September 2020 - Page 5 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

Census enumerators rock!

Since 1790

census2020-storyimage As I’ve recently noted, I’m one of tens of thousands of temporary Census enumerators working during the past few months. I’ve learned quite a lot, actually. My wife said I just took the job so I’d have something to blog about. While that’s not technically true, the experience has gotten the brain working.

I’ve been working in Albany County so far. One of the things I have discovered is that I’ve gotten to really see houses I’d never actually looked at before. Some are only a mile or two from my home. Some blocks have a thematic design, while others have a crazy-quilt feel. And oddly, I love them all.

What I don’t love, because I’m getting old, are narrow and/or steep stairs. Or handrails that move. On the first day, I walked the route because most of the houses individually were within walking distance. But the collective toll is that my feet ached for hours.

The solution was to take the bicycle. It’s been great, especially when I have to go three blocks to that next cluster of houses. I’ve discovered putting my Census valise and bike lock in my backpack is the way to go. And while I might get a little wet when it rains, my Census material does not. And I can put the bike on the bus to get to those locations that are a bit farther away.

Packing for the day

There are several items I must carry, in addition to various forms. One is a mask. Because I’m paranoid about losing it, I often carry three or four. I need my badge.

The device we use to get our list of houses to visit is an iPhone. I’ve never owned one. But my current Android rather sucks. When I needed to reboot my iPhone, I was told to turn the volume up and down thrice and turn it off, then on; it worked! The stylus is also preferable to using my fingers. But then I read stories like this and say, maybe not.

They’ve stopped teaching civics

I’ve discovered that a number of people don’t know what the Census is. This is despite ad campaigns and local advocates. I just saw a CDTA bus flash, “Please fill out the Census.” It determines the number of members of the House of Representatives for each state, among many other things.

I have explained how we have counted nearly all the people in the country since 1790; it’s in the Constitution. And that the information is by law confidential, not to be shared with the police, IRS, FBI, CIA, ICE, even the USPS.

Can I get a proxy

One of the difficulties of doing the Census in September when Census Day is April 1 is that people move. After a number of failed attempts, we are required to try to find other people to provide information. Sometimes it’s the landlord or the real estate agent.

One of my friends worried that people might lie about their neighbors. It has been my experience that the neighbors are in the main reluctant to share, or simply do not know.

As for some of the folks who are still there, a reported four-in-ten who haven’t yet filled out the U.S. census say they wouldn’t answer the door for a census worker. And proxies are less reliable than getting data from the householder, of course.

It’s been an interesting sociological study. PLEASE encourage people to fill out the Census by paper or online or by phone or to open their doors to one of the many Census enumerators in their area.

The wide, the wide river

His usual minimalist approach

wide river My daughter was up early, for her, in the late summer (September 4) around 9 a.m. She went out with a friend but immediately doubled back into the house. What is that sludge that is covering our sidewalk?

Someone at our next-door neighbor’s house has poked PVC tubing through a basement window. A slurry is running down the walkway between our houses. The wide river reaches the sidewalks and goes mostly left, in front of our house. This is because the sidewalk when it was reinstalled by the city, was poorly designed. Every time we get a good rain, it puddles there.

I called the absentee landlord of the property, who I’ll refer to as Tick, and left messages on two phones. Then our contractor, John, calls. He’s going to haul out the defunct water heater from the basement. I suggest maybe he ought not right now. But he and his adult daughter are in the neighborhood, so they come over.

John believes the effluvium is sewage. I call the city of Albany. After two transfers, I get a guy from the water department. “Is there sewage there right now?” I said yes. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes.” He arrived in eight.

Do you get the Fugs reference?

By this time, Tick and his wife have arrived. Mike from the city takes pictures and tells Tick that 1) he will be fined and 2) he needs to clean up the mess. Tick askes me if he could borrow my water hose. “NO!” Mike inserts himself. “You have to clean it up. No spraying it out onto the street. You ought to hire someone.” He suggests a local septic company. But Mike, who has seen Tick for maybe 15 minutes, KNOWS Tick won’t spend the money to do the right thing.

This leaves Tick and his wife to literally shoveling…manure. He hauls it to the farthest point in his backyard, where he digs a shallow hole and pours the waste. This is heavy and tedious work. Shoveling wastewater with a shovel is quite inefficient. Mike leaves.

Tick sprays ammonia on the walkway and sidewalk. Then he asks me if it’s clean enough for my satisfaction. I dodge the question: “It’s not to my satisfaction, it’s to the city’s.” But no, it was his usual minimalist approach, which is almost always inadequate.

Wisely, my daughter posted signs from both directions keeping pedestrians away for several hours until the slop largely evaporated.

My doctor, who I had already scheduled to see, recommended 1 part Clorox and 9 parts water to really clean it. But then I mentioned the ammonia. After the rain, we went with that cleaning formula. It was NOT how I had planned to spend my morning.

