Before we all saddle up, form an opinion posse, and ride off blaming Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Hannity et.al. for provoking the senseless shooting last Saturday of a United States Congresswoman, a United States Magistrate, a nine-year old girl, and 15 others near the front door of a Safe Way grocery market in Tuscon, let's stroll over to the saloon, throw down a couple of belts of Rot Gut, and cipher this one out.
This much appears to be reckoned: the shooter is a sociopath, certifiable wacko. He dropped out of high school and has been ranting and raging about his being a victim of every imaginable kind of authority ever since.
Did he have any friends? Apparently, he had just one -- and they sat around watching conspiracy theory movies together.
Did he have a girl friend? Nope.
I feel some empathy for the father and the mother, but from what I'm reading and hearing vis a vis the news, the parents were permissive molly-coddlers who enabled all of his tantrums and whims.
I don't know which photo you may have seen of him in your newspaper, but the one I saw in my paper depicted a very conflicted and extremely angry young man.
His eyes give him away.
A pattern seems to be emerging here, one that places Mr. Loughner in company with the likes of the Texas Tower Sniper, the Beltway Murderers, and the Virginia Tech Shooter -- and many other psychopaths who, over the years, have resorted to a firearm in order to satisfy their inner demon.
That a Congresswoman was one of his victims may be completely accidental to his act of rage. For all I know, he would have started blasting away at parents trying to register their kids for Little League.
We'll all get to know more and more about Jared Loughner in the coming days. I, for one, won't be too terribly surprised to learn that he likes Metal Head Music, the dark side of Hip Hop, Mayhem Movies, and that he gravitated to neo-Nazi web sites before his senseless act of savagery last Saturday.
Can there ever be a better case to be made, to include mental health care in national health care reform?
Just one more point, if I may: did anyone else notice that most of his victims were women?
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
The Health Care Debate Redux
I'm proud to say that I'm a Bobby Kennedy Democrat: socially Progressive; semi-Fiscally Conservative.
By that, I mean I'm all for investing the US Treasury in programs that improve the lives of people so long as we have the long-term capacity to support them.
Notice, please, that I choose to use the word "capacity" here instead of the word "ability." And therein lay the fuel for arguments between me and my Conservative friends (believe it or not I have several of them) concerning whether or not it is the proper role of government to get involved with matters such as health care reform.
Here are a few points regarding health care reform that we agree upon:
Regarding Point-Of-Contention (POC#1), most economists -- including those who work for the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office -- calculate that health care reform legislation, once it kicks in fully in 2014, will actually reduce the national debt by over $200 billion over 10 years.
Concerning POC#2, there are no such things as "Death Panels" established by health care reform. The term is a pure invention of lobbyists working with the insurance industry, one designed to scare the beejeezus out of us. The matter at-hand concerns a provision in health care reform that sets up a process whereby a patient can, at his or her option, issue an advance directive stipulating exactly what measures, and how much, may be employed by doctors and hospitals to keep a person alive. Most of us have an advance directive, so what's the Big Deal?
On POC#3, 'twas ever thus. The battle between the medical community and the legal profession regarding damage awards granted by the courts for medical malpractice have been raging for 30 years. I agree that any doctor who employs the full range of his or her competent, medical skill in order to make a patient well should not have to worry about being sued. Problem is, this debate, over medical malpractice, has been lumped into the much-wider debate over so-called "Tort Reform."
By the way, I can't find any fault with an attorney who uses all of his or her arts and skills in the courtroom to secure a hefty award on behalf of his injured client.
I don't mind that the Republicans now in control of the House of Representatives will want to re-visit health care reform sometime next week. Bring It On!
The debate ought to give President Obama and the Democrats the capacity to tell America just how important these reforms are, and how they will improve the lives of Americans over time.
By that, I mean I'm all for investing the US Treasury in programs that improve the lives of people so long as we have the long-term capacity to support them.
Notice, please, that I choose to use the word "capacity" here instead of the word "ability." And therein lay the fuel for arguments between me and my Conservative friends (believe it or not I have several of them) concerning whether or not it is the proper role of government to get involved with matters such as health care reform.
