What ails America, part B

Health hysteria, individual or environmental, is everywhere. Actually, rampant I believe. I used to think this foolishness was confined to dopey, ex-hippies who claimed to be sensitive to or negatively impacted by all sorts of things in life. Or generated by the Cosmic Organics people who developed a rash if they inadvertently ate a tomato from Chile.

Nowadays, my local Senior Center has notices on the doors saying you cannot wear any scent in the building. People near where I live claim they get vertigo from a wind turbine located at some distance from their homes. Others claim their children misbehave because of it. A lady I know says she gets headaches from RF waves and won’t let the gas company put a new meter on her house.

There are reasons New England has the highest gasoline, home heating and electricity rates in the country. Proposals to build refineries are always defeated, off or on shore LNG terminals are protested, wind turbine farms are in court for ten years, high tension electricity lines are halted.

I remember when a new soccer fields or park or library was thought to be a good thing for the town. Not anymore. NIMBY rules the land. An elderly couple here recently halted construction of a mixed housing development because it would be on land behind their house and they wanted the land, although it is privately owned, to remain undeveloped regardless of the general welfare.

The larger issue, of course, is that we, as a country, as a society, are totally unable to determine what would be in our overall best interests and proceed from there. We use the Interstate Highway System every day but are resigned to the fact that it could not be built, and certainly cannot be expanded, today. We complain about the cost of gas and electricity and heating oil but we refuse to do anything that would help to reduce those costs. If the proposal adversely affects one nut, in good conscience we cannot go forward.

This does not bode well for my town, Massachusetts or America.

The trouble with old people, part 47

A community, like Yarmouth, like Cape Cod in general, with a larger percentage of elderly residents than the statewide or nationwide average will suffer severe consequences. Especially if they live alone. The real tragedy isn’t that the elderly are terrible drivers famous for hitting the gas in front of hair salons or tattoo parlors and crashing through the front windows. It’s not the left hand turn signal that never goes out no matter which direction they are travelling. No, it is even more serious than that.

Old folks, and we have twice as many as the rest of the state as a percentage of our total population, eventually stop shopping and going out to eat. They get Meals on Wheels. The only workers they require are minimum wage home health aides and grass cutters. They require serious health care assistance and more drug stores per capita than casinos in Las Vegas. They stop making any contribution to the local economy. They start to drag it down.

And they vote, against everything. School funding can’t be improved, town infrastructure maintained, new projects, like sewers or mixed housing developments, can’t get started. After town meeting or voting they gather on the sidewalk bumping into each other’s walkers and wondering out loud where they are and commenting to each other about the high taxes keeping them from going to Foxwoods more than twice a month. They won’t sell their retirement homes and simply stop maintaining them instead. The grass grows up and the trim paint peels off. Property values in the neighborhood decline but they don’t care because they can’t see the messy pile they live in for what it really is.

That cheap wooden ramp up to the front door is always an attractive feature. The general thought today is that moving in with one of the children and perhaps the grandchildren would be a big negative for everybody.

And that may be true if you are as cranky, depressed and unpleasant to everyone as many of these folks are. That’s perhaps why no one comes to visit any more. It’s not just that “everyone is dead” as you like to say, it’s more that you have grown into an old asshole.

My grandmother Callery came to live with us when her husband died and we were little children. She cooked and cleaned, made pleasant conversation with the parents, watched the children and contributed to the family. Because she had worked before Social Security she had no income of her own. Now, I’m not suggesting making old people dependents of their families but I can’t help but think that many elderly would actually feel better and have a better outlook if they were part of an extended family on a regular basis.

Visiting a Friend

Some days I simply stop by Martha’s grave because it is nearby and I would like to chat.

Yes, I’m aware that makes no literal sense. My elderly next door neighbor goes to church early each day before Mass so he can pray for friends and relatives. He figures prayers from his church will be on a fast track to the Almighty. I go to the Pine Grove Cemetery to talk to Martha because I figure she can hear me better. In a pinch, I will talk to her from anywhere I happen to be but why not go where the reception is best, especially if it is nearby.

But there are certain days when something a little more formal is required. Decoration Day was what my grandmother called Memorial Day. That was an occasion to “decorate” the graves of loved ones. I usually have some spring flowers in a pot. July 15 is the anniversary of Martha’s death and daughter Jessica and her kids were here this year for that day so we all went over. Recently, I was there for our anniversary. I had mums for the fall and I cleaned up all the family graves and markers that had been overgrown over the summer. Martha loved Christmas so that’s also an important time to visit. And her birthday. You get the idea.

