Dealing with Government Bureaucracy

Yesterday, I replaced my old car. A friend of mine had purchased a new car a couple of years ago, but kept his old car as a spare because the dealer had offered him a mere $500 for a trade-in deal- the car is a stick shift, which to a dealer knocks off about a grand in value. This week, he offered it to me for the self-same $500 that the dealer had offered him two years ago. If he had kept the car, he would have been saddled with almost $500 in registration and insurance fees. All told, it was a win-win situation for both of us.

I had to register the car with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. I had contacted my insurance carrier to switch the insurance over as soon as my friend signed the title over to me. I hopped on the Number 4 Bus (PDF) at the corner of McLean and Central Avenues and took it to Getty Square in downtown Yonkers. I had to pop into the Riverfront Library to print my insurance card from the PDF that my carrier had e-mailed to me. I then popped into the DMV office next door...

I spent less than half an hour at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Of course, I had filled out my paperwork before even leaving the house, but seriously, I wasn't expecting to breeze through the DMV in the time I did. The first thing everybody does when they enter the building is to head to a "gatekeeper" who assigns numbers to the clients. A very pleasant man gave me my ticket, and about five minutes later, I met with an absolutely lovely woman who cheerfully and courteously assisted me in registering my motor vehicle. All told, the transaction took about ten to fifteen minutes.

After bidding adieu to the helpful clerk, I headed across Larkin Plaza to Maggie's Seafood Spot, where I ordered a sandwich of three beautiful, perfectly fried flounder filets (I originally wanted whiting, but Maggie, a jovial Korean woman with the gift of the gab, managed to "upsell", and I got the buck-fifty more expensive flounder). I ate my sandwich on the way to the Yonkers train station, where I caught the 25 Bus (PDF) home. Because I spent such a short time taking care of these various errands, I got a free bus transfer for the ride home.

A lot of people, especially "small government" idiots, like to badmouth public employees in general and DMV clerks in particular. I have to stick up for the public employees with whom I dealt throughout the course of my errands yesterday- the two public transit workers, the library staff, and the DMV clerks. All were dedicated, professionals, all performed their duties with pride and care. I have come to the conclusion that the anti-public employee narrative is largely rooted in racial animosity. The government has, for decades, had to comply with anti-discrimination standards more stringent than those faced by private sector employers. The civil service has long provided minorities with a path to middle-class status that was denied to them by industry. Now that private employers have been outdoing each other in the race to the bottom, those public jobs look much better in comparison to private sector jobs, and the aggrieved underemployed seem more interested in dragging public workers down with them than in building up private sector unions. For the record, all of the public employees I dealt with yesterday were minorities, half of them were women, and every single one of them provided stellar service. Dealing with government bureaucracy was a pleasure!

One Ton Tomato

Last night, while reading the tributes to Pete Seeger, I ended up watching videos of him performing the Cuban song Guantanamera, the tune of which is attributed to musician and radio host José Fernández Diaz, but which, in its currently accepted version has lyrics by poet and "Apostle of Cuban Independence" José Julián Martí Pérez. The imagery of Martí's poetry evokes a love of the countryside and the common people, both of which were loved by Seeger himself:

Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar:
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace más que el mar.

I'd translate this as "I want to give my wishes for luck to the poor of the earth. The stream in the mountains pleases me more than the sea". Damn, that's a very sweet way of looking at the world. Pete Seeger's arrangement of Guantanamera exposed a greater audience to Spanish language music, as this great Billboard article affirms. Here's Pete's original Carnegie Hall performance of the song:





Here's a great version of the song performed by Pete and his grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger in 1993:





What a dynamite performance, and the audience participation speaks to the near-universal popularity of the song.

Of course, me being a snarky bastard, I also rate for Mike Nesmith's parody of the song:





I just wish Mr Nesmith had given more attention to the verses of his parody... I'd rewrite the first verse as:


Tengo un hambre sincero,
Podría comer caballo.
Tengo un hambre sincero,
Podría comer caballo.


I bet Pete loved this parody.

Lefty Legend, Local Legend

This morning, at the tail end of my workday, I heard the news of the death of American music legend Pete Seeger at the age of 94. Pete lived a longer, fuller life than just about anyone.

