There's been a hubbub the past couple of days over a New Hampshire law that requires people who get lost to pay for their rescue. Last April, a 17-year-old Eagle Scout went hiking on Mount Washington and got lost. Helicopters and search parties combed the mountain for three days before finally discovering the boy. Now, citing the law, the state is billing him $25,000.
An online survey reveals that 25% of respondents think the state should reduce the amount and an additional 49% are in favor of it being dropped altogether. A second poll has 57% of respondents against the law's existence.
In the news yesterday was a story about a woman who has disappeared from a cruise ship sailing back from Alaska. Though all her belongings remain in her stateroom, the woman was nowhere to be found on the ship. The U.S. Coast Guard and the Canadian authorities are searching some 200-plus miles of waterways and coastline.
Was she a victim or foul play? Did she somehow manage to fall overboard (which is not easy to do)? Or did she just "miss the boat" and is safe and sound in a small Alaskan town? At this point, we don't know the answer to that.
What we do know, however, is that two countries are spending a large amount of money on manpower and fuel to search for her. Presuming she is found, should she be sent the bill? Based on the survey cited above, most people would say no.
How about people who ignore evacuation warnings in the face of floods, hurricanes, or forest fires and later have to be rescued? We've all seen the "dramatic footage" of a daring rescue by firefighters or helicopter crews or the National Guard. It's safe to say there would be a public outcry if these people were invoiced for services rendered.
So who should pay for this? Unfortunately, if you took a poll, the majority response is likely to be "the government." And where would the government get the money to pay for such things? That would be the same place it gets all its money... from taxes. I'm pretty sure you'd have a hard time finding anyone who would say they would like their taxes raised in order to pay for search-and-rescue missions of responsible people who make foolish decisions.
From what I've read, New Hampshire may be the only state that has such a law on its books. And depending on how much of a public outcry there is, they might decide to change it. In which case, the cost of future searches and rescues will come out of the funds that might otherwise be used to repair a road, pay for medical supplies in a clinic, or feed needy children a school lunch.
Just like they do in the rest of the country.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Getting What You Deserve
Some years ago, McDonalds ran an ad campaign to entice people to take a night off from cooking dinner and drive on over for burgers and fries. "You deserve a break today," was the clever catch-phrase and it played quite well, especially as more and more families had both mom and dad working outside the home.
The definition of the verb "deserve" is "merit" or "earn" and plenty of people felt that, after working all day long, they had earned the right to skip cooking once in awhile. And while you can certainly argue that choosing to eat dinner at Mickey D's might not be the most healthy option, doing so was not going to make a big dent in the family's budget.
Recently, I saw an automobile ad on TV that proclaimed that everyone "deserved" the luxury car we wanted. And for a "low" monthly lease payment of $395 (or $495 or whatever -- I was ignoring it by this point), we could have that car. What too many people seem to have lost sight of is whether or not they earned it... as in, bring in enough income to actually pay for it. After all, a monthly $395 is going to take a much bigger hit out of the family budget than $20 at McDonalds. (In fact, you could eat dinner every weeknight of the month at McD's for the cost of the car. Not that that would be advisable, but you get the point.)
Unfortunately, too many people buy into the concept that they "deserve" a fancy car or a huge house or a humongous television or whatever. I certainly will not dispute the fact that many people work hard; the lawn service guy cutting my neighbor's grass for minimum wage is putting as much effort into his job as my neighbors the nurses put into theirs and my friend the banker puts into his. But some skills are more valuable than others and, for the most part, what various professions earn reflects that. So the banker may well be earning a salary that allows him to easily pay for the luxury car, but if the guy cutting grass wants to be driving one, he had better find a profession that will pay him enough to do so.
Perhaps one of the best/worst examples of all this is to be found among college students. Many of the students have incurred enormous debt in order to attend and more than a few don't buy the textbooks necessary for their classes because they don't have the money for them. Yet those same students will be distracted in class by messages, updates, and the like that they are receiving on their brand-new iPhones. When asked why she had to have the latest (and quite expensive) version, one student replied, "I deserve it."
The question, then, is, will she and her like-minded fellow students ever earn enough to pay for what they "deserve"?
The definition of the verb "deserve" is "merit" or "earn" and plenty of people felt that, after working all day long, they had earned the right to skip cooking once in awhile. And while you can certainly argue that choosing to eat dinner at Mickey D's might not be the most healthy option, doing so was not going to make a big dent in the family's budget.
