Thursday, March 6, 2014
I alluded to my need to find a health insurance plan to replace my present one in an earlier post, "A Protective, Decorative or Disguising Shell". Today I continue that consideration, armed with more knowledge, thanks to the meeting I had this morning at 9:30 a.m. with Robert Izzo, a "navigator", as those charged with helping the public find a health plan under the new Affordable Care Act regime are called.
Robert is a sixty-one year old who works for the New York State Women's Chamber of Commerce. Normally, he helps women set up small businesses. As his organization was designated to provide assistance to the uninsured and soon-to-be-uninsured in my New York City area once the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land, he is now a "navigator", providing technical assistance to those who approach the office, to which the New York State health exchange directs them. In effect he is a "Virgil", guiding visitors through the underworld of government-run health care.
Helping women set up start-ups is a positive experience; helping men and women find health care under the new regime is not. "I have asked my boss for some 'mental health' days, because I am so stressed from doing this job. I like my job helping women start businesses. Now I have people coming here, women in their sixties, crying because they've lost their health care and the new system isn't working for them", he confesses.
The metaphor of the underworld is apt, because the system is not transparent and requires sophistication and doggedness to penetrate. And for many, there is no happy ending because the new health care they can obtain is more costly and less complete than that they had before. Some individuals are subsidized and obtain health care at reasonable prices, others, not much more well-compensated for the work they do, are shut out from subsidies altogether.
"A waitress who makes $28,000 a year can get a plan that costs $465 a month and a $200 subsidy", Robert explains. "With the subsidy the monthly cost of her health care is $265.
"A guy who makes $42,000 a year gets a plan that costs $700 a month and no subsidy. If his rent is $1600 a month, he can't afford that. It's a mess."
I ask Robert to verify whether it is true that some plans are not national, but limited to, say, the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. (One of the insurance brokers I spoke to told me all the exchange plans were national in their coverage.)
"Yes, I've heard of that. You have to check the coverage details before you sign up to make sure you are getting national coverage."
Here's another "Catch-22": To find the doctors in a particular plan while working with a navigator, you have to be enrolled. Essentially you have to buy the goods sight unseen, unless the plan has a website that lists their doctors. And all the plans are "in-network" only, so if you have a rare disease and no in-network doctor is a specialist, you must pay out-of-pocket for appropriate treatment.
"I had a woman call me who said, 'I'm healthy, but if I get cancer next year, I want to be treated at Sloan-Kettering' Robert continued. "I couldn't help her. She went to Sloan-Kettering, but no one would assist her, they told her they were not the appropriate place for her to get the information she needed. Eventually, she found out that Sloan-Kettering had signed up for one plan, First Republic. --I don't know how she found that out."
Robert tells me a little about himself: he lives with two roommates in an apartment in the Columbia area. He can't afford cable so he has no television or landline, and the computer he uses is the one in his office on 135th Street and Broadway. "Can you imagine, I'm a professional, and I don't have my own computer?"
As I have decided to move, Robert sends an e-mail to someone higher up the health care bureaucracy food chain to ask how the system handles moves out-of-state. I want to know whether I can sign up for health care for the months I remain in New York, then cancel the policy, go to Europe for a few months and sign up in the state I want to settle in upon my return.
"'Life-changing events' are an exception to the rule that you can only sign up for health care during the yearly enrollment period," he tells me. "'Moving' is a life-changing event, so you could sign up for New York, stop paying if you go to Europe, move outside New York on your return and sign up in whatever state you settle in."
Having mentioned moving to him, Robert is curious about how greener the pastures are in any of the places I've explored. Talking a little more, Robert reveals he's thinking of moving out of New York.
"Is it better in North Carolina?", he asks me. I end up counseling him as to what states have no income tax, how to compare the cost of living in one locality versus another, to look out for a city or town income tax, to evaluate what the level of sales tax is.
It would not be unreasonable to speculate that the Affordable Care Act will lead to some outmigration from places, like New York City, too expensive for the middle-class to survive in. The financial squeeze is too great and Americans have always been a mobile and practical people.
"At the turn-of-the century, our ancestors left Europe for a better life in America. I feel like now our generation, the baby-boomers, are doing the same in reverse" a friend told me. She and her husband are leaving Westchester for the same reasons I will be leaving New York.
It feels odd to leave a place that my family has lived in for more than a century. It is an uprooting, no question about it. Thankfully, it's a big country and Americans respect resourcefulness and don't have prejudices against "new" people, as can be the case in other parts of the world. So I'll navigate my way out of New York: It's a relief to have decided, at last, to go.
***
Later in the day I go to visit my physical therapist, with whom I discuss my search for health care. She tells me that her health care plan covers her only in New York State, thereby confirming what Robert, the "navigator" said; and contradicting an insurance broker who, pushing the "Oxford Liberty" plan (one of the most expensive), told me "emergency coverage out-of-state is always covered".
