The Newell Post

Despite the fact that my last three Irish Soda Breads have been disappointing, I, nevertheless, repeat my annual self-appointed duty to share my mother’s Irish Soda Bread with you.

The disappointing breads had their issues. On one occasion my wife Eileen left the caraway on the counter for me to use when I made the bread the following morning. I put everything together and proceeded to shake the container and added the caraway to the dry ingredients. After one shake I realized something was amiss. The caraway turned out to be celery seed.

The next bread was yet again sabotaged by Eileen. She bought the buttermilk, but it was not the usual variety that we normally use. This was made from buttermilk flakes which I don’t even know what that meant. The bread looked good, but there was a very bland and had an un-Irish-Soda-bread taste.

Bread three was underdone. Despite the fact that I applied the toothpick test, the bread was clearly undercooked and disappointing. But, I will be getting up on the horse next week to celebrate and remember.

Hopefully, you will too.

Every culture that has sent its representatives to our grateful shores has, along with hard-working people who had dreams of a new life and guts of cast iron, given America its language, folklore but, most of all, food. This morning our subject is Irish Soda Bread.

I have always viewed Irish Soda Bread the way my Italian friends thought of gravy, what we call sauce. Just as any self-respecting Italian would rather go hungry than be forced to eat pasta covered in Ragu, so, too, do I have my standards when it comes to Irish Soda Bread for no two soda breads are ever alike.

No matter how nice they look in their bakery wrapper, and regardless of the wonderful aroma that permeates the bakery, when you get the bakery-bought Irish Soda Bread home and attempt to slather it with butter, well, let’s just say it sucks. Supermarket Irish Soda Bread may suck even more. The only recourse true Irish Soda Bread Aficionados have is to only eat homemade Irish Soda Bread. But even here one must tread carefully. There are a lot of wannabes out there, but Jimmy is here to help you. Take this down:

Lizzie McHugh’s Irish Soda Bread Recipe

First. My Mother never had a recipe. She winged it. One day when Eileen and I were still living in New Rochelle, I called her for her recipe. She obliged, and I baked. I love having the first piece when the bread is still piping hot and the butter melts right into it. I didn’t love it this time. It didn’t even taste as good as a supermarket bread. I called her back and told her. She was confused and had me repeat what I had done. “I never said a tablespoon of sugar, you need at least a third of a cup.” Ok, I wrote the corrected recipe down and made a terrific Irish Soda Bread, just like Momma’s. Here it is for your baking and eating pleasure:

Ingredients

Combine

3 1/2 cups of flour

2/3 cup of sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1-tbsp caraway seeds (I like more I’m just saying)

1/2 half box of raisins

2 eggs

Buttermilk

2tblsps-melted butter

Beat the two eggs and add butter (let melted butter cool down) and enough buttermilk to bring the total mixture to 2 cups.

Add the liquid and dry mixtures and combine and place into a greased baking pan, round or loaf.

Put into a pre-heated 350-degree oven and bake for about an hour. Ovens vary so I would check at the 50-minute mark.

Let cool…but not that long as there is nothing on Earth quite like a warm piece of Irish Soda Bread.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day everybody.

As if we don’t have enough to annoy us, there is a new debate going on regarding DST.

A few weeks ago I read about a bill in Congress, supported by one of our Florida Senators, that would permanently establish DST as the time of the land.

Then, more recently, I have read that DST should be permanently abolished.

There are reasons proffered for both points of view on DST.

The little boy in me favors DST.

The joy that you felt as a kid in the Bronx when spring rolled around, and you could go out after dinner because it was still light is something that never leaves you. Stoop ball and box ball and any number of Bronx activities could be enjoyed into the wee hours of 7:00 pm.

It was the vernal equinox equivalent of Christmas with time as the ultimate gift.

Even in my late sixties, the thought of eliminating that special time from my experience is not acceptable. It is no bargain to make DST the permanent time either as it is the change, the transformation, that gives the joy to DST.

I don’t even mind returning to EST as it is good to go dark in the fall. It gets cold so why shouldn’t it get dark too?

