The Robber Baron Revival

Kiss Those Jobs Goodbye--They Gone

There was a New York Times article today about Apple and its outsourcing overseas–you may have seen it the article.  But there were some issues the article tripped past just a wee bit too lightly.  This post excerpts and highlights these.

“Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee…”

[Per the article, Apple employs 763,000 workers, of whom 43,000 are U.S. employees, giving a total of only 5% U.S. employees.]

“Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that ‘Made in the U.S.A.’  is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.”

[Outlier:  Let us be generous and assume that American business decision-makers always make solid, empirical, business-based decisions.  This would mean that overseas factories are far bigger.  Foreign workers are more skilled, harder working, and more flexible than are workers in the U.S.  That is, they can respond more quickly to changing situations and new instructions.

If this is true, I can see why a business would prefer to set up operations overseas.  Wouldn't you?  Unless there were some sort of advantages to being an American business...any benefits that it bestows to a corporation or to its employees...hmmm...tax breaks?  Permission for the corporation to lease or own land (which implies that this nation stop allowing foreign nations to do the latter...)?  How about this one:  Access to the American market for its goods and services?

It's too bad our government currently allows equal access to our American market to both American companies and to foreign companies such as Apple.  What, Apple?  You say you're an American company?  What makes you one?  Your employees are foreigners.  Your operations are performed overseas.  How are you different than a foreign company?  Oh--that's right:  You are getting American company tax breaks.]

“Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option.”

[Outlier:  Hmmm…Their only option…Does that mean their backs are against the wall?  Their company is about to fail and their shareholders are at their throats?  I mean, I’m just thinking of that $400,000 profit per employee, now.  And the fact that their business is claiming to be an American one.  And that they’re reaping the tax benefits of being an American corporation, and have been reaping these for quite some time.  And that their top level employees—their American employees—have been enjoying the American lifestyle at the top of the food chain over here.  I’m just not so clear on what Apple means by “their only option”.

Couldn’t some of that $400,000 per employee have been shaved off to go into apprenticeships to talented highschool and college students HERE?  Or even untalented ones who tested well for the vocational/industrial aptitude skills needed to run efficient Apple factories HERE?  Just sayin’…

Could it be that this is your "only option" if your company's only motivation is profit untempered by morals, and you have no scruples about eating the hand that is allowing you to feed upon it?]

“One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves.  Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul.

Yummy.

New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. (A foreperson) …immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories…each…was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.” 

Said an Apple executive:  “The speed and flexibility is breathtaking…There’s no American plant that can match that.”

[Outlier:  So, let me get this really clear:
Apple has taken its firm back to the days of the great robber-baron industrialists.   Company dormitories, and the 12-hour workday—and Apple is proud of it.  Boasting about it:  How they can depend upon being able to roust their human machines from their Company beds in the middle of the night and prime these pumps for a 12-hour run with just hot tea and a cracker.

How is a real human being to respond?  Let me try:  None of the top-echelon Apple employees would consider this to be appropriate treatment for an adult child of their own, or anyone else they cared about.  The fact that they consider it perfectly acceptable treatment for brown-skinned foreigners whom they never intend to see is dashed disturbing.   (Oh, but it's perfectly all right, because a higher standard of living is brought to those they serve--perhaps like the British served the Indians?)

This Now-Familiar Image Sums It Up Perfectly

 
Postscript:

At the end of the NYT article was this:

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared.  Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

WHOAA!!!  This is the department that is supposed to be helping American workers??!!  Betsey’s viewpoint comes through as skewed toward the business end.  She refers to Company dormitories, and tea and cracker fuel, as “efficiency”.   She considers normal humane treatment of employees to be “generosity”.  I’m sure she’s a very lovely person, but she has been working with the barons too long.  Probably without her being aware of it, their perspective has polluted her thinking.

Apparently, google and Wikipedia also need re-education.  The Wikipedia entry for “robber baron” is entitled “robber baron (industrialist)”.  And if you enter “robber barons” into google’s search box, google asks you if want “robber barons or captains of industry”.

Which Is It?

We should be far past the days when we had cause to consider all these terms equivalent.

Just Two Drops of Water From East L.A.

Just Two Drops of Water--How Special Can They Be?