It’s not unusual

In the decade or so Tick has owned the property, this is not the first time he’s tried to take the shortcut, only the most egregious. Well, maybe his inadequate lead abatement was worse. Any of his former tenants that we’ve gotten to know always have stories to share, often the usual gambit of taking months to return the security deposit, and occasionally something more problematic.

School days in the era of coronavirus

20 percent cut

All summer, the issues of whether my wife, a teacher, and my daughter, a high school student would return to their traditional school days were up in the air. My wife and I have been watching the seemingly endless stories about the perils of colleges and other schools that have already begun their semesters.

In the city of Albany, there was a big push to allow students and students a choice. The Albany School District had an August 24 enrollment choice deadline. Leading into that, the district held several “virtual forums to provide families with the most up-to-date information and the opportunity to ask questions.” Some were building-specific; these would explain the protocols in those particular spaces. There were also district-wide forums.

To be honest, I didn’t attend any of the events. My rationale was that I was all Zoomed out. I did, however, vote in the enrollment choice poll. We voted Yes to in-class learning. The infection rate for Albany County has remained less than 1%, despite a few stupid college parties.

Also, my daughter wanted to go back to school. She thrives as a social being and hated whatever ersatz learning the school was forced into in mid-March through June.

Plan I

Virtual student orientation for students and parents and guardians were organized. The topics included orientation to the new classroom environment, and health and safety protocols. Also, they provided orientation to Google Classroom and a virtual learning environment. Students would hear about appropriate social distancing protocols, and the use and requirements for masks and face coverings.

After virtual instruction for all students for a week, the schools would begin to “implement identified instructional model (in-person, hybrid, or virtual), with early dismissal each day. By Tuesday, Sept. 29, all schools would “implement full days of instruction” by the preferred mode.

The budget surprise

Oh, geez. Schools Hit with 20% Cut by Governor Cuomo Right Before Start of Tumultuous School Year. “New York State budget office informed school districts statewide that it was temporarily withholding 20 percent of the State’s payments. This presents a major challenge for all New York school districts,”

Cuomo and labor leaders have written to New York’s congressional delegates urging them to provide $59 billion to the Empire State “to avoid what the governor predicts will be devastating cuts on state and local services.”

And suddenly, after all of the planning for options, Albany High School will be all virtual in the fall of 2020. My daughter is not happy. Moreover, she complained that I hadn’t told her the news. Hey, she was just getting up when I was going off to work at 10:30 a.m…

Back to school

Meanwhile, my wife IS going back to in-person teaching. Protocols are in place, but they seemed to be tweaked on a thrice-weekly basis. As a teacher of English as a New Language teacher, she’s hoping to get a face shield. It’s difficult to show visually how to enunciate while wearing a mask.

My wife was less worried about herself than bringing something home to her somewhat older husband. We’re just crossing our fingers. And our toes.

This bit of satire is essentially true.

Labor Day in the time of COVID

Maxing out the threshold

labormovement On this Labor Day, we see how the coronavirus has pointed out flaws in how we operate a number of systems. Of course, unemployment skyrocketed in the early days of the pandemic. “Millions of people lost their job-based health insurance. While many are people are theoretically eligible for other forms of health insurance coverage, it’s not always that simple.

“This two-minute video lays out the options: Medicaid, job-based coverage from a spouse or parent, ACA marketplace coverage, COBRA, and short-term insurance plans.

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) plans may be able to elect continuous insurance coverage upon a “qualifying event,” such as losing a job or having hours reduced so that you’re no longer covered. That’s the upside. On the other hand, COBRA plans, in my experience, have been mighty expensive, especially when underemployed or unemployed.

The current regime’s constant attacks on “Obamacare” may have people believe the ACA is no longer an option. But it’s still there.Some folks thought the pandemic would aid the call for “Medicare for all,” or for all who want it. Perhaps, in a few months, it will.

HwOoMrEk

Having talked with a number of people who are working from home, I note some love it. They avoid much of the office politics, for example. On the other hand, others are having difficulty establishing a working day that is never over. This 2014 post in The Guardian, long before COVID-19, notes that “phones and emails enable bosses to pester staff at all hours. As a result, one-third of us feel unhappy about the time we devote to work and 40% of us are neglecting other parts of our lives because of work demands – which is likely to increase mental health problems.”

Our household fell into recognizing the separation of job and leisure when my wife was working from home in the spring. “Think you had a problem checking your work emails late at night? Without figuring out structure and boundaries it’s so easy to merge your work life and home life. Avoid that by putting a routine in place and physically separating work from home.

“For example, don’t plan to work from the couch. Instead, designate a space to work that’s away from living spaces and the kitchen. A desk in a bedroom, backroom, or spare room is perfect, preferably somewhere you can close the door if you share your living space with others. That works both ways because when your working day is over, you can shut the door on your job and ‘go home.'”