Here are a few points regarding health care reform that we agree upon:
- Medical care should be available to every American regardless of socio-economic status.
- Pre-existing conditions should be covered by insurance.
- There should never be monetary caps imposed by insurers on costs for treatment.
- We all like the fact that kids can now stay on their parents' policies until they turn 26.
- "Obama Care" will bankrupt the country.
- "Death Panels" will determine the ultimate fate of people with serious illness.
- Trial lawyers are ones responsible for skyrocketing health costs.
Regarding Point-Of-Contention (POC#1), most economists -- including those who work for the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office -- calculate that health care reform legislation, once it kicks in fully in 2014, will actually reduce the national debt by over $200 billion over 10 years.
Concerning POC#2, there are no such things as "Death Panels" established by health care reform. The term is a pure invention of lobbyists working with the insurance industry, one designed to scare the beejeezus out of us. The matter at-hand concerns a provision in health care reform that sets up a process whereby a patient can, at his or her option, issue an advance directive stipulating exactly what measures, and how much, may be employed by doctors and hospitals to keep a person alive. Most of us have an advance directive, so what's the Big Deal?
On POC#3, 'twas ever thus. The battle between the medical community and the legal profession regarding damage awards granted by the courts for medical malpractice have been raging for 30 years. I agree that any doctor who employs the full range of his or her competent, medical skill in order to make a patient well should not have to worry about being sued. Problem is, this debate, over medical malpractice, has been lumped into the much-wider debate over so-called "Tort Reform."
By the way, I can't find any fault with an attorney who uses all of his or her arts and skills in the courtroom to secure a hefty award on behalf of his injured client.
I don't mind that the Republicans now in control of the House of Representatives will want to re-visit health care reform sometime next week. Bring It On!
The debate ought to give President Obama and the Democrats the capacity to tell America just how important these reforms are, and how they will improve the lives of Americans over time.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Of Brass Monkeys & Shaggy Dogs
My friend Wally is heading up to Minneapolis for a few days -- good luck with the nine-degree weather, Wally.
Wally speaks with an endearing Norwegian clip to his voice, like the dialect you hear in the movie Fargo. He travels to Minnesota in the dead-of-winter for reasons fathomed by him and him only.
Perhaps he has an insatiable craving for lutefisk.
Anyway, Wally promises to deliver an up to the minute status report on the Brass Monkeys down there in the park by the Mississippi River.
His "report" is actually a long-standing joke that plays upon the ignorance of good folks who don't know anything about Brass Monkeys. These folks are thinking "chimps" while a few of us -- especially ex-Navy types -- know better.
Anyway, Wally'll let us all know when he gets back in-town whether or not the Brass Monkeys are still glued together.
While you're contemplating whether or not there is any relevant meaning to any of this, let me digress to the meat-and-potatoes of an old Shaggy Dog.
It's probably the first joke I ever learned...
This guy goes into the taxidermist with a suit case containing three dead pet chimpanzees.
He asks the taxidermist, "Can you stuff these for me?"
The taxidermist says, "Sure! We do it all the time. How would you like them mounted?"
To which the guy says, "Oh, please don't do that! Just set 'em up sitting side-by-side."
Yeah. Sure. Ya Betcha!
Wally speaks with an endearing Norwegian clip to his voice, like the dialect you hear in the movie Fargo. He travels to Minnesota in the dead-of-winter for reasons fathomed by him and him only.
Perhaps he has an insatiable craving for lutefisk.
Anyway, Wally promises to deliver an up to the minute status report on the Brass Monkeys down there in the park by the Mississippi River.
His "report" is actually a long-standing joke that plays upon the ignorance of good folks who don't know anything about Brass Monkeys. These folks are thinking "chimps" while a few of us -- especially ex-Navy types -- know better.
Anyway, Wally'll let us all know when he gets back in-town whether or not the Brass Monkeys are still glued together.
While you're contemplating whether or not there is any relevant meaning to any of this, let me digress to the meat-and-potatoes of an old Shaggy Dog.
