The Newell Post

I was in a big box store on September 26th. I took a picture of Christmas trees and other decorations memorializing the beginning of the Christmas Season…a few weeks after Labor Day.

I was still wearing white.

Nevertheless, the early arrival of Santa and his elves does not upset me. I, like most of you, look forward to Christmas with the enthusiasm of a little kid as if I were expecting my first set of trains.

I read recently that this year, we were going to have the shortest Christmas Season, and I wondered if last year it had started before Labor Day. But what was pointed out is that Thanksgiving this year is on November 28th, thereby making the Christmas Season less than one month.

I suppose what was really mean is that we have the shortest Christmas shopping season as Black Friday is November 29th and, of course, the last day of the Christmas shopping season is December 24th.

But for me, the Christmas Season does begin on Thanksgiving and ends on January 6th, what Catholics used to call the Epiphany. It was also the day that the Magi came to see the Baby Jesus and is the Twelfth Day of Christmas made famous in that annoying song.

For SiriusXM, the Christmas season began on November 1st when they began broadcasting in earnest various Christmas themed stations. Although to be fair, they actually began with the Hallmark Christmas channel before this date to coincide with the TV channel’s Countdown to Christmas promotion.

Some don’t like the early arrival of Christmas music. I am not sure why. I like the music and have several favorites and look forward to listening to it every year. By the time New Years comes around, I can admit that I might be ready to go back to my regular music, but I still hold on and continue in good faith to Have a Holly Jolly Christmas to the bitter end of January 6th.

But, my official date for getting into the Christmas frame of mind sill is Thanksgiving. I begin with the ritual listening to the Nutcracker, which remains on while we watch Laurel and Hardy in Babes In Toyland.

I would typically end this with a Merry Christmas, but it really is too early for that.

AI is supposed to scare us. Recall HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey. A supercomputer takes over a space ship and kills the crew. We don’t need HAL for that we have Facebook and Twitter.

Teenagers get bullied on Facebook to the extreme where thoughts of suicide replace the few Likes they may have received.

Haters spew hateful tweets on Twitter and through it all, you don’t know if what you are reading is real.

Talk about social media.

Nothing at all social about it.

In my career in education, I have had the misfortune to be involved in three separate implementations of automated student information systems.

The first took us two years before it was running nearly as well as the “archaic” system it replaced. Then we were told we had to upgrade the system.

The tech rep told us that the upgrade from version 13, which we finally had running, was no big deal as version 17 was basically 13 without the bugs! She actually said that. I replied that I don’t remember you telling us that when we were tearing our hair out implementing 13.

Subsequent implementations were equally as challenging. For the second implementation at another school, the tech rep said that the rollout of the Admissions module was the best they had ever seen. I suppose in the other schools not getting out offers of admissions for two weeks would have seemed grand.

I remember thinking at these times that we would consider this the Dark Age Of Information Technology.

These were the days before Facebook and Twitter.

Like many computer systems, there are bugs in Facebook and Twitter. There are human bugs. The technology is fine but it is the users that we have to fear.

Remember GIGO?

Garbage In Garbage Out.

An admonition to programmers to get their code right. Also, useful guidance to anyone responsible for entering data into a computer system.

Facebook and Twitter users should be so advised.

I have gotten to the point that I hardly visit Facebook and I have been off Twitter for a week or more. This post may appear on both but that is because it is set automatically to do so.

When posts and tweets are no more reliable or even as entertaining as spam emails, what’s the point in checking in every five minutes?

It’s a shame that Facebook and Twitter fell victim to trolls and spies and just plain nasty people.

Now, I am perfectly aware that some might find this post offensive and disagreeable. As in the case of offensive TV, please feel free to change the channel and, like me, block anyone you no longer wish to view on your page.

That’s probably the most empowering feature of modern technology.

The Joy Of Pulling The Plug.

I have been banned on Twitter. I am not really sure of my offense or who I offended. Perhaps it’s a Trumper Troll? When I last tried to Tweet I was advised by Twitter that I had offended someone. Apparently, the offending Tweet was a response to an NYT article to which I asked something intimating that Trump will throw “him” under the bus.

I honestly don’t remember what I was referring to except something to do with Trump and his inability to remember who his friends are.

Anyway, I am off Twitter.

Except, of course, I am not.

One of my first Twitter accounts was @BroadwayJimmy, in deference to one of my heroes, Broadway Joe. My daughter was concerned I was coming out given the reference to Broadway and well, you get the idea…not that there’s​ anything wrong with it.

So, I am guessing this post will be appearing on that Twitter account.

