Why I no longer support the United Way

I wrote this originally about 10 years ago. Nothing has changed in the meantime.

I used to be a strong supporter of the United Way. It made sense to write one check or have a small amount deducted from my salary every pay period to be distributed among a group of agencies. I was always surprised and disappointed to hear from the small but vocal minority who refused to participate because some of the money went to an organization of which they did not approve. But after several years of reflection, I have come to a similar conclusion, albeit for other reasons. They are three: the nature of institutional decay, the need for individual responsibility, and a desire to avoid homogeneity and the “team mentality.”

All institutions whether they are created originally by volunteers or are more formally established, go through stages or life cycles. Initially, the officers and members are enthusiastic and dedicated to the mission of the organization. Later, as the original staff burn-out or retire, the responsibility for maintenance of the mission is inherited by “professionals.” These well meaning individuals bring a subtle shift to the goals of the institution. Now the continuance of the organization, particularly its growth and increase in staff (which bring visibility and prestige to the managers), becomes utmost in importance. Often the original mission of the organization takes second place. In the case of United Way, we now see a national organization, funded lavishly by local groups that are required to subsidize a large staff with mammoth salaries, buildings, private aircraft, etc. Such excesses lead inevitably to the scandals such as we have seen in recent years.

Secondly, the United Way insidiously -- although not deliberately -- takes away the individual’s responsibility to support agencies in which he or she believes. A group of “community leaders,” not elected (hence not representative), decide how the funds will be dispersed. The agencies then have to appeal not to the loyalty of individual supporters, nor to the populations they are to help, but rather to a group of people who may have a completely different agenda from those expected to donate the money to support the agencies. This has a circularly devastating effect on the way managers are hired. No longer does an agency hire someone who can best provide support to the population its mission addresses, but rather on how well the manager can get money from the unelected board that distributes money. I suggest the skills required to do each job are vastly different.

Similarly, the process removes the individual’s responsibility to become party to the process of helping one’s fellow man. It has become so easy to have that little amount deducted, to turn over the job (and it is a task) of deciding which organizations to support to someone else. The collectivization of charity has artfully removed individuals from the process that should require us to investigate and decide ourselves. We have essentially created a mini government without representation that disperses our money without our input.

Finally, I object to the “team-mentality” that pervades the whole United Way campaign. The notion that companies and institutions compete against one another for the highest percentage of contributors offends my sense of individuality. There is often huge pressure placed on individuals (fortunately this is not true at HCC) to “join the team” irrespective of the philosophy or individual reasoning of the person. Society places too much emphasis on conformity as it is. The attitude is “trust us with your money.” “Let us make the decisions for you.” I think it’s time to return the decision-making to yourself. Don’t join the team arbitrarily. Support your community by participating in it. Investigate groups that ask for money. Do your own research. And then give generously to those causes you believe to be important. Do not abrogate your responsibility.

I urge you support of charities and worthwhile organizations. There are many that do an excellent job and are worthy of your time and money.

Back from the Deep: The Strange Story of the Sister Subs 'Squalus' and 'Sculpin'

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Back from the Deep: The Strange Story of the Sister Subs 'Squalus' and 'Sculpin':


The account of two WW II submarines who, through a weird twist of fate, had their stories intertwined. The Sculpin, in 1939, had helped located and rescue sailors from the Squalus when it went down in 240 feet of water off New Hampshire. Later in the war, the Sailfish, the rechristened Squalus lined up her torpedoes and attacked an enemy escort carrier which, it happens, was transporting prisoners that had been captured from the Sculpin. Many were drowned.

The Sculpin and Squalus were sister submarines launched in 1938. On one of her final trial runs, the induction valve (the huge air intake for the diesel engines) failed to close during a test crash dive and the Squalus sank. This was to be the first test of the Momsen lung (Momsen himself was to participate in the rescue) and the diving bell the Navy had installed and built following numerous submarine losses in the preceding decade. The survivors were now trapped in the control room and torpedo room. Fortunately the sub was not on its side but held a slight 11% upward angle (at 320 feet long, technically the bow, had it had enough buoyancy, I suppose could have stuck up out of the water. One option considered was to attach high pressure air lines to the sub and fill it with enough air to blow it to the surface. They decided to use the rescue bell instead, the first time it was used to rescue sailors trapped in a sub.) A big problem was that the last transmission before they dived to indicate their transmission was garbled slightly in the last digit so they were actually five miles away from where they had reported diving.

Well, enough spoilers. This is a fascinating account of overlapping coincidental tragedies. Submarine service was risky enough and submariners lost their lives at a rate 6 times that of any other service during WW II.

P.S. Excellent detailed website regarding the salvage of the Squalus at http://www.cisatlantic.com/trimix/oth...

Another book about the original sinking and salvage of the Squalus is Peter Maas' The Terrible Hours

Also A Tale of Two Subs An Untold Story of World War II, Two Sister Ships, and Extraordinary Heroism


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Flipping Off a Cop Is No Crime, Appeals Court Says - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Flipping Off a Cop Is No Crime, Appeals Court Says - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

It's the Bad Frog decision reference that got my attention.

