Tribute to a Trash Man

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep the streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve lived in a lot of east coast cities, and somehow I keep coming back home to New Orleans. The whole atmosphere here is different. It’s the food, the music, the clothes, the rhythm of daily life here is like nowhere else, right down to the trash pickup. The loss of Cornelius Washington is a sad day for the metro area, even though very few people knew who he was. This Times-Picayune tribute is well-deserved. Cornelius Washington is part of what made our city special, and he will be missed.

Cornelius Washington, wizard of trash cans, dies -

Washington’s street choreography of playful twirling and tossing often prompted applause. With a full trash can in each arm, he would “pop” both cans upside-down into the truck’s metal jaws, then set them back on the curb without losing his stride. From seemingly impossible distances, he would toss dozens of bags and boxes rapid-fire, landing them all in the back of the truck without dropping a scrap of paper.

“Cornelius was amazing. He could do things that I didn’t think that people could do with garbage,” said Dorothy Taylor, who has driven New Orleans garbage trucks for 18 years.

… When interviewed last year, Washington said hoppers in other cities seemed lackluster. “It’s too textbook,” he said. “They stop the truck. They step off the truck. They pick up the can. They dump it. Then they put the can back down in that one spot.”

No comparison with New Orleans, where hoppers like him had nearly perfected the art of trash pickup, he said.

“If they was to put a garbage man in the Guinness World Book of Records, I would be in there,” he said.

His boasting wasn’t based on showmanship alone. Washington knew where each handicapped and elderly neighbor lived and taught younger hoppers to return cans right to their doors. He also told them to work together with other hoppers on big stacks of refuse and to warn the truck driver about street closings, children, drunks and careless bicyclists.

“Every driver wanted Cornelius on his truck,” Taylor said. “There will never be another like him.”

Sound like a good job to you?

You’ve spent over a decade in education and on the job training and incurred over a $100,000 in debt in order to get into a profession. In this profession, if you make a mistake you’re going to get sued.  A jury will rely more on emotion than facts to find you guilty, and it’s going to cost you a bundle to defend yourself anyway - even if you win, the process is the punishment.  Your reputation will be irreparably harmed no matter the outcome.

The government is always on the prowl to find new ways to regulate you. And if you violate those regulations, you don’t just get fined. You can go to jail. You may take a lot of pleasure and satisfaction in the work but the work itself is stressful, with serious and long-reaching potential consequences.

Politicians are out there every week on the campaign trail telling people that they have a right to enjoy your services without paying for them and building resentment against you and your coworkers.  Two, maybe three of the top contenders for president of the country seem to think it would be just keen for you to work as essentially an indentured servant with your working conditions and pay determined by the government, which would be the only employer available for your industry. And although that hasn’t yet happened, the largest and fastest growing market for your services is already subject to arbitrary price controls by the government.

If you were that guy, maybe you’d be thinking about retiring or finding a different job. If you were contemplating that career, maybe you’d reconsider.  Wouldn’t you?

Obama: gaffe-prone or just really dumb?

The Anchoress has a link-filled indictment of Obama at Obama: gaffe-prone or just really dumb?

It’s easy, when you’re preoccupied with daily life, to lose track of the little things. A gaffe here, a misstatement there, and when the media is all too eager to suppress information that doesn’t help Michelle Obama’s kids, it tends to get swept under the rug. The Anchoress’ post is a great roundup of those things.

The Steadfast Wind In the Senator’s Sails - that still doesn’t power a wind farm.

This WaPo printed version of a Lifetime movie only lacks background music:

The Steadfast Wind In the Senator’s Sails - With Wife Vicki Beside Him, Ted Kennedy Will Set His Course Through Rough Waters

Awww… that’s so sweet! But that wind still doesn’t power a wind farm, one of many hypocrisy’s of Kennedy’s long - too long - career. The point of the article seems to be to set his wife up to take his seat when he leaves office:

By all accounts, she is Ted Kennedy’s principal handler, closest political adviser and now his primary caregiver, juggling his large extended family and his political network… Vicki Reggie, a Washington lawyer… Like her husband, Vicki Reggie grew up in a large and very political family. Her father, Edmund, a retired Louisiana judge and lawyer, helped deliver his state for vice presidential candidate John F. Kennedy at the 1956 Democratic convention and developed a close social relationship with the family. … she was a successful banking lawyer and partner in her firm … they went from their honeymoon straight to the Democratic convention, where Vicki’s first act as a political spouse was to greet 500 people at a party the couple hosted for the Massachusetts delegation. She gave up practicing law by 1997, reportedly to ensure that she would never be faced with any conflicts of interest, and advocates for many of the social issues her husband champions, particularly gun control. Washington friend Pam Covington surmised that Vicki’s “upbringing made the transition easy — she’s from a close family herself, she’s political, she shares his faith.” Friends describe Vicki as a well-informed mother hen, the premier “go-to” in any crisis. … She helps prep him for talk shows, works on his speeches and played a pivotal role in his decision to endorse Barack Obama, whom she’s been helping court Catholic votes. Her political skills and grace are such that there has been quiet speculation that she could succeed her husband in the Senate one day.