It's probably the first joke I ever learned...
This guy goes into the taxidermist with a suit case containing three dead pet chimpanzees.
He asks the taxidermist, "Can you stuff these for me?"
The taxidermist says, "Sure! We do it all the time. How would you like them mounted?"
To which the guy says, "Oh, please don't do that! Just set 'em up sitting side-by-side."
Yeah. Sure. Ya Betcha!
The Big Real Estate Smack Down
You really don't have to know anything about the real estate industry to understand a painful reality: the great American Dream of Home Ownership has turned into the Great American Nightmare.
Just about everyone I know -- from millionaires to borderline paupers -- has been beaten like a Himalayan Gong during the current real estate market Smack Down. Borderline paupers have been particularly stung by the tremendous decrease in the value of their property. That's because they believed that the equity they accumulated over the term of ownership would tide them over in retirement. So Long, Equity!
The wonks and the talking heads would have you believe there are numerous and complicated reasons why the Great American Dream has gone "pfft." But when you really get down to it, there is one -- and one only -- cause: the ages-old business relationship between the seller and the buyer has been usurped by the courts.
I "get it" about foreclosures. I understand why lenders go the the courtroom to enforce consequences against people why can't pay.
What I don't understand is this: I don't get the court-ordered appraisal process whereby a "disinterested third party" or the appraiser, establishes artificially low values on the properties undergoing foreclosure.
A little side track: appraisers employ one of three methods to establish the value of real estate. First, there is the comparable value method, in which the appraiser researches all properties sold within a certain area, and then comes up with a price tag based on the average selling price.
The second method is known as the income approach -- but this doesn't really apply to most residential properties where the owner is the occupant.
The third way to establish value is through the replacement cost method, whereby the appraiser calculates how much a home is worth if it was built on a lot from scratch. In most parts of the country, a minimum replacement cost for a typical residence would be in the $100 to $125 per square foot range.
By relying upon the comparable value method as the benchmark, courts set the equity factor built into every home in the community into a persistent, downward spiral. Consequently, the courts become overly-reliant on the worst-possible method of establishing value, the low-ball method. There are just too many foreclosure fire sales going on for the comparable value method to work.
Low-ball appraisals are not only unfair to the lender, they are lethal to folks who are not behind on their obligations. The sad fact is, low-balling is happening all over the country. People living in Nevada, Florida and California in particular are being hit by such practices.
Here's an example of how low-balling works: Appraisers inspect the properties in foreclosure and report to the courts that foreclosed "Property X" which sold for $350,000 five years ago is worth only $125,000 in today's market. This becomes the floor sale price, at auction, the bottom line number that would be acceptable to the court.
What happened to that $225,000 differential between the sales price six years ago and what the court will accept at auction?
Pfft!
But hold on there, chief. The courthouse auction price has a tremendous negative effect on the value of comparable homes not in foreclosure. People who are current with their obligations, in one word, get screwed by this process.
What the appraiser forgot to tell the courts is this: the house was gutted of duct work; appliances were removed or they do not work; plumbing and electric fixtures were ripped out; the AC unit went missing; and, the roof leaked.
For all intents and purposes, the foreclosed property sold at auction by the court is uninhabitable. It will not qualify for a certificate of occupancy unless extensive repairs are made to it. Put another way, the new owner will have to spent a crap-load of cash in order to bring the place up to livable standards.
By the time the new owner is finished, and gets his or her CO on the property, its value will be back up to the $120 per square foot range, where it should be.
Another way to look at it, the property's value would be back up in the $300,000 range because the replacement method would trump the low ball method.
When replacement cost trumps comparable value, homeowners who are current with their mortgages will be able to maintain equity in their property.
Before the courts place any foreclosed property up for auction, judges should ask one fundamental question: does the property qualify for a certificate of occupancy? If it doesn't -- and in a vast majority of cases, it won't -- then the property can be sold at auction for its raw land value.
Just about everyone I know -- from millionaires to borderline paupers -- has been beaten like a Himalayan Gong during the current real estate market Smack Down. Borderline paupers have been particularly stung by the tremendous decrease in the value of their property. That's because they believed that the equity they accumulated over the term of ownership would tide them over in retirement. So Long, Equity!
