The Newell Post

We should remember that Memorial Day started off as Decoration Day. It originated on a small scale in the years after the Civil War. It was a day when America’s soldiers who were killed were specially remembered and their graves decorated to show respect and appreciation for their sacrifice.

Here we are at the start of the Memorial Day weekend. It’s sure to be a strange one, that’s for sure.

The name was later changed from Decoration Day to Memorial Day, much as Armistice Day morphed into Veterans Day. Americans like to celebrate its soldiers, both living and dead.

Memorial Day is often celebrated with a parade or other public display to mark the occasion. The entire weekend is special to us as it has served as the unofficial beginning of summer. Barbecues are prepared, guests are invited, beach passes are obtained, and frisbees and baseballs are tossed and caught.

It’s a great time to be an American.

This year, of course, under the pall of the coronavirus, Memorial Day may actually be more memorable than ever before, because none of those things will be happening.

You might have a barbecue, but it is doubtful that guests will be coming over.

You may be able to obtain a beach pass while practicing sufficient social distancing but will you chance it by going to the beach?

I won’t be tossing a baseball or frisbee as my three children cannot fly to Florida and I cannot fly to New York.

Quite honestly, I was scheduled to celebrate Memorial Day by flying home from London but the flight there never happened.

Still, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer. That used to be such a big thing for me before I retired and moved to Florida. Nothing like looking forward to summer heat after a series of nor’easters and a spring that never broke seventy degrees. Now, however, summer doesn’t offer a break at all. What I now have to look forward to is a string of ninety degree days…one hundred and ten probably.

Winter can’t come soon enough.

Nevertheless, I do look forward to summer.

It’s a time to dust off my summer play list.

It’s a time to put a reading list together consisting of books I already read as a young college student.

There are also movies to be viewed, if Netflix has any left that I have not seen recently.

Summer also promises to be a time of hope.

We hope that the worst of the coronavirus is behind us.

We hope that we can once again visit with family and friends in the flesh and not as an avatar.

We hope that our country remembers what Memorial Day is supposed to be about and it is more than fitting to remember that Decoration Day was created as a tribute after the Civil War to honor ALL of America’s dead.

We hope that we will once be able to translate e pluribus unum and to inscribe that on our hearts.

God Bless America.

I could have ripped off a Harry Chapin tune and entitle this entry Sunday Morning Sunshine, but I am not sure where I will be heading, so Sunshine might have been misleading.

I have always been a big fan of sci-fi movies and books. I recently re-bought the Isaac Asimov Foundation trilogy for some of my summer reading. I will also re-read Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451.

Thinking about the future, about what will be has always attracted us. We make plans for our future. We go to school for our future. We diet and exercise to ensure that we have a future.

Last summer I was planning my future when I bought tickets for London and Ireland. I should be in London right now, probably not blogging. Sorry about that.

Instead, I am checking on today’s numbers to see if Florida has reacted at all to the governor’s breaking us out of lockdown.

The last two months have been like a few sci-fi movies I have seen over the years. On a trip to Disney, Eileen and I went to the movies on a rainy day. We saw a movie called Blindness. The Earth was affected by an epidemic of blindness.

It sounded far fetched and outlandish but still made an interesting plot for a movie.

Fast forward, and here we are with our own epidemic.

The similarities between life and fiction can be startling at times.

In the movie, chaos erupted as you might expect in a world suddenly gone blind.

Our current reality, despite all the calls for “We are stronger together,” and some such words of hope seems to be fraying on the edges.

We have seen armed rebels who despise the Michigan governor for continuing their lockdown besiege the state capital building. In Wisconsin, their highest court overthrew the lockdown order, and people are back at bars elbow to elbow.

While there are, of course, legitimate reasons to want to open up our country again, these decisions seem more concerned with politics than with safety and the economy.

