The Newell Post

To witness history is an extraordinary thing. To live it is even more special. On February 9, 1964 I, and millions of kids like me, got to do both.

Sunday morning started off like many Sunday mornings before it had. I got up for the 10 o’clock High Mass that my classmates and I had to sing in Latin. We sang the Asperges Me, the Kyrie, The Gloria, and the Credo. We listened to the Epistle that was read by one of my classmates and then came the Gospel that was read by Father Gorman. We put our weekly offering that was safely ensconsed in our envelopes into the basket that was manned by one of the ushers. Then we received Communion.

The Mass ended and we were set free to our respective homes and a nice Sunday breakfast. By now the Kennedy Assassination, while still remembered, was no longer something that kept us occupied, The only thing thirteen year olds across the country were thinking about was the Beatles. Tonight we would finally get to see and hear them live on TV.

Nearly twenty years later when John Lennon had been gunned down in front of his apartment building in New York I was taking a graduate education course and I had to explain to my professor why everyone had reacted the way they did to Lennon’s slaying. To put it in a context that I hoped he would understand I said, “It’s as if Shakespeare had been murdered.” He was surprised to learn that John Lennon could have been compared to Shakespeare. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him that Shakespeare couldn’t touch Lennon in the impact that he had on our culture. But back to 1964.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the day except as we got closer to 8 PM. The afternoon was prelude to the greatest moment of American History, well at least my subset of American History. I probably played some football. Maybe I had a hot chocolate at Hoch’s candy store? I may have talked to my friends about the upcoming Ed Sullivan Show anticipating the songs that the Beatles would sing. Whatever I did it was all very agonizing just trying to pass the time until the magic hour of 8 PM.

My brother Michael had a portable record player that operated on batteries, a birthday gift from his girlfriend Margaret. Rather than annoy my mother and father with the repetitive playing of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and “Please Please Me” I sought the quiet and privacy that our front bedroom offered. Finally, the moment I had been waiting for had arrived.

I was on the couch; my parents in their respective chairs. The introduction to the Ed Sullivan Show in the form of electrons beamed onto the big TV tube that was our TV screen hit my retinas and the theme song reached into my ears. Then Mr Sullivan came into view. For the first few moments I was back in the Loews American watching Bye Bye Birdie and Ed Sullivan was introducing Conrad Birdie. How prophetic had that movie been. Here was Ed Sullivan getting ready to introduce the Beatles who would soon make Conrad Birdie look like the opening act in a second rate music hall.

To be honest Ed Sullivan could be a little old fashioned and just a tad slow in getting on with the show. Tonight, however, he out did himself. First, he told us that the Beatles would entertain us two times, now and later in the show. In addition, the Beatles would be on next week and the week after. He then talked some more about how everyone had never witnessed the level of excitement that had occurred this week. Then, he introduced the Beatles and I was proven wrong.

Instead of opening with “I Want To Hold Your Hand” as I had predicted, they began their first set with “All My Loving” but no one was disappointed and nothing was ever quite the same again.

It’s hard not to get emotional when I think back to that night. So much changed afterwards that I can’t begin to describe. The music was exciting. The girls screaming were exciting and how I ever got to sleep that night I will never know.

I do remember school the next morning and thinking that at our weekly music class with Father Toplitsky he would surely have the Beatles to demonstrate one of his lessons. Sadly, I was once again proven to be wrong.

A couple of New Years ago I made a resolution to stop saying Two Thousand Twelve and start using Twenty Twelve. I reasoned that the new millennium had been acknowledged long enough. Here I am, two years later, and writing Twenty Fourteen seems as strange to me as saying Two Thousand Fourteen. I can’t believe that people back in Nineteen Fourteen experienced this same weirdness. Maybe it’s because that whether I say Twenty Fourteen or Two Thousand Fourteen, it still winds up being the year I turn sixty four which is still as hard to write as 64. That’s why I have given up on resolutions. The  calendar is urging me on to New Year’s Evolutions instead.

One of the common criticisms of good science fiction is that the author has not presented the world of the future within an evolutionary context. How did we get to this future world where a Federation creates a star ship capable of interplanetary flight and peopled by men and women who don’t mind dressing alike? The reader is required to suspend his or her dis-belief and just accept that all of the world’s problems have been solved except for those pesky Romulans and Klingons.

