December 25, 2009
The Annual Wrap-up
As a committed Zen student whose ego is dropping away just as sure as shit, I like to celebrate myself whenever an excuse arises. What better excuse than the end of the Gregorian year, when it's natural to look back at all one's noteworthy experiences over the last trip around the calendar?
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In February I moved out of my apartment in Jersey City and moved into Amy's house in Maplewood, NJ. After some 14 years of living in Jersey City, this was a significant transition. I went from living alone (i.e., with two cats and my daughter three nights per week) within a 90-second walk of a 12-minute train ride to downtown NYC to living with my de facto spouse plus her three kids plus my one kid part-time plus two cats plus the semi-full-time live-in babysitter in a three bedroom house in the suburbs, an hour and forty minutes from my workplace. Living in my delightfully disorderly shithole in JC was wonderful, but it was time to move on. Adjusting to the commute was a bit of a challenge, but I handled it. I used to complain of not having sufficient time to read. So I picked up a copy of David Copperfield and made good use of some of those hours on NJ Transit.
- In May, Amy sold her house, and together we bought a bigger one in South Orange. Then we moved into it. Big enough for all our kids, with a home office in which Amy shrinks heads when she's not caring for children or doing laundry. This 1920-something beast is full of surprises, some of which were overlooked by the home inspector. We marvel at how previous owners could have done the lazy stupid incompetent things they did. But the place has its charms -- not the least of these being the people who inhabit it -- and within a couple of decades I'm sure we will have everything fixed up to our satisfaction.
- For my birthday -- also in May -- I got me a nice little pneumonia. I left work so weak I could barely walk to the train, but I was too cheap/stubborn/in denial to take a taxi. Collapsed into bed, lay there trembling and hurting for a night, then woke up with the worst of it over. A few days and a few doses of drugs later, I was as good as status quo ante (only slightly older).
- In June I underwent a vasectomy. Too much information? Gee, I'm sorry. But it's a pretty cool procedure, recovery is quick and complete, and from then on life is more convenient. (Over six months later, the facility where the procedure was performed is still waiting on Blue Cross Blue Shield to "process" their claim, but keep reading.)
- In October I participated in civil disobedience actions along with other single-payer healthcare activists at the offices of UnitedHealth Group in Manhattan and at Blue Cross Blue Shield in Newark, NJ. Getting arrested in Newark was a breeze; we were in and out in a couple of hours. Getting arrested in New York was another story, as we went through the system and spent the night in jail at the Tombs. Why do this? Because I reached the point where complaining, going to legal demonstrations, donating money to organizations like healthcare-now.org, writing emails to elected officials, and so forth, just wasn't enough. I had to do something more to help rid our country of its disastrously inefficient and rapacious profit-driven private health insurance industry and replace it with single-payer national health insurance. Did my getting arrested help further this objective? I don't know. But lying down and giving up is not an option.
- In November I ran the New York Marathon in 3:34:43, fast enough to qualify this 50-something male for the prestigious Boston Marathon. The first third of the race was a test of discipline, and I failed. I got too amped up, ran too fast, and spent too much fuel. The last third of the race was a test of character, and I passed. I had to summon the fortitude to keep up the goal pace even with the tank on empty.
- In December I performed in our organization's annual Follies for the 17th consecutive year. The show makes fun of the judicial and political system, and modesty aside, we have some talented people and put on a truly funny show. This year I sang a country and western tune, playing the guitar in front of an audience for the first time in over 20 years. For someone who used to play concert repertoire like Bach, strumming a few chords is less than trivial. But I took it seriously and practiced in order to make sure it looked easy.
No doubt about it: I am a lucky bastard to be living this interesting life.
Posted by Professor B at 3:56 PM | Comments (0)
November 6, 2009
Running the 2009 New York Marathon
I had the privilege of running the 2009 New York Marathon on Sunday, November 1. This was my second marathon; the first was Philadelphia in 2008. I trained for 20 weeks using a program from runningplanet.com specifically designed for a 3:40:00 marathon. In the final week of training I decided to reset my goal to 3:35:59, which qualifies a male in my 50-something age bracket for the prestigious Boston Marathon.