The wonks and the talking heads would have you believe there are numerous and complicated reasons why the Great American Dream has gone "pfft." But when you really get down to it, there is one -- and one only -- cause: the ages-old business relationship between the seller and the buyer has been usurped by the courts.
I "get it" about foreclosures. I understand why lenders go the the courtroom to enforce consequences against people why can't pay.
What I don't understand is this: I don't get the court-ordered appraisal process whereby a "disinterested third party" or the appraiser, establishes artificially low values on the properties undergoing foreclosure.
A little side track: appraisers employ one of three methods to establish the value of real estate. First, there is the comparable value method, in which the appraiser researches all properties sold within a certain area, and then comes up with a price tag based on the average selling price.
The second method is known as the income approach -- but this doesn't really apply to most residential properties where the owner is the occupant.
The third way to establish value is through the replacement cost method, whereby the appraiser calculates how much a home is worth if it was built on a lot from scratch. In most parts of the country, a minimum replacement cost for a typical residence would be in the $100 to $125 per square foot range.
By relying upon the comparable value method as the benchmark, courts set the equity factor built into every home in the community into a persistent, downward spiral. Consequently, the courts become overly-reliant on the worst-possible method of establishing value, the low-ball method. There are just too many foreclosure fire sales going on for the comparable value method to work.
Low-ball appraisals are not only unfair to the lender, they are lethal to folks who are not behind on their obligations. The sad fact is, low-balling is happening all over the country. People living in Nevada, Florida and California in particular are being hit by such practices.
Here's an example of how low-balling works: Appraisers inspect the properties in foreclosure and report to the courts that foreclosed "Property X" which sold for $350,000 five years ago is worth only $125,000 in today's market. This becomes the floor sale price, at auction, the bottom line number that would be acceptable to the court.
What happened to that $225,000 differential between the sales price six years ago and what the court will accept at auction?
Pfft!
But hold on there, chief. The courthouse auction price has a tremendous negative effect on the value of comparable homes not in foreclosure. People who are current with their obligations, in one word, get screwed by this process.
What the appraiser forgot to tell the courts is this: the house was gutted of duct work; appliances were removed or they do not work; plumbing and electric fixtures were ripped out; the AC unit went missing; and, the roof leaked.
For all intents and purposes, the foreclosed property sold at auction by the court is uninhabitable. It will not qualify for a certificate of occupancy unless extensive repairs are made to it. Put another way, the new owner will have to spent a crap-load of cash in order to bring the place up to livable standards.
By the time the new owner is finished, and gets his or her CO on the property, its value will be back up to the $120 per square foot range, where it should be.
Another way to look at it, the property's value would be back up in the $300,000 range because the replacement method would trump the low ball method.
When replacement cost trumps comparable value, homeowners who are current with their mortgages will be able to maintain equity in their property.
Before the courts place any foreclosed property up for auction, judges should ask one fundamental question: does the property qualify for a certificate of occupancy? If it doesn't -- and in a vast majority of cases, it won't -- then the property can be sold at auction for its raw land value.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Institutional Suicide? You Decide ...
I listened to an interesting discussion aired on NPR recently. The topic examined: the impending, long, slow death of the American newspaper.
Commentators kicked the can around explaining why readership is down. Advertising is way off. Production costs are out of control. Forget about paying attention to distribution.
NPR's panelists offered a solution.
Newspaper publishers ought to move all content to the Internet. One commentator actually asserted the owners of The New York Times are considering such possibilities.
Well, excuse me. I don't think they should do so.
Instead of hand-wringing about the pre-Net days, anybody who truly cares about newspapers and journalism ought to engage in serious soul-searching and ponder the real causes of why a vast number of people have turned to the Internet for their news -- and their backs to the print media.
My take on these matters is pretty simple, almost linear.
First off, daily newspapers have themselves turned their backs on their readership by sacrificing their commission to gather local news -- by local news, "read" city and town council meetings, schools, hospitals, churches and synagogues and mosques, police reports, fires, accidents, births, obits, weddings, entertainment & more.
