Calling the Social Corps

In the face of yet another police killing of a black man, protesters raise the call to #defundthepolice.  It’s a message of anger, and anger is warranted.  Could there be a positive message?  Yes, let’s #callthesocialcorps.

The task at hand is to reduce police violence without reducing social order.  Wait, that’s two tasks.  Reduce police violence and keep social order.  And while we’re at it, let’s decide that every person who needs emergency help gets the right help.

The Social Corps could accomplish all those tasks.  The Social Corps would be a national corps of professionals trained in the social sciences:  social workers.  Call them social responders.    Social responders would join the ranks of first responders like police officers, firefighters, and medics.  Local emergency dispatch offices would sort calls between the police force and the social corps.

To sort emergencies requires making distinctions between the threatening or dangerous and the merely antisocial.  Okay, true, antisocial can be pretty bad.  But if it isn’t dangerous, it doesn’t require a firearm on the scene.  In fact, what it requires is someone with the social knowledge to evaluate the behavior and respond as needed.

The title Social Corps fits because the responders protect the marginal in society from losing their places altogether.  Someone who sees or experiences antisocial behavior would not need to fear calling for help, because the help would not be armed.  Someone who simply can’t cope with society would not need to fear being harmed.  In fact, someone in crisis would be attended with respect and assistance.

Social Corps responders would be sort of Andy-of-Mayberry style responders: no gun, but good will and understanding of human nature.  They would be uniformed.  They would have the authority to give orders, issue citations, make arrests, and testify in court.  They would also know when an emergency warrants calling a police officer.

Police violence would decline sharply, because police officers would be responding to fewer emergencies.  They would be freed from the call to apply rules of force to someone who is confused or panicky or “suspicious.”  It’s likely that many officers would gladly take the education necessary to cross over from the force to the corps.

Social responders would be especially helpful to parents, schoolchildren, teachers, and school administrators.  An unruly child who must be transported would be escorted not by an armed officer but a social worker.  Children would not be pulled into the justice system.

Creating a corps of social responders would provide more benefits than just reducing violence, keeping order, and helping people.  Responders would add a leavening of social intelligence to the general public.  Moreover, the Corps would be a fertile ground for first-person social science research, and for internships for social science students.

The Social Corps would reduce government budgets, not in personnel but in other outlays.  The number of responders would be comparable to the number of police officers, and similarly paid.  But their equipment costs, and their liability, would be far less than for a police force.

In this moment, there seems to be a popular will to make an end of police violence.  Now, while this moment lasts, is the time to create a lasting institution to carry the principles forward.  The Social Corps could do the job.

Calling the Social Corps
Calling the Social Corps would bring a trained social worker to the scene.
Democrat at the breakfast table holds forth on the day’s news.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

My New World

The manuscript is called My New World.  It tells of a life-change.  Change is the universal constant, yet we have a hard time figuring it out.  This manuscript represents a few years of trying to figure it out.

You may remember that I was resuming work on the manuscript after some time rolling the rock up the hill.

I sat down and finished the manuscript in three days.  It’s pretty much done.  A couple of pages need to be redone, and a couple of pictures need to be touched up.  I believe in substantial completion.

I think the next step is to look for a gallery that will show them.  They’re meant to hang on the wall.

These are real-world only artifacts.  They will not be published online.  They contain feelings and photos that have meaning to me and to those who are close to me.

If I am able to schedule a showing, then I will print a catalog of the show, for those who attend and want them.

For the cover I chose an old woodcut from the nineteenth century, Flammarion.  It’s anonymous.  I have always loved it, because it portrays a man taking a look past the edge of this world to a larger world, an unfamiliar world.  It seems to me a Renaissance concept, or Enlightenment.  It also partakes of the spirit of Walt Whitman.  We are creatures, sentient, in a cosmos.

I’m working at coloring it.  The picture here shows my first attempt.  I hope I will do better.

So close…

So close. I was so close to finishing the manuscript. Then my world shifted. It seems to do that. But, now I’m ready to return to it.

I had the photos printed on the pages. A few photos were too dark, so I had to work on those.

Then, suddenly, I got notice from my office building management that I would have to move my law office, and move it in a hurry. My lease was expired. They had decided to lease out the entire floor. All the small offices had to go.

I dropped everything and mobilized. In just under 30 days I had found a new office and moved into it. For the past two weeks I’ve been trying to get the place organized. There’s still a lot to do, but at last I can spare some attention for the manuscript.

So, here I go again.

I have lived with this manuscript for more than a year. And before that, I lived with an urge for more than a year. This project represents a turning point, both personally and poetically. (Is there a difference?). Seeing the other side is like looking from an old world into a new one.