Recently, I saw an automobile ad on TV that proclaimed that everyone "deserved" the luxury car we wanted. And for a "low" monthly lease payment of $395 (or $495 or whatever -- I was ignoring it by this point), we could have that car. What too many people seem to have lost sight of is whether or not they earned it... as in, bring in enough income to actually pay for it. After all, a monthly $395 is going to take a much bigger hit out of the family budget than $20 at McDonalds. (In fact, you could eat dinner every weeknight of the month at McD's for the cost of the car. Not that that would be advisable, but you get the point.)
Unfortunately, too many people buy into the concept that they "deserve" a fancy car or a huge house or a humongous television or whatever. I certainly will not dispute the fact that many people work hard; the lawn service guy cutting my neighbor's grass for minimum wage is putting as much effort into his job as my neighbors the nurses put into theirs and my friend the banker puts into his. But some skills are more valuable than others and, for the most part, what various professions earn reflects that. So the banker may well be earning a salary that allows him to easily pay for the luxury car, but if the guy cutting grass wants to be driving one, he had better find a profession that will pay him enough to do so.
Perhaps one of the best/worst examples of all this is to be found among college students. Many of the students have incurred enormous debt in order to attend and more than a few don't buy the textbooks necessary for their classes because they don't have the money for them. Yet those same students will be distracted in class by messages, updates, and the like that they are receiving on their brand-new iPhones. When asked why she had to have the latest (and quite expensive) version, one student replied, "I deserve it."
The question, then, is, will she and her like-minded fellow students ever earn enough to pay for what they "deserve"?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Ted P. Skimmer and Me
A number of the chapters of my "Secret History of All-American Comics" that has been running in ALTER EGO and BACK ISSUE magazines (available at http://www.twomorrows.com/) have been presented as interviews of Ted Skimmer, "a longtime employee of AA Comics." Ted's career there began in the mid-1940s and lasted well into the 1990s; he worked in both the editorial and production departments and did freelance work as a colorist and a letterer.
The use of Ted prompted one reader to write to AE editor Roy Thomas to ask for an article about the career at DC Comics of the real Ted P. Skimmer. Indeed, if you were to peruse some of the books DC published in the 70s and 80s, you would find that Ted was a fan from Pittstown, Oklahoma, who had a number of letters published. He then worked in the editorial department, writing the responses in the letters pages of some of the books, and even scripted an El Diablo story in JONAH HEX #48.
Despite all this evidence, Ted does not exist. In fact, everything he wrote was actually written by yours truly.
Ted's original appearances in the letter columns were done to fill space. Believe it or not, some of the letters that appeared in the comic books were written by staff members. If there was not enough mail to fill the page, those of us responsible for putting the columns together would ask our fellow fans-turned-staffers to write a letter. (This was going on long before my compatriots and I arrived at DC. Readers from my generation will remember numerous letters in the Mort Weisinger-edited Superman books that asked questions like, "Has Superman ever turned into a dragon?" The response was always something like, "Do you have x-ray vision? Have you been peeking into our editorial offices? That's exactly what happens in next month's issue!") Though our letters weren't usually blatant plugs for upcoming issues like those that Weisinger used, we often made comments that sparked an editorial response that could fill the page.
At one point, I was doing the lettercols for Julie Schwartz's books, along with the Daily Planet and Answer Man pages, and one or two of the other editors asked if I would handle the columns for their books as well. We decided that, rather than have it seem like I was the only person in the company who was reading the mail, Ted P. Skimmer would come to New York and take a job as an editorial assistant.
I came up with a "secret origin" for Ted, claiming that he and I were friends from college. When someone wrote in and asked where Pittstown, Oklahoma was because he could not find it on a map, I had an answer for that as well. There is actually a Pittsburg in the Sooner State and so, when Ted and I met, he told me he hailed from there. I thought he meant Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and started talking about how my brother lived north of there. When Ted explained he meant a small town in Oklahoma, I told him that he was not allowed to confuse people ever again and from then on I would call it Pittstown.
Occasionally, I would make jokes about the relationship between myself and Ted, eventually having him move from the Editorial department into the Production department "Bob calls me his right-hand man, which is pretty funny because I'm left-handed," Ted once commented in print. Indeed, whenever I saw Ted (in the mirror), he was left-handed.
Why Ted got credit for writing the El Diablo story is something I do not recall, but I'm sure we had a good reason at the time. It may just have been that he mentioned writing his first script in some letter column and we figured it was about time it was actually published.
The secret of Ted had remained pretty much undiscovered for almost three decades. The Grand Comics Database (http://www.comics.org/) lists him as the writer of the El Diablo story, along with a credit for a number of letters pages. But just the other day, someone reading my blog about the Secret History made a connection between the two Teds and wrote to me to find out the story.
