Looking Ahead

Update by Wally Dobelis

Dolphin-assisted therapy, considered as an alternative health care methodology in the US, has a number of adherents in Europe. Parents of autistic children bring their offspring to the Florida Keys for swimming and touch treatment with the assistance of dolphins, reporting improvements in the patients’ physical and mental development, as time progresses.

In 2007 the only dolphin-assisted medical-type care facility in the Keys appears to be Island Dolphin Care (305-451-5884), in Key Largo, at Mile Mar5ker 100, turning east (towards the ocean) at the traffic light into Ocean Bay Drive, then turning to 31 Corine Drive. The manager of this not-for profit organization is Deena Hoagland, and they share facilities and dolphins with Dolphin Plus, Inc (305-451-1995), who offer swimming with dolphins and other care services for special needs people.

The Dolphin Resesarch Center at MM 101 turning west (bayside) also offers swimming with dolphins, an option that is available at several dolphin show places , in Islamorada and further south in the Lower Keys.

Residential facilities by the week or month are available in condo colonies and motels, such as MoonBay Condominiums at MM104. For inquiries and reservations call Barbara Wodka, Key Largo Real Estate Sales and Rentals, 1-800-451-1050, or e-mail bwodka1@yahoo.com. Paste in your browser and open, for MoonBay and other ndo rentals, http://www.floridakeysrentalsandsales.com/VacationRentalsCondos.htm#Weekly%20Condos
To reach Wally Dobelis, e-mail wally@ix.netcom.com

Dolphin-assisted therapy, considered as an alternate health care methodology in the US, has a number of adherents in Europe. Parents of autistic children bring their offspring to the Florida Keys for swimming and touch treatment with the assistance of dolphins, noting substantial improvements in the patients’ physical and mental development, as time progresses.

In 2007 the only dolphin-assisted medical-type care facility in the Keys appears to be Island Dolphin Care (305-451-5884), at Key Largo, turning east (towards the ocean) at the fMile Marker 100 traffic light into Ocean Bay Drive, then turning to 31 Corine Drive. The manager of this not-for profit organization is Deena Hoagland, and they share facilities and dolphins with Dollphin Plus, Inc (305-451-1995), who offer swimming with dolphins and other care services for special needs people.

The Dolphin Resesarch Center at MM 101 turning west (bayside) also offers swimming with dolphins, an option that is available at several dolphin show places , in Islamorada and further south in the Lower Keys.

Residential facilities by the week or month are available in.condo colonies and motels, such as MoonBay Condominiums at MM104. For inquiries and reservations call Barbara Wodka, Key Largo Real Estate Sales and Rentals, 1-800-451-1050, or e-mail bwodka1@yahoo.com. Paste in your browser and open, for MoonBay and other ndo rentals, to http://www.floridakeysrentalsandsales.com/VacationRentalsCondos.htm#Weekly%20Condos
To reach Wally Dobelis, e-mail wally@ix.netcom.com

