May 21, 2013

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Talking Transportation: Gov Malloy Seeks To Kill the Commuter Council

March 19, 2013 by

Jim CameronShortly after he came to office, I wrote something critical of newly elected Governor Malloy.  Nothing new there.  I’d certainly questioned Republican governors in years past, usually to little response.  But this time the reaction was different.

A Malloy confidant, a senior State Senator from Fairfield County, took me aside and threatened me.  Not physically, but legislatively.  “You know, we could eliminate the Commuter Rail Council if you keep this up,” he said in Machiavellian tones.  “Bring it on,” I said, half-shocked at this political threat.

Well, it took a couple of years (and more criticism), but the threat has come true.  The Governor has submitted a bill (HB 6363) that would wipe out the existing Metro-North Commuter Rail Council and its 15 members.  In its place, a new Council would be appointed and the Governor, not the members of the Council, would choose its Chairman.

Further, the new Commuter Council’s mandate would turn from investigation and advocacy on behalf of fellow commuters to a PR advisor to the CDOT.  While the current Council has the power to request information and is required to receive cooperation from any state or local agency, that power would be eliminated under Malloy’s bill.

The Commuter Council isn’t the only pro-transportation group affected by the bill.  The CT Public Transportation Commission would also be eliminated along with the last vestiges of the Transportation Strategy Board (killed off by Malloy last year), the TIA’s, or “Transportation Investment Areas”.

This obvious power-grab by the Governor has so far gone unchallenged in the legislature, buried in a 66-page Christmas tree of a bill.  If it becomes law, my 15+ years as a member of the Commuter Council (the last four as its Chairman) will be history.

But why is the Metro-North Commuter Council singled out for such harsh treatment?

It’s not that the Commuter Council has been wasting state money.  We operate on a budget of zero dollars, even dipping into our own pockets to pay for design of a logo and pay for postage.  And I don’t think it can be argued that we haven’t been doing our jobs… meeting monthly with Metro-North and the CDOT to address commuter complaints and push for ever better service.

No, I think the real problem is that we’ve done our job too well, calling out CDOT, the legislature and yes, even the Governor, when they did things that we felt screwed commuters.  That’s our mandate.

I guess Governor Malloy didn’t like it when we pointed out that as a gubernatorial candidate he promised to never raid the Special Transportation Fund to balance the state’s budget, but then did just that when he took office.  And I guess he wasn’t happy when I noted that his budget took new fare increases from Metro-North riders but didn’t spend the money on trains, in effect making the fare hike a “commuter tax”.

And I’d imagine the Commissioner of the CDOT… the fifth Commissioner in my 15+ years on the Council… would be happy to see the current Council gone, critical as we have been about their Stamford Garage project which we see as selling out the interests of commuters to private developers.

It’s sad that the Governor feels the way to answer legitimate criticism is to eviscerate those who question him.  But I can promise you that his proposed elimination of the Metro-North Commuter Council won’t silence me.  Bring it on, Governor.

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 22 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  You can reach him at CTRailCommuterCouncil@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .  For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

Filed Under: News, Transportation

Did Jesus have a wife? New evidence says “Yes.”

February 25, 2013 by
Dr. King shows the sample of papyrus at a conference of scholars in Rome. –from the New York Times

Dr. King shows the sample of papyrus at a conference of scholars in Rome.
–from the New York Times

Eagle Rock, CA  — Milady Annabelle and I were visiting Occidental College. She’s an alumna. It’s a fine private, coed college, one of the oldest on our Pacific coast. Just a few miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

We were strolling the beautiful grounds. I noticed a newspaper box and, news junkie that I am, took out a paper—the students’ Occidental Weekly! A freebie. Never saw it before.

A big headline on Page 1: “Former Occidental Professor debates possible existence of Jesus’ wife.”

Couldn’t resist it. Read it right there. Every word. Seems that Jesus did have a wife. Gosh! But the headline was mild compared to the story itself. In her talk to Occidental students, the professor wasn’t “debating” anything. She said she had strong evidence that suggested yes, Jesus did have a wife!

I handed the paper to Annabelle. She feasted on it. “Sensational,” she said.

Both of us had heard allusions of this over the years, whispers, so to speak. But nothing like this. Nothing this firm. And that’s why I’m sharing it with you now.

Imagine our learning of this in a student newspaper!

The professor, Dr. Karen L. King, had moved on from Occidental and was now a professor at Harvard U. Divinity School. She had had come back to give to give her talk about this astounding development.

And she had first-hand info—she had done the research to come up with it.

She had gotten possession of a scrap of ancient papyrus. Just a tiny thing—the size of a business card. It had pieces of Coptic writing on it. Translated, one of them stated, “Jesus said  (to his disciples), “my wife….” That’s all.”

Unfortunately, the rest of the sentence was missing.

The story we were reading was written by student Clark Scally—students produce the whole paper. I was impressed by it. I noticed Scally had also authored two other articles in it. A busy young man. To my eye, quite professional.

His story about Dr. King’s talk had a juicy tidbit. He wrote, “In the Gospel of Philip, discussed by (Prof.) King in her lecture, Jesus speaks of marriage and sexuality extensively. He also refers to Mary Magdalene as his close companion whom he kisses more often than his other disciples, much to the concern of Apostles Peter and Matthew.”

That tickled me. For the simple reason that over the years I have come to think of Jesus as a man, as a very great teacher, one of the greatest ever, but just a man. And this certainly makes him look manly. I like that. Besides. I had never heard it said that boldly before.

In her talk, Dr. King said that scrap of papyrus was believed to have come from the fourth or fifth centuries.

She said an anonymous donor who collected such things had given it to her at Harvard Divinity School.

She had made thorough efforts to authenticate that exciting bit of papyrus. Had shown it to numerous scholars. Had discussed it with them. Had double-checked everything as carefully as she could. Had slept on it. Had decided it was legitimate. But she said more analysis is going on.

Certainly she’s a lady and professor of high repute and attainment. She left Occidental to join Harvard Divinity in 2003 as the Winn  Professor of Ecclesiastical History.

Six years later she made history when she became the first woman to be the Hollis Professor of Divinity. It is the oldest endowed chair on our shores, dating back to 1721.

She has received research grants from prestigious foundations. Has written many articles and half a dozen scholarly books. So, she is no lightweight.

I find the titles of two of her books tantalizing, The Secret Revelation of John and The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.

She spilled this about Jesus and his wife at Occidental on Feb. 7. But that came after a storm of controversial announcements and newsbreaks about it.

Initially, Dr. King had traveled to Rome with the papyrus and displayed it to a group of New Testament experts. She came back sure that it was authentic, though apparently the scholars were not all agreed.

The Vatican blasted it as counterfeit. A columnist for Britain’s eminent Guardian newspaper disagreed loudly. Declared the papyrus document a fraud and explained why. It boiled down to a typo.

It is known that the notion that Jesus did not have a wife developed only a century after his death. It is said that numerous people of Jesus’ time believed that he was indeed married. How about that?

To announce her findings to the wide public, Dr. King staged a press conference at the Divinity School.. It got attention. The New York Times was there, among others. It followed up with a detailed story. And it stirred up scores of comments, pro and con.

I read many. Scholarly and impressive. Regardless what side they were on, these people seemed awfully knowledgeable.

I’m not sure what to believe. I’d like more than a scrap of evidence. But again, deep down I like to believe that Jesus was a married man. That’s so natural. That’s what most of us want to do and end up doing. More and more of us get married more than once!

And now we have men marrying men and women marrying women! Legally.

Getting hooked seems to satisfy an inner need.

The public reaction was more than Dr. King expected. She says shat she is not saying Jesus had a wife. She is saying that the papyrus said he did.

I found it dramatic that this red-hot story was appearing in the student newspaper of a college of strong Christian origins. Occidental was founded by staunch Presbyterians and was totally Presbyterian for a century or so. It has been liberalizing in the last decade or two. I wonder how the old-timers would feel about this.

For sure one would be the Rev. Dr. Hugh K. Walker, D.D. He was a long-time chairman of Occidental’s board of directors in its earliest days. He set the school on a firm path.

He was the minister of the leading Presbyterian church in Los Angeles.

Why am I telling you this? Because of a terrific coincidence. Dr. Walker was milady Annabelle’s grandfather on her mother’s side. And that’s why her mom and dad enrolled her at Occidental.

In fact, her dad also was a Presbyterian minister. But he gave that up and became president for many years of the Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital… in time also became president of the U.S. Protestant Hospital Association.

Occidental’s fine reputation has become even more widely known of late. A big reason is that it was the first college in our continental U.S. that young Barack Obama, freshly arrived from Hawaii, attended. He lasted two years, transferring to Columbia U. in New York.

That’s something Annabelle shares with him. She jumped after two years, too, and probably for the same reason—to experience a broader undergraduate experience. She went on to the University of California at Berkeley and graduated from there.

One more thing about Clark Scally’s piece in the Occidental Weekly.

At its close, he wrote: “A member of the audience asked Dr. King how she was handling the attention and its pressure.

“’I lost eight pounds in the first week.’ Dr. King answered.

‘The Divinity School arranged a panic button in my office due to concerns for my physical safety. Most of my job since this has come out is to throw cold water on everything.’”

I liked young Scally’s including this quote.  it shows that it’s not so easy to be a professor. At times you must really profess.

Maybe he’ll wind up on the New York Times someday.

Filed Under: Senior Moments

Talking Transportation: The Five Biggest Lies About Highway Tolls

January 9, 2013 by

Jim CameronLike it or not, get ready to pay tolls on our Interstates and Parkways.  Transportation officials in Hartford say there’s just no other way to raise badly needed money for over-due infrastructure repairs.  Tolls may not be popular, but neither are collapsing bridges.

In the last decade’s debate on highway tolling, here are the five biggest lies that opponents have used to stall the return of highway tolls:

1)    The Federal Government Won’t Let Us:  Also known as “We’ll have to return millions in federal funding”.  Not true, as US DOT officials told us at a SWRPA-sponsored meeting in Westport years ago.  The federal government regularly allows tolls to be used as traffic mitigation and revenue raising tools.

2)    Our Highways Should Be Free:  So should ice cream and donuts.  Nothing is free, including the cost of repairing I-95 and removing snow from the Merritt.  Gasoline taxes come nowhere near to raising the needed revenue. Driving is a privilege, not a right. It should come with a cost.

3)    Tolls Will Slow Traffic:  It’s not 1965 anymore.  Tolling doesn’t require highway-wide barriers with booths and gates.  Just look at the NJ Turnpike or Garden State Parkway, where barrier-free tolls using EZPass allow you to pay at 55 mph.

4)    Tollbooths Cause Accidents:   See #3 above.  This happened once, 29 years ago, in Milford, and was used as an excuse to end tolling in the state.  If toll barriers are unsafe, why don’t fiery truck crashes happen daily at the hundreds of other toll barriers around the US?

5)    Highway Tolls Will Divert Traffic to Local Roads:     This may be true, for about the first week.  If people would rather drive for free on the Boston Post Road than pay 50 cents to save an hour by taking I-95, let ‘em.  Few drivers are that cheap, or stupid.

Trust me, I know about tolls and toll booths. I spent three summers in college working as a toll collector on the Tappan Zee Bridge.  Back then the toll was only 50 cents to cross the mighty Hudson, but people still didn’t like paying it.  (Today the toll is $5).

Connecticut pioneered toll roads as early as the late 18th century.  But today our state is facing billions in over-due bridge and highway repairs.  And federal aid for transportation may be cut by a third. So why are we in this current mess?  Who’s to blame?  Us!

We’re the ones that stupidly pushed CT lawmakers to cut the gas tax 14 cents a gallon in 1997.  And we’re the ones making it political suicide for legislators today to say they support tolls, even though they know tolls are inevitable.

Pick your poison:  “free” driving on pothole-filled highways with collapsing bridges… or pay a few bucks for a safe, speedy ride.

I vote for the tolls.

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 21 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: Transportation

Talking Transportation: Is This Any Way to Run The State?

May 22, 2012 by

Usually, I have a lot of respect for our elected officials in Hartford. But what happened in the final hours of the legislative session in recent weeks is just shocking.  You probably didn’t hear about it because there are no reporters left covering the state house for what passes for newspapers and TV news in our state, but that’s another story.

Lawmakers know they aren’t being watched and are, therefore, not accountable.  (I do commend veteran reporter Ken Dixon’s blog for the gory details of what they pulled off.)

Working late into the night, in their final hours in session, our elected officials wheeled and dealed on dozens of bills, painstakingly crafted and considered in recent months.  By 3 am they were voting on bundles of bills they had not read, some introduced at the last minute, acting like bleary-eyed college students pulling an all-nighter.  This is the government we deserve?

Amidst this annual frenzy, the Malloy administration was also trying to plug a $200 million gap in the current budget.  Unwilling to raise taxes any further, they turned to rail commuters and motorists and picked our pockets instead.  But the session had started on a better note.

Thanks to State Rep Kim Fawcett (D-Fairfield), a previously announced 4% rail fare hike to take effect 1/1/13 had gone away during the writing of the new budget.  But at the 11th hour, Malloy’s budget team put it back… not to raise money to fix our trains, but to raise funds to close the deficit.  This was less a fare increase than a tax on commuters.  And it was Governor Malloy’s idea, rubber stamped by the Democratic majority.

But worse yet, lawmakers stole $70 million from the Special Transportation Fund, also to plug that deficit hole.  That takes money raised by gasoline taxes, which was supposed to be used to fix highways and bridges, and uses it to pay for everything but those efforts.

As I have written before, the Special Transportation Fund (STF) is less a “lock box” than a slush-fund, dipped into regularly by Democrats and Republicans looking for money but reticent to raise taxes.

When he was running for office, candidate Dannel Malloy decried such moves.  He said he would call for a constitutional amendment to safeguard the STF from such pilfering.  Not only did he not introduce such an amendment, he did the same as past governors, raiding the STP and making commuters pay for his budgeting mistakes.  In my book, that makes him a hypocrite.

Months earlier, we discovered that this past January’s 4% fare increase wasn’t going to be spent on the trains, but was going into the STF.  When State Rep Gal Lavielle (R – Wilton) tried, along with 20+ lawmakers, to get introduce a bill requiring fare hikes to be spent on mass transit, she couldn’t even get it out of committee.

Commuters:  the fix is in.  Your fares (the highest of any commuter railroad in the US) are going higher.  But the money won’t be spent on improving rail service.  Those millions will just go into the STF slush-fund.  And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

Of course, this is an election year.  So you might ask those running for State Representative and State Senator who want to represent you, why they allow rail fares to be used as yet another tax on commuters.

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 21 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  You can reach him at CTRailCommuterCouncil@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .  For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

Filed Under: Transportation

Talking Transportation: Next Stop Penn Station?

February 14, 2012 by

There’s discussion again about bringing some Metro-North trains directly from Connecticut into New York City’s Penn Station.  But will it happen?

As with many good ideas that seem so easy, this one also has been studied thoroughly and found to be problematic in a number of respects.  Governor Rell floated the idea in 2007 but it went nowhere, aside from an experiment by NJ Transit to run trains from New Haven to the Meadowlands.

Here are the reasons that daily commuter service isn’t yet possible:

INADEQUATE EQUIPMENT:  As any commuter on Metro-North can tell you, we don’t have enough seats for existing service to Grand Central let alone expansion to new stations.  It’s standing room only in rush hour and on weekends.

ELECTRICITY:  Our existing fleet of MU cars cannot take a left turn at New Rochelle and head over the Hells Gate Bridge onto Long Island, then hang a right, in through the tunnels into Penn Station.  The old cars’ overhead power catenary system operates under a different voltage than Amtrak.  And in third rail territory on Long Island, even our new M8 cars use a different kind of shoe to contact the third-rail power source.  The 2009 experimental direct train from Connecticut to Giants Stadium in New Jersey was actually run with New Jersey transit railroad equipment which was only available because it was on weekends.

CAPACITY:  Even if we had the cars with the right electrical equipment to make it over the Hells Gate Bridge and through the tunnels to Penn Station, there’s no room in the station… that the station is full-up serving Amtrak, the Long Island Railroad and NJ transit.  If and when the $6.3 billion East Side Access project bringing some Long Island Railroad trains into Grand Central is completed (many years from now), says the MTA, there might be room for Metro-North trains to access Penn Station.

CUT LIRR SERVICE?        Recently the MTA has hinted they might run some Metro-North trains into Penn Station, but it would have to cut Long Island RR service.  You can imagine the push-back that got, pitting one set of commuters against another.  (See more on our Facebook page).

Whatever the decision, it won’t be made by us here in Connecticut.  Once again, Connecticut is being told by the New York MTA what our transportation future will be.  Connecticut still has no say in the matter… not even a voting seat at the table, either on the MTA or the Metro-North boards.

Connecticut may be the MTA’s largest customer, hired by CDOT to operate Metro-North trains in our state, but when it comes to important decisions, like expanding rail service to Penn Station, the MTA is clearly in control.

Years ago Governor Rell acknowledged the inequity in this position, and promised to fight for a seat on the MTA board.  But nothing happened.  Nor has Governor Malloy said anything about this unfairness.

So, just why is a New York agency still in charge of Connecticut’s transportation future?

JIM CAMERON has been a Darien resident for 21 years.  He is Chairman of the Metro-North Commuter Council, a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM, but the opinions expressed here are only his own.  You can reach him at CTRailCommuterCouncil@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: News, Transportation

Talking Transportation – Congress Tells Commuters…“Drop Dead”

January 16, 2012 by

Jim Cameron – Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council

Back in 1975 when New York City was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, then- President Ford declined to offer help and the NY Daily News’ headlinescreamed “Ford to City: Drop Dead”.

Well, last month the US Congress said about the same thing to us users of mass transit.  In their quagmire of inaction, bickering and partisanship, they let expire an important tax benefit to commuters:  whether you drove or took mass transit, you used to be able to spend up to $230 a month in pre-tax dollars to fund your commute.  But by not acting to extend the law, that benefit dropped to $125 a month for riders of mass transit but increased to $240 a month for drivers’ parking expenses.

What?  Commuters who ride the train / bus /subway get screwed but drivers get a benefits hike?  Yes, friends, it’s all true and you have Congress to thank.

This isn’t a red-state / blue-state issue.  I see it as a “gray state” victory, the gray states being those paved with asphalt that have scorned mass transit.  Meanwhile, big city riders of the rails get penalized.

There’s something egalitarian about mass transit… millionaires riding in the same smelly Metro-North cars as blue collar workers.  People of color actually mingling with white folks!  It’s like we’re all in this together, sharing space, giving up our individual liberties (smoking, singing, traveling exactly when we want) for the greater good (less highway congestion, air pollution, saving money).

People in the gray states don’t understand that.  Theirs is a culture of selfishness:  my car, my space, my right to travel where I want and when, to heck with you.  Oh yeah, and the right to have free parking (or at least subsidized, as under this bill).

Connecticut commuters welcomed the New Year with a 5.25% fare hike on Metro-North (with similar fare hikes to come the next two years), thanks to the Malloy administration seeing rail riders as an easy target for “revenue enhancement”.  So losing this federal tax benefit is just adding insult to injury.

The Federal government doesn’t do much in terms of our commuter rail.  They didn’t pay a penny for the new M8 cars.  They don’t set the fares, determine the station parking rules or set the timetable.  All of those are state functions.

Sure, the feds did kick some Tiger III grant money to Stamford for station work, but aside from that, nada.

That’s why Senators Blumenthal and Lieberman are trying to restore this federal tax benefit, the one thing they can do to help us commuters.  They’ve been flooded with angry letters.  Their bill (S-1034) has 10 co-sponsors but so far hasn’t won support from their colleagues who matter, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).  Not a lot of commuter rail in Montana and Utah, eh?

Time will tell if Congress can fix this mess.  I’m not optimistic, despite the best efforts of our Connecticut delegation.

 

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 21 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: News, Transportation

Talking Transportation: The Malloy ‘Tax’ On Commuters

October 5, 2011 by

If a mugger came up to you on the street and said “I’m going to poke your eyes out!”, but then he only kicked you in the groin, would you think better of him?

That’s what Metro-North commuters are asking themselves now that CDOT has decided on 15.25% fare hike spread over the next three years instead of the 16.4% hike first proposed.  Are we supposed to be grateful?

