Musings

Back in 1988, when several friends and I founded the Salt River Brass Band (a British style brass band, based in Phoenix), we had no money, no appropriate instruments, no audience, no place to perform, and no experience in running such a thing. Just some armature musicians looking for a better opportunity to perform.  Others handled recruiting personnel and music; I was handed administration.

I tapped my firm’s graphics and layout fellow to do the same for the Band.  We couldn’t pay Karl, but the work over the years was not onerous: a posed group photo and numerous live shots during a concert sound check about once per year, and a bit of layout work – mostly for our season mailer and the outer shell of our printed programs.  We credited him on the printed material and on the website (he was setting up as a professional and fine art photographer, and needed the exposure). We comped his extended family and friends into whatever concerts he requested.

We used his artfully posed program cover photo for an occasional season poster and on our CDs; KONC Radio used one as the front cover of their monthly magazine profiling the Band. Similarly, when we performed for the Verde Valley Fine Arts Association, the local paper used Karl’s work for the front cover of their “What’s Happening” supplement.

Our home venue, Chandler Center for the Arts, housed an art gallery.  We secured for Karl a exhibit in the gallery, which subsequently placed a bit of his work in its permanent collection; our tuba/euphonium quartet played for the exhibition’s opening, providing a bit of exposure for the Band, and a bit of tone to the gallery and to Karl.  And complementary wine and cheese for the quartet.

Karl’s photography and layout work was exemplary; it presented the Band as professional and artistic.  We all benefited – Karl, the Band, our audience, the radio station, our various venues, and the Chandler Center.  All from connecting talented people.

Our flugal horn player, Jack Bannon, in my Salt River Brass Band, posted on Facebook:

The son (Phillip Barton Key II) of the man who penned the lyrics to our national anthem (Francis Scott Key) served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. He was shot and killed by Daniel Sickles (U.S. representative from NY) in Lafayette Square across from the White House because Keys was having a long-term affair with Sickles’ wife. It was the first successful use of the “temporary insanity” defense. The “trial of the century” back then and only put on the back burner by the civil war.

I could not but reply:

There’s much more to the backstory. Dan Sickles was a protégé of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist; the offending wife was Da Ponte’s granddaughter, whom Sickles met while boarding with, and being tutored by, Da Ponte, at the time Professor of Italian at what became Columbia. The affair with Key was payback for decades of Sickles’ philandering (he was rumored to have been keeping three New York City houses of ill repute afloat, almost single handed.)

Da Ponte grew up in Venice, where he invested much energy in philandering along side the storied Casanova; it reached such an exalted level that the Church in Venice expressed outrage (quite an achievement, that) and had Da Ponte exiled. Thence to Vienna, as librettist for the Italian Opera, where he wrote three of Mozart’s finest, including Don Giovanni, inspired by his drinking buddy Casanova. He shortly outraged Vienna as well, was banished, and spent some years writing for London’s theaters. Finished his career in New York, where he introduced opera to America, and became he first professor of Italian at Columbia.

And passed his Casanova gene, as it were, along to a young Dan Sickles.

Sickles, in turn, started a political career with Tammany Hall, was the point man for assembling the land which became Central Park, went to London with James Buchanan as the detail man for Buchanan’s embassy, engineered Buchanan’s nomination for the Presidency in 1856, as well as his own election to Congress. Had to resign his seat due to the murder scandal, but raised a regiment at the outset of the Civil War and emerged as Third Corps commander at Gettysburg. There, in violation of orders, he pushed his corps, on the army’s left flank, close to a mile in front of the rest of the line, uncovering Little Round Top and nearly losing the battle for the Union. Only reason he wasn’t cashiered was his loss of a leg in the battle (he needn’t have lost the leg; his corps surgeon said it could be saved, but Sickles insisted, and “dined out” on his war wound the rest of his life.)

Some years later, Sickles headed the commission that commissioned the bronze statuary on many Civil War battlefields; he seems to have embezzled some $20,000 to $30,000 from the fund, but skated again.  He ended his career as our ambassador to Spain, where he seduced the Queen Mother.

All in all, a full life.