News reporting about all that takes place within a community gives a place a sense of immediacy, uniqueness and relevancy. Covering all that happens, so that the community can measure its achievements -- and its shortfalls -- in black-and-white-and-full-color, conveys the concept that the community is, indeed, important.
When newspapers ignore and/or outright refuse to report local happenings, people will react predictably: they'll deem the newspaper to be arrogant and stop reading it.
I don't have to tell you that there is virtually no such thing as the locally-owned newspaper today.
Conglomerates, such as Gannet, have eaten up most of them. Publishers, today, are more likely than not men and women who lack knowledge and attachments to the communities to which they are posted by their corporate overseers. Publishers, like cub reporters, receive "assignments." A five-year run for a corporately-owned newspaper publisher in one community is rare.
The same goes for a corporately-owned senior editors and reporters, all out-of-towners who bide their time and wish for employment with larger, chain-owned rags.
This is the ilk that refers to their newspapers as "products." This is the ilk that gives you a new "Friday Entertainment Section" that actually ignores local entertainment. This is the ilk that cuts back on page counts, narrows the column widths, and jacks up the ad rates. This is the ilk that charges a fee for publishing obituaries!
This is the ilk that's concerned with one thing and one thing only: profit margins reported back to their chains.
Don Oat, Harry Noyes, Dean Avery, the Crosbies, the Harts and and host of other owners of "family-owned newspapers" would have none of any of the above.
Something must be done to protect the few remaining family-owned dailies that are in publication today.
Tax laws should and must be changed, to project publishing families from forced sales to chains. The law, regulation and our economy should protect and defend people who actually were born and who continue to live by publishing dailies within their communities, people who actually care about the content and quality of news and advertising they deliver to their subscribers. After all, they run into folks in their community every day, at Rotary, church, or out on the street.
They place value on the content, a value, in retrospect, that far exceeded the coins they pocket from each edition. Community newspapers are the glue that keep a community together. No one can ever place a monetary value on that.
The Internet was and is precisely the reason why today's newspapers suffer loss of readership and loss of ad revenues. Anyone can post just about anything on the Net, news included, making the posts and news items relevant, to say nothing about immediate.
It's simplistic for me to write this, but the Internet is nonsensitive (read: no ink on your fingertips), instant and antiseptic. Furthermore, the Net can be unreliable as far as some news is concerned because there are no editors (gate-keepers of factual truth) to vet the information.
Besides, you can't grasp Net news content in your hands and fold it to work on a crossword puzzle. You get the vacuous equivalent of the Mickie-Dee Buck Special: without even paying a nickle.
Quick aside: I love to spend most of my Novembers in a small town in the Great State of Vermont. One of my joys when I'm there is to scoot down to the Valley Market at sunrise, before everyone else at the house is awake, to get copies of The Rutland Herald, a community-owned paper, and The New York Times -- both of them Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers.
The Herald is always on the rack, loaded with local political and government news, police/fire reports, obits, weddings, gossip, local sports, great editorials, and even better, folksier letters from readers.
The New York Times, alas, is another story. Whether it arrives at the Valley Market in central Vermont regularly is of no apparent concern to the Times circulation honcho in Manhattan. Sad to say, the Old Grey Lady even bagged me on a Sunday!
If there is a penumbra of hope for the American Daily Newspaper, it must be back lit in a belief that members of a community will insist that their news outlet be locally owned, that the coverage emphasize local events, that tax laws will be changed where applicable, and that willing investors within a community will support the enterprise.
Commentators kicked the can around explaining why readership is down. Advertising is way off. Production costs are out of control. Forget about paying attention to distribution.
NPR's panelists offered a solution.
Newspaper publishers ought to move all content to the Internet. One commentator actually asserted the owners of The New York Times are considering such possibilities.
Well, excuse me. I don't think they should do so.
Instead of hand-wringing about the pre-Net days, anybody who truly cares about newspapers and journalism ought to engage in serious soul-searching and ponder the real causes of why a vast number of people have turned to the Internet for their news -- and their backs to the print media.
