Small Crime, Big Damage Control: part one of 1 or 2 or who knows

Okay, I've kept mum--believe it or not--on the big issues our condo has been facing lately. After we found that Evil Zombie Building Maintenance Tech (EZBMT) had stolen from a unit, (BAM BOOM) life changed for us all. I'm talking practical details. But also, emotions are engaged. There is work. There is also the rehabilitation of everybody who is left. And there is the spirit or zeitgeist of business operations, which is conducted on so many levels. It is not black and white, and oh I wish it was.

But it can't be. It's a business. It's also the home of many people, including my own. It's trust and security and money and oh-so-minor in life's big issues. Cleaning up after one Jerk: it happens all the time.

EZ's just another of the many shady asshats out there. Not a big in the scheme of things. Not smart; just clever. Not successful; except lately. But he has 24 hours every day to study how to stay away from us. Our 24 hours per day is trying to get back on even keel. And that's just wrong.

But though I insult his intelligence, his style, and his habits, he did pull one over on us. So maybe this account will also be wrong. It's just what I see.

That Missing Two Ounces of Prevention.
1. Yes, hindsight: he's done other things. He's got court-ordered child support in other states and no driver's license. I think it's a sign of one or two flaws that may have kept us from hiring this dude--except we didn't do a background check, so I can't say for sure. The idea of background checks is horrid to me--until now. And we all accepted this payroll garnishment and lack of full I.D.  by not focusing on it. And some heavy glossing from somebody else, who took it cheerily in stride: Zombie Assistant.

2. Our stupid policy manual didn't have a good enough anti-nepotism policy. And his sister-in-law is Zombie Assistant. More on that later.

Two Tons of Cure.
I rammed it through. The Board wasn't even thinking about it. They were still in shock (or, Captain Nemo was panicking)--and right after that, depression. The old Board wasn't completely averse--they just weren't thinking of it. The new ones weren't averse, they just didn't have the details.

I called firms; got bids; informed our financial professionals; prepared a presentation. We had a Special Session. And the Board said "Yes, we have to do it."

So we had a private investigator come in. After that, the tension level ratcheted up in the Board. We had to keep a secret. Employees were officially under suspicion. And so forth. It was hard.

And the employees did know they were under a shadow. They had a hard time with it. No reassurance anyone could make was untainted. We all knew that, secrets or not.

I sent the P.I. more prep documents than you can imagine, writing them all up myself. I looked at pictures of items from the on-line market--you could see parts of our maintenance room in some of the backgrounds. Others were of unknown upholstery, possibly EZBMT's house. I investigated a pile of invoices, looking for prices and buying trends. Some things I had to look up on the Internet to get a price--expensive items for building repair that are custom-made for old buildings, or out of date on price lists but still useful to us, that still belonged to us (allegedly). Investigation of other items, all priced and listed on an Excel sheet--not my favorite computer program, but damn it works well for some things.

Some of the Board yelled at me for going overly. I just kept going. I didn't even have time to tell them they were full of shit. It was delegated to me, and I did everything I could think of except rent a car and a pair of handcuffs. I knew we might not get anything out of the employees. I wanted the P.I. to have every smoking gun I could get him.

I checked Vendor Ledgers to see if we had accounts with dummy companies (possibly run by employees). I checked for shipping contracts, trying to figure out how this stuff got sent out, if its origin of shipment was from our building.  I studied forensic accounting on the Internet so that I could figure out how to get more information out of what I was looking at already.

I say alleged because I have everything except proof. And that's the critical part.

In the two weeks' worth of items I could try to track, EZ sold $1300.00 worth of stuff for less than $500.00. It's not like he was making a killing out there. In fact, if he was buying it himself to re-sell, he lost a lot of money.

Zombie Assistant
In the meantime, all of staff was reeling. Angry as we were, tense as it was, we had to project confidence.
I had to write a new conflict-of-interest policy, so that Zombie Assistant didn't open up mail about her brother-in-law. I made her sign it. (She broke it twice. That I know of.)

In the meantime, she was "Embattled Dowager", "Plucky Maiden", "Crying Victim", "Servant of Us All" and "Evil Bitch When Nobody's Looking" by turns. (The last one is customary, but heavily accented under pressure.) You should know that her work ethic, already abysmal, took a nose dive. Sure, I understand--her family and her job were in peril. I do understand. It has to be hard.

The conflict of interest policy review happened on Thursday. By Friday she was laughing as she took off early from work. Do I sound bitter? Well. I took it as a sign of what I could expect. Maybe I am right, or maybe it's a self-fulfilling bad attitude on my part.

Zombie Boss
Shortly thereafter, we fired Zombie Boss. Unrelated: but he couldn't figure out what to do. I had to call all our maintenance suppliers, because otherwise EZBMT could have allegedly continued to order everything in sight and allegedly sell it on-line. The look of mystification on ZB's face when I did this was just awful.

While I was down there handling that, EZBMT's lawyer called and asked if he could have his job back. Unbelievable. But they called the weak link. I just happened to be there.

Firing ZB has added work. Or maybe not; he couldn't cope. But there is a lot of work.

Other Zombie Maintenance Tech (OZBMT):
The pleasant surprise in this is how OZBMT has managed to shake off the Zombie virus. He understood everything right away.
     No going into units for repairs alone anymore? Thank you for covering my ass.
     Nobody else to take call? That's okay, I'll take it: we'll work it out later.
     No snow removal contract, because Zombie Boss forgot about it? Order some ice-melt; I know what to do.

It was like the sun coming out. He could show what he was made of, at last: now that EZ and Zombie Assistant weren't running their dog-and-pony show about who was the competent building tech. It conveyed that we had also missed some of the good.

