother's nearly 50-year-old house, some of the wires in the walls are rather brittle -- and her house is well-insulated.

Which brings us to the federal level. It's a well-known fact that the infrastructure in the United States is crumbling and at lower standards than many third world countries. What will take for the president to come up with a viable jobs plans and for Congress to allocate the funds for this?

The Youth Sports Dilemma

2011-11-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

As a parent, I am always trying to figure out what's the right thing to do at any age. I'm afraid of pushing something on my child when he's too young and afraid of waiting too long to introduce him to things that at least some other kids his age already know.

Take sports, for example. I've seen three and three and a half year old kids play T-ball. It's a great way to learn a sport if only because it helps young children with eye-hand coordination. The youth baseball league in my area offered just baseball of sorts. It was non-competitive. All the kids hit the ball. All the kids hit a home run. All the kids got trophies. Purists were horrified, but I thought it was a nice introduction and they deserved credit for trying. My son was four when we enrolled him. Although he loves to run and he loves to wear the uniform, he just isn't a natural at hitting the ball and he doesn't really like baseball. We understood. There's a lot of idle time and he got bored. It's a laid-back game. We tried soccer this fall, assuming he would enjoy it more because there is almost always activity. He likes kicking the ball to us, but not with the team. Sadly, he has a tendency to run in the opposite direction of the other players. He doesn't understand the rules of the game. Maybe we introduced him to sports when he was too young. What can we do? We'll just try again in the spring.

Where Did The Money Go?

2011-11-05T05:26:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of millions, perhaps as much as billion dollars are missing -- and that's just from MF Global. Where did the money go, ? It's a fair question to ask. Inquiring minds want to know.

The weird thing is the report that stated that they thought they found the money, but now they're questioning it. Come on. How do you lose that kind of money? It's not as if you had a $100K engagement ring that you took off and put on the sink of a public bathroom while you washed your hands and then forgot to put it back on. It's not as if you had a diamond bracelet with a clasp that broke. There's an explanation. As I said, inquiring minds want to know. Too bad that never seemed to be a priority for those who write and those who are supposed to enforce the law.

About 15 years ago, a friend was covering the ongoing story about the principals of a small bank in northern Connecticut that went under. The money that customer lost couldn't be traced, she said. I told her that's impossible. They have records, I explained. There's a paper trail. No, there isn't, she countered. The money was transferred to the wives of the principals, she elaborated.

I still didn't understand why the money couldn't be clawed back (a term, by the way, that was rarely used, if ever, in those days). Of course, it was spent, but cars can be repossessed, jewelry can be resold, etc. Isn't receiving stolen goods a crime? Weren't their wives also accessories after the fact?

Do such laws still exist? I can't help but wonder in the aftermath of the Madoff Ponzi scheme, which had so many victims and so many enablers. There is a huge difference between the Connecticut bank and the Madoff investors. The sales people of the feeder funds had to convince the investors to put their money into the funds. When I worked for Fairfield Greenwich Group, I saw the marketing material they used. It was a spreadsheet I had to update based on the calculations of the N.A.V. [net asset value] calculated by Corina Noel Piedrahita that included the cash infusions, value of the investments and fees. The N.A.V. sheet compared changes weekly, monthly, annually and since inception and, yes, it was impressive. The rising N.A.V., as everyone knows, was slow and steady rather than volatile but that, too, was one of the selling points: that people could sleep at night.

I never expected the investors to get all their money. In some ways, this was the Wall Street version of a class action suit. The major victory sounds great because the money reported is in the millions, but the victims get bubkes. What is frustrating for so many people -- and not just the victims -- is the fact that the enablers have not been charged with criminal activity. No wonder Jon Corzine, huge ego and reckless nature notwithstanding, had no incentive to exercise any fiduciary responsibility. What was the worst he thought could happen? He would lose other people's money.

Simple Solution - Hire Cheap Labor

2011-11-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

Two days ago I received an email from Lisa Wexler, host of the popular and multi-award winning radio show, The Lisa Wexler Show.

CH CH CH CH CHANGES... TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE.

By Lisa Wexler

Some people really love change. I'm not one of those people. I liken myself to a tree. I grow roots and branches and stay planted in one place. I bend with the wind, lose an occasional branch, but stay healthy in the core. I withstand storms, heat waves and the season.

But I stay rooted.

Friday will be my last day at WSTC/WNLK. For so many, those stations have been an institution in their lives, part of their regular, everyday routine. Tune in in the morning for traffic, weather, news. Tune in in the afternoon to me, if so inclined. For me, for so many years, those station signs on the Post Road beckoned like a mirage in the desert. Practicing law, I dreamed of a more interesting life, a life on the radio....

Wow! She really handled that well. I hope people complain to Sacred Heart University, the new owners of WSTC-AM 1400 and WNLK-AM 1350, which were sold by Cox Media Group. Word has it that SHU students can replace people such as Lisa for a lot less money. Terrific -- not! What can these kids possibly to have to offer? Some of them still have pipsqueak voices. Some aren't even prepared for college academically. What insight, experience, knowledge can they possibly have to offer, other than using Facebook? It turns out that the new stations will be NPR affiliates. I am a big fan of NPR, but let's not kid ourselves (no pun intended). The purpose of the change is to maximize profits (even non-profits like profits) and they can do that through syndication and cheap labor behind the scenes for the slog work that doesn't pay that well to begin with.

I don't mean to paint everyone with broad strokes, but I find this appalling because it appears so blatent. Just hire inexperienced students to do the job because they're cheap. It's almost like hiring someone who took care of her grandmother to be a caregiver for your loved one. Sorry, but I want a trained professional. I had my experience with Chabad's "morahs," who lacked formal training as educators. No wonder my son didn't learn anything at their preschool. Thank goodness I had worked with him early on so that when he started at a school that was indeed NAYEC-accredited, he was at the level he needed to be. (Gan Yeladim students are still lagging. They'll do fine at some private schools or Jewish day schools, but probably not at public school kindergartens.)

During most of my adult life, I've seen a myriad of business books on excellence, performance and success. To whom is all this really important? It certainly doesn't seem to hold true for Wall Street or for Fortune 500 companies. Look at the crappy cars produced by the Big Three automakers. There's a reason why Toyota and Honda have made so much headway in sales. The Japanese have proven that they can produce much more reliable cars. And there used to be ads that "Ford has a better idea." Sure! Then, of course, there's the MF GLobal bankruptcy and Jon Corzine's resignation. From what? The company was already kaput. The same board of directors that approved his compensation package and the $400K it shelled out to his lawyers should have thrown him feet first into the Hudson or East River (whichever was closest) when the company didn't perform. Where were the auditors? The financial problems of the firm did not happen suddenly, as if a surprise snow storm hit.

Which brings me back to SHU's takeover of Cox Radio. I'm all for a fresh perspective, but from students? I think companies need a wider base. Besides, isn't SHU supposed to be a non-profit entity? What happens if they make money? Just curious.

Zombie Publicity

2011-11-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

For some reason, many people love to call themselves publicists. I am not sure why. I think some people just associate the idea of doing public relations with being affiliated with the few who are cool or successful or with industries that are interesting. They think it's work that has mostly perks (say, freebies) and no slog (wrong!)

Sadly, many people who work in PR or communications or whatever you want to call it are really not pros at it. Many journalists have gone into PR as Plan C (with Plan A being an editor, author, playwright or screenwriter and Plan B just writing for a newspaper or magazine until retirement). I can't begin to tell you how many "publicists" I know who are really just self-promoters and have rather tenuous connections to the people or businesses they're supposed to be representing. Of course, there are those who work hard at PR and manage to keep up with the current trends and the musical chairs in media. (The latter is key. If you don't have a good contact at the newspaper or magazine that serves the readers who benefit from your client, it is exceedingly hard even just to get a calendar listing, let alone "ink" about him.

As I've been working on the holiday calendar for my newspaper, I have been dealing with a lot of inexperienced publicists and communications directors. If you're one of them, I'm not holding it against you. However, please don't do zombie publicity. Keep these tips in mind for the future:

Please understand that I'm busy. I don't have time to send out a myriad of individual emails and to call each person. I do the best I can.
If I call and you're not there, please return my call within a reasonable amount of time. If you put me on the back burner, chances are your organization will not get ink.
Look at your email before you automatically hit the delete button. Just because the subject line promises "Free Calendar Listing," you should not consider it junk mail.
When I ask for a document from which I can cut and paste information, please don't send me links to your website or a PDF document. It's hard to go back and forth from the Web to Word and skip the pictures. Ditto for the PDF.
Don't go overboard on your descriptions. Look at a newspaper. Note that they no longer publish 300 and 400 word press releases. Two paragraphs and you're done. Realize that many people read their email on smart phones that have small screens. Thus, everything in your press release is really just an announcement, and everything in it must be pertinent, and everything pertinent must be in it.
About your style: please use AP style whenever possible. Periods instead of dashes in telephone numbers may look nice, but we use hyphens. Don't make us correct your style.
Use Spell Check. I can't take you seriously if you send me something with typos.
And double check your calendar to make sure you have the correct date(s).
Call me (or your contact) at a newspaper or magazine and make sure that your email address is "whitelisted." Otherwise, we may never get your email because the company's IT security system might consider it spam. (Hint: Constant Contact doesn't work for that reason; it's considered a bulk mailer.)
Have your webmaster update your website. Sometimes I work off-hours. I can't and won't include information from last year. Don't just do this for my sake. Do it for the insomniacs who go onto websites at 3:00 a.m. because they are looking for information.

Thank you.

Let the Post-Mortem Begin!

2011-11-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

The American people did not just jump to conclusions about the financial chicanery at MF Global.

An official at MF Global, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, admitted to federal "regulators" in a preliminary investigation that MF Global used clients' money as the firm's financial troubles escalated.

The MF Global official was obviously in a position to know and is probably perspiring heavily as he may very well be trying to work out a deal for immunity or at least reduced criminal charges.

This could just be the tip of the iceberg unless the rumor that Barack Obama had planned to reward Jon Corzine with the position of Treasury Secretary could backfire and hurt Obama's chances of reelection. (The Obama administration could, of course, just deny it.)

Hopefully, the MF Global disaster will lead to the demands of transparency in both the financial sector and the government. America's shrinking middle class cannot afford to lose any more money. The lost investments at MF Global will have a trickle-down effect in the worst way. Jobs will be lost, retirement money will be diminished and disposal income spending will go down. That will affect non-investors as well.

I Goofed Again!

2011-11-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

Pity Jon Corzine. He can't seem to do anything right. He only served five years out of his six year U.S. Senate term. He was governor of New Jersey for only one term before that bully Chris Christie defeated him. After he was booted out of office, he returned to his banking roots and screwed up big time by gambling. Apparently, he forgot that during his term as governor, the financial industry collapsed, in part because of excessive risk. So what did he do? He leveraged MF Global with $40 worth of debt to every $1 worth of equity. How imprudent is that under the best circumstances?

There are a few things more disturbing than Corzine's record. First, there is the team that agreed to his "Heads I win, tails you lose" severance package of $12 million. Granted, $12 million is not what it used to be, but the crash of 2008 should have made the powers that be very reluctant to offer rewards for poor performance. Aren't the members of the boards of corporations embarrassed at least a little when a company's earnings and stock price flatten or decline, or worse, when the company goes bankrupt? Board members are directors. They're supposed to be guiding the company. They're supposed to be smarter and more responsible than anyone else, including the CEO.

Second, the accountants and auditors apparently again rubber stamped everything all along, just as Arthur Anderson did with Enron. Heaven forbid they should actually look at every piece of paper and verify that things are kosher. It's a tedious task, but had they done so, they might actually have accounted for the $700 million that somehow disappeared.

Third, the media was so focused on the words "too big to fail" that a clause in the Dodd-Frank bill fell off people's radar. This is the part about mid-sized financial institutions, not large ones. (Sorry, Jon. You were not one of the big boys, after all.)

Finally, word had it that Corzine was to be tapped to be the next Secretary of the Treasury. Heaven forbid! A lot of investors lost their money in MF Global.As far as I'm concerned, the MF Global case should be the definitive argument for more government regulation, not less. A government's only purpose is to protect its citizens, not just Wall Street. It's bad enough that the government failed to do that in the past. Its leaders certainly should have learned from the 2008 crash.

Recently, my argumentative bond broker dismissed risk for investors. He said that we all know we're taking a risk with our money. I countered that I know there is risk, but that investors should not have to bear the consequences of imprudent risk taken on by those in the companies I invest in. There is a huge difference between investing in a company that doing research on genetics or creating a product that is useful and saleable, and investing in a company that fails to do its due diligence, to carry out its fiduciary responsibilities or to have proper accounting. Years ago, I invested in Chase Manhattan Bank (before it merged with JP Morgan). I lost money in it because the decision makers in the financial department made loans to Enron. I could not possibly have known that. The value of my investment went down strictly because of that.

Corzine is not alone in his practices or his record. Every executive should be treated the same way as the lowest employee. Executives, even CEOs, should hired at will. Corzine managed to bring the share value of MF GLobal from $7 to $1.20 in less than two years. People have been fired for a lot less. And instead of golden parachutes (which Corzine denies getting; he prefers the term severance package), they should get standard severance (two weeks pay for each year on the job), ten minutes at the end of the workweek to clean out their desk (under supervision) and an escort out the door.

The 18 Million Dollar Publicity Stunt

2011-10-31T17:36:00.000-07:00

I never understood the appeal of the Kardashians, but I understand that for some people, there is just never enough money.

The recent Kadarshian wedding was huge and got more attention than Prince Albert's wedding to Charlene Wittstock, but less than that of Prince William to Kate Middleton. Fair enough. But, really just 72 days before Kim announced that she's getting a divorce? Reportedly, Kim and her husband, Kris Humphries, made 18 million dollars on the wedding. (Most of us are lucky to cover our expenses.) When I read about the loot, I was cynical, but even I didn't think the wedding was just a publicity stunt. So much for the fantasies of Kardashian wannabees.

The most amusing thing about the divorce? According to TMZ, Kim claims that Kris was just "chasing fame." Weren't the rest of her family members doing that as well as chasing the money? That's what it's all about these days.

Can These People Count?

2011-10-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

Because I was always awful at math, I usually cut some slack for those who are not good it, either. However, there are times when I can't help but wonder who is doing the counting. More specifically, can these people count?

For years I've maintained that the Wunderkinds of business school are not standards of good math students. They fire people to "save" money on taxes and benefits, only to hire replacements (sometimes the same people) as high priced consultants, whose income makes up for the "savings." In addition (no pun intended), these same companies often end up paying recruiters a fee. So where's the gain?

Just recently, a successful program that had independent mediators settle things such as minor assaults, neighborhood disputes and other small things, was axed due to state budget cuts. Hello! This program saved money by not tying up the courts.

It's incomprehensible to me that people buy into the myths of saving money this way. It's basic arithmetic, with the extension of a few digits. It's really not complicated math.

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/policereports/article/Court-mediation-program-falls-victime-to-state-2243137.php

Getting it Wrong -- Again

2011-10-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

Here we go again, except that this time both the government and The New York Times is getting it wrong.

Remember Solyndra, the solar-energy equipment company that received a half-billion dollar loan from the federal government two years ago and is now bankrupt? Of course, there should be a post-mortem, but not if it's led by a businessman, and certainly not by Herbert M. Allison, Jr., the same former executive who headed TARP under the Bush and Obama administrations to "rescue" the collapsed and corrupt financial system. (Rescue was the word that The New York Times used. Ask anyone who is outside the financial system and he or she will agree that the word "rescue" is woefully inaccurate as a word choice.)

As everyone knows by now, TARP didn't work out as well as Bush promised or as people grudgingly accepted and expected. It turns out that the banks that were too big to fail became even bigger, and the smaller ones didn't do so well, either. As a friend of mine, who is a management consultant noted, they may be too big to fail, but they're also too big to succeed. Better still, as Bob Herbert, suggested, the government should just "break 'em up."

But let's go forward and let's be realistic. Chances are that no one is going to be prosecuted for any wrongdoing that happened at Solyndra. These days, half a billion dollars is nothing, certainly when compared to the TARP funds that went to regional banks such as Emigrant Savings Bank. (I'll bet most people outside the New York Tri-State area never even heard of Emigrant.) Why even bother? The only thing that's worth doing is having OW (Occupy Wherever) demand that there is either free enterprise with NO government help or nationalize energy and other national resources such as oil. That may be heresy to some people, but to others, it's akin to eating one's cake and having it, too.

A few observations about the mystery man behind TARP: He is one of those Ivy League whiz kids who helped destroy everything in his path. Among them was TIAA-Cref, a company that once had a good reputation in helping employees of non-profits reach their financial goals. Good old Herbie fired 500 employees, about eight percent of the workforce. (Employees called it Herbicides.) I know one of its victims. She claims -- and she is someone I trust implicitly -- that she was let get in favor of a man who had a wife and two children to support. Her husband was working at the time, but they also have two children to support. Looking back, I can't help but wonder if the sexism of her supervisor wasn't influenced from the very top down. I have no evidence to say this; I just don't feel that the choice of Allison is the right one. He comes with too much baggage.

Solyndra was founded in 2005, no doubt with the most noble of intentions, but I can't help but think that it was somehow tainted with the no regulation, get rich quick mentality that has permeated the U.S. for the past 30 years or so, and peaking with the Bush era.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/us/solyndra-inquiry-to-be-led-by-herbert-m-allison-jr.html?_r=1&hp

Exodus?

2011-10-27T08:10:00.000-07:00

"No, it's not OK."

That's the bottom line for consumers who are fed up with Bank of America and Netflix.

And they're leaving or threatening to leave in droves. Five dollars per month may not seem like a lot of money, but ordinary people aren't going for it. It's not that most people can't afford it. They're happy to spend that and more on Starbucks coffee or manicures each week, but that $5.00 takes on new proportions when they know it's only going to go to fat cat bankers. Credit unions are doing well, thanks to Wall Street.

As for Netflix? People are beginning to resent being held hostage by profitable companies. Note to Netflix executives: there are alternatives. You can get videos for free from the library or for just $1.00 from the supermarket.

Speaking of financial hostage-taking, I hope that the Netflix/Qwikster debacle extends to cable television. We have the Optimum Triple Play. We knew that the introductory rate of $29 per month each for cable television, Internet access and telephone would only last one year. We accepted the price increase last year. But the recent hike made our monthly cost go up by 50 percent since we subscribed just over two years ago. Note to Cablevision: our collective income hasn't gone up anywhere near double digits in that same time period.

