Posts from elsewhere for reuse

8-12-2021

The Futility of Masking and Distancing or Need deer wear masks? Need deer wear masks? See The coronavirus is rife in common US deer - Nature.

8-5-2021

It's more like, without immunity the vaccines would never be developed or made available.

I'm a litigating attorney, though not a plaintiff's trial lawyer and I have some very strong views on this matter. Plaintiff's trial lawyers ("PTLs", popularly known pejoratively as "ambulance chasers", look for imaginative potential lawsuits. Almost all of them are shakedowns since the PTL advertising to the public almost never tries a case, and in the rare case a matter goes to trial hires someone. In those situations the jury verdicts, in the seven figures. Almost never does that amount change hands, suck amounts being typically reduced by the trial judge or an appellate court. Since the defending parties are almost always insured, unlike a private defendant the judgment is stayed pending any appeal or reargument. Even worse, PTLs almost never tell their clients about "Medicare (or Medicaid or insurance) Cost Recovery." When my parents' lawsuit against the condo building in which they live was about to be resolved the husband of one of the members of my firm told me to ask about that. Let's just say that my parents' firm reduced their fees and negotiated the Medicare lien very hard. Otherwise my parents would have seen a minuscule portion of the eventual settlement amount.

Why this background? Without immunity Pfizer, Moderna and J&J would be immediately whacked with all kinds of lawsuits, most of little merit. The clients, with "dollar signs" in their eyes would sign up with the PTL's, only to be informed, when a settlement offer was made in response to the shakedown, that they would receive nothing. Then the PTL would "generously" offer them $1000 or so, big money to the people who would be willing to lend their names to lawsuits. Thus, the immunity serves to make something available to the public, to the overwhelming benefit of the general public, that would otherwise never be introduced because of the dubious activity of some of my peers.

I hope this explains things.


7-31-2021

I have something else to say that does not involve vilifying the business. The Vessel had no role in the decision of this adolescent to take his own life. I do have some serious thoughts though. Like all stories it starts with "once upon a time."

Once upon a time, during academic year 1976-7 I was a sophomore at an Ivy League school with deep, scenic gorges. The combination of an undiagnosed dust allergy and the cough medicine (Codeine and Tylenol) I used to combat the allergy caused me some rather severe depression. Accentuating this was difficulties in completing my foreign language requirements. One night, in early April, I basically "had enough" and started walking back and forth over one of the bridges over one of the gorges. Before I made any attempt to take a leap, I was stopped and questioned by campus police. My first mistake was saying anything about being despondent.

I was held overnight in the campus infirmary. I was evaluated by a psychiatrist engaged by the infirmary, one "Dr. Bull" (his actual name, no joke). I told him I felt better and wanted to finish some homework. He said I didn't get "the big picture", whatever that was.

The next day I was picked up by my mother and stepfather. Both were needed because I had a car on campus. Fortunately, and this is one thing I give my mother a lot of credit for, she took me to a family friend who happened to be a psychologist. He evaluated me and penned me a note that enabled me to return to finish my classes for the semester. I returned the following fall, graduating on schedule.

This is how it relates to the thread topic. Mentioning that you are in severe personal distress is most counterproductive. People are not there to help. They are there for a bureaucratic, not personal solution. Now that teen on the Vessel; he probably knew the score, and that if he told anyone how he was feeling he'd be living in a world of hurt, not of therapy and help.


7-29-2021

Thoughts on the Gain and Loss of Friends and Friendship

I was not popular as a child. Through age 14, I always had at least one or two friends, but I was subject to what we would now call “bullying” and was then considered “hazing” or “picking on people.” This hit a nadir in Ninth Grade, Spring Semester 1972 and the first half of summer camp, summer of 1972. I was almost kicked out of school that spring after a series of incidents. They were not strictly speaking my fault, but I was obviously more trouble than I was worth. I started out that summer with a decided chip of my shoulder, and at least partially provoked the fight that led to my expulsion. Then things turned around, at least until now.

The second half of the summer I attended camp with a decidedly more mature and supportive group. Though many were kicked out for such “zero tolerance” activities as smoking or bullying, I made it through, with at least some friends and my first “sort of” girlfriend. Notwithstanding, my mother wanted me to switch to private school. I refused to cooperate. She then conditioned my return to public school to my involvement in a number of extra-curricular activities. Those turned out to be soccer, the marching/symphonic band (the teacher cast me as a tuba player, amusing since I was 5’4” but it worked out) and school newspaper. Being urged or mandated to join activities was one of my mother’s biggest favors but I digress.