Yet he seemingly had to know something about the allegedly missing items. So there's still all this fog in front of the sun. There's still this feeling that maybe he's Compensating for past transgressions. The better he got, the more I worried; I think we all did.

OZ was worried for EZ, he felt for him. EZ betrayed a lot of people. But in other ways--and OZ doesn't even know it himself--he was instantly happier, his shoulders instantly straighter. When bad things are allowed to continue, people suffer. Even if they don't know it. And that is just another reason why we have to fight the crimes, petty meanness, small evils. Even in the intangible ways, this all causes suffering.

Two or three weeks later, we informed the staff that we would have investigative interviews. We told them Friday for Monday. . . . . . .

C.V.'s Birthday

The day after Christmas
I hear C.V. before I see him:
a beautiful baritone voice.

Only if you can, please!
Only if you can.

He jingles a plastic cup. He sees me.
"Hello, love. How are you?"

I have some change for him.
For the Season,

His cup has a jester ring of red and green
felt spikes with bells on the end.
It's Holiday: the cup is full of fold.

I drop a quarter in.
"How was your Christmas?"

The day before Christmas he said,
"Some asshole stole my bike."
"That's bad."
"Too cold to ride it anyway."
He laughed. "I'm almost glad to let it go."

But for Christmas, he had a wonderful time.
His former wife's children had him over.
She died some time ago.
It makes him sad
And he drank a little.

"You know," he says. "I never drink.
But I thought one wouldn't hurt."

I nod. He changes his story.
"I stood up and I was dizzy.
And the kids told me to sit down and rest.
I was drinking cranberry juice. I didn't know
anything was in it. And they just kept giving me more."

I nod again.
"But I had fun," he says.
"The only thing I feel bad about,
I wanted to take pictures of my children
and I forgot."

I nod, third time.
"You'll find another opportunity."
He nods back. "Yes I will."
He smiles at me. "New Year's Eve is my birthday."
"Well, how about that?" I smile back.
"Only if you can!" he calls. "Only if you can."

On New Year's Eve,
he has a boombox with him,
still playing Christmas music.
I slip a dollar in: "Happy Birthday."

Miss Ellen Takes The High Road

Owing to the unfortunate (?) constructive re-structuring of the Augean Stables within a certain area of my condo unit, Miss Ellen has been neglected. Not completely, you understand--but our forays have been limited in both number and scope.

Yesterday, she took off West, keeping on mostly level terrain. However, the way back was either by boat or up a campus on a hill--or a road that turned into a major throughway leading to a freeway that was entirely too dangerous.

So, uphill it was.

After climbing the Summit of Learning, we passed into the Land of Rareified Air (who knew students could afford Kate Spade and Versace?). Then into Faux Nobility, where the professors live in blissful Anglophilia (and German automotive engineering). I was completely lost there, ended up in Suburban Store Road (biggest Safeway outside of Texas, honestly, and the Road to Many Malls) and creaked seriously uphill, looking for a familiar cross street, getting further away from homem with every pedal stroke. By then it was Completely Dark. Just in time to get to the Naval Observatory--and Miss Ellen and I are not up on military clearances. I was relieved the whole place was gated up and no mistakes could be made.

Skirting that, with headlight and taillights flashing, we had fun--blowing down a long gradual hill as fast as the cars were going!!  And ended in familiar territory. Back where the homeless people still ply their trade, the family restaurants sit, and the pizza is cheap. My area is also gentrified, but not to the ult--and sullied with much Mid-Century Modern.

Ellen and I sailed home in complete charity with each other. And I learned a lot more about the city. It took hours, and it was worth every minute.

I Would Prefer a Mayor Who Doesn't Want to Go to Jail

We are having mayoral campaigns soon in D.C. One big issue for this locality is "Taxation without Representation."

We want Congressional seats and for our primaries to count for something. The Founding Fathers were afraid I think that D.C. would become a huge courtier's paradise, with people constantly seeking to influence the President and Congress locally as they went to parties or picnics. They were trying to avoid excessive local-ness of interest.

Perhaps they sensed that the United States really would be this vast continental stretch. Or perhaps it was related somewhat to the slave question. Or perhaps the jealousy of those in outlying sections of the original 13 states, who feared the U.S. would become the United Colonies of Whatever Virginia Wanted.

But it hasn't worked out that D.C. is courtier-central in the way that voting would make a difference. It IS courtier-central, but voting is the least of it. The courting goes on with lobbies, not votes. Most of those elected come from far away. Many of those courted are administrators who are not touched by the electoral process. In the meantime, DC has a voting electorate that has often been ignored. Since most of them believe in the power of government or are somehow attached to it, they get really exercised about having their opinion ignored. LOL. 

And then there are the traditionally disenfranchised. The people who stick with DC are not the middle class or upper class who come for the courting. They are the poor and those who serve the bigwigs their coffee in the morning. Everybody else is very temporary.

So right now, we have a candidate running for mayor who says he would commit "acts of civil disobedience" in order to protest DC's unrepresented status. At which time, he would be arrested, and it would be a good thing.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Well, it would be better than the last mayor who got himself arrested.

Washington DC hasn't always had a mayor. Marion Barry served as its second one, from 1979-1991. He was busted in 1990 on drug charges. In the meantime, the city had gone to hell without a responsible leader in charge. I remember hearing on NPR that police officers at that time barely had any budget. The funds for crime kits had been misappropriated or cut. The result was that there were no rape kits. Therefore there were no prosecutions for rape that could survive a trial.

It would go like this: the evidence kits that medical/LEO personnel tried to put together on their own were therefore not standard. Therefore all the evidence was tossed out when the Defense brought this up.

I still get mad about this when I think of it. This is what corruption is really about: not just a waste of taxpayer money, but a waste or diminishment of Every. Single. Freaking. Effort. To Do Good.

