Tom's Musings

I love running across historical facts and oddities that have heretofore escaped my attention or which suddenly catch up my interest or perhaps pop into my restless (and mostly unused) brain. Obviously, there are legions of such stories out there so I will occasionally lay out a few from time to time for your edification. I really do need to get a life. Aren’t you thrilled to be following my blog. Where else can you be entertained like this?

Let’s start with Cleopatra, the Greek seductress of Egypt who mesmerized Caesar and Marc Antony. But here’s the thing about her. She is closer (time wise) to the IPhone than to the great Egyptian Pyramids. Yup, some of them were erected in 2,500 BC while Cleo was doing her thing almost 2,500 years later. It has been only two millenia since she stopped doing her feminine mischief and offed herself.

Speaking of Caesar, as a young man he was more or less an ordinary soldier but from a family with some means. He was captured by some pirates at one point and held for ransom. While in captivity, he disprespected his captors and even promised to kill them all when he had a chance in the future. They never took him seriously and, in fact, laughed at his boasts. Eventualy, he was released upon receiving the ransom demand. Bad mistake on their part since Caesar made good on his boast. He raised a fleet of ships before returning and executing them all. Some people are more than blowhards.

Now, Joseph Stalin was not a blowhard. In fact, he never said very much at all, especially in public where he was embarrassed by his heavy Georgian accent (the country, not the state). He was ruthless though and not always the sharpest knufe in the drawer. In 1941, his spies and other officials from neighboring countries screamed at him that Hitler was about to invade. He refused to believe them. Unbelievably, Stalin trusted another tyrant more than his friends. (Hmm, reminds me of Trump’s love match with Putin.) Then, in response to the invasion many saw coming, he got drunk and stayed drunk for several days. Fortunately, he had not killed Georgy Zhukov during his 1937 purges of the miltary and political leadership. This brilliant general bailed him out and Stalin managed to become a hero to his people despite his insane insecurities and murderous rampages. Stalin was so feared that, when he collapsed and died, no one wanted to touch the body just in case he was still alive. As the story goes, the cleaning lady was the only one brave enough to determine that this tyrant really had gone to meet his maker.

Did a wrong turn cause the 20 million deaths of World War I? Who knows for sure. But the fact remains that the dominoes toward war began with the assassination of Archduke Fedinand by a Serbian nationalist during a State Visit. The plotters thought they had failed to knock of the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne when a grenade thrown under his car only managed to injure nearby spectators. One of the group, Gavrilo Princip, was sitting dejectedly at a cafe despairing that they had missed their chance. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, the car carrying the Archduke and his wife stopped right in front of him. The driver had taken a wrong turn, got confused, and then experienced dificulty with the vehicle. Gavrilo broke out of his depression, stood up, walked across the street, pulled out a pistol, and killed Ferdinand and his wife Sophia. The rest, as they say, is history.

Speaking of history, Hannibal, the great Carthaginian military leader, took on the great Roman Empire just as it was emerging into its glory. In fact, he did one hell of a job. Helped by his secret weapon, a bunch of elephants, he circled around though the Iberian peninsula and over the Alps (no small feat) before beating the Roman legions in three battles. It is estimated that some 20 percent of Roman adults were killed during the so-called Punic Wars. That should have been enough to bring most empires to their knees but the Romans fought on. Eventually, Hannibal was defeated, and the grounds around Carthage were salted so crops could not be grown in the future. Rome now controlled the Mediteranean and went on to become the empire we remember. But it was a close run thing and maybe we would be studying the Carthaginian empire if it had turned out differently.

We ignore so much of history, usually focusing on our world and that of our closest ancestors. For example, the Taipeng Rebellion in China took place around the same time as our Civil War. A cult leader named Hong Xuiguan claimed, oddly enough, to be related to Jesus Christ. While that seems an odd way to lead a revolt against the existing Chinese Imperial leadership, it worked. A long and bitter Civil War ensued in which it has been estimated that anywhere from 10 to 100 million died in battle or from starvation. Most put the figure in the 30 to 40 million range, higher than WWI but less than WWII. To put it in perspective, our Civil War cost between 600,000 and 700,000 American lives, by far the worst conflict in our history. Yet, few of us have heard of this more devastating catastrophe on the other side of the world.

Speaking of China, did you know that there is evidence that Christianity may have reached that remote land before it reached northern Europe. There is evidence that Nestorean Christians had settled in China as early as the 7th century. So, perhaps the aprochyphral story of a rebellious leader claiming to be a relative of Christ is not so far fetched. Then again, it stikes me that Asian spiritual beliefs are more cultural in character and less institutional. They can more easily absorb new thought and traditions and weave them into existing frameworks. I don’t recall the Catholicism in which I was raised being so adaptable.

Now, here’s an odd little fact. Who remembers Audie Murphy? Well, he was the most decorated American soldier in World War II. His start toward military fame was, however, less than auspicious. He was rejected by the Army, Navy, and the Marine Corps as being unfit for service. He kept trying to sign up to fight. I suppose that any life, even one in battle, had to be better than living in Texas. So, after his older sister lied about his age for him, he finally squeeked into the Army. Again, as they say, the rest is history. After the war and the publication of his heroics in a book titled To Hell and Back, he parlayed his military fame into a pretty decent movie career though, as I vaguely recall, he couldn’t act worth a damn.

