State of Panic

So, what happens when your state's legislative body calls a special session to pass a law no one needed in the span of time it normally takes to slow smoke a pork butt? The kindest description of the result I can think of is "higgledy piggledy."

Immediately, and frustratingly, the media got itself and the hoi polloi all worked up into a frenzy over transgender bathroom rights within nanoseconds of the governor signing House Bill 2 into law. Since then, all announcements about protesting performers, defunct business expansions, and cancelled conventions have cited the arguments of rainbow tolerance and the right to pee in the stall of your choosing as the causes for the loss of millions of dollars of revenues for the state.

But is that what HB2 is really about? What the NC Legislature did was to purposely serve up a heaping slice of turdcake coated in a saucy mixture of divisive controversy in the hopes the right, left and middle would argue ad nauseam about the sauce without realizing the main ingredient beneath that sauce is a turd. Essentially, Republican lawmakers baited the hook and the media went for it like a fat lazy bass, unwittingly helping misdirect the outcry over HB2 away from all the other things that are horribly wrong with the bill.

What is at the heart of it? A coordinated attack on municipal rights, workers' rights, fair wages and state-level legal recourse for victims of discrimination.

Don't believe me? Read the bill yourself. It won't take long. Not only wasn't there time between the official beginning of the transgender bathroom freakout and the governor blotting his signature dry for much to be written, the ideas expressed aren't very complex or carefully considered. Let's break it down.

Part One -- Single Sex Multiple Occupancy Bathroom and Changing Facilities -- This part states you have to use the bathroom that matches the doohicky or hoohah you were born with, regardless of everything or anything that might have happened in your life or how badly you have to go. Part of me is okay with this, because it means it is now illegal for drunk women at concerts to raid the men's room just because the line is shorter. Sorry ladies, it's the law. Side benefits aside, however, this poorly thought through bit of fear-mongering legislation creates more problems than it solves, which isn't difficult because there was no problem to solve to begin with.

Part Two -- Statewide Consistencies in Laws Related to Contracting and Employment -- Local governments can't require contractors to treat their employees in ways that are more ethical than the state determines is good enough for the likes of them. If Charlotte, Raleigh or Greensboro wants to enact stricter regulations in order to provide an improved work environment and more competitive conditions, too bad. This is where HB2 breaks into its chorus of "the provisions of this article supersede and preempt any ordinance, regulation, resolution or policy adopted or imposed by a unit of local government." With that refrain, Republican lawmakers void all past, present and future workplace protections enacted by all local governments in all 100 North Carolina counties.

Part Three -- Protection of Rights in Employment and Public Accommodations -- Again we hear the "supersede and preempt" refrain, only this time it relates to discrimination. No local government can legally extend additional protections from discrimination to those afforded by the state. It also says if you do manage to have a provable case of discrimination, you can't file suit in North Carolina. Yup, the state is so concerned you might be discriminated against that it doesn't even want to hear about it, especially in any Tar Heel court. Additionally, it limits protection from discrimination to the following factors: race, religion, color, national origin, or biological sex. If you're disabled, you're screwed. If you're a veteran? You're also screwed. If you're a disabled veteran who happens to be gay, you don't stand a chance.

Part Four -- Severability -- Standard legal mumbo jumbo that means just because one part of the law is deemed unconstitutional, the rest of the parts remain in full effect. In other words, even if the ridiculous potty laws get tossed out by the courts, it won't impact the ridiculous employment laws restricting the governing rights of local governments and putting thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of working class North Carolinians at risk of discriminatory employer practices with no state-level legal recourse.

Look, I understand some people live sheltered lives and naively believe they don't know anyone who is homosexual or identifies sexually in ways that deviate from the "norm."

The idea of a man dressed as a woman who wants to use the women's bathroom, or vice versa, is a terrifying notion to these people. They see it as something perverse, different, and strange that needs to be policed, controlled and monitored. As someone who has seen more than his fair share of gas station bathrooms, trust me when I tell you a member of the opposite sex dropping a deuce in the neighboring stall is far from the worst thing you could experience in a public facility. Transgender people are people, and what they want to accomplish in the bathroom is the same thing you and I want to accomplish -- relieving ourselves without catching a third world fungus off the toilet seat.

When it comes down to it, you're more likely to be molested inside a church by a member of the clergy, or in a government office by a member of the Republican Party, than to be accosted by a transgender man or woman in a public bathroom. And you're certainly far more likely to get screwed by the lack of protections afforded by North Carolina's House Bill 2.