Anyway, Mr. Barry served six months in the Federal prison system, and could not run for re-election. However, when he got out, he was back on campaign and was re-elected mayor in 1994, serving until 1999. Congress, which has special powers in DC, appointed a special agency to disburse the funds to the city--just an expensive special oversight to make sure the city funds didn't go up one man's nose.

In 2005, he was elected the Ward 8 councilman and still on and off in trouble. In March of this year, the council voted unanimously to strip him of all council assignments.

Why does he get re-elected? Believe it or not, I HAVE asked. Because the electorate of Ward 8 loves him. He has done for them for years. And he has huge name recognition. And because his electorate feels he represents the truly disenfranchised class in DC.

Congress has always been a little high-handed about DC conditions. Sometimes that has been a good thing, but not always.

But I would like a mayor who concentrated on city management and staying out of jail. I think it's more important than DC statehood. Make no mistake--not having a full vote is limiting. Sometimes I even find it frustrating. But having a mayor hell-bent for jail is far, far, far, worse.

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Skeeters and Glass Houses

You might remember the urban swamp I wrote about? And before that, the Idiots & Mice. Well, I will tell you: this is the same building. I called the city and I griped to the Store Manager. Underlying my words, of course, is the sense that this person doesn't even want to help himself . . .

I guess those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Anyway, he is avoiding calling his home office Real Estate Hotline about his problems. As long as there is a bag of food trash down the stairwell, the rodents have something to eat. As long as the drains are clogged, the water won't leave. If the drain(s) have to be Roto-Rootered (what is the real verb for that?)  the landlord has to pay. Not the SM, so why is it so tough to make this call? I don't understand it at all.

So I complained to him again Wednesday. Actually pulled him from a meeting. I was told he was in conference with the District Manager--Hey! Golden Opportunity! But the DM wouldn't come out of the office, and so the Manager lied and said he wasn't there. If there is a species on earth that I don't care for? Besides mosquitoes and rats? The DM. Best buck-passers ever.

Anyway, to shut me up the SM agreed to clean it up. At his expense? I can't disagree--those months of trash could have been solved by one ten-minute pull of the can months ago. On the other hand, what is so bad about calling the landlord, or giving me the landlord's name?

I must be ferocious. Anyway, it does look better down there. My one concern is that the underlying problem, the rodents, have safe haven in the empty building. We still aren't calling the landlord. And wouldn't I just.

In the tranquil night scene you see above, it's clean. The bucket is gone, one major mosquito vector. If the drain was blocked only by leaves, then we're set. When it rains, though, the ash tray and can will fill with water and we will have some mosquito vector left. Not to the same threat though.

I did this for me. Mosquitoes love me far too much. A block or so away from my house? Trouble.

In the meantime, at home, I have a ton of stuff to do. If I can do as well as I expect from others, I will be in a better place. Of course, I have neither rats nor mosquitoes. The cats did chew a hole in my window screen Thursday night.

Behind, again! Best get to it.

Oh, and this Zemanta Thing? Sometimes it's silly, but here's a Science article saying 

Mosquitoes Should Die.

Something we non-scientists have suspected all along. Malaria, heartworms, bug bites! 

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Twenty-Four Hours a Day, To Describe Troublesome Events!

I love to watch the changes that happen in my neighborhood. Somebody once described it to me as Gayberry, RFD, and that is a darn good description. Except, of course, it's not rural. So we have homeless people, and illegal aliens, crowds and crime and traffic like anyone else. Barney Fife wouldn't make it here, but Andy always would.

Trouble Swoops Down
The Blockbuster down my street was in a basement with stairs leading to the front entrance. Any practitioner of feng shui, the system of Chinese geomancy, can tell you that trouble flows down the steps and doesn't go back up. Most likely this, and not NetFlix, is the reason that this store had so much trouble.

They had an armed robbery, and the manager ran out of the store in a panic, leaving his underage female clerk to face the assailant alone. This was years ago. I am still not over this story. If I ever see that man, I'm kicking him in the damn kneecap.

Well, they closed last year. Mice took over, which means there are five restaurants and one drug store I don't ever patronize that share this same building. Nobody has swept down there for a year. The drains are plugged. And then we had rain.

But Feel The Love!
There is now a nine foot by forty foot area (I measured) with standing water in it four inches deep. It's the middle of the summer. Mosquitoes love me, so I am extremely interested in this development.

I called the HotWinds Mayor's HotWindLine. Unbelievable, to serve me it is open 24 hours a Day!! I was given a case number. It's going to be three weeks--no, that's the Deadline, not the service date, excuse me. She did not take down any of my details as to square footage, just: Mosquito Hazard. I think a 360 square foot area of mosquito reproduction is much larger than an Ordinary Hazard.

So I can gripe. I can check on my case number. I just can't get rid of a hazard. I am in love with this system.

Here is a nocturnal shot of an inspiring sight--to a mosquito. Even if the groundwater mysteriously drains, there will still be a bucket, an ash tray, and a trash bag with Plenty of Habitat.

Gentrification: Signs, Windows, and Doors

My personal favorite place to be in the urban neighborhood is where rich meets poor, i.e., the frontiers of gentrification. That is what I see now. Plenty of coffee shops, restaurants, the new sidewalks going in: all brick and cork lining and brushed new concrete. But I also love the old stuff hanging on.

If I walk three blocks east, there are overpriced lovely loft condominiums for sale--all refurbished older buildings, with new windows jutting out and sometimes new 'skins'. Across from that, there is a hardware store run by whatever generation it is (that whole stupid classification Gen-X,Y, Z, or I for I-phone apps--I don't know). They have a mural that extends all the way down the side of their building, full of exuberant revolution. Here is one part of it.