To their credit, CDOT held eight public hearings around the state to gauge commuter response to their plan.  Hundreds turned out, 99% of them saying there was no justification for a fare increase in light of worsening service.  But having asked the public for their views, the CDOT chose to ignore them.

Mind you, this fare hike is not really coming from the CDOT.  It’s actually a creation of Governor Malloy and his budget team.

At every monthly meeting over the past two years the CT Rail Commuter Council asked CDOT if there were plans for a fare increase.  Each month they said “no”, until this spring during the budget process.

When the Governor’s concessions package was initially rejected by state employees, Malloy came out with “Plan B”, a painful collection of service cuts and fee increases (including a fare hike) that hit everyone in the state.  That got the state workers to reconsider and eventually they agreed to concessions and avoided layoffs.  But when the unions said yes, “Plan B” didn’t go away, especially the Metro-North fare hike.

So these fare increases are not to cover the cost of running the railroad but to balance the state budget.  What they amount to is nothing less than a “tax” on commuters, an attractive target with few alternatives.

Our fares are already the highest of any commuter railroad in the US.  Now they’ll be even higher.  Even the railroad’s own computer models suggest these higher fares will reduce ridership.

There are plenty of ways for Metro-North to save money without a fare hike, like collecting all the tickets on the trains.  For years the CT Rail Commuter Council has been asking the railroad to get conductors to do their job.  By their own estimates, the railroad acknowledges millions of dollars in lost revenue from uncollected fares.

Instead of collecting all the tickets, the railroad adopted new rules which make tickets expire sooner, leaving many riders with tickets that are now worthless.  Buy a ten-trip ticket and it’s worth zero in six months if you haven’t used it.  Meanwhile, passengers board trains at Stamford every day and get a free ride to Bridgeport because conductors aren’t doing their job. Their free ride is paid for by those with tickets.

Remember:  Metro-North works for the CDOT.  Why the state chooses to look the other way while the railroad abuses passengers in this way is a question best answered by Governor Malloy, the CDOT’s boss.

At a time when the state should be doing all it can to create and keep jobs in the state… and keep taxpayers from moving to NY or NJ… it’s astounding that Governor Malloy chooses instead to make the cost of commuting more expensive, not less.

This fare hike is just another nail in the coffin of Connecticut’s economic growth.

JIM CAMERON has been a Darien resident for 20 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  The opinions expressed in this column are only his own.  You can reach him at CTRailCommuterCouncil@gmail.com  or www.trainweb.org/ct

 

Filed Under: News, Transportation

A new face for a new future

May 27, 2011 by

I recently read an astonishing news story about a surgical first in the U.S. It was datelined Boston.     

Dallas Wiens, 25, a construction worker in Texas had been given a new face at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  Not a simple face lift, which is common now. He got a total face transplant.

The surgeons had removed the face of another person—dead, of course—and sewed it onto his face.  No word what the donor had died of or who he was.  The operation was done for the best of reasons.  To give him a new life.  A better future.

Now about this man in Texas, Dallas Wiens.  He was severely burned in a power line accident in 2008.  He lost his eyesight and his face was turned into a horrendous nightmare.  He looked so awful that it’s easy to think he might have thought of ending it all.

A plastic surgeon in Boston came to his rescue.  In fact, it took a whole team.  The operation lasted 15 hours and was enormously complex.  They gave him a new nose, new lips, new eyebrows, new cheeks, new skin. They had to make everything fit right.  And they had to connect all the muscles and nerves that make facial features move and that convey sensation.

The surgeon, Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, had had to wait until a face came along that would be a good match.  Finally he located one.  The tension of it all can last long after the operation.  The body can reject the transplanted pieces.

Nothing on our body identifies us as clearly as does our face, of course.  Many of us feel it important to change it, in little ways and big ones.  Often  for good reasons.  We get a new hairdo.  We dye our hair.  Get a wig or a toupe.  Grow a beard.  Change the color of our eyes through contacts.  Get tattoos.  Re-shape our eyebrows or shave them and paint on new ones.

Tan our cheeks under the sun or under a machine.  Or we lighten our skin a shade or two to pass more easily in our race-sensitive society.  We Botox our wrinkles away or have our nose straightened or our chin pushed in or pushed out..

Sometimes for nefarious reasons.  It may get done because somebody wants a new identity to escape the clutches of the law.  Some people have their finger tips changed, for instance.  Different tips mean different fingerprints.

It’s surprising how much surgery gets done to change how we look.  We make our breasts bigger or smaller.  Have body fat sucked off.  Convert our sexual parts to male or female.

We are familiar with many transplants.  I remember the first heart transplant—in South Africa.  Sorry, I don’t remember the name of the surgeon, or the patient, a man.  Surprised that I don’t remember.  That was front-page all over the world, of course, and that was only right.

Many other transplant surgeries were developed.  Some are routine now– lung transplants, kidney  transplants, other organ transplants, hair transplants, even hand transplants.  As we know, these parts are taken from one person and placed in another or moved from one of the body to another.  Skin and fat, for instance.

Sadly nothing could be done to restore Mr. Wiens’ eyesight.

It was just a year or two ago that I read of the world’s first face transplant.  What drama!  A new face was put on a woman in France whose face had been horribly damaged.  Of course that was headlined all over the world.  Apparently she has recovered and is enjoying her new face.  Let’s hope so.

These two face transplants were done to make these two people look better.  Be more comfortable in the presence of their loved ones and families and even strangers.  Make it possible to earn a living in plain view again—not having to find a job that keeps them out of sight.

Reading this story about Mr. Wiens, I immediately flashed back to a man who could use such an operation.  A woman, too.  Honest — if I had a face like those two poor souls, l’d high-tail it to Dr. Pomanac, too.

They had truly hideous faces.  The worst faces I have ever seen.  My sister Lucie felt the same way.  She was with me.

It was an evening six years ago in Shanghai.  We were there for the wedding of a Chinese friend, Wu.  The two of us were on a Metro train heading downtown.  The rush hour was over.  There were just a few passengers on board.  Lucie and I were sitting on a bench facing the center aisle, which ran through the car.

I heard the door on the left end of the car open and I looked up.  A woman was entering from the car behind ours.  I was shocked.  She had no nose.  Just a gaping hole where it was supposed to be.  No lips. Awful.  No eyebrows.  Yes, I was shocked.  So was Lucie.  It was terrible.  Impossible to describe how bad.

As she approached, she had a cup and held it out to this passenger and that one.  She was begging.

Right behind her came a man.  Just as hideous.  No nose.  No lips.  No eyebrows.  Hideous.  He was doing the same thing, begging.

They made their way so quickly that I had no time to react.  No opportunity to dig into my pocket for money if I wanted to.  Lucie reacted the same way.  We followed them with our eyes as they moved past us.  They had good-looking bodies.  Athletic and fit.  In their 30’s, it seemed.  Appeared to have no problem.  But very few people gave.  The two disappeared into the next car.  Must have been ready to cry with disappointment.

Right away Lucie and I turned to one another.  “What was that all about?!” I said.  She shook her head. “No idea. But how awful!”

My words shot out. “I never, never saw anybody like that before.”  The awe was all over her face.  “Me, either.  Two monsters.”

The next morning we kept our appointment with Wu.  He had come from his office to have lunch with us.  He is an engineer–the international marketing director of an  electronic products company.  He and I met seven years ago in Africa.  We’ve been friends ever since.

The minute I could, I brought up the two monsters.  Yes, monsters.  It’s the word that said it best.  I told him the story.  Lucie kept supplying awful details.

I said, “What was all that about, Wu?”

He had grown up in Shanghai.  If anybody knew, he would.  I was eager to hear it all.  Lucie was all ears.

He shook his head.  “I have heard of such people.  But I have never seen any.  There are not many.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I have heard stories.”

“Please tell us!”

“There are parents who do this to their children.  When they are young.  They do it with acids.  Maybe with a knife.”

“How awful.  But why?”

“The parents need money.  They want their children to go out on the street and beg.  To become professional beggars.  People will  be horrified and will give.  Will be merciful.   But John,  you said not many gave.  Maybe it does not work.”

We were disappointed, of course.  What a story.  The parents.  The life of these children.  Their terrible life now approaching horrified people and begging.

I had it on mind all through lunch.  I’m sure that when he left, Wu passed on our story to everybody he ran across.  Such an awful story.  So incredible.

As I read Mr. Wiens’ story, I imagined what the last two years must have been for him, so disfigured.  And I imagined what these two poor folks working the Metro riders in Shanghai would go to to get a decent new face from a surgeon like Dr. Pomanac .

Can you imagine how good Dr.Pomahac and his team must feel to have accomplished a miracle like that?

Oh, one more thing. Dr.Pomahac said that Mr. Wiens would not look like he used to, and not like the unidentified donor.  He would look somewhere in between.

That’s appropriate.  His new face is giving him a new life.  A new future.  Wonderful.  Why shouldn’t he enter it happily and excitedly with a nice new—and different–face?

Maybe a clever surgeon will find a way to give him new eyesight.  Maybe by transplanting new eyes into him.  Don’t rule it out, as crazy as it sounds.

I hope so.

Filed Under: News, Senior Moments

Career Column 11: Seismologists, Hydrologists, and Meteorologists

April 28, 2011 by

Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and floods.  The news has been full of these problems and their disastrous consequences lately.  It seems that we need help on planet Earth.  Seismologists study earthquakes, hydrologists water patterns, and meteorologists weather patterns.  I am hoping that talented and dedicated people will choose these fields and work on improving techniques for predicting extreme weather,  earthquakes, volcanic activity, and so forth, making the world safer for all of us. 

Seismologist

There is a great description of the work of seismologists, put together by a Canadian organization, Eco Canada, here:  www.eco.ca/_student/PrintableProfiles/87.pdf.  Briefly, seismology is the scientific study of the movement of waves through the earth.  It is typically associated with studying earthquakes but has other applications, especially in the oil and gas industry.  The work essentially involves analyzing and interpreting data from records of earth tremors (seismic records), developing methodologies to improve data interpretation, and communicating findings.  A seismologist might set up equipment and collect data in the field or in a laboratory, create specialized maps, and prepare scientific reports. 

Seismology is a subfield of geophysics, a branch of earth science concerned with the Earth’s physical processes.  Careers in the oil and gas industry are open to individuals with undergraduate degrees in related fields, such as math, physics, or geology, but a master’s degree in geophysics will open up more opportunities.  A doctorate is necessary for those interested in a research career.  For everyone in the field, high level computer skills are important as is coursework in math, physics, and geology. 

Hydrologist

Hydrologists study the movement of water through the earth, using specialized techniques and sophisticated instruments.   They tend to specialize in either groundwater or surface water.  According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), hydrologists “examine the form and intensity of precipitation, its rate of infiltration into the soil, its movement through the Earth, and its return to the ocean and atmosphere”.  They often work in the field, and they are needed in the United States and internationally to serve government and industry.  Hydrologists at the doctoral level often work in universities as researchers and educators.

There were only about 8100 hydrologists employed in the United States in 2008, according to the OOH.   It is expected to be a fast growing field, however, with excellent prospects for those with a master’s degree and field work experience.  Hydrologists will be needed to assess building and hazardous waste sites and to deal with issues such as rising sea water and water conservation.   Hydrologists typically study in graduate programs in geological sciences (geosciences), environmental science, physical geography, or engineering.    The University of Connecticut, for example, offers MS and Ph.D. degrees in geological science that includes coursework relevant to hydrology, through the Center for Integrative Geosciences.    Wikipedia has a very thorough description of the field, here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrology. 

Meteorologists

Meteorologists, also known as atmospheric scientists, study the physical properties of the atmosphere, the air covering the earth, and how those properties affect the environment.  They predict weather patterns and climate trends using complex instruments and computer models, working for the federal government, private consulting firms, or radio and television stations. They work at weather stations, sometimes in remote areas, and in offices and broadcast studios.  Entry level meteorologists for the government often hold a bachelor’s degree, but they have completed very specific coursework in math, physics, and atmospheric sciences.  The field is small and, although expected to grow, job prospects are likely to be best for those with master’s degrees who want to work in private industry. 

There are many other narrowly defined fields in atmospheric and geological sciences, each employing relatively small numbers of specially trained individuals.  For example, you can be a geochronologist  (“use the rates of decay of certain radioactive elements in rocks to determine their age and the time sequence of events in the history of the Earth”), a geomorphologist (“study Earth’s landforms and landscapes in relation to the geologic and climatic processes and human activities, which form them”), or a mineralogist (“study mineral formation, composition, and properties”) among many other possibilities.   These fields and several more are described here:  www.agiweb.org/workforce/brochure.html. 

If you are not afraid of math, science, and computer modeling, don’t mind getting dirty (doing field work), and are interested in the physical properties of our environment, a career in the earth or atmospheric sciences could be fantastic.  There is often funding available for graduate training at both the master’s and doctoral levels.  Salaries are good, if not great, and job prospects seem to be stronger than in many other fields,  including other scientific fields, with opportunities in government, industry, and academia in the United States and internationally.   

Career Resource

There are some helpful tips for applying to graduate school in the sciences here: http://envsci.science.oregonstate.edu/graduate/future/tips_applying_grad_school, in an article prepared by the Oregon State University Zoology Department.  I think it’s on target.  The advice includes:   Focus on programs that offer a good fit with your academic and professional interests, and faculty members in the program who might serve as mentors, rather than focusing on a particular school.  Apply for fellowships, because if you are awarded a fellowship you will increase your chances of acceptance at a program of your choice by a large margin.  Your undergraduate program should have listings of fellowships you can apply for.  Contact potential mentors (faculty members you might want to work with) and visit programs you have an interest in.   Work hard on your essay (the article offers some detailed advice about the essay) and choose references who are familiar with your academic work, especially your involvement in research.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, News

Talking Transportation: Who’s In Charge of Our Transportation Future?

April 4, 2011 by

Is anyone guiding our state’s transportation future?  One wonders.

Three months into the Malloy administration, we still don’t have a Commissioner at the Department of Transportation.  Yet, the Governor is pushing legislation to eliminate the Transportation Strategy Board just a decade after its creation.

It’s clear that we are far from solving our transportation mess, so it’s disconcerting that no individual or advisory board seems to be in charge.

We’ve had five Commissioners at the DOT since Jodi Rell became Governor, the most recent leaving last July under the cloud of an alleged scandal.  So why the lack of a firm hand on the tiller of this 3,400-employee, $725 million capital budget agency?

Well, first, who would want the job?  The CDOT has careened from scandal to cost-overrun, from investigation to calls for reorganization.  It’s the agency we love to hate.  So it’s no surprise that Governor Malloy’s national search for a new Commissioner has turned up empty so far.

The last Commissioner, Joseph Marie, came to Connecticut after a national search and made tremendous progress at rebuilding morale in the agency.  His candor was refreshing.  His experience on the rail side (having just designed and built Phoenix’s light rail system) was hailed as a turning point in the agency previously dominated by highways veterans.  His deputy Commissioner, Jeff Parker, was similarly well versed and widely respected.

But when Marie was forced to resign amid unproven allegations of sexual improprieties… without so much as formal charges or investigations… Parker took over only to leave last month, impatient at the new Governor’s inability to give him the full title or replace him. 

Why then, with the CDOT in limbo, does Governor Malloy want to eliminate the Transportation Strategy Board?  At least that body had the mandate of taking a longer-term view of a 20-year plan for rail and road, airports and ports.

Created in 2001, the TSB was complemented by regional advisory TIA’s, or Transportation Investment Areas, including “The Coastal Corridor TIA” (on which I have served since its creation).  With input from the TIAs, the TSB issued its first recommendations in 2003 in a comprehensive report prioritizing long overdue investment in transportation, including ordering new rail cars for Metro-North.

There were updates in 2007 and 2011 as the body explored the links between transportation and economic development.

The first TSB Chairman, Oz Griebel, went on to run for Governor.  His successor, businessman Kevin Kelleher, missed many meetings and didn’t seem engaged in the TSB’s ongoing work.  A third Chairman, Bruce Alexander from Yale turned the TSB into a debating club, achieving little.

On one important policy issue, tolls on our highways, the TSB did a terrible job.  Unable to come to any consensus on this crucial traffic mitigation and funding source, they did what everyone previously has done with transportation:  they called for another study.  But the resulting report was so jumbled, offering nine different alternatives, that choosing among them was impossible and political suicide.

It didn’t help that then-governor Rell had rejected any tolling idea even as the million dollar report was being written.  Neither did a series of public hearings held by the TSB around the state when the report was issued.  The agency sought public comment without any explanation of the study or its proposals.

At the hearing in Norwalk only a handful of TSB members were present (with Chairman Kelleher again absent) to listen as 50 uninformed residents spouted the same old objections to tolling.  What a waste.

The tolling issue has not gone away.  Nor have questions about how we will fund mass transit with an ever-dwindling gasoline tax.  We still don’t know if Bradley Airport should be sold or continue to be run by the state… or when we’ll replace the crumbling Stamford rail station garage.  How about delays on the M8 cars due to the Japanese quake?  New highway spending, repair on hundreds of decrepit  bridges, so-called ‘high speed rail’ from New Haven to Springfield, development of our ports, overdue expansion of rail station parking… none of these issues seem closer to being addressed without leadership.

So as the TSB is legislated into oblivion and the Commissioner’s office at the CDOT continues to be occupied by Acting and Interim-titled placeholders, just who is watching over our state’s transportation future?

JIM CAMERON has been a Darien resident for 20 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council.  But the opinions expressed here are only his own.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: Old Saybrook, Transportation

Career Column 10: Working in Human Resources

March 17, 2011 by

According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), job prospects for human resource managers are expected to grow much faster than average, by 22 percent, in the coming years.  Revisions to safety standards, changes in health care regulations, labor relations disputes, and increased training needs due to technological advances are expected to contribute to a healthy demand in the field.   A bachelor’s degree in human resources, industrial-labor relations, or related areas (especially business administration with relevant coursework) along with an internship would be ideal preparation.   A liberal arts degree will need to be supplemented by internship or work experience and a business background.  To advance in the field, a graduate business degree with a concentration in human resources or labor relations, or a master’s degree in human resource management, is essential in some settings. 

To enter the field without a business background or experience, a graduate degree in business or human resources and an internship will be very helpful.   However, counselors could become employee assistance professionals, lawyers could become compliance officers, and accountants could become compensation and benefits analysts without much additional education.  In addition, an employee may be able to transfer into the human resources department of his or her company when there are openings.  

Hiring the right employees, reducing turnover, increasing productivity, and following complex employment laws are challenges for every corporation.  Human resource generalists have a hand in all of these functions in a company and more.  Human resource specialists, usually employed by large corporations, focus on a narrow area such as compensation, benefits, training, development, recruitment, or labor relations.  A third group of human resource professionals work as consultants to firms that outsource their human resource management needs. 

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), an important professional organization in the field, has an excellent website (www.shrm.org).   Among other things, it identifies and describes several disciplines in Human Resource Management, including Leadership, Human Resources Technology, Safety and Security, Compensation, Labor Relations, Benefits, Diversity Management, Ethics and Sustainability (ethics includes a lot of legal and regulatory issues), Employee Relations, and others.  It seems there may be something that interests everyone, making it an exciting field to explore. 

Most human resource positions are a good fit for individuals who are project oriented with an interest in directing, persuading, and helping others and creating and following routines.  Strong oral and written communication skills, good teamwork and leadership capacities, knowledge of human resource functions, a business and finance background, confidence, flexibility, and a high energy level are important for success.   Those who work hard, deal with people well, and show management potential can move up the career ladder.  

Human resource jobs at the management level pay well, about $95,000 annually.  However, they may not pay as well as other, more business oriented, positions in some settings, because they do not generate profits.  Compensation and benefits managers seem to earn a little more than training and development managers. An experienced benefits administrator should earn about $65,000 annually, while an experienced benefits analyst will earn about $95,000.  (A benefits analyst has responsibility for researching and evaluating benefit plans, in addition to administering them.)   Assistants in these fields, who work under managers, earn closer to $50,000 annually.  (All salaries are based on medians in Hartford, Connecticut, as indicated on salary.com). 

SHRM has a helpful brochure that describes the field and how to position oneself to enter it.  It can be found here:  www.shrm.org/Communities/StudentPrograms/Documents/07-0971 Careers HR Book_final.pdf.  A more complex view, for business students, is offered by the University of Michigan School of Business at  www.bus.umich.edu/StudentCareerServices/resources/CP10HRChangeMgmt.pdf. 