One more twist to the Da Ponte/Casanova connection: It seems likely that Casanova penned a bit of the libretto he had inspired.  The Opera company was on the road, performing a Mozart opera, and anxious to rehearse for the impending premier of Don Giovanni, which Mozart was struggling to complete.  This would be the occasion when the opera cast locked Mozart in his hotel room until he finished.  Da Palma could not complete the libretto until Mozart finished the music; we therefore know when Da Ponte wrote.  We also know that Da Ponte was not in town that week.  But Casanova happened to be on hand.  And the original of the libretto has a bit that seems to be in Casanova’s handwriting.

An even further twist: Key (the anthem writer) preceded his son as District Attorney for Washington DC, during the first Jackson administration.  Jackson needed an attorney general; he asked Key (senior) for a recommendation.  Key recommended an in-law and fellow Maryland plantation and slave owner, one Roger Taney, who Jackson appointed, mostly because of his “solid” views on slavery.  In his second term, Jackson appointed his attorney general, Taney, to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  Years later (just a bit after Sickles offed Key Jr.), Taney wrote the infamous Dred Scott decision.

And finally, the fellow who wrote “‘Twas the night Before Christmas” was the son of the fifth president of Columbia University.  He happened to run into Da Palma in a New York bookstore, was impressed, and introduced Da Palma to his father.  Which was Da Ponte’s foot in the door to the Columbia job.

Random examples of the benefits of nurturing a range of contacts and following up even weak leads, from my 17-plus years of managing our Salt River Brass Band, from its inception:

Some 18 months after our first rehearsal, when we were mostly doing concerts in various parks, I noticed an article on the upcoming opening of the fancy new Chandler Center or the Arts, seating some 1500.  Not thinking I’d get anywhere, I found a phone number for the hall and, to my surprise, found myself pitching the general manager on, could we ever play a brass band concert in his hall. More surprising, James called me a Godsend.  Seems a week long grand opening was  planned, with several high profile touring acts booked.  Unfortunately, construction ran several weeks over. No-one could re-schedule. And he had a deadline.

My start-up brass band was the Center’s grand opening.

We performed at the Chandler Center for another 18 years, doing a full six concert season and a free Forth of July, often to capacity crowds. We built audience alongside the new hall, always careful to price our tickets at the low end of the Center’s offerings, so as to pull new audience into the hall. We collaborated with the Center any way we could, providing free concerts when asked, smaller ensembles for fundraising events and art galley openings; the hall helped us with promotion, finding sponsors to cover hall costs (as for our free Forth of July concerts) and providing introductions.  I rather suspect James took me under his wing as something of a mentor; I was pretty green. To The Chandler center we owe much of the credit for our success.

Again, we joined the North American Brass Band Association at our inception, when we had barely a dollar to our name. ( As a matter of policy, we did not accept donations; we survived on ticket sales and contracted gigs – earned income only). We joined for the contacts, to be accessible to touring soloists or bandsmen moving into our area, and for a read on what other bands were doing.  Unexpectedly, I saw an ad the NABBA’s newsletter offering for sale (at a great price) the 2,000 piece music library of the Buffalo Silver Cornet Band, around since 1915 and, reputedly, the oldest brass band in the country. They in turn had bought the library of a 19th century band in the English Midlands.  We thus acquired wonderful music going back to the 1870s, much of it not available to any other band in the US. Wouldn’t have that music available without the NABBA membership.

Finally, listening to KONC, our then classical music radio station, I heard a broadcast of Gustav Holst’s “Mooreside Suite”. The Program Director, Sterling Beeaff, announced it as performed by the Dallas Wind Ensemble, with no other information provided.  On a whim, I called Sterling at the station and mentioned that he’s programmed an arrangement of a brass band piece, commissioned as a test for the 1928 British national brass band contest, and that I could find him a recording of the Holst in the original.  Conversation led to lunch; I donated a few brass band CDs to the station, got Sterling hooked on brass band music (much classical and operatic music has been transcribed for brass band), and we started to have brass band music programmed on our classical station, as well as Salt River Brass  performances regularly promoted. Sterling even broadcast interviews with our conductor and players.  All from a flyer of a phone call.

Talk to people.  Take a chance,  Get creative,  Reach out.

