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Common sense

Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, the Lynch Mob, and America’s Reality

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Are you as tired of hearing the endlessly nasty hysteria over the George Zimmerman trial as I am?

Here’s the problem: George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin are not the issue at all. They’re stand-ins for the issue: icons, if you will.

The real subject — and the one we as a nation should be addressing — has to do with the practical results of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination for Blacks and for our entire culture.

We can jump up and down and yell about the killing of Trayvon Martin until we all turn blue, but nothing that’s done about it will change the larger, horrific facts:

• Unemployment among adult Black men is still at 13.2 percent, far above the 7.5 percent rate for the population at large.
• Poverty is still widespread among Black Americans.
• Incarceration and “correctional” supervision stand at an astronomical rate among Black adult men.
• Life expectancy for African Americans lags behind that of their fellow citizens because of poor education and poverty.
• The first Black president of the United States, a man of enormous talent and accomplishment, can say with sincerity that he identifies with a kid who dresses up in hoodlum attire and covers his face with a “hoodie”; and when our president says that, he, too, expresses the pain of discrimination and poverty.

Those are the issues America should be addressing. The Zimmerman trial is a distraction.

Personally, I respect the President and hear his grief in his words. However, that doesn’t change the fact that when I pull up to a red light in a blighted neighborhood (which, because of the poverty rate among African Americans, is likely to be home to a larger proportion of Blacks than in other areas), yes: I invariably check that the car doors are locked. If I’ve carelessly left them unlocked, you bet I’ll hit the lock, and I DON’T CARE if it hurts anyone’s feelings.

On three different occasions, strangers have tried to enter my car at stop lights, once when I had a small child in the car with me. Sorry if it makes you feel bad, but my safety is more important than your feelings.

After the lynch mob settles down, those of us who do feel sorry that the present state of affairs harms a large part of our population need to work together to eliminate poverty and the crime, discrimination, despair, and blight that come with it.

That’s what people are really talking about when they carry on about George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. White folks may not know it, but black folks surely intuit it. Together, we must face that reality.

Less Meat…but Better Meat?

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CowSomewhere during the past several weeks — don’t recall where, exactly — I came across some food pundit’s advice that if, as anyone with any conscience must, you feel the production of meat and chicken in this country is inhumane and unsafe but you can’t afford to eat grass-fed, hormone-free, humanely slaughtered critters every day of your life, you should use your monthly meat budget to buy the highest quality meat you can find, but less of it than you’re used to. Don’t eat meat every day, or else eat lots less of it per meal.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

One of my friends, who’s had a couple of heart attacks, a quadruple bypass, and a stroke, appears to be the picture of health. He attributes his amazing recovery  and present good health to a strict vegetarian diet.

We know that red meats and dark portions of poultry add cholesterol (thereby contributing to your hardening arteries) and raise your blood pressure. We know that vegetarians are much less likely to suffer hypertension and may be less prone to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). But…total, unrelenting vegetarianism is not my style. I like meat, I like cheese, and I’m not gonna quit eating them.

However, I’m open to compromise.

Why not eat a lot less meat — maybe only a couple of servings a week — and use the money you save with that strategy to buy better quality products?

Earlier this week I tried it with a pricey little whole chicken from Sprouts.

Chicken. It’s one of my pet peeves. Like tomatoes, chicken has been stripped of flavor over the past few decades. Factory-farmed chicken is as bland and blah as soggy cotton.

Believe it or not, folks, chicken is supposed to taste like something. And not like the onions and garlic and gravy you dump on it. No. Chicken is supposed to taste like chicken. Same is true of turkey, which is about as flavorless as anything you can buy from the shelves of the food deserts we in America call supermarkets. In some European and Asian countries, you still can find chicken that has a flavor; that’s how I know it’s not just that my taste buds have gone numb in old age.

No, indeed.

In the U.S., you can find chicken with a flavor at Sprouts and, to a much more pronounced degree, at Whole Foods. Splurge a little and buy yourself an organic, free-range, no-hormone, no-antibiotic, no-torture chicken at one of these markets. Sprinkle some herbs over the top of it and bake it in a 350-degree oven or over a slow barbecue grill for 45 minutes or an hour, until it’s done.

You will be amazed.

I also discovered, by serendipity, that humanely, cleanly raised pork available at Sprouts is pretty damn delicious, too.