"No, it's not OK" is the unifying factor in the Occupy Name That Place demonstrations. I avoided commenting on OWS for more than a month because I was unsure where it was going. The movement seemed rather vague. I knew what the demonstrators were angry about, but I didn't think it would be effective unless they took it to Washington, D.C.. It turns out it a true grass roots movement, and that Washington won't be able to dismiss it so easily. The slow coverage by the news media was surprising. The New York Times sent an arts writer to cover it in the beginning. Even the violent actions by the police did not make journalists and editors realize that the Occupiers are not going away any time soon. They gave more credence to the demonstrators in the Middle East than they did to unemployed and underemployed Americans who are demanding things such as accountability from Wall Street and jobs for the middle class. What about civil rights, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution? Few people even bring that up, as if the First Amendment is suddenly an inconvenience. The Tea Party rally members could bring guns without getting grief, but peaceful, unarmed demonstrators who have the nerve to grouse about Wall Street and government are at the mercy of the police.Remember Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin? He had it in for all the public workers -- except for the police and fire departments, because wanted to insure his safety. Now that's rich!

No CLASS Act

2011-10-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

Not surprisingly, President Barack Obama caved in on another part of his health care "reform," this time about long term affordable care. Also called Community Living Assistance Services and Support, this part of health care "reform" was supposed to prevent the elderly from financial catastrophe which resulted from paying for expensive, chronic and skilled nursing care.

Long term care insurance has been around for at least a couple of decades. My mother looked into it, but was hesitant to buy it because she simply didn't trust insurance companies. What if the policy changes, she worried? What if an insurance company merged with another and no longer honored the policy? The former was more likely to happen than the latter, and her fears won out. Under Obamacare, the requirement to purchase long term care insurance would kick in 2014. Great! I thought, when read that. Yet another gift to fat cat insurance companies.

I am not unhappy that Obamacare is unraveling because it is a terribly flawed and compromised law that served few people. The first issue with the idea of health care reform is that too many people, particularly decision makers, seem to think that there are simple solutions for it. There aren't any. It is not just a matter of people's taking responsibility for their own health (e.g., eating healthy foods and exercising) or knowing what medical care costs are (try that when you go to your nearest ED). One New England professor said decades ago that what the U.S. has is "neither health care nor a system." That's the problem in a nutshell. If you follow the money, you'll see that it's this way simply because there is money to be made by a few.

Here is one example. This past summer, my mother suffered from a very rare, agonizing and debilitating disease. It's so rare that there's nothing on it on the websites of my go-to sites, The Mayo Clinic, CDC, NIH or even NORD (National Organization of Rare Disorders). She was completely misdiagnosed by the first doctor. She walked into his office with some discomfort. Ten days and two visits later, she needed a wheelchair and pain medicine, which he would not give her. Three other doctors who were affiliated with another hospital were interested in her case. The first one insisted that she go to the ED, where he would meet her. One remembered seeing a case such as hers during her internship. She called a friend of hers in Texas for advice, but he was not very helpful. Those doctors then threw up their arms and left it to us to find a dermatologist who might be able to help. I did, but after making several calls, I only found five doctors between Washington, D.C. and Boston who have had experience in treating the disease she has. In the meantime, four doctors billed Medicare to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars (including about $12K billed by the hospital for one afternoon in the ED!). The procedures, diagnostics and lab work prescribed by the four doctors in two towns, which are fewer than 10 miles apart, varied significantly in cost.

One of the valid criticisms of Obamacare -- and the current "system" that is in place -- is that there are no provisions to reign in costs. How can there be? There are no standards. As I mentioned, these four doctors are not practicing in areas that are distant from each other and thus have a wide range of rental costs, labor costs, etc. None of the pundits of health care in its current state or in a political reform will address the issue of what is health care worth? How much should an MRI cost? How much should "observation" cost? (For the record, there was no nurse or other health care provider in the ED with her at all times. I was there and I didn't get paid a penny. Nor was my mother continuously hooked up to monitors.)

So, it's back to the drawing board. But people -- anyone involved in the insurance system or not -- should do some serious story boarding and follow the money.

A Long and Complicated Twelfth Night

2011-10-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

The moment you see the filmy curtain in front of the set of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night, or, What You Will,” you know you are in for an unconventional production. Suffice it to say that director Mark Lamos is comfortable taking risks on stage – something that this reviewer usually welcomes to keep plays written centuries ago alive instead of just archival writings. That said, this production does not completely satisfy.

Andrew Boyce’s surrealistic scenic is stunning with its eclectic collection of beach scene, chandeliers, balloons, abandoned items and shabby chic architecture, all of which suggest the timelessness that Lamos seems to be striving to achieve. Tilly Grimes’ rather dilettantish costume design is rather confusing, especially since some of the characters are barefoot, and not on the part of the set that is clearly a beach. The cast, too, is diversified, both ethnically and in its mastery of Shakespearean dialogue.

Nevertheless, for all its unevenness, the play is thoroughly engaging, thanks to the performances of Donnetta Lavinia Grays (as the feisty Maria), David Schramm (as Sir Toby Belch), Jordan Coughtry (Sir Andrew Aguecheek), and, above all, Darius de Haas (as Feste). David Adkins (as Malvolio), Susan Kelechi Watson (as Olivia), Paul Anthony Stewart (Antonio) and Lucas Hall (Orsino) also gave mostly fine performances, but this production really belongs to de Haas. It must be mentioned that de Haas injured his Achilles heel shortly before opening night, but that was worked brilliantly into the staging with the use of a period wheelchair. Being seated throughout the play did not prevent de Haas from delivering a performance so fluid and natural that one would think Shakespeare intended Feste to be in a wheelchair. Feste’s sole purpose is to be a seasoned observer of human folly in a play that encompasses joy and sorrow. He can do it from a perch or a beach chair. It doesn’t matter where because de Haas’ exceptionally beautiful voice and limber movements would have delighted the Bard. (Note to casting directors: Look beyond any disabilities a performer may have. The above photo of de Haas was obviously taken before his injury.)

But back to Shakespeare’s intent. The play’s title is believed to refer to the close of the Christmas season, when everything is about merriment, joy, hope and lightness. The play is dotted with lyrics (some set to more contemporary melodies, including the tune of the good night song from “The Sound of Music”) as well as its classical themes of mistaken identity and subplot which involves a prank on the puritanical Malvolio. Was Shakespeare’s intent really served? That part is debatable. Lamos pushes the envelope of fun, even in the few places some cast members may miss. On the other hand, the play is a bit complicated and the combination of the direction, set and costumes make it seem as if almost every performer and crew member simultaneously emptied all their tool boxes to create this production. (Four actors even did some calisthenics in one scene.) A bit of tightening would have been welcome. The production may be imperfect, but the audience loved it, and it is worth seeing, if only for de Haas’ memorable performance.

"Twelfth Night" runs through Saturday, Nov. 5. For tickets or more information call 203-227-4177 or visit www.westportplayhouse.org. Lamos, who is Artistic Director of the Westport Country Playhouse and veteran director of 30 Shakespearean plays, will also conduct a master class on acting and directing Shakespeare on Monday, October 24 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

The National Health

2011-09-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday it was announced what everyone knows happens every year: health insurance premiums are going up. Big surprise. Apparently, though, it was a surprise to some that the average cost to insure a family is now at $15K per year, and that this year's increases were higher than expected.

What the news reports have failed to mention that is while this has been happening, insurers' profits have gone up. Where is the cry for some intervention from the government? (Let's not use the R word right now. It's not politically correct.) Come on, people! Unemployment is a huge issue. Health insurance is usually dependent on employment. Unemployment pays little. Health insurance costs a lot. Do the arithmetic.

Better still, someone please explain how to curb these costs with market forces and consumer responsibility. Obviously, market forces don't work in favor of driving down insurance costs, and consumers are rarely in a position to get an answer about costs. Recently, someone I know passed two kidney stones. He went to NYU Medical Center, near his office and then to Greenwich Hospital, near his home, as each stone started to pass with pain that required morphine. He couldn't just call various pharmacies to get quotes on the morphine. Moreover, he didn't think to call the radiology departments affiliated with these hospitals in advance to get quotes on what the CT scans would cost. (He has a high deductible and no co-pays, which means his out of pocket expenses are more than some people put down on a car.) Greenwich Radiology actually charged significantly more than NYU's radiology department. Go figure. Real estate in New York City (and this is midtown) is higher than it is in Greenwich. The facilities are more or less comparable. So why is one so much more? No one has an answer.

Which begs the question: what is the value of that CT scan? $900 or about twice the cost? What's scary is that even though a hospital will take your insurance card, the people in admitting will not disclose that a particular department operates (no pun intended) independently of the hospital. Many radiologists do not accept insurance. Nor do anesthesiologists. Even if you have insurance, and even if you get pre-approval for something from your insurance company, you can still have unlimited liability. This is a health care system and the best in the world, at that? I don't think so. It's more like organized crime, executed with the blessings of the state and federal government.

Dumb and Dumber? Or Poor and Poorer?

2011-09-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

Last week the College Boards reported that SAT scores went down to the lowest since 1995. The average combined reading and math scores slipped from 508 to 497 in six years. The reason? The College Board issued an explanation that the diversity of the students who are taking the exams is wider than ever. Thus, the scores will be lower.

We can take that at face value or we can do dig deeper and be faced with having to deal with the ugly fact that minorities are getting the short shrift when it comes to quality public school education. (Note: I do not see the phrase quality public school education as an oxymoron. There are good public schools and there are inferior private ones.) Tax money is only part of the explanation. A lot of it is what the parents expose their child(ren) to and demand when it comes to learning. Case in point: my son is four, the same age as one of his best friends. I pulled my son out of a local Chabad-run school because I thought the "teachers" were not challenging him academically. My son's friend's mother thought children don't have to know much at that age, let alone younger, kept him there, and enrolled him in another religious preschool when she moved to North Carolina. My son is way ahead of hers academically, thanks to my being proactive and sending him to a NAYEC-accredited school. For months, he's been able to count to 100 and backward in English and from zero to 10 in Hebrew. My son has been able to spell all the months of the since the age of three and a half. Her son can't. It's not that he's stupid. It's what he was taught (or not) and his parents' choice of schools. I met a seven-year-old privately educated girl who couldn't spell as well as my son could at half her age.

But I digress. Recently I blogged about the varying philosophies of how math should be taught. Innumeracy has been a huge issue in this country, along with lack of adequate training in science. The irony is that kids are natural scientists. Watch a baby or toddler in a high chair discover gravity as he or she tips over a bowl of cereal. Of course, parents carry on and eventually the kid becomes intimidated.

Not being a professional educator, I don't know what the answers are, except that there is no easy fix, no one size fits all solutions. Forget trying the politicians to do the right thing about more equitable distribution of tax dollars to the various schools. But what about standardizing curriculum across every school in the United States and, hopefully, keep that standard high? Each state has different guidelines about what children need to know by the time they reach kindergarten. I know that at warehouse clubs, one can buyfor under $10.00 a big, fat workbook with various levels of the curriculum that is suitable for children. Trust me when I say that isn't the only answer. My son pulls the book away and doens't obey me when I tell him to follow the instructions about tracing particular letters in the color that matches the sample on the page. But I tried to use it as a complement to what he was learning in school. Maybe other parents have more compliant children. The Stamford public schools introduce foreign languages in the seventh grade (so late!) and use the Rosetta Stone CDs, which can be bought for under $800.00. The point is that the parent must be interested enough to learn what his child is capable of learning and when. The benefit of "pushing" children when they're younger is that it is easier to understand how they learn. Some children learn more with visual or tactile aids. In our case, we also knew that our son does not have dyslexia or any other noticeable learning disability.If he did, it might be easier to get intervention now than when he is older and will also have to deal with issues of self-confidence and self-esteem.

There is a lot of controversy about how much to push children. In all honesty, I don't think kids are pushed enough to learn. I don't mean that every American child should be forced to put in as many hours studying as their European or Asian counterparts do. Sports, dance lessons, etc. take a lot of priority. It's extremely hard for single parents to offer the same level of care and attention as two parents in the same household. And for parents who work at highly demanding jobs (many of which don't even pay very well), the stress of and gaps in coordinating daycare, school and aftershool programs are tough, even when there is a nanny or grandparent to help. That said, keep in mind that American students have lagged big time. During the 1990s, one of the early partners of Fairfield Greenwich Group got a divorce from his Swedish-born wife. She took their two children to Sweden and found that despite the finest schools in Greenwich, her children's Swedish co-horts were two years advanced academically.

As I said, I don't know what the answers are. I'm beating myself up for not doing more about my son's education, and I know I'm doing more than other parents are. He is learning at school, at the various children's musuems we take him to and the educational television shows and videos we watch with him. And, yes, he is still having fun, as any four-year-old should.

What's Two Billion Dollars?

2011-09-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

Among the shock and outraged expressed about the arrest of UBS trader Kweku Adoboli on suspicion of a $2 billion loss, there has been virtually no comments on the following:

Who gives $2 billion to a 31-year-old trader?
Who was supposed to be supervising him?
Was he just the fall guy for the bank's impending announcement of a quarterly loss?
Didn't the bank learn anything from the 2008 scandal at Societe Generale when Jerome Kerviel was accused and convicted of causing $6.8 billion in losses?
Isn't it strange that errant white Ivy League American traders have not been targeted the same way as Raj Rajaratnam, Adoboli and Kerviel? One is Hindi, another is black and the third is -- OMG -- French!

In retrospect, what's $2 billion dollars?

But this begs another question, at least for me. Is this real money or is it a sort of Ponzi scheme or other scheme in which the numbers are exaggerated? Surely, there are other traders at UBS and the total amount for which they are responsible is far more than $2 billion. Think of it this way. Top executive pay is in the tens and tens of millions. The CEO of one pharmaceutical had a total compensation package of about $1 billion. Now extrapolate among many other CEOs, retirement funds, trust funds, etc. Remember, of course, that pension funds have dwindled over the years and not everyone puts in the maximum amount in his 401(k) plans. Finally, UBS is hardly the only bank to handle billions of dollars. In addition to other banks there are hedge funds and other funds.

The funny thing about hedge funds is that the term has become a catch-all phrase for managed funds. When Madoff first came into the picture at Fairfield Greenwich Group, I asked Walter Noel's daughter, Corina Piedrahita, what the newly created fund, Fairfield Sentry, actually was. "It's a hedge fund." What were they hedging, I wondered? Her response was that it's just a conservative fund and when the stock market rose dramatically, it would only go up a little, about 1 percent a month. When the market dropped, even a lot, Fairfield Sentry would go down a bit or stay the same, something that made them proud. To me, hedging was about not committing oneself one way or the other, in order to make sure that whatever happens, you probably won't lose. In personal life, one hedges one's bets about a job (when jobs were more readily available), that an item you wanted would still be there the next day (or you could go elsewhere), etc. With investments, hedging was a form of more calculated risks and there was something in place to offset possible losses. Even the simplest form of investments carries risk. That interest rates won't rise during the term of a CD, that a company's earnings will rise, that the buzz about a new release of medication, electronic, whatever will be in demand. The most conservative, risk-adverse investors have some diversity, such as CDs at multiple banks or small investments with various companies.

Which boils down to the questions of what kinds of investments do UBS, et. al. handle, and are their traders just gamblers? It's one thing if an investor or group of investors are willing to lose everything. If, however, they are responsible for other people's money, such as retirement funds, then they have a responsibility to keep that money intact. About a decade ago I invested money in Chase Manhattan Bank, before JP Morgan was involved. I lost money on that investment because at the time I invested, Chase had made loans to Enron. No one, of course, had done any due diligence because Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling convinced the world that Enron was innovative with its mark to market and other "creative" accounting practices, all rubber stamped by the once reputable Arthur Anderson and Company. I had no clue to whom the bank was lending money, let alone what the terms were. We all know what happened with Enron. I never directly invested in Enron, but I lost money anyway. That was so not fair, but it was part of a risk I took by investing my money -- and mine alone -- in Chase.

EMR Security Breach

2011-09-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

My husband works in IT security, so it was with great interest that I read the article about the medical records' being breached at Stanford University's hospital in Palo Alto, CA.

A lot of people are afraid of electronic medical records because of possible security breaches. They don't have to happen. The principles of security that financial institutions can be applied to health care. I know that for a fact because my husband did that at Aetna.

Recently, I had to go to two hospitals to get health care records for my mother's condition. I didn't actually get them. I drove her by car to the hospitals, then put her in a wheelchair and rolled her into the Medical Records Departments, where she had to show a picture ID and sign a document that she was receiving the records. How bad is that? She needed them in order to get a quick appointment with a specialist who required it for his review. (The alternative was to wait six weeks for an appointment when she was already in agony because four other doctors misdiagnosed her and could not treat her effectively.)

One of the promises Barack Obama failed on was going digital with EMR. This would have helped both health care providers and patients get quick access to health histories and it would have created jobs.

What happens if there is a security breach? The health care provider would most likely have to go the route of financial institutions that choose not to employ people like my husband. Those institutions, aware of the problem of identity theft, end up offering "free" credit monitoring for customers for one year. It's not free for the institutions. It's like a health insurer refusing to pay for a flu vaccine, but will pay for the hospitalization of flu patient. What was it they said about an ounce of prevention?

Laborious

2011-09-05T06:22:00.001-07:00

That's the first word that comes to mind when it comes to describing how one looks for a job -- a very painful reminder for millions of people on this Labor Day. Three decades ago, you just looked at the newspaper or went to an employment agency, submitted your resume and cover letter, if necessary, filled out an application, and hoped for an interview and job offer. During the expected mild recessions, competition was stiff, but everyone who sought jobs was hopeful that something would come through.

Today, the process is far more complex.

The classified ads have slim pickings and are often dead giveaways about the type of place that's offering a job. "Must know WordPerfect 5.2." (A lawyer who hasn't upgraded his equipment or software since the 1990s!) "Must have six arms and six legs and not be a clock watcher." (High stress, low pay.) "Fax resume to 555-555-5555." (Boss is not computer literate.)

Monster.com and careerbuilder.com are so late '90s and early 2000s. Indeed.com gets mixed reviews from users. Put in a term under the advanced search tool and you will get that term under everything you want and mostly don't want. LinkedIn is far better because there are jobs that are exclusively posted on it. If your LinkedIn profile is complete, with at least three recommendations, it's easier to get past the others who are applying for that job. When my husband applied for jobs on LinkedIn, he found that the rate of response was higher than through Dice.com, Krazoom.com and other job websites.

But applying for a job isn't enough. It turns out that people have to cultivate relationships and way that is supposed to be effective is through twitter.com. (This is in addition to signing up for tweetmyjobs.com.) Pundits who are already employed or successful freelancers claim that job seekers should follow others in their fields, preferably people at higher levels, and start twitter dialogs.

Then there is blogging. Writers, marketing experts and publicists should be tweeting and blogging regularly, preferably daily. But blogging is definitely something that should be on everyone's agenda. My husband works in IT security and has an occasional blog. Was it helpful in his job search? Yes and no. One hiring manager wanted to see samples of his writing. He explained that most of his writing was about security policy and that is confidential material. The hiring manager insisted, so my husband printed out his blog postings. It showed the hiring manager that he was up-to-date on issues in his field. Another interviewer had been following his tweets and was impressed. Unfortunately, that job was pulled before it could be filled, not an uncommon occurrence.

