The Most Wonderful Time of The Year – A Ghost Story

Oh yes, this is the house. We have launched Project Merry Gentlemen in Purgatory this year. Last year, we haunted public officials under Project Windsock. It did not do much good. This year, we have big business in our crosshairs. We want to make sure you remember the role you are supposed to play in society. Some of you muckety mucks need to remember there is a God and you are not her!” “Her?” I asked. “It’s a long story”, the ghost sighed. “It says here you are a managed care executive. I am not sure what that means but it sounds like an oxymoron.” I started to look defensive and he quickly changed the subject. “Look I got a lot of other business people to speak with tonight. I am initially visiting the ones that own only one house. They are easier to locate.”

The Lions, Lambs and Asses of 1914

The truce became symbolic for the common man’s struggle against the insanity and the cruel machinery of war. It also proved that the only thing stronger than hate and war is love and common humanity. The world may never again witness a war as senseless, devastatingly efficient in its slaughter or tragic in its far reaching consequences. As a witness to these memorials, you reflect in the silent alcoves and review the honor role of those who fell in battle. You can almost see the youthful faces of a young German and Englishman lighting candles and longing for a Christmas at home – -whether it was cutting a tree in the deep snows of a Bavarian mountain village or crunching across the crisp, heavy frosted pasture of a Gloustershire winter’s morning.

The Gods of Frolic

The father could not disguise his dislike of Max. Max did not much care for the father either, and avoided him like a bad neighborhood. A penchant for marking sofas, Christmas trees and bathroom towels had Max constantly vying for alpha status as head of the household. The father did not appreciate Max’s zeal for leadership and loathed his relentless regularity, his lack of inspiration and his tendency toward promiscuity. In dog years, Max was an 18-year-old boy; his behavior made sense to the boys. Yet the canine was not without guile and premeditation. In the summer of 1974, alpha dog bested alpha father in an act of pure revenge.

Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark

Image by erjkprunczyk via Flickr

When the AARP membership letter arrived, I put it in a pile of misdirected mail and prepared to walk it over to my next door neighbor, Charlie. Imagine my elation and surprise when I discovered that it was addressed to me. Apparently, I had joined a new demographic.

I had uncerimoniously turned 50 in September and was hoping to sneak by this dubious headstone like a kid whistling through the graveyard. I had zero interest in celebrating the autumn solstice of my life with a room full of fellow survivors.  I informed my loving wife that a quiet, more personal commemoration might be appropriate – perhaps a new sports car or a trip to Europe. This seemed infinitely preferable to ripping the seat of my pants while trying to do the worm on the dance floor at a 50th birthday fete.

I was now entering October country – - that shadowy meridian that separates the last sighs of September’s Indian Summer of youth and the cooler, denuded November twilight of mature life. It’s in the autumn of our days that the unexpected tends to happen; and sometimes, when you least expect it, you get sideswiped by Life and it it sucks. There are those days when you really just want to be ten years old again with your greatest concern being what you will wear for Halloween.  I had to come to grips with the fact that it was 2011, not 1971. The future was no longer a horizon line road that seemed to carry on forever. 50 was beginning to feel like a truck with bad brakes.

Perhaps my negativity created a karmic low pressure system or I may have offended St Propanus, the patron Saint of generators, because no sooner had I begun to wallow in self pity that the Great Nor’easter of October 30th hit.   I was just two days into being Mr. Mom having been left behind by my highly organized Captain who had slipped out of the country to visit our daughter who was studying abroad.  The remaining crew was a pathetic ship of fools – the hapless husband, two determined teenage boys, a bulimic Australian Shepherd and a demonic house cat that was now using her urine as a warped form of foreign policy.

When the electricity died Saturday afternoon, I initially smiled as the reassuring switches and subsequent thrum of the back-up generator restored my power. I was the resourceful ant who had elected to invest in the future while elsewhere, feckless grasshoppers were being berated by their partners for being too cheap or too New England-proud to make provisions for the potential for electrical outages. I admit that the purchase of the generator was a no brainer. My home lacks a certain charm when there is no running water, heat, phone, wi-fi or ESPN. It quickly becomes a giant port-o-potty.

As a native Californian, the cost and logistics of burying a 1000 gallon propane tank in my garden did not sit well with me. Before moving to New England from California, the biggest propane tank I had seen was on a Coleman camping stove — and that damn thing lasted for a year. Surely a 120 gallon tank of propane could run my house for a month. I would later learn that 120 gallons of propane can power a 100 watt lamp and an electric clock for about one day.  Introduce teenage electrical thieves that steal heat while you are freezing, play XBox while you are blacked out, microwave while you are drinking iced coffee and cap it off with a twenty minute hot shower — and you have a recipe for rapid power failure.

As the propane tank slowly drained of its life force, the service company informed me that they could not make it to my house for several days – ensuring that I was now going to run out of power. Apparently, they were also running out of power. This led me to the draconian decision to announce to the boys that we were going to ration our electricity. My energy conservation plan was not well received by the natives. Truth be told, it bugged me. We had bought the generator so we would not have to sit in the dark. Yet, here we were sitting in the dark trying to conserve energy. It felt like the ever perplexing paradox of having to clean the house before the cleaning people arrive.

The dishes piled up. The toilets remained unflushed. By day three, we avoided the laundry room as there was something living inside the five foot pile of dirty clothes. The cat disappeared and I feared the highly fragrant laundry mass had devoured her. For meals, I resorted to my Mad Lib bachelor recipes: grilled cheese on top of (you add the plural noun). When we ran out of milk, I suggested to the boys that they use the left over diet coke on their breakfast cereal.

“It tastes good. I ate Corn Flakes with Tab all the time in college.”

The dog kept whimpering trying to convey to me that I was obligated to take him on his daily 5 mile run. I just whimpered back at him. The cat retaliated for my neglect of litter box by peeing on the floor. I slipped in it. I thought about peeing on her but she was too quick. Meanwhile, the propane gauge fell like a barometer. We were down to 5%.