Many states have decided to remove lockdown restrictions, and let’s hope we don’t see a rise in the number of infections and deaths. It hasn’t been easy staying at home and wondering if your family will be ok. It hasn’t been easy going through all the protocols of sanitizing and scrubbing your hands and looking oddly at people who get too close to you.

I was at the doctor’s office Friday for a monthly IVIG treatment to boost my immune system, and I almost took an elderly woman’s head off because she almost backed up into me. I didn’t, but it bothered me that it bothered me.

It also had me thinking about the future.

It’s doubtful that I will get to London before next year, maybe I won’t even get their next year.

It’s doubtful that we are “stronger together.” I am filled with angst about our future as a country. There is so much division, and when politicians prey on prejudice and hatred, well, it sounds dreadfully familiar.

Today is Sunday, and on a normal Sunday morning, millions of Americans would be attending some type of religious service.

Catholics would be going to mass. I will probably listen to a radio broadcast of mass from  Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in a few minutes. More important than praying for a quick cure for this dreaded Caronavirus, I will be praying for a cure for our hatred, a cure for our division, a cure that will restore “UNITY” to the UNITED States Of America.

Life’s experiences should provide lessons, and we have learned so much due to this experience with the virus. I think we should all try to think about what we have learned, and maybe the future will be a better place to be.

This is about a day I had with my mother when I was thirteen years old.

My brother Johnny always did something special during the Christmas holiday for my mother and me. In 1963, when I was in the eighth grade, and the rifle shot from the Dallas Text Book Depository still echoed our ears, Johnny got us tickets for Radio City.

Now, this is something that we had done a few times over the years, but I was thirteen and going to see a movie, and the Rockettes was not something a teenager wanted to do with his mother…or so I thought.

Anyway, the night before our big date my mother reminded me that we were going tomorrow and maybe I made an “Oh NO!” face?

So, the next morning when I got up, I was acting a little out of sorts. My mother knew exactly what was up. When she saw me creep into the kitchen, she immediately asked, “What’s the matter, Luv aren’t you feeling well?”

Of course, I took the bait and said that my stomach was a little upset. My mother then took the bait I offered and said, “Ah, well then, maybe you don’t want to be going to Radio City seeing as your tummy hurts”?

This was too easy…or was it?

She kept looking at me as I ate my breakfast, you know the looks mothers can give?

She was so silent, just looking. The quiet and stillness of our kitchen on Leland Avenue was only interrupted by the snap, crackle. pop of my cereal.

I began to get the guilts.

The Church would do well to get lessons from my mother. You don’t need any fire and brimstone sermons with promises of eternal fire in hell to get people to feel guilty.

So, I cracked.

My mother asked me if I was feeling better, and I told her I was. Then she said. “Well, then maybe you’ll be well enough to go to Radio City?” I answered that I was.

So, I finished my breakfast, got dressed, and we headed over to the Parckchester Number 6 train for our journey downtown.

We walked over 51st Street from Lexington Avenue, taking in all the Christmas sites New York had to offer. Nowhere is better than New York at Christmas.

We made our way to Radio City and got to our seats in no time, as having tickets already helped us avoid a block-long line.

There would be a movie first and then the Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes and a great Nativity show.

The movie was more spectacular than the Christmas Spectacular. It featured Audrey Hepburn and Carey Grant in Charade.

(It is one of my favorite movies, and Eileen and I and Jeannine try to watch it together at least once a year…during which I re-tell this story.)

We were a half-hour into the movie, and my mother looked over at me, and we both nodded, indicating that this was a great movie but even more a great day.

When the movie was over, I got up as the credits were rolling down the screen and started to put on my jacket. My mother said, “Luv don’t you want to see the Rockettes”?

I was so taken in by the movie and the moment that I forgot, and when I told my mother, “Oh, I forgot,” she shook her head and knew I understood the importance of that day.

We did see the Rockettes and the Nativity, and they were as spectacular as promised. The Rockettes” legs glowed in the dark at on point!

