So Long, farewell, auf wiedersehen , goodbye

One of the many great things about the Shrub Presidency has been his choices in high level officials. They're all so darn multi-talented, likeable and entertaining. Dick "Richie" Cheney doesn't just vice-preside, curse out senators, and hide in a burrow like a woodchuck, he shoots people in the face! Condi isn't just an airhead -- she's an airhead with a PhD, and she plays the piano! And how 'bout that Albert Gonzalez? Civil rights? Who needs 'em with old Al hangin' 'round. But the one I love the most, of course, is the one who's leaving. You know who I'm talking about. I'm talking about Rummy. 'Sfeld himself, the Ruminator, Don the mon Rumsfeld. The courtesy. The respect for other people's opinions. The willingness to spend other people's lives on pet theories and settling scores from the Ford administration. Could you really ask for anything more in a public servant? Well ask and ye shall receive. Turns out he's a denizen of the blogosphere, too. Why just take a looky-see over here (post number 8) and here (post number 3 and more)!

I was really afraid that we'd lose him to "spending more time with his family" once he left office, but I'm so glad he's decided to join us out here in cyberspace!

I'm an animal

I subscribe to Salon.com -- an on-line magazine that features a combination of political coverage and "lifestyle" pieces. The political stuff is mostly fairly obvious liberal-democratic anti-Bush vitriol. Neither the writing nor the analysis is spectacular, but it's one of the few left-ish outposts that occasionally achieves some mainstream penetration. Plus, every one of its columns is in a blog format, and something I'm pretty fascinated with lately. As a hardnosed, cynical, dispassionate realist, who lacks a single atom of touchy feely senstivity, I try to convince myself that that's the reason I maintain a paid subscription.

Who am I kidding? Half the time I go straight for the fluff. Nearly every day, there's something about the "mommy wars"; or a singularly loopy letter and response [with dozens or hundreds of reader comments] in this guy's column; or some other "culture war" item that only the narrowest of demographics can follow. In order to get past the jump on all of this, and have the opportnity to pull out my what's left of my hair and mumble "what the fuck are these guys talking about", I have to pay to get past the jump. I'm hooked, so that's what I do.

A while back, there was an article that was really no more than a solicitation for commentary on the question of "why have kids?" [I don't have a link right now, but if I can dig it up, I'll post it.]. Every writer offered a treacly cliche on one of four basic themes:

1. I never knew unconditional love until my little sunshine was born
2. he makes me laugh
3. he completes me
4. after [mother, dad, the cat] died, there was a hole in my heart that stayed empty until she was born

A chorus of dyspeptic malthusians attacked each blurb the same way: Your "reason" is no more than selfishness and vanity. You want kids because of what they they can do for you, meanwhile you're filling the planet with more hungry fuel eating, greenhouse gas spewing ADHD Republicans in training. If you can't give a better reason than that, the planet is doomed. Neuter thyself. This preceding is paraphrase, not parody.

As a non-parent at the time it was a classic no-horse-in-this-race WTF are they talking about hair puller for me. I expected to move on, freeing the synapses for the next internal rant. For some reason, that didn't happen, though, and the question "can procreation be altruistic?" kept creeping towards the frontal lobes. Subsequent to the appearance of that article, I joined the ranks of the unconditional-loving-laughing-completed-heart-hole-filled, and the question has become a bit less hypothetical.

I'm almost embarrassed to acknowledge the truth about the warm and fuzzy benefits of childhood. My son does make me laugh, he does fill a void left by the the mental and physical deterioration (though not death) of a parent, he does give me a sense of completeness, and the unconditional love thing is really not half bad.

So what's in it for him? I guess the main thing is existence, which if he didn't exist wouldn't be much of a problem, so I guess that doesn't really count. And how about the rest of you? Well, for now, he has provided his share of stimulus to the baby industrial complex (thanks Grandma). He has also done a pretty good job of contributing to the college funds of the offspring of quite a few medical professionals, but I can't take credit for thinking of any of that before letting loose my little homunculi

So I guess there probably isn't any selflessness in the act. But it occurs to me, so what? No one asks you to justify breathing, eating, or mitosis beyond the benefits to self. It's what you do. So what if I happened throw in a little meiosis. I'm an animal, eukaryotic no less. What do you want from me? I got urges, drives, selfish genes, and all that. Besides, have you seen my kid? I swear he's the best looking, smartest, funniest kid on the planet. Plus, he's gonna take care of the whole global warming, inequality, poverty and disease thing. When he gets a little older. Right now, he's busy filling in holes.