By the way, the Ted shown in the photos in ALTER EGO and BACK ISSUE is actually my father. If nothing else, it made it easy to come up with a photo showing "Ted" and me together. In the final chapter of the series, in BI #36, there is a photo of Samantha Skimmer, Ted's granddaughter. As you might have guessed, it's actually my daughter Sammi, who is, of course, "Ted's" granddaughter.
The use of Ted prompted one reader to write to AE editor Roy Thomas to ask for an article about the career at DC Comics of the real Ted P. Skimmer. Indeed, if you were to peruse some of the books DC published in the 70s and 80s, you would find that Ted was a fan from Pittstown, Oklahoma, who had a number of letters published. He then worked in the editorial department, writing the responses in the letters pages of some of the books, and even scripted an El Diablo story in JONAH HEX #48.
Despite all this evidence, Ted does not exist. In fact, everything he wrote was actually written by yours truly.
Ted's original appearances in the letter columns were done to fill space. Believe it or not, some of the letters that appeared in the comic books were written by staff members. If there was not enough mail to fill the page, those of us responsible for putting the columns together would ask our fellow fans-turned-staffers to write a letter. (This was going on long before my compatriots and I arrived at DC. Readers from my generation will remember numerous letters in the Mort Weisinger-edited Superman books that asked questions like, "Has Superman ever turned into a dragon?" The response was always something like, "Do you have x-ray vision? Have you been peeking into our editorial offices? That's exactly what happens in next month's issue!") Though our letters weren't usually blatant plugs for upcoming issues like those that Weisinger used, we often made comments that sparked an editorial response that could fill the page.
At one point, I was doing the lettercols for Julie Schwartz's books, along with the Daily Planet and Answer Man pages, and one or two of the other editors asked if I would handle the columns for their books as well. We decided that, rather than have it seem like I was the only person in the company who was reading the mail, Ted P. Skimmer would come to New York and take a job as an editorial assistant.
I came up with a "secret origin" for Ted, claiming that he and I were friends from college. When someone wrote in and asked where Pittstown, Oklahoma was because he could not find it on a map, I had an answer for that as well. There is actually a Pittsburg in the Sooner State and so, when Ted and I met, he told me he hailed from there. I thought he meant Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and started talking about how my brother lived north of there. When Ted explained he meant a small town in Oklahoma, I told him that he was not allowed to confuse people ever again and from then on I would call it Pittstown.
Occasionally, I would make jokes about the relationship between myself and Ted, eventually having him move from the Editorial department into the Production department "Bob calls me his right-hand man, which is pretty funny because I'm left-handed," Ted once commented in print. Indeed, whenever I saw Ted (in the mirror), he was left-handed.
Why Ted got credit for writing the El Diablo story is something I do not recall, but I'm sure we had a good reason at the time. It may just have been that he mentioned writing his first script in some letter column and we figured it was about time it was actually published.
The secret of Ted had remained pretty much undiscovered for almost three decades. The Grand Comics Database (http://www.comics.org/) lists him as the writer of the El Diablo story, along with a credit for a number of letters pages. But just the other day, someone reading my blog about the Secret History made a connection between the two Teds and wrote to me to find out the story.
By the way, the Ted shown in the photos in ALTER EGO and BACK ISSUE is actually my father. If nothing else, it made it easy to come up with a photo showing "Ted" and me together. In the final chapter of the series, in BI #36, there is a photo of Samantha Skimmer, Ted's granddaughter. As you might have guessed, it's actually my daughter Sammi, who is, of course, "Ted's" granddaughter.
Monday, September 21, 2009
The Bad News Bears Grow Up
On Saturday, the NYC Carpenters held their annual picnic and softball competition and CRI fielded a team for the first time. With our snazzy, logo-emblazoned, red-and-white shirts, the Crushers looked like we were ready to challenge the rest of the teams for the championship. Well, until the game started, anyway.
Perhaps the first sign of trouble was when we realized that the only bat we had was a Little League one belonging to one of the team members' kids. Fortunately, we were able to borrow one from our opponents. Unfortunately, our opponents were the top-seeded team in the competition; since we were the newest team, this was not surprising.
We were quickly retired in the top of the first inning, with one batter striking out after swinging at balls that bounced two feet in front of home plate. Our opponents quickly proved why they were the top seed, racking up a dozen runs before we recorded the first out, then adding eight more before the inning ended. Oh, they were good hitters, but it didn't help that we had an outfielder who apparently thought he was supposed to let the ball drop in front of him before fielding it and an infielder who played ground balls by allowing them to first bounce off his chest. (To be fair, we had a couple of guys on the team who have never played softball or baseball in their lives.)
