Raise a Ruckus for the Public Option

To anyone following the healthcare reform debate, it's obvious that there's a big difference between what the House, the White House, and the people want and what the Senate is willing to legislate voluntarily. Witness the bill that just passed committee, with the miraculous bi-partisan army of one, that lacks what most people who have looked at the issue carefully conclude is a sine qua non of any real improvement in the way health care in this country is adminstered, namely the public option. Or whatever else you want to call it. I like "medicare for all," but I'm not in the advertising business.

Historically, the Senate's role as the more inherently "conservative" (in the literal, not current political sense of the term) chamber has been to put the brakes on overly radical ideas, to keep the irrational exuberance of democracy and the dark power of empire in check. Some might argue that that's what is going right now. Good old altruistic Senator Baucus and his 99 friends in pinstripes are saving us from our worst instincts by ensuring that we will all have our choice of indistinguishable, crappy, unaccoutantable, private-sector bureaucrats denying us coverage. I hate to say this, but I think something else may be going on. I think it's possible, just possible, that the Senator, plutocrats who listen more and more to other plutocrats and less and less to ideas from outside the echo chamber, have lost perspective.

I think it may not be a bad idea to help them get some other perspectives. In light of this, I've written the letter below to one of my Senators (Schumer). I wrote a variation on this theme to my other one (Gillebrand) as well. I think it would be useful for others to do this as well, focusing efforts ont he Senate, as that is the place where it seems good ideas need the most help.

Dear Senator Schumer,
My name is John Albin, I am a lifelong fourth generation native New Yorker. Among other things, I worked for 21 years in the New York City Dept. of Transportation [NB, where his wife was the boss for 8 years] and now work in CUNY [where she's now a big shot], so I am well aware of all you have done to help Washington help New York, and I share your commitment to helping my fellow New Yorkers. I am writing today to urge you to keep fighting for a robust public health insurance option. It has been disheartening to me to see the scope of healtcare reform grow narrower and narrower within the Senate. I am hopeful that a better bill than what has come from Senator Baucus' committee can emerge, especially if people with your progressive pedigree and legislative savvy keep fighting for it.


My family has been through several major health crises, and we have experienced the full gamut of options -- from "none" to "cadillac" to Medicare. I have to say that on balance Medicare has provided the best level of coverage, with the least difficulty. I think it is essential, from the perspectives of cost containment, quality, and access, that something like this be available for all. I know that in your heart you agree with this. I would be happy to share some of my thoughts and experiences with your staff if that would help you frame issues as the debate continues in Congress. It is my sincere hope that Senator Baucus' flawed and limited vision of what health care reform should be does not win the day.

What's in your wallet, Mr. Gingrich?

Various news outlets reported recently that Mexico has decriminalized possession of small amounts of various drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine. This is a good thing, though not as good a thing as a much broader legalization both there and here would be, but that's not really my topic today. Two of my pet political peeves are health care reform (which I commented on here), and drug policy. Apart from the obvious connection between the two issues (drugs are medicine), something else joins the two topics that I find interesting: Many politicians' views on these subjects are bizarrely disconnected from their own life experiences.

Most of the elite political and business leaders of our society (the people who control the debate and outcome for almost everything important) came of age in the sixties and seventies, which means that most of them a) got high when they were young, and b) are now over the hill and starting to fall apart. One would think that people in this cohort would be able connect those two facts of their existence to the policy questions they face, yet somehow many of them don't, and as a consequence fight for rules that they wouldn't live by if push came to shove.

Here's why I say this:

On the question of drugs, there is virtually no politician anywhere on the mainstream spectrum of left to right even willing to entertain the notion of legalizing drugs. Case in point: Barack Obama. By his own admission, the president regularly smoked pot and snorted cocaine. In his memoir, he placed front and center his realization that he was on the road to self destruction and needed to sober up and grow up, which he did (except for the cigarette thing). Yet when faced with the question of whether marijuana should be legalized (via an electronic town hall in which three million people voted for him to be asked this question), he firmly said that he was against it, and made a joke about the preferences of his questioners. In other words, for him learning how to control himself is OK. Other people should go to jail.

It's become a bit of a ritual that politicians of a certain age get asked about past drug use. Most of them have given up on denying the undeniable. Instead, the politician gets a serious look on his face, talks about how much he regrets having done so, offers the excuse that he was young and stupid, and says that it is wrong to do such things. But the young and stupid thing the politician did was a crime. Can you imagine a seeker of of high public office getting away with the same dance about, say, having sex with a girl he met at a party who was too drunk to give consent? Of course not. The politician gets away with it because neither he nor his interlocutor really believes the conduct to have been wrong, but neither wants to admit it. Whenever the "did you inhale" question gets asked, this is done with the intention of giving the pol an easy out and staying away from the real implications of the admission.

So this is what I'd like to see asked: Given your stance on enforcement of drug laws, is it OK that you got away with using illegal drugs in your youth? Should you have been arrested for this? If there were no statute of limitations on marijuana possession, would you turn yourself in? I would love to see, say, Norm Coleman wriggle his way around that.