Chapter 2 -- Scene of the Crime

This is the second chapter of a novel in progress called "Uncivil Service." Chapter 1 can be found here

Arthur Avenue is the main drag of what used to be the Bronx's Little Italy. It still has the remnants of Italian-American quaintness – a kind of Potemkin village of restaurants, bakeries, and pork stores -- but, like all the other Little Italies around New York, the Italians are gone. The generations that came of age in the '50's, '60's and 70's shed more and more of their forebears' immigrant ways, and moved out to the 'burbs. All that's left are widowed grandmothers in rent-controlled apartments, surrounded by a wave of Albanians who have taken over the restaurants and changed their names from Gonxhe to Guido. When the grown kids come back to visit grandma, they complain about how the neighborhood has been taken over by foreigners, but to the news crews doing their annual “welcome home to Arthur Avenue” stories, Albanians are close enough.

As I exited the subway and turned onto Arthur Avenue, I could see a half dozen police cars parked up the street. As I walked toward the address Crazy Joe had given me, I could see the two EMT's standing on the sidewalk, next to an empty gurney. The smaller of the two looked like he weighed about 350 pounds, and was smoking a cigarette. The other was staring intently at a half-dressed, gleamingly pierced teenager sitting on the stoop of the neighboring building. I couldn't tell whether his heavy breathing was caused by the girl, or his girth, but in either case, he clearly was in no condition to speak. I approached the smoker, introduced myself, and asked what was going on. Given the level of lifesaving activity going on around me, I needn't have bothered.

"Dead guy. Fourth floor. No fuckin' elevator. We ain't bringin' him down."

Who says New Yorkers aren't helpful?

I headed toward the entrance to the building, where I was stopped by one of New York's finest. After we exchanged versions of courtesy professionalism and respect, he motioned me toward a plain clothes officer standing inside the vestibule.

"Excuse me," I offered. "I understand there's a body upstairs. I think I may be able to identify it."

"Yeah? Who the hell are you?"

Good thing they have that slogan on the side of the cop cars.

I introduced myself and explained that I was the one who called 911.

The CPR front gave way slightly to more commonplace gruffness.

"I'm Detective Mike Rendell. Come with me."

We ducked under the yellow tape sealing the building's inner door and headed up the stairs. In addition to being a role model for all police recruits looking to improve their relations with the community, it turns out Detective Rendell was also a paragon of physical conditioning. The three flights took a while.

When we reached our destination, Rendell motioned me through another blue phalanx into a dark, sparsely furnished railroad flat. We walked through the kitchen, straight into the next room, where there was a bed, a folding chair, a lamp, and a dead body. At least I thought it was dead. I've never seen an actual in situ corpse before, but the large pool of red liquid, classically rendered chalk outline surrounding a motionless form, and hovering lab guys probably weren’t part of a school production of "Columbo."

Rendell grabbed my arm and steered me closer.

"Okay, take a close look at this guy's face. You recognize him?"

I swallowed the lump in my throat, took a deep breath, and answered.

"Yeah. His name is Tony Paternostro. He works for me."

"What do you mean 'works for you'? Do a lot of guys that work for you get shot in the chest?"

"I work for the City, and believe it or not, this is the first time. Tony took care of ordering asphalt for street repair crews."

"Asphalt, huh? Lotta wiseguys in that business, aren't there? Your boy Tony -- he got any interesting friends? Anybody you can think of might do something like this?"

"C'mon, he's a city worker. You know us. We don't work hard enough to make enemies."

"Looks like his work ethic might have picked up a bit."

"I don't know what to tell you. We fill potholes. There are arguments, even a few fistfights, like in any blue collar job, but Tony hasn't been in the street in years. He was kind of a glorified clerk. Took care of getting trucks filled with asphalt. Talked on the phone pretty much all day."

"What about this guy that called you about this?"

"Crazy Joe? He worked for Tony, and they were kind of running buddies."

"So what's his real name? Why's he called 'Crazy Joe'?"

"Joe Pazzolini. He's missing a few marbles. Always gets into trouble on the job -- says obnoxious things to people, fucks things up, basically, a guy you have to stick in a corner."

"So how come he still works for you guys?"

"So far as I know, he's never done anything criminal enough to get fired. He's gotten some reprimands, and lost some days of pay, but he always manages to come out of hearings with a job. "

"I'm gonna want to talk to him. You know where to find him?"