It will, undoubtedly, be appearing on one of my Facebook accounts, most likely Married With Cancer, as I rarely go on Facebook anymore. So sick of Zuck and the whole Russian thing, not to mention the morons who post all the bullshit that isn’t fit to print.

Sorry, what used to be fun to check every day​ is now a despicable site for people I no longer wish to see ​post.

So, as I have written in the past, social media has truly become Anti-Social Media.

Anyway, I will continue to blog if only for myself.

​I started watching season 1 of The Adventures of Superman. It’s kind of my Rite of Fall, along with getting my train layout organized for the new season.

Episode one of Superman opens with Jorel meeting with the high council to warn them of Krypton’s impending doom. I guess you can say he was a climatologist. Jorel warned that Krypton was going to explode like a giant bubble.

Of course, the high council, Kryptonian Congress, laughed and jeered, and in Jorel’s own words, “…marked me for a fool.”

Of course, we knew what Jorel knew, and a bit more as the episode progresses.

When Jorel gets home, he gets busy in his laboratory and is greeted by his wife. She complains that it has been oppressively hot and asks,

“Is that because Krypton is getting closer to the sun?”

Ok, so now we know that Kalel gets his brains from Jorel.

Then, Krypton shakes rattles and rolls, and Jorel laments that he didn’t build a bigger space ship so that they could all go to Earth.

Rather than try to get into the rocket with her baby, Lara says that she’d rather stay and die with Jorel in lieu of living on Earth with Kalel. Again, she reinforces the notion that Kalel gets his smarts from Jorel.

The rocket lifts off, and in a matter of a minute or so, it crashes into Smallville, where Ma an Pa Kent are driving along. The rocket is on fire, and Pa Kent rescues the crying baby.

After a brief discussion, they decide not to tell anyone what they witnessed and decided to raise Kalel as their own. Of course, they didn’t know his Kryptonian name, so they named him Clark.

Clark Kent had a better ring to it than Kalel.

We are led to believe that no formal notification of public services or application for adoption was ever made.

We can only assume that Clark had a Social Security Number as he was able to get a job at the Daily Planet. But there are several outstanding questions that need to be asked.

Did Clark Kent ever vote?

Did he have a birth certificate​?

Did he have a passport? (We think he did because in later episodes he would visit London and Paris.)

Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, we can assume Clark Kent never enrolled as a Registered Alien; never got a Green Card; and was, in fact, an undocumented​ immigrant.

In summary, Jorel warned about global warming on Krypton, and Kalel was an illegal immigrant.

Yet, Superman turns out to be the champion of fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.

It makes you think, doesn’t it?

Writing on steroids may be a mistake. Even this first sentence presented an inopportune misadventure. I actually typed “Writing on hemorrhoids may be a mistake. Surely if the former poses a danger, the latter definitely will. (The reason I am “on steroids” is because I had my IVIG treatment and it is a pre-med to prevent an adverse reaction. I can now hit a 95 MPH fastball but let’s see if I can write.)

For good or ill I am in the mood to write about missing.

Missing you? Missing moments? Missing evening light this time of year? Whatever it is that we sometimes miss we all can relate to the mood of missing.

I have been cursed with the mood of missing for quite a while.

The funny thing is that when I possessed the missing, whether it be an object or a person in my life, I never failed to take it or them for granted as if they would always be there when I desired them.

Mickey Mantle for instance.

Growing up in The Bronx in the ’50s and ’60s I, like many of my friends, adored Mickey Mantle. I often went to see him play, but not quite enough as I came to realize when he was no longer playing. I missed those days and the lost opportunities to see my hero. When I had children of my own, I vowed that I would get them to see their heroes as often as I could. But, they still miss their heroes who are gone.

Missing people who played such a significant part of our lives is healthy and is the final act of love that we bestow on them. When parents die, worse, when siblings die, the mood of missing never leaves you. But, the good news is they frequently come to visit in our memories, and we can almost see them and hear their laughter.

Missing inanimate objects such as one’s house is a little harder to explain. I miss living in our house in East Quogue. I loved my house. I loved building fires in our fireplaces. I loved going down to our finished basement to watch Yankee games and Ranger games. Even watching Jet games was enjoyable but far less satisfying.

But as much as I loved my house, it had nothing to do with the house. It had everything to do with the life we shared in that house. Mowing the lawns, watering the grass so that you had to mow the lawns again next week. The neighbors we had and the memories we shared. Christmas parties, birthday parties, simple Saturday afternoons preparing dinner.

It’s really not the house, it’s the home.

I am missing that.

The trouble is if I could, like Dorothy, don a pair of ruby slippers and click my heels and be whisked back to 10 Halsey, I would be missing my life here in Florida.

That is my curse.

