Author Archives: oinsketta

Book of Irv Notes

When I say “they killed” almost everyone in my family, I mean men with guns, mostly, following the orders of other men with guns.  On my mother’s side I was finally able to learn, with some detail, who these men were, when and where they fired the shots, what became of the bodies.

On Irv’s side there is only Night and Fog, a muddy shit hole of a hamlet wiped off the world map and the endless rage of the characters who survived in America.  No details but the names of three of the main characters, Chaski, Yuddle and Volbear, remain.  The accursed little town across the river from Pinsk itself … poof.

It would be fair to say I was haunted by this family history, as much by the stern instruction not to think about the murders as by the gristly, arbitrary murders themselves.  All that was left of this horror in the house where I grew up was a hopeless obsession with social justice.  My sister and I were imbued with it to a destructive extent since it is something the world itself doesn’t give a rat’s well turned thigh for.  

In fairness, I feel the same way about the history of American slavery, the ongoing slaughter done in my name by our weapons makers, the vast, life-swallowing institution of inherited poverty in the richest nation on earth.

“Stuck to care, motherfucker,” the skeleton of my father chortles from his grave on a hill in Peekskill, but he chuckles without mirth.   He knows he is largely the author of this Book of Irv, whether he wants to write it or not.  It’s the story of how a young boy without a chance grew up to put his kids on the hook.  What that hook is precisely, I will describe to you as well as I can.

 

 

Stab 1 — Call Me Ishmael

Thirteen years before I was born they killed almost everyone in my family.  Though I was always told not to worry about it, I did worry about it.   

My father, a perceptive man with a degree in history who could tell a pretty good story, might have sat down and tapped out an illuminating account but he is dead now too and can’t do much these days.  Before the end, when he could have been writing this all out, he was busy reading several newspapers every day, walking the dog, napping.  I am the last one in my line left to tell the story, including how they killed nearly every one of us, continue to kill so many of us.

My father left it to me, in his final, grandest joke, to grapple with the increasingly slippery ghosts of this story.  

We do not give a rat’s perfectly formed buttock for men who grapple with slippery ghosts, I know that as well as anyone.  I myself smirk whenever I pass such a man. You will hear no cluck from me if you slam this heavy tome shut now.  I will try to make it worth your while, that’s all I can tell you.

Life goes on, and, even if it won’t, this is a true golden age for episodic television, great actors are performing well-crafted dramas that move with insight and cunning from one emotionally fraught moment to the next, gathering momentum as they go. We binge watch now, many of us, and are relieved, on demand, of everything else while we do.

So I’m writing the account my father, a dreaded and articulate man, might have written if he ever wrote anything down. A hesitant hunt and peck typist who occasionally gave long speeches in front of groups, he never prepared his remarks on paper. He prepared them carefully in his mind, you could hear that at once from the organization of his talks.

He’d glance down at notes, but they’d be a few words on the back of an envelope to remind him of where he was in his thoughts. He had this wonderful facility, like the way the Romane (Gypsies) have always learned music.  See the shape of the song clearly in the air, in the mind, let the flourishes fall where they’re called for. The matter of style.

Style is also how the most unspeakable civilities are carried out, routinized, turned into mere artifacts of history. Read Dred Scott and you will appreciate the power of style to carry the day. That Chief Justice, smoothly working the levers of the law to assure everyone that under our law, and with the best of intentions on everybody’s parts, a Negro is still a Negro.

(that’s it for tonight, boys and girls, end of first stab)

The Actual Book

“The Book” itself, I realize now,  turns out to be something completely different than any of those three hypothetical discrete, daunting book projects I laid out the other day.  

For one thing, it has to draw all three themes together, for lack of time and because of the maddening specificity of the case it must lay out. Hatred, love, slaughter, mercy and play must be interwoven, weighed out chapter by chapter.  In the end you will have to care about it, see the work I am trying to move forward as animated by something very real and pressing, or the book is nothing.

The Book, this The Book of Irv (Book of My Father), pieces together a tricky puzzle, tells each strand of the history to lay out the unifying theory.  It is an attempt to explain the unexplainable, make clear things that are hazy at best.  

