Song of the Phone Continued

Ok—so I bought an apartment faster than I bought the phone. That is, if I did buy the phone, since there was some discussion of whether I should rent the phone, and then return it after whatever time it was, but the problem was that the phone had to be returned in pristine condition. So I think I bought the phone, which is now telling me that I missed a call from Beatriz, which is not true. I was busy trying to figure out how to answer the call, and getting contradicting information from the young, all of whom had been sending text messages from the womb.

“Swipe the screen,” said one.

“Press the phone icon,” said another.

I was off in the poetry shop beseeching help from Elizabeth, who has small hands and also fingernails. What did I have? A fork, with which I was trying to pry the cover of the charger jack.

“You are now going to have to open this for the rest of your life,” I told her, since the likelihood that my hands will get smaller is equal to the likelihood that the cover will get bigger.

“No problem,” said Elizabeth, who pointed out that I really should do something about the date, since the phone thinks it’s 3:15 AM on Wednesday, December 3, when in fact it’s 2:15 PM on Tuesday, December 2.

“It’s probably 3:15 AM on Wednesday in Korea,” I told her, since the phone that I ended up with is a Samsung, “and it’s always useful to know the time in Korea.”

Elizabeth agreed, in the mild way that people agree with people-who-probably-aren’t-dangerous-but-still-you-never-know…

So why did I end up with a Samsung Galaxy instead of the iPhone that I thought I was going to get?

I have no idea.

Let’s be clear—my job yesterday in Radio Shack was to nod my head and agree, since Hector, the nerd / employee, was entirely in control of the process. So we looked at the dinky little phones that were available for an upgrade, and Hector then steered me to the larger phones. Right—so that seemed like what I should do, and somehow the Galaxy was suggested and then assented to. So what about Internet?

I had decided—I didn’t want Internet, but Hector? Well, he was having none of that, since it was crazy to him to buy a Galaxy S5 and not have Internet. So guess who now has Internet?

Somewhere in the process, I became utterly obsessed with the question: would I have to transfer all my numbers manually, or could Hector transfer the numbers from my old phone to the new?

Hector just sighed….

“I’m gonna come back with a million questions,” I told Hector, and that’s true, since if you go to the Galaxy 5s website? Here’s what you see! 

      

 

That, of course, leaves me with YouTube, but you know what? I just can’t—not today, since I am sitting behind two tables of probable Koreans, all of whom are busy chatting with their girlfriends via Skype while texting their mother back in Seoul. They have, in fact, been here for a couple of hours, and the number of words exchanged between them? I have more fingers on my hand.

Oh, and when they do interact? It’s exclusively to show their friends something appearing on their screen.

Oh, and guess what? I tried to establish an email account, only to get the notification from Gmail that “someone recently used your password to try to sign in to your Google account.” So now I have to figure out—was that someone me? And should I reset my email?

“You’re going to have to be careful now,” said Lady, “since nobody wanted your old phone, except maybe for historical purposes. But now, people could steal your new phone….”

Why do I hope they will?

Whither Must I Wander?

“What kind of phone do you have,” asked my brother John, after I had protested that I absolutely hated my phone, as does everyone else.

“A red phone,” I replied.

“My God,” he gasped. “Marc, how could you? Everybody knows that red phones are the worst!”

He was treating me with all the seriousness I deserve, since he knows perfectly well: I am the one person in the western world—OK, excepting Haiti—who cannot text. And what else can’t I do? Well, call Lady, for one thing, since her phone number has a six in it. And what happens when I press six on the dial pad? I get five.

So it’s cyber Monday, and now I have to buy some damn phone, and I hate phones because all I want them to do is call the people I want to call. Instead, the phone wants me to take pictures—I have a camera, thank you—and store music and receive emails. In short, if I get an iPhone, which everyone is telling me to do, I will be hyper-connected. And you know what? That is absolutely what I don’t want.

What I want is a butler, somebody who will make calls for me, and state gravely: “Mr. Newhouse desires to communicate with you….” Better, he’ll just give them a message, and then I’ll go back to listening to the Porpora cello concerto, which may not be all that great, but it’s better than learning about the iPhone, and by the way, do you know that somebody actually wrote this?