"Actually, I'm not sure. He just got suspended from work, so he's not on the job. I don't know where he lives, but the personnel people at work have his address. I can try to track it down for you."

"You should do that. What else can you tell me about the dearly departed here? Married? Family? Friends?"

"Not too much. He's married. Lives … I mean lived in Yonkers. Crazy Joe told me on the phone that he kept this place on the side for meeting girlfriends. Tony and I never discussed love lives, though, so I can't confirm any of that."

With that, Rendell said to me "don't go anywhere. We're not done." Then he stepped out of the apartment.

He returned few minutes later, and said to me "We're going to see the wife. I want you to come with me and break the news."

"Listen," I said. "I really need to tell some people back at work about this, first."

"All right, but make it quick."

With that, I whipped out my government issue, economy sized, low-bid cell phone and called my boss.

“First Assistant Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maudlin’s office.”

It was, one of my boss’s secretaries, but I couldn’t say which. Arthur Maudlin had three of them, Alice, Carboña, and Shitonya. Despite being from different parts of the City and completely different backgrounds they had nearly identical voices that produced an effect somewhere between chalk on a blackboard an icepick in the forehead.

In addition to this gift (who could ask for anything more in a woman answering the phone), each was similarly endowed in secretarial and administrative skills. They couldn’t type, use a computer or file, had no idea how to transfer a call, and couldn’t even make a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, they were all three rumored to be sleeping with Maudlin. They never identified themselves when picking up the phone, expecting you to guess. Like concubines in a pillow book, they hated each other. If you guessed wrong, woe betide you.

Unable to bring myself to say two of the names out loud in the company of a stranger, I dove in and hoped for the best.

“Uh, hi Alice, Jon White. Is the boss in?”

I got it right on the first try. Maybe my luck was starting to turn after the morning’s fireworks.

“Yeah, Jon, he is. He’s been lookin’ fa you, awl mawnin, too,” she scraped.

“All right, put me through, then.”

Using her own version of the phone system, she dropped the receiver on the desktop, shrieked, “Artha! Pick up White on loin faw!”

After a few more rattles, and machine-tool-like vocalizations, the great man himself picked up the phone.

“Jon, where have you been all morning? I expected those reports to be on my desk at 11. I have a meeting with you know who this afternoon, and I can’t go in unprepared”

As usual, since he had no idea who or what he was talking about, neither did I. I fell back on my usual ploy. Knowing he never read email himself (relying on his crack secretarial staff to print it out for him and leave it in the inbox he never checked)

“Arthur, didn’t you read my email? I had to go out in the field this morning. But don’t worry, if you look on the computer calendar, you’ll see that the meeting has been postponed until next month. I’ll have all the data for you in plenty of time for that.”

“Oh I see. I must’ve missed that one, I read so many, I sometimes lose track. Thanks for staying on top of it.”

Worked like a charm.

“By the way, what were you doing out in the field?”

Not knowing of anyway to finesse this, I decided to go straight for the truth.

“Arthur, I don’t know if you heard yet, but Tony Pats died this morning.”

“Who?”

“Tony Paternostro”

“I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that name. Was he a relative of yours?”

“Uh, no, he was one of our employees – in charge of ordering asphalt for the repair crews.”

Continuing with the hands-on managerial touch, he asked, “Why would one of our employees do that”

“Do you mean why would he be ordering asphalt, or why would he die?”

“Both, I suppose.”

I had always tried to set aside the rumors that Arthur Maudlin only held onto his job because his daughter babysat for the Mayor’s children, but it seemed that my inner cynic could no longer be ignored.

“Arthur, I know you’re very busy, and I can understand how you might not be on top of some of these details. Our division handles the asphalt contracts. I do the administrative end of things. Tony handles … handled the field operation for me.

“Of course, of course. I knew that. But what were you doing in the field? I needed you for that meeting.”

“Well, because he was dead, Tony was unable to handle things in the field this morning, so I stepped in.”

“I keep telling you, you really shouldn’t micromanage like that. You have to let your employees do their jobs. If this keeps up, it’ll affect your performance evaluation.”

“But Arthur, Tony wasn’t at work, and his job had to be covered.”

“Well, he should have been at work. It’s your responsibility to hold him accountable for his attendance.”

“Arthur, I do try to keep a tight rein on absences, but as you may be aware, death is considered a legitimate excuse.”