You cannot understand hate until you experience it directly, cannot love until you’ve been loved. Simple idea, though complicated to explain well.

Everything we believe has been sold to us. Everything.  

Our world is increasingly based on selling, from everything you can see with your eyes to the deepest beliefs you hold.  If I can’t package and sell I’m basically through, and the thing I must sell is, above all, a compelling story of the theory that moves me.   It’s got to move you, too.

The Book of Irv is equal parts beauty and horror; the fun and invention of play — the first and deepest mammalian bonding and learning– (and Irv was always playful with children and small animals) and the unspeakable horrors of hatred, the despicable civilities committed in the name of our American law.  The devil is, as always, in the details.  These historical strands need to be patiently, clearly set out, in order to give the reader the full context for consideration.

Irv as a unifying figure is ideally situated at the center of this explanation.   His life began in dire poverty, a Jew born in a New York City tenement who moved with his family to a shit hole in Peekskill.   He was an outsider consumed by outrageous injustice.  He fought racism in America after returning from a stint in our occupying army in post-war Germany after that modern nation showed how muscularly racism could be flexed, if insanity actually ruled.  

My father, for all his frailties, fought a fitful fight for social justice across decades, as he fought his kids, dominated his wife, quipped, raged at the inhumanity of the world.  He imparted to his children deep and important values that would influence the course of our lives, to our great detriment.   All this should be explained, the strength of this irresistible force that compels us both to work with the children of the fucked.  

The principle is straightforward:  poverty breeds despair, violence and fear.   Poverty stinks worldwide, kills millions and shortens every life it touches.   You want to heal the world?  Start by working on eliminating poverty.  Start with the kids.

In our modern world of unlimited wealth, poverty is a problem that can finally be ameliorated.  It won’t be, but that’s another story.  I suppose the thing that finally drove Irv to despair was his feeling of hopelessness.  Justice does not prevail, except sometimes incrementally, for moments in certain lifetimes, and without a community of comrades it is impossible to continue the good fight.  

Irv understood that the moral center of a society that can enslave millions solely to amass great wealth is indistinguishable from a culture that sends its believers scrabbling to cut their neighbors’ throats.    The names of the atrocities change over the centuries: impaling, shooting, lynching, drowning, whipping, but the song remains the same.

The Book of Irv must walk the line on this side of rant, unreliable narrator or no. Play must be at the center of it, because play is the only dependable relief from the oppression all around.  A tall order, friend, but while I am taking orders, why not?

“So you’re going to talk about this fascinating, all-explaining, theory unifying book you’re supposedly going to write, Dr. Bronner?  Or are you going to knuckle down and start writing it?”

I’m going to knuckle down and continue to talk about starting to write it, at the moment.  But first to get back to my long-stalled project to make some space in here.

Write the Book

So what is this book?  

It is more than one book, actually.

The subject of each has been dictated by the world, each book is needed to demonstrate my point.  These are entwined but distinct points that need to be separated out.  Let me try to disentangle and prioritize them, make them less abstract, seem less the ravings of a madman.

Book One —  to convince the reader of the obvious: how important careful listening, participating and empathetic feedback are in learning.   Make the case for why I care about these things so deeply, why others should too.

This is a fraught book, perhaps more than the others.  It is a do or die attempt to sell, more than my name or skills, a big idea I’ve already invented the machine to demonstrate and have put into  practice dozens of times in classrooms in New York City. 

The world has largely moved away from these quaint values of care and appreciation, at least on a mass level.  If I’d make a business out of helping kids learn these old-time, hand-made type skills, I have to tell the story in a way that will engage and excite.  I need to find the way to inspire a creative and caring sector of a world that values, far above everything else it also espouses, competition and the metrics of who is wining and who sucks.  

Until I find the way to tell this story compellingly enough to get it funded, or finally give it up as a bad job and find something else to do, I continue to lose the only competition everyone readily understands.   Quicksand, my friends, in which I swim in extreme slow motion.

Book one, the detailed and compelling case for wehearyou.net, (or whatever you want to call it) an interactive workshop where public school kids’ imaginations run the show as they work together to master the interlocking skills needed to produce original stop-motion animation.  This is clearly the hardest of the three books to write.

