The Newell Post

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.

I really don’t recall the last time I woke up on a Sunday morning without the word pandemic being uttered or written. It’s a word I would surely like to forget. Instead, I would love to be writing about the Yankees and whether Judge will start to hit homers and whether Cole will get out of his pitching slum. I would even prefer writing about Jamal Adams and whether the Jets should renegotiate his contract or just let him stew?

Sadly, the Yankees haven’t even started playing, and the Jets are a long way from the start of their season.

Despite that Major League Baseball is due to start in July as are the NBA and NHL along with the NFL reporting to camp, the return of live sports seems as distant to me as a vaccine for COVID.

Perhaps it is the fact that states that had looked at New York and New Yorkers with disdain as their COVID numbers soared are now seeing their own explosion of cases? Maybe it’s because wearing a mask is considered  Un-American by some?

Blue States v Red States. Democrats v Republicans. Fauci v Trump.

Politicizing a disease seems a bit out there, but it is not the first time we have seen this,

AIDS spread over the world and through America, and to many, it was considered the Gay disease because it hit the Gay community the hardest. We learned differently as scientists grappled with ways to curtail its spread.

Some of the recommendations these scientists made were controversial to many. Promoting safe sex and clean needle exchanges were deemed immoral as if allowing thousands to suffer an agonizing death was acceptable.

Fortunately, society has learned to avoid the mistake of sacrificing lives for misguided theology.

Even in the nineteenth century, as our nation was expanding and industrializing, a new plague ravaged our shores. Cholera struck the poor harder than other populations. So, it was easy to blame the poor for this disease. Instead of looking at the conditions under which they lived, especially poor sanitation, the afflicted were deemed responsible for their own demise.

Today, COVID and our nation’s response has been colored by our politics. If you are a Trumper, you’re more likely to shun the mask. If you are a Democrat, you want the nation to shut down once again.

It’s a disease. It recognizes no party affiliation. It’s not even respectful of age, gender, or race.

If there is one thing we should all be able to agree on it is that it is a disease that needs a cure. But, before we get the cure, we need to take precautions.

Going to bars. Going to baseball games. Going to see Macy’s fireworks on the Fourth of July are all things that anyone would want to do on a summer day. But this year we really have to stay home. It’s a tremendous sacrifice to do so, and many people are losing money because of this. But Americans have made sacrifices before.

Thinking of others is what many Americans have done best.

Old Times There Must Be Forgotten!

I just read in the paper that The Dixie Chicks are dropping the “Dixie” from their name. While reading the article, I traveled in my mind to Columbus Day weekend 1977. I had just started teaching at a Catholic school, and I had a long weekend. My wife and I were traveling to Atlanta to see old friends (well, none of us were really old then.)

We deplaned and got our luggage, and our friends were there to whisk us away. But, instead of going to their house, we were taken to a club where an Elvis imitator was performing. Now, to be honest, I was never an Elvis fan even back in the day. My tastes went along the lines of Dion and the Belmonts, The Everly Brothers, and of course, Buddy Holly.

Elvis died just a few months before this, so I assumed the interest in his music was related to his recent demise.

I must say that the performer put on a great show. However, the audience scared the hell out of me.

Not sure if they were part of the show or not, but young women accosted our Elvis Tried To Be with scarfs and boas but no underwear. Ok, maybe they subscribed to the theory that Elvis was still in the house and had not met the other King (Jesus) as yet.

But then it got frightening.

Halfway through the show, when our star had sung quite a few of Elvis’ signature songs, quite capably I might add, the crowd of young women began chanting.

First, it was one woman, then another, then the men in the audience began to join the demand for Elvis…DIXIE DIXIE DIXIE!!!

The King, never one to disappoint his subjects, began to croon…”Well, I wish I was in the land of…” You get the picture.

No sooner had he begun to sing, but the audience rose en masse to show their respect for what I assumed was their national anthem.

Being a proud Bronx Boy and New York Yankee fan, I immediately stood up for the rebel song.

At the time of this event, I was teaching American History to seventh and eighth-graders. Although it was early in the school year, and we had not begun the study of the Civil War, I was reasonably assured that my students knew that the South lost the Civil War.

It was clear to me that my fellow members of the Elvis audience suffered under no such delusion.

It made me wonder what is being taught in the schools of the south. I also wondered how history was taught in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Did revisionists in these countries create an alternative narrative as to what occurred in the 1940s?

Here we go, 1984 comin atcha!