I chat away with Martha’s grandparents and parents just like we were all out to dinner. But with Martha, I provide updates: which of the granddaughters is doing what; who said something funny or cute; what nutty things I’m doing. As if I were not peculiar enough!

I know. I know. A person could get put away for a lot less. But I have no intention of stopping because these “visits” seem to keep me on a even keel and definitely make me feel better.

Imaginary Places

Cape Cod is loaded with imaginary towns. These are technically old villages that are a part of actual towns that no one wants to list, apparently, as their home town. There are seven such villages in the Town of Barnstable, five in Dennis and three in Yarmouth.

People say they are from Dennisport or Marston Mills or Osterville or South Yarmouth. Post Offices and old churches and, here on the Cape, public library branches have contributed to this illusion.

Names are part of the problem. Within the Town of Barnstable, the political seat of Barnstable County, lies the Village of Barnstable. So if you say you are from Barnstable you mean the village, not the town. No one is apparently from the Town of Barnstable. You are from Centerville, Osterville, Marston Mills, Hyannis, Cotuit, Barnstable or West Barnstable. The Village of Barnstable includes the even smaller Village of Cummaquid. The Village of Centerville includes the even smaller Village of Craigville. The Village of South Yarmouth includes the even smaller Village of Bass River.

Soon most of these village post offices will be closed and the churches, with falling attendance, will be consolidated. Branch libraries have been closed everywhere else in the world in favor of modern central libraries.We do, after all, have automobiles and buses to reach distant places outside our immediate village.

An interesting side effect of this Balkanization is that when the Town of Yarmouth, or any of these actual Towns for that matter, wants to do anything, if that thing will affect South Yarmouth, for example, positively, everyone in West Yarmouth and Yarmouthport will vote against it. If the thing the Town is proposing would negatively affect Yarmouthport, everyone in West Yarmouth and South Yarmouth would vote for it.

We are nothing if not parochial here.

Some Thoughts on Saving Baseball from Itself

Professional baseball games take too long to complete, especially between the Yankees and the Red Sox. If the first inning takes over 40 minutes to finish something is wrong. If the entire nine innings takes more than four hours something is seriously wrong.

Here are some helpful hints to rectify this problem and get us all to bed at a decent hour.

Batters are to stay in the batter’s box unless suffering from a serious equipment failure or clearly needing to remove a large object from the eye. (Or a moth from the ear). The ump must decide if you can flee the box. And only once per time at bat. No spitting on batting gloves after every pitch, tightening batting glove straps, in fact no damn batting gloves at all. Rub some dirt on your hands and man up. Stop adjusting your helmet, your cup, your chewing tobacco. Swing the bat for Christ’s sake. You are paid millions of dollars, in part, to address the ball. Do it! You do not need to relax and re-compose yourself after every pitch. You are, supposedly, a professional. You hit this damned thing for a living!

Pitchers make tens of millions of dollars a year but most can’t throw straight. In fact, a number of them seem reluctant to throw the ball at all. No more leaving the mound and wandering in the infield wilderness for forty years between pitches. You too must stop all those odd superstitious idiosyncrasies. Leave the mound, except to chase the hit ball and the batter walks to first. And throw strikes. No one is fooled when you throw three pitches up for balls and follow that demonstration by throwing the fourth pitch low in the strike zone. Throw one pitch after the other until the inning is over. It is not necessary to attempt to strike every batter out on eight or ten pitches. Almost all of them will quite willingly pop up or ground out if you repeatedly throw strikes.

Outfielders should stop throwing caught balls into the stands. Pitchers should stop demanding a new ball after every pitch. A couple of balls should last the whole game. Catchers may call time once in a game to consult with a pitcher. This is not neuroscience. Supposedly you chatted before the game about what to throw to what batter. Remember, you are professionals, right?

Relief pitchers should arrive on the mound ready to pitch. What the hell have they been doing out there all night anyway? Pitching coaches may visit the mound once each game, you decide when. Managers may make two pitching changes a game. A starting pitcher must pitch until the end of the seventh inning unless so brutally injured he has to be put down. Hopefully, the closer can pitch for two bloody innings but if that is too much for that baby on your staff use two, one for the eighth and one for the ninth but that’s it.

All games go on for five innings regardless of weather. If rain causes a delay after that, the game is called thirty minutes later unless the weather has improved enough to continue. If not, move on to the next game. We all have important things to do.

Finally, no more long singing interludes and to hell with the seventh inning stretch. The game is only going to last two hours from start to finish, no one needs to stretch anything.