Category Archives: Society

Memorial Day

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Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday once known as Decoration Day commemorates the men and women who perished under the flag of this country, fighting for what sets our America apart: the freedom to live as we please.

Holiday is a contraction of holy and day; the word originally referred only to special religious days. Here in the U.S. of A. “holiday” means any special day off work or school instead of a normal day off work or school.

The Uniform Holidays Bill which gave us some 38 or 50 Monday shopaholidays moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. Today is not May 30 but perhaps we can shut up and salute anyway.

Editorial cartoon from Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Lest we forget, the Americans we honor did not “give their lives.” They did not merely perish. They did not just cease living, check out, croak, depart, drop, expire, kick off. kick the bucket, pass away or pass on, pop off, or bite the dust. Their lives were taken from them by force on battlefields around the world. They were killed. Whether you believe they died with honor, whether you believe our cause just, died they did.

Today is not a “free” day off work or school. Today is not the big sale day at the Dollar Store. Today is a day of Honor.

2,180 U.S. men and women have died in Afghanistan since 2001.

More than 656,000 Battle Deaths have occured since the U.S. was founded.

“All persons present in uniform should render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute. All other persons present should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Citizens of other countries present should stand at attention. All such conduct toward the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.”

The American flag today should first be raised to the top of the flagpole for a moment, then lowered to the half-staff position where it will remain until Noon. The flag should be raised to the peak at Noon for the remainder of Memorial Day.

There are those in this country who would use today to legislate the man out of the fight. They can do that but the men and women we honor today knew you cannot legislate the fight out of the man. They have fought and they have died to protect us from those who would kill us. And perhaps to protect us from those who would sell out our birthright.

There is no end to the mutts who would kill our men and women in uniform even faster than they would kill their own. And there is no end to the mutts in our capitol who would let them. If I had but one wish granted on this day, I wish not another soldier dies. Ever. But die they did around the world again this year and die they will. For us. For me.

Because those men and women died, I get to write these words again this year. And you get to read them. You get to rail about Islam or Presbyterianism or Frisbeeism without fear of the government. And I get to read it. Please pause and reflect as you go to a concert, stop at an artist’s studio, grill a burger, or simply read a book in the sunshine the price we pay to keep our right to do those things. Thank a soldier today. And then do it again tomorrow.

Editor’s Note: This column is slightly updated from one that appeared first in 2008.

 

Decorating Tips

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“Have you been inside?” my friend Ashley Proctor gushed. “It is really something!”

A new house went up on my block in South Puffin. The architecture is interesting in that generic nouveau-riche-Keys-stucco style. It has large windows that do not open, square pillars defining a 1-1/2 story entry, and a scant foot or two on each side for dense landscaping. And we are blessed that it is not another hacienda.

Ms. Proctor is a young social engineer in Madison, Wisconsin. She dropped in to get away from the frozen north; my neighbor took her on “the tour.” Upmarket furnishings had never before turned her head.

I’ve discovered where McMansion builders get their decorating tips.

I spent the weekend in Las Vegas where we passed a Russian mobster blipping the throttle on his Lamborghini Gallardo and checking the time on his Rolex. Later, we watched an old-style, 30-something Vegas mobster in a sharkskin suit busing tables at the restaurant. (It was a better meal than the $60 Kobe hamburger, by the way).

Hotel Decor - Public Spaces

Tranquility isn’t the word most visitors would use to describe Las Vegas. In fact, there are 12.5 million LED lights across the barrel roof to accompany the high octane music and light show of Fremont Street. And then there’s the Strip, the 4-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard South with many of the largest casinos in the world and over 62,000 hotel rooms, where the night is bright and brash and glittering and loud.

Eat Mo Glitter.

And mo marble.

Hotel Room Decor

Just like the MGM Grand or the Venetian, that new house in South Puffin has a broad expanse of marble floors, recessed lighting for that intimate football stadium feel, and moldings. Ornate skirting boards. Beading at the chair rails. Ropework, dentils, and egg-and-dart details on the crown moldings. One room, done in black-and-white, cries out for a zebra-skin rug and zebra-striped linens. They did exercise restraint. There was no gold leaf or other gilt.

I’m not sure whether to blame the decorators the McMansion builders hire or the owners themselves but I’m hoping they buy the entire 21 piece living room set so at least everything matches.

 

Used Car Dealers

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Join me now for wondrous a ride in the Way-Back machine as we visit that time in the distant past when I built boats. Boat building is a wonderful business, full of some of the nicest people you’d ever want to go broke with.

Selling boats, not so much.

Like most folks in the business, I subscribed to several of the trade mags including Boat and Motor Dealer. It’s a good rag, full of how-to articles as well as profiles of the successful traders who would sell my wares to the unsuspecting public.

The advice? Emulate a car dealer.

Have you bought a car recently? After arm wrestling the salesman to a draw, you’ll be presented with a contract that is for a wee bit more than you might have thought the F&I manager promised.

Oh, the price of the car won’t have changed but that ain’t the amount on the check they want you to write.

Car dealers have mastered the hidden fee and the mysterious charge in the sales process: Some are inevitable, some are questionable, and many are just plain bogus.

