The Midwest Memo

If you work for the City of Bell, Calif., population 38,000, you are in the money, taxpayers’ money. Bell is located just outside Los Angeles and has median household income under the national average. In Bell 25% of the residents live below the poverty line. There’s nothing much special about this place that measures a tiny 2.5 square miles. The wealthy and the elite don’t call Bell home, it’s not that kind of real estate. Except it’s a beautiful place to be if you can score a city job.

The city manager of Bell makes over $700,000 a year. The chief of police pulls in $450,000 annually and the city council members, the guys who set, approve and vote in these salaries, they make about $100,000 for their part-time work.

In Bell it’s local tax dollars, every single overpaid one, tax dollars that are enriching government workers way beyond what the private sector would pay. The property tax rate is particularly high in the City of Bell. The tax rate is set by some of those receiving the obscene salaries

Plunder and pillage best describes what’s been going on in Bell.

Except recently, the public found out about the scandalous salaries. There was rage and there were protests and the State Attorney General is going to look into the matter. And the selfish fat cats who were somehow getting bloated salaries in secret, well they are feeling the scrutiny as these matters have become public. They are all on their way out.

How could such outrageous behavior go on?

Some years back Bell had a special election to become a charter city. A charter city operates under rules defined by the city itself, rather than by state law. A charter city reports to no one. Less than 400 voters actually cast a ballot in this special election. But the change to a charter city was approved by a tiny select group and the rest is unsupervised, unreported history.

The scandal was revealed last month by investigative reporting of the Los Angeles Times newspaper. Prior to the Times inquiry there was no local paper covering those boring city council meetings, those long, dull appropriation hearings.

Which brings me to a “thank goodness” realization and appreciation for the state of transparency of our local governmental bodies – county, city and township.

And in a shameless, selfserving move, I’d like to credit both the editor and publishers of the Comet for devoting the resources and column inches to covering local government and keeping things known to the public throughout Carroll County.

For many years I covered the county commissioners, the county council, and the Flora Town Council. I did a few school board meetings, the drainage board, the county plan commission. Over time it occurred to me that the reporter job was also a really protracted lesson in civics, politics and human nature.

As my years of covering government accumulated, I developed a base of knowledge about roads and bridges and policies and planning. Knowing the local government “beat” and how it all worked made it easier to follow the various meetings and to understand what was going on.

There were many commissioners and council meetings I covered where I was the only member of the public attending. I’m sure that it is true today. And it’s only human nature that any group behaves differently when a reporter is sitting in the room. There’s a little more formality, a bit more care or caution in what gets said.

When I served on the Delphi Library Board I recall the few occasions the press sat in on our meetings. Less jokes, straighter postures, a little more organization, that’s what the press brought out in me.

Local government works better with regular, reasonable press coverage. Coverage doesn’t happen everywhere and Bell, Calif., is an example of how bad things can get without it. So it makes me grateful that here in Carroll County we get a chance to read what’s going on in local government.

Years ago a skunk took up residence under the breezway of a house I had to clean out and sell. I never actually saw the skunk, but there was no mistaking the precise identity of who was down under. The neighbors saw Mr. Stinky coming and going on a couple of occasions. I’m not sure what got him mad enough to spray the place, but that’s just what he did.

One sunny afternoon, when I was pretty sure the skunk was out from under the house, I blocked the hole he had used to establish residence. Then I headed off to the hardware store for some advice.

“Ammonia,” that’s what the white haired man behind the counter advised. The hardware store man told me to put wide bowls full of ammonia in several spots throughout the breezway. And so I did. And the man instructed me to do something counter-intuitive. I was to leave the windows and doors shut in the space so the ammonia could do its work. And so I did.

How it worked, I can’t tell you, and it took some time, weeks, I think, and many refills of those bowls. But ammonia did the trick and the skunk smell was totally eradicated.

Notice what the hardware man did not send me home with. I did not get scented plugins that poof away every so often. No aerosol spray cans of scented deodorizer or fragrance were dispatched. He did not give me caches of potpourri to scatter about.

