The Newell Post

This entry was written during Hurricane Irene back in 2011. Not much has changed.

Whether she was a hurricane or a tropical storm, Irene sapped our energy and left us in the 19th century. No lights, no TV, no internet. What’s a boy to do, blog on paper? Well, that’s what I am doing, a pre-Gutenberg blogger listening to my transistor radio as I pen this entry of the Newell Post.

We’re being told that it could be Friday before we see the light of night. I hope my batteries last. Ironically, the aftermath of Irene is the perfect metaphor for the American Citizen in the 21st Century.

For powerless is our condition after our political parties have ravaged us. We matter not one bit to our politicians. While the Democrats and Republicans fiddled about the debt ceiling, the American economy was left to burn. Unemployment continued to rise as our infrastructure continued to crumble. The Washington Monument isn’t the only thing cracked in Washington.

So, how do we get these people to pay attention to us? The Supreme Court is no help as they have sided with the rich by giving them more ‘free’ speech than we ever could afford. The average citizen can’t get the ear of a politician whose daily activity includes selling his/her soul to the highest contributor.

So what’s the answer?

I think we have to flood DC with emails and snail mail and demand an investigation as to where our government has gone? Say what you want about the NY and NJ governors and Mayor Bloomberg but they did act and respond to a major threat this weekend. Washington would still be debating whether it was a hurricane or a tropical storm.

Since they couldn’t tax it, bail it out, or provide a loophole, they had no plan to deal with it. While we do get taxed, the average citizen receives no bail out and cannot evade the wrath of the IRS through a loop hole because we have no juice. We remain as powerless as we were before Irene came ashore but at least now we can’t watch CSPAN.

I vowed a few years ago that I would stop watching TV news and talk shows. Well, the last eight months I have fallen off the wagon and succumbed, once again, to the dark side.

Never a fan of reality TV, I always opted to view good TV. Instead of Survivor, I watched West Wing. Instead of Jersey Shore, I watched NCIS. Instead of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX, I read the sports page. However, when Reality TV invaded and took hold of the White House, well, I just had to watch.

Trump has become the President you love to hate. Even as you attack hate groups for the terrible things they have done and want to do, you find yourself hating Donald Trump. Oddly enough, it was the same for President Obama as so many people seemed to hate him. The thing I used to love hearing the haters say about Obama was that he was a socialist.

Yeah, he was such a socialist that he let all the Wall Street perpetrators of the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression get off scott free. Martha Stewart can go to jail for insider trading but let’s leave Wall Street alone.

And please I don’t want to hear from the Wall Street Defense League.

But, aside from getting yourself worked up, whether you are Pro Trump or Anti Trump, Whadya Crabbin About?

Has your life been impacted by  the election?

Do you still love your partner?

Do you still have your health? (OK so you may be losing your health insurance.)

Can you pay your bills?

Start to think of all the things you have and don’t let a politician take your joy away.

Fight hatred with love.

Fight hatred with forgiveness.

I don’t go on Facebook too often. I used to be logged in all day. Now, I check in to see what my family is up to. I find myself eliminating more posts than sharing them. I am sure many have deleted my posts and maybe deleted me. That’s ok with me as I have tried to  stay out of the fray.

I am trying to focus on positive things and I admit that this is a challenge. Sometimes I find myself getting angry and I have to stop myself and re-focus my attention to my better angels.

I have no reason to be angry.

I have no reason to be sad.

I absolutely have no reason to hate.

Forty years ago at this time I was preparing for my first year teaching at Saint Vito’s in Mamaroneck, New York.

I was nervous as you might expect but I was also filled with hope and faith and optimism. I was going to change lives. I was going to open the eyes of young people and encourage them to read and to be lifelong learners. It wasn’t always easy and it took a while to realize some of my goals.

I worked with great people. people I admired and I aspired to be like them. Teachers, nuns, priests,  were all so influential on my life as they were on the children who attended Saint Vito’s. Teaching there for four years was the defining moment of my life.

The students and the parents were extraordinary.

Despite leaving there in 1981, I did, as Father Peter suggested, “Take Saint Vito’s with you wherever you go.” I did that and I like to think that the places where I worked were all the better for it.

We all know great people like the ones I was blessed to know starting in 1977 on a hot September morning. We all know people who bring out our humility just thinking about their greatness. Hopefully, we are still able to earn the blessing of knowing such people.

My question is a simple one. Where were all the good people for the members of the hate groups?