Sometimes, things happen that many of us find difficult to understand from afar. Britain was so grateful to Winston Churchill for bringing them through to victory over the Nazis in 1945 that they resoundedly voted his government out of office. It seemed odd timing since the war in the Pacific was yet to be won. Instead, they ushered in Clement Atlee as the Labor (or should I spell it Labour) Party Prime Minister. Clement is not known to us as well as Churchill of course. No one has made a movie about him (as far as I know). However, he is ranked as one of the better PM’s in British history and is credited with introducing the modern welfare state and the country’s National Health Service (NHS). I recall the 2012 Summer Olympics held in London. During their opening ceremony, they organized a part of it to honor their NHS, something in which they obviously take pride. Can you imagine America honoring the shambles we call a health care ‘system?’ There are better organized riots than our so called system.

Speaking of leaders, do you realize how close we came to not having FDR during a crucial time in our history. Roosvevelt was visiting Miami in early 1933 after defeating Hoover for the Presidency but before being sworn in. A nutter decided to kill the President-elect and had a clear shot at him from the crowd at a short distance. Apparently, the would-be assassin was jostled at the key moment just as the Mayor of Chicago leaned into the open car to shake FDR’s hand. The mayor was hit and died within days. If FDR had been killed, we would have had John Nance Garner to lead us through the Depression and perhaps the War. Garner was from Texas and a conservative. While helpful to FDR at the beginning, he came to oppose much of the New Deal. You have to wonder what would have happened had he been in the White House during the the hard days of the 1930s.

One final note from my memory. I recall my dad telling me about the outcome of a sports event that impacted the lives of some in a big way. In New England back then, the Boston College-Holy Cross football rivalry was a big deal. These were two fine Jesuit Colleges located only about 40 miles apart. Then, Holy Cross annually played Penn State, Syracuse, Army, and other big powers. Anyway, in 1942 Boston College had a powerhouse team. They had outscored their opponents that year by a 249-19 margin and were headed for the Orange Bowl. On the other hand, the Holy Cross Crusaders stunk big time. A rout was anticipated. And a rout there was, but the Crusaders came out on top by an unbelievable 55-12 score, a game often referred to as the biggest college football upset ever. But here’s the thing, a large number of Boston supporters had reserved places at the Cocoanut Grove Night Club to celebrate what they were certain would be an undefeated season. Stunned, and dismayed, they cancelled their plans. That very night (November 28, 1942), the Cocoanut Grove burned down in a flash fire that took 492 lives. It was to be the 2nd most fatalities associated with a single fire in U.S. history.

So, there you go. All the stuff you could have lived the remainder of your life without knowing. You can thank me later.

I’m going out to see if I can find a real life now.

I get daily emails from Republican and Conservative sources asking me for money and support and then for more money. They are often addressed to Dear Patriot and have a fixation on whether or not I LOVE AMERICA which, they insist, is the greatest country on earth, without question. Sometimes I answer their query with a strong negative response just to see if they are listening. In case you are wondering, they are not. The next day I get the same request for money and the same question is repeated.

Relatively speaking, I simply no longer find much to admire in my home country. I did as a child but that admiration is long gone. There is no need to list all of our failings, they are legion and include deficiencies in health care access, environmental slackness, hyper-inequality in income and wealth, and an embarrasing level of gun related carnage. To focus, let us take one widely used metric of national health and well-being … life expectancy or LE. Basically, how long can we expect to live? In case you are wondering, I should have ‘kicked the bucket’ two or three years ago. Yikes … How did that happen?

If anything, this measure is a proxy for all kinds of dimensions associated with quality of life and national policies. As such, it is an excellent social indicator or statistic that goes far toward how we are doing as a nation, and how well we are taking care select societal subgroups like minorities and the vulnerable (old and young). Moreover, many factors go into determing LE, most of which are amenable to policy influences such as ease and affordability of health care and violence prevention. Perhaps the modal genetic makeup of a population seems impervious to control, yet even that variable can be influenced by immigration and emigration policies over the longer run. Even better, LE does not depend on self-reported status. Officials usually know when a person is dead or not though many an observor has concluded that I ‘bought the farm’ years ago. I should get off the couch more and move to indicate continued life.

But here’s the thing. During the Covid Pandemic, LE fell in the U.S. by some two years, the biggest drop in this measure since the Second World War. Of course, that was during a global crisis so such a dip was experienced in most countries with reliable data. Nothing to raise an eyebrow there. But in those wealthy nations that might serve as our peers, their dips were somewhat less extreme and they bounced back when Covid abated. The U.S. LE number has remained flat after the Covid peak while others have seen their LE figure begin to climb again in positive directions. Something insidious is going on here, another example of negative American exceptionalism.

Currently, the LE number here has been between 76 and 77 years (a number I have already passed as noted.) In all the nations we often use as references, the figures range from the low to the high 80s. Japan leads the pack with a figure approaching 90 years (should I start learning Japanese?). One estimate suggests that between 1980 and 2019 (before the pandemic), the U.S. had some 11 million excessive or amenable deaths assuming that we could have extended our life expectancy to match that of our peers. Another way of looking at it is to suggest that each early death truncates life by some 7 or 8 year (the difference between our mean death age and that of comparison jurisdictions), pushing the loss to some 77 to 88 million lost years of life. Whether they would be quality years is another matter altogether.