Because of the ten-run "mercy rule," we had to score eleven runs in the top of the second inning in order to continue the game. Needless to say, we fell eleven runs short of that and so the "CRI Crushed" were eliminated in the first round.
Watching all this brought back memories of the early days of the DC Bullets, the DC Comics softball team that I captained for a number of years. Like the Crushers, the Bullets had a number of players who had never played before and had no understanding of the rules. I used to ask if we could please hire some people who knew something about baseball and was reminded that comic book fans generally spent their time reading comic books, not participating in competitive sports. (We did eventually get some guys who could play; they worked in our accounting department!)
The Bullets, unlike the Crushers, did manage to practice a few times before our first game. (We even had a couple of bats!) In the first few years, we only played one game per season, against Marvel Comics. Luckily for us, their team was also made up of comics-fans-turned-pros, so we were pretty evenly matched. In fact, the Bullets won the first two years, but the games were not without bizarre plays.
In one game, we had runners on first and second with no one out. The batter hit a pop fly to the second baseman. Without a thought, both runners took off. I was coaching at third base, yelling, "Go back! Go back!" to the runner coming towards me. Rather than doing so, he just stopped and said, "Why?" Meantime, the second baseman -- reminiscing about it last week at Ithacon, Jim Shooter and I agreed it was probably Marvel production man Danny Crespi -- caught the ball (one out), stepped on second base (two outs) and then tagged the runner from first as he triumphantly arrived at the base (three outs).
Nothing so exciting happened in the Crushers game, possibly because we didn't play long enough. But as our opponents were piling on the runs thanks to one misplay after another, I thought of Casey Stengel, just as I had that afternoon thirty-some-odd years ago. "The Old Perfessor," after watching his hapless 1962 New York Mets lose yet again in their own unique fashion, sighed and asked, "Can't anybody here play this game?"
Perhaps the first sign of trouble was when we realized that the only bat we had was a Little League one belonging to one of the team members' kids. Fortunately, we were able to borrow one from our opponents. Unfortunately, our opponents were the top-seeded team in the competition; since we were the newest team, this was not surprising.
We were quickly retired in the top of the first inning, with one batter striking out after swinging at balls that bounced two feet in front of home plate. Our opponents quickly proved why they were the top seed, racking up a dozen runs before we recorded the first out, then adding eight more before the inning ended. Oh, they were good hitters, but it didn't help that we had an outfielder who apparently thought he was supposed to let the ball drop in front of him before fielding it and an infielder who played ground balls by allowing them to first bounce off his chest. (To be fair, we had a couple of guys on the team who have never played softball or baseball in their lives.)
Because of the ten-run "mercy rule," we had to score eleven runs in the top of the second inning in order to continue the game. Needless to say, we fell eleven runs short of that and so the "CRI Crushed" were eliminated in the first round.
Watching all this brought back memories of the early days of the DC Bullets, the DC Comics softball team that I captained for a number of years. Like the Crushers, the Bullets had a number of players who had never played before and had no understanding of the rules. I used to ask if we could please hire some people who knew something about baseball and was reminded that comic book fans generally spent their time reading comic books, not participating in competitive sports. (We did eventually get some guys who could play; they worked in our accounting department!)
The Bullets, unlike the Crushers, did manage to practice a few times before our first game. (We even had a couple of bats!) In the first few years, we only played one game per season, against Marvel Comics. Luckily for us, their team was also made up of comics-fans-turned-pros, so we were pretty evenly matched. In fact, the Bullets won the first two years, but the games were not without bizarre plays.
In one game, we had runners on first and second with no one out. The batter hit a pop fly to the second baseman. Without a thought, both runners took off. I was coaching at third base, yelling, "Go back! Go back!" to the runner coming towards me. Rather than doing so, he just stopped and said, "Why?" Meantime, the second baseman -- reminiscing about it last week at Ithacon, Jim Shooter and I agreed it was probably Marvel production man Danny Crespi -- caught the ball (one out), stepped on second base (two outs) and then tagged the runner from first as he triumphantly arrived at the base (three outs).
Nothing so exciting happened in the Crushers game, possibly because we didn't play long enough. But as our opponents were piling on the runs thanks to one misplay after another, I thought of Casey Stengel, just as I had that afternoon thirty-some-odd years ago. "The Old Perfessor," after watching his hapless 1962 New York Mets lose yet again in their own unique fashion, sighed and asked, "Can't anybody here play this game?"
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Right and Wrong
My alma mater, Hofstra University, has been making the front page (and lead story on the TV news) these past few days owing to a gang rape that has turned out to be not that at all.