Career  Resource

www.collegeboard.org  is the website for the College Board, a not for profit organization that administers SAT’s and other exams.  The website offers extensive college planning tools for free.  You can search for colleges by location, major, cost, size, setting, and other factors.  You can also find all kinds of information about a specific college, from average SAT scores to sports that are offered and housing options.  Take a look!

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Old Saybrook

Career Column 9: Helping People in Need (Without Going to Graduate School)

March 1, 2011 by

With the recent controversy about public employees and the impending budget cuts for health and mental health care in Arizona, I was thinking that there will always be people who can’t manage well without some extra help, whether it is funded by the state, the private sector, families, or charitable organizations.   Whether they are challenged by developmental or physical disabilities, dementia, or serious mental illness, some people rely on others for a little or a lot of everyday support.  People who help others with everyday tasks are called human service or social service assistants, and according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), the job prospects in this field are not just good, but excellent. 

OOH notes that social or human services assistants “provide services to clients to help them improve their quality of life. They assess clients’ needs, investigate their eligibility for benefits and services ….arrange for transportation….and provide emotional support.”   As might be expected, they also have to keep records and report to supervisors.  Employees in this field might be called case management aides, social work assistants, community support workers, mental health aides, community outreach workers, client advocates, childcare workers, or similar titles.

In Connecticut, a job as a social service assistant typically requires an Associate’s Degree in Human Services and experience or a Bachelor’s degree in a related field, although some may be open to individuals with a high school diploma.    

These kinds of positions can be a step towards graduate school and a professional degree in a social service field, such as social work, counseling, or psychology, or they could be a step towards a career in health care administration or a management position for a non-profit.    For some people, though, these positions are long-term and a way to make a living.  Unfortunately, social service jobs don’t pay very well, although some positions have more authority and offer salaries at a higher level and others offer the opportunity for overtime or shift differentials.  The most recent data (2009) indicate that wages in Connecticut for workers in these categories are higher than they are in many other parts of the country, with the median salary listed as $40,000, but job prospects are not projected to be quite as strong as they are elsewhere.   

Clearly, these kinds of jobs are not for everybody.  Some positions are physically demanding and potentially hazardous. (Before taking a job, it would be a good idea to find out, and verify, what steps the employer takes to keep workers safe.)  Some require working long shifts, or evenings, weekends, or nights.  The best candidates will be comfortable doing routine tasks and helping and directing other people.  They will be good communicators as well as responsible, understanding, and patient.  They also may need to pass a background check.

Recent social services assistant job openings in Connecticut include multiple positions in residential treatment, providing support for individuals with developmental or psychiatric disabilities in group homes or supported apartments, and some that are more along the lines of case management, for example, helping clients access medical benefits or advocating for families.  Related jobs include mental health aide in a psychiatric hospital, teaching assistant in special education programs, therapy aide in a behavioral treatment program, or rehabilitation aide in a rehabilitation hospital.       

Careerbuilder.com lists these and related positions under the category of non-profit/social services.  It would be a good place to start a job search.  However, job titles for these positions are quite varied, and you will have to use a number of different key words to do a thorough search.  You can try searching for human service assistant, social service assistant, case manager, therapy aide, mental health worker or for some of the other titles listed in the OOH noted above.  Large social service providers and hospitals also list openings on their own websites.  You might want to do a job search regionally, looking for employment opportunities at all of the social service and treatment facilities within a geographical area.  You could also do a job search with a focus on a particular group of clients, such as the elderly, people with developmental or psychiatric disabilities, or troubled children.  Find out which agencies in your community serve people you are interested in working with and start your search there.  (You can ask for help at locating this information at your local public library.  Also, there is a long but not necessarily up to date list of DCF licensed “child caring agencies and facilities” here:  www.dir.ct.gov/dcf/Licensed_Facilities/listing_CCF.asp.)

For training, most community colleges in Connecticut offer programs in human services.  Make sure that the program you choose provides experience as well as coursework, because experience will be key to getting a job, especially if you don’t have a Bachelor’s degree.   

Career Resource

Idealist.org (www.idealist.org) lists volunteer positions and jobs with non-profits in the United States and abroad.  Its mission is to connect “people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives.”  In addition, in the Idealist Career Center (www.idealist.org/info/Careers) you will find free, downloadable, book length information about careers in the non-profit sector, as well as tips and exercises to help you choose a career path. Take a look.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Old Saybrook

Talking Transportation: CDOT Thinks We’re Stupid

February 25, 2011 by

The CT Rail Commuter Council’s “Winter Crisis – Commuter Summit” last week was a big success.  Dozens of commuters turned out to share their horror stories about trying to ride Metro-North this winter… no heat, no information, no seats and in many cases, no trains!

Metro-North and the CT Dept of Transportation made the usual excuses and apologies, which placated few… “we’re doing the best we can”… ‘it’s not our fault the trains are so old”… and the classic, “be patient, the new M8 cars are coming.” 

All of these are true.  But it was in trying to explain the many delays in the delivery and testing of the new M8 cars that things got heated.

As any reader of this column knows, we’ve been waiting since 2005 for new cars to replace our decrepit fleet.  Designed and built by Kawasaki, the new M8 cars look great.  But they’re 15 months late into service with no real explanation as to why… or when they’ll be ready for passengers.  It was time for answers.

The CT Rail Commuter Council, a creation of the legislature, has neither a budget nor much power.  But the one thing state statutes say is that we may request “and shall receive” any assistance we want from the CDOT in understanding what’s going wrong with Metro-North operations.

So, to get to the bottom of the M8 delays, we requested that CDOT bring to our meeting someone from Kawasaki and from LTK (the consultant that’s been paid $27 million to oversee the M8 testing program).  To our dismay, they refused.  No explanation, just a “no”.

We turned to Governor Malloy’s office for help, but they didn’t even return our phone calls.  So much for the first test of the Governor’s promise of open, transparent government.

Why the cover-up?  What do CDOT and the Governor know about the M8 delays that they wanted to keep the experts away from our questioning?  What are they hiding?

At our meeting on February 16th we submitted a list of 32 specific questions about the M8 program and got few replies.  But among the facts we did learn:

  •  The testing program has been underway for a year.
  • The cars are showing not just “software problems” but hardware issues as well.
  • Kawasaki doesn’t get paid until the cars prove they can work.
  • The mandatory 4000-mile test run of the prototype cars has been started and restarted several times as new problems were identified.
  • Metro-North still thinks they can fix the M8 problems and get as many as 80 into service by the end of 2011, two years behind schedule.

When a commuter asked the Interim-Commissioner of the CDOT why he wasn’t speaking specifically about the identified engineering problems with the M8 he was told that “people wouldn’t understand” them.  In other words, because we’re not civil or electrical engineers (though many commuters are!), the CDOT thinks it better to just explain away this $866 million railcar as having “software problems”.

I told the Commissioner that I found his attitude insulting and condescending.  Commuters on Metro-North are not stupid and we don’t need to have things “dumbed down” to be understood.

The CT Rail Commuter Council has done what it can to find the truth about the M8 delays.  We’ve sent our questions along to the Transportation Committee of the state legislature.  Maybe they can get some straight answers.

JIM CAMERON has been a Darien resident for 20 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  The opinions expressed in this column are only his own.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com  or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: Old Saybrook, Transportation

CT Watchdog: Beware Counterfeit $100 Bills

February 14, 2011 by

Most of us would gladly accept $100 bills, especially from banks.  Sasha Suto of Glastonbury is not sure after her experience with Bank of America’s West Hartford branch.

Suto went to the nation’s largest – and frequently criticized bank – on Jan. 31 to cash a $900 check that had been made out on a Bank of America account.  She received 9 $100 bills and promptly took them to her credit union, Franklin Trust, also in West Hartford, where she attempted to deposit them.

The clerk checked all 9 bills with a special pencil and found that when she drew a line across one of the bills it turned dark instead of yellow, a sign that its counterfeit.

The clerk refused to deposit the bill and suggested to Suto that she take it back to the Bank of America branch.

At Bank of America a clerk ran her pencil over the bill and also found that it turned dark. The manager told Suto that she would have to confiscate the money and turn it over to the Secret Service – as federal law requires. The clerk who told Suto to take the check to Bank of America was reprimanded.

That was fine, Suto said, “but can I have another $100 bill since I got the bill from there in the first place 15 minutes earlier?”

Absolutely not, Suto was told, since the bank had no way of knowing that Suto didn’t slip another bill in her pile.

That is when Suto contacted me and I contacted Bank of America, which claimed that it thoroughly checks all $100 bills and there is no way Suto could have gotten a counterfeit bill from them.

At that point I didn’t know who to believe. While normally banks don’t pass out fake bills, it does happen, as Chase was caught red handed last year trying to falsely blame a customer for a bad $100 bill.

So I figured I would test Suto and asked her to file a written complaint against Bank of America with the West Hartford police. If she did that I was going to assume that she was either a complete idiot or on the level.

Suto did file a written complaint and West Hartford police – who had not been told about the counterfeit bill from the bank – started their own investigation. At that point I was comfortable that Suto was telling the truth.

West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci was not sure. He said that his department was investigating a rash of fake $100 bills being passed in West Hartford.

He said that on Jan. 30 a bad check was passed at a gas station and $900 in bogus bills were passed at Price Rite. Another case had also just came in. 

The tale does have a happy ending. Suto was called by Bank of America last week and was told that the Secret Service determined that the bill was legitimate, it just had some kind of coating on it.

She went back to the bank, refused a $100 bill and instead walked out with five $20 bills.

Suto says she doesn’t blame Bank of America, but she hopes the bank does not pass the $100 bill off again on someone else who will also have a problem with it.

Bank of America said its policy is not to inform local authorities when a counterfeit bill is received and only contacts the Secret Service, which she assumes contacts local police. I suggested that the policy be changed.

You can reach The Watchdog at George@connecticutwatchdog.com and he will answer as many emails as he can. Please check out his site, www.ctwatchdog.com for comprehensive consumer, health, finance, media, internet, computer, travel and education tips.

Filed Under: CT Watchdog

Career Column 8: The Manufacturing Sector

February 13, 2011 by

The number of people employed in manufacturing in Connecticut has declined consistently over many years.  But that’s not the whole story.   Manufacturing is the fourth largest of the ten employment sectors in Connecticut, employing over 166,000 people in 2010.  That’s a lot of jobs, more jobs than in construction, finance, or government.  Manufacturers in Connecticut make everything from airplane parts and medical devices to bread and soap.  They each employ a few to hundreds of people.

Today there were 348 manufacturing jobs in Connecticut listed with careerbuilder.com, more jobs than listed under the construction, banking, food service, or automotive categories.   What kinds of jobs in manufacturing are available and how can you get one?  A review of manufacturing jobs posted on careerbuilder indicates that there is work in shipping and receiving, assembly, and production at all levels.  A number of jobs are temporary and offered through staffing agencies.  Most, but not all, require experience. 

For those of you who are not knowledgeable about production work, here are some definitions:
Machinists are hired because of their knowledge, skills, and experience.  They use machines to produce precision metal parts.  Good machinists have a math background, good problem-solving skills, and the ability to do very accurate work.  They also have specialized training, which they get in technical high schools, community or technical colleges, or on the job.  They don’t need a college degree.  Although the number of jobs for machinists is likely to decline, there is not expected to be a lot of competition for those that remain.  According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) job prospects for machinists are good.  Something to be aware of, however, is that experienced machinists are preferred by employers, and with the recent downsizing in manufacturing there is likely to be a surplus of experienced machinists who will get hired on first.  Machinists in Connecticut earn $40,000-60,000/year. 

Tool and die makers make precision tools and metal forms.  According to OOH these are the most highly skilled and highest paid production jobs.  Despite the decline of manufacturing, job prospects for tool and die makers are categorized as excellent.  Tool and die makers learn their trade through formal education and on the job training. They earn $50,000-65,000/year.

CNC programmers and operators use computer controlled machines to produce parts, often in large numbers with a great deal of precision.   There is projected to be a reasonably high demand for operators and low demand for programmers in coming years (because of technological advances).  Those with the skills to operate a variety of CNC machines will be most employable.  CNC operators are trained in high school or community college programs and on the job.  They earn on average $43,000/year. 

Assemblers usually work as part of a team.  They put together finished products.   Their jobs range from easy to quite complex.  They need good manual dexterity and to be able to work quickly and methodically.  Although for the most part assemblers learn on the job, almost all of the assembly jobs listed by CareerBuilder today ask for experience.  Job prospects for assemblers are categorized as good by the OOH.  Electronics assemblers earn on average $32,000- 43,000/year. 

Manufacturing and mechanical engineers and engineering technicians are also employed in manufacturing.  Engineers need to complete a Bachelor’s degree while engineering technicians complete an Associate’s degree.  Note that there were few jobs listed requiring training at the engineering technician level, and the OOH indicates that engineering technician jobs are likely to grow more slowly than average.  Job prospects for engineers, in contrast, are expected to be good.  A manufacturing engineer earns about $66,000 -94,000/year. 

(Note that all salary estimates are taken from www.salary.com and based on employment in Hartford, CT.) 

There are numerous other production jobs in manufacturing, in food, textile, and other areas.  Some of these jobs are low skilled and offer low wages and they can be unsafe, especially in the food manufacturing industry.  Others are in decline due to technological advances and the lower costs of production in other countries.

“Dream It-Do It” is a nationwide program offered regionally through the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).  The purpose of the Dream It-Do It campaign is to attract people to manufacturing careers and promote an understanding of advanced manufacturing methods.  Connecticut signed on in December of 2010, through the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT), to “help create a new generation of highly-skilled workers”.  The program will work with community colleges, technical high schools, and business and industry to meet its goals.  For example, CCAT is offering summer programs to introduce students in grades 7 – 9 to advanced manufacturing methods, in the hopes of interesting them in pursuing a career in manufacturing.  Find out more at www.dreamit-doit.com/ or on the CCAT website. 

For information about training for production jobs, look into the Asnuntuck Community College Manufacturing Technology Center in Enfield  (www.acc.commnet.edu/manufacturingtechnologycenter/) or the Connecticut Community Colleges’ College of Technology Next Generation Manufacturing website (www.nextgenmfg.org/.)  When choosing a training program, research it carefully to make sure it offers the breadth and depth of experience and training needed for available jobs.  The Enfield program, for example, offers a wide variety of machines to train on, providing students with more of the experiences they need to land a job. 

Career Resource

Careerbuilder.com (www.careerbuilder.com) is a comprehensive job board published on line and in newspapers by the Gannett, Tribune, and McClatchey publishing companies and Microsoft.  It is very easy to navigate and lists millions of jobs nationwide and globally.  You can search job openings by location, category, and keywords and you can also post your resume.  Note, however, that not all job openings are posted on careerbuilder.com so it should be one part of a broader job search strategy.

 Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net.

Filed Under: Career Column

Career Column: The Teaching Profession

January 30, 2011 by

President Obama, in his recent State of the Union address, made the following pitch:   “….. to every young person listening tonight who’s contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child — become a teacher. Your country needs you.”

Do we need more teachers?  Is unemployment less of a problem for teachers than it is for other workers?  Today’s career column aims to answer these questions for would be teachers in Connecticut. 

In Connecticut there are a few paths to become certified to teach elementary or secondary education at a public school.  You can get an undergraduate degree, typically a Bachelor’s of Science in education, from a number of colleges.  Or, if you already have a college degree, you can complete a post-baccalaureate (post college) program leading to teacher certification at a university or an “alternative route to teacher certification” program through the state over the summer or on weekends (available for specific subject areas).    To become a special education teacher you need graduate level coursework or, if you already are a certified teacher in another area, you can complete an alternative certification program.    Everyone has to take some standardized tests, the Praxis exams.  None of these paths to certification are highly competitive or time consuming. 

However, once you are certified, finding a teaching job can be challenging, depending on where and what you hope to teach.   It is not too difficult to find openings for teachers in shortage areas.  Currently, in Connecticut, these include English, family and consumer science, math, music, science, technology, and world languages.  Special education also seems to be in demand.   There also tend to be openings for teachers in inner city school districts.  But getting hired on as a teacher in elementary education, social studies, art, or physical education in non inner city school districts is difficult, with many more applicants than openings. 

Once hired, new teachers face multiple challenges including a lot of paperwork, mandates, budgetary constraints, and managing a classroom of children.  They need to get along with other teachers, administrators, and parents.  They need to write lesson plans and grade papers after school and on weekends, and they need to complete a graduate degree within a certain time frame.    In addition, early career teachers are closely evaluated and not all have their contracts renewed.  

Good teachers like children and are motivated to help them learn.  They communicate well and have common sense and self-control.  They are patient, fair minded, optimistic, energetic, and creative.   They manage stress well and can cope with a challenging bureaucracy and multiple demands.  The best know intuitively that they want to teach, and many have wanted to teach since childhood.  

Teaching can be a great career choice for energetic adults who are looking for an “encore” career.  It can also be a great choice for young people coming out of college or parents returning to work after staying home with children of their own.   But would be teachers need to know what they are getting into.  They should be prepared for a challenging job search or plan to teach in a shortage area or in a difficult school environment.   As is true for most things worth doing, they will have to work hard at their chosen career.  

Job boards for teaching jobs in Connecticut can be found at www.cea.org and www.ctreap.net.  Note that job postings for teachers are to some extent seasonal.  Once a budget is passed and teachers give notification that they are retiring or resigning, school districts know which positions need to be filled for the coming school year.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Local News

Talking Transportation: Where are the new M8 cars?

January 25, 2011 by

Interior View of New M-8 Rail Metro North Rail Car

Almost daily, on train platforms and in town, a commuter stops me to ask, “So, where are the new M8 rail cars?”  I wish I knew!

It has been six years since then-Governor Jodi Rell announced that the state would finally be replacing its broken-down rail fleet… six years!  It’s taken that long for their design, bidding, construction and delivery.  The first car arrived Christmas Eve 2009, already a year late due to builder Kawasaki’s construction problems.

For 13 months those cars have undergone testing. But today we seem no closer to riding the M8s despite promises that they would be in service by now, and the testing process has been cloaked in mystery. (Ironically, there are dozens of videos of the M8s undergoing testing on YouTube, but that’s the closest I’ve been to seeing them running.)
Throughout 2010, we were told that prototype testing was going well.  But by November, we wondered why a date hadn’t been announced for the trains to go into service.  After all, even Governor Rell had been promised that the M8s would run before she left office at the end of December 2010.

So, in November the Commuter Council asked CDOT to bring us someone from Kawasaki to talk about the testing.  They refused.

Then, six weeks ago, there was a glitch:  an electromagnetic pulse from the cars was affecting the signal system.  This was a deal-breaker.  Testing was stopped.

But rather than advise legislators or the Commuter Council about this problem, CDOT and Metro-North gave the bad news “exclusive” to two reporters, who had to pledge they would not speak with any stakeholders with oversight. 
Those are questionable journalistic ethics and hardly “transparent”.  Since when do government agencies get away with spin-control on such bad news?

This past week, the Commuter Council asked CDOT for updates on the testing.  We received the same vague generalities as we’d been given for a year: “The testing is going along as planned.”  But this time, something new and disconcerting was added.

A senior CDOT official told us “We take out the M8s every night and run them, and every night a new issue comes up.”  A new issue?

Yup… every night of testing a new problem is found.  Among them, problems with the auxiliary power system, the automatic train control and the diagnostic computer monitoring.  And until they are all fixed, the final crucial test, 4,000 error-free miles, can’t begin.

And testing of the M8s on Shore Line East, under Amtrak’s power system and signaling, hasn’t even begun.  Until the M8s can run on Shore Line East there will be no equipment to run on the long-promised New Haven to Springfield commuter rail line.

But wait… there’s more.  It seems that Metro-North itself hasn’t been overseeing Kawasaki’s testing of the M8’s, but a consultant.  LTK Assoc. of Pennsylvania has been paid $15 million to monitor the tests.  And this week their contract will be extended seven months for another $12 million.

None of these details were shared with the legislature’s Transportation Committee or Commuter Council, despite our interest in this crucial testing stage.  It came out in a newspaper article.

If Metro-North feels it needs multi-million dollar consultants for another seven months after we’ve already had a year of testing, that sure sounds like they don’t believe the M8s will be in service anytime soon.

Nobody wants to rush these cars onto the tracks, however badly they are needed.  But given the $866 million cost of the project and the six years we’ve already waited, why can’t Metro-North and CDOT be open and honest about what’s going on?