I remember one day teaching history at Saint Vito’s. We were learning about World War II. I also had the class read Animal Farm and 1984. They may have read Brave New World as well. Anyway, I began the lesson talking about the Nazis. I started by saying, “Let’s remember that the Nazis were good men, believed in God, went to Church, and celebrated Christmas, and were good fathers to their children.”

The uproar that erupted was spectacular.

“But Mr. Newell, they were monsters. They killed millions of Jewish people.”

“Didn’t you see all the horror and hatred they produced?”

I let them go on for a few minutes and then I said, “That’s the whole point! Good people did monstrous things and allowed them to continue. Just because it happened over thirty years ago, don’t think it can’t happen again. When people hate they are capable of doing terrible things.”

Hatred consumed these people back in 1930’s and 1940’s Germany and it may well be consuming America in 2017.

Good people cannot allow this to continue.

I put a picture up on Facebook of a sticker on the window of a pick up down here in Florida, It read, “Rebel Lives Matter.”

I understand that people get upset by the notion of Black Lives Matter thinking that it’s an assertion that White lives don’t matter.

I think this failure to understand the viewpoint of Black Lives Matter is a result of a lack of empathy and a lack of understanding of our own history.

To think that we are still fighting the Civil War is amazing to me. It’s why the Second Amendment is so important to some. There are those who are afraid of losing  their right to wage war against America when things get out of hand. This is not about survivalists fearing Armageddon. This is about Supremacists getting ready for the Great Race War.

We need good people to stand their ground, not some knucklehead with an AK-47 and a confederate flag.

I know the original form of the statement reads “The sins of the father…” but today, on, what would have been the 110th birthday of my father, I prefer to think about the grace that was visited upon his sons.

I never knew my father to be sad. I never saw him cry until my mother died. He was always smiling and, despite having many life experiences that would have made other men bemoan their fate, my father chose to tell stories that made all who listened laugh.

I used to compare my father and my Uncle Al to Laurel and Hardy, my father playing Ollie to Uncle Al’s Stan.  Uncle Al was another man who had a hard life but you would never know it listening to him and my father talk.

The only character flaw my father had was that he couldn’t keep a secret. That’s not to say that he revealed sources to the Russians while entertaining them in the Oval Office. Rather, my father’s weakness pertained solely to Christmas. He rarely waited until Christmas to give me presents.

One afternoon in October my mother and father were waiting on Taylor Avenue as I was released from school. Walking out the gate by the Convent I saw them there in the car. As I got in the back seat my father had a sheepish grin and gave me the head nod encouraging me to look on the floor of the car. There was a box from Kleins and it had LIONEL emblazoned all over it.

My father bought me a set of trains and instead of tucking it away for Christmas, I was playing with them on Halloween.

Then, in December, I think it must have been the 23rd, he came bouncing up the stairs of 1261 Leland with a small box in his hand. It was two days before Christmas so why wait? He gave me the box as he led me into the front bedroom where our Lionel layout was stationed. He then opened the box and took out a beautiful Santa Fe diesel and placed it on the track.

He was always fond of taking my mother and I up to Ferry Point Park on a warm spring evening. They had lawn chairs and we always took a bat and ball and our mitts. I am guessing I was 10 and that would make my father 53.

He had just completed a hard day working in a Con Ed powerhouse but that did not stop him from fielding my fly balls. The unfortunate thing was that I was not a consistent hitter. When my father played left field, I hit the ball to right. Then he moved over to right and I hit the ball to left and so on and so on.

He never complained and was happy that I hit the ball no matter where it had landed.

I like to think he made me the father that I am.

I know he made my brothers Johnny and Michael the fathers they turned out to be.

I never had any chance of doing otherwise. Between the three of them, I always came in fourth but that’s still saying something.

The testament to my father is that anyone who knew him and is reading this is nodding his head and remembering much more than I have written.

I always liked to say that my father was a man of the twentieth century. Born in 1907, he witnessed the Great War, the Great Depression, Ruth, Gherig, and DiMaggio, WW II and all the rest of a most historic time. Yet, he taught me that true history recorded the lives of simple people enjoying a grand life.

And so, I wish my father Happy Birthday, knowing full well that no one would be singing louder than himself.

Happy Birthday Dad.

Number 10

Number 9

Number 8

Number 7

Number 6

Number 5

Number 4

Number 3

Number 2

And the number one reason I love President Trump.

Number 1

Growing up in a pre AC era I often recall days like today when the mercury reached 100+ and wonder how did we survive without air conditioning? I actually remember the day we got our first fan. It happened to be my 6th birthday; it was a Cool Home fan. That wasn’t my birthday gift but it could have been, even a fan was a welcomed addition.

