It’s now 8 NOV 2014 and I’m finally catching up on my energy. I’ve slept through the nightmares and my mind is back in balance. My chest doesn’t hurt and my old man skin is mostly healed. Starting on the 15th of OCT knowing I had to be on the road by the 27th for Lynn’s surgery and my Social Security hearing I began an open ended project to once and for all cure our home’s 30 year old cooling system of its leaks. Along the way to my goal I found a 4 inch long separation between the right side tank and the radiator core. I found that the water pump was still in good shape but I replaced it anyway along with the mechanical fuel pump. I still have a lean misfire upon warm acceleration but I’ll deal with that next week. I’ve recovered from that scope of work but not fully, if there is such a thing anymore. After my heart attack in FEB 2001 and aggressive mechanical intervention I went back to the hospital for three more overnight stays until they figured out that I was working too hard. And I had slowed down. Just not enough. So I am a little better at figuring out what I can and cannot do. And I know I stole energy to get our home back on the road for the 27th of OCT.
Lynn is doing well. Thanks to the expanded Medicaid, Lynn has been able to take the old man blood thinner coumadin and have the twice weekly blood tests required and the circulation in his bad leg has been good.
I wrote about the original joint replacement surgery here, with pictures for the naysayers that consider Lynn lazy, naysayers that don’t understand the difficulty he has standing and walking.
So I went right from working on our home to taking care of my husband. I’m a registered Republican so I suppose I could just dump Lynn and replace hi with a newer model with fewer miles but I’m comfortable with Lynn. He knows me and I know him and I don’t think the divorce and re-marry guys will ever understand this.
So today is our first day of really just sitting around and vegging out since October. Feels good just to rest and yes there is a difference between healing and resting.
Recently I tried writing about something I’d seen on YouTube: http://arts-attic.com/blog/?p=1056 and there was one part I didn’t understand. The Hasidim driving the offending van appeared to be either smiling or sucking on his teeth and I couldn’t figure out what he was doing until I had it done to me.
We shop at the Market Basket in Hooksett, NH mostly because we can buy gasoline nearby with enough room to maneuver and it’s also easy for us to get in and out of this MB with our home and trailer. When we leave I always trundle past the front of the store and make the left turn to head down the hill toward the road because the other exit is close to the intersection and I don’t want to be in the way of an automobile speeding around the corner. That day as I was rolling our considerable weight along the front of the store a car swung out in front of me and stopped. NO problem, that’s why I was rolling slowly. And began loading groceries. The elderly couple was in no hurry but I chose to toot our home’s horn to attract attention since I was now blocking the fire exit and the fire lane at the same time and also because I wasn’t the one blocking traffic. Cute little tweets from our city horns. Not big ugly blares from the highway horns. Eventually the gentleman came over and tried to put me in my place and during our conversation he reared back and made the eyes and teeth thing at me like some Jewish caricature. And I realized what the thing with the teeth is: a snarl. Give me a break. I am literally driving around in my home. If I want to sit there and wait I’ll go back and have a cup of tea. I was tooting my home’s horn to draw attention to bad behaviour. I mean, if you need help at Market Basket all you need to do is ask and the staff will load your car for you. But blocking the fire lane? Naw. That’s just bad manners. You were being a self centered asshole. And I call you on it.
And we’re ready to begin another winter in New England. For the first time, fingers crossed, we’re fit for travel on the road. With the gracious permission of the Oxbow Campground in Deering, NH I’ve been able to remove the radiator and have it repaired.
Grace Hopper remains a source of quotable quotes, our favourite being: “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission”.
Well, Tom Irving didn’t exactly give permission for major repair work. He graciously gave us permission for us to stay until the end of October, which is another 15 days past the Oxbow Campgrounds closing date of 15 October. I’ve learned through experience to live by the great Grace Hopper’s dictum “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission” and I did and I got.
This is our home with the grill removed to allow access to the radiator and front engine accessories.
