"The 2014 NYC Summer Pigeon Conference"

                Recently I was able to get some pictures of the annual New York City Pigeon Conference in Manhattan. All five boroughs of New York were represented as well as the northern most section of Manhattan, Harlem. I hadn’t realized it before this year but once a year in July the Pigeons converge on the Upper East Side to enjoy a luncheon (see pic) and then discuss (sometime contentiously) the various issues all pigeons in New York face.

If you look at the two pigeons facing away from the others and not partaking of the catered lunch, they represent Harlem. We know that because they are separated from the group and seem in their own world. They do like being able to cross 110th street and be on the Upper East Side. The three dark colored pigeons on the right, one of them has a green neck, represent Brooklyn. You would know that if you had attended the luncheon because they don’t exactly warble, they voilble. Plus, they stick together just like the Brooklyn pigeons have always done. They still resent the superior- acting pigeons of  Manhattan and Queens. The gray and black pigeons in the center are from Queens. They are very social, but you’ll notice the deference they give to the red one in the middle. The one in the center is from Manhattan. These Queens pigeons are essentially Manhattan pigeon wannabe’s. They present themselves as confidant and unique but that belies the psychic pain they feel deep in their pigeon core that they will never be as sheik and glamorous as the Manhattan pigeons. I mean the pigeons from Queens Fly over CITI Field, the home of the Mets, and they scrounge and act the fools for food at Mets games, but it still sticks in their little pigeon craws that the Manhattan pigeons get to work Yankee Stadium.

                Now notice the three black pigeons in the center vertically. They are right next to the reddish one in the center. Those are the representatives from da Bronx. It’s easy to see why they are from da Bronx; they don’t back down from no pigeons and while they give deference to the Godfather pigeon in the center, notice they have bullied their way into the center too. The Bronx pigeons are crafty, clever, urban jungle, street dwellers. Do NOT try to get clever with a Bronx pigeon!

 Oh, see the one on the far left, the grayish one? Well, he represents the little, almost forgotten, inconsequential borough of New York: Staten Island. It’s so insignificant that they only bothered to send one pigeon rep. He eats in silence and humbleness as befits Staten Island compared to the bigger and more assertive boroughs. One side bar: This Staten Island pigeon tried to sneak his cousin “Steinberg” into the conference. You see Steinberg on the far right side of the luncheon table (not eating). Even though he isn’t allowed to eat at the luncheon, he can watch the big boys and learn how it’s done.   Still and all, Steinberg did manage to get off the island and come to the Big Apple, a dream come true for most Staten Islanders I assure you.

                It’s time to point out the big Kahuna pigeon in the center, the reddish one. That’s the Manhattan blue blood, the Godfather of New York Pigeons, the pigeon that began the Pigeon Union ten years ago after the infamous five year Scrap Wars before which by the way, claimed thousands of pigeons lives. Yes, that’s Carmine, but every pigeon calls him “Big Red”.  Big Red don’t take no crap offa any city pigeon. All pigeon business goes through Big Red.  No pigeon takes a crap in this town without Big Red knowing about it.

It’s an interesting story how he got to be so powerful. He was not elected to the position. Oh no, after the Scrap Wars there was a battle to see who would lead the New York Pigeons. Carmine, as the story goes, apparently won out in a one year 5 borough pigeon bloodbath. Open warfare in the streets, dive bombing, sharpened beaks, warbling threats the likes of which pigeons are still too nervous to openly cluck about.

Well, Carmine apparently (as the pigeon myth goes) faced the last challenger, “Rags” from Broiklyn. While negotiations were still going on for a peaceful resolution to who would run the Pigeon population Big Red and his squadron of  “night birds” (so called because they were jet black and impossible to see) attacked the Brooklyn pigeon stronghold over on Flatbush Avenue just up the street from Ho Chi Minh’s laundry.  My Gawd, the mayhem! I wasn’t there but I’ve talked to several (now much older pigeon) survivors that begin to tear up when they talk about it. Comrades lost, friends pecked to bits, feathers flying, and the squawking intimidation alone caused several of the Broiklyn pigeons to die outright of heart attacks. One veteran of that Pigeon war still tears up today if asked about his lost winged Band of Brothers.