Networking groups have proliferated. Sadly, many are just support groups. The vast majority of attendees are those who are unemployed and can mainly help others by providing information on the corporate culture where they worked. That can actually be useful. Occasionally, they'll meet someone who can provide them with the name of someone who is still working there. What they have to watch out for are predators in the form of financial managers who want them to turn over their 401(k) plan investments and "help" them transition into an early retirement they can't afford, and people who have vested interests in luring them into thinking that their key to business success and financial independence is to buy into a franchise. The business plan is already there, they promise. (Yes, it is. So is the clause about the source of materials. And the clause about turning over 25 percent of the revenue to the person who started the franchise. Compare that to a royalty, residual or even one-time recruiter fee and it is a huge amount of money.)

The truth is that most start-ups and most franchises fail. (Remember Krispy Kreme Doughnuts? The building in Milford, Connecticut has been empty for at almost two years. It's as if a horrific homicide took place at 1440 Boston Post Road and no one wants to occupy that property.

What's the answer for job seekers? It's both luck and hard work. People can be doing all the right things and still spinning their wheels in this unfriendly job market. That said, anyone who isn't doing all the right things, regardless of how laborious they are, is not even staying in place, but is behind. My sister-in-law was told by a recruiter that she was unemployed too long. At that time it was about 18 months. She finally got a decent job in her field after 98 weeks of being out of work. My brother-in-law has worked about five months in his field in the past three years. A college friend has had a total of less than one week's paying work in nearly three and a half years. The managing editor who lost her job at a weekly newspaper is more aggressive, but she is surprisingly secretive about her food blog, yet most of the stories she pitches are about food. Did I mention that she only pitches to poorly paying markets and is earning a fraction of what she did before she lost her job? In comparison, my husband's "transition" period of seven months didn't seem that bad, and he got a full time job higher salary than he earned before. Well, he went to network meetings, applied for jobs online, blogged and tweeted. His laborious job search was non-stop. The others were more passive and didn't use every available tool. That's the difference. And today he is enjoying Labor Day as he should -- a day off with pay.

Zeros at Math

2011-08-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

I am embarrassed to admit that I am one of the many people in the United States who is functionally innumerate. Many people are fine with it, but I hate the struggle of having to figure out in my mind a 15 percent tip or the price of something that is under the sign "40 percent off."

When I was in elementary school, the New Math was the method they taught arithmetic. I struggled in pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus. It's easy to shrug off these skills by saying that I will never sew a round tablecloth, so I don't need to know about the circumference of a circle, but the reality is that not knowing math well beyond grade school arithmetic has hindered me professionally. The irony is that I've worked in finance and accounting and am not, in principle, intimidated by numbers. I just had a problem understanding higher math and its applications. When I was in college, I tried, whenever possible, to get math professors who were clearly passionate about their subject. I still struggled with statistics, but I had the best math professor for that course.)

Fortunately, I am an open-minded person and about 20 years ago I came across a PBS series called College Algebra In Simplest Terms. This series was the brainchild of Sol Garfunkel, who is affiliated with a math consortium. I was hooked from the start. Garfunkel explained how algebra is used in things with which everyone is familiar: fireworks, boats, car accidents. In each episode he would come up with a formula to figure out how professionals determine how to design things.

In today's edition of The New York Times, Garfunkel and David Mumford argued for the need to combine math and its applications. Why haven't educators and the high priced consultants they hire think of that before? Why should parents have to spend extra money on math tutoring simply because the powers that be at most schools can't or won't make sure that kids are learning math skills that will help them in their personal and professional lives?

I am really proud that my son, Alex, loves numbers and shapes. He knew shapes before his cohorts at his first preschool, but didn't know the oval because it wasn't in the Disney Learning Series's "Winnie The Pooh's Shapes and Sizes," which we watched many, many times. He knew it, along with the trapezoid, by the time he was about three and a half. Thank you, Melissa and Doug for your wonderful shapes puzzle! I worked with him on numbers in English, and he learned to count to ten in Hebrew, thanks to the Oy, Baby video. I am very happy that Alex had that early exposure to math. Hopefully, he won't struggle with it as I did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/how-to-fix-our-math-education.html

Financial Terrorism

2011-08-18T14:02:00.000-07:00

The U.S. has been fighting the wrong war on terrorism. Since the financial coup d'etat nearly three years ago, Wall Street has done more damage to the world than Al-Qaeda. The real war on terrorism should be focused on financial terrorism. That's the only way to describe what has been happening for the past three years, and certainly the past few weeks. Instead of holding up banks, robbing people at ATMs, hijacking cars or breaking into people's homes, the financial con artists, abetted by the government and Barack Obama, have been systematically destroying people's financial well-being through crises that have resulted in loss of jobs and investments. Don't think for one nanosecond that the banksters have lost money. They know all the sophisticated ways such as short sales and secret deals to make money for themselves. There's an old saying on Wall Street:

"Bulls make money. Bears make money.
The pigs in the middle lose their shirts."

Guess what, folks? Most Americans are the pigs in the middle.

Making Commnents

2011-08-14T06:04:00.000-07:00

As much as I still embrace print, I still read newspapers and magazines online. The reason is solely for the comments some publications post. Many readers are not just intelligent, but more perceptive and insightful than some of the journalists and columnists who are well-paid to report and interpret the news. I've already blogged about Thomas Friedman and David Brooks' being disconnected from the way real people live, work and manage everyday logistics. Both men don't know how fortunate they are to be middle-aged and employed.

Last week I read the article about Anne Sinclaire, wife of Dominique Strauss-Khan, in the print version of New York Magazine. While my son was still sleeping, I decided to go online to read what readers had to say about her and about Vanessa Grigoriadis, whose writings I've enjoyed over the years.

Rewadermonthofmay pointed out that a simple google search on Kenneth Thompson was an NYU graduate in 1992, thus making him middle-aged, not a "young African-American lawyer" and that the reference to his race is irrelevant. Reader also believes that Grigoriadis most likely relied on sources for information she couldn't possibly have known first-hand.

Verti noted that the rental price of the property at 153 Franklin Street was reported at $50,000, but was actually advertised by Town Residential LLC for $13,995 in the May issue of New York Magazine.

Girocelot spotted a grammatical error. Perhaps it was just a typo, but didn't anyone proofread the article?

Jeffarsham pointed out that there was an error in the date the incident occurred and that French prime ministers are appointed, not elected.

What makes this all even more of a crying shame is that excellence in reporting and writing is the best -- and perhaps -- only way to fight what has been happening to print. Yes, we know. We're all moving away from print and onto tablets, but the ways of providing quality content hasn't changed. Reporters and columnists still need to get off their duffs, off their computers and interact face-to-face with real people and do their own legwork, no matter how many awards they've won for their work in the past.

Big Crooks, LIttle Crooks

2011-08-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

One of the many topics that is omitted from the discussion about health care reform is participation by providers. It is not required and there are many providers who choose not to be in network in any insurance plans. Recently I was prescribed a medication that requires compounding. Unfortunately, my two favorite pharmacies, Stamford Pharmacy and Hope Street Pharmacy, which usually do compounding, do not offer this particular medication, which is medically necessary for my condition. My doctor's office gave me a choice of four pharmacies to use, but because of logistics, I chose Wedgewood Pharmacy in Swedesboro, New Jersey. When I found out that they do not handle insurance, I wasn't concerned. The "customer service specialist" claimed I would get the paperwork necessary to file for reimbursement. No problem, I thought.

To make a long story short, I had to spend almost two hours of my time (so far) trying to determine why the claim was rejected. It boiled down to the fact that Wedgewood would not give my insurer a complete breakdown of the ingredients and costs,something to which I believe is required under HIPAA regulations. At least I know I would be entitled to it. And why not? Shouldn't I, as a patient, know what's in the medication I'm taking? It's only my health. Of course, sometimes it's my money or other issue that I must know about. I argued with Dan Bitler, the "QA" and regulatory person at Wedgewood that I am entitled to know this. He denied it. The fact is that I have received thorough breakdowns from doctors and hospitals' billing departments and even found a serious error in the bill for the delivery of my first child. Someone entered the wrong code and claimed I had a bone marrow transplant. Another time I received a statement that billed my health insurance company for ambulance service after I slipped on ice in a shopping center. I made the calls to straighten it out. It was an accident, not a health issue. Therefore, the insurance company of the strip mall was responsible for the claim. To those who believe that health care costs can be contained if only consumers knew what things cost and would not abuse the system, hey, I'm on top of things. I protected my health insurance company from bearing the costs of the bone marrow transplant I did not have and that ambulance ride.

Fortunately, I am working with someone at my insurance company who acknowledges that I am entitled to reimbursement and that Mr. Bitler is being stubborn, evasive and outright misleading. She's taking action on her end and I am taking action on mine. Woe to Wedgewood Pharmacy! Furthermore, I am going to recommend to my doctor's office that they find an alternative provider because no patient should have to have to go through what we're going through for a claim of $146.00.

Coming Out

2011-08-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

The phrase coming out used to refer to debutantes. (Remember Hadley Nagel, the "Egghead Debutante" who came out last December amid fawning reports of her accomplishments and lineage, which turned out to more blue collar than blue blood?) Well, anyway, that phrase is better applied towards what we know about what's been happening in Washington, D.C.

It really shouldn't surprise us that, S and P, the organization that rates securities is owned by a corporation. Nor was it surprising that the committee of "sovereign credit raters" are "secretive" and operate "deep inside" S and P. It was, however, a bit surprising that despite all the Midget Brained Asses that are hired to crunch numbers and do creative financing and accounting aren't very good at mathematics and may have miscalculated the U.S. debt by trillions of dollars. http://gillreport.com/2011/08/sp-miscalculated-u-s-debt-by-trillions/

Oops!

Then there's the Debt Supercommittee, a/k/a the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. Its ix Repugnican appointees have vowed to Grover Norquist not to raise taxes. What can we expect? More pleas for one-sided compromises, the kind that Barack Obama has made one of his hallmarks? The only result would be "Read my lips: No new taxes" and continuing the Raw Deal to replace the New Deal, all with Obama's continued cooperation.

But back to the S and P and its problems, which are linked, directly or not, with the budget deficit that favors those who benefit from Wall Street.. Now what do those other brilliant minds such as Ben "Walmart Has More Economic Data Than We Do" Bernanke and Tim "I I Didn't File My Income Taxes" Geithner suggest be done? Funny how Rahm Emmanuel and Larry "Women Aren't As Good at Math and Science As Men Are" Summers made their exits when they did. We thought it was to further their careers or, in the case of Summers, to save his cushy pension. There is no doubt in my mind that they knew something was going to brew and they wanted to distance themselves from it.

During the 1990s, Hillary Rodham Clinton said there "is a huge right wing conspiracy." People interpreted that as the persecution of her husband's lust for other women. Hilary was right. What has happened since the election of 2000 is definitely a conspiracy. The only thing is that the left and the right on the same side.

Diving Into an Empty Pool Head-First

2011-08-08T18:05:00.001-07:00

Diving into an empty pool head first. That's the way things seem to be going as the stock market lost more than 1,000 points in less than a week, and the worst plunge in more than three years.

The Dow Jones Industrials Average closed today at 10,809.85. This figure, give or take a few hundred points, was not expected, but it was the severity of the fall that knocked the wind out of investors such as yours truly, whose investments are in blue chips, utilities and other safe places to put our money. I own TIPS -- Treasury Inflation Protection Securities, one of the most conservative investments anyone can make. They hardly paid anything when I bought them, but I figured that one day the U.S. government would own up to the fact that there is indeed inflation, and then their value would rise. Yes, many others invested in riskier securities and did very well for themselves. I bought the investments I did with the belief that although my returns would be modest, they would high enough to beat inflation and yet the risk would be low enough so that I could sleep at night. Now we're all insomniacs.

The blame was on Standard and Poor's for downgrading the credit rating.of the U.S. For so many years, Standard and Poor's was considered reputable and impartial. When Standard and Poor misled everyone on the CDO ratings, which were a factor in the economic collapse of 2008, it lost that credibility. When word had it that Standard and Poor's planned to downgrade the U.S. debt, many regarded it as an act of market manipulation. That could very well be. Now we all know that Standard and Poor's is a division of the McGraw-Hills Companies. In other words, it's part of the private sector that no one trusts. One news item that is under most people's radar is that in 2009, the European Commission charged Standard and Poor's with unfair pricing and accused it of abusing its position as the sole provider of international securities codes for U.S. securities by charging European financial firms and data vendors to pay licensing fees for their use. So it's not just part of a private company; it's corrupt on its own.

Barak Obama had to face the nation and give a pep talk about how things aren't so bad. We need to "reform" entitlement programs (read: cuts in the safety net) and tackle budget debts over the long run. Naturally, he failed to give details. Even if he had any, it doesn't matter. Whatever the Republicans want, he will give them after a song and dance about compromise on both sides. He is the Great Capitulater. It was interesting to read comments posted by readers of The New York Times. Many people are calling for him to resign or at least not run for office in 2012. They honestly believe his stepping down would actually help the economy and give people more confidence. I agree, but I believe that the same things holds for all politicians. Americans are fed up. Their approval rating of Congress is surprisingly only about 82 percent. I don't know of anyone who actually approves of Congress. There are a few holdouts for Obama, but I think it's for the same reason that they supported him. It's not so much the hopey-changey thing or win the future, which is clearly lost, but because they're afraid of being thought of as bigots. Be color-blind, folks. Take him for what he is: a failure as a leader. He was in the perfect position to give this generation a new FDR or even a new JFK. Instead he gave them an empty suit.

Losing the Future

2011-08-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

If anyone still has any doubts about Obama's intention for the future, this past weekend's deal about the deficit should have clarified things. There is no "winning the future." He threw away any future of hope for most Americans. If he still plans to run for office, he needs to scrap that campaign slogan. The only ones who will benefit are the crooks he failed to investigate and prosecute when he had his chance. He's clearly a sell-out.

If he wants to win the future for most Americans, he needs to do the following:

1) Get out of the war business. The U.S. is not winning.
2) Tell the American people to demand that their Congressmen and Senators pass legislation to make it more expensive for companies to operate and hire overseas than to manufacture and hire domestically.
3) Revamp the tax structure so that the richest Americans (not those earning just $250K or higher per family) and American corporations pay higher taxes here.

Results:
1) Reduced unemployment.
2) Lower budget deficit, perhaps even a surplus.
3) Higher Social Security and Medicare funding.

What's so bad about that?

Confidence and CONfidence

2011-07-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

There are times when I am convinced that I am the queen of insecurities, even when I know what I'm doing and when I know that I can do a better job than most people. I'm the type of person who rises to the occasion and learns what needs to be done, whether I want to or not. I remember this from day camp when I was the only one in my group who ended up cleaning up instead of having fun because it was the responsible thing to do.

This trait is great for employers and for fellow employees and volunteers who won't carry their own weight, but it's a horrible trait for me to live with because sometimes I end up bitter and resentful. Just recently, though, I learned that it's often not because others are lazy but because they are actually more insecure than I am at my peak. It's still hard for me to believe that, but here are a few examples of how I came to that conclusion.

I turned the Connecticut Press Club from a comatose organization into the area's most dynamic writers' group. I got involved because I was dissatisfied with the programming. I would attend many programs that promised help for journalists in finding new markets and learning how to get more income. The problem is that many of the speakers were retirees, so they were not really helpful, especially since the business of print media has changed as more newspapers have been gobbled up by large corporations and the digital age changed the way we reported and filed stories.

I made a bold move that was both necessary and brilliant. Instead of asking retirees to speak, I got, with the help of a few committee people, editors and writers from regional and national newspapers and magazines to talk about specific topics. We learned from people who are far more successful than we are how to cover business, personal finance, health and other topics. We also got a bonus. It turns out that most of those editors are actively seeking new talent. They were telling us what is missing from Writer's Market. That book is basically a telephone directory, and an incomplete, outdated one at that. Even the online version is outdated. Nevertheless, it's a good start, and I even gave a copy to the most active program committee member.

This was when I got my first significant lesson about insecurity. This person claimed she was a staff journalist and now writes mostly business stories. This is a bit surprising because she has no head for numbers and can't figure out profits and losses. Nevertheless I suggested that she put together a program on writing business stories and that she should contact business magazines. As she did in the past, she relied on email and plodded along, editor by editor, only to get many rejections. A friend suggested that we contact the speaker's bureau, and I passed along the suggestion. She agreed to do that only once the date of this program was fast approaching and we didn't have a big enough panel. (We aim for a minimum of three speakers because one may not show up and/or one may be a dud.) She refused to call Forbes in New York City because her daughter, an underachieving writer in her late 30s, was doing an internship in Washington, D.C., and she was afraid that their last name would jeopardize her daughter's career. I agreed to call and, sure enough, was able to get a speaker with minimal effort on my part. Just as an aside, her daughter was not hired by Forbes after her internship anyway, so her not being the one to call didn't help her any more than it would have hurt her. Then we ran into a problem with logistics. There was construction near the train station we asked the speakers to take, so we found a better alternative. The other train station was closer, but the train would be earlier. She was convinced that they -- all high level editors, not contributing editors or editorial assistants -- would get into trouble if they left work earlier. I gently explained that everyone welcomes leaving early and they are not low-level clerical workers who are tethered to their desks lest they lose their jobs. She said , "I don't feel comfortable telling them to change the train." So I had to do it and, no, I did not get any balking or nervousness from them. To round out the problems I had with her, she was supposed to help register attendees, as she had done in the past. She lost the envelope in which she put the checks. She had me call the person she worked with at the registration desk. She had me call the restaurant. She had me double check the box I carry in which I put handouts and miscellaneous items. Three days later she found it in the enormous black handbag she carries everyday and everywhere to hold everything but the pen and notebook which she, as a reporter, needs daily. Now that's a person who is not a paragon of reliability or self-confidence.

Another writer I know claims she quit her job as managing editor of a weekly newspaper because she wasn't given a promotion. Maybe she did. Maybe she was let go. There was and still is a lot of turnover at this newspaper chain. If she quit, it was not the most prudent decision. Her husband, an economist, changed careers and was trying to become a chef and baker of artisan breads. His bread is awesome, but this country is in a recession and for those who can afford it, there are plenty of places to buy artisan bread. He has a very limited number of places that sell his bread and he makes it from scratch at home. We're not talking about a significant size operation. They've also held underground dinner parties (the topic of an earlier blog) in the hopes of getting people to hire him. It hasn't worked out very well. They have no health insurance. Her car is a 1994 Saturn and his car is a truck. To make things even more difficult for them, she freelances for online publications that pay perhaps $50.00 an article (including a stint with patch.com until she claims they stole her content from another site) and for a weekly newspaper that pays $75.00 per article. Occasionally, she writes for a state magazine, but she and her husband are still seriously in financial doo-doo. I asked her if she ever pitched articles to the magazine editors who spoke at our programs. Her first response was a question: Have others pitched successfully? Oh, yes, I said, and the absolute minimum they earned was $300.00 for an article. She admitted that she hadn't pitched to any, something I suspected. She didn't elaborate, but my guess is that she lacks the self-confidence to do so. This is despite the fact that she brags about the many awards she has received for her writing. It seems that not only does she lack self-confidence, she and her husband both have grains for brains when it comes to simple arithmetic.

