William Jay Gaynor

I love history. It holds a certain fascination for me when it is strictly the recitation of dates and events, but it becomes almost a passion when it is presented as real people living real lives in the past. Just this morning I discovered William Jay Gaynor, mayor of New York in the early 20th century.

I think the story of my discovery of Mayor Gaynor is interesting in and of itself. It starts with our decision to stop curb side recycling because of the limitations on what they would accept. We now take our "treasures" to a recycling center. It is a kind of fascinating place where all kinds of materials are welcome. In one corner they have a bookshelf full of people's discards. You are free to browse and take whatever you want; donations to the center are welcome but not required.

A few weeks back Harry and I took our recycling in and I was looking through the books when I found 5 volumes of American Heritage books from 1967. I latched onto them immediately; I love the books and they make good bed-time reading. It was in the February volume that I found William Jay Gaynor.

Gaynor was probably one of the biggest mistakes Tammany Hall ever made. They put him up as their candidate for mayor and he proved to be a thorn in their side for his entire term. He was a man who spoke his mind without regard from whom he might antagonize and it is this which I found so interesting. When he took office he told a friend: "For thirty years I have been thinking what I would do with this office. Now I am going to do it."

He had a special disregard for the self-righteous. Of Doctor Charles Henry Parkhurst, who constantly critized municipal government from his pulpit, Gaynor said: "Some people are altogether too good for this world; the sooner they are translated the better. Doctor Parkhurst thinks he is pious when he is only bilious."

This is a quote from the book - they say it better than I can. "To those who favored extra-legal methods to combat vice and crime, Gaynor preached: 'The only way to enforce the law is the way prescribed by law. That which cannot be done lawfully must not be done at all, by the police or any other public official from the President of the United States down.' His constant precept was, 'Ours is a Government of laws, and not of men.'"

I know this is long, but I think this bears adding. A taxpayer wanted to arrest wrongdoers and the mayor told him: "My dear sir, let me tell you that every citizen has full legal right to arrest anyone whom he sees committing any criminal offense, big or little. The law of England and of this country has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen....Sail right in as hard and as fast as you want to, being careful, however, only to arrest guilty persons, for otherwise your victims will turn around and sue you for damages for false arrest. Policemen have to take the same risk." He told his own police force that "not even a murderer can be arrested and imprisoned without evidence."

On converting the Jews he wrote: "It seems to me that this work of proselyting from other religions and sects is very often carried too far. Do you not think the Jews have a good religion?...I do not think I should give you a license to preach for the conversion of the Jews in the streets of the thickly settled Jewish neighborhoods which you designate. Would you not annoy them and do more harm than good? How many Jews have you converted so far?"

I guess what struck me so much about this article was that what was timely almost 100 years ago seemed so current.

Super Size Me - Variations on a Theme

We went to dinner last night at a diner in the Riverside area. I decided I wanted a hamburger and french fries, partly because they make fresh cut fries. They had a 1/4 pound hamburger for about $2.50 and a 1/2 order of fries for $1.00. That is what I ordered. I hardly ever order drinks in restaurants (unless it is coffee with breakfast or a beer in the evening).

The waitress said "I am going to bring you the 1/2 pound hamburger with 1/2 order of fries and a drink because you can get that for $4.99." I looked on the board and, sure enough, that was their special. However, I did not want the special.

I told her I really didn't want a 1/2 pound hamburger. I resisted the temptation to launch into a tirade about how that was over twice the serving size for meat, and especially for greasy hamburger. I just told her I didn't want the 1/2 pound burger and I did not want anything to drink except water.

I must have grown three heads while I was sitting there, judging by the way she looked at me. And I am sure she doesn't get many people who turn down larger servings when they are "a bargain". But why should I spend $4.99 for more food than I wanted when I could get what I wanted for $3.50?

She may have been calculating her tip. If I could get Harry to tip by my formula - by person rather than a percentage of the bill - she would get the same whether she sold me a slice of bread or the Taj Mahal! That is assuming, of course, that the quality of service was adequate.

