Downsizing

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Jim

I’m going through a senior rite of passage: downsizing to a smaller house.

This has required a lot of thought and soul-searching because I’ve always been a big-house guy. I grew up in a tiny apartment while my parents saved their money and my mother yearned for a house. The modest house they eventually bought was a milestone of upward mobility. I continued the quest for gracious living with a three-story vintage home, a sprawling ranch house in the suburbs and my current faux-Spanish casa in Albuquerque.

I really love my house. It’s in a convenient location and has ample room for entertaining, a big patio and yard, a hot tub and a nice view of the city and mountains. But at this point I’m not using much of it. I no longer need four bedrooms and two living areas, and I’m getting tired of maintaining a third of an acre of landscaping.

So I’m building a new house in an over-55 community in Los Lunas, 20 minutes south of Albuquerque. My new digs will have two bedrooms, an open kitchen and living area, a den and an intimate patio. It’s also a lifestyle change because a close-knit community with resort-like amenities will expand my social life.

I pulled the trigger on this decision last month, signing the contract for the new house and putting the old house on the market. I worried that the new house would be finished before the old house sold, saddling me with two houses.

I soon found myself with the opposite dilemma: I got an offer on the old house after less than a week on the market and will close at the end of March. Because my new house will not be complete until June, I will move temporarily to a rental house in the Los Lunas community. So instead of the methodical transition I had planned I’m suddenly in frantic-moving mode. And downsizing.

I’ve always marveled at the Parkinson’s Law of possessions: Your worldly goods expand to fill whatever dwelling you’re living in. Years ago we moved from a two-bedroom house to a four-bedroom house and seemed to fill the place in about a week.

Over the decades Kathy and I acquired a mostly inherited treasure trove of awkward utensils that were rarely used but too nice to throw out: silver pitchers, serving dishes, candlesticks, embroidery and an incredible number of knickknacks. There’s an elaborate silver candelabra that we dubbed Liberace’s Revenge. Not to mention boxes and boxes of family photos and albums. In past moves this stuff was transported from one spacious house to another and socked away unseen in closets and cabinets. Downsizing to a house a third smaller forces a reckoning.

The imperative to empty the house in a few weeks has made me more ruthless, less sentimental and, at times, downright joyful as I dispose of things. I am filling my trash and recycling dumpsters every week. Boxes of books were donated to the library. I’m making weekly donations to the thrift shop at the local Air Force base. Unneeded clothing is going to another charity. I donated a few items to Goodwill (and they accepted my collection of old VHS tapes, bless their hearts).

I got a head start on this process when my daughter, Wendy, got interested in family history a few years ago. She spent several holiday visits going through old family albums and scanning photos into the computer. Still, I’m finding an incredible number of boxes of framed family photos going back several generations.

I am not tossing everything. Some items that look valuable are going into storage, to be disposed of after the move when I have time to make the rounds of antique dealers. I’ve rented a self-storage unit for things I won’t need for months such as Christmas decorations, fancy china, etc. I have identified the furniture that definitely will not fit in the new house and am posting it for sale online.

Three weeks from now the movers will load everything destined for the new house into a couple of shipping containers for storage until I’m ready to move in. And I’m arranging for a junk disposal service to pick up whatever’s left.

In the meantime I’m going through the house and garage packing, discarding and… downsizing.

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The death of the phone call

Posted on February 7, 2020 by Jim

When my phone rings I rarely answer it. That’s a big cultural change for me, because I spent much of my career working for a telephone company where answering the phone (within three rings in a tone of unflagging courtesy) was pretty much mandatory. Even the company president answered his own phone. 

I don’t answer the phone because 90% of my calls are unwanted solicitations or attempted fraud, often robotic. When the phone rings I look at the caller ID screen and ignore any call from an 800 service, or from a town where I don’t know anyone. If I miss a call that’s actually relevant I’m confident the caller will leave a voicemail. I still pick up the phone more than I care to because technology allows fradulent callers to “spoof” local phone numbers.