“It is? I suppose that makes sense. All right then so come back to the office now, I need those reports.”

I tried my best to fill him on the rest of the details, including my being dragooned into a police investigation. Ordinarily, the only time Arthur paid any attention to the non-estrogen-producing aspects of his surroundings was when his boss scrutinized him. I figured a murder in his branch of the organization chart might turn into an occasion for that, and might have expected Arthur to focus. But he was as disengaged as ever, his mind probably absorbed in the intricacies of scheduling three nooners in one lunch break. I told him I’d be in after lunch.

“All right then, I have meetings all afternoon outside the office. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll go over the reports then.”

“Sure thing boss, see you first thing in the morning,” knowing full well neither of us would be in the office any time soon.

As I heaved the two halves of my phone shut, Rendell grabbed me by the elbow and steered me toward an unmarked police car.

“Taxpayer dollars at work, eh White? Let’s go pay a visit to Mrs Dearly Departed. Now get me that address and get in the car.”

Next chapter

Chapter 1 – Typical morning, plus a dead guy

My day as a bureaucrat started as it often does -- the telephone rang. I picked it up and gave the official greeting

"Street Department, White speaking". Immediately, a voice began asking me how to get from North Carolina to Connecticut. Or perhaps it asked me why the hell traffic was backed up on the Belt. Or perhaps it told me that a streetlight in the Bronx was broken. Or perhaps there is a pothole the size of the sea of tranquility on Staten Island. Or perhaps it would ask me, or berate me about any one of dozens of subjects that have nothing to do with what I do for a living. I'm one of the lucky people whose name, bureaucratically obscurantist job title, and telephone number is published in various listings of government offices. Said number is also one digit away from the telephone numbers of a broad array of services. Many of those numbers are manned by recordings that inexplicably refer callers to my telephone number. Apparently dyslexia is a problem in government. I've tried to straighten this out with the listing and telecommunications bureaucrats, but the numbers at which they are listed allow me to do no more than request a permit to clean my sewer connection. I don't know exactly what a sewer connection is, though cleaning it sounds like a good idea

But I digress. The real story is that the telephone rang again. To my surprise, it wasn't the same person I just spoke to coming round the circle of bureaucrats.

"Street Department, White"

"Big fuckin' deal. Why the fuck didn't you order any asphalt for the Bronx Crew? I got trucks lined up around the block, 30 guys on site, and that sonofabitchbastard plant manager told me to go fuck myself."

"Good morning to you too, Al. Always a pleasure to hear your voice. What happened? Did you talk to Pats?"

Big Al wasn’t my boss, or anybody else’s, but he ran the show. There are more than a quarter of a million city workers in this town. Maybe eight of them know what they’re doing. Big Al is one of them. His experience and track record command attention. That and an unparalleled ability to use the word “fuck” as any part of speech.

"I talked to him Friday afternoon. Told him we needed 1000 tons from Amici Asphalt. He said he'd take care of it. Trucks show up this morning, and the whole place is shut down. Gates locked, and everything. All the other plants are closed, and I can't get any fuckin' asphalt in the Bronx. Pats ain't answering his phone, his cell, his beeper, or his radio. No one knows where the fuck he is."

"Did anyone try him at home?"

"Yeah. His wife said she hasn't been home in three days, and doesn't care if she never sees him again."

"That's weird. Let me make some calls. Get you some material. Track down Pats."

An hour later, the supply problem was solved, but the Pats mystery had deepened. Tony Paternostro, better known as Pats, was in charge of lining up our daily supply of asphalt, the hot, sticky, black gold that is the lifeblood of the road repair world. It's a somewhat difficult task. We, being the bureaucratic civil service misfits we are, never how much we need. And they (the suppliers who sell us the stuff), always have a higher paying customer they'd rather sell it to, as well as customer service policies based on the code of omerta. All in all, the task of balancing supply and demand calls for a combination of toughness and tact that few in our little world possess. Pats isn't necessarily endowed with a surfeit of either, but he gets by. More importantly, he always shows up for work, and always answers one of the half dozen communications devices strapped to his waist, night or day. Call it dedication. Call it loyalty. Call it overtime at time and half.

Failing to reach Pats myself, I made a few calls. No one had seen him or heard a word. He might have gone to A.C. over the weekend and gotten back late. He might have been at his girlfriend's, or his other girlfriend's, no one was sure though. Only one thing to do. Send Crazy Joe to check around.

