Saturday, January 09, 2021

What about now? After incitement can we still pardon Trump?

 Impeachment is fine, but once he's gone, let's just let him go.

After the events of the past week I felt I had to re-visit my most recent post and reexamine my own opinion: do I still think Trump should be pardoned for all crimes he may have committed while in office?

Before I give you my take on this, I'll point out that - as expected - almost none of my family, friends and colleagues who read the entry agreed with me. At best I was told I was naive, and at worst told I was an idiot to believe a pardon would help or heal anything. Until this week, though, I remained confident that a pardon was the best, first step to healing our country.

What changed this week? Two things:
  • Trump's dangerous delusions finally bubbled over beyond the pale and resulted in a new level of consequence, that caused...
  • ...all but the staunchest Trump supporters to recognize the real dangers to democracy of continuing to peddle fiction in the name of political expediency.
This impacts my opinion on a pardon for Trump because, in theory, a pardon may no longer be needed to bridge the gap with most Republicans anymore. If most Republicans have come to realize the dangers of drinking from the "Trump fountain", then it is possible that healing may be possible without the grand-gesture of a pardon; and that any prosecutions would not be the great divider (and distraction) I was imagining it to be back in November.

Back then I felt the cost of prosecuting Trump (deepening divisions and distractions) outweighed the benefits (a message to posterity that all people - even presidents - are subject to equal treatment under the law).

So it is time to re-weigh the two sides of the equation. Has Trump's weakened support from Republicans lowered the costs of divisions and distractions enough? Or can we now heal-as-a-country even with a backdrop of the inevitable prosecutorial circus around any Trump prosecution.

When I step out of the emotion of today and imagine a world three months from now, I see our country retreating to our separate corners again, and I'm convinced any Trump-trials will still heavily interfere with healing and compromise.

And perhaps I'm just exhausted: I would personally prefer to see Trump simply fade away than to continue to have a constant platform to engage and enrage his supporters.

On one thing I am decided: as I was with the first impeachment, I'm in favor of last-minute impeachment - even if it is doomed to fail. As with Ukrainian influence peddling last year, It is the responsibility of Congress to hold the president accountable for his - probably illegal - behavior. Each Congressperson should and must act to withhold their oath of office to protect the country and the Constitution, and that oath means acting on our core values. They should take a stand that is not politically motivated, but motivated by the core values of our country and humanity. So by all means, bring articles of impeachment to the floor.

And there is another advantage to impeachment - especially if there is a conviction: it will disqualify Trump from running for president again in 2024. A possible presidential run is a real justification that will keep Trump's voice loud within the Republican party, and in the news. With any chance to run for president gone, the only other reason to keep our eyes on Trump is to battle over his crimes in office. Let's not offer Donald that opportunity to maintain media relevance. Joe: please pardon him and increase our chances to heal as as a country.

Sunday, November 08, 2020

A Democrat's Call to Pardon Donald Trump

Let’s take account of where we are as a country and the unique opportunity we have right now.

We’re still divided.  The election has only confirmed just how divided we are.  Republicans (for the most part) came out and voted for Trump, and Democrats came out and voted for Biden.  Nearly 71,000,000 people felt the policy-alignment they had with Trump outweighed the personal and "temperament” shortcomings of the president.  71,000,000 people don’t trust Biden to protect their interests from what they see as the dismantling of American capitalism, individualism and religious-faith that have guided our nation for centuries.  There is no trust across the chasm today - and no amount of speech-making will change that.

We have a window of opportunity.  It will take years of work and compromise to bridge the chasm, but right now we have a unique and fleeting opportunity to jumpstart the process.  Once we return to bickering on individual issues it will be too late.  But if we lay foundations of tentative trust today - as we pause to transition power - we will be able to take unified action on other issues much sooner than we would without that basis.  Those foundations will be tenuous, but can solidify over time.  

We need several huge non-stupid and non-futile gestures right now, and Joe Biden is just the guy to do it:
  • Announce that you will Pardon Donald Trump for any crimes committed in office.  Show Republicans that we are serious about focusing on the future, and eliminate the inevitable rancor, divisiveness and distraction that would accompany any prosecutions.  Healing our country is more important than the sins of any one man.

  • Announce that you will not pack the court.  The threat of packing the court feels as unjust and manipulative to Republicans as the debacle of holding up the Garland nomination felt to Democrats.  Let’s de-weaponize the issue in the name of healing.

  • Include at least 2 Republicans in your cabinet.  Inclusion like this shows Republicans that we are willing to work across the aisle, and brings practical advantages.  Embracing influencers and policy makers into the administration will help garner support for compromise-based legislation.
I’m a lifelong Democrat, and most of my liberal friends will disagree strongly with this post - especially the idea of pardoning Trump.  Even writing this down was difficult for me personally. But as I’ve lived with the idea for the past two days, I realize that I care more about being able to converse again with my many conservative friends and relatives than I like the idea of holding Trump accountable. The more I sit with the idea, the happier I am letting go of the past; I’ve found some peace in writing this post and imagining that future.

It is hard to forgive.  It is hard to move past the pain we’ve felt for four years.  It is hard not to attempt to balance the scales and seek a fair accounting of past sins.  But when the cost of justice is the continuation of the vitriolic chasm we have in our country, we must not pay that price. 

Monday, September 21, 2020

An Opportunity for Healing on the Supreme Court

I’m still angry.  I’m not normally like this when it comes to politics.  Sure, I’m a left-leaning democrat, but I take pride in building bridges with people.  I never demonize those I disagree with; I never label people as ignorant just because they see the world differently than I do; I always seek to understand opposing points of view.  

I’ve now lived through several years with Donald Trump as president, and though I believe I've seen the sanctity of the office of President trampled, I refuse to disrespect those who support him.  I understand there are good reasons some choose to vote for him: you may believe he speaks for you when no one else will, or you may prefer his perspective to the more liberal ideological alternative.  I do not pretend that I have the right to tell Trump supporters who to vote for: the Constitution says all our votes count.  If we don’t all agree to the rules, then we don’t have a country at all.