My take on these matters is pretty simple, almost linear.
First off, daily newspapers have themselves turned their backs on their readership by sacrificing their commission to gather local news -- by local news, "read" city and town council meetings, schools, hospitals, churches and synagogues and mosques, police reports, fires, accidents, births, obits, weddings, entertainment & more.
News reporting about all that takes place within a community gives a place a sense of immediacy, uniqueness and relevancy. Covering all that happens, so that the community can measure its achievements -- and its shortfalls -- in black-and-white-and-full-color, conveys the concept that the community is, indeed, important.
When newspapers ignore and/or outright refuse to report local happenings, people will react predictably: they'll deem the newspaper to be arrogant and stop reading it.
I don't have to tell you that there is virtually no such thing as the locally-owned newspaper today.
Conglomerates, such as Gannet, have eaten up most of them. Publishers, today, are more likely than not men and women who lack knowledge and attachments to the communities to which they are posted by their corporate overseers. Publishers, like cub reporters, receive "assignments." A five-year run for a corporately-owned newspaper publisher in one community is rare.
The same goes for a corporately-owned senior editors and reporters, all out-of-towners who bide their time and wish for employment with larger, chain-owned rags.
This is the ilk that refers to their newspapers as "products." This is the ilk that gives you a new "Friday Entertainment Section" that actually ignores local entertainment. This is the ilk that cuts back on page counts, narrows the column widths, and jacks up the ad rates. This is the ilk that charges a fee for publishing obituaries!
This is the ilk that's concerned with one thing and one thing only: profit margins reported back to their chains.
Don Oat, Harry Noyes, Dean Avery, the Crosbies, the Harts and and host of other owners of "family-owned newspapers" would have none of any of the above.
Something must be done to protect the few remaining family-owned dailies that are in publication today.
Tax laws should and must be changed, to project publishing families from forced sales to chains. The law, regulation and our economy should protect and defend people who actually were born and who continue to live by publishing dailies within their communities, people who actually care about the content and quality of news and advertising they deliver to their subscribers. After all, they run into folks in their community every day, at Rotary, church, or out on the street.
They place value on the content, a value, in retrospect, that far exceeded the coins they pocket from each edition. Community newspapers are the glue that keep a community together. No one can ever place a monetary value on that.
The Internet was and is precisely the reason why today's newspapers suffer loss of readership and loss of ad revenues. Anyone can post just about anything on the Net, news included, making the posts and news items relevant, to say nothing about immediate.
It's simplistic for me to write this, but the Internet is nonsensitive (read: no ink on your fingertips), instant and antiseptic. Furthermore, the Net can be unreliable as far as some news is concerned because there are no editors (gate-keepers of factual truth) to vet the information.
Besides, you can't grasp Net news content in your hands and fold it to work on a crossword puzzle. You get the vacuous equivalent of the Mickie-Dee Buck Special: without even paying a nickle.
Quick aside: I love to spend most of my Novembers in a small town in the Great State of Vermont. One of my joys when I'm there is to scoot down to the Valley Market at sunrise, before everyone else at the house is awake, to get copies of The Rutland Herald, a community-owned paper, and The New York Times -- both of them Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers.
The Herald is always on the rack, loaded with local political and government news, police/fire reports, obits, weddings, gossip, local sports, great editorials, and even better, folksier letters from readers.
The New York Times, alas, is another story. Whether it arrives at the Valley Market in central Vermont regularly is of no apparent concern to the Times circulation honcho in Manhattan. Sad to say, the Old Grey Lady even bagged me on a Sunday!
If there is a penumbra of hope for the American Daily Newspaper, it must be back lit in a belief that members of a community will insist that their news outlet be locally owned, that the coverage emphasize local events, that tax laws will be changed where applicable, and that willing investors within a community will support the enterprise.
ALOHA, WELCOME & HELLO!!
I've been thinking about writing this blog for several months but, for one reason or another, I never got it started -- until recently.