  

Wait a minute—and this is supposed to make my life better? And this being the day to buy electronics, why am I being asked to shell out over five hundred dollars for a contract-free phone? And what would I do with a contract-free phone? Could I call anybody with it? Or would I have to find my own contract? Or would I simply just have it, so I could join the rest of the world?

So now I have a red phone that dials five when I press six, and I’ve spent an hour on the Internet trying to figure out: which phone is best for an aging writer of little brain and less technological savvy? Oh, and then consider this, from Apple’s webpage:

Touch ID fingerprint identity sensor.

Put your finger on the Home button, and just like that your iPhone unlocks. Your fingerprint can also approve purchases from iTunes or the App Store.

Yeah? Just like that? Listen, Apple, did I ever say it was OK to have my fingerprint? And what else will you guys be doing with it? What happens when the National Security Administration decides to do a mass collection of fingerprints?

Oh, and by the way, are there fingerprint hackers? Seems like there should be, since my fingerprint would have to be digitalized—seems like a pun, I know—and so somebody in China or Russia could be ordering online with my fingerprint.

There was a day, dear Reader, and not too distantly, when phones just did one thing—call people or businesses. And your only decision was whether to get a white one or a black one. All right, there was this….

    

 Ah, the princess phone! I still see one every three months, since my shrink has one, and since having graduated from Harvard—in addition to being a shrink—my shrink’s self-esteem is unblemished by any taunts about the masculinity of any man with a princess phone. Nor am I one to taunt, because I had one too.

What I should do, of course, is completely educate myself so that I know exactly what I’m doing telephonically and can make superb, supreme decisions, perhaps involving ordering directly from the Apple plant in  China, or maybe having a disaffected worker smuggle one out. There’s got to be at least one disaffected worker, and shouldn’t a serious blogger be able to find one?

Yes.

No—but I did come across this:

The poor working conditions in these Chinese factories are the subject of a new documentary, "Who Pays the Price? The Human Cost of Cheap Electronics." The film follows the lives — and deaths — of workers, many of whom are teenagers, who fall gravely ill from contact with carcinogenic chemicals like benzene.

Or you might consider this:

The research, carried out by two NGOs, has revealed disturbing allegations of excessive working hours and draconian workplace rules at two major plants in southern China. It has also uncovered an "anti-suicide" pledge that workers at the two plants have been urged to sign, after a series of employee deaths last year.

Right, so now I am considering buying a smart phone that will make me feel stupid—I can just imagine it flashing a warning, ”Do you seriously want to destroy your entire contact list? Are you frigging crazy?”—and will make me feel guilty, knowing that somebody around the world suffered for me, and now can’t even off himself, since that would be a serious breach of contract.

Oh, and even if the guy who made my phone tried to kill himself, as a spate of people did a couple years ago? Well, no worries, because the factory owners got that one sorted out. Here’s what they did:

Yup—suicide nets!

What should I do? Go low-tech and get a TracPhone, or try to go high-tech, and get an iPhone? Well, I can tell you what I will do, since there is a Radio Shack on the corner of my block, and they were the guys who allowed me to buy a phone which now dials five when six is pressed. So they know that I am as fluent in technology as I am in Mandarin, and they will show me what undoubtedly is the best phone—for them, in terms of markup—and I will nod and try not to ask dumb question, such as, “where is the ‘on’ button?”

And everybody else will be downloading apps to clean their oven overnight with their cell phones—“activate this app, place your cell phone in the oven, and presto!”—and I? What will I be doing?

I’d love to tell you that I’ll jump fearlessly from the Nineteenth Century to at least the twenty-second, but why do I feel I don’t have a chance? Of course, I really should do what the sister of a friend does: she has no phone, but not a problem because she’s very chatty, and talks to everybody, and since people like to help, and people like her, well, no problem! So when she needs to call people? Well, she asks to borrow her new friend’s phone for a minute.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

See?

     

Beyond Ferguson

It was predictable when the governor of the state declared a state of emergency when, in fact, there was utterly no emergency. What was there? The pending certainty that once again, the cops would get away with murder.

Let’s play fair: every time a cop intervenes in a situation, there is a risk of injury or death. Decisions are made in split seconds that have lifelong consequences. What am I saying? Maybe Darren Wilson had a reasonable belief that Michael Brown was armed and dangerous. Maybe he acted correctly.