Next to that is an art gallery. And then a barber shop with its own kind of art. You just know this place is a hotbed of black male gossip, and it must be great. Oh, to be a fly on the wall!!

Next to that is a take-out food place. My favorite thing about it is the fish picture in the side window. This picture is well past its shelf life: covered in dust and sagging badly. Therefore it is not good advertising. But I know better. Probably the best fish around if you can just walk in the door.

If I turn right, I see another hardware store, clearly dying. But its owner must have loved Lionel Trains. People, I love rust and crud. If this sign comes down, I will count it a loss.

If I turn left, I run into recently-closed pawn shops (very recently closed) and other dilapidation. Interesting tile work from the last mid-century. It's a toss-up whether it will be preserved or not. Behind it is a day care center. Yup. For dogs. All these fancy lofts are for single people.

New groceries going in, to serve the new condo dwellers. Other groceries served the lower-income folks and are starting to show prosperity.  New paint, more merchandise. Different culture. Isn't this lovely? And you can still get a money order, no sweat.

It's still a clash of cultures. I don't find it ugly, at least not in daylight. But it represents immense struggle. This garage retrenched. It gave up half of its square feet for a funky boutique in hot pink. They repainted their garage door to fit in with the boutique, and then it was defaced. The garage is an urban vocational training center. So much wrong with this--and yet fascinating. Here, graffiti is a sign of hostility, but also identity. It's a rear-guard action, but fate still hangs in the balance.

I find it interesting to view the frontier. It's slipping away, at least here. But it will come back. All this was prosperous once before, and then it failed. Neighborhood services left. Now they're coming back.

Small business expresses their dreams, their identity: Lionel Trains. Fish pictures. Murals of revolution, carefully rendered in bright red. The floating heads of the Six Famous Barbers.

It has character when it's new, and it keeps character when it is old.

We are seeing a renaissance around here. That means birth is now included in the long death of this neighborhood. It's a full cycle now and to me, it is beautiful, every fresh-paint and peeling-paint piece of it.

Packer

I never saw this man in my life, but I always called him Packer. He would have been at home in a mule-skinning outfit, as a trapper, prospector, or other frontiersman.  Unfortunately those days were done well before 1912. Those professions were in Western Territories. Packer lived on the East Coast. I believe he died in the early years of the twenty-first century.

How do I know Packer existed?

He had one grocery cart, purloined. To the front of it was tied a plush teddy bear, splayed out like the prow on an old-fashioned ship, or, alternately, a Catharine Wheel. For one two-week period of one summer, he had eight stuffed animals hanging from the grocery cart. I particularly remember a red-and-white elephant. Always, two five-gallon buckets, one for washing and one for rinsing, sat drying in the open air. The cart was full of neatly-folded blankets and clothes, as well as found salable objects. Over this, tarps would be neatly stacked, everything roped in, if the weather was good. There was always a sense of industry and cleanliness, purpose and regimen about his camp.

Only his camp was next to a bank. Stone-throwing distance from a major city intersection.

Did he have a body? Oh, yes. I never saw it though. I would leave mass transit and head home late at night. By then he was always asleep on a neatly-made bed. The bed consisted of a groundsheet and quilts ranging from small nursery-printed dumpster treasures to government-issue felt. They covered him completely, including his head.  On rainy or snowy nights I would find him completely encased in tarps, his buckets lined up to catch rain for washing, his grocery schooner wrapped into a cube of blue plastic, and, as always, tied down.

I believed he was one of the few homeless people who might have chosen to live that way by true preference. He was too competent to blame it entirely on constitutional deficits or bad luck.

One winter morning, on my way from home to work, his camp was gone. In its place was a large soot-blackened stretch of pavement, from the front of the structure pictured above to the edge of his normal camp. The globe on the lamp-post you see was now a Janus-head shape where one side was perfectly formed and the near side melted horribly, wrongly, into a distorted icicle. It looked like the lamp had a stroke. It looked like Packer had lit a cigarette under the neat bundle of tarps and blankets and burned to death. Or perhaps he had a brazier going, and everything caught on fire.

I am not sure how my fiction ends--did Packer die by fire or live to get treatment? Did he recover, but the bank finally told him to shove on? Or did this lapse from order cause him to be ashamed, to lose his sense of home, to go away and never come back?

The cart and buckets were gone.  I never saw them elsewhere. The soot marks remained, uncleaned, for a year. The city replaced the melted glass globe on the lamp-post about two years later.

Miss Ellen Bops w/o Direction, & No Wonder

My Toolbox
I needed a Wrench. Swear I used to have a whole darn set.
But that was before my Mom reorganized my tools Her Way. Her way is to get rid of the case that sorts drill bits by size, and throw them all in the Tupperware you usually use for celery sticks.

"You have plenty of Tupperware," she said. "Hmm. Let me try this one."
I don't have a lot of Tupperware. Furthermore, I don't want to buy any Tupperware.

She took socks and cut off the feet, then twisted them around to keep my extension cords nicely untangled..

"Mom, couldn't we just use a twist tie?"
"No, this will work. You'll see."
"That was a perfectly good sock, you know."

She does this for a living--use tools, I mean. She's actually really good--measure twice, cut once, careful on the job, everything. But I don't see how this works. It doesn't work for me.

Miss Ellen, Miss-Directed
So, I need a Wrench. Miss Ellen's handlebars are suddenly headed West when I want to go North. It is possible to steer like this, but only to Eventual Disaster.

Our HotWind Tax Dollars Are At Work, along with the Federal Re-Build America Act, re-doing the streets in my neighborhood. So far they have sliced a lot of pavement and laid down a lot of metal sheets on the road, then torn up the sidewalks and put in fancy brick stripes and granite curbing. They look great. When this project is done, no doubt I will be very pleased. But there's a lot of gravel and Pitfalls now, and every time Miss Ellen swerves to avoid one-----

-------her handlebars are suddenly headed SouthEast when I want to go West.