School was cancelled which required me to work from home. Working from home is overrated for executives. One tends to lose credibility on business calls when dogs and teens are screaming in the background. With the propane dying, I had to decide whether to eat my children or ship them off to friends who offered to host them while I presided over the death of my generator. Since they are not properly tenderized, I elected the latter and returned home. The propane was now down to 2%.

Like a lone survivor with a single bullet in the chamber of his gun, I was not sure whether I wanted to use the final wisps of energy to watch ESPN or clean world’s most disgusting load of dirty dishes. I went for the dishes. I turned off all the lights, sat in the darkness and ran the dishwasher — the only light on in my property was the tiny red dial indicating the status of the wash cycle.  I sat wondering when the boils and lice would arrive. Outside, there was an odd heaving and mechanical gasping as the generator breathed its final carbon monoxide emission.

I sat in ebony self pity.  I got up to add a log to the fire when I suddenly noticed a light flicker at Charlie’s house. I heard the distant clicking of a computer printer resetting in the den. I cautiously approached the light switch and click, glorious light poured down from the blackened recesses of the heavens. Power had been restored. I admit to waiting until the next afternoon (I’m no dummy), to pick up the boys only to be informed by our friends that one of them may have been exposed to head lice. Yes, Job there is a Santa Claus. The parasites had indeed finally arrived. One radioactive shampoo, two pick-ups and a reassuring Zumbach’s coffee later, our family was reunited.

I relaxed for the first time in days. The phone rang. My Optimum cable which has been as reliable as a blind man in a bar fight had come back to life. The TV flickered. There it was — ESPN. A toilet flushed. There was a cheer and then just as quickly, the lights went out. I moaned and turned around –only to see my teenage son smiling as he flipped back on the light switch.

“Just messing with you, Dad.” He grinned.

The Day Rick Saved the Stars and Stripes

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Ah, October. Autumn arrives and with it the final leaves of a 4860 game baseball season begin to fall as the competition is reduced to twelve teams across six divisions and two leagues.

As a young man, our four-boy family ritual of male bonding included trips to Chavez Ravine, a 350 acre terraced plateau of chaparral, eucalyptus and palms overlooking downtown Los Angeles. Dodger stadium sat like the Masada, a mountain top fortress on the southwestern plateau of the Elysian Fields neighborhood of Los Angeles. It was the center of the baseball firmament – the sacred home stadium of the Dodgers. Each season, our “boys in blue” would battle the hated San Francisco Giants and the despised Cincinnati Reds for the National League West pennant.

My father loathed the crowds and the traffic of sporting events as they equated to a perfect storm of human imperfection – bad drivers, inept parking attendants, cretins with their hibachi BBQs, legions of loud, drunken buffoons and filthy public urinals. Adding insult to injury was the sobering fact that every LA sporting venue was usually located in a very rough neighborhood.

Despite his misgivings, he understood the need to allow his boys to experience the electric atmosphere of a stadium packed with rabid fans and to witness young men who had so honed their athletic talents that they were afforded the chance to play Major League Baseball.

It was 1976 – America’s Bicentennial year – and it seemed everyone was declaring their independence. I was a surly freshman in high school and could not create enough distance between myself and my father. His existence annoyed me. Every syllable he uttered skidded like fingers on a chalk board. I cringed at the way he ate, talked and even breathed.  It seemed that his principle job description was to control my life.

My mother had already crossed this hostile adolescent desert with my two older brothers and suggested to him that we spend some father-son time at a Dodger Game. On this sunny April Sunday, it would be a chance for my Dad to see his beloved Chicago Cubs and for me to reconnect with a more innocent time of Topps baseball cards, the chance to catch a foul ball and if we were lucky, a nostalgic glimpse of a time when my Dad was viewed as mentor instead of tormentor.

We exited the Pasadena freeway on to Academy Road, winding through a densely populated, graffiti-scarred neighborhood of chain linked front yards. Run down homes built in the 1930’s were perched on steep hillsides with laundry on clotheslines flapping like Tibetan prayer flags in the spring breeze. Like clockwork, my Dad told me to keep my eyes peeled. I suddenly remembered why I did not like going to sporting events with my father. The toughest person we actually saw on the street was a 75-year-old Hispanic woman pushing a baby stroller.

“Careful, Dad, that grandmother might have a gun”, I said sarcastically.

At 16, I had begun to routinely challenge my father’s conservative peccadilloes and delighted in touching each one the way a sadistic dentist might probe a deep cavity. Dad had finally come to recognize when I was baiting him and ignored the provocation, writing it off as the price of being together. He was a creature of habit – robotically driving the exact route, to the same parking area, to the same space– a location furthest from the stadium and closest to the exit.

My father’s greatest nightmare was to be trapped in post game traffic when Los Angeles’ great social insurrection occurred. He believed these neighborhoods to be major social fault lines where pressure was always building. One day, urban rebellion would explode in an earthquake of civil unrest. When it happened, he damn well would not be stuck in his car when a gang of peasant farmers with pitchforks decided it was time to take back California. It was a thankless time for my Dad. I had spent the last year challenging his views on everything. I complained about the distance we had to walk to enter the stadium. He walked slightly ahead – eager for a coke and the cool shade of the concession area.

I was impressed as we were directed by an usher to field level seats off the first base line. The Dodgers were expected to be decent this year and showed some promise with a line-up that featured Billy Buckner, Ted Sizemore, Ron Cey and Steve Garvey. The meat of the Cub lineup was Rick Monday and Bill Madlock.

As we sat down, I suddenly saw a different side of my father that afternoon as he began to rattle off statistics and insights into his favorite Cub players and the pitching match ups.