The Commuter Council has been asking the questions but the answers have been curt and condescending.   Perhaps it’s time for the legislature’s Transportation Committee to get to the bottom of this story.  Commuters (and taxpayers) deserve an answer.

JIM CAMERON has been a Darien resident for 20 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  The opinions expressed in this column are only his own.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com  or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: Local News, Transportation

Career column: Working for Big Pharma

January 13, 2011 by

For this career column I planned to look into the kinds of jobs available in the pharmaceutical industry.  I thought I would have a look and report back, so readers could be better informed and get an idea about whether this would be a good direction to head in.  It seemed like it might be an exciting industry to work in, with its focus on developing new drugs and all of the news about recent developments in genetics and stem cell research.   

Hours later I can conclude that the employment picture for Big Pharma is a lot more complicated than one would think, and the news is gloomy.   I examined Pfizer as a local and representative example.  Pfizer lists 146 openings in the United States and about 80 internationally.   However, Pfizer reportedly cut 10,000 jobs in 2007 after failure of a new drug, 19,500 jobs in 2009 as a result of a buyout of Wyeth (which led to redundant jobs), and another 8,480 jobs in 2010, leaving a lot of angry former employees.  Hoover’s, a reliable source of industry information, lists Pfizer as having 116,500 employees in 2009.  So the 146 open positions listed in the United States are a trifle.  

Obviously there are other pharmaceutical companies that have openings, including Genentech, NovoNordisk, and Abbott Laboratories among Fortune 500 companies.  According to the Bureau of Labor statistics (BLS), pharmaceutical manufacturers altogether employed over 280,000 people in 2008.    Many of these people, perhaps 40%, were employed on the business or office support end of the industry, in jobs that involve financial planning, business analysis, marketing, sales (the number of sales representatives is diminishing at a high rate, however), contracting, outsourcing, corporate communications, and public affairs.  About 30% were scientists or other professionals and a smaller percentage worked in production. 

The most recent BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) does not present a rosy picture for employment prospects in Big Pharma, concluding: 

Despite the increasing demand for drugs, several factors will limit employment growth in the industry. Drug producers and buyers are placing more emphasis on cost effectiveness, due to the extremely high costs of developing new drugs. Competition from the producers of generic drugs also will put pressure on many firms in this industry as more brand-name drug patents expire. On the manufacturing side, continuing improvements in manufacturing processes will improve productivity in pharmaceutical plants, while many companies are also manufacturing more of their products overseas.

In addition, industry insiders writing for Science Careers, a blog published by Science magazine, and BioJobs, an award winning blog about careers in the life sciences,  suggests troubling job prospects for early career life scientists who hold doctoral degrees.   They note there is little government grant funding for science and few jobs in academia (except for postdocs).  They also suggest that much research and development takes place in emerging markets, where foreign born scientists trained in the United States are available to do the work.   The OOH also points out: 

Doctoral degree holders are expected to face competition for basic research positions in academia. ….. In general, applied research positions in private industry are somewhat easier to obtain, but may become more competitive if increasing numbers of scientists seek jobs in private industry because of the difficulty finding positions in colleges and universities. (italics added)

Also noted in the OOH: “ an economic downturn could influence the amount of money allocated to new research and development efforts, particularly in areas of risky or innovative research. An economic downturn also could limit the possibility of extension or renewal of existing projects.”

It seems that those who have a science and business background will be best prepared to work in the pharmaceutical industry.  Mostly business with a science background would be a good bet.  Those seeking a life in research after obtaining a doctoral degree in the life sciences should plan carefully when they decide where and what to study and which lines of research to pursue.  There are exciting and rewarding research positions available in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry, but not enough for all who want them.  It’s hard to say what will allow production workers to get and keep a job with Big Pharma.  Production workers do not need to be highly educated and there are not many job openings, so there is a lot of competition.  Relying on friends and family already employed in a factory to pull someone in, the old fashioned kind of networking, could be key.

Career Resource

In the course of learning about employment with Big Pharma, I stumbled across two good resources for science jobs:

www.sciencecareers.sciencemag.org is full of information and career advice for scientists and others looking for work, and it has a good science job board. 

www.biojobblog.com/ is more personal and has a lot of interesting observations and career advice, especially for life scientists.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Local News

Career Column: Buying for Sephora (so the rest of us can buy from Sephora)

December 22, 2010 by

My daughter’s boss’s friend’s daughter has what many young women would consider to be “the best job ever.”  She is a buyer for Sephora, the high end cosmetics retailer with well stocked independent store locations in malls all across the United States, Canada, and Europe.  I made it my mission to find out how one goes about getting this job and what the job might entail.  Here’s what I discovered:

The headquarters for Sephora USA is in San Francisco and most corporate level positions are located there.   Posted openings on Sephora’s website include one for an assistant merchandise planner and another for a planning manager.  Although these are not buying jobs exactly, they are closely related.   The assistant planner’s responsibility is to help with the creation of SKU (stock keeping units) forecasts and the placement of orders and requires 1-2 years of corporate retail planning experience.

I also looked at openings for buyers for similar companies and found this list of qualifications for an accessories buyer for Juicy Couture, a brand well known to Sephora shoppers:

  • 8+ years of Buying experience, 2+ years of previous management experience
  • Keen understanding and interest in fashion industry and trends
  • Excellent Retail Math and Excel skills
  • Proven vision for building line plans and assortments(and other qualifications that are less specific to the position and industry). 

I also found out that an associate buyer of dress collections at Saks Fifth Avenue needs 3 – 4 years of business experience and “strong business and financial analysis skills,” among other requirements.  Nothing in the rather long list of requirements for the Saks position had anything to do with a vision or interest in beautiful clothes, but perhaps having such an interest goes without saying.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “Buyers purchase merchandise for resale from wholesalers or manufacturers. Using historical records, market analysis, and their sense of consumer demand, they buy merchandise, keeping in mind their customers’ demand for style, quality, and a reasonable price range. Wrong decisions mean that the store will mark down slow-selling merchandise, thus losing profits.” 

An assistant buyer for natural skin care products for Sephora gave an interview to the website “I Want Her Job” (more about the website below).  She reports that she started out in an unrelated retail business and moved on to become an account coordinator and later an account executive for a manufacturer who sold products to Sephora.  She moved over to Sephora from there.  It is evident from her interview that she loves cosmetics and loves working for the company.  She describes what she does each day this way:  “I help determine the correct assortment of products to carry and how they will be merchandised. I am not just involved in skin care merchandising, but I also work closely with our marketing, education, operations and inventory teams.” 

In sum, to become a buyer in the fashion or cosmetics industries, it is vital to have a good head for numbers and to be motivated to achieve business goals.  A buyer might also work long and unpredictable hours and will need to be able to respond quickly and manage stress well.  For someone who has these qualities and loves the products the industry sells, a career as a buyer could be very exciting.  Like any other good job, it takes a lot of work, persistence, and drive to get there.  Relevant internships and retail sales experience would be a good first step.  A college degree is not always essential, but it is desirable, and a business or merchandising degree could be a requirement for some positions.  According to salary.com, the median annual salary for an experienced buyer in New York is $77,000. 

Career Resource

IWantHerJob.com (www.iwantherjob.com ) is an inspiring website that profiles women who love their jobs.   The site is a pleasure to view, interviews are informative, and women with all kinds of interesting jobs are profiled.  The site is fairly new so hopefully there will be a wider range of jobs profiled over time.  The interview with the assistant buyer for Sephora is here:  www.iwantherjob.com/cassie-cowman/ .

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Old Saybrook

Career Column: Keeping Us Safe in a Hostile World

December 2, 2010 by

I just saw the movie “Fair Game” with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.  It tells the story of Valerie Plame, the CIA operative who was outed in the course of the political craziness of the times.  Her story made me wonder about what it takes to become a covert agent for the CIA.   This career column will attempt to answer that question, for the CIA and for other government agencies that have a strong national security focus.  Given the state of the world, there will undoubtedly be good jobs in these agencies for years to come, and we need good people to fill them. 

CIA

According to her Wikipedia entry, Valerie Plame’s father was in the Air Force and worked for a period for the National Security Agency (NSA), so perhaps she was born into it.  She attended Penn State and obtained a degree in advertising before applying to the CIA, and the CIA sent her to graduate school. It seems that a specific educational background is less important than talent, personal qualities, and the ability to pass a thorough background check.   

For those who find the alphabet soup of agencies confusing, the CIA is the agency that collects intelligence information and conducts covert actions against adversaries of the United States; it hires and trains spies.   It turns out that the CIA website is extremely user-friendly for job applicants and those just wanting to learn more about its mission and history.   It is so effective that it could serve as a model for government and corporate websites of all types.  It has good explanations of positions it hires for, videos about them, and a fun “personality quiz” that dispels myths about CIA service.  Regarding working for the CIA it notes, among other things:

“there are some fundamental qualities common to most successful officers, including a strong record of academic and professional achievement, good writing skills, problem-solving abilities and highly developed interpersonal skills. Overseas experience and languages are important factors as well.” 

Anyone can apply and the on line application is easy enough.  However, the applicant must:

“be prepared to undergo a thorough background investigation examining your life’s history, your character, trustworthiness, reliability and soundness of judgment. We also examine your freedom from conflicting allegiances, potential to be coerced, and willingness and ability to abide by regulations governing the use, handling and the protection of sensitive information.” 

How they conduct this investigation and determine one’s “freedom from conflicting allegiances,” etc. is left unsaid. 
If a career in the CIA sounds appealing, and the thought of going through an extensive background investigation does not dissuade you, check out the job possibilities on the CIA website, www.cia.gov/careers/index.html. 

FBI

The FBI is concerned with law enforcement at the national level.  Among other things, the FBI gathers intelligence from domestic sources, so the CIA apparently goes through the FBI if they need information from within the United States.  The FBI website indicates that it is currently recruiting Special Agents with certain critical skills such as accounting, finance, engineering, and the hard sciences. Applicants need to be between 23-37 years old to be considered for these positions, and they also have to meet physical requirements and pass a background check.  The FBI is also recruiting to fill professional positions, some of which have to be filled by current FBI employees and many of which require the applicant to pass top level security clearances.  The FBI careers website is much less appealing and more difficult to navigate than the CIA website, but many positions are posted for FBI offices in different parts of the country.  For example, there are postings for administrative officers, biologists, and paralegals.  Note that most positions have very specific requirements for experience.  FBI jobs are listed here:  www.fbijobs.gov/index.asp. 

NSA

On its website, the NSA, or National Security Agency, indicates that its “core missions are to protect U.S. national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information.”  That is, the NSA protects national intelligence information and gathers intelligence information (signal intelligence, or SIGNIT) to share with those who need it.  The NSA…” collects SIGINT from various sources, including foreign communications, radar, and other electronic systems. This information is frequently in foreign languages and dialects, is protected by codes and other security measures, and involves complex technical characteristics. NSA…needs to collect and understand the information, interpret it, and get it to our customers in time for them to take action.” 
The NSA hires very smart computer scientists and engineers but also those with a background in international relations or anthropology.  For example, with a Bachelor’s degree in one of these fields you can apply for entrance into an intelligence analyst development program.   The NSA also offers a number of internships and scholarships at all levels. You can find out more about careers with the NSA here:  www.nsa.gov/careers/index.shtml.  The NSA website is easy to navigate and interesting to explore, but the information it provides is complex as perhaps is appropriate for its mission.  

Career Resource

The Federal Government’s official job site, www.usajobs.opm.gov/, is big, well organized, and informative.  It is a good place to learn about the hiring process for federal jobs and browse for federal jobs, and it is the only place to apply for most federal jobs.  If you take the time to explore the site, you will also find valuable information on how federal jobs are filled and you might be surprised at what kinds of jobs are available. For example, I did a quick search for jobs for psychologists in Connecticut and I was surprised to discover that the department of agriculture hires counseling psychologists for the Job Corps program.

Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Local News

River Reads: “Faithful Place” by Tana French

November 30, 2010 by

I really am getting behind here! I have a few books  you’d love but as I just closed this one I’ll get to it first. Good book. Dark and clever. Both in equal parts really which makes for a good mystery detective personal thriller angst ridden type book.

You really can’t go home again, or really shouldn’t, as undercover detective Frank Mackey discovers. Well, first he discovers the suitcase and subsequently the  body of his long lost love. THEN he discovers that running off all those years ago was an excellent idea.

The night that he and his Rosie were to elope, she doesn’t show. Assuming that he has been stood up he says screw it and leaves anyway.

He becomes a police officer. Marries, divorces and generally stays as far from Faithful Place in Dublin as he can.

His alcohol fueled family has many many issues and as they are seemingly unresolvable ( or un fixable) he saves himself at great cost to the other less self-reliant members of the family. Or was the cost due regardless?

It raises a good question. Are you duty bound to attempt to save your family if it can not or will not attempt to save itself? Does familial duty ( even if its guaranteed demise is self destructive and inevitable) trump personal obligation? Saving oneself at the cost of others is unacceptable but is it wasteful and defeatest to throw away your own potential to help people who don’t want your help? Indeed, resent you for offering?

Frank gets deeper and deeper into a mess that is more psychological and sociological than mysterious. I , had a fair guess who dunnnit fairly early on. ( yes, I know, pat pat on my back.)  The book goes beyond what you are expecting.

What I found most interesting is Tana French writing as Frank Mackey. A La Memoirs of A Geisha, it is impressive for an author to pull off the other sex’s point of view. She writes quite well as a man. ( Being a girl- one wonders how I would know this…good point but ignore it.)

Faithful Place is interesting on many levels and although a tad bleak it has quite positive energy about it. Love can close or open doors and Frank chooses to keep them open.

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

Filed Under: Local News, River Reads

Career Column: It’s All About the Money

November 19, 2010 by

Literally, the jobs described below are all about the money, exchanging it, managing it, and making it, without manufacturing anything at all.  If you work in banking or financial services, you probably already know about these jobs.  This column is for those who don’t work in banking or finance.  It should be of special interest to parents, spouses, friends, or siblings of people working in these fields, or readers who are considering them.  
Financial Analysts
These professionals assess the performance of investments by studying financial statements and analyzing other financial information to project earnings and determine a company’s value.  Financial analysts typically focus on specific industries or narrower subject areas.  They use spreadsheets and statistical software, and they are likely to work long hours, travel, and face stressful deadlines.  Financial analysts need strong math, analytical, and problem-solving skills, and they should be detail-oriented and highly motivated because they have to do intensive research and focus on minute details.  They need a good academic background and at least a bachelor’s degree in a related field.  These jobs pay very well and are highly competitive.   Students who are considering a career as a financial analyst should work hard in college, majoring in business, economics, finance, or a related field.  A strong background in math, good study habits, and good time management skills honed in high school would be an advantage.   
Stockbrokers, Financial Services Sales Agents, Investment Bankers
The Bureau of Labor Statistics includes stockbrokers, investment bankers, and financial services sales agents in one category, “Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents.”  These positions have in common the need to find customers and sell them financial products.  Stockbrokers advise clients on investments and conduct transactions, charging a commission on each one.  It is essential that they build a customer base.   Financial services sales agents sell a variety of financial products, such as insurance, banking services, or credit cards.     Investment bankers sell advisory services to companies and sell securities.  All of these jobs can be quite stressful.  Investment banking in particular requires very long hours and a very high level of motivation.  Only the top performers keep their jobs after the first couple of years.  Those who succeed, however, are rewarded by making quite a lot of money.    Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, self-confidence, and high levels of motivation are essential to success in all of these fields.  A college degree in business, finance, or a related field is usually required and sales experience is an advantage.  Young people considering these fields can prepare by honing their interpersonal and time management skills along with studying math, business, or finance. 
Personal Financial Advisors
Personal financial advisors assist individuals with investment, insurance and related decisions and help them plan to meet short and long term financial goals.   Some financial advisors also sell financial products.  All must do a lot of marketing to establish a client base, and they may conduct seminars or programs to engage clients.    Personal financial advisors usually have a college degree and often take courses in investments, estate planning, or related areas on their own.  They need good sales, math, and communication skills, and with experience and an exam they can obtain the Certified Financial Planner credential.  Good job growth is expected, but these jobs are competitive and those who have strong sales skills are likely to be most successful.  A career as a personal financial advisor can be a good choice for a career changer who has strong interpersonal and sales skills, an interest in the field, and a facility with numbers. 
The careers described above all require math skills, analytical ability, and a high level of motivation.  Financial analysts need a stronger finance background, while stockbrokers, investment bankers, financial services sales agents, and personal financial advisors need strong interpersonal and sales skills.  All of these can be challenging, stressful occupations requiring long hours and hard work, but for individuals with the right interests, talents, and temperament these fields can be tremendously rewarding, personally and financially.   One caveat, however, is that the demands and stress of these positions can, and often will, take a toll on family life.  That’s a topic for another column. 
Career Resource
The Riley Guide (www.rileyguide.com/), published online since 1994, is a comprehensive and easy to navigate directory of online job search and employment resources.  It provides straightforward information about careers and also provides links to helpful job search information.  For example, the Riley Guide offers a  directory of executive search firms for finance and accounting jobs as well as links to salary guides.   It also offers pages and websites that provide more general career advice, such as how to write a cover letter and how to network and interview.   In addition, it has a section on handling a job loss.    I highly recommend it as a place to start or continue a job search.  

 Karen Goldfinger, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Essex, Connecticut.   She specializes in psychological assessment for clinical, educational, and forensic purposes and has a special interest in career assessment.  She and two partners recently established KSB Career Consultants, LLC to provide on line career consultation for clients in Connecticut and New York.   Contact her with questions,  comments, or suggestions for the column at karengoldfinger@comcast.net. 

Filed Under: Career Column, Local News

A Goldilocks Planet

November 16, 2010 by

Yes, I like to look at the moon or the North Star on a beautiful evening, but I’m really not into things astronomical. But I just heard of something way, way, way up there—much farther away than our moon and sun and all the stars that we see–that has left me marveling, and for completely personal reasons—I feel a strange connection to it.

Have you ever heard of a Goldilocks Planet? Well, I never had until a few days ago. But I really paid attention when I heard that a Goldilocks Planet has been found. It’s fantastic. You’ll agree when I explain. Its scientific name is Gliese 581g. Yes, Gliese 581g. What a strange name. Please don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. What is important is that it is the very first Goldilocks Planet to be found.

Why did this wow me? Because many years ago I interviewed a great astronomer who said that such planets exist. The name Goldilocks Planet was coined later by somebody else. What was enormously significant about his prediction is that he said that Goldilocks Planets could support life–life as you and I know it. And might! And that there must be others out there.

The great astronomer’s name was Harlow Shapley of Harvard University. I interviewed him for an article for the magazine of the Worcester Sunday Telegram. I was a staff feature writer on the magazine.

That was in 1956, I believe—I do not have my scrapbooks handy as I write this. Prof. Shapley is the one who made that big news by coming out and boldly predicting in print that one day a Goldilocks Planet would be pinpointed somewhere in the infinity of the cosmos. We would know exactly where it is!

I’m sure you’re wondering about that name, Goldilocks Planet, which is so much more charming than Gliese 581g. It comes from the children’s  nursery story, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Truth is, I never read that story, so I don’t know why this planet was dubbed “Goldilocks.” Enlighten me, please.

What is so dramatic about Gliese 581g? Let me tell you. In the million, billions, trillions, zillions of heavenly bodies, Gliese 581g is the first found that has the most important essential to support our kind of life. That essential is water.

Why is this so? Because Gliese 581g  has the right size and is the right distance from the star that it circles. Not too close, and not too far. This is how it was explained a few days ago by Dr. Steven Vogt, leader of the team that made the big find on Sept. 29. He is an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Perhaps you read or saw this same story.

He said, “Gliese 581 g is the first rocky, roughly Earth-size alien planet found to orbit its star in the so-called ‘habitable zone’ — a just-right range that can allow liquid water to exist.”

Harlow Shapley made his startling prediction in a new book. He had written many. I tried to check its title this morning, but did not succeed. Sorry. Anyway, I read a review of it in the New York Times, I believe. Or maybe it was the Boston Globe.

He was known widely for his writings. He was gifted in a special way. He could write fully on abstruse subjects for scientific journals. Then he could switch to a plain and fascinating style understandable by an ordinary reader like me.