If you believe what you see on television, well the answer to all odors is another odor to layer over it. I love the family scene where the fish from yesterday’s supper is floating about the room. Mom injects a little aerosol spray into the picture to fill the room with cascading lavender. So what you now have is lavender scented fish. Yuck!

There does seem to be an aversion to cleaning implicit in all these commercials.

Has the dog taken up residence on your sofa? Smelly gym shoes making the closet a little grim? Well don’t clean it, for goodness sake, just spray another smell in the offending direction.

I’ve got a house for sale that hasn’t been lived in for a couple years. I complained to the owner that the place smells musty and that it could use a good airing out and a fresh cleaning.

The other day I showed the house. Now the house smells musty with lemon and vanilla atop the must. In each room there was a little clear vase with scented liquid and a bunch of smooth sticks sticking out of the vase. I’m told the sticks carry the flavor of the liquid into the air.

The place needed a little elbow grease and some fresh air. What I got instead was scented sticks.

For bathroom showers there’s now a contraption that gives the shower an automatic shower after you step out from your own shower. It’s a gyrating cleanser spray that sends an arc of liquid cleanser automatically from the top of the shower. What it lacks, regrettably, is a good stiff brush and some bleach.

My friend Jerry bought a handy man house that had a kitchen and bathrooms that were dingy and stinky and he and I assumed that he would gut the rooms and replace everything. Jerry’s mother is from the old country and she had a different idea. Armed with various sized brushes and bleach and cleanser and big, bright yellow rubber gloves, she did her magic. Jerry cancelled his plans to remodel after a thorough old world cleaning yielded sparkling, fragrant neutral kitchen and baths that were classic and squeaky clean.

It leaves me wondering if anyone makes an ammonia scented plug-in? Or bleach flavored potpourri? Now that might get my attention!

Last week my destination took me north to Wisconsin off the highway and down some sleepy country roads. The landscape was pleasant, the humidity heavy and I took my time to enjoy the ride.

Along the side of the road I spotted something that made me slow down, then stop and literally laugh out loud. Slightly to the right of a farmer’s driveway stood the traditional country mail box, a battered, slightly dented gray regulation postal issue complete with red flag and attached to a post about four feet high. On the side of the mailbox in black block letters was the name of the property owner and the address of the house.

Next to the traditional mailbox was a second mailbox. This second box was similar to the first one but it towered over its twin attached to a post at least 10 feet tall. The lettering on the side of this second box read one simple word: “bills.”

The humor was direct, the visual was absurd, and I loved the fact that the owner wanted to share a chuckle with just anyone who passed by.

Our actions and our interactions have impact. And even the next day, I found myself laughing to myself about the out-of-reach mailbox that touched a very common cord.

Out in the country in Adams Township we have wonderful neighbors. We look to these neighbors for local news, the occasional cup of sugar, friendship and more. Neighbors in rural communities are much less “expendable” than in the city. Folks need each other a tad more when there’s more space than people. As I have written before, my wife and I have a little studio apartment in downtown Chicago. So we get to experience two very distinct notions of neighbors. In the city, we barely know anyone who lives on the same floor in our building. There are over 900 units in the building and 26 units per floor. We recognize folks enough to share a greeting or a pleasantry about the weather. But that’s about it. People move in and out of the apartments without much note. Years can go by without exchanging names. Frankly, I find that the longer one goes without an introduction just makes the introduction almost impossible.

In a long apartment hallway you can actually pass folks without saying much at all. And so the whole notion of neighbors can take on a different meaning, and that meaning can be diluted to an insignificant relationship of proximity.

In the country, a neighbor may be called on in equal doses in good times and bad. Neighbors are there for help in a time of need or to help celebrate a happy occasion. In the city, a need is most likely directed to the doorman or the building superintendant.

But on our floor of apartments where 26 identical apartment doors face a common hall, there was one young man who seemed to be a neighbor to all. He was the only young person I knew in our building, the only young person who always greeted me, always had a smile to share. His name was James Shepherd and he died this month in a widely publicized boating mishap on Lake Michigan. He was just 21 years old.