During the fall of 1972, I made friends from the other four “houses” of the junior high school. I had attended the one of five that didn’t merge until Ninth Grade. One cold October day, despite being a soccer fullback I was put in for a few minutes by the coach as a forward. I looked at him quizzically. He pointed to an opposing player and said “that player just roughed up a few of ours. Teach him a lesson.” Instead, in those two or three minutes I scored a goal. Being fullback was a lonely position that year; I think we were 7-1-1 for the season. I did reconnect with an Elementary and junior high school friend, David. We recently fell out because of my vote for Donald Trump, and that’s part of the story. Another re-connection was with a friend from elementary school, Robert. I remember one day walking home after we took a different-than usual bus. The walk was on a brisk November 1972 day, and I felt, for the first time, an easy, real connection. Unfortunately , for reasons known only to him he refused to talk to me at the 1995 and 2005 reunions. David urged me to talk to him at the 2015 reunion. He described the relationship as “toxic” but said I could count on him “if I needed anything.” Later, he explained that he was trying to cut the list of people he felt obligated to eat dinner with even though the last such dinner was in January 1992.

Another friend I was introduced to that fall (we really became friends at the end of the next summer) was a near-genius with about double my IQ. While he denies it, my friendship with him seems to be fraying. He, without meaning to, expresses annoyance when I call or write even though it is not frequent. When I point it out he says “I’m reading it wrong” but I think Covid has done in that relationship, along with his wife’s unhappiness in associating with her husband’s friends.

In short, all I have left are business colleagues of long standing, who swear by warm feelings and their high esteem for me. See Thoughts on an Imminent Passing of a Colleague’s Father. Oh yes, I am happily married, for just over 30 years. But my “man cave” is empty, especially so at the ragged ending of the Covid pandemic.

7-29-2021


Thoughts on an Imminent Passing of a Colleague’s Father


I do not like feeling this way, but I do. Let’s call my colleague “Jon.” I have worked for “Robert” since 1986, with one minor and only partial interruption. Bob’s and my relationship, especially through 1998, was often stormy . Jon was hired in 1990, partially with my input. He is six years younger than me but he had a lot of things I lack; charisma and an easy way with people. During the early years, when it took courage, he stuck up for me during some of my fights with Bob. I remember one, especially, in December 1990.

As time went on I started to detect a certain amount of self-interest in his apparently benevolent behavior. One night in April 1993 when Bob and I were riding into New York City from the suburbs, Bob had referred to Jon as my “friend.” I said “he’s a friendly competitor.” In October 1995 his wife gave birth to a baby, their first of three. My wife had just gotten pregnant. We visited with him out in New Jersey. It was a pleasant visit until other friends of theirs came over. Jon’s wife handed my wife her coat and said “don’t you have another appointment”? A few weeks later, on November 3, 1995, I left the office for a brief visit to my grandmother, who I was told was dying. Not ten minutes after I left the office my cell phone (then new to me) rang. It was Jon and he asked “where are you” and I said “paying a last visit to my grandmother at the nursing home. He said “Jim, we need you back here.”

At the end of 2012 we merged into another firm. At the beginning of 2014, after a year, Bob and I left to join a bigger NYC firm after Bob had a near-altercation with the new firm’s senior partner. Jon stayed behind. I was "excessed" from that firm in the city a year later, at the end of 2014. Bob kept me going with referred work until May 2017, when he was also "excessed." We reconnected. In August 2018 Jon was fired and escorted out of his firm by security, accused of serious wrongdoing. We took him in. We merged, more happily, with yet another NYC firm. We constitute their suburban office.

Jon’s father is about to pass away. I make a great show of sympathy. But in light of his conduct with my grandmother’s death (and he wasn’t much nicer when my stepfather died at the end of 2013), I feel strangely cold. Am I wrong?
[IMG]file:///C:\Users\GLUCKS~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\ 05\clip_image002.gif[/IMG]




From March 2021 - https://www.city-data.com/forum/retirement/3250675-your-age-s-most-memorable-woke-post60633127.html?highlight=I+was+born+in+NYC+in+A pril+1957#post60633127 The year I was 15 1/2 to 16 1/2, by far. I'll try to explain as well as I can.

Early life, before year of focus of this post -

I was born in NYC in April 1957, and grew up in a notoriously affluent, largely Jewish suburb of New York City. Peer relations were rocky for much of the early years. My classmates in Grades 2-8 were, with a few exceptions (one of whom I am friendly with now) a real problem. Nowadays we would call it "bullying" but then the term was not a thing. If anything, these people became more of a problem in Ninth Grade, when we merged with the main Junior High School into the High School. The year culminated with Charlie, not a prior classmate, chasing me through the halls with a bicycle chain. The school turned the tables on me and tried to get my parents to move me to a private school. To put it mildly I promised not to cooperate, given the obvious injustice. This unpleasant period, just before I turned 15 1/2, continued with being tossed from a sleepaway camp. Tenth Grade started out with Charlie pulling a chair out from under me. A call from father to his (obviously before his death) put things right in a hurry.

