"Music was his life, it was not his livelihood."

      While I don't want to become one of those guys who can't stop working, one challenge I have is the intersection between what I find fun and interesting and what I consider work. Wondering about "O Holy Night" on Wednesday got me thinking it might be a good Christmas Eve post, if only to share that Jennifer Nettles video, which everyone should listen to. But digging into why I like the song brought me to Harry Chapin and Martin Tubridy, the discovery of whom prompted me to polish up this blog post and offer it to the newspaper, where it's running as a front page column Saturday. I'm posting it here in longer version—I have to tuck in under 700 words at the paper—because I wrote it on my day off. While Tubridy was identified on a Harry Chapin fan site in 2004, and in Wikipedia, it hasn't, to my knowledge, been in any newspaper outside of Weston, Connecticut. Making it news, of a sort, in my eyes. Anyway, It seemed worth pulling together in time for Christmas.

     Saturday night is Christmas Eve, and while I don't usually write a column for Saturdays, this fell in my lap late in the week. It isn't quite a Christmas miracle, more of a Christmas wonder, as you'll see if you can bear with me to the end.
     On Wednesday, an acquaintance asked if I were doing anything for Christmas. Yes, I replied, as always, on Christmas Eve, I'll play R&B singer Tevin Campbell's version of "O Holy Night."
     "It isn't celebrating Christmas, like having a tree," I explained. "It's just a pretty song."
     If you like that, my acquaintance said, you should hear Jennifer Nettles sing it. He sent me a link.
     Wow. Tevin Campbell has been topped.

     As I listened, I wondered: there are lots of carols, many quite beautiful. Why "O Holy Night"? Kinda religious for me, with all that falling on one's knees and nights divine. A French carol, incidentally, composed in 1847, the familiar English lyrics written in 1855 by a Unitarian minister, John Sullivan Dwight.
    I pulled at the thread, and immediately realized: Harry Chapin.

Harry Chapin

     When I was a teenager, I was a big fan of his songs about sad, thwarted people. Many dismissed them as sentimental, but to me they were moving. He had a couple hits—"Cats in the Cradle," "Taxi." I liked him enough to go see him twice in 1978, at Blossom Music Center outside Cleveland, and at Pick-Staiger Hall in Evanston. At both concerts he did something I had never seen a performer do, before or since. After the Blossom show, he stood amongst the fans, signing his "Every Year is World Hunger Year" t-shirt. I bought one and he signed it. 
     And at the Evanston show, he was running late coming straight from the airport. A student with a guitar was pressed into service, as an impromptu warm-up to distract the crowd until he arrived, and after he did, he not only thanked the kid, but had him sing a little with him. Later in the show, Chapin stepped around the microphone and sang, acappello and unamplified. He had a powerful voice.
    Of all his catalogue of songs, about small people and their frustrated dreams, the one that really got to me was "Mr. Tanner," the story of a mediocre talent from Ohio that begins:

Mister Tanner was a cleaner from a town in the Midwest.
And of all the cleaning shops around he'd made his the best.
But he also was a baritone who sang while hanging clothes.
He practiced scales while pressing tails and sang at local shows.

    But the joy music brought to him wasn't enough—fame beckoned.  His friends urge him to do something with his talent. Mr. Tanner gives in, goes to New York to try to grab the brass ring. He holds a recital.  In the song, Chapin recites the scathing review: 

     Mr. Martin Tanner, baritone, of Dayton Ohio, made his town hall debut last night. He came well prepared, but unfortunately his presentation was not up to contemporary professional standards. His voice lacks the range of tonal color necessary for it to be consistently interesting....