The NY Marathon is a logistical tour de force, with its 40,000-plus runners. Organizers clearly went to great lengths to keep everything moving and avoid excess congestion. Thus the start was divided into three waves, and these in turn were further partitioned into separate routes that only merged several miles later, where the streets were wider and people were naturally spread out more than at the start.
The streets were lined with hordes of cheering people. The atmosphere was highly charged, and despite the fact that I knew better, and even as I knew what I was doing, I committed the classic marathoner's mistake known as going out too fast. Instead of running around 8:14 per mile, my pace over the first 10K was 7:53.
Gradually I calmed down and ran the middle third of the race at a more reasonable pace. But you can't change the past, and by mile 18 I knew I was going to have to pay for my earlier lack of discipline. I had taped to my left wrist a timetable showing how much time had to have elapsed at each mile if I was to attain my goal time, and from consulting it I knew I was ahead of the pace throughout the course. But by mile 20 I was fading and the margin of error was getting slimmer. I concluded that I had nothing left, therefore nothing to lose. I would ask myself, can you stand another six miles of this? Yes I can. At five miles to go: can you stand another five? Yes I can. And so on.
The split times over the last six tell a tale of alternately fading, then fighting back. Mile 20, 8:22 -- too slow. Mile 21, 8:28 -- even slower! Mile 22, 8:12 -- excellent, two seconds ahead of the goal pace. Mile 23, 8:10 -- great. Mile 24 which is largely uphill, 8:49 -- despair! Mile 25, 8:04 -- heroic. Mile 26, 8:22 -- too slow, but we're almost home. For the last 0.2 I was running at an 8:35 pace -- definitely fading fast.
When at long last the great sign that said Finish came into view, I was so spent that it took me a couple of beats to comprehend what it meant. I crossed the finish line and stopped my watch at 3:34:44: success.
Weaving and unsteady on my feet, I was accosted by a volunteer who led me to the medical tent, where I ended up lying on a cot recovering for about 25 minutes. On the adjacent cot was a guy named John from New Zealand, apparently in his 40s, who had also nailed his BQ (Boston qualifier) at 3:17 -- and who had likewise spent everything he had and then some, and landed in the medical tent like me. In a shared state of total exhaustion and elation, we had a wonderful conversation about the nature of this amazing thing known as marathon running. It was a highlight of the whole experience.
During this conversation with John I had an insight: a marathon is at once both a communal, public event -- a grand party, an orgy of thousands running through the streets! -- and at the same time, as intensely personal and intimate an experience as you can have. It is absolutely solitary, but in a way that is neither good or bad. You drop down into ever deeper realms of your own consciousness and find out about who you really are. Think ten years of psychotherapy compressed into a few hours. Or, for you Zen practitioners, think of a week sesshin crammed into a single morning. No wonder the marathon game isn't for everyone. I believe that many marathon runners are motivated by nothing other than a search for the Truth. We intuitively understand what Master Bassui teaches: the Great Question cannot be resolved by the discursive mind.
Second-guessing myself, I speculate that I could well have attained the same result or better if I had run a more disciplined, strategic race. It would have been more elegant if I had conserved energy in the first half and had a powerful finish, running the last miles faster, not slower, than any of the preceding. But as experiences go, what actually did happen cannot be surpassed. It was a marvelous adventure.
Posted by Professor B at 9:47 AM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2009
Going to Jail for Health Care for All
On October 15, 2009, I participated in a nationwide campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience to demand Single Payer health care and an end to the profit-driven private health insurance system. Supported by some 50 legal protesters in the street, 14 protesters entered the lobby of One Penn Plaza in midtown Manhattan, a building that houses offices of the insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, and sat down on the floor. When we refused to leave, police arrested us and loaded us into paddy wagons.
