The Newell Post

I used to think I knew what the Truth is. Even if I couldn’t define it well enough to convince a philosopher, like Justice Potter Stewart in describing pornography, I know Truth when I see it.

My dilemma?

There’s hardly any to be seen.

Thank God for the Yankees because I can at least focus on sports rather than the other national pastime of hatred.

To think that the Greatest Generation gave their lives and youth to support the American Value to hate his neighbor!

For a country that purports to aspire to religious ideals, we sure seem to cast a lot of stones even as we dodge quite a few ourselves.

Ironically, I used to complain about this type of behavior at sporting events. God forbid you wear the shirt of the opposing team. Don’t dare cheer for an opposing player. Fans have gotten killed and assaulted for daring to disrespect the home team.

Sure, those incidences have been extremely rare, and at a time when a grammar school kid or high school teenager faces a higher risk of harm than a Red Sox fan in Yankee Stadium, the latter seems almost quaint.

Our most recent example of political hatred is being played out in the Senate as Kavanaugh awaits confirmation. It’s funny to put it that way. Confirmation envisions a ten-year-old in a blue suit with a red bow on his arm. I am sure if you asked him he would rather face the slap of a bishop rather than facing the Democrats.

No matter what happens with his confirmation hatred will continue to inspire. Hatred will, in fact, replace Russian meddling as a topic of debate just as election day approaches.

Supporters of Kavanaugh and his opponents believe they have identified truth.

I wish they would share their technique with me.

Since moving to Florida, I have come to realize that summer is more a state of mind than it is a season.

For me, June 21st is the day I queue up my Summertime PlayList on my iPhone. I also shun the various IPAs (though not entirely) and hunt for Summer Ale.

Living on Long Island has conditioned me to prefer Blue Point Summer Ale over other varieties of the same concoction, but I am not really a summer ale snob and, in fact, there is not a summer ale that I have refused to imbibe.

As we are in the middle of the Labor Day weekend, my thoughts naturally turn to of autumn and the seasonal brews that follow. Yet the end of summer is more about the season than the beverage.

On Labor Days past it was a ritual for Eileen and me to stand and clap for the lifeguards at Ponquogue beach as the final whistle of summer sound.

It was a joyous moment to show our gratitude to the young women and men who protected all the beachgoers who populated our beautiful shores even as we lamented the passing of another summer.

Tomorrow would be a school day for our children and work for Eileen and me would resume. The weather would still be summer-like, and the calendar would still proclaim that summer was the season but you knew in your heart of hearts that summer was over.

Despite the prospect of continued 90 degree days for the foreseeable future down here in Bradenton, I cannot escape that same feeling that summer is once again eluding me. Another season of my life has ended.

Why is it that the passing of summer brings on this melancholy?

Who feels sad when autumn evolves into winter? The last day of autumn is a mere five days before Christmas. Surely no one is sad about that.

Then when winter ebbs and spring springs to life no need to wax poetic about winter’s passing. Baseball is right around the corner and who isn’t happy about that?

Then, summer comes, and we are all kids again remembering that last day of school and the eternal bliss of sleeping late and staying out after dark.

But, with the last of the Summer Ale comes the promise of Pumpkin Beer so, you see,  life, when the chill of autumn is upon us (and I use that term very loosely down in Florida), retains the joy of that first day of summer and the last day of school.

My Catholicism has always been a source of my identity. I went to a Catholic grammar school. I went to a Catholic High School. I went to a Catholic University and then I went to a Catholic Law School.

I taught in Catholic Schools for five years and I taught CCD or Sunday School for ten years. I even served as a lector for two years.

I believed in all of the Church teachings that pertained to Christ and his teachings. I didn’t believe in all that the Church said but I believed what Christ said and did.

I believed in the Eucharist and the Ressurection and eternal life after death.

The horrific pedophile scandals have convinced me that the bishops and Popes of recent years do not believe in those things.

How could they?

How could they let sick, perverted men under the guise of the cloth to molest innocent children with the same hands that they let these sons of bitches consecrate the bread and wine into the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ?

How could they?

I’ll tell you.

They didn’t believe in anything they said from that pulpit of theirs.

The crisis that the Catholic Church faces is nothing to do with the billions of dollars that they will lose.

The crisis has nothing to do with the ultimate destruction of the hierarchy of the Church.

These villainous leaders, who were supposed to be Christ on earth, will be ultimately responsible for the destruction of the faith of nearly a billion Catholics.

Catholics are repulsed by their failure to suffer the little children.

Catholics are repulsed by our bishops lack of faith.

How can you expect us to believe in a life eternal when these charlatans didn’t fear meeting Christ face to face?