Pete Seeger was right, by which I mean Left, about just about everything- he was a tireless champion of environmentalism, an opponent of McCartyism, a labor organizer, an anti-war activist, and an advocate of equal rights when taking such positions involved considerable personal risk. If there was one thing he was wrong about, it was a naivete about the evils of Stalinism, which (of course) he came to see long before his critics would admit.

Locally, Seeger was instrumental in pushing for the cleanup of the Hudson River, building the Clearwater, a replica of the sloops which plied the Hudson before the era of steam. The Hudson's waters have improved to the point where bald eagles can thrive on the river and its tributaries, when not so long ago, the river ran the color of the industrial effluents which were dumped into it.

Musically, Pete took up the baton passed to him by the legendary Woody Guthrie, with whom he played in The Almanac Singers, among whose songs was the anti-Hitler song Dear Mr President, which also exhorted FDR to improve American society for black and Jewish Americans:





In the late 1940s, Pete was a co-founder of The Weavers (named after a play about the Silesian weavers' uprising). Among the most famous Seeger co-compositions of the Weavers period was If I Had a Hammer:





For a good overview of the Weavers' career, the documentary Wasn't That a Time? is indispensible:





The 50's were a particularly rough time for Seeger, who broke with the American communist movement when news of Stalin's enormities emerged, though this was not enough to keep him from being dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Peter defied HUAC not by pleading protection under the Fifth Amendment, but under the First. From a 1985 interview with Terry Gross of NPR:

So in effect I was defending myself on the basis of the First Amendment. The Fifth Amendment in effect says you have no right to ask me this question. But the First Amendment in effect says you have no right to ask any American such questions.

Pete was held in contempt of Congress for his defiance and sentenced to a year in jail, but the charge was eventually dismissed, just in time for Pete to participate in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. Pete helped to popularize an adaptation of the gospel songs I'll Overcome Someday and If My Jesus Wills, which came to be known as We Shall Overcome:





In his later years, Seeger was a fixture at the Newport and Clearwater folk festivals, both of which were started by his wife Toshi, who died last year. A good friend of mine, a volunteer at my workplace with whom I have spent many a Sunday morning as my graveyard shift ends and his volunteer stint begins, was heavily involved with the Clearwater festival for years, and knew Seeger personally.

In a call-in to WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show this morning, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr related a story about Pete enlisting the aid of future Riverkeeper John Cronin in building a dock, likening Pete to St Francis of Assissi, exhorting Mr Cronin, "Follow me!"

Pete Seeger's music has insinuated itself into the DNA of America... here in a moving performance from last year, he notes that his voice may not be strong, but that the audience's voices are, as he leads them in a rendition of Turn! Turn! Turn!:






Pete Seeger was a national treasure, and particularly a local treasure. I'd mourn his passing, but he'll live on through his body of music and the legacy of his activism. Rest in the peace that you advocated, as Bruce put it, you outlasted the bastards.

A Tourist from Upstate

I often joke that my job is very cushy, except when it's not, and yesterday was a "not" day, even though one of the guys on my team had a much rougher go of it than I did. In the middle of a bitter cold snap that we are experiencing, we had a furnace malfunction in one of our buildings. Despite a yeoman's effort by our understaffed maintenance crew, the pipes froze in at least one location. When the heat was restored to the building, my predecessor discovered that a pipe had burst in the building, and he had to deal with a veritable cascade of water. He was accompanied by a new hire (who, thankfully, is not afraid of the dark) undergoing on-the-job training. At least the "new guy" found out first hand that, while the job is often cushy, there are times when one has to jump through hoops of fire, or (in this case) water. Needless to say, the water had to be shut off in the building to prevent further leaks.

I arrived at work at midnight, to find my co-worker beat and miffed... it had been his worst day on the job. I basically just had to do some mopping up (literally) after he had had his ordeal. I filled a mop bucket with the stuff remaining on the floor, then monitored the temperature in the building periodically throughout the rest of the morning. I stuck around for a few extra hours until one of the guys on the day shift came in to assess the ongoing situation. Because it was a Saturday, and the site was closed, he decided to bring his dog, a handsome collie-beagle mix, to work with him, much to the dismay of those on the left Fred, who ran like hell and hid himself in some obscure corner of the property.