“The Cubs will probably lose. They have no damn pitching this year and there’s nobody to support Monday and Madlock. Those cheapskates the Wrigleys are too tight to pay for good players. They are no better than that idiot GM Jim Finks for the Bears who won’t get them a decent quarterback to help Butkis and the defense out. Monday hit .267 with 17 homers last year. He is hitting .365 now and is on fire. Steve Stone was 12-8 last year but his ERA was too high at 3.95. But, the numbskull likes to give up the long ball”

My Dad wasn’t even looking at me. He was like a little kid playing with soldiers, chatting away to invisible friends. He spotted Roger Owens, the famous peanut vendor.

“Michael, remember this guy? He once threw you a bag of peanuts between his legs over ten rows.”

“Hey Roger!”

He held up some money. The popular redheaded peanut vendor smiled and pointed at my father. He was four rows over and six rows up. Owens whirled and shot a bag of peanuts behind his back. Dad snapped them up as they flew above his head. There was a smattering of applause as he handed $4 to a daisy chain of fans who passed the money up to Owens.

The actual game was a nail biter that was likely to be decided by one run. However, the game proved to be a mere sideline to the drama that unfolded in front of 25,000 fans.

Heading into the bottom of the fourth inning, a fan and has 11-year old son leaped on to the grass of the outfield. Initially met by raucous applause, our cheers quickly turned to boos when people realized their intentions. My Dad turned to me and said, “Hey, give me those binoculars!” I heard him swear as he hissed, “that son-of-a-bitch Communist is trying to burn an American flag!” As he said “Flag”, I saw Cub outfielder, Rick Monday, rush past the protestors and grab the flag. The stadium went berserk and cheered even louder as security roughly escorted the agitators from the outfield. I looked up to see an entire small town of Americans standing and cheering.

“Dad, can you believe that?”

I looked over and saw that my father was almost crying. He was clapping his hands so hard that they must have hurt. “Atta Boy, Monday!” Dad was one of the last people to sit down as the game resumed. In his next at bat, Monday received another standing ovation from the grateful crowd.

The scoreboard flashed, “Rick Monday, you made a great play!” Dad stood again applauding the young Cub player who as it turned out, was also an ex-marine. I was about to tell him to calm down and sit but somewhere in the back of my adolescent brain, I knew this was the right thing to do. I stood up beside him and started clapping again. He turned to me and shouted over the din, “That’s what makes this country great. It’s patriotism. It’s goddamn patriotism. Don’t ever forget that!”

I suddenly felt a surge of pride.  It was an awkward feeling to feel pride for being part of something bigger than you when you seemingly had made no contribution.  But, I had witnessed something special. I was proud of Rick Monday, proud of my Dad and proud to be an American.  In the thirty-five years that would follow, I cannot not recall a time when I saw my father so spontaneously happy.  It happened as fast a lit match – - a hero deciding to take action.  I realized action is what heros were all about – normal people, that in an instance, stopped watching and started moving.

The following year, Rick Monday was traded to the Dodgers and helped lead them to two division pennants. He became a permanent family favorite and a role model for a new generation looking for reliable points of reference in a rapidly changing society.

Pizza Dreams

Pizza Dreams

….Mr Fenton Allentuck describes the following precognitive dream, “ I went to sleep at midnight and I saw my grandfather about to be run over by a truck in the middle of the street, where he was waltzing with a clothing dummy…. I had an uneasy feeling that some men were trying to break into my room and shampoo me.  But why ? I kept imagining shadowy forms and at 3A.M. the underwear I had draped over the chair began to resemble the Kaiser on roller skates.  When I fell back asleep I dreamed again, a hideous nightmare in which a woodchuck was trying to claim my prize at a raffle…  Woody Allen, Without Feathers

I am wandering the hallways of my high school dressed only in my underwear.  My best friend walks by asking me telepathically, “Where have you been all semester?  We have the calculus final today!”

I dodge in and out of shallow doorways and across cold pavement to find my locker.  I have forgotten the combination.  I am a dead man.  No graduation.  No college.  No job.  My life is ruined…

I wake up in a cold sweat with the moon streaming through the bedroom bay window.  I shuffle towards the kitchen while the cat trails affectionately underfoot mistakenly thinking it is time for breakfast.  I open the refrigerator and sigh, a pathetic figure cast in pale light.  It was only a dream.

Each night between the witching hours of 2am and 6am, average people are transported through a subconscious rabbit hole and across a bizarre kaleidoscope of disconnected faces, symbols and places.  The results range from the comical to the terrifying.  Some dreamers journey back in time to face old demons or attempt to amend unresolved conflicts. Others boast of encounters with random celebrities.  Some profess X-Men super powers – - flying at breakneck speeds or deploying telekinesis to move objects with their thoughts.

There is the classic “Groundhog Day” dream where one wakes up, relieved to be free from their early morning incubus, only to fall asleep and have the dream pick up where they left off.  The most terrifying dreams are “chase dreams” where someone is pursuing you – -  perhaps an insurance salesman or someone from the Tea Party.  I recall a nightmare featuring a buck-toothed girl who had stalked me in elementary school informing me that we had just been married.  As I fled the church, she started chasing me on a big wheel.  I could not seem to outrun her but was finally able to will myself awake.  If my wife had sat up in bed at that precise moment with false buckteeth saying , What’s up doc? “, she would be collecting now on my life insurance.

Lately, I have been having some wild dreams.  Perhaps, it is anxiety associated with my eldest going off to college or the post traumatic stress associated with Irene.  I keep dreaming the Levco guy is filling my house with chocolate milk – which is annoying because I am lactose intolerant.  Another dream has me dressed up like Dorothy from the wizard of Oz and someone keeps shouting, ” it’s a micro-burst, it’s a micro-burst!”  When I correct him and say, no, you mean tornado.” He turns to me and angrily chastises me.  ” It’s bad for business to say, ” tornado”.  We use the term “micro-burst.  It’s better for property values.”

I am uncertain if my nightly visits to the Twilight Zone are caused by unresolved conflict, odd midnight eating habits or an overactive imagination.  My mother used to have an expression for the kind of dream where you woke up saying, ” What the hell was that!”. She simply called it a “pizza dream”.