     Tanner returns to Dayton and never sings again, except late at night, softly to himself, sorting through the clothes.
      At several points in the song, Chapin bassist Big John Wallace sings the refrain of "O Holy Night," a soaring counter-melody.
    "Fallllll on your knees, hearrrrr the angels' voices..."
     So that's where "O Holy Night" came from, pressed into my mind by Mr. Tanner.
     But why is "O Holy Night" in the middle of a pop song about a cleaner from Dayton? That was trickier. Harry Chapin died in a fiery car accident in 1981—in a VW Golf, if I remember correctly, something that kept me from ever wanting to drive in small cars.
      I tried his surviving brother Tom, put in a call to the Harry Chapin Foundation, which carried on his work to fight world hunger. 
     The answer was waiting in an obscure interview in a Chapin fan publication from 2004, where Wallace is asked that exact question. He replied: "It was spliced together because it was operatic, and Harry knew it from Grace Church. It came from a review he read about Martin Tubridy and is the actual review."
     Tubridy was an ad man, not a cleaner. He was from Astoria, Queens, not Dayton, Ohio. But he really was a baritone who sang at local shows, good enough, at least in his own mind, that he rented Carnegie Hall and put on a performance. The New York Times sent a music critic. Its single paragraph backhand March 28, 1971 on page 63:
     "Martin Tubridy, a New York bass‐baritone, made his local debut in Carnegie Recital Hall on Friday night with Mitchell Andrews at the piano. His performance of two Purcell songs and Schumann's 'Liederkreis' cycle was not up to professional standards, lacking tonal steadiness and adequate phrasing...."
     That's what inspired Chapin to write the song, which appears on his 1974 album, "Short Stories." After Wallace outed him, people began calling Tubridy, asking: was he Mr. Tanner? Was he from Dayton? 
     So Tubridy was a little frosty when I phoned. But once he realized I wasn't one of those people, he warmed.
     No, he hadn't been a Chapin fan, he said, or had any idea he was the inspiration of the song until a decade ago. 
     "I fell in love with his music once I found out about him," he said.
     Unlike Mr. Tanner, Tubridy did not quit. He kept singing, despite the negative reviews—there were more to come—and a good thing, too. He met his wife, Marlane, while both were performing in an off-Broadway production of Guys & Dolls. For a long time, he didn't want to be associated with Mr. Tanner.
     "I knew about this, but just wanted to push it out of the back of my life," Tubridy said. "Only when Howie Fields called did I realize what it means to people."
     Fields is the drummer of the Chapin family band, which kept performing after Harry Chapin's death, headed by brothers Tom and Steve. Fields called over the summer, wanting to know if Tubridy, now in his 70s, would perform the 'O Holy Night' part in "Mr. Tanner" at a concert last month raising money for the Harry Chapin Foundation.
     "The man just gave and gave and gave," said Tubridy. "I decided to do the performance with the band."

Martin Tubridy (left) and Howie Fields before the Nov. 12 concert
 (Photograph by Peter A. Blacksberg © 2016)

     You can see the Nov. 12 performance on YouTube.
     "It was surreal," Tubridy said. "It doesn't seem like this could actually happen. A standing ovation. Incredible, really."
     There really is only one thing left to say:
      Mr. Martin Tubridy, baritone, of Weston, Connecticut, sang the 'O Holy Night' counter melody in 'Mr. Tanner' with a fullness, strength and conviction which, while at one point hard to hear over the audience cheering, was consistently interesting.
     Particularly, at the very end, when the lyrics are, "He did not know how well he sang, it just made him whole," but you hear Tubridy shift to, "it just made me whole."
     Music will do that. Critics pan and the years pass. But if you stick with your dreams long enough, keep singing, and are very lucky, maybe, just maybe, you'll get to do your stuff for people who cheer and critics who rave. Or even if you never do—the usual result—just the trying will make you whole. Merry Christmas.

A taste of heaven

     I visited a slice of heaven and a glimpse into hell Thursday, all within the span of a couple hours.
     Heaven might be overstating the case. But it was very white, and lovely. Which came as I surprise, because I was driving east along Lawrence Avenue, one of the more unlovely streets in Chicago. It was getting on 9 a.m., I had not had my coffee, and I was looking for a place, anyplace, to get a cup before I arrived at my destination. I pulled over at a Greek bakery, Hella's Pastry Shop, 2627 W. Lawrence -- only now, as I type it, does the name seem ironic.
    "Do you have coffee?" I asked, and as Gus, who has worked there 30 years, poured it, I looked around. Usually a bakery has a wide variety of offerings, but this place had one, predominantly. Tray after tray of kourabies—to use the bakery's spelling—a Greek Christmas cookie, filling the glass case, and the wall behind the counter. The effect was surreal, cinematic, charming. 
    I asked about the cookies, of course, and Gus suggested a dozen at $9.50. I already had breakfast, so compromised with a half dozen.  Gus gave me a complimentary honey cookie, wrapped in a napkin, and I ate that on the spot. It was very good, and I mentioned another Greek restaurateur of my acquaintance. His honey cookies ... Gus knew him, and he and I exchanged a knowing, sorrowful glance. Yes, well, baking is an art, is it not? And art, by definition, is not open to all, despite effort and intention.
      The bakery, he said, has been there for 50 years. These things take time to perfect. There was a sign in the window I admired on my way out. "All nicely wrapped." That was very sweet, in a way as sweet as the cookies. 
     The kourabies were very powdery -- not the best cookie to eat sitting in your car, but I managed. They were worth the care needed to eat them and the clean-up required, some diligent brushing and flicking. These crescents can be made with almond, or walnut, but these seemed a straight shortbread. I limited myself to two, saving the rest for the family, though that took an application of will as the day progressed. 
    Leading us to hell. As for hell, well, that's more complicated, as hell tends to be. You'll have to read my column on Monday. There too, I might be overstating the case, but again, only slightly.