© 2016 Mark Feggeler

NC Legislators Shafting Education

Pretty soon, if you want a decent education for your child in the state of North Carolina, you might have to come to grips with the concept of homeschooling.

Not that our teachers are incapable. Our Daughter just graduated high school and received, for the most part, an excellent education that has prepared her well for college. Our sons will be in high school soon enough and then heading off to college themselves, also with heads full of knowledge thanks to their many dedicated teachers (and despite the few who shouldn't be teaching). They are nearly beyond the point at which the vivisection of public education by the North Carolina Legislature can impact them directly. Until, of course, they have their own children.

The disdain for public education by the Republican leadership of North Carolina -- Republicans control both the House and Senate with commanding majorities, in addition to the Governorship --  is palpable. From salaries, to support, to supplies, to benefits, to basic respect, the state of North Carolina is failing our children by failing our schools.

Competitive teacher salaries? Who needs them? In fact, North Carolina celebrates bloated middle management over the value of line-level teachers and school staff.

For instance, the NC Department of Public Instruction hires people in at salaries with a basement of $57,000 to serve as Education Testing/Accountability Consultants. Qualified applicants could draw a starting salary north of $90,000. According to ncpublicschools.org, the basement salary for a Bachelor-degree certified teacher is $33,000. A similarly certified teacher with 25 or more years of experience qualifies for a maximum starting salary of only $50,000. That's a $22,000-$40,000 gap between the teachers charged with directly educating our children and the number crunchers dreaming up tests to measure the effectiveness of our teachers.

And it isn't as though North Carolina employs merely a handful of Education Consultants. A quick search using a handy tool provided by the News & Observer shows almost a full eight screens -- 197 individual positions -- of employees with the title Education Consultant Levels I, II or III. Perhaps, in a state made up of 100 counties, 197 consultants on various topics of public education isn't too extreme, but it makes me wonder why we then employ 76 Education Program Directors who are supposed to serve as the lead authorities for their designated topics. Why do we have more than double the number of consultants than actual directors, all of them drawing salaries beyond the reach of even the most seasoned teacher?

So, what is a state government to do when all this money gets tossed at education yet our overall testing scores consistently put North Carolina close to last place in the Union? Punish the schools, of course. The bloated middle management at the Department of Public Instruction, all too frequently mirrored at the local district levels, couldn't possibly be to blame. Could it? We need all those people milling about, pushing their own agendas, developing new ways to learn math, developing new tests to justify their high salaries. What would we do without them?

Oh, that's right.

We might be able to fund higher salaries for teachers. We might be able to hire additional teacher assistant positions. We might be able to buy proper textbooks. We might be able to fund modern computer labs. We might be able to get students out of trailers and into proper buildings. We might be able to fund personalized reading programs that target the needs of students rather than implementing a bastardized form of the Lexile program which, by its own descriptive content at its website, is meant to be a tool for teachers, not a systematic approach to governing all reading programs. We might be able eliminate the need for teachers and local administrators to help justify the pet programs of their higher ups and, instead, offer meaningful feedback on the effectiveness of tools offered to them without fear of political retribution.

There's a whole lot we might be able to accomplish if our Legislators stopped playing politics with our tax dollars and focused on funding the learning process.




2015 Mark Feggeler

Epic Education Fail

Recent events involving our local Board of Education -- namely the firing of well-regarded Superintendent Dr. Bob Grimesey -- have stirred discontent with the potential to cause an uprising worthy of a Victor Hugo novel. 

Many parents are angry at his firing. Many community leaders are angry. Many teachers and administrators are angry (and scared). And many students are angry, while many more students probably do not fully understand the degree to which they should be angry. For many different reasons, I count myself among the angry population.

To be fair, I know very little about Dr. Bob Grimesey. His name began dropping last year after he was hired to serve as superintendent of Moore County Schools here in our heavenly slice of North Carolina. I’ve seen him, as one sees public officials, at a few school events here and there. Other than that, I’ve had no interaction with the man and, therefore, am in no position to make any arguments based on his character. I don’t know him well enough to personally vouch for him, so I won’t even go there.

My reasons for being angry at the five Board of Education members who fired the Superintendent are based on wasted resources (his contract buyout is north of $128,000), cowardice (last-minute, closed-door meetings held at times inconvenient to parents and school staff), alleged collusion (this coup has been in the planning process for weeks despite never being discussed in a proper board session), and hubris (the excessive self-confidence these board members exhibit in banding together to accomplish their pre-determined goal, regardless of the needs and wants of the children they serve and the taxpayers to whom they answer).