At my lowest moments when I am missing my children and the life we had in East Quogue, I know in my heart of hearts that I would be writing this essay about missing Florida. It’s just the way I am.

I am afflicted with missing.

Of course, the only people I have shared this diagnosis of my temperament are Eileen and my children.

I really don’t think it’s a bad thing to miss the good things in your life so long as you’re able to recognize that you are still blessed with a good life.

We have loving friends and family in our southern retreat and no longer have to face the winter blahs. So, despite the fact that the steroids may be affecting my emotions as I type this I really do appreciate all that I have, and I am convinced that Eileen and I did the best thing for us at this time in our lives.

I think missing is more affirming than a sign of melancholy. Missing is an acknowledgment that you were blessed with good people who love you and had so many good memories that you shared.

The fact that Eileen and I can continue to enjoy a life together is miraculous and a constant reminder that I have much more in my life than what I am missing.

Sorry if this is just jibberish to you but let me just add that missing isn’t a bad thing as long as you’re able to move beyond it.

When I commuted on the Long Island Rail Road from Penn to Speonk on the 5:51 evening train, summer did not last as long as the calendar said it did. Getting off my train at 7:55 PM, the darkness began to greet me even in the second week of August.

It never failed to usher in a feeling of remorse, of loss.

Another summer was coming to an end and, with it, long days and warm weather with weekends spent on Ponquogue Beach.

The funny thing is that the best time of year to be living in the Hamptons was in the weeks after Labor Day. The crowds had thinned out, the train was less crowded, and the weather was still beautiful.

Even weeks after we stood and applauded the lifeguards on Labor Day in gratitude for their diligent and vigilant service to Southampton Town beachgoers, the beaches were beautiful, and the water was still warm. But the absence of the lifeguards only emphasized the dying of the summer and the arrival of autumn.

Still, autumn weather was much appreciated after a season of heat and humidity, and there were festivals and farmers markets not to mention the department stores reminding us that Christmas was only ninety days away.

Now, as I living in Florida, the end of summer is not so keenly experienced. It is getting darker earlier. It is also getting lighter later. But warm temperatures still persist and a day when the temperature only reaches the 80’s may inspire you to get sweatshirts and jeans ready for the cold days sure to come.

Fortunately, the cold days may start with temperatures in the 40s but rarely fail to reach the high 50s or 60’s. Still, it is cool enough to bring out the pumpkin ale.

Still, the sense of loss persists. A different type of loss but poignant nonetheless.

I should be calling my wood guy to get a cord of wood for the winter, and you could be sure that the first chilly weekend we had a fire would be started and enjoyed with one of those pumpkin ales.

No need to do so when you don’t have or need a fireplace.

But I’ll be wearing jeans and socks and even a sweatshirt before you know it.

There are only a few iconic historical events that an individual witnesses in a lifetime.  There were those who remember what they were doing and where they were on the Sunday of December 7, 1941. Many of these people have passed away.

For boomers like myself, the date that defined our generation was November 22, 1963. I was in my eighth-grade classroom taking part in a group discussion when Sister Irene Mary, the Principal of Blessed Sacrament School in the Bronx announced on the PA system that President Kennedy had been shot and that he died.

You don’t want to have too many of these memorable events take place in your life as they are usually of the catastrophic type.

Today, we remember one such event that all of us know exactly where we were and whom we were with when we heard that terrorists flew jetliner into the World Trade Center.

It’s hard to fathom that it has been eighteen years since we all witnessed the collapse of the towers. Even in today’s America where history, even our own history is rarely appreciated, we will take time to remember the past. It might be nice to forget our partisan disdain for each other on a day when hatred failed to conquer us.

Fanaticism of any variety is never a good thing. Whether the fanatic is an ISIS supporter or a neo-nazi, an intolerant religious zealot or an intolerant atheist for that matter.

Fanatics deny the value of anyone or any group that does not share their beliefs.

That is how men could learn how to fly a plane for the sole purpose of crashing into a skyscraper killing everyone on the plane, including themselves as well as the thousands working in the skyscraper.

Maybe we should keep that in mind when we talk about those on the other side of our political persuasion? Maybe Fox News and MSNBC should keep that in mind, too?

Just today. Let’s just try to remember that today.

Friday, September 3, 1971, was a memorable day. Life-changing events are almost always memorable, and I experienced a life-changing event on September 3, 1971.

The date also happened to be my mother’s 64th birthday. That is especially amusing as I am six years older than that as I type this story. I guess she really wasn’t all that old back then, nor was Pop who was the same age.

Anyway, as I do every year at this time, I commemorate the day that Eileen and I met. We met forty-nine years ago today, but we met on a Friday night of Labor Day weekend.