STOP!!! Don’t touch that mouse (thumb that back button…)! I think (hope) you’ll be glad you waited. The assignment was to imagine you were a water drop going through the water cycle. The students were two of my East L.A. extremely-low-performing school (average test scores 21%) fifth-grade students, during those five years I taught, after those umpty-ump years I systems-analyzed. First, an excerpt of the first student’s piece:

Being a Drop of Water Isn’t As Easy As It Looks
by M.M.
Genre: Narrative Fiction

Do you ever wish to be a drop of water? Well, don’t wish that any more! Being a drop of water isn’t as easy as you think it is…
When I was coming down from the sky with my family, I heard my cousin scream. That was the end of him, I thought. Soon, I started to hear most of my family scream. Then, I found myself screaming, too. Our bodies were just splattered to the ground.
After a while, we were all disappearing into the air. I got so scared, I asked my parents, “Mom, Dad, what’s happening?”
“We’re evaporating, my sparkling drop.”

* * *

A ten-year-old East L.A. “nobody” thinks to plant that sophisticated (and touching) my sparkling drop touch in the middle of her piece. Nice.

But it’s this second piece that really blew me away:

I AM WATER
by R.A.
Genre: Poem

Watch me. I am Water.

I am home for the fish.
I am rain for the earth.
I am drink for the people.
I am bathwater for babies.

I am all that and more.

I am water for cooking.
I am ice for cooling.
I am snow for sledding.
I am pools for splashing.

I am all that and more.

I am puddles for boots.
I am rivers for boats.
I am lakes for swimming.
I am waves for watching and surfing.

I am all that and more.

WATCH ME.
WATCH OVER ME.

I AM WATER.

* * *

I felt the power of her poem years ago, and I feel it now. Do you?
How did something this powerful and fully-mature show at such a young age? What happens to gifts like these in the anti-academic culture of our country and our time, and, especially, in her culture and locale, where the majority of the girls are pregnant by 8th grade?

We don’t even value poetry any more–who still reads it, really? What a loss.

I Am a Table for Leaves and Flowers

Naughty Nancy: A Different Drew

"Look At ME, Mommy!" The Contents of My Diaper On Your Sign, Wall, or Sidewalk, Courtesy of My Missing Big-Boy Parts

(Yes, Nancy fans, this post will get there…)

I despise, despise, despise graffiti.

• The beauty of nature destroyed when rocks and trees are smeared with feces-in-a-can.
• A peaceful walk down a public street destroyed when surfaces are blazoned with threats, or made just plain ugly.
• Art galleries destroyed when liberals who live in graffiti-free oases give visual terrorism a ringing endorsement. (They’d feel differently if they had to acid etch it off their walkways, or paint and repaint it off their fences.)

But I’ve just been seduced by the graffiti of a teenager, scrawled throughout two of my favorite childhood books.  While sorting donations to a used bookstore, I was about to discard two Nancy Drew books in disgust because they had been liberally scribbled in.   Red ballpoint, red marker, lots of underlining, and messy, messy handwriting. After reading a few comments, though, I was hooked:

Naughty Nancy, Indeed!

Simple minds, simple pleasures.

Here are more samples from Naughty Nancy, annotated by someone–someone who appears to have been a teenager–whom I’ve dubbed “Steamy Stacy”.

“I’ll count,” said Nancy. “When I say ‘three’, heave ho.“  
** Oh, how vulgar! **

Namby-pamby Nan calling one of her equally virginal girlfriends a “ho’?” Yes, it’s a dumb pun (and a shameless overlooking of a missing comma) but it made me snicker along with Stacy.

TV's Ho Version of Nancy Drew, Anne Francis as Honey West

Here’s a similar snippet:

Alex laughed, then as the conversation became more general, he leaned toward Nancy and whispered, ** Hi, sailor **.

Yup. Laughed again. Sex simply does not exist in the “real” Nancy Drew world. Had Alex really said this, Nancy would have plotzed. (In Nancyworld terms, this means she would have said “Golly!”, and her eyes would have gotten really big.)

“You and I are going to have a wonderful time together solving the plantation mystery!”

Nancy was startled. She thought the remark most inappropriate, in view of the fact that Alex’s engagement was to be announced soon. ** How daring! What a cad! **

I’m with Steamy Stacy:  Even for 1957, when this text was copyrighted, Nancy’s reaction to Alex’s innocent remark seems over the top. Perhaps it was Alex’s leaning over and whispering which was inappropriate:  Maybe he tried to sneek a peek down the neck of Nancy’s Peter Pan-collared blouse to get a glimpse of her 1950′s cast-iron bra.  (More on Nancy’s magnetically-attractive cleavage later.)

An Actual 1957 Cad. ("Leave No Pun Undone.")