At the memorial service for James, hundreds of people pressed close together to hear speaker after speaker take the microphone in hand and share the manner in which this young man had touched his or her life.

Speakers shared tales of wonderful antics and of touching reflections. It seemed extraordinary that someone so young had genuinely touched so many lives. But that was exactly what James did. For all in attendance, it seemed to be a time for reflection about how we relate to one another.

Like the farmer with the too tall mailbox, like the rural neighbor whose door is open to others, and like the friendly city kid from down the hall, we all have a unique opportunity – the chance to engage and impact for the good all those around us.

Waiting to connect with a customer yesterday, I perched myself comfortably on the ledge of a stonewall in front of our agreed upon meeting place. It was late afternoon, sunny, quiet and serene and just an idyllic moment to relish some reflective time.

To my immediate left there was a bicycle stand with a lone adult sized man’s bike leaning upright at it. Not too long into my wait, the bike’s owner appeared, pulled the bike from the stand, and took off at a speedy clip.

The bike rider carefully held something up in mid air in his left hand. It was something I recognized intuitively, but which did not immediately register due to its seeming random, out of context appearance. And so I looked more carefully as the rider passed close by me and noted that he was indeed holding a clear plastic bag filled with a pint or so of water. And darting about inside that bag, inhabiting that clear water was a healthy looking, medium sized gold fish. The fish was bright orange in color and its odd appearance out of the blue took me back down memory lane. Off my thoughts went to fun fairs of my youth tossing a ping pong ball into rows of glass bowls each containing a gold fish unknowingly awaiting a new home.

“Do they even do the gold fish toss anymore?” I wondered to myself, thinking that some gold fish organization would have, by now, made it illegal to give gold fish such unregulated destiny.

But the gold fish going for a bicycle ride surely had no clue of what was in store in the moments ahead, let alone into the future. And it occurred to me that the gold fish did not know to be afraid or concerned or to even wonder about the path now taken. The fish did not know that his or her destiny was tied to the biker’s riding ability, the rush hour traffic and all those bumps soon to appear in the road.

And like the gold fish, we Americans are going for a ride with an untested driver, an uncharted path and a big dose of complacent blind faith to comfort us along the way.

I am troubled by the uneasy quiet that has settled in following the passage by Congress of the health care overhaul legislation.

Like the gold fish going for a risky ride, I feel we are off and running but that the populace is totally without knowledge or control or input.

And I have a hunch.

I cannot watch a half hour of television without receiving the following advise:

“Ask your doctor” “See your doctor”

“Consult with your doctor.”

Each piece of advice is a tag on for an advertisement for some kind of medication.

Because in today’s America, there is a pill for everything and a mind-set to match. Feeling sleepy, there’s a pill for that. Feeling down, or maybe frisky, or got an ache, there’s pills for all those things. There’s medication for just about every condition. For the young and for the old and for lifelong conditions, there is a pill.

And the ask the doctor, see the doctor, consult the doctor advice from the commercial – it’s not to examine lifestyle or to get some practical advice about stress or nutrition. And it’s not to get on an exercise program, or to chart out healthy lifestyle choices. There’s no time for that in America’s waiting room. The advice to see the doctor is to get the prescription to take the pill – the whatever-ails-you pill.

I fear the dirty little secret to health care is that we can’t afford it – and that truly we can’t come anywhere close to implementing or paying for the fix that’s been promised. And so the solution will be to embrace a mind set already in place – to see medication as the normal, easiest path to wellness.

Like the gold fish suspended in mid air going for a ride into the unknown, off we go. And the virtual silence after the dubious celebration of landmark legislation – it tells me something. Something is amiss.

I suited up for corporate battle the other day.

It was a Friday high noon appointment with lawyers and accountants scheduled for our big conference room. I was the host.

I placed chilled water bottles and complimentary note pads at each seat. I designated sides to sit on. I gave the opposition the seats facing the view outside. A distraction perhaps?