Zooming to our current time, it is interesting how quickly we have acquiesced to the southern cross of bad history regarding the Civil War.

How were military bases ever named after traitors?

How were statues of these same traitors allowed to occupy public spaces?

The fact that these traitors provide a special affront to African Americans is only one reason these traitors should not be so honored. ALL Americans should condemn the glorification of traitors from wherever they may come.

Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon are held in disdain and ignominy for their actions and they are not half as traitorous as those who took up arms fought those who carried the American Flag.

African American athletes who kneel during the National Anthem are vilified by the same people who honor the killers of American heroes.

Some people get upset when they see or hear the term, Black Lives Matter.  The knee jerk response of many is “All Lives Matter!”

Yes, of course, all lives do matter, but no one had to tell us that white lives matter, we already knew this. The Black Lives Matter movement began because there are too many Americans who have not accepted the fact that black lives actually do matter. By saying black lives matter, it doesn’t mean that white lives don’t matter.

It seems my Saturday Morning Musings has morphed into a rant. I am sorry.

But reading about the Dixie Chicks changing their name and also learning that Lady Antebellum is also changing their name reminded me how such little changes in our thinking can be revolutionary.

Change is inevitable, and we resist evolution at our peril.

For those of us who have studied the New Testament, the Sermon On The Mount is an all-inclusive lesson we should all abide.

Didn’t mean to end with a sermon. It just worked out that way.

Alright, enough is enough. Since March, we have been washing our hands, hiding behind masks when we have the nerve to venture out of our homes, and having no sports to watch except re-runs.

I’m officially Bugging Out!

That’s not to say that I am getting in the car and heading to the nearest tiki bar. I am actually more afraid than ever. In March, we didn’t know too much about Corona, and we only saw the devastating news from New York. It had not hit the rest of the country as hard, so it was easy to assume that it was the density of New York’s population that provided fuel for the COVID fire.

But now, as Arizona, Florida, and Texas are exploding with the virus, new worries bombard us daily. At what is more shocking, California, which was rightly praised for flattening the curve even before the curve got going, has not spiked as high as the other states mentioned.

We are exactly six months from Christmas, and we better get ready for shopping online even more than we have been. The gift wrapping industry will undoubtedly take a hit as the smart way to use Amazon is to shop and let them send the gift directly to the beneficiary of your Christmas yuletide blessings.

I know it’s odd to be writing about Christmas on Juen 25th, but it is so freakin hot in Florida that just thinking about Christmas and snow and Charlie Brown ice skating with Lucy chills my sweating heart.

Every night we seem to see people on the news proclaiming that mandating the wearing of masks is tyranny! Tyranny, I tell you! They sound very much like the anti-vaxxers who resist having their children immunized. You know that if we are so fortunate to have an effective and safe vaccine shortly that these crackpots will refuse to comply with any public health mandate to immunize.

The whole point of wearing a mask and getting vaccinated is to protect others as much as to protect you. It seems to me that wearing a mask especially is not a big deal to ensure that the virus is not spread through your community.

Think about the sacrifices that people had to endure during World War II. Food was rationed as well as gasoline, and people were happy to contribute to the war effort or at least were smart enough not to complain while US troops were in harm’s way defending them.

I guess we’re all bugging out just a bit.

Be well, stay strong, stay safe.

Music and summer have always gone hand in hand for me. Certain songs will bring me back to a summer day on Leland Avenue or a blanket on Orchard Beach. Going to a Yankee game and hearing Saturday In The Park is as evocative of a perfect summer’s day as seeing Jeter go from first to third on a single by Bernie.

All good movies have a great soundtrack, and my summer movie throughout the years had some beautiful songs, many of which our good friends on iTunes have made readily downloadable for a modest fee. I encourage you all to create your own Summertime Playlist.

For your general amusement, here is mine.

In no particular order:

