Isaac Laquedem

The City derails business

The city wants to improve one of those streets near the Pearl District that has train tracks running through the middle. As part of the project the tracks would be removed. One business still uses freight service along the tracks.

City employee A asks the business about the tracks and learns that the business will move by the end of the year, so the tracks can be removed any time after New Year's Day. A tells City employee B that the business is going to be moving soon, so the city should start construction away from the tracks and save that part of the street for last. Word gets to City employee C that the business is gone (which it isn't), and C revokes the railroad's franchise to have the tracks in the street, and tells the railroad to pull up the tracks at once.

A few days ago the business's employees show up for work, and the railroad isn't there any more.

City employee A didn't do anything wrong, and neither did B, and neither did C, but (unlike high school grades) the A and B and C average out to an F for the city.

In the Alternative

The Trusty Accountant tells me that I have to pay Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) this year in an amount about equal to half a month's net paycheck.

"AMT was supposed to hit only the rich," I said plaintively.
"You are rich," he cheerfully replied.
"I'm not poor," I said, "but I'm certainly not rich."
"Congress says you're rich," he smirked.

Being declared Congressionally rich would be satisfying if it didn't come with a price tag.

The Mark of Stark Street

Having excuses on my mind (vide the previous post) recalled Nate Zusman, whose use of an excuse earned him the nickname "the mark of Stark Street" back in the 1950s.

Mr. Zusman owned a nightclub on Stark Street. On occasion the authorities had some questions about the degree to which the club followed licensing hours, and whether it was a home for gambling and other activities not officially permitted. As a sidelight to the racketeering investigations of the 1956-57, Zusman was charged with paying money to some of Portland's finest. (He was separately called before the Senate Racketeering Committee, item 25, but that's another story.)

On the witness stand, Zusman admitted paying money to Portland policemen, but he said that the payments were loans. I won't claim to recall his exact words, but his explanation went something like this: "I like the police. They work hard at a dangerous job. Sometimes I hear that a policeman needs some money to take care of his family, or for the doctor, and I lend him some. The word has gotten around that I'm an easy mark for a hard luck story, and now they all come around and want to borrow money. 'The mark of Stark Street,' they call me."

I met him some years later, when he and his wife were living in a pleasant, well-laid-out house in Dunthorpe, built on a wooded part of the former estate of Ira Powers, of Powers Furniture Company. A builder now owns it and wants to tear down ithe house and cut down the trees to build one of those $1.5 million spec houses of no particular charm or merit. The builder's looking for a buyer, whom I'll think of as the mark of Palatine Hill.

Friday the Rabbi Dozed Off

On Friday, June 18, the Oregonian printed an essay by Emanuel Rose, rabbi of Temple Beth Israel and of Neil Goldschmidt. Rabbi Rose said that Oregonians have discussed Goldschmidt's story long enough, and it is time to move on and put it behind. Goldschmidt, he says, has suffered enough from his public humiliation.

On rereading Rabbi Rose's essay, I find that I agree with more of it than I did when I first read it on June 18. But the Rabbi has missed one important reason for our keeping Goldschmidt's story in mind.

The three basic purposes of imprisonment are often described as (1) preventing the criminal from reoffending, because the criminal won't reoffend while in prison, (2) reforming the criminal so that when released, he will be less likely to reoffend, and (3) deterring others from committing the same crime, by using the criminal's punishment as an example of bad consequences.

One consequence of keeping Goldschmidt's disgrace in mind is that -- perhaps -- other men with the same opportunity to exploit an underage girl will consider his downfall before they act. Goldschmidt's public shame is a powerful deterrent to others. Let's keep that lesson fresh.

So many notes, so little time

Having made a creditable attempt at Mozart's "Rondo Alla Turca" (the last part of Sonata XVI, K300i) some years ago, I thought I should try to learn the rest of it. It's slow going. Then it occurred to me that if people can learn French by playing French tapes while they sleep, then I could learn the rest of this sonata by playing it while I sleep.

I've tried this for a month now. I can't say that I play Sonata XVI any better, but I can identify all of my mistakes with perfect accuracy.

To be fair to myself, Mozart did cram a lot of notes into some very small spaces. If I get daring, I will attempt his Fantasia (K475). In measure 84, he wishes the player's right hand to strike the keys 49 separate times (ignoring doubled notes), and in measure 85, he inserts 40 grace notes between the end of the second beat and the start of the third beat. Moussorgsky and his 11 fingers aren't looking so bad.