All this is no surprise. A National Research Council study from a decade ago reported that the gap in survival rates and in health outcomes between the U.S. and its peer nations started on divergent paths in the 1950s and that has remained a pervasive trend. In the early 1950s, the U.S. ranked 12th in LE. By 1968, it had fallen to 29th. By 2019, we ranked 40th among populous countries, lower than Lebanon and Albania. ALBANIA? Hetrogeneity is part of the problem here, not only in demographics but in policy regimes. The data clealry show that even people in their primes die earlier when they live in states dominated politically by conservatives. I will state the obvious … policies matter and conservatism kills! I might point out that this was an era where countries strengthened their safety nets with many adopting universal health care regimes.

Then, during the pandemic, we managed to kill off our citizens at a higher rate than others, a tragedy oft associated with resistance to masking and vaccination opportunities and with a struggling health care system that was unprepared and disorganized. Political confusion and unthinkable disinformation from mostly conservative sources also played a part along with embarrassing levels of inequality that leave too many vulnerable. Poverty stricken neighborhoods are not healthy places to live and we have some of the worst among wealthy nations.

Shockingly, our increasing mortality rates are even found among those in their midlife years (21-64). While we traditionally have lagged behind others in preventing post-natal deaths (we rank in the middle of the pack and after most rich nations), those in the prime of life are dying off faster than they should be. Epidemiologists look to rampant substance abuse and suicide to explain some of this. These are endemic to the widespead anxieties and despair felt by too many here (we don’t rank at all high on national happiness scales). Poor lifestyle choices contribute to high levels of cardio-metabolic diseases to be sure. But racism, disgraceful levels of societal inequality, and the fact that America has become a freaking free-fire zone adds to our woes here.

I must pause to note that Canadian officials recently issued a warning to their citizens intending to visit the U.S. They are concerned about the higher risks of their tourists becoming a gun fatality since similar levels of violence do not exist in their home country. They suggest Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan as safer alternatives. Okay, that part is a joke but not the warning, which I see as a sign we are descending into banana republic status.

The sad part of all this is that the gap between us and our peers can be diminished. It is amenable to correction through common sense public policies. What if we finally got around to passing even minimally sensible gun and firearm regulations? Perhaps we could cut into our rate of one or more mass shootings per-day. What if we had more preventative public health policies and better approaches to nutrition. Have you ever compared what we serve our kids at school versus what they get in other nations (pizza and burghers versus healthy alternatives)? What if we adopted the policy that exists in EVERY OTHER FREAKING RICH NATION of guaranteeing accessible health care to all. What if we started to ratchet back on the factors that result in unacceptable levels of inequality and poverty by strengthening labor market protections (e.g., raising the minimum wage), enhancing the social saftey net, and reintroducing a progressive tax structure. Much more might be said and none of these basic measures are secrets by any stretch of the imagination.

It has never ceased to amaze me that we can be mezmerized as a nation about the murder of one person, perhaps following the news or trial on that case for months. Yet, tens of thousands die annually in ways subject to policy amelioration and we simply yawn with indifference. How freaking sad!

American exceptionalism my ass.

NOTE: I’m reposting two of my favorite graphs below!

I have finally achieved it … male perfection. Okay, that may be a bit of an overstatement but I think I’m better than most of my bretheran… finally. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much since the Y chromosome doesn’t appear to add much of value to the species. Personally, I still can’t do any of those practical things that men are expected to do. You know, things like fix a car or repair a leaky faucet or fend off a grisly bear in the wild. But I am finally good on the one thing that makes men special to most women … I listen to them without expecting anything in return. I’m way better at that now that I am in my dotage … not caring about physical intimacy that is which, in my experience, was never particulary high on the female list of wants. This ability to eschew the usual male predatory role, to be sure, arrived late in life.

Perhaps you find this amusing but I’m serious. There is no greater burden imposed on young men, and by extension young women, than excessive testosterone. Why, you ask or probably not? Lust hits a teen male like a runaway freight train, just as soon as puberty rears its ugly head (bad pun intended). Women do not appear to be afflicted with this crippling affliction. Physical need, to the extent that they experience it at all, creeps up slowly on them, taking years if not decades to arrive.

They have no freaking idea how lucky they are. Okay, they are set upon by their own peculiar array of hormones but I have no idea what they are … other than they cloud the judgment of young females to seek out ‘bad’ boys. On that score, I have no freaking idea why they prefer losers, nor do any of my male peers. On the other hand, they do have these ‘nesting’ hormones in abundance … one kiss and they are off to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for ‘his and hers’ floral towels.

Back to the male animal before I get into even more trouble. You are going along in life as a kid about to embark on your carefree teen years, clueless yet happy, when you wake up one morning as horny as hell. It is all downhill from there, until this enervating condition thankfully passes on a number of decades down the line. On that fateful teen morn, though, you suddenly are reduced to a wimpering excuse of a human being who follows any and all female counterparts around like a hapless puppy dog, hoping against hope that one of them will take pity on you. The things you do in this state … we better not go there.

Alas, in my day, the 1950s, none of them did. They were all Catholics, or so it seemed. I think they all pledged themselves to the Virgin Mary of the Purest Corporeal Vessel or some such nonsense. Chastity and purity became their highest calling. No doubt, they would rather be dipped in a vat of boiling oil than give it up to a horny guy like me, or any horny guy for that matter. Thank God none of my buddies seemed to score. That was a kind of blessing since my ego was never strong and being left behind on the sexual battlefield would have been a crushing blow from which recovery was extremely unlikely. In any case, I recall looking ahead to a long life of celibacy or marriage or, most likely, a marriage that was celibate to all extent and purposes. None of these seemed like palatable alternatives.

