The Newell Post

As a kid I used to hate this time of year. It was still summer and I was still on vacation but you knew it was going fast and, before long, you would be going back to school. I used to really hate the first few days of school because school had that hot, musty, new-books smell. I am getting the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.

It was always around this time that you would start to hear the Robert Hall jingle, “School bells ring and, children sing. It’s back to Robert Hall again” and so on. It was on TV and every radio station. It was the 50’s version of Staples playing “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, “except I never laughed at the Robert Hall ad.

Now I hate how it has already started to get darker early. I am barely home from work and the sun has already set. Ok, I do get home late but still, taking an outdoor shower at twilight isn’t that nice. Just another reminder of the waning of summertime. There was a time when I didn’t mind going back to school, though.

When I was a teacher I was ready to go back to school right after the Fourth of July weekend. Teaching at St. Vito’s was a terrific experience and I hated when school was out of session. Ok, I might have missed the after school sessions at the Ground Round but I missed teaching too. Back then the first day of the school year was New Year’s Day. I might have said Happy New Year to my kids but who remembers?

Perhaps the worse thing about this time of year is knowing that the election is coming and that means we will be bombarded with bellowing, billowing, bombastic bullshit from both the left and the right. I really hope they don’t over do it with the lies and threats and predictions of doom and gloom if the other guy wins. I’m done with both of them.

Yesterday I was reading about O and how he has an issue with not being able to show gratitude and appreciation to campaign workers. It’s even a problem for him to thank donors. Is this guy a child of the Entitlement Generation? Then you have R who supports For Profit colleges because they are on his donor list but he doesn’t mention that these same colleges are ripping off our Vets as well as other students. So, I haven’t a clue as to whom I will vote for.

But just as the Lord Taketh, He also Giveth because just as the summer starts to end, professional football starts to begin. What better way to end your days of summer fun than by reading about the New York Jets beating the crap out of each other? I mean, that’s how you get to the Super Bowl isn’t it? The Jets may not have two guys that can catch a pass but they can duke it out with the best of ‘em. I wonder where Tebow was when the fracas broke out?

The baseball playoffs will also be coming up and, though, the Yankees have not been playing all that well, I still have high hopes that we will once again vie for another World Series title. The Autumn Classic! I always thought that was a Bronx Entitlement Program.

I have some kind of sinus thing going on. I have a splitting headache and it seems to be emanating from my sinuses. Wishing to alleviate my suffering, I went to a Walgreens near where I work. I go to the appropriate aisle for sinus medications and select the product that will give me some relief. Except, it wasn’t the product. It was a card with a picture of the product.

You see, Crankers use this and similar medications to manufacture meth. You know what meth is? It is the drug of choice for people who want to stay high for days on end and no longer care that their hair falls out to say nothing of their teeth. So, because of these cretins, I have to take this card with the picture of my selected sinus medication back to the counter where the real thing is securely kept out of the reach of nasal sufferers.

In order to obtain the medication I had to show my drivers license. I asked if I had to take my shoes off too. The clerk was not amused. But this little interlude got me thinking. Why do we have to put up with so much bullshit because of the morons who are doing bad things? Why do we have to succumb to evil?

Think about all the things we have to do in order to live in what we call a civilization. You know there are areas where you just shouldn’t walk alone at night. You probably should stay off the subways after 1 AM. My own rule is don’t ride the subway after the evening rush but that’s me. I go to a Yankee game and I have to take off my Yankee cap to show I don’t have any explosives hidden under my interlocking NY. I have to have my cell phone operational to show that I am not using it for an illegal purpose.

Then, I go to get a Blue Moon and I have to show that I am of legal age to purchase it. Ok, the first time that happened I was flattered, but come on! What’s going on here?

Here are some other inanities that we have to endure because of the evil people in the world:

We have to take off our shoes and submit to full body scans at the airport.

We have to put up with the snotty TSA personnel after they make us take off our shoes.

We have to change our passwords to various sites every other week (it seems).

We can’t go to a stinking movie without worrying that some nut job is going to pull out an automatic weapon. (I don’t know about you but I will wait until the new Batman movie comes out on Netflix.)

We can’t go to a sporting even without worrying about drunken idiots attacking us for wearing the wrong shirt or cap.

We can’t go just about anywhere without being recorded or videoed or otherwise having our privacy invaded.

We can’t drive our car without being scanned or under surveillance for DWI, driving unseatbelted, or running a red light or maybe driving an unregistered car without insurance.

I am sure you can add to this list because new invasions or forced accommodations to evil are added every day.

The real trouble is we really don’t mind. It is more important to us to enjoy the semblance of security and personal safety than to worry about surrendering personal liberties. We are only too happy to have ourselves scanned and patted down so that we can fly the friendly skies. We don’t mind surveillance cameras in department stores because we understand the need to watch for shop lifters. We give in because we understand there is evil out there and someone has to be on the lookout for it. But think about the costs that we have to absorb because of evil people.

