A pink glow seeps in. Out my front window, the whole sky beckons, mother-of-pearl roses, blues and whites. Horizontal brush strokes of clouds splash the sky in gray, blue and pink. The moon sets. Across Lake Washington and over Puget Sound and into the Olympic Mountains, I see Mt. Constance, stretching in her pink pajamas.
Mark Nassutti
Freelance, commentary, creative non-fiction and memoir
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I write about my family’s history. In the ideas, values, secrets and sorrows that get passed from parent to child lie clues to my own mysteries. The stories emerge from a quest to understand, a desire to heal broken hearts, a commitment to practice compassion, curiosity and creativity in inter-generational relations. Writing these stories helps me grow out of the all-too-frequent wreckage. I humbly offer these stories because those who have heard or read them tell me they learn something, are moved in some way, are changed in some way that is positive and helpful. I also write commentary, more as a diversion, and would categorize myself as an iconoclastic independent. Enjoy your visit to my site and please leave a comment or two. |
Over green tea
Posted by Mark on December 2nd, 2009Vignettes
Posted by Mark on October 2nd, 2009Juliet’s Balcony
Mietta placed her white patent leather shoes carefully on each rock step as she climbed, wary of crumbling mortar ravaged by weather and weeds. She held the pleats of her white Sunday dress off to each side with her hands so she could see better, looking up occasionally to watch for low branches on the olive trees of the uppermost terrace. She tucked one side of her blonde hair behind her left ear as she turned to look behind her. Her little sister Flavia hadn’t seen her, and her parents were busy chatting with her grandparents on the side yard terrace overlooking the port and the Bay of Trieste.
Stelio should be there by now, she thought, as she took the few remaining steps on level ground, her shoes crunching the grass, brittle from the late summer sun. She slowly leaned out over the low wall, its red bricks warm under her hands, looking around a vine heavy with grapes to see the landing on the long, long stairway of Viccolo di Gattorno.
“Stelio!” she whispered. “Ciao!”
Stelio, sitting on what must have been the 40th step on this 223-step stone staircase leading from Via Commerciale, looked up. He’d been studying the vein patterns on two variegated leaves torn from a long leading vine of ivy hanging down from the opposite wall, resting his arms on his bare knees, his tie loosened under his black jacket. He jumped up with his slightly gap-toothed smile. His black shoes scraped on the stone as he brushed his bottom and straightened his jacket in one practiced move.
He picked up a small bouquet and came to the wall below her, reaching as high as he could. She leaned over, worrying about her dress, and her fingers grazed his as she took it. It was rosemary, with a single passion flower torn from a vine. She broke off a piece of rosemary and twirled the warm needles between her thumb and first two fingers just under her nose, taking in the warm fragrance as her eyes browsed the flower’s complex patterns.
Stelio, gazing up at her, started to lose his balance and took a step down, then back up again.
Mietta smiled. “Grazie!”
The Lineup
Just inside the heavy wooden door to my father’s apartment, a small parquet-floored foyer provides archways to the central hallway straight ahead, the kitchen to the right and the living room to the left. At the left most corner, a built-in shelf hangs from the wall below a large oval mirror, and on this shelf lie the essential tools of my father’s life.
From left to right, neatly lined up, three eyeglass cases of various shapes. Two cell phones, one for Italy, one for Switzerland. His oxblood wallet and a larger matching billfold thick with credit cards, licenses and permits. A pocket-size digital camera tucked into its faux-leather case, the strap hanging over the edge of the shelf. A folded Swiss Army knife. His home phone, white plastic, resting in its recharging cradle. A plastic pack of facial tissues, new. A gold Cross pen and pencil set. His analog watch, the gold metal band unclasped, the dial facing up. His house keys. His car keys, with the garage door remote attached.
The desk in the borrowed apartment I’m using looks out on a vast South-facing terrace that provides a 180-degree view of central Trieste. The 600-meter Carso escarpment defines the East. To the south, hundreds of red-tiled rooftops punctuated by the pale façade of the synagogue and a single, ugly, blocky concrete apartment building. To the west, the dark fortress of San Giusto brooding over a sliver of Adriatic Sea.
At the left most edge of the desk lie the essential tools of my life.
From left to right, lined up but not quite neatly, two cell phones, one for the States, one for Italy. My brown, indestructible heavy-gauge nylon wallet with Velcro closure. A tube of lip balm, SPF 15. A pile of Euro coins. A pocket-size digital camera set on its faux-leather case, the strap draped casually over the top. A black plastic pen, cheap but reliable, willingly lost or lent without heartbreak. A reporter’s notebook, open to a bullet-pointed page of notes labeled “Next.” A smaller, pocket-sized notepad, open. A packet of facial tissues, one or two tissues already gone. My digital wristwatch, its breathable fabric strap open, the display facing up, already used that morning as a wake-up alarm, about to be used to time a carefully-designed exercise routine. An eyeglass case, open, with a cleaning tissue inside. A coiled cable ready to upload photos from the camera to the nearby laptop. My sunglasses. The aforementioned laptop, open, but sleeping.
Pure coincidence.
Twins
Annamaria and I took the elevator down to the street to wait for my father. We expected him at 7:15. The plan was to call a taxi upon his arrival, stop by Gelateria Zampolli to pick up a carefully crafted list of “paline,” single-serve scoops of gelato of different flavors for dessert. Destination: Sarah’s kitchen, at Guido’s house.
