The Newell Post

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.

I was diagnosed with leukemia, specifically Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, nearly twenty years ago.

Fortunately, the health care and medical treatment that I had access to during those twenty years has given me the opportunity of surviving these twenty years.

There have been great advances made in the variety and effectiveness of cancer treatments during the time of my illness that have kept me alive. (For that reason, I am very confident that there will one day, if not this year then in the next, that we will have a cure for the coronavirus).

However, there is a cancer that will never have a cure.

It is a cancer that has ravaged this nation since its inception over two hundred and forty years ago.

You won’t find this particular type of cancer listed in the PDR, and, unfortunately, no researcher is working on a cure. There is no incentive to find a cure as there is more money to be made with the cancer than with the cure.

Hatred is the cancer.

We have always had hatred in this country. It is entombed and enshrined in our own Constitution, one of our most revered documents.

We hate people who are different in color, who talk differently than the white majority, who may be from a country that is deemed inferior, and we have instutionalized this hatred.

We have done this to many different groups of people for all sorts of reasons. We hated the Irish because they dared to be Catholic and poor; we hated the Jews because they were Jews; we hated Italians because they were Catholic, didn’t speak English, and were poor. We hated the Chinese because they looked different than whites. We put Japanese Americans in internment camps during WWII because they looked more like Japanese than Americans.

What our nation did to blacks and what it continues to do to blacks is a moral obscenity.

I really thought that there would be a great awakening after this terrible coronavirus had been eliminated. I really thought we as a nation would begin to address the ongoing problem of homelessness, poverty, and economic inequality.

With over forty million unemployed, it seemed to be a no-brainer that a new world order would be necessary to bring America out of this despicable time and into the twenty-first century.

Sadly, instead, we have lapsed back into the eighteenth century.

I don’t know what kind of hatred made that cop kill George Floyd. I only know that we have to do something about it.

Removing this hatred from our country is never going to result from a government law or program. For one thing, our government rather enjoys and benefits from the existing hatred and has absolutely no reason to end it.

No, we are on our own to stop the hatred.

Removing this type of disease requires another form of social distancing.

We can no longer be silent.

We can no longer accept sentiments expressed in our presence that propagates this type of disease.

I am embarrassed to write that I have been too complacent in this regard. Not wishing to create a scene or to start an uncomfortable conversation, I have taken the silent approach. No more.

I will remove myself from all hate speech.

Just walk away.

Block on Twitter.

Delete on Facebook.

I sincerely hope that if I offend anyone on these media that they do the same.

We don’t need each other if we cannot agree that Hatred is the New Cancer.

It’s bad enough trying to keep track of the days of the week when you are retired. Not working gives a whole new perspective of the week. There is no longer a feel to any of the days.
My work week would begin on Sunday afternoons. We all got that Sunday Angst just thinking about Monday and the week that lies ahead. I wouldn’t call it depression, but it had a bummer feel to it all the same.

Of course, Monday came and brought with it a little taste of horror. I had to get into commuter mode and jump into my routine. Get up at 5:30, leave the house at 6:00, zip into the deli for a cup of coffee, race to the Speonk LIRR station, wait for the train, and climb on board, and disembark in Brooklyn in a little under two and a half hours after a relatively short subway ride.

It was exhausting.

But the day got underway, and by noon you couldn’t tell that you had been off the previous two days.

Tuesday was worse.

For some reason, when I got to Tuesday, it always made me feel that the week was long, that the road to Friday was inescapably fraught with delays and hazards, making the prospect of getting there more formidable than it appeared the day before.
Maybe I was just tired from Monday.

Wednesday came, and with it came a little bit of hope. People started to call Wednesday, Hump Day. This seemed a little too sexual in nature for me. It seems a bit ridiculous to me now, after all, who has sex on Wednesday?

Thursday was Super Day to me. It was almost better than Friday. It was my weekly Christmas Eve. You weren’t getting any presents, but it was all ok to have a dram or two of Holiday Cheer.

Friday was here at last, and everyone you met on the train had a smile, and everyone at work was a little less tense, and even a two-hour mid-morning meeting couldn’t dampen their spirits.

The day absolutely flew by, which, in a way, was a little sad. I always wanted to savor the feeling of Friday and make it last longer.
Even agnostics and atheists subscribed to TGIF.

But not I am retired.

But now we have Carona.

Both have conspired to remove all feelings and sensibilities about time and the days of the week.

