NFTL - RDate 110.29

So, like...where ya' been? Oh, wait. That's your line. Truth is, I took the summer off. Well, not really off. I took the summer off from blogging. I guess that's not really right either. I tried like h-e-double hockey sticks to blog. But kept getting pulled away by more insistent forces. 

First there was an aggressive hosting schedule at the cottage. We'd been shut out from hosting in 2020, except for a little family here and there. And we were anxious to get back into seeing our friends and showing them all the neat improvements we had installed at Wiser Times. But as we're not yet really back into large indoor group gatherings, we spread the fun over several weekends. That meant more company prep and recovery time and more total time in the presence of others. It was great fun having smaller, more intimate groups at the cottage. Nancy and I feel we really caught up with people after the long COVID-driven absences. 

In between hosting gigs I mowed, helped Nancy upgrade the game room at the lake, traveled to Florida to visit my mother, mowed, took a nose dive into a trash barrel, recovered from cracked ribs, chased critters out of the cottage...and mowed. But I mostly remember this.

Before I knew it, it was September and I hadn't posted anything since May. 

So enough whining. Those were all choices that I made. Time to revamp priorities. As I laid out at length in one of my earliest posts, Labor Day Renewal is part of our American culture. But before I proceed with this heavy exercise, I'd like to catch up a little more.

More than a year has passed since my last Notes from the Lab post. And even though the streets, ballparks and restaurants were empty or near empty while we hunkered in our bunkers, stuff did happen. Like the virus-related stuff noted in my January post 2020 - Big Mistake or Bad Idea. But other things happened, too. Things that weren't just about surviving COVID. Good things. Well, mostly. That's where I'm going with this edition of NFTL.

Music Night (8/6/12, Last Updated 5/13/20): In my last update on this subject I explained how our little music club of now over 30 years was planning to go virtual to survive in the world of COVID 19. I and others were concerned that the sometimes tedious nature of mega-zoom calls might not mesh well with the leisurely, open style of our in-person gatherings. That, and would we be able to overcome the technical challenges? 

Well I'm happy to report that everything worked out fine. With strong support in the early days from our tech team, and a couple of adjustments to our methods, we were able to  continue our group activities without skipping a beat, so to speak. This is what our sessions looked like during COVID.

Of course, the pandemic impacted the lives of our group members much as it did everyone else. It was on our minds constantly, as reflected in some of our recent group topics - Social Distancing, Searching, Recovery. All fine collections, and more than a little therapeutic I would say. The move to virtual gatherings also had a silver lining that we didn't anticipate. Increased participation. 

Our group is widely distributed around the tri-county area. Over the years, depending on our venues, it's been difficult to get everyone together. Not so on Zoom. We were very glad to see some of our "outliers" more frequently. And based on the energy often displayed during the Zoom calls, it was apparent that all of our group were very happy for the opportunities to visit with humans outside their immediate households.   

And now I'm happy to report that - in our post-vaccination world - we're expecting to return to live Music Nights with our Christmas edition in December. We're all looking forward to getting our old groove back. Like not having to log in, check our mics, adjust the room lighting and wait our turn to make fun of each other. Exciting. With the Delta variant running rampant these days, nothing is certain. But hope springs eternal.  

Up North (8/15/12, last updated 5/13/20): The big news at our cottage the last year has been the lake itself. It's been busy. Here's a shot of our beach in the summer of 2019. As you can see, even then much of our beach had been reclaimed by the lake since the title picture of this blog was taken circa 2010.

But in 2020, the lake took more. Almost all of it. Here's a shot from August last year.

My poor grandkids had to build their sandcastles on this meager piece of shore. And as you can see in the background, it wasn't only the beach that took the hit. The lawn receded about six feet which was enough to take out two trees. Our beloved twin-trunk "slingshot" tree on the south side, shown above. And my hammock shade tree on the north side, shown below.

They both suffered the usual fate of such disasters, as shown in the following few pics. 

However, the scariest day of the summer of 2020 was when the wind came up suddenly and pushed the already high water up over the berm and flooded the badminton court, also known as our front yard.

At one point we had to put a plank out to get from the deck to the gazebo without wading.

This summer, the lake has been more generous, giving back our beach to about the size of 2019. A far cry from our largest beach, but quite an improvement. Here's a shot of the Kuhlman men enjoying the restored sand castle area.