I propose that we start to fill in the gaps of this literary oversight. Let the evolution begin! At least mine.

Here are my evolutions for Twenty Fourteen:

1. I will no longer watch MSNBC; CNN; and FOX (this one will be easy to achieve.)

2. I will try to smile more.

3. I will try to worry less about what people think.

4. I really will try to eat less red meat.

5. I will enjoy sporting events without getting outraged that any team I root for could possibly lose.

6. I will appreciate the things that I achieve and not dwell on the things I could not.

7. I will rejoice at being sixty-four and 64 and I will play “When I’m Sixty-Four” on my sixty-fourth birthday.

8. I will make reading The Newell Post fun and not just a “Here he goes again” kinda thing.

9. I will vary my routines so that they no longer seem so routine.

10. I will learn to play “Words Of Love” on the guitar.

I am going to stop at ten. I think they are all doable. I know I will have to remind myself of  them from time to time and re-commit myself to achieving the evolution I deserve. There will be others mostly dealing with my spiritual growth but I am not ready to share them just yet. I am confident, however, that if I focus on these ten, I will be on my way to a better me which is all that we could ask of evolution.

I don’t know about you but Christmas Eve seems to be coming a lot faster than when I was a kid. Back then it seemed that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve was an eternity. Now it seems that once Labor Day comes Christmas Eve is right around the corner. I know that getting older warps your perception of time but it really is getting out of control as far as I’m concerned.

But I guess time going faster does have its benefits. For one thing, it must mean that you are having fun.  It is a proven fact, after all, that bad times or at the least, unpleasant times, never seem to end fast enough. Whether it was waiting for the three o’clock bell to ring when you were in grammar school or the whine of the dentist’s drill as it was burrowing into your jaw to sound its last painful chord, you just couldn’t wait for the clock to fast forward you out of the chair and on your way. But as I have gotten older, I realize that what my Mother used to say when I was back on Leland Avenue in the Bronx, “Don’t be wishing your life away”, was sage advice.

Cherish the slowness of time’s passage. Enjoy the moment. Live in the moment. Christmas Eve is here again so you should drag your feet just a little to keep the New Year in its place. It wont be long until we’ll be struggling with using 2014 instead of 2013. (I don’t know about you but I still haven’t given up on using “19” and we are more than a decade into the new century!)

Now, as to making the season bright, here are my suggestions:

Mix up your Christmas music a bit. Don’t play the same old songs or sing the same old carols.

Watch something else besides White Christmas and A Christmas Story.

Read Bleak House in lieu of A Christmas Carol.

Have a milk shake instead of egg nog. By all means don’t have any whiskey!

While the above recipe for celebrating Christmas Eve may, in fact, make it last longer, it certainly will not make it worthy of remembrance. So, do as you have always done and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas…and a little Jameson while you’re at it.

https://www.createspace.com/3870864

Read about growing up in the wonderful world of The Bronx during the ’60’s and 70’s. Starting on November 22, 1963, Jimmy Newell guides you through life as it used to be and how it forever changed during this post war, baby boomer age.

National Cancer Survivor Day.

Sunday was National Cancer Survivor Day and Eileen and I celebrated it by attending a meeting of survivors. The day started off with a definition of “Survivor”. The broadest would include not just the cancer patient but the patient’s entire team. Family, friends, health care providers make up the team and when I think that Eileen and I each had our own team, the number of our combined team members is staggering. It continues to grow.

The next thing I learned is that I was embarrassed listening to the experiences of the panelists who offered their experiences with cancer and being a survivor. I had it so easy compared to many of the people who spoke and those in the audience who merely nodded their heads in agreement. When I think about what my own wife, Eileen, endured during her treatment and what she continues to endure, I feel kind of silly and ashamed thinking about the times I was feeling sorry for myself.

I also learned a new mantra. Victor not Victim. Again, I was humbled by the few times in my thirteen years of surviving when I felt sorry for myself. I will now try to live up to the concept of being a Victor and leave the Victim behind. I should have learned that lesson from Eileen but I have been known sometimes not to listen.

The other thing I learned is that Eileen and I have a story to tell. We started talking about it before yesterday’s meeting but Eileen got a head start at 3 AM this morning. An idea for a title of of the book that we will write is His Story Her Story: A Couple’s Guide To Survival.