 
Bess gave a sigh of admiration. ** hunger **
Poor Bess. Forever being described in the books as “pleasantly plump”, Steamy Stacy edits mercilessly to drastically increase Bess’s caloric intake.  I cruelly snickered each time, even though feeling guilty. (It’s not like Bess can help overeating. It’s the author’s fault.)

“For once in my life, I’ve lost my appetite.”
** History!** (i.e. is being made) screams Stacy, honking out great unladylike snorts of laughter.

“Visitors are welcome to walk in and look around,” Donna Mae announced as she led the way into one of the gardens.
“Oh, how  artistic ** yummy! ** Bess exclaimed. ** eating a bunch of tulips. **

Good Grief, Bess. You're Named After a Cow, But You Needn't Eat Like One.

 

While Stacy is confident of the keen teen sparkle added by her own asides, she typically slams characters’ quips by editorializing: “** Ha Ha! **” or “** What a card! **”.  When one of Nancy’s two best friends dons a fairy costume and the friend, George, remarks:  “If you girls think these wings will hold me up, I believe I’ll fly away and escape this rehearsal!”, Stacy pauses long enough to hoot a scornful ** “Wittster!” **

It is unfortunate that Stacy’s own witt didn’t extend to better spelling.

In some of my favorite moments, Stacy adds her own creative plot twists:

** Unknown to anyone, Nancy herself had taken the money. Ned notices Nancy has more cleavage. He thinks it’s Victoria’s Secret. It’s really 20s, 50s, 100s, etc. **

Is THIS Why the Guys Called Her "Super Sleuth"?

 
But my heart took its happiest hops at entries of this sort:

Uncle Rufus smiled. “This here ka-noo has taken me an’ my nieces and nephews miles an’ miles,” he said proudly. ** My massah, he loves it! **

Taken together with similar asides, such as how the characters “Mammy and Pappy” were, in Stacy’s description, ** slaves **, it is clear that the Nancy Drew approach to blacks was disturbing to our teen reader.  She caught every example of inappropriate black racial stereotyping. Nice to see that.

My would-be feminist heart swelled even more when these margin notes showed up:

“Talk about women changing their minds!” ** sexist **.
“This is Mrs. Holman, my right-hand man.” ** sexist **.

Way to go, Stacy! But I suffered total grammatically-induced infarction, and am electing Stacy to feminist sainthood, for the following two gems.   Bless her sweet liberated heart!:

1) “I don’t blame Colonel Haver for wanting to restore the River Princess. She’s  ** It’s ** the most romantic thing I’ve seen…”
2)   “The married ** wo/ **men stayed on the steam towboat…”

As someone who herself uses s/he instead of “he or she”, when I saw that wo/men…Stacy, you had my heart, girl.

Dear Stacy,

Even though you graffiti’d books, and ruined them for life, I wish I’d known you back when you created Naughty Nancy—I bet you were one heck of a teenager back then. I hope you grew into one heck of a grown-up, and had lots of little steamy hellions just like you.

Outlier Babe

Ned Saves Nancy From Rare and Deadly Sabertoothed Moray Sharks

References:

Um…Was that pathetically reaching, or what?  To squeeze in that off-topic rant against graffiti in this post about the Nancy books?  But meant every word.   Yes, even Banksy.   If you let one brilliant Banksy do whatever he wants wherever he wants without permission, then you have to let everyone do it, and everyone isn’t a Banksy.

May as well add this other rant too:

You, who dog-ear the pages of books? Disgusting.  Breaks those corners right off–the ones we next folks need to use to turn the pages.  And you, who write or highlight on the pages? A new circle of hell for you!  But only if the books are borrowed. If they’re your own, dog ear or scribble as you will.   Because I write in my own books. But I do have my standards: If it’s an acid-free hardcover, it remains pristine, on the theory that the book will last for others to enjoy, and why should my desecration ruin it for others?

I do write, and sometimes highlight, all over my paperbacks.  But it’s typically very neatly.  Just in case someone else may wish to read them someday.  In this way, they can enjoy the dribblings from the cracks of my brain.  If any are left–those noodles’ crannies have mostly smoothed out by now.

Clouds

A small “puff piece” (heh heh) written just after I drove from California to Florida. (finally migrated from Blogger, where it was posted back in April ’11).


Driving cross-country, you can’t help but notice the clouds.
 
