The Newell Post

Listening to a little Cat Stevens this morning, I was instantly  brought back to 1261 Leland Avenue on a typical summer’s Saturday morning. Feeling a little “tired” from the night before, it would not be uncommon to grab my camera and whatever book I was reading at the time and head downtown.

Walking over to the Parkchester station of the 6 train on a hot Saturday afternoon was glorious. There was no air conditioned subway to take me to 59th Street, but it was glorious nonetheless.

I used to love to look north from the subway platform and see the beautiful Bronx layed out in all its splendor. Even the rumble of the approaching train could not destroy the image.

The train was not nearly as crowded as the day before when daily commuters made their way to midtown or Wall Street. In those days we merely said we were going Downtown. After all, The Bronx was up and the Battery was down.

Part of my recollection to that typical Saturday morning circa 1970 included the books that I would be reading. No murder mystery. No Tom Clancy or Nelson DeMille. If JK Rowling had written a book, I hadn’t heard of it back then.

No, I was reading Herman Hesse, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and anybody who would make me wonder about life and the universe.

My single lens reflex camera was loaded with KodaChrome or KodaColor (KodaColour for my English cousins). Digital only applied to the finger that would activate the shutter.

The big decision of the day was weather to transfer to the 4 or 5 express at 125th street or to stay on the 6. Either way, I would disembark at 59th Street.

As you got to the top of the stairs to the street level of 59th Street, you were first struck by the heat. Even though the subway and the underground passages getting to the street were an inferno, somehow, when you got above ground and onto the sidewalk, it seemed even hotter.

The only way to beat this heat was to head west and go to Central Park.

I always entered on the Central Park South end of the Park and had a very defined route. It would take me over hills and around softball fields and to the Bethesda Fountain. The fountain was beautiful but it was the  terrace in front of it that was the attraction in those days.

Hundreds of frisbees would be flung, simultaneously it would seem, by scores of like minded people. No one worried about losing their frisbee, and no one criticized errant flingers.

I would continue my walk after a few minutes.

Literary Walk was a beautiful place to go. Not that I was a big fan of Robert Burns or Sir Walter Scott, but because it was a beautiful tree-lined path and a welcomed relief from the sun. However, it was the pick up musicians that you would meet along the way that made it the place to be.

There were several artists that would meet routinely on Saturday afternoons and they would play much of the music of the day. Free concerts and in such a beautiful setting were hard to ignore.

Somewhere I have pictures of these events but today they are only memories.

When I think back to living in New York, Central Park was as important to me as Yankee Stadium and Leland Avenue. Especially on a hot summer’s day.

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, folk lore 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 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-tblsp 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.

The Republican members of Congress should first try to apply the cafeteria approach to health insurance, that they are trying to sell to the American People, on the cable companies first.

I mean, why should I pay for channels that don’t interest me. Let me choose from the available channels and create my own plan. Now, that may sound great for cable TV customers but it is a terrible health insurance plan.

You know, the one thing a good con artist has to be is consistent. One of the many anti-immigrant sentiments that is espoused is that many are unlicensed and uninsured when they drive. You get into an accident with one of these people and you have no recourse to collect damages or even get you fender fixed.

You get screwed when drivers drive without insurance.

You get screwed when people go to the emergency room without health insurance.

So the first act of destroying the Administrative State is to give people the freedom to screw us all over.

You know what will happen? It’s the same thing that happens with car insurance. Those who do obtain insurance have to pay the freight for those who don’t. Insured drivers have to suffer their own monetary loss when injured and those who have health insurance will pay higher premiums to cover hospital and medical costs that have to be recouped by a failing health care finance system, not to mention higher co-pays and higher deductibles.

The real solution to he health care insurance crisis?

I want the same plan that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell has.

I like to start Saturdays off with an episode or two of The Adventures Of Superman. This is the original TV series staring George Reeves (the best Superman and, more importantly, the best Clark Kent.)

Back in East Quogue it was common for me to get up early, brew a pot of coffee, and head downstairs to my TV/Train room to watch Superman without disturbing my sleeping household. After watching Superman I would go to the trains and run the trains that I began acquiring on Leland Avenue back in the early sixties.

There’s some psychology going on there I am quite sure.

The first episodes of Superman were filmed in 1951 but did not air until 1952. No HDTV back then, most had to settle for a nine inch black and white TV.

Harry Truman was still our President. The Soviet Union was our major international threat. The H Bomb was about to be tested for the first time.