There are two easier ones that come to mind– the easiest would lay out the devilish details, fleshed out by memory and imagination where the world has wiped away all trace, of the destruction of the roots and trunk of my family tree by centuries-deep hatred that finally had the technology to carry out its ultimate goal– killing every last one of the fuckers, everyone like me.  

This had happened before, has happened many times since, has tangled roots and a million implications.  It has haunted me since I learned of it as a boy, applies over and over as we read the news today.   Who gives a shit about this story? Probably a few middle class people here and there.  It is a story that will mostly have to wait, it would appear, or show up as a long article in some journal somewhere, along with my research into the unfathomably sad, sick history of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

The third book is the tip of the iceberg, really, the iceberg itself being the preceding book.  Or, picture, instead of the iceberg,  the fruit of the destroyed tree, if you prefer another cliché.  To understand how somebody of great intelligence, humor and charm can act like a cornered rat, lash out viciously at loved ones, you need to picture the exact circumstances that put the rat into his dreaded corner.   This would be the most interesting of the three, perhaps, and require the least by way of imagination.

But let me tell you a little story that might be the best way to set the stage for the first book, the story of my most tangible real-world quest.

In a region of Italy ravaged by World War Two, in a village called Reggio Emilia, the first thing the parents built, when peace finally returned, was a school.  This school was built in a charred landscape, for children who had known only war.  The parents wanted a better world for their children and their first priority was imbuing these poor devils with a love of life, a deep appreciation of the wonder of creativity and every hope for a beautiful future.

To that end they made the school beautiful, had the children plant and tend a garden to make the blackened earth blossom.  When the plants in the garden were cared for, green leaves magically sprouted and their fruits ripened in the sun. These delicious ingredients were harvested and lovingly cooked.  Kids and their teachers prepared and ate the things the earth produced, the things they had brought forth from the earth. 

Colors, flavors, scents, everything that could excite the senses of young kids was brought into play.  The childrens’ excitement  guided the things they studied.  Adults carefully listening to the children nurtured their creativity, childish intellectual curiosity and everything else that makes students into life long learners.

I was told of this program by a friend who’d encountered it in San Francisco.  It reminded her, she said, of my program, since it placed adults listening to children’s ideas and discoveries in the forefront of education.   She believed it was now a worldwide movement, that there was probably a Reggio Emilia school or two in New York City.  

I was delighted to find a couple in New York City. You will not be surprised to learn who the children in these Reggio Emilia schools are– they are children whose parents can afford the $35,000 a year tuition for their kindergartner.

Below is what Reggio Emilia says about itself (see ruptured appendix 1).   Here is what a writer for a major magazine has observed– a fairly obvious point about which children need this humanistic approach to education the most.

Which completely ignores the question of how these creatively engaged kids do on the life or death standardized tests designed by testing corporations to measure learning and guides us back into the crippling cul de sac that I must somehow leap out of if I am to proceed, if my long-stalled program is to go forward.  In a world of limited resources, whose children will get the rare, difficult, precious thing and whose children will get the predictable, easier, more crippling one?

If you will excuse me now, I have to go bash fucking City Hall in the face and get back to practicing so I can find my way to Carnegie Hall.

More tomorrow, when I must somehow avoid writing anything in this vein, or this vein.

 

ruptured appendix 1

At the heart of this system is the powerful image of the child. Reggio educators do not see children as empty vessels that require filling with facts. Rather they see children as full of potential, competent and capable of building their own theories.

Children have the right to be … active participants in the organization of their identities, abilities, and autonomy.. .  “better citizens of the world”… (this system) also credits children, and each individual child, with an extraordinary wealth of inborn abilities and potential, strength and creativity.  Irreversible suffering and impoverishment of the child is caused when this fact is not acknowledged [my emphasis– ed].

Each day and every moment, we, the teachers, follow the directions of the children and adapt ourselves, always observing, documenting, listening and interpreting their goals, theories and strategies so we can gain insight into their thinking, always ready to make changes and support the children in their discoveries.

“Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand.”  Chinese Proverb

source

 

 

 

 

This year you write the book

Whatever you may have said or written about it last year, or in any past year, he said to himself, this year you must actually write the book.

