Why I'm not an academic

When I was in high school my mother suggested from time to time that I become a surgeon. I was a good student and liked science. I have small, fairly delicate hands. I was a pretty good pianist which suggested to her that I had the dexterity she assumed surgeons need.

I found the idea appealing. I had little idea of the work doctors do. What I knew for certain was that I was destined for a life as an intellectual. I loved books and still do. I read voraciously. I was sure as a teenager that a life of physical labor would not suit me well.

So I set off for Bucknell University, a good liberal arts college, with a vague idea of possibly, maybe becoming a doctor. I signed up as a biology major. The first shock came in the second week of my freshman microbiology lab. We were examining a specimen, trying to draw the cells. Everyone else seemed to think this was extremely easy. I couldn't get the damn thing in focus. After a long struggle the lab instructor told me I had just drawn my eyelash.

By mid-term exams I was still struggling with biology lab and way behind my peers in the other subjects. This was new for me. I never failed at any subject but I could see I was on a course to fail now. The one bright light in that first semester was an English Literature course I took to fill a humanities requirement. I loved it. The professor was terrific. I did well. I didn't have a vocational plan but “temporarily” became a humanities major. I tried courses in History, Philosophy and East-Asian Studies. I loved them all and did very well. I started to learn to write. I got a BA in History with Honors. I never doubted my future as an academic as I earned a MA and PhD in philosophy.

In all the years of intense study I never questioned my ability to make a living. I did odd jobs. I taught freshmen and prison inmates. I learned basic plumbing and wiring. I heated with wood and became president of the local food co-op. I surrounded myself with books. I read every day and slowly learned to be a better writer. When I finally finished my PhD it took me a year and a half to land a regular teaching job, but I finally got one at a small Franciscan school in Western New York, St. Bonaventure University.

During my first years at St. Bonaventure I threw myself into really learning how to teach philosophy. It was hard but I had fun. I found I was pretty good at inspiring a fair number of my students to read, write and even think about things they never considered before. I developed a couple of new courses. I helped start a student outdoors club that flourished.

At the end of my second year I was called in by my department head for an evaluation of my work and my progress toward the golden ring of academia, tenure. He started out by praising my work as a teacher. He liked the fact that students gave me good evaluations. I was also pulling my weight in the generally distasteful committee work required of all academics. I was well liked by other members of the department and was fitting in. Unfortunately, he was not able to give me a good recommendation.

The problem, he explained, was that I had never published anything in an academic journal. In fact, I admitted that I was not even working on a research project. I had read a few papers at professional conferences, but that was it. Unless I could get going on something major, I would not be ready by the time my formal tenure review came up the following year and I would be let go.

I walked out of the meeting in shock. All the work I had done counted for nothing. I wrongly assumed that at a small college I would get a lot of credit for being a good teacher. I assumed lack of a research publication might be overlooked. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

About a week later I was starting to get angry. I stopped in to see the department head and asked him to name a journal where he would like to get published. The Journal of the History of Ideas.

Over the next few weeks I poured over that journal trying to get a handle on the sort of articles they generally published. I holed up in a library with a good collection of works by and about Spinoza, a philosopher about whom I knew nothing. I skimmed everything I could find about Spinoza's political and ethical views looking for a topic. Then I focused on carefully reading everything he said on the subject of freedom of speech. I wrote an article of exactly the right length with appropriate footnotes and references. I polished it and sent it in. A few weeks later, just as the summer break was ending, I received the letter telling me the article would be published.

I returned to St. Bonaventure deeply disturbed by this exercise. On first meeting my department head before fall classes I told him I had written an article about Spinoza. Great, he said. Was I working on getting it published? I handed him my acceptance letter. He was pleased, actually quite jealous. I had proved my point. Academic publication is a sham exercise, just part of the hazing, with no practical consequences except in the tenure game. Now I was bitter. I never recovered my enthusiasm.

The next spring my department head told me he was happy to recommend me for tenure. Maybe they would even consider early tenure. By then I was making plans to attend law school with hope that I might find an intellectually honest profession at last. I've not been disappointed.

St. Louis Smells

“Wind's from the south today.”

When we toured the big Budweiser plant here last December we realized that the slightly sweet odor we occasionally smell in our neighborhood emanates from the brewery, a mixture of fermented grains with strong overtones of hops. The brewery is only a mile from our house. It vents massive amounts of this non-toxic gas every hour. We only smell it when the wind is from the south.

It's a good clean smell. Nobody complains. It's also a reassuring smell in a time of economic uncertainty since it means beer is still being brewed by one of St. Louis' biggest employers.

Most of the time I'm not aware of smelling anything. The scientific explanation for this is fairly simple. First, compared to other mammals, humans have a very puny nose. Second, we have evolved so that sight is our primary contact with the world. We've got eyes exquisitely well suited to interpret everything we encounter, so smelling the world takes a back seat. Third, our olfactory system stops smelling things quite quickly. Even though the chemicals for the odor are still there we forget we can smell them. The result is that human beings are not very discriminating in the olfactory department.