I am quite sure that if you were to poll Americans at the time a fair amount of anxiety and fear would be common to the citizenry.

In addition to the Soviets and H Bombs, race relations had not progressed; polio was a dreaded disease; and the Korean War was raging. The only difference is that peopler didn’t have to watch it on TV 24/7 like we do today.

Despite all this, people remember this time as the beginning of Happy Days. Baby Boomers were being born; suburbia was on the rise; and the glorious post war era was in full swing.

I suppose that is why I resort to Superman and Lionel trains on Saturday mornings.

It’s always nice to do  a little time traveling on a quiet Saturday morning. It sure beats watching Fox News or MSNBC.

I am sure that anyone who grew up in an Irish American family can relate to the title of this blog. The Little Faker in most Irish households was a baby. The Little Faker was an appellation of  love and affection, usually bestowed when the grandfather or grandmother was bouncing the little one on their knee.

Today, the Little Faker, can be best assigned to the President.

Before I go into yesterday’s news conference, let me just state that I know most of Trump’s supporters are not mean spirited xenophobes or homophobes. I am sure that many who voted for him did so out of exasperation with the Democrats in particular and Washington as a whole.

The President resonated with many people who were,frankly, tired of all the bullshit that came out of Washington. I was one of these people, although I did not vote for Trump. I would have voted for Jeb Bush or another reasonable Republican if given the chance but that was not to be.

Now, watching the President perform yesterday was very scary.

If you voted for Trump, you should be scared too.

Once the election had been won I though Trump would tone it down. For a while it seemed that he had. He met with Obama and spoke well of the meeting and the President. He even seemed to recant the “Lock Her Up” promise. But the pre-election Donald soon returned.

Executive Orders were signed and the hypocritical Democrats screamed. I mean, Obama was signing them left and further left as well as commuting the sentences of more prisoners than any President before him. He was the President and he had the right to do what he did. To cry foul at Trump doing the same thing was disingenuous.

However, it was the subject and the poorly executed nature of one EO that starts the Little Faker on his decline.

Instead of admitting that his Immigration Executive Order was not as precisely crafted as it should have been, leaving Green Card holders, for example, in a pickle, Trump blamed the Court who stayed the order. He then went on to point out that this court had more decisions overturned than any other appellate court. He was faking.

During his press conference he repeatedly chastised the press for creating fake news.

He proclaimed that all of the news about Russia was fake.

He proclaimed that Flynn, of the “Lock Her Up” chant leader fame, was fired because of what he told Vice President Pence. (For some reason Trump never explained why he didn’t set the VP straight and waited two weeks to act.)

He proclaimed that he won the election by the greatest electoral college vote margin since Reagan.

He proclaimed that the press had a lower approval rating than Congress.

He even proclaimed that drugs are cheaper than candy.

Fake Fake Fake Fake Fake

But perhaps the most bizarre moment came when the reporter, April Ryan, an African American woman, asked the President if he were going to meet with the  CBC. The President looked lost for a moment but Ms. Ryan bailed him out and stated that the CBC was the Congressional Black Caucus.

Trump, a little flustered, stated that there was supposed to be a meeting set but that he never heard anything more about it (fake) and asked Ms. Ryan if she would set the meeting up.

It was hysterical to see. It was like Seinfeld asking the Chinese mailman where the really good Chinese restaurant was. Of course in Seinfeld’s case he didn’t know that the mailman was Chinese and it was satirizing the political correctness overload that we have seen. Trump, however, was serious. I guess he doesn’t know too many black people?

We have not even endured a full month of the Trump presidency. Will he be able to deliver a new health insurance system to replace Obamacare? Will a new income tax initiative be achieved? Will the infrastructure be addressed? Will The Wall be built?

These and many similar questions are hanging out there like a big matzoh ball.

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I wasn’t a Flower Power People or Person but I did come of age in the 1960’s. I was, however, A Flower Power People Sympathizer if not a card-carrying Flower Power Person.

I believed in peace and listened to rock and roll, and although I wasn’t much for drugs and the sexual revolution train left while I was still on the station platform I, nevertheless, miss the Flower Power People and I think we should look for them.

No period, not ever our own, was a volatile and divisive as the late 1960’s. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The war in Viet Nam was raging. And our cities were burning. Yet, in the face of all this turmoil, young people waged a battle against despair and hopelessness by just turning their backs to the mainstream.