When I arrive home, an e-mail from Robert is waiting for me: he has the answer to my question about what would happen if I sign up for health care in New York, go to Europe for the summer, and return to the U.S., but to live in another of the fifty states. It is a two-part answer:
"Yes", I can sign up for health care in another state when I return under the "moving" exception. However, if I do not keep paying the premiums to New York while I am in Europe, I will be subject to "the penalty" for not carrying health insurance. That "penalty" is the yearly $125 penalty imposed on anyone not enrolled in a health insurance plan. That penalty is anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 less than what it would cost me to keep up New York State health insurance while I am in abroad.
As none of the U.S. plans provide coverage abroad and I have to pay for travel insurance (which does not cover routine medical care, but is much cheaper) the choice is obvious: carry a New York State plan until I leave for Europe, stop paying once I leave the country and pay the penalty; then enroll in the state I settle in when I return.
***
I read in the newspapers that the Obama administration has announced a new policy providing that anyone wishing to keep their health insurance coverage may do so through 2016. However, state insurance commissioners and the insurers themselves have to be willing to continue to offer the plans. This news does not provide me with much comfort, though: my coverage is through COBRA, a program mean to bridge coverage between jobs, or to provide coverage to dependents of a someone covered under an employer plan who has died. It is a "one-off", meant to cover extraordinary events. So my health coverage is not covered under the new policy, and I have to keep looking for a health insurance plan to replace the old one.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Day Of The Jackal; Potatoes and Pickled Herring
Ash Wednesday
March 5, 2014
I made my own Mardi Gras last night. I ordered in white pizza from V&T's (a famous pizza parlor and a neighborhood institution), and bought a small cheesecake. I got a chance to watch Fred Zinneman's Day of the Jackal, a wonderful film based on the idea that there was a follow-up assassination attempt on the life of President de Gaulle after the first --which actually occurred on August 22, 1962. In the movie, OAS, an underground group of military men opposed to de Gaulle's decision to grant Algeria independence, demoralized after the first attempt's failure, entrust a cold-blooded assassin, "The Jackal", to kill de Gaulle.
The film, based on the Frederick Forsyth novel of the same name, stars Edward Fox as the Jackal, Cyril Cusack as the maker of the gun the Jackal uses in the assassination attempt, Ronald Pickup as the forger of identify papers, Michael Lonsdale as Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel and a very young Derek Jacobi as his assistant, Caron. Eric Porter plays Colonel Rodin of the OAS, the ravishing Delphine Seyrig ("Last Year At Marienbad"), is Colette de Montpellier, the aristocrat he romances. Donald Sinden is Assistant Commissioner Anthony Mallinson of Scotland Yard, who is ordered by the Prime Minister to help his French counterparts in order that the Jackal, believed to be an Englishman, may be prevented from disgracing Britain by killing de Gaulle.
The film belongs to Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Fox appears soon after the credits (which are set against footage of the first assassination attempt and execution of the perpetrators). Deputy Commissioner Lebel only appears later, after the French Minister of the Interior has run out of ideas for finding The Jackal. Police Commissioner Berthier, invited to the meetings by the Minister, is asked for his recommendation, at which point he says that to find the identify of The Jackal, it will take a detective. Who is his best? the Minister asks. Deputy Commissioner Lebel, comes the reply. The camera cuts away.
Lebel is first seen standing in a dovecote, tending to his pigeons. He is smiling, until his wife runs out of their house in the country to tell him that his boss, Police Commissioner Berthier, is on the phone. The investigation is conducted in absolute secrecy and under the supervision of the Minister of the Interior until the Jackal murders Colette de Montpellier, at which point Lebel is told his help is no longer needed. Only when the bureaucracy falters is Lebel recalled. The assassination is prevented, but only just barely.
The Jackal is a brilliant psychopath, Lebel is a bloodhound on his trail. "The Day Of The Jackal", is so popular because it delineates so tautly the rigor of each character's pursuit of his objective: in the Jackal's case, to execute a fantastic killing that will end his career, but leave him a millionaire; in Lebel's case, to prevent the violent death of a head of state who epitomized France's resistance in World War II and the years of progress that followed. The Jackal is flashy, but cunning; Lebel is self-effacing and relentless. In the penultimate scene, Lebel, carrying a powerful automatic weapon, bursts into the attic room where the Jackal has his lair, killing the Jackal in one violent burst of weapons fire before the Jackal can kill him. The last scene has Lebel at the graveside of the man called the Jackal, who it turns out is not Englishman Charles Calthorp, whose identity the Jackal had assumed for his last job. The Jackal's identity remains, to the end, a mystery.
***
Today being Ash Wednesday, I went for ashes at noon at my nearby church, a few blocks away. As today is a fast day, I decided to eat simply, lunch, the main meal allowed, being a boiled potato, pickled herring and onions sautéd in garlic, a dish I prepared myself.