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Dr. Paranoia writes: I have suspected it a long time, but will not hold still any longer. The truth must be told. There is evidently a mad genie held captive at the staid Paper of Record, who occasionally breaks loose and captures control of the paper.
I have seen it before, when all the articles in the Book Review Section appear written in the styles of the authors reviewed, and when the entire daily New York Times issue is written in the flighty fashion of the Styles section, errors, typos, vanities and all. The djinn gains possession of the columnists with some frequency - not just Maureen t)owd and Paul Krugman but also Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof.
This week, though, the genie has taken on a nostalgic mystery/ pulp writer’s mantle. Not identifying the issue, the front page has an article listing the six numbers of a year-old Connecticut multi- million dollar winning lottery ticket, its deadline about to expire, calling on the owner to save his fortune. A bit cruel, as genies are, the screed was published on the expiry date, St. Valentine’s Day (ouch, I just let the secret date out of the bottle.)
Moving right along, in the National section, the genie treated us to a piece, written tabloid style, about a case worthy of Sam Spade, of the Maltese Falcon that has flown away again. It was a copy, given to a San Francisco bar owner by Elisha Cook Jr., evoking instant recall of the baby-faced killer with the high voice. The figurine, valued at $2,000, was stolen, probably based on the value of the $400,000 original, along with a bunch of Dashiell Hainmett first editions, appraised at considerably more. This story ran alongside a tabloid tale, of a gunman, who lured and killed three members of an investment firm who may have cheated him, and another, of a mass shootup in a Salt Lake City Mall. Yikes!
So far so good, now comes the, tale of a non-computer-savvy substitute English teacher, to warm the hearts of all Luddites. She turned on the machine in a classroom, and it started spewing up lurid pictures from porn sites, one after another, and the poor sorcerer’s apprentice was unable to turn them off. She sent the kids away, and sought help in the teachers’ lounge, but no expert was available. Meanwhile the shooed-away kids returned and had a giggle session. Subsequently the poor dear was indicted, and convicted in the Norwich, CT Superior Court, of exposing seventh-graders to porn, with the potential of a sentence of 40 years in the poky. Fortunately, the computer community has rallied, and the teacher will have free legal help for her appeal. This happened to me too, in the dark ages of early Internet, until I found that nothing short of rebooting stops these porn site streams. Now my machines have appropriate software, unlike the ancient systems at the CT school.
Keeping up with the nostalgia theme, Here’s Looking at You, a review of off-Broadway’s Adrift in Macao, by a master of clichés, Christopher Durang, brings back touches of Casablanca’s Rick, in the transformed role of a Chinese gambling joint owner Rick Shaw, with female characters acting out Lucille Ball, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford roles. If you want more, a film review of The Whacky, the Naughty and the Oh- So-Deep movies, harking back to the auteurs of the noir, will take you further into the yonder. More? Yes, a radio review replays the events after Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632, the rise of the Sunni and the Shia, all the way to the Shah Riza Pahievi and premier Mohammad Mossadegh, and the return of the Ayatollahs, as viewed by National Public Radio in a current five-part series.
Would you like a True confessions article? They have it, in the Business section; Exxon chief Rex W. Tilleson concedes that the planet is warming while the carbon dioxide Levels are increasing, a sort of first from the oil industry’s leader, world’s largest publicly trd company. He does caution, though, that governments rushing in to cut carbon emissions could damage the global economy, acting as though oil and gas were bottomless resources (he should read the BP annual forecasts).
For him corn-based biofuels are ‘moonshine,” although he concedes that grass and wood chips are worthy sources of ethanol. No recognition of the fact that buildings produce 42% of carbon dioxide emissions world-wide, more than transportation, the energy coming from renewable sources, and solar captors flh1in fuel cells that could substantiall alleviate the warming and energ resource exhaustion without af fecthig “the global economy.” Bu this is a beginning. The same NY Times issue also proclaims 2006 to have been the worst year for US balance o trade, down $763B, fifth year in row, the loss up by 6.5%, heavil conthbuted to by oil imports. So there.