I guess I needed a little inspiration and a nudge from an old friend, Dave Shippee, who bit the bullet recently and started his own blog which you can find at shippeesays.com. Ditto to Andy Thibault, who continues to pen his frequent, inciteful and insightful column "cool justice."
Check them out!
I chose the name Various Matters because I loved reading a column by that name appearing in the Norwich Bulletin, a daily newspaper up in Connecticut where I enjoyed a brief career progressing from reporter, to copy editor, to city editor, to state house correspondent, to Sunday columnist to, finally, managing editor after a pit-stop in DC where I served on Lowell Weicker's staff.
We called the column VMs back then, and it was a melange of club announcements, pithy news blurbs, personals and one-line classified. Various Matters was the best-read column of the newspaper -- and I hope that I can continue the VM tradition in some electronic fashion.
You can expect to read about politics here (of course) and also encounter some information about coping with certain health issues that I face on a daily basis. I'll also use VM as a platform for some thinking about the state of our country and its future. You can also expect to read an occasional blurb about provocative men and women who have made, and will continue to make, life interesting.
I guess I needed a little inspiration and a nudge from an old friend, Dave Shippee, who bit the bullet recently and started his own blog which you can find at shippeesays.com. Ditto to Andy Thibault, who continues to pen his frequent, inciteful and insightful column "cool justice."
Check them out!
I chose the name Various Matters because I loved reading a column by that name appearing in the Norwich Bulletin, a daily newspaper up in Connecticut where I enjoyed a brief career progressing from reporter, to copy editor, to city editor, to state house correspondent, to Sunday columnist to, finally, managing editor after a pit-stop in DC where I served on Lowell Weicker's staff.
We called the column VMs back then, and it was a melange of club announcements, pithy news blurbs, personals and one-line classified. Various Matters was the best-read column of the newspaper -- and I hope that I can continue the VM tradition in some electronic fashion.
You can expect to read about politics here (of course) and also encounter some information about coping with certain health issues that I face on a daily basis. I'll also use VM as a platform for some thinking about the state of our country and its future. You can also expect to read an occasional blurb about provocative men and women who have made, and will continue to make, life interesting.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Pigskin Prognostications
I love the game of football.
I played the game in college, wore a flag on my hip in my late 20s attempting to recapture my Glory Years, and probably spent several thousand hours watching games on TV in the decades that followed.
I went on to procure the "best seat in the house" about ten years ago by deciding to become a football official at the high school Friday Night Lights level. That experience also afforded me the opportunity and privilege of refereeing Pop Warner games on Saturday mornings and afternoons.
I especially enjoy officiating Pop Warner ball at the Bobble Head level, where kids in the 7-9 year old bracket begin to learn the fundamentals of the game and the meaning of sportsmanship.
Quick aside ....
A couple of years back, I served as the referee (the White Hat) during a Pop Warner Mighty-Mites game between the Sharks and the Tarpons. A Tarpon player, Number 68 -- all of 7 years old, all 78 pounds and all 4'2" of him -- was playing on the offensive line.
I noticed he stopped blocking right after the snap. He was whirling around in circles, stomping his feet, and crying his eyes out.
I immediately ascertained the kid wasn't injured -- how could he be hurt when all of the action was taking place 20 yards away from him? -- so I allowed play to continue on for several seconds. Then I whistled the play dead just after a gang of Sharks dragged the Tarpons' ball carrier to the turf.
I walked over to Number 68, who was now crying louder than ever as he crawled around on his knees scooping his fingers through the chewed-up sod. I asked him if he was hurt. Sobbing and frantically digging his fingers through the mud on a mission, he screamed: "I lost my front tooth!"
I grabbed Number 68 by his pads and helped him regain his feet. I then peeked through the kid's face mask attached to his helmet and, indeed, there was a crimson gap in his uppers -- the companion incisor was also missing.
Game rules require that all players wear -- and use -- teeth protectors, which are pieces of white or clear plastic/composite that kids can bite into in order to protect their teeth during normal game contact. Teeth protectors dangle from face masks at the Pop Warner level, snapped into place by a piece of moulded plastic.