Anyway, there was no harm done. I got my little burger and it was more than adequate. It had enough onion with it to choke a horse, even a horse like me who likes onions. The fries were good although they could have been hotter. (That is a whole 'nother blog. Why is it so damn hard to get a hot order of french fries any more, not matter where you go?)

So I am still not skinny by any stretch of the imagination, but I am not as fat as I could be!

Why Can't I Say it Like That?

A lot of the reading I do for work relates to death. We deal with health and specifically a lot of end of life issues.

Almost every article I would read about death would refer to Sherwin B. Nuland's book "How We Die". So last week I decided I needed to read the book. I was starting to think I might be the only person around who hadn't.

I am less than 1/4 of the way through the book. Dr. Nuland has put into words that make me jealous some of the things I have tried to express. For instance, I have never cared for viewing of the body before, during, or after a funeral. I was horrified the first time it happened. I was 10 years old and attending my grandfather's funeral. I had already experienced seeing my father cry for the first time. Then everyone got up and went sedately to the front of the church. I didn't know why we were going up there but I think my young mind assumed we were going to get a treat. Imagine my horror when I discovered we went to the alter to view my dead grandfather in his coffin!

As time progressed and I experienced more funerals, I learned not to be so repelled by this practice but I still found it unpleasant. I came to the conclusion that very few of the bodies I viewed bore much resemblance to the living persons they had once housed. They looked like wax figurines. I attributed this to the fact that the personality was what made an individual what he or she really was. But I never felt I could express it well. Dr. Nuland has done it for me.

"That day would surely have been a lot easier for me, and its memory less painful, had I but known that not only my own grandmother but indeed everyone becomes littler with death - when the human spirit departs, it takes with it the vital stuffling of life. Then, only the inanimate corpus remains, which is the least of all the things that make us human."

His book is really interesting as it describes the physiology of dying. I want to share some of it with my mother so she can understand that Daddy's death was natural and not the result of some negligence on the part of his caretakers. I have to figure out how to present it to her - it has to be brief and to the point, and she doesn't like the idea that living is fatal.

Chuckle, Chuckle

Just a quick note. I was re-reading some of my blogs and found some serious spelling errors in them. Now I was an English major in college and taught junior high language arts for two of the longest years of my life. Spelling has never been my strong point but I always prided myself on knowing how to look up the words I didn't know how to spell.

Computers have been my downfall, partly because, although I am not a terrible typist, I will never be the world's most accurate. Also, I now have a tendency to do things more quickly and don't keep my Webster's by my side.

I decided to edit my blogs and correct the spelling using spell check. I learned that one of the words that this site's spell check does not recognize as a word is "blog".

I don't know whether it is genetic or societal, but something in my makeup compels me to see things like that as humorous. Kind of like when we were out last night and drove by a new housing development called "Turtle Run". Talk about an oxymoron!

Fun with words. There is no greater.

Red Tape and Fools

I have been trying to assist my mother with some of the details of rearranging the pieces of her life following my father's death. My parents have virtually no material assets so on the surface it would appear that there would be few loose ends to tie up. Wrong!

First, Mother has to have a copy of her marriage certificate in order to satisfy the requirements of Social Security, I assume to have her income adjusted to what it should be as a surviving spouse. Of course, she had provided them one, she says, when she started drawing Social Security, but they do not have it on file. My sister ordered one from the state through the mail three weeks ago and it has not yet arrived. I have been trying to track it for her but to no avail. I made the mistake of telling her I ordered mine online and got it in three days.

Daddy had a Medicare suplement policy and the premiums for that were taken out of their bank account by automatic draft. Mother called the agency that had handled it asking for the man with whom they had worked. She was informed that he was no longer with the agency and that she would need to furnish a death certificate in order for the policy to be cancelled and the drafts stopped. This policy is a couple hundred dollars a month, which apparently at this point is about half her income. It didn't make sense to me that it would be that hard to cancel a policy that wasn't mandatory so I decided to go directly to the insurance company. It was a struggle, what with an automated phone system which did not give any option I thought applied, and an erroneous email address, but I finally reached them by fax. A nice lady called me back and said that the information given Mother was incorrect. They could stop the bank draft right away, although they could not stop August as it had already got to far along in the process. They would draw no more than August's. I was also told they would accept a photocopy of the death certificate, they would cancel the policy back to July 17, and the unearned premium would be refunded. This was all what I was hoping to accomplish, but I was surprised to actually get it done.