Our group consisted six women and eight men. Of the men, two were in their mid-seventies; one of these was a retired Episcopalian priest, whose bearing and clerical color gave our group an air of respectability and gravitas; the other happened to be a Quaker.
Most people who do civil disobedience hope to get what is known as a Desk Appearance Ticket (DAT), where the police take you to the precinct, check your fingerprints for warrants, and if they find none, hand you a piece of paper like a traffic ticket and send you on your way. The whole process takes typically four to eight hours, and is perhaps only slightly more (or maybe less!) unpleasant than typical airline travel, where you are in a sense imprisoned, and your patience is tested. But we were not so fortunate. It was determined -- I don't know how or by whom -- that we were to go through "the system" with the rest of humanity in all its wretchedness. Some of us speculated that this determination may have been political, i.e., someone powerful made a phone call and said that protesters should be discouraged and not given any breaks.
First we were taken to the 9th Precinct, in the East Village, where we were divided by gender and kept in two cells for over 10 hours. For the first five or six hours, morale was high. We had lively and stimulating conversation, got to know one another, sang songs, had some good laughs. After seven or eight hours had elapsed and we still had not been provided water, much less food, we began to complain. Ironically enough, the priest had headed a commission some years ago that promulgated a set of reforms for the New York law enforcement and penal system. Among these was a regulation that any prisoner detained for over five hours between midnight and 7:00 a.m. had to be provided food and water. When priest pointed this out to one of the officers, she argued that the rule applied only to Corrections and not the NYPD. The priest insisted that it wasn't so, and encouraged her to consult her supervisor. Eventually, she offered to take a few dollars from us, go to a vending machine in the building and bring some bottled water. I don't think it took much effort. Shortly thereafter one of the support team was allowed to send in a bag with refreshments: more water, some fruit and energy bars.
In the meantime, the police went through an arduous process of fingerprinting us one by one with a scanner that kept failing to recognize our fingerprints. Whether it was software or hardware that was defective, or both, the machine balked if your fingers were too oily, or not oily enough, or if you were simply too old and your prints were too faint. The cops muddled through with commendable patience for the several hours that it took to fingerprint all 14 of us.
It was approaching 10:00 pm when we were transported downtown to a place known as the Tombs, in the basement of the courthouse at 100 Center Street, too late to appear in night court and be released. The place was packed, and we all stood handcuffed in a slow-moving line for over an hour to be photographed one by one, and finally, around midnight, admitted as a group to one of several large holding cells.
Some of us were still wearing white T-shirts with black lettering that said "Victim of Private Health Insurance" on one side, and "Medicare For All" on the other. We were repeatedly asked by both police and prisoners why we were protesting, and we seized every such opportunity. People were overwhelmingly receptive. (Only the intake photographer at the Tombs was hostile, but then again, from what I was able to observe, he seemed to have hostile attitude towards everyone.) Thus the system handed us an opportunity to promote our cause and continue the very sort of work for which we were arrested.
The Tombs was not particularly pleasant. I was grateful not to have known in advance what it would be like, because if I had, I might have hesitated to get arrested. We were in a windowless rectangle with a built-in stainless steel bench along three walls (the fourth being the bars). There were a lot of miscellaneous arrestees, people sleeping on the floor or on the benches, overwhelmingly black. A group of kids, whom I found vaguely menacing, had apparently been arrested together for drugs; they monopolized one of the two phones. Shortly after we arrived, the guard announced a feeding and let us all out into the hall to collect little boxes of corn flakes and milk. When we returned to the cell there was a confrontation, basically about territorial boundaries. Another prisoner struck one of our group in the face, breaking his glasses and giving him a black eye. Another of our group yelled for the guards, who came promptly and removed both victim and assailant to different cells. This was how our evening at the Tombs began. (Note to those considering doing CD who have an aversion to violence: this incident could surely have been avoided had we exercised a bit more caution.)
A guard came to the bars to ask witnesses about the incident. A couple of us went over and provided a narrative. Then there was some grumbling in the cell about snitches, and I had some fears of getting my white ass beaten. But the whole affair seemed to blow over, and the hours dragged on.