It’s good to see the government taking more action to curb junk phone calls, but so far the scammers have been undeterred by either laws or technology. I do not expect this to change.

Happily, there are alternatives. I am communicating more by text, email and Facebook message. More people are using Facetime and other video calling services. Many people are disconnecting their landline phones and I probably will follow suit. The voice telephone call may be going the way of the buggy whip.

This a milestone because ubiquitous telephone service helped define the Twentieth Century. When I joined Illinois Bell in 1968 the Bell System was one of the biggest organizations in the world. Everything about it was gigantic: a million employees, buildings in every town in America; the largest private fleet of motor vehicles; the nation’s top research lab; the world’s most widely held stock; revenues larger than the economies of entire countries; and a manufacturing arm that processed much of the world’s supply of copper. One factor that spurred the development of dial telephones was that the anticipated demand for telephone operators threatened to exceed the number of women in the U.S. labor force. 

It was an American success story. A regulated monopoly supported the national goal of universal telephone service and attracted the billions in private capital investment needed to make it happen. By the late Twentieth Century more than 90% of American households had phones. To dissuade the government from breaking up its monopoly the Bell System developed radar during World War II and released its patents (like the transistor) to the public. 

It was probably inevitable that technology the Bell System developed led to its demise. The “natural monopoly” of telephone service disappeared when lower-priced computerized switching equipment and microwave data transmission enabled competitors to enter the telephone business without massive capital investment. Cell phones liberated people from a fixed network of copper, and the voice telephone service that once required buildings full of specialized equipment now is just a software feature on a generic server. For many people (myself included) “landline” phone service now comes via the Internet instead of the traditional telephone network. 

The voice telephone call, once the only wheel in town for electronic communications, now competes with text, video, pictures and anything else that can be displayed on a screen. The majority of people who still prefer voice calls now make them on cell phones as landline phone penetration has fallen below 50%. 

The final nail in the coffin of voice telephone service may be the technological wizardry that enables fraudulent callers to stay a step ahead of call-blocking systems. When the majority of calls are unwelcome, who’s going to answer the phone?

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A threat to our democracy

Posted on January 24, 2020 by Jim

In the Senate impeachment trial, the Democrats have been saying repeatedly that President Trump is a threat to our democracy and must be removed from office before he steals the 2020 election. My senators and Congressional representative, Democrats all, have repeated this in daily social media posts. Election integrity is important to me, and I’m glad my elected representatives are as concerned about this as I am.

So I was a little suspicious when my son, Haven, received an official-looking invitation to register to vote in New Mexico. Because he lives in Wisconsin.

Haven’s voter registration form arrived in my Albuquerque mailbox with a letter from the Voter Participation Center advising him that publicly available records show that he is eligible to vote in Bernalillo County. That’s odd because my son grew up in Illinois, moved to Wisconsin years ago and has never lived in New Mexico. Neither Haven nor I could figure out how he got on a list of potential New Mexico voters. He never attended school here, held a New Mexico driver’s license, rented a car or signed a petition. Haven’s only presence in the state is his annual Christmas visit. The only record that could possibly connect him with my address is the birthday presents he sends me via Amazon.

Now, that’s a threat to our democracy. Someone who is less law-abiding than I am could send in the registration form and actually vote on my son’s behalf, since New Mexico does not have a voter ID law.

Who would want my Cheesehead son to vote illegally in New Mexico? Must be the Russians, I thought, or perhaps the Ukrainians or the Trump campaign. Turns out the Voter Participation Center is a nonprofit organization with close ties to the Democratic party. John Podesta once served on its board. The Voter Participation Center has come under fire for misleading registration campaigns in several states. The organization sends out millions of voter registration forms that look like they’re coming from a government agency. Many have gone to felons, undocumented immigrants and the deceased with letters assuring them they are eligible to vote.

State election officials have found that many of the applications from the Voter Participation Center are invalid or fraudulent. And some people who are ineligible to vote got in trouble with the law when they sent in a registration form.

