Author: frankisemptiness

February 15th, 2024

This letter from me was published today in the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin.

“Several years ago, I traveled to six Native American reservations in the Puget Sound area. I had the opportunity to meet with some of the tribal elders. I asked them what it is that makes an older person an “elder.”

They explained to me that age is a factor in qualifying to be an elder, but wisdom is also necessary. Age and wisdom are not synonymous. Part of this required wisdom is the ability to place the needs of the community before personal gain.

I think about what the tribal leaders told me when I read about the presidential competition between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. As far as I can see, both men are driven by raw ambition. They attempt to cling to power despite the fact that younger and more capable individuals can take leadership.

Biden and Trump are not primarily concerned about the needs of our country. They are not elders. They are old, but not wise.”

February 12th, 2024

Our little grandson, Asher, is asleep. He is lying in the bed, breathing loudly because he has a head cold. I just gave him a warm bottle of oat milk a little while ago. He woke up thirsty, and after drinking the bottle, he got tired and dozed off again.

Asher has more than a cold. He probably has pink eye. Yesterday his eyes were slightly swollen and reddish. The right eye had a small amount of yellowish discharge. He seemed to have no pain or discomfort. My wife and I decided to wait until this morning to get him in to see his pediatrician, rather than drag him to urgent care or an emergency room.

Yet, I feel anxious. We are his fulltime caregivers, and we worry about the boy like he was our own son. I feel sure that we won’t have a problem getting to see his doctor, and the pediatrician will probably prescribe some kind of antibiotic to clear up the eye trouble. It’s just that we care about the little guy, and we don’t like to see him sick. I will feel much better when we know what is wrong with him, and how we can fix it.

I also feel exceedingly fortunate. I can take Asher to his doctor’s office, which is fifteen minutes way from our house, and quickly get him treatment. Other people in other parts of the world can’t do that. Parents in Gaza have no chance of getting medical care for their kids. They can only comfort their children on their own and hope for the best. The fact that I have help readily available for Asher and families in Gaza do not seems fundamentally unjust. Why are we the lucky ones?

I need to check on Asher.

February 1st, 2024

“In 2023, over five million people are under supervision by the (U.S.) criminal justice system, with nearly two million people incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails. The United States has the largest known prison population in the world.” – Wikipedia

Last week, I took my grandson, Asher, to a local library to hang out. Libraries are good places to do that. The children’s section often has games and toys in addition to hundreds of books for kids to read. Asher is only three years old, so he can’t read yet, but he enjoys looking at picture books.

While we were there, he started playing with a little blonde girl who was only a month or so younger than him. The girl was grumpy. Her mother, a young woman sporting an oversized knit cap, tried to convince her daughter that she should share her toys with Asher. The child was having none of it. Asher didn’t care. He played with her anyway.

As the toddlers interacted, I struck up a conversation with the young mom. Generally, I don’t have much to discuss with new parents. They belong to a different generation, and it is hard for me to find common ground with them. Except for the fact that we were both raising little ones, I didn’t know what else to talk about. Somehow, I mentioned to the woman that I knew somebody who had done prison time. Surprisingly, she volunteered the fact that she had been in prison too. After that, we had plenty to talk about.

The young woman looked just like all the other mothers herding their children in the library. There was absolutely nothing unusual in her appearance. There was nothing strange in how she related with her little girl. If she had not told me about her past, I would have never guessed that she had been incarcerated. Maybe, years ago, I would have been astonished by her confession, but I am used to this sort of thing now.

I had a similar experience a few weeks ago. I was at lunch with three former coworkers. We are all retired, and we are just typical old white guys, living in the suburbs and trying to make sense of our lives. While we ate burgers and drank beer, the subject of jails and prisons came up. All but one of us knew somebody, a close friend or a relative, who was doing time or had done time in the past. We had a very interesting, albeit depressing conversation.

Based on statistics, it really is not that odd that so many people in our country know someone who has been incarcerated. Actually, it is just as likely that a person knows an ex-prisoner as it is that they would know somebody who has been in the military. Millions of Americans have spent time behind bars. Some segments of the U.S. population, based on race and socio-economic status, are more heavily represented in this enormous group, but nobody is excluded. Hell, I was in jail, and I am generally rather law-abiding.

