Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

When one gets to be of a certain age and behaves well, people react accordingly. Some of these reactions include trust and seeking of advice, even when people know that the advisor belongs, albeit part-time, to a blabbermouth profession. General questions are sometimes answered with embarrassing candor and details, leaving the questioner embarrasingly unable to close the topic.
Illegal immigration is an ambivalent topic. While the illegals may be vociferous, their employers, local tradesmen, do not want to go there, not in my east 14th Street survey area, west of Loisaida (Avenue C). One finds by roundabout inquiries that there exists some dependency on illegal immigrants for kitchen work, deliverypeople, construction workers, skilled and unskilled laborers. They will talk in principle, defending the practice, suggesting amnesty, family education and health care. The common refrain is that this is for your, the consumers’ benefit, and the illegals pay taxes.
Speaking to my non-trade neighbors, most, in brief discussions, support some form of legitimization. The opponents mainly concentrate on specific offenses, with offered broadbrush solutions that often defy practicality.
Thus, a lawyer friend will invariably lead to the probability of naturalization and legitimizing of potential terrorists. He would like to make citizenship dependent on the immigrant’s admission that the laws of a secular government supercede those of divine rule. thus excluding people who who are governed by Sharia. He would strip the defiers of secular authority of citizenship and deport them, leaving open the contradictions of the Bill of Rights and the details of execution .
That the devil is in the details is noted in the specific immigration plan of another neighbor, a professional people manager, who would offer all illegals with good records an option of signing a three-year contract of temporary residence in the US, at the end of which they would be sent back to their native countries, with the proviso of returning after three years for another temporary residence. Education for the kids would be granted, but no free health care, and no Social Security. They must pay taxes, but there would be no provisions for family or dependemnts’ return or anybody’s eventual citizenship. The details of deporting 12 million people three years hence are moot – "ok, so we will turn New Mexico into a camp, leave me alone."
Another neighbor, almost seriously, would forbid immigration altogether, and, a fourth, less seriously, joined the conversation by suggesting that we offer Mexico a statehood.
I offer the above observations not to make fun but to show the severity of the problems and the emotional levels that the problem-solvers have reached..
The use of the A-word creates the deepest reactiom from the negatively inclined. A step-wise amnesty appears to be the most practical solution to the problem, with the least negative humanitarian impact. Coupled with future enforceable restrictions on illegal immigration, it has been offered by the middle coalition of Democrats and Republicans (for once, the President of the US, is in the lead of the compromise) and fought tooth and nail, by another, a vocal mass of extremists, with Minutemen on the right and orhanized labor on the left. Seemingly, some of the unionists would prefer to leave the mess alone, while the rightwing extremists would punish the illegals, although they have been readily accepted and exploited by agribus, construction companies and the food incustry, just like prior generations of immigrants, without letting them and their children reap the eventual benefits of citizenship that the Germans, Italians, Irish and Jews enjoyed.
All of us have reaped the benefits of illegal immigration, in the lower food price that we have enjoyed over the years, much below what we would have paid for union-label products. Leaving it at a status quo would be a selfish but undersatandable attitude, but that does not compute in today’s circumstances. The flow of illegals needs to be stemmed, else we are turning into a lawless society. The status of the existing illegals needs to be stabilized, aned equitable provisions made for education, health coverage and taxation/ Social Security. The always practical federal income tax people seem to have figured out a way of collecting revenue without requiring an SS number, maybe others can learn from them.