Because we live in a world mostly encountered by sight, we're unreliable reporters of smells. Some people are better than others at recognizing and describing what they smell. Most people typically just categorize smells as pleasant or unpleasant. To describe a specific smell we refer to common experience rather than the smell itself. Something smells like rotting fish or like a rose. Descriptions of complex specific smells are elusive. No one can describe a specific perfume, for example, without sounding hilariously vague: “violets, sugar and a hint of musk” does not conjure up anything for me.

I bring this up because of an incident this week involving our dog, Joli. First thing every morning while it's still dark I let Joli out into our yard. She's gone 2-3 minutes then comes back to eat her breakfast. On Tuesday I realized about 10 minutes had passed and she had not come back. I was concerned enough to go out to see what was up.

I saw her at the foot of the steps crouched in a typical border collie “stare.” This stance always means she has spotted something she believes is potential prey. I went down to her. In a group of flower pots overflowing with annuals was a small possum. I'd seen two in our yard before so I wasn't that surprised. Joli's nose was within a foot of the possum. The possum was cornered. It was hissing. Joli was so interested in this small animal that she growled at me to let me know how unhappy she was at being told to get inside and let the possum go on its way.

After about 15 minutes I let Joli out again to see what she would do. She immediately went to the spot where she had confronted the possum. She took a minute or two to investigate that area then set off on a complete patrol sniffing every inch of our yard and garden. She seemed sure the possum was still around. Its persistent odor told her to keep searching.

For the next two days she repeated this very complete search every morning to no avail. Only when there was no residual scent left was she finally convinced the possum was gone.

As chance would have it the Times Sunday Book Review this past week featured Inside of a Dog: What dogs see smell & know by Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/books/review/Schine-t.html?_r=1&em

Professor Horwitz contends that we can only discover what our canine companions are thinking by trying to understand how they experience the world, their umwelt as it were. The key to understanding a dog is to realize that dogs primarily sniff the world. “As we see the world, the dog smells it. The dog's universe is a stratum of complex odors. The world of scents is at least as rich as the world of sight.” http://insideofadog.com/

A dog not only has a much larger area in their nose and brain devoted to smelling, they constantly renew the air in their noses so they continue to smell things long after we humans can sense no odor at all. Recent research into the mechanics of sniffing shows it to be a complex phenomena that allows a dog to exchange the air in its nostrils without inhaling or exhaling. Humans are just not very well equipped to sniff.

For me St. Louis is the strong smell of hops on a south wind; for Joli it's the subtile scent of opossum.

Blog 52

This is my 52^nd weekly blog. When I started this project last September I was unsure whether I could or would be able to write an interesting short entry every week, but I've gradually learned the rhythms. I find the discipline it imposes helpful. I write for an hour a day from about 4-5 am. This fits my schedule as an early riser and pleases Joli the dog. She's in the mood for play, pats and eating her daily meal as I write. I work on a few different story ideas each week. Often I don't settle on the final topic until Saturday morning, then I assemble the fragments, rewrite, have Merry edit the result and get her help finding the appropriate photographs mostly from those she's shot during the week.

In retrospect I'm glad I decided to also post these reflections on the internet. Since I started posting to Blogger back in March, about 800 people have visited my site. Thanks to a handy little tool called Sitemeter I can tell a bit about each visit. By far the most visits were from people who somehow already had my web address. The pages with the next highest number of visits due to the use of search engines like Google were the stories about towboats, catfish, Lemp Junque, Devil's Back and the black fly derby. I have no idea why these subjects are the most popular. The average number of daily visitors has increased over time with my current average at 8. I've had hits from all over the world, but most are from Central NY and the St. Louis area.

The number of visits to my site jumped dramatically when I got a plug from Bob Crowe, a local lawyer who posts the amazing blog called “St. Louis Daily Photo.” Bob mentioned his photography hobby in court last spring and gave me his blog address. I've been faithfully checking his site on a daily basis since. He has a terrific eye for portraits. His weekly photographs of the St. Louis Arch are a revelation. Check him out at http://saintlouismodailyphoto.blogspot.com/

Bob's photo blog inspired Merry to start her own daily photo blog and join the group of dedicated amateur photographers who record daily events in cities around the world. Merry's blog can be found at http://meredithleonard.blogspot.com/. Merry's daily posts also appear on the site of City Daily Photo where you can find beautiful images of everything imaginable. I recommend this site highly, but be warned, you can easily spend hours at http://www.citydailyphoto.com/portal/index.php. Merry and I were both surprised about a month ago when a fellow in England decided to include our blogs in an index he maintains of all the blogs he can find focused on specific localities. He includes blogs that are active as well as those with no current posts. His site called “Around the World” is a treasure trove of photos and written reflection at http://www.geraldengland.co.uk/dp/

Using the internet to post publicly accessible personal reflections started in the mid 90s. The first blog is credited to a Swarthmore College student, Justin Hall, who started Links.net in January 1994. The term “weblog” was coined by John Barger in 1997 as a contraction for “logging the web.” Peter Merholtz shortened “weblog” to “blog” in April 1999. The first free web tool for blogging was “Blogger” released by Pyra in August 1999. When Google bought Blogger in 2003 it had 200,000 active users. http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/history_of_blogging.asp Now there are a host of free tools for blogging and millions of users.