                Well, so much for Pigeon history. Big Red held the meeting after the luncheon. They laid out borough territories for pigeons to operate in for the next year. The discussion on how much to pester tourists came up and it was agreed, that they would pester the shit out of every one of them. Some of the Uber pigeons went so far as to demand they try grabbing food out of tourist’s hands. The Staten Island pigeon rep. Irwin suggested that scaring off tourists was bad for future business but he was roundly warbled down. Most agreed that there never seems to be an end of naive, gullible tourists that want to go home telling a story of how a New York pigeon ate their food, and then dumped a load on their head.

              

By the way the white bird in the upper part of the picture is your classic definition of the New York “outsider”. He's probably from Long Island.

"Stop Crying Brazil"

                Stop crying Brazil! I know your beloved National soccer team lost in the semi-finals of the World Cup to Germany by 7-1. I know you are the host country of this World Cup match and that Brazil has always been an international powerhouse in soccer for decades but a big fat: So What! Teams lose, that is why the game is played on the field or court. Otherwise we would just put all the stats in a computer and have it declare a winner.

                What gets me about all this is the after game Brazilian melo-drama. The Brazilian reaction was so over the top. Here are a few comments from randomly selected Brazilian people about the loss, as reported in the NY Times:

“…Brazil lacked concentration, it lacked commitment, but above all the things it lacked talent”.

“I kind of cried, I cried without tears” (Francisco Pareira de Godol age 5)

“Some people said they were sorry for the players, but not me. They didn’t show love for the game, I think it was a total *unbalance”. (*Not a typo)

“Brazil did not have a team. It was way too bad. It did not have a midfield, it didn’t have strikers. We should have been *disqualified during the first round, against Chile”. (*Note: you can’t disqualify a team just because you don’t like them)

“The Way they hurt the hearts of the Brazilian people. My head hurts. It’s too much suffering”. (Adilson Mourao aged 47)

“It was a disaster. Like we were dizzy. A tractor ran over us”.

                Before the game, Brazilians loved their team. The stadium where the game was played was packed, there were outdoor screens and countless thousands watching on the beaches and in stadiums all across the country. Those places had “carnivale”-like atmospheres. Why? Because Brazil had lost only one match at home out of the last 20+ games. Brazilians expected to beat Germany and were celebrating even before the game. We all know what over confidence can do. Teams often get careless and make mistakes. Brazil did!

                Disappointment that your team lost? Of course. Shock that they lost? Yes. But get over it Brazil. All teams lose, favorites lose, and let’s not forget Germany is a great team. They are likely going to win the World Cup. You weren’t playing the Sisters of Mercy you know! Germany is referred to as the Machine because of their precision passes and speed. Just the kind of team that if you relax or lose concentration they will carve you up which is exactly what happened.

                 

Here is what Brazilians should be upset about:

A)     50% of the population lack the resources for basic survival

B)      Schools have inadequate infrastructure, lack of teachers, they are located in dangerous neighborhoods, and nonattendance in schools is rampant. 20% of the population can’t read at all.

C)      Police brutality is commonplace and crime is everywhere. When people have no education for decent jobs, and are poor they look for illegal ways to make a living.

D)     Hospitals are old and crumbling, there is a shortage of medicines in every city, doctors are in short supply and at best care is minimal.

It’s true that the bigger cities have had an economic upturn in recent years which has led to job openings at livable wages but there are almost no qualified applicants. Brazil, you are still a third rate country. I’m sorry, I get the fun of Rio, the Carnivale and the beaches. I do but unless a person is in the upper 15% of the economy, life in Brazil is brutal.

