Three-Minute Fiction's Finders Keepers: Cookies (the story)

Three-Minute Fiction Contest 2013.  
 "Cookies" by Roberta Morris

Bertha took the first empty seat she saw.  It was next to a Park Avenue grande dame type whose Saks shopping bag occupied the seat on the other side.  With a sniff, the lady stood up, grabbed her bag and moved down the car.  A delicious aroma made Bertha glance down.  Behind where the shopping bag had been was a small box from a place called Martha's Pastries.  Bertha found the smell intoxicating:  party cookies. "Homeless I may be," she thought to herself, "but I was well brought up."  She breathed in one more time, and then, half rising and pointing toward the box, said to the woman's departing back, "You left something."

The man across from her shook his head and mouthed "Don't bother."  Bertha disagreed.  "Homeless I may be," she thought, "and I will accept contributions, but I never steal."  The lady would probably realize her mistake, walk back and give Bertha a sheepish smile.  Maybe she'd even let her keep the box.  It wasn't that big.

The subway lurched along.  Bertha contemplated the situation. "'On further reflection,'" as her boss thirty years ago had always written when he'd overlooked the obvious, "a Muffy's Mother like that won't come back while I'm sitting here."  Sure enough, as Bertha looked down the car, the arrogant face turned away.

"I could make it easy for her and sit somewhere else,"  Bertha acknowledged to herself.  Then she noticed a small envelope taped to the top of the box.  At that moment, the train pulled into 68th Street and the lady exited, stiff-backed and with a studied non-glance at Bertha. 

Bertha immediately pulled off the envelope.  Inside was a Macy's gift card for $100 and a note: "Winifred Higglethorpe!! Enjoy your birthday!!! Affectionately, Cousin Cynthia."  Bertha knew she would never keep that money.  What was in the box, though, was perishable.  And she might never find Winifred.

Bertha stuck the envelope back on the box and carried it off the train.  She headed for her favorite branch library. "I pray I'll die before the end of libraries," she grinned. "If I'm lucky I'll even die before the end of books printed on paper."  The librarian smiled at her -- they both loved Mrs. Gaskell -- and Bertha signed up for time at a computer.

When her turn came, she searched for Winifred Higglethorpe.   "Homeless I may be," thought Bertha, "But my computer skills are terrific."  Winifred Higglethorpe was a perfect name for the Google age.  "Not like Ellen Miller," she laughed.  Ellen had been Bertha's name until she was 37 and a construction worker had called out to her, "It's Big Bertha!"  She was more a Bertha than she'd ever been an Ellen.

The only Winifred Higglethorpe anywhere in the ether lived in the East 80s off Second Avenue.   Not a bad walk.  As Bertha reached her destination, Cousin Cynthia was getting out of a cab.  Bertha walked up to her and offered the box. "You left this on the subway."  The woman backed away and ran toward the building.  "At least take the gift card," yelled Bertha, "I only shop at Prada."  The Saks shopper turned, grabbed the card, and left Bertha with the box.  There were four Linzer cookies, four chocolate-dipped seashells, and four squares of pastry topped with stripes of marzipan and jam.  "Homeless I may be," thought Bertha, "but I do appreciate quality."

//

Clothes (Very Short Essays 02)

CLOTHES by Roberta Morris

I've lost my stomach
for naked emperors:
the big men
with the long titles,
the big words
in the long sentences,
the lack
(complete)
of content.
And the listeners,
commenting on the leaves,
or worse, the spider webs,
never the forest,
not even the trees.
They are too polite
(too craven?
too self-absorbed?)
to say,
"That Versace is invisible;
that Armani is imaginary."

(These thoughts
on the academic life
can be generalized.)

***

This is the first serious poem I wrote after high school.  The year was 1998.  I had attended a talk at the University of Michigan Law School where I was an adjunct.  I won't say who spoke or what the topic was but the talk bothered me. The first line of this poem popped into my head and then I wrote the rest.  In the spring of 1999, Current Magazine, an Ann Arbor weekly, announced its first annual Poetry and Fiction Contest.  I entered my one poem and won an Honorable Mention.  I admit that this encouraged me.