As a result it is now possible to catch quite intimate glimpses of life everywhere on the globe. There are also blogs on politics, sports, and some that are just plain crazy rants. Major news outlets have gradually come to style their web-based presentations after blogs and promote feedback from readers. My favorites are those that just focus on the surprises, mystery and beauty of everyday life. I enjoy the images. Most people who post such entries love the places they live and want to share that love with others. It promotes understanding in a way not possible before the development of the blogosphere.

Another big advantage for me is the heartfelt response some of my posts draw from you. The post last week about cleaning out my mother's house brought a number of quite beautiful email replies from those of you who have done the same, or who anticipate the experience. Thank you Barbara, Chris, Margaret, Allison, Aaron, Kerry and Dan for sharing your stories.

Now, on to year two.

McKinley Heights neighbors

Maybe if it hadn't happened in one day, I wouldn't have noticed.

6 am, walking to the bus, a neighbor I never particularly noticed called out to me.

“Hey, haven't seen you lately, thought you might've moved.”

I quickly explained that Merry had driven me to work in the mornings for the last couple of weeks.

“OK then. Have a good one.”

As I continued to the bus stop I was amazed. Had I ever seen this guy before? Of course, I must have. I probably passed him every day; a middle aged black guy in work clothes getting into his car the same time I headed for the bus. I must have seen him. Probably nodded to him in passing or said hi.

Later on the way home, I hopped off the bus at the same corner. There's a talkative short black guy with wrap around dark glasses who usually gets off at the same stop every day. I've said hello to him frequently. He's a janitor at a senior housing unit across town. As the bus was just pulling away he turned to me with a surprised look on his face.

“Where's your bag, man? Do I have to help you stop the bus?”

I do carry a brief case most days. Today I decided I didn't need it.

“Thanks, I left my case home today.”
“Oh, alright then. Didn't want you to lose it.”
“Thanks, for keeping me straight, have a good weekend.”

“You, too.”

Two times in one day on the same street corner made me wonder how much casual neighbors notice me. I remembered another example from about a month earlier on the same street corner. I woman often walks her Boston Terrier on the other side of the street in the evening the same time I take Joli for her constitutional. I had said hi to her a couple of times from across the street. On this occasion we had changed the time of our walk for a few days by half an hour because I had worked late.

“Hey, you doing OK?” She called out across the busy street. “Haven't seen you for a while.”

“I'm fine, thanks for asking.”

It finally dawned on me that I live in a neighborhood.

I vaguely recall reading the classic description of what makes a neighborhood in Street Corner Society by William Foote Whyte in my first sociology course many years ago. One key factor is that neighbors recognize and acknowledge each other. Making the slightest contact by saying “Hi” makes the stranger into a neighbor. Nice feeling. Neighbors look out for each other.

It was about this time last year we decided to move to Ann Ave. in McKinley Heights. Now without my particularly noticing it's becoming our neighborhood.

Metro

We recently discovered that Merry's much beloved Subaru station wagon, the workhorse of our fleet, had a fatal leak in the head gasket. Repair cost would exceed the residual value of the car. Since moving to St. Louis we have rarely used both cars at the same time because I regularly take public transportation to work. We decided we would reduce the fleet to one and donate the Subaru to the local NPR station. They picked it up last Thursday.

Last Saturday Merry departed for her river trip down the mighty Colorado through the Grand Canyon. Logistics required she drive out. Merry's trip will take about three weeks. This left me without a car for the first extended period in my adult life. The situation has forced me to reflect on just how dependent I am on having a car at my disposal at all times.

In preparation I stocked up at the grocery store. I knew I could get to a near by supermarket by bus, but I wanted to avoid hauling heavy groceries on the bus if possible. Therefore I laid in a three week supply of dog food, canned goods, juice, spaghetti sauce and so on. I have adequate supplies to cook supper every night for myself and Merry also filled the freezer with several goodies – her famous macs & cheese, salmon loaf, chili. I have the choice of several good restaurants I can walk to if I want something fancier. I am set.

But what if we didn't have a car at all, could we get along? The answer to that question depends entirely on whether there is good, reliable public transportation.

At the beginning of this month St. Louis drastically reduced its public transportation system. Back in November there was a ballot item in St. Louis county encompassing the city's suburban area in Missouri that would have raised the county transit subsidy by a few cents per person. The timing was bad. Voters rejected the item, refusing to pay even a small amount in new taxes during a recession. The management of the transit system clearly believed that a small tax increase would pass without a problem so they did virtually nothing to sell the idea or plan for what would happen if the tax increase failed.

