The Newell Post

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.

I am not sure what Samuel Becket’s “Waiting For Godot” is all about. I am sure if I really wanted to learn the meaning of the play that there would be a myriad of sources to tell me. I don’t want that.

I think one of the joys, if not the only joy of reading art or witnessing it performed, is making your own evaluations and finding your own meaning.

So, what does this have to do with my Saturday Morning Rant? In fact, what does Godot have to do with you or me?

I guess it would be useful to know who Godot is and why the characters are waiting for him. It might indeed be useful to know this but quite unnecessary.

To me, the keyword in the tile of the play is WAITING.

Becket was living in Paris when the Nazis invaded France.  He would join the French Resistance, so maybe he was waiting for the Americans to come to France’s rescue? What I take away from the title is a question.

What am I waiting for?

It seems that I have always been waiting.

When I was in school, I was waiting for Thanksgiving and then Christmas vacation. No sooner was I back in school than I was waiting for Easter vacation and then summer vacation.

Those were simple waits but still significant enough to create a sense of longing and joyful expectation. It was a reachable goal.

As an adult? Well, I won’t bore you with all of that.

The fact is I am still waiting and longing and, despite the fact that I am nearly seventy years old, my expectations haven’t really changed at all. With the exception of the addition of one more wait. A wait that seems as far off as those Christmas vacations and summer vacations seemed over sixty years ago.

I am waiting for the end of COVID-19 and all the impact that it is having on our lives.

Sadly, there are so many who have been impacted with tragedy and loss that there is no amount of waiting and truly maybe nothing to wait for that will put this miserable experience out of our mind.

Still, we will rejoice when COVID-19 is defeated.

It is commonly believed that Godot was a representation of GOD. I am not sure as every explanation I have heard seems to offer a different opinion. But, I believe it is God.

While the act of waiting may seem arduous and excruciating depending on what it is you are expecting, it is also a manifestation of your hope in something good about to happen.

So, despite the daily recitation of positive tests and fatalities and just listening to the accounts of suffering detailed by health care workers, I have hope, and I truly believe the rest of us do too.

There will be a cure or a method of lessening the effects of the virus. There will one day be a vaccine (of course, we will have to convince the lunatic anti-vaxers to let us use it).

The world’s scientists and researchers are on the case, and they will develop a treatment. I have no doubt about that.

That is a good thing to wait for. It offers hope. Despite the fact that we do have to wait and, by waiting, endure more daily updates of the devastation continuing to wreak havoc on civilization, we will survive and one day thrive.

That is one of my waits. That is my hope.

But I have others.

I am waiting for the divisions of this country to be eradicated along with COVID-19.

I am waiting for Americans to stop fighting this civil war that has wasted so much time.

I am waiting for all of us to see all of us as worthy of respect despite our color, creed, and sexual orientation.

I am waiting for America to wake up and realize that our nation’s physical health is a National Security issue. We don’t need Russian hackers to destroy us if we are going to destroy ourselves.

I am waiting to go to the Bronx to see Sean and Jeannine and York and, of course, Rudy and Scout.

I am waiting for Bryan to come home for the summer.

I am waiting to go to Disney with our friends Karen and Connie.

I am waiting to go to our club for a Hoptical Illusion that they have on hand especially for me.

I am waiting to have a pint in an English pub and a second one in Sligo.

I am waiting to stress out when Aaron Judge strikes out, or Gary Sanchez gives up a pass ball. (It’s funny how precious even those moments can seem now.)

Ok, you have the idea.

Life has its waits, and that is a really, really good thing.

God bless.

Be well.

Stay safe.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. It is a day that, for many, represents the holiest day of the year.

As a kid, it was a day to don a new outfit that was more important to my mother than I. In the weeks coming up to Easter, we would be implored to give up something for Lent. I was never quite good enough at that. Nevertheless, I had my own rituals.

As a college student, I would listen to Jesus Christ Superstar as part of my devotion, but I also attended Holy Thursday and Good Friday services as well as Mass on Easter Sunday.

For Holy Week in 1971, I vowed to make a special sacrifice. I fasted for the last three days. Well, I had my “Last Supper” on Thursday and did not eat any food at all on Good Friday or Holy Saturday. I went to Mass on Easter Sunday, received communion and, went home to break my fast with a well-represented breakfast.