Meat, chicken, and fish that taste better would make a fine treat, to be consumed on special occasions and with restraint in day-to-day life.

Never have thought I could afford the fancy humanely farmed beef at Whole Foods. But…if I weren’t scarfing a piece of beef a day, I sure could.

Right now the freezer is jammed with Costco rib-eye — I buy a package of the stuff and cut each steak into three pieces, providing enough for at least 12 or 15 servings. Cutting back on the number of servings per week will extend that supply to cover a month or month and a half. Or more.

But after that’s gone?

It’s off to Whole Foods.

CowHindu

Images: Swiss cow. Daniel Schwen. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Hindu cow. From “Ten Questions People Ask about Hinduism …and Ten Terrific Answers!” (p. 6). © Himalayan Academy Publications, Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

 

Preparing for Emergencies: Small, Big, or Catastrophic

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Summer is y-cumen in, and with it, presumably more catastrophic storms in the South and the Midwest and more catastrophic wildfires in the West. Most of us probably have thought about and made some at least cursory preparations for in acute emergency, such as a house fire, a power outage of a couple of days, or a temporary evacuation. For an event like that, it’s wise to have a “go bag,” holding important papers and identification, a credit card and some cash, prescription drugs, and maybe a pistol and ammunition. But have you thought about how you and your family would cope with a truly catastrophic, long-term emergency?

Several scenarios, some less unlikely than others, could wreak some very serious havoc and, over time, pose an extreme threat to individual safety. For example, a month or so ago the New York Times ran a report about the monster solar storm that occurred in 1859 and pointed out that if such an event occurred in the 21st century, it could take down a developed country’s electrical grid. Recovery could take anywhere from a week to several years. An ill-timed coronal mass ejection, known as a Carrington event, is thought not to be a “maybe” occurrence but a “sooner or later” one. John Kappenman, an expert on the effect of solar storms on utilities, says utilities will suffer severe damage to expensive transformers and other key components, resulting in outages that could last for months. “Think of Sandy magnified by a hundredfold,” he suggests.

We’ve already seen what Hurricane Sandy did. Many people are still out of their homes, and it remains to be seen whether the damaged development will be — or even should be — rebuilt.

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, causing the worst engineering disaster in the history of the U.S. and leading to civil disturbances, breakdown of civil order, mass evacuations, and extreme threats to public health and safety.

Long-term drought and heat have brought catastrophic wildfires into cities such as Colorado Springs, Los Angeles, and and Oakland. Wildfire seasons seem to start earlier and be more intense each year. To those of us who believe in science, it’s pretty clear these are not flukes but events we can expect to see occurring with increasing frequency and severity. But even if you’re a climate-change denier, it’s impossible to overlook the fact that massive, catastrophic climate events have occurred in the past — one of them admirably chronicled by Ken Burns for PBS.

Be that as it may, we don’t need Mother Nature to cause trouble for us: we can do a pretty good job of that ourselves. A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences points out that a well organized and well timed terrorist attack on the power grid would cause cascading outages across North America that could take weeks or months to repair. Nor would a series of bombs be required to take down the power grid: a smart hacker could accomplish the same from the comfort of a desk chair. It is believed that countries unfriendly to the U.S. are already at work on building such a capability.

Consider what would happen if we had little or no electric power for an extended period.

We have, of course, the obvious issues: large parts of the American Southwest are habitable during the summer only by dint of air conditioning. The reverse is true in the upper Midwest and the North Atlantic states: people survive the winters because their homes are heated by electricity or by fuels that require electric power to produce and dispense them. Hospitals need electric power to keep patients alive. Airplane, automobile, and train traffic is made possible to a large extent by electric power. The vast computer system on which our commerce system depends runs on electricity. Even laptops and cell phones have to be recharged occasionally.

On an individual level, the ramifications are huge.

• You couldn’t refuel your car — gas pumps run on electricity, too.
• Most retailers couldn’t sell food, medications, or repair supplies to you: their computerized cash registers require electricity to operate.
• Electric stoves wouldn’t work, so if yours is one of those elegant glass-top stoves, you couldn’t cook food or sterilize water.
• Modern gas stoves, which have no pilot lights, also need electricity to run safely or, for many models, to operate at all.
• Not that you’d have food for long: whatever is in your freezer and refrigerator would spoil within hours or days.
• Without diesel or gasoline to power trucks, many parts of the country would quickly see food shortages.
• Absent air-conditioning or heating, the elderly and small children would be at great risk. In the event of an outage that extended weeks or months, people would die.
• Hospital emergency rooms would be available only for the most dire cases; obtaining medical care would be difficult or impossible.
• As conditions deteriorated, some of our honored neighbors would run amok, looting, robbing, and rampaging  with little to stop them. The difficulty of maintaining civil order in a large city would make conditions extremely dangerous for everyone.