This is my philosophy: treat all people with respect, and treat the rules of the road with respect, even if you disagree with the result.   So, even when I've been deeply disappointed (e.g. - Gore concedes), felt misled by leadership (e.g. Bush justifies Iraq), and disgusted (e.g. - Trump doesn't disavow racist supporters), I didn't get angry.  

Here’s a relevant example from 2005: when my liberal friends argued we should fight “tooth and nail” against George W. Bush's nominations of Alito and Roberts to the Supreme Court, I disagreed.  Both were legal scholars deserving consideration, and rules didn’t provide solid ground to reject them.

Why was I willing to concede this all important ground?  Why not fight to keep the court more liberal?  For one simple reason: the rules of America said I didn’t have the right to.  The “rules” I’m referring to are no less than the United States Constitution and its amendments, as well as the common understanding of how it has been applied to government for generations. In the case of the Bush nominations, the country had elected Bush twice, and “the rules” gave him the right to make the nominations.  As liberals, we had every right to fight the next battle at the ballot box for a new president, but no right to reject strong legal scholars prepared to fairly judge the cases in front of them, merely because we disagreed with them.

But the Garland nomination failure made me angry. I will never look at the other side of the aisle the same way again.  Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party’s sidelining of the Garland nomination is the single most divisive, immoral, unjust and unfair action I’ve ever seen occur in American politics in my lifetime. 

It is 100% clear that the Republican Party chose to break the rules because they disagreed with the result they foresaw and not because they truly believed that the Constitution gave the American public the right to “vote” on the next Justice in an election year.  And today we have indisputable proof of their hypocrisy: within hours of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death Mitch McConnell has already announced that there will be no delay in the consideration of Trump’s next nomination.  

McConnell's “opposite party” argument is obviously specious.  If he actually believed that Republicans regaining control the Senate in the 2014 mid-terms represented a change in the electorate's mood -- thus justifying appointment delay -- then the same should apply today given that the Democrats regained control of the House in 2018.

But let's not get distracted calling out hypocrisy over an argument that made no sense in the first place.  Instead, let's consider how we can make things better.

Here is what I propose. Republicans across the country (elected officials and everyday folks), I implore you to support that we even the score and begin to heal the damage that was done in 2016.  Apply the same standard for this single Supreme Court opening that was unfairly applied then: delay the consideration of this nomination until after the election.  Let’s turn the death of an undisputedly great legal scholar into a healing moment for our country and subjugate our partisanship for the higher purpose of righting an obvious wrong and bridging just one major divide between us.  Then, let’s together return to the time-proven Constitution's intent and long-held understanding that it is the Senate’s sworn duty to consider court nominations in a timely manner.

Right a wrong.  Start the healing with this, the most egregious of wrongs, and prove that finding a way to live together with widely divergent views is not only possible, but fundamental to keeping America prosperous for all of its citizens.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Radicava - From Form to Substance

About Radicava

The ALS community is excited about recent developments in treatment options.  There are several promising drugs now in stage 2 and stage 3 trials, and earlier this year (2017), for the first time in 22 years, the FDA approved a new treatment for ALS called Radicava (generic name Edaravone).  Radicava's Phase 3 trial showed that the drug slowed the progress (it is not a cure!) of ALS by 33%.

No drug is right for everyone (of course check with your doctor!), but Radicava should be widely applicable to many ALS patients because:

  • the drug has been used for years in Japan to assist with recovery from stroke, so its side-effects are well-understood and known to be rare and relatively minor, and
  • the drug is approved for all ALS patients by the FDA.  (Some insurance companies are lagging behind, limiting who they will approve to those that match the trial-inclusion criteria - more on that later in this post.)
Despite being approved since May 5, 2017, and technically available-to-US-patients since August 8, 2017, patients are finding it difficult to receive the drug.  Insurance approvals, lack-of-training, and a general lack-of-awareness of the drug and processes around obtaining it are slowing access.

My father was lucky enough to get access to Radicava relatively early on: he's been receiving it since August 28, 2017.  My father, mother and I spent many weeks navigating the "system" to help make this possible, along with the help of a few very helpful care-givers along the way.  The rest of the focus of this blog post is to share what we've learned in case it helps others accelerate the path to obtaining the drug.

How to Get Radicava in the US

Everyone needs to get paid and the drug company, Mitsubishi Tanabe, has placed an outrageously hefty price-tag on the drug.  As a result, two bottlenecks are slowing down access:
  • Insurance companies are slow to approve or are limiting access to a sub-set of the ALS population - so not everyone can get the drug, and
  • Care-companies are wary that they will end up being "out of pocket" for the huge cost.
Insurance Coverage

Our family had Radicava approved for us by Medicare, but not everyone is so lucky.  Several insurance companies are limiting approvals to patients who match the Stage 3 Trial inclusion criteria.  That means that individual patients with degraded respiratory function or who have had the disease more than two years may not eligible - depending on your insurance provider.

This is not right.  The FDA approved this drug for all patients because it may slow the progression in any patient.  While there are some scientific rationalizations for this (perhaps a topic for a future blog post), in my opinion this decision to limit access originates with the high-cost of the drug in the US.  Either the drug company or the insurance companies (presumably both) need to put the needs of patients higher on their list of priorities.

If your insurance company will not approve you, then your options are limited here in the US.  The drug company may offer other options to support access to the drug based on financial need (see information on Searchlight below).  Or you can lobby your insurance company; or obtain the drug yourself through another (international) provider.  Then, you'd either have to travel to that country to get the drug, or learn to administer it yourself - which should never be done without some professional, medical oversight.  All the more reason I hope the insurance companies and Mitsubishi Tanabe will find a way to approve this for all patients.

Buy&Bill and Paying for the Drug

The biggest thing I learned over the past few months was how money changes hands for a drug like this.  It turns out that the drug company is not in the business of billing insurance companies.  So someone else has to take the risk of paying over $1,000 per dose for the drug and imploring the insurance company to be reimbursed.