The regional transit system here consists of four parts: city buses, express buses from the suburbs, call-a-ride for disabled and the “MetroLink” light rail. MetroLink is a single long line stretching from Scott Air Force Base far out in Illinois on the eastern end through downtown to Lambert Airport well west of the city with a spur line to the near southwest suburbs. It runs pretty frequently and is on time almost all the time. It's dependable and quite easy to use, once you get to a station. The express buses connect further out communities to MetroLink stations and also directly to downtown. Metro has a contract with the Illinois county adjoining the city to provide express bus service, but no similar contract with St. Louis county in Missouri, the transit tax is supposed to cover that.

After the voters in St. Louis county rejected the transit tax increase, the whole thing unraveled. Metro officials announced that they would suspend all express bus service to St. Louis county, forcing thousands of those folks to drive to work. They also reduced the frequency of all city buses by one half. Every other bus driver was laid off as well as all express bus drivers, more that 500 in all. All bus routes within the central city were completely discontinued, meaning all downtown commuters like me would have to transfer to the MetroLink somewhere on the journey. Call-a-ride service was also reduced. The only services left intact are MetroLink light rail and the contract express buses from Illinois. For me the change adds ten minutes to my daily commute in both directions. For many others it's made commuting by public transit simply impossible or so onerous that they chose to drive instead.

Merry & I contacted numerous public officials quite awhile back to voice our concern over this turn of events. We received exactly two responses. One was from Russ Carnahan, our Democratic Congressman, who assured us he shared our concern and was doing all he could to help. The other was from W. Todd Akins, a Republican Congressman from a wealthy part of St. Louis county, who suggested that private enterprise would be the best way to solve the problem. Huh? I very much doubt Akins has ever felt the need to use public transportation. Since the meltdown the Missouri state legislature considered a supplemental appropriation but now has taken it off the table. No one appears to know what to do or where to get the money.

People simply won't think about a life without cars until they don't have one. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary we all assume we will always use personal automobiles. We assume we will always have the gas to run our cars. We assume gas will always be available and affordable. We neglect thinking about alternatives until it's late in the game. There's never any problem getting massive public money for highways, but public transit is always viewed as a mostly unnecessary frill. The reality is that we need to be dramatically expanding public transportation now. Instead, we go on blindly letting it shrink.

Human beings generally do a lousy job of planning for the future.

Mockingbird

Atticus Finch at the bus stop

Street lights the pre-dawn

Spring has brought him a mockingbird

Not a robin

Not a bluejay

Not a wren or crow

But all in one bird

He's there every morning at 6:05

One day a street light

Then a flowering crab

Wednesday the top of an abandoned store

His personal songster

No other bird song at this hour

Clear notes, louder than traffic

Atticus wonders:

Could this be the same bird

Every day,

A new resident of this dusty corner?

Until now I've been alone in the dark

Then on Friday,

Three

Bear

Last Saturday we drove an hour west of St. Louis to pick up Bear at a McDonald's along the highway. Bear is a three-year-old Border Collie who had just been plucked from a private dog shelter by the dedicated, kind-hearted souls at Mo-Kan Border Collie Rescue. Robin, the woman behind his rescue, found out that Bear had spent virtually his whole life to date in the kennel. He apparently has a minor thyroid problem, but is otherwise healthy.

Merry joined Border Collie Rescue only a short time ago. A local volunteer came to our house to check it out and determined we would be appropriate as foster humans for dogs waiting for adoption. I was somewhat surprised that a dog was placed with us so soon. We debated for a few days whether we were ready, then decided that now was as good a time as ever. Thus, we found ourselves at the McDonald's transferring a somewhat shocked black and white dog to a crate in the back of Merry's Subaru.

Our first challenge was introducing Bear to Joli. We decided to begin by walking them together around the neighborhood before letting Bear in the house. This was a good plan and it would have worked, too, if the handle on the leash we used hadn't broken the first second as Merry got Bear out of the car. This led to a scramble to hold onto Bear while a different leash was located. Then it was off around the block. To our pleasant surprise he walked very well on a lead, even though he got tangled up a few times. As our blood pressures returned to normal, we seemed off to a pretty good start.

We kept a close watch on him in the house. Here's an excerpt from Merry's first report back to Robin:

“He is a pretty good boy in the house. We've interrupted him marking in the house a couple times. He mainly wants to stay close. He wants lots of pats and scratches and will lay on his back for tummy rubs. He is not very civilized. He knows sit pretty well, and comes pretty well when he remembers he should be coming when called. We are working on sit and lay down. Stay is out of the question so far. We are working also on wait...to come out of the crate or to go through the door. We don't think he knows his name yet.”

We've had him a week now. Merry works with him every day. We see small bits of civilization becoming part of his behavior set. For example, I was quite surprised on last Sunday to discover that Bear had not played much with toys. I threw him a tennis ball and he just looked puzzled. I tried a squeaky toy. Same result. So we had him watch as we played with Joli and made sure there were toys in the yard when the dogs were out. Here's Merry's report to Robin on his progress:

“Yesterday outside he discovered the big ball with the rope. He watched Joli run for it and after a while, when he got the chance, he grabbed it and ran around with it. Tore around! He is an incredibly graceful runner and jumper. Really light on his feet.”