Being a felon does not quite carry the stigma that it used to have. That is because we have created so many of them. Especially in today’s tight job market, employers don’t give arrests or jail time that much weight anymore. I know somebody with four drunk driving convictions. They applied for a job and had an interview. The only question the interviewer had for this person was, “So, do you have a way to get to work every day?” Likewise, drug possession convictions are pretty standard in our day and age. Those black marks hardly raise an eyebrow in some industries.

Why does the United States have so many of its citizens in jails or prisons? I think that there are several factors involved. First, the prison industry is exactly that; it is an industry, a profitmaking operation. Prison cells are like hotel rooms; they only make money for somebody when they are full. Even when prisons are run by the government, there are numerous private vendors making vast sums by providing goods and services to inmates at premium prices. Prisons are often located in isolated rural locations where jobs are scarce. Prisons bring money to struggling local economies.

Second, there is a political fetish in our country about getting “tough on crime”. I have heard that from politicians since I was a teenager. Yet, after all these years, I don’t feel any safer. We lock up more people, but there is still violence. I will grant you that there are individuals who are dangerous and need to be kept away from the public at large. However, many people in prison are there for nonviolent crimes, and many of them are there because they are mentally ill. I know from experience that incarceration has nothing to do with rehabilitation. Prisons are just warehouses for humans who have run afoul of our nation’s laws. It is rare that a prisoner reenters the outside world as a better person.

So, what should we do? Well, locking people up doesn’t seem to help. We have to look at how we can reintegrate ex-prisoners back into society. Restorative justice may be useful. The idea of the felon making some kind of amends to the people they hurt could be healing for everyone involved. The point is that unless we want these ex-prisoners to commit more crimes and once again occupy a cell, we need to make them into useful members of their communities. It can be done. I have seen it happen. We just have to want it.

February 5th, 2024

The following letter from me (or an edited version thereof) was published in yesterday’s edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“Over the years, I have participated in numerous public protests. In fact, I was arrested at an anti-war demonstration back in 2017 for civil disobedience. I don’t go to these events anymore partly because I don’t see them as being particularly useful. Yes, a massive demonstration can be impressive and inspiring, but its effects are usually ephemeral. I suspect this will be the case with the current pro-Palestinian rallies.  

We live in the United States of ADHD. A raucous protest might be reported by the media and catch the eye of the public, but Americans are easily distracted by the next shiny object that comes along. A demonstration is a wakeup call, a chance to alert people that a problem exists. That is all it can do. 

In order to change minds and hearts about an issue, it is necessary for dialogue. Those who are promoting a cause need to talk with other people, not just at them. That requires time, hard work, and patience. It is so much easier to just scream slogans on the street. “

February 2nd, 2024

When I was a cadet at West Point, ages ago, I was required to take a semester-long class on ThermoFluid Dynamics. I don’t why I needed to take this course, and it doesn’t much matter anymore. In any case, I studied hard, passed my exams, and promptly forgot nearly everything I had been taught. In my fuzzy memories of the course, I seem to recall that there were mathematical ways to predict the motion of a fluid, whether it be a liquid or a gas. I distinctly remember is that, if the fluid became turbulent, then all bets were off. Turbulence precludes the possibility of knowing what a fluid would do. At that point, the answer to the equation becomes a big question mark.

A few years later, when I was at flight school and learning the basic physics involved with aviation, the subject of turbulence came up again. This time I paid a bit more attention because turbulence has a direct impact on how well a helicopter can fly. For an airfoil, be it the wing of an airplane or the rotor blade on a helicopter, to produce lift, it requires a smooth flow of air underneath it. Turbulent air does not produce lift, which means the aircraft cannot stay aloft. This is a big deal to an aviator.

Years later, I read “Chaos”, a book by James Gleick. I should say that I attempted to read it, because a lot of the mathematics in the book was over my head. The book was about chaotic systems, of which turbulence is one. Chaotic systems like the weather or road traffic have hidden patterns, feedback loops, and are incredibly complex. These systems are sometimes stable, and then suddenly they’re not.

The weather is an example of a system that can change at a moment’s notice. On the other hand, the Great Red Spot on the planet Jupiter is an example of a chaotic system that has lasted at least since 1831. The atmosphere of Jupiter is in constant turmoil, yet this massive high-pressure system has persisted for almost two centuries. The point is that, even in the most chaotic environments, an island of stability can exist.