“What is this ‘he said to himself’ business? ‘More to see in 1983?'”

Never mind that, he said, vow that this will be a year without parentheticals…come crisply to the point.  The clock has long been ticking, it is time to score some points, the shot clock winding down, shoot, score, ca-ching!

In a dream last night I had set up my electric guitar in the living room of Hitler’s house.  My host had insisted, I’d gone to plug in in the living room.  Hitler was busily rushing about with guitar cords.  I didn’t notice what kind of guitar he had plugged in, but he was eager to jam.

“A jam session with Hitler?” the whoosh of a long sigh filled the air.

 Yes, and in the dream I knew enough not to argue with him, knew he’d storm into the other room and come back with a pistol. He was famously psychopathic, I knew, and wouldn’t hesitate to show his irritation by shooting me in the face.  The usual low stakes had been raised a bit in this jam session, I later thought to myself.  I never heard him play, because I woke up before that point, but I suspect he played like he spoke.

“Don’t we all?”  Some year without parentheticals (somebody said)

and forget ellipsis, too …

This is the year you do all the things you have not yet done, the things you gave up as impossible, improbable, too hard, too taxing.   This is the year to unlearn learned helplessness, he said with waning faith.  Meaning enough with the 57 varieties of brooding.  

It is time to stop picturing yourself on the lip of that ravine in Vishenevitz just because the day, or year, dawns darker than expected.  Just stop it.  And stop talking to yourself, and pondering, with endless unprofitable invention, the slipperiness of the ground most of us are tap dancing on.

Suddenly, the music begins, and who is that coming overloud through the amp on the left side?   We can only guess.

America’s Exceptional Exceptionalism

Other countries, other cultures, other People, may consider themselves ‘exceptional’.  This may be true —  to them — but American Exceptionalism is exceptionally exceptional, more exceptional than any other exceptionalism, as I’m sure you’ll all agree.  As I shall endeavor to demonstrate again here.

I don’t say this only to be arch– or only to avoid doing things I must do today while I tap blindly at these keys.  Those motives cannot be denied, I add in the spirit of complete transparency of the kind President Obama so forcefully advocated as a candidate.  If you don’t feel like reading my bullshit but still want a good reason to be pissed off, just click this link.

Consider this: America has been exceptionally successful selling the ideas of freedom, justice and the American way.  Selling is the American genius.  This is beyond dispute.  Nobody does it, or did it, better.  

I don’t say this only out of bitterness at not being a sales genius myself, though admittedly that’s part of it.  America has packaged and ingeniously sold any number of wonderful and terrible things.  We are the undisputed genius of that ever-growing field which now encompasses advertising, public relations, spin-doctoring, marketing, branding, market research, demographic targeting, political persuasion, fundraising, data collection for targeted marketing, political advertising to influence the outcome of democratic processes, etc.

I think everyone can agree this amazing industry, employing many millions and influencing every American deeply (not to mention billions of others worldwide) is kind of exceptional.  To have the genius and ability to sell millions of rocks as pets?  Exceptional!  To be able to expertly package and market candidates for political office, and launch devilishly targeted attack ads to torpedo enemy candidates? Truly exceptional!  No shit, really, and no wonder these experts are paid enormous sums of money for the invaluable services they provide.  

Of course, it’s mostly the bitterness speaking. And glibness, which, though I sometimes flash, I know is also a vice.  So let me stop flapping me gums and post the link to the latest illustration of American Exceptionalism that has come across my desk.  

Apparently, to avoid another threatened government shut-down by those elected government officials who are hell-bent on proving that government is the enemy, certain compromises were made here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Sekhnet warned me to take my blood pressure meds before reading this short article on five of the most infuriating political compromises that prostitutes, pimps and panderers struck recently in our name and in the name of preserving and funding our great democracy.  I made it to the end of number two, before going into the small room to do the same myself.  As I went I chanted “USA! USA! USA!”  If you’re feeling strong today, click here.

And God bless our exceptional United States of America.