Election officials in some states have issued fraud alerts about the Voter Participation Center’s registration drives, and have warned residents that attempting to register when they are not eligible to vote may subject them to prosecution. The New Mexico Secretary of State has issued no such warning because voter fraud apparently is not a problem in New Mexico.

Now that I know that a fraudulent voter registration drive is under way in my state, I am going to contact my elected representatives to alert them to this threat to our democracy. Because they are so concerned about the integrity of the 2020 election, I am confident they will take immediate action to prosecute the Voter Participation Center to the fullest extent of the law.

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Japanese honeymoon

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Jim

We had a picturesque apartment on the lower floor of a house on a steep hillside, half cave and half treehouse. A step down from the entrance hall to the living room, two steps down to a kitchen with windows on two sides, a step up to a bedroom with no windows. It was a romantic adventure (or so we kept telling ourselves): starting married life in an exotic country 6,000 miles away from both sets of parents. 

I was at a joint-forces base in Albuquerque when the Navy finally ordered me to sea duty: a minesweeper homeported in Sasebo, Japan. “Sasebo’s a nice town,” said the Air Force colonel I worked for. “I bombed it once.” 

Kathy and I had been dating and decided to get married before I shipped out so the Navy would send her to Japan, too. One of the many ways in which I was lucky in marriage was that Kathy was an Army brat who had moved a couple of dozen times. To her, an overseas move was business as usual. 

I flew to Japan 12 days after we got married and Kathy joined me three months later, getting from Fukuoka to Sasebo by train on her own after a snafu in the Navy’s transportation arrangements. I was at sea when she arrived. When I returned the Navy housing office helped us find an apartment in town because base housing was limited. 

Kathy in the kitchen

Sasebo had recovered from the colonel’s World War II bombing when we arrived in 1966 and was a bustling seaport city. House-hunting was an adventure because an address identified a neighborhood of twisting streets and alleys and house numbers were sort of random. The cabdriver would stop in the center of the neighborhood and ask for directions from a couple of local guys who drew a map in the dust after a lengthy discussion.

Our neighborhood would drive a zoning inspector to drink: houses of assorted sizes shoehorned in wherever they would fit, crowding narrow streets with no sidewalks and an open-sewer “benjo ditch.” Because street parking was impossible, we had to rent an off-street parking space in order to license our car. Coming home entailed walking about a block uphill from the parking lot, descending a long staircase, walking along a footpath and down another flight of stairs to our front door. Carrying groceries was great exercise. 

The Navy housing office provided worn but serviceable furniture and appliances. Kathy figured our refrigerator had gone through the war on the Japanese side. The apartment had two half-baths: a toilet and cold-water sink off the entrance hall, and a sink and bathtub off the kitchen. Hot water came from an on-demand water heater over the kitchen sink that lit a gas burner and shot out a tongue of flame toward your face when the faucet was turned on. 

Sasebo’s winters are mild but our house was lightly built with no central heating. We dressed warmly and huddled around the space heater as the wind whistled up through the floorboards. Mildew was a problem in the topical summers.

Our sunporch

Then there was the wildlife: gangly spiders the size of a saucer. Kathy emptied a can of bug spray on one before we learned they were non-poisonous and easy to dispatch with a flyswatter. There also were centipedes. One Navy wife photographed the exotic insects in her house and mailed the photos to her husband at sea. 

Sasebo was less westernized than Tokyo and some people still wore traditional Japanese dress. Getting around was an eventful ride through Kamikaze traffic and the occasional street market. Japanese drive on the left side of the street (most of the time). Our VW Beetle was a medium-sized car by Japanese standards but still was a tight fit for the narrow streets. We were told there had been few motor vehicles in Sasebo until recent years, and it looked like everyone was learning how to drive together. The two-way street near our house was wide enough for one car and Japanese drivers were sensitive about losing face.

The mechanics of living in Sasebo kept Kathy busy while I was at sea for a couple of months at a time. She drove down to the base every day to pick up mail. My letters took a couple of weeks to reach her via a supply ship, an aircraft carrier in the Tonkin Gulf and the Philippines. Daily visits to the exchange store and commissary were necessary because when a scarce commodity (such as hair spray) appeared on the shelves it was snapped up quickly. 