Pizza dreams are not all bad.  Some people have made a fortune off their dreams and hallucinations.  Jack Nicklaus, struggling with his golf game, had a vivid midnight vision where he was striking the ball with an unconventionally short, modified swing.  He awoke and tried the swing successfully on the golf range which resulting in a marked improvement in his game.

Samuel Coleridge wrote his famous Kubla Kahn after waking up from a drug induced dream.  Mary Shelley, along with husband Percy and Lord Byron, was housebound in a Swiss castle during a violent storm  and agreed to a competition with the famous writers over who could tell the most frightening ghost story.  After retiring to nap (and consuming a hallucinogenic), she awoke with a vision of  a creature so terrifying that it literally induced her to question the essence of Man and God.  No, it was not Sarah Palin.  It was a creature grafted out of cadaver body parts – purloined by grave robbers in the dead of night — nope, it wasn’t Ron Paul or Barney Frank either.  It was Frankenstein. ( P.S. she won the bet !).

As a child who had more nightmares than Stephen King, my new age mother tried to explain to me that dreams were subconscious fields and mental alleyways where humans tried to work through our anxieties or mental struggles.  My mother was always curious about the strange films playing in the midnight theaters of our minds.  She expressed great interest in our nocturnal adventures, considering our forays into the unknown as potential “out-of-body” experiences known as “astral flight” to deep struggles of conscience known as “guilt”.

Our Age of Aquarius mother read countless books on dream interpretation – - from Freud, Jung, and Cayce to the interpretations of Native American shamans.  Each Sunday, we were forced at gunpoint to church by our father, only to come home and struggle to reconcile the sacred and the profane of Western Christianity and new age spiritualism.  Our mother explained that the bible was filled with examples where God would choose to appear to individuals in dreams and through these encounters convey a divine message. The ancient Greeks and Egyptians considered dreams as omens and harbingers of great importance.  Each society and religion maintained a social order where those who could decipher the hieroglyphics of dreams – - elders, medicine men, oracles and sages were raised to positions of prestige and power.

Freud asserted that each of us possesses a subconscious, Id, and the conscious, Super Ego. These irresistible forces of hidden desire (teenagers) regularly clash each night with the immovable objects of temporal restraint (parents).  As the mind works through these physical and emotional challenges, it paints mental canvases more complex and bizarre than any created by Picasso or Chagall.

Unlike Freud, Jung did not seek to interpret dreams as tangled sexual symbols requiring therapeutic intervention.  Jung considered dreams a collateral universe where the subconscious mind worked furiously over problems, unresolved issues, philosophical conundrums and latent desires.

There are many who consider dreams a highway to the paranormal, a lonely road to another dimension of our existence – - one that happens just outside of our mind’s eye.  Rod Serling called it the “ Twilight Zone”.  Ray Bradbury called it “October Country”.  Alien abductions, spiritual guidance, premonitions, past lives and psychopompic events (encounters with deceased loved ones ) have all been documented through dreams.  Lincoln was said to have a clear premonition ten days before his own assassination where he dreamed of mourners and a corpse in the East wing of the White House.  A soldier informed him that the shrouded figure was “ the body of the President, killed by an assassin”

In 1961, a dream researcher’s case study quickly turned into perhaps the most credible case of alien abduction ever documented.  A Canadian couple, Betty and Barney Hill, returning from holiday in New Hampshire began to experience health problems and terrifying nightmares.  When hypnosis revealed identical stories of an alien abduction and medical experiments, while driving along lonely US Highway 3, dream specialists were dispatched to investigate.

Betty Hill’s nightmares never ceased and graphically included minute details of a medical procedure conducted by her abductors that included the unheard of description of a needle that was inserted into her belly button.  The fantastical medical procedure that she so accurately shared under hypnosis is now commonly recognized as a routine process to withdraw eggs for purposes of in-vitro fertilization. (Ok, this is usually where Twilight Zone music plays…..)

Whether you see dreams as a disjointed, meaningless theatre of the absurd or a clash between the temporal and unknown, the subconscious mind is the last wilderness of our generation.  Dreams can portend events like Nostradamus or haunt us for past sins like a relentless Javert.   Like so many other invisible psychic sinews that bind us, we are linked by our fascination with these odd subconscious episodes and bonded by the common phenomena of waking up back in high school in our underwear.

We have also concluded that we must, at all costs, avoid eating pizza after 11 at night.

The Snobbery of Chronology

Prior to 1066, Anglo Saxon England was an age of faith and profound uncertainty with universal recognition and acceptance that society could not survive without a profound faith in God. People were heavily burdened in this agrarian society. Devils and saints fought for the souls of medieval citizens of the realm. People took the Devil very seriously and often attributed unexplained phenomena and bad luck to the unholy evils that existed in the twilight shadows and the dark corners of men’s hearts. Elves, fairies, demons, trolls and goblins inhabited the uncharted lands and the superstitious recesses of people’s minds.

Aristotle and The Teenager

ristotle: (looking insulted) I cannot believe you would say that. When you wanted to dye your hair green for the festival of Promethia, your mother and I agreed. You wanted a magpie as a pet and as your muse. We let you have the bird even though it defecated all over my tunic.

Teen: (rolling her eyes) Whatever…

Aristotle: I told you not to use that word anymore unless you are contrasting between logical points and are uncertain of the value difference between the two. I find the term dismissive and disrespectful.

The Great Air Conditioning Wars

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“It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn’t hear the barbarians coming.”

Garrison Keillor

We recently received a letter from CL & P that provided normative data from our immediate neighborhood on our electrical consumption.  If the letter was to be believed, we were consuming enough power to light several small Midwestern towns.  Our failing grade suggested we had a carbon footprint larger than Paul Bunyon’s boot.

