ketchup or salsa

As I mentioned early I would have loved to have more people join me in my cause.  I tried to get others to help me get signatures but I was not successful.  It's kind of work, and it's kind of embarrassing and people fear the board a little.  I didn't have much faith in getting people to email the board because I didn't think most people would follow through.  Some people will tell you anything to get rid of you and some people will just forget.  Also I would have no record of who had sent what, that would be in the hands of the board and they could say whatever about that.

As I've said previously, the 200 names would only have forced a consideration and my 100 names have already accomplished that.  I don't have the data to do this online.  In retrospect maybe I could have asked for the emails of those signing the petition, but I was afraid that would deter them from signing. 

I said earlier that I was thinking of sending an email to Laura, the committee chief who I thought was on my side, asking what is going on with this survey formulation.  I did send her one yesterday and this morning she has written me back that she has been circulating that around with the original members of the committee.  Naturally my blood is boiling.  I wrote her back that I thought i was going to be part of the formulation.  I was going to write back more but I am too angry at the moment.  I have to let myself cool down and let reason return.


The reason this border thing continues to fester is that you have a stable genius, pardon me very stable genius running the country who loves raising the roof over this, and a senate majority that slobbers over each other to kiss his feet.  What do you expect to happen?

There are a lot of refugee camps all over the world, there are Palestinian camps that are as old as the members of The Institute.  The refugees do the best they can but mostly these are sub par places.  The reasons these countries established the camps is that they didn't want the refugees mixing with their populace so the people cannot leave them,

There are a lot of small towns like in Iowa and Nebraska that as Beagles has described have been losing populations, but meatpacking plants have moved in and hired a lot of Mexican immigrants who live in the town and rent houses and pay taxes.  At first the local Gringos were appalled but when they saw their towns prospering again they changed their minds and did not mind salsa replacing the ketchup in their diners. Everything is fine until ICE moves in and hauls all the migrants away.

Uncle Ken Needs Help

The more I think about it, I think that Uncle Ken needs to get more people involved in this effort.  I previously said something about a hundred people showing up at a meeting but, as Uncle Ken pointed out, that's probably an unrealistic expectation.  Any number of people, though, would be more effective than one.  Those who don't want to attend meetings could write letters or emails to the board members.  I have heard that individual messages like that have more impact than names on a petition.  Not that the petition was a bad idea, but it didn't go far enough.  Didn't one of the board members say that they would have taken it more seriously if it had 200 names on it?  That's also something the new recruits could help with, circulating additional petitions.  This whole thing could be organized on line, like the "Clean Slate" campaign was.

Meanwhile, back at the border:  I wouldn't object to letting more immigrants, or even all of them, into the country if there was some kind of plan.  I think the asylum system is beyond redemption and should be scrapped and replaced with something that has a snowball's chance in hell of working.  The reason that hasn't been done yet is there is no clear consensus about either letting them in or keeping them out.  The people who want to keep them out will never agree to anything that lets them in more efficiently, and the people who want to let them in won't agree to anything that keeps them out more efficiently.  I don't know how to fix that, I'm just trying to identify the problem.

Some time ago, there was an article in National Geographic about a refugee camp in Africa that has evolved into a permanent settlement.  It has streets, wells, shops, and schools.  Last I heard, somebody was surveying and mapping it so that the growth could be more deliberate.  I don't remember how much government involvement there is, I think the refugees have mostly done it themselves.  There are regions in the US that have been losing population for years and would likely welcome a development like this in their neighborhood.  Somebody should do a study about that.

Ken and the Kondo Board Part Seven and Last

I wanted to discuss three matters before I let go of the subject.  One was the difference between rules and the rulers, or as Beagles calls it on paper vs the real world, another was my personal reaction to all this, and the third is the mysterious character of the board.  Looking back I think that I have already discussed the the first point plenty so I will move on to the other two.