Perhaps the most interesting challenge could be called “Bear's Liminal Problem.” The most difficult time for Bear (and us) is when he needs to make a transition from one way of being (say in his crate) to another (loose in the house), or vice versa. Here's Merry again:

“Anytime we go out or upstairs or downstairs, he needs prep, and it is best if Joli is not in the scene. For instance, going up to go in his crate for the night has been hard. He ran by the crate, ran into this room, that room. Last night I tried coming upstairs with him and not going straight to the crate. [lightbulb!] We hung out on the couch nearby, him getting lots of pats and scratches, generally making out. Then when I asked him to get into the crate, he popped right in!”

I experienced this problem first hand a few days ago. I just got home from work and as is my habit hitched up Joli for her evening walk. We've been doing this virtually every day for at least ten years, so I was on automatic pilot. I opened the door, let Joli out and suddenly Bear was past me and out the door. A second before he had been nowhere around. Joli blocked him and I grabbed him by the neck fur. He's so strong he pulled me to my knees before I could stop him. Ouch.

This event and the general problem Bear has with learning how to gracefully make transitions put me in mind of how anyone learns to go from one mental state to the next without being utterly confused. While we are on the threshold between two mental states we are particularly open and vulnerable. There exists a fairly large body of literature on liminality in philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience. I never thought it might apply to dog training.

As for Bear, he will be at our house for another week at least. Then he's scheduled to go to another foster home. I'm off for a week hearing cases in Cape Girardeau. Merry will stay here and work with Bear some more. You can check on the status of Bear by looking at his bio found at http://www.mokanbcrescue.org/info/dogs/dogs-available.html.

For those of you who love BC's and want to see how Merry first got interested in rescue, check out one of the very best BC sites on the web at http://www.theshepherdsdog.com.

One final note: I want to thank everyone who responded to my cry for help in last week's post. I needed the boost. I've decided to follow the advice of several of you [Thank you George, Merry, Kate, Scott & Glenn] and start a blog archive on the web. I've signed up with Blogger and by next week I expect to have the archive ready for public viewing.

Six months later

Merry & I moved to St. Louis six months ago on Labor Day, 2008. I made a two year commitment to relocate here when I was hired, so one quarter of that commitment has now been fulfilled. The current arc of our lives started when the ALJ job was offered to me in late June. Then came the whirlwind of the move - selling my practice, finding someone to rent our house, finding and buying a new house in St. Louis, packing up the house in Syracuse (accomplished by Merry while I spent all of August in Baltimore being “trained”) and finally moving. I was required to go to work immediately, so Merry did most of the work getting our new home ready to live in. 2115 Ann had been “rehabbed” in the recent past, but once we took possession it became obvious that the conversion from two-family to one-family had been heavy on style and light on careful workmanship. The concept is good, the execution less so.

The new laundry room was unpainted and without a dryer vent. The electrical system was left incomplete in minor (we hope) ways. The two bathrooms were painted horrible colors (downstairs was dark blue with white stripes, upstairs dark green with a silver glaze). The master bedroom had been painted a dark chocolate brown. Merry applied her considerable painting skills and remedied the decorating faux pas. She also had the electrical system inspected and a dryer vent installed. She decorated the house with the art work we brought along and bought the necessary new furniture and fixtures needed to make it a home. She contracted for a new fence for the yard and had a gas fireplace installed in our upstairs sitting room. The place looks great. There are many things that still need to be done, but I feel that we are finally settled in. As spring approaches we are planning for a garden.

All through the turmoil of moving I've been amazed and blessed by all Merry accomplishes every day. In many ways she has the harder job. She retired from her long time mental health social work job in Syracuse and moved to a new place where she knew no one. Nonetheless she has engaged in an undaunted course of discovery that has led us from one joyful event to another. Thanks to her efforts we now belong to the Missouri Botanical Garden, the St. Louis Art Museum, the St. Louis Science Center and the Missouri Historical Society. We have walked in the major city parks and explored many nearby State parks. We spent a weekend in the Ozarks and a week in New Orleans. The list goes on and on.

For my part, I've spent most of my time learning how to decide Social Security cases. In my first six months I've held a total of 309 hearings. Of these I've issued decisions in 204 cases. I paid benefits in 118 of these cases and denied benefits in 86 (including those dismissed because the claimant failed to show up at their hearing). That means so far I've rendered favorable decisions 58% of the time. The national average is 60% favorable. I'm probably being a bit more careful granting benefits because of my lack of experience. I also had to adjourn 105 of my cases for various reasons. 28 were adjourned because of the January ice storm in Cape Girardeau. 30 claimants needed post trial development of the record. The other 47 were rescheduled for further hearings, usually because the claimant wanted to hire a lawyer. To my astonishment at this time I have 835 pending cases assigned to me, and the number keeps rising weekly. Even if I reach the informal goal of deciding 500 – 700 cases a year I will keep falling behind. The cases are just coming in faster than they can be fairly processed. Our office has been promised two additional judges from the hiring that is anticipated this coming summer. That will help; in the meantime all the Judges here are meeting and exceeding every goal set for us; yet we are still falling behind.