     

You can lead a girl to slaw, but you can't make her eat

  
     In an ideal world, the Sun-Times archive would be online, where you — or I — could access it. But it's not. In that same ideal world, I would at least be able to explain why it isn't online, or when it might be. We don't live in that world either. 

      Though I can post favorite columns here, where people can find them, one of the many benefits of running a blog. I even have permission to do so, until that happy day when the archive is online.

     This is one of my favorite columns; I'm posting it so I can show it to people. It has an interesting back story. A chef I admire, Sarah Stegner, was coming to my kid's junior high school to make cole slaw. What I thought would be the story — the award-winning chef interacting with the school lunch ladies — did not turn out to be the interesting part. 

     What turned out to be the interesting part was the reaction of a group of 12-year-old girls I stumbled upon in the lunchroom. I was a little skittish about using them -- people are sensitive about being in the newspaper, and no parents had been consulted, no approval sought. None was needed, of course. A free press may go about in public. But I didn't want the story spoiled by aggrieved parents. So after I reported this but before it ran, I did something I had never done before, or since. I phoned the mother of the Queen Bee student I focus on, to tell her the column was coming, and seek her permission to use her daughter's name. To my relief, she didn't mind.  

     Lily Jaeger, 12, a willowy wisp of a girl, is sitting in the cafeteria at Northbrook Junior High School, picking at her lunch: a bag of salt & vinegar potato chips.
     That isn't all she brought to eat of course -- she also has two sandwich cookies and some gummy bears in a brown bag.
     "I originally had applesauce in there but I took it out," she explains.
     Neither Jaeger, nor her seven friends crowding cozily together at a table, have touched the free cole slaw set out for them.
     "Too healthy," explains Kayla Fox.
     "We like junk," laughs Maddie Caplis.
     "It's yellow . . ." says Shayna Lutz.
     "If it were blue . . ." speculates Jaeger, in a dreamy tone suggesting that, well, then it might be an entirely different story.
     The slaw is indeed yellow -- a rich orange yellow that suggests fresh peaches, which comes from the organic golden beets and roasted organic squash used to make it, along with ripe pears, apples, cabbage, honey and a sprinkling of roasted pumpkin seeds.
     The slaw has just been prepared in the school's kitchen by Chef Sarah Stegner, who spent years running the dining room at the Ritz-Carlton, and Chef George Bumbaris, her partner now in the Prairie Grass Cafe and Prairie Fire shrines to carefully-crafted seasonal comfort foods. This is "Slaw Month" at the junior high school, which has Stegner and Bumbaris coming in each week to disguise good-for-you organic vegetables and fruits as cole slaw. "Hell's Kitchen" this ain't.
     "As a chef, you are a leader in the food community whether you are conscious of it or not," says Stegner, explaining why she is here. "You set the pace for what's out there. If you can give a little bit of direction and guidance and help, you should do that."
     Receiving direction are Donna Eckles, the food service manager at the school, and her staff of three: Linda, Joyce and Petra.
     Cafeteria ladies do not have a good reputation -- popular culture tars them as mean and their food as glop delivered with the ring of a big stainless steel spoon against a metal tray. But Eckles, in her blue smock with snaps and her name on a metal tag, who received her culinary training on the job at Libertyville High School, works smoothly alongside Stegner, in her crisp white chef's tunic with cloth buttons and her name embroidered on it, who studied at the Dumas Pere Cooking School and received the James Beard Award, twice.
     "Part of this is trying to get the staff here to do the setup, to work with them," says Stegner, who found Eckles receptive to ordering and preparing the organic produce.
     "She did this, and I'm sure it was not easy for her. She peeled butternut squash and diced it up. She had to call the farmers and tell them where to deliver."
     The school scrapped its fryer years ago -- fries are now baked -- and welcomed Stegner.
     "She's really nice," said Eckles, who has cooked with Stegner before. "Sarah has come and done a chicken dinner with the whole works, broccoli slaw. We do Tallgrass burgers, and they did guacamole sauce."
     That would be 100-percent grass-fed beef burgers from Bill Kurtis' Tallgrass ranch, the only beef served at Northbrook Junior High, a choice the school explains is healthier and not too expensive, when you factor in money saved by using organic-fed chicken. Lunches here cost $3, just 50 cents more than at the Chicago Public Schools, which has its own healthy initiatives starting this year. ("We have salad bars in Englewood," says CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond.)
     Getting kids to eat slaw is another matter
     Erik Dieschbourg, 11, is first to take a sample of the cole slaw, adding it to the pizza and chocolate ice cream cup on his tray.
     "Is it good?" asks Reid McCafferty.
     Dieschbourg tries a nibble.
     "Yeah," he says, without enthusiasm.
     The consensus is that the yellow slaw looks "gross" but those who try some like it.
     Madelyn Rowan, whose hand is covered with scrawled notes, dissolves into giggles before hazarding a morsel. "It's really good," she says, to her unconvinced friends.
     "Wash it down with this," says Maddie Tatham, 11, extending a Chewable Lemonhead in her direction.
     Lily Jaeger reconsiders rejecting slaw.
     "Is it free?" she asks, hopping up.
     "She's not going to eat it," confides Shayna Lutz. "She's going to pick at it, say 'Eww' and start crying."
     Not quite. Lily returns with a cup of slaw. She holds it dramatically at eye level, examining it closely, her features a symphony of disgust. She holds it to her nose and sniffs.
     "I smelled it," she announces to her seven friends, hoping that will placate them. It does not. Goaded, she gives a shrug, then plucks up a shred of slaw between pink polished nails and raises it to her mouth, gagging as Shayna instantly brings a napkin to Lily's lips -- the way a mother would do with a child -- so her friend can spit the shred out.
     Lily trots off to the water fountain, then returns, nibbles delicately upon a salt & vinegar chip, as if to settle herself, then decrees:
      "It's actually not that bad."