At Harvard he was not only the senior professor and chairman of the astronomy department but director of its Astronomical Observatory. He had spent hours beyond counting at the eyepiece of its telescope.  But later, he didn’t have to do that. A camera would do that work for him. He made the observatory world-famous.

In this latest book of his, I was startled by what he was proclaiming: there was a planet out there with characteristics like our Earth. He was not saying that he had found such a planet. He was stating that statistics—an important branch of mathematics—assured us that there would be planets out there that could sustain life. Not strange and startling life unrecognizable to us, but our kind of life. With creatures human and animal that we see every day

I don’t remember his mentioning it, but what this meant was that if we somehow could get to such a planet, we could live and thrive on it. That was a logical conclusion. Remember, he was writing before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made it to the moon!

Back then I was a feature writer for the Worcester Sunday Telegram.  I had been a reporter and then I landed this wonderful job as a feature writer. Which was to find and write up a good feature story every week—a story that would interest lots of people because of who or what it was about. It could be about anybody or anything, just about.

But it had to be true. Factual. Interesting, but not sensational in the way of some tabloid scandal sheets. And the idea of it had to be pre-okayed by my editor and the story I turned in checked by him.

I was only 27 or so at the time. I contacted Professor Shapley—I don’t recall exactly how—and explained what I had in mind. Got to tell you I knew zilch about astronomy. Had never read a book on it, never taken a course.

What strikes me today is why he ever said yes–why he would take the time for a country bumpkin like me. The Telegram was a fine newspaper, the second or third largest in New England, but not the New York Times (what is interesting, however, is that it is now owned by the New York Times).

I expected to go to his office in Cambridge. No. He told me that he would be at his summer home in Peterboro, N.H.  Asked me if I could visit him up there. Sure! I got started early on the appointed day and drove up. A modest frame house surrounded by trees. And when I pulled in, I found Professor Shapley out among the trees, a clipboard in hand. I wondered, What the heck is he doing?

I’d like to say that he was a tall man with a distinguished mane of white hair, but I have no recollection. Time has dimmed all such details. What I remember is that he was a genial man and easy to talk with. Totally unpretentious. Nothing about him to provide a clue about his true identity as a leading scholar and scientist who was very different in a remarkable way.

And what was that? Well, he had written papers and books intended for fellow astronomers. In an astronomer’s lingo, with mathematical equations and tables of data. Writings that had been read and studied by fellow astronomers around the world.

But as time went by, he had started to write also for ordinary folks like you and me. Well, maybe not you, but certainly ordinary like me. All to provide enlightenment and give us an idea of the immensity of our universe and what it is like. And in his latest book, to tell us why he was convinced that somewhere way, way out there would be a planet like ours. More than one. With people like you and me, or very much like us.

So, what was he doing our here in his baggy pants and old felt hat? And clipboard? Poking around at the foot of a big maple? Of course, I asked him.

He smiled. What he told me was so unusual that no wonder I remember it half a century later.
“I’m studying the chipmunks around here. It’s a hobby of mine.  There are many of them. They’re a lot of fun to study.”

He lifted his clipboard and pointed to a sheet on it. It was filled with notations. No idea what he was recording. Maybe what size the furry little creatures were, what they ate, how many babies they had, how they adapted to the various seasons, whether there were different kinds.   Maybe he wrote all that up for some wildlife journal on the side. I don’t know.

If so, I would have found all that interesting enough to write a separate feature about him: “Harlow Shapley—Great Astronomer, Weekend Chipmunk Whiz!”

He invited me into his house and we sat in a sunny corner. He put his clipboard aside. And in a relaxed way…which made me relax, too…I admit I was a bit uptight…explained why he believed what he believed about the assured probability of extra-terrestrial life. And he did it in words that anybody could understand.

No way can I recall his exact words now. I wish I had a copy of my published article in hand! But they went like this:
“Our earth  circles the sun. It’s the Polish astronomer Copernicus in the 15th Century who proved that our earth circles the sun. What extraordinary news. For eons people believed just the opposite–that the sun circles our earth, and there are still plenty of people around who believe that.

“And our earth supports life–supports us–because it circles the sun at the right distance and with the right temperature range on it to have hydrogen and oxygen under appropriate conditions to form water.  Water is all-important for life. In fact, we—you and I–are mostly water. No water, no life. No water, no food.

“Astronomers have concluded that our planet Earth may be the only one in our solar system (in plain words, circling the sun) under conditions which make it possible for us to be born, grow up, and live our lives.

“But—and it’s a great big but—our solar system is only one in the universe.  There are many, many solar systems. They vary in size. Some have more planets than others, and these planets make their loops around their sun at varying distances from it—which means they have different chemical make-ups and different temperatures cold and hot, and so on.”

He made it all understandable to me.

Now here is the dramatic part. Statisticians—mathematicians who specialize in calculating the probability of happenings—can safely conclude that out there in infinity there are one or more heavenly bodies that replicate our planet.  And this is exactly what Professor Shapley had calculated. And this is why he was so sure he was right. This is why he had published that book.

Of course I was greatly impressed. I knew I was sitting across from a great man. I was so grateful that he was taking the time to explain all this to me, and that he was doing it so generously and patiently. And all without making me feel like an ignoramus, which is what I was. My nervousness had long eased, and I felt enthralled as I asked and listened and scribbled in my pad.

I don’t remember whether he offered me a cup of tea or coffee, though he must have. I was there quite a while. I do remember that he asked a lot of questions about me…about what my job was like and why I had chosen it as my vocation. Things like that. I could see that he had a consuming curiosity. Stars and planets. Chipmunks.  Ordinary Joe’s like me.

A cordial goodbye, and then I was in my car heading south toward home. I was elated by my time with him. But also uptight. Uptight because my job was only half over. The harder half was coming up. How to write all this down accurately and interestingly.  Without blunders, and without exaggerations. In complete fairness to him.
And all well enough to be worth printing in our Sunday magazine. We published more than 100,000 copies every week, and statisticians of another kind estimated that some 150,000 readers would look at the magazine…and see my story.

How many would read it?  Well, that was anybody’s guess. But my concern every week was that my editor would think highly enough of what I turned in to justify using all that paper and ink to publish it.

Just before writing this piece today, I researched Harlow Shapley on line. Dead many years now. And I learned something new about him. I knew that he had grown up on a farm in Missouri. And wanted to get away from it. He enrolled at the  brand-new School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. But it was  a year late in opening. What to do?  He decided to pick another field.

He studied the university’s catalog, starting with the letter A. The first subject listed was Archaeology. Later he explained. “That was too hard to pronounce!” The next was Astronomy. He could pronounce that, and that’s what he signed up for! He never got to study Journalism formally but he got very good at explaining things well, which is what Journalism is all about.

Maybe that is why he said yes to me that day, a young journalist who was doing the type of work that had once fascinated him so much that he aspired to do it.  Maybe why he spent so much relaxed time with me in his country house, away from the pace and formality of the great university.

Well, now we know that our universe is billions of years old. What fascinates me as I write this is that in the span of one person’s adult life—mine—I got to meet the scientist who made the amazing prediction that he did: “There’s a planet like ours out there!” And some 50 years later I got to read that the first Goldilocks Planet has been discovered–Gliese 581g!

And we know where is. In fact, I suspect “Gliese 581g” is the way it is pinpointed on some huge astronomical chart.

And we know how far away it is. Dr. Vogt said about 20 light years away.

How far is that? Well, I had forgotten how big a light year is.  I checked. One light year is six trillion miles. Let me spell that out–6,000,000,000,000 miles (I rounded it off). Now multiply that by 20! Not around the corner, eh?

We have reached the moon, yes. And we have plans to reach Mars before many more years.  But it will be a while before we get to Gliese 581g, won’t it? And a while before some of its inhabitants reach us.  Unless they are already on their way.

Who knows?

Oh, excuse me.  Some people,  but not the scientific kind, believe some of those folks are with us now.

John Guy LaPlante is a veteran writer, journalist and resident of Deep River.  His award-winning columns and articles were most recently published in the Main Street News.  He is the author of two books, “Around the World at 75. Alone! Dammit!” and “Asia in 80 Days. Oops, 83! Dammit!”  He has just completed his service as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the Ukraine where his 27-month tour of duty began last fall.  John always welcomes comments on his articles.  Email him at johnguylaplante@yahoo.com

Filed Under: Local News, Senior Moments

Fit Focused: Starting from Scratch

November 14, 2010 by

In August 2009 my husband and I gave each other anniversary presents of entry fees to compete in Ironman Lake Placid (IMLP) to celebrate 20 years of marriage.  I had just completed my third half ironman and this was a natural progression.  For those of you who don’t know, an Ironman (or ironwoman!) is a 2.4 mile swim, followed immediately by a 112 mile bike ride and then straight into a full 26.2 mile marathon run.

The training commitment was huge and we wondered after a few months of training what we had got ourselves into.  The training was going to be a monumental task and everyone in the family had to buy into it including our three kids and the dog.

Our friend Jason, who had just completed the Providence Half Iron with me had given us lots of inspiration as he had not been in the best of shape yet had trained for, and completed, Ironman Arizona the year before.  The commitment was not just monetary; the $600 fee to sign each of us up was proving to be the easy part!

The race was at the end of July 2010.  After a long year of training and a few minor setbacks everything was going well, we were covering longer and longer distances and getting fitter by the day, but each having to train separately so the other could manage our kids, our businesses and our training. 

In that 10 months I learned so much that helped me to be where I wanted to be.  I felt like I was a great role model for my children when my youngest daughter, who was 10, decided to do her first kid’s triathlon.  The kids were excited for us and very supportive and I felt like I was living a better life for myself.  I felt great focusing on our lives and value for all – living every minute to the full.
 
In June a bombshell fell.  I was having age-related medical issues and after a routine check-up and some tests I was told I was going to need a total hysterectomy.  “There goes my Ironman”, I thought.

The disappointment was overwhelming as I was just peaking in physical fitness and my husband and I were doing this together.  Surgery would put me further back than when I started.  I was gutted that I had come so far and it was all going to be for nothing.  Rod continued training and although it was tough, I found that I was able to help him even more with those last few weeks and really make a difference.

Two days before surgery I went to watch all the athletes, who had trained all year just like I had, begin their race. Although it was mentally tough for me to watch rather than participate, I was so glad that I took that opportunity and was amazed by what I saw. 

There were blind people tethered together doing the 2.4 mile swim in Mirror Lake.  There were recovering cancer patients doing the 112-mile bike ride and participants with artificial limbs running the 26.2 mile full marathon.  This motivated me to start from scratch again — my situation was not so difficult.

That day I cheered my husband on who finished in 13 hours and 22 minutes and I went and signed up for IMLP 2011.  Two days later I was having my surgery and was not allowed to exercise properly for three months.
 
It is now Oct. 17, and a beautiful sunny afternoon and I just ran with my daughter.  I am training again and even though I have lots of hard work ahead of me, I feel I am living life to the full.

Setbacks happen and we have no control over them.  I had two choices – pick myself back up and get going or admit defeat. 

I chose the former.

I encourage everyone of you, who has had physical or mental setbacks, to have exercise as a major part of your lifestyle. My point is that you don’t have to be a personal trainer to be involved in exercise — anyone of any age or fitness level can do it.

It comes down to personal motivation and goal setting.  Lance Armstrong is a perfect example of someone who has overcome one of the worst illnesses and managed against all odds to do the impossible – win the Tour de France multiple times.  I know we are not all Lance Armstrong, but we all have the ability to set our own goals and succeed in whatever chosen level we decide.
 
Since my surgery, ball class has been the best medicine for me – starting over with core training on the ball to build back all those muscle and using light weights.  Anyone who wants to start with me is welcome as I am just crossing the start line.

I advise everyone to have a personal goal for themselves to exercise in some way.  The fall is a great time to start planning your exercise goals — don’t wait until winter when things get harder because of the weather.  People of all ages, shapes and sizes, disabilities or not, had the will to do the Ironman.  Inspire yourself by whatever exercise regime makes you feel great.
 
If you need to set an event goal, here are some great sites to pick upcoming events to get you started :
 
Active.Com has many choices  including the Turkey Trot on Nov. 25 sponsored by Sound Runner, Feb. 12 is the Cupid’s Chase 5K run or walk in Hartford.

The website Cool Running has a New Year’s Day run in Lowell, Mass., as well as many other events to choose from.

I hope that you get inspiration from these Ironman participants I have just told you about and that it inspires you to lead a better, healthier life.

Allison Duxbury is an AFFA qualified fitness professional with over 15 years experience in group and personal training.  After many years travelling the world with her husband Rod, an officer in the British Army, they returned to her roots in Connecticut to bring up their young family and start her business: FitFocused.  Three years later, the business is thriving and her clients range from 9-year-old competitive Irish Dancers to an octogenarian veteran

Filed Under: Fit Focussed, Old Saybrook

Between Us: Just Don’t Do It

November 14, 2010 by

The notion that simple solutions exist to knotty problems should trigger a host of red flags.

I have a bone to pick with “just,” because in at least one of its permutations, it lies.

My dictionary defines “just” in its adverbial sense as ”simply; no more than,” which, when you think about it, “just” seldom is.

Consider, for example,  Nike’s admonition to “Just do it,” and Nancy Reagan’s solution to the lure of recreational drugs: “Just say no.”

If it were as simple as Nike and Nancy would have us believe–if we’d “just” lace up our running shoes, and “just” decline the drug du jour—then the percentage of obese adults (34%) and obese kids (17%) would fall to zero, and zero drug use would mean we were all clean.

The point here, is that with campaign season upon us, and about as unavoidable as a 900-pound, halitosis-ridden gorilla on the coffee table, the notion that simple solutions exist to knotty problems should trigger a host of red flags.

Because in these days of financial uncertainties, social realignments, and toxic exchanges that pass for public discourse, chances are, if the solution to any problem were as simple and obvious as “just” doing it implies, whatever the “it” was, it would have been done, and we’d all be seeing its beneficial effects.

Unfortunately, there exist a number of office seekers this fall for whom the “just” admonition constitutes the entirety of their political platform, while any concrete, creative change that might result from their rhetoric is either immaterial or non-existent.

In New York, for example, gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino has come up with the simple (or simplistic, depending on your views) notion of “taking a baseball bat” to Albany.  According to some polls, this “just” approach resonates with more than a few voters who note that Mr. Paladino’s campaign reflects their “anger” at political “insiders.”

But as columnist Clyde Haberman noted recently in the New York Times, if Mr. Paladino “believes that he can waltz into Albany with his baseball bat and, as he vows, pound it into cutting state taxes by 10 percent in his first six months and state spending by 20 percent in his first year, he better own a helmet that fits well.”

Leaving aside the question of whether anger represents a viable methodology to bring about constructive change, consider the impact on the public discourse of both public and private voices who lay claim to some sort of real Americanism by virtue of their “just”-ness—as in “just” being Every-day Joes and Josephines— while at the same time exhibiting little or no grasp of basic American democratic tenants.

It is apparently came as a news flash to Christine O’Donnell, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Delaware, that the First Amendment to the Constitution forbids the establishment of any national religion, or the preference of one religion over any other.

And apparently neither Dred Scott v. Sandford— in which the Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent were, in effect, non-citizens—nor Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down separate public schooling for black and white children, were sufficient blips on Sarah Palin’s radar screen that she could cite them as pivotal moments of American history, despite her highly-touted image as a patriot and a representative of the American Everyperson.

Further, it seems that along with ratcheting up public rancor and attempting to pass off “Don’t Tread On Me” as the solution to convoluted national problems, some voices out there are equating ignorance with chic–or at least evidence of some sort of “real” patriotism.

The more a candidate demonstrates ignorance of basic English; the more a candidate dismisses educated, critical thinking as “elite,” the more, in the candidate’s own parlance, those gaffes qualify them as “real” Americans. (Or, as Ms. Palin put it in a recent tweet, “‘Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’  English is a living language.  Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”)

Fraught times can morph the most innocuous-seeming words into distinct threats to clear thinking, to informed public discourse, even to the basic understanding of who we are as citizens in a working democracy.

“Just” is one of those words.

Benjamin Franklin famously described the American experiment as “a republic—if we can keep it.”

That’s an admonition to informed debate and careful considerations, not “just” sloganeering; sloppy, uninformed rhetoric, and simplistic reasoning.

Come to think of it, let me tweak the title of this piece with the power of punctuation.  How about “Just: Don’t Do It.”

Trish Bennett’s award-winning column, “Between Us,” ran in the Main Street News for many years.  She holds a master of science degree in journalism and was adjunct professor of media history at Quinnipiac University before relocating Bryn Mawr, PA.  Her latest work appears in “This I Believe: On Love,” a collection of essays submitted for broadcast on National Public Radio, and on sale in stores nationwide beginning Nov. 9.  

Filed Under: Between Us, Old Saybrook

Talking Transportation: Thank You Governor Rell

November 14, 2010 by

Anyone who follows this column knows I’m bipartisan in my criticism.  Whoever is in power, Democrat or Republican, I’ve got “suggestions” on how they could improve our transportation mess.

Since she came to office in the midst of a scandal, no other politician has been the target of my commentary more often than Governor M. Jodi Rell.  Today, however, I want to give her the credit she’s due for all she’s done on the transportation front.

Watching the Governor ride the first of the new M8 rail cars this week, I was struck by how she had come full circle in only six years.  The irony is it took her entire tenure in office to order, design, build, test and finally deliver these new cars.

In Governor Rell’s first budget address to lawmakers in February 2005 she started to undo years of her predecessors’ neglect of our trains.  She told lawmakers we must order 300 new rail cars, and they did.  Mind you, she told us then the cars would be in service by 2008.  I predicted, accurately it turned out, that 2010 was a better guess.
The Governor said riders should pay a small part of their cost with a modest fare hike, and that too was passed by lawmakers.

But Governor Rell also said that commuters shouldn’t pay more until they were actually riding in the new cars… a promise she kept.  As manufacturing delays by Kawasaki slowed delivery of the M8’s, that planned 1.25% fare hike was deferred.   A politician who keeps a promise.  Imagine that.

More recently, Governor Rell also told the New York MTA, parent of Metro-North, there was no way she was going to raise fares in Connecticut to pay for the budget problems of New York’s own making.  That was a first in the troubled history of Connecticut / New York relations, but again the Governor deserves credit for doing the right thing.
But not every dream came true during the Rell administration. 

Grumblings about a lack of a voting seat on the MTA or Metro-North boards never amounted to more than that… grumbling.

And yes, Governor Rell did change Commissioners in the Dept. of Transportation at a pace that left many people wondering who was in charge:  five Commissioners in six years.  One was a former State Trooper, another had run Bradley airport.  The two most recent of them actually had experience in rail transportation.

Wracked by scandals, Governor Rell was embarrassed on several occasions by her DOT, eventually asking local businessman Michael Critelli to study the agency and issue recommendations for reform.  Of course, few of the group’s suggestions were ever embraced.

Long promised repairs to our dilapidated train stations took four years to happen, thanks mainly to Federal stimulus money.  If this work wasn’t “shovel ready”, nothing was.

We’re still not certain if the much-needed New Haven Rail facility will ever be fully built, as its price yo-yoed from $300 million in 2005 to $1.2 billion in 2008.  The Governor’s solution… pay consultants $630,000 for an audit.  Their report found only $11 million in potential cuts.

Still, Governor Rell was a big rail fan, realizing the importance not only of fixing Metro-North, but planning for the future.  Together with fellow lame-duck Senator Chris Dodd, she secured a serious down-payment on high-speed rail between New Haven and Springfield.  Well, maybe not true “high-speed”, but certainly higher speed than Amtrak currently offers.

I’m not sure how Governor-elect Malloy will do on transportation, though he clearly understands the problems from his years as mayor of Stamford.  His dreams for better mass transit will be most tempered by our economic crisis.

But to outgoing Governor Rell all commuters should give a loud “thank you” for all that she accomplished.  She’ll be a hard act to follow.

Jim Cameron has been a Darien resident for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  The opinions expressed in this column are only his own.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com  or www.trainweb.org/ct

Filed Under: Local News, Transportation

Finance Matters: Estate Taxes and Your Government Absent From Work

November 9, 2010 by

Lots of people work hard all their life to put some money away for their retirement and leave behind some funds for the next generation.  If they’re prudent with their investments and live within their means, this can total a few million dollars. A few million dollars is nothing to scarf at, but it doesn’t put you in the same league as Bill Gates.  Owning a small business, having some real estate and a good retirement plan will often add up over time. The research and consulting firm, Spectrum Group, says that in 2009 there were 7.8 million families with a net worth of $1 million, excluding their primary residences. 