As I cruise along, peacefully feeling the heat (it’s about 100 degrees outside) and hearing the wind whooshing through the wide-open windows, there is much more sky than I remember there being back in Los Angeles.   Most of the time, the clouds are those big, fluffy white ones:   Always lovely to look at against the big blue sky.   A few times on my long journey, though, I receive little gifts of cloud surprises.
 
In Arizona, I notice the famous mesas first, which I had expected.  What I did not expect—and had never heard described in a book or seen in any painting—are the Magic-Mirror mesas I see in the sky:  Perfect mesa-shaped clouds, but suspended upside-down exactly above each mesa on the ground.  This sky-world lasts for only a few miles, but I thoroughly enjoy my short time traveling in the thin layer between worlds. 
 

In New Mexico, I see a Chinese dragon, complete with bushy eyebrows and two pair of long trailing whiskers.   He is not breathing fire when I see him, but the sky before his face is filled with small cloud balls.  His head is tilted up toward them with a satisfied air, so one imagines he has just finished puffing them out.
 

Snooti, the Chinese Elephant

In Oklahoma, the clouds make me hungry.  Six giant identical wedge-shaped mason’s trowels descend gradually from left to right like stair-steps.   Actually, the trowels themselves are hidden by the delicious mounds of whipped cream on top of each one, revealing the trowel shape underneath.  I so want to ascend to the sky and eat my way up those stairs.  I wonder what I would find at the top?
 
In Texas, a cute little baby brontosaurus stretches up his head and neck to eat a small cotton candy puffball floating before him.[1]
 
The morning I reach Florida, the clouds decide to show off:  They line themselves up before me the entire way down the penninsula, glowing in the breathtaking colors of the Creation just like a Sunday School book illustration.   And that same evening, as I finally reach my destination and the sun sets behind a cloud, I see something I had seen previously only in Art Deco designs:  Green, aqua, blue, pink, and turquoise rays shoot out around the sun, separated by distinct lines, as if Mucha had painted the scene.  The rays show for a good long while—half a sinking sun’s worth.
 
The perfect cloud coda to my journey.
 

Not As Beautiful As What I Saw, But Very Beautiful, Nonetheless

 
But earlier that first afternoon in Florida, there’s a break from all this beauty.  I see the only cloud formation that ever makes me laugh out loud:
 
Outside the driver’s side window, I cannot help but notice a giant cartoon-man’s head.  It is in three-quarter profile, facing right, with his mouth wide open, and big, panicked, googly eyes.  In front of his open mouth is his cloud hand, held in a loose open curve toward his face.   Past his hand is a series of clouds streaked across the sky, each one growing larger the farther away it gets.
 
Can you picture it?  The poor fellow’s sneezing fit goes on and on, despite everything he tries, and nothing can ever put a stop to it. 
 

And that, my dears, is where we get clouds!

---

[1] Yes, I know we call these dinosaurs “apatasauruses” now (apatasauri), and scientists of old had the round head shape all wrong—their noses are pointier.  But I did not see a pointy-spade-nosed apatasaurus—I saw a very cute round-headed baby brontosaurus, just like I said.

 
 
(If you liked Clouds, you may also enjoy Tiny Town or Snowcaves.)
 

The Unusual Birds

Poor Little Kid. He Probably Never Gets to Have a Puppy or Kitten. Sometimes, Life Sucks.

We couldn’t have a dog or a cat, because of me.  Instead, we had a guinea pig, a hamster, a turtle, a rabbit, some fish, and two parakeets.

The first parakeet was Willie.  He was green when we got him, but pretty soon, he was a gray color, which is the color of a parakeet’s skin.  Willie pulled out all his feathers.  My mom took him to the vet, and the vet said “He is too nervous.  Your house is too noisy with those children.  This parakeet is going to die.”

A Plucked Parrot, Not a Parakeet, But An Equally Sad Sight

Willie lived for another ten years.  But he couldn’t fly, because he didn’t have any feathers.  His cage was up on a stand.  He’d climb down the outside of the cage, slide down the pole to the floor, walk across the floor, and climb up the dining room curtain string to the top of the curtains.  Then, he’d sit up on the curtain rod all day, peering over the top of the curtains down at everyone, with his hunched little back and his little naked head and shoulders.  He looked like a tiny vulture.

This One Guy Has It Almost Right--Still Not Vulture-y Enough

Ah--Here We Go! This Extinct Carolina Parakeet Had It Right!

He snacked on the curtains while he was up there.  They were made out of fiberglass.  The vet said “If you don’t stop him eating that fiberglass, he’s going to die.”  We knew better by then.