To the more offbeat problems. The question of continued automatic citizenship that brings pregnant tourists here may have to be addressed; ditto the allegiance of the arrivals to religious ideologies that deny democracy and allegiance to a secular government. Washington is seeing to the expansion of democracy in the Middle East by providing voting rights for all, and consequently building the powers of ideologies of anti-democratic forces. Adherence to democracy does not mean just rights of voting, it means also civil rights. The good news is that there are no niquabs, the full body covers, and virtually no burkas in sight on 14th Street. Women’s civil rights among the religious radicals is the only hope for a return to a rational world.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Walking by Washington Irving High School on a Tuesday morning, around 9AM, I was struck by the presence of four uniformed policemen, across the street from the school, seemingly watching the traffic. Bold as I am when on duty, I asked the sergeant if this was the policing group assigned to keep WIHS trouble-free. No, he told me without prompting, they were a task force; WIHS had its own detail of 14 officers inside, with a sergeant. Was this standard with a heavily troubled school? – he did not know, his group was due to check on seven schools this day.
Encouraged, I tried to call the school, and found a pleasant respondent, reader of this column, who passed to me the name of the principal, but ventured that the Department of Education’s Public Affairs office would be a better source. There my message prompted an instant callback from their police specialist who straightened me out – the 14 people I had heard of at WIHS would be a mix of uniformed officers and, predominantly, School Safety Agents, civilian employees of the NYPD’s SSA Division. They used to be with the Board of Education, which no longer exists. In January 2004 school safety was reorganized, and some ten or more schools came to be recognized as Impact institutions, a nice word which I assume to be a euphemism for "dangerous." Not too bad, with the city’s school count of about 1,450, 350-400 of them high schools. Alas, WIHS was part of that Impact group.
To continue with the numbers, NYC K- through-12th grade schools have a student population of 1.1 million, plus 80,000 teachers, more than what we used to think of as the population of a major capital. All schools have one or more agent assigned to them, with some uniformed policemen added, such as those in Impact schools. So far I have not met any SSAs; the young girls with Explorer over Police Department shoulder patches on their blue shirts that I saw turned out to be part of a 50 member career aspiration program, designed to acquaint the young with police work, remove their fears and bad perceptions of the cops, and, perhaps, after some obligatory college, recruit them into New York’s Finest.
In the last year or two WIHS has been removed from the Impact list (there are nine high schools remaining, three each in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens), which speaks well for the actions taken and discipline put into effect. Looking at the WIHS website, there were eight letters from parents and grads, dated 2004 through 2006, few pleased (one happy girl was admitted to New York University), but more cautionary – faculty members are well-meaning and serious, but the students, some bright and easygoing, largely tend to be troublesome , and the school is crowded. One parent suggested learning to navigate, to get the benefit of the many programs , activities and the dedicated faculty, but another cautioned parents to look elsewhere before coming to WIHS. WIHS has slightly more than 3,000 students, and a division in houses, or interest groups that reduces the impersonality of a large institution, a recent innovation. One expects that the letters date back to the troubled days, though there have been one or two bad gang incidents earlier in the year on Union Square.
Looking for some figures about the SSA organization, statistics of incidents and the hopeful intimations of attainment of controls and reduction of incidents, I tried to get data from the NYPD Public Affairs, who sent me to SSA Public Affairs, but no one was available, and they returned me back to NYPD, There an attempt to help was turned into a major project – with a demand for a written list of questions. I will try to cope, but maybe for a future article…Meanwhile a news report about 2,700 applicants for 289 SSA jobs in 2007/8 provided some comparison to the desirability of police recruit jobs – only 5,000 testing for 2,800 openings with the expectation of 800 remaining after completing the Police Academy. The SSAs start at $28,900/yr, topping out at $32,600, as compared to the Police Academy recruits’ $25,100 immediate pay, topping out at $59,000 (that’s without promotions).
Obviously, these kids are not there for a career as a SSA, and equally obviously the uniformed police starting pay must rise, else all the young cops after completing the PA courses will run off to high-pay Nassau County PD jobs.
Meanwhile, a call placed with the principal of WIHS, Dr. Denise DeCarlo, has not been returned. Not surprising, newspaper people looking for figures are not the most trusted characters in the school system. I am still hopeful, I used to be able to get through to her predecessor, Principal Robert Durkin, without problems. But that was in what I think of as slightly less troubled days, with different problems.