It reminds you that Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas are all just around the corner. When it’s cold, you are looking for an excuse to go inside not play ringolevio in the frigid tundra of Leland Avenue. The darkness only excuses your presence from the outside.

The darkness also enhances the coming of spring and DST.

And so, God Bless Daylight Savings Time!

I wrote this on February 12th but only shared it with my Family Facebook Page. I now share it with you.

I moved down to Florida from East Quogue New York. Before moving to  East Quogue, I lived in the  Bronx for over twenty-six years. Thirty-three years in East Quogue did nothing but reinforce the Bronx in me.

I am proud of my Bronx heritage, as proud as I am of my Irish and British heritage.

Being a Yankee fan if not a Yankee, I came to Florida with not a few pre-conceived notions of the South and Southerners.  I guess studying history and all that the South represented at one time, to say nothing of the great divide between those who voted for Trump and those who did not, only served to strengthen these pre-conceived notions.

I have been pleased to find out that you don’t stop learning important things in your late sixties.

Last week I had the unfortunate experience of being broadsided by a garbage truck. I was driving my Rav4 past a shopping center when the garbage truck attempting to drive across the road to make a left turn rammed me.

I saw the truck at the exit to the shopping center but never saw it coming.

I heard what sounded like an explosion and glass shattering and then I felt the impact. I skidded for a bit, and then the car rolled over on its roof.

Finally coming to a stop, I unfastened my seat belt and shut the car off while hanging upside down.

Within seconds, maybe twenty, I had people calling to me if I was ok. I responded that I was but needed help getting out.

Fifteen seconds later I was up on my feet being tended to.

Naturally, I was in shock, or so one of my Grand Floridians told me.

There must have been fifteen to twenty people who stopped to help. One guy in a shirt and tie was administering to the cuts on my left leg. When I asked him if he was an EMT, (he may have thought I was checking his credentials), he told me that he was in the National Guard and had EMS training. He had a full emergency kit and cleaned my cuts and the blood dripping down my leg. I told him how grateful I was.

Another guy was on the phone, presumably with the 911 people, and asked me questions about how I was feeling and checked the usual parts, neck, legs, arms, etc. He relayed the information so that the EMT staff would know what they were facing.

Others just asked how I was doing.

I learned from these people what I knew already but tend to forget when I am watching the news.

No one asked me who I voted for. No one asked me if I was in favor of the wall. No one asked me if that was a Bronx accent  I was emitting. No one cared about any of that insignificant personal data.

They saw someone who needed help, and they took time out of their day to ensure that they helped me.

So now when I think about living in Florida and the people of Florida, I realize I am a better person because I do live in Florida and I had the great privilege of meeting these Grand Floridians.

I just wished the garbage truck missed me.

In closing, I am fine. I have been stunned by my good fortune, and I will try to never take that for granted.

Eighty-six years ago today, March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office for the first of four times.

At that time the terms of President and Vice President began on March 4th. Because of the deepening of the Great Depression after the election of 1932, it was deemed that waiting to install a new President until March was no longer acceptable. Therefore, the twentieth amendment was passed and ratified, and the date was changed to January 20th.

We suffered a great recession in 2008 but as devastating as that economic disaster was it was nothing compared to the Great Depression. There were no Hoovervilles, people living in tents because they had been evicted. There were no long lines of people waiting in the cold to get a bowl of soup.

To be sure millions did suffer. Many lost their jobs. Many lost their homes. But for most of us, we carried on working and living and even enjoying life. You may not have checked your retirement account as often as it took a big hit, but you probably survived and recouped your losses in time.

Thanks to the socialist programs and ideas that have been embedded in our society since that day in March of 1933, we are able to survive economic catastrophe.

We have unemployment insurance, we have Medicare and Medicaid. We have Social Security and Social Security Income and Disability Insurance. Our savings accounts are protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

FDR brought this country back from economic ruin because he was not afraid of creating programs for poor people. Poor people were not the enemy of the people, poverty was.