Sure, some said they tuning in, turning on, and dropping out, but, in reality, the seeds of revolution were sown and the revolutionaries weren’t limited to Flower Power People but they quickly became their symbol especially in the Summer of Love, 1967

Anti-war protests soon took the place of love-ins, however, and The Happening was moved to the streets of Washington, DC. But it would be a mistake to view this as a political revolution only. More importantly, the revolution was a conscious decision to think differently. That is what Flower Power was all about.

Long before Apple made it their mantra, young people began to think different and question all that prior generations had taken for granted. Mistaken by the Greatest Generation as a slap in the face to American values, young people were merely looking at what had transpired in their lifetime and saw the need for a change.

After all, they saw the bold and charismatic JFK gunned down in the streets of Dallas. That was the beginning of the end to the promise of the American Century. And it only got worse as these Baby Boomers grew up. They weren’t going to fall for any of the nonsense that politicians were spewing and rejected both political parties, ironically creating the opportunity for the hated Richard Nixon to win the 1968 Presidential election. The war continued. Race relations got worse. Ultimately, the middle class was set on a course of destruction, never to return to the halcyon days of the post war.

As I write this, President Trump, not a month into his presidency, was forced to fire, albeit a little late, his National Security Advisor and it looks like Trump’s nominee for the Secretary of Labor will be withdrawing his name for consideration. Will Trump continue to flounder and blame everything on the media? He certainly has a long way to make America as great as it had been last year.

We need the Flower People, or at least an updated rendition, to remind us of our values.

Americans love people. We defend them wherever they are in harms way. We want them to share in our freedom. That is our most treasured commodity. Why then do some want to limit freedom to Americans only?

The Birthers have become the America FIRSTERS.

Peace baby!

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 listening 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 red head 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 the 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.

I remember as a kid in grammar school when current events was a big topic for us. Sister Margaret always started our eighth grade day off with a discussion of Viet Nam and Madame Nhu, the Dragon Lady. It seemed that to be a good citizen of America you had to know about current events. Today, of course, the reverse is true.

Although last year I swore off the polarizing networks of Fox News and MSNBC, the presidential election cycle drew me back like the train wreck it really was. Unfortunately, I have not been able to let go and continue to drop in every night, even if it’s for only a few minutes per channel. However, I do have a way of mitigating the effects of this inability to look away.

Homeland on Showtime is the perfect alternative to the news.

I am a late comer to the series but have been catching up. I am not in the current season as yet so don’t spoil it for me.

The comfort I get from watching CIA operatives kill people in foreign countries is that it makes our own country look so much better.  Whereas the news channels here go out of their way to highlight the internal terror of American life; cop shootings, parents killing kids, and the general hatred people have for each other, Homeland focuses on problems we never experience.

It’s like going on Space Mountain. You get the same thrill and angst as you do watching the news but Homeland lets you get off at the end and switch to The Big Bang Theory.

You might think I advocate burying your head in the sand as opposed to remaining a informed citizen but I just moved to Florida. I have no intention of burying my head in the sand, but I am resolved to get my  butt as close to the sand as possible .

Well, here I am, finally in Florida. Having survived the last six tumultuous months, I am just getting my Florida Face which is nothing like my NYC Subway Face.

I thought that our first week here in the Sunshine State would seem more like a vacation than a major life changing event but visiting the construction site of our new home kind of added the sense of permanency to our location. It did not come without some remorse.

Living in our EQ house for over thirty years, it was not easy closing the door to that life and setting out on a new life. We left so many friends and family members behind and, although our kids will be making their way down here for various visits and we will return to them quite often, the loss of the spontaneous drop in is a poignant reminder of just how far we have traveled. The first thing I planned was the Christmas trip for my kids and dogs.  I have to see the dogs.

But did I mention that the weather has been spectacular?

We did have a chill last night as we came out of the restaurant. The temperature dipped down to 75 degrees. Today, we expect some rain but being a full sports day with the Rangers and the NFL championship games, let it rain.

I was spared the inauguration as I had to meet with the Community Center people here in our temporary residence to go over the dos and don’t of gated community living.

We haven’t been to the beach yet as we are just getting used to our local environs and packed our beach chairs in the POD. New beach chairs are on the agenda for the coming week.

Also on the agenda is a trip to the East Coast to see my sisters and their kids. Maybe a visit to Archie’s?

Oh well, one day at a time.

A Bronx Boy’s Tale, by Jimmy Newell One of my favourite things to do while I walk around the city is trying to imagine how was like to live in New York in the past; trying to imagine the Fift…

Source: When Life Was Good