She was Always a loose cannon. Now she's a loose cannon with a loose nut, and I don't mean me.

I took Miss Ellen back to a place where direction is not so important, i.e. my living room. I tore up my closet for a nonexistent wrench. Finally I proceeded on half-finished state-of-the-art sidewalks to the neighborhood hardware store. I had a tracing of the nut and was measuring wrenches against it.

The guy behind the counter is a short, wiry caramel-colored man with a grey Afro hairstyle and a grey plaid flannel shirt. He's worked there forever.
"Why don't you get an adjustable wrench?"
"Sounds good."
"Right behind you," he points out. "Look up, above your eye level."

I pick a small one I can leave in my bag. "I've been needing a weapon, too," I tell the hardware guy.
He pokers up. "Need a bigger one then."
"I'm not going to hit anybody with it particularly," I tell him back. "I'm going to sling the bag."
"Yeah, that'll work," he says, still straight-faced. "Like David and Goliath. A course, I got a pipe wrench for $29.95 if you think about it." He hands me the receipt. "Come back anytime."

He probably thinks I am one of those candidates for a floral-print screwdriver. Hah! That is completely untrue.

Anyway, one of Miss Ellen's nuts is all right and tight. The other one still needs some adjustments.

Zombies, Chicken-Hearts, Law and Order

We have had a lively month at the Condo!

Lies, Cocaine, and Delusions
The prostituting, extortionist, scary scream-in-the-halls-"I'm going to kill you and everyone here!"-with-blood-on-his-face guy was Arrested At Last. The Staff is all chicken-hearted--I don't mean the zombies, but the Desk Staff, and so when he came in with his dealer or stable, they could never confront him.

Probably I would have, and been sorry afterward.

The Hearing
So the Owner/roommate/partner came in for a Hearing. The Board threatened to fine him Huge MegaBucks in order to get him in. To avoid the fine, he must write a Never Come Back Here Again authorization (I am sure it has a better title) so that the Chicken-Hearts can bar him from the condo.

Does this sound like it's going to work? No. Is it the extent of our power to protect our Owners and Staff in the law? Yes, unless we want to sue a coke dealer who is currently unemployed.

I suspect he will get out much earlier than a year, break his half-way house agreement, and Return. But we will have the letter this time. The Threat of the Fine is not really a good one now, but it can be renewed with Cause.

The Soap Opera
The dejected room-mate/partner of course knew nothing about this man he was living with. (He was only trying to help him. He was back in France at the time. Can we all say bullshit merde now, in unison?) He was so surprised by all that had transpired. He thinks it is a mental health problem.

I wanted to kick him awake, myself. But these were all the self-delusions of a battered spouse, so I also wanted to direct him to the nearest Shrink.

There is something fragile in the middle of his self-deception. And something calculated, not desperate, under the lies. He's the weak link in our chain.

But the bid for sympathy didn't work. That's not our job as Board members. So we legislated a new reality--we told him we didn't care what his arrangement was, or his mixed feelings, the guy had to go and stay away forever. And by the way, change your locks. We'll want to see the receipt.

A Space to Breathe In
Hello, police force of HotWinds. Thank you very much for tracking this guy down, and providing the Chicken-Hearts, the Zombies, and the preoccupied Bureaucrats of the Board a chance to work this through.

Maybe you didn't get him in on the big crime case you wanted him for. Maybe he was busted only for failure to appear. It was still leverage for us, working for our 275 families and friends, our staff of say twenty.

This Bureaucrat salutes you.

Another Constellation

We have a lot of cold dessert choices in my neighborhood.

Down the street and over from Brett's Yogurt, there is another, national franchise. It sells ice cream and doughnuts: you know the one. The lady that owns it, LaRonda, is there every day in the morning with the rush, worrying in the afternoon during the lull, then speeding through the afternoon after-school rush. She does not find good enough help to be open late at night. This is a mistake on weekends.

We also have a lot of homeless people here. One of them used to buy cases of water and ice in summer, cool them down in an ice chest, and sell them. He would carry the ice chest up and down the street, or sometimes he had a wagon. Then he disappeared.

Months later, Reginald was back. In a wheelchair. He'd been at XYZ University's Hospital, getting treatment for brain cancer. Over the intervening months, he panhandled from his wheelchair, with the tumors in his head visibly getting larger and larger, his cognition poorer and poorer. Occasionally you would see him with a quart of hand-packed ice cream, getting the full good out of it. LaRonda at the ice cream and doughnut store used to give it to him freely, whatever flavor he wanted. She is struggling. She gave that homeless entrepreneur some of the last joy he had on this earth.

Star Quality

There's a small yogurt place in my neighborhood. It sells soft-serve yogurt, no fat, at a reasonable price. For another dollar they will put fresh fruit on top--prime, best quality stuff. The store is tiny, and it is jammed with Tetris, board games, Wi-fi, and numerous college students.

Today I walked in and somebody famous had dropped by. He is a television star from probably Seinfeld, and is now starring in a play in my city. The proprietor/inventor of this business gives all kinds of discounts to people who can imitate Seinfeld characters, or answer trivia questions, or score at level gazillion at Tetris. He Loves Seinfeld TV. He is also having a good time with his business. It's still personal, so slinging yogurt and cutting up mango is not a rote activity yet. Almost two years in business now.

So, The Star's entourage was filming and taking pictures. The Star and the Proprietor were trading free yogurt, autographs, jokes. Brett, the owner, had met a hero. He was having a blast, plugging his company and learning about the actor's new gig. Probably all this will go on Facebook or Twitter eventually. But you could see he was mesmerized.