So what does this have to do with health care? Well, the thing is, all these aging boomers are, well, aging. They're either already medicare eligible, or damn close. I would love to know how those who oppose universal access to affordable health care square their positions with their actual or impending membership in a publicly-funded, universal (for those of a certain age), affordable health insurance program.

Take, for instance, Tom Coburn, senator from Oklahoma and licensed physician who opposes health care reform of any stripe and wants to throw us all into the free market. He was also born in 1948, which means he's four years away from being medicare eligible (or may already be under certain circumstances). Or Newt Gingrich. He's over 65 already, regularly disses medicare and other government health programs and lobbies for "choice".

Coburn is a special case because he was a practicing physician before he became a politician. I'd like to see him asked: "You are a staunch opponent of government run or funded health programs, and you are on the record opposing both Obama's 'public option' and the idea of 'medicare for all.' Why did you accept both medicare and medicaid patients in your medical practice? Why did you accept fees from government programs you condemn?"

But Gingrich (and any other pundit over or in the vicinity of 65) should be asked one simple question: "Are you enrolled in medicare (or do you intend to enroll when you become eligible)?"

I'd be willing to bet that all of them would have to say 'yes,' because medicare is such a valuable and useful benefit that only an idiot (or that mythical creature known as the consistent ideologue) would turn it down. For reasons that I cannot grasp, media types never ask this. They do ask congress people why they wouldn't want everyone to have access to the same type of employer-provided health benefits they get, but that's really too much of a softball. It's too easy to for them to say that they do in fact want to bring that about, but it's a matter of how and how much it'll cost (which they all say). The question doesn't really expose the, I don't know, cognitive dissonance? hypocrisy? involved.

Looking at it in these terms brushes up against argumentum ad hominem, the fallacy for which I have the most scorn. So I'm reluctant to say that one should disagree with Gingrich, or Baucus, or Boehner, or Ensign or Coburn because they don't even agree with themselves. Still, I can't help but think that in the domain of political discourse on matters of inherently personal import, that the personal is in fact political. So, with that thought in mind, I can't help but wonder whether Newt et al are card carrying FICA members. What's in your wallet Mr. Gingrich? Indeed ...

They're all a buncha HIPAAcrites

As the right-wing rhetoric on healthcare reform heats up, I really have to wonder whether some of these propagandists have ever actually encountered our so-called system. I could spend time swatting away the falsehoods, like the one about how Obama is going to require old people to kill themselves. I could also copy and paste the same statistics that every other commentator cites about how the "greatest medical system in the world" leaves us 39th in health outcomes, but that's all a bit too impersonal.

For me, it comes down to this. You've got some symptoms, so you go to the doctor. The receptionist asks you for your insurance information and makes you sign a form that says you promise to pay any charges not covered by insurance, no matter how large. You fill out a bunch of other forms authorizing your doctor to share your sensitive medical information with insurance people, who offer you no guarantees of privacy. You wait, sometimes for a couple of hours. You see the doctor. The doctor takes tests (sends samples to a lab not covered by your insurance; you get a bill). The doctor spends five minutes with you because he can't afford to dawdle, unless he can work a procedure into it, which he gets paid for separately from the office visit.

Days or weeks later, you get the results back. It's something serious. He refers you to a specialist. You go to the specialist. Same insurance drill. You see the specialist. He's a putz. He doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. He picks his nose and chews his boogers. All he tells you is that some people die from this, some people get better. We'll cut the top of your head off and take it from there. You want a second opinion.

You go to another specialist. What insurance do you have? Sorry, we don't take that. Do you have out of network coverage? I think so. What's your maximum out of pocket? What's the deductible? What are the co-pays. If you need surgery, you have to work out a deal with the anesthesiologist yourself because they don't take insurance. Now you get to see the new guy. He's great. He knows exactly what's wrong with you. He's treated 5000 people with the same thing, and they all live to be 95. He's gonna save your life, make you feel like you're 25 all over again. Thank god. How much is this gonna cost me? We don't know, could be a few hundred, could be a few thousand. Could be more.

All through this, you get "explanations of benefits" that explain absolutely nothing, and bills from people you never even heard of for stuff that was never done to you, but you're getting sicker, and something has to be done. So now you have a choice: Let the angel in the white coat save your life and wipe out your savings, or let the putz sew boogers into your cranium for free.

OK, so maybe this is a bit of a caricature, but not that much of one. No matter how good any of these doctors is, the first thing you talk about is insurance and money. While you're getting diagnosed, you talk about insurance and money. All of your choices are influenced by insurance and financial concerns. You spend more time on the financial implications of your illness than you do on the medical concerns. Once you're cured, you spend months, maybe years, filing and re-filing the same claims that have been inexplicably rejected, and all this is with "good" insurance. The administrative and financial burden, under the best of circumstances, infuriates you and distracts you from the task of getting better, or taking care of a sick loved one. Moreover, none of this actually about making good health care decisions. Rather, it is about clawing the right quantity of the right kind of care out of the P&L statement of an insurance company that for completely arbitrary and impenetrable reasons has contracts with some doctors but not with others.