Since then I have written a few poems a year.  Another poem, Crocuses, won an Honorable Mention in a later Current Magazine contest, one that The Way Back Machine captured.  I posted another of my poems, Merit Needs a Publicist, on this blog early on and may post more as part of the Very Short Essays series.

RJM 7/20/2013

New Demographic Category: TECMY (Acronyms - 03)

This morning (4/26/13) I attended a session of the FutureLaw conference at Stanford. The conference overall has 26 speakers.  Exactly one of them is female, and she is a third year law student at Stanford.  I can think of several non-student women who would have been excellent choices for FutureLaw speakers, and it's not even my field.

For whom is the Future of Law female-free?

The irony is that four days ago I was a panelist at the Microsoft Diversity in IP Law Summit, also at Stanford. 

1.  "Women and Minorities in IP Law" and TECMYs

In connection with preparing for the Diversity Summit, I thought about that word "Minorities."  I remembered that when I was at Bell Labs in the early 1980s, I heard that Asians were not considered minorities by the Labs when it reported numbers to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  Whether this was true or rumor, it made sense. Bell would not have increased diversity by hiring more Asians:  the fraction of Asians at Bell at all levels was higher than it was in the general population.

It seemed to me that a more productive discussion of diversity in IP Law would be possible if there were a shorthand ethnic category for WHITE or ASIAN.  Maybe it could be called

TEC

Clients for IP law in the Bay Area seem to me to be almost all:  TEC (white or Asian), Male, and Young  -- under 35, say, or maybe by now it's 40. (Sergey Brin, for example, will be 40 this summer.)   I propose calling this subgroup TECMY, pronounced TEK-mee.

TECMY is not the same as that patent law phrase, "having a technical background."  A female with a PhD in Physics (like me, for example), a 60-year old male white electrical engineer,  a male Latino geneticist or a male African-American computer scientist, are all examples of non-TECMYs.


2.  TECMYs and Client Comfort

When I was in law school in the 1970s, partners from fancy law firms would freely say that they didn't hire women because they'd lose clients:  clients like to talk to people who "look like them."

Nowadays (a mere 40-odd years later), the good news for women and minorities with law degrees is that the people who hire fancy law firms -- mostly corporate executives and corporate inside counsel -- are no longer exclusively white males.  But in Silicon Valley, in tech companies, they are pretty much all TECMYs. 

This affects the non-TECMYs both in hiring and in opportunities for advancement.  It also affects decisions whether to stay in IP law beyond that entry-level job or  to change careers.  The effects are due only partly to what the non-TECMY attorneys think or experience themselves.  It is also due to their employers' belief that the clients "are comfortable" only with mirror-image lawyers.


3.  Looking for Excellence

We all know about Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman at HP, and Marissa Mayer formerly at Google now at Yahoo, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. What happens, though, if you look in those companies for the next highest ranking female? How many men do you pass on the way down?  The situation for non-TEC minorities is worse, and much worse for female non-TECs.

I asked the wonderful Stanford Law School research librarians for help, and George Vizvary found me Julianne Pepitone's CNN Money article from March 18, 2013, and its fascinating interactive graphics.  The article is entitled "How Diverse is Silicon Valley?" and the lead image is a map with a dot for Silicon Valley and in big letters the words "Boys' Club."  Pepitone didn't get the idea from me:  it springs to the casual observer.

Too often I have heard from women lawyers that, if they walk into a meeting with a male non-lawyer, the male lawyers in the room talk exclusively to the non-lawyer.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that so many start-ups start up with a group of buddies of college age and even less mature.  They may know, vaguely, that companies are not supposed to discriminate, but if they think about it at all, they think that the law applies to banks and car manufacturers -- stodgy places with closed-minded people -- not to them.  They are hiring for BRAINS, for ability to THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, for CREATIVITY.  The fact that every hire looks just the like the previous one is not because they discriminate for any reason of prejudice or other evil, it's just that they find that the people with the right stuff all come from one demographic subgroup:  TECMY.