Then a few years later we got a second fan. On Leland Avenue, we were hi rollers. As a kid we never really stayed in the apartment during the day so I guess the heat never seemed to bother us. We would play on the shady side of the street and take a break when there was no shady side of the street.

But the worst was yet to come. When I turned 18 and got a job in the mailroom at Lorillard Corp and had to take the IRT 6 train to Grand Central, and a new level of torture by heat presented itself.

Now, you were hot from the moment you stepped out on to Leland Avenue and made your way over to the Parkchester station. But then getting on the 6 was like entering a sauna. In fact, we used to joke and say, “It’s like a sauna in here,”

Ok, so we weren’t funny, but it was freakin hot. The sweat dripped right off your head onto your NY Times, which you had to fold in a very special way, the art of which has been lost unfortunately, but where was I? Yeah, it was freakin hot. But it got better.

We got to 125th and changed for the downtown express. The train was right across the platform and it was already jammed with people. However, if you positioned yourself, as I always did, right by the door so that you could scoot over and just squeeze yourself into the little bit of the free space available, you were able to make the train.

I was not the only one, though, who wanted to make the train and it was not unusual for me to have barely squeezed in to suddenly find myself on the opposite side of the car, having been crammed through like the chopped meat at Lenny’s butcher shop. This, of course, only made it freakin hotter.

This tender memory of days gone by does absolutely nothing to help me deal with today’s heat. It is unfortunate that I am no longer 18 as I think that would have enabled me to cope better. Not having to commute on the Long Island Rail Road in this summer of hell does take the sting out of the weather.

I do take comfort that there is no snow to shovel or ice to chip and I will try to focus on taking a dip in the pool that while I try to remember those halcyon days or extracting my shoe out of the melting surfaces of the city streets

I Say…You Say…Or My Night With A Knight

Late one night, a night that would soon change to early one morning, in the middle of November, 1963, I heard a song on my Dick Tracy transistor radio (a story for another time) that would change my life for ever. I heard it once around midnight and I couldn’t go to sleep until I heard it again. The song was I Want To Hold Your Hand by a group from England of all places.

Well, I wasn’t the only one who heard that song as the Beatles came roaring into our lives. You might say they saved our lives. I always thought that their first hit, my all time favorite song that I heard back on that November night in 1963 was exactly what the country needed just a few weeks after I first heard it.

In the Dark Days that followed when we were sucker punched by Lee Harvey Oswald we needed someone to hold our collective hands and the Beatles showed up just in the nick of time. The trouble was not everyone got the Beatles. Some ridiculed their look; others denied their harmony and musical talent. This was when I was introduced to the world that would become the 60’s and while it took a few years for it all to sink in, my worldview was altered forever.

All these emotions presented themselves to me last night as I sat in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium with my family. It was Eileen’s coming out party, as she liked to describe it (she was one year removed from breast cancer and surgery). There I was, in the Bronx, where 48 years ago I heard I Want To Hold Your Hand back in my bed at 1261 Leland Avenue, waiting for Paul McCartney to take the stage. When he finally did I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Fortunately I did neither but I must have had a quizzical look on my face because Eileen kept asking me if I was alright.

So Paul or as I like to refer to him Sir Paul, just started singing around 8:30 and didn’t leave till around 11:20. Hello Goodbye; Eleanor Rigby; Jet; and perhaps the shocker of them all, A Day In A Life. I tried to take snippets of all the songs but every time he went to the piano I just knew he was going to sing Hey Jude. But, as luck would have it, that did not come till the end of the show and as I started my video that sick little twirling spiral indicating that my iPhone was shutting down appeared on my screen. Oh well, I’ll get it tonight at my second night with a Knight.

An Anglophile’s Delight

This has been some weekend. It began, as the best weekends often do, on Thursday night. Bryan and I went to see Deathly Hallows Part 2 and it was spectacular. It may not have included all of the back-stories we would have liked but it was terrific all the same. We certainly will be going back for another viewing.

I guess this desire for redundant experiences in English culture was again exhibited the following two nights as we set off to Yankee Stadium, not to see Derek Jeter add to his 3000 hits, but to hear the hits of another icon of Brit lit, Sir Paul, He’s still a Beatle, McCartney. Now some of you may not recognize the producer of self proclaimed silly love songs as nothing more than a rock icon. But Billy Shakespeare himself would have chucked his sonnets for the opportunity to hear Sir Paul sing A Day In A Life and Give Peace A Chance. Nor would you ever hear a Yankee Stadium crowd serenade the Bard as we did Sir Paul, recognizing him in the traditional Yankee Stadium Bleacher Creature Roll Call.