First I tried to remove the upper radiator hose. The lower radiator hose wasn’t too bad to change out but the upper one was impossible to remove from the radiator. After much angst I realized that I was gonna hafta remove the radiator. I had been entertaining, keeping the dream alive that all of my coolant leaks were the result of a heater host that only leaked when hot and under pressure.
I started off by removing the big piece of fiberglass that holds the headlights and unites the front fiberglass into one piece. Next I vented the R-12 to the atmosphere, crying all the while over the loss and removed the AC condenser, cold air intake, washer bottle, coolant overflow and whatever else was in my way. The oil cooler lines were easier and harder than I expected. The engine oil cooler can be and was disconnected underneath the radiator but I had to reach up alongside the radiator to disconnect the transmission oil cooler lines. The skin on the back of my hands will heal.
Now I started this on a Friday, so I had Saturday and Sunday to look for problems before I had to deal with the radiator, so after I got the radiator out and realized that the water pump wasn’t obviously bad I had time to remove and replace the water pimp and the engine driven fuel pump. The original equipment water pump does have 50,000 miles and 30 years of time under its belt while the fuel pump is the next suspect in a lean misfire condition and it was either fit an $80 fuel pressure gauge and monitor the fuel pressure while driving or replace the fuel pump for $30. I really wanted that fuel pressure gauge but I wasn’t willing to run fuel under pressure up to a $15 gauge in the dash. For $80 I would have bnought an electric gauge with a remote sending unit.
Closer view of the engine accessories mounted on the front of the engine.
For the amount of time and effort necessary to get to this point it would have been the height of stupidity to not replace the fuel and water pumps. I’m probably going to kick myself for not changing the timing chain and sprockets but there was only so much time and money available for this project and the coolant leak was potentially fatal. With the fuel and water pumps changed out I turned my attention back to the radiator and rigged up a way to pressurize it with the original radiator hoses and a motorcycle valve stem. No pressure build up with my 12V air compressor. Now I had noticed that the heater return line to the radiator was sitting askew but I hadn’t focused on the seam right next to that fitting. For about 4″ the right hand tank was separated from the radiator core. From the top down so now I began really praying and chose to make a sacrifice of chicken thighs to the great god of GM cylinder heads hoping to find favor with him in this, my hour of need. I should have sacrificed a leg of lamb to the radiator god.
I never took pictures of the area where the tank separated from the radiator core because I was too busy trying to get the damned thing repaired or find a direct replacement.
And here’s where the wheels fell off the rails. This is why I hate farming work out but I’m becoming too feeble to do the work myself.
Merrill’s Radiator in Concord, NH has now made my internet hall of infamy. Three strikes and you’re outta here! First they did the radiator for my Ford T Speedster, o-kay. Then I paid them to assemble the fitting onto my decorative oval gas tank for the same project and it leaked. I did it over myself. Then it didn’t leak. Third I dropped off my home’s main engine radiator with the instruction to remove and replace the side tank, clean and solder the tank back on and touch up and solder joints that were leaking. I expected to pick up my tank the next day. Instead of meeting my expectation I received a call that the radiator was unrepairable as it was and it would be $650 to repair properly with a new core. So I drove down and picked up my radiator now having lost two days of my time, paid $35 instead of his “normal” $45 charge for inspecting a radiator and went home. Lynn found Bob Rondeau’s Radiator Repair 65 River Road in Bow, NH and after a telephone call Lynn proclaimed “This is a guy we can work with.” Bob gave a price over the phone of $90 to remove and replace the tank AND to rod out the radiator tubes ! so back on the bike and off I went, my trusty radiator riding pillion behind me. I liked what I saw when I arrived, he agreed the radiator was in good shape and asked me “Are you sure your head gaskets are good?” And I replied, “No.” He couldn’t do it the next day but it ws done the day after that so it’s now Friday and I started this odyssey on Monday but when I arrived there was my baby having had the tank removed, 12 tubes rodded but no significant debris found, the tank replaced and after pressure testing a few tubes were resoldered along with the ins and outs where solder bloom had done its damage. Bob said $80 and I gave him the $90 and was happy with every penny spent.
