The Newell Post

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.

When I was in the eighth grade our class was provided a weekly, Young Catholic Messenger. It contained articles that were written to appeal to young students. The bag page was dedicated to jokes which, of course, was the first thing we turned to when we got our copy.

One Friday’s handout contained an article that I recalled just recently. The article was about air pollution. Now, to the kids who lived on Leland Avenue and the area around Blessed Sacrament Schoo, we knew all about air pollution.

Many of the apartment buildings and our own school depended on the burning of coal to provide heat and hot water for the residents. When these coal-fired furnaces were in full operating mode large black plumes could be wafting from their stacks into our world.

The article made a prediction that in the future we would have to wear hazmat suits when we went outside our homes. Well, they didn’t actually refer to them as hazmat suits. More likely, we would be dressed in space suits like the astronauts who were sent out of earth’s atmosphere.

The point was, and what I remember most about that article, that it wouldn’t be safe to breathe the air.

Now, fifty-seven years after I read that alarming article, we have reached that point where it is unsafe to breathe the air.

As COVID has rampaged through America, infecting over three million citizens (generally believed a gross undercount), and killed over one hundred and thirty thousand, we are urged by our public health officials to wear a surgical mask when we venture outside our homes.

A pollution crisis of a different sort envisioned in 1963.

With all the horrific accounts as to what happened in New York in the early days of our COVID experience, you would think the rest of the country would have learned its lesson. Many didn’t.

Where NY closed down for months, putting people out of work, forcing businesses to go out of business, keeping schools closed, the curve representing the spread of the disease gradually flattened and went down. Now N,Y is starting to reopen. Slowly.

Other states thought it was a NY problem, a NY disease. While the numbers in NY were exploding, these states were hardly affected at all. But the virus was not done when NY turned the tide.

No longer a NY or blue state problem, COVID invaded the south and the west. Not coincidentally, these states, with the exception of California, are run by Republican governors who kowtow to the president. When the president chided blue states for remaining closed and actually supported protestors who stormed the state legislature in Michigan, these red-state governors opened their businesses and, not surprisingly, to public health officers, the disease is now ravaging these states.

Politicizing a pandemic is not good public health practice. Where the president has used his bully pulpit to castigate those who would dare to get into the way of his economy, he has done nothing to earn him the honor of being the self-proclaimed War-Time President.

He has seen the enemy and retreated to the White House bunker.

Wearing a mask has been deemed unpatriotic to many. Nevertheless, many more are heeding the call to protect themselves and others by the simple act of wearing a surgical mask when we go outside and to maintaining social distancing in and outside.

It should be apparent that all of us, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents want to return to our normal lives. We want to see our families in person and not only on a computer screen. We want to go to our favorite restaurants and to go to a movie or a Broadway Play. We want to travel. No specific political agenda precludes these desires.

We won’t get there by being crazy.

We won’t get there by fighting science and medicine.

We have spent the last thirty or more years arguing about pollution and climate change all because of the regulatory affect regulations curtailing pollution and carbon emissions have on corporate America.

The greatest achievements we have had in my lifetime have been a result of science, technology, and medicine.

The Salk vaccine preventing polio. The tremendous advances in treating cancers. Sending astronauts to the moon. Opening the world of computers to us all and our children.

Why then are so many people willing to forsake what scientists and doctors are telling us?

When I was told I had leukemia twenty years ago, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t argue with my oncologist that he was wrong, that I feel fine, that I would ignore his advice.

I went through all the tests and treatments he prescribed because I respected his expertise. It was a sacrifice on my part to succumb to the onerous chemo treatments. It caused hardship for my family. It made working difficult.

But it would have been absolutely insane for me to go to a doctor who I had reason to trust and ignore his diagnosis and advice.

Why are so many willing to ignore the advice of knowledgeable people who have studied pandemics and have made it their life’s calling to prevent and fight them?

Wear the mask.

Stay away from large crowds.

Listen to the doctors.

You wouldn’t take your car to a mechanic and argue that you didn’t need new brakes.

Or maybe you would?

Alber Einstein, a fair scientist himself, once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. ”

While we rely on our scientists and doctors to develop a cure or a vaccine or at least a viable treatment for COVID, let us also rely on the wisdom they have already provided.

Opening up the south and west too soon has shown that nothing was learned from the NY experience.

Continuing to adhere to this policy is insane.

The Fourth of July, 1970, a few friends and I ventured from the known venues of the Bronx and set off on an exploration of New Jersey’s Long Beach Island.

It was 1970. Some of us were twenty, others nineteen. Therefore, we were all of legal drinking age….in New York.

That fact was soon to be realized.

We were supposed to stay at the house of a friend of a friend of a friend. However, one of these friends was disabused of the notion of an open house welcome to strangers who partook in what was deemed politically incorrect behavior. Even 50 years later, I am reluctant to state that we were smoking pot when the invitation to stay was rescinded.

So, there we were on the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend with no room at the inn.

As Ollie would famously say to Stan, “What could be worse?”

Well, we found out quite quickly what could be worse as we headed straight to another type of inn only to be rejected once more. When the barkeep asked us for our proof (or ID as it is referred today), it was promptly provided along with an urgent quest for his finest tap beer. Sadly, our innkeeper denied our request and advised us that we were underage.

“Whaddya talking about? We’re all over eighteen!”