Recently, Katelyn Jetelina of Your Local Epidemiologist, who I enjoy and respect, published an article on declining birthrates in the US. She mentions several reasons for folks not having kids: lack of access to affordable healthcare, little support available for new parents (paid parental leave), the costs of childcare. She also mentions various financial incentives tried around the world, with mixed results.

She misses several elephants in the room:

In America, abortion claims  around one million children per year.  If we want more kids, we might consider not killing them before they’re even born.  Leaving out of our discussion abortions based on tests indicating serious handicaps in the child, we have two big issues: the costs of birth (neo natal, the birth itself, and early child health care can amount to well over $30,000 if one is not well insured) and, obviously, the costs and time commitment of raising that child. (These costs, obviously, discourage planned childbearing as well.)

We might address the birth related health costs by simply covering them all, making birth “free”. We cover a child’s education through at least high school, thinking that having well educated kids is important to society; might the same logic apply to birth expenses?

We might address the ongoing cost, in funds and effort, in raising the child by facilitation adoption. Adoption today can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and much time and aggravation.  How about cutting the red tape, and the cost of screening and backgrounding prospective adopters. I’ve not seen any indications that adoptive parents are any worse at the of than natural ones.  Make adoption easy and free.

Regarding childcare costs: Several generations ago, the grandparents bore much of that burden.  At a local lever, we could discourage “seniors only” communities, allow “mother-in-la specials to be built on the back of existing homes. Encourage, as a society, parents to live in the same town – better the same neighborhood – as one set or the other grandparents (or aunts, other family).  Where no family is available, allow neighbors to supply childcare, without state licensing. QA trusted neighbor is likely a better choice than a state licensed facility, staffed by lower paid employees there only for the income.

Doing whatever we can to get the grandparents (or great grandparents) involved in child rearing presents benefits to all concerned. We’d give grandparents a purpose in life, and I rather suspect that if one asked a grandparent, late in life, if he’d wishes he’d spent more time on the gold course or being with his grandkids, he’d choose the latter.

We have few children and we have them later in life than we once did. We ought encourage early marriage and child bearing.  Our needing more children is not solved by simply finding a way for every woman to have two kids; it’s also in facilitating some to have many children.  Several generations ago, Americans married early – often the girl just out of high school, the fellow a couple of years her senior.  With decent jobs available for a high school grad, and with apprenticeships available for most of the jobs for which we now require degrees, the fellow could often be financially secure enough to support wife and children (perhaps with a bit of help from the grand parents). Marrying one’s high school sweetheart would involve marrying a local (close to a neighbor).  If one marries and stays in the community, one has both sets of grandparents available to lean on. And, the earlier you start, the more kids might have.

Katelyn also mentions the high expense of fertility treatments, if needed.  The later in life one attempts to conceive, the more difficulties arise. Thus, best to start early. The current pattern of college degree, advanced degree, a few years to establish oneself in one’s field, leads to fewer children (if any) and fertility issues. Finally, if the mother cannot conceive, why not adopt.?  As a society, we ought to encourage adoption.

Marrying early, having hots of kids, involving grandparents, extended family and neighbors in raising the kids, having a tight community of multiple generations, is how we evolved, both genetically and socially.  Might be some wisdom in that.

Here’s a review I wrote for Karl Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotisms.

Hydraulic economies (Those based on huge water projects, either irrigation or flood control) require large corvees of labor, generally require autocrats to organize them, and morph into monumental constructions and armies. Farming tends to be high intensity and productive; peasants often have control over their own farming practices, but little else. Intensive agriculture allows very high productivity (per acre), so creates high populations. The state, originally managed (save in conquest situations) by the technical elite, demands total subservience. (Exceptions featuring cooperative, not forced, labor, and hence non-totalitarian societies are Venice, Salt Lake City and the Netherlands.)

Most land is rented or allocated by government or by (usually palace connected) landholders; peasant ownership occasionally occurs. Hydraulic Despotism would be a better title (and was the author’s original choice, but the publisher apparently thought “Oriental” would sell better): examples include Central America, the Pueblos, Spain under the Muslims, and Hawaii, in addition to the expected Egypt, India, the near east and China. Despotisms are often exported sans hydrology, as in Rome (via Sicily), Russia, the Byzantine Balkans.