To me, it was a constellation, or twin star.

Brett is in his early twenties and has already started a small business that employs up to ten college students. It's a great concept and is already a nascent chaiin--I think a new one is opening in Baltimore. Who is a hero here?

Maybe they are both heroes in their own lives, the stars of their story.  The one man brings glamor--and surely it's difficult to achieve success in show business. But in exchange, you get recognition, free yogurt, and the big bucks. Brett won't get the recognition. He pays wholesale for yogurt. Maybe someday, he'll make the big bucks. He's just as much a star, although I'm sure he doesn't think so.

Photo: i'm only here for the food.com

Pentagon shooting

Best wishes for a speedy recovery to the two police officers shot outside the Metro station at the Pentagon today.  Both officers were part of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. Both were wounded--so far we hear not seriously--and taken to a good hospital, George Washington University's hospital. The suspect was also wounded and in custody.

It's too early to start freaking out about terrorism: we should wait to find out. The shooter was outside the station, not inside it or on a train. That station is a big hub for park and ride into Virginia, and very close to some nice shopping malls and discount big-box stores. The Pentagon has about 26,000 people working there, plus all the other nearby magnets in Arlington, so it might be random crime or individual-upon-individual. You can bet the DoD, the DHS, Virginia, DC Metro, and who knows who else will be on this like gravy on rice--and find out for us.

It certainly sounds like these two officers saved many lives, though, terror attempt or not.

I will update this post through the weekend if any real news shows up.
First Update, midnight March 5:  This article at the WashPost has the best details.

No Need to Panic. Good to Buckle Up.

According to the news, the CIA suggests we could have an al-Qaeda attack in this country within 3 to 6 months. This revelation was part of an annual briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee--not a rambling report by the CIA to the Senate in the wake of 'intelligent panic". Here is the first paragraph of that portion of the 47 page report (from p. 12). I found the portion of financial crime and cyber crime to be more novel, but here's the part that has newspapers' interest from coast to coast:

Over the past year we have seen ongoing efforts by a small number of American Muslims to engage in extremist activities at home and abroad. The motivations for such individuals are complex and driven by a combination of personal circumstances and external factors, such as grievance over foreign policy, negatively inspirational ideologues, feelings of alienation, ties to a global pan-Islamic identity, and the availability of poisonous extremist propaganda through the Internet and other mass media channels.

Here and there, I am reading various comments:
1. Obama is covering his butt because he is afraid something will happen.
2. The CIA must cover both their butt and their president's butt, so they're covering their butt pre-emptively.
3. The CIA just divulged a massive secret that shows the depth of our intelligence to the enemy.
4. Damn the bastards.

None of these comments or opinions are of any use to us. The CIA told the Senate Intelligence Committee something they already knew. And we know it too. Random tragedy happens to us all the time. Only consider. For a victim, it follows the same pattern as an injury-inducing car accident. We must try to safeguard ourselves, but panic at the wheel won't do us any good.

Comparing Dangers
1. Devastation occurs to you when you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the perpetrator frequently also suffers an injury.

2. There are certain predictors, e.g. driving on New Years' Eve, you are more likely to find a drunk driver who will try to kill you on an icy roadway. Likewise, certain countries or cities or places of work are more dangerous for terror attacks than others.

3. The new development (not that new) is that any jerk can decide he wants to be a terrorist and make the rest of us miserable. But that's not new either. Terror has human agency--one jerk, a weapon, an act. But if you think about it, a car collision is also a product of human action.

So, you prepare for it and reduce risks. To prevent car accidents, or bad injuries from one, you study for a driver's license, you take defensive driving, you wear your seat belt, you have a designated driver if you drink. You expect your government to enforce licensing laws and make traffic stops. Same with terrorism, except they don't do the work out where you can usually see it for yourself.

That's the only mystery to the whole thing. The rest of it is just minimizing risk. Trying to get us to panic is part of a terrorist's job. CIA reports shouldn't induce panic either. They are a way for us to focus on our prevention and remedies for the dangers among us.

What is the equivalent to a seat belt for a terrorist attack?  Well, it starts with a three day supply of what you need to live, see in the dark, and get information. We should think about some measure of disaster preparedness for all the places we go. The most readable and useful post is at the Happy Medic, well worth following for its sensible advice.

At Home:
One gallon of water per person per day. Don't forget the pets.
Food for three days--and the right foods. Unfortunately, a family box of Twinkies will not last that long. You will eat those the first hour you are nervous. Food that takes water and fuel, like dried pasta, are also not a good choice. So in the pasta category, you would stock canned cooked spaghetti, already in sauce.
Batteries, a radio that operates without electrical, a well-charged phone
A clock that runs without power. A flashlight and batteries.
Something to do, because gallantry counts--and you will go stir-crazy in your house without an amusement. You might not be able to surf the internet or watch TV. And applying duct tape to your windows will only last so long as an activity.

Home Security.
How are the locks working at your house? What other security measures do you need? Do your windows fasten? Will somebody want to come in? They don't have to be a terrorist. They can just be desperate. If your neighbor is desperate, how do you plan to handle that?

At Work.
I've had bomb scares at my work before. We had to leave immediately. What if it's freezing or raining outside? Where will you go? What if the building is closed and your keys and your bus card and your wallet are still inside? Maybe you need a pocket arrangement or a spare key in your wallet.
What if you get stuck inside your building? Do you have water there, or a transistor radio, or a flashlight? Who is going to win the last doughnut in the employee lounge?

In Your Car.
Do you keep supplies in your car? Amazingly, it is a similar list to what is at home. Some water, some canned goods, a flashlight, all neatly held in a box in the trunk. Batteries and water might need replacement during a hot summer, more so than that stored in a house. Add a blanket. Do you have gas enough to get home or to the nearest shelter? And where is that shelter, exactly? See also mass transportation below.