Crazy Joe, one-eyed, unreliable, dishonest, stupid, and drunk, Pats's on-again-off-again sidekick and cross to bear, had keys to Tony's office, apartment, and car, and knew his habits and haunts. Crazy Joe had many fewer communications devices strapped to his waist than Pats, but for once, I knew exactly where to find him -- at a disciplinary hearing. Crazy Joe has done (or, rather, failed to do) a great many things in his career. Having fomented disasters as a laborer, dispatcher, messenger, gas station attendant, and clerk, his most recent assignment had been to sit by himself in a shed next to a fax machine and wait for a list of figures to come through. He was then supposed to wait for a technician to stop by, to whom he would hand the fax. This apparently had proven to be quite a challenge.

On the first day of his new assignment, Crazy Joe sat in the shed, the fax machine faxed, and the technician, a fellow of Middle Eastern extraction whose name was pronounced by yelling "Batman" while simultaneously coughing and harrumphing, stopped by at the appointed hour.

"I am Bat(coughharrumph)man. I have come for de fux."
"Dafuck you say?"
"Defux. Please gif me de fux"
"Dafuck you say?"
"De fux! I must have de fux!"

Crazy Joe then popped out his glass eye, threw it at Batman, yelled, "Get dafuckouttahere you Indian rat bastard," (according the complaint filed by Batman in triplicate. Batman retreated from the shed and immediately filed said harassment complaint with the department's equal employment opportunity office, on the grounds that he resented being referred to as Indian.

But I digress.

On the morning of Pats's unexplained absence, I knew where to find Crazy Joe. Emerging from the hearing room, his glass eye back in place, and his natural eye glassy from drink, Crazy Joe muttered curses and epithets at his inquisitors under his breath. I stepped out of my office and called to him.

"Joe. Come here. I need a word with you."
"Hiya Jon. Howya doin?"
"Fine Joe. How'd the hearing go?"
"Colored bitch suspended me for tree days widout pay."
"Yeah, well, just be thankful she didn't fire you."
"I didn't do nuttin'. Dafuck dese people fuckin' wit me faw?"
"Joe. You can't say racial stuff to people in offices. Doesn't matter what you say on the street, cause those guys'll kick your ass anyway. But don't talk about nationality in the office."
"Waddyou talkin' about? Dat guy wasn't colored. He was Indian."
"He's Iranian, Joe, and he didn't like you calling him Indian."
"Who gives a fuck? Indian, whatever. I ain't no racist. I got a colored guy livin' next door to me."

"Look at this way, Joe: You ever call a Napolitan' guy Sicilian by mistake?"
"Yeah ..."
"Well what happened?"
"He hit me in the head with a brick."
"Think of this hearing as a brick. If you don't know a guy, don't mention any countries. Trust me on this one."

"All right, all right. Is dat all you wanna talk to me about?"

"No, I need to ask you about Pats. You seen him in the last couple of days?"

"No. Me an him had a fight. I ain't talk to him in like a week. Why?"

"Nobody knows where he is. He's not answering any of his phones or his beeper, and he didn't show up for work today."

"Ah, he's probably hidin' from his girlfriend. She foun' out about the udda one. Treatened to tell his wife."

"What you mean 'hiding out'? Where is he?"

"Uh, he's got dis otha apartment up by Arthur Avenue where he hangs out sometimes."

"Yeah? I never heard about that one before. Anyway, I need you to go see if he's around. Tell him to give me a call."

"I don't tink he really wants to see me. See we, wuz out at dis afta hours jernt, an' ..."

"I don't want to hear about it. Just find him and tell him to call me, or the next time that Lady won't miss you with the brick, if you know what I mean."

"Awright, awrigtht. I'm goin'."

The rest of the morning was relatively quiet. Between sewer connection cleanings, I finished off some paperwork, divvied up one person's worth of work between three clerks collectively capable of substantially less than that, and declared myself worthy of lunch and a little fresh smog. When I got back, the phone was ringing."

It was crazy Joe.

"Uh, Johnny... I dunno howta tell you 'dis, but it looks like Pats is dead."

"What?!"

"I'm at his place now, an' he ain't movin', an' he ain't breadin'."

"Did you call 911?"

"Uh, no. Ya 'tink I should?"

"Joe. Call 911."

"See we had 'dis fight see, an' he looked OK when I left him, but now...I 'tink I should get outta heah."

"Joe. Give me the address.