Most Navy families hired Japanese help: At a couple of dollars a day you couldn’t afford not to. Families with children complained that their Japanese nannies spoiled the kids rotten. Our cleaning lady, who came once a week to clean and do laundry, spoke no English and Kathy’s Japanese was limited. When the plumbing froze one winter morning Kathy found the cleaning lady outside the house, trying to thaw the water pipe with burning newspaper. She pointed to the pipe and explained “mizu (water).” Kathy pointed to a pipe a few inches away and asked what it was. When the lady replied “gasu,” Kathy emphatically convinced her that the burning newspaper was a bad idea. 

Our elderly landlord and landlady, whom we nicknamed Mama-san and Papa-san, lived upstairs. Mama-san apparently believed that if she chattered enough Japanese at us we would eventually understand her. Paying the rent once a month was a mini-ceremony in Japanese etiquette. I’d greet them, exchange bows, and give them the money. Then they would bow and I would bow in response. And then they’d bow again. Since I was usually in uniform, I would straighten up after a few rounds of bows and salute. This caught them off balance and allowed me to get out the door before they bowed again. 

We never got to know our Japanese neighbors. When I went out in the morning I often saw some of the neighbor men urinating in the roadside ditch. Who would greet me with a bow, of course. 

Fortunately, we had American neighbors. Our enterprising landlord had built two small houses on his property to rent to Americans. We also attended the occasional social function at the officers’ club, though Kathy found the wives’ club scene boring and took a Japanese flower-arranging class instead. 

Our favorite bartenders

Our favorite hangout was a joint known as a stand-bar, where the hostesses served drinks and flirted from behind the bar instead of cuddling in booths for drinks. Kathy was popular with the hostesses, who had learned all their English from talking with drunken sailors. They fussed over her when she became pregnant: “No mo’ drink fo’ you — baby-san get stinko.” We explored the local restaurants and learned not to ask what was in the food.

Our adventure came to an end in typical Navy fashion when I came home one day and announced: “We’re leaving Japan a week from Sunday.”  “Where?” Kathy replied. “Great Lakes, near Chicago.” “Sounds good.” She was four months pregnant at that point and did not relish having a baby (and a Japanese nanny) in Sasebo. We’d had enough of Japan and Kathy was starting to understand Mama-san. 

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Observations on immigration

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Jim

Immigration ought to be a no-brainer. Control the border with Mexico. Decide who gets in and make it easier for them to do so legally. Deport the criminals. Grant legal status to my cleaning lady. 

But nobody’s thinking along those lines, are they? Democrats want to adopt the same open-door policies that stimulated Brexit and are toppling governments in Europe. Some of President Trump’s policies make sense but are immediately branded as racist because that’s the only argument Democrats have. So nothing is going to happen until the situation becomes so intolerable that voters elect representatives who are willing to compromise. When that happens, they will need to consider issues no one is talking about. 

The United States is a nation of immigrants because generations of immigrants have become Americans. This sets us apart from countries such as France, where Muslim immigrants have been excluded from the mainstream and live in enclaves where terrorists are sheltered from the police.

We used to be good at assimilating immigrants. In the 1970s we welcomed a million Vietnamese refugees (over the objections of Democrats). Those refugees were vetted in a multinational effort and temporarily housed on military bases, where they got a crash course in English and American citizenship and some learned to do manicures. 

So it’s worth asking: What’s being done to assimilate the million or so immigrants streaming across the Mexican border this year? We know most of them disappear after they’re turned loose and won’t show up for immigration hearings. Where do they go? Are they integrating into American society in diverse communities, or are they populating Central American colonies in ethnic ghettos? Are they being encouraged to pursue the American dream, or are their advocates telling them they are victims of racism? Will they become hypenated Americans, as my Hungarian-American grandparents did, or will their ethnicity become the basis for grievance-mongering and plantation politics? 