Some folks claim these people represent a “privileged” class of Americans, especially during these times of rampant foreclosures and high unemployment. Somehow, success in achieving the American  Dream has turned into a bad thing. I wonder what would happen if everyone felt this way and simply stopped working.  Then all the naysayers should be happy.  Of course, there wouldn’t be any tax money to pay for all the wonderful things that the government does for you, but that’s besides the point.

A part of being prudent with your money is the responsibility of doing some estate planning. Estate planning helps control what your heirs get, when, and on what terms.  It also helps in keeping down the taxes paid at death.  This isn’t evading taxes. It’s paying what you legally owe and no more.  In order to properly plan, it’s necessary that the government initiate regulations that the public can expect will be stable enough for plans to be projected into the future. After all, no one knows when they are going to die and people can’t be expected to change their estate planning every five minutes.

Under the Bush Administration, Congress passed a major tax bill entitled the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) that dealt with a number of estate planning issues. Many provisions of this bill were set to lapse in 2010. This would allow Congress to take up the matter again and decide what to do in for the future. Instead, Congress has let the Act lapse and thrown everything into turmoil. 

In 2009, the estate tax exemption was set at $3.5 million. Putting it another way, estates under that amount paid no federal estate taxes. In 2010, when EGTRRA lapsed, there was no estate tax regardless of the size. In 2011, the estate tax exemption returns to the pre-2001 level of $1 million.

Unfortunately most Americans think this issue has no direct impact on them. After all, only 1 in 160 people who die a year owe estate taxes. Perhaps these people should rethink their position.

Because of Congress fumbling the ball, the family of Yankee owner, George Steinbrenner, was able to escape estate taxes estimated up to $600 million. Combined with the deaths of three other billionaires in 2010, it cost the government $6.5 billion in taxes. In a time of economic recovery, letting this kind of revenue get away can not bode well for the popularity polls in Washington.

Secondly, if we return to the $1 million exemption in 2011, small businesses could suffer “liquidity” problems when trying to raise funds to pay the taxes. This can lead to the liquidation of many businesses along with the loss of jobs. I thought Congress said they were trying to create jobs. You don’t  do it by closing small businesses.

The likelihood is that Congress will act upon this mess and in all probability will simply extend the provisions of EGTTRA for a couple more years. Of course, they could have done this in the first place and avoided the problems caused by their screwup.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.

Glenn “Chip” Dahlke, a Senior Contributor to The Living Trust Network, has 30 years in the investment business. He is a Registered Representative with LPL Financial and a principal with Dahlke Financial Group. He is registered to transact securities business with persons who are residents of the following states: CA. CT, FL, GA, IL. MA, MD. ME, MI. NC, NH, NJ, NY.OR, PA, RI, VA, VT, WY. Securities offered through LPL Financial. Member FINRA/SIPC. Contact him at chipdahlke@dahlkefinancial.com or at his office on Ashlawn Farm in Lyme, CT (860) 434-4261.

Filed Under: Finance Matters, Local News

The Wonders of Wi-Fi

November 6, 2010 by

Odd, the first time I noticed it.

It was a September evening just before I entered Peace Corps.  I stopped by the Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library in Old Lyme.  One of my favorites.  Just one car in the parking lot.  But the library was closed.  I recognized the old car.  Jack was behind the wheel—I’ll call him Jack.

I walked over to say Hi.  He was hunched down.  About 40. Walked to his own drummer.  Worked at this and that, as he needed to.  Fiercely independent.  Sharp.

He was so intent that he didn’t notice me coming.

The window was down.  “Hi, Jack. What are you up to?”

He had his fingers on a laptop keyboard.  “Hi, John. I’m checking my emails.”

“Your emails?  Out here?”

“Yeah. I’m tapping the library’s  wi-fi signal.  Works fine.  I do this often.  No need to go inside.”

It was all completely new to me.  I had had no idea.  Wi-fi—Internet without wires.  Without walls, so to speak.

I saw it again in Morro Bay, California.  Was visiting my daughter Monique and her hubby David.  I enjoy the little but very fine Morro Bay Library.  It was late afternoon.  Balmy day.  A VW Microbus was parked among the others, but close to the building.

I had a Microbus once.  For about three years after I retired.  Cruised the U.S. in it, even down into Mexico and up into northwest Canada.  Sight-seeing, having fun, learning so much along the way.

One man in this Microbus.  He had slid the broad side door open.  Was sitting at the tiny table, working a computer.  The radio was playing some Mozart.  Was having a grand time.

I didn’t need any explanation now.  I knew what he was doing.  The library was open, but he was accessing its wi-fi.  He preferred to be outside.  His van had a Nebraska plate.  I’ll bet he was looking up a library wherever he went on his travels.

I never saw anything like this in Ukraine during my 27 months of Peace Corps service.  The technology just wasn’t up to snuff.  They had the Internet, but limited.  I used public Internet shops, paying by the minute.

How happy I was when I discovered the huge downtown public library.  It had only two Internet-connected computers, both thanks to uncle Sam.  How delighted when I discovered them.  Free!  I kept it secret from my Peace Corps colleagues—didn’t want them in line competing with me for one.  Finally my conscience bothered me and I told them.  They reacted just as I expected, to my regret.

Well, I saw the same wi-fi behavior just last Sunday.  Early morning. I went for  a walk down Main Street in my own Deep River.  Our downtown is becoming so charming.  Deep River is really becoming the Queen of the Valley again.

Approaching our library, I noticed a man sitting in the sunshine on the stone wall in front of it.  Right across from his gleaming parked Saab.  His tee-shirt said Newport.  He was working a laptop.  A tourist, I was sure.  Again, I just knew–he was taking advantage of the free Internet.  He had searched out our library to do this and was delighted to find it.

Wi-fi has become commonplace.  When you buy that service, often you use a password to access it.  Some people don’t bother.  People like the three I have mentioned often troll for an un-protected service.  Sometimes they troll their neighbors too.  Their computers indicate who is using wi-fi within a certain range, and what the relative strengths of the signals are.  This way they get wi-fi free if they do sneak into somebody’s service.  It doesn’t seem to be illegal.

I have come to believe that public libraries make the conscious decision to leave their wi-fi available this way.  For anybody and everybody who wants it, even from outside.  For them it’s just another way to serve the public.  Libraries, how wonderful.  Few other countries approach us in the quality of their libraries.  Take it from me.  I’ve been to many.  How lucky we are.

I remember the first time I used a public computer in a public library outside the U.S.  I was up in Quebec City.  I discovered the big, splendid new library there.  Ultra-modern in every way, including its architecture. I saw many public computers in one room. Many people using them.

I approached the librarian in charge. “I am a tourist from Connecticut,” I said in French.  French was my first language. Very comfortable using it … l enjoy using it. “May I use a computer.”

“Oui.  Of course,” she said with a smile.  She wrote out a pass for me.  “Here it is, with the compliments of Monsieur Gates!”

“Monsieur Bill Gates!  What does he have to do with this.”

He gave us a grant that helped make all this possible,” she said. “I believe he has given such grants to libraries in other countries also.”

As it turns out, while I was in Ukraine I read that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was making a grant of millions of dollars for many libraries throughout the country over a period of years.  Yes, to make the marvels of the Internet available to Ukrainians.

I believe the first company to make wi-fi available to its customers was Starbucks.  Starbucks was already providing free newspapers for customers to enjoy with their coffee.  Free wi-fi was the logical next step.

Back from Ukraine, I made a happy discovery.  Guess what? McDonald’s now provides free wi-fi in more than 12,000 restaurants in the U.S.

No wonder it’s the industry leader. I have enjoyed McDonald’s and Burger King for coffee and a pit stop for years.  But I haven’t yet been in a Burger King with wi-fi. I am sure they will make the big leap.  Will have to.

Public free wi-fi has become a standard amenity in many places.  Hotels, shopping centers, airports,  universities, hospitals, resorts, book stores, brake and oil lube shops, on and on.

This is when I discovered the new tiny e-netbooks.  First came the laptop, then the notebook, now the e-netbook … each one smaller.  Had to have one.  Bought a beauty.  Has the standard software programs plus many bells and whistles. Even a tiny video camera (but I don’t use it … don’t want people to see what I really look like at times).  Weighs less than two pounds.  Has everything except CD and DVD capability.  But I don’t need these because I also own a Mac.

For nearly five years now — since the first week it appeared on the market — I have owned an Apple MacMini. It’s a full desktop processor.  Just the size of a cigar box, if you are of age to know what that is.  Cigar boxes are not common any more.  My MacMini is full-powered … mighty!  I even took it to Ukraine with me, but it was months before I found a place to live with where I could connect it.

Well, got to tell you that on my long zigzag journey home from California, where I arrived from Ukraine, I used my wonderful e-netbook every day here and there … all kinds of places.  All because of free wi-fi.

Hard for me to believe that I have been using computers for more than 40 years.  I remember when all of us on the editorial side of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette received a memo from upstairs.  It said all of us would get computers and we would have to learn to use them.  Mandatory.  “We will train you.  Don’t worry!”  The idea was frightening.

I was the editor of its Sunday magazine, “Feature Parade.”  It wasn’t one that we just bought from a syndicate, all pre-printed, and just put our name on.  We edited and published our own, with our own magazine staff and some free-lancers. I felt so intimidated by the new technology.  But I got the hang of it.  (But I am still learning every day.)

I remember my first portable computer.  It was a Smith-Corona.  Laptops had not yet appeared.  I used it at home and on the road. A bulky thing.  It weighed 10 times as much as my little e-book.  Nevertheless, marvelous.  I remember the first time I walked into a public library with it.  I walked it with an extension cord in my other hand.

I approached a librarian at her desk.  “May I use this?” I said, and explained.

“Gosh, I’m not sure.  We don’t have a policy for that.”

It’ll be for just 20 for minutes.  Very quiet.  No click-clacking of typewriter keys.  Won’t bother anybody.”

“Well, all right.  But I’ll have to report this.”

I set up at a table and went to work.  She kept glancing at me.  Finally she came and stood at my side and looked on.  “That is very nice, isn’t it!” she said approvingly.

“Yes, I love it.  They’ll become common.”

How right I was. That Smith-Corona of mine has become an antique.

And know what?  Just yesterday I read in a newspaper—a digital newspaper, by the way, like this one you are reading—that the huge outdoor National Mall in Washington has been equipped with wi-fi.

More than 200 “hot spots” have been set up on its vast acreage.  They disperse the wi-fi signal.  Yes, right there in front of our Capitol.  People out there in the fresh air will be able to open their computers and connect to the world.  Without wires!

But not only laptops and e-netbooks now.  With Blackberries and their kind.  With the so-called smart telephones of many kinds.  Millions now own one.  Even the three oldest of my five grandchildren—the other two are less than four years old! All three are texting.  That’s a brand-new word to me—typing with two fingers on the tiniest of electronic keyboards, sacrificing grammar and spelling to brevity and expediency.  Maybe to you also.  I don’t now how to text.  That’s too newfangled for me.

All this is the fantastic result of the first half century of this, our civilization-changing Computer Age.  And this is just the beginning.  I see the certainty—though I may not live to enjoy it—that entire towns and cities will have  free wi-fi.  In fact, our whole country will have free wi-fi.  Someday the whole world.  This I believe truly.  Having a computer device to connect to it will be as basic and commonplace as wearing shoes.

I remember reading Buck Rogers comics when I was a kid.  Buck Rogers was far-fetched and wonderful.  But even Buck Rogers was not futuristic enough to keep up with this!

John Guy LaPlante is a veteran writer and journalist.  His award-winning columns and articles were most recently published in the Main Street News.  He is the author of two books, “Around the World at 75. Alone! Dammit!” and “Asia in 80 Days. Oops, 83! Dammit!”  He has just completed his service as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the Ukraine where his 27-month tour of duty began last fall.  John always welcomes comments on his articles.Email him at johnguylaplante@yahoo.com

Filed Under: Columnists, Local News, Senior Moments Tagged With: , ,

Investing for the Rest of Us: Part I

November 6, 2010 by

Charting a Course for the Future

As the dust settles from the Wall Street meltdown of 2008, the average investor needs to chart a course that threads its way through future growth and perils.  Simply relying on the old investment adages may not be the wisest course.  Here are some things to think about.

1)      Wall Street is not your friend.

At this point, it should come as no surprise that the goal on Wall Street is to make money for Wall Street, rather than giving investment advice that the average investor can actually benefit from.  Washington makes a lot of noise about reform, but don’t hold your breath about anything happening.

We have gone through two major Wall Street screw ups since 2000 that cost most individual investors a good chunk of their portfolios.  First was the attempt to convince everyone that there was a “new math” on how to value companies that had some relationship to the internet and after that didn’t exactly work out, Wall Street moved to use the environment of easy money to package high risk real estate mortgages that fell apart when real estate values started to decline.

Even though most investors never owned internet stocks or CDO’s, the collapse of these products helped drive down the stock market in general.  To thrive, Wall Street must continue to find and distribute economic “hot spot” products.  A good bet in the future might be derivatives created from “cap and trade.”  After all, trading air seems ready-made for the street.

2)      Take a new look at “asset allocation.”

Although asset allocation models do not ensure a profit or protect against a loss, they have become the standard of investment models for many investors.  The theory itself is over 50-years-old.

The world has changed since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.  Thanks to a developing global economy, asset class correlations are becoming more similar and this increases volatility in a portfolio.

Don’t exit asset allocation like the last helicopter out of Saigon, but do avoid the rigid “pigeon holing” of asset classes that’s become prevalent in asset allocation design.  Investment managers today need the flexibility to move a little if the asset class returns really moves against them.

You can’t take your boat out without a life preserver on board.  Your portfolio should be no different.

3)      Does passive indexing investing still work?

Index investing was the “flavor of the month” back in the 1990’s when proponents of “efficient markets” promoted that it was so difficult to beat the market that everyone’s best bet was simply to mirror a market index and go to the beach.

Today, the market is full of inefficiencies and with the S&P 500 flat-lining over the last decade, it’s time to pour the sand out of your shoes and get back in the game.

4)      Portfolio “compression” is the next best idea.

The average investor doesn’t need to squeeze all the upside out of a bull market, as long as there’s some protection against the next bear.

Cutting portfolio volatility should be on your new year’s resolution list.  The future market road will continue to be rough and rocky roads, which generally demand good shock absorbers.

If you are a competent investment mechanic, by all means install them yourself.  If you need a qualified mechanic, seek one out.

If you enjoy a really rough ride, just hang on with your current portfolio.  You may get a few teeth knocked out, but that’s not what’s going to hurt the most.

Although the stock market is going through a tough patch, it’s still where a lot of the action is to outpace inflation and grow funds for the future. No promises, no guarantees, but that’s always been the story from the beginning.  Going forward, caution will be your best friend.

One old adage you will still be able to hold near and dear is that if it looks too good, it probably is.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing.

Glenn “Chip” Dahlke, a Senior Contributor to The Living Trust Network, has 30 years in the investment business.  He is a Registered Representative of LPL Financial with Dahlke Financial Group.  He is licensed to transact securities business with persons who are residents of the following states: CA. CT, FL, GA, IL. MA, MD. ME, MI. NC, NH, NJ, NY.OR, PA, RI, VA, VT, WY.  Contact him atchipdahlke@dahlkefinancial.com

Filed Under: Columnists, Finance Matters Tagged With: , ,

Talking Transportation – The Lessons from Katrina

August 26, 2010 by

We were all awe-struck five years ago watching the coverage of the rescue efforts in the Gulf following hurricane Katrina.  But did we learn anything from that tragedy.

Remember:  our annual hurricane season is well underway and storm activity peaks around this time each year.  And we ready for “the big one”?

Consider the following:

1)  Transportation Means Survival: The difference between those who lived and died in New Orleans was based on access to transportation.  When told to evacuate, those with cars did.  Those without couldn’t and were stranded.  The lack of public transportation along the Gulf Coast left the “disadvantaged” as just that… dis-advantaged, and maybe dead.

How would those living along the Connecticut coast be evacuated if a category four hurricane were threatening us?  Join the crawl on I-95?  Take Metro-North?  Or hunker down at a local mall.  How many of our towns have adequate shelter or emergency supplies?

Is Amtrak ready, along with Metro-North, to deploy its fleet to evacuate the hundreds of thousands threatened by a hurricane?  Doubtful.

2)  Our Classless Society Isn’t:   The victims of Katrina weren’t characterized as much by race as by economic class.  Being able to afford to live away from the flood plain and have access to private transportation both cost money.  This isn’t about race:  you don’t have to be Black to be poor.

But after Katrina, then-President Bush’s mother, Barbara, was touring the Katrina refugee camps in Houston.  She commented that, given the squalor of their former New Orleans homes, these victims of Katrina were actually better off than before.  Then she added “it’s kind of scary that they might all want to stay in Texas.”

Where would Connecticut’s refugees flee after an evacuation?  And how long would they be gone pending recovery and rebuilding?   Gold Coasters perhaps could drive their SUV’s up to familiar ski country in New England. But where would the Hispanic, Haitian and Black populations of Stamford, Norwalk and Bridgeport go… and would they also be made to feel like so many dust bowl Oakies when they arrived at refugee camps?

3)  Our Government Is Incompetent: Katrina and 9/11 showed us that our government can’t do a damn thing to protect its citizens.  One might excuse a surprise terrorist attack, but a long anticipated, well-scenarioed hurricane?  Not a chance.

At the time of Katrina, 75 percent of FEMA’s budget was being spent on anti-terrorism efforts, even though acts of nature present the real danger to most Americans. Gobbled up into the Homeland Security Agency, FEMA had lost all clout, competence and most of its budget.  “Brownie” may have been doing a “helluva job”, but would his successor do any better five years on?

Ask any old-timer about the Hurricane of 1938 which devastated New England that September.  It still ranks as the worst natural disaster to ever hit our state.  True, the human toll was compounded because we had no notice of the coming storm.  But even with sufficient time to evacuate, a storm of that size would devastate this state, especially our most expensive homes built along the coast.  Santayana said: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Have we really learned the lessons of Katrina?

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  Read his column on LymeLine every other Monday.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .  For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

Filed Under: Transportation Tagged With: , ,

The $40K Binge

August 19, 2010 by

By Trish Bennett

Only 30% of students enrolled in liberal arts colleges graduate in four years.

Some years before the term “helicopter parent” insinuated itself into the lexicon of higher learning, a father and mother took to the road.

Among the flotsam and jetsam of “college necessities” crammed into the Ford Country Squire station wagon was their son and heir who, perhaps for the first time in his 18-year existence, had—at his father’s insistence—organized his own belongings without his mother’s aid.

Roughly an hour into the four-hour trek to school, dad squinted into the rear view mirror, scanned the hodge-podge of electronic and sports equipment and the vacuum cleaner (mother’s one allowed input), and dryly inquired, “Michael, where are your clothes?”

Having put in time a) as an undergrad; b) as a parent of undergrads; and c) as an undergrad professor, I’ve evolved the thesis that parents of college students often confuse the proverbial brake and the spur when dealing both with their students and the institutions they’re attending.

That is, the tendency can be to obsess over picayune details and to snooze at the helm when confronted with issues that may threaten their students’ success and wellbeing.

Reading Craig Brandon’s new book “The Five Year Party” well before the car departs for campus can be a helpful beginning. Subtitled, “How Colleges Have Given Up On Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It,” Brandon’s book makes some bold and disturbing accusations.

Among them: That many universities fail to exact minimal standards of scholarship (as in read the material, complete the assignments, participate in discussion); dumb-down grade averaging; and, by becoming de-facto education-free zones, thus over charge parents for under-serving their students.

(The book’s title refers to studies noting that today, only 30% of students enrolled in liberal arts colleges graduate in four years.)

Further, Brandon, a former education reporter as well as a former college instructor, notes that many campuses are so awash in sex, drugs and alcohol that they make National Lampoon’s 1978 classic “Animal House” look like a nursery school romp.

Alas—and here’s where the spur/brake confusion comes in—many Class of 20-Something parents tacitly accept the idea that their kids’ “rites of passage” include such infantile behaviors, and that they’re powerless to do anything about it: as if pulling the purse strings closed was not an option.