Two scoops of Nutella, Guido had said. Two of nocciole for Annamaria. Fragole, limone and vanilla for Paul. I planned to get one of cioccolata fondente and another of riso for myself. Well, not exactly for ourselves, intended to share.
At precisely 7:15, Paul came around the corner. As we turned to greet him, I found him pointing at his watch and grinning as he strode toward us. I felt the back of Annamaria’s hand touch my arm and looked at her to see her grinning. “Guarda,” she said, as she took the lapel of my sportcoat and pulled it open while pointing at his. “Look.”
My father and I were both wearing brown leather shoes, tan pants – his pressed cotton khaki from Lands’ End, mine woven hemp from REI – white button-down shirt open at the neck and a blue sportcoat.
Pure coincidence.
Criticism
As we got in the taxi to head for Guido’s house, Paul joked with Annamaria about dating and then turned to me, looking anxious.
“Mark. I forgot the cake.” We’d bought what must surely be an amazing dark chocolate layer cake from the Opicina bakery. It was still in his fridge.
“Goddamit! How could I do such a thing! Oh my God, this is terrible, it’s always like this, stupid, stupid, stupid!”
By instinct I tried to console him. “We’re on our way to Zampolli to pick up ice cream. And I’m sure that cake has so much sugar and chocolate in it that it will last for weeks. Don’t worry about it.”
But he couldn’t let it go. The anguished look on his face deepened as he turned away from me, waving off my attempt to relieve him of guilt.
Then my mind flashed on one after another time and place where I had done the same to myself. What a strange habit, I was able to think, to beat yourself up for an insignificant mistake, an easily rightable wrong.
And oh what I had done to myself, I thought, so many times, for such errors as this and far more serious crimes, of both omission and commission?
“It’s okay,” I said, patting his knee. “Don’t worry about it.” Then I took a deep breath as I turned to my own window, and silently prayed for forgiveness.
Strada Napoleonica
The Opicina tram stopped at the obelisk marking the beginning of the trail. From here, heading northwest toward Aurisina, a braid of walking paths wound through brush and small pines along the edge of the Carso escarpment overlooking Trieste. From an elevation of what Paul informed me is 457 meters, we could glimpse through the trees the full extent of Porto Vecchio and Porto Nuovo, the 19th century and 20th century port facilities – empty — plus the western half of the city and the coast of Istria down to Punta Salvore on the Adriatic.
“Not a single ship!” I knew this rant of his by heart.
“Hey, there’s the moon,” I said, pointing. A sliver of moon hovered over the eastern horizon.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at it and then at his watch. “It’s already 3:45, of course, the moon is coming up.
“And look, see, just the one tanker, bringing oil to the refinery. That’s it! Goddam unions!”
I sighed, and welcomed the cool breeze, air at what Paul informed me was three to five degrees Celsius cooler than down in Trieste.
“You know,” he said, and I knew my evasive tactics had failed, “even after the container ships stopped coming, we used to get cruise ships, but they wanted to come on Sunday, and they asked the city to make sure the shops around Piazza Unita would be open so their passengers could visit and shop a little. No! Everyone said no. Everybody in Trieste says no. The minute you try to do something, no! You try to improve something, no! And the unions, they couldn’t even say that yes they could be available to provision the ship. No!
“So the cruise lines they said ‘Screw you, we go to Capo D’Istria,” the nearby port in Slovenia. “They’re open 24X7.”
So how’bout those Mariners, I thought. “Look, let’s head down the path here. I know there are a few openings in the trees further on.”
“Ya, these trees, why do they let them grow like this? It used to be nothing, a perfect, open view, now look at this. Why don’t they maintain it? Ach!” The gravel pathway with its slightly uneven footing had now seized his attention.
“So why,” I asked, trying again, “do they call this ‘La Strada Napoleonica?’”
“Because when Napoleon came, you know, every town in the world, every inn and hotel, they claim that Napoleon slept there, they’re all fakes, but when Napoleon came here to Trieste there was no Costiera, the highway along the sea, that was built by the Italians in the 1930s, and there was no railroad, that wasn’t built until the end of the 19th century, by the Austrians, so this was the only way down into the city, this road right here, Via Commerciale, so they say Napoleon came along the Carso here, watching and looking for a way down, until he gets here, and goes down. But nobody really knows what path he traveled, everything was completely different then.
“And Via Commerciale, there was no other way up, to get to the interior, the hinterlands, for the merchants, than on wagons, pulled by horses, big horses, six or eight of them, dragging these wagons up the hill. And there was no pavement, it was just mud,” and he mimed the front hooves of horses plowing through deep mud, struggling up the hill. “That was it, until the railway, they came up here, and then through Opicina and onto the road to Vienna.”
East
My first night in Trieste, sleep ebbed and flowed through me, and at least five times my efforts at re-hydration after a long trip urged me out of slumber and into the bathroom. After one of these visits I stopped at the door to the terrace and looked out. I could see stars.
Opening the door, I felt the cool air and stepped outside. Despite the city’s lights, I could make out the major constellations. In front of me was Orion and his belt. Wanting to orient myself, I looked around for the Big Dipper, Ursa Major, and found M-shaped Caseopeoia. I knew it faced Ursa Major, and then I found the bowl of the dipper, its handle hidden behind the roof of my apartment. I traced its line to Polaris, faced it squarely, and brought up my arms pointing straight away from my body to the sides.