I tend to think that the human brain is a chaotic system. There is probably nothing in the universe that is more complex. Even when the organ functions properly, there are moments of unpredictability. Now, what happens if you take the brain and put it on drugs? It won’t look like an egg frying in a pan, but it will be definitely chaotic.

I have a friend who worked as a bouncer in his youth. We talked about drunks. His comment was, “You can’t reason with these people!”

Indeed.

Having dealt with drunks, and having been one, I can attest to the fact that somebody who is drunk or high is highly unpredictable. I know from experience that you cannot tell what will happen next with that person. The individual is chaos incarnate.

So, what do you do with somebody who is using? How do you keep the person from injuring themselves or someone else?

You can’t fight chaos with chaos. Somebody needs to stay calm and rational. That is difficult to do, especially if the person using is acting out of control. Sometimes, and I’ve done it, you have to call the cops. Sometimes, you get lucky, and you guess the hidden pattern underneath the chaos.

I got lucky a couple days ago. Somebody who I know well was drunk. The person really needed to go someplace and sleep it off, and that place was not at the individual’s current location. I had a few times in the past taken this person to a motel to stay overnight.

After quietly explaining that they really needed to settle down, I asked them, “So, what do you want to do?”

The person pondered for a moment and sighed. They replied,

“Go to a motel, I guess.”

“Do you want me to take you?”

“Yeah.”

I found the Great Red Spot.

January 27th, 2024

Room 146 is the Preliminary Courtroom for Milwaukee County. Compared to the pre-preliminary courtroom I saw a couple weeks ago; it didn’t look that bad. I mentioned my observation to the young woman whom I was accompanying to her court appearance today. She looked around, and then told me,

“Yeah, but this courtroom is inside the county jail building.”

That’s disconcerting idea, especially when the county jail might very well be the next stop for a person after their court appearance. I keep forgetting that this young woman is on a signature bond and is currently “out of custody”. It would not take much for her to transition to “in custody”, and she knows it. A few weeks ago, she fell into that latter category, and it was not a pleasant experience.

There was a couple dozen people waiting to enter the courtroom. Almost all of them were Black. There were only three white defendants. Most of the other white persons in attendance were lawyers, mostly public defenders. The court commissioner and most of the folks working in the courtroom were Black. Half of the police there were Black. The young woman and I were part of a small white minority.

Today was the woman’s second court date. She is charged with “battery on a police officer”, which is a felony, and it tends to get people’s attention. She is staring at possible prison time, and that makes each appearance a time of anxiety and stress. Nobody tells her what will happen during her court appearance, and perhaps nobody actually knows. The original plan was for her to make a plea today, but that didn’t happen. The public defender’s office had not assigned her a lawyer, so her hearing was adjourned for cause. Until she gets counsel, she won’t enter a plea. Until she enters a plea, her case cannot move forward.

The uncertainty is overwhelming, both for the young woman and for anyone else who cares about her future. She can’t make any long-term plans, and neither can I. She has a very young son, and he needs her. My wife and I care for this boy fulltime, so we also have skin in the game.

We kind of figured that nothing would get resolved at this preliminary hearing, but we didn’t know that. From our experience with the criminal justice system, damn near anything can happen, and it often does. There was a question in my mind about whether the young woman would be coming back with me or if I would be alone in the car on the ride home.

In a sense, the young woman dodged a bullet this afternoon. She is still free to spend time with her son. She can still go to her treatment sessions. Within certain limits, she can do whatever she wants. I bought Chinese takeout food after we got home. We sat around the table and ate. We laughed and joked. The young woman and her son had fun together. It was like we had collectively exhaled a sigh of relief. We can live relatively normal lives for a while.

She won’t see the inside of that courtroom for another three weeks, and then the legal process resumes. In the days before her next court appearance, the anxiety and tension will build in the house. It will reach a fever pitch on her court date. I will take her to that room again, and once again she will roll the dice. She got away this time, but the next visit may end very differently. In the end, whenever that is, some version of justice will prevail, and she will face the consequences of her actions.

She won’t dodge the bullet forever.

