Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Catching Up...

The last few weeks went by in a whirlwind. During that period we took a two week cruise in the Baltic region, trans Atlantic flights to Holland and back, packing up from our summer on the boat, and then closing it up involving a myriad of operational chores best left unsaid and then driving the 1,250 miles home, 800 miles on the 2nd day -- made pleasurable by Stephen King's audio edition of On Writing read by the author himself -- arriving to assess all the work to be done in and around the house, particularly on the tropical overgrowth of landscaping, courtesy of the humid Florida summers.

The ports we visited deserve their own commentary and as I pull together photos another posting with a description of the ports will be forthcoming, but a few preliminary words on the cruise itself. We've taken many and of course beside the interesting ports, ship life and days at sea are high points to me. We try to confine our cruises to the "smaller" ships, in this case the MS Rotterdam. This particular ship accommodated "merely" 1,380 passengers on this trip, her displacement at 61,849 tons. We had been on this ship once before, almost ten years ago, through the Panama Canal. She is still an elegant ship, although refitting and updating will be needed soon.


Our cruise covered 2,998 miles (remarkable as I did not realize the region was so large). We arrived in Amsterdam after the fastest trans-Atlantic flight I've ever been on as the tail winds were over 100 miles per hour, only five hours from JFK. They served drinks and then dinner shortly after departing, turned off the lights for this "overnight" flight and it seemed as if only a half hour went by before they were turning on the lights for breakfast. At one point our air speed was 720 miles per hour. I felt like Chuck Yeager about to break the sound barrier. I hadn't flown KLM in some time, a very decent airline, but well worth the few dollars to upgrade to "economy comfort" seats.

We arrived in Amsterdam very early in the morning and had to wait several totally disorganized hours for the pre-arranged bus connection we had made through Holland America to finally depart for Rotterdam where our ship awaited. One would think that at least this part of the trip would be under control -- after all HA has done this before.

The cruise took us to Copenhagen, Warnamunde (Berlin's nearest port), Tallin, St. Petersburg, and Stockholm. We were supposed to go to Helsinki as well, but weather prevented the visit, for reasons I will explain when I write up our port visitations.

Embarking in Rotterdam, our ship life began by locating our cabin (mid ship, Ocean view), and as we live on a boat during the summer, we found it commodious by comparison --including several spacious closets and lots of drawer space!

There are so many things to do, even on a relatively small ship such as this, but our routine was to have a set dining time, a table with three other couples, nice people with whom we could exchange pleasantries about the trip, but politics and related topics were strictly off limits. After dinner most people went to the musical production shows but we discovered a great jazz trio in one of the lounges and became regulars there. Every evening they took requests from the great American songbook, the music we love so much.


The drummer (Seth) and the pianist (Jane) are a married couple who do gigs in Nantucket when they are not traveling on a cruise ship (the bass player was from Spain, hired by the ship, and fit right in). Jane is one of the best jazz pianists I've ever heard on a cruise ship and she plays requests from "lead sheets" or "fake books" which is the way I play, taking the melody line and the chords and improvising (although her skills are head and shoulders above mine). But she does all this from an iPod which has searchable PDFs of thousands of songs. I requested (among many others) the little-played "Cottage for Sale", a rendition we loved having been recorded years before by Julie London. To our amazement, Jane came up with the song immediately...

"A little dream in a castle
With every dream gone
It is lonely and silent
The shades are all drawn
And my heart is heavy
As we gaze upon
A cottage for sale

The lawn we were proud of
Is waving in hay

Our beautiful garden is
Withered away.
Where we planted roses
The weeds seem to say..
A cottage for sale"


Jane's style is so reminiscent of Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. Her voicings are superb. In fact she played several Bill Evans pieces, including Waltz for Debby. These are not the kind of offerings one normally finds on a cruise ship. More information on Seth and Jane can be found here.