Here is the key paragraph of this blogpost.  In most cases, the care-provider that is actually infusing the drug is responsible for the cash outlay.  I'm referring to the facility or agency that receives the physical drug and delivers it into the patient's veins.  These care-providers are typically not giant corporations, so when just a single patient represents the outlay of $154,000, the care-provider must make sure they will eventually be repaid.  With the insurance situation as precarious as I described above, this is no small feat.

The procedure is known as buy and bill and not all facilities will even do it.  So our first job was to find an agency or facility willing to buy and bill at all.  Once found, their finance department will be looking to cross all the "t"s and dot all the "i"s to make sure that your claim will not, at some later date, be rejected by the insurance company.

To their credit (or their enrichment, depending on how you look at it), Mitsubishi Tanabe knew this would be an issue and has gone to some trouble to try to make this process easier.  They have set up a Patient/Provider Support group called Searchlight whose sole purpose in life is to help work through the red-tape that Mitsubishi Tanabe anticipated.  Searchlight can be very helpful in:
  • Pre-approving insurance - If your insurance company does cover you, Searchlight will get the needed assurances from the insurance company and into the hands of the buy-and-bill care provider so they'll feel comfortable paying for the drug.  This is a huge help!
  • Enabling distribution - Once an official order is received from the infusion provider they work quickly and efficiently (in my experience) with major distributors to get the drug safely into the hands of your infusion-provider.
  • Coordinating information flow - the searchlight enrollment form seems at-first like dreary paperwork, but I've come to see it as a well-designed tool for this process.  It centralizes most of the things that the infusion-provider needs to feel more comfortable, as well as the logistical information needed for buying, billing and shipping.

Note: if you can find alternate forms of funding you can avoid buy-and-bill using the "specialty pharmacy" option; but that is less common and I can't speak to this process personally since I never explored it in detail.  The good support at Searchlight may be able to help you navigate this option.



Pushing and Prodding

If all of this sounds confusing, it is.  And it is not just confusing to you, the patient, but it may be confusing to your doctor, the infusion-provider and the representatives of your insurance company.  Because this is a new drug.  There is uncertainty around how it will be used, how it is administered, how it is paid for and who it will help.

That means that taking the time to understand and drive the process can put you into the driver's seat.  I've found that everyone typically wants to help.  By respectfully explaining that you understand what each party in the process needs, you can be a catalyst.  But you can't do it alone: the people involved in each part of the process have to move the ball forward.

So, as most of us dealing with ALS learned long ago, being your own advocate for your care is essential to your healthcare, and obtaining Radicava is no exception.  Understand the process and then aggressively work with your doctor, Searchlight, the infusion-provider and the insurance company until you can see the bottlenecks, and then you'll be able to overcome them.  It is time-consuming and frustrating at times, but also inspiring to see that you're not the only person trying to make things right.  I found people at all of the institutions I mentioned (yes - even the insurance companies) who were incredibly helpful and anxious to overcome what we all agreed were silly obstacles.

The Process
  1. Decide if you should get the drug - Talk to your neurologist.  While it has been approved by the FDA for all ALS patients, there are some side-effects (in particular an allergy to Sulfites, with which the drug is packaged) that may make it a bad choice for you.
  2. Contact Searchlight - They may tell you to submit the enrollment form before you can get started.  If your doctor can help you do so, go ahead and submit the incomplete form with at least your insurance information and doctor info.  Just let Searchlight know that it will not be complete until you get a few more steps done, but that you wanted to get the insurance approval process started.  Searchlight's phone number is (844-772-4548).  You can use their help in the next step...
  3. Identify your preferred infusion provider - Radicava can intrude heavily on your life so you'll want to decide whether to have infusions in your home or at a nearby facility.  Work with your doctors and talk to the facility or agency to make sure they are willing to "buy and bill" and can accommodate the daily infusions you'll be looking for.  Searchlight can also be helpful in identifying infusion-providers.  Knowing and focusing your efforts on a single infusion facility is critical to getting through this process efficiently.  Check that the infusion-provider has been trained (or will be trained by the time the drug arrives) in the administration of Radicava!
  4. Get the completed enrollment form submitted to Searchlight - Ideally, your doctor will fill in and submit the enrollment form to the drug company, though we assisted in the early days by manually collecting much of the information needed.  I recommend that, as your own advocate, you get a copy of the filled-out form at every stage so you can help identify problems.  The form includes your insurance info, you doctor's info, the prescription itself and the infusion-provider's info.  If any one of the them is wrong or incomplete then the process can go sideways, so it is worth the effort to work with your doctor (who is the preferred "submitter" of the form) to get the information on the form correct before either you or your doctor fax it to Searchlight.  Searchlight's fax number is (888-782-6157).
  5. Contact Searchlight yourself - You'll likely be assigned a named support representative who will know your case.  Pro-tip: ask for your Searchlight Patient ID number and ask providers to include it written somewhere on anything further submitted to Searchlight.  While Searchlight's main job is to get your insurance approval, they are well-positioned to know where the hold-ups are in the entire process at any point in time, so use them to help you figure out who to bother next to keep the process moving.  Searchlight's phone number is (844-772-4548).
  6. Work out the kinks on the enrollment form - It is pretty rare to get it all right the first time, so use Searchlight to find out what is wrong and get the appropriate party to fix it.  Did the doctor forget to sign the prescription?  Did the infusion-provider correctly indicate "buy and bill" and specify a distributor?  We went through three submissions of the form before it was sufficient.  The other players will tell you that they "can handle it from here" but they often don't have the time / focus you'll want.  It will be up to you to call your doctor, infusion-center or insurance company to collect the information and somehow get it onto a corrected-form that you or your doctor can re-submit.
  7. Insurance approval - Searchlight's focused purpose in life is to help move this process along so typically the insurance approval (or rejection - see above) will be the next thing you find out.  Confirm with Searchlight that they have notified the infusion-provider that the insurance is approved.
  8. Infusion-provider comfortable - For us, this was the most difficult step.  Radicava is new and the infusion-provider is taking all the financial risk, so they need to know they will eventually get reimbursed.  Work with the good people at these institutions to provide the assurances they need from your doctor, Searchlight and insurance company.  In addition to insurance approval, we provided doctor's office notes, treatment plans and test results so they would have the "ammunition" to back up any claim for payment with the insurance company.  This may require several back-and-forth calls directly with the infusion-provider, then calls to doctors to have them send what they need.
  9. Infusion-provider order-form - The final step we had to be involved with was making certain that the infusion-provider actually orders the drug and promises to pay for it.  Searchlight will typically work with the infusion-provider to get this done (although technically the information is on the original enrollment form, in practice a separate form is usually submitted).  There is little risk once this is done, as Searchlight will either fulfill directly or (in most cases) forward the form through to one of their approved distributors.
  10. Confirm your appointments for infusions - Once all that is done, set up the schedule for home or facility-based infusions.  The schedule is well-documented based on the trial protocol.