The show Friday evening was so spectacular and was matched by an equally spectacular show on Saturday that it will take several weeks for me to stop thinking about being 13 and listening to the Beatles on our Hi Fi back on Leland Avenue. Of course facing myself in the mirror while shaving should put an end to those time travels but only for a moment.

It may be just a little ironic that someone deemed a Patriot will be forced to plead the fifth but that is not what I am writing about.

I am Pleading The Fourth.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. Americans have been celebrating the Fourth of July for 241 years, ever since the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Thirteen Colonies became Thirteen Independent States. Then, with the adoption of the Constitution Thirteen years later, the fun really began.

We were and we are one nation. Some like to add “under God” to it and some resent the extra words. We have focused on this disagreement and many more others of late thereby highlighting all that we hate about “Them”.

“Them” could be the people who watch MSNBC or FOX News. It’s all in the eye of the viewer. Whichever side you support, tolerance for the opposite view has gone the way of the musket. We don’t like each other anymore.

America has a long history of not liking each other.

Put your group (HERE) and you can be pretty sure at some time people didn’t like members of your group. Many may still not.

Back in the day when young people were singing peace and love songs and burning cannabis instead of flags and crosses, many of us extolled the similarities that we all shared. We weren’t so much into promoting diversity as much as ignoring our differences of color and faith and national origin as well as sexual orientation and recognizing that we are all brothers and sisters sharing a common humanity.

It was easy to do this in The Bronx. Even in neighborhoods that were predominantly white, there were Jews, Protestants, and Catholics (no one advertised they were an atheist and we didn’t know the word agnostic). There were Germans, Italians, Irish, Polish, Greeks, and they all hyphenated “American” onto their identity.

In school and as our neighborhoods evolved blacks and hispanics were added to the Bronx American Dream and, yes, life was never perfect but we did our best to get along and I think we pretty much succeeded,

When Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960 there was some jubilation in Catholic households, well Irish households. I was never quite sure the non-Irish members of our Church were ever that happy about it.  But the point is, anyone who voted for Nixon was still a proud American. No one talked trash about either of the candidates or about each other’s political party.

All Men Are Created Equal.

I always like saying that you couldn’t put All In The Family on TV today. We have gotten so intolerant that good old fashioned satire is taboo. I think the same is true about The Declaration of Independence, at least that portion above.

I know that statement excludes women but I think it is a good thing.

In order to evolve as a people, we must understand our past. Excluding women in that statement may offend us today, and, even though an argument can be made that it made for a better sentence by not adding  …and women to it, women were not equal at the time of its writing. You can be damn sure that blacks did not come under that umbrella either.

The Constitution went even further and had to be amended to correct it.

It’s to our betterment to remember that our Founding Fathers were not perfect. It keeps us honest by knowing that. Our leaders today are also not perfect. It took the people and voters over the 241 years of this blessed country’s history to get us this far and we are not done.

We fought a Civil War because we could not see beyond our own shortsighted views. Let’s not make the same mistake.

We argued about immigrants when  they were coming from Ireland and then from Italy and then from China and then from Eastern Europe. We also learned that each of these groups added so much to our nation and perhaps we can learn from that past and apply it to the new immigrants who are being castigated today.

So, whether you are hosting a BBQ or going to the beach or just watching the Macy’s Fireworks on TV, think about the history behind the celebration. While it may have been an imperfect start, no one I know is unhappy with the result.

There are differences among us. Regional, racial, religious, and political, differences that can cause terrible things to be said and written about each other. I stopped posting onto Facebook because of these differences and I let them dictate how I interact with the world.

No more.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July and it is a holiday that expresses the common heritage that we all share and enjoy.

Happy Fourth of July

Somebody, please take the phone away from the President! It’s bad enough living in a country that would elect such a moron ( I apologize to all the morons for that) but to have him boast our stupidity to the world just makes it worse.

I have tried to be silent. I have stayed off Facebook because I just couldn’t read all the nonsense that some have posted over the last year. It used to be a nice way to keep in touch with family and friends separated by distance but now I see Facebook as a source of annoyance.

If only our President viewed Twitter in the same light!