Republicans like Herbert Hoover, the outgoing President in 1933, were stuck in the nineteenth century and loved their laissez-faire and didn’t want to interfere in the market place. The Republicans of that time were not evil, they were merely wrong. Hoover was a good man and, up until the crash, a good President. But we needed FDR to turn the country around, and he did it with programs that many call socialist and that many Republicans today want to dismantle. These Republicans are evil.

They want a small government, and they want to reduce federal spending all the while they represent states that take more federal money than they give back. Hey Mitch! You want small government? Resign today and give up one seat for Kentucky.

We are a socialist country and thank God we are. How else could people retire? You know Republicans in office may want to work and keep on the government dole until they die, but I don’t. Medicare and Social Security made it possible for me to retire.

If there are people out there who disagree with socialism, don’t apply for Medicare and refuse to collect Social Security.

Let the capitalists take care of you. I am sure that corporate America will provide for you in your old age. Maybe they will redefine Corporate Welfare?

I was listening to WFUV, the public radio station of Fordham University. They were doing one of their themed sets of songs, today’s having to do with songs with Mrs. in them.

The song that inspired me to write about expressions was Harper Valley P.T.A. sung by Jeannie C. Riley.

The lyric that struck me was, “The day my momma socked it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.”

Socked it to!

Whatever did that mean?

I had a general idea at the time, but I could have been all wrong. The funny thing is that for a short time in the late 1960s, sock it to me was the most ubiquitous slogan and defined the moment of the sixties.

Sly and the Family Stone, Country Joe and The Fish, Jim Hendrix used the phrase in their songs. However, the most famous use of the expression occurred on the comedy show, Laugh-In, when, then-presidential candidate, Richard Nixon uttered the magical words in the form of a question.

Even Nixon had a sense of humor.

Sock it to me got me thinking about other catchphrases that seem to have gone out of style.

You may remember “Right On!”

I was never too comfortable uttering right on. I was too white. My hair wasn’t quite long enough. My jeans were just a tad too new. You would go to a demonstration, and some speaker would say all the right anti-establishment things, and you were supposed to voice your approval by yelling out Right On!

John Lennon used it in one of his solo career songs, Power To The People. One verse ended “Power To The People, Right On!”  He got away with it.

Nelson Rockefeller, however, was not as fortunate.

My friend PJ and I, at my suggestion that we would make fifty dollars a week, joined the Rockefeller’s 1970 re-election campaign for Governor of New York. One Saturday morning we showed up a rally in Astoria, Queens. Our assignment was to hand out buttons and leaflets to the tens of people who showed up to support the Governor. You guessed it. One of the buttons was emblazoned in hippie script with the immortal words:

RIGHT ON ROCKY

I don’t remember ever using Right On after that.

“He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother.”

The story was that a priest saw a boy holding a baby and he asked the boy, “Is he heavy?” The boy replied, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”

Talk about a public service announcement waiting to happen!

But then “heavy” took on new meaning. Thoughts became heavy. Words and actions became heavy. You were never quite sure if it was a good thing, but you knew it was heavy when you heard or saw it.

The only time I hear heavy anymore is when I go to the doctor.

“Are You Together”

I just googled that phrase, and one of the responses was. “32 Signs You Have A Future Together.”

Back in the day, Together had nothing to do with being a couple. It was more a term indicating you were one with right thinkers. You were hip if not a hippie. It was important to be together, and I am not sure what the alternative would have been. In any case, it was a subjective determination that might be in dispute on occasion.

These few examples of arcanery (my word) represent a specific time in American culture. I suppose we have no business using them in the twenty-first century any more than using the phrase Twenty-Three Skiddoo at Woodstock would have been proper. This had me thinking of twenty-first American catchphrases.

I had to go to google again to learn if there were any current terms or sayings that correspond to my time sensitive vocabulary.

There is a list of television phrases that seemed cute. There was a list of things that supposedly millennials say that seemed more foreign to me.

I chose not to record them as they only served to make me feel older than I am.

I am much more together, and I refuse to sock it to millennials who routinely get abused for being young.

Right On!