Mass Transportation.
Keep keys, a small flash, a stash of small bills that you never spend on daily stuff. Having a fifty dollar bill tucked away is not as good as having ten five-dollar bills stashed. The thing you need may cost less, and the person who has it can't make change. Shoes for walking (plus clean socks) are also a good choice. Hard to walk home in four-inch spikes.

I think this can mostly be done with one well-planned trip to the store. After this inventory, I know I do not have enough batteries. All around me, I know people are unprepared. So I am picking up extra water too.

By doing this, I'm just as prepared for any number of emergencies, including the next time they fix the boiler in my building, or a thunderstorm cuts out the power on my block. I'm not doing this for a jerk with a bomb. I'm doing it for me.

This Is Your Lucky Day

Reading Palms
The third story of the pictured building is the consultation room of a woman whom I will call The Gypsy. In the summer, The Gypsy sits outside in one of two yardchairs and tells fortunes to drunk marks for $5.00 each. Once, on my way to the grocery store, her mother offered to tell my fortune for free. She divined that a 'great weight' had settled on me, blocking my luck. A Very Serious Situation.

This great grey cloud would go away with a candle ceremony, conducted with a Catholic priest's help, and it would only cost me $1,000.00. The money would go in a box, sit on a priest's altar, and be blessed by the saints and the smoke of many candles. My life would be purified and my barriers would crumble. My Luck would Return! Participation was not required. She would take care of everything.

I told her I didn't think so. Finally she decided that $181.00 would be enough to satisfy the candlemaker, the priest, all the saints and leave a few pennies for The Gypsy's Mom. With a discount like that, I figured only one-fifth of that cloud would be lifted, so I told her no thanks. I did pay her $5.00 though. This story cost me a voluntary $5.00, and I can tell it over and over, although, not to the same people twice.

Doubled Down
One week, my husband and I visited New Orleans. We were walking down Bourbon Street, which is of course an inevitable consequence of going to New Orleans. A woman came up to us in the light of the street lamps. She was dressed in baggy jeans and a t-shirt. Her hair was not styled and she was neither ugly nor attractive. But the silver on her eyelids glinted in the lights of Bourbon Street. She looked up into my husband's face and breathed,

"Today is your lucky day."

She was mesmerizing. We followed her into a shabby storefront. I swear it was the silver eyelids.

A thin balding man who looked like the biggest loser ever stood behind a cheap counter made of old paneling and Formica. He held a dice cup in his right hand. We had a chance to win a prize. All of the prizes were on shelves along the back wall, which was a scabrous green. All of the boxed prizes were covered in a good half-inch of dust.

We got five rolls of the dice for free. Unbelievable! It really was our lucky day. Or night, really.
The man counted the dice so fast we were sure he was miscounting. We even tried to ask, but he just kept rolling, counting, putting the dice back in the cup. It was a lot of dice. And he was satisfied.
And we were Winning.

Then we had the opportunity to Double Down for two dollars. We had the chance to Double Down again. Finally we were at octuple chances for the prize! Oh, Wow, it was Our Lucky Day! And it only cost Eight Dollars for Eight Chances! We only needed thirty-eight more points!
My husband started to laugh. "No, thanks."

We would have run faster, except we were laughing too hard.

I was afraid to be in New Orleans streets after dark, so I had limited the amount of money in my bag before we left the hotel. We counted up our respective cash after Silver Eyelids and The Counter Man had their chance at it. One of the best $20.00 lessons ever. And hey, we were Doubled Down. Two of us learned it for the price of one.

Jimmy Welty

In the middle of the city of HotWinds, inside a bookstore: portraits of famous American authors, reproduced on canvas. A tall, black, and moody homeless man used to come by almost every day. He would also cadge cigarettes from employees outside on break. Sometimes, he would scare the hell out of them. That was when he was drunk.

Most of the time, he was in the company of other homeless men, and they would all sit on the sidewalk benches, laughing and arguing and drinking beer out of discarded Styrofoam cups. He had different names, depending on who he talked to. To me, his name was Jimmy, and you had to be careful not to sit on that bench if he was coming toward it.

One night, Jimmy came screaming into the store while I was dealing with a customer service issue--i.e., an unhappy customer. He immediately barreled over to me, yelling that something was wrong, something about Grandma, and that I was a bitch. The security guard threw him out.

That customer service issue evaporated pretty damned quick. Jimmy asked the security guard if I would talk to him. So about ten minutes later, I went outside.

�Jimmy, I don�t understand what you�re trying to tell me.�

�Look.� He led me away from the door and toward the window, which did not make me happy, since the security guard couldn�t see me. He pointed.
�Every night I lie on this bench and talk to Grandma,� he told me. �When I get tired, she watches over me. But now she can�t watch over me no more.�

I looked in the shop window.  Eudora Welty�s portrait had fallen off the wall.
�See,� he pointed again. �Grandma.�

�I�ll take care of it,� I promised.

The hanging screw and wire had come out of the back of the picture. I poked a new hole in the back of the frame and screwed it up tight. I rehung Ms. Welty's portrait. Made sure it was level. And he was satisfied, for months. If he screamed at me, he apologized immediately. He�d back down.

On December 27th that year, I heard he�d killed a man in front of a downtown fast food outlet on Christmas Day. I don�t know if that�s true. I only know I never saw him again.

I asked a police officer once on our beat. But Jimmy was not his name. It is only a name constructed for me to know him by.

Eudora Welty was a white Southern author, childless and unmarried. Her stories are told by unreliable narrators. In this way, she scammed her readers into learning more about human frailty, strength, and social relations than you can even add up. She never preached. She just told stories.

How thin is the barrier between sane and insane, violence and security? Her grandson knew.