Pickled herring and potatoes is a favorite Scandinavian dish. Herring has been popular there for centuries because it keeps for long periods when cured or pickled. It is a basic dish in cold climates because its basic preparation has taken place long before it is eaten and it can be accompanied by hot potatoes or noodles, both of which require little cooking. As it is still quite cold outside, pickled herring and a boiled potato is perfect for a cold Ash Wednesday.
At Ascension, the pews were filled to bursting and it was standing room only. Ascension supports a diverse community of Spanish speakers who are among the church's most faithful parishioners. It also serves the English-speaking community in the area. The two communities do not cross paths that often, as there is a Spanish-language Mass and there are English masses, and a only few bilingual ones on selected holy days of obligation.
So it is striking to see the range of the parishioners at the noon service: uniformed food service workers from the Dominican Republic, still wearing their hairnets over black, straight hair tied in a bun; Mexican men, Columbia students, neighborhood people, church stalwarts. A few minutes into the service, one of the two uniformed ladies finds a seat in a pew in front of me and slips her hairnet off: the gesture reflects her awareness that she is in church, not the food counter, and it touches me.
Into the space at the end of my pew, a very elderly and feeble man from the Dominican Republic and his daughter, squeeze in. The man sits next to me and asks me a question or two through the service: "Will there be Mass after the ashes are given out?" ("Yes"). What are those people on line in the central aisle doing?" ("They're taking communion.") He, like quite a few of the Hispanic men present, does not take communion. I read somewhere that many Catholic men will go to Mass, but won't confess before. Knowing they have something to confess but not doing so, they won't take communion. (Which shows respect for the Church's rule, but perhaps at their own expense.)
After, I go upstairs to the organ loft to visit with the Music Director. He had to play the organ with one foot because of surgery to a bunion. It will be a very busy day for him, as the last service will be at 7:00 p.m. The forty days of Lent have begun.
March 5, 2014
I made my own Mardi Gras last night. I ordered in white pizza from V&T's (a famous pizza parlor and a neighborhood institution), and bought a small cheesecake. I got a chance to watch Fred Zinneman's Day of the Jackal, a wonderful film based on the idea that there was a follow-up assassination attempt on the life of President de Gaulle after the first --which actually occurred on August 22, 1962. In the movie, OAS, an underground group of military men opposed to de Gaulle's decision to grant Algeria independence, demoralized after the first attempt's failure, entrust a cold-blooded assassin, "The Jackal", to kill de Gaulle.
The film, based on the Frederick Forsyth novel of the same name, stars Edward Fox as the Jackal, Cyril Cusack as the maker of the gun the Jackal uses in the assassination attempt, Ronald Pickup as the forger of identify papers, Michael Lonsdale as Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel and a very young Derek Jacobi as his assistant, Caron. Eric Porter plays Colonel Rodin of the OAS, the ravishing Delphine Seyrig ("Last Year At Marienbad"), is Colette de Montpellier, the aristocrat he romances. Donald Sinden is Assistant Commissioner Anthony Mallinson of Scotland Yard, who is ordered by the Prime Minister to help his French counterparts in order that the Jackal, believed to be an Englishman, may be prevented from disgracing Britain by killing de Gaulle.
The film belongs to Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Fox appears soon after the credits (which are set against footage of the first assassination attempt and execution of the perpetrators). Deputy Commissioner Lebel only appears later, after the French Minister of the Interior has run out of ideas for finding The Jackal. Police Commissioner Berthier, invited to the meetings by the Minister, is asked for his recommendation, at which point he says that to find the identify of The Jackal, it will take a detective. Who is his best? the Minister asks. Deputy Commissioner Lebel, comes the reply. The camera cuts away.
Lebel is first seen standing in a dovecote, tending to his pigeons. He is smiling, until his wife runs out of their house in the country to tell him that his boss, Police Commissioner Berthier, is on the phone. The investigation is conducted in absolute secrecy and under the supervision of the Minister of the Interior until the Jackal murders Colette de Montpellier, at which point Lebel is told his help is no longer needed. Only when the bureaucracy falters is Lebel recalled. The assassination is prevented, but only just barely.
The Jackal is a brilliant psychopath, Lebel is a bloodhound on his trail. "The Day Of The Jackal", is so popular because it delineates so tautly the rigor of each character's pursuit of his objective: in the Jackal's case, to execute a fantastic killing that will end his career, but leave him a millionaire; in Lebel's case, to prevent the violent death of a head of state who epitomized France's resistance in World War II and the years of progress that followed. The Jackal is flashy, but cunning; Lebel is self-effacing and relentless. In the penultimate scene, Lebel, carrying a powerful automatic weapon, bursts into the attic room where the Jackal has his lair, killing the Jackal in one violent burst of weapons fire before the Jackal can kill him. The last scene has Lebel at the graveside of the man called the Jackal, who it turns out is not Englishman Charles Calthorp, whose identity the Jackal had assumed for his last job. The Jackal's identity remains, to the end, a mystery.
***
Today being Ash Wednesday, I went for ashes at noon at my nearby church, a few blocks away. As today is a fast day, I decided to eat simply, lunch, the main meal allowed, being a boiled potato, pickled herring and onions sautéd in garlic, a dish I prepared myself.