Even in a market dominated, capitalist society, it does not have to be this way. Despite the right-wing rhetoric, France, Germany, and Holland are not communist countries. Switzerland is not a communist country. England is not a communist country. All of these countries have simpler systems that provide high levels of care and better outcomes overall at lower costs, without forcing people to do the insurance dance and worry about bankruptcy. Some are single payer; some have a mix of private and public insurance. However, they all have strong, central government bureaucracies that impose universal coverage and consistency without requiring patients to go nuts with paperwork. They all have compromises, but not the ones we're stuck with.

It's also not this way in the United States, if you're over 65 (or at one time, 62). My father had a massive stroke when he was 56 that left him permanently, severely disabled and forced him to retire, at greatly reduced pension. To get to that level, he had to spend four months in hospitals and inpatient rehab, and a year in outpatient physical and occupational therapy, while seeing multiple medical specialists. Managing the insurance and bills became such a huge task that my mother had to cut back on her teaching courseload and hire someone to help her.

Magically, when my father turned 62 (and became eligible for Medicare), all this went away. No more secretary at home. Doctors who wouldn't see my father welcomed him with open arms. Hospital admissions took minutes instead of hours or days. Out of pocket medical expenses were virtually nil. All at a lower overall cost (according to those pesky EOB's) than with private insurance.

No one who has ever been sick and had to deal with the nightmare of our insurance system could spout the nonsense that passes for debate in Congress. Not that I would wish any ill will on, say, Mitch McConnell or Jim Boehner, but maybe these guys might learn something from, say, a heart attack or a brain tumor. Then again, maybe they've already been sick and went to see Dr. Putz, who sewed so much snot into their craniums that the drivel they've been spouting is the best they can do.

What are you Kant's Nephew?

The McCourt thing has got me thinking about education, teachers and such. That, and I'm a little health-updated out, so pardon the interruption

I've had the pleasure of studying with two singular educator/raconteurs: Frank McCourt, and Sidney Morgenbesser. Though better known these days for his second act as a best-selling author, McCourt's first act as a teacher of lord knows how many thousands of budding writers no doubt built the fan base for his future success. Morgenbesser was a philosophy professor at Columbia who despite very thin publishing credits, was revered as one of the great wiseacres and skewerers of pomposity in the western world. Mention to any philosopher, economist or political scientist that you studied with Sidney, and you will be greeted with a smile and a story about something Sidney said at a conference that broke up the room in laughter, while completely changing the way everybody thought about the subject at hand.

I have two vivid memories of something each of them said in class that have stayed with me all these years. I've come to realize that these very brief interludes informed nearly everything I've done in my working and intellectual life. It's kind of hard to process the notion that one sentence each by a philosopher and a creative writing teacher would matter to someone who has spent very little time at either of those endeavors, but facts is facts.

One day in creative writing class, McCourt began reading an assignment of mine aloud (I don't remember exactly what it was) that started off with the word "basically," as in "basically, what I mean to say is blah blah blah." He proceeded to tell me exactly why it was a bad idea to start a sentence with an modifier, or dangle one in any other fashion, and extended this to a mini lesson in applied sentence parsing. Never before had grammar or the mechanics of writing made any sense to me. Forever after, I understood that if you want someone to understand what you are trying to say, you have to say it clearly, succinctly, with a minimum of distraction from your point, and without ambiguity. That insight has enabled me to get my meager ideas across with enough success that I am reasonably frequently told that I am a good writer (which I am not, but mainly because of the meagerness of my ideas).

My great Sidney moment happened in a seminar on philosophy, economics, and Marxism he team taught with a fascinating figure named Alexander Ehrlich. Actually, the moment I'm going to tell you about was my second great Sidney moment. The first happened on the first day of class when he explained what the seminar was going to cover and how it was going to work, making liberal use of such technical philosophical terminology as "mishegas" "megillah" "famisht" "shmegegge" and "farblunget". In the middle of this, he stopped and announced to the class "by the way, a working knowledge of Yiddish is a requirement for this course". The next week (in time for the drop deadline) the herd had been culled of every blonde head.

OK actually, that was my second great Sidney moment. My first great Sidney moment came after in my first semester of CC (Columbia's core survey of western thought course) when I started giving serious thought to majoring in philosophy. I was talking about this with my father (an economist with Sidney stories), who simply told me "go talk to Sidney." I managed to find Sidney in his office, introduced myself as Peter Albin's son, and told him that I wanted to study philosophy. He asked me why, and I told him that I liked CC, had started reading some philosophy in high school and was interested in getting into the questions I had encountered more deeply. He asked me what I had read in high school and I said "oh you know, Carlos Casteneda, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the Dancing Wu li Masters ..." Sidney smiled and said "so how's your dad?"