After all was said and done I got Lynn to the hospital on time and after one scare with a leak from the heater bypass valve all is well and good. With proper temperature control, coolant contained where it belongs our home is more of a pleasure to drive.
This video starts out with a bicycle ride down a New York city street. No stunt riding. No weaving in and out of traffic. No traffic at all until a mini van passes the bicyclist. Then stops. The man riding the bicycle passes the minivan on the right. The minivan passes the bicyclist on the left. And stops. Again. The bicyclist squeezes by the minivan on the van’s right and continues along. The minivan passes the cyclist again on the left ans stops in front of the cyclist. And the minivan pulls to the right. And the confrontation begins. On “film.”
And the dialogue begins.
Van Driver: “You don’t drive down the middle of the street.”
Cyclist: “What the fuck were you doing back there?”
Cyclist: “Come on and hit me, Hit Me.”
Van Driver: “You don’t block my car.”
Cyclist to passer by: “He’s harassing me.”
Van Driver to passer by: “He’s harassing me.”
Well, you get the idea I hope. Watch the video from World Star of David,
There is a type of argument that I consider unfair and other than not giving in to the overt antagonism I am unable to formulate a good defense. I don’t think that it’s anti-semitic to call some of the Hasidim assholes and this road-rage incident instigated by the operator of the mini-van serves to further the point I’m trying to make. Here you see the driver of an automobile pass and stop in front of a bicyclist several times before using his automobile to force the bicyclist off his bicycle.
I think that this form of argument, used by the Hasidic driver comes from a place of deep contempt for anyone not of his neighborhood. That’s a problem because the ultra-orthodox Hasidim pull out the “You’re Anti-Semitic” card at a moments notice and no one wants to say the words: NO, you’re just being an asshole. Yeah, I’m not the most well spoken person around.
Never mind that among the many flavors of Judaism, the Hasidim are the most extreme, we see here that the Hasidim are intolerent to other flavors of Judaism.
2014 also saw the 12th Annual Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. While attendance was down from previous years, thousands still attended the parade Thursday night hosted by Jerusalem Open House. Hundreds of police officers and border guards secured the parade as tensions were high. Israel has liberal LGBT rights policies despite the hostility shown toward LGBT people, particularly men, from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. And the parade in Jerusalem has been a target for their anger in past years.
Two Israeli men play with their child during a rally before the parade in Jerusalem.
Israeli commando police forces secure the area where thousands of Israelis participated the parade.
The Anti Defamation League defines and anti-semite as: The belief or behavior hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish. It may take the form of religious teachings that proclaim the inferiority of Jews, for instance, or political efforts to isolate, oppress, or otherwise injure them. It may also include prejudiced or stereotyped views about Jews.
I decided to collect some published information from what I consider credible sources after I read this from the recent president of the East Ramapo school board:
The school board president, Daniel Schwartz, said in an interview that the petition, filed by Advocates for Justice, represented the views of chronic complainers. He said any insinuation that Orthodox Jewish board members could not focus on the needs of non-Jewish children was offensive and anti-Semitic.
O-kay, so you played the anti-semite card. I say, maybe you’re just an asshole Dan.
In recent years, resentment on the part of yeshiva and day school families has escalated, particularly because local property taxes — the major source of public school funding — hit even low-income families who may not earn enough to pay income taxes.
“The job interviews take place with practical, unspoken calculation in Southside’s dozens of Hasidic schools. The schoolteacher is desperate for work; the school administrator, short of funds, can offer only the most minimal of wages.
But the offers, at perhaps $150 a week for 30 hours of teaching, are made and almost always accepted for one central reason: welfare. The teacher knows welfare payments will supplement a meager income; the school knows employees who also receive welfare will be able to survive on low salaries.
”It’s a mutual understanding, I suppose,” said the director of a Bedford Avenue yeshiva in the Southside section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. ”I know the price they will go for, and that’s what I pay.”