Awful Bumping Into You Like This

Three items of various importance:

Snowballs in Hell
Up by U Street, people twittered themselves a massive snowball fight meeting. Apparently all was ducky--the young adults had also helped cars floundering in the snow--even a police car! until they threw snowballs at an off-duty detective's car. He took exception and got out with gun drawn. (Perhaps 'unholstered' conveys it best.)

Well, he's crazy. This town is full of politically active people with a good poli sci education and cameras, Blackberries, and aspirations to make a statement (or a documentary). They didn't know he was a detective: car unmarked, plain clothes, heavy jacket--until he radioed in for backup. Then the 'pig' comments started. I hate that too.

Police backup came with guns out (and quickly re-holstered) because they saw it was stupid stuff. They were apparently misled by the detective. Then the uniforms sought to quell the disturbance with the detective still screaming behind them.

This is not going to go away. It's going to radiate outward, in millions of future interactions with our PD. The investigation is ongoing. The uniforms referred it up to supervisors. But you know, the City Paper has it now.

We don't know how that off-duty detective was circumstanced prior (grisly investigation, prior argument, was he drinking? what?). The problem is, whatever was prior, that's what teamwork is for. To gain support for tough times. Not to make more crap for everybody else on your side.

I have no way of knowing how good the fellowship would have been, before. I do know the fellowship after puts a strain on an already strained department. I don't have to be in law enforcement to understand that.

But this is an isolated incident. We have a bigger problem with city services, and it's potentially even more lethal in impact--but--not on the same emotional register.

Mass Transit Mismanagement:
WMATA has lots of headaches. People throwing themselves on the track, that's one. Can't fully operate during snow periods, that's two.  The potential for terrorist incidents that must be dealt with. That's big, but the big one? Those cute Metro cars keep having (or narrowly avoiding) accidents. Nine people died in a June crash. Two Metro workers were struck and killed in two separate accidents, and safety inspections were not scheduled afterward. In November, another crash. The entire transit authority is broke.  And we narrowly missed another crash due to equipment error last week.

I've decided that this disparity in tone and type of coverage is due to location. One stupid thing happened on the street. Bad decisions for Metro happened in an office. But more people are affected by crammed commutes. Especially if the safety equipment doesn't work.

Strange Diets:
In other civic news, the capital of the United States is out of broccoli, because the stores have not brought in new shipments due to snow. We are also mostly out of salad and coffeecake, too. However, there's still plenty of jelly and soft drinks. I noticed the liquor store is fully stocked, although, almost out of Perrier, which was what I wanted. We're going to be okay. Maybe a little hyperactive. So watch it with the drinking, the snowballs, the weapons, and the words, people.

Photos: city paper, washington post

A Deal is a Deal

When I moved to HotWinds, I went to work in a downtown store that had books, and coffee, and comfy chairs. It was a homeless magnet, you may be sure.

We had several characters. One would look at art books (I don�t mean pornography) or pretty complex works of history in the caf�. Periodically, uncontrollable rage would spew out of his mouth, loud and obscene. At the neighboring tables, the NewsMag journalists and the luncheon crowd would suddenly stiffen, electrified.  And the caf� staff was always afraid.

There were five managers taking shifts in that store. Four were guys. Two of the guys were scared of this man. Two enjoyed throwing him out. I had the middle road. I thought this man had maybe Tourettes Syndrome. If not, it worked out to the same thing.

So we had a ritual. I�d get a complaint, go over to him.
�How are you doing? You seem a little upset.�
�I�m fine, I�m just fine.�
�Okay, just checking. Other people are trying to read or talk, you know. You can keep it down, right?�
He would nod and look back down at the book. He was always careful with the books.

Second time: there was always a second time. �Hey, you still seem a little upset. I don�t want you to go, but if you scare people again, you know I�m going to have to ask you to leave.�

One time a mom with two grade-school children complimented me. Usually, mothers with grade-school children are angry about stuff like this. I still remember her, because it was nice.  She was calming her kids down, by handling it like that, too.

Third time: there was always a third time, too. So, out.

Social services made a difference for this man. He started showing up in clean, crisp shirts, snazzy check patterns, as good as the NewsMag guys had. His hair started to shine jet-black and clean. His eyes were brighter. Things were looking up.

He still exploded spontaneously though, but by then we knew each other pretty well. After the second visit, and the third explosion, he would close his book, square it neatly on top of the table, and leave on his own. Then he�d come back in a couple days, to learn more about Eugene delaCroix or the Napoleonic wars.

I suppose we had what you call a gentleman�s agreement.

In the City of HotWinds, Explosive Developments

Life is getting exciting where I live.
1. Yesterday, they arrested someone for (allegedly) throwing a Molotov cocktail four blocks from my condominium. He was protesting, but he didn't stick around long enough for anyone to read his placard. He was apprehended, but now they won't say what his issue was. (Maybe ambivalence.)

2. Five days before, Maryland police arrested (thank you very much) 19 members of the Royal Lion Tribe of the Latin Kings for (allegedly) throwing Molotov cocktails at a house in a Hot Winds satellite city called Rockville. In the spirit of interstate cooperation, NYPD also arrested a few of those 19 up in their city.

The article at the Washpost looks like it was longer, and then butchered to fit. It therefore makes no logical sense. While my guess is that this house was bombed over drug distribution, or perhaps consolidation of leadership, the article does not say.

3. But, apparently the spirit of interstate cooperation is alive-n-well for the gangs, too, since the new improved Maryland chapter of the Latin Kings recently visited  LK headquarters in Chicago and New York.
Marylanders, felicidades! We're all hooked up. The state flag is even the right colors: Yellow, black, and red. I wouldn't be surprised if it started showing up on the street in decorative apparel.