It was even worse than that, if you can imagine. After you were shot down some 70 or so times, or was is 700 times, you do lose count after a while, you begin to wonder what women want. You know it is not your body, that’s for damn sure. But what is it, then? Most likely it is some abstraction that you represent … the social status that goes with snaring a guy, protection from being hit on by other male predators, a source of resources (assuming you had some which I didn’t), and other such goodies. You were merely an inconvenient path to things they really valued. Ironically enough, those of the female persuasion complained that men ONLY wanted them for their bodies. Those of the male persuasion would love to be desired JUST for their bodies … if only once. That, by the way, is the lure of mainstream pornography for most males … the illusion of females desiring sex.

If you are blessed by not having any human sensitivities, the male-female game is easy. The rules are expressed in many aphorisms … the woman needs a reason to have sex, the male just needs a place; women seek relationships and wind up liking the sex, male seek sex and wind up liking the relationship (on occasion); and the list goes on.

The point of all this, learned early on, is that men really are from Mars and women are from Venus but from planets NOT in the same solar system, nor even the same galaxy. While both appear to be members of the same species, that is a cruel trick being played by some malevalent divinity. The two genders clearly are driven by very different chemistry and by distinct internal wiring which makes communication difficult and inter-gender understanding vitutally impossible.

The core difference is this. Males are driven by a primitive drive-reduction need while females use sex in a transactional sense … exploiting male need for things they find attractive. Exploiting may be a strong word but I can’t come up with another more acceptable yet accurate. The bottom line is this … men are primitive idiots, females way more complicated. In thinking about the long term survival of the species, women are essential while men are peripheral at best, an outmoded version of something long since rendered useless.

When I was a young man, primed by excess testosterone, I figured out the game. You promised love to get sexual release. Simple rules, really. I had a guy I roomed with once. I thought he was an amiable loser, always high on something and not going anywhere in life. However, he was very successful with the females. He even used my life story one nght in a bar to score with a gorgeous blond … he used MY life! Damn it, that never worked for me.

Then again, I was handicapped by a sense of right and wrong plus tons of amorphous guilt. Damn Cahtolic upbringing! Jimmy Joe (that was his name) was not better looking than me, he was definitely not as smart or interesting as I (in my humble opinion), and nowhere near as funny. But, in the end, he knew how the game was played. Play it he did and without any reservations. I doubt anyone was fooled, not even once, on either side of the gender gap. I would look on in amazement thinking ‘no woman could possibly fall for his line of BS.’ But they did, or at least appeared to, with regularity and predictability. Amazing!

The odd thing always was, and is, I always liked females. I found them more interesting than males in many respects. Sure, it was easy to chat with guys about sports and politics and things out there. But females were better attuned to the inside things where you never went with your buddies. Talk about feelings? Are you freaking kidding? Try that and you risked getting beat up or ridiculed at least. But you could go there with women and that was nice.

I never set out to do this this consciously but, over time, I realized my closest acquaintances and work colleagues often were women, especially in later years when I had more choices. The professional connections are easy to explain. Women are better organized and focused … attributes I missed when God was handing them out. They corrected for my obvious deficiencies.

In the early years, though, my gender dance was pathetic. I would be with a female who had not immediately told me she had to wash the dog that night (again!), or who intimated that she expected her aunt to die for the 6th time and had to get ready for the sad event. It would have been kinder if she had told me outright that she would rather die alone on a desert island than spend any more time with me.

There were times when said female might even be giving out the signals by touching her hair, by long looks into my eyes, by laughing at my stupid jokes, and by touching my arm or (gasp) my leg. Suddenly, even as the illusion that I might score was laid before me, I would be seized up with a dastardly thought … I don’t want to be just another typical male. I never wanted to play the usual game, the one that superficial Jimmy Joe played so well. I didn’t want to trade emotional comfort for physical release, no matter the need on my part.

I wanted to tell the woman opposite me in that moment that we could just talk and I would listen; we could share inner secrets and I would commiserate; we might even be emotionally connected but I would never send her a sexual invoice or come to collect the usual bill where she felt obligated to ‘put out.’ That is, I would not ask for payback in the currency of physical intimacy. I would be different, if freaking frustrated! I never wanted to be the typical predatory male.

Sometimes that magic worked, sometimes it didn’t and then I wound up being oh,so typical. I hated that. Decades go by, you do get girlfriends and lovers (somehow). You even come across responsive females whose orgasms seemed more powerful than yours, a mystery that yet requires an explanation. You get married (in my case very happily). And you do grow older. But, in the end, you grow no wiser. That other species called the female remains as mysterious as ever, beyond any form of comprehension or understanding for us hopeless and hapless males.

But here is the small miracle. One day you wake up and realize your testosterone level has diminsished … by a lot. You are not even sure when this miracle happened, the process being glacial. Sure, you still check out women but by habit, not need. And they still studiously avoid any eye contact with you. Some things never change. On the other hand, you realize that you have changed, slowly and imperceptibly. You are now a qualitiatively different man without appreciating how or when the change occurred. It is only apparent in retrospect.

The difference! Well, for me, it is this. I used to struggle to be this non-predatory male, with being what women wanted in a male without asking them to pay the usual price. Now, finally, it was easy. I was no longer interested in the expected price to be paid. I was still the same person who liked to listen and share and explore things. All that was the same but without any of the inconvenient strings attached. I just wanted companionship, coupled with some occasional suggestion of minor affection … something along the lines that they knew I was alive or just in the same room.

Oh boy! Oh liberation! I am finally the perfect man.