When I am away from everyday life while cruising, particularly the day to day gyrations of the market and politics and my beloved computer, reading becomes a pleasure, interrupted only by port visits, the obligatory meals, and jazz delights. The rest of the world goes by as contact is mostly limited to CNN International on board, a 4 page summary of the New York Times, and, of course, occasional, but very expensive and slow, Internet connections via satellite. Still, I tried to keep up with the baseball scores and the pennant races while on board, and the latest machinations of the approaching presidential election.

While away it seems that President Obama proposed a job-creation, infrastructure-fixing plan, with tax implications for the wealthy, one that was immediately shot down by the Republicans. How one can be so against a more progressive tax structure -- albeit with fixes of loopholes and some of the complexity along the way -- while 46 million Americans are living at the poverty level is beyond me. We had lunch with a woman one day who pontificated that half of Americans don't pay any taxes and that is why we should have a flat tax (very regressive in my mind). Hence, politics and the economy were off limits discussions (for me at least -- no sense on such a trip). However, on board I managed to see parts of the "Republican presidential debates" which were laughable as moderated by Fox, most candidates invoking God and the Constitution as their very own personal, exclusive allies.

So it was no wonder, off with the TV and on to some good reading. The first one I tackled, sort of an underground classic for which I thank my blogger friend, Emily, was J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country. This is written in the tradition of Thomas Hardy, a wonderful tale about a medieval mural of the apocalypse which was painted on the ceiling of a church in the countryside somewhere in England and whitewashed over. The man who is hired to restore the painting, in the process, resurrects his own soul in the bargain. He is separated from his wife, Vinny, and recovering from his experiences during WWI:"The marvelous thing was coming into this haven of calm water and, for a season, not having to worry my head with anything but uncovering their wall-painting for them. And, afterwards, perhaps I could make a new start, forget what the War and the rows with Vinny had done to me and begin where I'd left off. This is what I need, I thought -- a new start and, afterwards, maybe I won't be a casualty anymore. Well, we live by hope." It is a little gem of a redemptive novel.

From the sublime to the entertaining I picked up another Jonathan Tropper novel, This is Where I Leave You. Here is yet another clever novel by him, the focal point of which is our hero, Judd Foxman, sitting a seven day shiva with his dysfunctional family, as his marriage is falling apart. Tropper is known for his smart witty dialogue and this novel delivers. Although comic, Tropper is an observer of the manners and mores of modern times and I almost think of him as a Jane Austin type, delectable to read, with stinging observations. For example, this is his riotous description of sitting shiva (sat on chairs lower than their visitors) on one particular day: "The parade of weathered flesh continues. Sitting in our shiva chairs, we develop a sad infatuation with the bared legs of our visitors. Some of the men wear pants, and for that we are eternally grateful. But this being late August, we get our fair share of men in shorts, showing off pale, hairless legs with withered calves and thick, raised veins like earthworms trapped beneath their flesh who died burrowing their way out. The more genetically gifted men still show some musculature in the calf and thigh areas, but is more often than not marred by the surgical scars of multiple knee operations or heart bypasses that appropriated veins from the leg. And there's a special place in shiva hell reserved for men in sandals, their cracked, hardened toenails, dark with fungus, proudly on display. The women are more of a mixed bag. Some of them have managed to hold it together, but on others, skin hangs loosely off the bone, crinkled like cellophane, ankles disappear beneath mounds of flesh; and spider veins stretch out like bruises just below the skin. there really should be a dress code." A laugh a minute because it is so true.