I consulted with our team members on the points we would make, the strategy we would take.

It was quite the orchestration.

Early that morning I faced my closet with guarded anticipation. I have more blue shirts than any other in my accumulated collection. A blue shirt is a safer bet for those, like me, who are human magnets going around all day catching lint, grease and random spaghetti sauce. The bright spanking white long sleeve shirt is the power shirt, the shirt for the bravest of the brave willing to risk copy toner and magic marker and the exploding root beer soda in the cubicle one over.

I went for broke. I chose a white shirt with French sleeves. I picked a gray tie with a dull silver tie tack. For cuff links I only have three to chose from and I picked the flashy ones, big white ones with blue ships pictured in the middle.

“Not those clunky things,” my wife said as she noted my choice of cuff links.

“But I get compliments on them whenever I wear them,” I replied.

“People comment on them,” she explained, “because they can’t miss them. They appear to be five pounds each. They wonder how you can raise your arms so freely.”

I went with small boring silver cuff links. My arms practically floated to the ceiling, they were that free.

I suspect folks have been adding adornments to their attire since the beginning of time. I suppose fig leaves were the first official earthly “attire.” I don’t think it required a talking snake to suggest that a little color might be nice to weave into what would have otherwise been pretty basic green duds.

Years ago I was the guardian of an eccentric artist, a talented woman who had made her livelihood creating beautiful artwork in a number of mediums. She painted and sculpted and constructed miniatures that were fascinating and entertaining.

In her nursing home days this woman went in the opposite direction of her art. She wanted all things plain. She took a distinct dislike to all wardrobe accessories – hats, scarves, jewelry and the like. She would point at the offending button or clasp or whatnot and shout “adornment” to register the fashion infraction. The problem was, if you got close enough to her she would not stop at the shout. She would pinch you.

One fateful day I needed a signature from this lady. We had been sitting in her room and talking a bit and so I thought my attire had passed muster. When I shifted into position to put the document within her signing reach, well the glint of my tie tack must have been too much.

“Adornment,” she yelled as my right ear lobe got the pinch of a lifetime.

I think of this woman whenever I see folks who cross the line with too much jewelry or wardrobe embellishment. I also think of her whenever my ear lobes throb.

I am pleased to report that the Friday power meeting went well. And I can report that my drab cuff links did not require any compliments, that my white shirt did not get sullied and that those on the other side of the table were not overly distracted by the view out the window. But since appearances matter, it would have been nice if someone on our team had noted one slight detail.

Our attorney had nicked himself shaving that morning. Like many of us, he stuck a piece of toilet paper on the nick. He arrived at the meeting late, took a seat to my side, and none of us noticed the toilet paper, until the conclusion of the meeting.

I should have pinched him.

Back in 2000 author Malcolm Gladwell’s best-seller “The Tipping Point” hit the bookstores. The book’s major discussion point is summed up by on-line dictionary Wikipedia as “the level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.”

Though I’ve never read “The Tipping Point,” I’ve thought about the concept often.

The subtitle of “The Tipping Point” is “how little things can make a big difference.” And it’s true – little things can make all the difference. I saw this play out with my next door neighbors and their eccentric Cocker Spaniel. During week one of the dog’s stay, the lady of the house, told the humorous story of how the dog ate a family member’s slippers. “How cute!”

Next was the tale of mayhem caused when the dog somehow got up on the kitchen table just before meal time. “Hilarious!”

More stories followed including the pricey trip to the doggy psychiatrist. But when the dog lifted his leg to the family room sofa, the “momentum for change” reached the unstoppable point and the pooch was history. Lots of Lysol disinfectant was sprayed, but not a tear was shed.

Whereas “The Tipping Point” explores the moment when change is inevitable in one direction, there is a moment before the tipping point when things are not yet determined, where someone or something could take the matter in totally opposite directions. I call that moment “the tottering point” that unstable, undetermined point in time when things can go either way.

