Polygon, the Dancing Bear

Occasional notes on politics, history, technology, architecture,
and the life of a county clerk

2002:
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2003:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2004:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2005:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2006:
January / February / March
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August / September / October
November / December

2007:
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August / September / October
November / December

2008:
January / February / March
April / May

Current entries

Tuesday, July 29, 2003, 1:32 pm

The Funeral Business and the Death of Professionalism. I received a note from someone who was seeking a source and date for some comments I wrote last year on the Grave-L mailing list. I found a copy of the posting, sent it to the requester, and decided to feature it here as well.

Another poster had commented on the economics of funeral homes. He wrote that 25% of existing funeral homes are projected to disappear in the next few years, and that funeral homes were trying to acquire local cemeteries. I responded as follows:

When I was a candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives, in 1998, I received considerable material from the for-profit cemeteries association trying to convince me to support their drive to repeal the Michigan law that prohibits funeral homes from owning cemeteries or vice versa.

Obviously the push for this repeal came from SCI and the other big funeral companies. Their whole business model was to look for ways to charge more than traditional family-owned funeral homes did (the exact reverse of Wal-Mart). They would even lure family members back years after the death and "pound on them" (not my term) to pressure them into buying still more stuff.

Obviously, too, they have been looking to snap up not-for-profit community cemeteries and turn them into profit centers. One unhappy victim of this process is historic Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago. Out-of-state corporate owners have zero regard for a cemetery's historic value and zero interest in good stewardship of historic structures and monuments.

The pricing model that was described earlier — figure the total costs, and spread them over the number of services — is stunning proof of how little the funeral business resembles a "free market". In fact, it is the exact same model used traditionally by monopoly public utilities in pricing phone service, electricity, etc.

By contrast, most businesses have to meet a market price for each of the goods or services they provide. If they can't make a profit selling at the market price, they go out of business. They don't get to calculate their costs in advance, and expect consumers to pay assigned prices or else.

I suppose morticians claimed a kind of societal exemption from those kinds of market strictures, along with doctors and lawyers and accountants, based on the notion that they were ethical professionals who could be trusted to help people to make the right decisions and not take undue advantage of the lack of opportunity for consumers to price-shop. And indeed, in a community where the doctors and lawyers and morticians were all well known figures who cared about their reputations and adhered to professional standards, that probably worked pretty well.

But dramatically improved communications and transportation have broken up a lot of what used to be self-attentive and self-policing communities. We get our goods and services and information from a much wider field now, and are less likely to have contact with or knowledge about the providers outside of the specific interaction. Every professional field has been transformed by this.

The strategy of SCI and the other companies was to quietly buy up the formerly family owned funeral homes, which presumably at least on the average were run in the traditional way, and turn them into profit centers, jacking up prices by factors of four or more. In essence, it was a bald-faced grab for money, protected by the shell of the reputations of the former funeral directors. But it works, because bereaved families are notoriously disinclined to price-shop or to question the bills.

What's more, charging extremely high prices for funeral home services is a market advantage — because then you have even more resources available for marketing! If 25% of funeral homes are expected to disappear in the next few years, presumably they are the ones which stuck to the traditional model and hence got out-marketed by their much-better-funded rivals. They're out of business because their price structure is too low.

The arrogant contempt for consumers and the public interest that has come to dominate the funeral business is grim indeed.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments

Sunday, July 27, 2003, 11:42 pm

The Grange. A few months ago, I became a member of the Grange — a venerable agricultural organization also known as the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. Specifically, I joined the Pittsfield Union Grange #882, located in and named for Pittsfield Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan. The Pittsfield Grange, as it is usually called, organized in 1901, is the only survivor of a dozen or more Granges that used to exist in Washtenaw County.

Pittsfield Township used to be like many Midwestern rural townships, six miles square. In 1900, it had a population of 1,050; in 1950, it had 5,369; in 2000, despite having lost its northern section to city annexation, the population was up to 30,167. Indeed, it is one of the fastest growing communities in Michigan. I don't live in Pittsfield Township, myself, but in the adjoining city of Ann Arbor.