An award-winning author I know claims to have written 200 books that were published with more than 1 million copies in print. With such a track record, she should be getting at least some advance, say $5,000 per book? If I count correctly, she should be quite comfortable financially. She shouldn't even think of buying her costume jewelry at Wal-Mart. When I activated the memory chip in my brain, I recall her telling us that as an editor of children's books (for which she was paid $90K plus benefits), she altered titles to include "Jesus" or "G-d" to comply with the division head's wishes to give the books more visibility in the Christian children's books market. She never actually claimed then that she wrote all those books, but when she began to market herself through social websites, she suddenly became prolific. Incidentally, she writes books for adults, too. Now she's working on a book of devotionals and it's taking her nearly a year. From 200 titles in, say, 40 years (or, 5 books a year on average) to 1? Possibly, but the numbers don't quite work for me.

A fourth writer is an author and journalist who sometimes comes across as rather tough.She is very articulate, but she does tend to promote herself at every opportunity. This invariably makes me question what she's really all about. Once she told me that she spent $1,500.00 on how to give presentations. So why did she lecture wearing what appeared to be an old-fashioned house dress, did nothing with her hair, and wore no make-up and cheap jewelry? Sorry, but appearances do count in the credibility department. I don't mean to sound catty, but in her case, $1,500.00 would have been better spent on a decent suit, good shoes, good bag, jewelry (even good fake pearls or consigned necklace and earrings) and hair and make-up lessons. I'm not saying that's a uniform for everyone. I once met PR legend Kelly Cutrone when she was with her first firm, Cutrone and Weinberg. Even then, her edgy style was ahead of everyone else. But her overall appearance stated self-confidence and capability. It was perfect for Kelly Cutrone and would not necessarily work on this particular author. The point is that Kelly Cutrone knows her audience. The author is good at writing, but not at communicating with people in public. Fact: despite a decent turnout for her lecture, she only sold one copy of her book that day.

I'm not saying that these people misrepresent themselves to deceive others. They're just selling themselves. But they shouldn't have to if they are as successful as they claim. Personally, I find the first person's writing very staccato and prosaic and the second person's writing strong but forced. The author has a strong and annoying Queens accent and her grammar and spelling are atrocious. Yet somehow editors buy their pitches. I just don't get it. As far as I am concerned, they're all short on delivery. That said, it's my problem. They learned CONfidence -- just enough to con others into thinking they are better and more qualified than their competitors. I have to work on self-confidence and on selling myself instead of spending the rest of my life helping other people get ahead and have fun.

To counter these aforementioned people, I think about a woman who is incredibly smart and has held prestigious positions at two well-known financial firms. She rarely talks about herself or her work or her impressive titles. Her husband also held high profile positions at two banks. During the market highs, I imagine that their combined income easily topped $300M, but you would never know it by the way they live. Before they downsized to a townhouse, they lived in a rather simple five bedroom contemporary house that they decorated themselves. The kitchen had dated Formica cabinets . They each drive Hondas. They dress well, but not expensively. She and her husband invested in their children's education and I'm speculating that they have zero debt. They are both totally without artifice. She doesn't even enhance her already exquisite facial features with make-up and a better hairstyle. That's how unpretentious she is. Oh, and she even plays the piano, reads Torah beautifully and is her elderly mother's primary caregiver. She doesn't need to impress others or promote herself. She is successful and secure. I should be channeling her pure spirit instead of fretting about my perceived inadequacies against those four writers. My guess is that if someone judges her superficially and is wrong about her success, she won't waste a nanosecond thinking about them, let alone trying to correct them. Yes, I need to remind myself that she is the kind of person I should strive to be -- only in my field. Maybe, as a bonus, I'll even become more successful in my career.

Twisted Nerves at Westport County Playhouse

2011-07-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

It’s complicated. That’s the best way to describe Terrence McNally’s 1991 play, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, which runs through July 30 at the Westport Country Playhouse.

Even 20 years ago, the play was complex, but it was more powerful in the context during the tail end of the epidemic of AIDS, the disease and AIDs, the fear. For those who were too young to remember it, the fear of AIDS was to the 1980s was similar to that of polio to an earlier generation. People were afraid that they could get AIDS from casual contact, from a public toilet seat, from a swimming pool. And there was a great deal of prejudice against homosexuals, who were the main victims of the disease. In an age when several states are passing legislation to legalize same-sex marriages, any production of this play must try very hard to channel the emotions of the 1980s.

The play takes place at a beach house on Fire Island. Sally Truman (Maggie Lacey) inherited the house from her brother, David, a photographer who died of AIDS. She and her husband, Sam (John Ellison Conlee), invited his sister, Chloe ( Jenn Gambatese) and her husband John (Chris Henry Coffey) to spend the Fourth of July weekend there. Sally is a painter and is morose and emotionally fragile, especially since her brother’s death, her affair with her husband’s brother-in-law, John, and the pregnancy she fears she may not be able to sustain, based on her medical history. Put this heterosexual foursome on an 8.7 mile island that is populated mostly by the GLBT community and specifically in the house of someone who died of AIDS, and let the tension mount.

While the concept of the play worked in 1991 and is still credible today, the main problem is that the play is structurally flawed. The couples aren’t particularly likeable. Nor are they always convincing, individually or together. The audience has no idea how good an artist Sally is. She actually seems unimaginative. Sam is carrying two mortgages and other debt, yet he seems to be a moderately successful New Jersey building contractor. Sam and Sally are protective of each other, yet their relationship seems to be one of polite habit and resignation rather than strength and love. John is somewhat priggish and reserved, the type who does The New York Times crossword puzzle in ink and without cheating, yet he will cheat on his wife. He is an admissions director at a prep school. Chloe is bubbly, babbling and well-meaning, an amateur musical theatre actress who peppers her speech with French, bursts into Broadway tunes and is aware that she gets on everyone’s nerves. Her babbling helps her live in denial about John’s infidelity and his battle with cancer of the esophagus. They live in New Canaan and are members of a country club. Quite frankly, she doesn’t fit in and on his income, he probably cannot afford the membership application fee or annual dues. What did each of these couples see in each other?

Despite the tight direction by Mark Lamos, some of the scenes seem fragmented and unresolved in its theme of dealing with devastating illnesses and harsh reality and the hope of getting through it with love. At one point John and Sam have a physical fight, but the reason and the aftermath are unconvincing. In another scene, Sam forces open a strong box and David’s ring accidentally falls into the swimming pool. A reference to the ring in the pool is made later in the play but, still, no one retrieves it. Sally makes a comment that they could get AIDS from the pool, but they were already wet from splashing or from putting their feet in it anyway. While Sally is painting, she is frequently distracted by the view of an unknown swimmer who later drowns. And then there’s the title. It’s explained at the end by Sam’s bruxism and his dentist’s advice that before he goes to sleep, he should keep his lips together and teeth apart to avoid further grinding down his teeth. What is the metaphor as far as the play is concerned? That the couples must look as if everything is fine and not let on that they are disintegrating inside? Perhaps, but when done in three acts, two intermissions and about two hours and 45 minutes, that is a very long metaphor. The audience has a lot to speculate about.

That said, director Mark Lamos put together a cast that is otherwise excellent, but confined to a play that is problematic. Andrew Jackness’ set design is stunning. When Sam states that the beach house is worth at least $800,000, the audience can believe it.

Is the play worth seeing? Absolutely. It depicted an important social as well as medical issue of an era. It just requires a reminder of its impact. And don’t expect light comedy. See McNally’s It’s Only a Play for that.

Another Noel Embarrassment?

2011-07-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

Although it seems that the Noels may avoid criminal charges related to the Madoff case, it turns out that there is another situation that would cause embarrassment to most people: getting caught creating knock-offs.

Shortly before the Madoff scandal erupted, Marisa Noel Brown and two friends, Ulrica Lanaro and Lillian Stern, decided to go into the jewelry designing business under the name of Tre Labs. Never mind that Marisa did not attend design school. Or even that the costume jewelry she and her friends "created" did not reflect the Noel family's taste in expensive looking jewelry. I wondered about that when news broke that Tre's jewelry would be shown at Henri Bendel and priced from just $50.00 to $85.00. That's hardly the style of people who spent their lives pretending to be old blood, old money.

But today's news feeds brought news that Brown and her friends are accessories to crime and they are being sued by the Australian company Dinosaur Designs. Tre's copies were displayed at a trade show at the Jacob Javitz center. And to make things worse for Brown, they claim a Tre partner bought the original merchandise in their store in Nolita and have the receipts to prove it. The Tre designs, they claim, were manufactured as copies in China.

This is not the first time that the Noels have -- borrowed, shall we say? -- someone else's designs. Monica Noel sold under her own line some linens that resembled Frette's designs. I wasn't surprised because Monica loves beautiful things and even after Bernie Madoff came along with the goose that laid the golden egg, she was always looking for a good deal. Walter was an inadequate breadwinner for the lavish lifestyle she wanted, but Monica was always resourceful. She would get money from her mother and Walter would repeatedly refinance to create their picture perfect image of money and social status. She knew she could have those linens virtually duplicated for very little money in Recife, Brazil. (Note: Monica Noel the brand became better known for her children's smock dresses. Also, for the record, her linens went beyond Frette-style designs and they are beautiful. I bought a lot of them.)

Monica's daughters often tore out ads from magazines and had a local dressmaker, Cleusa (prononuced clay-OH-za) duplicate the clothes with fabric they bought from Banksville Fabrics in nearby New Canaan. This is an old trick that some European women employ in order to dress very well on a budget. When Corina got married, she had a Carolina Herrera gown copied in Brazil for her wedding. In an act of unmitigated chutzpah, she invited one of Carolina Herrera's daughters to the wedding. The spin was the exotic story that Corina was having her dress made in Brazil as part of her international wedding, which including having 3,000 roses flown from Colombia.

Monica once had a partner -- and I use this term loosely -- to help her with her design business. Her name was Deborah Cowan, a Greenwich divorcee who eventually moved to Rockport, Massachusetts. Deborah handled a lot of the grunt work of the business and eventually decided that she can do just as well for working for herself. Monica accused Deborah of stealing her designs, but that's like the pot calling the kettle black. And, apparently, it's happening with a second generation.

iM Out of Touch

2011-07-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

By now I shouldn't be surprised that well-known columnists of The New York Times are sometimes, even often, out of touch with reality. Take Thomas Friedman, for example. I always viewed his columns on energy with the idea that he probably doesn't have to do facetime at work in order to keep his job. He may telecommute. He may live in a city with good public transportation. Or he can afford to pay $7.00 for a gallon of gasoline. Whatever the reason, it's easy for him to write about raising the gasoline tax and demanding that Americans conserve energy.

Yesterday's column, "The Start-Up of You," verified that he is definitely not living in the real world. The premise of his Op-Ed is something we all know -- that "this is not your parents' job market." Moreover, he argued, job seekers must brand themselves, be flexible at all times and -- get this -- work towards creating the next social medium phenomenon.

Look at the news these days from the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy — Silicon Valley. Facebook is now valued near $100 billion, Twitter at $8 billion, Groupon at $30 billion, Zynga at $20 billion and LinkedIn at $8 billion. These are the fastest-growing Internet/social networking companies in the world, and here’s what’s scary: You could easily fit all their employees together into the 20,000 seats in Madison Square Garden, and still have room for grandma. They just don’t employ a lot of people, relative to their valuations, and while they’re all hiring today, they are largely looking for talented engineers.

As Twitter responds when something goes wrong, "Whoa!"

For starters, Mr. Friedman has never created an Internet start-up company. As far as I know, he never created a start-up company, full stop. He's a columnist, and a darn lucky one, too, because he's worked for The New York Times for years, he gets time off to write books and he's still employed while being middle aged and expensive by today's job standards. The vast majority of people are not as lucky as he is. Nor are they in a position to reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs.

The demand for technology and innovation is not about the next form of social media, but about real tangible products such as energy, biotech and repair of this country’s pathetic infrastructure.

This country does not need a start-up in the form of individuals. It needs a complete overhaul, starting with the government. Rewrite the Constitution. It’s not holy; it’s antiquated. Supreme Court justices should not have lifetime terms because life expectancy today is much higher than it was in the 18th century. Get rid of the corrupt two-party system with its self-serving lifelong perks. Eradicate all subsidies for farmers, pharmaceuticals, oil companies and all private enterprise. Cut defense spending. Money spent fighting unwinnable wars overseas isn’t coming back here.

The old-fashioned way of doing business wasn’t all that bad. There were some ethics then. Companies created jobs domestically. They paid taxes to the U.S. government. They promised longevity, benefits, even company picnics in return for hard work and employee loyalty. It worked out beautifully until Ronald Reagan incited the well-to-do with the cancer of greed and started the class war. Companies stepped up globalization and the incomes of most Americans began to fall behind. Deregulation meant compromises in both physical and financial safety. Nearly three years ago, the country slid into recession and started to drag down the rest of the world because of unrestricted gambling by the financial service sector. Don’t you remember this, Mr. Friedman? So far, social media has not pulled the U.S. out of its lingering recession and it has not prevented European countries from economic collapse.

I can't help but wonder about the approval process at The New York Times. Does the Op-Ed page editor get a quick story budget? This write-up was not an immediate reaction to something that happened in Washington. This could have been run any day that Mr. Friedman's column is scheduled to run. He could have written it two weeks ago and then gone on vacation.

As I scrolled through the comments, I noticed that the vast majority of them trounced Mr. Friedman's arguments. Readers understood that most people are not cut out to create the next big thing in social media and that jobs in field such as health care, sanitation and clerical work are necessary for society. Even Facebook and Zynga need accountants. My favorite was at the end. Jen of New York wrote, "Good Lord. Friedman is doling out self-help tips now?"

If he is, I'd like to know his secret to success and longevity.

Can We Trust Them?

2011-07-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

At first, this headline came as a surprise:

Wall St. Banks Expected to Post Weak 2nd Quarter Results (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/business/economy/banks-expected-to-post-weak-2nd-quarter-results.html?hp).

Then a horrible thought came to me. What if they were cooking the books all along, not unlike Bernard Madoff? And perhaps like those hedge funds that have been going like gangbusters for so long? Years ago, John Winthrop, a money manager who rented office space from Walter Noel, went to China to explain investments. "Trees do not grow to the sky," he told them. But that's what Wall Street would have people believe -- that the good times would just go on and on, at least for a few.

The banks are blaming the debt crisis in Europe (caused by whom again?), the deficit debate in Washington (Republicans vs. the Closet Republican, Obama), regulations about bank fees (to prove that regulations stifle business), federal dumping of mortgage bonds from the AIG rescue (which proves that the government doesn't know what it's doing when it comes to business), and concerns about the overall economic outlook (which, until now, did not involve the input of Main Street, which was made up of low-lifes who just weren't smart enough to rake in the big bucks).

What scares me is not the occasional dip in profits. It happens with many companies. Just like people, companies also have their ups and downs. What I find unnerving is the possibility that the "auditors" just rubber stamp the financial reports. If you look at annual reports, you'll see a disclosure that the auditors believe that the numbers presented herewith are accurate.

Long before there was "Take Your Daughter To Work Day," my mother took us to the company where she worked. I met the accountants who actually did auditing. The company was small, and the accountants would park themselves for three weeks each quarter to look at the books and make sure that every check had an invoice attached to it. In other words, they liked paper trails and wanted to see that everything was kosher before they signed off. I grew up believing that's the way it should be.

Speaking of disclosure, I own shares in JP Morgan Chase. I lost money on my initial investment because the brilliant minds made deals with Enron, which also engaged in creative accounting practices and their financial reports were rubber stamped by the once-reputable accounting firm, Arthur Anderson.

Which is why I ask, can we trust them?

R.I.P., George Lang

2011-07-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

George Lang, owner of two of my favorite restaurants, died on Tuesday. He was 86 years old.

I had the honor of meeting George when he lectured at the Jewish Community Center in Stamford. I was thrilled to get an assignment to interview him and review his book, Nobody's Seen the Truffles I've Seen, about his hardscrabble life in Hungary during World War II. George really was an incredible person. He harbored no bitterness about his life. He was an aspiring violinist, but he felt he was not good enough, so he looked for another field in which to excel. He found himself in catering, doing weddings for Mafia princesses and later decided to become a restaurateur. He told me that he no longer observed the laws of kashrut because his mother refused to eat the gruel in concentration camp and subsequently died of starvation. It's amazing what you can do with food that doesn't have to be kosher! He created and/or inspired remarkable food, even taking classics such as Pot-au-Feu to new heights. Cafe des Artiste's signature flourless chocolate cake was named after his mother, Ilona. His cookbooks are home-friendly and I highly recommend tracking them down.

I had been to Cafe des Artistes in New York and was impressed not just by the wonderful food and romantic setting, but by the hospitality. I'd gone with a friend years before and we were nobodies. We weren't dressed exceptionally well. We were not regular patrons. But we were treated graciously by the staff. Ten years ago I was in Budapest and had the privilege of eating at Gundel's, which he and Ronald Lauder restored to its former glory. It was one of the highlights of my trip.

I was saddened when George and his wife, Jennifer, closed Cafe des Artistes. I never got to go again and I wanted to share the experience with my husband. At least I have two of George's cookbooks, from which I've prepared wonderful food. Rest in peace, George. You will always be remembered with admiration.

Bad Medicine Gone Worse

2011-07-07T09:33:00.001-07:00

Here's a follow-up to an earlier blog post.

I have a question for any hospital. Why would you want a doctor on your staff who is notoriously rude to colleagues, underlings and patients?

The experience I had with a doctor at Stamford Hospital's wound center has only made my opinion of that hospital go down further. (I had botched surgeries by two doctors who had been head of their orthopaedics department and three other doctors failed to diagnose osteoarthritis, a disease that is hardly new or rare. I also spent an hour in the Emergency Room with a bleeding head, and there were no other patients waiting to see a doctor.) It turns out that the physician my mother saw at the wound center has quite a reputation of being nasty. You don't even have to mention his name. Everyone knows who he is. I only wish I'd known before taking my mother to see him. If anything, he has become more obnoxious with each visit (this was our third).

I've interviewed lots of top doctors and among their shared characteristics are an interest in science (of course) and a desire to help people. I can't figure out what made this guy decide to go into medicine because he totally lacks compassion. During three visits he offered absolutely no medicine to help alleviate my mother's agony -- agony, not just discomfort. She couldn't even walk.

I fired him.

But, again, I ask, why would a hospital want such a doctor on board? He's certainly not a good representative for the hospital, despite his stellar credentials. I'm amazed that any medical school even accepted him after an interview.