Okay, stop laughing now. I am still not rich (just comfortable). And if a woman is looking for protection, she is better off calling 911. And if she wants something fixed, I will still hand her the phone and suggest a handyman or handywoman she might call. But I ain’t bad. And all it took was simply surviving to old age. Who knew!

https://www.quora.com/profile/Gilbert-Carney/https-www-quora-com-Who-is-the-greatest-person-that-history-has-forgotten-answer-Adi-Redzic-1?ch=15&oid=95260483&share=47609ccf&srid=inlsB&target_type=post

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/may-29-2023?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

https://open.substack.com/pub/jerryweiss/p/joe-biden-knows-how-to-negotiate?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

I entered my teens in the late 1950s. I can still remember my mother saying that her teens were the best years of her life. That was such depressing news to my ears. My early teens were mostly awful for me. Not objectively bad, and I never considered doing anything harsh or irreversible, but they were not happy days for sure. Fortunately, in my case, mother was dead wrong. Things got much better as soon as I entered college and only declined for a period when my drinking got out of control as I approached 40 years of age. On the whole, life has not been bad at all. Fortunately, I didn’t listen to my mother back then (mother is not always right) and simply believed that things would get better.

It also struck me that my teen cohort seemed okay. Among the neighborhood kids, many of whom faced less than bright futures, all seemed normal for the most part. I never heard of anyone needing therapy or medication for a behavioral issue or winding up in juvenile court. The girls didn’t get knocked up and the boys didn’t run off to the military to avoid their parental responsibilities or stay out of the slammer. My neighborhood was far from the American dream, only cold water flats and families struggling financially, but there was this patina of normality. Sure, there were hierarchies and we picked on one another but never to the point where suicide became the preferred option. Nor did I ever hear of any kid being sexually abused by a Priest, parent, or some adult figure. In fact, our parents didn’t seem to be worried about our well-being in the least. Most often what I would hear hear after school as a young kid was ‘get the hell out of the house and don’t come back until the street lights come on.’

Obviously, bad things happened as was evident by the revelation of widespread abuse of boys in the Catholoc Church that emerged a generation or two down the road. In my day, though, there was wall of denial and slence. Problems within families were not discussed nor displayed for public consumption, and certainly not litigated. The authorities gave parents wide leeway over how children were to be raised even when their methods were highly questionable. A whack to the backside was considered good discipline, no matter what that Doctor Spock said. Nor were there the legion of mandated reporters (professionals required to report suspected child abise) as there are today. As a result, the incidence of child abuse and neglect were manageable, if not ignored.

When I worked for the State Human Services agency at the start of my professional career, I saw the numbers of reported child abuse neglect and abuse explode as if the world were falling apart. In my day, teen problems were assigned to isolated delinquent children and bad seeds. Minor infractions in school or with the police often were dealt with informally, not with heavy-handed zero tolerance policies. When I almost got in trouble with the law, I just called my good friend whose dad was a cop. He took care of it for me. Now a teen might end up with a record. Not a ‘Leave It To Beaver’ world but quite innocent on the surface.

Today, we seem to do far more to protect our children and teens. Yet, they are neither safer nor happier, or so it seems. The State Education Department in Wisconsin just released the results from the annual Youth Risk Behavior Study. The results suggest that a whole generation of young people are very stressed and unhappy, with many on the verge of self-harm . Respondents reported the following:

ALL FEMALES

Persistent Anxiety …………….. 52% 66%

Feelings of Depression ……….. 34% 46%

Self-Harm Ideation …………….. 22% 32%

Considered Suicide ……………. 18%

Almost 60% said that they had experienced at least one episode of depression, anxiety, self-harm or suicidal ideation over the prior year. The rate of depression, in fact, has risen by 11 percentage points alone since 2011.

All this strikes me as a lot of unhappy kids. The numbers caused me to look back to my childhood. Sure, we had challenges. I started working at age 14 and went to an academically demanding boys high school where the Catholic Brothers whe ran the place would whack you if you stepped out of line. Your parents then would whack when you got home if they learned that Brother had whacked you earlier that day, which you never confessed voluntarily. I was okay on the ball field but not as good as many others, which left me with feelings of inadequacy. I was also just a bit younger and naive compared to others in my peer group, thus was subject to constant teasing. And getting to second base with those of the female persuasion was considered next to impossible. What am I saying … totally impossible. So, we made due with looking for the ‘promised land’ only in the reflection off highly polished shoes the girls might wear at the sock hop. You were never going to explore those forbidden areas in reality. At least I wasn’t.

In all these bad numbers, there are a few hopelful signs. Though about one-in-five girls report being more or less forced to have unwanted sex, the overall proportion of girls having sex has fallen in recent years. Teen pregnancy rates have also fallen and then stabilized in the recent past. Likewise, the use of alcohol was at the lowest rate since the question was first asked in 1993. These numbers fly in the face of prevalent impressions of kids out of control and high schools as modern day versions of sin city. Then again, there are all these debates about whether stationing police in high schools is a good or bad thing, and aparently the law is called in to deal with unruly teens on a routine basis. Again, I cannot recall the cops ever being called to schools in my day, or perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention.

It is impossible to compare one generation with another and I may be glossing over problems from my early days. It was the 50s after all where cyber-bullying was not feasible and drugs were something that you heard about happening in the really big cities. I cannot assert with any confidence that my sense of warmth about ‘the good old days’ is warranted or a function of distorted recollections. I did have my share of bad moments, even despairing moments, especially when my mother insisted these would be the best days of my life. Damn good thing there were no guns in the house when she said that.