                My point is this: Brazil you have so many things to be upset about that need fixing and your soccer team isn’t one of them. Your priorities are bass-ackwards. The soccer team is and will be fine and maybe a good old fashioned ass whipping is what they needed to pull them out of their overconfident lethargy. You need to be crying over your (what could be great country but is still a) third rate country and do something about that. Look to the United States for inspiration here.

                Germany defeated the United States 2-1 in the World Cup and little old Belgium knocked America out in the quarter finals. Groans were heard in every bar and home for about 7 minutes. Then it was time to get back to the real business of living our lives. We have perspective here not hysteria. The most common thing overheard when America was knocked out was: well, when does football season start?

             

"Austin and Rebecca"

I have written one hundred fifty six Bailey Posts in 4+ years and I have never written one about my son. I never wanted to be one of those parents that overwhelm people with seemingly endless stories, anecdotes, pictures and so forth. I mean let’s face it virtually every parent thinks their kid(s) are special and they are, especially to them. The readers of The Bailey Post that have kids are rightfully proud of them. All of our kids are doing their best, moving forward and being good people. I am not referring to that kind of parental pride. We all have that. I’m referring to the parents that make you look at hundreds of pictures of their kids: “oh look, there’s Reggie spitting up his applesauce”, “oh look there is another one of Reggie spitting up his applesauce, oh no, I don’t know what little Reggie is spitting up in this picture but isn’t he sooooo cute”?  What are you going say? “Wish I had a picture of my kid doing that”?

Today, I am going to write about my son Austin and his fiance Rebecca. Austin recently completed his Master’s Degree with an emphasis in American and British Literature.  His finance Rebecca earned her Master’s this semester too in English with the same emphasis. Both graduated “with distinction”. Rebecca will pursue another Master's in Education. Austin was accepted at the Graduate Center in Manhattan, where he will pursue a PhD in English starting this fall. Austin also won the Helen Gray Cone Prize for Excellence in Scholarship at Hunter College and his Master’s Thesis won for best Master’s Thesis of the Year. The title of his Thesis is: “The World is Full”: Emerson, Pluralism, Nominal and Realist”. Rebecca’s is: “Jane’s Women: The Formative Roles of Female Bonds in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre” Rebecca has her Master’s at the age of 25, and she was a Macaulay Honor’s Scholar. So those are the facts (end results) but what I am the most proud about Austin is how he got to where he is.

Austin accomplished what he has with virtually no help from me. Yes, I gave him some moral support and on occasion when his loan money ran out some financial support. But other than that; he did all the work. He didn’t ask me to edit papers, pick my brain about authors, nothing. I offered to do so but he said he wanted to do it on his own and he did. He also had to teach himself how to be a good student and do it when he got to college.

You see he wasn’t always the scholar. He would be the first to tell you that. He barely graduated from high school. Hold your thumb and forefinger together and then barely separate them. That’s how close it was. I didn’t know whether or not to order a cap and gown until a week before the ceremony. School held very little interest for him in K-12.  Only his third grade teacher gave him satisfactory marks. Every other grade and teacher told me every year: “Austin needs to work harder”, “I like Austin and the other kids do to but I don’t know what he’s learning”, “Austin seems to have his head in the clouds”.  His kindergarten teacher told me after 2 ½ months of Kindergarten that he was already behind. I said, “How can you be behind in Kindergarten, I mean what? Is he finger painting with only one finger”? “He eats the glue stick”?

He was placed in Special Ed in first grade because he needed help with his reading. In those days the always “cutting edge” “progressive” (I’m being sarcastic) Poway schools had gone to the new reading program called Whole Language. Some kids need to learn how to read by using phonics. Austin was a phonics kid and after year or so of phonics he tested out of Special Ed. Once he got the reading down he began to be an avid reader. Don’t misunderstand me. I was concerned about what was or was not going on with he and school. I wasn’t shrugging my shoulders and saying oh well. But I also knew what I had observed about him early on.