The first step to assimilate these folks is to identify them, weed out the criminals and grant legal status to the vast majority. If the objective is to bring illegal immigants out of the shadows and put most of them on a path to citizenship, it’s odd that some politicians don’t want to know how many people we’re tallking about: 11 million? 30 million? 

The American immigrant tradition is based on two guiding principles: We welcome practically everyone (not without controversy),and we decide who gets in. That second principle no longer applies at the Mexican border, where smuggling cartels decide who enters the country. 

Opening our borders to everyone who wishes to live here is unsustainable, as they’re learning in Europe. Victor Davis Hanson offers the gloomy hypothesis that unchecked immigration will taper off only when parts of the United States are indistinguishable from the Latin American barrios the migrants left behind.

If and when our government chooses to exercise authority over the border AND overhaul the legal immigration system, our representatives have some decisions to make and opportunities to consider. A starting point may be the “Statue of Liberty” standards once applied at Ellis Island: Admit immigrants who are healthy, able to support themselves and are not criminals or unaccompanied minors.

If we value diversity, why do we favor immigrants from Central America over those from Africa, Asia and Europe? And why do we bring in mostly unskilled immigrants when entry-level jobs are being automated and skilled positions go unfilled? A merit-based system like Canada’s would allow us to move medical and technical workers to the front of the line, with expanded guest worker programs for seasonal and agricultural workers. Perhaps our economy will offer more upward mobility if employers no longer have an unlimited supply of cheap labor.

We also need Armed Forces recruits because the majority of young Americans cannot pass the physical or drug test. Immigrants who meet the standards and speak English should be allowed to enlist and get a fast track to citizenship. (The Navy did this for many years with recruits from the Philippines.)

Limiting chain migration is a good way to bring in more workers and fewer dependents. I’d like to see an exception for family businesses, however, to allow immigrant business owners to bring in relatives to work for them. (Many of my favorite restaurants in Chicago probably are the result of chain migration.)

Our asylum system is a farce when overwhelming numbers of economic migrants are encouraged to file fraudulent claims. We need to close loopholes in the law and admit more genuine asylum seekers such as endangered Iraqi translators and Middle Eastern Christians fleeing genocide.  

We also need to work with Central American governments to stem the flow of migrants. Nothing we can do will transform these failed states into prosperous democracies. (And no, they are not failed states because the United States harvested bananas, fought communists or went after druglords.) But cooperation still is possible. The Trump administration’s outreach to Mexico and Guatemala is a good start toward the kind of multinational initiative that resettled Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s. 

One problem is that exporting poor people to the United States is a rational economic strategy for Central American governments. Migrants get jobs and government services in the U.S. that enable them to send more money to their families than they would earn at home. Actively encouraging its citizens to sneak across the border has been successful for Mexico, where remittances from Mexicans in the U.S. contribute more to the country’s GDP ($30 billion a year) than oil exports. 

This is not necessarily a bad thing. The voluntary foreign aid of individual remittances, which dwarfs U.S. aid to Central American governments, helped Mexico grow its economy and eventually reduced the flow of migrants. We can’t expect these governments to change their economic model, but we can work with them to expand trade and regulate the flow of migrants. This will support our national interest as well as theirs and make the relationship less parasitic. Taxing remittances to fund border security and other initiatives is a good first step. 

Fixing our immigation system offers many opportunities but will remain a big problem so long as our elected representatives refuse to solve it. The only question is how serious the border crisis will become before the voters force politicians to work together as a last resort. 

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Censorship, privacy and monopoly

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Jim

One of the many political controversies swirling around is the role of social media such as Facebook and Twitter in poisoning public discourse and fanning the partisan flames. Censorship of political opinion is a growing concern, along with the influence of doctored videos, Russian bots and fake accounts. But the remedy of government regulation may be as dangerous as the disease.

I saw a precursor of this controversy when I worked for Illinois Bell in the 1970s. The hot technology in those days was the telephone answering machine, which delivered a recorded message to anyone who dialed the machine’s phone number. 