While our environmental “F” offended my anti-global warming spouse, it enraged my green teenaged son who had chided me over the past year for my failings as an environmentally conscious citizen.  If I were to succumb to all of his Greenpeace demands, I would be composting everything, urinating in the woods, and drinking from a perpetually dented metal water bottle. My house would forever register a refreshing 58 degrees in the winter and 80 degrees in the summer.  I had already turned over the keys to my car and password to my ATM.  I was not going to turn over control of my thermostat without a fight.

I admit to being distressed over the last year as our energy bills soared.  I repeatedly circled the house wondering if one of my neighbors was perhaps pirating electricity from the tangled tightrope of wires that snaked down through the tree line and fed our voraciously energy dependent home.  I did notice at night that my neighbor’s houses seemed darker and vacant while our home was lit up like a Christmas tree.  TVs were on with no one in the room.  Computers were perpetually hibernating but very much alive. Every room was illuminated yet every kid was downstairs in the basement.

There was a problem. As my conscientious spouse would be turning off the air conditioner and opening a window to welcome a warm, woolen summer night, our teenaged son was upstairs recreating winter and burying himself under a three-foot pile of buffalo blankets. In the adjacent room, his eco-friendly brother was opening his windows to allow fresh and humid summer air to circulate and releasing an Alberta clipper of expensive AC into the soft night.

Our energy efficiency is complicated by a home that is a patchwork quilt of miniature ecosystems containing rooms hot enough to support desert succulents and frigid areas capable of doubling as a meat locker.  Some spaces are simply haunted – - defying logic with cold spots and odd drafts.  The notion of removing or donning clothes to regulate our own body temperatures is anathema to California transplants that prefer a world perpetually set at 72 degrees.  I try to explain to my energy leeches that only Heaven and San Diego routinely reach meteorological nirvana.  We are, as humans, meant to suffer and through this suffering we find humility and tank top shirts.   These insights are always met with blanks stares and silence.  As if to mock me, I hear the air conditioning unit kick on.

I am also part of the problem. I often need to turn on the AC at night to avoid waking up feeling like a malaria patient stuck in some POW camp near the equator.  I go to bed early, only to wake up as if a fever had just broken.  In fact, the energy czar has turned off the AC and opened a window.  Overheated crickets are now serenading me with soft derogatory thrums, “lo-ser”, “lo-ser”, “lo-ser”.I move like a cat burglar and twist the thermostat.  Optimal ambient temperature should be calibrated not in degrees but to the weight of the heaviest person in the room.  My wife likes to set the AC to 105 lbs.  I need it reset to 230 lbs.  I am a large man and throw off more heat than a January pot-belly stove.

She is asleep but stirs when she hears the thermostat.  “I opened the window,” she murmurs in weak protest.  I stand still, holding my breath, waiting and then move to close the window.  I ease slowly back to bed.  At 6 am, I awaken to a soaked tee-shirt that looks as if I had shoveled coal in the bowels of some great steam ship.  I glance at the thermostat now set to 78 degrees.  The window has been reopened.

The AC wars have been waged for decades.  In 1971, my parents gathered us for a rare family meeting to vote on whether to put a pool in our back yard or install central air conditioning.  Summers in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Valley could easily hit 100 degrees — often with air pollution that would squat like filthy humidity – causing health problems for infants and the elderly.  The debate often raged in every middle class house between swimming pools and air conditioning.

My older brother clearly saw the social advantages of a pool that included parties, skinny-dipping and Jacuzzi encounters that he had only read about in Penthouse Forum.  My middle brother and I clearly saw the benefits of air conditioning as we had a number of friends with pools. We saw how most had lost interest in their own kidney shaped swimming holes.  On hot evenings, their windows would be filled with a hundred whirling fans – desperate to cool the inside of the home to a temperature equal to the outside air.  Air conditioning sounded boring but I knew there was nothing more reassuring than to hear a Carrier central air unit whirl into high gear.

My youngest brother voted for the pool and we were officially deadlocked.  My mother would be the deciding factor.  We were certain she would opt for the pool as she knew very well that my father believed that air conditioning weakened the constitution.  These modern conveniences were the first rotation to the left in the cycle of dependence.  With dependence, poverty of character would soon be in full motion.  Suffering led to insight and strength. Strength led to freedom.  And freedom led to a good job with a country club membership where the men’s locker room had air conditioning.

Secretly, my mother’s greatest fear was that my father would not allow us to actually use the air conditioner. His frugal fanaticism was legendary and at least with a pool, which he would probably refuse to heat, the water would be cold. Yet, the Gods were kind that summer delivering a withering heat wave that broke our deadlock. In a shocking last-minute reversal, everyone opted for AC.

Almost immediately, the AC wars began.  There were fights over windows left open and $200 monthly electrical bills.  There were fiats, moratoriums and bizarre brown out periods.  Inevitably, the AC advocates and the utilities who faithfully delivered their electricity prevailed. Consumption triumphed over common sense.

It is now midnight and I am once again creeping over to turn down the temperature.  Brody, the dog has shifted from the carpet to the cool, wood floor – a sign that even man’s best friend is not willing to accept this pea soup summer night.  I am turning the tumblers of the thermostat like a safecracker hoping to avoid the energy czar’s wrath.  I hear the whirl of the AC unit and feel the cool, artificial air course through the floor ducts.  Brody sighs with approval.

Tonight, I have won a small battle but I do not delude myself.  This is war and I fully expect a counter attack before dawn.

Drawing Quarters in The Republic of Richard Stans

Richard Stans was the country adjacent to but unseen by the USA, sort of like Canada. Each day in class, we would stand and pledge allegiance to the American flag and to the Republic of Richard Stans – one nation, invisible, with liberty and justice for all. At Christmas time we sang Silent Night about the portly celibate “Round John Virgin – mother and child.” Perhaps John was so corpulent he symbolically represented mankind – men, women and children – or maybe he just ate the mother and child.