The concept is that we will each write about our own cancer and that of each others’. We will each write from the vantage points of patient and care giver. I was the patient first and I never knew how hard it was being a care giver until it was my turn. Eileen has already started writing her view as a patient and I am not sure how I can match here poignancy and emotion. She gets right to the heart of the matter while I have a tendency to worry more about how I write rather than what I write.

Though we may differ in style and, at times, subject matter, I think we both will accomplish illustrating the importance of family and friends and health care providers who make you feel it is their life’s mission to make your day. I would never have imagined going into an oncologist’s office and being happy to see the people there. It is one of those blessings I mentioned earlier.

My guess is that if you are reading this you are a member of our team in some way. You have either supported Eileen and I directly or, perhaps, you have supported members of our family or one of our friends. You certainly have supported other cancer survivors. It’s a big club.

I love cliches. They’re so pithy and there’s nothing quite like pith when all is said and done. Some cliches sound like Yogiisms which may make us smile or groan but we, nevertheless, get the point of the statement which doesn’t always happen during Presidential debates.

The Jury’s still out. What a great cliche that is! It not only gets to the heart of the matter but instantly we have a mental image of a courtroom with an empty jury box and an anxious defendant and a courtroom full of people awaiting The Verdict. My mind actually creates the jury room in Twelve Angry Men. During the recent Obama-Romney debate I envisioned Henry Fonda urging me to not jump to conclusions, to examine the evidence, to be patient enough to allow the truth to will out.

It’s hard to ignore Henry when he is forceful. Even the cynical Jack Warden, with whom I can really sympathize because he is in a rush to go to a Yankee game, or Lee J. Cobb, the angriest of the Angry Men, cannot convince me that Obama is guilty of doing nothing for the last four years. It is because of this that, in my mind, The Jury Is Still Out. The trouble is Judgement Day is nigh.

My biggest disappointment with Obama is something Romney pointed out during the first debate. Instead of focusing on health care reform, Obama should have been doing more to create jobs and get the country back on its economic feet. I felt that if you get people back to work health insurance for these people would follow. I understood the situation, the historic alignment of Congress in the President’s favor. Obama had the votes to do something that hadn’t been done before and he chose to use this opportunity to create his legacy right out of the chute. Whether he was correct to do this cannot be determined yet. The Jury Is Still Out.

The trouble with undertakings as monumental as trying to fix health care is that these things take time. Obama’s attempting to deal with an issue that Presidents have been dodging for years. How often have we heard that Social Security is the third rail of politics? You touch it and you die. The same is true about Medicare and Medicaid. But it’s time that someone deal with them and Obama did just that and it may cost him re-election but maybe it shouldn’t?

Maybe we all have to come to the realization that important matters cannot be solved over night. Maybe we have to give these things some time? Maybe our ADHD inflicted society must just have a little patience and hope? Just maybe Obama was right. Maybe Obamacare will save Medicare and Medicaid and reform health care. The Jury may still be out but Henry Fonda has convinced me to be patient and to look at the evidence one more time. The Jury may be changing in favor of Obama.

I Believe

I believe in The New York Yankees, Champions of Heaven and Earth

I believe in Derek Jeter, our fallen son, The Clutch Hitter Almighty

I Believe in Mariano, Saver of All Time

I Believe In AROD, but I don’t know why.

I Believe in Cano, Doncha Know, who has been dead for Three Days but will Rise in The Motor City.

I Believe in Andy, who has Testified and been reborn.

I Believe in Granderson, the Grandy Man Can’t, who never saw a baseball he couldn’t swing at and miss.

I Believe in Swisher, the soon to be former Yankee, who Swishes when he hits and when he fails to catch.

I Believe, I really do Believe, The Tiger shall be tamed and the New York Yankees will remain Victorious for ever and ever.

Amen

Just sixteen days from today I have to make a major decision. The outcome of my decision may not amount to much and I know that but I still want to make the right decision. I don’t want to be wrong. At the least I want to be able to say I told you so. The trouble is I haven’t got a clue. The bigger trouble is neither does anyone else.

That is why sixteen days away from the Presidential Election I still don’t know who I will vote for.

The debates have not provided anything new. Both candidates look happy if not smug when the other is speaking as if to imply that the other is so full of bullshit that it’s laughable. I would laugh too were it not for the fact that I don’t think I will be able to move out of the country to find a better place to live.