Who forgave their sins except for other charlatans who were more concerned with protecting the good reputation of an organization and cared nothing for protecting a child.

I always felt these bastards cared more for a fetus than a child. In reality, they cared for nothing but preserving the source of their own financial support.

I am angry and, I am sure all Catholics are angry.

The anger is justified but, unfortunately, completely useless.

Anger will not remove the suffering that the victims continue to endure.

Anger will not make this memory go away.

The Church that I knew will no longer exist. That is a good thing.

We need a New Catholic Church.

The New Catholic Church will do what Christ instructed the man who asked what he needed to do to be saved.

The New Catholic Church must sell all its possessions and give to the poor.

We don’t need men in funny hats or big rings for us to kiss.

We don’t need big cathedrals, make them museums.

We don’t need any more saints. In fact, no one who presided over this terrible period of pedophilia should be canonized. Pope John Paul II should have his sainthood revoked.

The best that can be said about him is that he fell asleep at the switch. The worst? He knew all about the tragedy and did nothing about it.

There should also be a permanent change to the liturgy of the mass.

To the Prayers of The Faithful should be added:

“For all the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy, we pray to the Lord.”

Lastly, priests and nuns should be able to marry, and nuns should be treated as equal in all aspects of religious life. Men and women should both be encouraged to serve and to live a life that is dedicated to preserving the dignity of the individual as well as the faith in our church teachings.

This second Reformation is needed so that people of faith continue to have a reason to believe.

For some reason, I haven’t listened to my Summer Playlist nearly as often as in past summers. I suppose not having a five-hour train ride has served as a reduction in listening opportunities.

Whatever the reason, the weather has not been a factor. If anything, I should be listening to it more often than when I was up in New York. After all, it’s always summer down in Florida. Well, that’s not entirely true.

We just don’t have the same seasons as the rest of the country.

We have, FREAKING HOT, HOT, Balmy In The 80’s, and A Hint Of Fifty.

Unlike their northern counterparts, Florida seasons are not equally apportioned throughout the year. Freaking Hot, for example, extends from May through September.

Ok, enough of the weather lament. Back to my Summer playlist.

I do, in fact, have The Girl From Ipanema (I was surprised to learn it wasn’t IMPANEMA), as well as other summer songs from my childhood.

Summertime, by the Jamies.

See You In September, by the Happenings.

I also have quite a few from the late ’60’s and early ’70’s.

Suffice it to say that each entry carries its own memory baggage. Surprisingly, only Summer In The City brings to mind sweltering  New York City weather. The others merely evoke the great feeling of being off from school or working in the mailroom.

Carefree days when you were able to forget assassinations and war and poverty. I was a kid, and I was off from school and thinking seriously ended on the last day of school.

While I have not been listening to my playlist as often as I used to ( truth be told I have it on as I type) I did read a few books from summers past.

Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, and Future Shock. Actually, I am reading that now. I wanted to see just how prescient Alvin Toffler was about how our lives would change.

I find it easier to write about this kind of things than current events. The music makes me happy, and the books bring back sitting on an un-airconditioned IRT 6 train on my way to work. I can almost feel the sweat dripping into my eyes as I read.

So, as we enter the last few weeks of summer, I hope your summertime memories, old and those currently under construction, keep you cool.

Stay cool gabagool.

One of the things I can do on The Newell Post is identifying my reading audience. I can’t identify specific individuals but I can, for example, determine the various operating systems used to view my Blog. In addition, I can see the countries in which my postings are read. Ukraine is a regular. I don’t know why.

The excerpt above was taken from an entry to the Newell Post that I wrote over four years ago.

At the time, I was intrigued that anyone in Ukraine would have found my blog interesting. Who knew?

Well, after the cyber invasion of our nation at the hands of the Russians, I guess my readers in Ukraine weren’t interested in me at all, but perhaps they were interested in my Facebook page?

I haven’t been on Facebook for some time and I am not really sure if any of my “friends” are even reading this. It’s such a shame that a form of communication that was able to keep friends and family, often living far distances apart, is now tainted by fear and uncertainty due to the Russians.

I do wish the President would build that wall. Not on our border with Mexico but a firewall to ensure  our cybersecurity.

Fifty years ago today I attended a play on Broadway. The play was I Do I Do. It was a requirement for my senior English class. I would be graduating from high school in two weeks.

I don’t remember much of the play as, like most Americans, I was still in shock having heard the news of the previous day. After just winning the California Democratic primary and sealing up the nomination as President, Bobby Kennedy was shot down just minutes after this remarkable achievement.

My mother told me he had died and then I went downtown with a classmate to see the play.

On the heels of the Martin Luther King assassination just two months earlier RFK’s assassination was a death knell to the America of 1968.