 

 

Fun in the Sun

I had something closer to my heart to write just now, but decided to write something closer to my inflamed baboon’s asshole instead:

Dear NY State of Health:

 I had a message on the website congratulating me when I logged in recently. The green notice told me that there was nothing more I needed to do to keep my health insurance as it is for 2016. I then checked my Inbox for the message received on 12/20/25 and read that my subsidy was being removed. I called to straighten things out and two or three days later got an electronic disenrollment notice.

A confusing ninety minutes on the phone with NYS of Health on 12/22 resulted in erroneous information being inputted on my application on my behalf. The website crashed mid-conversation, which made things more difficult still.   During the first call Marlon told me he would list my income for 2016 as zero, since my income for the last three months had been quite low. I described to him why it would be inaccurate to list my 2016 income as zero and then the call was abruptly cut off.

When I called back I learned, from the next person I spoke to, Izahn, that Marlon had filed my application listing my income as “zero”.   I was unable to see my own application on-line because of the trouble with the website. Izahn assured me that he’d fixed Marlon’s mistake, submitted a new application for me and apologized for the website being down so I couldn’t see the application he’d filled out for my continued health insurance.   He advised me to send the most recent tax returns. They are enclosed.

I had two emails on Christmas Day, the first referred me to a notice that turned out to be the disenrollment notice at the bottom of this letter.     Marlon’s “zero” apparently triggered the other notice I was emailed on Christmas Day, informing me that the income information on the 12/23 application did not match income obtained from State and Federal sources.

 I’d like to maintain my insurance coverage. Your assistance is greatly appreciated,

 “Your assistance is greatly appreciated,”

He added ironically, disgustedly, clenching his face into a fist with which to smash the reader of his words to a powerless minimum wage bureaucrat working for the health insurance industry, under the guise of a program to help New Yorkers afford overpriced health insurance.

“They Can’t Do That!”

(note: this is a reimagining of a hideous courtroom encounter with an enraged young jurist who senselessly flogged a tired guardian with the unreasoning letter of the law.  No similarity to the actions of the angry hearing officer, if such a person even existed, is intended, nor should any be inferred.  Elpidio Ortega and Dave Levin, although arguably based on real persons, are also arguably not).

You don’t really understand how relentless the law is until you stand next to it for a long enough time.  Years ag0, as my dying mother was impatiently waiting for me to finish in court and get her for lunch, I had a conversation with a judge, on the record, that went like this:

Judge:  So, counselor, you’re telling you have  never even made an attempt to speak to your ward and have no intelligent action plan for the octogenarian, Mr. Ortega, a non-English speaking client of Adult Protective Services.

Me: (pause) … that’s basically what it boils down to, Judge.

The Judge asks a series of probing questions, my nods, head shakes and other body language and gestures are captured only as silence on the record, as is my detailed explanation.   Then the judge says.

So, basically, counselor, again, what you’re saying is you have never even made an attempt to speak to your ward and have no real plan of how to protect your ward, an 80 year-old man who is facing eviction.

Me:  … outside of what I have already said, Judge, that is what I’m saying.  There is only one plan now possible for Mr. Ortega.

Listen to the voice recording again, “outside of what I have already said” is a non sequitar when all I’ve said is that it boils down to me having no idea how to proceed in this guardianship matter.  

My adversary in the Housing Court that morning, Dave Levin, remembers well what I’d said, the steps I was taking, that he had already agreed to my excellent terms.  None of that is on the record.  The cunning and ambitious young judge made sure to make a clean record.

“A clean record comes in very handy when anyone questions your ethics.  If you can produce a transcript where everything that can be used against you has disappeared, you’re golden,” said his mentor Sheldon Silver.  This young judge was one of Shelly’s golden boys, had skipped over several more qualified candidates to become a Housing Court judge.  He dexterously rode the switch to edit our colloquy on the fly, delete the rest of what I’d said in the six unrecorded minutes.

But they have a clock in the courtroom, right on the bench, you will protest, surely when the judge and you speak on the record the transcript has a running time stamp that would show deletions.   

Oh, of course, absolutely — in theory.  But theory, we find, gets the snot whipped out of it by practice, almost every time.

In case a judge needs a break to make a phone call or look up a point of law on the computer, or use the bathroom, there is a switch that turns a tiny red light off and on and signals when the device is recording, when the transcript is being made.  The judge turns the recorder off between cases too, otherwise the log would be one running mess of courtroom sounds.  