East, I thought, looking at a dip in the edge of the Carso. West, I thought, as I turned and marked the leading edge of a 10-story apartment building. South, I thought, turning around and picking out the bell-tower of a small church in the direction of San Giacomo.
Back in bed, I felt more secure.
Grand St. Bernard
He says I was probably four years old, and summer time, just a short while after we moved to Switzerland. We drove, just him and me, to the Grand St. Bernard pass between Switzerland and Italy to spend the day visiting the famous dogs and exploring. The car of the day was the Sunbeam convertible, and the weather was nice enough that he’d put the top down. After visiting the dogs, we took some sort of lift, maybe a chair lift, to go up higher on the mountain. After walking around up there and enjoying the views, we walked back down. “I held your hand as we went down,” he said. It was the first time we’d been in the mountains together.
Buon Apetito
Favorite food item so far: Crema del Carso. A low-calorie confection made of layers of thick, flaky pastry and custard cream. As I savored the first bite cut from a slab four inches thick at my father’s little kitchen table, I assured him: “There’s absolutely no butter in this.” Pasticceria Saint Honore, Via de Prosecco 2, Opicina.
Next: Spaghetti con Calamaretti. The sauce is made from tiny squid, peppery, spicy, with garlic and olive oil and I don’t know what all, but I wanted to eat two plates of it. I’ll be going back for more. Ristorante alle Bandierette, Riva, a block or two south of Piazza Unita.
At breakfast, I now eat like the Kaiser. A scramble with Viennese origins combines an egg, some milk, flour and sugar, a scattering of pine-nuts and a handful of raisins, all mixed together like pancake batter then cooked in a frying pan, constantly turned over like scrambled eggs, until firm. Serve with powdered sugar, maple syrup or preserves. I prefer a home-made apple compote with just a hint of what I perceive to be anise, made by Milan’s leading oncologist.
Trouble with truffles: It’s truffle season, and nearby Istria, the peninsula that juts into the Adriatic just south of Trieste, produces an amazing crop. My second night here, we went to a concert in Buje, in the Croatian part of Istria. Arriving early, I spotted a shop that specializes in all things truffle, tasted a few samples, and bought a couple of items. After the concert, we stopped at a restaurant and had a variety of dishes with truffles. I maxed out quickly. A couple of mouthfuls made me swoon, but after that, it got to be a bit too much. A little goes a long way.
Polenta alle Sepie: Another squid-based dish from Sarah. A very smooth polenta topped with a slow-cooked sauce of squid, tomatoes and an as-yet-un-catalogued coalition of spices.
Gnocchi con Susine: Stuff these large, baseball-sized potato dumplings with a plum and then boil them up. Two on a plate, smothered with a sauce made of plums, cinnamon and vanilla, will be plenty. A classic Vienna-inspired Triestino dish, served at any meal. We ate these at Val Rossandra, an Alpine pocket carved into the flanks of the Carso southeast of Trieste. The very first “rifugio” or inn established by the Club Alpino Italiano. Rifugio Mario Premuda became the seat of Italy’s first formal climbing school. The steep, rocky escarpments flanking the narrow valley provide great climbing practice just an hour’s travel time – including the approach hike — from Trieste. Along with the gnocchi, we had a nice insalatina of a light lettuce that resembles oak leaf, with some fagioli, olive oil, salt and pepper. We each had a large glass of beer and some good multi-grain bread along with water, all enjoyed in warm sun. It felt like having lunch at an alpine ski resort after a morning of spring skiing.
Osso Bucco: This isn’t my mother’s Osso Bucco, and that’s just fine with me. Sarah braised these veal shanks for two hours to an amazing tenderness. It was unfortunate that a dinner originally planned for six had to eventually cover 12 as various friends and relatives came by and were asked to stay for dinner. The Osso Bucco got some help from home-baked Kamut bread, pureed broccoli, fresh Bufala Mozzarella with garden-grown tomatoes, insalatina and, of course, wine. I provided a demonstration of “grab and growl.” In Italiano, prendere e ringhiare. You might get a fork stuck in the back of your hand.
Back to Trieste
Posted by Mark on September 26th, 2009My father reads. A look at the massive bookcase in the living room that doubles as his office reveals an inquisitive mind with a focus on history and philosophy with a slight nod to literature and the arts. On the dark, elaborately carved floor-to-ceiling wall-unit, books line up, sometimes double-stacked, in sections about war, revolution, and philosophy. A sub-section on the Russian revolution, another on Italian history, the entire collection of Will and Ariel Durant volumes on the history of philosophy, a half-dozen Hemingway titles, Joyce, even some popular authors like Michener and Clavell.
War titles include American war stories such as Guadalcanal, The Bridge at Remagen and A Day in Infamy; Thunder in the East and 900 Days from the Russian side; The Face of Battle and other titles on military history. I found Joy of Sex, In Search of History, 1984, and the Cooper Clinic Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, plus a series of picture books on the regions of Italy and the art of China, and a guide to the Slovenian language.
Speaking of languages, I also found Stefan Zweig in German, Pirandello, Povero Nostro Franz and other books on Italian history in Italian, and the novels of Dumas in French.