I will never understand why people who don't know what they are talking about can't keep their mouths shut and refer the questioner to someone who does know. Instead, they hand out important misinformation in a cavalier manner, never seeming to understand the damage they do to individuals but telling them the wrong thing. I may yet write a letter to that agency and rake the nameless woman who misled mother over the proverbial coals.

Speaking of fools - I would like to get my hands on the idiot who convinced my parents that the "scooter" Medicare bought for Daddy was the answer to all their prayers. It was totally inappropriate. My dad couldn't see very well and he had suffered a stroke. He wasn't by any means totally impaired mentally, but some of his thought processes were damaged. He was not a candidate to be meandering around on George, the name he gave his scooter, all over town. He almost got wiped out by a semi one day. Now Mother, who cannot see worth a darn either, has this scooter which is doing no one any good. Why couldn't Medicare have purchased the hearing aids instead?

Speaking of hearing aids - What kind of ethics does a doctor have who sells equipment costing several thousand dollars on $50 a month payments to 80 year old people? Now Mother has, in addition to a worthless scooter, two hearing aids which never did work well and are nearly out of warranty and an unpaid balance of over $1,500! No one will want to buy the hearing aids and spend $300 to have them retooled to fit. I wouldn't give you a dime for them without the warranty. They were in the shop more often than in Daddy's ears.

I haven't contacted the hearing aid people yet but it is on my to do list. I am waiting until I get all my questions in a row and all my anger under control. However, I do feel a strong need to also talk to the KDOA (Kansas Department on Aging).

The Dance

It is trite, but sometimes the smallest things in life can bring such pleasure.

Last year I looked out my kitchen window and there were swallows swooping and diving. The sight of them was thrilling; it was almost like a choreographed dance. I called Harry and Kirsty to come look at it and they agreed. I am really not much of a dance person but every once in awhile it hits me just right and I do enjoy it. The swallow dance makes me smile.

I just looked out my office door and the swallows were outside it doing their dance once again. It was accompanied by their rather one-note song. But it is so nice to just watch them going about their business. A bonus is to think that they might be eating mosquitoes while they are at it.

They also try to make nests in the awning over our front door and then poop on the "stoop". That isn't quite so pleasant as our clients don't really like having to dodge bird doo. (Many of them are too old to have the agility to dodge much of anything!) But you have to look at the whole picture, and when that is the picture of the swallow dance, it is acceptable.

August 2

Tomorrow is August 2. My dad's birthday. I was going to go see him. But I won't. Because he died 2 weeks ago, on July 16.

He was alive and then he was dead. Oh, his health was fragile. He had multiple problems. He had a heart attack 15 years ago and a stroke 5 years ago. He had COPD. And, of course, he was missing a few body parts, like his lower left arm and the thumb off his right hand. He didn't have the strength to walk, but he got all around the nursing home in his wheel chair. He had trouble finding the right words to say, compliments of the stroke, but he was mentally competent, alert, and interactive.

According to my sister Teresa who saw him about an hour before he died, he was pretty much the same as he had always been. An hour later his heart just quit working and he left us.

It is harder for me to grasp the reality, even though I went up to the nursing home to see him after he had died, I saw him at the funeral home, I sat through his funeral, and I went to the cemetery. But I didn't see him every day when he was alive like Mother, Barbie, and TC did, so going a couple of weeks without visiting him is no different for me. But it is different, because I know he isn't there. And I should be up there with him tonight and tomorrow for his birthday. But I'm not. Because he died. My daddy is gone. Boy is there really a hole in my life now.

And I cannot seem to cry. It has been over 2 weeks and I have not broken down and cried. Most of the time I have that "tears behind the eyeballs" feeling, but it is like a sneeze coming on and then fading away. The tears never really come. I finally did some armchair psychology on myself and decided that my subconscious knows that crying is admitting the reality. So I don't cry. If I don't cry, he isn't really dead. Only he is. He really is.