My final novel for the cruise was one I've been saving for years for the right moment, a mass market paperback edition, small and portable, although some 500 pages, so ideal for carrying on a trip -- Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline. I've read most of Conroy and when he writes autobiographical material, he is at his best. I'm sure many of the episodes he chronicles in this book, one about a boy coming of age in a military college in Charleston, SC, come right out of his own life experiences. It is powerful and fast-moving, a page turner, beautifully written, Conroy being one of our most lyrical writers today. It is about the true meaning of honor, a painful lesson our protagonist, Will McLean, learns in the real world. Will is not from the elite society of Charleston as are some of his classmates. He is on scholarship as the point guard on the basketball team, as was Conroy himself was when he went to school. Although Conroy's autobiographical My Losing Season primarily deals with that subject (basketball), well worth reading, this novel devotes only a dozen or so pages to the topic, but perhaps the most vivid, accurate ones I've ever read about playing the game. Still, it is the beauty of his writing that glued me to the pages of this novel: "The city of Charleston, in the green feathery modesty of its palms, in the certitude of its style, in the economy and stringency of its lines, and the serenity of its mansions South of Broad Street, is a feast for the human eye. But to me, Charleston is a dark city, a melancholy city, whose severe covenants and secrets are as powerful and beguiling as its elegance, whose demons dance their alley dances and compose their malign hymns to the far side of the moon I cannot see. I studied those demons closely once, and they helped kill off the boy in me."

Thanks to these three novels, the jazz trio, my ship time was spent in good company (and with Ann of course). Ann wrote a detailed email to her friends about our trip, describing each port, and I am going to draw heavily from her observations when I get around to editing and selecting photographs, as well as adding my own thoughts.

But I will say one thing as a teaser for a future piece. The high point was St. Petersburg where we hired a private guide for two ten hour days. One cannot tour Russia without a Visa or a registered travel guide (or one of the ship's bus tours, which we did not want to do). Our guide turned out to be as stunningly beautiful as she was knowledgeable, a graduate of St. Petersburg University, with a degree in Art History, and with excellent English skills. Each place of visit was accompanied by her knowledgeable narrative. It started with an early morning visit to the Peterhof Palace, with its lush gardens and magnificent furnishings, these two exterior photos hardly do it justice, but, as I said, this is merely foreshadowing of a more detailed account in a later entry.


















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Thursday, August 25, 2011

Goodbye, Irene, Goodbye

The irony hasn’t escaped us. One of the reasons we live on a boat on the Norwalk River (CT) during the summer is to leave the oppressive weather in Florida, including its hurricanes. So, when Irene was said to be a direct threat to Florida last weekend, I authorized our house minder to put up the remainder of our shutters and to secure the house for possible hurricane conditions. No sooner than they were up, the National Weather Service revised its path projections and over the last few days these has evolved into nearly a direct hit where we have our boat docked. This is not the first time a storm diverted from our house to the vicinity of our boat, the last one being Floyd. I could become paranoid about being a hurricane magnet.

While we have been able to stay on our boat past storms, this one seems to be more ominous, especially with the added tidal surge while there is an astronomical high tide. So we’ll be moving off the boat Saturday and going to a hotel on high ground, securing our “summer home” to the best of our ability with additional lines and fenders and stripping all canvas.

We’ve had a few calls from friends in Florida, joking (to the point of uncontrolled laughter) that we should return where it is safe from hurricanes. There is some truth in this as Floridians are better prepared, but the suggestion borders on a little Schadenfreude, not intentional I know. One even suggested I take the boat out of the harbor and anchor it off one of the Norwalk Islands, to her mind a simple solution to tying it up so compulsively. Ha. I can imagine explaining that to the insurance company.

So, preparing for the worse, and hoping for the best, and also hoping our hotel (only ten minutes from the boat and 90 feet above sea level) doesn’t lose power, but we’re ready for that too, totting flashlights, batteries, and books.

Good luck to all in what might be the worst hurricane I’ve been in since Wilma (in Florida) and Carol (in Sag Harbor when I was a kid). As lovely and as calm as the eyes of those storms were, I need see no more.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Senseless to the Sublime

The last two nights make me think of Franz Kafka's The Hunger Artist, in which a famous fasting artist is on display in a circus menagerie, the crowds pushing past him to get to watch the lions stalk and feed. "He immediately got an earful from the shouting of the two steadily increasing groups, the ones who wanted to take their time looking at the hunger artist, not with any understanding but on a whim or from mere defiance—for him these ones were soon the more painful—and a second group of people whose only demand was to go straight to the animal stalls." It is a highly symbolic story of how artists sacrifice themselves for their art and the general public's ignorance of what great artistry demands and preference for sensational pursuits.