Cities would burn, the war in Viet Nam divided our nation more than ever, and Richard Nixon was assured to be the successful candidate in November.

It isn’t hard to remember those turbulent times and the only benefit of doing so is to reassure ourselves that America in 2018 isn’t as bad as you might think.

Like his brother’s assassination, Bobby’s loss keeps you wondering what might have been.

Would the Viet Nam war have ended sooner and the Great Divide that it created and still permeates our society today have been avoided?

Would the hope of racial and economic equality have been realized?

Would we have faith in our leaders today?

I know there are those who are sick of political dynasties. Jeb Bush found that out in 2016 and so did Hillary. Indeed the mystique around the Kennedys still remains to a degree but even Camelot has lost some of its aura over the years. Despite the human flaws possessed by the Kennedys and RFK in particular, they always put Country above self.

1968 was a dreadful year.

Seventy-four years ago in the European Theater of Operations in World War II thousands of insanely brave men accosted the shores of France at Utah Beach and thus began the end of the Nazi empire.

Back at home, there were no debates about whether this was the right thing to do. No one questioned the President’s motive in ordering the attack. No revisionist historian had yet pondered the dramatic loss of life and whether such sacrifice was prudent. It was a different America. No one was going to apologize.

I thank God for that.

Where would we be in this country, in this world, had these brave men not thrown themselves on the beach that day in 1944? Maybe we would not have prevailed in World War II? Maybe we would be goosestepping our way through life hating everything and everyone not Arian? Maybe the world economy would consist of  Nazi Germany and a militarist Japan?

Remembering those that put their lives on the line for us this day seventy years ago is the least we should do today.

That was a time of American heroes when partisan politics had not brought our government to a grinding halt. It was a time when no one would dare question the integrity or patriotism of the American President.

For his part, FDR would never have praised Hitler or Hirohito and insult Churchill. Then, after the war, Truman stood up to Stalin and helped recreate Europe and the only wall erected was built by the Russians.

It was a much different time.

It’s getting a little lonely in the Oval Office.

How many more of the President’s closest advisors will resign in the next few weeks?

It’s getting so Trump is like Reg in the Great Outdoors. For those who may not remember, Reg got struck by lightning 66 times. Like Reg, no one wants to stand near Trump anymore, lest they die!

And of course, despite all the scandals and pending catastrophes looming over Donnie’s head, he continues to tweet. His staff is so desperate that they have hidden his iPhone and replaced it with a Walkman and headphones along with a cassette tape containing his favorite top ten songs.

Here they are:

Number 10:            I Fought The Law And The Law Won

Number 9:              In Some Secluded Rendezvous

Number 8:              There She Is Miss America

Number 7:              Stranger In Moscow

Number 6:              Theme Song: From Russia With Love

Number 5:              A Town Without Pity

Number 4:              This I Swear Is True

Number 3:              Back In The USSR

Number 2:              Help

And Donald’s NUMBER ONE SONG!

Number 1:             Stormy

The easy listening list for Presidents with a lot on their mind.

I was teaching religion when religion education shied away from the Catechism of my youth to a more humanistic approach.

The standard of memorizing the answers to catechetical questions was replaced by a more new age approach. Loving and Caring and Sharing were the rote replies to the questions of the day and you only had to hear your students reply with a sarcastic sing-song retort to understand that the lesson hadn’t sunk in.

It’s not that loving and sharing and caring weren’t worthy ideals but that they seemed to be the answer to everything. How ironic that one of these standards has now fallen into disrepute. I am writing, of course, about sharing.

How many times have we found ourselves, as loyal Facebook users, sharing articles or surveys or any other type of information not our own? How many times have these postings resulted in passing propaganda that was not only false but was initiated by the Russians? I don’t have the answer to that but I am sure Facebook does.

How sad that this mainstay of social media has been allowed to be used in such a way. Of course, we are to blame. We allowed our biases to shape our sharing and to spread things that were not only false but, in many cases, mean-spirited and downright hateful if only because we felt self-righteous in our own beliefs because the article proved our point.

Trump is a bigot. Hillary hates white people.

It has gotten to the point that I no longer believe anything I read on Facebook unless it is something about the New York Yankees.

That is why I have taken the pledge and I no longer will share any article about anything.  I am even going to resist commenting on any post unless it is positive and one of my real friends has initiated the post.

Twitter is even worse and I have taken to blocking tweets from people filled with hate.

The good news about social media is that we do control the information we read. Like other forms of media, we can just “turn the channel” or, in the more modern form, delete the post, and move on to something more entertaining.

I am guessing some of you, if you haven’t already, will delete me from your Twitter feed and Facebook page.

Good for you!