I’m on the left, before I realized pro sports were an impossible dream! This was in the area between our 1st floor flat and the ‘three-decker’ next door. We played at ‘war’ and ‘‘cowboys and indians‘ endlessly in and among the tenaments where we lived. And we would play games for hours in the streets. One just involved a tennis ball and hitting it off some steps across the street on the other side of these bushes. We created a whole baseball game oy of our imaginations with a ‘home run’ happening if the ball cleared those same bushes in back of us. We did amuse ourselves.

Today, kids have so much more and so much less. As I’ve said before, I would see the younger generation when they were debt-ridden college students. By then, they would be angst ridden about future prospects, focused on how they might get by in life. My college years were a challenge (I would work 11-7 in a hospital many a night before heading off to classes) but I loved them. I never worried all that much about the future. There was an implicit assumption that all would get better. My cohort would be okay. Life for all of us was on an uptick. We often talked not about survival but on reforming society to make it a better place for all. Self-delusion can be an incredible narcotic.

Optimistic me graduating from Clark University!

As inequality has increased in America and our culture wars and political divides tear us apart, we have lost something … hope! You can endure a lot; you can be poor but still happy; you can see the worth of trying hard and rising from little, but you need hope. Take that away and you see the rampant epidemic of despair and defeat you find among today’s teens. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Calling All Industrial Engineers – May 27, 2023

Time for a few jokes. You probably heard many of these before but hey, this is costing you nothing. So, you’re getting your money’s worth.

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Rabbi’s Advice … Tom goes to see his Rabbi. “Rabbi, something terrible is happening and I have to talk to someone about it.”

“What’s wrong?” the Rabbi asks.

“My wife is trying to poison me.”

The Rabbi was shocked, “How can this be?”

The man is clearly desperate. “I tell you … she is poisoning me. What should I do?”

The Rabbi then offers. “Tell you what, I’ll talk to your wife and find out what I can and then call you back.”

A few days later, the Rabbi calls Tom and says. “Okay, I spoke to her on the phone for three full hours. You want my advice?”

“Of course,” the man responds.

“Take the poison!”

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Couples Counseling … Tom and his wife go to a therapist to deal with their problems. After they sit down with the therapist, the wife points out all the problems she sees with their marriage.

After some 45 minutes, the therapist holds up his hand to stop the wife’s monologue. Then he gets up, walks over to the wife, and kisses her passionately. He turns to the husband and says. “Now sir, if this happens to her 3 times a week, your wife will feel much better about herself and your relationship.”

Tom nods appreciatively and asks, “Great, just one question though.”

“Sure, what is it.” The therapist asks, pleased that things are going well.

“I easily can drop her off here Mondays and Wednesday but I go golfing with my buddies on Fridays.”

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No Golf Partner …. Tom’s wife says, “I noticed you haven’t been playing golf lately.

“I don’t have anyone to play with,” Tom replies.

“What about Clyde?’

Tom grunts. “Would you play with someone who cheats on his score and moves his ball when you’re not looking.”

“Well, I suppose not,” the wife agrees.

“Well, neither will Clyde.”

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The Visit … After work, Tom brings his buddy from work home for dinner unannounced at 6:30.

His wife starts screaming at him as the friend silently observes it all. “My hair and makeup are not done, the house is a mess, the dishes are stacked in the sink, and I’m still in my pajamas. And besides, I cant be bothered cooking tonight. Why the hell did you bring someone home.”

The husband replies calmly. “Well, he’s thinking of getting married and I promised him a demo.”

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Fidelity … Sitting at a bar, Tom told the bartender that he was drinking to forget the heartbeak of his broken engagement.

“So sorry, dude, what happened?” the bartender asks.

“Well, what can I say? But would you marry someone who didn’t know the meaning of the word monogamy and who laughed whenever the issue of fidelity came up?

“No way in hell,” said the bartender.

“Well, neither would my fiance.”

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Reminiscing …. Three old ladies were sitting side by side in their retirement home, reminiscing about the old days.

The first one recalled the time she could get a large cucumber from the local grocer for one penny, indicating the length and thickness of the vegetable with her hands.

The second lady nodded, adding that onions used to be much bigger and cheaper also. Then she used her hands to demonsrate the size of two onions she could get for a penny a piece.

The third lady smiled as she piped up. “I can’t hear a damn word you two are saying but I sure as hell remember the guy youre talking about.”

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The Magic Trick … An Irishman and an Englishman walk into a bakery. The Englishan steals 3 buns and puts them into his pockets and the two men leave. Outside, he says to the Irishman, “that took great skill and guile to steal those buns. The owner didn’t even see me.”

The Irishman replies: “Thats just simple thievery. I’ll show you how to do it the Irish way and get the same results.”

“I doubt you have anything to teach me,” the Englishman says, “but go ahead.”

So, the two men go back into the shop and call the owner over. The irishman begins, “Sir, I want to show you a magic trick. I’ll make three buns disappear and then reappear.”

“Well, I’d love to see that one,” the owner responds.

The Irishman asks for a bun and then eats it. Then he asks for two more and eats them as well.

The owner becomes suspicious. “So, where’s the trick?”

The Irishman smiles: “Look in the Englishman’s pockets.”

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The Birthday Gift … Tom tells his buddy, “I dont know what to get my wife for her birthday. She has everything. Besides, she can afford to buy anything she wants. I’m just stumped.”