Rabbi Leib Glanz, whose United Talmudic Academy employs about 700 teachers in Southside, said: ”If they can’t take what I can pay, I get someone else. I do not count on welfare when I hire. But clearly welfare has been beneficial to the yeshivas.””
Also from the same essay:
“One foundation of the Hasidim’s economy is an organized, aggressive approach to winning welfare benefits. For example, the office of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, the Hasidim’s main social services center in Southside, has a staff that fills out applications for aid and telephones city officials to contest adverse decisions. Advocates for Southside’s Latino poor cite with envy the Hasidim’s unified efforts at obtaining public assistance. Current and former city welfare officials regard the Hasidim’s pattern of obtaining public assistance — the widespread listing of nearly identical incomes that fall just within qualifying guidelines — as circumstantial evidence of manipulation, or even fraud.”
But if I even hint that the Hassidim are commiting out and out fraud, out comes the anti-semitic card and a list of generations of injustices done to Jewish peoples. But why can’t you accept that you bring it on yourself?
And more from Mr. Sexton:
“. . . their religious emphasis has created economic dead ends for many of the Hasidim of Southside. The focus on religious studies results in children ending secular education at age 13, curtailing job skills. Other factors also limit opportunity: discrimination in the mainstream workplace exists; the neighborhood’s once-dominant industries, like the jewelry and garment trades, have dwindled; some have difficulty with English, their second language, and the neighborhood’s substantial network of private charity, built around wealthy households and loan societies in every synagogue, is already overtaxed.”
The Amish, another group that refuses to assimilate and change with time, supports itself through farming and manufacturing. Why can’t the Hassidim do the same?
Valparaiso Indiana resident John Johnston, who is challenging State Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-10th said on Facebook Tuesday 8 July 2014:
“No one has the guts to just let them wither and die.”
“For almost three generations people, in some cases, have been given handouts. They have been ‘enabled’ so much that their paradigm in life is simply being given the stuff of life, however meager. What you see is a setting for a life of misery is life to them never-the-less. No one has the guts to just let them wither and die. No one who wants votes is willing to call a spade a spade. As long as the Dems can get their votes the enabling will continue. The Republicans need their votes and dare not cut the fiscal tether. It is really a political Catch-22. The voters are the ones in charge. However when only 10-11 percent show up to vote, not much will change. People simply are not hurting enough, or simply happy enough that they will do nothing. Consequently the dole continues.”
It seems the Demoulas family drama is over. Again. Arthur S. Demoulas, son of George and Arthur T. Demoulas, son of Telemachus have ended their life long dispute with the sons of George Demoulas agreeing to sell their shares in the family company to the sons of Telemachus Demoulas.
James Gooch and Felicia Thornton were hired by the sons of George to replace the sons of Telemachus in the day to day operation of the Market Basket chain. And the workers revolted. Fearful of losing the good working conditions they enjoyed while working for the sons of Telemachus, nearly all of the Market Basket employees went on strike. And for one reason or another the customers of Market Basket joined the workers. Gooch and Thornton ordered the workers back to their posts and the workers replied with a solid no. Gooch and Thornton ordered up a job fair to hire replacement workers and no one showed up to apply. Gooch and Thornton then ordered the workers back to their posts with a this is our final offer, and the response was again no.
After more Demoulas family drama involving the governors of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, who knows how many bankers and of course the extended Demoulas family an agreement was reached for the sons of George to sell their ownership of Market Basket stock to the sons of Telemachus. The Market Basket chain was open and operating in time foe the Labor Day weekend. By Saturday the stores were stocked to 75% of capacity with customers taking items from shelves almost as fast as the stock boys could fill them.
What do I take from this drama? Something I’ve know for years. It’s harder to lead than it is to push. It takes time and effort to treat your employees with dignity and respect. But it’s worth it because it’s easier to lead people willing to follow you. Threats may cause people to follow grudgingly but its only exemplary leadership that can cause employees and customers to play the part that has been payed in this summertime drama.