I felt qualified to write this post because we've been through the process twice.  My parents are "snow-birds" living in Florida in the winters and Connecticut in the summers.  So in August we went through this process for Connecticut, and we are just completing the process a second time (with a new infusion-provider) in Florida.

My father represents a sample of just one, so please recognize that there is no medical evidence that this drug does anything except slow the progress of ALS in some patients.  However, we're happy to report that in his first two rounds he has found himself feeling more energetic and able to participate more in daily activities than before, even if it hasn't stopped the progression of all of his symptoms.

While I'd love to post the names of individuals who have helped us I don't wish to do so without permission.  But I can't thank enough the people at our doctor's offices at MGH, Columbia Presbyterian and USF for helping my father on so many levels - getting this drug being one of them.  Our representative at Searchlight was instrumental in helping me to understand this process and making it happen.  Perhaps we are most grateful to the infusion-providers willing to put themselves out there.  Florida Cancer Specialists has been great, and the people who run the infusion-center at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut went above and beyond to trail-blaze the delivery of this new drug in the US.  I was told their efforts led to the first two insurance-backed Radicava deliveries in the entire country.

I know this was a long post and there is a lot to this.  But if you take nothing else from this remember that money makes the world go around: so the key to getting Radicava is to make sure the primary financial risk-taker (the infusion-provider) is comfortable that they will be reimbursed.  The rest of the steps described are all about keeping the process moving.

If my father's experience can help others in the community we're anxious to assist.  I haven't had the time or space to cover many other details of Radicava-use such as the scheduling of infusions, the use of PICC lines or ports, any medical details on the drug itself, or the pros and cons of home vs. facility-based infusions.  So feel free to reach out to me via blog-comments or the email address on this blog if you think there is anything from our experience that will benefit you.

And please comment with your own experiences / advice and we can spread the word and get this new treatment into the veins of more people it can help.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Microwave Crêpes

Microwave Crêpes



I developed these crêpes when I realized our favorite family breakfast treat was inaccessible in my daughter’s dorm room kitchen.  She is a fantastic cook so I wanted to help her to enjoy crêpes even in her freshman year at school.


The recipes I found online were a bit too gummy in result, and created tiny crêpes, so I started from scratch.  Even after experimenting, they are, alas, missing some of the subtlety and crispness of a pan-made crepe, but are not a bad approximation when a stove is unavailable.  Relative to a standard crepe recipe I increased the proportion of flour and butter to tighten up the resulting crepe and help it "fry" a bit.  I also used my “dessert crêpe” approach of adding a little bit of sugar and vanilla for more flavor in the pancake itself, to compensate for the lack of browning in the microwave.


Utensils Needed:
  • Microwave Oven
  • Dinner plate with flat center, raised edges
  • Parchment paper


Crepe Ingredients (makes 7-8 crepes):
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup flour
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • 1/4 tsp vanilla
  • pinch salt
  • 1 tablespoon melted butter (unsalted better, salted OK)
  • Powdered sugar for garnish (if desired)


Directions:
  1. Whisk together milk, egg, flour, sugar, vanilla and salt in bowl (pro tip: use your measuring cup as your bowl, measuring the 1/2 cup milk in first and save yourself one item to cleanup).
  2. While whisking, add melted better until well combined.
  3. Let sit for 5-10 minutes to allow flour to absorb liquid, re-whisk 5 seconds when ready to use
  4. Cut parchment paper to about the size of the plate and place onto center of plate.  Use your fingers to push/fold paper to get as flat a surface at the bottom of the plate as possible.
  5. Pour 3 tablespoons batter into center of plate.  Use back of spoon and/or tilt plate to even coating.
  6. Microwave on high 1 minute (may require slightly more or less depending on the power of your oven).
  7. Crepe will be set but (unfortunately) will not brown in the microwave.
  8. Carefully slide edge of knife along edges of crepe to loosen, then invert crepe and peel parchment from crepe.
  9. Repeat process (parchment can be re-used) until all batter is gone.
  10. Fill crepes with favorite fillings, fold or roll, sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.
  



Filling Ideas:
  • Beurre-Sucre (Sugar and Butter) - our family favorite, microwave-able filling recipe below.
  • Nutella & Banana - cut banana into small pieces, spread 2 tsp nutella over crepe, add banana pieces, fold or roll.
  • PB&J - spread 1-2 tsp peanut butter and 1 tsp jelly, fold or roll


Beurre-Sucre Filling Ingredients:
  • 2 tablespoon unmelted butter (salted better, unsalted OK)
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • (Note: lots of other fillings can be used, see directions below)


Beurre-Sucre Directions:
  1. Place butter and sugar into microwave safe small bowl.
  2. Cover bowl loosely with paper towel to catch splatter, and microwave 45-60 seconds, enough time to both melt and spend about 10 seconds bubbling to “cook” some of the sugar.
  3. Sugar may clump, so carefully stir into butter after removing from microwave (butter will be hot!)
  4. Spread 1-2 tsp onto crepe, fold and serve.