(Do I really think so? Of course not. I’m also in a café, not a cop car. I’m reading things, not having them happen around me, as I’m supposed to take charge of a situation without having all the facts.)

So give Wilson a break. But there’s a problem: what do we do with the statistics like these?

Anyone looking at this chart would come to only one conclusion: the police in the United States of America are waging a war on black people. Oh, and by the way, what does our prison rate look like over time? Have a peek:

In short, around 1980 we went nuts and decided to impose draconian sentences on everything, even offenses that were nonviolent. So now, we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world at 743 persons per 100,000. Compare that to Norway, with 71 inmates per 100,000. Can anyone really believe that the United States is ten times more criminal than Norway?

“Those white motherfuckahs will never catch this Niggah; not up here in these hills,” said Montalvo, as he drove about 60 degrees up a hill in the mountains, two weeks ago. “They’d never get a police car up here…”

He had taken us to the river, since I was stressed out and needing a break. So Montalvo? Well, he promised that standing under a waterfall was God’s way of “bitch-slapping the sins out of me.” And who could resist that?

Along the way, he was smoking something hand-rolled, and do I have to tell you? Of course I assumed it was dope, though he told me later that it was passion fruit seeds, instead. Was it? Whatever it was, it didn’t affect his driving down some of the steepest, curviest roads on the island.

But if he tests positive? Well, it will then be 744 not 743 inmates per 100,000 people. And how much will we all pay to incarcerate a black kid who formed a mystical union with a blue macaw?

I could do the numbers, which would probably indicate that we could provide Montalvo with an aviary full of blue macaws, save money, and not jeopardize in the least public safety. But those aren’t the real numbers: what would it do to Montalvo, what sort of man would come out of seven years in prison? Would there be a poet left there?

And what would it do to me?

“Man, I can see it all over your face,” he told me.

“What you’re not hearing is me talking to my father,” I told him.

Because Montalvo had climbed two or three up a rock face in the river, and I was seriously wondering if he would jump down, and what I’d do about that, since I knew perfectly well that there were large rocks six inches below the surface so of course Montalvo was going to sever his spinal column and spend the rest of his days in “I Love You Lord Home Center” Yes, click on the link: it really exists.

Well, I had been arguing with my father, who was telling me from very-much-above (I sure hope) “tell that crazy kid not to jump!” After all, the only reason I have my feet is because every single last time I mowed the lawn, my father had insisted that I wear leather shoes, and had told me never to pull the mower towards me, but rather push the mower away from me. See? That’s why I’m not hopping around on stumps right now.

And it would have been a shame to lose Montalvo to a spinal column injury, since he had very patiently taken Raf by the hand and shoulder, to guide over the rocky river bed. It was touching: a younger man helping his father, unprompted and spontaneously.

It would also be a shame to lose Montalvo to the criminal justice system, since my scotch is OK but his dope is not. I wanted to tell him, my son who had taken his other father by the hand and shepherded him up the river, that the cops could be trusted, that he didn’t need to head for the hills and hope that they wouldn’t send the helicopters instead. I wanted to tell that but…

…I couldn’t.

Education for Some

Here’s why it should work: my nephew, Tyler, went to a public school in New York City. But before you conjure up the visions of a greying, decaying public school—complete with the boarded-up windows—you should know that this was Stuyvesant High School. And what’s so special about that? Well, Wikipedia provides part of the answer:

Stuyvesant High School /ˈstaɪvəsənt/, commonly referred to as Stuy /ˈstaɪ/,^[7] is one of the nine Specialized High Schools in New York City. Operated by the New York City Department of Education, these schools offer tuition-free accelerated academics to city residents. The only way to be admitted into most of the Specialized High Schools, including Stuyvesant, is to take the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT). Stuyvesant traditionally holds the highest cutoff score out of the Specialized High Schools; each November, over 28,000 eighth and ninth graders take the 2¹⁄₂-hour exam, and roughly 800 students (less than 3% of applicants) are accepted annually.

So Tyler had done well—but did Stuy do well by Tyler? The answer is yes and no—since Tyler went on to go to an excellent university and then to Colombia for a master’s degree. But Stuy did have a little problem, in the form of a physics teacher from China or India whose accent was so thick that nobody could understand him. Nor was that the only problem: there were stories of teachers drunk in class, of mediocre lectures, of the academic laziness and boredom that afflict the average American high school. What made Stuy great? The students, not the teachers. Merely by being so exclusive, it attracted the finest students.