"Uh, he don' want too many people knowin' 'bout dis place."

"Joe, if he's dead, he won't care, and if he's alive, I don't think he'd mind."

"Uh, okay, but don't tell nobody about me findin' him, awright?"

"Yeah, sure Joe, just give me the address."

As soon as we hung up, I called 911, reported the situation, then headed out the door.

Next Chapter

Are you sure?

I've worked within the bureaucracy of a municipal government agency for many more years than I'd like to admit, and even more than I ever intended. Early on, my job was kind of fun. I spent a few years getting to know the details of an operation that provides an actual service, and the sometimes colorful characters who provide these services "in the field".

Eventually, I got pretty good at my job and was promoted up the administrative tree. The further up the tree I went, the more I became something of a bridge between between the field, and the bureacracy that "supports" it. This, too, was interesting for a while, but it eventually had a corrosive effect on my soul.

Yes, it's true. It turns out that bureaucracies are indeed full of lazy, spitelful, CYA-obssessed, and above all incompetent, well, bureaucrats. Bureaucrats, it turns out, are not frustrated idealists just waiting for someone out of a Frank Capra movie to inspire them to process forms quickly and simplify their procedures. And did I mention that they are often incompetent? More so than you ever dreamed? Well, they are.

This is where the soul-deadening part comes in. I've become so accustomed to the first answer or explanation (and usually, the second or third ...) someone gives me being false, quickly rendered in order to get rid of me, and completely contradicting any facts brought to bear on a conversation, that I can no longer simply accept what someone outside of work tells me. I assume that any answer to a question is some combination of deceptive, ill considered, and wrong. I cross examine every interlocuter with a series of "are you sures?"s and "perhaps you really mean?"s, and "consider the exact opposite of what you just said and imagine for a moment that that were true instead"s. This sort of thing may have served Socrates, well, but in the modern world, it just gets you branded a pain in the ass, and doesn't get you any closer to figuring out why they're threatening to cut off your cable service.

Recently, I have had something of a reawakening to the possibility of competence. A little over a year ago, my son Alexander was born. A prenatal ultrasound had revealed that he had a clubfoot, but we had been reassured that our son would not turn into Richard III and that the clubfoot could be treated non-surgically with a near certain prognosis of correction and normal function. Still the clubfoot was on our minds, and after he was born, it was evident.

The morning after he was born, it became apparent that something more serious than the clubfoot was wrong. The first time he tried to breastfeed, he choked and turned bright blue. Alex was quickly moved from the hospital nursery to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where he underwent a series tests.

It turned out he had a congenital abnormality of the digestive system and trachea called an esophageal atresia and tracheo esophageal fistula (EATEF) as well a minor spine and kidney problem. These problems taken together are a syndrome called "VACTERL" The EATEF part of the deal was "incomptible with life" but completely correctable with surgery.

To make a long story short, the surgery was successful, and Alex came home from the NICU five weeks after he was born. Over the following year, he has grown rapidly and turned into a very cute, active, bright child. There have been a number of complications and scares along the way, and he still requires close follow-up by an army of specialists, but to all outward appearances he is completely healthy and thriving. Obviously, he's also the best looking and smartest baby born in New York in the last several decades, but that goes without saying.

Along the way, I have probed every doctor as I would an accounts payable clerk in the agency where I work. Instead of sullenness, obfuscation, and failure to act, I have been greeted with clarity, compassion, accurate diagnoses, and optimistic prognoses that have all worked out they way the medical professionals said they would. I have met doctors who return calls at any time of day or night, patiently answer every question, laugh at my inappropriate jokes, and most importantly, treat Alex carefully and compassionately.

For all the good this has done Alex, it has also taught me to once again to value the opinions and abilities of other people. So these fine people have given me two gifts -- a wonderful, thriving son (who before the middle of the 20th century could not have survived), and they reanimation of a small piece of my own soul. I still yell at accounts payables clerks, but every once in a while, I allow myself to expect a co-worker to do something right the first time. They haven't lived up to that expectation yet, but I have hope.

Pickin' and Grinnin'

For much of my life, I've spent as much as several hours a day playing guitar. Sometimes this has been serious "practicing", other times more like random noodling. My focus has usually been on electric guitar, but lately it has shifted more toward acoustic. Part of the motivation for this has been a search for songs I can play and sing for my young son, Alex. I no longer have time for more than a few minutes of guitar at a time (1 year olds demand a lot of attention. Who'd a thunk it?). So entertaining him with a bit of picking kills two birds with one stone.