The other story at the cottage was the retirement of our builder. In past posts you've seen the handiwork of this able craftsman. He built our gazebo -

Designed and built our "barn" -

Rebuilt the floors in the family room and sunporch bedroom - 

And most recently rebuilt the entire front of the cottage including the new deck. 

In summary, Dave the builder has been the key to the restoration and major upgrade projects for our little piece of paradise. Not to mention several other smaller repair and improvement jobs he did for us - new shower, new bathroom flooring, some roof repair and new living room carpeting. We wish Dave a happy retirement, of course. And we will miss his contributions. 

We are also a bit sad about Dave's retirement. Mainly because we have one more big project on our list - remodeling our game room. It needs new flooring, new walls, a new ceiling and maybe even a new door wall and back patio. Pretty major. Aggravating the situation is the fact that other builders are fully booked with work for months due to the post-COVID home renovation boom.

We still plan on finding a new builder eventually, and moving ahead with the reno. But likely not until the industry and the price of building materials return to normal. A year or two maybe. In the interim, we decided to upgrade the game room where we could without reconstruction. Here's what we did.

We started with this.

And went through this.

After ripping out the old carpet, installing a new oversize area rug, replacing the closet doors with drapes, changing out the large window drapes, assembling a new bed headboard, purchasing a new queen bed along with bedding, side tables and lamps, assembling and loading a new "wall of sci-fi/fantasy" shelving unit, upgrading the key table and - trickiest of all - installing wall-to-wall hospital curtains for privacy, we ended up with this. Who needs Dave?

Hell Month (6/29/13, First Update): In this early post I described in detail our family ritual of spending the month of May grooming the house and the yard for the summer. So that we would be motivated to accomplish the necessary tasks, we invited all our friends to a picnic on the first Saturday after Memorial Day. We've done this now for over 30 years. And while we still plan on hosting the picnic as long as we're able (or until someone else takes over the franchise), Hell Month has run its course. 

The most arduous tasks involved with Hell Month was maintaining our backyard deck, where most of the picnic action takes place. Sure, there were other activities, like prepping the lawn, planting flowers, laying in provisions, that sort of thing. But the big nasty was power washing, digging tree droppings out of the crevices and re-staining/refinishing the deck originally installed in 1969. Here's a couple shots of the old deck in its glory days.

A few years ago the deck began to show its age more, so we had the top surface boards replaced in an effort to pretty things up. 

But the weather and the big honkin' maple tree in the middle of the deck took their tolls. The cedar planks weren't spaced correctly, resulting in unwelcome standing water in some spots. And the wood began rotting. Making matters worse, the maple tree began shedding limbs with increasing regularity. So in the spring of 2020 we had the tree removed. All but the last 14 feet of the main trunk and the stump. Couldn't get the equipment necessary to remove those pieces in until the deck itself was removed, which we weren't quite ready to do. 

A couple of months later we decided to move forward. We had the deck and stump removed except for a small section of deck left to facilitate access to our back door. This reduced the back yard to dirt and wood chips.  

Finally, this spring the ground had settled enough for us to replace the deck, but not with another deck. We opted for a patio. Concrete. Durable. Attractive. And very low maintenance. While we were at it, we also replaced the driveway as it was as old and tired as the original deck. Here's the new look of the place. First the new party patio, complete with new planters.

And our new drink patio added at the end of the new driveway.

So without the deck work, Hell Month has officially been retired. And replaced with a little gardening, a little mowing, setting up a few chairs, and a trip to Kroger's. Well, not quite that simple, but pretty close. Beginning of a new era.

Feeling Good (1/30/17, First Update): In the original post I explained how important I think it is to have times where you feel really good. The way I described it was a feeling like "ooh, life is fabulous, can't grin wide enough, please let me do this forever". Since the beginning of the pandemic, it's certainly been more important to generate such feelings, and likely more difficult given the steady diet of horrible, scary news. 

Everyone's first goal, of course, has been to stay safe. That remains paramount. But once you're safe, what do you do? For me and I believe many if not most others, those "feel good" times often involve being with other people. During this period of reduced human contact, alternatives were needed. 

