Sunday Morning Coming Down

The Miami Dade Libraries have a budget problem.  The proposed budget will require libraries in some less advantaged neighborhoods to close or have their hours reduced significantly.  There will be lots of layoffs. The Mayor says the day of the library/books is probably coming to an end to a local TV Station. What libraries are doing is different. I guess in some ways it competes with other places that provide free Wi-Fi.  Yes Barnes and Noble have story hours on Saturday Morning and they serve coffee.  Books and Books in Coral Gables has authors flogging their works on a nightly basis and after the lecture/commercial the author will sign the book and you can retire to the patio for a glass of wine. One of the biggest problems is some of the overhead that various branches have to pay.  The dogs have to be fed.  Rent(or a depreciation charge), and an indirect charge for the county's finance department... bleed money away from the library. The Fri...

I haven't been back to Bensenville my hometown for several years.  From reports on Facebook the airport is swallowing up parts of the town, Spiroff's hotdog stand is very fondly remembered along with more than a few other fast food joints before McDonalds and Starbucks. Sal Garcia who I never met also made a rather profound comment.  He thought there were a lot of bars in the town. I would have to agree.  I'm also somewhat relieved that I don't live in B'ville any more.  I think I would be able to really like a corner bar with cold beer, with parlay cards and more or less familiar faces. There really aren't dives in South Miami like the dives in Bensenville are or were.  I might have become a regular at Jerry's, Del's, The Three J's or another tavern that lined Irving Park between Bensenville and Wood Dale.  My Icelandic heritage is laced with little drinking games invented by uncles who thought it was fun to see how many taverns they could stop at...

There are people I've worked with. There are people I know from the race tracks. I spend a couple of hours on Sunday Morning with a church family although my Mom wondered sometimes if it was a church or a family. And then there are the guys that got up really early on Saturday mornings to run at Parrot Jungle for over 10 years.  We started by 7:00 AM and were sitting at a picnic table by 8:30 AM.  Ice cold silver bullets were the favorite fluid replacement vehicle. I'm glad we hardly ever raced on these jogs/runs.  Although we all started our watches and clicked them off when we were done the runs were filled with conversation.  If we ran too fast it was hard to talk. Maybe the last hundred yards some one would pick up the pace, or if you were out late on Friday night you might drop back and sweat it out knowing that you would get ripped for being lazy or having some other character flaw.  Running six to nine miles on Saturdays took an hour to...

One little aspect about going through immigration or working with kids in Florida is getting a background clearance and getting fingerprinted.  If you had a promise of employment, the prospective employer( park department, school, youth organization, day care center) gave you the address of a local police stations where you could get fingerprinted.  Many jurisdictions charged $10 for the service.  You can still get the background clearance for $10 more or less but finding out where you can buy the fingerprint card is a scavenger hunt of sorts.  In the Miami Area the local Office Depot, Office Max, and Staples did not have the required finger print cards that would be used for and I-485 adjustment of status to become a permanent resident in spite of assurances that they would be available at any local office supply store.  A second trip to a different county police office had a hand written note by the front desk that finger print cards could be ...

To cut down on overtime a fire rescue squad 11 fire trucks and emergency vehicles won't be used to respond to calls and crews will be reassigned.  This will save about $2,000,000.  It is unclear how many lives will be lost because of the expected increase in response time to about eight and 30 seconds. Originally, the mayor, a retired fire chief from the City of Miami proposed a small increase in the property tax rate to cover increased costs in fire rescue, libraries, and animal services.  Property values are increasing for many and this would be spending more money to support Miami Dade County.  Until recently rates were stable, valuations fell off the table and folks paid less.  Obviously the mayor miscalculated the response from the public and did an about face. Hiring freezes, some significant layoffs in fire and libraries and a slowdown in the upgrades planned at Animal Services have become his new plan Miami Dade County is not Detroit....

Ryan Braun played baseball at the University of Miami and the place where the team plays baseball is Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Stadium even though A Rod never actually played for UM.  Naming rights for sports venues can be convoluted. What isn't convoluted is that there were at least two major leaguers connected to UM that are part of an unfolding story about performance enhancing drugs and a clinic that is right across the street from the UM Campus. I am a 1973 graduate of the University of Miami and attend baseball games more often than I go to the movies or travel to see the Miami Marlins.  This stuff stings.  I once had a fantasy baseball team filled with former UM players that made it to the majors.  The local newspaper followed former players through their minor league and big league careers if they were lucky enough to make it. The University and the MLB both have policies against steroids and other performance enhancing drugs and players who are...