Today's blog is the 26^th entry in the series. Frankly, I'm enjoying doing the writing. Every day I write for about an hour before heading off to work. Much of this ends up in the trash, but the process feels right to me. I hope the product will eventually improve. I worry, however, that I've overstepped the bounds of friendship with each of the people who receive this by sending what may be seen as junk mail. Perhaps the problem for me is that I don't know what most of the recipients think about being on my mailing list. A few people have responded to individual posts, so I'm pretty sure they want to keep getting my postings. The fact is that most people on the list have not ever replied, so I'm starting to feel uncomfortable.

I started this project as a way to keep in touch with friends, and as an incentive to keep me writing about something creative every day. This blog is working for my purposes, but I don't want to unnecessarily annoy my good friends in the process. Believe me, I won't be hurt if anyone doesn't want to stay on the list. I'd rather know than not know.

Accordingly, I ask those of you who have not responded in the recent past to please drop me a brief note to let me know if you still want to get these postings. Better yet, a little feedback on the writing or subject matter would also be nice. I'm sure many of you have questions about the midwest or St. Louis you are dying to have answered. Just let me know. Thanks.

Bandwidth

Earlier this week I realized I would be at work preparing to hold hearings this coming Tuesday, Inauguration Day. I hoped to watch the swearing in and hear Obama's address live rather than on the evening news. Our office does not have a television in the lunch room. After some preliminary investigation I decided I needed to ask Karen, the Hearing Office Director, and longtime boss of all things, whether she would permit arrangements to be made that would allow the office staff to watch the Inauguration. Karen was not in the office at the time so I sent her a brief email.

The next day Karen came to my office and told me she was unable to clear the idea. She looked uncomfortable. There were technical problems. It seems you can't get good TV reception in the office, and we aren't allowed to use SSA's satellite up-link for streaming TV over the internet. There was a possible issue with video hearings that might be held, which had something to do with available bandwidth, not to mention the difficulty clearing use of the computer system for such use, complete with allusion to prior difficulties encountered. Clearly she was not enthusiastic.

When I arrived home Tuesday evening, turning this bureaucratic encounter over in my mind, I was surprised to find an email waiting for me from John Mahoney, a friend of mine from way back in the late 60s. It seems John saw the item in the Bucknell Alumni magazine announcing my move to St. Louis and decided to drop me a line. He reminded me that back then when we were fellow student radicals working to stop the Vietnam war he arranged for a speaking engagement for a previous black presidential candidate. Here's how John puts it:

“Do you remember when I brought Dick Gregory to Bucknell? Jake Register (and his wife) and I drove down to Harrisburg to pick him up that afternoon - but he wasn't there. We were told that he was at Penn State - so we drove there and picked him and his assistant up. On the drive he kept tossing out his campaign literature - which was dollar bills with his face on it with the White House painted black. We would have made it to the Davis Gym in time - but Gregory needed to be fed. He was a vegetarian! I had never met a vegetarian and didn't know what to do - so I headed to IHOP!”

Frankly, until John's email I had mostly forgotten this event. I still have one of those “Gregory Dollars” in my collection of 60s political memorabilia. I vaguely remember being disappointed in Gregory's speech at Bucknell not only because he showed up late, but because he spoke more about the health values of vegetarianism than about ending the war. I didn't vote for Gregory.

Next week an African American will be sworn in as our President. I believe Dick Gregory's somewhat jokey, sure-to-fail, presidential write-in candidacy 40 years ago played some role in changing the perceptions of my generation about the role of African Americans in US politics. I feel the same way about the ill-fated runs of Jessie Jackson (1984 & 88), Lenora Fulani (1988 & 92), Alan Keyes (1996 & 2000), Carol Mosely Braun (2004), and don't forget the Rev. Al Sharpton (2004). I think they all knew that they were in some subtile way laying the ground work for someone they knew would someday exist who would run and win. I very much doubt they dreamed that Barack Obama would come along so soon.

Racism runs deep in our national psyche and our institutions. It pervades the subconscious life of us all. In my view racism can be gradually overcome only by successful modeling of the possible future of people of all races living and working together. This can only be achieved practically, not by aspiration. We learn to live together in harmony by actually doing it. That's why so much rides on Obama having a successful presidency.

As of Friday, there was no official office announcement about whether, where or how ODAR staff could watch the Inauguration. I'm sure some staff members have already decided to stay home from work Tuesday. In the end Karen had agreed if I wanted to set up a TV with possibly poor reception and the staff wanted to watch on their lunch break, she was fine with that, but it was apparent the office would take no steps to facilitate such arrangements. I am troubled that the value of having the entire office staff watch the Inauguration together does not seem to even have occurred to the SSA bureaucracy. In a more perfect world all federal employees would pause, gather together and listen as their new boss explains his or her plans for the future.

I was heartened when one African American staff person told me her husband, who works for the Army, was going to watch the Inauguration on a big screen TV set up especially for the occasion at work. I am glad the Army recognizes the value of watching their new commander-in-chief be sworn in.