The presidential campaign for Howard Schultz-Bucks got a big boost from Democrat contenders, Warren and Gillibrand.

In the wake of the revelations regarding Virginia Governor, Ralph Northam for appearing-not appearing, admitting it was he-not admitting it was he in a med school yearbook in blackface or wearing a klan outfit, a new allegation against the would be next in line to be Virginia’s governor, Justin Fairfax regarding sexual assault fifteen years ago.

Unlike when Al Franken was accused of sexual assault, and more recently when Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault during his confirmation hearing, both Warren and Gillibrand called for each to resign.

Now, they appear to have lost their Me-Too voice.

It’s a terrible thing when you throw stones at windmills. You can’t be selective as to which windmill you stone. You can’t be against injustice in certain instances.

There was a time when candidates could get away with their inconsistencies. Lincoln may have been the last President to enjoy time to change his mind without having to eat his words.

Radio and television made prevarication hard to ingore or escape.

Add Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, well, let’s just say, candidates who misspeak, misremember, or just out and out lie are better off confessing, “mea culpa, please forgive me, and I’ll never do it again.”

When I was caught throwing chairs off a boat on a high school trip to Rye Beach Playland, that’s what I did. Brother Kevin was merciful but kept a close watch on my behavior until I graduated.

As to the sexual assault charge?

Unfortunately, men of power do the types of things of which these three men have been accused.   The timing of the accusation compared to the time when the assault took place should have no bearing on determining the credibility of the charge.

How you assess the credibility of the charge?

That’s the question we all have to consider.

The one lesson we should have learned is that political affiliation, race, gender, and sexual orientation should not determine credibility.

It would be wise for Democrats to remember that.

The Day The Music Died?
February 3, 1959, was a day I will forever remember. I can still see my brother Mike and me watching our Mother prepare breakfast. I cannot tell you what the weather was like. If there was snow on the ground, I could not tell you. What I do remember, though, is listening to the green Zenith radio that was up on the shelf over our refrigerator.

In those days my Mother would often have on a rock and roll channel. It would be years later that she would turn to listen to Rambling With Gambling. So, back in 1959, she was probably listening to Herb Oscar Anderson or someone like him. On that particular day it did not matter what channel you had tuned into nor did it matter who the DJ or radio host was. That day it was all the same news and music. Buddy Holly had died and that is all we heard that day. Even as an eight-year-old I saw the irony in his most recent recording that every station was playing. ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’, written by Paul Anka, just about summed up the feeling of that day.

We also heard that Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper had died as well, in the same airplane crash as Buddy Holly. Twelve years later Don McLean would refer to this day as The Day The Music Died. While music most certainly did not die that day in February, it was never the same. I am not sure what impact The Big Bopper would continue to have had on the course of music but Buddy Holly and Ritchie  Valens would surely have continued to provide terrific music and, no doubt, to inspire new artists and bring new innovations to rock and roll. It is not coincidental that The Beatles recorded ‘Words Of Love’ in deference to Buddy Holly’s contribution to music.
Twenty Five Years Later
Now it is February 3, 1984. Eileen and I are expecting our second child. The plan was that we would go to the hospital that Monday, February 6th for the birth of our child. That taught me a lesson. There are some things you can plan and some that you cannot.

It was a Friday evening. We had a nice dinner and I was just about to put a fire on and watch the Winter Olympics. No sooner had I had the logs in the hearth than Eileen called out from the bathroom that we would need to be going to the hospital instead. My first reaction was to push my way into the bathroom and to take a shower. To this day I cannot fathom why I thought it necessary for me to be showered and shampooed. I guess I was recalling when Sean was born and that it was going to be a long night/day.

Now we had made plans with friends to take care of Sean on Monday but they were nowhere to be found. So, we called our friend’s mother who promptly drove over and picked up Sean. Eileen and I then made our way to Southampton Hospital. Upon arriving at the Hospital, Eileen’s doctor came in shaking his head saying, “I thought we agreed this was going to happen Monday. I was just about to watch the ice skating competition.” I told him I was too but that at least I did get my shower in.