Phil Mickelson, by his own admission said the 66 he shot in the final round of The British Open may have been his best round ever.   Making up five strokes on the field and winning without a playoff, he beat Henrick Stinson by three strokes.   Four birdies on the last six holes sealed the deal as he crushed a very evenly matched field until the back nine on Sunday. I woke up this Sunday morning to some weekend sports guy teeing off on Tiger Woods.   Tiger Woods is still a great golfer.   Whether or not he ever wins another of golf’s major tournaments is sort of irrelevant.   Records are made and broken all the time in sports and at age 37 Woods will have lots of opportunities to break Big Jack’s record.   As the years go by it isn’t going to get easier, but a little bit of Zen magic might help.   Stop trying so hard! Tiger draws a crowd, but more than a few are there to see if he will have a melt down, count the F bombs, and quietly pull for ...

Over a year ago, I began the adventure that is owning part of a race horse.  Its been a long and winding road that started on a farm in Minnesota. Randy my quarter horse training friend said something which is very true if not profound.  When asked if he gambled on his horses, he replied yes, every day from sun up to sundown, but I rarely go to the windows at the track. Trainers get a per diem if they train for an owner/owners.  If he owns and trains the horse in question, both are running for their lives at least figuratively unless this is a hobby, and it can be a very expensive hobby which is time consuming, worrisome and filled with more failure than success. The victories are remembered, but at the end of the day that stall needs to be mucked out and you hope and pray the horse comes back to the barn in one piece and ready to eat after the hangover from racing passes. Sometimes even that doesn't happen.  Sometimes you just send checks and wa...

In 1950 the population of Detroit was about 1,850,000, in 2010 it had shrunk to 710,000.  While the United States as a whole has grown in population, Michigan lost about 54,000 residents from 2000-2010.  Ignominiously the country's biggest loser for the period. While the government did what it did to help bail out the automobile industry, the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan have not been able reverse a larger trend of people leaving the Motor City for other parts of the country in search of jobs.. Major League sports franchises like the Red Wings, Tigers, Lions, and Pistons still call the Detroit area home and General Motors and Ford still are major employers, but they are unable to generate population growth in the area in a very meaningful way.  Roger and Me, the movie by Michael Moore is almost 25 years old and it did a pretty good job of explaining and foreshadowing the problems Detroit faced then and now.  Detroit had poor political l...

A couple of years ago I was called for jury duty in Miami, and this time it was different.  Instead of watching a not so good movie, reading book, or getting hauled into a court room or two before being thanked for my "service" and being home, I was selected to serve on a jury. I was selected to be the jury foreman. It had been a long day.  Starting a case at 4:30 pm and not really knowing what to expect, we all agreed to start fresh the next day instead of  possibly working well into the evening and told the judge our plans.  The case was scheduled to be heard the next afternoon at 1:00 pm. A new gas station owner had been the victim of a battery at the hands of a guy that had paid rent to the previous gas station owner to wash cars on the property.  The new gas station owner wanted more rent and the two were unable to agree on a new rental agreement.  Over the period of a week the tenant tried to negotiate and offered more money.  The l...

Just about everything I know about abortion finds its way back to "The Cider House Rules".  I've read the book and have watched the movie.  The story is one with more than a little bit of irony.  In the good old days, orphanages were a common way of caring for children without parents.  One of the opening scenes of the movie showed kids swarming around a couple looking to adopt a child.  About the same time the movie was made a co-worker adopted a brother and sister.  She and her husband wanted a family and I can only guess that they felt really good that they could keep a brother and sister together while they established their own family.  She had seen the movie and mentioned that they had seen lots of kids that wanted and needed families.  The last report on the kids is that they were doing well in school and while money is tight, health reports are good, and everyone is moving forward.  The almost babies when they joined the family ar...

There was a front page picture of  flooding road in Santo Domingo DR. and adventurous drivers.  Chantel has broken up and while we will have a rainy weekend, there is little danger from serious winds in Miami.  Beer bought in anticipation of a long weekend indoors will be put to good use, none the less.  A similar storm in Bensenville, could have easily sent the beer fridge floating up to the ceiling at my cousin's house on Center Street.  Meanwhile, German customs officials investigating complaints from Greenpeace about a shipment of whale meat destined for an Asian port, have cleared the whale meat for shipping but the ship it was on left port, after off loading the cargo.  The owners of the whale meat are scrambling to find another ship that will allow the whale meat to continue its voyage to the far east.