The Pittsfield Grange Hall, a simple white gabled structure resembling an old one-room schoolhouse, is located on what used to be a rural road between Ann Arbor and Saline. For an Ann Arborite like myself, it's on the left just past Meijer's [a Michigan-Ohio superstore chain]. Over the last 25 years, the Grange Hall, which is available cheaply for rentals, has become Ann Arbor's most important venue for folkdances — contradances, square dances, ballroom dances, English country dances, etc. It is also used for wedding receptions, concerts, parties, and so forth.

As the dance community came to rely on the Grange Hall, individual dancers and musicians were encouraged to support the Grange organization itself by becoming dues paying members. After all, if the Grange disappeared, so would the hall. Eventually, some of the dancers came to take a greater interest in the Grange and its philosophy, history, and activities, came to know the families who had belonged to it for decades, and took leadership positions. Starting in September, the Grange Master or chairman of the local chapter (or "Subordinate Grange") will be a dancer.

The National Grange was founded just after the Civil War by Oliver H. Kelley. The intent was to bring together farmers of the North and the South, but the Grange was always strongest in the rural Northeast and Midwest. The concepts and rituals are based on agriculture and the seasons, using names and symbols of the old fertility godesses such as Pomona, Flora, and Demeter. Unsurprisingly, today's Fundamentalist Christians take a dim view of this, and some even denounce the Grange as witchcraft and paganism.

More important in the organization's history, however, has been its role as a powerful advocate for education and the advancement of farm communities. Grange meetings have always included an educational program, and state Grange organizations sent lecturers on tours to promote better farming methods, conservation of natural resources, and many other topics. (In recent years, the Michigan Grange has taken on Deaf Awareness and hearing loss as an area of special emphasis, and built a strong relationship with the Michigan School for the Deaf.)

Naturally, as the largest organization of American farmers, it had considerable political clout. The creation of a cabinet-level U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in 1889 was a Grange victory, as was the creation of the Weather Bureau. Most American agricultural colleges and agricultural experiment stations were founded at the insistence of the Grange. Most of the political reforms enacted in the late 19th or early 20th century were advocated by the Grange, including the Australian or secret ballot system in the 1880s, direct election of U.S. senators in 1913, woman suffrage in 1920, and primary elections for nominating candidates.

(This is not to say that the organization was ahead of its time on every issue. The Grange also supported outlawing the liquor trade, a halt to immigration from Asia, the abolition of Daylight Savings Time, and legislation "prohibiting the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine colored in imitation of butter.")

Growing up at Michigan State University, where my father was a history professor, I was well aware that MSU had been founded as Michigan Agricultural College, and that the institution and its original mission had been assisted and sustained across many decades by the Grange. Dora Stockman, state Grange lecturer, was an influential member of the College's governing board, elected in 1919 when woman suffrage went into effect here. (When the Michigan Woman's Hall of Fame was created in the 1980s, I nominated her, but she was not selected.)

The irony of the agricultural reform movement, of which the Grange was a part, is that it has almost put itself out of business. In 1867, when the Grange was founded, most Americans were in farm families, and the problems of the farm were America's most urgent problems. Achievements such as better education, better roads, and more efficient farming methods have led directly to a dramatic decline in the number of farmers.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments

Friday, July 25, 2003, 11:06 pm

The Fire. There was a big fire in downtown Ann Arbor yesterday evening, creating a colossal column of smoke visible for 30 miles. One of my friends, seeing it from the freeway coming into town, described it as being of "Biblical proportions". My wife, also seeing it from the freeway, phoned to say that it looked like the whole downtown was burning.