Neither candidate inspires the confidence that leads me to believe that we will be in a better position in four years. Neither has a plan, or has outlined a plan, that you can even pick apart and attack. All I keep saying at the end of their speeches is Just Gimme Some Truth.

My nephew Chip and my niece Marybeth posted a video on Facebook last week that may have been the most depressing thing I have ever seen. The upshot of the video was that Congress cannot possibly balance the budget without excruciatingly high taxes. The point was made that even if you eliminate all discretionary federal spending, including Homeland Security, all Defense spending, everything but entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, you cannot balance the budget. The reason being that when you add those costs to the interest due on the national debt you already exceed all tax revenues collected.

Let me state that again. The government could shut down except for those entitlement programs and we are still in the red.

Is this the truth? If it is, we are cooked. If it is, there is no way that we can continue as a nation without significantly raising taxes and significantly cutting entitlement programs. Yet, neither candidate is saying this.

One of the things that I have stated time and time again is that, while we have waged two wars that have cost trillions of dollars and that may or may not have secured our safety, there has been no equivalent economic pain at home. Sure, we have had the financial collapse but that had nothing to do directly with the wars. The economy itself was allowed to self-destruct. If you talk to people who were around during World War II, that was not the case back then.

I remember hearing stories about rationing and manufacturers switching over their production lines to war time necessities. Consumer products were for the most part put on hold while companies made items related to waging war. Even civilians had a role in the war. Today, no such effect has been felt by those of us at home.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been the singular responsibility of our servicepeople. Men and women in the military are the sole combatants and have been the only ones, along with their families and friends, who have felt the impact of war.

While these wars were waged, millions went to baseball and football games. Millions went to college, although the cost has really skyrocketed. Millions went to Disney and complained about the long lines. And yes, gasoline and home heating oil prices have gone through the roof. But there were no paper drives; no tire drives; no War Bond sales; what we did have was a lot of finger pointing and bellyaching. Now all I have to say is, Just Gimme Some Truth.

Which candidate will tell me that he has an energy plan like T Boone Pickens who claims that America has twice the barrel equivalent of Saudi Oil in natural gas resources? Which candidate is going to tell me that we all have to feel the pain in order to bring our nation back? Which candidate will tell me that parents have to bear the responsibility to raise their children and to prepare them for school? Which candidate is going to tell me that the prospect of retiring when I am sixty six is a complete and utter fantasy? Which candidate will cut entitlements and raise taxes on all of us?

Just Gimme Some Truth!

Every time I hear “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” I reply, “Then what do we do with this cake?”

Of course we can have our cake and eat it to. We just may have to settle for a smaller slice is all. This should be easy for us all to accept, well maybe Rep. Akin will have some difficulty but then he can just squeeze away and voila! No more cake.

 Would that we all had this physiological capability, to make things disappear. I really could have used this Physiological Delete Button or as I like to call it “PDB” when I was listening to the Jet game while I was driving home from the Yankee game Saturday night. How great would it be to be able to delete unpleasant memories or events and their effects? It is certainly an ability that R hopes we have.

I mean all the campaign funds in the world wont be as effective in modifying our collective memories as the PDB. Hopefully for R, we will forget that we actually had a surplus of tax dollars before W set out looking for WMDs in the wrong country. It will, of course,  be useful for us to forget that the financial mess that has been lingering for five years actually started the year before O was elected. But then O has some use for the PDB, too.

After all, O swept us all off our feet with his suave demeanor and Clintonesque rhetoric. I am a sucker for a good speech but even I am getting a little bit suspicious of these guys who just  talk a good game. I mean come on do something. Electrify us with ideas not just words. O had every opportunity to propose job programs and to set lofty goals that just might have caught on but instead we have Obama Care and no one is really sure what that will mean for any of us.

O cannot even take on the NRA even after the terrible acts of violence that have stunned us all to sleep while would be gun enthusiasts buy six thousand rounds online. But then R hasn’t said that much either.

R does have a great smile, though, doesn’t he? I laugh when I hear women (you know who you are) say that R is good looking. He looks like an alien, not the undocumented variety but the HG Wells, Alien Nation type. He really creeps me out and once he actually comes out with a plan I will then consider his politics but for now I guess we have to just listen to Rep Ryan Rage Against the Constitutional Machine to know what the issues are.