Like so many things where the law is involved, keeping the system honest is on you.  If you speak without making sure that light is on, you learn to your horror too late, your remarks will leave no judicially cognizable trace.  

Once you know about the red light you can check it, point to it any time it is shut off, make a record of the light being off, correction to the record.  But, if you don’t know about the little red light, and the ease with which a concealed button can be pressed and unpressed, you are fresh meat for thirsty blood drinkers.  

“Off the record, please, your Honor,” means the tiny red light blinks off, the clock moves along, and all conversation is off the record, unless the judge decides something needs to be put on the record.  

“When we were off the record counselor for the respondent informed the Court that his client has not been seen in three weeks, cannot presently be located.   He reminds us that his client has evaded three psychiatric evaluations and a Heavy Duty Cleaning and that the last time he was in Court he spoke of having booked a reservation for a coach seat on an interstellar airline.  Respondent confirmed his flight arrangements by consulting a large, hardcover note book, and reading a long confirmation code from a blank page, aloud to the Court.” 

Outside of that kind of information germane to the case, there is almost never a reason to put something said off the record on to the record.  Everybody knows the drill.  On the other hand, an argumentative, angry judge, might prefer not to have an argument that makes him look like a cranky crybaby asshole preserved for all time. 

“Well, your Honor, I’ve already been waiting over an hour for you to look at and sign the three line stip [a stip is an agreement, stipulated to by two parties – ed.] Mr. Levin and I submitted to your Clerk.  You agree that the terms are reasonable and I have every reason to hope another Order to Show Cause will not be necessary.  In the event that the agency unaccountably does not do what it has already promised to expedite, I have almost a month before I have to make a motion.   Mr. Levin and I are in agreement about its terms and he has been generous in this negotiation.”  

Judge: this is not a bad stip, I agree, but I have a question for you, counselor, as the Guardian ad Litem.   As you know I am required to allocute this stipulation, even though your client is not in court, even though you and Mr. Levin are both attorneys.  But I have a few questions for you, and as you can see, I have not been sitting idly by as you waited for me to sign your stip, which I could not have done anyway, until I’d allocuted it.  

Me:  You will recall, Judge, that I’ve appeared before you many times as a Guardian ad Litem.  We have seen more difficult cases than this one, but the system doesn’t really have a good fix for this.  Tenant owes over $9,000 and has zero income so there is no way to get him any kind of grant.  He has to move.  He has adult children, also living with him, also with no income.  They will all have to find places to live.  The City does not have such places, outside of homeless shelters.  The best I can do is have APS get an Article 81 guardian appointed, that will stay this proceeding for up to a year, during which time they will find housing for him, hopefully.  At least then he will have a proper guardian for the person, as opposed to a Housing Court GAL.  Not many arrows in my quiver, judge.

Judge:  Did you meet with your client?  Is this what he wishes?  

Me:  Judge, the man is eighty, with no income and $9,000 behind in his rent, growing by $800 a month.  He doesn’t speak English and my Spanish is weak.   But Judge, even if he expressed to me, through a translator, his firm wish to retire to Kuai,  I could not do anything more than I am doing for him now, everything within my legal means to get him an additional six to twelve months in a rented home he can’t pay for.  It’s an imperfect system, I grant you, and we both know just how imperfect it is– and Mr. Levin’s client will be out close to $20,000 before this is over–  but I don’t see at this point what Mr. Ortega’s wishes have to do with it, I have to protect him in his place as long as I can.  

Judge:  Why would you take this case if you could not speak Spanish?  You’re telling me you never even made an attempt to contact him?  

Me:  I was in regular contact with his case manager at APS and her supervisor, Ms. White.  They both confirmed that he does not pick up the phone or come to the door.  Spanish was not an issue to your law secretary when she called to ask me to take this case.  Is there some insight I’m missing here, Judge?  

Judge (voice recorder on): So, basically, counselor, again, what you’re saying is you have never even made an attempt to speak to your ward and have no real plan of how to protect your ward, an 80 year-old man who is facing eviction.

Me:  … outside of what I have already said, Judge, that is what I’m saying.  There is only one plan now possible to protect Mr. Ortega’s interest in not being evicted into homelessness.