January 26th, 2024

The title of this essay is a Latin aphorism that roughly translates in English to “Of the dead nothing but good is to be said.” The statement is attributed to Chilon of Sparta. The idea behind the words is that it is unfair to malign the dead, since they have no opportunity to respond the criticism or to defend themselves. That’s true. However, refraining from censuring the dead is also a bit awkward.

I met with a friend of mine two days ago. We get together every week or two to sit and talk and share a couple beers. We worked at the same company for almost thirty years. When we meet, we talk about the sort of things that old men usually discuss: grandkids, health problems, and fallen comrades.

It so happened that I had heard that morning from another person about a fellow coworker who was on his death bed. I told my friend about him. We had both worked with the man for years, and we knew him well. After I mentioned the guy’s condition, my friend and I became quiet for a while.

I finally admitted to my friend that I had nothing positive to say about the dying man. My friend then related a story to me about an experience he had years ago with the soon to be departed person. It was not a pleasant tale, and my friend grew upset as he told me about the incident. I felt depressed. Death is always sad. It’s worse when the individual on his way out is not going to be missed.

I have been to funerals where people truly celebrated the life of the dead person. I have been to gatherings where mourners exchanged bittersweet stories about the departed, and their voices were full of sorrow and affection. There are people for whom it is easy to recall happy events. Their lives brought joy to others, and they are deeply missed when they leave this world.

Other people die, and the survivors have to cherry pick memories. They have to separate the happy times from the bad old days. I have been to funerals where that has happened. It might take a little effort, but generally the survivors can remember some good things about the dead person.

I have attended a couple funerals where the mourners took the Latin dictum to heart, and they did not speak ill of the dead. Instead, they said nothing at all. That is tragic and horrifying in a way. Silence can also be an effective means of condemnation. At those events, the feeling seemed to be: “Let’s get this over with.” The deceased is quickly buried and just as quickly forgotten.

I will eventually have my turn. I suspect that I won’t much care what people say about me after I am dead. I would prefer if they just spoke the truth, if they choose to speak at all.

January 18th, 2024

It happened during the summer of 1978, but I can’t remember exactly when it was. I was attending a three-week-long class at the Northern Warfare Training Center at Fort Greeley, Alaska. It had to be sometime around the summer solstice because it never got dark. It never got hot either. The NWTC was up near the Arctic Circle, close to Fairbanks. Even in summer, a long sleeve shirt or a jacket was necessary.

The military training was divided into three parts. The first week consisted of learning how navigate a small boat on the Tanana River. The second week was spent learning to do rock climbing and rappelling. The third week was spent on the glacier. We hiked on the glacier, crossed crevasses, and got sunburned from the glare off the ice. The Delta River flowed from the lower edge of the glacier. One day we did a river crossing. That was all we did that day.

The Delta River is narrow and shallow, at least where it is close to its source. The water in the river flows rapidly and is cloudy and white from all the fine silt in it. A heavy-duty cable had been strung across the stream, and each member of the class needed to hook on to the cable and ford the river. It didn’t take long to make the crossing, but the effects of the experience were long lasting.

Basically, the water flowing in the river had just recently been ice. It came right off the glacier. I remember that I took maybe a dozen steps before I went numb below the waist. After that, I shuffled along unable to feel my legs. On the far side of the river was a small campfire which was more for show than anything else. My clothes were soaked with freezing water, just like everyone else’s were. We all shivered until an Army bus picked us and took us back to our barracks. Everybody took a steamy hot shower and collapsed in their bunk. That was the end of the day’s training.

Now, forty-five years later, I wonder what the purpose of that episode was. Since it was Army training, there didn’t need to be a good reason for fording a frigid river. There didn’t need to be any reason at all. Perhaps, it was all about giving each student some firsthand experience with hypothermia. If that was the goal, the training was a complete success. We all learned that hypothermia sucks.

I have spent most of my life in Wisconsin, which implies that I have some understanding of how to function in the cold. When I was young, I went sledding and tobogganing. I made a feeble attempt to ski. I participated in outdoor activities, even ice fishing, which I have been told is one of the first signs of insanity. However, at this point in my life, I can barely tolerate the cold. I do not hate it enough to move south, but I no longer enjoy freezing my ass off.