Guthrie family's American roots

By Wally Dobelis L'Attitudes contributor (also reprinted in The Keysnoter

Scores turn out for legacy tour in Tavernier

The legacy of Woody Guthrie, author of the third best-known American anthem (unofficial, after “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful,” bumping shoulders with “God Bless America”) is carried forth by members of his second family, now in their fourth generation.The Guthrie Family Legacy Tour is playing on a national circuit, and we heard them in Tavernier on a rainy night Feb. 12 in the 769-seat auditorium of Coral Shores High School.The above numbers, my concoction, are historically correct. The anti-fascist and anti-racist folk hero troubadour, born in 1912 as Woodrow Wilson Guthrie in Okemah, Okla., son of a broke cowboy/land speculator/politician, was an early Okie dust-bowl departee, moving in 1931 to California to sing with wife Mary Jennings and three children.
By 1939 he was in New York, hooking up with Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers (later the Weavers), composing union and social protest songs, and eventually writing a sometime column for the Daily Worker. But protest and anti-fascism and anti-racism were his objectives, not communism, and he was unscathed by the congressional committee investigators.Thus Woody, a giant natural but musically untrained talent, continued to write verse and add such music as he deemed appropriate, and perform. Hundreds of folksingers and millions of music lovers took his message to their hearts, and Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Phil Ochs paid tribute by copying his style.Meanwhile, he built a new family with dancer Marjorie Mazie in 1946 with three children: Arlo, Joady and Nora. Arlo's children Abe, Cathy, Annie and Sarah Lee and the latter's husband Johnny Irion, plus all-around musician Gordon Titcomb, comprise the basic traveling tour, other members dropping in and out. Nora actually runs the Guthrie Foundation, administering the 3,500 song lyrics found after Woody's death in 1967, with some of them used in the successful 15-song “Mermaid Avenue” record by Billy Bragg and Wilco in 2000. A second edition was released soon after.
But I'm racing ahead, like an Arlo Guthrie monologue. In the late 1940s, Woody started ailing of an unknown disease. He sought relief in California, marrying artist Anneke van Kirk, and having another daughter, Lorinna Lynn. But the disorder - eventually identified as the rare Huntington's disease, the physical and mental disease that institutionalized and killed his mother - persisted, and he was institutionalized off and on, starting in 1954, eventually passing away in 1967 at the Creedmor State Hospital in Queens, N.Y.Now to the performance. Arlo is a wild-haired leader, who makes up the program as he moves along, singing songs whose lyrics he can remember at the moment, he claims. It starts with a Woody review, adding some Arlo numbers, all following a guitar-heavy beat, interrupted by Arlo's far-ranging monologues that break everyone up (he sometimes loses the point, but recovers), until some lyric Sarah Lee and Johnny Irian numbers lighten the load.It is a nostalgia trip, but not overly, with light politics, a positive discourse on the individual's impact on society (the unknown man who told Joseph his brethren went thataway was responsible for him being sold to the Egyptians, for Moses, Israel and the world as we know it, and such). An ancient wire recording of Woody's rambling gave a genetic clue of Arlo's predispositions.
Tributes to Steve Goodman's “City of New Orleans” (“Good Night America”) and Cisco Houston's “St. James Infirmary Blues” eventually led up to the piece de resistance, “Alice's Restaurant,” Arlo's 1968 debut masterpiece, an 18-minute monologue spoken over the short tune of “You Can Get Anything You Want at Alice's Restaurant,” about an arrest for littering that led to his draft deferment during the Vietnam War and some global conclusions, that brought the audience to its feet.The concluding “This Land Is Your Land,” interrupted by reminiscences, almost anti-climactic, nevertheless heightened the experience.The Guthrie Family Legacy Tour playing in Tavernier consisted of Arlo, daughter Sarah Lee and son-in-law Johnny Irion (a 4-year-old granddaughter also made a stage appearance), as well as son Abe Guthrie, an accomplished keyboard artist and vocalist and leader of his own Xavier band; and Gordon Titcomb, a pedal-steel artist, whose mandolin provides the punctuation to a guitar and two-keyboard (Arlo also plays one) performance.The tour, riding the Amtrak City of New Orleans train in 2006, performed benefits for the victims of Katrina, along with their record sales rising over $140,000.As to the unofficial anthems, Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land is Your Land” in 1940, adapting the tune of a Baptist hymn as a reaction to Irving Berlin's “God Bless America,” which he considered unrealistic. The latter, written and stashed in the composer's trunk while he was a soldier at Camp Yaphank, in 1918, was rescued by Kate Smith 20 years later and, most notably, sung by the members of Congress on the United States Capitol steps on Sept. 11, 2001.“America the Beautiful” was written by Wellesley English professor Katharine Lee Bates in 1882 while on a trip, put to the tune of the 1882 Baptist hymn “Materna,” composed by Samuel A. Ward, and became popular around 1910.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Why didn’t Socialism ever take deep roots in the US? According to Werner Sombart, German sociologist (1863-1941), Socialism in America foundered on the shoals of roast beef and apple pie. This profound thought may have been in the minds of the Israelis in their relationships with Palestinians until a bad mix of Sharon and outside Arab propagandists brought on the Second Intifada, the basic source of the current strife in the Middle East. The Israelis thought that providing the Palestinians of Gaza and the Green Zone with good enough livelihood to build houses and buy TV sets, small cars and appliances, wold bring peace, while the Arabs’ inability to unify samong themselves would diffuse the unrest. Sombart’s observation has the basic truth in it. Unfortunately, the enemies of peace found the means to string together an overarching surface unity that , however tentatively, brings together the warring factions – Persian Shias, Arab Sunnis and Shias, Druses, Kurds, and other subsets of Islam.