“They can’t do that,” you will say at this point.

I know, and dogs and cats can’t lick their genitals either. 

“You poor fucking innocent chump,” I will say.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOG INTO THE NY STATE OF HEALTH WEBSITE TO SEE IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR HEALTH COVERAGE

Two Christmas Day emails from the tireless Obamacare spambots after months without a peep from my ruthless benefactors.

Happy Christmas, sucker, (click the link to see, inter alia, the letter informing you that your health care insurance has been canceled, effective immediately, for unspecified reasons.) 

On the website, the message is a bit cheerier:

Congratulations

The email arrives, arrives again, reminding you there is a message in your INBOX.  It could be anything, it arrives on Christmas Day, should be some good news.

 

LOGIN to Obama's asshole

Have a nice day.  You have ten days to produce all required (if any) documentation at our Albany offices before this decision becomes final and binding.

Obamacare website

 

Correspondence with a weasel

Looking for some papers just now to serve in connection with a rare payday as a lawyer, I came across this great correspondence from my early days at law.  The first letter was sent by a guy who ripped a friend of mine off, almost 20 years earlier, for $750.  It is priceless, as you will see when you read the detailed response.

When I got out of law school, my friend asked how long a judgment is good for (a judge had agreed the man, a lawyer, owed her the $750).   Turns out it’s enforceable in New York State for 20 years, at 9% interest.  The original $750 had grown to a considerable sum over the 18 or 19 years.  I grabbed that sum from his bank, legally freezing the amount owed in his bank account.  

When he found out he called in a rage, to tell me that I was a fucking low-life, scum of the earth, goddamned fucking piece of shit.  I allowed that all this might be true, but I was more interested to know if he would consent to the money being released to my client.  He was not at all mollified by this reasonable approach, cursed me louder and hung up on me.  

Later that day he decided to take the high road.  Here’s how it went:

November 2, 2000

via TeleFAX  

Dear Mr. W____,

I take strong exception to your heavy handed collection methods on behalf of your client.  This is an eighteen year old matter which has had no activity during the intervening years.  Simple inquiry would have revealed that I am a member in good standing with the New York Bar, and that I still own, reside and work at ___ Street., Brooklyn, the situs of the dispute between Z___ and myself.  A telephone call or letter would have sufficed.  Your behavior is typical of that which increasingly places the legal profession in disrepute in the eyes of the public.

Please send by return FAX any and all documentation regarding Z___’s claim, whether in your possession or Z____’s possession.  Additionally, please send me any and all correspondence between yourself and Republic National Bank/HSBC or any other institution which in any way relates to any attempt at collection in this matter.

If you do not intend to comply with this request please so inform me by return FAX.

You may rest assured of my best intentions.

Very Truly Yours,

To which I apparently replied:

Brother I____:

I regret that you found my collection methods heavy handed but I had little reason to expect you to pay this debt voluntarily, as you proved me right by not accepting my offer to lift the bank restraint if you paid it voluntarily now.  

I relied on the representations of my client that you would do everything in your power to avoid paying the money as you had demonstrated a pattern of unwillingness to pay this $750 debt in the past; first when you breached your contract with her, then when you refused to pay Judge Michael H. F____’s judgment after trial, when you made an appeal that you never perfected and later when you brought various counterclaims that removed Dr. Z______’s next Small Claims case from the jurisdiction of the Small Claims Part– brought because there was no acceleration clause in the contract you had with her and the court had instructed her to bring a separate action for the remainder– to the Civil Court that you then had adjourned at least twice and finally defaulted on.  Only the fact that M___ Z_____ was a pro se litigant saves you from having the marshal levy on twice the amount you still refuse to tender.

I had little reason to expect good will on your part and, in light of your attempts to weasel out even now, I’m glad I took the certain route to a tiny fraction of your wealth.   

Regarding your belated discovery request (discovery is only permitted in Small Claims actions with prior judicial approval, by the way) nothing requires me to provide you with copies of anything, you have the ordinary access to them through the channels you know so well as an experienced attorney.

Yours sincerely,

(and I might well have signed it)

“Juan Snyde-Bastid, Esq.”