One of the reasons we live in this area of Florida is for the cultural diversity it has to offer. True, it does not have the advantages of a London or a New York in its breadth or consistently high quality, but knowing where to go can uncover some wonderful cultural events. Case in point, our favorite small theatre where we never miss a production, Palm Beach Dramaworks. But the largest theatre in the area is West Palm Beach's Kravis Center for the Performing Arts and we've seen some fine musical revivals there over the last several years, South Pacific standing out in my mind, and some special programs such as when Sondheim visited for an evening discussion of his works.
Admittedly, it was with some trepidation that we got tickets for the Kravis’ production of Beauty and the Beast but Ann had tried to see the Broadway version, liked some of the music, and never could get tickets so we were hoping that this touring production would at least be on par. Tuesday night we saw the opening and it was so dreadful that we left at intermission. This review gives some of the details although it is actually very restrained in its criticism.


It is a Disney dumb-down production presumably for the kiddies, with one dimensional slapstick characters, but, amazingly, most of the adult audience seemed to be laughing at the childish humor which at best rose to the level of a sitcom. The fact that a Beauty and the Beast could flourish for so long on the Great White Way says much about the public's taste in musicals. We should have known better!

The following evening we sought redemption, having long ago booked tickets for a series we have followed for years, Keyboard Conversations ® with Jeffrey Siegel at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. These are "unique concert-plus-commentary format in which he speaks to the audience about the music before performing each work" in their entirety. Wednesday night was one of the most demanding programs we've ever heard this highly-acclaimed American pianist perform, tackling three of the most difficult pieces written for the piano by Johann Sebastian Bach (Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903), Samuel Barber (Fugue from Piano Sonata, Op. 26), and Ludwig Van Beethoven (Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 --- the "Appassionata). Mr. Siegel playfully calls the program "Three Great B's Bach, Beethoven and Barber" (the latter B normally reserved for Brahms, but this is the 100th birthday celebration of Barber, one of America's leading composers, a contemporary of Bernstein and Copeland). In addition he played two of Barber's "Excursions" which I had never heard and reminded me so much of some of Gershwin and Copeland.

The physicality of the performance was astounding. As I play the piano myself, I have a special appreciation for what Siegel accomplished last night, performing the entire program without sheet music, keeping up with the tremendous technical demands of these pieces. Indeed at the end of the night, when he conducted his traditional audience question and answer portion of the program, he seemed, justifiably, physically spent, perhaps like the artist in Kafka's story. But this audience was brought to a standing ovation in appreciation.


Antidote du jour.......

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Thursday, June 10, 2010

“Legitimate” Claims

By now we’ve all seen the $50 million media blitz by BP in which Tony Hayward articulates that all “legitimate” claims will be honored, as well the recent news story that it will pay these claims for "as long as it takes." There is a world of meaning in the word “legitimate” and in a first step to define it before BP’s legal army begins to mobilize, BP announced it would appoint an “Independent Mediator to review and assist in the claims process,” that person apparently yet to be appointed (again, by BP, not an independent authority). This “Independent Mediator” will make advisory decisions” on claims, with those decisions subject to the following:

* If the claimant feels the advisory decision is unreasonable, he or she retains all rights under OPA either to seek reimbursement from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund or to file a claim in court.
* If BP feels the advisory decision is unreasonable, the company may choose not to accept it, but the claimant then may use the Independent Mediator's decision in claiming against the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund or in a subsequent court action
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Note the reference to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund as the first line of defense for BP. Congress created this Fund in 1986 to pay the claims of “any person or organization that has incurred removal costs or suffered damages due to an oil spill may submit a claim.” Supposedly it is funded at $2.7 billion. However, the Fund site says: “British Petroleum is now accepting claims for the Gulf Coast oil spill. Please call them at 1-800-440-0858.” So, back to you BP!

