The Black Hole of Geezera

All righty then, for MBTA fare purposes, I'm now an official geezer. This hasn't helped me get a priority seat; it just cuts the fares.

So yes, despite budget cuts, the T is  marching ahead with the Senior Pass programme. It is running on a strictly Darwinian principle. At the moment, there is but one place to get the pass: an office at Back Bay Station.  A very, very small office, which must also deal with applicants for disability passes and for The Ride services. My generation is supposed to be turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 a day. One had to think either that Monday was Boston's turn to crank out 10,000, or that the MBTA isn't ready for prime time. Grump.

When I arrived, about 11:15 on a Monday morning, there were about 20 people ahead of me. That's 20 people in an 8 X 11 foot waiting room. There were, very soon thereafter, another 20 people clamouring to get in. After a few minutes, it occurred to some genius on the other side of the counter that those who had checked in, and th.en had had their photo taken, could wait outside in the concourse and be called back by a staff member. Until that moment, if someone had passed out or died, they would have remained standing. This innovation of course required the staff member to walk an additional ten feet and open a door to call the name of the lucky recipient. Some of them felt this imposition more than others.

All concerned no doubt will agree that the renovations of the main office at Downtown Crossing can't be completed soon enough,

Sartorial statements and other rants

Sometime before 2004, I used to encounter this guy--New Yorker by accent and attitude--outside the local hardware store. If I happened to have picked up my Red Sox hat on the way out the door, he'd invariably sing out "so how about those Sox?" This of course happened more often when the Sox record was unimpressive.

Eventually he said it once too often and I snapped back, "it's a hat."

My daughter brought me back a U of Texas t-shirt as a souvenir of her cross-country auto trip some years back. I gave up wearing it after hearing a number of actual U of T grads wish me "hook 'em, horns," or make the horns gesture. I figured out eventually that it was a social gesture, not an insult.

For some years, as part of my defence against the Beast, I have worn hoodies for most of the cold months. Now I learn that because I wear a hoodie, I must be a gangsta and therefore it's fair for any white guy packing to shoot me on sight.
This insight is of course courtesy of Geraldo Rivera. In media packed with entertainers playing journalists, Rivera has long stood alone in his idiocy. There was a slight window for doubt that he's a total doofus, but he has now slammed that shut. Even Fox must find him hard to stomach.

Speaking of idiot media: as I write, the Trayvon Martin backlash pack is in full cry. I'm not the first to wonder a) how it is that Mr. Zimmerman's alleged injuries at the hands of Mr. Martin did not come up until a month after the fact? and b) how it might be that the "stand your ground" defence wouldn't apply to someone armed with Skittles and Ice Tea confronted by a stranger packing heat? And oh so many other things. Note to the lawyers. If Mr. Z had his head pounded on the sidewalk by the vic, and there are (conveniently) no superficial wounds a month later, such trauma would likely leave brain lesions that will be detectable for quite some time yet. Evidence is extremely helpful.

The most remarkable feature of the health care pissing contest is the way that Republicans in general, and the TP in particular, fly passionately to the defence of people after something for nothing. Their darlings are people who can afford health care but don't buy it. They prefer to take their troubles to the nearest Emergency Department (ED) and plead lack of coverage to avoid paying most, or all, of their bill.

The availability of free coverage today (such as it is) was meant to provide care
to those who genuinely can't afford it, not to small business people suffering from Stage 4 cheaps, who won't even cover themselves for fear of cutting into their margin. Reactionaries have a word they like to apply to people they think are after something for nothing, when those people are poor, or old, or not them: freeloaders. It seems to fit the case here. We have private health insuorance, and one reason (the main one) that it costs so much is that we're paying not only for ourselves, and for the system capacity that goes to the indigent, but also for this sort of freeloader. Of course, the same rule is true for government subsidies to, say, oil companies. It's not freeloading when Republicans do it.

Speaking of freeloading, I've spent the last couple of days trying to get a MBTA senior discount pass. In theory, I'm eligible for this because I just had my 65th birthday.

In practice, well.... I went online to see what I could do to expedite the process. The answer is nothing. The T in its wisdom has merged the processes for senior cards and TAP cards (the latter being for people with disabilities). In doing so, any opportunity for an older, non-disabled person to fill out paperwork in advance has vanished. So yesterday I followed the instructions to Back Bay Station to fill out forms and file in person. A helpful T person inside the turnstiles directed me to the office, which is outside the turnstiles. There, a less helpful person said "the-system-is-down-call-tomorrow." Tomorrow is today, and I don't have enough time off to do that. I'll call next Monday, and I'm betting on the same thing happening. (I'm also betting the office still won't inform any T employee on the platform, so that people can turn around without paying a second fare.) The Monday after that I'm booked; the one after that is Patriot's Day, so they'll be closed. Come April 23, I wonder if "the system" will still be down.

Massachusetts residents are well aware of the MBTA's budget shortfall, and that the cuts the T will make to close the gap will be announced next week. Being more than a little paranoid, I have to wonder whether this is an unannounced part of the plan: simply stop enrolling new riders in the discount plans. That surely would meet Republican approval. Tough cookies if some senior has to go without their cat food dinner to ride the T, or if someone in a wheelchair has to ride their own two wheels from Lynn to Boston. There will be a later report.