Pulling the manuscript together

 

I’m pulling together the last strands of my manuscript project. I’m assembling the last illustrations. I’ve done the preliminary page layout. Now I’m adjusting the lines of lettering and the photo sizing for each page.

I delivered a couple of old photos from the age of film to Holland Photo for scanning. One is faded, and it will have its color refreshed. The other is black and white, and it will be colorized. Almost all the other photos are from the digital age.

This morning, I took new pictures of my breakfast cooking. The picture I had was a vertical, and I needed a horizontal. More important, the picture I had was too dark. Sometime I will tell you all about my dislike of the black stove in my apartment. I fixed it with some white parchment paper. Looks good, I think.

I need to practice with the watercolors in preparation for coloring an illustration from a woodcut. It’s Flammarion, a really spectacular drawing from the 1800s. My watercolor ability is pretty crude, so we’ll see how long it takes and how it turns out.

I had thought about highlighting some words of the text with watercolor, and I tried it on the last draft. It was a disappointment. So, not doing that.

The page layout went pretty well. I stumbled a lot figuring out how to use Affinity Publisher, but I’m getting the hang of it. I’ll write more about that soon, too.

I had a run of the pages, with only the pictures, printed on plain paper. I’m using those and written pages from a previous draft to adjust picture size and text placement for the final manuscript. First, I lay the draft on the lightpad. Then I lay the photo layout over it. I can see it all. Then I figure out how I want to fit everything together.

You can see (squint at it) by the photo of the sheets on the lightpad that the lettering sheet shows through the photo sheet, so it’s easy to fit them together into a composite image. (You can also see the sad results of my watercolor attempt.) In that composite, the page-head photo covers part of two lines of print, so I’ll have to get creative about that.

Some time this week I intend to put the final photo layout file on a flash drive and take it to Miller Imaging. They will print it on some high quality paper. I haven’t chosen the paper yet.

Once I have the good sheets with the photos on, I’ll sit down to do the final lettering. I’m aiming for this coming weekend or the following. I’m getting excited about it.

Simple sautéed apple

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I had an apple sitting on the bar for about a week. I picked it up and looked at it. It still looked good and felt firm. I didn’t want to eat it raw: too big and probably too tart. I decided to sauté it in butter.

First I put several tablespoons of butter in the skillet and set the burner at medium.
Second, I sliced the apple.
Third, I dropped the slices in the melted butter.  I let them cook for about 15 minutes, turning every few minutes, testing with a fork.
Serve and eat! The tartness was tamed.

I tried a couple of variations for this..

I kept half the slices in the pan and sprinkled on corn meal. It immediately soaked up all the butter. When I ate the apple slices, the corn meal was still pretty hard to chew. Maybe I should have soaked it first. Or maybe flour would have done better.

I tried pouring a little honey on the other slices. That was delicious! Next time I may try brown sugar and cinnamon.

The whole thing took less than a half hour.

Good tools are a joy to use

I’ve been accumulating new tools.  About a week ago I bought some new inks.  This past week I bought a lightpad to use in laying out pages or tracing.  Today I bought and downloaded a page layout app.  I’m ready to go.

My new inks are my old inks.  Higgins makes excellent bottled indelible inks.  I use them with my dip pens.  Their inks were among my favorites for a long time.

My other new old ink is Quink, by Parker.  As a schoolboy, I learned to love fountain pens with a Scheaffer.  But, when I became a man, I discovered Parker and a refined writing tool.

Quink is a good all-purpose ink Parker makes to fill it’s fountain pens.  It flows freely, dries quickly, has good density.  But Parker is stingy with details about its manufacture or properties.  This bothered me.

At some point I discovered Noodler’s.  It seemed perfect for both dip pen and fountain pen.  It was indelible (or nearly), had good density, yet flowed freely enough to be used in a fountain pen.  This was all true, though the free flowing fountain required attention.  But the ink dried slowly.  What I mean is that it took a long time to dry.  In the time that it took to read this essay, the first line of ink would not be dry. 

So now, I have my new old inks back.  It’s good.

I’m excited about the lightpad.  It’s an Artograph, 12 x 17.  I’ll use it for a lot of page layout tasks, as well as giving invisible bases to lines of handwriting.

I think my first experience with a light table was working on some high school rag.  It was a lot of fun.  Later, working on various publications and as a shoestring publisher, I used light tables that, if I recall, may have been 36 x 36.  That’s a lot of light, and a lot of work area.  Most were smaller.  

In my own endeavors, I had a light box about the size of a small suitcase or a large briefcase.  This new lightpad has about the same area, but is less than half an inch thick.