Where exactly was the fire? At first, it was hard to tell. We don't have any local TV news here, and Detroit media does not like to be bothered to drive all the way out to Ann Arbor. I searched the FM and AM bands, but local radio stations (mostly just national feeds for Clear Channel) had nothing to say about it. The Ann Arbor News web site, as usual, didn't mention it until the next day. Eventually the Michigan Daily's web site had a small article about it.

What Ann Arbor needs is an aggressively updated local news web site. Unfortunately, there is literally no local media outlet with the interest and ability to create such a thing.

The fire destroyed the already partly demolished Technology Center (so renamed by some optimistic promoter in the 1980s), a shabby industrial complex, including what was once the truck garage for the Washtenaw County Road Commission. It's immediately west of downtown (i.e., on the side away from the university), separated from the central business district by an old railway embankment.

Until recently, the Technology Center complex provided cheap, centrally located space for many artist studios, the Performance Network theater, and various small businesses including Partners Press (printer of my last round of campaign brochures).

It was, in short, Ann Arbor's headquarters for the scruffy/hip creative community, or the struggling artist subculture, or whatever you want to call it. If you don't live here, you probably imagine that this sort of thing is what Ann Arbor is all about. But it coexisted uneasily with its increasingly upscale neighbors, some of whom complained about loud parties and piles of trash and people living there illegally. A few months ago, the city, citing code violations, evicted the last remaining tenants.

Some called this the end of the arts in Ann Arbor, since it's hard to imagine any artist who's not already wildly successful being in any position to rent any comparable space in this increasingly expensive and yuppified city.

One reason the Technology Center was a cheap place to rent was its location, right in the middle of the Allen Creek flood plain — indeed, crossed by the so-called "floodway" itself. I don't have the contour maps and rainstorm data, but as I understand it, a flood event that would inundate the whole place is statistically likely.

However, it is not legally impossible to build in the flood plain; it just takes lots of money. And so the Ann Arbor Y (the joint YMCA/YWCA, I believe), disliking their now-passé (and asbestos-laden) early-1960s building downtown, obtained the Technology Center property to build a new complex. Demolition had already started when the fire took place yesterday.

The fire burned through the night, but was pretty much out by today. Downtown Ann Arbor and the U of M Central Campus are still permeated by the smell of smoke.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments

Monday, July 21, 2003, 1:40 pm

Security from political buttons? Famed Internet guru John Gilmore was ejected from a British Airways flight last Friday, for wearing a small button on his lapel with the words "SUSPECTED TERRORIST".

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments

Sunday, July 13, 2003, 6:00 pm

Hooray! I finally got the new version of The Political Graveyard (my political history and biography web site) completed and installed yesterday around 1pm.

The new version lists 119,675 U.S. politicians, judges, and diplomats, compared to 107,137 in the previous version — an increase of more than twelve thousand. And, of course, I added a lot of new information on people already listed.

Among the new features are more than fifty new categories of politicians by occupation or industry, to wit:

Politicians from various professions: lawyers (4,264), farmers (521), teachers (290), physicians (209), professors (107), social workers (78), university or college presidents (66), engineers (61), writers or artists (59), pharmacists (58), clergy (57), accountants (43), dentists (32), funeral directors (25), police (24), labor leaders (21), economists (17), architects (14), coaches (12), psychogists or psychiatrists (9), veterinarians (8), scientists (6), nurses (6), auctioneers (5), barbers (4), chiropractors (4).

Politicians from media, sports, and entertainment: newspapers (236), professional sports (66), entertainment (58), broadcasting (32), advertising (5).

Politicians from retail trade and lodging: automobile dealers (39), hardware merchants (24), clothing merchants (14), florists (11), hoteliers (11), restauranteurs (10), jewelers (6), all other merchants (137).

Politicians from other important industries: banking (220), insurance (141), real estate (140), construction (72), lumber (56), railroading (49), manufacturing (29), mining (27), nautical and maritime (16), automobile manufacturing (10), oil and gas (12), aviation (7).

Politicians from miscellaneous and unclassified occupations and industries (203).