Alex seems to like songs with a bit of a beat, and a happy major-ish kind of sound. He also likes to crawl up to the guitar while I'm playing, start swatting at the fretboard, and use the neck as a chinning bar. This all kind of makes open tunings work a bit better than standard tuning. I can take my fingers off the strings, pry him off the neck, and let him bat at the fretboard, and the results will be a little closer to music than it would be otherwise.

I've never been much of an open tuning player, though. I've occasionally played a bit of slide blues guitar, and done the Keith Richards thing, but rarely gotten too far figuring out chords and plucked phrases, a la the great fingerpickers. To address this deficit, I dug up a Blind Blake CD and started figuring out one of my old favorites, "Police Dog Blues", which Blind Blake plays in an open E tuning (or maybe D capoed up a whole step). This has got a strong ragtime beat, a gentle sounding vocal melody, and lots of cool licks that aren't too hard to figure out. It also has two of my all time favorite blues couplets. Singing about the dog who guards the house of a girl he's fallen for:

I'm scared to bother 'round her house at night
I'm scared to bother 'round her house at night
She's got a police dog craving for a bite

His name is rambling, and when he gets a chance
His name is rambling, and when he gets a chance
He leaves his mark on everybody's pants.

I love the way he sets up the expectation (by naming the dog "Rambling") that the dog will do one thing (like maybe ramble around the neighborhood), and winds up doing something totally different. Alex seems to like it, too. When he's getting all fussy and upset about going to bed, singing "Police Dog Blues" usually stops the screaming.

No if I could only get him to sit still for my solo arrangement of "Giant Steps" ...

What Happened to "X"

OK, here's my first real post, and it's a doozy ...

I grew up in a high rise middle-income housing complex in Greenwich Village in the 60s and 70s. My family was part of the first wave of tenants who moved in as the building was completed. Many of these other tenants were also families with young children. The building was one of those classic NYC housing deals that don't exist anymore -- really nice, really cheap apartments, that no one ever moves out of.

As a result, most of the kids who moved in together wound up growing up together, attending the same schools, playing together after school, and, as we grew older, doing the things that teenagers do together. Of course we didn't all hang out together in one crowd, and we all had friendships away from the building, but there were fairly stable subsets of kids in the same grades who made the trip from infancy to adolescence together. My main partner in crime in the building for most of my childhood was a boy I'll call "X".

X and I knew each other even before we moved into the building. We played together as babies in the playgrounds of Washington Square Park. We went to the same junior and high schools. For several summers, our families stayed in beach houses near each other. It wasn't as intimate or deep a friendship as some I've had, but we were close and spent an awful lot of time together until about age 16. After that, we drifted into different circles of high school friends, and after we graduated, we went our separate ways. Over the 25 years since I graduated from high school, I've seen X only a handful of times, but it's always been friendly, and he has always been one of those people I think of trying to track down and catch up with.

Fast forward many years later and I hear a bit of building gossip from my mother, where X's parents still live, too. It seems X was arrested in an FBI sting for attempting to solicit a 13 year old girl (actually an FBI agent) for sex over the internet. He's under house arrest pending trial. He's not allowed to see his child, and is looking at a minimum five-year sentence if convicted. I google his name, and because X has spent much of his career as an entertainment and gossip journalist, the details are easy to find, and pretty lurid.

I get in touch with another building alumnus ("Z" who remained close with X long after I did) , who fills in some more of the background. X had had a drug problem, and had gone through a messy divorce, but there had never been a hint of anything like this before. Z says X had been getting his personal and professional lives together after hitting bottom and seemed to be doing well.

So what the heck happened? X was a fairly ordinary kid. Bright, though not particularly intellectual or academically dedicated. Good at sports, though not really a jock. Funny and gregarious, though not charismatic. A bit of a prankster, and a wiseass, but overall, he was a good kid. We grew up with some kids who got into some very ugly stuff, but he definitely was not one of them.

His growing up to become a gossip columnist surprised no one who knew him, but a pedophile? Was it drugs? Lonely late night hours on the internet robbing him of inhibition and judgment? A bizarre spasm of middle age? Or was this always something inside him? A ticking time bomb set up by something in childhood? I've gone over every memory I've got of him and his family, but I have absolutely no insight into this. "You think you know someone." A cliche, but in this case, the truest one I've ever met.