On the good news side, 3rd through 8th graders in NYC school system have improved their math averages, rising above the overall NYS numbers. The arriving generation of recruits for WIHS looks hopeful.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of the summer vacation and weekend driving period. It is therefore the time for highway authorities to remind drivers to tighten seatbelts, reinforced by some strong words from Governor Corzine, the most famous case of injuries caused by flaunting the law.
It was therefore no surprise for me to find a highway trooper on the median of Taconic Parkway, looking for violators. I was some 60 miles north of the city, in light traffic, just bounced off the right lane by a guy mindlessly speeding out of the side road, and was not surprised to see the trooper take off after him. I slowed down to let him pass, and he did, placing himself in front of my car and flagging the speeder down, on to the shoulder. But, surprise, he also flagged me down.
I moved to the shoulder, the trooper parked in between, and walked over. "Registration and driver’s license, please, keep your hands in sight and do not exit the car," he said, in his cop’s voice.
"Officer, I was not speeding," I protested. "Yes you were, he was doing 73 and you were doing 70, in a 55 mile zone," he answered. "If so, only momentarily, only to avoid getting hit, my speed control was set under 65." At this point it should be explained that there is an unwritten agreement between the troopers and drivers on the Taconic Parkway, an easy road, to extend the limit to 65 miles an hour, on clear days. It is in the interests of moving the traffic on this increasingly popular road, with growing population, both year-round and summer, more so since 9/11/2001. The cops will never admit to it, when interviewed, but that’s the reality.
At this moment my wife, a totally truthful woman, spoke up: "I was knitting, and I did not see anything, but he always sets his speed control below 65." "Well, you have got control, you can plead not guilty at the traffic court,’ he grinned, naming the town of jurisdiction over that part of the Parkway.
No, no, we protested, we just wanted justice. He looked at us, and in a normal voice, said: "Tell you what; I’ll give you a seatbelt." "Thank you, officer," I had unbuckled, to get at my wallet, so he was technically correct.
The lawman left, to check our credentials, and returned with a complex computer- printed traffic ticket. "This here is a citation for a seatbelt violation, no points. Now, if you might find that you had your seatbelt on, and try to contest it, there is another part, for speeding, that will cost you points. Do I make myself clear?" "Perfectly clear, officer, no problem and thanks," I was practically crawling with gratitude.
The next day, in the office, I had a story. "I have a ticket to pay that I’m actually glad to honor, can you believe that," I challenged a co-worker. "Yes, I believe you, I have one too," he countered. It turned out that in Sparta, his home town in New Jersey, his wife passed a stop sign while turning a corner, and was nailed by an officer. "I told you to be careful but you don’t listen," my friend had laced into his cringing sweetie, until the officer interrupted him, maybe feeling sorry, and offered to write a ticket for a much lesser offense, an obstructed license plate. Much relieved, the couple accepted the compromise. "Do you think he would have been so receptive to your story, had I not opened my mouth?" thus my friend, who claims that he was rewarded with a non-admitting kiss.
Some conclusions from all this. We know from Law and Order – my sometime source of everyday ethics, now given another year of existence, Saturdays at 8 PM – that justice is negotiable. Criminals can take a plea and settle for reduced sentence, even more so if they squeal on accomplices. Is that right, or should all cases of illegal actions be accorded equitable justice? Yes, of course, but the practicality of overworked court systems forces compromises. Justice must be applied swiftly, without delay. The costs of trying all cases, time and money, whether paid for by individuals or states, would escalate mercilessly. Consider the impracticality of death sentences; if not humanely justifiable, look how many years they take to adjudicate and how much they cost.
With all this background on hand, does it not make sense that that traffic laws be administered with the same effectiveness? Does it not make sense that roadside compromises be effected, if the state and municipality can collect some comparable penalty without court appearances by the offenders and troopers, and remorse is shown? Obviously, leniency will not be offered when a check of the records, now wireless, reveals a dangerous history that might mandate a license-suspension threatening penalty. Rational compromises are just an absolute necessity of civilized existence.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis