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Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World's Most Mysterious Fish

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World's Most Mysterious Fish:

I love books like this.  Take some obscure or mundane topic or subject and dissect it to the nth degree.  I doubt if anyone reading this really has a fondness for those slippery, slimy creatures, and yet it turns out they are singularly fascinating. “The freshwater eel, of the genus Anguilla, evolved more than fifty million years ago, giving rise to fifteen separate species. Most migratory fish, such as salmon and shad, are anadromous, spawning in freshwater and living their adult lives in salt water. The freshwater eel is one of the few fishes that does the opposite, spawning in the sea and spending its adulthood in lakes, rivers, and estuaries—a life history known as catadromy (in Greek ana- “means “up” and cata- means “down,” the prefixes suggesting the direction the fish migrates to reproduce).* But among catadromous fishes, the eel is the only one that travels to the depths of the oceans so far offshore. . . .No one has ever been able to find a spawning adult or witness a freshwater eel spawning in the wild. For eel scientists, solving the mystery of eel reproduction remains a kind of holy grail.”  And they determinedly try to return to their ocean origins.  Place some in an aquarium and they will try every way possible to squirm their way out.  If there is no way, they die.

Interesting people abound.  Ray, for example, a hermit (or recluse, if you prefer) who lives in a shack off the Delaware river and has a permit, which he inherited from his father, to operate an eel weir.  Every year  (he  has a degree in engineering) he carefully rebuilds the stone weir, repositioning the stones into walls (every year they are destroyed by ice and flooding.)   All in preparation for the September run. A good year will yield 2,500 eels weighing on average .85 pounds each. He puts them in salt to kill them then turns them in a cement mixer filled with gravel to get the slime off, guts them with a knife and hot-smokes them to restaurants and passersby saving a few for personal eating.  Fascinating.

Eels are relentless in their efforts to return to their "ocean womb."  Just try keeping some in an aquarium sometime.  They'll be all over your floor.  In New Zealand, where the Maori have a long symbiotic relationship with eels, they have been known to roll up in balls to get across land masses and try to get through hydraulic dam generators.   Tradition has it they will live for centuries waiting for some typhoon to wash them out to sea from some land-locked pond or lake. For the Maori, it's one of the highest sources of protein for them so when the British, in the guise of the Acclimatization Society stocked everything with trout only to discover eels love trout,  they embarked on a vast "kill the eels" program, with detailed instructions on how best to do it on every fishing license.   The result was much the same as the campaign that killed off most of the buffalo.

Of course there were unintended consequences.  Turns out killing the eels meant the trout, having no natural predatory exploded in population. "The trout in eel-free rivers had become more numerous, yes, but the average size was much smaller. In the 1950s, a biologist named Max Burnett studying the interaction of trout and eels in the streams of Canterbury discovered that the eel, maligned and needlessly slaughtered, was actually in part responsible for the now world-famous trout fishing in New Zealand. By preying on the trout, the eel was culling a population that soon became overpopulated and stunted without them. With the eels in the rivers, the trout were fewer but much larger. Burnett’s work showed that the presence of eels was beneficial and single-handedly turned around public opinion of them. The killing stopped. "  And now New Zealand is again celebrated for its trout fishing.

That doesn't mean the Maori can't be cruel to the eels: " People who smoke eel usually leave the skin on the fish but remove the unappetizing slime with salt, ash, or detergent. Even Ray, who had worked in slaughterhouses his whole life, admitted their method was cruel—removing their protective slime while suffocating them.* The eels reacted by writhing and rolling in the dry detergent, trying to use their tails to get it off their bodies, but it only spread the caustic powder. When the eels were dead Ray rubbed them down with a sugar sack to remove any leftover slime, snipped their tails to bleed them, and hung them by their heads. "

Let's be clear; I wouldn't be caught dead preparing or eating eel (more on death from preparing eel in a bit.)  But it does have healthful benefits: "Eel meat has well-known health-giving properties.* It is high in vitamins A and E, containing four times more vitamin A than cheese and eight times more than egg, six times more vitamin E than cheese and three times more than egg. Vitamin A is good for human skin. Vitamin E helps prevent aging. Eel is also rich in fish oils that contain antioxidants to aid the immune system and fight sickness. Because of its high concentration of omega-3 fatty acids, eel has been found to help prevent type 2 diabetes. A native of Kyoto told me, “They have a saying in Kyoto—that the girls have beautiful skin because they eat eel.”

Well, maybe.  As note above, preparing eel comes with several risks.  The blood contains a strong neurotoxin so getting it into one's blood stream through a cut or opening in the skin can cause death. One cubic centimeter of eel blood injected into a rabbit, "causes instant convulsions and death."  That's one reason why it's always served smoked or cooked and never raw.  Whoopi-do.

Shades of John McPhee (high praise, indeed)


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America's Real Criminal Element: Lead | Mother Jones

America's Real Criminal Element: Lead | Mother Jones:

Fascinating article.  Mother Jones had done another story about how much lead is still present in the environment.

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