OK so my third great Sidney moment came when Sidney started talking about how Marx's only real important works were those that dealt with practical critiques and analyses of politics, society, and economies; that the early stuff was all fuzzy headed noodling; that as a grand scheme theorist there wasn't really that much to talk about. This was circa 1983, when there still was such a thing as communism, critical theory and post structuralism were at something of a zenith, everybody walked around with a copy of the Marx-Engels Reader, and the 1848 Manuscripts were being viewed as his Marx's deepest work.

So I said to Sidney, "what about alienation? Isn't that a deep idea? Doesn't it all hang off that?" Sidney said "Alienation schmalienation. What the hell is that? Can you define it?" And I couldn't (at least not in non-circular, non-mish-mosh terms), despite having read thousands of pages on the subject and written a number of A papers that claimed to talk about it. At that moment, I realized that it was possible to regurgitate jargon that either meant nothing or which you absolutely didn't understand without anyone being the wiser. Philosophy became pretty much a dead subject to me after that, which was a bit of a problem because I was maybe 20 credits into a 30 credit major. However, I have discovered that there is perhaps no better management tool than asking people to define their terms and explain in plain English why what they are saying is important.

Now if I could only figure out what the meshuganah Derrida was talking about ...

Can you verify?

All dialog guaranteed verbatim.

Hapless Call-center Lady: Welcome to the card-member service line.  Can you verify the last four digits of your social?

Literal Minded Bugger of a Customer: My social? I wasn't aware that this involved socials, or that dances had digits.

HCL: That would be your social security number.

LMC:  Ah, why didn't you say so?  Yes, I can verify the last four digits of my social security number.

 [several seconds of silence]  

HCL: Sir? Are you there?

LMBoaC: Yes, I'm still here.

HCL: Sir, can you verify the last four digits of your social security number?

LMBoaC: I said yes, I can.  If you tell me the information you have, I'll verify it for you.

HCL:  No sir, I need you to tell me the last four digits of your social security number.

LMBoaC:   You want to verify what I tell you, is that it?

HCL: Yes.

LMBoaC:  Ah, I see.  You seem to have this a bit backwards.  Why didn't you say so?  The digits are XXXX [Those are not the real digits, by the way, or "BTW" for the youngsters in the audience.  If I told all of you the real ones, you might be able to verify them, which would not be a good thing for me, I gather.]

HCL: Yes, and how can I help you this evening?

LMBoaC: Well, I've had an account with you for many years, and have always paid my bills on time, but for some reason, you have increased the interest rate on my card to 29 percent, and reduced the credit limit to $390.  This would seem to indicate that you don't want my account anymore, so I would like to oblige you by closing my account.

HCL: Yes, I see from your account that you are a very good customer, is there anything I can do to change your mind?

LMBoaC: Can you restore my credit limit to $10,000 and the interest rate to 8.9%, which were the terms last month?

HCL: No, I can't, but I can give you a free gift.

LMBoaC: What would that be?

HCL: A credit card holder.

LMBoaC: Uh, no, that's OK.  Just close the account please.

HCL: I'm sorry I can't do that.  I will have to transfer you to someone else who can.

LMBoaC: Please do.

HCL: Before I transfer you, may I please have your daytime phone number?

LMBoaC: May I ask why?

HCL:  For account maintenance purposes.

LMBoaC:  Account maintenance purposes?

HCL:  Yes, so that we can maintain your account.

LmBoaC: You mean the account that I am closing and will no longer be maintaining with your company?

HCL:  Yes.

LMBoaC: Do you see the irony in that?

HCL:  I'm sorry sir?

LMBoaC: Never mind.  No you may not have my daytime phone number.  Please transfer me to the person who can close my account now.

[Beep beep.  Hold music.]

HCL#2: To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking

LMBoaC: Define pleasure.  Oh never mind.  John Albin, that's A-l-b-i-n  [I always spell it because for some reason despite only two simple syllables, no one ever gets it.]

HCL#2: Yes Mr. [sounds like "elbow"], how may I help you this evening?

LmBoaC:  I would like to close my account?

HCL#2: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, may I ask why?

LmBoaC: Well you've changed the terms so as to make it unusable, and I have other cards that are better, so I don't see the point in keeping an account that you clearly don't want.

HCL#2: I'm sorry to hear that, is there anything I can do to change your mind?

LMBoaC: No thank you.

HCL#2: I'm sorry for the inconvenience, I'm sure you understand the reasons.

LMBoaC: It's no inconvenience to me.  You're the ones losing my business. 

HCL#2: Yes, but you understand that with the financial situation we have to change the terms.

LMBoaC: What financial situation?  My account is in good standing.  I pay my bills on time and rarely have a balance.

HCL#2: Yes, but the bank has been losing a lot of money.

LMBoaC: Not from me.

HCL#2: No sir, you are a very good customer.

LMBoaC: It's nice of you to say so.  Please close the account now.

HCL#2:  Yes sir.  Is there anything else I can help you with?