However, we were reminded that we are now in New Jersey, where the drinking age is twenty-one.

Our plan to drink enough beer to enable sleeping on the beach, a viable option to not having a place to stay, was now shelved. Realizing our dilemma, we headed to the nearest motel where the six of us crowded into a one-room no-tell-motel with no air conditioning and a small black and white television for our entertainment pleasure.

I slept on a desk chair.

I detail all this to set the mood for the next day, which was July 4th.

The night ended abruptly, and we knew what we had to do.

Not even stopping for breakfast, we made our way north on the Garden State Parkway and eventually to the New Jersey Turnpike and the wonderful, glad to be stuck on it, Cross Bronx Expressway.

I got home just in time to go to bed.

Not being a good daytime sleeper, I had my catnap and put on WNEW FM. I think it was Pete Fornatell, or it could have been Vince Scelsa. They both were great DJs. A selection of revolution themed songs was selected, and for quite a while, I read a book and listened to the songs. It made the weekend worthwhile and had a healing effect on my aching back brought on by an extra firm desk chair.

So, while demonstrators in Washingon were being gassed by Nixon, I listened to the Boss Tunes of rebellion.

So, today, I have put a list of songs together to honor the spirit of rebellion, revolution, and freedom.

In no particular order or significance, here is my list:

Chimes of Freedom   The Byrds/Bob Dylan

The Times They Are A-Changin    Peter Paul and Mary/Bob Dylan

Blowin In The Wind    Peter Paul and Mary/ Bob Dylan

Where Have All The Flowers Gone    Peter Paul and Mary/Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson

It Ain’t Me Babe   Bob Dylan

Born To Run   The Boss

Born In The USA    The Boss

Time Has Come Today    The Chambers Brothers

Everyday People      Sly and The Family Stone

Brothers In Arms     Dire Straits

Every Kinda People   Robert Palmer

Volunteers    Jefferson (When they were still an) Airplane

Wooden Ships    CSN

Rockin In The Free World    Neil Young

America    Simon and Garfunkel

In God’s Country    U2

Sunday Bloody Sunday   U2

These might not be the songs you would have chosen, but maybe they will inspire you to think of your own list. At least, it is hoped, it made you think about what this day is really about. Americans and they were flawed people make no mistake about it, sat in a room and wrote words that continue to inspire. While those words did not apply to all people in our country at the time, the document and its lessons are works in progress.

Two hundred and forty-four years ago, it was declared that we would no longer be subject to a tyrannical king. Now that that was accomplished, the work of creating an enduring Democracy began.

It was a difficult task then, and it remains one today.

But the real revolution of that day that should inspire us today is that we the people have as much to say how we are governed as those we elect to govern.

Well, let me know your list or at least some songs you would add to mine.

Be well. Stay safe.

Last year at this time, I posted “Do We Still Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident?”

I merely copied the Declaration of Independence, including a list of the signatories and the states they represented. It was interesting to read the reasons our Founding Fathers declared American Independence.

Re-reading it just a few moments ago, I could not help but think that it was such a far less complicated time back on that summer day in 1776. But, ironically, it was a far less complicated time last year on the Fourth.

The economy was humming, to the extent that restaurants and bars were open to indoor dining and the stock market was steady. Baseball was in full swing. I had just come back to Florida from an eight-day trip to the Bronx. I began thinking of making a trip to London in the spring of 2020.

All in all, things were ok, especially if you avoided cable news.

Of course, this Fourth, we live in a different world and a battered country.

We are five months into living with the plague of COVID. All professional and amateur sports were canceled in March and have yet to return. 130,000 Americans have perished due to this deadly virus. And wearing the mask has been relegated by some misguided Americans as an infringement on their personal liberty that could have been tacked on to the list of grievances cited in the Declaration of Independence as proof enough of the righteousness of the rebellion.

In this Era of Pandemic, there has also come an awakening or reckoning regarding the matter of race relations. While thousands of people have lost their lives to a disease, a deadlier and more insidious disease continues to plague minority populations.

While the effect of COVID has disproportionately affected minority communities, this other plague has affected only minority populations. Police violence against black men may not result in the same number of deaths, it has, nevertheless, never lost its persistency. While treatments and cures have been identified, no clinical test trial has been initiated to determine their efficacy. And they lie on police commissioners desks all throughout the country.

That disease continues unabated.

The Black Lives Matter started a few years ago after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Immediately after the phrase was first uttered, white people, myself included, refrained, All Lives Mattered.

That was a true statement. All lives do matter.

What I have come to realize, because it took a while because it was never in doubt to me, was that many white people had to be reminded that Black Lives DO Matter.

The people chanting the slogan or wearing a shirt emblazoned with the movement’s slogan were not denying that all lives, including white lives, matter. They were just reminding all of us that their lives matter as well.

That truth was not self-evident to the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. It is not self-evident to Americans today.

Black men are still getting killed uselessly and criminally, and people, black and white, have had enough.

During the recent period of protests and demonstrations, I wondered what our Founding Fathers would have thought. They didn’t think too much of black lives back in 1776 or later in 1787 when the Constitution was being written. It would take a civil war and nearly 100 years before blacks would even be considered citizens.

So, Black Lives Matter was not Self-Evident to our Founding Father,s but it is Self-Evident to us on this Fourth Of July.