                            –Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 15, 2010

Repeating "We are SO screwed..." over and over is not a success strategy

“Now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like."                                                                                                     — Michelle Obama

     Oh, I don't know about that.
     Yes, the brittle fraud we elected president has been scraping together a rogue's gallery of right-wing goofs and fringe mediocrities as his Cabinet.
     Yes, he has been as manic on Twitter as ever, firing off poorly spelled salvos at all who dare question him. Yes, he has been willfully blind to Russian meddling in the U.S. election, leaping to slam our intelligence agencies while making goo-goo eyes at Vladimir Putin.
     Pretty grim. With the promise of more grimness to come, as every closet bigot, neighborhood bully and tin-hat lunatic feels emboldened to strut his stuff in public, praising Trump all the while.
     But how does recognizing this translate into lack of hope? Just the opposite. Hope is required now. The first lady gets that. "Hope is necessary," she continued, pouring out her heart to Oprah.
     It sure is. Merely repeating "We're screwed" over and over is not a success strategy.
     Four reasons for hope:
     1. The Curse of the Outsider. President of the United States is the first elective office will Donald Trump hold. You know who that evokes? Jane Byrne, whose only elective office was one term as mayor of Chicago. Remember Jane? She won by opposing insiders like Ed Vrdolyak and Charles Swibel then, once in power, panicked and ran into their arms. We're seeing that already with Trump. Just because he thinks governing is easy won't make it easy...

To continue reading, click here. 