When the show ended, and we headed out of the theater, we both said it had been a terrific day. It was also a memorable day.

As we headed down Fifth Avenue and made a stop in to say a prayer at St Patrick’s Cathedral and admired all the sights of a bustling city, I realized this was a day that I would always remember and also one that I was so glad that I didn’t ruin by not going.

But the day got better.

As always, when we are in the city, my mother and I made our way to Horn and Hardart’s and had a pot pie…it might have been beef that day!

Happy Mother’s Day Mom

XOXOXOX

Starting in the summer of 1969, I often spent Saturday afternoons exploring Central Park. In those days walking through The Park was a little like visiting Woodstock every week.

There were people wherever you went, no social distancing required. We didn’t use the term diversity to apply to people back then, but New York City diversity was on full display wherever my walk took me.

One of my favorite spots to linger was the Bethesda Fountain and Terrace.

It was typical for what seemed like hundreds of frisbees to be flying from one side of the terrace to the other with an equal number of very capable frisbee enthusiasts winging their discs to and fro. My son Bryan, an avid Ultimate Frisbee participant, would have felt quite at home.

But back in the late 60s early 70s, it was one of many sites to visit at least for a little while on your journey through the park.

My favorite spot, however, was Literary Way. Not only was it a beautiful walk adorned with statues of many of history’s greatest authors, but it was sheltered by a canopy of branches from stately trees offering a well-appreciated relief from the summer sun.

It was also a gathering of several folk artists who were only too happy to sing and play our songs for free. They didn’t even seem to mind when you sang along.

Further down the road, I always stopped by the Band Shell on the off chance that a performer might be playing there as well. I was spoiled one Saturday afternoon by coming upon a free concert given by Pete Seeger, so from then on, I always made sure to check. Usually, I just sat down on a bench to read for a few minutes.

Of course, I went to the Park on other occasions to attend concerts at the Wollman Skating Rink. Tickets were ridiculously cheap even for those days. I was able to see The Byrds, Melanie, and Harry Chapin, among others, for one dollar or, if I splurged for the best seats, I was set back for two bucks.

There were times, however, when tickets were sold out, so you merely sat on the rock hill outside the entrance, and I heard great music for free.

Living in Florida now, I am missing these days in New York City and perhaps my youth along with it. This heinous virus has to be eliminated so that New Yorkers cand return to Central Par and all the places that make New York what it is.

Central Park and Yankee Stadium are my favorites right now, aside from the living rooms of my children.

Be well, stay safe, be tough, New York.

Well, here is another momentous anniversary to ponder. Seventy-five years ago, the Second World War in Europe came to an end, and the Nazis were defeated. Three months later, the war would finally come to an end in the Pacific after we dropped two Atomic bombs on Japan.

Although I was born in 1950, World War II was something my generation grew up in its shadow. You couldn’t watch TV in the 50s without seeing a documentary or drama with a war theme. Even the games we played were invaded by the war.

We played with soldiers and had rifles; some had toy hand grenades. We played I Declare War, which was a game that combined tag with dodge ball. Each player chose a country, and we put a ball in the middle of the sewer cap in the middle of Leland Avenue. With chalk, radii were drawn out from the center and each segment represented a country where you would stand waiting for the next round to start.

The first player to be “it” retrieved the ball from the center and in a loud voice proclaimed, “I declare war on RUSSIA” and proceeded to bounce the ball as high as possible while the kid who was Russia ran after the ball and the rest of us ran away as fast as possible.

Once the ball was caught, we were all ordered to stop, and then the kid with the ball would try to hit one of us, and then that person would be it and on and on the game would go.

You always wanted to be USA, and you didn’t want to be Russia or Japan.

We knew what was what in the 50s.

On May 8, 1945, people rejoiced in Times Square, and a sailor kissed a girl that has been memorialized in huge statues, two of which I have seen. One was in San Diego and the other in Sarasota.

People were happy.

Happiness seemed to endure into the 50s and early 60s.