For page layout software, I chose Affinity Publisher.  It’s been reviewed well and rated favorably.  I haven’t tried to use it yet.

I rode into the world of desktop publishing in 1985 with a piece of software by Aldus called Pagemaker.  I think I started with version 1.4.  For someone at home with newspaper layout on real layout boards, Pagemaker made perfect sense.  I loved it.

Eventually, Adobe captured Pagemaker, and then slowly let it die.  I’ve really been at a loss for a layout application since then.  I’ve tried a few.  We’ll see how it goes with Affinity.

With these new tools, I’m fully equipped to finish my project.  It’s a collection of illustrated broadsides of poetry.  I’ve been working on it for over a year, I’m embarrassed to say, and now I’m at the final step.

You may suspect that there will be another step after the final step, and you would be right.  I’ve thought about that.

Medicare for All Kids

I’m for Medicare for All, but not all at once.  We should expand Medicare to cover all Americans.  But we should do it in steps.  Step one: cover the kids.

What is Medicare for All?  When I talk about it, I mean the current Medicare system, expanded to cover everyone.  People understand the current Medicare, and it was created by our last great President, a Texan.  Senator Bernie Sanders (I voted for him and may again.) and some Democrats define Medicare for All to mean a fully comprehensive system that covers all necessary medical costs.  That would be great, some day.

Back in 2010, when the so-called “tea party” Republicans were demonstrating against the Affordable Care Act, I went to my Congressman’s town hall meeting carrying a sign that I made.  It said:

Universal Medicare

From my little home-made sign, the idea of expanding Medicare caught fire.  (Well, okay, maybe that wasn’t the spark.  But the idea did catch fire.)

Universal Medicare should be phased in for three reasons.  First, there is not enough support, even in the Democratic Party, to get the expansion done in one time.  Second, such a sweeping expansion would be a tremendous shock to the economy.  Third, we don’t want another disastrous rollout like we had with Obamacare.  The best way to expand Medicare substantially while establishing that it is going to be for everyone eventually, is to extend it to all children under 25.

Start with the kids

We should start with kids for several reasons.  First, children are the most vulnerable population.  Medicare, like Social Security, was established for the elderly because they are a vulnerable population.  Children are also a vulnerable population.  Second, covering children will take a lot of financial pressure off families.  Third, we are already spending some of the money to cover children, so it’s not as big a budget stretch to bring them under Medicare.

We spend money covering kids now with a program called CHIP.  It’s a very limited, means-tested program, so it’s inefficient and unfair.  Let’s discontinue CHIP and bring the kids into a solid program.

Forget about expanding Obamacare (Pelosicare, anyone?).  It’s a house built on sand.  Let’s build our house on rock—Medicare.

Life span

The beauty is that, once we have covered both ends of the life span, we will have created a donut hole in the middle that obviously will be closed in time.  Just as the donut hole in prescription drug coverage created by the Republicans was inevitably filled…  What?  The prescription drug donut hole hasn’t been filled?  What’s the holdup?

Do you want to lock in the remaining expansion?  Sure.  Take it in two more steps.  Cover 45 to 65 in the thirties.  Then cover 25 to 45 in the forties.  That’s soon enough to feel definite, but far enough out to feel non-threatening.

Maybe this is our only shot to expand Medicare in this generation.  Let’s don’t blow it.  Social Security was created in the thirties.  Medicare was created in the sixties.  If we get this expansion done in the twenties, we may be waiting another generation or two.  Let’s make it the most important one. 

 

Got Content? You can manage it.

You know what you’re looking for.  Do you know how to find it?  You need a CMS (Content Management System).  You want something that you can put things in and then easily find them later.  Got it.  It’s called: “the Finder.”

It was invented by a little startup that stole it from an experimental lab run by a big legacy company.  But, it’s not hard to find.  It comes preinstalled on every Mac (Apple computer).

You probably don’t think about the Finder much.  That’s the kind of CMS you want.  Because what you’re interested in is your Content, not the Management System.

The reason you don’t have to think about the Finder is because it’s intuitive.  That means it works like you would expect.  It’s a hierarchical file system. (no sorry, Apple, you can’t own that).  It’s really simple.  Things that go together, you put in a folder.  And folders that go together, you put in a higher level folder.  It’s called sorting.

Intuitive means you understand it without thinking about it.  Why do we understand the Finder so well?  Because it is based on a system that was developed over centuries, using paper.

It works with anything.  It’s application-independent.  You can put a movie and a spreadsheet and a text document in the same folder.

There are a lot of content management systems, but very few that manage content as well as the Finder.  It’s the standard.  Soon, I’ll compare another CMS with the Finder.