Sales tax: There is no escape from death or taxes.
Title fee: It’s a tax. You’re stuck.
Vehicle registration (the license plate): Ditto.
Vehicle registration, part II: Florida residents adding a vehicle are assessed an additional $225 fee. Just because we can. Bogus but it’s a tax so you’re stuck.
Doc fee/conveyance fee: This so-called “documentation fee” pays for the paperwork every other business calls the overhead to record a sale. Dealers have just figured out that you should pay their overhead. Bogus.
Prep fee: The dealer preparation fee is assessed to cover the cost of preparing the car to hand over. The factory covers the prep fee. Really bogus.
Delivery charge: The factory already adds a “destination charge” to the invoice. You’ll notice that if you buy a model car from Wally or a kumquat from the grocery, there is no “destination charge” to cover freight. Other businesses eat that cost. Many car and boat dealers tack on an additional delivery charge of their own. Doubly bogus.
Advertising fee: This one’s extra tough because you’ll notice again that if you buy that model car or kumquat, there is no “advertising fee” to cover the cost of enticing you to the store. What, are they nuts?
Facility fee: This is a really, really good one. You get to rent the chair you sit in the waiting room. B-O-G-U-S.

The Airlines definitely read the playbook. They charge you for your ticket. Fine. They charge you for your meal. Ehh. They charge you to check your bag. Not so fine. And now they charge you for your “better” seat on top of charging for your flight.

Hospitals apparently read Boat & Motor Dealer, too. Here’s what the Miami Herald had to say yesterday on page one, above the fold:

Like baggage fees for air travel, healthcare may come with hidden costs called facility fees, and not all insurers pay them.

The Herald story details the unpleasant surprise a Miami woman had with the University of Miami’s network of clinics and hospitals. She had some testing done at one of their outpatient clinics. Her insurance paid for the tests but not the $210 bill from UHealth for “hospital services.” The hospital labeled it “Room and Board – All Inclusive.” She never set foot in any UHealth hospital or spent the night at the clinic.

She probably did sit in a chair in the waiting room, though.

Not all insurers pay them? Why should an insurer pay a new, extra facility fee? Why should the patient pay a new, extra facility fee?

Our South Puffin hospital owns several physician practices and has an urgent care center. Our North Puffin hospital has also bought or started physician practices, built a rural health center network, and a new urgent care center. I don’t know if either charges a facility fee. I’m afraid to ask.

I do know that SWMBO had to visit the North Puffin urgent care center over the weekend. She tangled with a piece of sheet metal in the barn and needed four stitches.

They did a great job.

They didn’t give her a bill.

Doctors have no idea how much a “procedure” costs. Hospitals can never tell you what it will cost to visit them. I do not understand how any business can get away with that.

“We’ll just bill your insurance,” they said.

Not giving her the bill may have been wise. See, I won’t pay a “facility fee” and do typically argue a bill line by line because the overreach of government and the malfeasance of the insurance companies aren’t the only reasons U.S. health care needs to be burned down and rebuilt from scratch.

If they had given me the bill, her insurer would have never even seen the bogus charges.

 

Be Gone, Twerk, and Take that Selfie with You!

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Between overused and underbrained, herewith are the top-ten words that annoyed you (and me) the most in 2013:

10. Obamacare (no explanation necessary)
9. No problem
8. Gridlock
7. Just sayin’
6. Shutdown
5. -Pocalypse (as a suffix for any noun.)
4. Selfie
3. Like
2. Whatever fell from the top spot, the Pew National Attitudes Project found.

The winner, hands down, as the one word grates on Americans more than any other?
1. Congress (that’s the only poll they won in 2013.)

 

Guest Post: Peej’s No Puffin

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[Special to the Perspective] — I’m feeling emotional today, which is par for the course this time of year, although some days I’m more so than others. Today is one of the “extremely-more-so” days … so it was probably stupid of me to choose this day to go through two boxes of Christmas decorations. They aren’t mine; they belonged to a neighbor who moved to a different state last summer. She took a few ornaments that trace back to when her now-adult daughter was a baby, and gave the rest to me. She hasn’t seen or talked to her daughter in a long time, and she doesn’t care to.

As I’m going through these two boxes I’m overcome by memories, happy and joyful memories of Christmases past, celebrated with three children I love too much to even begin to describe. Later, when grandchildren were added to the mix, my Christmases grew even more love-filled and even more memorable. That love and those incredible memories were trying hard to dominate my mind as I went through the two boxes of decorations — but they weren’t winning the battle. They were squeezed out by shock and grief that someone could simply toss years of memories away like that. I’m able to read people quite well and I could tell that she just didn’t care. “Take what you want and either donate the rest or put them out by the curb with your trash,” she told me.

Thinking I hadn’t heard her, I asked if she was absolutely certain and she assured me she was.

Many of the decorations are dated … 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982. Obviously the family chose a special ornament each year, and I thought of the ages my own children were during each of those years. I remembered our annual tradition of going to a Christmas store and choosing one special ornament together, and then going to get our tree. I thought of the stockings I hand-made for them when they were toddlers (stockings they still love to this day). I thought of the ornaments that each of them made for me in school, all of which I still have and still hang on the tree year after year. Those thoughts were lovely, but as I was getting lost in them I couldn’t help feeling like I was violating someone’s personal space. As though I had no business pawing through those boxes, touching those colorful glass balls and birds and angels and bells and Santas and rocking horses … precious possessions and memories that belonged to someone else and not to me.

Mostly what I felt, though, was despair that any parent could be ambivalent about seeing his or her child … at Christmas time, or any time. That is simply inconceivable to me, as I look at my children and grandchildren and feel like there’s no way my heart can possibly hold all that love. And just when I think it’s filled past capacity, more love for a family that means the world to me somehow finds a way in.

I’ll pray for her. I don’t know whether she cares, or whether it will do any good, but I’ll pray anyway.

— Peggy J. Parks

Author Peggy J. Parks has written more than 100 nonfiction educational books for children and young adults on topics ranging from environmental science, the Internet, and space research to controversial issues such as gay rights, animal experimentation, stem cells, and drug legalization. Two of her titles were recognized as “Best Books” of the year by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition, she wrote and self-published the cookbook Welcome Home: Recipes, Memories, and Traditions from the Heart.