I don't know what I expected when I first faced the board.  I think I just expected to shoot my mouth off and then have the board go on about its business.  As the date approached I got more and more sure of my cause and developed a whole set of arguments, imagined myself standing up before the board and declaiming my cause like Mr Smith gone to Washington, but then I had to keep telling myself to calm down so I didn't look like some raving crank

The big surprise for me at that meeting was that the board was divided on the matter, so suddenly there was some hope.  I was sorely disappointed by their refusal to do a survey, and I think that was when the idea of the petition first came to me.  I wasn't sure if it was even legal by board rules but when I brought it up the board shrugged.  Still I had trepidations.  I thought about it.  That meeting was on a Thursday and I didn't get into the hallway until Tuesday.  I half expected some condo board thug to come out and tell me to stop that right away if I knew what was good for me.  But nobody interfered with me and the people I pressed with my petition where mostly favorable.  In my own eyes I had become their champion, fighting for their rights.  A few pressed me about replacing those awful rugs in the elevators, but I remained a single issue man.

But there was a problem of mission creep.  When the Clean Slate took over one of their issues was transparency.  When we vote on new board members they each submit a campaign page and they almost always stress transparency, but there is mostly just the appearance of transparency, everything is mired with boring gobbledegook, and nobody outside the board knows what is going on.  If Beagles were in the condo I guess he would pore over that crap, but we don't have many like Beagles.  I would like us to have some kind of interactive website where unit owners and board members could interact.  But again I am not going to push for that until this Christmas lights thing is over.

The other matter is the mysterious nature of the board.  Who is on it because they love Marina City and the residents?  Who is in it because they are natural social climbers and they aim to get to the top?  Who is in it because they want to control what is going on to make more money on their investment?  What are the the cliques and blocs among them?  I can see where some of these ex-congressmen and senators who become lobbyists would come in handy for some lobby.  If you want to press your cause you need to know where the chutes and ladders are.


My cornbread was successful enough.  My sister gave me some tins for Christmas so my muffins came out looking like proper mini muffins rather than something dredged out of the catbox.  I made some plain because some people like vanilla ice cream.  I did add some canned corn which I had previously resisted and it gave them a nice crunch and moistness.  The black olives did not overwhelm the olive jalapeno muffins.  I used the jalapeno  slices in the jar and added some of the oil they were pickled and that gave the muffins a pleasant hotness, not the hotness that burns your lips as you bite into it, bu the hotness that you don't notice so much until you have already had a few bites and then it comes from the back of your throat.

Half baked

My operant theory is that you don't know when you have enough until you have too many.

Ha!  That reminds me of another aphorism from a bygone era: "Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess."  Or words to that effect.  Anyhow, your quest for savory perfection in the world of cornbread sounds like you are on the right track, my only concern is that the flavor of the corn could be overwhelmed by the jalapenos and olives.

From what I've read, the Jiffy line of mixes is the gold standard for cornbread and I took a peek at their ingredients.  No big surprises except that wheat flour is the main ingredient, followed by cornmeal and sugar.  Since cornmeal has no gluten I think regular flour is necessary to keep things from crumbling apart.  I use bread flour and it seems to work pretty well but I may increase the quantity in the future.

It's funny that you were making your muffins Friday morning.  I had my pan of cornbread in the oven when I read your post, and that was after I made some tortillas for breakfast and finished making another batch of refried beans.  Quite a busy morning but I was done with everything and the cleanup by noon.

There is another locally made tortilla chip that may be of interest, a little more flavorful but not as robust as El Ranchero and made in Carol Stream.  The ingredients are cornmeal, corn oil, salt, and lime, and the brand is Donkey.  I like the chips for guacamole but they are too puny for my heavy duty refried beans.

-----

Since I've stopped being an obsessive news junky I'm starting to rely on Mr. Beagles for info about the immigration stuff.  I don't agree with his point of view but that's okay; we can agree to disagree, can't we?  My opinion is that since Spain had such a large role in the settlement of the New World I'm willing to cut them some slack and let the Spanish speaking people live where they want as long as they play by the rules and carry their own weight.

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The saga of the Condo Board is fascinating and I have a lot of questions which I'll get to one of these days, but not today.