Right now I plan on unofficially watching the Inauguration on Tuesday on the TV in the claimant's waiting room. I'm sure many ODAR staff will join me. Together we launch our imperfect future.

Story tellers

Hello everyone. Merry and Joli left yesterday to drive to New Orleans where I will join them on Tuesday for Christmas in the Big Easy. For some time we have both wanted to get a look at New Orleans post-Katrina. We plan to explore the city and participate in at least one Revellon dinner, a unique New Orleans holiday tradition. I plan to write about that when we return.

Without fully realizing what I was doing I read two books during the past few weeks that struck me with such force I decided to break with my normal weekly travelogue and spend a little time describing their effect on me. Feel free to skip the convoluted book reviews that follow. You have been warned.

When we moved we decided as a general principle not to bring our library with us. There were some exceptions to this rule. I wanted to bring a few books to inspire me to write. After reflection I decided to bring all the books I own by Italo Calvino (13 thin volumes) as well as by Humberto Costantini (2) and Michael Ondaatje (2). I selected these books because I admire the skill displayed in the story telling by these three otherwise very different authors.

Costantini, a Buenos Aries veterinarian (1924 – 1987), deserves to be better known. I think only two of his novels have been translated into English and both seem to be out of print. If you can find it, I highly recommend his poetic and highly imaginative The Gods, the Little Guys and the Police.

The Sri Lankan - Canadian poet Michael Ondaatje is well known and in my humble opinion is perhaps the most talented living writer. His descriptive power is unmatched. I sometimes wake from a deep sleep thinking about the desert passages from The English Patient or the incredible “painting the Buddha's eyes” scene from Anil's Ghost.

Most of the books I brought for inspiration, however, are by Italo Calvino. Calvino (1923 – 1985) was born in Cuba but lived most of his life in San Remo, Italy. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/calvino.htm.

At the very end of his life Calvino was preparing to give the Charles Eliot Norton lectures on literature at Harvard. He planned six lectures but only finished five – published in English as Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Each lecture focuses on one element of Calvino's writing process. The first lecture on “Lightness” is the key to what makes his writing so unique. He tells us “my working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight.” He wants his writing to escape the heaviness with which descriptions of things is freighted. To achieve this he uses only the most distilled language. The other four lectures “Quickness,” “Exactitude,”Visibility,” and “Multiplicity” contain further details and helpful examples of the struggle to escape language gravity. To my way of thinking Calvino truly achieves his goal in the stories that make up Invisible Cities in which Marco Polo describes unseen the wonders of the world to Kublai Khan, but it's there in all the books. As a consequence of this focus on lightness Calvino's story telling most resembles highly intellectual fantastic fairy tales.

As I was reading the Six Memos, Merry took a trip to the bookstore and brought me Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. I took it to work to read on my lunch hour. Fortunately it's a quick read. Bradbury is for the most part a terrible, clumsy writer when compared to Calvino. He is full of himself, unquestioning in his praise for his own work and very impressed with the arc of his own life. In short, he's an American. Bradbury was born in 1920 in Waukegan, Il and still lives in LA. http://www.raybradbury.com/about.html

Why did I read his self congratulatory book about how he became the best writer of his generation? Because of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. These were the best books I had ever read when I was 16. Even now I think of them as some of the most evocative stories I have ever read. I tried to re-read Fahrenheit 451 recently. In literary terms, the writing is pretty clunky, but the story is terrific. How did he do it?

He did it by writing every day for years and years. Pounding a typewriter and churning out what he admits was largely junk at the clip of 1000 to 2000 words a day. He sums up the “Zen” of his work in three words: WORK, RELAXATION and DON'T THINK (yes, he uses capital letters a lot). His point is that skill in story telling is achieved by finding a way to let your subconscious move the writing. To do this you have to be relaxed and not allow your intellect to get in the way of telling the tale. He says the only way to do this is to write and write every day until you can write while totally relaxed and without thinking. Surprisingly, this actually seems to capture one of the key insights of Zen practice.

So...lightness and Zen. What I take from these two books on writing stories is simple. The stories are already there in my subconscious. My job is to relax enough to find them, polish them and help them escape the gravity of everyday things. We'll see.

Riding the bus

Last week we were in Syracuse for Thanksgiving and a belated three way birthday party with my dear friends Harmon Hoff and EveAnn Shwartz at their home, Maple Avenue Farm near Earlville. There was no blog entry last week but here's another glimpse of everyday life in St. Louis for your enjoyment.

During my first week on the job I learned that Social Security buys a bus pass on request for all employees. To my pleasant surprise your government is actually doing something concrete to slow global warming. Any US government employee can ride the bus or light rail for free, but there is no subsidy for those who drive. All the other judges drive to work and park in the building garage at the cost of $130 per month. I live only 2.5 miles from the office, on a bus line. I decided on the bus.

As in most big cities, learning the St. Louis bus routes and schedules was a real challenge at first. Eventually I settled into a fairly efficient pattern: leave the house no later than 6:15 am, walk two blocks to the #10 bus stop on Gravois, wait from 0 – 5 minutes, ride about 15 minutes, walk a block to the office and arrive at 6:35, give or take a few minutes. The homeward trip is about the same but takes about 25 minutes due to more frequent stops to pick up and discharge passengers.