Every technology has its dark side. At one point a white supremacist group in Chicago set up an answering machine to deliver a virulently racist message. Predictably, the politicians and media went into outrage mode and demanded that Illinois Bell take the message down. 

I worked in media relations at the time and had some interesting conversations with reporters. 

Yes, we agree that the message is repugnant, but Illinois Bell does not have the authority to censor the content of telephone messages. You really don’t want the telephone company involved in censorship, do you? 

I pointed out that if a court were to order Illinois Bell to take down the offending message as a threat to public safety, our technicians could disconnect the white supremacists before the ink on the court order was dry. But that’s up to the judicial system and not the Bell System. 

I also reminded reporters that no one was forcing people to pick up the phone and dial that specific number. If you don’t want to be offended by the white supremacists’ message, don’t call them. People figured this out and the controversy soon blew over. 

What kept Illinois Bell out of a censorship nightmare was that we were a regulated public utility, accountable to both the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. Any attempt on our part to pass judgment on the content transmitted over our wires, even if we wanted to, would run afoul of a large body of regulatory law. 

Our status as a regulated monopoly also drove corporate policies and ethical standards designed to earn the trust of customers and keep the company out of trouble with regulators. Censorship was not a big issue but safeguarding customer privacy was practically a religion. Employees signed off on the company’s privacy policy on their first day of work. Eavesdropping on telephone conversations was strictly forbidden and revealing an unlisted phone number was grounds for dismissal. 

This was more than a regulatory requirement: It was deeply engrained in a strong telephone company culture that had been nurtured for generations. Employees took the company’s commitment to privacy personally, not for fear of getting fired but because it was part of their value system. Telephone operators would never give out an unlisted phone number (even under torture, I suspect) because it was not just against the rules, it was unthinkable. 

Could this be a model for the social media companies? That’s hard to tell. Regulating Facebook and Twitter as media companies could make them more responsible for content but runs the risk of government censorship. Making them public utilities could outlaw censorship but would be difficult to enforce. Government-imposed privacy safeguards could help, but that ship probably has sailed. 

If the Bell System is an example, no regulatory policy will be effective unless it has the full support of management and is embedded in the corporate culture. For the social media companies, this probably would require new leadership and a massive overhaul of a politicized corporate monoculture. 

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Good times in the war room

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Jim

My war room experience was with the telephone company. The principle of a war room is to bring all the decisionmakers together in once place to bypass bureaucracy and act quickly. This concept makes sense for utility companies that must keep service going in emergencies such as storms and disasters. 

Full disclosure: During my years in the Navy and periodic assignments in the Pentagon, I never saw an actual war room. I’m sure war rooms exist in the bowels of that five-sided behemoth, but as a public affairs officer I didn’t have access to them. And you probably can’t fight in there, as they did in Dr. Strangelove.

Illinois Bell had a well-organized war room. A conference room with extra telephone and data circuits was quickly converted to an emergency operations center by pushing the tables together and plugging in the phones. Each department sent a representative with authority to act under the coordination of an emergency director, and the center was staffed 24 hours a day when necessary. 

Most of the folks assigned to emergency operations were seasoned managers from the installation, repair and engineering organizations. They were accustomed to teamwork because the center was activated a couple of times a year for weather events and the occasional strike. Moving repair crews from one district to another, or dispatching a truckload of supplies, was handled across the table instead of through departmental channels. 

Working an emergency was an adventure, a welcome change from the daily routine with sleeves rolled up and neckties loosened. The hours were long but there was a lot of friendly banter, plenty of coffee and food. Especially food. 

Whenever the emergency operating center was activated, the first order of business after the phones were connected was to bring in food. On one occasion the center was activated on a Sunday and the only snack available on short notice was an assortment of cookies from an upscale bakery: fancy, dainty cookies suitable for a ladies’ tea party. The guy responsible for the food got a lot of kidding about the effete cookies. The next time the center was activated he was ready with husky sandwiches and fist-sized cookies. 