Toms buddy responds, “Hey, why dont you make up a fancy certificate that says she can have two hours of great sex, any way she wants it, when she wants it. She’ll probably be thrilled.”

Tom, not being the brightest bulb on the marquee, did just that.

The next day Tom’s buddy asked, “Did you take my suggestion?

“Yes,” Tom grimmaced.

“Well, how did it go?”

Tom sighed. “She loved it. She jumped up and kissed me before running out of the house shouting ‘I’ll see you in two hours.‘

…………………………………………………. THE END ……………………………………………..

So, I was perusing a piece in the Washington Post that reported out on a large survey of American workers who could work at home, the so-called remote-capable workers. It turns out that 60 percent fully worked on site before the pandemic, a proportion that fell to 22 percent after the plague was over. That’s probably a good thing since only 6 percent of these workers would prefer to work in the office all the time. I’m guessing those respondents probably have bratty kids at home or a spouse of questionable temperment.

As the researchers probed a bit deeper, they uncovered some interesting findings. A full 69 percent of the survey takers agreed that working in the office helped them connect better with their peers while slightly more than half (54 percent) felt that on-site work facilitated collaboration. This strikes me as critical arguments for spending some time in the office though that would depend greatly on the nature of the jobs. For me, as someone who finds other people highly overrated, human contact is not much of a draw. However one slices it, the trend toward remote work was greatly assisted by the pandemic.

This reminds me of one of my many adventures in life which was to be part of a Union bargaining team during some tense negotiations. This happened when I was a Wisconsin State employee in the early 1970s and this was the first contract to be worked out in this manner since legislation had been passed to permit more or less full negotiations over compensation and the conditions of employment. I worked as a research analyst at the time. Somehow, and I really cannot recall how this happened, I became the head of the Research Analyst and Statistician bargaining team or just Analysts for short.

We were one of five such teams, the smallest and the least powerful group as opposed to some of the others like the State Police, Public Safety, and Prison Guards. If we nerds went on strike, who would care. I can envision it now … ‘cave to our demands or we’ll march on the capitol armed with our pocket calculators.’ Admittedly, it was a great personal experience with tough negotiations that went on months even after the existing contracts had lapsed. Unfortunately, I left my position to take an opportunity at the University just before it all came to a close.

But I raise this episode in my so-called career for a specific reason. One of the ‘demands’ repeatedly raised by members of my unit was the desire to be treated as ‘real professionals.’ That included the ability to work from home when it was appropriate and, of course, that the work actually got done. I hit a brick wall with that one, not only with the State negotiators but with the heads of the other bargaining units on my own negotiating team. The other bargaining units were focused on traditional issues like pay, benefits, traditional work rules, and maintaining the advantages of seniority in job security. Whenever I brought up issues like being treated as real professionals or having more control over how we did our work, some beefy prison guard would pat me on the head and tell me to go sit in the corner and shut up. They did not want the peculiar wants of the nerds complicating negotiations over real isues. It was concept before its time.

In any case, I paid much attention when this study of contemporary workers moved on to the issue of job satisfaction. Obviously, back then, the research analysts and the rest of the state workers were not on the same page. Satisfaction was rooted in distinctly separate dimensions of one’s work experience. Even without comparable data from my era, what would we find today? In this study, roughly four out of five respondents expressed satisfaction with their jobs though slightly more than half felt definite stress in their work.

In my state employment world of five decades ago, I recall considerable stress (we were in a period of considerable innovation) but most were happy and energized in their work unlike, as I understand it, the more recent mood of state civil servants which is downbeat after years of Republican control in the State. This suggests that some workers today (outside of state employment at least) are finding positions that generally are meeting their needs even though about half are experiencing stress through their work. Just what might some of those employment needs be?

When asked what was important in their job, compensation or pay was at the top of the list with job benefits close behind in the ranking of factors. The first non-monetary attribute receiving a high rank is having a good boss, which ranked in the top three. Then you fall all the way to 6th position to find any other social or interactional factor. There, the friendliness of coworkers is sited, followed by the prospects for advancement in 7th. Finally, in 8th place, respondents mentioned the perceived benefits to society. The focus on compensation also dominated the reasons for switching jobs with higher pay being the most important factor followed by dislike for their old position and then a search for a more interesting job.

There’s probably nothing earth shaking in these findings. Yet, they raised some thought in my febrile brain. The focus on pay is consistent with results from more general questions of what is important to people. When I was coming of age in the 1960s, the attitudinal surveys of that era, when focused on the young, found establishing a sound philososphy of life or finding meaning in life relatively more important that materialistic goals. That finding has been fully reversed over time.

I doubt this reversal can be attributed to the fact that we have suddenly become obsessed with shiny baubles and hedonistic lifestyles, though such have always had their attractions. I suspect that today, young people see a higher and steeper mountain to climb before them. As income and wealth inequality has grown, achieving even the vaunted so-called American Dream is now more of an acquisitional nightmare. In many markets, the home of one’s own with a white picket fence and a secure job with a pension to support your family is more mirage than reality. Fewer now can focus on the content and conditions of their professional lives as opposed to how much it will pay simply to keep their heads above water.