Several years ago I attended a focus group on area hospitals. The people in the focus group had been to at least one of the following hospitals:

White Plains Hospital
Greenwich Hospital
Stamford Hospital
Norwalk Hospital
Bridgeport Hospital
St. Vincent's Hospital
Yale-New Haven

One of our tasks was to write on huge easel pads all the positives and negatives of each hospital. During the discussion, I learned that most of the team had not been to most of the hospitals, but just to Greenwich, Stamford and Norwalk, and most of their experiences were based on visits to the emergency rooms. They loved Greenwich Hospital because they felt that the waiting time was short and that the staff was courteous. Most were OK with Norwalk Hospital, but they perceived it as less prestigious as Greenwich Hospital. Stamford Hospital had so many items in the "negative" column that I laughed and burst out saying, "They should just tear it down and start anew."

I still feel that way today, especially after my experience with this doctor. How can I possibly trust the judgment of those who make the hiring decisions?

Great Medicine

2011-07-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

The best advice I ever got about medicine was to choose your hospital before you choose your doctor. Good hospitals -- teaching hospitals that see large volumes of diverse patients -- have good doctors. And the best rated doctors are almost always affiliated with top hospitals.

Here is the first of an occasional list of good health care providers.

Hartford Hospital - for stroke. According to Dr. Inam Kureshi, Hartford Hospital sees more than 750 stroke patients a year -- more than Yale-New Haven or Mass General. It is one of the 10 largest stroke centers in the nation.

Bridgeport Hospital - for heart attacks. You have the best chances of survival after a heart attack at Bridgeport Hospital.

Note: Do not judge a hospital by its surrounding neighborhood. This is one case in real estate where it's not location, location, location. It's about the care.

Belvedere Podiatry - Drs. Paul M. Greenberg and Rick J. Del Monte are among the few doctors who are willing to fix someone else's botched surgery. I know because they've operated on my feet twice after four surgeries were done by orthopaedists. Never, ever let an orthopaedist touch your feet unless he or she treats only feet. When I had my surgery done by orthopaedists, it was in the days when people still believed that podiatrists are not real doctors. They are. In fact, Drs. Greenberg and Del Monte hold Diplomate status. They are completely up-to-date on procedures and techniques. It's hard to believe, but it's true: you probably will not need pain killers after surgery. In between surgeries, I found out that Janet Carlson, one of the world's best health editors, recommends them.

John Fulkerson, M.D. - for knees. Carlson, who is also a competitive ballroom dancer and has suffered multiple injuries, also recommends Dr. Fulkerson of Orthopedic Associates of Hartford (www.oahct.com). OAH also has other renowned specialists including John Grady-Benson for hips and Steven Schutzer for knees, hips, dance and sports medicine. Carlson also found that DonJoy Knee Braces help a variety of knee ailments. Check out their website and you'll see that you won't find anything like their braces at drug stores or most stores that sell medical supplies. www.betterbraces.com/donjoy/knee-braces.

Kristaps Keggi, M.D. and John Keggi, M.D. - for hips. The former is a pioneer in anterior hip replacement surgery. His nephew, John, followed him into this subspecialty, but practices with a different group. John Keggi also does hip resurfacing. Kristaps Keggi is with Yale (www.orthopedics.yale.edu). John Keggi is with Orthopaedics New England (www.keggiorthosurgery.com).

Bad Medicine

2011-07-05T17:30:00.001-07:00

Bedside manners are supposed to be secondary when it comes to providing health care, but I believe that is a myth. I believe that they are part of communications skills (or lack thereof) and that doctors who have terrible beside manners are not good communicators, either.

Just to be clear, it's not that I simply dismiss something I don't want to hear. I was heartbroken to discover that in my early 20s I already had osteoarthritis in my toes and could not wear high heels. I've had an exceptionally unpleasant autoimmune disease since I was eight years old. What could I look forward to in life but looking less than unattractive and feeling horrible about my appearance? I know this sounds superficial, but ballet flats will never make you look as elegant as high heels do. Duh, that's why dancers perform en pointe.

But I digress. Recently I saw a periodontist for an evaluation about why I suddenly lost bone in one part of my jaw. I was puzzled because I've taken enough calcium and I've been diligent about oral hygiene. I adore my dentist and trusted his recommendation. Unfortunately, I had a bad feeling from the get-go about the periodontist who works in his office. He wasn't at all friendly. Worse, he was totally negative and predicted that I would lose a tooth in two years or ten years if I didn't undergo surgery. His voice was staccato. And did I mention that he didn't answer my questions?

Last week I went with my mother to see a vascular surgeon at Stamford Hospital's wound center about a venal ulcer. My mother is of the generation that believes doctors are demigods and that you just don't question them. I didn't like this guy from the moment I met him. She dismissed his unfriendliness as just having poor bedside manners. Later, she mentioned her visit to a friend of hers who used to work at Stamford Hospital. Her friend said he's "a nasty bastard." I agreed with her friend, especially after today's visit. I questioned how long recovery is expected to take. He nearly bit my head off and said, "It could take a year. It could take two years." Excuse me, but that's not an answer. Try saying, "Under ideal conditions, if you do this, that and the other, it will probably take x number of weeks, but it could be longer." But, no, he went on to tell us that two patients had this and one ended up in the hospital because of a stroke and the other because of a heart attack and because they were off their feet, they each healed in one week.

Am I being unreasonable about wanting better communications? I don't think so. But I am somewhat demanding as a patient. I expect a doctor to take the time to listen to patients' concerns. Hey, people are scared. They want to be reassured that they're going to get good care. The last thing they need is someone to make their anxieties worse.

I also expect a doctor to be up-to-date on techniques and procedures. It's shocking how many doctors haven't learned much since they completed their residencies. I'm very lucky that my job requires me to interview many of the specialists I may need one day. It's interesting that many of them have completed fellowships after they did their residencies. Many also say that they listen carefully to their patients. One told me that doctors who listen to their patients get the diagnosis. Lay people may not know the name of what ails them, but they know they're not well. And they deserve to be heard.

I once read that many people who have eventually been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr Syndrome went to three or four doctors before someone took them seriously. How frustrating that must have been for the sufferers. It was also costly for the insurance companies.

In my next blog, I will post the names of good doctors. I warn you, though, you may have to travel a bit, but it's worth it. Why waste your time and money on someone who is still practicing old-fashioned medicine in the worst way?

Elder & Child Abuse

2011-07-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

You've read about it. Older people and kids whose bruises are not the result of falls but of physical abuse by caregivers, even family members. Here's a bruise that may well be inflicted, but one that you won't spot so easily: cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

The administration is, surprise, surprise, ready to cave in on the budget "negotiations" (read: Republican blackmail) by cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits.Those of us who never bought into Barack Obama's hopey-changey thing in which he was going to be the advocate of the ordinary are not surprised. It's just another flip-flop by the Golden One whose raison d'etre is to get reelected with the help of the rich.

'Congress smells blood,' said William L. Minnix, Jr., of the trade group LeadingAge.

Oh, yes, but it's all in the good name of possibly raising taxes. (I, for one, am not counting on that, at least not conventional tax revenues.) Senator Chuck Schumer said, "We are very willing to entertain savings in Medicare." Entertain? And good old Senator Joe Lieberman added, "We can't save Medicare as we know it. We can save Medicare only if we change it." Let's not forget that Joe and his wife, Hadassah, have serious stakes in the health care industry.

Part of the proposal includes reducing payments to teaching hospitals. As the victim of several doctors who never bothered to learn anything since they got their degrees, I I have a problem with this. Patients benefit from teaching hospitals because their doctors tend to be more up-to-date on techniques and procedures. Another proposal includes establishing a "blended rate" for each state for the CHIPs program. This means less of a financial burden on the federal government and more on the states. This isn't going to work. The federal government certainly has budget issues, but the states are in a bigger financial crunch. Anyone who has been on a state plan knows how hard it is to get access to health care that's comparable to those with standard insurance plans.

WHAT ME, WORRIED?

The irony is that politicians, especially presidential candidates, count on seniors for votes. Obama should start fretting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/us/05deficit.html?src=recg

Car Shopping - HELP!

2011-07-04T07:11:00.001-07:00

My 11-year-old Ford Taurus wagon has had no air conditioning for the past three years. We've tried to fix it because we believe in owning cars until we run them to the ground. We've put a lot of money in repairs into this car, which I regret having bought. But I didn't cut my losses when I should have, but after all these years, I'm entitled to search for a new or newer car. HELP!

I hate shopping for cars. It's because I don't believe in leasing or trading up every few years that I have more trepidation about commitment to a car than Prince Albert had to choosing a bride. With human beings, there is the hope of working out any problems that may arise. When it comes to fixing problems with cars, there is usually one-sided resentment and the feeling of having been taken.

Here are the other problems I'm facing with this purchase, which may not happen for months or even until next year.

Ken and I are allergic to debt. We own everything outright. We bought our 2004 Nissan Sentry in 2007 for cash. We've become more frugal than ever before.
I love station wagons. They're roomy and convenient. They fit in our small garage. They drive like cars, not trucks or buses. There are very few station wagons on the market.
I need to fit one Britax car seat, one booster seat and one adult in the back seat.
I still need ample cargo space and I don't want to buy a Thule container for the roof. Also, the trunk of a wagon or SUV makes a great changing station.
I'm terrified of driving large vehicles. I once drove someone's Range Rover and I was petrified of hitting a child, a dog or a fire hydrant. Just because so many people drive SUVs and minivans doesn't mean I have the confidence for it.

Did I mention that Consumer Reports' ratings can be confusing? They'll praise one model, but then admit that it's low on reliability. I think reliability is important. Am I asking for too much? If anyone has a suggestion on a car that's roomy and convenient and easily maneuverable, please let me know!

Closing Arguments

2011-07-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

My mother has been addicted to the Casey Anthony trial and has been keeping me up-to-date on what's been happening and how evidence was being used in the trial. Aside from the fact that I barely have time to watch television, this is a trial I don't think I could watch even if I were bedridden and somehow got bored with reading. The idea that a mother can murder her child is unfathomable for me.

I know first-hand that kids can drive you crazy. My son went through phases such as tearing pages from books, painting my keyboard with nail polish (and my favorite, hard-to-get shade, at that), turning on and off all the lights every minute, locking doors and flushing things down the toilet. Those phases were costly, too, because I had to call a locksmith and a plumber. He's destroyed things I haven't fixed or replaced yet. He whines a lot, sometimes for hours at a time. And, like most children, he doesn't listen to us. Sometimes he's actually defiant. Of course, we get upset and frustrated. Who wouldn't? But it doesn't take long for us to hug him and kiss him and tell him over and over again how much we love him.

One day I arranged for a play date with a friend at the zoo. The kids played well together, as they usually do. My friend and I decided to go for lunch afterward at the mall in Trumbull. By then, her son was getting tired. Kids who are tired tend to fight it until they become silly and overly active. She lost her temper when he ran off to the area where they was a photo session with the Easter Bunny. She's adamant about not exposing her son to Christian holidays. I figure my son will learn about them, anyway, but I ran after my child when I saw he would interfere with the photo shoots. When she got her son back, she screamed at him that he was lucky she came back for him. I was a bit shocked because I'd never seen her lose her cool and she always seemed to be more in control over him and more patient with him than I am with mine. (About 16 months ago I blogged about being an incompetent parent. Since then, I'd forgotten that I was not the only one who couldn't figure out how to handle my toddler.) I knew she was angry and probably tired herself and didn't mean it. And, no doubt, she hugged and kissed him and told him over and over how much she loves him.

But my friend and I wanted to have children. Like many young girls, Casey Anthony didn't want motherhood and she took every opportunity to shirk her responsibilities. From what I understand, she was under a lot of pressure from her domineering mother to keep and rear her child. If motherhood was so terrible for her, why didn't she tell her mother that she had to give Caylee to someone who loved her enough to give her a good life? I just can't understand it.

The Hot Dog Wars

2011-07-02T04:08:00.000-07:00

Every summer holiday weekend means barbeques. Steaks, hamburgers and, of course, hot dogs. People who say they don't eat meat eat hot dogs. There's something about the combination of fat and salt that is irresistible. And, somewhere on our quest to have our junk food and feel healthy about it, someone came up with the idea of uncured and organic hot dogs.

Now it turns out that even these healthy wieners have as much of those carcinogen-linked nitrates. What's even scarier is that some of the ingredients, such as celery juice and celery powder, sound so healthy. Apparently, a bacterial culture converts those benign sounding ingredients into nitrates.

Which means that if you enjoy what you're eating, you're eating the wrong food. And if you're spending more on organics, you could just be wasting money.

Nitrates, by the way, have been around for centuries to cure meat and kill the bacteria that causes botulism and gives charcuterie its distinct flavor. My grandparents ate those foods and they lived until they were 89 and 95, respectively. Did I mention that they also smoked and never exercised? I guess it just boils down to sheer, dumb luck.

At any rate, the food manufacturers are actually demanding more labeling. I never thought I'd live to see the day!

Cry Rape!

2011-07-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

He said. She said. It was ugly and it got uglier. I'm referring, of course, to the accusations that Dominque Strauss-Kahn raped a worker at the Sofitel. I had difficulty believing the accusation from the beginning. It's not that I doubt that rape happens and that sometimes the perpetrator is affluent or comes from a respectable background. remember Alex Kelly. What troubled me about this case was the swiftness of it all, from the arrest to the hysterical conviction by the public. Intuitively, I knew there was a lot missing from the story, but I couldn't pin it down without speculating about what happened. And we really don't know what happened. He may have forced himself on her. It may have been consensual.

But it turns out that the woman lied big time and about other important things besides accusing someone of rape. She lied on her application for asylum. She lied to an immigration judge. She lied about previous claims of rape. She lied on her tax records. She lied about her children. She lied to the grand children. And in a translated phone call to her boyfriend, who is in prison, she said she knew what she was doing. (Why wasn't this conversation translated earlier?) So she wasn't such a poor, uneducated immigrant who was just trying to eek out a living in a safe haven. She has street smarts and quite a finely honed skill of being able to manipulate people. She wasn't working in a slum hotel. She knew that people who stayed at the hotel were well-heeled. In the time it took to clean his room, she could have determined that she hit the jackpot.

You can dismiss this case by saying that the woman is a pathological liar and the police and prosecutor were incompetent, but there is something much more disturbing about this case. A man's reputation was sullied, perhaps destroyed forever. Whether or not he had affairs in the past is irrelevant. That hasn't stopped people from worshiping JFK or forgiving Brad Pitt for leaving Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie. Perhaps Strauss-Kahn will reclaim his reputation, but what happened to him can and does happen to many men on a lower scale. There have been several cases where women cried rape, most notably Cathleen Crowell, who accused Gary Dotson of rape. It took years for him to be exonerated of the charges, thanks to DNA evidence, but his life was ruined. He was imprisoned at the age of 22 and never got the proper guidance to rebuild his life. Date rape happens, so do accusations of it. On a lower scale, there are women who dress provocatively and then get offended when they get unwanted attention. No one deserves it, but sometimes it boils down to using good judgment and taking precautions. Would you go to the favelas of Brazil wearing good jewelry? Of course, not. There have been a myriad of warnings about being shot at and robbed.

What happened at the Sofitel is nothing short of a tragedy for all involved.

Fascinators - The New Hats

2011-06-30T10:09:00.001-07:00

It takes a first lady or princess to set off a hat craze. It happened with Jackie Kennedy and her famous pillbox hat. Then again with Princess Diana, who wore traditional hats with expected feathers or veils, often at the expected flattering angle.

Now it's the Duchess of Cambridge, Britain's newest fashion darling (along with her sister, Pippa Middleton), who is setting trends for fashionable headpieces. Only these are not hats. They're fascinators. Perhaps the term hat sounds stuffy or old-fashioned. Fascinators are, well, fascinating. The feather is unexpected. The headpiece doesn't cover too much of the hair. (And the Duchess has exceptionally beautiful, natural looking hair, so why hide it?)

I checked out The New York Fascinator Company (www.fascinatorsnyc.com) to learn more about them. It seems to me that they've been around for a long time, but today's fascinators are a great improvement. I remember wearing a flower or bow in my then long hair. It was fairly easy to pin to the hair, but things couldn't be easier now. Some fascinators are on thin wire hairbands.

They're fun, girly girl, witty, and sometimes add just the right touch -- and they're far more contemporary than many hats. There's only one problem. Hats work with short hair. Fascinators could look silly. You have choices. An unexpected source is the gift shop at Hillwood Estate, Museum and Garden, former home of Marjorie Merriweather Post. They sell hats that are perfect for attending summer weddings. Mrs. Post had unhappy marriages. When I visited Hillwood I noticed her daughters and granddaughters' weddings pictures. None of those pictures had men in them. But the headpieces were remarkable.www.hillwoodmuseum.org

Celebrating 80 Years At The Wesptort Country Playhouse

2011-06-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Westport Country Playhouse celebrated its 80th birthday.

The historic theatre opened on June 29, 1931 with "The Streets of New York," a melodrama which starred Dorothy Gish. Just before the theatre was closed for a much needed renovation, then Artistic Director Joanne Woodward revived the show.

Ever since I can remember, the playhouse has been the heart and soul of Westport. Before it became a playhouse, it was a tannery and then a steam-powdered cider mill before it was abandoned during the 1920s. How perfect was that for creative people, notably local actors who needed a nearby try-out house for Broadway-bound shows. Later it became a summer stock theatre. During the past few years, it became a regional theatre with a longer season. Virtually every production I've seen has been excellent. Around The World In 80 Days is the only recent exception that comes to mind. I don't believe that you have to find every show entertaining. Thought-provoking is fine. Good production values are terrific. That one was just dated and boring, but the cast was made up of real troupers who made the best of a bad situation. Last year's season included two dated plays and one play, Happy Days, that was simply hard to like unless you're a fan of theatre of the absurd. That said, I give Mark Lamos, the artistic director, credit for not choosing only crowd pleasers. I like to go to the theatre with an open mind. I've seen shows that were awful at first, but then saw different productions that made them seem like completely different plays.

The celebration of the playhouse's anniversary had the usual promotions and a cake resembling the playhouse (donated by CakeSuite of Westport), but it also included distributing 80 balloons to 80 different locations in Westport, Weston, Fairfield, Norwalk, Wilton and beyond. Attached to each balloon string was a voucher for two tickets for the upcoming production of Terrence McNally's "Lips Together, Teeth Apart." What clever marketing!

For more information on upcoming events, visit www.westportplayhouse.com.

What's The Job Outlook? It Can Improve If We Try.

2011-06-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

Despite what the National Bureau of Economic Research claims, the recession is not over. And there's no such thing as a jobless recovery, no matter what the GDP numbers indicate.