Saturday, October 08, 2016

Why I'm Voting for Hillary Clinton


I hear it everywhere.  What a terrible choice we have to make.  They are the most disliked candidates ever.

Like many people out there I find Donald Trump entirely unqualified to be president from almost every perspective: lack of experience, lack of integrity, disagreement on policy, and yes… poor temperament.  Add to that his questionable business practices, his insensitivity to women’s issues, his lack of understanding of minority points of view, his divisive campaign rhetoric and - most importantly - his complete inability to ever admit or learn from a mistake, and the choice is incredibly easy.  I must vote for Hillary Clinton to make sure this man does not become our president.

Then I hear the comparisons on the other side.  Hillary is not trustworthy.  She shows bad judgement.  She is a criminal.

I just don’t buy into it.  But I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, so I did some research on all three:
  • criminality
  • trust
  • judgement

Criminality.  Regarding criminality, I decided that my research wasn’t going to do a better job than congressional committees and the FBI, so I’m relying on their results here, which, after thousands of hours of testimony and investigation found no basis for criminal charges regarding email servers, Ben Ghazi, Whitewater or Vince Foster.  In each of these cases there are trust and judgement issues, but I’m confident she did not break the law.

Trust.  This one is interesting and difficult to separate from the other two.  A critic might argue that she’s untrustworthy because she broke the law.  As we just discussed, I'm confident she did not.  A critic might argue that she’s untrustworthy because she’s shown bad judgement, but that is really just about judgement (which we can discuss below), not trust on its own.  Trust, in my view, is a subjective belief in whether or not someone is telling you the truth.  Sure, Hillary lies.  But in my view she lies in ways that every politician always has and does.  Perhaps more often than some, but far less often than her opponent.

Judgement.  Here is where an argument against Hillary could carry some weight.  Do we really want a president that shows poor judgment in how she used her email server, or more critically, which trade deals she supports, which wars she votes for, or how quickly she sends more security to Ben Ghazi?  Well, again we need to tease things apart.  Some of these are failures of judgement and some are matters of policy.

It is not poor judgement to support a trade deal or fight for gun control or even to support the appointment of a more liberal minded supreme court justice.  All of those are matters of policy over which well-informed people often disagree.  On specific votes such as the Iraq war or when particular amendments make bills difficult to vote for, there is an element of judgement, but in the end I believe those judgements are driven by making tradeoffs between competing policy priorities.  As it happens, not surprisingly because I’m a Democrat, when I read Hillary’s positions on real issues, I agree with almost of all them.

So on real issues of judgment that are unrelated to criminal charges, I see it comes down to these issues or “charges” from her critics:
  • Email Server
  • Ben Ghazi Security
  • Ben Ghazi Lying
  • Clinton Foundation

Let’s take them one at a time.

Email Server.  It was clearly bad judgement to allow state department emails to flow in any way through her personal email server, much less all of her email.  Note that I don’t believe it was bad judgement to have a personal email server in the first place - I think that was good judgement and I’d have done the same if I was in her position because not doing so (a) would have made all her personal email subject to public records, and (b) left her open to accusations that she was using public resources for personal use.  But using it exclusively and allowing the mixing of government and personal emails was just plain foolish; and even if it didn’t lead to any real damage to our national interests, I recognize that it could have.  That said, in the big picture of dumb decisions, it is not on the scale of major policy misjudgments on which I’d prefer to judge any candidate.

Ben Ghazi Security.  The claim is that Hillary showed poor judgement in not sending more soldiers to protect the consulate, even when asked in the weeks and months leading up to the tragic event.  In hindsight, it is easy and obvious to say that she or her people should have sent more protection there. Before the event happened, though, I’m certain it was not obvious.  I believe the accounts that state that Hillary was not involved in the decisions regarding where and in what numbers security personnel were deployed across the globe.  And I fully believe that had she or others in State known what would happen, that they would have taken action to protect the consulate.  In short, to blame her personally for this you’d need to take one of two positions: that she is a monster that wanted the ambassador to be killed, which I plainly don’t believe; or that she should have realized which of the dozens of threats they faced daily were real, which I frankly feel is hard work you can never get correct 100% of the time.

Ben Ghazi Lying.  The claim is that the Obama administration with Hillary as its mouthpiece lied to the American people about the cause of the Ben Ghazi attack in order to support the administration’s message that Al Qaeda was on the retreat.  I believe she made a mistake that many people make, speaking as optimistically as she could based on the information she had getting at the time, which turned out not to be true.  No politician is dumb enough to make false statements that are bound to be disproven, and Hillary is nothing if not a good politician.  Add to that the fact that she was only one person in a much larger “spin machine” (all administrations are spin machines) and I find it impossible to pin blame on Hillary for this, even if it had been a calculated lie.

Clinton Foundation.  The claim is that the foundation provides a method for rich donors (individuals or governments) to influence State Department policy.  John Oliver has done a better job than I can investigating some of the detailed donations.  But politicians have always raised money for their elections and their causes.  Having meetings and fund-raisers is part of the game, and determining the difference between raising-money and “paying for influence” will be impossible until we implement real political reform (which I’m a fan of) to get big money out of politics.  Even so, Hillary anticipated potential conflict here and put solid disclosure policies in place, which the Foundation followed.  I’m having trouble seeing much bad judgement here at all, much less any mistakes that can be pinned to Hillary herself.

So Hillary is not a criminal.  She’s shown some poor judgement regarding some operational (email) matters, but on matters of policy I’m very aligned with her.  I believe that government has an important role in helping the young, sick and elderly; that everyone deserves a fair chance to get educated, and to work hard to lift themselves up; that everyone deserves access to quality healthcare; and that a strong America can be a great partner with other, like-minded countries to fight extremism throughout the world.

Though not exclusively a Hillary position, I also believe that the biggest threat to our internal politics is the ever-increasing divide within the US between extreme views on the left and right. I’ll admit that I’m not sure Hillary is well positioned to cross this divide.  In fact, I was a Bernie Sanders supporter because I felt that challenging and resetting “the system” is the only way eventually bring the country back together (but that’s another blog post).
 