At that point things took a sharp turn for the better. Almost on my 15 1/2 "birthday", in October 1972 I scored a goal in soccer (though I was normally a fullback). Also, around the same time another 10th grader named Jim (now my closest friend) and I met. And not by introduction but by chance. Jim did not have a Jewish name nor look Jewish. I was making a joke about "Rabbi, lawyer, priest" to someone else and he cut in and said "don't you have any pride in your religion?" He was in my grade, but I wasn't used to being talked to that bluntly, seriously or intelligently, particularly by another 15 year old. A bit less than a year later, well after my father's death we became friends. The exchange would not have meant anything to me except for the events of January 5, 1973.

January 5 -7, 1973 -

On January 5, 1973 I experienced my first major loss in life,my father's death after a battle with cancer. see When Should a Parent Tell Their Offspring That Other Parent is Fatally Ill? What was called the "Sunshine" hot line was my major outlet since my particular crop of high school associates were not of the maturity to be of any assistance. though my old classmates were even, in general, friendly. Many came to the Shiva, or condolence call, for my father on January 7, 1973, the day of his funeral. After my father's death, and that afternoon, per Jewish custom, the Rabbi was in our living room asking for input for the eulogy. He taught me more about Judaism than I learned in the last year of Hebrew School. Basically I was on the path to becoming an oxymoron, an "observant Reform Jew."
Notwithstanding that thaw with my elementary and junior high school classmates, that summer, on a teen tour, I made a decision that I largely needed new friends, from the "other Junior High School." On a 98° day after we both came back from different teen tours we gathered first at his house, in the swimming pool, and then cycled the four miles to my house. Given his relative maturity (though he was not the "15 going on 60" type) and high IQ I decided to lay things out, to later seek his help at "breaking in" to the other 4/5 of the grade. He more than obliged and we are still friends.

Though it's out of chronology I must add this. After my father's death, in February 1973 my mother started dating my (eventual) stepfather, with whom I became extremely close. So for the first time I had siblings.

A side story. In March 1973, my mother and grandmother took to Sonesta Beach Hotel in the Bahamas. Which I think is now the Melia Resort. My mother and grandmother decided to go shopping in downtown Nassau, about 2 miles or so away. I took one look at the available shopping and decided I'd be dreadfully bored. I knew from prior reading in National Geographic that they sold turtle soup at the local zoo, so I asked to take a side trip there. I went to the bus terminal in Nassau and quickly figured out that the timing wouldn't work. I'd have to take a bus to the zoo and then double-back into town to catch a bus back to the hotel. I thus returned to the hotel, changed my clothes and went to play tennis with a girl I had met and her brother. I forgot to leave a note in the room and cell phones didn't exist then. Needless to say my mother and grandmother were furious when they came back and couldn't find me. Finally my mother stuck up for me (a rare moment) by pointing out that I did leave my street clothes on the bed, meaning I was engaged somewhere in athletic activities, either in the water or playing tennis. And to this day I never have had turtle soup. I did not disappear and 46 years later I am not dead. Nor, since I never got the soup, is another turtle.

What I gained -

That year, I gained, for the first time: a) mature friends in any real sense; 2) a reattachment to my religion; 3) a relationship with a stepfather with whom I enjoyed 40 years; and 4) an assertion of some real independence from my mother, easier said than done for an "only child".

What I omitted -

My political shift, away from being extremely radical politically to being merely a left-wing extremist. I will discuss if appropriate but this post is long enough.


From a DM to Rachel NewYork 3-16-2021

Both sides of my family arrived pre-1914. I wish I could say that they had emotions on the subject but I doubt, at least at the "grandparent" or parent level that they did. I suspect that all of those generations were more interested in fitting in to the new country than displaying their heritage. At that time in Jewish history, survival in a new, unfamiliar country took precedence.

The great-grandparents on my maternal grandmother's side were Orthodox. I suspect that was more genetic than anything since in their photos (the only ones from circa 1896 on I have seen) there was little indication of Judaica. My wife's side, quite the contrary. When shortly after my maternal grandmother's marriage to my maternal grandfather, my grandfather deliberately mixed up the milk and meat dishes from what I have heard no one cared. My mother and her brother, my uncle, attended religious and Hebrew school (uncle only for latter) but did not take it seriously. My mother and her friends actually sneaked out of class.