He has also made a detailed study of his family’s history, creating a series of carefully hand-drawn family trees going back to the early 17th century. Names like Patini, Boccelli, Rossi and Ertola, Guglieri, Valentini, Zanier, Moro and Cescutti fill the funnel that leads down to us Nassuttis. On my paternal grandfather’s side, the earliest Nassutti is Michele, born in 1818, and the earliest antecedent is Leonardo Cescutti, born in 1796. Leonardo’s grand-daughter Maria Cescutti, born in Clauzetto, marries Giovanni Domenico Nassutti of Travesio in 1887. They have three children, including first-born Umberto, born June 10,1887, in Trieste.
On my paternal grandmother’s side, the footprints begin even earlier, in 1636, with Giulio Cesare Bocelli. His line widens when his namesake, born in 1834, marries Letizia Ertola in 1861 and produces nine children including second child Lino Michele Vito Bocelli, my father’s maternal grandfather. His 1896 marriage to Anita Valentini produces four children including first-born Ada, who arrives in Domodossola on May 11, 1897.
Some noble blood joins the line in 1814 when Vito Bocelli of Monticelli marries Contessa Teresa Gazzola of Piacenza. They eventually become grandparents of Lino.
Ada and Umberto marry in 1920 after a long courtship that began while Umberto applied his accounting skills at an Italian Army desk job in Milan during World War I. My father was born five years later, on June 23, 1925. He has no siblings.
Beyond civil and church records of births, marriages and death, no records have found their way into our hands. No letters that might illuminate the lives of these men and women. No photographs or paintings that predate Umberto or Ada. We have one piece of furniture, a cassapanca, a coffin-sized dowry chest with a massive iron lock that now adorns my mother’s living room in California, handed down from Ada’s grandmother.
It is precisely that historical void that drew me here last year. I came as an investigative reporter in search of my father’s family history. My goal was to understand him, his family’s origins, and how the historical environment he lived through as a child, adolescent and young adult formed him. I want to know because I want to understand the ripple effects on me and my sister and, ultimately, on my children and my nephews.
Thanks to that two-month visit, I came away with a firm grasp of the historical facts and events that surrounded my father’s youth. I modestly consider that an accomplishment given that 98% of my research was done in Italian, including extensive interviews with a half-dozen of my father’s contemporaries, an in-depth reading of various histories of Trieste and an introduction to the region’s literature.
However, my mind and heart barely acknowledged the equally or possibly more important emotional history. I came away with only clues and inklings, a sense that the emotional environment may have been as stern and disciplined as the carefully aligned streets in Trieste’s Austrian-inspired center with little of the coloratura that this international port city’s eclectic blend of cultures, religions and traditions might have provided.
I begin this visit with a very different objective. I have the facts, the history, the family tree. My goal is to gather the sensory details of both place and family, the people, habits and traditions, to observe, to hear, to smell, to taste – to feel. I wear different eyes, and, in addition to pen and paper and a camera, I bring a sketch pad. I’m no Picasso, but I have a sense that even my amateurish drawing skills will help me stop longer and look more carefully, perhaps at fewer subjects but in greater depth, using more of my brain – and heart – to understand.
There will be richness, depth, a sort of palpable knowledge that transcends words on a page, or at least the kind of words I’ve historically written. I’m no Hemingway, but if I can capture something deeper than a hand-sketched family tree and pass that knowledge and understanding on to the next generation, perhaps I can enrich their lives. It is for them that I do this. Five were born, four live on, and it’s my belief in the wisdom of understanding history that now sends me into the streets of Trieste and the parquet-floored rooms of my father’s home.
As large as this emotional world seems to me, for months I have been feeling that there is something more. I can’t yet articulate just what that is. I hope that over the next four weeks I will learn.
King County Executive Sets a Good Example
Posted by Mark on August 28th, 2009This column was published in the Kirkland Reporter on Tuesday, September 1, 2009.
King County Executive Kurt Triplett wants action. We should back him.
Triplett sees a wall of muddy water coming, so he wants to raise 42 miles of levees rather than wait for famous FEMA to come to the rescue when two Seattle area cities flood. He wants to do it now and is willing to declare a state of emergency to get it done.
He sees a flood of red ink coming, so he wants to dish off 39 county parks – free – and lay off 15 of his own staffers so he doesn’t have to make further cuts at the Sheriff’s department.
Despite a rising tide of demand for bus service, he’s willing to slash Metro service by 9 percent and raise fares. He’d rather cut public transportation than sacrifice public safety.
What a magnificent example for our elected officials.
Triplett, until recently Ron Sims’ chief of staff, knows what it takes. And he is fearless because he isn’t running for public office. He’s not a career politician worried about keeping his job. He’s focused on the job that has to get done.
Triplett exemplifies the notion of the citizen legislator focused on doing the right things that will benefit the most people with the money we have entrusted to him.
Why should Kirkland care? We have our own police and fire departments, so what Triplett does to preserve the Sheriff’s department capabilities matters little to us. Very few of us have any direct involvement with Kent and Auburn, the cities likely to flood this winter, though I suspect there are a few among us who own land or buildings in those cities, or who have investments in or work for companies with significant operations in the flood plain. And only a tiny percentage of us use public transit.
This is why we should care:
If Kent and Auburn flood, we will all look stupid for not supporting bold action to prevent a near-certain disaster. A flood would shut down King County Elections headquarters, the Kent Regional Justice Center, the county’s primary animal shelter and flood out hundreds of businesses and 20,000 residents with total damages approaching $3 billion.
If King County makes drastic cuts in police protection, we have several as yet unincorporated areas on our borders that will suffer. Imagine the ripple effects.