Sarah Bloom Raskin, Federal Reserve governor, finally stated what the rest of us have known for a very long time: Stagnating incomes and financial inequality are not going to help the recovery. "This inequality is destabilizing and undermines the ability of the economy to grow sustainably and efficiently," she said. Disparities "drag down maximum economic growth and are anathema to the social progress that is part and parcel of such growth."

It sure is! The less people earn, the less they can afford to spend, which means that retail suffers, restaurants suffer, auto sales suffer, home buying suffers, fewer high school students go on to college, and we all end up suffering. By not doing anything to intervene, the government is going to cause the U.S. to capsize.

What's scary is that every day we know more and more what the Fed knows and no one is doing anything about it. The Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances was released just three months ago. It showed that the poorest 20 percent of families saw their net worth fall by 18 percent in two years (2007-2009). The middle class suffered a decline by 21 percent. Twenty-five percent of households earning less than $15K per year don't even have a bank savings or checking account. And in those three months, no one at the Federal Reserve has been able to convince Congress or the president that they need to act fast to change things.

What can they do? It's simple. They passed the Patriot Act in less than 24 hours. By this time tomorrow, Congress (yes, vacationing Congress) can pass a law that taxes to the hilt any American company that outsources labor. Make these companies, which are very cash healthy, pay the income tax, FICA and Medicare on salaries comparable to the U.S. and pay tariffs on goods manufactured and services performed outside the overseas. Make it cheaper for them to employ Americans workers here. It will fix many problems. People will pay their own income tax, their share of FICA and Medicare taxes and they will spend.

Yesterday, a Greek official defended the austerity measures (of course) and blamed the middle class for getting too big for its britches, wanting bigger homes and multiple cars. This is not what the middle class used to be, he insisted. Oh, no? In my early lifetime, fathers supported their families on one income and most families I knew had one bedroom per child. Most families I knew ate out once in a while and went on vacations. Why should such a lifestyle be exclusive to the rich?

Part of the problem with the job outlook is that employers only want young people. It's a myth that they want cheap labor. I just got off the telephone with someone whose niece was just offered her first job out of college. In August, the economics major will work for Deutche Bank for a six figure salary and four months of training in London with housing that the company will pay for. Yes, she will be earning more than $100K per year and she still needs to be trained to do her job.

Here's an idea. Hire older people who already have the experience. Pay them the same money and offer them free cosmetic surgery so they will look younger. Do the math and you'll find that it's cheaper to hire the middle aged than the young. Hey, Deutche Bank. You're in finance. You can figure it out.

Mid-Year Planning

2011-06-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

Someone once said that people are born optimists and the proof is in keeping calendars.

That was a while ago. The word calendar is very limited. For a while, it was agenda, but that sounded so calculating. The proper term is planner, because that's what we have to do. And any day now, the stores will be stocking paper planners, which many people still believe are far superior to electronic ones. How is that possible in this digital age?

For starters, you're not tethered to a computer and you're not squinting at a smartphone. How many times has someone said "I'll have to get back to you because my calendar is on Outlook?" Have you ever tried typing lots of nots w/omistkes on teh tny kyueboard of yoru CrackBerry? What if you got the telephone number or home email address wrong? That could be the fatal blow to a potentially good professional relationship.

Many of us also have multiple forms of income. We're juggling two jobs, whether it's by choice or out of necessity. Some people are testing the waters as entrepreneurs. Others, like myself, have a part-time staff job and freelance anywhere we can to try to make ends meet. Perhaps we also volunteer. The last thing we want is for our employers to have too much information on our lives outside the office.

Years ago, research was done about the connection between the brain and the physical act of writing goals on a piece of paper. Those who only thought about what they wanted to do were less likely to achieve the goals than those who actually wrote them down. Note: it helps to look at those goals frequently. We all need reminders.

Which is one reason why I was delighted to get a Rhodia Classic Meeting Book in the mail today. It was a comp from Exaclair, the world's best paper company. Exaclair happens to own several lines of stationery I've been buying for years. I discovered Clairefontane notebooks 20 years ago. They always made me feel cheerful and distinctive with their plaid covers, grid sheets and colored tabs and European sized paper. I used to try in vain to talk myself out of buying them because they were so much costlier than Mead notebooks. I always loved the gorgeous boxes that held the scalloped G. Lalo writing paper. Everyone who first received a letter from me that I wrote on Lalo paper thought they it was a wedding invitation. My first Quo Vadis planners were small and came in a soft leather cover with a snap. I bought one in green for my professional goals and one in red for my personal ones. Dates didn't matter. I just loved the feel of the paper and the portability of the planner. Because it was bound, I felt those goals, those ideas would have more permanence than if I just jotted them down in my Filofax (which is not owned by Exaclair). Then I found improved index cards. Called Bristol cards, they are roughly the same size and used for similar purposes, but the feel is infinitely smother, the colors are soft and beautiful, and they have grids instead of regular ruling. Ever since I discovered them, index cards became a pedestrian way of keeping notes, and something for other people. I found a nice box to store my Bristol cards.

I'd seen the small stapled Rhodia pads in several stores, but I just couldn't justify buying them because they would become wrecked in my handbags. When I saw a small leather covered one, I had to buy it to jot down interesting phrases I'd heard or read. The timing was perfect. I'd just read Michael Tonello's book, Bringing Home the Birkin and I fell in love with orange, whether or not it was Hermes orange. I bought a Rhodia mid-size notebook with the orange leather cover. My husband loved mine and bought himself two. We were totally hooked. The size is perfect and we love the smooth paper, not just because of the feel, but because it's fountain pen-friendly. The cover and the paper make writing things down a wonderful experience. I don't scrawl because Rhodia paper demands respect and thought.

Back to my new Rhodia Classic Meeting Book. How I wish this had been available when I was planning my wedding! But no matter. It's available now and it's going to change the way I approach pitches. It lends itself to creativity. Whether a writer works on fiction or non-fiction, there's research to be done, calls to be made, new ides to interject, editing and reediting. Yes, I'll still use my regular planner with pre-printed dates and times for the reminders of doctors' appointments and reminders to call the tax assessor's office. But now each new idea I'll get will have its own beautiful page with guides for topics, notes and actions -- an incentive to get me to follow up.

It inspired me to break down and buy two Circa Rhodia notebooks. I just can't resist Rhodia. Recently my brother sent my son a Yankees coloring book. He tucked a two line note inside. I recognized the paper. Another Rhodia addict in the family! It's a good addiction to have.

An Old Idea Whose Time Has Come Again

2011-06-27T12:00:00.001-07:00

Recently I spoke to a friend whose daughter is a stay-at-home mom with two kids. Because of her modestly paying profession, It doesn't pay for her to work, because most, if not all her income and perhaps then some, will go to daycare. So she and her husband are trying to be frugal and they joined a food co-op.

What a great idea! I'd heard of those many years ago and then again about six years ago when friends of ours joined one in Philadelphia. For those who are unfamiliar with food co-ops, they are nonprofit groceries and members have to pitch in to do something -- stock items, bookkeeping, whatever. They get their food at a discount and, of course, variety and gourmet goodies are not high on the agenda. But that's OK. It means they can get their staples at a lower cost.

I looked into food co-ops in Stamford and was surprised to fine some, mostly affiliated with Angel Food Ministries, which is a national organization. There is also The Willimantic Food Co-op in Willimantic, but that's way too far from Stamford for me to save money.

Here's a sample of what $35.00 plus applicable sales taxes will buy at a Angel Food Ministries:

A dozen eggs
1 quart of shelf-stabilized milk
4 pounds mac 'n cheese
1 pound fresh string beans
1 pound sugar snap beans
1 pound dry beans
1 pound shoestring cut carrots
1 pound chopped spinach
1 pound brown rice
1.5 pounds pork
1 pound ground beef
3 pounds fully cooked hamburgers (including buns)
5 pounds chicken (breast and large wings, divided)
1 pound turkey loaf
1 pound ground chicken
8 ounces pancake mix
7.5 ounces break and bake cookies

That's quite a lot of food. It's interesting that there are no fruits, just vegetables, meat, milk eggs and some simple carbs. You would think that apples and bananas are part of most people's diets. Nevertheless, I give credit to Angel Food Ministries for providing so much for people whose incomes are really low. If you don't need their services, please consider making a donation. www.angelfoodministries.com.

The Willimantic Food Co-op (willimanticfood.coop) is more like a traditional supermarket with locally and regionally sourced food. It was originally a buyer's club, a precursor to the surviving price clubs that are ubiquitous for so many people across socio-economic paths. It's worth checking out, if only for the recipes that people of most incomes can enjoy.

The Dodgers Are Hurting

2011-06-27T06:45:00.000-07:00

It came as no surprise to me that a major league baseball team would file for bankruptcy. It was inevitable. Baseball is as American as you can get. For many it's perhaps more the field of dreams of becoming multimillionaires than the love of the game. After all, athletes have short career spans, so they must rake in the big money as quickly as possible.

In addition to the astronomical salaries teams pay players, there's the business model. I admit I know little about most business models, but it seems that they share a variation of a theme by Tolstoy. Every unsuccessful business model is unsuccessful in its own way.

I, for one, am curious about why a baseball team should be considered a franchise? It's not as if you anyone can put $X of down for a team and give 25 percent of the profits to the company that owns the franchise, as they would with a McDonald's franchise. With sports, it's way too complicated. Sports franchises are secretive and baseball somehow got exempted from anti-trust status. Baseball owners convinced officials that they're losing money and that the cities can bring in all this revenue if they just turn public spaces into subsidized ball parks.

So what happened that the Dodgers declared bankruptcy? Part of the blame is on the economy, but the fact is that baseball isn't going away. Even with fewer people attending games (not just because of the economy, but because of the high price of admission), there are two other ways to get revenues: selling corporate box seats and advertising. This year, there was a violent post-game attack on Giants fan Bryan Stow, which led to a lawsuit about Dodger Stadium's poor stadium management and security. More important, Frank McCourt's finances are being investigated by the baseball commissioner, in part because of his divorce. Was he unable to find investors, maybe? I don't think so. Word has it that since Frank and Jamie McCourt bought the Dodgers, Frank wasn't just concerned with the bottom line (which is to be expected), but his personal business.

Maybe there is a silver lining in this. Janice Hahn, a Los Angeles councilwoman has already introduced legislation calling on Major League Baseball to give fans an opportunity to buy the team and make it a public franchise. Now that would be a field of dreams for the fans.

Sicker and Sicker

2011-06-24T18:32:00.000-07:00

Every day I read the newspaper or listen to the news I feel as if I'm caught in a surrealistic film. In one week, here's what happened:

Two Congressmen threw a hissy fit and walked out of the talks about the budget deficit. (This was supposed to be a critical issue.)
Congress condemned President Obama's intervention in Libya but authorized funding for it. (So are they for it or against it?)
Tyson Foods bribed government inspectors. When the top executives found out, they found a more efficient, acceptable way to make those payments. (So where are the food watchdogs here?)
And did I mention that the Supreme Court ruled that Wal-Mart did not discriminate against 1.5 million women who were part of a class action suit against the retailer?

Each day I feel that any confidence I might have in "the system" is being eroded further. I'm afraid to buy food because FDA approval means nothing. There's chicken poop and toxic chemicals in fertilizer, and this is considered perfectly fine by the government. I'm not ready to start my own garden. I don't have the time. I'm phobic about anything that crawls. And I'm too poor to buy organic. Besides, just because it says organic doesn't really mean it is. Even if the food is, the packaging could have BPA or the water source could be contaminated. Forgive me if I sound paranoid or cynical.

At least I won't be shopping at Wal-Mart or buying Tyson food.

Fed: We Give Up!

2011-06-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

The Federal Reserve, under the helm of Great Depression expert and Alan Greenspan protege Ben Bernanke, finally conceded what the rest of have known for a long time: the economy is not going to recover any time soon.

A statement released by the bankers' shill read:

“The economic recovery is continuing at a moderate pace, though somewhat more slowly than the committee had expected. The committee expects the pace of recovery to pick up over coming quarters and the unemployment rate to resume its gradual decline."

That's a variation of the ongoing theme that the recession has been over for two years. (See my earlier post which referenced the National Bureau of Economic Research.) It would not be inaccurate to interpret that as Bernanke's telling the bottom 98 percent of Americans that they're completely on their own.

I've blogged earlier that Bernanke needs to resign or be fired immediately. In January 2010, the Senate gave Bernanke a second four year term. Can the U.S. wait until 2014 until his term is over? I don't think so. Bernanke is simply ineffective for the overall economy. He even admitted that Wal-Mart has more economic data than the Fed does. Even if it's true, how stupid was that to admit it? All Bernanke has done is help his cronies on Wall Street, and there is no reason to believe things are going to change under his chairmanship. Here are other clues from the Fed's statement:

The Federal Open Market Committee (i.e, the policy board of the Fed), voted unanimously to keep interest rates near zero "for an extended period."
The Fed's portfolio of greater than $2 trillion will support low long-term interest rates.
The Fed will buy $600 billion in Treasury securities, as planned, starting next week.
The Fed predicts that unemployment will remain in the range of 8.6 to 8.9 percent through this year and drop slightly to a range of 7.8 to 8.2 percent by 2012.
With its long-term investments, the Fed is ruling out acknowledging real inflation. (Apparently, rising commodity prices will still be ignored.)

In other words, it's ignoring inflation and printing more money, which will devalue the dollar further, and it is giving up on the idea of full employment.

When the Senate gave Bernanke another term, President Barack Obama lauded, "As the nation continues to face the consequences of the worst recession in a generation, Ben Bernanke has provided wisdom and steady leadership in the midst of the financial and economic crisis."

I hope that Obama's opponent, preferably a real Democrat (not a Republican in disguise) quotes him on that.

Bernanke and his mentor, Alan "Greenpants" Greenspan

And Now A Word from Our Sponsors

2011-06-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

This just in: Wal-Mart did not discriminate against anyone. One and a half million women simply must be wrong. So sayeth the same people who legitimized Citizens United.

The banks were too big to fail, so they got bigger.

Now corporations are too big to sue, but not to pay their fair share of taxes.

And just recently, The New York Times ran an article that Justice Clarence Thomas (whose wife is a voice of Citizens United) is overly chummy with a Texas real estate billionaire. With friends like these, this country doesn't need Al-Qaeda. Consider the U.S.A. a full-blown banana republic.

Death and Taxes

2011-06-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Franklin wrote to Jean-Baptise Leroy, "Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

Ben must be turning in his grave with another major report about how America's largest corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes. According to The New York Times, corporations are hoping that Obama and Congress will create a "repatriation holiday" which would allow them to bring home the money, but at a federal income tax on profits that would be only 5.25 percent for one year instead of 35 percent. The Times reported,

"Apple has $12 billion waiting offshore, Google has $17 billion and Microsoft, $29 billion."

Billions! And corporations, which have placed the IRS in the same category as The Untouchables in India or the bubonic plague, are begging to be taxed so that they can inject money into the nation's economy. This will be the next stimulus, they promise. Forgive me while I barf.

"For every billion dollars that we invest, that creates 15,000 to 20,000 jobs either directly or indirectly," claims Duke Energy's Jim Rogers. Oh, so that's been the problem for the past 10 years. It wasn't outsourcing or 9/11 or the mortgage fiasco or the meltdown of the financial markets. It's the taxes, stupid.

The supposedly non-partisan organization The National Bureau of Economic Research explained further that most of the profits have been returned to the shareholders in dividends and stock buybacks. The NBER is supposed to explain the way the economy works, but it really seems to be a shill for corporations. Just look at their website and read their reports. They claim the latest recession lasted 18 months, from December 2007 to June 2009. Need I say more about this organization?

Here's another example of reality when it comes to the way corporations serve their shareholders.

General Electric, the first subject of Major Tax Avoidance by a Corporation, used to be a wonderful investment for shareholders such as you and me and some institutions. GE's dividends used to increase a bit year after year. The stock price rose quite steadily and then the stock would split 2 for 1 around the time it stayed at about $100 per share. It would happen again and again and again. Then it stopped 11 years ago. (Disclosure: I've been a GE shareholder for more than 25 years.)

Here's a recap of their dividends, indicated in cents per share:

7/25/2011 - $0.15
4/25/2011 - $0.14
1/25/2011 - $0.14
10/25/2010 - $0.12
7/26/2010 - $0.10
4/26/2010 - $0.10
1/25/2010 - $0.10
10/26/2009 - $0.10
7/26/2009 - $0.10
4/27/2009 - $0.31
1/26/2009 - $0.31
10/27/2008 - $0.31
7/25/2008 - $0.31
4/25/2008 - $0.31
1/25/2008 - $0.31
10/27/2007 - $0.28
7/27/2007 - $0.28
4/25/2007 - $0.28
1/25/2007 - $0.28, up 3 cents per share since 2006.

This is curious, especially set against the time frame of the recession, as claimed by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The dividend went up during the said recession, and plummeted right after it was over.

But it gets better. GE's last stock split was 3 for 1 and that took place on May 5, 2000. According to our friends at the NBER, there was a recession that lasted from March to November 2001 -- just eight months! What? No time for GE's share price to recover?

How could it when the rape of GE's shareholders was in evidently just gaining momentum? Just for ha-has, I researched the history of GE and took the closing prices of each year on or about June 1. (Remember, the financial meltdown occurred in September 2007, so if I chose year-end closings, the numbers would be distorted.

Date Closing Price

6/1/2011	18.49
6/1/2010	13.99
6/1/2009	11.09
6/2/2008	23.56
6/1/2007	32.62
6/1/2006	27.26
6/1/2005	27.85
6/1/2004	25.42
6/2/2003	21.95
6/3/2002	21.60
6/1/2001	35.60
6/1/2000	38.05

In 11 years, the stock price went down by 51 percent. It wasn't impressive even during the financial bubble. In 2009, it tanked because the financial markets collapsed and GE had focused on the financial maneuverings instead of manufacturing. Supposedly now it's making real, tangible products again, but the stock price still sucks.

So back to taxes. What these corporations are serving Congress is a variation of the same thing they're serving shareholders -- a lot of BS. And everyone, whether they own shares in any company or not, is suffering.

Read more of the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/business/20tax.html
Statistics for GE's dividends can be found at http://www.dailyfinance.com/quotes/general-electric-company/ge/nys/dividends-splits.

My Dirty Little Zillow Secret

2011-06-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

As readers of my blog know, I love homes. I love to look at open houses. I'm also the mother of a young child and I have less time for this hobby now.

Fortunately, Zillow has grown from a simple information site to one with a lot more detail and my favorite part -- pictures!

It has always been important to me to keep abreast of prices of homes, remodeling costs, cars and luxury items such as jewelry and products from Hermes and Louis Vuitton. Even if I am not in the market to buy, I don't want to feel as if I'm living in the past and I certainly don't want to get sticker shock. When it comes to home, my interest in seeing them is not just about price, but about trends in designs and building materials. I will never, of course, have my dream house and I accept the fact that even a house that's five years old is already dated.