And on. After so many hours under flourescent lights with no windows and little sleep, the time of day reported by my watch became a meaningless abstraction; there was no discernible difference between 4:30 a.m. or p.m. There was a water fountain in the cell, but I distrusted the foul-tasting water and drank sparingly. As for food, it's too painful to remember and I'd rather not talk about it. Seriously, though, the nourishment provided was evidently designed to keep us from starving and no more. For a good meal you should look elsewhere.
At some point, a handsome, well-dressed, articulate black man was brought into the cell. He and a like-minded friend began to lecture the assemblage about God, and His purpose for us all, and what we had to do to attain true manhood. "Gentlemen," he said, "there are four attributes that you do not find in a real man. A real man is not a gangsta, a pimp, a thug, or a playa." This seemed to be directed at the vaguely menacing kids. Eventually, there was a genuine conversation to which everyone who was not asleep appeared to pay attention, many of them participating. We discussed spiritual and philosophic issues and basic personal values. Where we could find common ground, we did so. When our well-dressed friend argued the inferiority of women, we called him on it. It was a remarkably fruitful exchange of ideas. But the preachers outlasted us, and the dialogue degenerated back into a one-sided lecture that became oppressive.
Our Episcopalian priest had been placed in a separate, more private cell -- presumably because of his age and status. Towards morning, they put him back in with the rest of us. His appearance apparently humbled the two lay preachers, as they finally quieted down as soon as this real clergyman arrived.
The morning wore on and became afternoon, according to my watch. At last the guards started pulling small subsets of us out to go to court, where a judge released us on our own recognizance. Mine was one of the last three bodies -- as we call humans in the judicial/corrections trade -- to be summoned. Our lawyer, a volunteer who enjoys representing protesters, stood up for us in court without having had a chance to talk to us beforehand. The prosecutor offered Defendant Yours Truly a plea to Trespass Violation, the lightweight version of the misdemeanor Criminal Trespass, and one day of community service. Community service? Excuse me, I have been serving the community big-time for the last 32 hours. For our septuagenarian Quaker, who has more of a track record than most of us, the offer was seven days in jail. Apparently he is deemed a danger to society and in need of some deterrence. Fuck that. The UnitedHealth 14 will be holding out for much more favorable dispositions.
My brief encounter with the system was sufficient to underscore what I already knew: we live in a profoundly racist society. There can be no justification for the extreme overrepresentation of minorities and the poor in the jail population. If patterns of law enforcement have a disproprortionate impact on non-whites, which they undoubtedly do, that is inexcusable; and if dark-skinned people in fact commit crimes at a greater rate than light-skinned people do, then they must be disproportionately affected by inequality and social problems that make it so, and which must be addressed. Most people would rather make a living wage than spend the night in the Tombs for shoplifting cosmetics from Walgreens.
The experience also reinforced my feelings of gratitude. I knew I was lucky to enjoy a bourgeois life, but after being released from the can, sleeping in a comfortable bed next to my warm and yummy wife, with the cat Master Lin-chi curled up purring next to my legs in all his astounding furriness -- this was delicious beyond description. I slept like a god.
When I awoke, the first thought in my head was this: Patients, not profits. Medicare for all. I realized my determination was now all the stronger.
* * *
Since you've been good enough to read all these words, you can now be rewarded with pictures and video. An excellent YouTube piece is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vx_Cnw2Wxk, and there are still photos at http://www.antiauthoritarian.net/NLN/photo-gallery/2009_10_14_health/ -- scroll down past the silly HCAN stuff about the meaningless public option to see some great shots of the UnitedHealth action.
And yes, there is something you can do: http://mobilizeforhealthcare.org/ The struggle is far from over and we have no intention of giving up.
Posted by Professor B at 3:26 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2009
for Amy
this morning I saw
you standing in the shower:
a naked godess
Posted by Professor B at 4:42 PM | Comments (0)