The harsh realities of the situation are that Dr. Grimesey is gone and likely will not be back. [NOTE: Since writing this post, and thanks to the intervention of NC State Representative Jamie Boles, we might just get our superintendent back.] It’s a nice dream to believe the decision can be reversed, but the chances of it happening are beyond slim, even if the election recall being discussed to remove certain Board of Education members succeeds. Time passes too slowly. People move on. Better things are down the road for Dr. Grimesey and I wish him well in his pursuit of them. He will thrive.

How do I know this? Because I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before.

Years ago, I worked for a company that encouraged and even congratulated back-stabbing manipulation. Fear and bullying were the order of the day. Decisions were made based on personal preference rather than sound business reasoning. Lies were told and systems meant to protect employees were abused. The short-term result of the company’s management style was good people who were treated like trash and corrupt leaders who protected, pampered and profited political allies. The long-term result was the near destruction of the company through years of turmoil until, finally, the cancers were cut out. Of those good people who were chewed up and spit out, the ones I see around town have achieved personal success and made good lives for themselves. The manipulators who made life hell for everyone have mostly fallen from power and are ostracized, in some cases even by their own family members.

The Board of Education’s vaguely justified and unpopular firing of the Superintendent has not damaged Dr. Bob Grimesey. If anything, he has been liberated to seek the employment of a school system that will embrace and appreciate him. He now has hundreds of glowing personal references available online for future employers to read and can go on his way with an extra $128,000-plus in his pocket. That’s not to say it won’t impact him emotionally. His tearful message to an audience of supporters this week clearly indicates a desire to remain in Moore County to serve the public.

The real, true and genuine effect of the Superintendent’s firing is the fact it has brought into the full light of day those five board members who hoped they could either bully Dr. Grimesey into quietly resigning on Monday, or fire him with little public attention in hastily scheduled back-to-back meetings. People who, seven days ago, weren’t paying the first lick of attention to Moore County Schools are now feverishly discussing recall elections, alleged collusion, nepotism, and potential violation of the North Carolina Open Meetings Law. Much like the leadership at that company I worked for years ago, the five members of the Board of Education and the administration they might wish to create now seem like so much detritus circling a bowl in desperate need of flushing.

Some people will overreact. Keep calm folks. 

Keep threatening language and hyperbole off the table. Accept the reality that you can’t hit the rewind button and undue what has been done. It’s time to move forward politically to remove the problem. Move forward intelligently to elect people who, to the best of your knowledge, will represent you to the best of their abilities. Move forward ethically to do whatever you are going to do in a way that will not disgrace you or your allies in this endeavor.

Most importantly, sleep well at night, secure in the knowledge you are trying to do the right thing. I’d like to think there are five people who can’t.

Mystery Mail Bingo

Just a few months ago, our mail delivery was perfect. Beyond perfection, even.

Our mail arrived each and every day at the same time of day for seven-and-a-half years. Packages that were marked "Do Not Bend" weren't. Packages too large for our mailbox were hand-delivered to our door. Packages and parcels belonging to other people were not mixed in with ours. We were spoiled.

At least, that's how the United States Post Office must have considered us, because the new year brought the announcement of a change. Our mail carrier, Kim, was retiring and another would take her place.

What I've learned over the past few weeks is that the Post Office for the village in which we live does not directly hire employees as mail carriers. Why? I don't know, and neither does anyone at our local Post Office. Someone, ages ago, determined that's the way it should be and that is how it has remained from farther back than living memory appears to serve.

Instead, a contract specialist two states away in Maryland solicits and reviews bids from anyone literate enough to complete a form and who also happens to be interested in managing one of the many local delivery routes in our area. Past experience is supposed to be taken into consideration, but in this case it doesn't seem to have been a priority.

These days, our mail delivery is one of the greatest mysteries going. A local bookie could clean up taking bets on all aspects of service:

• Time of mail delivery;
• Percentage accuracy of mail received;
• Whether or not you received any mail at all;
• Whether or not outgoing mail left in your mailbox for the carrier to take with her remains in your mailbox at the end of the day;
• The number of days outgoing mail remains untouched in your mailbox;
• Number of days you receive mail without a single piece of it being addressed to you or any other member of you family;
• The number of bills you neglect to pay because you never received your statements;
• The number of confidential documents (bank statements, credit card applications, car registration renewals, medical bills, W-2 forms, etc.) you receive that are not addressed to you;
• Whether or not the carrier understands why mailboxes have those little flags on them;
• How many mailboxes the carrier runs down before she acknowledges having run over any;
• How many pieces of mail are lodged between the cushions of the backseat in the mail carrier's car on any given day;
• Whether or not the mail carry can read.