Zillow has been an easy, albeit inaccurate way to keep up to date with the value of homes. During the housing bubble, I noted that some houses and condos were way overvalued. Since the bubble burst, that is still happening in some cases, but in other cases, houses are being undervalued. Zestimates on on rental values are way out of whack. I appreciate the fact that there is more history on sales and property taxes, and those are based on public records.

Here's the new problem: I can snoop on people I know. I just happened to check on a house for sale and I saw a link to a house for sale that belongs to a couple I know. What I didn't know was that they put their house on the market or why and now I'm speculating. I hate myself for this. It gets even worse.

The parents of one of my son's friends are moving to the South because they are broke -- well, sort of. They're the type of people who only have money for their toys, but not necessities, so they got into a vicious cycle of debt -- mortgage, home equity loans, car leases and credit cards. Still, I'm floored every time I hear about their new acquisition, such as replacing an expensive car lease on a 14 month old car with one that carries a higher monthly payment. For months they've led us to believe that this move will help them financially. With what they make on the sale of the house, they can pay off the home equity loan and still put 50 percent down on a house that costs half the value of t heir Fairfield County house. That make sense, we thought. Until I remembered that Zillow tracks history. And then I saw that they are not going to be better off. She bought the house eight years ago for $475,000, put a minimum of $140,000 of renovations into it, and sold it for $495,000. Ouch! And did I mention that the job offer he got isn't firm? There's no letter of employment, no contract. I feel for them. I hope everything works out for them because it would be a disaster if it doesn't. Of course, they were and still are irresponsible about their finances, but how much should they and their innocent children be punished for it?

When Ken and I lived in our condo complex, I would go to open houses to see the renovations made on other units. Our place was built during the 1980s. It was a great time for building. Ceilings were high. Rooms were large. Crown molding was installed. The only negatives were that every kitchen had an interesting architectural feature of a curved wall around a cabinet and the ubiquitous wine rack (read: dust collector). I was inspired by what could be done, but I was also envious that we didn't have the money for renovations. We wouldn't have gone top of the line, but we did have two obstacles: ugly, wrinkled, stained original carpeting and ugly, dated Formica cabinets with oak strips on the bottom. We replaced the floors with tile and laminate for $15,000 with the labor. We replaced the ugly dark beige toggle switches with contemporary white rocker switches and matching outlets for about $150.00 in parts. We did the work ourselves. We got a lot of value for those improvements. Still, it took months until it dawned on me how the other condo owners could afford to put in gourmet kitchens and luxury bathrooms: home equity loans. Ken and I are anti-debt. So we don't live in a fancy house and the air conditioning on my 11-year-old-car isn't working, but we don't owe any money. At least we aren't awake a night wondering how we're going to manage. And I'm no longer envious of those with nicer homes and late model cars. I guess I needed to snoop and think hard in order to make that envy dissipate. Now I'm less curious about other people's finances.

What Defines War?

2011-06-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought war was an act of hostility, like dropping bombs. Sort of like what Obama is authorizing in Libya and is dangerously close to doing in Yemen. So how does he think that what he's doing does not apply to the War Powers Act? Why aren't more lawmakers on his case instead of just tacitly agreeing with everything he says and does? Yes, I know. He is a constitutional scholar and Commander in Chief, but aren't his actions getting out of hand? It seems to me that the U.S. is going down a slippery slope for reasons its citizens don't understand. Yes, Qaddafi is a dictator, but he's been one for almost 40 years. Why is this suddenly an issue? What about Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Asad? When and where will this end? Why save the rest of the world (and there haven't been calls for help) when Americans are losing jobs, losing homes, losing health care coverage and losing municipal services?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16pow

ers.html

A Thumb And a Forefinger

2011-06-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

That's how much we care.

The New York Times reported today that Medicaid benefits that were extended because of unemployment are expected to run out at the end of month. That's all people who are still struggling to keep a roof over their heads need right now. Coincidentally, WNYC's program, The Takeaway, had a thoughtful discussion about a new study that shows what medicaid families knew all along: that the poor don't have the same access to health care.

Earlier this year, my family and I experienced what the poor face when it comes to health care. For two very scary months, we were on Connecticut's Charter Oak (for adults) and HUSKY (for children) plans. I injured my knee in two places and had to see an orthopaedist. I checked out the credentials of the specialists who were on the plan and sort of got lucky. I found one who had a great educational background. Too bad he had a great future behind him. When I saw him, he refused to take X-rays or an MRI. He admitted that he, too, had a knee problem, but had neglected it. Either he was burned out by life or work, or he was trying to protect the insurance company from incurring more costs. (Note: the private insurance companies Connecticut uses for these plans are Aetna and United Healthcare. So much for "state" insurance plans.) Fortunately, an excellent anti-inflammatory medication relieved the pain quickly. My husband decided to work in a physical before his new job started. The only primary care physicians on the plan were residents and he was told that he would not see the same doctor twice. Great. It's a well-known fact that continuity fosters better overall health.

Then my son contracted a nasty stomach bug that manifested itself in alternating vomiting and severe diarrhea on and off for more than two weeks. I called two pharmacists and was told that they don't recommend giving medication for that for kids under the age of five. It was a bug that just had to work itself out of his system. I accepted that until every few days our son would be violently sick again. Our regular pediatrician does not accept HUSKY, but he recommended someone who does. I called her office and was told that Dr. Ester Ramirez could not see Alex for a sick visits for more than a week because she was booked. I explained that this situation was not something that can wait. Her office held firm. I tried other pediatricians. The HUSKY website is not accurate because many doctors change their affiliation. Finally, I called United Healthcare and said that my son needs to see someone before he gets even sicker. They authorized urgent care. Thank goodness the pediatric urgent care facility in this town, Firefly Pediatrics, is run by pediatricians Harry Romanowitz and Stuart Silverstein, whose credentials are in a stratosphere above most doctors. Their pleasant personalities are a bonus, but their training is superb. I have every confidence in them. Dr. Silverstein was there the afternoon we took Alex to see him. He took cultures (the real ones -- that take 24 hours to grow before reports are generated) and suggested that we sprinkle pro-biotics in his food. That evening, our son's condition had already dramatically improved.

We were lucky, but mostly it's because we were not on the state arrangement for long and I know how to screen doctors and won't settle for just anyone. Many people are intimidated and don't ask questions. And many, especially the poor, end up with crappy health care. This is unacceptable. Good health care should be a right, not a choice and not something that is dependent on luck.

Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/health/policy/16medicaid.html?src=recg and http://www.thetakeaway.org/2011/jun/16/new-study-shows-families-medicaid-have-reduced-access-specialty-care/

Political Scandals at the Westport Country Playhouse!

2011-06-12T05:37:00.001-07:00

With the recent news of Arnold and Maria's divorce and Anthony Weiner's twitter escapades fresh in our minds, the Westport Country Playhouse's revival of W. Somerset Maugham's The Circle couldn't come at a better time.

Set in 1921, the play opens as Arnold Champion-Cheney, M.P. is about to relive his childhood tragedy. His mother, Lady Catherine, bolted 30 years before with her husband's political peer, best friend and son's godfather, Lord Porteous. His father, Clive, is arriving with little notice. His wife, Elizabeth, surprised him with her announcement that she invited Lady Catherine and Lord Porteus were coming to stay with them. The reunion gets even more awkward as Elizabeth reveals she wants to leave Arnold for their houseguest, Teddie Luton. The play is perfectly crafted, with one exception: the undefined character of Mrs. Shenstone, who serves no apparent purpose in the play. At best, she is a friend of Arnold and Elizabeth's, but she drives not one part of the plot and supplies no wisdom or even wit to the play. There is plenty of both in this play, and the wit evokes Oscar Wilde. " The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed for expediency." Which makes the presence of Mrs. Shenstone even harder to understand.

"She was like a lovely marquise in an old French comedy," Clive describes Lady Catherine. Occasionally he lets his anger and hurt break through his otherwise unfailing civil demeanor. He snidely brings an old photo album to show everyone what a delicate beauty his narcissistic ex-wife used to be. In another scene, he tells Lady Catherine dispassionately, "I love old wine, old friends and old books, but I like young women."

Other revelations are sure to become prescient. Teddie describes his ex-patriot life in Malaysia as being with people who have learned to make the best of one's situation. That sums up the life of Lady Catherine and Lord Porteous, who fled to Italy for a "silly, worthless life" and a social circle of divorcees and kept women. He promised her, "I don't offer you happiness. I offer you love" and certainly kept that promise.

Clive, whose emotional pain prevented him from living in the elegant country house where the play is set, tries to help his son save his marriage to Elizabeth. Remove the bars and the prisoner won't want to leave. Alas, he fails.

Nicholas Martin's well-paced direction keeps the audience members interested even though they can guess the end by the title. Everything comes full circle.

The cast is nearly impeccable with Paxton Whitehead as Clive, Marsha Mason as Lady Catherine, Marc Vietor as Arnold and John Horton as Lord Porteous. Whitehead's performance of Clive as gentleman, responsible father, victim and master of vengeance is absolutely delicious. Mason nails her character's combination of shallowness, charm, determination and acceptance and is nicely cast opposite Horton, who is spot-on as a now cantankerous man who threw away a promising career for love. Vietor is ideal as the somewhat stuffy and dutiful aristocrat who is as clueless about his wife's feelings as about the antique furniture he collects. As Arnold's wife, Elizabeth, Gretchen Hall is pleasant but not quite convincing. Elizabeth should be suitable as the wife of a member of parliament, but she comes across as superficial and naive. What is lacking in her performance in the early part of the play is the self-possession expected of a 25-year-old of that time and social rank and the steeliness required for a woman who is about to hurt her emotionally bruised husband. Bryce Pinkham's Teddie needs to convey the charisma that would persuade Elizabeth to give up social status and money for life in an English colony in a third world country. James Joseph O'Neil is proper as the butler, there when needed but always discreet, and Christina Rouner makes the best of her undefined character, Mrs. Shenstone.

Alexander Dodge's interpretation of Aston-Adey, the Champion-Cheney house in Dorset is utter perfection. Classic columns and wide doors set against sky blue walls and exquisite furniture and accessories. Philip Rosenberg's lighting beautifully complements the scenic design. Gabriel Berry's costume choices reflected the flouncy Lady Catherine and sometimes discomfited Elizabeth.

The Circle will run at the Westport Country Playhouse through June 25. For tickets, call the box office at 203-227-4166 or toll-free at 1-888-927-7529. Tickets are also available online. The Westport Country Playhouse is located at 25 Powers Court in Westport. There will be several special events in conjunction with The Circle. On Tuesday, June 14 is "Ladies' Night Out," with a pre-show reception at 6:30 p.m. with appetizers, music and chance to win the use of a car from Mercedes-Benz of Fairfield for a weekend. "Talking over Tea" will take place Wednesday, June 22 at noon with lunch and insights into the costuming. Guest speakers include Anne Keefe and Lisa Ficco, artistic advisor and wardrobe supervisor, respectively, at the playhouse. "Backstage Pass" takes place that day, following the 2:00 p.m. matinee. Patrons can meet members of the production stage and learn about scenery and special effects. "Together at the Table," a communal dinner in the playhouse rehearsal barn is set for June 22 at 6:30 p.m. A discounted ticket price of $10.00 includes dinner and a show and is limited to 100 people. You must attend as a family group with student-age children. Thursday Talkback is a question and answer session on June 23 following the performance.

Self-Annihiliation

2011-06-09T08:22:00.000-07:00

Last year I had 365 blog posts, a topic for every day of the year. This year I have not been as diligent due to a combination of family obligations and disbelief in what has been happening in the world, particularly the U.S.

Where do I begin?

With Obama's fourth and perhaps fifth war? His promises to bring the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq have not materialized. Au contraire, not only are U.S. forces still there, now they're also in Libya and Yemen and the something that has been churning in Iraq is becoming more volatile. And he won the Nobel Peace prize?

With U.S. foreign policy? I blogged earlier about Obama's attack on Israel, but he also seems to have forgotten all about North Korea. Last I heard, it's still a threat. Is he waiting for something to happen?

With the federal budget deficit? Hey, that's been going on for years, decades, even, except during a brief period of peace and prosperity when the Golden Heifer existed -- a balanced budget. During the Bush-Cheney years, it was "Deficits don't matter," but now that politicians figure they can tighten the belt on what's left of the middle class, they do.

With the states' attacks on public workers? Yes, I've read about those who get six figure salaries, but there is little that's being reported about those who are barely earning a living wage. Go on the websites of municipalities and look for the job opportunities. Try getting by on $28K-$75K and then still having to buy your bennies.

With the upcoming election? The primaries and caucuses are 18 months away. Where are the two parties? Most of the promising Repugnicans have dropped out. Sarah Palin still doesn't understand that she's a national joke. Mitt Romney is the only one who has a chance. But where are the Dumbocrats to challenge a president who has taken a bad situation and made it far worse than anyone could have predicted, mostly by morphing into his predecessor?

With the jobs situation? Come on, this should really hit home. Everyone knows someone whose livelihood has been affected by The Great Recession. Owners of retail stores, restaurants, and services have suffered big time. The only reason they may still be employed is because they're self-employed. There are plenty who have had to close their businesses. As for the rest of the workforce, it's divided between the big banksters and surviving hedge fund Ponzi-scheme creators and those who are being terrorized about getting canned if they don't do two people's jobs. There are still enough unemployed and underemployed people to have a massive rally in front of the White House and Congress to scare the bejesus out of their occupants.

With inflation? Despite official reports, it's significant. All those big mouths who think people should use public transportation, bicycles or their own two feet to get around and save on gas don't live in suburbia, where there are few sidewalks and, more often than not, one needs a car to get to public transportation. It sounds like a joke, but it's reality. Food prices have gone up at least 37 percent in more than one year. It's a steady increase, so I don't want to read or hear another word that food shouldn't be included in the inflation index because it's volatile. If over the course of three months it goes up 3 percent and down 2 percent and up 5 percent , it's volatile, but an average of 2 percent per month for 18 months is a clear pattern. The government raised what seniors pay for Medicare and supplements, but not Social Security -- not by one cent. These same seniors are getting bupkes in interest on their hard-earned savings. Many people's golden years are turning to rusted iron.

With the health care crisis? The insurance ripoffs are nothing short of sickening and the politicians are not fighting for the public. To make things worse. a list of top hospitals, including Johns Hopkins, the best hospital in the country, are being cited for infections. This is a huge problem and most of it is preventable.

With elected officials? Wow! John Edwards is being prosecuted not for using campaign money for his personal (hello, every politician does), but because it was used to cover up sex! And Anthony Weiner is a whiner. He won't resign, even though he constituents know he's a liar (denying those allegations for more than a week makes him one), a cheat and an untrustworthy "representative." Oh, who cares what they think? They are there to serve him. Pardon my cynicism.

With our local, friendly banksters? Great! Goldman Sachs is being investigated. Why has the government been dragging its feet about this? How long did it take to figure out that GS and the banksters have been robbing this country blind? And why is it taking so long to prosecute Bernie Madoff's enablers? Follow the money and you'll find the culprits.

With the small criminals? Cable television, for example. Seen the rates lately? Obscene! I live in the suburbs in a woody neighborhood. We can't get satellite unless we want to throw our money away. Remember Obama's push for those boxes you had to buy if you didn't already own a newer television set?

With government criminals? Freddie Mac, Sally Mae, Timothy ("I forgot to pay my taxes") Geithner and Ben Bernanke, whose obsession with the Great Depression and lack of understanding of economic data is criminal negligence.

These are enough to make anyone lose hope that this country will get back on its feet. It seems determined to annihilate itself. People are making analogies to the fall of the Roman Empire. That took a lot longer than the 30 years since Ronald Reagan planted the seeds of destruction in the U.S. and which his followers have been cultivating.

Can You Change Your Personality?

2011-05-30T05:55:00.001-07:00

In this seemingly endless jobless recovery, I know a lot of people who are unemployed or underemployed. Most of them have committed the unforgivable sin of becoming middle aged in this youth-obsessed society. I can't say anything to them, but I would love to tell them that they can make their job search less of a struggle if they worked harder at appearing more youthful. For most, it's a matter of tightening middle aged spread, updating their wardrobes (at least with new trendy shoes and bag), bleaching their teeth and getting some fillers injected into their lined faces. For others, it's all of the above plus a personality change.

Is this possible? Is it something they should do? Here are some examples:

One bookkeeper I know has a rather heavy New York accent and somewhat loud, gruff manner about her. This was fine until a company she was with for a long time merged with another and she was made redundant. A year plus later, she landed another job, but that company downsized due to the crumbling economy. Two years later, she is still pounding the pavements. She knows that her voice is liability, but she isn't doing anything about it, at least not socially.

An ex-journalist pursued a Master's degree in interactive communications after she was laid off because rootin' tootin' cowboy Sam Zell ran Tribune to the ground. Sadly, in middle age, her new degree will not likely help her get a new job anyway, let alone one with a decent salary. but her biggest obstacles are her weight and somewhat staid personality. It's ironic she is studying a field that is dominated by young people who think 24/7 about short, pop-up communications that is fun rather than something that evokes seriousness and substance.

Another person I met worked in the telecom industry. He's middle-aged, but quite good looking, soft-spoken and trustworthy. Unfortunately, he doesn't know the art of B.S. and, no doubt, potential employers pick up on his feeling defeated.

Another man my husband knows through four or five job layoffs ago does everything right, from appearance to likable personality to skills. He looks much younger than 47 and he is one of the rare workers who makes it a point to know everything that is involved in a job, instead of finding ways to push responsibilities onto other people or incurring extra costs for his department by hiring temps. The best corporate America could do for him was hire him part-time for several jobs. What's he doing wrong? He isn't lying about his unemployment record and he is probably conveying the idea that he has strong work ethics.

Basically, their liability is the same: they don't know how to sell themselves. They don't have dynamic personalities that dazzle the decision-makers. The young know no fear, so they will apply for jobs for which they have no track record. But many know how to sell themselves. They come in with enthusiasm and sometimes even a sense of entitlement. Watch them in non-business settings and you will see how they come into a room and take over. I wish young entrepreneurs could teach this in seminars.

I have also known (and, unfortunately, worked with) people who can continue to sell their non-existent worth. Without fail, those who have overpromised that they did and they can and they will always underdelivered. But they usually kept their jobs. Some lied; some just stretched their resumes. But the lesson here is that it is your personality, not your experience and skills, that gets you the job and helps you keep it. Employers want people who are fun and upbeat. They want show horses, not workhorses. Results do not matter that much. If you don't believe me, look at the CEOs who perform poorly, but are hired by other corporate boards or who are interviewed by news journalists.

Many houses of worship have opened their doors off-hours for networking groups. Temple Beth El in Stamford has done a lot to help the unemployed with two different ones. On June 6 it will host the final session of Relaunch Your Career. Previous sessions included tips on dealing with hiring managers and HR people who break the law by asking your age, how to use social networking, how to explain gaps in employment, etc. This session will include speakers who have been hiring managers. For more information, visit www.tbe.org.