I worked for decades as a supervisor on the loading dock of a trucking company in Wisconsin. The dock was not heated, so the environment of my workplace was exactly the same temperature as the outside of the building. In winter that meant it was cold. I used to dread the last part of January and the first few weeks of February. Almost without fail, there would be a week when the temperatures never got above zero. That’s brutal, just brutal.

Cold weather over an extended period of time is hard on machines and harder on people. If it gets cold enough, trucks and forklifts won’t run. During extremely frigid weather, we had one guy spend his entire shift just starting tractor for the drivers. Even if we plugged forklifts into the facility’s electrical outlets to keep the batteries charged, some of them still would not start. Often, before a truly cold night, we would park as many forklifts as possible into the heated maintenance shop. Then we knew that at least some of the jeeps would run.

The dockworkers, and I, wore as much clothing as we could to stay warm. That was a losing battle. After eight to ten hours out on the dock, even with frequent breaks for coffee or soup, a person starts to get hypothermia. You can feel it in your bones. There is a stiffness and fatigue that simply does not go away. There is a weariness that sucks the life out of a person.

I retired partly because I couldn’t handle the winter work anymore. So, when it gets crazy cold outside, like it is now, I stay inside. I will go out briefly to run an errand or get the mail, but I don’t go out on the tundra unless I have to do so. I am blessed to have a warm house. Some people don’t have that.

Today, in the Milwaukee area, there was a high temperature of two degrees. That’s the high temperature. It was eleven below last night. I read the news this morning. Three homeless men were found dead in the local area from hypothermia. One of them was my age and they found his body under a bridge. That’s unacceptable. Nobody in this country should freeze to death in winter. Nobody. That’s a horrible way to die.

I have some small idea of what that might be like.

January 16th, 2023

Look at the picture. What do you see? More to the point, what do you notice first? What catches your eye? How do you react?

I have sent a copy of this photo to probably one hundred people already, and I have received a variety of responses. Most of the recipients already know the identity of the child in the picture. They remark on the radiance of the boy’s smile or on the joy in his eyes. One woman remarked,

“I like the irony of the freedom in his eyes and the plastic thing on the doorknob!!!”

What people have told me about the picture perhaps has less to do with the image than it does with what is within themselves. Maybe they project whatever is truly important to them on to portrait of the little boy. Maybe he is like a mirror for them. Perhaps some of them don’t really see the lad at all.

A young man who is originally from Syria wrote to me,

“He looks amazing with cap. Many Muslims wear kind of the same cap.”

That’s what I thought too. I looked at the boy, and I immediately thought to myself,

“He looks just like one of the kids from Gaza.”

He does. The little man could easily be one of the children currently being traumatized in the war. The difference is that this boy is smiling. The children in the pictures from Gaza generally are not smiling.

What a difference the golden cap makes! Like magic, it draws our attention, and it causes us to put the kid into a mental pigeonhole. His image conjures up certain emotions. The cap encourages us to judge the boy, without ever having met him.

The truth is that I know this young man. I know him very well. He’s my three-year-old grandson, Asher. He’s Catholic boy with a Jewish name and Muslim cap. He’s more than that, much more. Asher is smart and strong and a trickster. He is loving and passionate and headstrong. No photo can ever capture who he truly is.

Likewise, no picture or video on the news can do justice to the children in Gaza. In a matter of seconds, we make snap decisions about who they are and if we should give a damn about them. We should take a bit more time.

We don’t know them.

January 12th, 2024

I wrote this letter to the editor. It was published this morning by the Chicago Tribune

It is an American tradition to shout from the rooftops that the United States is the greatest country on earth. It is apparently also a tradition for Americans to react with shock and dismay when large groups of people cross our borders because they want to live in the greatest country on earth. We can’t have it both ways. 

Currently, thousands of migrants are coming across our southern border in search of a better life. This is a chaotic and confusing situation for American citizens and for the migrants. However, it does not need to be this way. Instead of regarding these newcomers as threats and liabilities, we could view them as assets to our nation, and treat them accordingly.  

The fact is we have a chronic labor shortage, and America’s birthrate is not sufficient to alleviate that shortage, not now and not in the future. Jobs go begging. Employers in our country bitterly lament the lack of workers. The migrants entering the United States could be the workers that we need. They probably won’t make a seamless transition into the work force, but they are motivated, and they are here. 

Vet these people. Give them job permits and get them to work. We need them. They are a godsend.