LMBoaC:  No thank you.  Just close the account.

HCL#2:  Just to let you know sir, after you close the account, you will not be able to use it.

LMBoaC: Yes, that's the point.

HCL#2:  Your account is now closed.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

LMBoaC: No inconvenience at all. Good night.

[Click]

The financial system is doomed. 

Wake up and smell the coffee

Proust had his madeleine, and I have my burger, doughnut and coffee, one whiff of which is capable of launching me into an almost hypnotic state of nostalgia.  It all goes back to an afternoon in the Village when I was maybe three or four years old.  On the corner of Waverly Place and Sixth Avenue, there's a coffee shop.  There has always been a coffee shop on the corner of Waverly Place and Sixth Avenue.  These days, it's called the Waverly Diner, or something similarly logical.  I think of it as the new place, even though it has probably been called that for 30 years.

Back in the day, though, it was called Twin Brothers, and it was a little more on the doughnut shop end of the continuum.  Back in the day, most diners were, and most were  called something like that -- Twin Brothers, Four Guys, Three Joes.  They all had the same neon and chrome motif, white Formica counter, soda fountain, round stools that a little kid can spin around on, and the smell of burgers, doughnuts, and coffee. 

At the time my family was living a few blocks away on the corner of Houston and Sixth, and we had some interesting neighbors, as people in the Village tended to have back then. Next door to us was a divorced mom named Cathy Phelps, with two kids about the same age as my sister and me named Peter and Susie.  It's not a given in New York that two families with kids the same age living next door to each other will become friends, because nothing interpersonal is a given in New York, but we did in fact all become friends.

Elsewhere in the building, there was a guy named Bob Gibson.  He had three daughters who were quite a bit older than us, and baby sat from time to time.  Bob was a famous folk singer, a prominent member of the generation that immediately preceded and mentored  Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, and the like.  My parents were sort of beatnik-ish, and deeply involved in the anti-war movement, civil rights, and lefty causes, which made "folk singer" a respected profession in our household. 

At the age of three or four I was only very dimly aware of any of this sociology, but it was part of the background of life, and I was aware that Bob was somebody.  I was also dimly aware that there was something dark and wrong about him, that made others wary.  I have learned (through family reminiscence and reading up on the folk scene) that what was wrong was drug addiction.  Bob also had a brother named Jim, who wound up moving in with and marrying Cathy next door and become a presence in our lives thereafter (and who may also have shared some of his brother's troubles, though I'm not clear on this).

So anyway, there we all were, folk singers, junkies, college professors, divorcees, lovers, teenage daughters, and little kids in and out of each others apartments doing what ever it is that such people do.  [I can't speak for anyone else, but I had a serious Tinkertoy jones] Though they were little more than kids themselves, my parents tended to be the most adult and level headed figures around.  My father was often the only male possessed of basic urban family preservation instincts and common sense, and my mother was often the only female who knew how to keep people fed and clothed, acting as a den mother to all manner of strays throughout the sixties.

Anyway, where were we?  Ah yes burgers, doughnuts and coffee.  One thing that was definitely not a regular feature of daily life in the level-headed beatnik home was greasy spoon food.  My mother was a relatively serious cook and homemaker, and my parents were relatively broke in those days, so we didn't routinely go out for snacks, and when we did, they tended to be wholesome.  So one day, one of the Gibson girls (I don't remember any of their names) invited me on an adventure in search of snacks, and she took me in hand to Twin Brothers.  Immediately upon entering, I was greeted by the combined aroma of burgers on the griddle, coffee, and fresh doughnuts.  I spun around in circles on the stool and cautiously accepted the Gibson girl's offer of a bite of burger, a jelly doughnut and a glass of chocolate milk, sensing somehow that all this was contraband.

Soon, the snack was over, and it was time to head back down Sixth to Beatnik Towers.  We arrived home to furor and panic, my father searching the streets, my mother ready to call the cops, and Gibson adults in high dudgeon.  It seems that not only was the snack itself contraband, but conveying me to said snack without proper notice and authorization was a rather serious transgression.  After that incident, to the best of my recollection I was no longer entrusted to any Gibson girls, and I believe that very shortly after Bob's family imploded and disappeared from Beatnik Towers.

Ever since then, any time I have walked into or past a greasy spoon or doughnut shop and encountered that combination of aromas, this narrative plays out in my mind, with a vibrancy and certainty as strong as anything else in my memory. Literally, every time for my entire life, a jelly doughnut can serve up near total recall of an event that happened at the edge of memory and experience.  It also triggers a flood of memories about Cathy, Jim Peter and Susie, and the ways we would exit and re-enter each other's lives over the following decade or so, which is a story for another day.  Perhaps I'll head down to the coffee shop for a jelly doughnut and a glass of chocolate milk, find a Bob Gibson record on iTunes and see what happens.

Do I know you?