Uh, Oh, Obama!

2011-05-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Presidents and others who represent the state are supposed to be well-versed in protocol. Someone goofed, and the buck has to stop with Obama. He gave a toast to the Queen -- ordinarily a nice gesture, except when the national anthem is playing.

Recently I blogged about Obama and his advisers' lackadaisical homework when it came to meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was unfortunate under the best circumstances, and those were not the best circumstances. People have accused him of being an Arabist. The irony about this latest gaffe is that Obama went to Europe in his expected trail of glory. The Superman wannabee was lucky that the Queen has seen just about everything and handled herself as royalty should. No doubt most of her counterparts would, but that's not the point. You can't go to another country, especially when representing your own, and impose your own ways. Obama has advisers on staff and they are not doing their jobs. Time for some changes when you get back, Mr. President.

What To Do When You've Got Your Criminal

2011-05-26T09:56:00.001-07:00

The Hague (Den Hague)

I know, I'm hard on Barack Obama. I've made negative comments about his assassination of Osama bin Laden not because I prefer Osama to Obama, but because I believe that what's left of the civilized world has to maintain standards.

Thank goodness civilization reared its beautiful head with the arrest of Serbian war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic. Yes, it took some 15 years to find where he was hidden in plain sight -- longer than it took to find Osama bin Laden. He was responsible for the death of some 8,000 innocent Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, but he wasn't assassinated, as Osama was. He will be transferred to The Hague, where he will be tried, perhaps, in the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia (pictured below).

Whether or not it was the carrot of possible acceptance into the EU that catalyzed his capture is immaterial. The fact is that he was finally caught and will be prosecuted for a serious crime. I wish the U.S. were willing to turn over its war criminals to The Hague so justice can be served.

And Justice for Sex

2011-05-25T11:50:00.001-07:00

What is with America? Don't impeach a president (or his VP) for high crimes and misdemeanors such as war crimes. but impeach one because he had a ridiculous relationship with an intern. Don't prosecute the executives at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG or the big banks who caused the world's economy to tank and innocent people to lose their savings and investments, but prosecute an ex-presidential candidate because he used campaign funds to hide his affair (even though his politically ambitious wife knew about it).

Americans are puritans when it comes to the sex lives of their politicians. Who really cares about their lust? I only care about things such as my future Social Security and Medicare, my taxes, whether or not the draft will be reinstated and whether or not the Department of Justice and other government departments and agencies will go after the real crooks. I care more about Elizabeth Warren than Elizabeth Edwards' widower.

While they're so puritanical about politicians, they could care less about apparel and entertainment. Personally, I am offended when I see little girls 'tweens and teens dressed in suggestive clothes. Television? There's so little worth watching, I don't have the time to figure it out from the grid of all those reality shows. One time I watched the E! story about the Kardashians to try to understand their appeal. Kris Kardashian Jenner encouraged her daughter to pose for Playboy! What kind of mother does that, let alone on national television? But should her daughter have an affair with the President, calls for impeachment would ring from coast to coast!

Time For Another Rally

2011-05-22T05:27:00.000-07:00

On April 15, 2002, hundreds of thousands of people went by busloads to Washington, D.C. to deliver the following message to then President George W. Bush: We support Israel. This was at the height of the failed Oslo agreement and the Palestinian attacks seemed almost daily.

Fresh in Americans' minds were the attacks on 9/11, so it was no surprise that the Jews who participated in the rally carried signs that compared the attacks on the U.S. with the attacks on Israel. "Israel has 9/11 24/7" read one sign.

President Obama's recent attack on Israel should result in another pro-Israel rally. The president of the U.S. needs to be reminded of why Israel has had his predecessors' support. It's about democracy, stupid. That's not the same thing as the currently glorified, romanticized Arab Spring. With the Muslim Brotherhood poised to take advantage over an unpredictable and unprecedented situation in Egypt, I wouldn't be so sanguine about what will happen. Even Egypt's peace agreement with Israel is now tenuous. The fact remains that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has a true democracy. There has never been a dictator. Israeli law allows the Palestinians/ex-Jordanians to vote, to have its own political parties, to serve in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and to compete in the Miss Israel contest. Did I mention that the Palestinians/ex-Jordanians don't pay taxes, despite all these rights?

The saving grace about the meeting between the Israeli and American heads of state is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is no pushover. Much of the world has fed Obama's ego and he thinks he can do no wrong. Well, he can and he did. You can boil down Netanyahu's stand to just two words: It's personal. His brother, Yonatan ("Yoni"), fought the terrorists of Black September and later died in action while rescuing Jewish hostages held by Palestinian terrorists during Operation Entebbe. Thus, The Israeli's prime minister's interest in preserving Israel and protecting her people, especially the Jewish people, is not just politically expedient. It's that personal.

Yoni Netanyahu (pictured right) died a hero, as did many other Israelis in service. But Yoni was highly regarded in Israel long before his death at the age of 30, coincidentally on the 200th anniversary of America's Independence Day. In addition to being a top-tier soldier, he was gifted and charismatic. Three years later, The Jonathan Institute was established to sponsor international conferences on terrorism. Benjamin Netanyahu attributes his "hard line against all terrorists" to the death of his brother.

What does this say about Obama? That he and his advisers failed miserably at diplomacy because they failed to do their homework? Yes, they were all lax, but does it go further? Is Obama an Arabist? His trip to Europe seems to serve one purpose: to get the Europeans to help fund the Arab spring in Tunisia and Egypt. Ironic, isn't it? He met with one of terrorism's biggest foe on the heels of his assassination of Osama bin Laden, and there was a huge disconnect between the two countries' goals. All the more reason for another rally in Washington, D.C. This one should be in memory of Yoni Netanyahu and what he stood for.

Any reader who travels to Philadelphia should see the monument donated by Philip and Muriel Berman and dedicated on October 10, 1986 in memory of Yoni. Created by Bucky Schwartz, it consists of four white marble monolithic blocks, originally sculpted from one single stone), approximately 7 feet high by 2 feet deep and wide, positioned in a square. It is outside the entrance of the National Museum of American Jewish History near Market and 5th Streets. The Netanyahu lived in Philadelphia and worshipped at Mikveh Israel, one of America's best known Sephardic synagogues. Both Bibi and Yoni attended Cheltenham High School in Wyncote. Add this fact to your future homework, President Obama. You may not know squat about Israel, but the Prime Minister of Israel knows the U.S. well, and the U.S. is behind him.

New Borders

2011-05-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

While I fundamentally disagree with Obama's illusory plans for peace in the Middle East (meaning, of course, only Israel and the ex-Jordanians who are called Palestinians), I am open to them if the U.S. sets an example. After all, the U.S.'s stated interests (not necessarily actual interests) are all about democracy, justice and all that good stuff.

The picture aboveshows the U.S. mainland and images of Hawaii and Alaska. Hawaii, as you may recall, became a state in 1959.

Here is an image of the original 13 colonies, with borders that were defined in 1763. If the U.S. returns to these borders, many of the Native American tribes will get their land back in full. Mexico will get its territories back (they're not pictured here, but we're talking about the wide open space of Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Kansas, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California and most of Colorado). No wonder it was called the Viceroyalty of New Spain. All this property was won by the U.S. by the end of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

There are bonuses to going back to the 1763 borders. The federal deficit will, for all practical purposes, be wiped out. What can anyone do with this debt? Tell China to go after Mexico for the money? Illegal immigration would be a non-issue. The Mexican workers would be in their own country. Homeland Security would be easy to manage. There would be no point in continuing the wars in Iraq and and Afghanistan. Finally, the torturous presidential campaigns would be reduced to a few months instead of almost two years. Note: the upcoming one is an anomaly. There have been no viable candidates among the Repugnicans and the Dumbocrats are cowards. The ambitious have a huge window of opportunity here. Don't let Obama's illusions get even more out of hand by letting him think he can sail into the next election. This country can't afford him, even if Israel did comply with his hare-brained scheme for peace.

How did the U.S. become so bloated in the first place? It wasn't just through war. It was the concept of Manifest Destiny in the 1840s, that the U.S. was meant to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Journalist John O'Sullivan referred to it as a divine destiny. Divine. As in the Almighty. So how dare anyone question Israel's claim that their little bit of land was given to them by G-d? After all, the U.S. is a Christian country. Regardless of the lovely concept of separation of church and state, its national holidays include Christmas. And President Obama calls himself a Christian. Read the Bible, Mr. President. Or, if you prefer, read the Koran. There are no references to Jerusalem in the Koran. Then go back to the drawing board about peace in the Middle East.

Perpetual Lies

2011-05-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

The Great Appeaser (aka President Obama) has inadvertently set off a new slew of old lies. One of them which is reemerging is the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. That's odd because Arabic is an official language in Israel, Palestinians can vote and even stand for election in the Israeli parliament and even terrorists get the best medical care in Israel (all at no cost to them).

Rumors still persist that President Obama is a Muslim, something he has never denied, but there is supposedly a confirmation in a speech that was posted on Youtube. Is that authentic or doctored? I don't know, and it doesn't matter. The point is that Obama's attempt to appease everyone is now becoming inflammatory. He is being bashed not just by potential opponent Mitt Romney, by people such as Congressman Anthony Wiener of Queens and by ordinary citizens who are just dumbfounded by his latest audacious remark. Just as they thought the anti-Israel sentiment had gone under the radar of the Arab Spring, it is rearing its ugly head. I'm waiting for the day when the blood libel is revived and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion will become an ebook bestseller.

How irresponsible of Obama to make this speech on the heels of the May 15th celebration of Israeli Independence Day. The Arabs call that day "al-Nakba" -- the day of catastrophe. The demonstrations in Egypt may have ousted Mubarak, but they haven't squelched the possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood and not democracy as the U.S. would like to see it, will gain more strength. This weekend is the annual meeting of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group that sometimes raises the blood pressure of Israel's friends and enemies.

With or without AIPAC, Obama's speech is divisive and he may well be paving the way for his defeat in the 2012 election. I can't help but see Obama as a wound up top, spinning away from the crise du jour. He would party instead of address the economic crisis. He whirled into Libya after failing to wrap up Iraq and then authorized the assassination of Osama bin Laden, again avoiding the unpleasant facts of high unemployment, spiraling commodity prices, rampant government corruption, etc. I will never forget a town meeting in which a woman told him that she is sick and tired of defending him despite what's going on in the U.S. He stood there smiling broadly. What an inappropriate reaction! It was as if he were on recreational drugs.

Readers of this blog know I hate politics and loathe all politicians. But I would be grateful to see a viable candidate from either side, preferably someone from the Dumbocratic party to challenge Obama. Americans cannot afford to have him serve another term as President. A lot of people voted for him in 2008 for all the wrong reasons. They thought he was young and cool but, most of all, they didn't want to be thought of as bigots. What matters to them now?

The Fall of Obama

2011-05-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

With all due respect, President Obama, you just jump-started your downfall!

Your latest attempt at meddling in Middle East politics will fail, something that many people see as a good thing.

You are still high on assassinating Osama bin Laden and the still unfulfilled promise of the Arab Spring. What you forgot are:

Hamas is intent on destroying Israel, as are all the other Arab countries.
Israel has offered 97 percent of the land the Palestinians wanted in exchange for peace. The Palestinians rejected the offer. The Irish settled for 26 out of 32 counties (or 81 percent). There are two viable countries.
The rest of the Arab world doesn’t care about the Palestinians, who are, by the way, Jordanians. What they have in common is not just their heritage, but their hatred of Israel. Egypt and Jordan did not sign peace treaties out of the love of Israel. They did it for their own benefit.

What part of this is still unclear to you?

There is a lot of ignorance about the State of Israel, and ignorance only breeds hatred. What you, of all people, with your Ivy league background, should know are the following:

Palestine was created as a British mandate. Do you think the Palestinian Arabs want to go back to that?
In Israel, Arabic is an official language. Look at the currency. Go to a movie and look at the subtitles.
In Israel, the Palestinians are permitted to vote.
In Israel, the Palestinians are permitted to serve in the Knesset (Israeli parliament).
In Israel, Palestinian women are permitted to compete in the Miss Israel beauty pageant.
The Palestinian schools distribute children’s textbooks that encourage violence.
The Koran doesn’t mention Jerusalem even one time. Why do the Palestinians want Jerusalem so badly?
Don’t count on being a shoe-in for the presidency in 2012. Jews vote. You just lost their vote.
There are serious problems in the United States. Unemployment. Crumbling infrastructure. Corruption. Deficits. How about attending to those?

A White Knight?

2011-05-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

Shortly after the news that Irving Picard pretty much caved in for a settlement with the Madoff feeder funds, a white knight has entered the scene: Eric T. Schneiderman, attorney general of the States of New York.

Who? Ah, yes, many people have forgotten that someone replaced Andrew Cuomo as AG when the latter became governor. Schneiderman is a former Democratic state senator from his native Upper West Side in Manhattan. A Harvard law school graduate, he gave up a better paying job in private practice to protect the public interest. Now he is on dangerous turf -- battling the Big Banks, a road that many people came to a dead end under Cuomo. No one is sure yet which byzantine practice he is going to attack first. He is starting an investigation into their practices, and many on Main Street hope that he will not give up. Main Street is still livid that it lost homes, jobs and savings while Wall Street continued to get obscene bonuses. Too big to fail really meant too big to jail.

Schneiderman's office has not revealed details about what he is going to attack first. That's not a bad thing because the enemy must not be alerted. We wouldn't want masses of paperwork shredded to avoid being subpoenaed, let alone millions of dollars disappearing forever offshore. (Not that a lot hasn't already been.) He has a huge amount of work and I hope it will not daunt him. And when it's over, he can pick up where Irving Picard left off. Bernie Madoff could not have created the world's biggest Ponzi scheme without a lot of help. Which means his feeder fund managers were, at the least, accessories after the fact. Fairfield Greenwich Group claimed to have stringent due diligence. On what? Luxury homes and yachts? Private aircraft? One of the partners transferred a Manhattan apartment into his wife's name in April 2007. He is still married to the same woman. Madoff was arrested in December 2008. Figure it out. The partner -- and most probably the others -- knew something wasn't kosher. In the meantime, most of the partners are still living pretty well. Merkin no longer has his famous art collection, but he can paint the walls of his prestigious apartment at 740 Park Avenue with chalkboard paint and write 100 times, "I will not help anyone steal."

I am very hard-nosed about this because there are still small fry money managers who are trying to lure investors into giving them a minimum of $1 million (most likely the sum of their home's value and savings) for an investment that has consistently yielded seven to eight percent year after year. Of course, they offer the usual disclaimer, but this sounds so familiar.

Years ago I met Mike McGraw at a media conference. This is not the athlete, but the prize-winning reporter for the Kansas City Star. When he first said he believes in conspiracy theories, I was ready to write him off, but this was at a workshop sponsored by the reputable Poynter Institute. I listened intently as he told us why he loves being a vacuum cleaner -- always picking up pieces -- and how he loves to study bureaucracies and systems to find out where their pressure points are and where they fail. He is always filing FOIA paperwork. And he's right. A city hotel collapses. The inspectors didn't do their job. Contaminated meat is irradiated and resold in the secondary food market. It turns out that the insurance company bought into the food salvage industry and the insurance company hired a lab to test the food. Guess which company the results favored?

So go get 'em, Schneiderman! Mike is correct. There are conspiracies and it's up to you to stop new ones from emulating the old ones.

Keep on Truckin'

2011-05-17T06:53:00.001-07:00

Food is a hot topic and a lot of writers are trying to capitalize on it. For years, those in the industry have been trying to spot the newest trend. What will get people excited? The newest thing is food truck grub, an old concept that has reached new heights.

I was curious about this since my newsfeed from Zagat had several mentions of pop-up restaurants in New York City. Last week an ice cream truck drove in front of my house while I was outside with my son -- something I've never before seen in this neighborhood. I also recall a truck in my neighborhood that offers frozen food that is far more . Yesterday I received an email about Zagat's new survey, The Food Trucks (SF, LA, NY). "Share your witty, descriptive comments on your favorite food trucks in San Francisco, Los Angeles & New York!"

I've always thought of food trucks as the worst place to get a sandwich, hotdog or even a cold drink. I've seen enough food trucks and carts in New York City and always shuddered at the idea of filth, grime and germs in and around the food. But if Zagat notices it and doesn't drop the subject, it's important, as least as a trend. Evidently, there aren't many people such as me who are germ phobes. They just want their bad ass burgers, greasy wieners, Cajun fare, Cubanos sandwiches, shrimp and cupcakes a go-go.

What's the key to making a food truck popular? Why would people, who are used to artisan bread and goat cheese pizza and buying only locally grown, sustainable organic food, eat food from a truck? What's the appeal? Isn't it a lot more prestigious to say, "I own Zinc Restaurant" instead of "I own a food truck?" Most people who buy their lunches on a budget of, say, $8.00 to $10.00 per day get take out sandwiches from a deli or hot food from a Chinese restaurant.

I guess it boils down to price alternatives. The person who buys a sandwich can save a few dollars by buying a meal from a food truck. The person who dreams of owning a food establishment in order to make a living can do it relatively cheaply and move the location if the one he or she initially chose isn't working. Then all that's needed to get started is a menu and food, sourced from a price club or Gordon Food Service. You can buy the above fully equipped 1995 food truck for $29,877.00. (Contact billmartinjess@sbcglobal.net.) Or you can buy this 1999 model for $42,500. (Call Jeff at 919-601-2862. He's in Missouri, so you have to plan a trip.)

And just look at this kitchen! You can do anything in it! It's truly commerical -- none of this faux gourmet stuff. It has the ideal work triangle to make cooking less of a chore. It even has natural light. And it's perfect for those who would like a kitchen dedicated to Passover. (OK, so someone would have to take a blowtorch to it to make it kosher for Passover.) Most of all, it will never look dated because of the color or materials suggested by a kitchen designer. Nor will it wear out. Remember, this is a 16-year-old kitchen, yet it looks brand new! You and your food truck will be the envy of your friends and neighbors.

Yes, even this age of austerity, you can have it all!

In all seriousness, what people should know is that these foodies must still meet health regulations. I would hate to think of people deciding that since they're unconventional and mobile anyway, that they don't need to bother with permits or inspections. Reputable food truck owners would abide by state laws, but this reinvented concept comes on the heels of a recent trend that seems to have died down, at least in this area -- underground dinners. These were by invitation only and often one had to sign confidentiality agreements in order to participate. The people who run them don't want to spend the money on a brick and mortar restaurant, report income or comply with food laws. The allure is that it's secretive you don't know what's going to be on the menu or even where the dinner will take place until just about the last minute. It could be over a furniture store or you could be sitting on the floor. And paying $60.00 or more per person for the privilege.

It seems to me that food trucks, similar to underground dinners, are an attempt to make money fairly quickly and with little investment. No one is going to make a ton of it, but what isn't taxed tends to help budgets stretch further.