Our second parakeet, a blue one, was Tweet. 

Rub Beaks With Tweet

I’d asked for and gotten him as a birthday gift, but my mother named him Tweet and made him her bird.  I still think he liked me best.  He’d ride around up on my head. Sometimes I’d get mad at him because when he groomed me, he’d bite through strands of my long hair, and I’d see a big piece fall to the floor.
 
Here is another trouble-making parakeet–Tweet and he would have hit it off like gangbusters:

 
Tweet didn’t understand why Willie wouldn’t fly.  When Willie would walk across the floor, Tweet would keep him company.  The funny thing was, we had wall-to-wall carpeting with looped fibers, and their curved claws would stick to it like Velcro.  So, when people came to our house, they’d see two little birds walking, not flying, struggling to pull their little tootsie-toes loose with every step.  And one bird was totally naked.

People thought we were weird.

Not Willie and Tweet, But Maybe In Their Eyes, It Was

References:

1) Our home was not a peaceful environment, and Willie’s feather-plucking was a sign of stress. I am happy that Tweet came into Willie’s life (and mine), and that the two birds found happiness with each other. If you have a bird with Willie’s problem, see the very helpful site Birds Come First, on Feather Plucking

2) The photo of Tweet is not really a photo of Tweet–sadly, no photos of him remain. The photo came from a sweet site for parakeet and budgie lovers, Budgies Are Awesome.
 

Snowcaves

Michelle is Smart. It's Always a Good Idea to Write Your Name on Your Skates

Even though I hurt so much in the winter, I still liked to play in the snow, like all kids, and I still liked to ice-skate.  There is no feeling quite like a new pair of skates.  First, your dad grinds off that stupid extra-low tooth on the bottom of the blade that always catches.  (I wonder why Michelle’s dad didn’t grind it off of hers?)  Then, you lace them up good and tight, so that your ankles are supported when you skate around.

I loved skating backward.  It’s easier than skating forward, because all you have to do is lean from side to side to race along.  I also loved Crack the Whip.  Do kids still play that?  Everyone joins hands, with the fastest skaters at the front.  When the leader changes direction, in a tight turn, the kids at the end get whipped around really fast.  Sometimes you can’t hold on, and go flying off on your own.  It’s a little scary, and a lot of fun.   The video below shows a really short whip of four skaters, and only two “cracks”, but it was the only vid I could find to illustrate how very quickly speed accumulates, and what can happen.  Even with only four, the skater on the end can really fly.  Skip to the 1:00 mark (not quite halfway along the bar) to see them start the first run:

I’d only skate for a little while before my feet hurt too much to walk.  Then, I’d hang out at the oil drum, which always had a fire burning inside it to warm our hands.  I wished I could lift my feet up to the top!

A Party for My Cold Hands and Feet!

When we played at home, in the snow in our front yard, I could always run indoors and put my hands in hot water to thaw them.  Then, there’d be a pair of dry mittens waiting, and out I’d go again.   My feet hurt but they stayed dry, because inside our boots we wore plastic bread bags held up with rubber bands.  All the kids did.

There was one outdoor place in the winter where I was comfortable.  After the snowplow came around, it would leave big snow mounds several feet high on the sides of the road, which meant the sides of our property.  We would tunnel into one of the biggest mounds and make a cave.  This was my favorite winter spot.  I’d take a book in and read (a lot of light leaks into these caves), or just curl up and think.  The inside of a snow cave feels warm and cozy.  Did you ever go in one?

In the winter, after you’re done playing outside comes the best part.  When you come inside, and the warm air touches you, your face burns.  Then, your mom sits you down at the table and gives you a bowl of hot, hot chicken soup.  There is nothing like the taste of that hot soup.  The hotness spreads from your inside out, and you feel happy, happy, happy.

Almost As Good As Mom's (Since Mom's Came Out of the Campbell's Can)

Dear Blue Line, You Make YourSELVES the Po-lice

"Your Name Here", If You're Not Careful

Yesterday, there was just one more story about another oops where another innocent person got arrested. A well-written, interesting brief story, in the New York Times, by Jim Dwyer, which you can find here: An Arrest for a Crime That, It Turned Out, Never Happened. Mr. Dwyer is a finer writer than I, so by all means read it (instead), because all this post does is to butcher his fine article by excerpting and resequencing in order to emphasize the all-too-typical Blue Line behavior that makes me scared–yes, scared like a little girl–of ever having anything to do with any policeperson.