Zoom and other virtual meeting tools have played a huge role in helping us overcome our isolation. But while I like the Zoom experience, it seldom gets me to "ooh, life is fabulous, etc." For that, I turned to old hobbies. You know, those things for which one never seems to find time? For the last 18 months, I had much more time than normal not in the presence of other human beings. So I spent more time on music projects, photo projects, reading, catching up on my "must-see" movie backlog, and at times just sitting quietly contemplating the universe. The latter usually with a cocktail in my hand watching an episode of Ancient Aliens. A lot to think about there.

I've even rebooted my career as a musician. I cracked the case of my nearly 70-year-old 120 bass Scandalli accordion and have been working my way through my old lesson books. This has made my mother - and my grandkids - very happy. 

With my waning fine-motor skills working overtime, I've even starting to wade slowly into the pop music world. At least what I define as pop music ('70s and '80s mostly). It's been invigorating. I'd forgotten the joy of making one's own music.

I won't claim that all of these hobby activities have taken me to new heights of euphoria. But when I reflect on the fact that I've spent much of my forced isolation making progress on goals that have lingered for years, I get to feeling pretty good. 

***********

Enough catching up for now, so I'll close and move on. And I hope everyone finds ways to "feel good" while staying safe. 

Grosse Pointe Charles

Memory Lane - The Rise of the Magic Kingdom (September - October 1982)

At the end of my last Memory Lane post, Christy had celebrated her first birthday with fanfare and flourishes on Ipperwash Beach capping off a pretty fun summer. September of 1982 would see some interesting developments including the blossoming of a special era in my work life. A little background.

The IRS like the rest of the Federal Government is funded on an annual basis. Additionally, about 85% of the IRS budget goes for employee salaries. In other words if the IRS has to cut significant costs for whatever reason, it has to do it through a reduction in salary costs. And since most IRS employees are full-time permanent, this can be tricky.

Over time the budget wizards have come up with numerous policies and procedures to match resources with needs. One of those is to vary hiring practices. As there is high turnover in many IRS jobs, not filling vacancies for a while can help cope with a shrinking budget. This has resulted in a feast-or-famine approach to on-boarding new staff.

Due to an extended period of lean budgets, by the spring of 1982 the IRS Collection Division of the Detroit District (the State of Michigan) hadn't hired but a handful of revenue officers over the previous several years. Our authorized staffing of 300 had dwindled to about 180. Of course, during this time the workload had actually increased. 

Finally the new budget for Fiscal Year 1983, which would begin October 1st of 1982, provided funding to restore our revenue officer complement back to 300. The bulk of the new hires were brought on board in July with all the hiring completed by the end of September. Our goal was to have the new hires contributing to Collection Division productivity as early in the new fiscal year as possible. 

How the Collection Division was able to hire and train 120 newbies with an existing staff of only 180 while keeping the Field operation viable is an interesting story in itself. But it will have to wait for another time. Suffice it to say that we did it using smoke, mirrors and a few creative skill-development techniques. Not dissimilar to teaching your kids to swim by tossing them off the back of the boat and hoping for the best.  

Despite the obstacles, by late summer I and my hand-picked staff were saddled with 110 of the new trainees (the additional 10 new hires were part of a separate operation in Pontiac). Of our 110, 90 were located together on the 19th floor of the McNamara Building in downtown Detroit. The other 20 were split between Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids. So with the eight new managers, 20 (mostly) experienced coaches and one brand spanking new branch chief (yours truly), the training branch had a total of 131 BIS. That would be butts-in-seats, a technical budget term.

Setting aside the operational challenges for the moment, the McNamara-based staff was facing a daunting socialization obstacle. How quickly could we get this diverse group of 90 individuals to embrace each other and focus jointly on our mission? Let me clarify.

An IRS revenue officer is a strange job. Not everyone is cut out for it which is why we have high turnover in the first place. Essentially, ROs as we refer to them spend much of their time interacting with people who in some manner have failed to meet their tax obligations. This failure is usually the result of poor money management, lack of business acumen, unforeseen health or personal problems, or occasionally just outright disregard for the law. You might say it's complicated.

An RO's stock in trade is the ability to poke into other people's business, ask a lot of personal questions, identify the root cause of the problem and get the taxpayer to make whatever changes are needed to return to proper compliance. And do all this without putting him or herself in danger or alienating the taxpayer. Not an easy task. 