Everyday is Sunday or Friday or Tuesday.

It doesn’t matter.

I get up. I make coffee. I catch up on the news. I read the paper. I do the crossword puzzle. I take a dip. I read my book. I drink lots of water. I have lunch. I set the table for dinner. I BBQ or Eileen and I will cook (well, Eileen really) something inside. We eat. I clear off the table. I load the dishwasher. I go into the den and watch Netflix, Prime, or YouTube. I go to bed.

I don’t mean to sound like I am complaining. I have no right to complain, considering what other people have endured and continue to suffer. My life has been impacted only in the loss of proximity to the people I love.

Flying up to NY to watch Opening Day with Sean was quickly scratched.

Then the trip up to NY to see all three of our children this summer was scratched too.

But when you see that our total of deaths due to Carona is approaching 102,000, these trivial inconveniences don’t deserve mentioning. Still, they are essential to me, and I imagine many of you share the same sentiments.

It isn’t a contest.

My pain is still my pain even though there are so many with more pain, life-altering pain.

I just deleted a few paragraphs that I wrote regarding current events.
I want to keep this observation a little more hopeful for a return to normal living.

I do have faith in science and medicine.

Nearly twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with leukemia.
That was a scary word to me, it still is, but here I am twenty years later.
So, medicine has been very good to me (if I may paraphrase Garret Morris on SNL).

Therefore, I believe medicine and pharmacology will once again come up with a treatment if not a cure.

In the meantime, I will have to adapt my daily feelings and get over it as has been suggested to me time and time again regarding a host of other vexing issues in my life.

We are well, and we are strong, and that is something I am not taking for granted.

My only prayer is that you are as well.

The Coronavirus has illustrated the ongoing tension existing between science and reality.

Here’s what I mean. Science is a system of observation of facts and reality, for many, consists only of feelings.

Scientists tell us that global warming is a fact. However, many of us feel it’s another anti-capitalism hoax.

Corona, to many, is little more than a common flu. Pointing out that thousands die every year from the flu, these people feel that bodies piling up in funeral homes and hospitals being overwhelmed with gravely ill patients is nothing more than a bad common cold.

Science has even attacked our diets.

I don’t know about you but there is no way I am sticking to a Paleolithic diet when there are honest to goodness American Hot Dogs to be grilled this Memorial Day weekend. Besides, if the Paleolithic Diet is so great, how come there are no cave men around or dinosaurs?

I’ll tell you why! When you complement a Paleolithic Diet with a huge asteroid hitting the Earth, it can be absolutely lethal to your longevity.

Remember what George Orville taught us, “Who controls the past, controls the future.”

A spinoff of this is who controls the present controls the past and the future if they can get people to drink the KoolAid.

In the next decade it has been estimated that information will double every two years. My only question is:

WILL ANY OF IT BE TRUE?

I am having a hard enough time sifting through all the misinformation we have now. There are so many doubts that haunt me in the still hours of the morning.

Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?

Did we actually land on the moon?

Did Jose Altuve where a buzzer under his jersey?

And with all of this you’re telling me that there will be even more information to doubt in the coming ten years?

It’s getting so that belief in anything takes a leap of faith more dubious than anything religion offers for consideration. Even watching Netflix can be excruciating on that score.

I started a series about UFOs indicating that many of our most recent presidents (except the current one) believe in UFOs with several having had a personal experience.

Spoiler alert. In one instance Richard Nixon is said to have brought Jackie Gleason to a Florida (of course) air base where they saw aliens just lying there, lifeless. It is said that Gleason was so unerved that he was unable to eat for days.

Now, if you can’t believe Richard Nixon and Ralph Kramden, who can you believe?

Marshall McLuhan wrote in Understanding Media, “The medium is the message.” How information was delivered or shared was more important than the information itself. You only have to visit Twitter and Facebook to understand that it is the intimacy that we have in the new global electronic village that trumps what is actually shared for our viewing pleasure.

Whether any of the information is true or not, there will be millions who will swear that what, “I read on Facebook about…” was as true as John’s Gospel.

I remember when a common thing you would here back in the day was that ,”You can’t believe everything you read in newspapers.” People didn’t call it fake news but there was a healthy skepticism about certain stories.

Today, I am learning not to believe anything I read on Facebook or Twitter unless of course I want to.

After all, we determine for ourselves what is truth.