Family Paleontology 101: The Decline of The T-Rex Parent

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The Mesozoic era was an epoch of magnificent and marvelous social and industrial evolution.  It could be divided in to three principal periods: Triassic, Jurassic and the Cretaceous period.

The 1950’s and early 1960’s were the zenith of our modern society’s Jurassic age.  T-Rex fathers roamed the landscape bringing order, power tools and Old Testament justice to a post WWII primal world in desperate need of control and benevolent, unilateral authority.  The T-Rex possessed an abnormally large mouth from which he would chew out loud, belch, curse and devour any weaker form of life.  He possessed a great sweeping tail that could strike with unusual dexterity – hitting anything, including his own children for the slightest infraction.  His arms were unusually short which precluded him from helping with chores or changing diapers.  He was like a biblical God – - always angry and with lots of rules.  He was the perfect working machine – an eating, sleeping, and laboring automaton that was preprogrammed to improve every aspect of his white picket world. 

As in nature, his progeny were highly vulnerable.  It was a time of great civil upheaval. The ground was rocked by the volcanic violence in the inner cities. There were wars glowing on the distant edges of night fought in the far-off jungles of Southeast Asia.  In every valley, long-haired, social parasites advocated sex, drugs and rock and roll – - all vying to corrupt the hearts and minds of the T-Rex’s children.  He furiously scanned his horizon lines for signs of sedition and malevolent movement.  Threats must be dealt with swiftly and decisively.  It was a fight between good and evil and the largest, most fearsome creature to ever roam the earth was not about to yield to any living thing – a Russian, a hippie or even a Russian hippie.

The female, or She-Rex, gently drafted behind the T-Rex.  This was a time where social conformity and home economic classes promoted feckless obedience and quiet, efficient martyrdom. She would exist to protect his progeny, cleaning up after T-Rex and moving stealthily in the shadows subordinating her identity to the greater purpose of ensuring the perpetuation of her own species.  She made and cleaned the nest. She tenderized everything and she ensured that no one’s lateral incisors went more than six months without being cleaned by a dentist. 

Later in her life, She-Rex would realize that the notion of the nest and the myth of marriage were propaganda promulgated by T-Rex traditionalists who did not understand a balanced, more egalitarian world.  Her world would also soon change.  She discovered she had choices and that her instincts and ideas mattered.  She suddenly understood that she was as essential to the family’s survival as her T-Rex partner.  In fact, she was pretty sure that if she decided to stop doing the laundry, the T-Rex would be forced to go to work in dirty underwear.  This epiphany marked the beginning of the Cretaceous Period. 

The Cretaceous Period of the 80’s and 90’s ushered in an era of permanent cooling from the days of hot, humid chauvinism.  Some trace the decline of the T-Rex to this very time.  A handful of revolutionary historians claim that liberal activists or specifically, Jimmy Carter, killed off T-Rex.  Other more insightful paleontologists speculate that the T-Rex did not die but went into hiding.  In an Ice Age of emasculated political correctness, replete with its time outs, “I” messages and liberated females, the T-Rex headed for the proverbial hills.  The T-Rex father – the provider, the king, master and commander would soon find himself an anachronism – - barely recognizing the wilderness of his youth and lamenting his own inevitable exile.

He still rises each morning as he has for eight decades, stretching weary bones and putting his nose into the salt air that hangs in a marine layer of fog over his seaside home.  He faithfully scans society’s horizon lines in the form of newspapers, the Internet and television – - and does not like what he sees.  He exerts his right to free speech by sending poison pen letters to feckless politicians rebuking them for their fiscal recklessness and their ignorance to the irrefutable fact that free market capitalism and personal responsibility are the cornerstones to any great Democracy.  He is offended by Washington’s patronizing indifference and lack of experience – many of those who “represent” him have never run a company, managed a payroll or had to make difficult decisions involving their own money.

 As he looks across the blue infinity of his beloved Pacific Ocean, his back is turned to an America that once rewarded ability and persistence – - only now choosing to alter the definition of success out of some horribly misguided sense of social equity.  Charlatans, social engineers and unqualified liberal public servants are slowly mortgaging his final days and the future of his children.  Society now considers his unflinching values of self-sufficiency, corporal punishment, personal responsibility and meritocracy to be quaint, nostalgic echoes of a simpler and less sophisticated time. 

 Apparently, he muses, politicians have decided people can no longer think for themselves.   He wonders if there is not some undercurrent of truth in the notion that the next generation lacks the stamina to stay informed enough on the issues to deserve to vote. Perhaps we could make people take a test….

 To those who might question his steel-trap logic, impugn his well-reasoned opinions, attack his seeming lack of empathy or try to leverage this great nation’s future with expanded entitlements and reckless foreign policies, he has just two words, “Piss off!”

 His numbers are clearly dwindling.  Yet, he remains faithful to his creed and to his She-Rex, for everyone knows that a real T-Rex mates for life.  Their heritage is another place and time.  They are bonded by their simple act of survival in a turbulent and treacherous period and in having weathered the tempests together, they share a mutual respect that runs deeper than any sediment of the past.  They have integrity and grit.  They are the last of an extraordinary breed whose over-sized footprints and well-worn paths are disappearing – swept by winds of change and overgrown in a world so deafened by the din of self-interest that one can barely hear them as they share their stories of living and raising children in an epoch as wild and unrestrained as any time in history.

The Stages of Death and Dying, Employers and Health Reform

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“Change, before you have to…” Jack Welch

We live in a society that loathes uncertainty – particularly the unintended consequences that sometimes result from a catastrophic event or in the case of PPACA, landmark legislation. Wall Street and the private sector crave predictability and find it difficult in uncertain times to coax capital off the sidelines when the overhang of legislation or geopolitical unrest creates the potential for greater risk. Despite our best energies around forecasting and planning, some consequences, particularly unintended ones – only reveal themselves in time.