Pickled herring and potatoes is a favorite Scandinavian dish. Herring has been popular there for centuries because it keeps for long periods when cured or pickled. It is a basic dish in cold climates because its basic preparation has taken place long before it is eaten and it can be accompanied by hot potatoes or noodles, both of which require little cooking. As it is still quite cold outside, pickled herring and a boiled potato is perfect for a cold Ash Wednesday.
At Ascension, the pews were filled to bursting and it was standing room only. Ascension supports a diverse community of Spanish speakers who are among the church's most faithful parishioners. It also serves the English-speaking community in the area. The two communities do not cross paths that often, as there is a Spanish-language Mass and there are English masses, and a only few bilingual ones on selected holy days of obligation.
So it is striking to see the range of the parishioners at the noon service: uniformed food service workers from the Dominican Republic, still wearing their hairnets over black, straight hair tied in a bun; Mexican men, Columbia students, neighborhood people, church stalwarts. A few minutes into the service, one of the two uniformed ladies finds a seat in a pew in front of me and slips her hairnet off: the gesture reflects her awareness that she is in church, not the food counter, and it touches me.
Into the space at the end of my pew, a very elderly and feeble man from the Dominican Republic and his daughter, squeeze in. The man sits next to me and asks me a question or two through the service: "Will there be Mass after the ashes are given out?" ("Yes"). What are those people on line in the central aisle doing?" ("They're taking communion.") He, like quite a few of the Hispanic men present, does not take communion. I read somewhere that many Catholic men will go to Mass, but won't confess before. Knowing they have something to confess but not doing so, they won't take communion. (Which shows respect for the Church's rule, but perhaps at their own expense.)
After, I go upstairs to the organ loft to visit with the Music Director. He had to play the organ with one foot because of surgery to a bunion. It will be a very busy day for him, as the last service will be at 7:00 p.m. The forty days of Lent have begun.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
The Cold War
March 4, 2014
When I wrote about "White Nights" a few posts ago, I was thinking about whether the fomenting crisis in the Ukraine was not the Cold War redux. Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB, fits the bill as head of "the Evil Empire" as Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union: teetotaling, treacherous, isolationist. For students of history, the invasion of the Ukraine to protect Russian citizens threatened by the government that has replaced Yanukovich, harks back to Hitler's invasion of Poland to protect German citizens supposedly under threat by Polish machinations. It is of course fitting that Poland is in the lead in calling for harsh sanctions against Russia. Poles lived Russian rule and resisted it unafraid of the hardships required to throw off Soviet domination. Whether Western Europeans will be capable of similar resolve remains to be seen.
With the temperature at seven a.m. this morning at 14 degrees, it is hard not to dwell on the hardships of life in much of Russia, where the deep freeze is the norm. In the Baltic, summer essentially ends August 15, as Bill and I learned when we booked a cruise of that sea that began on that date. Stopping for the day in Visby, a Swedish island favored by that country's wealthy (Ingmar Bergman had a home there), it is known for its roses, which were still blooming the morning we visited. By afternoon, however, we were in the midst of a hellish rainstorm which stranded us on the island overnight. Violently windy and cold weather is a norm in the north of Europe during the same days citizens of Mediterranean countries are lolling on beaches. Being raised in these climes affects the mode of thinking of people, some historians have argued. Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama's book about the role of landscape in forming the mindset of the German people, explores the idea. I don't know if someone has done a similar book about Russia and Russians, but living this frigid winter in New York, it seems likelier to me that a certain inflexibility might creep into the attitudes of people forced to live much of the year in extreme cold, a contempt for those whose day-to-day is not quite as driven by what is outside the window --the "decadent West", as I think Putin has referred to us.
In need of psychic balm after the labors of my tax season, I decided to reward myself by visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the exhibit of photographs of Charles Marville, "the official photographer of Paris", who plied his trade just before, and during, Haussmann's massive reconstruction of the city. Atget's early career overlapped with Marville's later, but the two men's work could not be more different: Atget's images have a sharpness only the improvements to the technology could have brought about, they are documentary. Marville's are "painterly", the efforts he made to create the image are visible in the photograph. This is apt, because Marville began working in the infancy of the medium, when the reliability of the entire image varied with 1. the patience of the subject to stand in front of the camera for several seconds while the image was exposed; and, 2. ability of the photographer to compensate for the lack of technical aids to convey accurately such essential backgrounds to images as clouds. For instance, some photographers took separate photos of clouds, then amalgamated them to images of the streetscapes below them to create the overall photograph they wanted.
Among the most interesting photographs in the exhibit are of public toilets. There were different styles, some enclosing the whole body, others permitting the head and shoulders of the toilets' users to be seen, the distance between consumers of the service no greater than that over a garden wall. These toilets were replaced with others providing users greater enclosure. The older ones reflect a lesser concern about bodily functions than the newer, and are a reminder that in earlier times it was not unusual for bodily functions' exertions to be carried out in the plain view of others also bowing to their bodies' demands. In French, the public toilets were called vespasiennes, in homage to Vespasian, the Roman emperor, who first made public toilets pay.