Why wouldn’t people be happy? Most adults had lived during the Great Depression and then fought the war. Once the war was over, America was poised to explode more than A-bombs. Our economy took off. Technology started to impact our lives as televisions and telephones were standard features in most homes.

Life was good, even if it remained scary.

War was always right around the corner. Whether in Korea or fearing that the United States would wind up going into WWIII against the Soviet Union, war was still in our psyche.

The Cuban Missle Crisis in 1962 brought that right into our living rooms.

But today is to remember a day of joy, a day of happiness, and a day of victory of Light over Darkness.

It is also a day to remember the brave men and women who served and died so that we could still enjoy the freedom of America.

Yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of the Kent State shootings. It was a dark day on all college campuses following this tragedy. More than that, It was a defining moment in our history as a nation as a divide was created that still exists today.

There were other fiftieth anniversaries that I highlighted with a blog. Last year we had the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing (perhaps????)

In 2018 we had the fiftieth anniversary of the Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations

Then in 2014 we had the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles first coming to America and appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show.

A few months before this, in November 2013, we had the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK Assassination.

But yesterday I was thinking about September 11, 2001.

I was able to process the fiftieth anniversaries of those events sighted as they did happen quite a while ago, and I was quite young. Thirteen for JFK and The Beatles, seventeen for MLK and Bobby, and nineteen for the moon landing and Kent State.

Somehow, however, the notion that we will be acknowledging the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11 blew my mind.

It hardly seems possible.

What a different world was created in the rubble of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the patch of ground in rural Pennsylvania.

The shock that we all experienced seemed to last for a long time. For, unfortunately, a short time, Americans were united as a nation. The partisanship that has torn our country apart from the Viet Nam War era until the present day was put on hold in September 2001.

You would think that a pandemic would do the same.

We are as divided as we ever have been, and it seems that each side hates the other with such passion and conviction that the prospect of working together to help our nation is more unlikely than ever.

I have tried to be positive on these pages and have not recently railed against any political leader, but anger has morphed into despondency, and I fear the America that we used to know and love may never be seen again.

We might as well be talking about Yankees and Rebels when we talk about Blue and Red states. There is so much disdain for the leaders of both parties and for their supporters.

We need reconciliation, on and we need it now or else the numbers of victims of this dreaded disease will continue to climb as we look for someone to blame for its spread.

Here we are in lockdown despite the fact that Florida will be opening up again. How many Floridian canaries will venture into the coal mine of living in corona?

It’s a scary proposition one that we all hope will prove to be far less dangerous than it appears today.

Scarier (to me) than corona was what I saw on the news a couple of days ago regarding the armed assault on the Michigan Statehouse. Strapped with automatic weapons, armed protestors sought to work (shoot?) their way into the state legislature.

This is not a nation at war with an invisible enemy.

At a time when it appeared that we were getting the point that this virus does not distinguish between red and blue, north and south, or, despite early reports, young versus old, we now appear anxious to get back to our days of division and animosity.

The reality, however, is that we are all on the same page except for the timing.

I want professional basketball and hockey to complete their seasons and to have their playoffs.

I desperately want to see the New York Yankees play games at Yankee Stadium and hear Frank sing New York New York after every game.

I want to be able to re-schedule my trip to England and Ireland.

I want to be able to go to Disney World in September as we have planned.

I want to be able to visit my sisters and nieces and nephews in Stuart.

I want to be licked to the point of crying uncle when I see Scout and Rudy.

I want to have a nice dinner with my wife and kids.

I want to be able to go out to dinner and not have to worry about getting sick.

I want to see the New York Jets play and see if our new players will help us win.

I want to do all these things and more starting tomorrow, but that probably will not happen.

We all want to do these things or our own version of what life has to offer us and gives us pleasure.

Being locked up on lockdown is not fun when compared to what we are missing, but it may be the only thing we can do to ensure that we will once again get to enjoy our pleasures.