According to BP, “90 percent of the damages or income loss claims paid out so far had gone to individuals -- primarily fishermen, shrimpers, oyster fishermen and crabbers. The rest had gone to smaller businesses, and the company was also moving to respond to claims by medium- and large-sized businesses.”

No mention is made of the elephant in the room: state and local governments along the Gulf that depend on their revenue from property tax and sales tax. These are under stress to begin with and, now, with tourism disappearing, and properties along the Gulf going unsold (anyone want to buy a home near a beach with tar balls for an unknown period of time?), home valuations are plummeting, along with the associated property tax. Florida, which has no state income tax, is dependent sales tax revenue, a large portion of which comes from tourism with its beaches and water being the major attraction. And, with the Gulf Stream, no part of Florida is immune to the threat of oil contamination.

The ripple effects of lost revenue to small to large businesses, increased unemployment, plummeting home values and increased foreclosures, and finally to tax revenue, are large and long lasting. So, BP, what about the “legitimacy” of claims of state and local governments for the lost tax revenue, this year and perhaps years to come? Thus far BP’s track record, on promptly paying claims, truthfully reporting the scope of the spillage, going all out to save the precious wildlife and shorelines of the Gulf, is poor. This does not bode well for how BP’s legal team will finally attempt to define “legitimate.”


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Monday, May 24, 2010

Potpourri

Towards the end of the week I am going into the hospital for “a procedure” (a minor one to the medical community, a major one to me) so I attribute this posting to some free floating anxiety and an attempt to get some thoughts down on several topics, all suitable for their own entries. I think of them as a bunch of tweets, albeit more than 140 characters.

The first thing on my mind, other than “the procedure” is how quickly we’ve become inured to the major catastrophic saga of the last month: the oil “spill” in the Gulf of Mexico. I present as anecdotal evidence Sunday’s New York Times. “All the News That’s Fit to Print” fails to mention anything on the topic until more than halfway into the first section, although the front page did carry an article on premium prices for a Jon Bon Jovi “concert” in Hershey, Pa.

Why, I wonder, are we not pressing with all the public opinion power at our disposal for some resolution to this disaster? To watch BP, Transocean, and Halliburton in the brief Congressional Hearings was sickening, each pointing to the other to blame in a see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil routine, finally all pointing to the Minerals Management Service which “oversees” drilling activity. BP says it will pay "all legitimate claims," the operative word being their interpretation of “legitimate,” but that is far from the main issues: why were there no contingency plans in place and how, with all this country’s resources, is there no way to stop this fire hose of black destruction on the pristine waters of the Gulf? Every single one of us should be holding these companies and the federal government responsible and let our justifiable anger be heard.

Maybe I take this personally as we live in Florida and appreciate the natural beauty of its waterways and beaches. But I felt the same way after the Exxon Valdez and it is absolutely stunning that we have failed to learn the sad lessons of drilling in fragile environments.

Then, I shift to another aspect of living in Florida, particularly south Florida that is blessed with some of the finest theatre talent. I’ve written before on the incredible productions at Dramaworks, the West Palm Beach theatre dedicated “to theatre to think about.” Yesterday we saw a concert version of Sondheim’s classic Into the Woods performed by the Caldwell Theatre Company. There we discovered that some of the actors we’ve seen repeatedly at Dramaworks and Florida Stage not only can also sing, but do so at professional levels befitting Broadway. In particular I mention Jim Ballard (who we saw only a few nights before in a Noel Coward reading at Dramaworks), Elizabeth Dimon, Wayne LeGette, and Margery Lowe, and I apologize if I am overlooking others. Also, as a pianist myself, I found Michael O’Dell’s keyboard accompaniment remarkable – almost three hours of Sondheim’s intricate melodies played flawlessly and lovingly. All in all it was a great performance of one of Sondheim’s best works, the lyrics of Children Will Listen reverberating in memory:

Careful the things you say
Children will listen
Careful the things you do
Children will see and learn
Children may not obey, but children will listen
Children will look to you for which way to turn
So learn what to be
Careful before you say 'Listen to me'
Children will listen

We saw Stephen Sondheim last year in West Palm Beach on the eve of his 80th birthday (I regret that Google has removed music uploads from the link). He is a national treasure, our last remaining tie to the greats of Broadway.