I’m sick of these political families. It’s been sarcastically noted, “Why not just go the whole nine yards and convert it into a peerage?” The trouble is, between incumbency, connections, and name recognition, they’re nearly de facto peerages now; you practically need explosives to pry their cheeks from the seat of power.  Do the subjects of the “People’s Socialist Republic of Massachusetts” really want to keep the Kennedys in power or are they just not being offered any other choices?

We need socialized medicine for the children!

This US News and World Report was good: More Young People Going Without Health Insurance but the subhead was annoying - “Study finds 13.7 million without coverage, mostly because of cost.” The fact is that families are making informed decisions to not buy individual policies for their young adult children (which are quite inexpensive) because those young adults need little or no health care. Rather than spend $100 a month on a policy that will almost certainly not get used, they’d prefer to spend $75-100 on a doctors visit, and try to get samples, or request generics for any medication that will be needed. Because for the vast majority of people that age, the flu, an ear or yeast infection, or other mild-to-moderate problems requiring a single visit are the worst thing that will happen. Why spend $1200 on that gap year when you probably only need to spend $100-$150? It’s just common sense; less of a gamble than an educated financial decision.

It’s yet another false crisis to soften us up for socialized medicine, a philosophy which to one degree or another, all three presidential candidates subscribe. Still, the article was at least somewhat evenhanded; what you get out of a casual read of it will depend on your point of view.

The number of young adults without health insurance rose again in 2006, so 38 percent of high school graduates and 34 percent of college graduates will spend some time uninsured in the year after graduation, a new report shows.

It rose AGAIN. But they balanced it with “some” time.

“We’ve been tracking this since 2003, and every year we’ve done the study, the number of uninsured has grown,” said report co-author Sara Collins, an assistant vice president at the Commonwealth Fund.

There were 13.7 million Americans aged 19 to 29 without health insurance in 2006, up from 13.3 million in 2005, according to the latest federal data, the report said.

EVERY YEAR the number grows. Oh noes! They at least were specific with stating that people were without insurance, not without care. Free or discounted care is available from a variety of sources in this country.

“There are a couple of transition periods when you turn 19,” Collins said. “Many health insurance programs won’t cover you as a child, and also when you graduate from college.”

Public programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program end coverage at the age of 19. “Voluntary employer-provided insurance is tied to the ability to get a job, and the jobs available to young people tend to be those that don’t carry benefits,” Collins said.

While young people are less likely to need health care, “they do use the health-care system,” she said. “Losing coverage at this time can affect your ability to transition effectively into a situation of health care.”

That’s right; they are MUCH less likely to need health care. And they tend to only need it for minor things, as I stated above.

And when young people do require health care, it can be because of a major accident, in which costs can be “catastrophic,” Collins said. “And it is never a good idea to be without health insurance, no matter what your age.”

Those costs CAN be catastrophic. But they can also be treated in a charity hospital, or waived, or paid out over long periods with no real effect on your credit report. For the vast majority of people these things don’t come up at all, and for the few who decide to go without insurance (which, again, is extremely cheap for healthy young people) this is the consequence. It’s easily dealt with over time. And care is not withheld from those who need it. The overall effect of the article is to convey that THIS IS A PROBLEM THAT MUST BE SOLVED! But the fact is that the marketplace already makes cheap coverage available, and that in a free country people are able to choose how to spend their money, and in a free country, there are consequences - sometimes bad ones - for our choices. That’s not a problem that must be solved. There’s a basic “safety net” in that care is not withheld, welfare is available in certain circumstances, and private payment agreements can be made.

And to cleanse the palate of the “victim” image the article paints of young American adults, here’s a repost of my For The Sicko Fans from last July with some very relevant videos:
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If you enjoyed Sicko and would now like to base our nations healthcare system on a few anecdotes and some very dicey statistics, here’s a couple of palette-cleansing videos for you.

First, it’s not a crisis for the US:

It’s a crisis for those who are stuck with single payer healthcare:

How are those anecdotes working out for you now? I’ll say it again:

War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, single-payer healthcare is free. The very name, “single-payer healthcare” is one of the best modern examples of Newspeak I’ve ever heard. It’s not “single-payer.” Everybody pays. Whether they use it or not. And it’s not “healthcare.” It’s healthcare rationing. Kevin, MD posts often on the lunacy that is “universal health care” or a single-payer system such as those used by Britain and Canada. And it is lunacy to give the government control of how and when we see a doctor.

And here’s one more - four months to get an MRI for a possible brain tumor:

Beef Sortaganoff and I am woman, hear me roar!