At the same time, if parents do get wind of unacceptable or failing grades (it’s an “if” because the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act passed in 1974 makes grade reports the property of all students over age 18)), the same people who turn the blind eye to their kids flagrant waste of tuition dollars often aim righteous indignation at professors who reward their students’ non-study habits with C’s or D’s rather than A’s or B’s.

Prior to setting off for campus, then, it might be useful if both parents and students examined closely their expectations for the university experience.

To expect hard-working adults to furnish unlimited sex, drugs and rock n’ roll to their progeny at the rate of $40,000-plus-a-year might, for example, be considered a tad excessive.

It’s also reasonable that parents are entitled to some evidence that, in return for hard-earned dollars spent on her behalf, their child is returning that enormous favor and working diligently toward the purpose of college, which is to learn to think.

To exact such minimal standards of a student is hardly helicoptering; it is responsible parenting.

So much for the spur.

As to the brake: It’s also responsible, as Brandon notes, for parents to hold universities to their stated purpose of education. A trenchant question parents might want answered, Brandon thinks, is how many of a given college’s professors send their children to their own institution.

If the term “responsibility” has cropped up several times in this piece, it’s because I think it’s time that the on-going bad behavior by  some universities, students and parents comes to a halt.

If universities, in the quest for enrollment dollars, decline to exact minimal scholastic standards and turn blind, deaf and dumb to outrageous, even dangerous undergraduate behaviors, then they should retool tuition and call it a cover charge, restyle themselves social clubs, and replace professors with professional bouncers.

If students actually confuse “trying hard” with producing decent scholarship, and regard gratification bingeing as a means to that end, then they should defer college until they can discern the difference.

If parents doff their roles as mentors and leave value instruction to high schools and colleges, then parents leave themselves little recourse to demand credible grades, much less adult behaviors, from their offspring.

“Responsibility,” after all, means accepting obligations and making good on them. It’s about owning our own actions. And finally—how novel when discussing education—
responsibility is about being smart.

Trish Bennett is an award-winning journalist and the former assistant editor of Main Street News. She holds a master of science degree in journalism and was adjunct professor of media history at Quinnipiac University before relocating Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Her latest work appears in the up-coming volume of “This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women” slated for publication in association with National Public Radio this Fall.

Filed Under: Between Us Tagged With: , ,

“Blast From The Past” by Kinky Friedman

August 18, 2010 by

Richard S. “Kinky” Friedman almost defies description. 

A renaissance man and possible hysterical realist* (think Tom Robbins Still Life With Woodpecker); he is a singer, writer, columnist and ocasional politician.  (He ran as an independent for Governor of Texas in 2006 and received 12.6% of the vote…)

He is primarily known, by me, as a member of Don Imus’ irreverent entourage.  In an effort to force my better half to read my columns I capitulated to reading/ reviewing the male coup de foudre that is Blast From The Past.

I admit to liking it and finding much of it to be enticing enough to read the other one I took out, but it is definitely male humor. Fart jokes are the least of it.  Jamieson Whisky, public sex, genitalia, drugs, and the other staples of male humor are accounted for in bulk.

Despite being a tad traumatized (I am truly a prudy girl no matter how much I try to overcome it ), Kinky captures the dark insightfulness I like so much in David Sedaris.  (10.10.08)

Looking closely at something is always going to provoke and subsequently educate, more than a glossing over can. Kinky is brave enough to look under the rug and face what he finds.

Kinky is obviously a smart man and I liked his casual usage of literary references, many of which he left to hang in the breeze rather than over-explain.  (Reichenbach Falls 12.20.08).

I wouldn’t liken Blast From The Past to L”Elegance du Herisson (9.5.09)  in its thoughtful asides, but it isn’t a horse of an entirely different color either.  There are many bits that give one pause and deserve closer attention.  Abbie Hoffman’s cultural detritus for one …

There are also small gems like his mention of an idiot drunk in the bar named Myers who thinks of opening a British food shop in the Village.  “Most ridiculous idea I ever heard … whole idea’s a pipe dream.  Never happen.” **

I also loved the bar they frequent called the EAR because two of the bars on the B burned out.

Actually, the more the think about it the more I realize how good it it.  Possibly my mamby-pamby attitude is altering?   Am I becoming more indulgent of bathroom humor and private parts?  Nah.

… but I am going to pick up A Case of Lone Star.  Let’s see how Kinky does with that …

*Hysterical Realism, also called recherche postmodernism and maximalism is a literary genre of strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plots or characters and precisely specific social phenomena.

 **Myers of Keswick
634 Hudson Street (between Horatio and Jane St.)
New York NY 10014
Phone: (212) 691-4194
Fax: (212) 691-7423
Mail: info@myersofkeswick.com
MON – FRI: 10am – 7pm
SAT: 10am – 6pm
SUN: 12noon – 5pm 
(One of the best little shops around. Truly.)

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

Filed Under: Arts, River Reads

Benn Launches New Book in His Hometown Library

August 17, 2010 by

A new mystery by Connecticut author James R. Benn has garnered wide praise in advance of its official publication date of Sept. 1, earning a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly calling it “stellar”.

Benn will be kicking off the release of RAG AND BONE with a Book Launch Party on Friday, Aug. 27, 7 p.m. at the Lyme Public Library, 482 Hamburg Rd., in Lyme.

There will be a brief presentation and reading, refreshments, and books for sale and signing.

RAG AND BONE: A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery” is the fifth title in a mystery series set within the Allied high command during World War Two.  RAG AND BONE has received superlative early reviews:

In its review, Publishers Weekly says, “Stellar…Benn excels at depicting the impact of war on London–the bricks from bombed buildings piled neatly on the streets, families living in Tube stations, “the odor of the Blitz.” Destruction aside, Billy never forgets that “Even in the midst of war, murder is unacceptable.”  —

Bill Ott of BOOKLIST notes, “Benn shrewdly combines the political cat-and-mouse game with the murder investigation, offering a fascinating glimpse of the wartime intelligence world…his portrayals of the individual lives affectged by the global machinations reflect an almost Graham Greene-like feel for nuance.”   

RAG AND BONE takes the series main character, Billy Boyle, to London where he is called on to investigate the murder of a Soviet official.  There is reason to believe the murder is connected to the recent discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest, where thousands of Polish officers were executed by the Soviets. The revelations endanger the uneasy alliance between the Soviets and other allied powers, and Billy finds himself in a diplomatic minefield as the investigation suggests his best friend, Kaz, may have been involved.

Demonstrating that the past is never truly gone, earlier this year the president of Poland and many others were killed in a plane crash on their way to a commemoration of the Kaytn Forest Massacre in Russia. The decisions made over seventy years ago are still claiming lives today.

Soho Press publishes the series, and is planning a national author tour in October.

James R. Benn lives in Lyme, Connecticut.

For more information about the books and scheduled events, visit www.jamesrbenn.com

Filed Under: River Reads Tagged With: ,

A Summer Reading List … for Grown-Ups!

August 9, 2010 by

Why do kids get to have all the fun?  Why can’t we have homework?

Well, my darlings, you can.  My lovely friend TS and I have decided I will do a Summer Reading List.

There will only be six books to read.  I will not review them so you can’t cheat. 

Actually I may do two to inspire you.

I will otherwise be reading them with you.  If you read the majority of them … you’re invited to the wine review that Shorelinw Web News will host at the end of the summer (contact editor@shorelinewebnews.com).

Wouldn’t that be fun?  You could have a drink with ME!  Really, what better incentive could there be?

None at all. 

Luckies. You will have the opportunity to speak with impunity to me about my choices.  You hate them, you love them, I want to hear all!  So buck up my friends, here’s the list.
 
In no particular order …

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.”  Read her latest book review exclusively here on LymeLine every Friday.

 
Filed Under: Arts, River Reads

Attention Knitters

August 9, 2010 by

By Ann Nyberg

There are knitters everywhere.  On Thursday evenings at Panera’s in North Haven, Conn. (see photo below left), you can find a whole table full of gals knitting and chatting away about their various projects, having dinner, solving the world’s problems and finding their zen all at the same time.

If you’re a knitter like I am, you find this kind of scenario just glorious.  Creating something handmade that is all your own. 

Knitters are notorious for doing things for others.  Much of the time they are making something for others.  That’s how we roll.

As a little gift here’s a heart you can knit for that special someone.

 Just to show you my knitting is very much alive and well, here’s a vase cover I did … yes, I know, a vase cover?

These artists have to find their yarn somewhere and one place to do that is at Saybrook Yarn, in yes, Old Saybrook, Conn. 

It’s right down the street from the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center.  I serve on the theater’s board of trustees and don’t even get me started about how much I love that 250 seat venue … that’s for another post.

Anyway, at Saybrook Yarn you will find this to be a place that you will return to over and over.  The owner and her employees are so friendly and so helpful.  If you’ve dropped a stitch and it’s dropped down to who knows where, they’ll help you find it.  The place is huge.

As I continue on with my Annie Mame blog, I will post about other yarn shops that I love in Connecticut … they have to be friendly or forget about it.

There are pattern books and needles and metallic threads in this shop.  It’s just a great place to spend some time, hours really.  It’s a soft ,cozy spot.

When you’ve had your fill of knitting for the day, don’t forget to spill out onto the streets of Old Saybrook, there’s a lot going on there, and again don’t forget to check out The Kate and its museum to the four- time Academy Award winning actress.

Katharine Hepburn was a knitter (see photo at right)—she called Old Saybrook her paradise.

Oh, by the way, my favorite site on the web for finding thousands of knitting patterns for free is Knitting Pattern Central … it’s all right there for you, truly, you’ll find every pattern known to man or woman.  Just as many crochet patterns as well.

WTNH news anchor Ann Nyberg happens to believe the glass is half full and that there is magic in everything if you’re open to it.  She believes in doing good for others, in enlightening people’s lives and in showing them the way.  In Connecticut there are wondrous people and places to which she will introduce you in this column. This is a state rich in personality and in talent.  She will share it all here with you. Think of her as kind of a one-woman, living, breathing, CT Chamber of Commerce!  Read more from Ann on her blog at www.anniemame.com, where this article was first published.

Filed Under: Arts, Life with Anne Mame, Local News

Talking Transportation – The AC-DC Railroad

July 25, 2010 by

A few weekends ago, service on Metro-North and Amtrak was thrown into chaos when two trains ripped down portions of the overhead caternary (power line).  Trains were cancelled, weekend riders stranded.

Metro-North’s service in Connecticut is made all the more challenging by a technological quirk of fate.  Ours is the only commuter railroad in the U.S. that operates on three modes of power… AC, DC and diesel.

On a typical run from, say, New Haven to Grand Central, the first part of the journey is done “under the wire”, the trains being powered by 13,000 volt AC overhead wires, or catenaries.  Around Pelham, in Westchester County, the pantographs are lowered and the conversion is made to 660 volt DC third-rail power for the rest of the trip into New York.  Even diesel engines must convert to third-rail, as their smoky exhaust is banned in the Park Avenue tunnels.

And there’s the rub:  Connecticut trains need both AC and DC, overhead and third-rail, power pick-ups and processors.  That means a lot more electronics, and added cost, for each car.  While the DC-only new M7 cars running in Westchester cost about $2 million each, the dual-mode M8 car designed for Connecticut will cost considerably more.

So, some folks are asking… “Why not just use one power source? Just replace the overhead wires with third-rail and we can buy cheaper cars.”  Simple, yes.  Smart, no.  And here’s why.

  • There’s not enough space to lay a third-rail along each of the four sets of tracks in the existing right of way. All four existing tracks would have to be ripped out and the space between them widened. Every bridge and tunnel would have to be widened, platforms moved and land acquired. Cost?  Probably hundreds of millions of dollars, years of construction and service disruptions.
  • Even with third-rail, the CDOT would still be required to provide overhead power lines for Amtrak.  That would mean maintaining two power systems at double the cost.  We’re currently spending billions just to upgrade the 80-year old catenary, so why then replace it with third-rail?
  • Third-rail AC power requires power substations every few miles, meaning further construction and real estate. The environmental lawsuits alone would kill this idea.
  • DC-powered third rail is less efficient.  Trains accelerate much faster using overhead AC voltage, the power source used by the fastest trains in the world… the TGV, Shinkansen, etc.  On third-rail speeds are limited to 75 miles an hour vs. 90 mph under the wire.  That means, mile for mile, commute time is longer using third rail.
  • Third-rail ices up in bad weather and can get buried in snow, causing short circuits.  Overhead wires have problems sometimes, but they are never buried in a blizzard.
  • Third-rail is dangerous to pedestrians and track workers.
    The idea of conversion to third-rail was studied in the 1980’s by consultants to CDOT.  They concluded that, while cumbersome and costly, the current dual-power system is, in the long run, cheaper and more efficient than installing third-rail. This time, the engineers at CDOT got it right.

Not satisfied, some of the third-rail fans tried pushing bills through the Legislature in 2005 to study the replacement scheme yet again. More studies would have meant years of delay in ordering already overdue car replacements. Fortunately, the Legislature dispensed with these nuisance proposals quickly.

Doubtless, we’ll have further “wires down” problems in the years to come.  Ironically, Metro-North’s 97% on-time record has made us come to expect stellar service, despite our ancient infrastructure.  But in the long run, service will be faster and even more reliable by sticking with our dual-mode system.

JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 19 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  Read his column on LymeLine every other Monday.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct .  For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, seewww.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com 

Filed Under: Business, Local News, Transportation

Between Us – Porching It

July 20, 2010 by

Porches are, like summer, are sloth-inducing and community-inviting.

The American poet Robert Frost is famous for—among other things—penning the line, “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

Frost’s lines concern a stand of birches observed in winter, bent down, as those trees tend to be, by snow and ice. It is as if, Frost observes, a small boy had shinnied up the trunk, and, with the bravado of the young, reached the end of the tree, and flung himself, clutching its topmost branches, feet-first into the blue winter sky and “ridden” the tree to the ground.

The image of the birch-swinger is a metaphor for the poet’s on-again, off-again relationship with the world: “It’s when I’m weary of considerations,” he writes, “and life is too much like a pathless wood…I’d like to get away from earth awhile, and then come back to it and begin over.”

Now given the fact that it’s July in New England, as opposed to January, I will make bold to offer a seasonal amendment to Mr. Frost and note that, fine as birches are, one could also do worse than be a sitter of porches.

Bear with me, and I may actually get you to believe that homely, un-“hot” objects like birches and porches can actually be the stuff of meaning, allowing us to revel in life rather than merely regarding it as a conquerable commodity or something to be endured.

Porches are ephemera to many modern home builders and largely to the 21st century mindset in which everything seems to require justification via a specific purpose.

Real porches–and here I exclude so-called “three-season rooms” which are made practicable,  and therefore justifiable, by insulation or infomercial awnings; and “decks” which many times dangle in space supported only by four by fours and which function as a grilling stations and occasionally collapse, sending bratwurst, steaks and grill person into the sump-pump bog some 18 feet below—are, like summer, short-lived, sloth-inducing, and community-inviting.

And to have one, especially a front porch, is to be blessed.

First, porches represent the once-upon-a-time in architecture. A time when folks strolled streets after dinner; a time when neighbors knew their community as faces and names met over day-to-day dealings; a time when social interaction was spontaneous rather than marked on an agenda three weeks in advance.

So once upon a time, after supper, you spied Fred and Mabel over your flower boxes and invited them up to your porch for ice cream and/or gossip.

Porch furniture, likewise, embodies a largely abandoned approach to existence: It does not warm, vibrate or advertise as orthopedically approved. Rather, it rocks, but back-and-forth; it swings, but in the wind.

So once upon a time, Junior de-camped to the porch and poured over Treasure Island, or Pop left the edging until tomorrow and expended his strength willing Ted Williams to first base while downing a lemonade.

“A good porch,” notes writer Garrison Keillor, gets you out of the parlor; lets you smoke, talk loud, eat with your fingers—without apology and without having to run away from home. No wonder that people with porches have hundreds of friends…Me and the missus float back and forth on the swing, Mark and Rhonda are collapsed at opposite ends of the couch. Marlene peruses her paperback novel in which an astounding event is about to occur…the cats lie on the floor listening to birdies, and I say, ‘It’s a heck of a deal, ain’t it, a heck of a deal.’ A golden creamy silence suffuses this happy scene, and only on a porch is it possible.”

As I said, one could do worse than be a sitter of porches.

Happy summer.

Trish Bennett is the former associate editor of the Main Street News. Her award-winning column, “Between Us,” ran in that paper for many years. She holds a master of science degree in journalism and now lives in Bryn Mawr, Pa., where she currently works at an inner-city elementary school in West Philadelphia with disadvantaged kids as a “library lady” and reading specialist. She can be reached at pwbennett@verizon.net

Filed Under: Between Us, Columnists

Fit Focused – Financial Fitness Makes Sense

May 26, 2010 by

With the financial markets as they are and many people worried about their jobs and the security of their homes and businesses, I have seen an increase in the number of people attending my classes and coming to me for personal training.  On the face of it, this might not seem to make sense.  Perhaps you are one of those people who has always seen personal training as one of the luxuries that we have to give up when times are hard.
 
As a personal trainer what I see are people making choices – choices that look to their long term health and well-being. What they know is that regular exercise is extra important in times of stress.  Regular, strenuous exercise keeps cortisol levels down and rids our body of adrenaline.  Both of these hormones can lead to anxiety and depression as well as making it more difficult for us to concentrate and cope on day to day basis.  Reducing exercise can often lead to an increase in “hidden” costs, such as increased doctor’s bills, leading to increased anxiety over insurance costs or eligibility.
 
In times of stress, staying fit and staying focused is essential.
 
We know we need to exercise, but we also know that it is very difficult to keep motivated when you exercise on your own.  There is always something more important than that power walk or run that you promised yourself you would take instead of your regular class.

Walking is a great weight-bearing exercise but it does not help your upper body strength.  Few of us are really able to gauge for ourselves when we are working at our optimum level.  Suddenly our power-walk becomes an amble. 

You know that we should all be participating in some level of weight training 2-3 days a week and working all 12 major muscle groups for optimum strength and bone density as well as participating in cardiovascular activity 3-5 times a week for 20-60 minutes at a time.

Strength training and flexibility training also keep you from getting injuries such as pulling a muscle when you are gardening, which in turn leads to more visits to the physical therapist or chiropractors and more hidden costs. 

So, if you don’t know how to do that yourself, enlist the help of fitness professional.  By keeping strong on the outside we benefit physiologically, physically and psychologically when it comes to times of stress; whether that stress is financial or the stress of caring for a loved one.
 
OK – so we know we need to keep fit and we know it’s very difficult to do it on our own.  So how do you keep fit, yet at the same time keep the strings tight on your pocketbooks?  Cut back on other things, your fitness classes really should be the last thing to go.
 
Working out as opposed to eating out may sound extreme but is a great way to cut back.  Forego the take-out pizza or Chinese and save that money for a fitness class where you hit every muscle group in one hour and get your cardiovascular activity too.  Instead of going out to dinner make a healthy meal at home.  This can also save unwanted calories as you know exactly what is going into the recipe that is being made and you’ve just saved yourself a whole lot of money.
 
Stop buying the junk or extra treats weekly.  By not buying the cookies, pie or chocolate gateau, you will save yourself $$$ and be healthier too, further enhancing your health and fitness.  If you have a sweet tooth, it is cheaper, and healthier to make an easy recipe from scratch such as peanut butter cookies made with reduced fat Smart Balance peanut butter, Smart Balance oatmeal, some dried cherries, sunflower seeds and a little bit of dark chocolate – a healthy and delicious recipe that is cheaper than store bought items and full of good fats.
 
Another way to save money weekly is to shop around – go to different supermarkets to find the bargains.  For example Wal-Mart sells Kashi bars for $2.50 a box.  These bars are a healthy snack.  Shaw’s carries the same bars for $6.00 per box.  Ocean State Job Lot has the Bob’s Red Mill range of quinoa, granola, oatmeal and bulgur wheat cheap.  The price is doubled in every supermarket I have been in.  They also carry many lines of organic healthy blue corn chips, veggie chips etc.  By saving on your food bill you are creating an income to support your fitness bill so you get the most bang for your buck!
 
What all of my clients understand is that no one can put a price on health and fitness.  You may be surprised to learn that three classes a week costs less than one take-out meal for your family and it’s going to help do more to prevent hospital bills and doctors visits in the long run than “saving” on your fitness now.  You will save money by preventing, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, depression and anxiety or hypertension.  All this just by changing the way you spend your dollars.  Where are your priorities?
 
