The Newell Post

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

I had to specify “Japan” because so many Americans have a desparingly lack of historical knowledge and appreciation. Just for additional clarification, we dropped the bomb on Japan during World War II. (In another post I recounted the experience of a WW ll veteran who was introduced by a teacher to her grammar school class as a “Veteran of World War ELEVEN!)

As a kid growing up the dropping of the bomb was a curiosity as much as a source of dread. Everyone loves fireworks and the atomic bomb represented the ultimate magnificence of pyrotechnics.

Through the window of the Enola Gay shortly after the bomb was released from its bay, we witnessed a flash and a glorious cloud that rose ever higher. Of course, the view from the ground was much different. It was not until I read, Hiroshima by John Hersey that I understood just how destructive the bomb had been.

I remember reading that for some of its victims all that remained was a shadow etched into the ground by the ferocious light emanating from the core of the blast. It is no wonder that no sooner had the war ended that America feared the bomb.

As children hid under their desks during drills in school and as Air Raid Shelter signs were put on buildings in our neighborhood, nuclear energy was being promoted as a cheap, efficient, and clean source of electricity.

The Nuclear Age was upon us.

A source of controversy in its own right, nuclear energy pales in the utter destruction housed in one nuclear warhead. But, here we are seventy-five years later, and more Americans have been killed by a virus than Japanese killed in Hiroshima. A total ranging from 129,000 to 226,000 people, were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the second city to suffer a nuclear attack days after Hiroshima.

Sadly we are still in the throes of the pandemic and no end in sight.

Harry S. Truman was the wartime American President who gave the order to drop both bombs. The decision has been defended on the basis that the bomb ended the war where a protracted battle would have cost over a million lives. It’s easy to criticize when your 2020 vision is blurred by seventy-five years.

Still, maybe we can better understand the logic of that day as we shelter in place and wear masks and live in our own dread.

The Mercy Rule should be invoked.

You know when a baseball game is getting out of hand with one team holding an 11-0 lead? I mean, there is no mystery as to whom will win the game so, let’s call it a day and move on.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

I think it’s time that we start applying the Mercy Rule to 2020.

From its inception, 2020 has been disappointing. I am not even considering politics at this point. It seems that from the very moment the ball fell in Times Square, upon the last note of Auld Lang Syne, 2020 was just a techno-enhanced version of 1968.

COVID, the collapse of the US economy, George Floyd, and the other African Americans who fell victim to racism all have derailed the country as we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century.

It’s time to reboot the system.

I propose that at the stroke of midnight, September 1st, we fast forward to 2021.
I realize it’s more psychological than astronomical, but pretending to put an early end to 2020 is called for under our present conditions.

In addition to all of these items we have been dealing with all year, a tropical storm wreaks havoc on the NYC metropolitan area…but don’t mention global warming to the buffoons who mock science.

Now, zooming ( if I may use the word in a non-video sharing sense) right to 2021 is an excellent idea, but it might also be of value to zoom directly to December.

They keep promising a vaccine by the end of the year, so maybe skipping ahead a few months might be just the trick to get us out of our houses so that we could be eating a pizza in a pizza parlor with no fear of anything except maybe a little agita?

Avoiding September, October, and November would also put an end to the whole back to school thing. Let’s just pass GO and straight to Free Parking for a Christmas Vacation.

The parallels of this year to 1968 evoke stark memories and a divided country that remained that way except for a brief time in September 2001.

I was eighteen in 1968, and I stayed home on New Year’s Eve.

There was nothing to celebrate.

Watching TV with my mother as Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadiens usher in 1969, I remember saying to my mother, “Thank God this year’s over!” I have a feeling we all might be saying that this year.

I wonder if you can download Guy Lombardo on iTunes?

I was watching “Opening Day” at Yankee Stadium the other night when the oddity of opening day in late July and the fact that there were no fans in the stadium was obscured by a revelation.

For the first time in my memory, the Bleacher Creature Roll Call was not greeting the Yankees and their fans at the opening of a home game, much less opening day. Instead, a group of health care workers and first responders were called to “take their position” as if they were the ballplayers we idolized.

I was amused to see players from both squads salute these workers by banging the equivalent of pots and pans,  the tradition honor bestowed on these heroes every evening at 7 PM. (Of course, I presumed the “pots and pans” to be replicas of trash cans thereby mocking the Houston Astros and their methodology of cheating)

The only thing that made this moment less meaningful was the absence of fans to show their appreciation of our essential champions.

Nevertheless, those represented at Yankee Stadium as well as other essential workers have persevered to provide on a daily basis what users of Facebook and Twitter often fail to illustrate in their posts and tweets.

Making the world a better place is not as hard as you may think.