Maybe, to recall Larry Summers infamous remarks, maybe in certain fields TECMYs on average have more ability than non-TECMYs on average.  (The blogger mathbabe has an excellent post about the Larry Summers' comment, if you need reminding.)  My answer to the Larry Summers' kind of thinking has always been "So what?" Let's assume for the sake of argument that the statement about the averages is true.   It is also utterly irrelevant.  Neither Harvard nor any tech start-up nor any IP law firm nor IP legal department is trying to hire "average.'" They are all looking for excellence.

If you look for excellence only within a demographic subset, you are going to miss out. 
 
The tech community of Silicon Valley, by overwhelmingly favoring TECMY people for its employees, executives and lawyers -- and, today, speakers for conferences in FutureLaw -- is missing out.

It is time for change.

Forty years ago I did not expect that forty years later I would be writing something like this.  Let's hope it doesn't take another forty years before I can say, "Times have changed."

4/26/13

Ne-ner-nis (Part 3) - LANGUAGE 03

It turns out that Dr. Al Lippart,  a Wisconsin veterinarian, independently came up with ne-ner-nis, too.  He wrote an eloquent article in support of these neuter pronouns for his local newspaper in 1999 and posted that article on the web in 2007.  In the language of patent law, Dr. Lippart is the first inventor to file, for sure, but I did not derive my idea from him.  Great minds think alike, once again.

I learned about Dr. Lippart from someone who had found my blog because I wrote about Andy Borowitz. (Thank you, Andy.) 

Veterinarians need neuter pronouns, not because pets are neutered (ha), but because vets do not always know the gender of their patient.   They don't like to use "it" when referring to someone's beloved pet.  As Dr. Lippart explained to me last November, "It is downright embarrassing to call a dog 'she' when ne is a 'he'!"  (Yes, our correspondence was several months ago.  Apologies for not posting sooner.)

Dr. Lippart said he was told by various lexicographers that "'he' and 'she' start with fricative sounds and ne begins with a nasal sound [and] that alone is reason enough for 'ne' not to work into our language."  Hmmm.  "It" does not begin with a fricative sound but people are willing to use it.  As to a general dislike of the nasal:  Ever notice how nobody likes to say NO?  No, I have not, either.  As I'd noted in my earliest post on this subject, N is an underused initial letter and quite uncommon among fiction writers' last names.  Is that because it is not fricative?   I wonder.

Anyway, I'm no veterinarian, but I do find I need ne-ner-nis all the time.  Would that those words would become more common.  Footnotes in email are inappropriate; footnotes in texting and tweeting are impossible.

Israel - Photo Essays - 01 - Manhole Covers

We've been in Rehovot, Israel, for the last two months while my husband is a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science.  I usually use email, not blogging, to tell people about my travels, but I'm making an exception for a few photo essays.

I do a lot of walking and I look down too much.  And so I noticed that Israeli manhole covers are (a) square (but didn't we all learn they had to be circular so they couldn't fall in?  maybe there's another solution to the falling-in problem?) and (b) varied and interesting.

The manhole cover here is the first photograph I took in Israel. I used it as the lockscreen background for my Israeli cell phone.   

Manhole Cover at the old HaTachana Railroad Station, now a mall,Tel Aviv/Jaffa.  Dec. 31, 2012

I found my next manhole cover photo op also in Tel Aviv.

Outside the Felicja Blumental Music Center, Tel Aviv, February 2, 2013.

Eilat's manhole covers feature an anchor and a sun and waves - and maybe a Crusader's castle?

February 20, 2013

Blow-up of center medallion

 A similar one in Jerusalem has the lion of Judah in the center.

Jerusalem, February 21, 2013

Blow-up of center medallion.

Two days later we went to Tel Aviv to take the free tour of Bauhaus architecture offered by the city.  This one is a beauty.

Tel Aviv, February 23, 2013

In Rehovot, there are quite a few like this next one.  It says, in English, Hebrew and Arabic: "Caution Optical Fiber!"  Can the fiber hurt you or is the warning to protect the fiber, so that you don't accidentally cut it when you fall into the manhole?

February 17, 2013

 

February 23, 2013

Also in Rehovot, an interesting one with a twin (see its corner above the one photographed). And look at what is to the left of the center medallion.