This week’s column was getting shaped on an entirely different topic, when the radio news announced through that The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band record would be 40 years old come June 1, 2007. All other thoughts set aside; I marched to an old Strand bag, untouched for years, and reached in. I could have done it blindfolded, the signals were so strong. And indeed, the top three vinyl LPs that came out were Revolver, the White Record, and Beatles’ Second Album, and after 10 seconds of frantic search, the aforementioned.

I had not touched the LPs in years; in fact, I reacquired a working player only some months ago. All my infrequent Beatlemania needs were served by a CD. But the memories persisted, and the tunes started vibrating through my mind, while reading the titles.

Sgt. Pepper is one of the three really memorable LPs in the Beatles’ repertory of some 80 remembered tunes, recorded on 12 discs, near the top, in my recall. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds – often accused of being the LSD battle hymn, also a haunting melody, comes to mind. I remember a slight street boy singing and dancing to it at the Bethesda Fountain, in the heady summer of 1967, when the Photographers of Washington Square, my irregular weekend affiliation of slide-takers and equipment traders, tired of the guitars, folksongs, rock and roll and crowds of that weekend music paradise, decided to expand to Central Park. It was a less raucous environment, the Bethesda Fountain weekend squatters were bicycle people and pop music fans; there were tennis courts nearby, and the Easter Sunday Sunrise brought in strange religionists, with Ralph Ginsberg reciting mantras.

Lucy, and, A Little Help from My Friends (Do I need anybody? I need somebody to love – the tunes for these phrases just jump out) were singled out as drug culture–evoking tunes in the Pepper opus. It was not a collection of tunes alone, each of the 13 songs told life stories, reminding me of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Richard Cory and Miniver Cheevy. She’s Leaving Home is a tear-evoking melody (Wednesday morning she silently closes the door…Daddy, our baby’s gone , cries the mother); Lovely Rita is a meter maid; fellow carnival workers give Mr. Kite a benefit; Billy Shears’s (Ringo Star’s) Lonely Hearts Band is just that.

The cover of the record was another proclamation, with over 70 portraits of people, well-known and obscure. Easily recognizable are Marlene Dietrich, W. C. Fields, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy; there were also Bob Dylan, E. A. Poe, Lenny Bruce; the less known KarlHeinz Stockhausen and Aleister Crowley, the British mystic, probably a George Harrison choice, along with various Indian gurus, and a splendid Marilyn Monroe.. The Fab Four appeared three times, as colorfully uniformed and hatted members of the Pepper brass band, next to their suit-and-tie wearing younger images, and, as themselves, in the centerfold. The imagery, still happy, was not indicative of the breakup that was to occur soon, after the accidental death of their manager Brian Epstein in 1969.

In June 1967 the triumphant Beatles were just 10 years old. John Lennon had assembled a Liverpool grammar-school kids’ group, The Quarrymen, in 1957, Paul McCartney and George Harrison joining soon. The drummers kept changing, until they settled on Pete Best. They found an audience in Hamburg, with the first romantic songs recorded abroad, but neither Decca nor EMI, the music giants in England, wanted to risk any money on them. Finally George Martin, a producer at EMI, gave them a recording (the quirky Best was fired and reliable Ringo Starr took over the drums), radio play and concerts followed and soon the attractive musicians found a huge following of young girls. The music crossed the Atlantic, not too easily; there were skeptics until in 1964 Ed Sullivan gave them a spot on his Sunday TV show. The early British invaders, with their schoolboy suits, quaint accents and inoffensive music with quality tunes drew instant attention. No question, they were outstanding tunesmiths (McCartney, despite not reading music, could orchestrate, with George Martin’s aid) , and good popular poets, particularly Lennon. They utilized unusual instruments and classical groups in such standouts as Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, after giving up touring and creating recordings in studio.

The breakup commenced soon after The Four went to India in 1968, for transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Nevertheless, they continued to create more LPs, including the successful White Record and Abbey Road, often working separately and depending on technology to blend their music. Some factors were Ringo’s feeling of being disrespected, a thieving manager, and Lennon’s infatuation with Yoko Ono, who wanted him out. In 1969 each of them started producing individual recordings, none matching the quality that the group’s synergy had created. Lennon and McCartney, working together, had created some 200 songs, a quality oeuvre that assured the Beatles’ fame forever.