While my mother was preparing the eggs and bacon and brewing the coffee, I had a nice piece of her famous cheesecake. This would not have been Christ’s first task on Easter Sunday but I had done my penance and cheesecake was my salvation.

I did no such fasting this year, but I did forego eating meat on Good Friday…which reminds me of another story.

My sister Maureen related this tale to me a few years ago.

It seems back in the day when meant had to be abstained on all Fridays by edict of the Pope, Maureen witnessed something that shocked me when she told me.

One Thursday evening, my mother was preparing my father’s lunch for the next day. Maureen was beside herself when she asked my mother what on earth she was doing.

“I’m fixing your father’s lunch.”

“But momma, you’re making ham sandwiches!” (One sandwich was never enough.)

“So I am.”

“But tomorrow is Friday!!!”

“Luv, your father works very hard and needs a good lunch to get him through the day. Not eating meat on Friday is a man-made rule and was never demanded by Jesus.”

So it was that my mother became the first cafeteria Catholic.

Now the nuns and priest of that day, probably late 1940s, would have deemed my mother’s actions as sinful if not heretical. But Jesus wouldn’t.

She understood that. She understood that Jesus was above petty rules and regulations.

Never once did you read Jesus, saying that it was a sin to eat meat at any time.

Never once did you read Jesus saying that you had to go to church every Sunday.

In fact, the only times I remember Jesus in a church was when he was lecturing the priests about God’s law and when he kicked the gamblers out of His Father’s House.

The point is that giving up meat and going to mass are wonderful traditions and should be encouraged as they provide a focus on living a good life. But when going to church can put you or others in danger due to an extremely contagious disease, well Jesus wants us to stay home, and all you have to do is to read the Bible to know that.

Tomorrow there will be many chances to attend mass for me. I can either listen to it on SiriusXM radio or on WFUV. Mass will be available on television as well and on YouTube.

Would it be better to attend in person? Of course.

The splendor and the beauty of the Mass are always better in person, but we have a good reason to forego that this year.

Let’s just hope that this will be the last Easter we have to pray in isolation.

Happy Easter everyone.

Look, I’ve tried to keep a positive outlick during this corona mayhem. I have taken to practice social distancing from listening to cable news, except when Governor Cuomo is on. I’ve gotten used to trying to keep myself amused by writing blogs if only for my own sanity. I have even tried to smile, although, as you may know, no one has to teach me to be nice!

Anyway, a few chinks in my armor are beginning to breakthrough.

I’m starting to have nightmares about running out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

I have more food in my freezer than they had on the Titanic (which I realize is not the metaphor I was looking for).

I am trying to put a Coronavirus PlayList together but have only come up with a couple of songs, Another Day In Paradise and Ave Maria.

It just seems that one day flows into the other. There is very little difference between Monday and Friday. The weekend has no meaning whatsoever.

There’s no baseball.

There was no March Madness.

It doesn’t seem likely that there will be hockey or basketball playoffs.

There isn’t even NASCAR! Although I did watch a video-game-like version of NASCAR last  Sunday and how pathetic is that?

It’s not that I am complaining, I’m merely voicing,  or in this case, writing, what so many people around the world are experiencing.

I should be planning my trip to London and Ireland, which would be happening one month from tomorrow. Instead, I will resort to watching YouTube for all the places we would be visiting in a coronoa-free world.

I am purposely ignoring the real suffering brought on by this terrible disease. My goal here is to make a few of you smile in the face of a terrible time.

God bless all of those who do so much to protect us and keep us healthy and to keep us safe.

Please stay safe.

Is it possible to have both cabin fever and agoraphobia? Can I be bouncing off the walls because I have been inside the house too long while at the same time afraid of going outside?

Then, of course, there’s germaphobia. How many times can a person wash their hands in one day? In between washings, I will look up to see if the Guinness people have any statistics.

I almost went outside today.

I had to go to the bank, and as I was backing out of my driveway when I got a good look at myself in the rearview mirror. I was wearing a makeshift mask that Eileen constructed out of a bandana.

I stared into the mirror and went back into the driveway.

I had the thought that going into a bank wearing a mask might not be the wisest thing to do, given the stress and anxiety the bankers must be feeling.

Well, do your best to keep a positive outlook.

Be well.

Stay safe.