Summertime, Summertime by the Jamies

Summer In The City by the Lovin Spoonful

Summer by War

A Summer Song by Chad and Jeremy

In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry

The Boys of Summer by Don Henley

Saturday In The Park by Chicago

Everybody’s Talkin by Harry Nilsson

Goin Back by The Byrds

The Girl From Ipanema by Astrud Gilberto, Joao Gilberto and Stan Getz

Good Morning Starshine by Oliver

HOT HOT HOT by Buster Poindexter and His Banshees of Blues

Had To Cry Today by Blind Faith

Kokomo by The Beach Boys

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by The Band

Ride Captain Ride by Blues Image

A Salty Dog by Procol Harem

Jump Into The Fire by Harry Nilsson

Make Me Smile by Chicago

San Francisco Nights

See You In September by The Happenings

Spirit In The Sky by Norman Greenbaum

Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto

Summer Wind by Frank

25 Or 6 To 4 by Chicago

96 Degrees In The Shade by Third World

Jamming by Bob Marley and The Wailers

My Cherie Amour by Stevie

John Barleycorn by Traffic

Spill The Wine by War and Eric Burden

In The Year 2525 by Zager and Evans

Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny

Well, that’s a good start. I will probably add songs as I hear them or remember them, Some like Sleepwalk go back a long time, most are from the 60s and 7,0s but all bring a smile to my face when I listen to them.

I would love to hear your suggestions for a summer playlist.

It’s been a long time since I experienced the first day of summer or the last day of school as a student. Nevertheless, the euphoria that I experienced, on those days when I was in grammar school or even high school, has never failed to be rekindled as I approach another “summer vacation.”

It seems funny to write about summer vacations now that I have been retired for three years, and the last time I was even a student, though not a child, was in 1990. I still love the first day of summer and the last day of school.

Sometimes the last day of school occurred on the first day of summer. I would feel extra jubilation, however, if the last day of school actually occurred the day before or two days before the first day of summer. You were already in vacation mode and were given another chance to celebrate your good fortune.

Ironically, summer vacation on Leland Avenue amounted to a little stickball, maybe softball at the park, and a few visits to Yankee and Shea Stadiums. No one really went on a vacation.

My parents would take us to Steeplechase Park in Coney Island or maybe Freedomland in the Bronx. Then there would be a few days up with my Aunt Catherine and Uncle Al up in Rosendale, NY.

But, for the most par,t it was on Leland Avenue where I spent my summers.

There was always someone with a transistor radio nearby so that we were awash with the latest summer hits and some golden oldies from the year before. I can hear some of those songs now, and I time travel back to Leland Avenue awaiting the Good Humor Man or the Bungalow Bar truck. In later years the chime of Mister Softee would resonate throughout the neighborhood.

I don’t know how many Spalding balls we would go through in a summer, but it would have to be quite a few. We used them to play stickball, of course, but also curb ball, stoop ball, Ace, King, Queen, box baseball, I Declare War, Triangle, and Off The Wall Baseball. Quite a lot of versatility for a $.25 investment.

The Fourth Of July was always special, and fireworks began exploding quite early in the day. Then in the evening, the skies were filled with rockets and helicopters. Soaring into the night sky and accompanied by a cacophony of aerial bombs that would rattle the windows of houses three blocks away.

When I was still in grammar school, it was a common practice on Leland Avenue that families would set up a sitting area in front of their apartment buildings and provide food and snacks to the kids while the adults did what adults still do today, had a few cold adult beverages.

Those evenings were never immortalized by the likes of Norman Rockwell or Ray Bradbury as both, sadly, were deprived of the Bronx growing up experience. But they still would have enjoyed the sentiment and rejoiced for this special slice of Americana.

Because summer and the last day of school are uniquely joyous events common to all regardless of where you experienced them. The joy one feels thinking about those days is less dependent on where you experienced them than with whom.

So, on this first day of summer, remember the special first days of summer when you were a child. The beauty of that feeling is that you can still have it no matter how old you are.

Happy Summer!

I have been thinking about 1968 a lot recently. I remember talking to my mother on New Year’s Eve in 1968, remarking, “Thank God this year is over.”

It was a terrible year.

It began with the Tet Offensive in the Viet Nam, resulting in the death of thousands of brave and under-appreciated US soldiers.

Then in April, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

In June, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated after winning the California Democratic primary setting him up for the party’s nominee for President.

Hell broke out in the streets of America due to these great American tragedies.

It was hard to ignore what was going on in those days but not as hard as today.

In 1968, there was the evening news and the 11 o’clock news. That was it.

New York City still had a number of newspapers despite losing the Journal American and Mirror, which were two of the triumvirate Sunday papers that I would buy for my family at Hoch’s candy store on Saturday nights.

But, there was the New York Times, the Daily News, and the Post sill in operation so, there were print accounts readily available to complete your education of the horror going on outside of Leland Avenue.

I didn’t read those accounts.

I did, however, read everything I could about Joe Namath and the New York Jets.

The Jets were one of my top two distractions.

The other was the Beatles.

When I wasn’t reading about the Jets, I was listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour, and then of course, The White Album came for Christmas.