A lot of businesses are now also asking how to monitor employee internet activity so you need to get some good software if you need to do that.

You don’t feel well

Pre-COVID, a 2014 survey by the National Survey Foundation (NSF) concluded that 4 out of 10 Americans say they come to work sick simply because they don’t have much choice. Approximately 10% of those surveyed said they go to work sick. If you’re physically going to the job, that’s a terrible idea.

Undocumented immigrants, according to this CBS News report are particularly vulnerable. Generally excluded from the stimulus plans, many of these folks work, even when ill.

What if you are working at home and you feel as though someone ran you over with a truck? Obviously, you’re not going to infect your co-workers. Still, if you would have stayed home with your symptoms, you should take a sick day, if it’s available. “Plowing through” could just make one sicker.

“We NEED you!”

I’ve had enough conversations with unhappy employees to recognize a really disheartening phenomenon. There is a body of workers who actually have sick and/or vacation days accrued. However, they are discouraged, actively, or subtlely, from ever taking them. And often there’s a threshold, beyond which one can actually LOSE paid time off.

I remember feeling like the “indispensable employee” back in my FantaCo days. My boss insisted, correctly, that I should take time off. I decided to take eight successive Wednesdays off. The new comics came on Thursday, so this made sense. I read, went to the movies, cleaned my apartment, paid bills, and still had the weekends for fun.

We’re aware of how the Europeans take off more time than Americans. Yet, “almost as much productivity can happen, but within a defined set of hours… It’s setting an expectation; people don’t feel like they have to be checking email.”

An Abe Lincoln quote

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.

John Thompson, Tom Seaver

Mets and Hoyas

I’ve been pondering something since the deaths of basketball Hall of Fame coach John Thompson and baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver. It is that being a sports fan was hugely significant to me for a chunk of my life. But it has waned in recent years.

I could tell you, without looking it up, who won the World Series every year in the 1960s. For the 2010s, I could recall only four. And two of them, the 2017 Houston Astros and the 2018 Boston Red Sox were arguably tarnished.

Tom Terrific

After the decline of my New York Yankees after their 1964 Series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, I started following their crosstown rivals, the Mets. But they were pretty terrible. They put this young pitcher, Tom Seaver, into the rotation in 1967, and he went 16-13, with a 2.76 ERA. Pretty good on a team that went 61-101. In 1968, the Mets were 73-89, their most wins ever. Seaver was 16-12 but lowered his ERA to 2.20.

By 1969, the leagues divided into East and West divisions. Shockingly, the Mets amazed sports fans with a 100-62 record. They swept the West’s Atlanta Braves in three games. They were widely assumed to be the underdogs to the Baltimore Orioles with the Robinsons Franks and Brooks, among other stars. Yet the Mets won the World Series four games to one. Tom Seaver in 1969 went 25-7, with a 2.21 ERA.

A letter writer in the Boston Globe remembers this. “That year, Seaver had made a statement that ‘if the Mets can win the World Series, then we can get out of Vietnam,’ an extraordinary act in those days for a professional athlete.”

I followed Seaver through his career with the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox. I forgot he pitched for the Red Sox in 1986, but he was injured during the 1986 Series, so didn’t play against the winners, NYM. It was just as well for the legacy of the greatest Met. He died in late August in his sleep of complications of Lewy body dementia and Covid-19.

Big John

For a couple years in the mid-1960s, John Thompson was a backup center for Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics. It was probably before I saw the Celtics in an exhibition game at the IBM Country Club in Endicott, NY. The NBA’s Celtics and the New York Knicks were my teams then.

I didn’t become a follower of the men’s college game until the late 1970s. I tended to root for the teams in the Big East, which was formed in 1979 and featured Syracuse, the premiere team in upstate New York. But I’d root for any BE team, including Georgetown, against non-conference opponents.

John Thompson inherited a Georgetown Hoyas team which had been 3–23 the year before. He led them to a .500 record in season two. “By his third season in 1974–75, Georgetown qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1943.”

So when North Carolina beat Georgetown in the March Madness finals in 1982, I was disappointed. And when the Hoyas beat Houston in 1984, making John Thompson the first black coach to win the Final Four, I was quite thrilled. And when underdog Villanova, from the Big East, beat Georgetown in the championship game in 1985, it was actually OK. “Over 27 years, Thompson’s Hoyas went 596–239 (.714), running off a streak of 24 postseason appearances – 20 in the NCAA tournament and 4 in the NIT.”

Thompson’s coaching legacy includes the recruitment and development of four players in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame: Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, and Allen Iverson.” Iverson thanked Thompson for “saving my life” in an Instagram post.

Sean Gregory wrote in an appreciation for Time, “No coach of his generation, in any sport, was more influential.” John Thompson died in late August.