You see? The possibilities are endless!

In response to the postal mayhem, I'm doing my part by calling to complain every few weeks to keep our local postmaster apprised of how abysmally horrendous mail service continues to be and spreading the name and mailing address of the contract specialist in Maryland to all who live along our delivery route.

I would post it here, but it's probably illegal and I'd end up getting subpoenaed, or audited, or cavity searched, or some silly thing like that. So just shoot me an email and I'll respond back with it so you can write the guy a letter, too. Just make sure you don't leave it in your mailbox for the carrier to take.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Yankee Bacon

My Lovely Wife and I are diametrically opposed when it comes to our internal thermostats. It isn't uncommon for her to dress in layers and carry a jacket on days when I'm ready to pack my shorts with ice cubes.

Historically, winter is for me, summer for her.

In college at Plattsburgh, NY, when the temperature broke into double digits, you traded out the really, really heavy jacket for just the really heavy jacket. Shorts and t-shirts came out as soon as the mercury topped 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

You learn things about your body in that kind of unreasonable coldness. For instance, your legs can handle 18-degree gusts of wind for the two-block walk from the dorm to the raquetball courts, but your arms can't. So, go ahead and wear the gym shorts just so long as your top half is wrapped in two t-shirts, a sweatshirt, a hemp hoodie, and a parka. If you're walking into the wind, hold your raquet like a groin shield to keep the giblets from freezing.

Yes, the Great White North was something I could figure out. Then I moved to North Carolina, which really wasn't a very smart thing for a pigmentally challenged person like me to do. Moving closer to the equator should require a permit process in which you answer a series of questions.

Do you burn easily? Yes.

Have you ever blistered? I get blisters on my blisters.

Do you ever tan? Does a faint gray hue count as a tan?

Have you ever burned on an overcast day in December? What year?

How many third-degree sunburns have you had? Third degree is for sissies.

You get the idea...

If you fail, you're assigned a southern-most latitude based on your paleness that you are not allowed to cross without signing some sort of waiver. Fail really big and you get free igloo construction training and a pamphlet about the many different uses of walrus blubber. Unfortunately, this process has yet to be implemented.

And while I've gotten smarter about slathering myself with sunscreen and wearing hats on sunny days, there have been plenty of times when I've ended up looking like a lobster and smelling like 190 pounds of Yankee bacon. The worst is when we've had other people's kids with us at the pool and severely underestimated their tolerance to the Carolina sunshine.

"Sorry we turned your kid into a bacon bit! She really enjoyed the water, until it started vaporizing when it came into contact with her skin..."



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Pink Snuggie Thief

Twenty years ago, I laughed at people who complained about winter weather in North Carolina.

How seriously can you take people who raid the grocery store for milk and bread at the mere mention of a snow flurry? How can you not poke fun at school systems and businesses that shut down twenty-fours in advance of a predicted snow storm?

I hate to sound like a stereotypical old codger but when I was a kid we needed six inches of snow on the ground and the threat of more before the superintendent even considered closing school for a day. I recall quite a few mornings on which my brothers and I would reach out into the snow to measure the depth with a wooden ruler. Oh, the disappointment of only three or four inches...

During college at SUNY Plattsburgh in upstate New York -- just a short beer run to the Canadian border -- when the winter weather finally gave way to a day above 45 degrees, you would find many of us outside enjoying the sunshine in shorts and t-shirts.

If you wanted to go tubing down the Saranac River that ran behind the dorms, you had to do it in April, when the spring runoff from the mountains raised the level of the river high enough to keep you from bashing your head on a rock. The water was a bone-chilling 50 degrees. I still remember washing up on the wrong side of the river and trembling for a solid hour before regaining enough control of my muscles to walk back to campus.

When my Lovely Wife and I began dating in 1992, my future Father-in-Law would constantly offer me sweaters or jackets when he saw me leaving their house in 40-degree weather without one of my own. He was a lovely man, and well intentioned, but I doubt anything he wore would even have wrapped around my thigh, let alone cover my torso.