Then Hey Jude came out just in time for my entering as a freshman at St. John’s University.

1968 spanned two semesters and two school years for me, which also made it a mostly uninspiring year for me.

I wasn’t a student in the true sense either in high school or my first two years in college. I am not sure which caused what. Were 1968 and all the cultural mayhem responsible for my lackluster academic performance, or was my lackluster academic performance a contributing factor to my harsh recollections of 1968?

Principles of Full Disclosure require me to inform you that drinking may have also played a roll in my interpretations. Sadly, no such excuse can apply to 2020, as drinking is no longer a recreational activity that I often enjoy.

Too late for therapy this morning.

Notwithstanding my dire personal remembrances of this pivotal year in American history, I have come to an epiphany as to how to survive and thrive in such times.

As I mentioned earlier, back in ’68, we only had the evening news and the 11 o’clock news, so avoiding televised news was easy. Unlike today, where we have dueling, all-day cable news channels spinning their slants into willing viewers who already agree to believe anything that is broadcast into their living rooms, avoiding the news requires a little effort.

YOU HAVE TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL OR TURN OFF YOUR TV!

This may be hard for most as, in the days of Corona, we are trapped in our homes, and TV has become our window on the world more than ever before. Still, limit your exposure to these deadly radiations that emanate from you HDTV.

In 1968 I was not much of a reader. I read (sometimes) the books that I was assigned in school, especially the Cliff Notes. It would be another two years before I had my first epiphany.

My first epiphany occurred due to the Kent State shooting when protestors were gunned down by the Ohio National Guard.

It was then that I became a student in the truest sense.

Another lesson in surviving bad times.

Cultural immersion.

For me, the arts are not only a distraction from the day’s events but a useful backdrop by which to evaluate what the significance of those events are.

If you don’t understand the Black Lives Matter movement, try reading about slavery, the Civil War, and the struggle blacks have faced in their American Experience.

The same is true regarding the immigrant question. Maybe read about the role immigration has played in US History, and you might even spend a few bucks and enroll in Ancestry.com.

How ’bout them Confederates?

Here’s a thought: Robert E. Lee was a bigger traitor than Benedict Arnold.

The Confederates make the looters in the recent demonstrators look like choir boys.

Will we erect statues of the Looters or name military bases after them?

Ok, no more polemic ranting.

Simply try to evade the hate and learn to seek information that is helpful and enjoyable to experience. For me, I still listen to the Beatles and other music, and I do read. Quite honestly, I am reading science fiction right now, but I have read more serious and personally educational books as recommended by my daughter. I also will resume re-reading Harry Potter.

Music and reading can be informative as well as calming, and we need both in our lives if we are going to survive 2020.

1968 was a year of great strife and division in this country, and 2020 is playing out the same way. The good news is we survived 1968. But we didn’t have the pandemic of a virus just one of hate.

Today we struggle with both.

We have no control of the Corona and must trust our scientists to discover a treatment or cure.

But, no one can eliminate the hate that rips us apart.

This one is on us.

We have the cure if only we wish to apply it.

For the last couple of years, since I have been living in Florida, I have been going up to the Bronx for my birthday. I would go to a Yankee game, last year I got to two. Last year Sean and Jeannine and York took me out to Frankie and Johnnies for dinner, and I am still stuffed.

This year I, sadly, won’t be able to travel for my birthday.

No surprise as this year is a monumental birthday for me, and they usually don’t go as planned.

The last monumental birthday that went well was in 1990 when I turned forty. It coincided with graduating from law school, and Eileen staged a wham-bam surprise party that was just terrific.

Ten years later, when I turned fifty, I had a physical that discovered that I had leukemia.

Feeling cheated out of a celebration, when I turned sixty in 2000, I planned a JIMBORY. It was going to be my own surprise party.

But just after my sixtieth birthday, Eileen was diagnosed with breast cancer.

From then on, I wanted nothing to do with having a big celebration for my birthday, it was just not worth fretting over the “What next?”

So, this year, I will be seventy and, with all that has been going on with Corona and the strife that our country is dealing with, who has a reason to celebrate?

The answer is you do!

You see, Jeannine and York have provided the joy that has been hard to come by these last few months. They will be the proud parents of Eileen and my first grandchild.

So, we will be having a HAPPY MONUMENTAL BIRTHDAY after all, but it will be in December.

Eileen and I are delirious and already learning our new roles.

Having shared in all the joy which with the Newells et al. have been blessed, I know you can appreciate how delighted and excited we are.