In the last decade, employers have endured an inflationary period of rising healthcare costs brought on by a host of social, political, economic and organizational failures.  There was and remains great anticipation and trepidation as Congress continues to contour the new rules of the road for this next generation’s healthcare system. Optimists believe that reform is both a way forward and a way out of a mounting public debt crisis and a bypass for an economy whose arteries are clogged by the high cost of medical waste, fraud and abuse.  Cynics argue reform is merely a Trojan Horse measure that offers an open invitation for employers to drop coverage and for commercial insurers to “hang themselves with their own rope” as costs continue to spiral out of control — leading to an inevitable government takeover of healthcare.

Meanwhile, leading economic indicators are flashing crimson warning signs as recent stop-gap stimulus wears off and long overdue private/public sector deleveraging results in reduced corporate hiring, lower consumer confidence and increased rates of savings.  The symptoms of a prolonged economic malaise can be felt in unemployment stubbornly lingering around 9.2% and a stagnating US economy that is struggling to come to grips with the rising cost of entitlement programs.  Across the Atlantic, the Euro-Zone is teetering as Italy and Spain (which represent more credit exposure than Greece, Portugal and Ireland combined) stumble toward default.  Despite these substantial head winds, US healthcare reform is forging ahead – - right into the teeth of the storm.

Closer to home, states have begun to debate and propose legislative amendments to their own versions of reform as they attempt to reconcile a declining tax base with the soaring obligations of Medicaid and collectively bargained pension and long term care.  Should Congress finally agree to allow an estimated 28% of fee reductions in Medicare provider reimbursement to become law, the private sector could see as much as a 400bps increase in core medical trends resulting from cost shifting – pushing trends back into the mid-teens. Hospital systems, providers and healthcare agencies are bracing for cuts and potentially looking to the private sector as a source for more dollars.  All of this is building at a time when certain industries are nearing a “point of failure” – - an inflection point where healthcare spend as a percentage of revenues and operating profit will either consume earnings or completely erode employee take home pay.

Many are looking ahead to 2012 as a “burning bush” year – a seminal presidential and Congressional election where political results will help clarify the direction of reform – pivoting toward the reinforcement of employer sponsored healthcare as catalyst for market based reforms or merely a cementing of the incentives that seem to encourage the deconstruction of employer based coverage.  With 33 Democratic Senate seats up for reelection and 10 GOP spots up for grabs, the entire composition of our government could change – or perhaps not.  In the interim, the fiscal year 2012 will continue to show 44 states projecting budget deficits totaling $ 112B.

A recent controversial McKinsey study forecasted that as many as 30% of employers or 54m individuals covered under private healthcare would be “dumped” into public exchanges as of 2014.  This number is in sharp contrast to the 12.6mm assumed by the CBO (approximately 7% of 180mm privately covered individuals.)  The influx of 41.4mm unbudgeted insureds – all eligible for federal subsidies of as much as $5,000 – would upend the initial CBO estimate of $ 140B deficit reduction over 10 years and result in an increase in public debt in just six short years.  The ensuing debt arising out of PPACA over the periods 2020 to 2030 could easily eclipse $ 1T of additional public debt.

Any economist can confirm that all unsustainable trends eventually end.  Rising premiums, public to private cost shifting, perverse and unaligned incentives for care, rationing and a host of other stop-gap issues are all doomed to be replaced by a system that either drives efficiency through market reform or through the single payer procurement of healthcare.  It will take at least five more years and three election cycles for this marine layer of debate to lift.  Unlike 1996, there is graveyard silence arising from the private sector.  Employers seem to be stuck in one of the several stages – - often attributable to the dead and dying.

Denial — “This can’t be happening, not to me.” One could argue that this generation of business leaders has drawn the short straw when confronting the decisions we will need to make to keep our businesses viable in a period of sustained high unemployment and economic stagnation.  Many larger employers are nervous regarding reform but somehow feel that reform is more likely to happen to other people – smaller employers and the individual marketplace.

These firms do not want to believe that the myriad unintended consequences associated with reform could impact their bottom line. Denial has been a principle ingredient and willing accomplice to healthcare cost inflation in the last decade.  For many employers, the inability to confront the fact that many of their own business practices – insistence on open access PPO plans, less medical oversight and utilization review, limited appetite for employee disruption, inability to dedicate the time or resources to assess the health risks embedded within their own population of employees – - has them resigned them to a cycle where premiums are increasing faster than wages and corporate earnings. While costs continue to rise, many employers have simply focused on stop-gap year over year cost shifting.  Others prefer to abdicate to commercial insurers who have failed to drive affordability and improved access. It comes down to believing you can make a difference and a willingness to confront the hard choices – choices that could fundamentally drive market-based reforms.

Anger — Many find themselves simmering with resentment, hunting for villains whose feet they would seek to lay all blame: “It’s those damn insurance companies!” “It’s that Socialist in the White House!”” It’s the failure of regulators to do their job in managing the complexities of the healthcare delivery system. “It’s the big hospitals!” “It’s the drug companies!” It’s the rich and their lack of empathy” “It’s the poor and their lack of personal responsibility” The list of culprits could fill a thousand postal office walls.

A polarized Congress, pariah hungry media and a workforce unwilling to understand that access does not equal quality means that change cannot happen without some noses getting out of joint.  Yet, we understand clearly that if we want to reduce our exposure to the coming storm of public to private cost shifting, we must engage and move on from our own anger.  As 35m additional Baby Boomers increase the double the ranks of Medicare to 70mm by 2030, total health spending will near 30% of the GDP and Medicare costs are expected to eclipse $ 32,000 per enrollee up from $12,000 in 2010.  Facing the magnitude of these suffocating entitlement costs, we will either embrace private sector, market-based reforms that fundamentally realign the current delivery system or we will default into a more regulated, lowest common denominator system that will rely on rationed access and reimbursement as a means of controlling cost.

