Teefs and Poleefs

[captainsblog]

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."- 2 Henry IV, III:i

"Tell me about it."- Ray

I returned to Rochester yesterday for the much-awaited repair job on my deconstruction of dentistry from last weekend. The missing piece was duly bagged up, I did my COVID check from the parking lot, and brought it in to await the verdict.

And,.... it's right back to where we started from.

I've had so much dental work in my life, I lose track. I'm pretty sure this upper was the site of both an earlier root canal and, more recently, a procedure called a "post and crown." Eleanor was unfamiliar with the drill (heh), seeing how she was blessed at birth with a mouth full of actual healthy teeth. In this procedure, your dentist removes most if not all of the tooth below the gumline, adds essentially a fence post where the tooth once rooted, pops a temporary over it, sends the specs for the permanent crown out to the Lab Boys, and several weeks and thousands later cements it in. That permanent one proved to be less than permanent when it fell out last Saturday. But, since it did not break and I did not swallow, it was an hour's work to reconfigure the post and cement it back in.

It comes with no guarantees- "It could last two hours (it did) or two years (it probably won't)" was the prognosis. For now, though, it feels fine, and the options if it does go next time are to replace the whole shebang with an implant- about the only dental procedure I never HAVE experienced in my life- or just extract all the prior work and leave an inconspicuous hole back there. Hey, I lived with that for a week and it hardly seemed noticeable.

I'm also happy to say it made it through the first 24 hours, including three non-soup meals, with flying colors. Except in the dream I had last night where it came off again. Stop it, subconscious:P

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After that, I met a client last seen in I think 2017, finalized a settlement of a $2,800 case that was closer to pulling teeth than anything I experienced the previous hour, and dropped off some other papers at a client's- driving as I went over Rochester's equivalent of what DC has done to the road in front of the White House-

Watch on YouTube

I knew what it was from the coverage, but oddly enough, when you're at ground level, you really can't make it out. That's emblematic of a lot of the misunderstanding of the BLM movement and of the calls for police reform that have been a part of it. Besides all the "All Lives" and "Blue Lives" pushback, there have been cries about "tradition" and "heritage" in the related moves to remove and rename visible symbols of centuries of oppression.

Tying these together, I got thinking about the literal militarization of our primary public servants. The immediate impetus for these latest thoughts was this piece about some racist North Carolina cops getting caught planning Boogaloo Boi events on company time. One of the side effects of reading this story, other than the throwing up in my mouth, was catching its numerous references to military ranks in US police departments. With all the debate about defunding police, it would be a simple and inexpensive step to demilitarize it- at least its structure and trappings.

I've never understood the reason or the need to retain the use of Army ranks in a profession that is voluntary and, at its best, has a mission of NOT killing or being killed. We structure it with Sergeants and Lieutenants and Captains and Majors. We only leave off the bottom (privates are officers) and the top (generals are chiefs and/or commissioners). I suspect it attracts a certain number of testosterone-loaded men who want to play soldier without the lifetime and possible deathtime commitments.

This hierarchy is not universal. From my extensive study of the UK Thames Valley policing system going back to the 60s (i.e., watching Morse-related police procedurals from Endeavour to Lewis), I see coppers who bear titles more closely representing what they actually do and not named after an honour conferred by King Ethelbert on somebody in 1062. The ranks begin, as here, with officers, who may or may not be the same as constables depending on era or precise venue. Then they DO have sergeants- exceptions prove rules- but up they go to Inspectors, Chief Inspectors, and then Superintendents of both flavours. There, as here, "detective" is a ridealong that comes with additional training; there as here, once but no more, "WPC" and "policewoman" were once sexist parts of the hierarchy.

That would be a simple place to start. Get rid of the military ranks and the pips and scrambled eggs on the collars and pockets. Replace them with more visible IDs and body cams - I'd look for a brand that doesn't amazingly turn off in the vicinity of black people. (I'll make an exception for Endeavour's Chief Inspector Bright: he looks bitchin' in his daily dress uniform. Plus, who am I to argue with a man who fights tigers?)

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Thinking even more about this brought it closer to home- my childhood home, to be precise.

Our oldest sister Sandy was 20 years older than me, and graduated from high school in 1957. At that time, unless you could go on the GI Bill (who as a kid I thought was GI Joe's friend;), college was still out of reach for most middle-class kids. The best career paths if you couldn't get a bachelor's degree were police work for boys and nursing for girls. Sandy spent two years in a Methodist Hospital affiliated program getting her RN, and spent most of the next 30 in operating rooms and eventually administrative offices. She never got a university credit in her life that I can remember despite her being my equal in intelligence, determination and writing ability.

Look how THAT training has changed in the ensuing generation. A bachelor's is now essentially mandated for qualifying as an RN, along with all the additional specialty training and continuing ed. The Florence Nightingale starches gave way to scrubs and sneakers. (And for traditionalists about police ranks: Fuck You. Getting that white cap was the highlight of Sandy's life to that point and arguably after it- and she, and we, were immensely proud of it and her. She proved it unnecessary to doing her actual job.)

I suspect that municipal leaders of the 1950s, faced with sudden need to police millions of people where there had been potato farms five years before, slap dashed the best models they could come up with at the time. Which, since they were all men and had all served, meant duplicating the wartime experience. So policemen were sent to boot camps, herded and ranked on completion, and taught chain of command as vital to their mission.

Don't worry, traditionalists- you can still get a Sexy Nurse costume for Halloween, and I'm sure Dominant Officer Not Friendly will still be available, too. I just don't need to see it, or the ranks or the bullshit, coming down my street or out of my tax dollars anymore.

ETA. Well, then. Found me a new rabbit hole to go down.

After writing that, I went on one of my famed Pack Rat quests to find a photo I KNOW I have of Sandy in her nursing cap. I tried one hidey-hole without success, but I did find an old little flip-through book of snapshots from before my birth, annotated by my mother. Two of them fit the theme of other recent memories here, of Sandy's own graduation in East Meadow High School's first senior class, on June 23, 1957:



These were taken on the lawn of the 1850-era Methodist Church building on Newbridge Avenue, from which they moved two years later to the newer one across the street that I basically grew up in. There's a different church still using that old building, and Mom's old congregation still owns the small cemetery behind it.

Speaking of Mom, here's her writing about these photos:

(1) Our Girl Graduate Sandy June 23/57
Graduation Day from East Meadow High School
A Proud Day

(2) The Happy Graduates
Pat Boos- Ronnie Timmerman- Sandy Stilwell
After special Church Service
A Big Day for All

I remember the Boos family from around the corner- not the other guy. As of 2004, there was no sign of Pat or any from the family in the alumni book I have; Ronnie is likewise unseen in there, although there are two younger Timmermen closer in age to me.  I posted those pictures on a couple of Facebook groups and mentioned the two younger ones, one of whom (a year ahead of me at EMHS) appeared to be active in it. Except she's not anymore; Nancy Timmerman, class of 1976, died 40 years later, and her older brother, not the one next to Sandy in that photo, predeceased her.  But a little further googling tracked down Ronnie himself, and I may be able to get the photo to him to see if he remembers anything of it.