The Financial Times of last weekend contained an admiring essay by Ariella Budick, "The ghosts of Paris past", about the Marville exhibit. Funnily, I got more pleasure out of reading the article than actually seeing the exhibit. The review used two photographs from the exhibit, "Rue Estienne' (1862-65); and, "A lamppost at the entrance to the École des Beaux Arts" to illustrate it. The photographs are set against the FT's softly salmon-colored paper, giving them a greater feeling of timelessness than the Met's prints --set on white mounts-- do. Reading the reviewer's evocation of the cacophony of drills and hammers that built such monuments of "old" Paris as the Palais Garnier, I could imagine how disruptive Haussman's grand plan for the city was of the lives of the people who worked at les petits métiers --the tanners, the sellers of old clothing and furniture, the tin merchants-- all the people who served Paris' poor. Both groups were uprooted in consequence of the creation of Paris' Grands Boulevards.
One of the most interesting photographs is of the two squat pillars that marked the entrance to the old Les Halles --the food market that preceded the creation of the cathedral of glass that was itself torn down in 1971, when the market moved to Rungis, in Paris' suburbs. The two columns dated to the market's creation in 1183. When Haussmann targeted them for destruction, there was no outcry. On the other hand, when Les Halles was torn down (replaced by a modernist nightmare --a failed shopping center) it was denounced as "architectural suicide". Nonetheless, it was accomplished.
Open war between architectural preservationists and modernizers is the stuff of our times, a drama of "the heroism of modern life", as Baudelaire called it. Sometimes the preservationists overshadow the modernizers, sometimes the modernizers force preservationists to yield to the imperatives of modernizing technology. Whether we admire Haussmann's ambition or reject it as megalomania, photos of the city of Paris before and after Haussman force us to reflect on the price of modernity. Indeed, at the time of Paris' rebuilding, some critics observed that the "new" Paris was simply a place in which the wealthy disported themselves in the playground of the city's center, while the poor, rendered invisible, were pushed to its margins.
Plus ça change, plus la même chose, non?
When I wrote about "White Nights" a few posts ago, I was thinking about whether the fomenting crisis in the Ukraine was not the Cold War redux. Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB, fits the bill as head of "the Evil Empire" as Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union: teetotaling, treacherous, isolationist. For students of history, the invasion of the Ukraine to protect Russian citizens threatened by the government that has replaced Yanukovich, harks back to Hitler's invasion of Poland to protect German citizens supposedly under threat by Polish machinations. It is of course fitting that Poland is in the lead in calling for harsh sanctions against Russia. Poles lived Russian rule and resisted it unafraid of the hardships required to throw off Soviet domination. Whether Western Europeans will be capable of similar resolve remains to be seen.
With the temperature at seven a.m. this morning at 14 degrees, it is hard not to dwell on the hardships of life in much of Russia, where the deep freeze is the norm. In the Baltic, summer essentially ends August 15, as Bill and I learned when we booked a cruise of that sea that began on that date. Stopping for the day in Visby, a Swedish island favored by that country's wealthy (Ingmar Bergman had a home there), it is known for its roses, which were still blooming the morning we visited. By afternoon, however, we were in the midst of a hellish rainstorm which stranded us on the island overnight. Violently windy and cold weather is a norm in the north of Europe during the same days citizens of Mediterranean countries are lolling on beaches. Being raised in these climes affects the mode of thinking of people, some historians have argued. Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama's book about the role of landscape in forming the mindset of the German people, explores the idea. I don't know if someone has done a similar book about Russia and Russians, but living this frigid winter in New York, it seems likelier to me that a certain inflexibility might creep into the attitudes of people forced to live much of the year in extreme cold, a contempt for those whose day-to-day is not quite as driven by what is outside the window --the "decadent West", as I think Putin has referred to us.
In need of psychic balm after the labors of my tax season, I decided to reward myself by visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the exhibit of photographs of Charles Marville, "the official photographer of Paris", who plied his trade just before, and during, Haussmann's massive reconstruction of the city. Atget's early career overlapped with Marville's later, but the two men's work could not be more different: Atget's images have a sharpness only the improvements to the technology could have brought about, they are documentary. Marville's are "painterly", the efforts he made to create the image are visible in the photograph. This is apt, because Marville began working in the infancy of the medium, when the reliability of the entire image varied with 1. the patience of the subject to stand in front of the camera for several seconds while the image was exposed; and, 2. ability of the photographer to compensate for the lack of technical aids to convey accurately such essential backgrounds to images as clouds. For instance, some photographers took separate photos of clouds, then amalgamated them to images of the streetscapes below them to create the overall photograph they wanted.