As for Metro, I confess ambivalence. I’m a big advocate for growing our bus fleet because it’s so much more economical, quick to deploy and flexible than a light-rail system. But if I have to choose – and when we have to balance spending against income, we have to choose – I would choose flood prevention and public safety over bus service.
Triplett’s boldness reminds us that we must make painful choices. We will have to continue to make painful choices, and we will have to stop whining when our pet projects get cut.
Triplett’s willingness to break the political gridlock also reminds us of what to ask of our elected officials. They must risk angering some segments of the population in order to provide for the greater good. They must put aside their own career aspirations to make things happen when they need to happen. And when they are running for office, we must press them on what they will do when tough decisions have to be made.
So watch the King County Executive debates starting October 15. Read their position statements at http://www.susanhutchison.com/issues/issues.html and http://dowconstantine.org/index.php?page=display&id=4. Send them emails telling them what you expect of them.
Meanwhile, look over Triplett’s Countywide Strategic Plan at http://www.kingcounty.gov/exec/strategy/StrategicPlan/CountyStratPlan.aspx.
And join his Million Sandbag March to raise the levees.
Pull the Plug 2.0
Posted by Mark on July 22nd, 2009Published in the Kirkland Reporter op-ed section, July 21, 2009
Last fall, a dear friend’s aunt died of Alzheimer’s. The event prompted many conversations about end of life care, both for her aunt and for ourselves. I have a living will, but I concluded I needed to go further.
Thanks to a voter initiative approved last fall, Washington State allows assisted suicide. It’s a good start. But it won’t help me deal with my new nightmare: I can’t recognize my loved ones. I can’t tell a story. I can’t read. My inability to care for my basic needs fails to register in my brain. Food has no appeal, and I’m unable to feed myself.
But from the outside, I look healthy.
I wouldn’t want to live that way. I wouldn’t want to die that way, without the ability to connect with anyone outside myself, or with myself for that matter. I wouldn’t want to burden my family that way.
And I wouldn’t want to incur the costs: $7,000 to $10,000 a month for an assisted living facility or a nursing home. I’d rather spend the money putting my nephews through college.
At my nightmare stage in the progression of Alzheimer’s, life could end in a few months or, far worse, in a few years. The rate of decline doesn’t follow a predictable path. But however long it would take, I think it would be too long.
And I wouldn’t qualify for assisted suicide. I can say now that I would want that option, but the rules say I have to be of sound mind at the same time two doctors sign off on the prognosis of six months or less to live. I have to confirm my decision two weeks later. What Alzheimer’s patient would be viewed as “of sound mind”? I’d also have to give myself the drugs. What Alzheimer’s patient would remember what the drugs were for?
There’s an option, albeit imperfect. I have a health care directive that states my wishes in the event I fall into a persistent vegetative state or suffer brain death. I’ve also granted durable power of attorney for health care to a friend who can make decisions for me if I’m unable to do so.
In the case of brain death, I’m a plug-puller. If there’s no chance of bringing me back, pull the plug.
Dementia is different. While the brain disintegrates, the body seems fine. My friend’s aunt wasn’t on life support, but her brain was gone. She was conscious, but she was gone. Is that the same as brain death? We know there’s no way back. No cure. No way to reverse the slide.
To guide my decision-maker, I had to modify my directive. Here’s what I settled on:
“If I am diagnosed in writing by two doctors to be suffering from an irreversible form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or other loss of brain function that has rendered me unable to control my bodily functions, unable to care for myself, and unable to recognize my situation and carry on a coherent conversation, I direct that I be given no further treatment that might delay my death, such as: feeding or hydration; antibiotics or other treatments to deal with infection; radiation or chemotherapy; or surgery to repair injuries. The only allowable treatment shall be pain medication or drugs intended to manage my behavior if I become a danger to others.”
Death would most likely come from dehydration, in a few days to two weeks, and relatively painlessly.
It seems like the right thing to do. We all benefit. If I’m gone, then let me go.
The New Tyranny
Posted by Mark on May 31st, 2009I voted for hope. What I’m getting is a new kind of tyranny, the tyranny of fiscal irresponsibility, burdensome taxation and claustrophobic government bureaucracy.
This recession started at the household level. Millions of us made bets on illusory home appreciation data, aided and abetted by grow-at-any-cost bankers. Mine is one of those households, and I am personally and professionally humbled.
I can deal with my own mistakes and bad judgment. What bothers me is that there is one household that hasn’t gotten the message.
Despite the recession, this household refuses to cut spending to match its income. This family, already heavily in debt, wants to buy a ton more stuff with money it doesn’t have.
And the head of this household expects you and me to make up the difference, claiming that all of us will benefit from his brilliant investments – in failed car companies, imploding banks and universal medical care, all cover stories for payoffs to labor unionists, corrupt financiers and Big Pharma.
I’m sorry, but when I hear President Obama talk about adding a national sales tax to plug the gap between what the IRS already collects from me and what he wants to spend, I have to say no.
He needs to cut back, like I have.
Instead of cutting back, he’s talking about adding a new tax, a value added tax, or VAT, also known as a national sales tax. He argues that we need a new source of revenue to pay for all this great stuff, because the current tax system isn’t bringing in enough.
And one of the rationales used to support this argument is that because it’s used in 130 countries, the VAT is the most popular tax on the planet.