Finally, and I’m not sure about the appropriate transition to this topic, but I continue to be mesmerized by Raymond Carver’s writings, including his essay “On Writing.”

From that essay, here is classic Carver as it is exactly what he does: ”It’s possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things – a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring – with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader’s spine.”

Thinking about a friend who admitted he wrote something just to make a deadline and make a buck, knowing he could have written something better if he took the time, Carver writes, “If writing can’t be made as good as it is within us to make it, then why do it? In the end, the satisfaction of having done our best, and the proof of that labor, is the one thing we can take into the grave. I wanted to say to my friend, for heaven’s sake go do something else. There have to be easier and maybe more honest ways to try and earn a living. Or else just do it to the best of your abilities, your talents, and then don’t justify or make excuses. Don’t complain, don’t explain.”

It seems this advice is applicable to everything as we journey into the woods.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

And to All a Good-Night!

How many times does one have to see a version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to say “enough?” Never, I say, as every generation can find it’s own version, just as Hollywood always seems to find another way to rework the story. Today, the tale could be a morality play about our financial times, Scrooge being played by a Wall Street Banker du jour, Tiny Tim by a child lacking health insurance, Bob Cratchit by someone in foreclosure, while the unemployed gather beneath the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Past or present Chairmen of the Federal Reserve could play the ghosts. I pick Paul Volcker for the Ghost of Christmas Present, as he seems to see things the clearest. Naturally, Bernie Madoff must play the part of Jacob Marley wearing his chains forged of Ponzi links.

For me, the classic tale still elicits an emotional response, especially the versions that come closest to Dickens’ original text. So in that spirit, I offer a couple of photos of our Xmas past, in our home in Connecticut where the holiday really felt like Christmas:









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And this one from Florida Christmas Present, where it will be 80 degrees and one of the high points is the annual Christmas Boat Parade. It’s a Humbug, I say!

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Nice to be Home?

On our way back to Florida, we spent a few days in Asheville, NC, one of our favorite places, the mountains being such a contrast to the horizontal topography of our home. While taking a walk in that area we met someone who lived her entire adult life in Florida but had moved to Asheville to be closer to her grandchildren. When she heard we lived in Florida she commented that the reason she misses her old home is she can no longer see the moonrise until it is high in the sky, the mountains dominating everything. That is what she missed the most.

In Asheville, we visited with our friends, Irene and Pete, who also relocated there from Florida a few years ago. They now have second thoughts about having made the move while sometimes I have had second thoughts about moving to Florida from Connecticut. Perhaps one’s preference boils down to a whimsical perspective on the moonrise.

Returning to Florida, we were greeted by a few unwelcome notices, thanks to the economy and new county and local “budgets.”

Unlike the federal government, which can run deficits ad infinitum, state and municipal governments can’t print money and must have a balanced budget. So far so good. During this Great Recession, with declining receipts from sales and property taxes, they must either cut budgets or increase revenue. After years of bloated budgets, thanks to the chimerical prosperity since the last downturn, any cutback would have to be drastic to align itself with reality. The path of least resistance is to find ways of separating the taxpayer from his money in a stealth-like fashion.

Case in point, we returned to multiple notices of a speeding ticket (made out to me, although my wife was driving) from our neighboring community, Juno Beach. This ticket was issued by an automated camera in the back of a van operated by LaserCraft, a company in Georgia. One is instructed to send the $125 fine to Georgia; probably LaserCraft getting the majority and Juno Beach the smaller share, but a small percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing.