And it didn't matter, anyway, because I wasn't cold. I was in North Carolina. Hundreds of miles south of where I grew up and almost one thousand mile south of where I went to college. During my first ten years combined in the Tar Heel State, I barely witnessed more than an inch or two of snow. Quite quickly, my wardrobe changed from flannel shirts and knit sweaters, to short-sleeve shirts and year-round flipflops.

But lately I've noticed something peculiar. Whereas I once sought out light coats with no heavy liners, I am now the owner of several winter-weather jackets. Even my mild-weather jacket has a liner. I'm wearing gloves again, too. I have this pair of black leather gloves I've owned for several years that now, inexplicably, are with me where ever I go.

Perhaps the most rattling indicators of my thinning blood are in evidence at night.

My Lovely Wife gets cold somewhere around the end of August and stays that way until the first of July. As a result, every winter we drape our bed with an electric blanket. The first one we owned had one control for the entire blanket, meaning she would be toasty warm and I would slowly dissolve into a puddle of sweat. We now have a blanket with two controls. Well, this winter my side has been on just as much as hers, and more often than not at the same setting. This wouldn't bother me so much if I found myself waking up at two in the morning to throw off the covers and cool down, but I don't.

The final evidence of my acclimation to the Southern climes, however, came just a few weeks ago. One evening, I scurried to the computer in the basement family room to work on my book after the rest of the family had fallen asleep. Before I realized what I had done, I was wrapped in the pink Snuggie my Lovely Wife keeps in the game closet.

So, in twenty years I've gone from running around outside in shorts and t-shirt in 40-degree weather, to sitting in a 72-degree carpeted basement wearing socks, long flannel pajama pants, long-sleeve shirt, and wrapped in a pink Snuggie like some refugee from an alternate lifestyle monastery.

I'd love to keep writing about all this, but unfortunately I have to go. They've just called for a dusting of snow on Thursday, so I need to run to the grocery store to stock up on bread and milk.


© 2010 Mark Feggeler

Topless At The Pool

I've never been a model of physical fitness.

As a little kid I was skeletal. In elementary school I was short and fat. In junior high I went from being short and fat to tall and emaciated skinny in the matter of two weeks.

All through high school I remained bone skinny -- 5'10" and barely 150 pounds -- despite the fact I thought a one-pound bag of sour cream & onion Doritos contained my daily servings of fruits and vegetables. You might not remember the sour cream & onion Doritos. They were a variation of the present-day ranch flavor and turned you green up to your third knuckle. Delicious...

It doesn't help that our skinny Italian enjoys reminding me, in a very loving way that I do think is adorable, how fat I am. Just a few weeks ago he was hugging me and in the cutest voice said, "Daddy, I love you cause you're fat and soft."

I recall being self-conscious about my appearance since grade school. Some of it does relate back to being either too thin or too fat, but some of it also comes from my natural lack of pigment. I have none.

My feet could be used for road flares. If I were to ride my bike at night, rather than reflective tape on my clothes, I could just take off my shirt and illuminate an entire city block, that is if I weren't self-conscious about taking off my shirt in public.

Actually, my extreme paleness has afforded me a ready excuse to not take off my shirt in public, which should be a horrible crime anyway. There's usually no cause for it and it only disturbs people.

Fortunately, when I go swimming at the beach or in a pool, a shirt is required unless I want to spend the next three days recovering from a third-degree sunburn.

Doesn't matter what level of sunblock I use, either. I've lathered up with 45 SPF, 50 SPF, 70 SPF and recently tried 100 SPF. While effective, it does sometimes feel like I'm choking my skin with pore-clogging goop just so I can go out in the sun. And despite which SPF level I choose, an hour in the pool is enough to wash it off, especially from the shoulders where the children grab on. And in the past few years I've even taken to spraying sunscreen straight through the remaining hairs to myscalp.

So, the other weekend when we traveled to Concord, NC, to bring the kids to the indoor water park at the Great Wolf Lodge, I knew I would need to make a decision about going shirtless.

I started off thinking I would wear my blue sport shirt throughout the entire weekend since it dries quickly and would help hide my pudginess. The first dousing from the giant bucket took care of that, however. Once the air hit that forever-mildly-damp shirt, I would freeze and remain freezing the rest of the day.

So, the shirt came off for the rest of our time at the waterpark. Amazingly, no one's retinas were burned out by my paleness and no children's psyches were damaged from the site of my flabby gut. That is, at least none I'm aware of.



2010 Mark Feggeler