The Sombart quote came into my life while listening to Prof. Hassia Diner (NYU) lecture on Jewish ethnic food. She claims that there is really no such; there are ethnic Jewish foods, as eaten in the various European communities. The gefillte fish from Lithuania is much different from that of Roumania, the latter is much sweeter. The really common aspects are in the community controlled treatment of meat.

Kashruth or kosher rules were actually enforced through the Tsarist Russian government, as a means of collecting taxes from the Jewish community, a regressive form of taxation, making the poorest pay equally with the rich. Contemporary authors called it corrupt, as well as providing a livelihood for the enforcers. Not that Jewish life was rich with meat; a chicken might be affordable on weekends, to be shared with the poor of the shtetl (poor stufents in the yeshiva would be rotated to the wealthier residents for meals, not always eating with the family), the rest of the week food was monotonous. Potato , introduced in the 17th century, was the mainstay, vegetables were scarce, and a weak soup was the recurring meal for the poor.

Immigration to the United States was largely driven by need for food. Dr. Hasia Diner’s book, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2003) makes the point that it was not only the Jewish wave that was so inspired. Coming to New York, the port for Jewish arrivals of the main immigration period, from the latter half of the 19th century through the 1920s, the availability of rich of the food was the greatest benefit, and the new arrivals soon learned to enjoy the food of other communities. The Hungarian Jews brought the goulash to the table, the Polish contributions potato kugels, dill and sorrell, black bread came from the Ukraine, and stuffed cabbage, variously known as prakkes, holishkes or golubkes, came from everywhere. Bagels were “mazeldik” or full of good luck, because their round shape denoted the eternal cycle of life.The German Jews had meat, corn beef and pastrami, and delicatessen, and the Mediterranean people introduced olives and squah into the diet. The Jewish taste for Chinese food – chop suey then – dates back to the 1880s.

America provided its own contributions. When Proctor and Gamble discovered Crisco, the vegetable oil based shortening, it was advertised in the Jewish press with pyramids and camels, as a butter look-alike that can be used with meats, on the theme of “come out of the desert.” It came about because P&G had started turning cottonseed oil into soap, as a substitute for animal fats, to fight the high prices of the meatpackers, and, after developing hydrogenation, saw the product as a butter substitute. Alas, trans-fats…

Eating out was introduced in America, and Abraham Cahan of the Daily Forward, the great explicator of American ways to new arrivals , took credit for introducing the term “ausessen” into the Y vocabulary.

The dairy restaurant was an American invention too. The monotonous shtetl diet was very unhealthy, and health authorities in Europe had expressed their concerns about the absence of milk products and vegetables in the food for children. Once on these shores, with rich food available at low prices, the Jewish community expanded its culinary interests.

Incidentally, glatt kosher is a creation of the 1970s, as an expression of the strict Kashruth observances of the super orthodox Hassidic Jews.

Wally Dobelis also thanks Robert Sternberg, and Lisa Schiffman of the Jewish Post..

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis



Herewith another chapter in the never-ending saga of the Union Square redesign, Phase III. Last time, on August 30, 2006, this column offered the conclusion that the Union Square Park can have either an extended playground area or an extended seasonal restaurant in the Pavilion, but not both. That was reached after absorbing the presentations brought out in the community meeting attended by over 100 activists on Tuesday August 22 at the Seafarers, called by the Union Square Community Coalition (USCC) and Citizens For Union Square.

Now cometh a sheaf of documents from USCC dated December 27, 2006, from Ernest L. Raab, Vice-Chair, to David M. Siesko, Chair of Parks Committee, Community Board 5, offering the criticism that the planning of US Phase III is done behind closed doors by the Parks Department and the BID/LDC and “their several corporate manifestations" such as Union Square Hospitality Group, the Corporate Campaign for the Completion of Union Square, the Union Square Partnership, Inc., etc. [USP is the renamed former 14th St/Union Square LDC/BID, whose new Executive Director is Jennifer Falk, former first deputy press secretary for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and spokesperson for Dan Doctoroff, Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Rebuilding].