She was seventeen and for the first time in all the years reminiscing about that moment I am brought back to the Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There.

After all, she was just seventeen, and I was twenty-one, so you already have a good idea as to what I mean.

She wasn’t really standing there, however, but perched upon a bar stool grinning from ear to ear as if, when she first laid eyes on me, she knew that forty-nine years later there would be a story to tell. How could she have known? And, having known, what a miracle that she stayed seated and grinning as I made my way over to her.

But she did stay, and soon we both realized that we would be staying for good. We didn’t know then about Sean, Jeannine, or Bryan but the idea of “our” children would not have been a surprise as we began our future, making our way home from the Hollow Leg.

Saturday came, and we ventured to Central Park and its environs. The picture that adorns my Facebook page on this date was taken on this trip downtown. The picture is of Eileen smiling into the lens with me holding the camera right next to her. A mirror in the Sherry Netherland Hotel served our reflection onto the film. It’s my favorite picture of Eileen because she looks so happy to be standing next to me.

Another Miracle, I suppose.

I went to my local beer and wine distributor last weekend. I had hoped to get a few six-packs of summer ale. Last year around this time they were looking to unload it and what would have normally cost me twenty dollars or more only amounted to eight dollars for two six-packs. No such luck this year.

There was only one six-pack to be had and, while it was a good brand, it wasn’t my Long Island favorite Blue Point Summer Ale.

So, there I was with a little more than a month left of summer and summer ale was no longer available. To make matters worse there were big displays of Pumpkin Ale.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Pumpkin Ale and can’t wait to have some, but there’s something antithetical to me to be drinking an autumnal brew when it is 90 degrees. Of course, it probably will still be 90 degrees here in Florida when the calendar morphs from summer to fall, but at least I will have the pretense of drinking an autumnal ale at the appropriate time.

Buying Pumpkin Ale in the summer would be akin to decorating for Halloween in the summer. Well, my next stop on my shopping spree took me to Lowes which had huge displays of all types of Halloween decorations.

I know merchandising is big business and you always have to be a season ahead to entice shoppers and to reach your quarterly quotas, but it just doesn’t seem decent to be pushing Halloween when you haven’t made it to September.

And now that it is finally September will the Christmas displays be far away? You can bet your credit card balance  that they are in the pipeline even as we prepare for Labor Day.

Then there are the hurricanes.

Just when you are beginning to rest easy thinking that you might be escaping another hurricane season a storm crops up on the radar sending us all into panic mode. We have been watchinghurricanes for weeks , and while they have stayed away from Florida’s shores shifting, you can’t rest easy until you see the calendar change to November and even then you are on the lookout.

But still, if I only had a little more Summe Ale, my hurricane angst might not seem so bad.

If that were the only thing to worry about this Labor Day weekend, Florida and the Southeastern coast would rest easy. But 2020 has provided us with a host of worries not including hurricanes.

Be well.

Stay safe.

Remember when you used to listen to albums? Or LPs?

You’d put the first side on and maybe you would put two or three more albums on the spindle and when all four Side A’s had played you’d flip them over to listen to side B’s.

Then maybe you finally discovered that this practice was scratching up your albums and you resorted to playing one disc at a time.

However you played your records, you listened to an album in its entirety.

The Beatles had Sergeant Pepper, The White Album and the Moody Blues and Jethro Tull both produced albums that you had to listen to in the order presented on the record. Of course, there were many other groups who provided long-playing entertainment.

The point is, I don’t listen to albums anymore or, not as much as I used to.

I have all my music on my Mac and downloaded onto my iPhone. I can still play albums but the ability to create playlists has captured my music listening attention. Maybe it’s a type of Boomer ADHD? Maybe I don’t have the attention span to listen to one entire album? Maybe I need the variety of different groups and even different styles of music on a playlist to keep me bemused while sitting poolside?

It’s the natural development after the vinyl disc morphed to the CD which only survived a few years only to be replaced by a digital representation of the music we love. Remember going to Sam Goddy’s or even EJ Korvettes and perusing the record aisles? You may not have known what you were looking for when all of a sudden and album by the Byrds jumped out like a guest on Let’s Make A Deal screaming at you PICK ME!

It was the start of impulse buying for me. The same was true of books as well. You may not have had any idea about any book in particular but then one just seemed to jump of the shelf and into your hand.

Now, you have to know what you are looking for. You either have to have the name of the song or at least the group. iTunes does have the requisite logarithims to identify your likes and will have a list of digital albums from groups you have previously purchased but it just isn’t the same.

Playlists are nice don’t get me wrong but hearing songs out of context just isn’t the same. I even anticipate the next song which appeared on the album despite knowing full well, that I never included it in my playlist.

Progress.