A further thought on Ronald Reagan

The current New Yorker has a piece by Edmund Morris on Ronald Reagan, which Morris wrote after Reagan's death. Morris wrote a biography of Reagan in which he inserted himself as a character interacting with Reagan -- rather like Boswell writing about his travels with Johnson without having been there.

Morris didn't invent characters for this article, but Mrs. Laquedem and I were both a little put off by the article, for different reasons. Mrs. L. said that Morris wasn't really writing about Reagan; he was writing to show how well he could craft a sentence. (The article does have some graceful sentences.) I noticed something else: Morris started the article by describing his file-card index of facts and quotations about Reagan, and he took every opportunity to write about his large collection of facts -- his research for his Reagan biography. Then he gave examples of Reagan's famous detachment, such as not recognizing his son Michael at Michael's high school graduation. From this and other examples I got the sense that Morris was saying, "I did all this research about Ronald Reagan and at the end of it I still didn't really know the man: he was unknowable."

Maybe the reason, not guessed by Morris, is that to his associates and supporters, Reagan reflected whatever they wanted to see in him, remaining serenely unchanged. He was their mirror; a mirror that showed them no blemishes or dark spots.

The Story of Earl

I once knew a man named Earl, who was born during the McKinley Administration. In due course he married. In the 1930s he and his wife bought a little house, squeezed into a narrow lot in the middle of a long block.

In the 1960s the Great Institution across the street offered to buy their house. They wanted to build a parking lot. "I'll sell for $12,000," said Earl. "Nonsense," said the Great Institution, "your house isn't worth more than $9,000." "I know that," said Earl, "but my wife likes the house, and I don't want to move."

Several years later the Great Institution offered $18,000. "I want $21,000," said Earl. "No," said the G.I.

Several years later the G.I. offered $30,000. "I want $35,000," said Earl. "No," said the G.I., "we can't pay you more than it's worth."

Several years later the G.I. offered $50,000. "I want $60,000," said Earl. "We've bought all the other houses on the block," said the G.I. "We'll build around you." "Fine with me," said Earl.

It's easy to say that you 'll build around someone else's house, and a casino in Atlantic City actually did just that, but it's not so easy when you want to build a parking garage and the lot you don't own is in the exact middle of the block and bisects your floor plan. The G.I. didn't build.

One day the Man in Charge of the G.I. looked out his window and saw Earl building an addition to his house. (Earl, who was at least 75 by this time, was doing it himself.) "All right," the Man in Charge told Earl. "I understand that you like your house. We really need your lot for our garage. What would it take to get you to sell it to us?"

"Hmmm," said Earl. "If you find a house that my wife likes as much as this one, we will trade you this house for that one."

Earl was a man of simple and unassuming tastes. His wife wasn't. It turned out that she liked a house high above the Great Institution, three times as large and five times as valuable as the house they were selling. (And once the owner found out why the G.I. wanted to buy that house, the price jumped by $100,000.)

At about this time Earl wrote me and asked if truth was absolute or relative (he was reading Spinoza then). He may have been pondering whether the statement "The G.I. saved $3,000 in 1965 when it didn't buy my house" was absolutely true. If so, he was pondering it while sitting on his balcony, drinking a glass of French wine, and enjoying a view of the city that was, and is to this day, not just relatively but absolutely splendid.

If we can send a man into space

America's space program used to be the foil for all sorts of other worthy causes. In the 1960s and 1970s I hear statements such as "If we can send a man into space, why can't we cure cancer here on earth?" and "If we can send a man into space, why can't we wipe out poverty here on earth?"

Let's bring it up to date: If Paul Allen can send a man into space, why can't he pay his bills here on earth?

A paradox

An e-mail exchange with the Secretary-In-Exile led to my concluding the following:
Most of us are not as intelligent as we like to think we are.
But it takes real intelligence to evaluate ourselves honestly and to recognize that we are not as intelligent as we think we are.
Therefore, if we recognize that we are not as intelligent as we think we are, we must be even smarter.

The kinder, gentler ODOT

About once a year I do business with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), not in the ordinary consumer way of renewing a driver's license or car registration, but involving questions of highway access, condemnations, easements, and the like.

Until maybe two years ago, I found ODOT very difficult to deal with. (To be fair, ODOT might say the same about me.) But two years ago, something changed. Since then every ODOT agent I've dealt with has been unfailingly polite, reasonable, prompt, and attentive. I don't know what caused this change -- I'm sure it's not because I'm any less prickly than I used to be -- but I appreciate it.

Maybe it's something in ODOT's drinking water; if so, please send that water cooler around to the Department of Revenue.