So…even if you’re not washed out of your home by a flood, blown away by high winds, buried under earthquake debris, burned out by wildfire, or suffocated in dust storms, some very alarming scenarios are not only possible but even, to a degree, likely. It’s worth considering how you can be prepared for events ranging from short-term emergencies to catastrophic events that could disrupt commerce and services for days, weeks, or months.

Even a passing emergency could require you to evacuate your home. Your absence might be brief, or it could extend for quite some time. At a bare minimum, you should always have an emergency kit in your car. This should contain items such as these:

• water (at least a gallon per person)
• space blanket(s)
• towel
• toilet paper
• flashlight
• battery-operated lamp
• fresh batteries to operate these tools
• iodine pills or a water filter, or both
• first-aid kit
• jackknife
• matches/butane lighters
• rope
• twine
• jumper cables

Stored in a safe and accessible place in the house, you should have a grab-and-go kit containing certain key items; for example:

• important papers
• government-issued identification
• pictures you would like not to lose
• cash
• credit card
• prescription drugs
• a pistol & ammunition (assuming you know how to use a gun safely)

You should never have to make a mad dash for these things. Here, for example, we have a reporter describing just such a frantic search. You shouldn’t be running around trying to grab things as a wildfire is bearing down on you or floodwaters are climbing the front steps. Anything that you absolutely have to take should already be packed, preferably in a locked metal box.

Your gas tank should always be pretty close to full. Some people store gasoline in a safe place on their property; keep gas cans full and away from sources of ignition.

In case of a protracted evacuation, you might also want to store some gear that can quickly be packed in your car. This might include a full set of camping gear — if your car isn’t large enough for you and your partner or your family to sleep in, it would be wise to store a tent near the vehicle. In addition to the items listed for your emergency kit and your grab-and-go bag, you would need supplies like these:

• camp stove and propane
• lighter or store of matches in a waterproof container
• lightweight camping dishes & cookware
• knives, spoons, forks
• drinking vessels
• can opener
• rope
• twine
• soap
• detergent (liquid) for washing dishes and hair
• toilet paper
• towel(s)
• toothbrushes
• aspirin
• antacids
• anti-diarrheal agent such as Imodium or Pepto-Bismol
• sleeping bags or blankets
• jackets
• rainwear
• hats
• day packs
• camping food
• pet food, packed & ready to go
• pet dishes
• medications for pets, if any
• collars and leashes for pets (take steps in advance to deal with pets during an emergency)
• evidence of dogs’ immunization
• if you carry a gun, extra ammunition

If, on the other hand, you did not have to evacuate but instead faced lengthy power or water outages or had to “shelter in place,” as the new turn of phrase has it, you would want to have your home supplied for a period of self-sufficiency. It would be good at least to have staple foods and various tools and supplies in place.

• rice, beans, canned foods
• flour and bread-baking ingredients
• extra pet food
• propane
• propane grill, camp stove, or both
• crank or battery-operated radio
• battery-run lamp
• extra batteries
• bottled water in carboys
• barterable items, such as cigarettes, ammunition, alcohol, and the like
• pistol or shotgun, with appropriate ammunition
• gasoline, safely stored
• extensive first-aid kit
• supply of prescriptions
• OTC pain-killers
• OTC cough, cold, and allergy medications
• a land-line phone — not one that operates on cable, which requires electric power
• generator (either a small one or a whole-house system)
• fuel to operate the generator
• functional vegetable garden
• if you have a large enough yard: chicken coop & hens
• iodine pills, a water filter, or both
• a supply of cash — at least $1,000 stashed in a safe place (check your homeowner’s insurance: many policies provide coverage for up to $1,000 of cash)
• tools such as a hammer, screwdrivers, saw, hatchet, wrench, box-knife, and shovel
• fire extinguisher

If you have a camper or an RV, remember that some such vehicles have a propane fridge, stove and even a generator, all of which could come in handy. Be sure to have enough fuel on hand to run the RV’s features.