Which leads me to a suggestion from elsewhere, that the US might well have emerged as a totalitarian state rather than as a liberal democracy had we been settled from west to east, rather than the reverse.  Much of the west requires large irrigation projects to support population; little of the east does.

We’ve seen concern of late regarding re-building America’s military, though little appreciation on the varied difficulties of doing so, quickly.

I joined my extended family on Thanksgiving at my little sister’s, up the road in Flagstaff.  Her husband, Jim, until recently co-owned a mini-storage facility, and thereby accumulated quite a trove of miscellany from abandoned units.  Knowing my interest in history, he graciously (maliciously?) presented me a 1920’s era Swedish army helmet – and a link to the history of its development and eventual production:

https://www.world-war-helmets.com/fiche/Casque-Suedois-Mle-21-High (might have to copy and paste)

Note the time needed, and the complexity, of designing and producing something as straightforward as a helmet.  Consider how long it might take us to, say, produce a reasonable number of frigates to fend off, say, China.

Might be a while, this military re-building.

I start with archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies – here’s a link at Thriftbooks:

    https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-collapse-of-complex-societies-new-studies-in-archaeology_joseph-a-tainter/297573/?resultid=313bb4d5-f79b-4b17-83a5-83e73350d03f#edition=3692137&idiq=10667801

His Summary, chapter 6, works pretty well. Close to 20 societal collapses studied; a variety of ultimate causes are found, but always the same underlying problem – more and more “good” things added to society, and to its overhead, and its debt.  Eventually, you’ve eaten the seed corn, and no longer have the resources to fend off another invasion or plague or hurricane.  A summary of the summary might be ”In each of the cases examined, the costliness of complexity increased over time while benefits to the population declined.”

Economist Mancur Olsen in his The Rise and Decline of Nations demonstrates that increasing complexity (accumulation of rent seekers, regulations, and of necessary solutions to problems: all increase societal overhead: none can be abolished without a really major dust up – along the lines of a French Revolution):

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-rise-and-decline-of-nations-economic-growth-stagflation-and-social-rigidities_mancur-olson/277158/?resultid=7a3914a1-640d-46b7-8826-6f25a341a5f8#edition=64543053&idiq=52373473

Hoover’s John Cogan’s The High Cost of Good Intentions gives an example in Federal entitlement programs.  He chanced to be looking a Civil War veterans’ pensions and noticed that from there being several thousand disabled veterans’ on pensions shortly after the War, by the turn of the century, veterans’ pensions consumed over half of the total Federal budget – simply by Congress broadening coverage. And, the more he looked, the more similar examples he found:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-high-cost-of-good-intentions-a-history-of-us-federal-entitlement-programs_john-f-cogan/36991966/?resultid=e9b7138a-e304-472e-8df6-0e95a42dedf0#edition=21159309&idiq=32351129 (This one I bought but haven’t read…)

Finally, Goodhart and Pradhan’s The Great Demographic Reversal explores why we likely cannot produce our way out of this fix – too many consumers chasing too few producers.  It’s only gonna get worse:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-great-demographic-reversal-ageing-societies-waning-inequality-and-an-inflation-revival_manoj-pradhan_charles-goodhart/26079680/?resultid=1a8e8ab2-b981-4596-961f-bb1d09fa2362#edition=28390823&idiq=54469810

Years back, a good friend, in a varied career, worked managing the men’s’ overflow shelter down at Central Arizona Shelter Services (our downtown Phoenix homeless shelter complex).  Bill was the only staffer on at night, in the midst of a hundred plus often rough-hewn individuals. Early on, he recruited on of the regulars, a seemingly sensible but capable fellow, to stick close and cover his “6”. Several months into the arrangement, they were sitting in Bill’s tiny office.  Out of the blue his protector mentioned “by the way, I’m schizophrenic”.

Bill responded with “like, you occasionally think you hear something?”

“No; at the moment, for instance, there’s a bunch of hobgoblins dancing around atop the file cabinet behind you.  And they are just as real as you and me sitting here.” Bill’s eyes widened a bit; he couldn’t resist a glance over his shoulder.  There weren’t no hobgoblins.

I draw from that an informal rule of thumb – much of insanity can be recognized by one’s disconnect from reality.