We then made our way to the OR room and I got the chance, again, to sit next to Eileen as our baby was being born. (Let me tell you, that’s the type of sex education we need in our schools.)

The birth of your child is always amazing. One minute she wasn’t there and the next minute she was. Before that minute had elapsed, however, we named her Jeannine. It was 9:30 PM.

She was a sight to behold. A beautiful round face trimmed with a wisp of reddish hair. We always thought she would be a redhead like her mother. The maternity nurse took her and got her ready for her crib and then both of us walked Jeannine up to her room. Eileen was in recovery and would join us later.

When we get to the room the nurse asked me if I wanted to hold her. So, I picked her up out of the little crib and took her in my arms. She turned her head up to me and I swear she looked me right in the eyes and I think she was a little miffed for being disturbed while she was napping. She had a look and I also think she was eying me up wondering what her fate would be with this big doofus that was holding her. Her eyes were wide open and deep blue and her lips were puckered and the nose, that I would spend most of her early years stealing and hiding, was as cute as could be.

It was then that I first sang ‘You’re Sugar….” but it was by far not the last time.

Happy Birthday, Jeannine.

Though the music may have died back in 1959, it was resurrected in 1984.

No, this isn’t about having my glasses on while I was shaving and seeing the real me. It isn’t about having to go to physical therapy to help come with the side effects of all the medications efforting to keep me alive.

It’s about my reaction to the new democrats cursing to their constituents.

Now, politicians have forever been cursing at their constituents. Most recently, the shutdown of our federal government forcing TSA searchers looking for a handout instead of through a handbag, sending Coast Guard members cruising soup kitchens instead of the shores of America. While both parties and the president decried this terrible state of affairs, they collectively raised the one finger salute to let these government workers know how they really felt.

But for me, when the words fuck and motherfucker are used in a televised speech, it lacks a certain statesmanship quality that I aspire my leaders to possess. After all, JFK said “Ask not what your country can do for you…”  rather than “Don’t us what the fuck America can do for you.”

Nevertheless, I have had a change of heart if not a full-blown epiphany.

On April 24, 1971, I was in Washington DC with Peter, Paul, And Mary and Country Joe McDonald.

There happened to be hundreds of thousands of other people there too, but I like to remember it as a more personal occurrence.

The point is that after Peter, Paul, And Mary and I sang Blowin In The Wind, Country Joe and I did a rousing rendition of  The Fish Cheer, made famous by Country Joe And The Fish at Woodstock.

So, there I was with Country Joe and several hundred thousand others, yelling in response to Country Joe’s exhortations to spell along with him. We yelled our reply when he bellowed “GIVE ME AN F,” and we gave him his requested F. When he followed with “GIVE ME A U,” we chanted U. Before I knew it, we sang C and K and then when he thrice demanded, “WHAT’S THAT SPELL”  I shouted FUCK FUCK FUCK.

It was no mere profanity, it was a revolution. It was a call to arms against an enemy who took over our country. Sadly not everyone in America was as enraged by the Viet Nam war as those of us on that beautiful Saturday in April 1971.

Our country was divided back then even more than it is today.  In fact, Viet Nam represents the birth of American division.

So, when I heard those two Democrats use the profanity, I heard them with sixty-eight-year-old ears and not the twenty-year-old ears that heard Country Joe lead his cheer. It took my memory of that day nearly forty-eight years ago to understand these new Democrats.

My concern was not that the language was offensive or inappropriate but that it might trigger a retreat from the Democratic base. I never liked when the Democratic party became the party of the extreme. Americans do not want extremists in power of whatever slant. We pray to God that Nazis do not take over the Republican Party. I also pray to God that the extreme left also fails to rise to dominate the Democratic Party.

Democrats need to remember that the diversity of ideas is as important as the diversity of people. It is important to recognize both and to welcome both and to be tolerant of both.

So, I understand the frustrations and zeal for change that often results in the use of language not ordinarily heard in the halls of government. I also cannot turn stones at those who utter such phrases as my family will be only too willing to remind me.