I can’t tell anyone to start trusting Hillary, but I can tell you that the criticisms of her poor judgement and criminal activity have been overblown.  To echo more of John Oliver’s sentiment, if you don’t want to vote for Hillary because you’re worried about possible criminal activity, bad judgement or untrustworthiness, you simply cannot vote for Trump.  Trump is demonstrably less trustworthy, shows far poorer judgement, and is more likely to have broken the law than Hillary.

Run, don’t walk, to the voting booth.  Let’s get Hillary elected, protect our planet from an egomaniacal bully, and live to fight another day for our ideals and to finally heal the divide that plagues our country.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Archaeology in the Catskills

Source: Pinterest
My parents and I have started a pretty nice tradition: once a year I spend a day or two with one of them just-the-two-of-us.  We try to do something out of the day-to-day so that we can connect in ways that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Why wouldn't it be possible otherwise, you might ask.  Our stages-of-life may help answer that question.  I'm 51, married with two kids in college, a full-time job and I live in a suburb of Boston.  My parents are in their 70s, retired, and split their time between Connecticut (summers) and Florida (winters).

While we have many opportunities to connect with one another - at birthdays, holidays and even "family-reunion" vacation time, those invariably become ensemble events, with little time to connect one-on-one with family members beyond the occasional conversation, inevitably interrupted when it’s time to sing Happy Birthday or get dressed for some ceremony.

I asked Dad what he wanted to do this year, and he chose the Catskills.  As I learned in much more detail over the course of the weekend, Dad had fond memories of family vacations and of growing up there.  He wanted to share some of that with me.

I knew the Catskills were once the most popular getaway from New York City in hot summer months, especially for the Jewish community.  The Borscht Belt was famous for its resort hotels and for attracting some of the best entertainers - particularly comedians - in the world.  

Still, I was skeptical that this was the best use of our time.  Online research warned me away, explaining that all that remained of this wonderland were depressing ruins in an area still trying to find a way to recover from the sudden loss of tourism when the people stopped coming.  I was worried there’d be nothing to see or do.  I secretly planned several activities around hiking, fishing and scenic views as a backup plan in case we found the area completely useless for reminiscing.

Turns out my skepticism was justified in one way: the area is now so far disconnected from its past glory that it was difficult to find any location or structure that my father could actually remember. 

But my skepticism turned out to be unwarranted after all!  We ended up having a great time and still connected with each other and with his past!  It turns out you don’t need to be in the Colosseum to learn about Rome; at least not if you have a real live Gladiator to teach you.  My father was able to fill in all the gaps from the precious little clues we found on what turned out to be an archaeology mission in the Catskills.

Huguenot Hotel

We started with one of Dad’s more recent memories: The Hotel Huguenot in Huguenot (which may be administered by a town called Deer Park), NY.  This place was special because it actually had two lives for Dad.  First, it was the location of several summer vacations with his family: a favorite spot he and his extended family would visit repeatedly.  I got a feel for what these resorts were like   when he explained they learned songs, and that they even put on shows with songs and costumes, for the others guests.  He remembered having to dress up as a girl to play a part.  It was like camp with the family. 

Postcard showing Hotel Huguenot in the 1930s.  Source: Boston Public Library Collection

Second, he returned when he was college-age on what sounded like a pretty risqué trip with his future wife (yes: happily this story was about Mom).  He drove up from New York in the summer with his girlfriend to visit his cousin Richard who was up at the hotel for the summer.  It was planned as an all-day trip, and Mom’s parents were a little nervous about letting her go.  Things got pretty dicey when there was a massive rainstorm, delaying them in both directions as they tried to wait out the storm.  They ended up returning Mom to her worried parents in Queens at around 2:00am.

We meandered into town from Port Jervis, from where Dad remembered approaching years ago.  When we hit the uniquely named Neversink Road, he explained we were on the right track.  He remembered the road name.  We knew we were close.

For the next 45 minutes we zig-zagged through the town, blindly looking for the ancient building or for someone who could direct us.  On a quiet Saturday we found no one outside to ask, and no trace of the building.  Dad’s Internet searches had yielded the photo above, and it had a Google Maps marker in it that we tried to find, but quickly realized it was marking the town and not the hotel itself.  We tried in-town and out-of-town, rolling down a beautiful dirt-road until it dead-ended at train tracks, exploring side-roads and main roads, and three times following promising leads to eventually find ourselves well out of town, and turning back.

While we did not find the hotel itself, I’m still pretty sure we found the general 2-3 block area where it once stood.  Nestled in the same area was a tantalizingly-close source of information. We found the Deer Park Museum: an 1863 school house converted into a historical society of the area.  Alas, it was closed for the day.  We moved on.

The Deer Park Museum was a potential source of information but was closed on Saturdays.

When we returned home I re-ran my Internet searches with the new information that "Deer Park" was a valid search term when seeking information on the Huguenot Hotel.  I found a book on Deer Park history that showed that the hotel was on the main road, though I still never got an actual address for the site of the hotel.

Source: Images of America: Deerpark

Monticello

Our next target was Monticello which Dad remembered as the largest town in the area, and one of two towns used as a gathering point for the arriving summer labor force.  Transportation dropped young people from New York here, and employment agencies would find work for them.

We settled in at the friendly Miss Monticello Diner for lunch.  Earlier Dad had told me about the traditional waypoint diner that “everyone" visited on the approach to the Catskills: the Red Apple Rest, but a little research confirmed it was gone as of 2007.  We enjoyed the diner on Broadway that served quality large portions at a reasonable price.  Across the street from the Miss Monticello Diner was an example of what we expected to find around the Catskills, a dilapidated hotel from the 1930s whose floors, we joked, we clearly not level.  We'd skip that hotel, we said, until we found one with floors that didn't sag.