The fall of 1981 marked the beginning of my sophomore year at Columbia University, and what I thought would be a year full of positive changes.  My freshman year and the summer after had been kind of tough.  As a native New Yorker, at a time when Columbia had a housing shortage, I was unable to get a dorm room.  I spent the first semester living at home in the Village and commuting uptown, and had a hard time making friends and working my way into college life. 

For my second semester, I lived in a fraternity that made animal house look like a chapter of the John Birch society.  I started making friends on campus and and fitting in a bit better (living in what was easily the largest warehouse of illicit substances west of Lenox Avenue certainly helped), but it was all so drug addled and bizarre that rather than spending spring break attending the frat's week-long acid test, I retreated home and let my parents nurse me back to health and sanity.  In the last month or so of the term, I had started a dating a senior girl who moved away after graduation.  We traded visits over the summer, but it didn't really work out, and we wound up going our separate ways.

By the time the summer came to a close, I was ready for a bit of renewal and redemption.  I still hadn't gotten housing from the college, so I wound up throwing my lot in with a colorful character named Michael Offen.  Michael was a bit of a hustler in those days (and for all know, still is -- last I heard, he worked for Bear Stearns).  He was the spitting image of Marty Feldman, with wild bulging eyes, curly hair,  pointy features, and an amazing ability to charm people into whatever schemes he had going with girls, jobs, or school.

His father and uncle were involved in some sort of agribusiness, which led Michael to tell people that his father jerked off bulls for a living.  His uncle (who visited us a couple of times), bore a striking resemblance to George C. Scott in his Patton days, and had been an intelligence officer before he turned to romancing livestock.  The family had houses full of extra furniture, which was part of Michael's sales pitch for the tiny hovel he found for us  at 142 West 109th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, a region the student guides warned us to avoid. [I still remember the address because I've been around that neighborhood for one reason or another enough times over the years that it has stuck.]

The first time we went to the building to check things out, there was an elderly disheveled hispanic woman cleaning the hallways.  In a mix of hand gestures, and Spanish (she seemed not to speak English), she conveyed the notion that she was the super and would show us to our prospective new digs.   We walked up to the third floor and arrived at a knobless, lockless door.  We pushed it inward, and it fell off its hinges, revealing only gloom.   The super made gestures suggesting it would be fixed, so we wrestled it to some sort of stability and proceeded.

The apartment consisted two small bedrooms, one of which had no door, a small living room, a large kitchen, and a bathroom.  The bathroom had a tub without a shower, and no sink or mirror.  The apartment had no closets, though there were hooks on the walls.  The floors were rough unfinished wood, and the entire apartment was painted in high-gloss red enamel.  Dead cockroaches littered the floor and a vague odor of decay filled the air.  The apartment faced airshafts on all sides.  As I stuck my head out the kitchen window to see if there was anything to see, a chicken carcass whizzed by and crashed into the debris-strewn courtyard below.

Despite missing the opportunity to read the entrails of the chicken, we interpreted all the omens to be good and decided to take the place.  Sure it needed a little work, but we were young, school didn't start for another couple of weeks, we'd get the lease in our own names, and the price was right -- 350 bucks a month.  Besides, it was the only apartment available  that had real rooms. The others were all "railroads," and neither of us liked the idea of having to traipse through the other's bedroom.  We made arrangements to return to the real estate office that had sent us there, eager to hand over our first and last month's rent and sign on the dotted line.

Later that day, we got our semoleans in order, and headed to an office on the upper west side to meet our landlord and close the deal.  When we arrived, the "super" was there waiting for us, now well dressed, coiffed, and made up.  The real estate agent introduced her to us as Mrs. Parada, the owner of the building.  She greeted us in lightly accented, fluent English.  I don't remember whether I was just to too stupid to see the mess we were getting ourselves into, or whether Michael pulled a Michael and convinced me that it was all copacetic, but no matter.  We paid our money, took our chances, and spent the next week or so schlepping in our belongings, and getting the place as livable as possible.

The months that followed (surprise surprise) were absolute hell.  We had an unexplained power outage that took days to resolve, a fire in one of the next door apartments, noisy neighbors, flocks of chickens and other detritus streaming past the airshaft windows, and a front door that continued to fall off its hinges.  More importantly, as one of the coldest winters in recent memory descended upon us, Mrs. Parada showed her true colors, providing neither heat nor hot water for weeks at a time.  We stalked Mrs. Parada and complained to every public official we could, but none of it helped.  We took cold baths, and froze.  The only solution was to spend as little time as possible in the place, shuttling between the library, the Hungarian Pastry Shop, the Marlin Cafe, and friends' apartments.  Given the unfavorable male:female ratio in pre-co-ed Columbia, romance was rarely a refuge.

As we soon discovered, our surroundings also had some interesting, uh, economic activities.  Car stripping was one of the main industries in the neighborhood.  Every week or so, a new car would appear on the block.  Men would emerge from adjacent buildings, plug power tools into the streetlight bases, and gradually reduce it to little more than a few bits and pieces sitting in a puddle of oil.  Other cars would sprout new fenders, bumpers , and trim, which were, miraculously, the same color as the car that had shed its skin.  There was a curious specialization to this.  Our block was the Toyota-stripping block.  One block west was strictly Datsuns.