On the local scene the current sparring between the County Council and the Clerk of the Circuit Court seems to be at such a tottering point. This is a saga desperately overdue for a nickname, so I’m dubbing it “checkbook gate.” Something is going to happen in “checkbook gate.” Those bank numbers are going to get balanced or something’s going to change. Can you sense the tottering?

The tottering point can hit you personally. It can kick in on the family level, community level or on the national level.

Personally, my waist size seems to be perpetually at the tottering point of 35 inches. Thanksgiving tips me from 35 over to the 36-inch area, but a wedding to attend with enough advance notice tips me in the opposite direction towards my suit pants size of 34.

The other night we got carry out Chinese food. The dinner came in three plastic containers with resealable lids. They were sturdy containers and the lids fit tightly.

“Let’s save those containers,” my wife said when we finished dinner.

In my legal career over many years it has fallen to me to serve as the executor for dozens of decedent’s estates. In carrying out executor duties, my helpers and I have dealt with numerous households where accumulations have gotten – to put it delicately – out of hand. One clear sign of out-ofhand accumulating is not knowing when enough is enough. And saving plastic containers is a real litmus test for when the old personal thrifty meter moves from practical to frugal and then to crowded and finally to certified cuckoo.

As I stood washing the containers at the kitchen sink, I pondered where my wife and I currently register on the plastic container hoarding meter. There have been times, dark times, when these tempting containers got the best of us. They and their companion lids would hold up in otherwise perfectly useable kitchen cabinets and would spring out at us whenever we disturbed them. But unless I missed a cabinet, we seem to currently be tottering at the frugal level and I tucked our new plastic containers in with the others with little trepidation.

I suppose a lot of life is spent at the tottering point where things could go either way. But self-knowledge is always helpful. This case is no exception. And from where I sit, I can see where too much take out food could move us away from tottering and into tipping – two fold: a husky guy waist and a kitchen overrun with plastic containers.

Fortunately, taped to our refrigerator door are two wedding invitations (RSVPs are already mailed). For the moment we’re safely tipped towards less carry-out food, a smaller waist and a minimum of tottering.

I went Easter egg hunting with granddaughter Julia, age 3. Our hunt was an unscheduled outing, an outing at Julia’s insistence. The hunt was over the Labor Day weekend just past.

Timing a little off, you suggest?

First, a little background. Our family celebrated Easter this year at our little weekend place on the lake. If you recall, that Sunday in early April was warm and sunny and a good day for an egg hunt. And we had one, for Julia.

That day Julia’s Uncle Jeff accepted the roll as the official Easter Bunny and placed plastic eggs in the front yard for Julia to find. Oh the eggs were so easy to spot I winced when I surveyed the yard. As assistant bunny I suggested alternate and less obvious spots. I even meddled a tad further and rearranged some of the most obvious eggs.

I got voted down. I returned the eggs back to where I found them.

And so Julia had a pretty easy time of it that brisk, sunny April Sabbath. She took her little straw basket, scampered about the postage stamp bit of a yard – and she cleaned up – got every one of those bright colored plastic eggs with little surprises hidden inside.

And that was that – or so we thought.

Fast forward to Labor Day.

Julia was back again to the lake place for a visit with the grandparents. She had but barely bounded out of the family van when she announced to me her intentions:

“I’m going to go Easter egg hunting.”

The calendar had already shifted to September, so I fumbled for words.

“Oh sorry honey that will have to wait till next year, oh that will be fun.”

Julia was having none of it and took me by my hand.

“Let’s go,” she insisted.

And off we went, scouring the front yard where she had so easily found the eggs before.

“We’re hunting Easter eggs,” I announced to my neighbor Kathy who happened by on the driveway. “We might have a rough time of it,” I added with a shrug.

Julia and I scoured the front yard, we paced the side yard. We looked in bushes, we checked behind gutters.

But as we turned the corner to the back of the house, there, in the bright light of a warming September sun, three brightly colored plastic eggs lay tucked and positioned and hidden in plain site for us to find.