Is any tax popular with anyone other than a government official?
Leonard Burman of the Tax Policy Center said last week that “everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands we’re going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious candidate.”
Excuse me, but isn’t an obvious candidate for solving our budget problems to cut spending? But the word “cut” doesn’t seem to be in President Obama’s budget vocabulary.
According to the US Treasury, he already borrows 46 cents for every dollar he spends. Now he wants to spend a ton more, with new spending set to exceed income by $1.3 trillion next year alone.
That’s where you and I come in, along with our children and grandchildren who will be paying interest on today’s loans for decades. President Obama’s bankers in China are nervous about lending him more, so he has to come up with cash somewhere else. Ergo the VAT.
Yet the VAT presents an irony. Here we are in a recession and a national sales tax would actually slow the consumption that drives economic growth. Look at the math. If you have a $100 budget and face an 8.5% state sales tax plus a 10% national VAT tax, all of a sudden you can only buy $80 worth of stuff.
Maybe you can borrow the twenty bucks from your kids.
I had hoped to see a shift from the tyranny of the Bush years to an era of rational, smart decision-making. Now I’m just seeing the dark curtain of a new tyranny sweep across our amber waves of grain, the tyranny of taxation and nationalization, a thick wet blanket of bankrupt ideas that will stifle and not stimulate, that will crush and not nurture, that will give us the illusion of hope by stealing it from our grandchildren.
To Get Better, Fire the Worst
Posted by Mark on May 8th, 2009The Nation’s Report Card arrived last week. I felt disgusted. Our K-12 education system, the most important industry in America, hasn’t improved despite 40 years of reform.
We need a game-changer.
And here it is: Our public schools will soon lay off thousands of teachers statewide. The usual practice is to lay off the newest first, based on seniority. Let’s try something different: Lay off the worst.
Just because a teacher has more years under his belt doesn’t mean he’s more effective than a newer teacher. What if one of your newest teachers is a superstar? Or even just average? Shouldn’t you lay off a poor performer before you lay off an average teacher?
If we keep doing layoffs the same way we’ve always done them, we’re going to keep getting the same results. But if we gather up our guts, make our principals force-rank every school’s teachers from best to worst and lay off from the bottom ranks, we will quickly improve teacher morale, teaching skills and student achievement.
I’ve lived the impact of a principal’s inability to fire a poor performer. When my son was in third grade, he fell victim to a teacher who wasn’t cutting it. She hadn’t responded to coaching and remedial training. She needed to be terminated.
The principal conceded the fact but refused to pull the plug. The result? My son was left behind. He didn’t learn third grade math. It took three years and outside tutoring to catch up. There were 25 others like him.
What would have been so bad about firing that teacher? She would have gone on unemployment, and to get a new teaching job, she could have taken classes to improve her math teaching skills. Even an average teacher stepping in would have done a better job and kept the class on track.
Our principal’s refusal to act cost 26 children three years of catch-up and their parents thousands of dollars in tutoring. The teacher still lost her job, at the end of the school year.
How does laying off poor performers improve morale? First, good teachers know who the poor teachers are. They’re a burden. The fourth grade teacher who inherited my son’s class had to work twice as hard to make up for the third grade teacher’s failure.
Morale also improves because the worst performers complain the most and collaborate the least. They’ll even denigrate star teachers because they’re making them look bad.
Finally, morale improves because no-one wants to be the worst next year, creating an incentive to work together to improve the whole team’s performance. If the team improves, the school improves.
What about teaching skills? Research shows they’re more important than class size, funding, or curriculum. And the most powerful way to improve teaching skills – more important than continuing education, higher degrees or board certification — is to give the principal the freedom to hire, train, evaluate and, where necessary, terminate teachers.
How do we know the principal will be fair? If she hesitates to fire the worst performers for any reason – caprice, popularity, pity – she will undermine morale and her team’s performance, making it more likely that she will be fired.
A principal’s biggest obstacle to terminating poor performers is a union contract. There’s a process, usually so long and painful that most principals won’t even try. Those union contracts also require seniority-based layoffs. These restrictions on terminating poor performers reveal the union’s history of putting teachers first, students second.
The unions can change the game too. By allowing their worst performers to be removed, they can walk the talk of putting children first.
We have to act now. Washington State layoff notices must be given by May 15. You’re your superintendent. Demand he order every principal to force-rank his staff based on performance. Let’s take advantage of the layoffs and remove the worst first. Our children deserve the best, not those who’ve just been there the longest.
Copyright 2009, all rights reserved.
Broken Promises
Posted by Mark on April 3rd, 2009This is the latest draft of the first chapter of my second book. Copyright 2009, by Mark Nassutti.
Trieste, my father’s birthplace, crumbles slowly into the Adriatic Sea. An imperial relic born of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s need for access to the sea, it sags beneath the steep limestone and dolomite escarpments that define the edges of the surrounding Carso plateau. The waltzing Viennese architecture of its ramrod-straight center shrinks from the wandering maze of the medieval old city on one side and the writhing and drab 20th century apartment blocks on the other. The daily traffic in the streets gives the impression of vitality, but the cars, buses and motorbikes course through the arterial system of an old and tired body.