True, ROs have some legal authority to enforce their demands. But those procedures take time and usually damage relationships, and as such are generally used as a last resort. The more ROs can achieve results through informing and persuading, the more effective and productive they are.  

So you can see why we hire strong, independent types for this job. On the down side, such individuals often come with a competitive streak. And having 90 of these smiling, empathetic, pit-bulls-in-training in close proximity could be troublesome. We wanted to avoid having them sharpen their skills on each other. But how to do that?

What we came up with was - fun. We would encourage and accommodate as much fun among the trainees as we could. This we thought would build relationships within the group that would lead to mutual support and a sense of teamwork. They would compete together against the challenges of the job rather than against each other. For the most part, the strategy worked.

The fun took on many forms. In the work place we held group lunches and Monday morning ugly-tie contests. There were the after-work happy hours at local watering holes and the occasional outing to Tiger Stadium. To introduce the trainees to the rest of their Collection division colleagues in the McNamara Building we took special steps. We hosted a catered reception in our 19th floor space and invited everybody.  

About a hundred guests came to this virtually unprecedented event for a Collection division office. Most I think were just curious about what the heck was going on down on the 19th floor. But many ended up introducing themselves and spending time chatting with our new people, which was the whole idea. We thought it was a great success.

It was at this event that a senior advisor from our Special Procedures unit, Al K., coined the term that stuck with our operation from that day forth. Smiling, with a cup of coffee and a sandwich in hand, gazing out over the nearly two-hundred people enjoying themselves, Al noted, "This looks more like the Magic Kingdom than a Collection operation." And indeed it did.

Now to why I dragged you through all this. During the first few months of "The Magic Kingdom" we held a couple of social events that cemented our social structure firmly in place. They were a branch-wide picnic at Kensington Metro Park and a killer Halloween party.

Let's start with the picnic which was held in mid-September. The day began with a softball game. I've opted to include shots of personalities that might be familiar to some of my readers. Hard to believe these pictures were taken nearly 40 years ago.

In this first pic we have an eager young lady (can't make out exactly who from this angle) swinging away at a high hard one. Well, not that hard as we were playing softball. And from the position of the ball I would guess she's just popped out to the pitcher.

Behind our aggressive batter are me, in a position I can no longer assume, and Tony C. happily making like an umpire. Like most ROs, Tony liked to be in charge.

Next a couple of wannabe heavy hitters. First is Dick Hickson, our division chief at the time.

Dick was a controversial figure in those years, caught between some ugly top-level politics and his genuine desire to make life in the Collection Division better for all of us. For my part, he always treated me well and taught me a lot about being prepared for when opportunities come along. It was his confidence in our management and coaching staff that encouraged us to take risks and learn by doing. 

Here we have yours truly in an outfit that could only be worn in public in the '80s. Note the socks.

I'm hesitant to admit that I still have the hat, the shirt and the shorts. The socks are long gone, but it may be time for a little more wardrobe purging. Perhaps some thrift shop could offer the whole ensemble as an '80s-look package.

After softball and a couple of beers, we moved to volleyball. Here's a group shot of the action, just to document that at one time some of us actually had vigor.

I can't identify all the faces, but a few are clear. That's Bruce C. second from the left with the curly hair and glasses. On the far side of the net in the left spiker position is Tony C. again. And to the right are me and Dick M. trying to avoid getting hurt.  

In this shot Ralph S. is focused on avoiding the embarrassment of a "beer" serve (that would be hitting the ball into the net because of too much beer), a too-common experience in picnic volleyball.

After the action we relaxed, grilled and in general promoted the good will we were trying to build. In this pic Greg T. is enjoying the day with Anne K. on the left and his bride Melissa on the right.

Below is Dick M., known for the last 40 years in our circles as the "Duke of Inkster" (yet another story for another time), stirring up a pot of beans with what appears to be an able assistant (I don't recognize the young lady behind the Foster Grants). Good will blooming all over the place.

In this shot, I in my bucket hat am demonstrating why I'm seldom seen tending a charcoal grill. I never mastered the smoke thing, nor have a clue when things are done. As a result I'm' usually restricted to toting charcoal and cleaning the grill. 

Also in the pic are Tony C., just heading off for help I think. And that's Ralph S. giving the photographer that "can you believe this guy" look. Despite the subject matter, I was very glad to come across this pic in my prep for this post. We lost both these old friends in recent years, and I have fond memories of each.