Calling out the Mayor of London after the most recent terrorist attack in London and misquoting him in the process should spur even Steve Bannon to rip the phone out of Trump’s hand. But then again, Bannon is the architect of this dismal regime.

By the way, has anyone heard from Paul Ryan? I think a search committee should be formed and a manhunt organized ASAP. His poor family must be out of their minds in worry.

I blamed Hillary for not slapping Trump’s face during one of the debates and walking off the stage. I think she would have won had she done that. It’s too bad that none of the Republican candidates could man up to smack this bully down.

Someone pointed out something during Trump’s Excellent Adventure Abroad. Next time you see Millenium ( I like to call her that) and Trump coming down from Air Force 1, take a look at her face. She cringes as he touches her. No wonder she lives in New York.

My wife and I moved to Florida in January. After living in East Quogue, in the Hamptons, for over 33 years you would think we had a major life adjustment to experience. We really didn’t at first.

The entire month of January was basically R and R. We were exhausted from all that we went through getting our house emptied of a lifetime of memories. I was scared that I would have seller’s remorse once I was no longer living in East Quogue, but, as I told our children, we sold our house not our home.

Nevertheless, we did leave all our friends and family behind. That was hard to take. But somehow we survived and got a nice tan to boot.

Knowing full well that friends and family would accompany us on our new journey made it easier. Three of my nieces, Patty, Kathy, and Noreen, were down a few weeks ago. Sean was down last week to help us unload our POD as was my niece Liz. Eileen’s sister, Aunt Mary is now with us so family is taken care of. Jeannine is down this weekend and Bryan is coming down Monday. My two sisters, Maureen and Barbara are in Stewart, just a few hours away as are two of Maureen’s daughters, Connie and Marybeth, and Barbara’s daughter Liz. My nephew Chip, Maureen’s son is also down here frequently.

Eileen’s brother Kevin and his wife Eileen are a half hour away and Eileen’s other brother Jimmy and his wife will be making an appearance in two weeks.

My long time friend Freddy is in nearby Venice and we have gotten together a few times. He helped me set up our gas grill, I handed him the screws.

Other friends also will be coming by I have no  doubt. John was down in February and I know he will be back. Mike will be coming down in October and again in March for Yankee Spring training. Lou will hopefully come down along with PJ maybe for the reunion PJ would host in Hampton Bays?

We have also made a few friends down here thanks to our long time friend, Connie who has introduced us to Tuesday Night Trivia which we play with her and Lucille, Connie’s sister, and Lucille’s husband Brian.

Connie also introduced us to Sue and Larry who have become good friends.

Despite all of this activity and company I had a unique, somewhat unsettling experience the other evening.

I was sitting on the lanai with Eileen looking out at our pool and the pond our property borders when I had an odd sensation. I felt as if I had been sitting on our deck in East Quogue having a Blue Point summer ale when I blinked and here I was sitting on a lanai with a pool. I had a complete life reset. What was is no more. What is presents an entirely new way of life.

I wasn’t experiencing remorse or anything that could be deemed painful but it was an odd feeling still the same.

I am not sure retiring and living in East Quogue would have been good for me. I think this reset of mine is just what I needed. I needed to have new routines, new things to do, new people to meet, a new way of life.

The beauty of it all is that I didn’t have to lose my old way of life. My family is still my family and I am in contact with them every day. We don’t see each other as frequently as I would like and the visits have to be arranged and booked but we will still get to see them. (I am secretly sending subconscious vibrations encouraging them to relocate to Bradenton so that may change the situation.)

I know I will have my friends in my life no matter where we live and I will be coming to NY for Yankee games and Jet games and for holidays so there will be opportunities for get togethers. (The Yankees are playing at home on my birthday so I am working on a plan…)

Resets are necessary sometimes. I have a MAC and sometimes I have to reboot to get it working again. Our garbage disposal wasn’t working and we hit the reset button and it works just fine.

I suppose that, in life, there is a distinction with self-inflicted resets and those thrust upon you by outside forces.

Mine was self-inflicted and has been a most pleasant experience with some minor inconveniences and bumps along the way. We have other resets thrust upon us that were life altering and not at all pleasant. You endure those and try to relish in your self-inflicted resets.

The one thing that has changed for me is relying on Facebook for social networking and contact. The entire Washington fiasco and the bitterness on both side of the political spectrum has caused me to shun the Facebook check in that I used to do on an hourly basis.

I tweet and rarely get any feedback which is kind of nice. It’s like shouting in a forrest and not caring if anyone hears you yelling or a tree falling

I suppose that is what happens in a reset.