Old hotel in Monticello.  Source: Google Street View

Over lunch, Dad told me how he’d arrived at 14 years-old off a bus from New York, traveling alone, looking for a job (Dad had arrived in Liberty, the next town we’d visit).  He  found his way to an employment office, filled out the forms, and sat there “for hours” until one of the hotel managers who were filtering through the office select him and a few others as waiters.  He carted Dad and the others to the hotel where they’d work the entire summer serving six meals a day (the children ate each meal before the adults, so it meant breakfast, lunch and dinner two times).

An employment form from an agency in the Catskills, similar to the one Dad used to find his first job. 

Dad also explained that pancakes was his go-to meal when he lived in the Catskills, and not just for breakfast.  They were filling, delicious and cheap - so he ended up eating them anytime he ate out.  Now that he’s a bit more affluent he chose to order an omelet, though, for our lunch at the diner.

Liberty

Out next stop was Liberty: the town Dad stopped at to get his first job, and after our failure to find any actual buildings in Huguenot, we spotted an opportunity.  We saw signs for an (open) history museum called the Liberty Museum and Art Center.

The museum was a great stop for us.  We not only got to speak to the gentleman at the desk who provided a great deal of local color and suggestions on where we could find some of the remaining hotels, but we also found a great exhibit displaying photos and souvenirs from the local hotels.  The exhibit focused on Grossinger’s, which was one of the largest hotels in the Catskills and had been located less than a mile away.  Some of the buildings were even still standing.

We left the museum and tried to find some of those hotels, including Grossinger’s and the Kleins Hillside Hotel.  It turns out we were in the wrong town for the Klein’s Hillside, and while we saw the Grossinger’s ruins from afar, we could not get close enough to take photos ourselves.

Even as we didn’t find the actual hotels, Dad continued to fill in the blanks for me.  Wandering through Liberty we saw the town that once catered to all the arriving labor.  The memories started flowing and I heard about his time as a waiter, how he slept in a barn with the other workers, hid stains on his black uniform by pouring dark coffee over the stain to hide it, and how he got a reputation as the milk-boy because he got caught stealing glasses of milk for himself to drink.

Interestingly, Dad told me waiting and bussing tables was one of the worst-fit jobs he ever had, giving him great respect for the people who actually do it well.  It was hard manual work for tips as the only way to actually make money. Most importantly to him, he had few opportunities to learn and expand his perspective.  Later in life he’d explore music and engineering which he found were much more exciting and he made great contributions to, and learned a great deal in, those fields.

South Fallsburg

Now we were getting annoyed: still no actual building to visit that Dad had remembered.  It hurt that Dad had not stayed or worked in the larger hotels that still stood or had more information available.  But Dad had an ace in the hole: the Raleigh Hotel.


Within a couple of summers Dad abandoned the waiter jobs and instead worked in the Catskills as a piano player and band leader.  It was a different process to get the job: Dad assembled the band and got the summer booked in New York before arriving.  He worked in a small hotel and his gigs were nightly after dinner until 10-11pm.  Then he’d be done for the night.

He and his fellow band-members would regularly walk from their smaller venue to a much larger hotel that was less than a mile down the road and they’d watch (and often sit in with) the musicians who played much later into the night at the larger venue.  Dad was pretty sure he remembered this larger hotel was the Raleigh Hotel.

And we knew that the Raleigh Hotel was still standing and operating as a hotel because they were on the Internet and he’d called them the previous week and they’d said they were booked!  Most importantly, we had an actual address for the hotel so we knew where to go.

As we approached we looked for sites that might be the smaller hotel Dad played at.  He thinks it was called the Lincoln, but we saw no sign of it.  (Later we found a listing for a Lincoln Hotel in Parksville, but never found the actual building.)

We did find the Raleigh Hotel, though, and realized the woman who said they were “booked" may have been speaking facetiously.  The place was gated, locked and seemed to be undergoing renovations to be turned into condominiums.  A little additional research showed that the hotel had been through several attempts at resurrection over the years, and this appeared to be the latest one.

Hurleyville

Stymied again, I suggested we try to get more guidance at another nearby museum in Hurleyville. This museum wasn’t just for one town as the Deer Park and Liberty museums were: this museum covered the history of all of Sullivan County and was listed as open until 4pm.

We quickly found the building and discovered that the museum included a Borsht Belt exhibit.  We enjoyed seeing more photos of the hotels, including one of the Raleigh; but the treasure trove for us was a book that listed every known hotel in the area!  The book was organized by town and enumerated over 700 hotels large and small.  We found the Raleigh and Lincoln and we noted that the Lincoln had been owned by the Peltz family, and was in Parksville on "old route 17.”  We added this to our target list.

We also found a listing for the Alpine Hotel.  Dad had mentioned the Alpine as one of his earliest memories of the Catskills.  He thinks he was less than four years old when his family took him there, but he was still able to perfectly perform the song they had taught him that year, which extolled the virtues of leaving your job and cares from the city behind you to enjoy the summer.

The listing in the book was somewhat specific, mentioning that the Alpine was “opposite [the] old theater building” in Fallsburg.  A clue to go on - so off we went!

Listing for Alpine Hotel.  Source: book in Sullivan County Historical Society’s Borscht Belt Exhibit

Fallsburg

After some twists and turns on the road we found the only theater in town and it was clearly "old."  The Rivoli was now doing live theater for a local company and was unfortunately locked up for the day.

Dad in front of the Rivoli Theater

The town was an interesting mix of decaying buildings and signs of resurgence.  Old buildings were paired with freshly paved sidewalks and street signals.  Some buildings were being demolished, others being rebuilt.  The population was an unusual mix of latin residents and orthodox jews: a latin supermarket next door to a jewish bakery.

Across the street were several buildings and lots, any one of which could have been the Alpine Hotel.  We walked the town and the lots, and tried to find the pond or lake that Dad remembered being on or near the property, but found only a damp-but-overgrown bog nearby behind the post-office.  It was probably the lake a it did back up to one of the potential sites of the hotel.

Charming old home for sale across the street from the theater in Fallsburg.  Possible site of Alpine Hotel?