It only takes one less negative post or hateful tweet.

The power of scrolling enables us to ignore those items that offend us and, as the nuns of Blessed Sacrament and the Baltimore Catechism advised, avoid the near occasion of sin by showing our disdain to the offending poster/tweeter.

Make an effort in your own use of social media to avoid the near occasion of sin.

I am not always successful as I frequently “heart” the items that offend others and put my own two cents in to comment on somebody else’s post. I have to stop doing that.

Of course, I endeavor to be funny or at least ironic and don’t often spout hatred but being sarcastic never made the world a better place.

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

I often try to write with the thought in mind that my mother will be reading this.

If you had as loving a mother as I had, maybe keep her in mind when you put something out there on social media.

I am sure she would want you to make the world a better place.

It would always seem to me that, once August had arrived, summer was on a fast track to autumn. Getting off the train at Speonk at 8:05, I would be greeted by an ever sinking sun so that by the time I arrived at home, darkness had enveloped East Quogue.

Although I loved the change of seasons, this loss of daylight would bring with it a fair amount of despondency.

Now, living in Florida, and no train to chronicle the shortening of the day, I find my self as despondent as ever on this first day of August.

My mood is not in the least affected by the approach of autumn, as, if truth be told, I cannot wait for its arrival and the chill in the air that will accompany it. Undoubtedly, the days of ninety-degree temperatures will give way to the balmy breezes of the high eighties.

No, it is not the realization that summer is on the wane but rather that, for me, and I am sure you as well, this has been the summer of our discontent.

No matter how I persevered in listening to my Summertime Playlist, the songs never were enough to make me smile. Instead, they served only to remind me of days that are no more. While it is often a pleasant exercise to remember past days of carefree bliss, during a summer such as this, it is only a slap in the face and a hideous reminder of the summer that we have lost.

Ironically, like the entire year, the summer of 2020 has flown by. Not even the sweltering heat of Florida has protracted its effect on viewing the calendar. August will seem to end as quickly as July has and, hoping no hurricanes hit our shores, September, no doubt, will turn into October long before our senses tell us it should.

Again, I hear my mother saying, “Don’t be wishing your life away.”

But, Mom, that is the point. I am seventy years old now, and time is precious to me, and despite not spending time according to my desire, time has, nonetheless, wished away on its own.

No poet, not even Mr. William Shakespeare, should dare to ask, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”?

Don’t dare compare anyone you love to a day of fear, loneliness, and exhaustion.

Maybe we will return to a bucolic summer’s day next year?

I have tried to ignore these sentiments, but to deny their existence would seem dishonest. It would seem to say that I do not need other people in my life. I do not miss seeing my children. I do not miss Scout and Rudy. I do not miss our trip to London. I do not miss baseball and all the things that made for a happy life.

Ignoring these is shameful.

Still, we have hope, and we have all had a dramatic lesson in love and what it means to have love and what it means to give love.

Despite my flirtation with the magical world of gloom, I have realized that in many ways, I have been closer to people than in other pandemic-lacking times. Trough the wonders of our technology, we can visit remotely with our family and friends. It has served as a lifeline for all of us.

I even feel my Saturday morning riffs on the iMac keyboard has helped to raise a giggle or two (you know when I don’t depress the bejesus out of you like today).

We all just want this to be over.

Let’s hope that when I write on September 1st that the approach of fall will be a time of optimism and joy.

I am discontented today, but I won’t be tomorrow.

It’s a song, not a meeting. The Collegians sang it in the days when Doo Wop was king and ruled the airways of our transistor radios.

To be honest, my brother Michael had a copy of the record, and he used to play it quite frequently.

I only remembered the song as I am preparing to have a Zoom meeting with the boys from the Bronx.

Like most old songs, it evokes memories of happier times, less complicated times.

Here it is courtesy of YouTube:

Enjoy everyone.

It seems like yesterday, or maybe, twenty years ago. In early March, there were reports that the President was going to close down the country due to the Carona virus.

Many people panicked.

Some went on panic shopping sprees.

I didn’t.

To be sure, I did do some Carona shopping. However, unlike many of the paranoid co-shoppers who joined me in Publix that day, I skipped the toilet paper aisle, the hand sanitizer aisle, and the antibacterial soap aisle.

Instead, I headed straight for the pot roast.

Having selected an appropriate side of beef, I then went through the supermarket to obtain food items that you could either store or freeze. We have all been through this before.

Whether anticipating a hurricane or a blizzard, Americans, the greatest consumers, you might say, perfect consumers, are always at the ready to buy and hoard whenever the hint of armageddon is predicted.

Well, the president never did shut down the country, and by the time Florida put us on lockdown, supermarkets and pharmacies were excluded.