Matthew Crawford, in his recent “Why We Drive”, features a discussion of self-driving cars.  Driving is a complex skill that requires connection to the world.  Learning, and practicing, that skill encourages us in connectivity. With Uber, and now self-driving cars, kids no longer have to learn to drive.  This follows, by a few years, kids no longer working on their own cars, which follows adults no longer working on their homes, or repairing their appliances.  I can’t imagine my old man, faced with a broken washing machine, not trying to repair it himself, and calling on neighbor or friend if stymied.  He’d call a repairman only as a last resort.

Kids mostly no longer work for their own spending money – newspaper and lawn care jobs are no longer available; kids no longer need organize their own baseball game – Little League provides and adult to do the organizing and adjudicating; they no longer even organize their own play – parents organize “play dates”.  Less and less can they do on their own.

Besides encouraging disconnection from the physical world, and making us less capable as a people, one’s inability to “do stuff” creates a sense of one’s own incompetence and inability, and thus creates anxiety.  Note the sharp rise in medicating for anxiety disorder.

We likely face severe disruptions in our workforce in coming years. Declining birthrates, both here and abroad, and an arguably dysfunctional educational system will produce worker shortages, tellingly in skilled occupations and professions.

Concurrently, many skilled jobs will disappear (AI replaces cubicle workers while driverless vehicles replace delivery and truck drivers). Generous eligibility for welfare and disability income will further reduce numbers of workers.

There is little to be done at the state level to address birthrates, seductive benefits, or disappearance of jobs. We could, however, enlarge our workforce by easing entry into highly productive careers, by allowing one to start one’s work life earlier, thus extending his productive years, and to allow one to change careers seamlessly.

State occupational and professional licensing require years of college for many professions, and months or years of trade school for many occupations.  What if we allowed kids just out of high school to enter their chosen field, at a low rung, earn a living and produce value for society, while learning that trade or profession in preparation for a competency test, leading to the license?

Likewise, allow someone a bit later in life, perhaps automated out of his job, to earn and learn on the job, again in preparation for an eventual license?

If a licensing exam given to applicants, from barbers to lawyers, is worth its salt, we ought have no particular interest in whether the competency was acquired through school, or reading, or on-line, or through working in the field.  Let each applicant acquire his skill in whatever way best suits his learning style and individual circumstances.

Apprenticeships – learning while doing – have a long and honorable history, longer in fact than do universities or trade schools.

An alternative: the apprenticeship model.  

• Widely used in numerous trades and professions since at least the middle ages
• Ubiquitous in America until fairly recently: we hadfew trade schools; colleges awarded mostly Divinity degrees. Ben Franklin apprenticed to his brother to learn printing and publishing; Lincoln read law
• At an early age, rather than attending college or trade school, kids learned to support themselves, earned income rather than accumulating student debt, and produced for the support of society, while learning the given trade or profession.
• Anecdotally, the apprenticeship model induced a certain loyalty to the trade or profession through the “begat” chain: you were loyal to your mentor (and he to his), and wanted to pass along his knowledge and virtue to the next generation.
• Many if not most “trades” are learned better hands-on than theoretically (“Book learning”); similarly, most professionals will tell you they learned more the first several years on the job than they did in school.
• Apprenticeship learning could be supplemented by outside reading and by the modern equivalent of night school – classes or lectures on line.
• One could explore a trade or profession for a few months, and resign if he found it unsuitable, rather than investing years and resources before realizing that unsuitability.
• One could much more easily move to a different trade or profession mid-life; how many middle aged folks, with families to support, can take years off for schooling?
• Much discrimination against the poor would be eliminated: The poorer you are, the more pressure you are under to take a full time job as soon as possible in life, and not spend months or years in school. An apprenticeship would allow you to support self and family, and be a productive member of society, while learning the trade or profession.

Pathways forward

In lieu of an education requirement to acquire a state license, how about a formal apprenticeship under a current licensee, with appropriate reading or on-line courses; at any time during the apprenticeship, or perhaps without an apprenticeship, the applicant could take a rigorous exam to qualify for the license or certification.

A retail approach to licensing reform, given seventy-plus licensing authorities, would take decades, and incur turf battles in each area.  Better to identify our current system as an updated “Jim Crow’, designed to limit competition among providers and to keep the “wrong” people out, and to reform across the board.

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