News flash—brilliant students don’t need brilliant teachers: they’ll thrive in the rockiest soil. Who needs good teachers? Kids for whom television has been their primary window to the world, not kids who, like Tyler, could identify a Monet haystack at the age of six. That’s how often he had been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art….

So I should be for it, shouldn’t I? Because look, if I had shown up drunk for work at Wal-Mart, they would have marched me down to Human Resources and fired me. Why should a New York City schoolteacher be allowed to hold on to a job, just because he has tenure?

And I should be proud of my state, the great state of Wisconsin, which twenty-five years ago did something that I found chilling at the time, and still do. Here’s what one writer, Christopher Fons, has to say:

25 years ago the Bradley Foundation and a number of other right wing “free market” oriented think tanks convinced the Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, a majority of Republicans, “New Democrats” like Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and a few Democratic Black Nationalist legislators like Polly Williams that it was time to help the poor of Milwaukee by allowing them to accept state money to attend private or charter schools instead of their neighborhood schools.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program initially allowed a few hundred low-income students to participate in the program. Today the program has expanded to over 28,000 students and the means test for getting a voucher is $78,000 if the student’s parents are married. The last Wisconsin budget also expanded the program state-wide and allows a tax deduction of $10,000 if your child goes to a private high school and a $4,000 deduction for an elementary school student.

Wisconsin, in short, is leading the country in using public money to pay for private schools. Here’s the scheme: identify a “failing” school, close it down if it doesn’t improve, and then give parents vouchers for them to spend in the charter school of their choice. And listen to Steve Jobs, if you need convincing:

The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of these people who believes the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I've seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers - so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year.

If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, "Let's start a school."

—Steve Jobs, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

Hard to argue with Steve, right? But then again, the thought does cross the mind that any child of Steve Jobs will get a good education. Why? Because Jobs will not have parked his kid in front of a TV for the first five years of the kid’s life; neither will Jobs be feeding his kid fast food in the car on the way home from one job before going to his second job. And Jobs will have the mentality and the skill set to go into a school, observe, ask hard questions, interview students and teachers—who knows, maybe even take a look at the books, to make sure the school is financially solvent. White guys who are CEOs of major corporations can do that.

But on this side of the café where I’m writing we have Amir, whose child just turned six months. On the other side, Elizabeth, whose two children are fourteen and twelve. Are either Amir or Elizabeth capable of doing what Jobs did? Good people they are, but are they capable of evaluating a school? Could they be fooled by fancy brochures or the latest technology, when in fact an old-fashioned, low-tech teacher—standing in front of her or his blackboard—would serve them better?

“Hey,” I just asked Elizabeth, “whatever happened at your daughter’s school? You guys did a strike, and demanded the resignation of the principal, substitute teachers, a security guard—even had a meeting with the Department of Education about the school. Anything ever happen?”

“Not a thing,” said Elizabeth. “Well, let’s see what happens.”

So she’s savvy, in one sense—savvy enough to organize, to make a bit of a stink. But there’s something missing, something that I recall from a book by Malcolm Gladwell. And that was? That the ruling classes—meaning the people who buy the Starbucks coffee, not serve it—train their children quite unconsciously, but no less effectively, how to mediate the world. Is there a simpler way to put it? You bet—the movers and shakers teach their kids how to get what they want.

For three months, Elizabeth’s youngest daughter didn’t have an English teacher. I think now of my mother—would she have let that happen?

In fact, she didn’t. She had stirred around when needed, at one point joining a group of parents who forced the city to enclose a storm sewer that had swept away a child playing in it after a hard rain. The moms came down so hard on the official that they drove him to tears.

Do either Elizabeth or Amir have those skills? Do they have the mentality? And lastly, do they have the clout to back up a threat?

If they don’t, then they need Jobs’ child to be sitting next to their kids in a public school. And guess what? Jobs needs his child to be there, too. Because having a system where the entitled get one education and the downtrodden get another leads to a world and a system that ultimately doesn’t benefit anyone.

Sure, for the short-term it works. But pretty soon, you end up with a society so stratified that it looks like Mexico, which, by the way, is about to unravel.

Could anyone seriously want that?