But, it is hoped that we can also speak in terms of forgiveness and gratitude and that the harping on tweets and sound bites are replaced with understanding and accommodation.

The ongoing saga of the Mueller investigation and the ultimate removal of the 45th President continues. In fact, it had almost been a forgotten tweet or cable news bulletin (remember when bulletins interrupted normal television transmissions, you know when something significant happened?).

Instead of harping on the dysfunctional first family and the presidency that refused to quit, we have focused our attention on federal workers who have not been paid in a month. These are workers of the federal government of the United States Of American, and we have seen fit to send them to soup kitchens and to beg mercy to the Henry F. Potters of the various Bedford Falls of America.

Yesterday, the Secretary of Commerce could not understand how a worker who had not gotten paid in a month had to resort to going to a soup kitchen. I thought it was bad back in the day when senior Bush didn’t know how much a quart of milk cost.

It just goes to show you that we should have a financial threshold beyond which no billionaire should be eligible for public office.

America would be a better place without such wealth telling us how to live.

When you think of the people, who saw in Trump a champion of their values and someone who would restore their status as respected and important Americans. How must they feel when they read about or see on Fox News how one after one of Trump’s men gets indicted for lying.

Do they not feel betrayed by the likes of wealthy men lying to protect a felon? Do they not feel betrayed by a man they trusted to protect them?

Will Trump’s wall protect his supporters from Russian missiles and American retreat from its role as protector of the free world?

Back in the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, we may have hidden our heads in our school desks, but we didn’t bury them in the sand.

We may have protested a war that we saw as unjust and unnecessary, but we didn’t kiss Putin’s ass.

So Roger Stone has been indicted. It’s another shoe of endless shoes dropping and about to drop. The only thing that worries me is that, if we don’t get rid of the born again bigot vice president, will getting rid of Trump be a good thing?

Something about that devil you know, you know?

January 12, 1969, a date that will live in glory for all New York Jet Fans.

The 1968 season for the Jets was as much as you could have hoped for. Sure we lost to the Raiders in the infamous Heid game but, a few weeks after that debacle my friend Mike and I danced on the frozen field of Shea Stadium celebrating the Jets’ victory over these same Raiders in the AFL Championship game.

Make no mistake about it the Jets were going to the Super Bowl but Mike and I were not. We would be watching from afar on WNBC TV, in black and white and not living color.

Not possessing a color tv as yet my parents were not about to send me to Florida for a football game. It never came up for discussion.

Now, fifty years later and my children hating me for passing along the Jet fan gene, I realize I should have gone to the game no matter what the cost may have been.

To be fair, back in 1969 with Joe Namath in good health and possessing a great defense, I never would have believed back then that the trip to the Super Bowl would be a once in a lifetime phenomena.  Sadly, the return trip has been eluding the Jets and their fans for fifty years.

Nevertheless, we can take comfort in the fact that the Jets won the most consequential football game of all time. Had the Jets not won that game, football today would not be the same.

Joe Namath revolutionized the NFL even while he was pointing his finger skyward reveling in its demise. Without his singular victory the merger of the two leagues, the American Football League and the National Football League, would not have proceeded. Super Bowls I and II were so dominated by the NFL Green Bay Packers that the inferiority of the upstart league was firmly established…to some.

When Joe Willie guaranteed a victory over the indomitable Baltimore Colts, the older league and its fans prayed for Namath’s comeuppance to be both swift and painful.

The Jets scored first on a Matt Snell sweep and then Joe went to work with a controlled offense. He wasn’t slinging that day as he had for his AFL career. Joe picked apart the vaunted Colt defense and it was the Colts who resorted to a more open offense. Their attempt to take advantage of the Jets defense failed and resulted in interceptions and missed opportunities. It was a grand day all together.

When the dust had settled even the Ghost of Johnny Unitas could not defeat Joe Willie and the Jets. While at least finally scoring a touchdown, it was too little too late. The Colts had humiliated the NFL while Joe Willie and the Jets legitimized the AFL.

Football was never the same but it was so much better.