Among the most interesting photographs in the exhibit are of public toilets. There were different styles, some enclosing the whole body, others permitting the head and shoulders of the toilets' users to be seen, the distance between consumers of the service no greater than that over a garden wall. These toilets were replaced with others providing users greater enclosure. The older ones reflect a lesser concern about bodily functions than the newer, and are a reminder that in earlier times it was not unusual for bodily functions' exertions to be carried out in the plain view of others also bowing to their bodies' demands. In French, the public toilets were called vespasiennes, in homage to Vespasian, the Roman emperor, who first made public toilets pay.
The Financial Times of last weekend contained an admiring essay by Ariella Budick, "The ghosts of Paris past", about the Marville exhibit. Funnily, I got more pleasure out of reading the article than actually seeing the exhibit. The review used two photographs from the exhibit, "Rue Estienne' (1862-65); and, "A lamppost at the entrance to the École des Beaux Arts" to illustrate it. The photographs are set against the FT's softly salmon-colored paper, giving them a greater feeling of timelessness than the Met's prints --set on white mounts-- do. Reading the reviewer's evocation of the cacophony of drills and hammers that built such monuments of "old" Paris as the Palais Garnier, I could imagine how disruptive Haussman's grand plan for the city was of the lives of the people who worked at les petits métiers --the tanners, the sellers of old clothing and furniture, the tin merchants-- all the people who served Paris' poor. Both groups were uprooted in consequence of the creation of Paris' Grands Boulevards.
One of the most interesting photographs is of the two squat pillars that marked the entrance to the old Les Halles --the food market that preceded the creation of the cathedral of glass that was itself torn down in 1971, when the market moved to Rungis, in Paris' suburbs. The two columns dated to the market's creation in 1183. When Haussmann targeted them for destruction, there was no outcry. On the other hand, when Les Halles was torn down (replaced by a modernist nightmare --a failed shopping center) it was denounced as "architectural suicide". Nonetheless, it was accomplished.
Open war between architectural preservationists and modernizers is the stuff of our times, a drama of "the heroism of modern life", as Baudelaire called it. Sometimes the preservationists overshadow the modernizers, sometimes the modernizers force preservationists to yield to the imperatives of modernizing technology. Whether we admire Haussmann's ambition or reject it as megalomania, photos of the city of Paris before and after Haussman force us to reflect on the price of modernity. Indeed, at the time of Paris' rebuilding, some critics observed that the "new" Paris was simply a place in which the wealthy disported themselves in the playground of the city's center, while the poor, rendered invisible, were pushed to its margins.
Plus ça change, plus la même chose, non?
Monday, March 3, 2014
Uplift After Taxes
March 3, 2014
I completed my taxes tonight. Not just the 2013 tax year return, but the organization of the payment of the April 15 estimated taxes which are now part of my new life as someone essentially in retirement. A feeling of depletion at tax time is not unusual: in proof of the fact, fewer children are born in the United States around January 15. That's nine months from when taxes are due.
Our local Citbank remains closed, and lately the temporary ATMs have been out of order, so tonight around nine o'clock, Beauregard and I made the walk to the nearest Citibank, which is on 96th Street and Broadway, fifteen blocks away. The temperatures are once again frigid, although the relief I feel from having completed this task quickens my step. I need to transfer funds to make sure the moneys are available when the taxman comes to get them, and not procrastinating about it will give me closure.
There is new snow on the ground in places, and on the windshields of parked cars. One wag took advantage of last night's snowfall to express himself. I passed a windshield on which his or her finger had served as chalk to the windshield's blackboard: "No More!" the graffitist had written. On the next car's windshield he had also left his mark: "Enough!" Could he or she have been referring to the snow?
Making the bank transfer took just a few minutes. Walking down to 96th Street and back, fighting the wind whipping Broadway, I fantasized of leaving everything behind and going on a world tour. I once read that Noel Coward, near collapse after too much success in the West End, took a cruise around the Asian Pacific to disappear from London for a while. I always envied him, being able to withdraw from the world for several months aboard a slow boat to China (He wrote "Mad Dogs And Englishman" during the trip.)
Alas, I am tethered to New York. However, I returned to my building to have the doorman hand me a package. It was a collection of CDs of music by the Benedictine nuns of Mary, Queen of Apostles convent, located in rural Missouri. I had heard them sing on WQXR, which has played many selections from their three recordings over the last few months.
I put Angels And Saints At Ephesus on and heard the strains of a hymn entitled "O God Of Loveliness", sung to a melody I recognized immediately. I had sung it as a child, at morning chapel at the Scotch Presbyterian private school I attended, Alexander Robertson. I struggled to remember the lyrics I sang, which were different. All I could remember was the last line of a verse "Who makes the woeful heart to sing."
Looking at the album notes I saw that the melody is known as "The Silesian Crusader's Hymn". I entered the title into the browser of my computer and got my answer. I learned the hymn as "Fairest Lord Jesus". If filing my taxes brought me low, the hymn raised me high. "The world is too much with us" sometimes, but for me, not when these nuns sing. They were the remedy for what ailed me.