While the morning was a major hassle, I am actually glad that I stayed on the property for a couple of extra hours, because I witnessed a tourist from the North Country flying in to take position in a scenic overlook onsite:

Pity the iPhone camera doesn't have the best zoom- you can make out the bird-shaped blob in the middle of the frame, and the white head stands out in front of another tree limb... yup, we had a gen-u-ine bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) hanging out on our property for a good portion of the day. It was a nice coda to a not-so-nice day on the job, and it's not even tourist season!

Slightly Bummed by a Good Thing

This afternoon, I will be attending a "Hail and Farewell" party for one of my favorite co-workers. I know you're not supposed to play favorites, but it's so difficult not to do so. Besides, she's a favorite co-worker of everybody- everybody on the job loves her, all the visitors love her, I bet even supercute fuzzy animals love her. Personally, I think so well of her that I never even begrudged her scrumping my wineberry patches (actually, the summer before last, we had a "berry summit" in which we drew a line down the property: "Everything north of the line is mine, everything south of the line is yours").

Anyway, she got a job with a smaller organization in which she will be able to take on more autonomy and more authority (as an added bonus, it's an easier commute for her as well). While I will miss working with her, I am happy on her behalf.

I wrote a maudlin, treacly e-mail to her earlier in the week, telling her what a pleasure and a privilege it has been to work with her and wishing her good fortune in her future endeavors. I felt it was important to get that sort of thing out of the way early, because this afternoon will be spent trying to comfort disconsolate co-workers. In particular, an assistant site manager who worked closely with her for years (a self described "big mush") is going to be a big, sobbing mess.

Me? I'm kinda bummed, but I'd be a poor friend indeed if I weren't happy for her.

Desperate for False Equivalence

Given the extensive coverage of New Jersey governor and GOP Establishment darling Chris Christie's ever-widening web of scandal, right-leaning types have been desperate to find some false equivalence. Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch owned rag The New York Post tried to blame Mayor Bill De Blasio for poor snow removal on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hilarity ensued...

The writers at the "Post" insisted that De Blasio botched snow removal on the wealthy UES as political payback because he didn't garner the percentage of votes there as he did in other neighborhoods:

“It really is a tale of two cities — this time with the tony Upper East Side getting the shaft!”

Of course, when these people receive the exact sort of service that the residents of the Outer Boroughs receive, they perceive it as an attack. It's particularly frustrating because the neighborhood is well-served by public transit. One entitled chucklehead interviewed on the radio whined about having to take five cabs to get from the 70s to the 90s, when a ride on the Lexington Avenue subway line would have gotten him there with no problem.

Even more hilariously, part of the perception of shoddy treatment resulted from a malfunctioning GPS unit which failed to update progress made by a plow that was operating in the vicinity. Yeah, a WATB sitting in a Starbucks checking snow removal performance on his iPhone would have thought that nothing was being done, while a glance at the street would have revealed the truth.

The recent snowstorm was no picnic- I spoke to a Yonkers police officer on line at the supermarket, and he indicated that there were auto accidents all over the place... and NYC received more snow than the City of Y______. The simple fact of the matter is that the snow removal proceeded at a normal pace, and the wealthy Upper East Siders had to get in line with everybody else in the city.

You know they've got nothing when, not only do they want to conflate a slow snow response to an actively hostile lane closure, but they have to lie about the speed of said snow response.

Yonkers Yeti

I have a terrible time buying footwear. My ideal shoe size would be 11.5/EEEEE, but EEEEE shoes just don't seem to be made, so I get by with size 12/EEEE footwear. In many cases, a style of shoe or boot will "max out" at EEE, so I am limited in the "model" of shoe that I can wear. My last purchase of footgear was a nice pair of workboots, purchased before the first big winter storm of the season. I bought one of the few pairs of boots that even came in an acceptable width, specifically a boot which had a uniform width along its length (it doesn't taper towards the "toe box"- see, buying footwear is such a pain in the ass foot that I actually know a lot of the terminology of the trade now). Basically, I am the podiatric equivalent of one of Cinderella's wicked stepsisters.

We had a pretty major snowstorm starting yesterday and running into the wee hours of the morning today. I decided that I would run to the supermarket to buy something to throw in a slow oven to help warm up the house. On my way home, I passed another pedestrian, a slender woman of average height. After we exchanged greetings and parted company, I looked down and noticed that the contrast between our footprints was startling:

Man, look at that big ol' bootprint, I'd better watch out or "Bigfoot" hunters are going to try to track down the Yonkers Yeti.