The other big business in the neighborhood was, ahem, distribution of chemically active horticultural products.  Liberally sprinkled around the neighborhoods to the east and north of Columbia were pot stores.  Literally, these were stores that sold pot, either openly over a counter, or through a bank-teller like cage.  The one I remember best was on Amsterdam Avenue, just below 110th Street.  It had two signs, one above the door that said "Joe's Meat Market," and another painted on the window reading "Right-On Variety."  I soon discovered, though, that there was more to the neighborhood than just retail outlets.

Not too long after I moved in, I went down to my parents' place for dinner, and my father drove me home.  My father, who grew up on the upper west side, and knew every inch of Manhattan like the back of his hand, was very concerned about where I was living.  He had been trying to talk me into moving back home.  Hoping to convince him that everything was OK, on the drive uptown I told him not to worry.  The neighborhood was poor, but the people were nice and it wasn't dangerous.

At the height of my spiel, we turned the corner onto my block and were stopped from proceeding by a police detachment.  The street was full cops wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying rifles.  There were snipers visible on the roof of one building.  Learning that I lived on the block and was heading home, the cops let us through.  As we reached my building, a couple was dragged out of a building a few doors down from mine in handcuffs.  It was a major heroin bust that made all papers.

Fast forward to the end of the year, and I had had it.  I sublet my share of the apartment to my buddy Tom Meltzer (sorry Tom), and moved back down to the Village to lick my wounds, and devote myself to earning enough money to stake myself to slightly better digs.   As vivid as my memories of that apartment are, it strikes me that I remember almost nothing of any of my neighbors, except for another pair of friends (Gavin and Phil)  suffering through a year of Parada-hell in the building next door.  This is somewhat out of character, because in every other place I've lived, I've usually gotten to know or at least taken notice of my neighbors, many of whom I can still easily recall.

Fast forward another 27 years, and the subject of forgetting or failing to notice people has become current.  Doing the math, my sophomore year beginning in 1981 puts me in the Columbia College class of 1984.  A certain fellow named Barry-something-or-other (who has subsequently found a nice place to live) was class of '83, as were a number of my closest friends, including several with whom I am still in regular contact.  So far, I've only come across one college friend who has any recollection of him.  Still, he's obviously a hot topic of conversation, and every issue of every Columbia publication has had at least one item about alma mater's most illustrious alum over the past year or so. 

Recently, while catching up via email with a high school friend who went to grad school there, we of course got on the subject of Obama's days at Columbia, and did you know him, and funny how no one seems to have, and all that, and he called my attention to a couple of items.  One was an essay entitled "Barack Obama '83, My Columbia College Roommate" in the most recent alumni magazine.  The author talks about how as junior transfer students from Occidental College in the fall of 1981, neither he nor Obama could get housing from CU, so they wound up sharing an unheated dump of a railroad flat on 109th between Amsterdam and Columbus.  Hmm.  It seems the president of the United States of America and I lived on the same block, under similar circumstances.

The other item was an article in something called WikiCU (a Wikipedia-like site devoted to Columbia trivia) about Obama's days at Columbia.  Most of it is lifted straight from the roommate piece (or vice versa), but it also includes some additional detail, namely pictures of said dump and (a drum roll please) its address.

"#3E, 142 West 109th St"

Upon reading this, your faithful correspondent picks his jaw off the floor, and runs around his office shouting "holy shit!  Barack Obama was my frickin' next door neighbor!  Barack Obama was my frickin' next door neighbor!  Barack  Obama was my frickin' next door neighbor!"  Now I suppose it's entirely possible that Barry is reading this and now running around his (significantly rounder) office and shouting "Holy shit! that guy who played at the Postcrypt all the time was my frickin' next door neighbor!"  Then again ... 

But even now, I must sheepishly admit that I still don't remember him.  However, Barry, if you were the guy throwing chickens out the window, I've got a bone to pick with you.

White, You Huckleberry

When I was growing up, there were two kinds of people: Yankee fans and Mets fans.  Red Sox fans didn't count as human, so the didn't fit into either category.  Given this conceptual framework, I get some satisfaction out of the  big news on the sports pages that feared Sox slugger Jim Rice finally made it into the Hall of fame, on the 800th ballot, or something like that, and Rickey Henderson (the most exciting Yankee of one of the team's most frustratingly underperforming incarnations) it in on the first try.

The less said about any Red Sock the better, except that by the numbers Rice was as deserving as anybody of election to the hall.  That it took so long is probably not because he played for the Red Sox (unfortunately, the HoF voters do not understand the proper categorization of humanity).  Rather, it was because the HoF is run by a bunch of sportswriters (i.e., over-aged nerds), who hold grudges against athletes who don't kiss their butts enough.