Toilet paper and water were the big sellers during the early days of the crisis. Having scoffed at the notion of buying toilet paper that first corona shopping day, I got a little nervous when we got down to eighteen rolls in our vault. So, I did what every sane person would do in my situation; I bought twenty rolls from China. I didn’t necessarily know I was buying Chinese toilet paper until Amazon informed me that my order was on a slow boat from China.

I got the delivery in June.

Fortunately, we never ran out, and that’s what’s great about America.

I bet Putin had a hard time dealing with the TP crisis of 2020.

It seems that, in addition to toilet paper and hand sanitizer, stores had a hard time keeping guns on their shelves.

Gun sales rose throughout the pandemic. Approximately two million guns have been sold.

I could see why hydroxychloroquine, flashlight-suppositories, and bleach syringes might be big sellers, but what did people think when they bought that gun? Are you going to shoot the little buggers invading your body?

Of course, we all go a little mental during a pandemic.

Some people buy toilet paper.

I bought a pot roast.

I am making a big deal about this pot roast only because today is the big day. Yes, the pot roast is out of the freezer, soon to be deposited in a worthy pot for roasting.

You might think that it may be a little hot for comfort food of this variety. However, there appears to be a cold front heading to Bradenton, and the temperature for 6PM is predicted to be 86 degrees with a 40% chance of rain.

Now, I have to Google a suitable wine that pairs with pot roast.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

I remember that first night in London still feeling the lag of a long flight and time change. It didn’t keep me from going out and having a pint at the local pub. Now, back from my European excursion and heading to New York, I am looking forward to another pint, but this time sharing it with my kids at Rambling House in the Bronx.

My annual birthday trip up to the Bronx capped off by a Yankee game at the  Stadium is how I wanted to celebrate my seventieth birthday….well my sixty-seventh, sixty-eighth, and sixty-ninth birthdays as well.

A short ride from Westchester Airport, and I am back in the Bronx and heading for the pub.

I really don’t think I have a problem.

Tomorrow we are going to the first game against the Rays. It won’t be a Saturday afternoon game like we used to go to back when we lived in East Quogue when I had a Saturday package. But, a Friday night game will do just the trick.

Rambling House is a typical Irish Bar, Bronx style, and sadly everybody knows my name. Well, that’s because Sean, Jeannine, and Bryan are frequent customers, and I am known as Mr. Newell, not exactly Norm or Cliff.

Thursday night is Trivia Night, and there’s hardly a seat to be had. I had my customary Blue Point Summer Ale and a salad…cheeseburger and fries variety,

Once the trivia started, I made my way back to the apartment to babysit Scout and Rudy while the kids played the game.

Climbing up the hills in Woodlawn is not really like scaling Everest, but it is damn close. On more than one occasion, I seriously thought about calling Uber for the four-block trip. Three of the four blocks are nearly vertical, or so it seems.

It seemed that no sooner had I scaled 238th Street and made it to Oneida where another three flights of lighthouse-like stairs awaited me than my children were joining me with the dogs.

The Yankees were playing, and there was a big enough crowd for a Thursday night, so you knew Friday would be a massive crowd to watch the two AL East heavyweights go at it.

That’s baseball Suzan.

That’s the way it should be.

I should be up in the Bronx with my kids.

I should be sitting on the couch with two dogs climbing all over me.

I should be telling the crowd at Rambling House how grand the trip to England and Ireland was,

I should be going to the Yankee game tomorrow.

There’s a lot of things we all should be doing.

But sometimes our dreams don’t come true.

When I was in high school I had a friend who had a habit of boasting that he could get you tickets for some event or other. The dialogue would go something like this:

“Do you want to go to the Super Bowl?”

“Yeah, that would be awesome.”

“You can’t!”

He would tell you why you couldn’t such as he had to give the ticket to my uncle.”

We would laugh like hell every time.

It doesn’t seem very funny now.

I really did want to go to the Bronx.

When I was a child, I often expressed a desire for a future event to arrive. On Halloween, I would start looking forward to Christmas. On New Years Day, I would start looking forward to Easter Break. Then, I would look forward to summer vacation. (I never looked forward to anything during summer vacation.)

On those times when I uttered, “I wish it was…”, my mother would caution, “Don’t be wishing your life away.”

Her voice echoes in my mind when I now say, “I wish this coronavirus was over.”

But, I don’t think my mother would disagree with me on this wish.

We have gotten so used to COVID LIFE, and that’s the scary part. We have adapted to lockdowns and have adopted face masks, and we look askance at those who don’t follow these safeguards.

We willingly have distanced ourselves from friends and family to protect them and ourselves. We understand that we are at war, and, like Rosie the Rivetter in World War II, we have rolled up our sleeves and gotten to work to shut down this disease.