"My daddy said I could put my front tooth under my pillow and the Tooth Fairy would visit and give me five bucks," whimpered Number 68.
The kid's tooth protector provided the definitive clue. It glistened with a faint trace of blood mixed with some dirty saliva. What appeared to be a roan pearl was clearly embedded within the plastic.
Naturally, the kid did not and could not see what I had seen. Being the referee, that is, the person in complete charge of play, I decided to blow my whistle to stop the clock so that I could play a little game-within-a-game of my own.
"Let's take a look and see if we can find it," I said.
We pawed the turf together for a second or two. And then, I said: "Hey! Check out your tooth protector!"
In less than a femto-second, Number 68's mood shifted from near-complete dispair to near-complete elation. I think you can tell this is happening by looking into a kid's eyes.
Pop Warner Football rules also prescribe that players who have blood on their uniforms or their equipment must be sent to their side lines for care.
So I ordered Number 68 off of the field.
"Don't forget to put your tooth in a place for safe-keeping. And good luck with the Tooth Fairy," I told him.
There is football.
Then, again, there is football.
I played the game in college, wore a flag on my hip in my late 20s attempting to recapture my Glory Years, and probably spent several thousand hours watching games on TV in the decades that followed.
I went on to procure the "best seat in the house" about ten years ago by deciding to become a football official at the high school Friday Night Lights level. That experience also afforded me the opportunity and privilege of refereeing Pop Warner games on Saturday mornings and afternoons.
I especially enjoy officiating Pop Warner ball at the Bobble Head level, where kids in the 7-9 year old bracket begin to learn the fundamentals of the game and the meaning of sportsmanship.
Quick aside ....
A couple of years back, I served as the referee (the White Hat) during a Pop Warner Mighty-Mites game between the Sharks and the Tarpons. A Tarpon player, Number 68 -- all of 7 years old, all 78 pounds and all 4'2" of him -- was playing on the offensive line.
I noticed he stopped blocking right after the snap. He was whirling around in circles, stomping his feet, and crying his eyes out.
I immediately ascertained the kid wasn't injured -- how could he be hurt when all of the action was taking place 20 yards away from him? -- so I allowed play to continue on for several seconds. Then I whistled the play dead just after a gang of Sharks dragged the Tarpons' ball carrier to the turf.
I walked over to Number 68, who was now crying louder than ever as he crawled around on his knees scooping his fingers through the chewed-up sod. I asked him if he was hurt. Sobbing and frantically digging his fingers through the mud on a mission, he screamed: "I lost my front tooth!"
I grabbed Number 68 by his pads and helped him regain his feet. I then peeked through the kid's face mask attached to his helmet and, indeed, there was a crimson gap in his uppers -- the companion incisor was also missing.
Game rules require that all players wear -- and use -- teeth protectors, which are pieces of white or clear plastic/composite that kids can bite into in order to protect their teeth during normal game contact. Teeth protectors dangle from face masks at the Pop Warner level, snapped into place by a piece of moulded plastic.
"My daddy said I could put my front tooth under my pillow and the Tooth Fairy would visit and give me five bucks," whimpered Number 68.
The kid's tooth protector provided the definitive clue. It glistened with a faint trace of blood mixed with some dirty saliva. What appeared to be a roan pearl was clearly embedded within the plastic.
Naturally, the kid did not and could not see what I had seen. Being the referee, that is, the person in complete charge of play, I decided to blow my whistle to stop the clock so that I could play a little game-within-a-game of my own.
"Let's take a look and see if we can find it," I said.
We pawed the turf together for a second or two. And then, I said: "Hey! Check out your tooth protector!"
In less than a femto-second, Number 68's mood shifted from near-complete dispair to near-complete elation. I think you can tell this is happening by looking into a kid's eyes.
Pop Warner Football rules also prescribe that players who have blood on their uniforms or their equipment must be sent to their side lines for care.
So I ordered Number 68 off of the field.
"Don't forget to put your tooth in a place for safe-keeping. And good luck with the Tooth Fairy," I told him.
There is football.
Then, again, there is football.
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