When I watched him play video games (ages 4-8) he was relentless about mastering whatever game he was on. He didn’t get frustrated, didn’t get mad like I saw other kids get. It was interesting because it almost seemed like his view was I will master it, I just have to take my time. So he focused harder. He had strategies on how to improve, he thought his way through it, made adjustments, tried new things. Most of the games he did master. Then it was skateboarding and he studied it, watched others and kept working at it. Finally at age 12 he decided he wanted to play the guitar so I got him one. I showed him how to use a pick, how to form several chords and string some chords together.
The first 2-3 days he struggled to get his fingers to hold the strings down without creating a muffled sound. I thought he was going to give up. He really was frustrated with this.  A couple of days later though, I was walking down the hallway and when I went past his room I heard him playing a song on his guitar without that muffled sound. He was whipping through chords and playing like he’d been playing for months. I asked him who taught him how to play the song he was playing (Nirvana) and he said he had the song on a CD and listened to it until he figured it out. He played every day for hours. He became a good enough guitar player to be asked to play live on the #1 rock station (in San Diego) at that time. He was I think 13 ½ and he played with a pro named Gary Hoey. (See pic)

My point is, that while school wasn’t going well, I saw some signs I liked, his determination, his patience with himself, his desire to figure out things and do them right. I didn’t know if school would ever fit in with this but I thought whatever he ends up doing he’ll give it his best.  I also knew that I could not badger him into doing school work. He was always independent minded and I encouraged him to think for himself, come to his own conclusions about things. When it came to issues of health and safety there was no debating things. One thing I had going for me was he loved me, and he didn’t want to disappoint me so he almost always tried to make good choices.  I left him alone to find his own way. Some kids you can do that with, and others you can’t.  

He didn’t get to go to his 8^th grade graduation because he didn’t pass enough classes, and I thought he would be really upset not being with his friends. He was quiet that day but was not really upset. It was like he understood that if you don’t put in the effort you don’t get the prize and that was what he’d chosen to do. I told him early on I would not use my position as a teacher to run interference for him or do any negotiating for him. I had other teachers lean on me to give sweetheart deals to their kids and I was not going to do that. I didn’t and he never asked me to.

After HS, he began taking a night class here and there through the local Community College but spent most of his time working a job and playing music with his band. One night when he was about 20 he asked me, “Dad, what does it take to get a Bachelor’s Degree and what does it take to get a Master’s”? I told him and he just went, Huh, kind of quizzical like; like he was thinking, “so that’s how it works”. He said nothing more at that time but the next semester he began to sign up for more classes.  I told him a few days later, “you know Austin if you want to make a run at getting a college degree you are going to have an uphill battle because you didn’t take the classes the other students did in K-12”. He looked at me for about 15 seconds and then said, “So you’re saying I should have worked harder in school”? We both cracked up but he knew what I meant. So it took him longer than the usual whiz kid racing through college but he did learn how to be a really good student.

The point where I started to relax was when Austin was a junior in HS. One day I knocked on his bedroom door and went in. He was on his bed reading a book with another one next to him. I asked him what they were and one was: Poems by Walk Whitman and the one in his hand was the philosophical essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was reading the Emerson essay on self-reliance. I asked him if they were homework and he said, no, he was just curious about them and wanted to read them. I said well, let me know what you think of them, and he said he would. A smile began to form and I thought, "He's going to be fine".

 Rebecca was 180 degrees the opposite of Austin. She is brilliant, skipped at least one grade, sailed through high school and graduated at 17. She was a Macaulay Honor Student at Hunter College with a full ride scholarship. She had a Bachelor’s degree before she was old enough to order a glass of wine.  Two completely different stories, with just about the same ending.

                My point is every kid creates their own path and no paths are identical. As long as they are moving forward, trying and are good persons they are successful.  Like I told Austin more times that he wanted to hear: your job is to be a kid and my job is to be a parent and if we both do our jobs the best we can, things should work out.