I am tired of reading stories about people who violently react to either being told to wear a mask or forcing others to do so. These accounts do not reflect my limited experience.

Yes, I have seen people who do not wear a mask. I stay away from them, not my job to confront irrationality. I am guessing that some of these unwilling participants in our national effort to eliminate the spread of this disease have additional issues that I don’t wish to witness.

But more importantly, there are many more who freely and willingly don the mask. It’s really not a big deal. It’s not a hazmat suit, though, that wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

To be fair, I don’t really go out much so I am not seeing too many people other than a few friends. I try to occupy myself with other activities to get me through the day that don’t involve COVID statistics or social distancing challenges or debates on sending kids back to school.

I write these posts as a way of dealing with my angst and loneliness for my children…and their dogs. When you are seventy years old, giving up a year of your life is not anything you will be able to get back.

I had to stop myself when I started typing because I was going to rant on about Oregon and the terrible things going on there. But I realized you don’t need me to write anything about that. It’s all over cable news and in the newspapers.

Better to focus on our experiences and challenges.

I just, “Wish this COVID thing were over.”

It used to annoy me when I was completing any form of application that wanted to know not who I was but what I was.

One form that I came across included a  list of racial and ethnic categories that was rather long and my group wasn’t even listed. Of course, “White” or “Caucasian” was there for me to select but they are so bland and limiting and didn’t really describe the Jimmy Newell that we all love.

When I was in a particular peevish mood I would select “Other” and write in, if asked, “Bronx-Irish-Catholic-Blue-Eyed-Yankee Fan.”

I could relate to that sociological category.

Politically speaking we have less control over our groupings.

I have been told by those with whom I disagree politically that I am a radical leftist. Some even used the much-derided term, liberal!

I guess they are right.

I believe science and medicine.

I do not believe anyone should own weapons of mass destruction, including AR 47 rifles.

I believe the federal government should protect us from foreign interference.

I believe black lives do matter, and I would go on to state that so does the lives of Native Americans and immigrants from all nations. (This does not mean that, for those of you who consider yourself to be white, that white lives don’t matter. It just indicates that some of us have to be reminded of the worth of the lives of others.)

There are other things that I believe, but I think I have gotten my point across. None of the things I listed are what anyone would logically consider radical or leftist. That is not to say that you have to agree with me. I accept your right to disagree with me on any of these topics.

However, assigning any identifier to my beliefs is my responsibility. It’s call freedom of association.

I was at a Yankee spring training game a couple of years ago, and I was seated at a table having a hot dog and beer. A father and a young boy approached my table and asked if they could join me. Of course, I said yes, but I added, “You’ll have to take that hat off first!”

The father had a Red Sox hat on, and we both had a good laugh.

We spent the next half hour talking baseball. They were from Massachusetts and, as you would hope, were big Sox fans. We didn’t engage in any trash talk but sang the praises of each other’s team.

Finally, the father asked, “I guess you’re a NY Giant fan.”

I replied that I had been as a kid but that I was a Jet fan.

“Really,” he said, “We love the Jets!”

It just proved to me that you can’t really know anything about a person from the hat they are wearing.

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Live Aid benefit concert that raised millions of dollars to help feed the world.

1985 was such a different time than 2020 has been so far. The only thing roaring about these “Twenties” is COVID.

But back in 1985, British, Irish, and American Rock stars rallied around a cause. The cause was hunger. The concerts were held in England and the U.S. and transmitted around the world. People were asked to call and donate money.

I tried, but you couldn’t get through on the day of the concert, and I had to make my donation a few days after the fact.

Ronald Reagan was President, and America wasn’t perfect back then either. But, once again, young people and the artists they favored showed us a way to behave and think beyond our shores.

I guess the only thing that can compare to that day in 1985 is when health care workers are saluted at 7:00 PM every night by fire engines sirens wailing and people banging pots out their New York City apartments. The practice caught on as other cities joined the salute of their angels of mercy.

I am not sure the salute is still being given, but it should be.

Of course, such an event cannot be put on today as it would certainly be a super spreader of this dreaded virus. But, maybe one day, there will be a week or month of celebrations to honor those who protected us and served us and provided all the services that we now know are so essential to our very survival?

I think they talked about a ticker-tape parade in NYC.

Live Aid was a noble acknowledgment of the realization that we share a world with billions of people and that their hardship can very quickly become our hardship. So, it should be incumbent upon us, now that we are dealing with a worldwide pandemic, to remember that we need the world as much as it needs us.

I remember the footage of the starving people in Ethiopia and the report by the BBC that inspired Live Aid. Sadly, I also remember what our own president today would say about them.

Feed The World.