My natural father's family was even less attached to the religion though my father and his brother were apparently Bar Mitzvahed. I do remember my mother lighting Chanukah candles but the menorah was placed on the kitchen counter, not in windows.

I was placed in Hebrew School and Bar Mitzvahed, along with most of my school classmates. Though I went to a public school I was in the "Jewish" portion of the district, and about 80% of my classmates were Reform Jews. As I have posted I happily exited Hebrew School on May 4, 1970, two days after my Bar Mitzvah. My mother was happy to have one less carpool, and I couldn't care less. I was the only one that "circled back" to active involvement.

Two things happened that caused that: 1) meeting for the first time a fellow student, in October 1972, that is now my close friend, the one with double my IQ, who said, in response to a bad joke I told to others (since I did not know more about him than his non-Jewish last name at the time), "Jim, are you Jewish" and then "don't you have any pride in your heritage"? and 2) my father's death, on January 5, 1973 and my preparation with the Rabbi for the eulogy. This was my first meaningful discussion involving religious topics (other than the mechanics of Bar Mitzvah prep) with my Rabbi or for that matter any clergy. I saw the logic in the death rituals and from then on it was a "learning curve." My soon-to-be stepfather, who I had previously met but became more involved with after my mother and he started dating, was a little, but not much more spiritually interested.

In sum, that is why the importance of menorah display would never have occurred to me. My wife started our tradition of placing it in the window. I'll ask her tonight, after I get home from work (I am one of the few working normally from an office), if the reasons you mentioned are any part of it.




From FB 2-26-2021

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1862...08689972676819


https://www.facebook.com/groups/1862...eric&ref=notif


Rainy Day People is my vote. No matter how amazing a song "Talking in Your Sleep" is (and it is one of his hidden gems) Rainy Day People goes in the category of one of my favorite songs, period. Not just one of my favorite Lightfoot songs. The best thing someone can be is a "rainy day person." People have lots of friends for the periods that times are good. It is a test of the genuineness of a person when they stick around when times are desperately bad for that person. In either my professional or personal life (I can't go into details) I feel that people I am close to, and myself, have done this for more than one person. People who are down need to know which side you're on.


From Huffpost 2-21-2021


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/middl...52240#comments



When I was in grade school and middle school, 1964-71 I was picked on a lot. We would now call that bullying. A big element though not necessarily the "cause" was my lack of being athletic. Enter "Michael", one of my worst tormentors. I'll admit that when he made fun of me I made fun of his long hair, which he was early in getting.


We didn't see each other after we graduated Middle School. We maintained a common friend, Dave. One day during the summer of 1988 when we were 31, we played a beach football game in Westhamptom. Dave knew my athletic abilities had grown over the years. Michael was assigned to "guard" me during that game. He was barely looking since he assumed I would never be passed the ball. When Dave passed the ball to me, I caught it and was a good 10-120 yards down the beach before Michael knew what happened.


Thoroughly humiliated, he challenged me to tennis the following weekend. When we played it was a scorching 98 °, common during that famously hot summer. I beat him 6-0, 6-1. Two summers later, we were at a summer camp for adults in the Berkshires. Dave was there with his (then) wife. I was there with my girlfriend (soon to be fiance, soon to be wife). Michael asked to share the other bedroom in my girlfriend's and my cabin. Far from the strapping bully of 1971 when we were 13, he was almost intimidated by us. We saw each other a few times. T Hen, in 1999, I attended his bachelor party, That marriage did not last long. i am now married 30 years.



From Facebook 2-12-2021


https://www.facebook.com/groups/1862...eric&ref=notif


Carefree Highway - I have to echo the comment of Deb Radwan
about "the theme of wondering if past loves ever think of you." Did She Mention my Name, another favorite of mine, reflects this same theme. In general, the theme of the past being gone but one's still having ties to it is a perpetual theme of literature and indeed humanity. I am sure that theme echoes through the ages.


From Quora 2-6-2021

People of the AOC mindset, and not just AOC, thrive on hysteria. There are other hysterias which as better illustrations than this phony “bathroom” episode, including but not limited to the following: 1) Covid; and 2) “Climate change.” Everyone party to the hysteria of the day demands “action” yet are unwilling to make sacrifices themselves. Gavin Newsome attending an unmasked large dinner at the French Laundry, see Newsom embarrassed by French Laundry dinner ...is one example, with Covid. John Kerry’s trip to Iceland on a private jet, see John Kerry took private jet to Iceland for environmental award ..., is another, on climate.
Covid is definitely a real problem and climate change is likely overblown. People feel very good about themselves by signalling their virtue. AOC feels good about herself by playing victim. It’s all part of a patter.