Bargaining —”I’ll do anything for a few more years.” The third stage involves the hope for postponement.   The lion’s share of stakeholders in healthcare can be found milling in this no man’s land of indecision.  While hope is not a strategy, a surprising number of firms are clinging to the dream of “repeal and replace” legislation. Others are merely expecting Washington to do what it does best – prolong debate and delay implementation long enough to afford them enough altitude to pass the problem on to someone else. The tea leaves do not look promising for fundamental legislative intervention that would disrupt the momentum of reform.  Repeal is unlikely. Employers must understand that 2014 will require certain decisions.  Fundamentally employers will have one of four choices:

• Take the Money And Run – Do I drop coverage, pay the penalties associated with moving employees into the public exchange and pocket the difference?

• Drop Them But Ensure A Safe Landing – Do I drop coverage, grossing all employees up to my current level of subsidization so all might afford coverage in the public exchanges?

• Create a Consumer Plan of Your Own – Do I move to a private exchange or defined contribution approach to financing my medical benefits to cap expenditures but remain involved as a sponsor of my benefit programs?

• Control Your Own Destiny – Do I continue to offer group based private insurance believing that employer sponsored health coverage is more likely to experience lower trends if properly managed and that medical coverage remains a fundamental part of my company’s ability to attract and retain employees.

Depression — “What’s the point?” The problems we face as a nation and in business can feel overwhelming.  We have the misfortune of having to confront $38T in underfunded Medicare liabilities, $ 14T in public debt, and a potential double dip economic recession arising out of any number of black swan events – - credit defaults abroad, domestic hyper-inflation or a slowing of Chinese GDP.  It seems inevitable that we must head into a period of profound austerity.  Facing the potential of sustained uncertainty can burden any decision maker to the point of inaction.  While some period of reflection is healthy to any organization, people must take a position, plan around the certainty of change, grieve over the passing of an epoch and move forward with a renewed conviction to address the challenges that lay ahead.

Corporate depression may manifest itself in a lack of willingness to engage in the discussions or conduct financial modeling required to understand what scenarios will best benefit your organization.  It is a strange period where we express grief knowing that the traditional employer/employee social contract has changed forever in a hot, crowded, global marketplace.

The sense of urgency to explore alternatives to traditional employer sponsored coverage will led by retail, agriculture and hospitality while professional services, technology and collectively bargained public sector plans may feel more obligated to remain on a course of employer sponsored coverage.  Planning prior to 2014 is essential to be position a firm to react to opportunities that may present themselves.  Should a key industry competitor choose to discontinue coverage and use operating overhead reductions to drive down prices, what will you do?  Many have promised to not be first but not be third in line to change.

Acceptance — “I can’t fight it, so I better prepare for the inevitable.”  2014 will mark the beginning of a movement toward or away from employer-sponsored healthcare.  It is more likely that most will be carefully weighing election results, the first two years of public exchange performance and the actions of their competitors to determine a course forward.

2014 is forcing discussions over the will of the private sector to drive market-based reforms, and the review of decades-old beliefs regarding direct and indirect compensation plans.  Employers that have navigated these phases of change and are now aggressively accepting the new normal of healthcare and will most likely end up as self insured, in touch and aware of their own population risks, directing patients to primary care based system that reward providers based on quality and efficiency and are committed to driving healthier behaviors and personal compliance with to reduce chronic illness.  Employers will realize returns on these efforts as aggressively managed plans will likely experience lower single digit medical trends.  These firms will be reticent to abdicate management of healthcare costs to a public exchange but instead focus on educating and activating their workforce to the personal and corporate dividends of change.

Some employers may convert to defined contribution plan designs such as cafeteria plans to allow for a more diversified workforce to allocate finite dollars to purchase coverage that make most sense for their unique needs.  Health benefits may become part of an overall defined contribution approach to retirement and benefit planning – affording each employee to allocate their dollars to their circumstances and in doing so, accept their circumstances more freely because they have choice in where they spend their dollars.

Reform is a process and like many of the vagaries in life, every person and each business will react differently to the stimulus of change.  Every problem is a disguised opportunity and with it, comes the added dividend of using change as a catalyst for reassessing your strategies to attract and retain employees. It’s about making decisions by commission rather than omission.  And, the sooner an employer navigates these stages of change, the more likely it is that healthcare reform will happen for them – instead of happening to them.

A Touch of Grey

Grey is a state of mind. Youthful Satchel Paige, the oldest major leaguer of his day debuted for the Cleveland Indians at age 42 after years as a star in the Negro Leagues. He was the first African American player in the American League. Ever the ingenue, Paige was constantly asked about his age. He would rhetorically ask, ”if you did not know how old you are, how old would you be?”

Birth Daze

In your thirties and forties, you celebrate your birth anniversary with the parents of your children’s friends who have become your friends. You realize your social circle is now completely composed of those who live in your dimension. Their unwavering companionship is your gift. They offer you understanding and never question why your foxhole smells the way it does. Their foxhole is in the same shape. You dream of the perfect adult birthday present: zero accountability for 24 hours — everyone just leaves you alone. All you want is to sleep in, work out, play a little golf, maybe get a massage or haircut. You want to eat something unhealthy, watch your favorites on TV and not be told to turn the channel, clean a dish, pick up a kid or move a trash can.

Francophile

I love France and the French. No, really. I trust their sartorial intuition and am intoxicated by their fields of lavender and sunflowers, their ancient hill towns, alpine mountains, rugged coast and wind swept countryside. The French people, particularly Parisians, are like an aging actress – seductive, entitled, proud, elegant, stubborn, self absorbed, mercurial and somewhat unpredictable. I have come to accept their political contrarianism as a sort of symbiotic fact of life. I also love to lampoon the French at every possible turn. The French insist on positioning themselves as a rational and more egalitarian alternative to American hegemony and its “McDonaldization de le Monde”. Every protagonist needs an arch enemy. Sherlock Holmes had Dr. Moriarty. Superman had Lex Luther and Republicans have Hillary Clinton. The French need America.