Below is the verse I sang to the Silesian Crusaders' Hymn:
I completed my taxes tonight. Not just the 2013 tax year return, but the organization of the payment of the April 15 estimated taxes which are now part of my new life as someone essentially in retirement. A feeling of depletion at tax time is not unusual: in proof of the fact, fewer children are born in the United States around January 15. That's nine months from when taxes are due.
Our local Citbank remains closed, and lately the temporary ATMs have been out of order, so tonight around nine o'clock, Beauregard and I made the walk to the nearest Citibank, which is on 96th Street and Broadway, fifteen blocks away. The temperatures are once again frigid, although the relief I feel from having completed this task quickens my step. I need to transfer funds to make sure the moneys are available when the taxman comes to get them, and not procrastinating about it will give me closure.
There is new snow on the ground in places, and on the windshields of parked cars. One wag took advantage of last night's snowfall to express himself. I passed a windshield on which his or her finger had served as chalk to the windshield's blackboard: "No More!" the graffitist had written. On the next car's windshield he had also left his mark: "Enough!" Could he or she have been referring to the snow?
Making the bank transfer took just a few minutes. Walking down to 96th Street and back, fighting the wind whipping Broadway, I fantasized of leaving everything behind and going on a world tour. I once read that Noel Coward, near collapse after too much success in the West End, took a cruise around the Asian Pacific to disappear from London for a while. I always envied him, being able to withdraw from the world for several months aboard a slow boat to China (He wrote "Mad Dogs And Englishman" during the trip.)
Alas, I am tethered to New York. However, I returned to my building to have the doorman hand me a package. It was a collection of CDs of music by the Benedictine nuns of Mary, Queen of Apostles convent, located in rural Missouri. I had heard them sing on WQXR, which has played many selections from their three recordings over the last few months.
I put Angels And Saints At Ephesus on and heard the strains of a hymn entitled "O God Of Loveliness", sung to a melody I recognized immediately. I had sung it as a child, at morning chapel at the Scotch Presbyterian private school I attended, Alexander Robertson. I struggled to remember the lyrics I sang, which were different. All I could remember was the last line of a verse "Who makes the woeful heart to sing."
Looking at the album notes I saw that the melody is known as "The Silesian Crusader's Hymn". I entered the title into the browser of my computer and got my answer. I learned the hymn as "Fairest Lord Jesus". If filing my taxes brought me low, the hymn raised me high. "The world is too much with us" sometimes, but for me, not when these nuns sing. They were the remedy for what ailed me.
Below is the verse I sang to the Silesian Crusaders' Hymn:
- Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature,
- O Thou of God and man the Son,
- Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,
- Thou, my soul’s glory, joy and crown.
- Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands,
- Robed in the blooming garb of spring;
- Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,
- Who makes the woeful heart to sing.
- Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight,
- And all the twinkling starry host;
- Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer
- Than all the angels heaven can boast.
- All fairest beauty, heavenly and earthly,
- Wondrously, Jesus, is found in Thee;
- None can be nearer, fairer or dearer,
- Than Thou, my Savior, art to me.
- Beautiful Savior! Lord of all the nations!
- Son of God and Son of Man!
- Glory and honor, praise, adoration,
- Now and forever more be Thine.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
A Protective, Decorative or Disguising Shell
Saturday, March 1, 2014
There's a 1997 Norwegian movie called Insomnia that comes to mind as I write this. It is about a Swedish detective named Engstrom who has had to exile himself to Norway for having sex with a witness in one of his investigations. Assigned to an investigation in a village north of the Arctic Circle during the summer, when the sun never sets, the constant daylight is a metaphor for relentless exposure --of Engstrom's past, of his "foreign-ness" in Norway, of the facts in a murder investigation. The idea that constant daylight in summer is anything but delectable also turns up in White NIghts, Taylor Hackford's 1985 film about a tap dancer and a ballet dancer (Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov, respectively) trapped in the Soviet Union. The French, use the term to describe a sleepless night, which is what I am having.
The deep freeze has not kept me inside, thanks to Beauregard, although most of my friends seem to have been knocked for a loop by it. No one's keen to go out, many of my neighbors laid low with a cold or a flu, everyone complaining of how dry their skins are from the heat sent up through the pipes of their apartments. In fact, complaining has become an Olympic sport among "adults" this winter. I exclude from the definition many college students in the area, who are running in the parks wearing shorts, despite the -5 degree temperatures (with the wind chill factored in).
When I am not out with Beauregard, I am trying to figure out what health care plan I will enroll in once the COBRA I currently have runs out May 31. If Bill had lived one more year, I would have had health care coverage at a reasonable price for life; on his death I got three years of coverage at double the price we had been paying, a COBRA few who lose their spouses get for so long, even at $600 a month. Nevertheless, I'm five years away from Medicare, so for the next five years, I have to avail myself of the offerings made available by the Affordable Care Act .