“There they are,” Julia shouted with expectant delight.

The eggs were thanks to good neighbor Kathy who, upon hearing of our quest, had raced into her home, grabbed some “left-overs” and went to work as the Labor Day Rabbit, the distant cousin to the Easter Bunny.

And so for a moment, the impossible yielded to the marvelous and it was Easter on Labor Day and earth and humanity glistened in the eyes of young and old alike.

The experience got me to thinking of how life is a play being constantly written. And I considered all the roles we might play: sibling for some, friends for others, spouse, child, parent, elder, leader, and follower. Our assignments as cast members then are constantly changing, our scripts and dialogues all fresh in the making.

We each have the starring role in our own life. That is a given. It is by nature’s design.

And we each have the opportunity to be the best supporting actor or actress in the lives of family and friends and of those we love. That role is by choice and an honor to fulfill.

But there are lesser roles for each of us to be cast in each and every day. Good substantial roles, some of them are, to teach or encourage or assist. But some are walk-on parts, total voluntary cast assignments to cheer or to comfort, to aid or to abet.

A September rabbit posing as the Easter Bunny showed me that wonder is alive and well and that some supporting rolls are just too good to pass up

A few weeks back I received my license plate renewal form from the Indiana Department of Motor Vehicles. You can renew in the mail or on-line. I opted for the mail – I like paying these type of bills with a check. Call me old-fashioned. I like the paper record.

So I wrote a check, and sent the application and check in the mail. This past weekend I received said application and check returned, refused. BMV said my check was a counter check, and that they don’t take counter checks. My check was not a counter check. I had run low on checks and my banker printed up a dozen checks for me – checks with my account number on them.

Imagine the chaos and complications had I sent in my application towards the deadline and wound up driving on expired plates because the BMV deemed a valid check a counter check. It doesn’t make any sense. They should have deposited the check – period.

And while I’m complaining about the BMV, I’ll mention our grim faced driver’s license photos. Since the “no smile” policy for identification is not national, I have trouble figuring why the world is safer if most Hoosiers look like heck in their driver’s license photo.

On the same day my license renewal application came back rejected, I realized I owed a check to the Indiana Department of Revenue for my third quarter estimated state income taxes. If paying taxes wasn’t taxing enough on its own, the revenuers down in Indy have added just a little more work for estimated tax filers. Unfortunately, the civil servants apparently failed to consult anyone who is actually self-employed. Instead of a slip for us self-employed to simply declare what we are paying in estimated taxes, we’ve got a form to complete. Memo to the folks down state: we don’t know what our income is going to total – that’s why we estimate.

It seems to me that government is constantly hiring professional consultants for advice on this and that. Would the folks in Indy ever consider consulting with a couple of the real citizens they actually tax and/or regulate?

I used to have an Indiana Real Estate Broker’s license. I worked hard to get that license and attended continuing education classes to keep the license current. I paid the recurring license fees imposed by the state to keep said license. Having the license was part of a long-term business plan. And the fees I paid to the state were clear revenue.

You can imagine my chagrin, then, when by sheer chance I learned one year that my broker’s license had lapsed. I called Indianapolis in disbelief, holding in my hand a license that said it expired many years in the future.

“Oh that far out date was a mistake,” the clerk told me, “We don’t issue them that far out.”

“Except you did issue it,” I protested.

“Well, it was a mistake,” she replied firmly.

And, she went on to tell me that in a cost-cutting measure, the renewal form I had failed to submit, the renewal form had been changed that year from the traditional mailing in an envelope to a postcard.

“Lots of folks just like you thought that card was an advertisement,” the voice on the phone told me. “A lot of brokers tossed the renewal notice and lost their licenses this year.”

So the regulators in Indianapolis saw that their notice had gone ignored by many licensees and yet took no action to remedy the situation. No second chances, no extended deadlines, you’re out.

We live in an age where more and more citizens think that government is here to solve most of life’s problems. And my response to that belief is a face that pretty much matches the one on my current Indiana driver’s license.

Go figure.