This is the most nefarious kind of revenue raising tactic, with the taxpayer being forced to pay a fine without being able to face the accuser (there is a $50 fee to file an appeal, one you are warned you are sure to lose). Non-payment results in being turned over to a collection agency, with all the attendant credit history ramifications. The “evidence” is two photographs of our car clearly showing it in front of and behind other cars in a lane so presumably every car received a ticket. Desperate economic times dictate desperate tactics for municipalities, and this is one of the worst. Lest one thinks that this is typical FloriDUH and it can’t happen here (wherever that might be), if Juno Beach gets away with this (there is a suit in court to overturn this), other cities will surely follow and why not automated cameras on Interstates as well?

Then, as our Florida home is our primary residence, it is “protected” under the Save our Homes act, the property tax increase one year over the next being capped at 3% or to the Consumer Price Index, whichever is less. Read the fine print – that is during good times only. Palm Beach County property market value has decreased so much that it has simply frozen or reduced the “appraised value” of homes (thereby staying within the 3% cap), and increased the tax rate to take up the slack. (From the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser: A property's assessment could stay the same or go down but property taxes could go up any given year because of millage increases levied by your local taxing authorities). Why bring a budget in line with the economic times when it is easy to pick the pocket of the taxpayer? PBC tax rate will increase 15% over last year.

We are told there is no inflation, that this is a deflationary economy. It is true that there is no investment return to be found on our woefully declining US dollar, and no doubt there is asset deflation (e.g. homes), but consumer inflation is alive and well, the manipulated CPI not reflecting the real rise in the cost of living. Unemployment continues to grow (albeit at a declining rate) and until there is sustained employment growth – real growth – the recovery forecasted by the market is suspect (it’s time to “party” as the Dow passes 10,0000, Leo Kolivakis writes in his Pension Pulse blog)

Bottom line: if you want job security, retirement and health insurance benefits, work for your local government.

Welcome Home Taxpayer!.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Bus to Nowhere

May 5th’s Palm Beach Post proclaimed “West Palm Beach's new bus depot 4 days from debut,” an encouraging development for mass transit in this area, in keeping with national priorities as well. One of the main objectives is “a seamless connection to the regional commuter train system.” That system is Florida’s Tri-Rail, the only mass transit system for moving passengers in the heavily traveled North/South corridor between West Palm Beach and Miami, also connecting to Ft. Lauderdale and Miami airports.

So far, so good, an improvement to one of the connecting tributaries, something that will provide dependable and reasonably priced transportation to those who either can’t afford driving that route or simply encourage people to give up on their gas guzzlers for such trips. In fact, since the economic downturn began and fuel prices spiked, ridership has almost doubled.

Is this one of the green shoots we’ve heard about? Such an expansion of mass transit not only accomplishes these important local and national objectives, but also provides jobs as well, not to mention getting people to their jobs.

Ironically, in the same issue of the Post, is another story: “Tri-Rail's hopes for emergency state money are dashed; by fall weekend service ends, entire system could close in 18 months.”
“The Florida legislature Tuesday refused to include $30 million in emergency Tri-Rail funding in the 2009 budget, as requested Sunday by a group of legislators in an open letter to GOP leaders.”

$30 million? – mere chump change that hardly qualifies as a down payment on what has now been revealed as AIG’s real bonuses payments for 2008, $454M. This is the amount which Florida is refusing to fund, or does not care enough about to fight for some federal government sponsored money to keep one of its few mass transit options open? The legislature is obviously willing to play political hardball at the expense of people who are dependent on the system for their very employment. Didn’t they get the message from Washington about improving our infrastructure as being one of the pillars of the stimulus package? Clearly they are not aware of the new buses to nowhere.

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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Aging and Writing

Marking the passing of a great American novelist, The New York Times Weekend Review carried an outstanding essay "John Updike’s Mighty Pen" by Charles McGrath http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/weekinreview/01mcgrath.html?emc=eta1

Especially interesting was the Video A Conversation with John Updike, taped in October 2008, with Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, “about the craft of fiction and the art of writing.” Disquieting to think he died only a few months later, but listening to the interview I was struck how much he ruminated about aging and writing. He said that he was currently working on an historical novel set in the 1st century, but not knowing much about the period he was trying to educate himself, lamenting, though, that “maybe I’m too old to be educated.” He also said he was thrilled that the New Yorker had recently accepted two of his short stories as he was “trying to keep [his] name in the New Yorker after a long draught.” “It makes me feel like a real person to get a short story in the New Yorker.”