You only have one body – life is not a rehearsal and you won’t get a second chance to be healthy.

Allison Duxbury is an AFFA qualified fitness professional with over 15 years experience in group and personal training.  After many years travelling the world with her husband Rod, an officer in the British Army, they returned to her roots in Connecticut to bring up their young family and start her business: FitFocused.  Three years later, the business is thriving and her clients range from 9-year-old competitive Irish Dancers to an octogenarian veteran.
 

 

Filed Under: Columnists, Fit Focussed

Between Us – “Fine, and You?”

February 13, 2010 by

It is the absence of the “fine” in our kids’ lives—deliberation and discernment skills—that worries me:
 
To the ever-expanding pile of words denuded of practically all meaning, I’d like to add “fine.”
 
Witness the range of synonyms offered, for example, by my Macbook onboard thesaurus: “very well,” “well,” “all right,” “okay”: which is a little like saying “thriving,” “healthy,” “so-so,” and “breathing, but little else” all mean the same thing.
 
Show me a med student who maintains that “thriving,” “healthy,” “so-so,” and “breathing but that’s all,” are interchangeable descriptions of a patient’s state, and I’ll show you next week’s road crew member.
 
What got me ruminating on “fine’s” decline is several recent examples that demonstrate how very absent from our children’s experiences are the word’s other uses.  That is, “fine” as in “subtle”; “delicate”; “refined.”
 
Now before I am accused of advocating that kids be inculcated with the rituals of high tea at four o’clock, and the care and feeding of Granny’s bone china, allow me to explain.  Or perhaps paint you some word pictures.
 
I volunteer in an inner-city Philadelphia school built in the 1920’s.  The library, where I help teach first, third and fourth graders is a relatively bright oasis of clean, sturdy tables and raspberry-hued upholstered chairs.  Outside the library, strong-armed, alarmed doors keep intruders out of the sunless halls where rusty pipes often leak into containers meant for recycled paper.
 
To many of my kids, the library can mean “fine” in the sense of an alternative: one of only a few places regularly available to them where nursery rhymes, biographies, and Harry Potter can offer beauty or delicacy in contrast to the gritty realities posed by poverty and absent parents.
 
Since school began, though, my volunteer friends and I have been alternately surprised, bemused and discouraged by our students’ choice of books.
 
Call it “elitist” if you will, but we can sigh when there are tug-of-wars over the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “Captain Underpants” series while grade- and ability-friendly volumes featuring Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein and Anne Frank seldom get a glance.
 
Is this “fine” in the sense of just okay (“hey, at least they’re reading”)?  Perhaps.  Is a steady diet of only pop culture and familiarity helping these kids to develop finer qualities like critical thinking and subtle reasoning?  I think not.
 
And lest you think that disadvantaged kids are the only ones who lack for examples of higher aspirations, come west about nine miles to the quite advantaged Main Line where the children of privilege, like their 8- to 18-year-old counterparts country-wide spend—according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation—more than seven and a half hours a day in front of a smart phone, computer, TV or other electronic device.
 
For the moment, leave aside concerns of rampant childhood obesity and the 47 percent of “heavy” media users who, according to the study, had mostly C grades or lower.
 
Instead consider the example of Baby Trey, who, the New York Times related, was parked by his well-meaning mother in front of Baby Einstein videos and “Dora the Explorer.”
 
“By the time he was 4, he had all these math and science DVDs…and he learned to read and do math early,” said Trey’s mother, Kim Calinan.  But now that Trey is 9, Calinan observes, video games have displaced after-school activities, and her son shows little interest in any social interaction or independent exploration—such as reading—that might cut into his gaming time.
 
“[Heavy media use has] changed young people’s assumptions about how to get an answer to a question,” says Donald F. Roberts, a Stamford communications professor emeritus who is one of the authors of the Kaiser Foundation study.  “People can put out a problem…and information pours in from all kinds of sources.”
 
And as a former communications professor myself, I can attest that even college age students, while they may be whizzes at harvesting factoids, are becoming less and less adapt at culling and discriminating between the finer points in that information avalanche.
 
To some degree my privileged former students are no further along in their ability to engage in refined, subtle thought than my challenged present charges.
 
So what we have here may be “fine,” in the sense of “okay” for many: Democracy is not yet threatened by many kids’ hampered ability to reason.
 
But it is the absence of the “fine” in our kids’ lives, represented by deliberation and discernment skills, that worries me: the impetus to be curious beyond the familiar; to be enlightened beyond the obvious; to consider rather than simply emote; to be educated rather than simply amused.
 
And absent those fine points of the human experience, we and our children are not fine at all.

Trish Bennett is the former associate editor of the Main Street News. Her award-winning column, “Between Us,” ran in that paper for many years. She holds a master of science degree in journalism and now lives in Bryn Mawr, Pa., where she currently works at an inner-city elementary school in West Philadelphia with disadvantaged kids as a “library lady” and reading specialist. She can be reached at pwbennett@verizon.net

Filed Under: Between Us, Columnists

Between Us – Comfort Me With Satire

January 26, 2010 by

“Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live.”

God bless Dorothy Parker, wherever she is. You might be trapped in a dark tunnel, the only light being that of the on-coming train that’s about to mow you down; but if Parker were with you, she’d convince you that you were about to be dispatched by the Orient Express—how chic—and that there was still time for a scotch before the final impact.

A bit twisted, perhaps, but I like that in a person. Matter of fact, I’m fond of curmudgeons in general: those folks who shudder at the thought of political correctness, self-esteem, and other feel-good sentimentality in favor of good old unvarnished invective and crotchety quips.

Malcontents and misanthropes take life straight up and neat; they leave the chocolate mud-slide (so-called) martinis to the unshaven and the wimps. They truss up hypocrisy, cant, pretense and sham and promptly impale them on the skewer of humor, as author Jon Winokur notes.

“In a nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses,” Winokur continues, “it then becomes an honor to be labeled a curmudgeon.”

So with election babble vying with financial collapses to bubble our stomachs and ravage our brains, it’s not a bad survival mechanism to explore what some notable wags made of life’s assorted plagues and pestilences.

Before we degenerated into the unadulterated vitriol that now passes as informed political discourse, Americans used to poke amused fun at the opposite political pole. Robert Benchley, once upon a time, noted that the only way to tell Republicans and Democrats apart was to examine the detritus littering their post-convention meeting rooms. Republicans, Benchley said, tended to leave about more gin bottles while the Democrats seem to have gone in for more rye.

Somewhat after the time South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner over a minor tiff called the Civil War, but before the “Axis of Evil” was invented, humorist Dave Barry observed that Democrats seems to be basically nicer people than Republicans. Alas, Barry continued, Democrats had not only demonstrated time and again that they had the management skills of celery, but that, while they were kind enough to stop and help you change a flat, they’d also manage to set your car on fire. Republicans, on the other hand, would decline to stop to help, bereft as they were, of the knowledge to fix a tire. Besides, Barry maintained, they’d want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.

Politics has always been ready fodder for souls who despise double-speak that says nothing.

Journalist H.L. Mencken once opined that if an office seeker had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. He went on to declare that nine out of ten politicians were knaves who maintained themselves by preying on the idiotic vanities and pathetic hopes of half-wits: rather perceptive in an age of identity politics where we imagine “likeability” or the ability to shoot moose (or miss quail) to be qualifications for high office.

Playwright George Bernard Shaw saw more identity foibles at play in national rah-rah-ing, although it must be admitted that he lived in an age before flag lapel pins (or lack thereof) determined loyalty to one’s country. Patriotism, Shaw postulated, is the conviction that one’s country is superior to all others because we were born in it.

Worrisome notion, one might think, if everybody in the world thought that way.

Remember the junk bond melt-down? No matter. Substitute “sub-prime lending” and you’re in the same ballpark. Film critic John Bloom (nom de plume, “Joe Bob Briggs”) once went on a rant that recently deposed Wall St. Masters of the Universe should have heeded.

“How does something like this happen?” Briggs raved. “How do people spend ten years buying and selling something with junk in the name, and then say, ‘Oh, my God, you mean those weren’t good investments? They sounded so great!” You can almost hear the whining today from one-time Merrill Lynch tycoons, “Sub-prime lending. We thought we couldn’t go wrong with a name like that!”

Right.

It’s as though the finance gurus read Wilson Mizner’s fertile, irreverent mind. “Money, to be worth striving for, must have blood and perspiration on it—preferably that of someone else.”

Mark Twain (as usual) nailed it. “Honesty is the best policy,” he maintained, “when there is money in it.”

No doubt about it, it’s nasty times out there. And it’s tough, too, because so many cures for the national blues are either illegal, immoral or fattening, as Alexander Woollcott observed.

When I get the funks, I go running, which, if I keep to my habits, should mean I’ll have run three marathons by a week from Tuesday. Or maybe I’ll just see if Oscar Wilde had any thoughts about hockey mom-ism and pig lipstick.

 
Trish Bennett is the former associate editor of the Main Street News. Her award-winning column, “Between Us,” ran in that paper for many years. She holds a master of science degree in journalism and now lives in Bryn Mawr, Pa., where she currently works at an inner-city elementary school in West Philadelphia with disadvantaged kids as a “library lady” and reading specialist. She can be reached at pwbennett@verizon.net 

Filed Under: Between Us, Columnists

Between Us – Tender Mercies

December 23, 2009 by

It may be ours to redirect our energies, from thrusting greedy fingers into stockings for a prize, to discerning what our neighbor might not crave, but desperately require.

There is a beautiful symmetry to the ebb and flow of the academic year, a sense of security in the certainty of beginning, middle, and end.  Task announced, studied, and—as actually happens in some cases—mastered.
Then there are times when an instructor sees, over the course of 13-odd weeks, the kernel of inquiry sprout.  And slowly, perhaps in fits and starts, grow to be a self-sustaining quest that might, just might, continue beyond the semester’s end, to absorb the student in a life-long journey: not to master, but to continue to discover.
Ideas like that represent the tender mercies of teaching, making the slings and arrows bearable.  And one can think those thoughts to within an inch of their lives, which was what I was doing when I stumbled across an intriguing study out of Stamford University.
Briefly, an educational researcher selected a group of fourth graders, students she had determined to have roughly the same learning abilities, and to whom she administered two rigged tests.
The first was ridiculously easy, allowing the students to breeze through almost completely unchallenged.
The second, was the first in reverse: a devious doppelganger, calculated to be well beyond the capabilities of most fourth graders.

Having set the stage, the researcher observed.

One group of students—determined by their behavior in the face of the problem—first changed their posture.  They doubled down, giving the test their full attention, summoning all their resources, to arrive at a solution.
These the researcher dubbed “mastery” students.  The quest for them, she concluded, was to understand what at first seemed un-understandable.  No matter what time elapsed, no matter if an adult was watching, no matter whether ego was risked on trying and perhaps failing to come up with an answer, the mastery students plugged away, fueled by their curiosity, intrigued with the challenge.

By contrast, the second group—again, self-designating based on their behavior—the researcher called the “helpless” students.

Their behavior was defined first—again—by posture.  After studying the test for several minutes, they began to relax in their chairs: backs against seats, feet stretched forward, in a languid, disinterested fashion.  These children, the researcher found, became passive in the face of difficulty.  Verbally, they began criticizing the test (“This is so dumb”); some time later, they began criticizing themselves as “dumb.”
These students, the researcher concluded, had interpreted difficulties, not as intriguing puzzles, but as obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible.

The researcher went further, theorizing that the “helpless” students were also “performers,” looking always toward some real or imaginary gallery, where adults sat ready to give approval.

In short, the “helpless” kids did not explore from some inner motivation to satisfy curiosity.  Rather they “performed” for what they expected and hoped: quick recognition and praise.  And when those immediate rewards didn’t materialize, the students decided the puzzle was not worth their energy, and soon disengaged.

I made notes on the study for my next semester’s teaching, but, given the almost universal push-backs and knock downs our society has faced over the last several months, it was obvious that the “mastery” and “helpless” student study has relevance far beyond the Stamford testing lab.

The thought occurred that there are precious few of us who are not grappling with issues that may well strike us as insoluable.  Many, if not all of them, tend to crescendo during the holiday season, when popular understanding has it that, at the very least, life should be merry and bright.

To be sure, home foreclosures and the evaporation of life savings are more than December downers.  They are life-shaking, if not shattering.  They are not easily surmountable, and are made no more palpable by insipid philosophies that call for seeing the eggnog glass as half full, rather than half empty.
 
I would submit, however, that, though our issues are real and threatening, the attitude with which we face them need not—and for productivity’s sake, must not—mimic that of the helpless students.
We need, I think, to seek out the tender mercies.

It may be our task, in this solstice season, to remember the mastery students, who, like Eleanor Roosevelt, lit candles instead of cursing darkness, and lived into childhood’s best promise, choosing to explore, rather than to expire in a heap of self-pitying indignation.

It is ours at this time of year, I think, to begin to value, rather than evade, the trials that daunt us, and in their grim faces, to dare to whistle, if for no other reason than to dispel the greatest enemy, which—because it paralyzes, and distorts our vision—is fear.

It is ours, I think, to redirect our energies, from thrusting greedy fingers into stockings, hoping for a prize or peace that we think we deserve, to, instead, probing gently and lovingly, to discern what our neighbor might not crave, but might desperately require.

Finally, I would submit, it is ours to decide whether we will be helpless or masters.
Having elected a man from Illinois to lead us out of the muck and mire of the last eight years, it may be our task and privilege to discern again the distant voices: not the old seductive siren songs of greed and gold and gotcha-ism, but rather—to paraphrase another man from Illinois—to heed the better angels of our own scarred, but still steadfast, nature.

Trish Bennett is the former associate editor of the Main Street News. Her award-winning column, “Between Us,” ran in that paper for many years. She holds a master of science degree in journalism and now lives in Bryn Mawr, Pa., where she currently works at an inner-city elementary school in West Philadelphia with disadvantaged kids as a “library lady” and reading specialist. She can be reached at pwbennett@verizon.net

Filed Under: Between Us, Columnists

Packing in Holiday Fun Without Packing on Holiday Pounds

December 22, 2009 by

Are you in the throes of holiday shopping and partying and wondering how you can possibly find the time to exercise?  As I always say – consistency is key.  Remember that fitness cannot be stored so if you decide to give yourself two weeks off over the holiday season, be prepared to have lost up to half of your current fitness levels that you have worked hard to achieve.
 
Stay motivated by signing up for events in your local area such as a walk for a cause or a run such as the Turkey Trot. If you are traveling do the same – what a great way to explore a new area.  Local running stores always know safe or favorite running/walking routes.  If that is impossible for you, then even working out to a DVD or getting a workout to take on your travels from a certified personal trainer is helpful or you may choose a Yoga class to de-stress.
 
You can pack on five to 10 pounds during the holiday season.  Do you know that one pound is equal to 3,500 calories.  The good news is that a good hard work-out can, on average, use up about 700 calories as well as helping you to maintain or improve your current fitness level.  You can do it … schedule it in your daily calendar as if it’s a doctor’s appointment.

Be consistent – make a plan and stick to it!  Keep a journal of each day of exercise on your fridge and then you will really know if you are cheating yourself.  This could be a commitment to yourself to walk 15 miles per week – that’s just three miles a day, five days a week – or take classes or sign up for personal training. 

Although there are other pressures on your wallet – now is the time that scheduling classes or personal training slots is most helpful because you make yourself accountable for your workouts.  If you can’t do that – link up with a friend who is more likely to be consistent than you – and make yourselves accountable to each other. 

Workout watches, which give you a breakdown of hours exercised and calories used, are a great gift and useful whether you are training in a group or on your own.
 
Remember to eat four to six small meals a day instead of waiting to eat until you have that one huge meal in the evening when you will not be able to burn it off.  By eating throughout the day, you won’t over-eat all the wrong things at dinner. Before going to your party eat soups, fruits and veggies, so you won’t be starving when you arrive.

A great way to ward off those extra pounds is to exercise before the party so you will burn more of what you eat and replace the glycogen you have used during your workout with potatoes or pumpkin or apple pie.  Turkey or beef will repair the muscles you have worked.
 
If you are hosting the holiday meal, prepare lowfat foods.  For example, when making pumpkin pie use egg whites and instead of cream, use evaporated milk.  You could use graham crackers for the crust.  Baste meats with wine or broth – not butter.  Buy everything fresh instead of prepared foods, which are salty and will result in increased weight through water retention.
 
People often ask me – what if I am at someone’s home for dinner?  Remember your portion sizes and don’t feel you have to finish everything on your plate.  Skip dessert – or go for a fruit option.  As a quick guideline choose a portion of meat the size of a deck of cards, potatoes no bigger than the size of your fist or stick to less than ½ cup of rice or pasta and fill up on fresh veggies and salads (but skip the dressing).  Take a pass on the bread and the butter.
 
By taking responsibility now and staying committed to eating and exercising wisely you will enter the New Year happier and healthier and feeling better about yourself.  If you know now that you will struggle over the holiday season – make a commitment now to an exercise schedule for the New Year – and then stick to it!
 
Have a happy and healthy holiday and New Year!

Allison Duxbury is an AFFA qualified fitness professional with over 15 years experience in group and personal training.  After many years travelling the world with her husband Rod, an officer in the British Army, they returned to her roots in Connecticut to bring up their young family and start her business: FitFocused.  Three years later, the business is thriving and her clients range from 9-year-old competitive Irish Dancers to an octogenarian veteran.

Filed Under: Columnists, Fit Focussed

Recovering From Investment Paralysis

July 26, 2009 by

Recovering From Investment Paralysis
 
Now is the time to start preparing for market recovery.  Yes, there will be a recovery.  Maybe sooner, maybe later- what matters is that there will be an end to these economic blues and better to be prepared than not.

Anyone simply hanging on to their ravaged portfolio until “it comes back” may want to reconsider their position.  It’s time to get involved with your investments and filing away those monthly statements without opening the envelope is not the involvement I’m talking about.
 
This isn’t to say that good stocks don’t go through bad periods.  When the tide goes out on the stock market, many otherwise stable companies get dragged out in the undertow.  The point is that sticking your head in the sand and simply waiting for the market to sort itself out is a form of “investment paralysis,” a dangerous condition that is the inability to make a decision – any decision – because of market uncertainty.
 
Here are a few simple steps to shake off the paralysis and get your portfolio moving again in the right direction.
 
1)      Take a deep breath and put it all in perspective.  Time for a reality check.  For most investors, the recent past was a train wreck.  A huge fiery, smashing, crunching, metal twisting wreck.  Be confident though that the economic tracks will be cleared and the railroads will run again.  They may not run over all the same ground, but run they will.
 
2)      Stabilize the portfolio.  Before the recovery gets underway, there is the chance that further losses may take place and you should stop the bleeding.  Weed out the worst of your portfolio.  This will both lock in capital losses to offset future capital gains and create a cash position that helps stabilize returns.  This cash can later be put in play when the recovery is evident. 
 
3)      Rebuild beginning with today’s value.  In hindsight, maybe you could have done something different, but you didn’t. Rebuilding begins with what remains within your control.
 
4)      Expand your time horizon.  Unless you have an immediate need to access your funds or don’t plan to be around in future, set your sights on five years from now, not five days.  This doesn’t mean that short term opportunities don’t exist, but the longer perspective helps to give an insight to the big picture, which should dominate your overall investment strategy.
 
5)      Separate yourself from the herd.  Warren Buffett has said, “You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you.  You are right because your data and reasoning are right”.  Common sense should prevail.  Sure the auto industry is in the dumps today.  Does that mean we will all stop buying cars?  If we don’t replace our aging chariots, most of us will be walking.  Does this make sense?
 
So get those unopened statements out of the draw and rip them open.  It’ll only hurt for a little while.
 
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing.

Glenn “Chip” Dahlke, a Senior Contributor to The Living Trust Network, has 30 years in the investment business.  He is a Registered Representative of LPL Financial with Dahlke Financial Group.  He is licensed to transact securities business with persons who are residents of the following states: CA. CT, FL, GA, IL. MA, MD. ME, MI. NC, NH, NJ, NY.OR, PA, RI, VA, VT, WY.  Contact him at chipdahlke@dahlkefinancial.com

 

Filed Under: Columnists, Finance Matters