A kaleidoscope of crazy

     There's a lot of crazy in the world. I know that — heck, I coined the phrase. And I believe it. But you can believe something to be true, sincerely, in your heart, and still marvel at specific examples. 
     For instance....
      Take yesterday's column, about Chicago police recruits taking ethics training at the Illinois Holocaust Museum. It was a long, seven hour day, spent at the Holocaust museum, 9 a.m to 4 p.m., with 113 would-be cops.  Too long to be at the Holocaust Museum. I do not recommend it. Not to take anything way from the institution. It tends to bring a person down. 
      Still, it was worth it, because it led to an interesting story, I felt, delivered fairly directly. No need for me to get on a soapbox. Just present the interesting thing going on. It raises enough important questions on its own.  
       If you haven't read the column, read it here.
       Done? Feel like you've understood it? Good. Now we'll have the police reaction. Pause, to imagine what that reaction might be. What do you think a veteran police officer would say? Got your idea? Good. 
    Here's the reality. We'll just use one, but he expresses a common reaction. The most common reaction:

I am a highly decorated, retired Chicago Cop (31yrs.)with several thousand( you read that correctly- several thousand) arrests under my belt. Comparing The CPD to the Nazi Third Reich is so insulting & idiotic, that I really don't know how to respond. I would also imagine that comparing innocent Holocaust victims to "Inner City Thug Casualties" is just as insulting to the Jewish People. I don't think any Holocaust Victims were robbing,shooting,wielding weapons, car-jacking or threatening anyone, when they were murdered...........do you?You owe Cops an apology.

     What do you say to that? It's just so sad. It made me sad to read, to think about, not because it was a unique reaction, but because it is the common condition nowadays, not just with cops and this story, but with so many people. Our vision has become kaleidoscopic. We can look at the most mundane thing and see a shattered, swirling mosaic of crazy. What can you do in the face of that? Nothing.

Horrors of the Holocaust help teach ethics to Chicago police recruits

     The morning began with bagels, coffee and activities — stand up if you've volunteered, that sort of thing. Then speaker Kelley Szany, director of education at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, drew the attention of 113 Chicago Police Department recruits to a large pad of paper at each table and asked them to draw a line down the middle and make a chart.
     "Left side, how you see yourselves as officers," she said. "Right side, how you think others see you."
     That took five minutes. Then she went around the room, asking one recruit from each table to stand and read what they had written.
     Cops see themselves as professional, fair, heroes, leaders, brave, respectful, loyal, sharp-looking, dedicated, motivated, honorable, helpful, caring, comical, authoritative, among other qualities.
     The public, however, sees them as aggressive, unfair, rude, selfish, power-hungry, robotic, corrupt, biased, lazy, bullies, violent, drunks, racist, killers, overweight . . . plus a few positive qualities, like courageous and trustworthy.
     It seemed an odd exercise, here at the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, a summer camp icebreaker, particularly when they were urged to "please use your police voices." Something soon forgotten in the grim journey the officers-to-be, all in their 20s and 30s, were about to take.
     But we would circle back to it during the "Law Enforcement & Democracy Initiative," a unique day of ethics training given to CPD recruits.
     Szany walked them through the role the police played in the German Republic becoming the Nazi Third Reich. She passed around photos of street scenes, of officers with dogs, of police publicly humiliating mixed-religion couples.
     "What sort of police functions do you see happening in these photographs?" she asked, explaining the process of eroding civil rights.
     "When we look at the Holocaust, when we look at genocide as a whole. . . . What we know is that genocide does not happen in a vacuum," Szany said. "Genocide always unfolds in almost an evolution, and in stages, and at every point in these stages . . . we as citizens can choose how we are going to respond. Individuals, organizations and governments can choose how they want to respond. . . . We are going to learn, even if you do not think it is possible to say 'No, I will not participate' it is possible."
     They toured the museum, opened in 2009, following a path that moved Europe's Jews from warm scenes of family life to being an ostracized, ghettoized, terrorized, then murdered minority.
     The recruits listened carefully and were obviously affected. At least one couldn't eat her box lunch.
     "They get why they're here," said a 28-year-old recruit. "The parallels are frightening."
     She was one of several Polish immigrant recruits. (The police department asked me not to use their names because they haven't been vetted as department spokespeople.)
     "I'm from Lublin," she said. "I would pass the Majdanek concentration camp every day on my way to school. [When the program began] I was thinking, 'What does this have to do with my police work?'"
     Then she made the connection.
     "It might happen, even here."
     In the afternoon, they heard a terrifying account from a Polish survivor, Aaron Elster, who lived for two years, hidden in a windowless tin attic. Perhaps the most unsettling moment was a 2009 "60 Minutes" report, "The Bad Samaritan," about David Cash, a college student who looked the other way while his best friend raped and murdered a 7-year-old in the restroom of a Las Vegas casino.
     Retired police Sgt. Diane Shaw connected the dots: the way the German police went along with inflicting horror and how police today go along with wrongs around them, making Chicago what one expert called "the capital of the Code of Silence."
     "How willing are we to lie for somebody, to protect them?" Shaw asked. "Or rationalize things to ourselves. [David Cash] had a code of silence. Do you think there were people who remained silent during the Holocaust? They didn't speak out, for any reason."
     "That was a huge surprise," said one recruit, a 38-year-old former bricklayer. "Now I see how they are tying it all in. It fits like a glove."
     To watch the 113 recruits—military disciplined, polite, attentive, smart, sincere, well-intentioned—inspires some hope for the future of our troubled department. But only some. They have another training ahead of them, the training of the street, even longer, more intensive, and you have to wonder if their day in Skokie will stay with them. The organizers pressed the cadets to retain that positive self-image, to always be the officer they saw when they looked at themselves that morning.
     "How you see yourselves, you were right on target," said Shaw, displaying a few charts. "You are proud. You should be. Honest and courageous. These are things you should continue to strive to be. Sometimes this gets tough. . . . You are the authority figure. [Hitler] used the uniform for the worst possible way. If he can use the uniform to the worst, how can you use your uniform for the best? The challenge is, what can you do to change your world? You're going to go to a district, to a watch, to a beat. When you get to those places, how are you going to change that part of the world for the better? How are you going to use your police uniform and your police powers for the better?"