To recap the story as it stands right now for those not in the New York-Metro area, an 18-year-old Hofstra student claimed to have been gang-raped by five men in a bathroom stall in one of the Hofstra dorms at 3:00 a.m. Monday morning. She claimed that one of the men, whom she met while dancing in an on-campus club, took her cellphone away and used it to lure her into the dorm. Once in the dorm, the man was joined by a second and the two of them took her into a men's bathroom, tied her up in a stall, and raped her. Three more men, whom the woman first thought would help her, turned out to be friends of the first two and they also raped her.
After the incident, campus and local police were called and four of the five men, including one who was a Hofstra student, were identified and arrested.
Not surprisingly, the Hofstra staff and student body were shocked, appalled, and frightened for their safety. As campus security was increased, an investigation into the crime ensued and the search for the fifth man continued.
On Wednesday night, however, the shocking story took an unexpected turn. Confronted with the news that a video of at least part of the attack might exist, the woman recanted and said that the sex had been consensual. The D.A. dropped all charges, the four men were released from jail and the search for the fifth was cancelled. (In the meantime, however, the four men had their names and pictures plastered across the newspapers and on television, the modern equivalent of being locked in stocks in the town square.)
Hofstra has now suspended the woman, pending a disciplinary hearing, and the D.A.'s office us considering pressing charges. We do not know, as yet, why she lied or why she got into the situation to begin with.
One of the men in the case, upon being released, said that he was glad that justice had prevailed because he thought he was going to be put in prison for something he didn't do. Yes, that is the basic premise of our judicial system: Good and bad. Right and wrong. The guilty are punished and the innocent go free.
But just what is it that he didn't do? All four men admitted to having sex with the woman, though they insisted it was consensual. Does that make it right? In what society is it okay for four (or five, if there was in fact a fifth man) men to have sex in a bathroom stall with a woman? What is it that was lacking in these guys' upbringing that not one of them stopped and said, "Why am I doing this? Why are we doing this?" Or, at least, "What is the matter with this woman that she is doing this?"
One of the mothers, hugging her son after he was released from jail last night, proclaimed, "I knew my son was innocent." Well, ma'am, your son is not guilty of rape, but one would have a hard time arguing that he is innocent.
No one did the right thing in this case; there was just wrong and more wrong.
To recap the story as it stands right now for those not in the New York-Metro area, an 18-year-old Hofstra student claimed to have been gang-raped by five men in a bathroom stall in one of the Hofstra dorms at 3:00 a.m. Monday morning. She claimed that one of the men, whom she met while dancing in an on-campus club, took her cellphone away and used it to lure her into the dorm. Once in the dorm, the man was joined by a second and the two of them took her into a men's bathroom, tied her up in a stall, and raped her. Three more men, whom the woman first thought would help her, turned out to be friends of the first two and they also raped her.
After the incident, campus and local police were called and four of the five men, including one who was a Hofstra student, were identified and arrested.
Not surprisingly, the Hofstra staff and student body were shocked, appalled, and frightened for their safety. As campus security was increased, an investigation into the crime ensued and the search for the fifth man continued.
On Wednesday night, however, the shocking story took an unexpected turn. Confronted with the news that a video of at least part of the attack might exist, the woman recanted and said that the sex had been consensual. The D.A. dropped all charges, the four men were released from jail and the search for the fifth was cancelled. (In the meantime, however, the four men had their names and pictures plastered across the newspapers and on television, the modern equivalent of being locked in stocks in the town square.)
Hofstra has now suspended the woman, pending a disciplinary hearing, and the D.A.'s office us considering pressing charges. We do not know, as yet, why she lied or why she got into the situation to begin with.
One of the men in the case, upon being released, said that he was glad that justice had prevailed because he thought he was going to be put in prison for something he didn't do. Yes, that is the basic premise of our judicial system: Good and bad. Right and wrong. The guilty are punished and the innocent go free.
But just what is it that he didn't do? All four men admitted to having sex with the woman, though they insisted it was consensual. Does that make it right? In what society is it okay for four (or five, if there was in fact a fifth man) men to have sex in a bathroom stall with a woman? What is it that was lacking in these guys' upbringing that not one of them stopped and said, "Why am I doing this? Why are we doing this?" Or, at least, "What is the matter with this woman that she is doing this?"
One of the mothers, hugging her son after he was released from jail last night, proclaimed, "I knew my son was innocent." Well, ma'am, your son is not guilty of rape, but one would have a hard time arguing that he is innocent.
No one did the right thing in this case; there was just wrong and more wrong.
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