The letter indicates that the Phase III planners work behind closed doors and have not permitted significant participation by other community groups, and that CB5 has accepted their presentations without effecting any changes reflecting the significant requests of the concerned local community.

Included is a list of some such groups – particularly Community Boards 2, 3, 4 and 6. “Stretching from wall to wall,” CB2 and CB3 have actual responsibilities over Union Square Park and “must participate in the CB approval process.” A 20-entry log details the past events where CB5 recognized such joint responsibilities, and lists the February 8, 2006 submission to CB5 of some 40 letters from elected officials and neighboring community organizations , variously protesting against the privatization, commercialization and alienation of the landmarked park. This was not acknowledged in the Board’s resolution at the meeting on February 9 [not much reaction time there, people], although the Board requested that Parks Department include opportunities for other organizations such as cultural institutions, community groups, etc, to submit proposals for the pavilion, in addition to restaurateurs. USCC notes that Parks Department has not complied with such requests from community groups.

The conclusion suggests that CB5 has not appropriately represented the interests of the local park-starved community, or advocated its inclusion in the planning process, and asks for CB5’s help in restoring the Pavilion’s and the North Park’s use for children and as an open space.

In a same-day response, CB5 Chair David Diamond and Parks Committee Chair David Siesko claim some confusion regarding the Board’s position. First, they are very excited over the increased playground and want Parks to expedite its construction. As to the Pavillion, CB5 has not taken a position regarding its future use and is awaiting a draft RPF so that they can develop a position (to come in early spring 2007). They are looking forward to a spirited and open discussion then. As for accepting comments and suggestions, the general public, elected officials and others can speak before the appropriate committee as well as before the monthly Full Board meeting; suggesting an undermining of the public comment process is not factually accurate. The Board finds that CB5 and USCC positions are substantially aligned – both are looking forward to the construction of the new playground and a review of the use of the Pavilion, and that CB5 looks forward to continuing the long and fruitful relationship with the USCC.
This column’s file shows that the core basics of the current Parks /USP- sponsored $14M design are simple – the playground that will consist of the two current playgrounds at the park grade level, connected by a new lower-level “pit” playground area area now housing the Luna restaurant. That means caregivers moving between the three playgrounds with strollers will need ramps or stairways or both, a major complication and a first such experiment in the NYC park system of 1700 venues. The bathrooms will be built in a separate building in the NE corner; somewhat of an inconvenience and intrusion on a green area. The current dilapidated bathrooms, on the pit level in the Pavilion, are to be converted to the kitchens of the seasonal restaurant, while the dining area will be constructed at the park level.A less disturbing approach would be to fill in the pit, have the entire expanded playground on park grade level, and restore the Pavilion restrooms for year-round use, with access from the Greenmarket level and with a staircase connecting to the park level.. This is more or less the USCC Alternate Plan, as expressed by Barry Benepe, the nationally recognized designer of the Greenmarket system. As a restaurant compromise, one might construct a year-round food stand upstairs in the Pavilion, at popular prices, on the model of the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park.

To be continued, no doubt.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Urgently needed, a copy of the above article by Wally Dobelis , in Town & Village about 1999. It is an IT expression first used by the author in an in-house publication around 1982, explaining the impossibility of accelerating computer project development to meet deadlines by using additional programmers, who first need weeks of orientation and technical background studies and seminars (cf "Mongolian hordes"). The fact that projects were delayed by constant specification and product changes, dictated by the marketplace, was not well received, and "freezing the specs" would be suggested. In the past 25 years project philosophy has undergone variations, to recognize the problem, and IPO, HIPO, Chief programmer conceptsubdividing (modularizing), waterfall with modifications, and most recently, iteration (i.e. developing basic part, then adding) methods have been in use

This is not readily understood by management, and the explanation brought the author nothing but grief, and a reputation for contrariness. Other managers, willing to accept the management offer to hire and spend were able to advance their careers because of their cooperation, although project completion was obstructed and deadlines were met by trimming project objectives ("bareboning the project").