The Greatest Generation has been given this title because they endured the Great Depression and World War II.

We are now being challenged to see if we can approach their standing as a generation worthy of such a title.  This is not a time for drawing guns on our leaders, but it is a time for our leaders to unite all of us and to help us understand what needs to be done and what are the risks to be faced.

Going out to dinner and a movie used to be a nice date when it was safe to go to a restaurant and a crowded movie theater. It will be again, but we may just have to wait to make sure.

A small price for greatness, wouldn’t you say?

Warren G. Harding was the Republican nominee for the Presidential election of 1920. His campaign slogan promised a Return To Normalcy.

Many scoffed at the term, pointing out that “normality” was the proper term.

In any event, the slogan was successful as Americ did want to return to a time before World War I, and perhaps the Spanish Flu and Harding won the election.

Now Harding was not a great President, and he did bring us the Teapot Dome Scandal, which was only eclipsed in Presidential history by Watergate. There was also something about women secreted away in a closet in the White House. Still, perhaps the only accomplishment for Harding’s time in office was dying and allowing Calvin Coolidge to assume the office.

Here we are one hundred years later, and you can almost hear the ads proclaiming that our presidential candidates will bring us back to normalcy or normality or back from the brink of disaster.

Here I was all set for a new round of the Roaring Twenties with modern-day Flappers and bootlegged hooch, but instead, we have at least another six months or a year (some say two years) of sheltering in place.

The Florida governor willing to use me as a guinea pig for his theory that Covid has already peaked. He has chosen to ignore the President’s recent guidance as to when a state should open up (guidance, in all fairness, that the President himself seems to be ignoring). Nevertheless, I am going to continue to shelter in place.

So, yes, I am looking to return to normalcy or normality or a time when going to a Yankee game isn’t toxic to my health save the Blue Moon beers and the sausage and pepper sandwich.

It’s the little things that we miss during a pandemic.

Like all of you who are taking this sheltering at home seriously, I am getting a little batty.

So much so that last night, I had a difficult time getting to sleep. I kept thinking about The Prodigal Son, and I was tempted to get up and write a blog in the middle of my insomnia.

I didn’t.

All day long, I thought about not writing anything about what kept me up all night long. But, having just finished dinner, I thought I really should.

The parable of the Prodigal Son remains my favorite parable as it clearly encapsulates what it means to be a good person.

We see a son who, by all accounts, was a scoundrel. He took his share of his father’s money and lived a life of debauchery. He drank to excess and womanized and just squandered all his father’s money to the point that he was penniless and homeless.

When he finally had reached rock bottom, the Son had an epiphany.

He realized that even the lowliest of his father’s servants had a roof over his head and food to eat. So, he travels back to his home to beg his father to let him live with the servants.

The father got word that the son was on his way back, and he was beside himself with joy.

He told his servants to put a celebration together and to prepare the fatted calf for the feast.

There’s another brother who never did anything but work hard for his father, and he was a little miffed at all the hubbub being made for his drunk of a brother.

The father explained that he was rejoicing because his son, who was dead is now alive. He was lost and is now found.

Ok, well, that’s the gist of the parable, but I think there is something more for us today.

The father threw the party for HIM. HE was dead and was given new life because his son was coming home. By forgiving his son, who was a lazy lout, the father was able to celebrate and rejoice. Forgiveness made the Father a new man.

By forgiving his son, by giving his son a celebration, the father received a much more powerful gift.

We experience this every Christmas.

When I was a kid, I may have been nine years old, my father and mother picked me up after school. This was unusual. My father was never home that early, and it was only a few blocks for me to walk home. Anyway, they were waiting for me, and as I got in the car, my father gave me a kinda deke. He nodded to the back seat where on the floor lay a box with big letters LIONEL TRAINS.

It wasn’t even Halloween, and he was giving me a set of trains. Now, another father would have tucked that box away and saved it for Christmas. Not my father. He couldn’t wait.