He went on to observe (and much of this is paraphrased here) that there comes a moment in a writer’s life when you are full of material untouched in your mind and seemingly urgent and it merges with enough skill to get it down, but this skill tends to peak in an American writer’s late 20s or early 30s. In those years I could bring a naiveté and therefore a sense of wonderment to my writing. “I’m not ashamed of my later work, but feel there is an unforced energy in the earlier work.” We never idolize anything beyond youth in this country. Consequently, we’re all failed youths, as we don’t believe in the wisdom of the ages especially now that so many people live forever in old age homes. Some of our greatest writers were Hemingway and Fitzgerald; “their idea of happiness is to be young.” And those words concluded the interview.

I closely identify. In Florida that sense of aging, a feeling of irrelevancy, is particularly pervasive. As Updike says in Rabbit at Rest, “There’s a lot of death in Florida, if you look. The palms grow by the lower branches dying and dropping off. The hot sun hurries the life cycles along….Even friendship has a thin, provisional quality, since people might at any minute buy another condominium and move to it, or else up and die.”

I thought my feelings might be confined to those of a retired businessperson living in the “sunshine state.” But my friend Bruce, a teacher and a writer living in Massachusetts, to whom I sent the New York Times link, seems to have had a similar reaction. This business of aging, still trying to stay productive, moving forward with learning as being the very essence of living, is something I would like to think we share with Updike. Here are Bruce’s comments on the Updike interview:

I listened to the interview and was, of course, attentive to his remarks about aging and youth. Naturally, I immediately applied what he said to myself to see if I thought it was true. My conclusion about me is that I am profoundly and forever naive. Thus, I'm surprised that because I am old I am invisible. I am surprised that my students don't realize that I am wise and learned. Oh, they do to a degree, but their best perceptions of me are ones that leave out my age. I'm surprised that young teachers with a few exceptions do not seek me out. I am surprised I am not valued because I have so much experience. Perhaps, I am, but it's not apparent to me. I like what Updike said about the unforced energy of youth. I think that's true, but an older man needs to seek to find what imparts an unforced energy to his own endeavors. I keep returning to Bronte's remark about being appreciated and expecting to get credit for what you do. Don't she says, or you will spend your life waiting. Then again in our own conception of ourselves we are never appreciated enough. Thus, we are back to Ecclesiastes and vanity. In any case, I liked the interview, especially the remarks about America and youth

See http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2008/02/old-friends.html for more about Bruce.

Monday, July 14, 2008

National Catastrophe Fund

When we relocated to the West Palm Beach area from Connecticut, it was with the knowledge that while the area was vulnerable to hurricanes, they didn’t seem to be more frequent than what we had been accustomed to in the northeast. (The last one to hit the West Palm Beach area before we moved was Hurricane David in 1979. Hurricane Gloria in 1985 was a worse storm in Connecticut.)

So with this false sense of security we retired to a home within a mile of the coast and were able to get relatively reasonably priced insurance. Since then our overall insurance costs have tripled, mostly because of the obsolete boundaries that determine the windstorm component, such as homes east of I95 being exponentially more vulnerable than those a stone’s throw to the west. While Hurricanes Charley and Wilma surely dispelled that myth, these artificial guidelines persist.

The recent tragic flooding in Iowa, not to mention the torrid tornado season, and wildfires in the west, underscore the need for a national catastrophe fund to more effectively deal with the economic consequences of these disasters, ones that seem to be more frequent, perhaps the consequence of global warming.

Such a fund combined with tax breaks, similar to the ones that were granted to victims of Katrina and Wilma, might mitigate unrestrained insurance costs, and the expenses that will surely do in victims of national disasters. Had we not poured more than a half a trillion dollars into an unnecessary war in Iraq, we could be a long way towards creating a national catastrophe fund, not to mention saving American lives.