Parksville

Next stop: the Lincoln Hotel, which we saw listed in the book as having been on “Old Route 17.”  We knew about this road.  Route 17 is the main thoroughfare Dad remembered that everyone used to come into the Catskills.  It was, as all highways were at the time, a two-lane road that slowed as it wound through each town along the way.  It has recently been replaced by a modern super-highway, but old route 17 still exists paralleling the new road.  Locals still call it “old 17” but near Parksville it is now officially called Parksville Road.

We pulled into a Mobil station to fill up and in the convenience store Dad struck up a conversation with an older gentleman reading a newspaper.  “Not to insult you,” he said “but you look like you may have lived around here long enough to remember some of the older hotels.”  He pointed us in the direction of a few structures you could access from the road and we went exploring.

The Lincoln Hotel, or a hotel really, really close to it.

And explore we did: we found a building that we simply assumed was the Lincoln Hotel.  It had all the items that Dad remembered about his first job as a waiter.  First, it was close to Liberty, which matched where his bus dropped him off his first summer.  The buildings we found had a separate barn which matched his recollection of where he slept that summer.  There was a swimming pool - or what was left of a pool - across the street.

Swimming pool in front of the Lincoln Hotel, or a hotel close to it.

Drive to Honesdale, PA

It was getting later in the day and we had to decide on next steps.  We’d made no hotel reservations, preferring to “play things by ear” as we worked our way around the area.  Dad made the call: there was just one more stop he wanted to make before we headed back, but this place was not close to the other hotels, Dad just knew it was in the general area.

So we decided to head in the direction of Camp Equinunk, where Dad had gone to camp for three summers as a youngster.  Dad had researched it and knew that the camp still existed and still operated as a summer camp.  Our plan was to get as close as possible to the camp, then find a place to eat and rest for the night.

GPS was our friend and provided a great route, about an hours drive to Honesdale, the closest real town to the camp.

The mountains and forests and streams were beautiful in the Catskills, but were marred by decaying buildings and general sense of disrepair.   However, something interesting happened as we drove through the towns immediately to the west of the Catskills and into northeastern Pennsylvania.   As the squalor diminished the beauty of the natural landscape was able to shine through unencumbered.  It was eye-opening and really beautiful as the day slowly faded through the clouds and trees.

Honesdale, PA

That night we put ourselves into the hands of the proprietors of the Hotel Wayne, where we chose to stay and dine for the night.  It was an historic building in the town, having housed the dignitaries who first financed the canal that helped put Honesdale on the map.  Now it was an aging building trying to survive on its connection with the past.  In fact, the night we were there an episode of Ghostfinders was being filmed, seeking signs of the many spirits that had been detected in the hotel over the past century.

The reality is that the hotel is a very old building with a management team trying to keep it habitable for modern visitors.  They put air conditioners in the windows, crammed tiny toilets / showers into old closets, and installed wifi in all the rooms.  A good attempt, but it was difficult to completely ignore the buckling floors and creaky stairs.  For Dad and I, room 207 had a real charm we enjoyed, despite our joking earlier in Monticello that we wanted a hotel with even floors.  We both agreed our wives may not have been as forgiving for the lack of modernity.

One of the highest rated restaurants in town was right in the hotel, so we decided to try it out.  Bistro 1202 is one of several restaurants owned by the same family that runs the hotel.  We were pretty hungry by the time we sat down, and we got generous portions of decent food that I wouldn’t characterize as “fine dining” (which was how the hotel advertised itself); I’d call it solid restaurant fare. With an expectation of from-scratch-fine-dining, our orders of onion rings, pork buns and duck breast were a disappointment.  But looking at things objectively and with an expectation of a casual restaurant in rural Pennsylvania, the food was fine.  Unfortunately, our waitress was so inattentive and rude (perhaps we’d done something to annoy her) that it actually made the meal uncomfortable.  She was so anxious to have us out that she brought the completed check to us without asking if we wanted dessert (which we did) so we had her reopen the tab.

The next morning we decided to try to find a breakfast place favored by locals, and hit the jackpot with Jennz Café.  We really enjoyed our breakfasts surrounded by friendly service and lots of locals who all knew each other and the restaurant staff.  I had eggs on gluten free toast, and Dad finally had that stack of pancakes that connected him to his Catskill traditions!

Camp Equinuk

Our final stop was Camp Equinunk. Dad went for one summer with his brother Charles, and three summers with his cousin Richie when he was about 9-11 years old.  That put his time there at 1945-1947, a solid 70 years prior.  Dad remembered a good deal and told me all about it on the drive out and, not unlike the Alpine, Dad is still able to sing the camp song end-to-end.

Dad did not consider himself a great athlete: he was overweight as a child and recalled being the kid always picked last.  At Equinunk though, Dad enjoyed some success in swimming.  The camp still has a large lake where Dad was able to compete in swimming during color war.  Color war was the red team against the grey team: since those were - at still are - the colors of the camp logo.  

The lake at Camp Equinunk.  Source: Glide Magazine

He recalled there was a girls camp nearby, and that on weekend nights the camps would organize socials to let the boys and girls socialize.  Camp Blue Ridge still exists as an adjacent girls camp, sharing the lake and some other facilities.

We found an open gate and drove through the camp.  At first, Dad felt it was unrecognizable: new athletic facilities, new living quarters, modern fields and additional buildings obscured any semblance of the old camp.  But a few buildings stood out: probably the same structures he’d slept in for three summers as a child.

Dad at Camp Equinunk

Reflections

There was a real sense of nostalgia in the Catskills and rural Pennsylvania.  I couldn’t tell if we’d brought it with us because of our mission, or if it was naturally embedded into the landscape we’d been exploring.  Either way, the superhighway we drove on as we returned home, passing shiny newly-built malls, Starbucks, Target, and a half-built new Tappan Zee Bridge, provided a jarring jolt back into the present.

I’m so grateful for the time to get to know Dad a little better. Immersing ourselves in the past, however buried that past is, was a wonderful backdrop to encourage us not only to share some previous history, but to create some new history together.