Ken and the Kondo Board Part Six

I like Beagles's describing the issue I have been speaking of as rules vs people as on paper vs the real world.  Beagles didn't say so in so many words so I wonder if I can summarize the ending to Beagles posted those old rules he had had a part in making and, after some struggle, yada yada, those old rules became enforced.

Of course I will keep after this issue.  There is the survey to be formulated and then there is the board meeting where that information will be used to formulate a new rule.  Actually what I want to do is just drop the recent rule and go back to the way things were before it was made part of the code.  My point being things were hunky dory then, why not, in the spirit of Occam's Razor, remove this recent rule and go back to the paradise in which we dwelt before?  But there was some movement in that committee meeting to make a more comprehensive rule to take into account flashing lights, strobe lights, maybe people could have lights different from white, but they all have to be the same color, when do you have to turn them off at night, can you only have them up during the Christmas season?  I fear that in the general confusion of this I will lose my case.

Even now I fear that things may be moving within the board without my knowledge.  I was going to email Laura (who I think may be on my side but this is just speculation) to ask what is going, but my calendar indicates it is too soon after the meeting.  I don't want to piss her off by pushing too hard.

A little more background.  When the whites only rule was being promulgated the board did send out a notice so people could object if they didn't like it, and almost nobody objected.  I didn't.  I didn't even notice the notice.  The board often sends out pages of boring goobledegook so nobody pays any attention.  When I did my petition I asked people if they remembered getting that notice and nobody did,  I tracked the notice in our poorly-maintained website, and the white-only sentences were there, but they were buried between pages of boring gobbledegook.  The thing is clearly the board knows that nobody reads this stuff, so that notice was hardly sent out in good faith.

And surveys, people don't pay that much attention to them.  It was mentioned at that committee meeting, by way of arguing against doing a survey, that only ten percent of the residents reply to these surveys so what does that mean?  Now that I think of it no evidence of that was presented, but as I said I was unprepared for the thrust of the meeting because I thought the survey was settled law.


I meant to conclude this whole colored lights thing with this posting but now I see that I have still more things to say.  It does help me set things clear for myself and prepares me for the next battle,  Did Beagles find that rewriting his battle with bureaucracy helped make things clearer in his mind?

Will be baking some corn muffins this morning.  No honey, just the basic recipe but with more cheese, more jalapenos and more black olives.  My operant theory is that you don't know when you have enough until you have too many. 

Grass Roots Politics

Thanks to Uncle Ken for bringing us up to speed on the Christmas lights issue.  It sounds like he has been handling it well so far but, as I said, he needs to keep after those people or they might stall around until it's too late to do anything about it.  I know it seems early enough now, but Christmas has a way of sneaking up on people of our age.  I read in a book once that's the way you know when you are no longer young, when Christmas comes too soon. As for me, I find this topic quite interesting, it's a fine example of grass roots politics.  Most people are more concerned with national politics than they are with the local stuff, but the local stuff is where we as individuals can have more of an impact.

I know that I wrote the story of my grievance backwards.  That's because I didn't plan to include the back story at first.  I suppose I could have done some cutting and pasting after the fact to put it in chronological order, but I didn't.  The disputes we had about overtime at the paper mill over the 23 years that I worked there would make for a long and complex story, maybe even book length, but I will try to summarize it for the purposes of this discussion.  The issue wasn't about overtime pay, it was about the way overtime opportunities were offered, and who was obligated to take it if everybody else turned it down.  After years of trying to formulate a one-size-fits-all procedure, we finally decided that each department should have it's own.  As department steward, I was involved in negotiating the procedure for papermaking.  I subsequently bid out to another department, giving up my steward's position in the process.  Years later, when I bid back into papermaking, I was once again elected to be the department steward.  While I was gone, the work systems in the entire plant underwent an extensive redesign, which is another long and complex story in itself.  Papermaking was the last department to be redesigned, and they were having a hard time adapting to the new system.  One of the reasons I bid back was that, having had experience with the new system and also papermaking experience, I thought I might be of some use helping them with the difficulties they were having.