(Of course, these lists are very far from complete, and are probably not even statistically significant. However, over time, as more information is collected, I expect these numbers to grow.)

Another major advance: U.S. ambassadors and other diplomats are now listed, logically, on the page for the country to which they were posted. Things brings together in one place diplomatic lists for countries known historically by different names (like Siam and Thailand or Persia and Iran). It also places them on the same page with lists of U.S. politicians who were born, died, or buried in that country.

The international pages have been further improved with incomplete but extensive lists of past U.S. Consuls posted there — most of them from the World War I era. At one time, consulships were plum political appointments, and very often went to defeated congressmen and so forth. Further, now that I have pages for every country and territory in the world, including oceans and seas, I added links connecting adjoining areas, as I already had for counties in the U.S.

The footer of each page of the new version contains a copyright notice, with a link to Feist v. Rural Telephone (facts are not subject to copyright), and a Creative Commons license permitting others to re-use my original material, with attribution, non-commercially, without any further red tape.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Thursday, July 3, 2003, 1:58 pm

Ohio Elects A Canine Congressman. Congress has had Yellow Dogs, and Blue Dogs, so this new member should not surprise anyone.

Lest you think the picture is a joke, consider that the Congressional biography site takes photographic images very seriously. Correspondents of mine who offered images of past Members were rebuffed due to strict rules about the quality and provenance of any pictures to be displayed on the site.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments

Tuesday, July 1, 2003, 12:03 pm

Visiting The Bug House. My nearly 5-year-old daughter loves the "dinosaur bones museum" at the University of Michigan. I told her that there were many other kinds of museums, "even a bug museum."

It was an offhand comment, but she remembered it. Some weeks later, she announced that she wanted to see the bug museum.

The Bug House, as it is actually called, was established in 1996 by the Michigan State University Department of Entomology; it's located in two rooms in the MSU Natural Science Building. We went up to East Lansing to see it yesterday.

Welcome to the Bug House where we showcase insects, some of earth's most numerous creatures. There are more kinds of beetles in Michigan than there are varieties of birds on earth. Insects range in size from moths as large as bats to springtails smaller than grains of sand. Their life spans can last a week to over twenty years. They live in pools of petroleum and in the brine of the Great Salt Lake. They survive the heat of Death Valley and the cold of the Antarctic coast. They are the stars of the Bug House.

The Bug House is plainly geared to school tour groups, but it is open to individuals and families on Mondays from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Unfortunately, the associated gift shop is not open during that time.

One room is lined with mounted displays of hundreds of different kinds of insects, spiders, and so on. One can't look at the many, many examples of Coleoptera without thinking of the famous observation, by British curmudgeon J. B. S. Haldane, that the Creator must have had "an inordinate fondness for beetles".

The main room also contains a working beehive, a handsome wooden structure with plexiglass sides and a passageway to the outdoors. The bees, in amazing numbers and density, were hard at work doing typical bee things. My daughter wanted to hear the bees as well as see them; a hatch was opened, and the buzzing of thousands of bees could be heard through a screened porthole. "They smell good, too," said our guide, but I did not perceive any distinctive odor.

The other room had about a dozen terrariums containing live bugs. One tank had dozens of hissing cockroaches, a harmless but huge and disgusting-looking species from Madagascar. Hissing cockroaches are frequently used in filmmaking — they're the fat, slimy-looking bugs in Men in Black, and at least one of the Indiana Jones movies.

Digression. I'm a little startled to find, via Google, that hissing cockroaches are described as "the best starter cockroach species" for someone who wants to have exotic cockroaches as pets. They're easier to care for than goldfish: cockroaches are almost indestructible, can survive radiation and freezing, and can go without food for three months.

A personal cockroach collection seems highly peculiar to me, but on the other hand, I'm the one who has archived and cataloged hundreds of Nigerian fraud email messages.

Around the ceiling of the Bug House are attractive, inflatable bug models, no doubt available during the day from the Gift Shop.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments

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