I'll share this one final but classic shot from the picnic. Bruce C. carving a watermelon in the way that only he can. No mystery as to why Bruce's nickname for decades has been "Sledge". 

While work during this time was demanding, with long hours and a steep learning curve, I did get to relax every once in a while. At least that's the way I remember it. I went to a college football game once or twice. Here's a pick of the MSU-OSU game that year. You can tell the quality of tickets I was able to get by the angle of this pic. I call it "unremarkable alumni, upper-end-zone reserved".

I was okay being far from the action that day as my Spartans were hammered by the Bucks 31-10.

Back at home, Christy was still viewing the world mostly over the rail of her playpen.

And as often as we could, Nancy and I sat on the large front porch of our Baby Ford home in Dearborn. It was the best feature of the house.

If we tired of watching the neighbors go about their business on Francis Street, we would retire to our small but inviting screen porch at the back of the house to watch the local wild life (birds, squirrels, the occasional opossum and one year a crop of cicadae).

But, most of what was happening to us was work. I in the "Magic Kingdom" and Nancy in her pressure-cooker management job in the yet-to-be-automated, sea-of-paper telephone operation known as Office Branch.

Back to the training branch. Things were working well as we rolled into the new fiscal year on October 1st. After a couple of months of classroom training and generous exposure to field collection techniques, the new hires were getting their feet wet on the streets of Detroit and surrounding communities. The coaches in the McNamara contingent were working hard to expose their charges to the broad range of issues and situations they had to master. And the six managers just down the hall were asserting their independence more and darkening my office door less. For my part, I was learning mostly the hard way what to share with Collection Division leadership and what to keep to myself. So we all thought it was time to party again.

Tony C. stepped up and offered to host a Halloween party. The word went out, plans were made and excitement began to grow. Everybody got into it. And I don't just mean the costumes. They were ready to party like people who had high-pressure day jobs. You know, like spending all day greeting people with "I'm from the IRS and I'm here to help." 

The party - as well as Tony's house - literally rocked. I mean the vibe had to have shown up on somebody's Richter scale. Here are a few pics of some perhaps familiar personalities.

In this first one, Dave K. is bustin' a move. Mae R. looks like she's calling for backup.

Here's Dave again in a pensive moment with French maid Mary Beth D. Probably reflecting on the rush one gets from completing a well-written case history sheet. Not.

Speaking about a rush, here I am as an MSU cheerleader. Somehow I'm managing to make conversation with mime Anne K. 

I'm including this second shot of me fighting off vampire Nancy M. mainly because of my beer. If you look closely at the distinctive bottle you'll see it's a Stroh Signature, a premium brew of the time that was sort of the official beer of our social circle.

Here's a shot of our host, pirate Tony C., taking it all in and enjoying the hullaballoo. Also, it looks like another Signature fan had passed this way.

In this shot sheikh Frank P. is holding court with his bride Lucy who went AWOL from the nunnery for the party. Frank is famous in our social circle as the only one of us who ever rolled a golf court. 

Behind this award winning werewolf costume was another one of our new managers, Al M. Though you would never know it from this look, Al was a softie.  

Here's a shot of Al's bride Nancy as a vampire. Also a bigtime softie. 

In this shot Susie B. is saying something in Greek. I think it was about her drink, but as I don't speak Greek...  

Here veteran RO Imogene O. is passing along a few tricks of the trade to newbie Mike P. As I recall, Imogene was pretty tricky.

Posing as Smurfs were George K. and his bride. George did double duty for us as a coach and a classroom instructor. Under that fake beard he wore a pretty well-tended handlebar moustache. 

Closing out our photo review again is Bruce C. first in a frog outfit. 

And then performing his normal end-of-party ritual (remember the picnic) - carving plant life with a large sharp instrument. This time a pumpkin.

There were many more strange attendees at the big do, but I think you get the idea. It was a memorable night. In my opinion, the 1982 Halloween party was a turning point in the life of the training branch. We had risen, shall we say, and went on to a number of operational accomplishments before the experiment ended as planned in May of '83. That's when the now full-fledged ROs were distributed to line Collection groups. 

For my part, I still have a number of close friends from those days. And we still tell stories about the work, and the parties, that we collectively refer to as "The Magic Kingdom".

Grosse Pointe Charles