I participated in another kind of war room when Unilever merged pieces of three companies into a foodservice business unit. The transition team, with representatives of all three companies and consultants, spent several months around a series of tables in a vacant warehouse with phone wires and computer cables dangling from the ceiling. I shared a table with a woman from Puerto Rico who cursed at her computer in Spanish and a guy from Canada who chatted on the phone in French with the Montreal office. 

When Ameritech sponsored the annual Senior Open golf tournament, company managers set up a war room at the country club to coordinate every aspect of the tournament, from arranging transportation and lodging for the golf pros to organizing events for customers. The operation was so efficient that some of us asked, only partly in jest, if we could run the entire company this way. 

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Farewell to newsprint

Posted on February 27, 2019 by Jim

When I walked out to the driveway, my morning newspaper was missing. Again. No problem: The Albuquerque Journal has an electronic edition and I read it on my iPad, as I do when I’m out of town.

Then it occurred to me: I no longer need a daily delivery of newsprint. After all, I’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal online for years. So I switched to an electronic-only subscription and will save $15.57 a month.

I had a moment’s hesitation because this is a big milestone for me. Newspapers have been part of my life as long as I can remember. My folks got a couple of newspapers a day and I started reading them as soon as I could understand the comics. I delivered newspapers as a kid and was editor of my high school newspaper.

In college I worked part-time as a reporter for the weekly paper I had delivered a few years earlier. One of my public relations jobs required me to read all four Chicago newspapers and clip anything of interest to the company. Over the years I edited at least a dozen employee publications, most of which were in newspaper format. Handling newspapers smudged my fingers so often that I joked about printer’s ink leaking out of my veins. I can only guess at the number of trees I participated in killing.

The impermanence of newsprint shaped my attitude toward my work. I never thought I was writing timeless literature because I knew my newspaper article would wrap garbage or line a birdcage in a couple of days. Publishing a book a few years ago was a novelty because I had created an artifact that was registered with the Library of Congress and would endure on a bookshelf.

I already had made the atoms-to-bits transition in my work. In the last decade or so of my freelance career most of what I wrote was published and distributed electronically. My last employee publication was a website. Often the only paper evidence of my work was the check I received from the client. And this blog goes out into the cloud.

So I was ready to sever my connection with newsprint, but not without mixed feelings. Seeing the words I wrote appear in print gave me a sense of accomplishment and wonder that I still relish. I will always have fond memories of Sunday mornings with five pounds of Chicago Tribune.

As a former paperboy, I had a moment of sympathy for the carrier whose missed deliveries prompted my decision to go electronic. But I will not miss stepping onto a frigid driveway in the winter and will have more room in my recycling bin. Perhaps this will save a tree or two. Not to mention $15.57 a month.

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Impeach the President. Please.

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Jim

It’s time for Congress to impeach President Trump.

Democrats have been teasing us with impeachment porn for two years now. Congressmen claim to have evidence that’s “beyond circumstantial” that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election but, inexplicably, have not leaked it to the New York Times. The news media have been giving us breathless reports of unsubstantiated leaks every couple of days and proclaim the end of the Trump presidency at least once a week. And I’ve lost count of the number of constitutional crises.

Are you getting bored with all this? I am, and I’ll bet millions of Americans are ready to change the channel. After two years of buildup, the Democrats owe us some entertainment. At this point, only an impeachment trial will break the suspense and satisfy the nation’s craving for excitement and drama.

What a spectacle it will be! Impeachment proceedings will bring everything out in the open. All those redacted documents will be declassified. Congressmen finally will get a chance to show us all that evidence they say they have. It had better be good.

What juicy testimony will we hear from Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti? Imagine the laughter when Michael Cohen swears to tell the truth. David Pecker of the National Enquirer will have to testify, too, just because the headline writers will have such fun with his name:  Pecker Stands up to Questioning.

We’ll see Oscar-worthy performances from the chorus line of Democrats running for President. Will Cory Booker have another Spartacus moment? Look for histrionics from Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, scolding from Elizabeth Warren and billionaire-bashing from Bernie Sanders. Think of the campaign ads all those sound bites will produce.