Tuesday, Stolicknaya became the first horse of the f5 stable.  Thank you, Charrette Hill for your vote of confidence in Randy Weidner. Maybe this time I will be able to see "our" horse run in a race at Hialeah Park in December, or at Canterbury, or Prairie Meadows, or the North Dakota Horse Park. I met Randy and Lindsey at Hialeah Park a couple of years ago.  They had a couple of quarter horses at Hialeah, and we struck up a conversation while waiting in line for a beer at the concession stand.  I doubt that it would have ever happened in the days of Citation, Seattle Slew, or Devil's Bag. Hialeah Park had reopened with a thirty day quarter horse meet, the year earlier.  If I was going to play the horses at Hialeah I figured I'd better suck up all the information from everybody as close to the game as possible.  I spoke to everyone I could who had a cowboy hat and in the process got to talk to owners, trainers, jockey agents, jockeys, and even th...

When I first retired and broke my hip and had it replaced, I had a lot of time for marathon TV viewing.  It wasn't exactly planned that way.  I did not retire to watch more TV.  Basic cable was enough  The NCAA Basketball Tournament, USA Network NCIS and their "Character Marathons" were more exercises in catching up with shows that I had previously not watched or bracket fever.  The Sopranos, The West Wing and Burn Notice could kill a few hours if it was too rainy or hot for other activities. Fast forward, Summer 2013, six weeks into the hurricane season and there is a tropical storm to the south and east of Miami and the Weather Channel and all the local stations are leading every news program with the weather in the tropics.  There seem to be two types of folks in Miami, when it comes to TV and weather programing.  Those that hang on every update of the cone of destruction and those that switch the channel every time there is ...

There is the gambling hot line in Florida.  It can give you information about where to turn if you get the fever and you know you should go home but you don't go home, and there is still some money in the bank account and you think the problem is that you were just under capitalized.  Payday is Friday, you still have a job, the rent and utilities have been paid through the end of the month and you'll just skip lunch a few days because the gas tank is empty to sort of catch up. This has been a pretty good week at the track.  I came out ahead on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday.  Friday, I was tired and should have stayed home but the cafeteria has some good food at a reasonable price and I rationalized a trip to the track could be saved by a five dollar, more or less balanced rice, beans, and meat Cuban Special.  I left after getting beat in a photo finish where it looked like my dog had finished second and I would cash.  My protest to Pauly, a track fu...

This is a relatively complicated issue if you are a political scientist. I don't think that democracy can guarantee good government.  On one hand, you might think that the invisible hand of "the democratic process/rule will solve the problems a country has. Elections do have consequences.  David Brooks may feel that Egyptians are mentally unprepared for democracy.  This may be a Paula Deen moment for him. I'm uncomfortable about an American newspaper columnist commenting on a country's mental preparation for democracy.  How many citizens would like to vote on laws in other states, districts, and towns?  Lots and lots I bet. I'm sure there are more than a few people that think that a certain representative in (fill in the blank) is a dolt of the first order and should be removed from office.  Such is democracy I guess. Our country's functional democracy is based on an incredible amount of wealth and a population more or less moderate in po...

This is a reflection on a gambling moment or two that happened yesterday.  July 1st is Canada Day, sort of like the 4th of July in the USA.  Woodbine, Ajax, Hastings and Gulfstream all had live racing yesterday and I was going to take advantage of the opportunity to watch and play the horses.  I bought three programs with the plan of picking specific races, being selective and winning some money so I could continue playing.  The TVG account had some cash in it from a late Pick 3 at Los Alamitos.  Groceries had been bought, maintenance fees paid, and electronically the cable and utilities were paid up and the Eagle was flying even if he had not landed. One of the reasons I have survive playing horses and dogs for over thirty years is a voice in the back of my head that keeps saying, "I hope I break even today, I need the money".  Another key to staying alive is saying thank you for the track for closing down for the day and giving a player a chance to...

A post June 28, 2013 Icelandic Review said that illegal work was on the increase in Iceland.  Cash rather than electronic payments is on the rise.  In Iceland it is called black work.  You get paid cash and their is no record of the transaction, no income tax is withheld.  In a country of about 300,000, where there are pretty good statistics about what is happening economically it is said in the article that labor unions, employer groups, and the Icelandic IRS are working to reverse the trend.  Tourism and other indicators are up, but its not being reflected in tax receipts. Forty years in Miami have made me aware of a significant black market in labor where people are paid in cash and you might be quoted two prices, cash or some other means and where stuff is sold and no sales tax is collected.  Day laborers from Home Depot or babysitting and maybe even gypsy cab or jitney rides that compete with public transit and tax collecti...