The plans available comparable to the coverage I have now will cost $1000/month, a $400 increase, without factoring in that the plans allow no out-of-network reimbursement. I will lose all my present doctors, because the reimbursement rates are too low to be attractive to them. As I evaluate the plans, consulting with brokers for the plans, "navigators" (non-broker consultants), and friends who are familiar with a few of them, I am discovering that neither dentistry nor vision care will be covered in any fashion. Also, companies can charge a deductible for medications and a deductible for medical care, meaning that reaching a cap on one, doesn't stop co-pays on the other. It all adds up to an increase in my health insurance costs of at least $5,000 up front, before figuring my required contributions should I actually need medical care.
In effect, the combination of New York State and New York City taxes, increased health care costs and the increasing cost of living in New York City generally, is pushing me out of the City.
Of course, my situation isn't terrible: many are much more strained. However, the cost of the financial platform I need to live here keeps rising, while my income stays fixed. The result is that in the future, I will be more and more pressed financially. Many New Yorkers in a similar position opt to stay and reduce their lifestyle, replacing the full-price tickets they used to buy with discount ones; or go only to free concerts, going out much less frequently, curtailing restaurant, hair care, vacation and other expenses. They trawl the thrift shops the way they once did sample sales or department stores. I do.
There's a carapace I see I'm starting to develop in consequence of my new situation. I don't want to spend time in theatre crowds, even for a performance I would have given my eye teeth for once: it takes too much energy. I'd rather spend time in the park with Beau, or reading when I don't have to attend to financial matters. The time spent that way gives me the chance to plan my escape. When I'm in the park, no matter how frigid the temperatures I'm reminded of nature's beauty and that there are places elsewhere in the fifty states where I could live and start life anew.
And maybe sleep better, too.
There's a 1997 Norwegian movie called Insomnia that comes to mind as I write this. It is about a Swedish detective named Engstrom who has had to exile himself to Norway for having sex with a witness in one of his investigations. Assigned to an investigation in a village north of the Arctic Circle during the summer, when the sun never sets, the constant daylight is a metaphor for relentless exposure --of Engstrom's past, of his "foreign-ness" in Norway, of the facts in a murder investigation. The idea that constant daylight in summer is anything but delectable also turns up in White NIghts, Taylor Hackford's 1985 film about a tap dancer and a ballet dancer (Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov, respectively) trapped in the Soviet Union. The French, use the term to describe a sleepless night, which is what I am having.
The deep freeze has not kept me inside, thanks to Beauregard, although most of my friends seem to have been knocked for a loop by it. No one's keen to go out, many of my neighbors laid low with a cold or a flu, everyone complaining of how dry their skins are from the heat sent up through the pipes of their apartments. In fact, complaining has become an Olympic sport among "adults" this winter. I exclude from the definition many college students in the area, who are running in the parks wearing shorts, despite the -5 degree temperatures (with the wind chill factored in).
When I am not out with Beauregard, I am trying to figure out what health care plan I will enroll in once the COBRA I currently have runs out May 31. If Bill had lived one more year, I would have had health care coverage at a reasonable price for life; on his death I got three years of coverage at double the price we had been paying, a COBRA few who lose their spouses get for so long, even at $600 a month. Nevertheless, I'm five years away from Medicare, so for the next five years, I have to avail myself of the offerings made available by the Affordable Care Act .
The plans available comparable to the coverage I have now will cost $1000/month, a $400 increase, without factoring in that the plans allow no out-of-network reimbursement. I will lose all my present doctors, because the reimbursement rates are too low to be attractive to them. As I evaluate the plans, consulting with brokers for the plans, "navigators" (non-broker consultants), and friends who are familiar with a few of them, I am discovering that neither dentistry nor vision care will be covered in any fashion. Also, companies can charge a deductible for medications and a deductible for medical care, meaning that reaching a cap on one, doesn't stop co-pays on the other. It all adds up to an increase in my health insurance costs of at least $5,000 up front, before figuring my required contributions should I actually need medical care.
In effect, the combination of New York State and New York City taxes, increased health care costs and the increasing cost of living in New York City generally, is pushing me out of the City.
Of course, my situation isn't terrible: many are much more strained. However, the cost of the financial platform I need to live here keeps rising, while my income stays fixed. The result is that in the future, I will be more and more pressed financially. Many New Yorkers in a similar position opt to stay and reduce their lifestyle, replacing the full-price tickets they used to buy with discount ones; or go only to free concerts, going out much less frequently, curtailing restaurant, hair care, vacation and other expenses. They trawl the thrift shops the way they once did sample sales or department stores. I do.
There's a carapace I see I'm starting to develop in consequence of my new situation. I don't want to spend time in theatre crowds, even for a performance I would have given my eye teeth for once: it takes too much energy. I'd rather spend time in the park with Beau, or reading when I don't have to attend to financial matters. The time spent that way gives me the chance to plan my escape. When I'm in the park, no matter how frigid the temperatures I'm reminded of nature's beauty and that there are places elsewhere in the fifty states where I could live and start life anew.
And maybe sleep better, too.
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