Behind the festooned facades of the older parts of the city languish thousands of empty, obsolete apartments. This provincial capital’s population has shrunk by a third since its prosperous peak at 275,000 just before the devastating losses of World War I. The city shrank despite the influx of nearly 50,000 ethnic Italians escaping the Communist Yugoslavia after World War II. The city is old without the virtues of age, the people are old without the hope of a future, and the few attempts at architectural restoration and economic stimulation create the same effect as makeup on an old woman’s cracked and sun-baked face.
Walking through Trieste invites a profound sadness, except maybe in April, when the Mediterranean sun begins to warm the city after months of gray riddled with blasts of icy winds crashing down from the Julian Alps to the north. Triestini call the wind “la bora” and it bores into you in gusts up to 100 miles per hour. As you walk the streets, la bora rises up and tackles you like a pre-teen wrestler just out of her first winning bout, grabbing at your coat and spinning you into a wall as she tries to knock you down and pin you for a point.
Combined with rain and cold, la bora paints the city, the cars, the harbor and the boats with a thick layer of ice making any movement dangerous at best. Even into March, la bora strips trees of their branches and shatters umbrellas into ribbons before it retreats to wait for another winter. As March moves into April, the trees come into their flowers, the bulbs produce their daffodils and tulips, and the cafes begin to set their tables outside again.
But even on a sunny Sunday in March 2008, the loss of hope remains. Walking among the crowds strolling giant Piazza Unita’, the few families with young children only highlight the gray. I can hear laughter in the bars and cafes, but when I catch people’s faces when they think no-one is looking, they are grim, tired, depressed, a grayness that no amount of fashionable clothing, elegant jewelry or handsome eyeware care can mask.
I found Trieste littered with broken promises. Below the stereotypical veneer of Italian warmth lies a Triestine substrate of resentments that shows up in how people look at you when you meet, how they pass by in the street, how they argue, how they love, how they live and how they die. None of it’s personal, it’s just the legacy of generations of aspirations manipulated and dashed, within and among families, within and among communities, within and among nations.
I could feel it. And among those broken promises were a few that my father made to me. It was the hope of finding out why that had brought me here. He was 82, long retired. I was 50, my life on hold for two months, sleeping on a sofabed in a friend’s den.
On that sunny Sunday, I went to meet a friend at Bacio sul Canale, a cozy family-run restaurant facing the Canal Grande in downtown Trieste. It was before the dinner hour, so the place was empty but for the bartender and a pair of young women seated at the small bar. The place still smelled of espresso despite the late hour, and I couldn’t yet detect the aroma of the evening meal being prepared.
“Buona sera,” I said, and continued in Italian, “is Simon here?”
“Not yet, signore,” the bartender said. “Would you like something to drink while you wait?”
“Si, grazie, a beer, una piccola.”
I shed my oil-cloth car coat and crushable fedora onto one barstool and sat on the other, next to the two women. They were in their 20s, dressed in what I guessed were fashion brand knockoffs, one of them wearing eyeglasses with an ostentatious logo on the sides. A cigarette pack and a lighter sat in front of them on the bar, along with two glasses with lipstick prints on the rim and half-full of white wine.
“Buona sera,” I said.
They looked over at me and replied, almost in unison, “Buona sera.”
“How do you know Simon?” the one in the glasses asked.
“Ah, you know him? I met him here. A friend of mine introduced me to the owner, and she to him.”
The other woman smiled and said, “You speak Italian very well. Where are you from?”
“Grazie. Seattle, in the state of Washington.”
The one in the glasses looked at me, puzzled. “Why the heck would you want to come to Trieste?”
“My father lives here.”
She turned away. “That’s not a good enough reason.”
I smiled at her. “OK, why are YOU here?”
She turned back to face me. “Because my family is here. That’s the only reason. And if it weren’t for them, I’d be outta here. Milan, Rome, maybe Germany. Anywhere. This place is dead.”
The other woman nodded. “I’m in the same situation. I have a college degree but the only jobs I can find are in places like this. That’s why I’m here, looking for a job.”
“I know the owner’s daughter,” the one in the glasses said. “There are jobs in shops, but the city isn’t growing, and the jobs go to family members first. There are jobs in restaurants, like this one. And there are jobs in the government, but to get one, somebody has to die. If you have money, you can buy someone’s shop. But the shops get handed down, and to open a new one would be foolish.”
I nodded and drank some beer.
“So how long will you be here?”
“I arrived on March 3, and I’ll be here until the end of April.”
“Two months? Why would you want to be in Trieste for two months?”
I hesitated to go into details, but I was curious to hear what they thought.
“My father is old, and I actually don’t know him very well. He left us in California when I was 16. I came to get his story and learn more about Trieste.”
She shook her head and fingered the cigarette pack. “There is nothing interesting about Trieste.”
Muddy Shoes
Posted by Mark on March 7th, 2009Published in the Kirkland Reporter, op-ed section, 3/7/09
My shoes got muddy last week. Spit-shined, black dress shoes. Walking through Golden Gate National Cemetery near San Francisco, 161 acres overlooking the bay, waves of white marble markers riding the contours of the terrain.
139,037 graves.
I’m no redneck patriot. I’m not a veteran. My nearest relative with military service is my paternal grandfather, who worked a desk job during World War I. I just felt compelled to pay my respects.
I felt relief to notice the vast majority buried here died at home. The year of death, if it falls during a period of conflict, suggests death by enemy fire, but there’s no marking like “KIA” on the grave to answer the question.