Holocaust survivor Aaron Elster shares his experience with Chicago Police recruits.

Next they'll leave you a mop and a bucket

     We're used to clicking on buttons online. Sending emails, ordering products, answering questions. 
      And we're used to the on-line world intruding upon what is still thought of as Real Life—we all carry a smart phone and pull it out at idle moments and gape at it, as if we're expecting to find the answer to our unease there.
     But suddenly finding the on-line world's feedback buttons in tangible reality; this seemed something new. In a men's room in Navy Pier. The choices, in case you can't read the photo, are, if "The restroom is clean and properly supplied," press the green button. If "The restroom needs supplies," press the yellow button and, should "The restroom needs cleaning," press red.
     Initially charmed by novelty and the let's-pitch-in-and-put-on-a-show quality of the thing, and by the fact the new bathroom, with its cool grey tiles, was indeed clean and supplied, I pressed the green button. 
     Not realizing, first, that I was undoing the whole washing-hands thing by touching the green button. And second that I was also being dragooned into unpaid janitorial service. 
     Right now, the economic model is that an employee is hired to clean the restrooms, and part of that job is determining when the rest rooms need to be cleaned and re-stocked. This button system, cute though it may be, is like scanning your purchases at CVS or the Huffington Post gulling its readers to write the posts they then read. The first step into a new way where mops and buckets and rags and cleaner are stacked in the corner and if customers want a clean john at Navy Pier, they clean it themselves.
    The devices, by the way, are called "Smiley Boxes," are powered by batteries, and use low power radio waves to communicate with a central location. They're the creation of a Swiss firm called FeedbackNow, 16 years old with hundreds of customers. They're part of "The Internet of Things," keys that tell you where they are, refrigerators that order milk when it runs low, that sort of thing.
    There is something charming to that notion as well, a reminder that we are not atomized individuals, but part of a greater system and we can help out. If I had to summarize the cause of Donald Trump's advent in one sentence, I'd say, "Americans forgot they're all part of the same society." Thus they look to their own narrow interests, frame every problem as a matter of maximizing their own convenience and the rest can go hang. 
    But who are we helping by providing feedback to keep the bathrooms clean? Not the dwindling number of janitors. These buttons frame the bathroom problem this way: how can we know when the toilet paper is out without having an actual employee check? 
     The problem could be framed a different way. For instance: how can bathrooms be kept clean while employing the maximum number of people? Stated that way, we could look to how they do it in certain European countries, where you'd expect some elderly pensioner to be sitting stoically on a chair in the corner of the bathroom, keeping an eye on things, collecting centimes on a plate. Not the glamorous retired life we see in financial planning commercials, but it would solve a lot of problems for the idle, lonely elderly while raising the general condition of bathrooms. We could have clean bathrooms because every hour somebody on salary with health insurance and a pension comes by and cleans it. 
     Sadly, we don't seem to frame our problems in how to create the best advantage for the greatest number, but how to do what is necessary as cheaply as possible to that even more money can flow to fewer and fewer lucky individuals. And we see how well that is working.