There was an old union saying: "If you don't have it in writing, you don't have it."  Well it seems like, even if you do have it in writing, you still might not have it.  I won the first grievance on paper, but not in the real world.  I won the second grievance in the real world, but not on paper.  It all came out in the end, but it took a year to make it happen.  The reason I told this story in the first place was to caution Uncle Ken not to declare victory and go home prematurely.  Just because they say they are going to do it doesn't mean they will do it and, conversely, they might say they're not going to do it and do it anyway.  Like the old saying goes, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

I included the second part of my story, which maybe should have been the first part, to illustrate my long held opinion that written procedures should be followed until such time as they are repealed or amended.  When something like that is allowed to fall into disuse, no good can come of it.  Of course people are important, but they are often unreliable.  Written rules are needed to serve as checks and balance against the impulsiveness of human nature.  Changing a written rule takes time and energy, hopefully insuring that it won't be done for light and transient reasons.

Meanwhile, back at the border. Yes, it's still there:

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AACvgSt?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Ken and the Kondo Board Part Five

The motion of the board was that a committee would meet to formulate the survey:

MOTION by L. Holman and SECONDED by G.M. Stacy to approve the Rules Committee to discuss creating and distributing a survey regarding the use of holiday lights on the building.   
Discussion ensued regarding the motion at hand.   
The motion was approved.   P. Seth and M. Ulaszek voted No.   M. Dosen and S. Burdett Abstained. 

I was suspicious, surveys can be slanted to get the desired results.  I approached Laura Holman the board member who was apparently in charge of this committee, and asked to be included in the meeting.  She told me that I would be informed and she was quite nice about it.

I went to the committee meeting prepared with suggestions for the survey.  Aside from Laura there were three other board members.  The whole system of committees is pretty fluid, any unit member can attend a meeting and by attending a meeting they become a member of that committee but only for that day, they can choose to not attend any more and not be a member again.

Anyway, along with Laura there were three other board members and when Laura said let's get down to the brass tacks of formulating the survey one of them said, whoa, hey, the board didn't decide that there should definitely be a survey, only that we talk about whether or not there will be one, and the other two board members rightaway chimed in with agreement to that interpretation.  Laura and I thought otherwise, but now the discussion was open again and I had to plead my case all over again as I had at the board meeting.  Had I known that this was going to happen I would have been prepared with more articulate arguments, but anyway after an hour of  'discussion,' (Those three board members vs me, Laura largely ambivalent) it was decided that there would indeed be a survey and that we would meet again to discuss its format, so you can see a long road remains to be hoed.

Passing strange I thought that those three other board members, who had all been at the board meeting, should misremember the motion of the board meeting in the same way. Reading the minutes I suppose one might argue that discuss creating might include discussing the possibility, but I maintain that if that was the case it would have been stated that way.  And I was there and I know what I heard, and those other three board members who were all against it had an axe to grind in misrembering it.

After the meeting I looked up the minutes.  We have a cumbersome website where stuff like that can be looked up and when I went there to look up the minutes of the meeting I learned that no minutes had been added since February, but I was provided a copy when I complained.  I sent that statement to Laura along with my argument for what it meant.  I guess I was seeking to somehow curry favor with her, but I don't think that succeeded because I haven't heard back from her.  Come to think of it I haven't heard anything in the past few weeks about the formation of that survey either.  I'll email Laura about that later today.

And that's where things stand. 


I know I have gone on about this matter at length and I had already discussed some of this before, but the Dawgs hate it when I go on about some hypothetical matter so I thought they would find this more interesting.  Also of course writing things down makes things much clearer for me than just thinking about them.

I am unclear from Beagles's narrative whether he won his case.  I think the second paragraph should come before the first because that is the chronological order, looked at that way it looks like he did win his point.  If he had named his grievance something about overtime pay it would have been more clear.

I think the discussion this is all leading up to are the merits of which is more important written rules or the people who enforce those rules, and I would like to have that discussion now, but it abstracting it from concrete cases makes it more hypothetical so I don't know if interest can be kept up.