March 4, 2013

Patent pending!

A book at the bottom.  A microscope to the left?  Is this in honor of the Weizmann Institute?

Then there are the triples, photographed in Rehovot, later spotted in Tel Aviv as well.  One version has a person in the middle, one a truck.

February 17, 2013

The Person

The Truck (also taken February 17, 2013)

The Myth of the Undecided Voter, and The Reality of the Decided Deciding Not to Vote [Voting 03]

For years, I've thought that there really were no undecided voters. Sure there are some people who are undecided, months, weeks, even days before the election, but the chances that they are, or have regularly been, voters are slim. Finally, in the last year or so, I've heard other people say or write that the numbers of truly undecided voters is minuscule and unlikely to affect outcomes even in the battleground states.

But even after the myth is busted, it is not the end of the story.

That's because the real problem for politicians (and democracy) is not voters who have trouble deciding, it's supporters whose support is only lukewarm. These are the people who are not particularly interested in politics or who are not especially informed or who do not identify with the ideals of their candidate. Or they may be people whose ultimate interest is in being able to say they voted for the winner. Whether or not they have voted often before, they do not view voting as a civic duty they must perform, dare I say, religiously.

What the politicians and journalists SHOULD think about is whether these people will decide to stay away from the polls on Election Day, or - for the increasing number of people who can vote early or by mail - will just never get around to voting. They may feel unappreciated. The candidates and the media are busy paying attention to the needles in the haystacks, also known as undecided voters, or the squeaky wheels, also known as the base, and not the elephants in the room, also known as lukewarm supporters.

This coming November 7, the top news story may not be what the undecided voters finally decided but instead who was counted on to vote but then couldn't be counted. The reason might be dirty tricks, corrupt voting machines, voter i.d. laws, hanging chads, or other systemic problems. But it also could be that the decided voters lost interest and decided that their vote would not matter.

If (when) that happens, it could affect not only the presidential election but also Congressional, state, and local races as well. People who lack the time or inclination to vote for President probably won’t vote at all.

That is the real evil of focusing on the undecided voter instead of the lukewarm voter: it could make the decided decide not to vote.

rev: extraneous 'who' deleted 11-14-2012
Series designation added to title 11-20-12

The Real Culture of Dependency

The Real Culture of Dependency

At the Democratic Convention last week, Vice President Joe Biden responded to remarks at the previous week's Republican Convention that concerned "the culture of dependency."

He took the high road, eloquently defending social programs that help children and families. But he might have done something else. He might have gone on the attack by identifying the real culture of dependency, one that the Republican party and the Romney-Ryan candidacy have no intention of destroying. On the contrary, their plan is to make that culture grow like mold on week-old leftovers.

The dependency I am referring to is that of wealthy persons - both corporate and human - on tax cuts, tax breaks, tax incentives and tax loopholes.

Not all wealthy people try to avoid paying their fair share. But some prefer to pay lobbyists, lawyers and accountants to minimize their taxes rather than just paying their taxes.

Less wealthy persons, both corporate and human, do not have that option. But they may hope someday to be wealthy enough to have it, and therefore they may vote -- oops! corporate persons can't vote! so I guess I mean only human persons, the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United notwithstanding -- for candidates who promise to perpetuate the culture of dependency.

We have, due to this culture, become a country where you don't have to have the slightest embarrassment about being, acting, or declaring yourself greedy. In fact, you can be proud of it. You earned it without any help, right, so it's entirely yours? That's why I call the people who support the culture of dependency "Greedpublicans."

Americans used to be deservedly proud of their generous hearts. Mean-spiritedness was a vice. Being willing to share was a virtue. Helping the less fortunate was a sign of strength. Not any more. This culture of dependency is harming our society and our standing in the world.

***

The quote: "But I must tell you--one thing that perplexed me the most at their convention was this idea of a culture of dependency. They seem to think you create a culture of dependency when you provide a bright, qualified child from a working family a loan to get to college, or when you provide job training in a new industry, for a dad who lost his job, because it was outsourced." Link to text of Mr. Biden's speech.