Last night Eileen and I were listening to Garth Brooks sing while we were in bed. Well, Eileen was really listening, and I was dozing until he sang American Pie.

That song brought me back to February 3rd. That’s my daughter Jeannine’s birthday and every year, I post the same blog, “A Long Long Time Ago.”

It recounts the Day The Music Died that Don McLean wrote about in American Pie. It was the day, February 3, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash.

In my blog, I fast forward to the same day in 1984 when Jeannine was born.

I thought about her birthday this year when the Coronavirus was something that didn’t concern us when, of course, it should have.

But, getting back to Garth Brooks.

Listening to him sing so beautifully and joyfully, I thought back to a summer day in 1997 when I was working for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Due to the Long Island Rail Road, I was taking the west side subway up to 96th Street and walking to Mount Sinai on Fifth Avenue through Central Park.

Garth Brooks was scheduled to give a  concert in the park, and a stage was being erected right near the Fifth Avenue entrance on 96th Street. A day or two before the event, hundreds of people were starting to camp out. It was like a country version of Woodstock.

I struck up a conversation with a few of the people and asked what all the excitement was. They evidently loved Garth Brooks and traveled from all points of the midwest and west to see him in NYC. They got me excited too, and when the concert was aired on television, I enjoyed watching it as did Eileen.

I am writing about this now because, in the very area of Central Park where Garth Brooks regaled us with People In High Places back in 1997, a make-shift hospital has been erected to tend to the overflow of patients from Mt. Sinai.

Nobody in high places ever predicted that would be required.

But listening to Garth last night instead of joy, I felt intense anger and was blogging in my head about all that had not been done to protect my city ( I may live in Florida, but I remain a New Yorker) and the country.

But today is Palm Sunday, and my roots have revealed another emotion.

Peace is required, and love is demanded to get through these days.

It’s not enough to pray in silence, we are required to live our prayers.

As Peter Pan instructed the Darling children to get them to fly, we must think happy thoughts.

Without happiness and joy in our hearts, we will be stuck in the mud of despair.

Listen to Garth Brooks today (and possibly tonight in a country virtual concert) and smile.

Back when I was studying history, I was interested in the idea of technology and culture. It was stated that our relation with and reaction to technology was both ambivalent and ambiguous.

I remember reading several dystopian novels and citing movies from the early 50s that demonstrated these concepts. You only had to watch Godzilla and Rodan to know that Japanese filmmakers were making their statements against nuclear technology.

Who could blame them?

Even more recently, many of my generation decry the obsession that young people have with their smartphone and video games. Ironically we share this observation in texts and posts and tweets.

The truth is my relation to technology has evolved as recent events have enlightened me in my moment of solitude in Bradenton.

Whether it is with friends down here five or ten miles away or family hundreds or a thousand miles away, technology is helping me stay connected that would have been impossible back when I was studying history.

My appreciation of technology is no longer ambivalent or ambiguous.

Technology is keeping me sane in a crazy world.

In addition to keeping in touch with my children via phone, we text numerous times during the day. It’s kind of a long-distance pulse-taking. We also use Zoom Meeting to have a video chat where we not only can communicate but we can see each other. The smiles of my children are all that is needed by Eileen and me to assure us that they are well.

Then, yesterday evening another Zoom Meeting was held between my friends who were former co-workers at one of the colleges where I served and me. Although it is like looking at an old Hollywood Squares TV show or the opening to the Brady Bunch, Zoom provides the closeness that is hard to replicate in a phone call or text or post.

Technology is keeping me sane in a crazy world.

I never would have thought that back in the 70s.

Not only is technology keeping me sane, but it is also going to provide the cure that we so desperately need to kill this damn virus.

Technology will save our lives. And no ambivalence or ambiguity can survive that.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been 52 years since my last confession.

These are my sins:

Three weeks ago, I was at Costco and did not buy toilet paper. I thought I had plenty.

I told my wife that Dr. Fauci recommended three shots of Jameson to ward off the Coronavirus.

I told my wife that Dr. Fauci also recommended that she sleep in the guest room in compliance with social distancing guidelines.

I inadvertently touched my face many times, including a scratch (NO PICK) or two of my nose.

I have a secret stash of hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes.

I only washed my hands seventy-five times yesterday.

I am now ready to make a good Act of Contrition, but I have to confess that I need a little help with that.

Amen