It’s the KIAs that bother me. I feel sorrow for the dead and their loved ones. Anger over the lives thrown away with casual disregard or lost due to incompetent leadership. Gratitude to those who fought to protect us. Pride in those who fought to protect others.
Outrage that so many lives were thrown away so often for no good reason.
I admire our warriors. They bust their butts to be ready. They dive on grenades for no reward other than the gratitude of their buddies. They pledge their willingness to violate our society’s greatest taboo to kill on our behalf, putting their bodies as well as their minds on the line.
Ask any combat veteran what he feels when he kills. Most won’t answer, so imagine: Pull a trigger, see a man’s body torn apart. Push a button, see a tank explode, broken men on fire crawling from the wreckage. Drop a bomb, incinerate 100,000 people under a mushroom cloud. Thrust a knife into a man’s throat and smell the blood as it spurts over your hands.
These are the things we ask our warriors to do. How dare we send our young men and women into combat out of any but the purest motives, without a clear sense of purpose that would motivate us to go ourselves if we could?
It’s easy. We delegate that decision and we don’t think through the implications. We never see a flag-draped casket because so few of us send a child to become a warrior. At any given moment, only one in a thousand US families have a relative in Iraq. The odds you know a soldier in harm’s way are low.
And even fewer of us have gotten our shoes muddy standing in a rain-soaked cemetery watching that flag-draped casket being lowered into the ground. Memorial Day comes as just another three-day weekend. Veteran’s Day passes as just another parade. We don’t think about where those old men in funny hats have been, what they’ve done, or why.
Thanks to smart generals like Petraeus, we’ll get most of our soldiers out of Iraq soon. About 50,000 will stay to make sure the mess we made doesn’t get worse.
But where do the others go next? Afghanistan, a country that repeatedly swallows up tens of thousands of valiant fighting men from world powers like Great Britain and Russia. Afghanistan’s ragtag bands of tribal warriors, helped by the mountains and the weather, always win. What makes us think this time will be different?
Arrogance, pure arrogance. Blend that with ignorance of history to make a palatable brew of mind-numbing myth. Sprinkle with our collective reluctance to get our shoes muddy on the battlefield of ideas.
Let’s at least exhaust our fingers sending emails to our elected representatives. Every email carries the weight of a hundred votes. That’s the force multiplier our warriors need most.
Madness lies in ignoring facts
Posted by Mark on February 27th, 2009Published in the Kirkland Reporter, 2/24/2009.
We the people. The ink used to write those words, along with the rest of our Constitution, were penned onto paper made from hemp.
For 150 years of our nation’s history, hemp provided a low-cost, environmentally friendly and renewable resource used to produce paper, rope, clothing, sails and many other products.
On what basis was hemp suddenly deemed so dangerous that if you are caught with more than an ounce and a half of hemp’s biological cousin marijuana, sentencing guidelines require penalties comparable to those for robbers, child molesters, arsonists and rapists?
Is someone with a handful of marijuana really as dangerous as a rapist? Consider these statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Transportation:
Annual deaths due to tobacco consumption: 500,000.
Annual deaths due to alcohol consumption: 100,000.
Annual deaths due to marijuana consumption: Zero.
In 2006, there were 13,470 highway deaths attributed to alcohol. Marijuana? Zero.
Despite all our laws and hundreds of thousands of arrests and tens of thousands of supposedly dangerous marijuana possessors thrown into jail, our teenagers report in national surveys that it’s easier for them to get marijuana than alcohol or tobacco.
No-one’s advocating that teenagers smoke marijuana, any more than they would advocate teenage smoking of tobacco or consumption of alcohol. Yet it’s easier to get a few grams of weed than a pack of coffin nails or a 24-ounce bottle of malt liquor.
Is there anything else we might like to spend the estimated $7 billion it costs to arrest, prosecute and jail simple marijuana possessors every year? Nah, we don’t need to plug funding gaps in education, infrastructure, or social services. Let’em rot, at the cost of $24,000 a year per prisoner. More than three times the cost of educating a child.
When the available facts make the policy look ridiculous, I’ve learned to look for hidden agendas.
History shows that marijuana only became a big issue after the alcohol prohibition of the 1920s was lifted. Why?
First, the federal law enforcement bureaucracy focused on alcohol had lost its reason for existence. Facing unemployment, its leaders declared marijuana the new menace.
Powerful corporations backed the initiative when they saw an opportunity to kill off hemp, a major competitor to paper manufacturers (chemically processed paper pulp) and petrochemical companies (nylon and other petroleum-based fabrics). Private companies that build and manage prisons have joined the special interests wishing to preserve current law. Their lobbyists have no facts and no scientific evidence to justify our system of marijuana laws, but those corporations make money off the status quo and spend tons of money preserving the marijuana myth.
Look behind the myth and you find no integrity, moral, medical, fiscal or otherwise, behind our multi-billion effort to suppress the adult consumption of a substance less harmful and less addictive than tobacco or alcohol.
Why are we the people doing this to ourselves? 70% of voters nationally think our war on drugs is a complete failure. 74% of us Washingtonians agree that we should reduce the penalties for marijuana possession. Yet our politicians sit on their hands, intimidated by the powerful myth-makers with accusations of being “soft on crime.”
It’s up to us. We the people must look at the hard facts and tell our state legislators to act. They are currently considering reducing the penalties for simple possession. It’s a start. We have to encourage them. If we stick to the popular mythology about marijuana and ignore the results of our current policies, that way lies the true reefer madness.