My own life’s experiences are instructive here. As I have stressed in other posts, I seldom worried about what I would do in life after I reached my teens. True, I constrained certain choices to maximize my life options … like deciding not to have children and minimizing any interest in material possessions. Still, I and most of my own peers felt we would always find our place in society. We often took courses that interested us and not because they would lead to a well-paying job. I chose a major because it was the strongest at my school and promised insights into the human condition, not because it promised future riches. I sought out jobs in my youth that seemed to offer work of significance (hospital work and work with troubled kids) and not merely for money or how these positions would look on a college application or a future resume. And we spent countless hours discussing the issues of our day and how to make the world a better place, not trading tips on how to dress for success or in seeking future contacts for a hoped for rise to the top.

As I went through life, how much I made was always less important than what I was doing. Whereas doing something of ‘benefit to society’ was buried well down the list of meaningful job attributes for today’s workers, it was very high on my list and on the lists of many of my peers. During my working life, I suspect it would have been second on my ranking, right after ‘doing something that interests me.’ Whether or not the work was challenging, and stimulating, and absorbing was always what drew me in and kept me going. That was true in my early civil service work where my colleagues and I did some groundbreaking stuff in the management of human service programs and in my university work where I had the pleasure of engaging in so many of society’s most difficult challenges (e.g., welfare reform). I revelled in being a ‘player,’ one who had the opportunity to take on whatever issue or puzzle attracted my admittedly short-term attention span. It was fun and stimulating which is what counted above all else in my book.

Now, there was a cost to this approach. I never did the things that would ensure my rise in academia and, as a result, never made much money. Even as Associate and Acting Director of a university-based research entity, I was likely the lowest paid academic affiliate in that nationally renowned Institute (which included faculty from leading universities from around the country). Without going into detail here, making more money would have required that I do stuff that academics prized but which I found narrow and provincial. It was more important to me that my position, at least as perceived by the outside world, opened all the doors to me that I needed. Once in, I was always able to fool people (whether in D.C., in state governments, and even among academics) into believing I knew what was talking about. Thus, I was continuously invited to give talks, to consult on public issues, to be at the table when the direction of policies were being debated, and to share my ‘expertise’ with fellow academics. However, while I wrote tons of reports, policy papers, book chapters and the like, I seldom wrote for peer reviewed journals which I felt constained creativity into siloed straight jackets and were targeted at an audience that did not necessarily interest me.

Being a respected policy wonk while pretending to be an academic (necessary to give me maximum flexibility and allowing me to teach) was perfect in most respects. It afforded me national credibility even if (as I already mentioned) it never paid well. In the end, the low relative pay never bothered me. Perhaps being married to a woman who made more than me (and didn’t care how much I made) helped a lot, as did my (our) early decision to forego offspring which would have changed things. We were comfortable, and that’s the important thing. We enjoyed our work and we shared common values. She also was more interested in the substance of the work she was doing and much less than the pay though her high position in the judiciary ensured she did okay. However, when she saw the Wisconsin Court system going into a kind of partisan death spiral by the beginning of this century, she retired early rather than participate in the death throes of impartial and objective justice. Yes, there was an economic cost to that decision but I agreed with her totally. Don’t do it just for a somewhat better retirement package.

Economists know that the marginal utility of each extra dollar earned has value up to a point when basic needs are satisfied. Based upon numerous survey data, that kink point can be identified and is usually located somewhere above (though not far above) the median income figure for a locale. After that, each additional dollar acquired has less value which continuously diminishes as you climb the income ladder. As one wealthy venture capitalist once argued, what can people do with all this money his rich peers were seeking? You can only eat so much food. A nice digital watch tells time just as well as a Rolex. You can only drive one car at a time, etc. The acquisition of more and more becomes merely a game of one-upmanship among a few of the elite. As one of those elite once procalimed, ‘money is how we keep score.’ But, in the end, it really is a game and one with awful consquences for so many others.

Bottom line, we both were happy with ‘what’ we were doing, not ‘how much’ we were making. I recall once being asked to fly to Canada to consult on some human service design issues in Toronto. I was doing a lot of that (not something valued in the academy). My close colleague at the time (she now works directly with the University Chancellor) asked me on this occasion why I never asked for compensation for such excursions, perhaps a stipend of some sort from whomever made the invite. Most of my colleagues probably would.

But these were public entities which I thought were always short of resources. Thus, asking them to kick in never crossed my mind. After all, I already was being paid (not a lot but enough) for whatever I did through the university so I was happy. I also raised a whole lot of money from outside grants to support my project and consulting work. Therefore, some things I did (like teaching policy courses) were more add-ons than necessary tasks. I wound up banking money for the future since I could not draw it down in salary due to university rules.

Thus, I wound up being way over stretched. In addition to my research and project work, I felt an obligation to help run the Insitute, to teach students, and to give talks to policy and academic audiences around the country. These functions were important to me even if it required I get up at 4:30 or 5:00 each morning and get to the university when it was still a ghost town. I could not pass up the opportunity to share what little I knew with others and perhaps making a difference down the road. I suppose that nothing had changed since I was a kid trying to figure things out and discussing how to create a better world with my college friends, except now people were listening to me … often a frightening prospect.

Let me end this with one thought. I am NOT anyone special. Many of us came of age in a different world which had different opportunity sets and distinct dominant concerns. My spouse and I were simply fortunate to be able to live according to values that were more prominent than they are now, ones that I still revere. But I know that the young today face different constraint sets and confront severely altered and enhanced pressures. If I were young today, I might respond very differently to an uncertain and hostile future. It seems more of a future based on a Darwinian struggle, a dog-eat-dog world. That is sad.

I am SOOOO glad I am an old fart.

PS: For more detail, check my professional memoir … A Wayward Academic: Reflections from the policy trenches.