The Senate trial is certain to be raucous, especially if the Democrats deploy the screaming protesters they organized for the Kavanaugh confirmation. We’ll see colorful ranting on the sidelines from Maxine Waters and unintended Bolshevik-bimbo comedy from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. TV ratings will soar and people will have watch parties, like the Super Bowl with drinking games.

I don’t see a downside to impeachment. If Trump remains in office he may be a shoo-in for re-election. If he’s removed from office, Vice President Pence will continue Trump’s policies and, as a career politician, will not violate any norms. We even may see an election based on issues, for a change, instead of outrage.

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Missing the bus

Posted on January 22, 2019 by Jim

Public transportation is controversial in my adopted home state of New Mexico. The Rail Runner, a commuter train line from Belen to Santa Fe, is hemorrhaging money and losing ridership. In Albuquerque a new bus rapid-transit system is more than a year behind schedule and counting.

I’m following the controversy because I grew up on public transportation in Chicago. I spent most of my life commuting by suburban train, elevated and bus because it was the most convenient way to get around. Riding the train to work downtown was faster than driving and way cheaper than parking. In college I spent more than two hours a day on the subway getting to and from the campus. I effectively majored in transportation because I spent nearly as much time commuting as I did in journalism class.

Public transportation thrives on population density. In cities like Chicago and New York thousands of people live within walking distance of every subway station, every major street can support a bus line, and riding to work beats fighting traffic.

Bus service struggles in less-dense suburbs and smaller cities because meandering routes and complex schedules are necessary to ensure access. Taking the bus usually is slower and less convenient than driving, which makes public transportation a last resort rather than a competitive option.

New Mexico is automobile country because the state is blessed with endless miles of nowhere and many residents live in the middle of it. Albuquerque occupies nearly as many square miles as Chicago with one-fifth the population, and the buses run mostly empty most of the time. I never ride the bus in Albuquerque because the nearest bus stop is a mile away.  And I have a car.

So our public transportation is driven more by political hubris than passenger demand. The Rail Runner commuter train opened to great fanfare in 2006, ostensibly to avoid future traffic congestion. When service began, the trip from Albuquerque to Santa Fe took about the same time as driving.

But the train ride got longer as more stops were added, and the anticipated traffic congestion failed to materialize as the state’s population remained flat. Riding the train now takes twice as long as driving, even during rush hour. Ridership is declining steadily while the state pays off the Rail Runner’s massive debt.

In Albuquerque, the last mayor pushed through an elaborate bus rapid-transit system along the city’s main drag: dedicated bus lanes, platforms in the middle of the street and electric buses. The street already is served by two other bus routes, but the new transit system promised to stimulate development and attract millennials.

Businesses complained and some closed while the street was torn up for a year. Then the newly completed platforms had to be modified to fit the electric buses. When the buses finally arrived, they were so defective that the city sent them back to the manufacturer. As the convoy of electric buses left town one of them broke down a few miles outside the city and had to be recharged.

The project now is more than a year late and the new diesel buses won’t arrive for another year or so. Many of the millennials the bus system was designed to attract are leaving town because it turns out jobs are a bigger draw than fancy buses. Meanwhile, the new bus lanes in the middle of the street go unused as traffic slows to a crawl. The city is contemplating — I am not making this up — temporarily using the bus lanes for street festivals and craft shows.

I usually don’t symphathize with politicians, but synchronizing a public transportation network with population growth is a tough call. In Albuquerque, few politicians have personal experience with public transportation but are under pressure to build things. So they listen to city planners who instinctively dislike automobiles and developers who crave city subsidies.

But public transportation and subsidized development don’t create population density unless there are other reasons for people to live and work there. And are nearly-empty buses the best way to serve the small minority of residents who do not have access to cars?

Despite the bus rapid-transit fiasco, Albuquerque is getting off easy. The previous mayor was pushing for trolley cars.

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