Speaking of butts, let's talk about Phil Rizzuto.   Some years ago, I was watching a ball game on TV with my dad.  Scooter and Bill White were calling the game, with the usual mix of Oh Holy Cowisms and disagreements, with White playing his usual role of straightman/huckleberry.  Rickey Henderson was on first, taking a long lead, jabbering, twitching, and doing everything he could to drive the pitcher and catcher to distraction.  He takes a big lead, and White says "there's Rickey taking that big lead."  All of a sudden he's off.  Before you can say, um, Jack Robinson, Henderson slides in safely, beating the throw by a mile.

White continues:

"That Rickey Henderson, he always gets that good jump"

"Yeah, he's so fast, too,"  adds scooter.

"Well, you know, he's got those powerful legs,"  says White.

"Yeah, and he's got cute buns, too," concludes Scooter.  We all, dad, me, and White, fall off our chairs. 

That's why there's a hall of fame. 

Are you Jewish?

As many of you many know, Judaism is divided into four main streams of practice: orthodox, conservative, reform, and ambivalent.  Most people would assume that the order in which these were just written reflects the gradual passage of the Jewish people into coexistence with the gentile world.  Certainly the folks in black hats would have us believe that the most authentic form of the Jew is the most "traditionally" religiously observant and that relaxation of practice puts one on the slippery slope toward loss of one's very identity.

Interestingly, archaeology suggests that the opposite may be true.  To vastly oversimplify, the historical portions of the bible say that god offered the descendants of Abraham a deal: worship me, and you get the promised land.  On the way down through Moses, the deal got a bit more complicated and specific -- worship me, follow the laws, and wipe out the infidels who are living there despite the fact that I gave it to you, and you get the promised land.  Along come David and Solomon, and a few more details get fleshed out as to the where's and how's of practice, and the Jews get the promised land, plus this really cool kingdom, a nice temple, yadda yadda.  Fast forward lots of centuries, and we have a culture built around the idea of a covenant, liberation from slavery in Egypt, and the carrot of the promised land being dangled in front of us.

However, since the rise of modern archaeological techniques, and especially since Israel's expansion following the six-day war, there has been lots of opportunity to dig up the holy land.  Lots of old cities have been found, lots of worship sites have been found.  Evidence that many of the kings mentioned in the bible were real has been found.  The problem is, most of this evidence suggests that the kingdom of David was relatively modest, and that the Israelites were consistently polytheistic (rather then errantly monotheistic), until hundreds of years later than traditional readings of the bible suggest.  More importantly, no evidence of the exodus has been found, and other finds filling in the context of the ancient world make it extremely unlikely that it occurred on anything like the temporal or physical scale described in the bible, if it occurred at all.

Or so argues a book I've recently read  called "The Bible Unearthed" by archaeologists  Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman.  Assuming that the narrative F&S lay out is accurate (and a even a cursory survey of the literature on biblical archaeology threatens the certainty of such an assumption, which never stopped me before ...), the greatest significance of this story is that traditional orthodoxy is actually the most recent, and least historically grounded of the forms of practice.  Ambivalence about god and monotheism, ambiguity of identity, intermingling with other peoples, and picking and choosing which religious laws and practices to follow or ignore is the most traditional path of all.

As a fourth generation, smart-assed New York atheist Jew, this is a combination of comforting and disturbing.  On the one hand, I no longer have any reason to feel even the slightest bit sheepish around the nudnicks in the mitzvah tanks.  Which reminds me of a story ... One fine spring afternoon some years ago, I was riding my bike near Washington Square Park, when a guy with a black hat and a long beard standing in front of a Winnebago accosted me. "Are you Jewish?" he asked.  Why, I don't know, but I answered "yes," then swerved away from the liturgy he proferred.  "It's no reason to get he killed," he lamented, with a shrug.  About that, he was certainly correct.

On the other hand, finding out that ambivalence and doubt are the oldest forms of piety undercuts whatever hipster cred attaches to ambivalence and doubt.  Which leads to more ambivalence and doubt about ambivalence and doubt about ... Infinite regress is so, I don't know, regressive ...  Of course ambivalence and doubt about identity and god have their own implications that go far beyond my navel gazing.  If you lack absolute certainty in your beliefs, and you doubt the story that places your ethnicity in a special place in the universe, membership in the tribe is not only a reason not to get killed.  It is also a reason not to kill (or condone the killing of) others just because they are not one of you and aren't happy about your asserting a shaky birthright.

So picking and choosing which laws to honor in a fashion consistent with the ancient traditions of my people, I eat the occasional cheeseburger or rasher of bacon (don't tell my doctor, oy my cholesterol), and worship a false idol or two (Clapton is god).  However I strictly honor the one about "thou shall not murder," and think this applies to dropping bombs on schoolhouses in Gaza.

On yet another hand, I am a non-practicing ethnic Jew, married to a non-practicing ethnic Serbian Orthodox Christian, which makes our son an Orthodox Jew.  This used to be a joke, but in light of recent archaeological findings, not so much so.