Every day I anticipate the moment when the #10 bus rounds the corner onto Market St., the main drag downtown. Framed in the windshield is the Gateway Arch, the sunrise and the Old Courthouse centered between the gleaming stainless steel legs of the Arch. It's become my weathervane and inspiration.

The bus talks. As the doors open to admit passengers the bus says, in a pleasant female voice, “Good morning, #10 Gravois to downtown.” Every time someone pulls the cord she says, “Stop requested.” At key stops she announces the stop and lists the connecting buses. There is a certain squeaky sweetness in her voice as she chirps, “Market and Tenth Street.”

On winter mornings the passengers huddle wrapped in heavy coats and scarves, hoods up, listening to iPods. In the afternoon they talk. It's quite common for passengers to greet the driver and sincerely thank him or her on exiting the bus, a habit I've adopted. Many of the afternoon bus drivers are big talkers, razzing passers-by and riders. One of the first cool days a short heavy-set black woman climbed on wearing a brand new puffy pure white down coat. She looked like a marshmallow with legs. The driver kidded her, “Hey, woman, you looking way too warm.” She sat near the driver who kept asking her if she were warm enough. She refused to unzip the coat. Everyone else on the bus was in shirtsleeves or a light jacket. Finally he asked her why she didn't buy a matching down hat. “Can't eat no hat,” she shot back.

One warm fall day a guy in coveralls hooked his bike to the front of the bus and got on carrying a clear plastic bag full of clothes. “Man, you sure smell like fish,” the driver commented. “Yea, well, see I work at the fish meal factory on 4^th and can't figure how to get the smell off. I put my work clothes in this here bag, but I still stink like fish guts.” His concern for the noses of his fellow riders sparked a bus wide discussion on how to defeat fish oil with bleach, lemon juice, baking soda, pine soap and more that lasted until he got off and wheeled away into the twilight.

Merry decided to ride the #10 one day but before paying her fare asked the driver if the bus went up GraVOIS with the accent on the second syllable. We did know the “ois” was pronounced “oy”. “What?” She said it again. “Where?” “Where are you going?” Merry was getting exasperated. “Up GRAVois, GRAVois” in a very gravely voice. For the rest of the short ride he occasionally growled, not quite under his breath, “GRAVois.” Merry laughed for days.

I've come to genuinely like the bus commute. Perhaps the best thing about riding the bus is the chance it gives me to observe the working people of St. Louis. They are janitors, factory workers, chambermaids, waitresses, office clerks, high school kids, homeless people and one ALJ. The bus riders are from all races. The vast majority on the #10 are black, but there is a wide variety of other races including hispanic, asian, near eastern and white. We ride together. I know that most commuters are still stuck in their cars, but it does me good to feel a part of the minority who rides the bus.

Unfavorable

Hello again everyone. Here's another short reflection on my new job. Thanks to everyone who commented on last week's entry. It's a bit lonely out here and the friendly contacts are certainly welcome.

After two weeks of hearing cases I've already discovered a rather surprising (surprising to me at any rate) basic law of judging Social Security cases. Finding in favor of someone and granting benefits is easy. It's gratifying, too. Claimants come to court convinced they are so disabled that they cannot work. They tell me their story. These stories are always heart wrenching. The claimants are sad, worn-out folks. Some have worked hard all their lives until an accident or bad judgment laid them low. Some are deadbeats, drug addicts, and lay-abouts who ran out of friends and luck. Some are ordinary people whose body has inexplicably turned on them. Many are mentally ill, undiagnosed and unable to care for themselves in any meaningful way.

During a hearing this week, as I listened to another sad story, I realized that I was going to have to deny this person benefits. I am certain that she believed she could not work, indeed it may be true that she can't work. The problem is she simply did not have any credible evidence to support her belief. Her good doctors had done their work well. According to them she had recovered most of her body's function. She hurt and was tired but I knew without a doubt that she could hold down a job.

As she told me that no one would hire her no matter how hard she tried, I looked at her lawyer. He is a well respected practitioner. He caught my eye. Somehow he saw that I had reached my decision and that it did not favor his client. I saw a slight change come over his face; a look of resignation, perhaps. As I noticed this change, he realized I knew that he knew the case was hopeless. At the end of the testimony I asked him if he needed more time to gather evidence that might convince me. He knew that such evidence did not exist and to his credit he did not pretend it did.

The next day I wrote the unfavorable decision. It took a lot of time to explain why I did not believe the testimony of the claimant and why her doctors did not provide adequate evidence of disability. This was hard work. Lonely work. Necessary work.

To my surprise, I did not shrink from this work or even find it distasteful. Judging means being striving to be fair. To be fair you need rules. It some cases the rules dictate some claimants lose. In order for me to do my part in this system of justice I have to apply these rules impartially, even when it means someone loses. It is hard work to be sure. I hope I can be worthy of it.