Shell game

During the past fortnight, it's been the North Shore's turn for MBTA hearings proposing cost-cutting by service cuts. The friendly natives have been turning out in large numbers to register their comments: carrying torches and pitchforks.

The sheer idiocy of most of the proposals cast some doubt on how serious the T really is about service cuts. In my town, the primary plan would cut out the route that passes through the only shopping area within five miles: brilliant. It would also eliminate at least half the express routes that connect with Logan and South Station, which have become very popular for obvious reasons. Over in Salem, the plan would virtually eliminate weekend service, and with it a major source of tourists to a city that lives or dies by its tourism. I imagine this idea must be just as popular in Rockport, up at the end of the rail line, and even more dependent on public transportation.

I suspect the T was never very serious about the service cuts. The plan seems to be to get the friendly natives to swallow fare increases without a murmur. Probably there will be some cuts too, but not as drastic as those now being trotted out. The outcome will be the worst sort of political theatre.

Once, Massachusetts public transportation was self-funded. That was inadequate in itself, but now public transportation must also bear part of the cost of the Big Dig overruns. Heaven forfend that we should ask motorists to take their fair share of that expense! And heaven forfend that we should ask the T to take responsibility for its numerous inefficiencies and overpriced perks.

So the DOT extortionate shell game continues. Film at 11.

Yo-Ho, Part 8 and last

Back to the MBTA

There's little to say about the return trip. My wife and I swapped seats for the flight home, which wasn't a total success. She got the middle seat and didn't sleep at all. I took the window seat, where I promptly discovered that a 757 window seat doesn't have quite enough headroom for me. Wedged in, I did sleep though, for about three or four hours. Then I dozed off for about 15 minutes at a time until we saw the sun rise (because the morons in the seat in front of us hadn't pulled the shade).

The high point of the return, oddly enough, didn't come until we caught our bus at Wonderland. Ah, those squeaky, smelly, grubby MBTA buses.

Note to M-A: early on Sunday morning, they're all prison buses. But I think we got your driver with a heart of gold.

As the bus was about to pull out, a guy on a bicycle pulled up and asked if he could get a ride to Central Square, since it had begun to rain. He said he forgot his Charlie Card and did a classic Wimpy routine of how he'd pay next time. The driver patiently said no about six different ways, then finally shrugged and let him aboard.

This was not your stereotypical suburban cyclist caught in the rain in his bright Italian jersey. This was one of those cyclists one sees here and there, who are on a bike because they can't drive. I'd say one OUI too many was the cause here.

A few minutes after we started, the driver called to this guy to come up. He came, clearly fearful that he was going to get thrown off after all. The driver handed him his own Charlie card, first ringing up this ride, and told him to keep it. Our poor wet cyclist was stammering in his gratitude, and the driver said "just do it for someone else sometime, OK?"

Sometimes ya gotta love this town.

Yosemite Reflections

Having reached an age when time, money and stamina are running out at about equal rates, it's unclear if we can return to Yosemite, but I'd like to try.

If we go back, we're inclined to camp at Tuolomne and visit the valley, not the other way around. From all reports, bears up there are as common as squirrels, but bigger and smarter. So we'd need to be a bit smarter...and a bit bolder.

Now, we're having a little fun about the lack of pictures of the bear, so pardon me for grabbing a teachable moment. From the perspective of the urban east, a Yosemite bear encounter sounds like a tall tale. It isn't. The unusual thing was that we had gone a full week without seeing a bear. People who live in that and other parts of bear country will tell you that humans are the intruders in bear habitat, not the other way around. They will say that in any incident involving property loss or injury, it is nearly always the human who is at fault for offering the bear a temptation it is not equipped to refuse.

Consider that ear tag on our bear. A bear caught breaking into a car or camp for the third time at Yosemite is a dead bear. The next bullet won't be rubber. Human stupidity is a large part of this problem, and so is simple oversight (think of that candle we lost). More than that, there is a big problem with skepticism. People who have not experienced Yosemite simply don't believe that, from dusk to dawn, you are as likely to meet a bear as a human being. Carry food with you and you're ten times as likely to meet a bear. Leave food in your car and you're quite likely to have a wrecked car, a whopping fine from NPS, and an unsympathetic insurer who won't cover you.

All of these are real threats, but not as real as the death of bears faced with temptation once too often. But too many people just don't believe it and treat the bear stories as tall tales until it's their unfastened bear box that's cleaned out, their car that is wrecked, or it's them on a narrow trail between a cub and its very angry mother. If I were making up a story, I'd be sure to give myself a more heroic role.

The park's weekly reports suggest that if you want to be scared of something in Yosemite, try the people planting marijuana in remote places along the western slopes. Parks law enforcement is breaking up these farms regularly, and the planters are packing serious heat. This is not something you want to stumble across by accident.

It's tough to say what the major national parks can--or should--do about crowds. This has been a problem as long as the parks have existed and been accessible by automobile. It strikes me that one option would be a public relations push on crowding in California itself. Over 90% of the cars I saw had California plates. Even deducting for rentals, California residents still account for the great majority of the visitors. Perhaps there could be an effort to encourage some of them to go elsewhere, maybe to California state parks: California could sure use the revenue.

Now I need better boots and more hiking.