I never fully appreciated why until I saw A Christmas Story.

In the movie, the father is a boisterous Old Man whose greatest characteristic is mastering the art of cursing. Of course, in the movie, he employs the WC Fields technique of substituting nonsense words that cannot help but be understood for profanity.

Anyway, we follow Ralphie try to ensure that this Christmas, he will receive a Red Rider BB Gun. His mother thinks he will shoot his eye out, so blurting his wish out at breakfast failed. His composition detailing what he wanted for Christmas also failed as his teacher echoed his mother’s “You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out.” Finally, even Santa disappoints.

But it is his father who comes through in the end.

To me, the whole movie revolves around one scene. It’s the look that Ralphie’s father has when Ralphie is opening his BB gun.

If you are only a decent Dad, you’ve had that look as your son or daughter opened their gifts.

Again, it is the giving that provides the ultimate joy.

Hoarding our wealth does nothing but make us miserable…miserly…a miser.

So what does this all have to do with Looking Forward?

We have to do a better job of creating essential access to essential commodities. It’s not enough to rely on market philosophies that put burdens on the least of us.

Food and shelter. Water and healthcare. Education and security from harm. These are things that we shouldn’t dole out to only the worthy amongst us. How ironic that many of our essential workers actually have the least access to these essential commodities?

America needs a Marshall Plan. We need to take care of those who have the least, and while it will be lifesaving to these people, it will be life-changing to us.

Get over the blue state red state thing. Don’t let politicians divide us.

To suggest that only certain people in certain states deserve our love is despicable.

We’re better than that America.

If you don’t want to read the bible and learn about the Prodigal Son, at least YouTube A Christmas Story.

Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward in 1888. It’s a Rip Van Winkle/Utopian novel.

The main character falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in 2000.

All sorts of societal evolution took place in the intervening years of the main character’s nap, to which his guide will bring him up to speed.

I read this book in college in the fall of 1971 when I was still learning the Science Fiction ABC’s as written by Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke. So, futurism was popular with me, and it had yet to turn dystopian in nature despite Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World.

Bellamy created a world in which people got along. Where crime and inequality were eliminated. But that’s now what is important to us today as we hope to enter a post-covid-19 world.

In a brief scene when our character is taken to a 21st Century restaurant (remember going out to eat?), he is struck by the deference that his host affords the waiter who is tending to them. In this new world, citizens are required to provide National Service, similar to the draft that was in full force when I read this book.

However, instead of going off to war, recruits are serving the nation in more benign activities. They do so willingly because that is what citizens do. And because of that, no distinction is placed on the type of service that is performed by the citizen. Being a waiter, or a cleaner, or a sanitation worker, actually is more favorably looked upon simply because they are not glamorous jobs. To put in today’s vernacular, they are, however, essential.

Perhaps as we think about a new world after covid no longer threatens us, we can remember those who provided essential service while we stayed in our homes?

Naturally, healthcare workers and first responders, including members of the Fire Department, Police Department, and EMS, and of course teachers who are already held high in our esteem. But it is the grocers and the staff who stock shelves and put up with pandemic shopping as well as the truckers who have traveled thousands of miles transporting our much needed food and, let’s not forget toilet paper.

Then there are the farmers and the laborers in the field that have been too long considered illegals. Ask yourself, where would we be if they had not come to pick the crops we need to survive?

And restaurant workers who provide a diversion with delivered foods or curbside pick-ups.

All of these workers and their families have taken the chance on exposure to this dreaded virus so we can survive.

Let’s hope we remember their sacrifice when this is all over. Let’s hope we have learned an appreciation of the little things we used to take for granted only to realize they really weren’t that little in the first place.

Ok, rambling on a bit, but you get the point.

I’m looking forward, and it really will be forward and not looking to return to a past that wasn’t all that nice to begin with.

We have to remember that the virus cares nothing about Red or Blue states. We should try to remember that ourselves.