These are not exhaustive lists. But at least they should give you a start on thinking about emergency preparedness. With the three-pronged threats of extreme weather events, hacking, and terrorism now part of our reality, we all should have an escape plan and a stay-at-home survival plan that will tide us over for several weeks.

“Terrorist”: Let’s Call a Spade a Spade

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“We believe this to be a terrorist,” said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. “We believe this to be a man who has come here to kill people. We need to get him in custody.”

Reuters, Scott Monroe and Tim McLaughlin

In all due respect, sir: No. This was not a terrorist. This was a murderer. And his brother, who’s still at large as I write this, is a murderer, a car thief, and a kidnapper.

In a word, they’re both thugs.

We need to stop honoring thugs with a term that suggests they’re some sort of heroes for some sort of cause. The word “terrorist” describes a person who commits violence as a form of political speech. To call every madman and every nitwit who decides to commit a violent crime upon the public a “terrorist” is to lionize criminals.

It’s time to quit that. Way past time.

People who kill innocent civilians are murderers. They are murderers of women and children. They are murderers of men who have presented no threat to them. People who commit carjackings are thieves. People who make off with the owners of the cars they steal are kidnappers. They are not heroes of some cause. They are criminals.

Each time we call some misguided madman a “terrorist,” we elevate him or her to the level of a minor hero for some political cause. And when we create laws specific to “terrorism,” we institutionalize that honoring. In doing so, we do not discourage such behavior: we encourage it.

Let’s get real. We already have laws against murder. We have laws against theft. We have laws against kidnapping. We have laws against building bombs and placing them in public places. People who violate those laws are criminals, not some sort of romanticized (in their own eyes) low-level heroes.

We need to get rid of the “terrorism” laws and prosecute these jerks for what they are: criminals, under the perfectly effective laws that existed long before the waves of panic generated by the 9/11 attacks.

Khalid al-Mihdhar was a criminal.
Mohamed Atta was a criminal.
Marwan al-Shehhi was a criminal.
Ziad Jarrah was a criminal.
Hani Hanjour was a criminal.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, if he proves to be guilty, was a criminal.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, if he proves to be guilty, is a criminal.
Timothy McVeigh was a criminal.
Jared Lee Loughner is a criminal.
James Holmes is a criminal.
Adam Lanza was a criminal.

The sooner we identify such people as what they are — thugs, not some sort of marginal heroes for some sort of imagined or fanatic cause — the better off we as a people will be. The less scared we will be and the more effective we will be.

Let us call them what they are, and let us prosecute them for what they are: murderers, thieves, kidnappers, bombers, shooters. And let us dispense with the politically loaded term “terrorist.”

It gives these people way too much credit.

Billing for the Little Stuff

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I  have a bidness problem with electronic media: because of its gestalt and instantaneous nature, it tends to blitz you with tiny jobs that, one by one, take little time but that taken together add up to a lot of billable hours.

Take e-mail, for example.

Shooting off a short e-mail takes less than five minutes. Do you bill for a two-minute squib? Gathering the facts for that e-mail may take more time; if it takes five minutes to collect information for a message that requires two minutes to write, do you bill for five minutes or do you bill for ten minutes? (One normally bills in increments: five, ten, fifteen minutes…any part of that increment means billing for that increment.)

This weekend in a moment of idleness I added up all the time involved in writing messages residing in the “sent” folder that went to one of my clients. A few of them were fairly complex and took ten or fifteen minutes to write. But twenty-five of them were things that took at most five minutes apiece to shoot off.

Five minutes times 25 e-mails comes to two hours’ worth of my time.

If I don’t bill for every one of those teeny little squibs, I lose money — at $60 an hour, that’s a hit. But there’s something about charging a client for an activity so ephemeral that seems…I don’t know. Beyond the pale.

Asked a friend and long-time mentor about the ethics of this.

“I can’t believe you’re asking me this question!” squawked she. “Weren’t you married to a lawyer? You bill the sob for every minute of your time.”

You heard about the lawyer who dies and ascends to the gates of Heaven?

“There must be some mistake,” he says. “Why are you taking me now? I’m only 45.”

And St. Peter replies, “According to your billable hours you’re 82.”

 What say you, readers? Do you (or would you, if you were self-employed) bill for every minute of your time, no matter how fleeting the task?