Throughout the post, I’ve highlighted the words that best illustrate the point of this post’s title.  This sentence of Mr. Dwyer’s tells you the gist of what happened:

He wound up arrested one afternoon at gunpoint, taken to the 34th Precinct station house, held for several hours and accused of lying about a crime that he not only had nothing to do with, but that hadn’t even taken place.

[Outlier: Here it is from the perspective of the poor innocent, a Mr. Vansintjan:]

“Someone ran at me with a gun drawn, screamed at me to get down to the ground, pushed me onto my knees, and then put my face in the ground.”

[Outlier: And was the crime he was suspected of murder, that he should be handled so aggressively? Violent battery? Rape?]

That'll Teach YOU to Jump That Turnstile!

Moments earlier, the police had received a report of a burglary in an apartment just across Bennett Avenue from the park. A man said that two intruders had just left his apartment. “He pointed to an individual running up a hill in Fort Tryon Park and identified him as one of the intruders,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman. The chase led to Mr. Vansintjan.

As he was being held on the street, he said, “they told me someone had reported the theft of a Macy’s bag.”

[Outlier: Really. That specific detail was in the burglary report, officer?]

He protested that he had been shopping and that he was on his way to The Cloisters. Moreover, he said, his hands were turning purple from the tight squeeze of the handcuffs. They were loosened slightly. The officers suggested that Mr. Vansintjan, who is 5 feet 10 and weighs 130 pounds, had resisted arrest, he said.

"The Cloisters" --Beautiful Building Complex Used As Museum, at Fort Tryon Park

The friends waiting for him were astonished to see Mr. Vansintjan surrounded by eight police officers. “They came over and the police told them to get back,” he said. “I said, ‘Those are my friends.’ An officer asked me, ‘Oh, are they your accomplices?’ I said, ‘No, we were going to the museum.’ ”

Just before he was loaded into the police car, Aaron Vansintjan said, one of the officers looked at him. “He said, ‘I’m embarrassed,’” Mr. Vansintjan said.

The man who reported the break-in was driven past Mr. Vansintjan and identified him as a burglar. At the station house, Mr. Vansintjan was unshackled and taken to an interrogation room. “A detective asked me to tell my side of things, and said, ‘If you are honest, we will be easier on you’,” Mr. Vansintjan said. He said he was not told of his right to a lawyer, or to remain silent.

“After I told him what had happened, the detective said, ‘You know, what the other guy is saying doesn’t match up with your story,’ ” Mr. Vansintjan said, an old ruse used to trick people into admissions. “I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ”

While this was going on, the man who reported the burglary told the police that there had been no break-in, and that people were out to get him, according to Mr. Browne. He was taken to a psychiatric hospital, Mr. Browne said.  Mr. Vansintjan knew nothing of this until I [i.e. the reporter, Mr. Dwyer] told him on Tuesday.

[Outlier: Let's stop here a minute. The arrest happened Christmas week. Mr. Dwyer spoke with Mr. Vansintjan on January 9th. The police never intended to let him know that there had been no burglary to begin with. Well, one can hardly blame them, considering it all: abuse, illegalities, innocent man. If Mr. V. were to make a public fuss, there would be consequences. And now, after that NYT piece, there still may be: Quite a lot of "Tsk"-"Tsk"-ing from police superiors.  Perhaps even a mild head shake.]

Tsk. At Least He's Too Canadian To Make a Fuss

Just before he was released the evening of Dec. 22, Mr. Vansin–

[Outlier: WHOA!!!--"the evening of?"--Sorry for all the interruptions, folks, but let me see if I have this straight: It was during Mr. V.'s afternoon interview (he was arrested "one afternoon") that the police learned that their witness against him was a nutter .  But, instead of apologizing to him like human beings, they instead put him in jail (to punish him for not being intimidated by them?  "Uppity Canadian!") and continued to hold him there until that evening.  Now, remember, this could be you.]

Just before he was released the evening of Dec. 22, Mr. Vansintjan said, a sergeant told him that an antique pocketknife he had been carrying “was a problem.” “I knew it was legal,” the student said. “He said they were going to give me a break, so it wouldn’t go on my record…”

"Just See That You Don't Do Anything Legal Again!"

[Outlier: To you honest and true police out there who suffer from the others, I am so sorry for insulting and offending you by lumping you in with your False Blue brothers and sisters, but you are so hard to see hidden in there among them. Thank you for doing your best by the job and by us, in most difficult times, without the public admiration that you deserve.]