The night before my husband’s surgery, I barely slept. There’s just something about general anesthesia that spooks me, and combined with my recent paranoia and urge to buy life insurance, the little whisper in my head was saying, “This is it. This is what you were afraid of; it’s the end of the life you’ve built.” The guilt of knowing I’ve been building my house on the sand, together with the guilt of having spent a good part of the evening dealing with an emergency from a client that needed to be resolved before I took two days off was a recipe for a sleepless night. Then the surgery; along with repentance, prayer, and an overwhelming gratitude that God granted us more time - along with a resolve to keep my eyes on the eternal and not waste any more of my life. So I very cheerfully brought him home and fetched and stepped and I was especially glad to, considering all he does for me. That was part of my fear, actually; he’s taken such good care of me over the years that I feel quite dependent sometimes. As it happens, yesterday disabused me of my worries about my perceived helplessness.

I had taken out meat for dinner, expecting to make stuffed pork chops. (He’s always starving after surgery for some reason, and though we start light with soup and scrambled eggs, by evening he’s more than ready for solid food.) Unfortunately, at dinnertime I realized that I’d taken out a beef eye of round, not pork. That’s really tough meat, and there wasn’t anything else in the house. We’re flat broke; in fact, today is payday, so a trip to the store was out of the question. No time to marinate it or slow cook it. I ended up slicing it, pounding the crap out of it, and inventing Beef Sortaganoff.  (Added: when you pound meat, make sure to wear an apron or a towel or you’ll look like you’ve recently left a crime scene.)

I had some cream of mushroom soup, a can of beef onion gravy, and about 3/4 of a cup of sour cream. So I fried the pounded beef in a little oil, added the soup and gravy, and let it simmer while I cooked penne pasta (the only kind in the house.) Mix the liquid with the drained, cooked pasta, stir in the sour cream at the last minute, and there you have it - Beef Sortaganoff. Not too much like the real thing, but very edible, not to mention economical. Given our recent economizing and my dislike for spam, maybe I should keep the recipe in mind. It was much better than Hamburger Helper and we practically lived off of that stuff in the 90s.

So from the other side of the bed (the side of his good arm), I put one knee on the bed and leaned over to hand him his dinner. Crack! the base of the bed snapped and the mattress sagged into the drawers below. We got one of these about 18 months ago. I know, friends don’t let friends buy particle board… but we also didn’t know if we’d like the style, and didn’t want to invest a lot of money into it unless we were sure. Later on we’re going to use this as a pattern to build one of wood, although we’ll be adding another layer of drawers to it. But I digress.

I was in a panic, and began to wonder which one of our men friends I could call on for help. Then I remembered… am I not the woman who, at 19 years old and armed only with some borrowed tools and a Chilton’s manual, replaced the starter, alternator, distributor and head gasket on my Pinto? Why, yes, I am. Did I not wield a chainsaw to great effect in the weeks after Katrina? Why, yes. I did. I decided to fix the bed on my own. Well, not entirely on my own; my daughter was ready and willing to help. We’re Curtis women. Isn’t our family motto “try hard things”? We can do this. Right?

Kris was dispatched to the couch, and Susanna and I rooted through his power tools and scrap lumber. We figured out how to use the chop saw, and proceeded, all digits intact, to clear the area and disassemble the bed. (Hey, that gun’s loaded, okay? Mind how you handle it. Yes, that one too.) Aside from some issues with the drill (WHY does it keep going backward!? Oh, that button.) and outright missing the blocks of wood (I didn’t say any profanities but I was thinking them REAL loud) we were screwing to the inside of the particle board frame several times, we did just fine.

The Curtis Women - Victorious! We are women, hear us ROAR! If we could make that Tim Allen noise, we would have. So while I have been cared for and loved, I don’t really think I’ve become that dependent. I’m still creative, ambitious, and not too prideful to ask for help when necessary. When I need to get something done, I still can. What a blessing the reminder has been!

Now back to our regularly scheduled stepping and fetching.

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Photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

Out! - UPDATED

My husband is having another surgery today - hopefully the last - due to an on the job injury two years ago. He’ll never fully have the use of his right arm again, but if the surgery goes well he’ll regain more use, and he won’t be in pain every day. So I’ll be away from the computer today and most of tomorrow. I have some timed posts set up, but obviously if your comments get kicked to the moderated queue it’ll be a day or two before I can get them out.

Update: The surgery went well, and while it’s too soon to know the level of permanent impairment but the doctor is taking a very positive attitude about it.  (He’s already lost 5% and has pins and assorted hardware in his wrist; today was his elbow.)  So we’re back home and I’m stepping and fetching.  Pharmacist, nurse, cook, waitress, valet, pillow fluffer and all around Girl Friday.  And blessed to be so. 

I Can Haz Furgivnis?

I struggled with how to deal with the Christian necessity of forgiveness for a long time, finally studying up and writing a three-part series on it: Forgiveness and Acceptance Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

The key that really helped me deal with certain things was the understanding that forgiveness and acceptance of someone back into my life were two entirely different things - and a reminder that God is sovereign and that I can rely on Him made all the difference.

more cat pictures

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