I can understand why gun owners are angry when they have to deal with restrictions and background checks but they have to put up with it because of those who do evil with guns. There really is no choice in the matter.

America is the most ‘penalized’ country in the world. We imprison a greater number of our citizens than just about anywhere in the world. That cost is a major burden on our nation. It is estimated that eighty five percent of those incarcerated are in prison because of drug related offenses, either selling or committing another crime while under the influence or trying to get money to be under the influence. The War Against Drugs has been a failure.

Because we spend so much money on capturing, prosecuting, and imprisoning drug users, there is very little left for treatment programs. Maybe it is time to rethink this strategy?

I don’t know what the answer is, I only know that, like most Americans, I am sick and tired of having to adapt to evil. I want to progress and evolve to a higher level of living but I am dragged down by those who resort to a life of evil and this is just here in the good old USA.

I would like to see the Congressional Budget Office develop an Evil Index that would cost out what our nation spends on fighting evil. I am just thinking that we would have a twenty first century country were it not for bad people and the things they do.

Make the world a better place.

Nearly a week has gone by since the terrible tragedy that took place in Aurora, Colorado. It is still hard to grasp the depth of the tragedy even as we try to make some sense of why these acts occur in the first place. The why, we will never know. We never do when lunatics act out. The how, well, that’s another story. We always know how.

A guy buys a gun. Then he buys 6000 rounds of ammunition, online no less, that’s how!

We live in a society that taxes everything we do. You rent a car, tax. Get a hotel room, tax. Buy a bottle of whiskey, tax. Fill your car up with unleaded regular, tax. Buy a pack of Luckys, big tax. Buy a Big Gulp Coke in New York City, FORBIDDEN!!!!

But you can buy all the armor piercing ammo you want and there is no special tax on that.

Look, I understand there are responsible gun owners just like there are responsible drivers. The difference being is that it is not as easy to get a driver’s license as it is to get an AK-47. To get a driver’s license, you must pass a written test, pass a road test to make sure you can actually handle the deadly weapon that you will be driving, have your picture taken, register your car, get car insurance, oh yeah, and pay for the privilege of driving. I don’t know if you have anything to do to buy a gun, except show up and buy one at a gun show. Maybe they have a three day waiting period but that is the most inconvenience that you will have to endure and, if you listen to the NRA, even that is too damn much.

Everyone points to the Second Amendment right to own and bear arms. Now, even if our founding fathers really did want citizens to be able to carry weapons to put down insurrections or to be able to revolt if the government got out of control, I don’t think we should be held hostage to a view that was clearly expressed for a society much different than our own.

Surely the framers of our Constitution would not advocate the right of seventeen year olds to carry a gun to a neighborhood basketball game or a graduate student to carry an automatic weapon to a midnight movie.

The old refrain, “If you criminalize gun ownership, then only criminals will own guns,” which is what Sarah Palin was hiding behind when she uttered, “Bad guys don’t follow laws,” just is not good enough reason to stand pat on gun control. Oh, by the way, a big thank you to John McCain for giving this one a platform, will she ever go away?

The fact that gun permit applications doubled in the state of Colorado immediately after the midnight massacre is extremely disturbing. Do people really think that if they carry a gun they will be safer? It seems to me that more guns will only make for more deaths. Do we really want to see people in the subway carrying heat? How about on the LIE? I just don’t think that would be a good idea.

It seems to me that there is a rational approach to gun regulation but I guess it requires people to be rational first.

Summer In The City

There was a time when I could care less about getting away on vacation during the summer. New York was the only place I wanted to be. Back in the late sixties and early seventies just going to Central Park on a Saturday afternoon was as much vacation as I needed.

In fact we often went down to the park on Friday nights. I say we because, while I would have no problem of negotiating Central Park and its hidden environs on a Saturday afternoon, Mrs Newell raised no stupid children who would go into the Park at night without a few of his well chosen friends. Of course on many a sultry Friday night it was not uncommon for a group of us to take the IRT Number 6 down to 59^th Street and head over to our favorite liquor store on Sixth Avenue.

Sixth Avenue Liquors had the finest selection of imported and domestic wines which we summarily ignored. Fortunately for our well developed palates there was a varied selection of fine grape and strawberry wines. But nothing could compare with the finest of wines, The Nectar of The Gods, Bali Hai. Just saying the name brings me back to a particularly eventful Friday evening in July of 1971. Our Party of four, having bought our half pint bottles, made its way up Sixth Avenue towards the outskirts of Central Park when all of a sudden there was a sudden downpour. Proceeding to the Park was no longer an option and we were forced to ad lib on the fly and select a new destination. Fortunately the St Moritz hotel had a lovely sidewalk café with a protective awning.

As my comrades and I selected one of the many vacated tables we surmised that this location would only do for the briefest of interludes. While my friends and I could hoi polloi with the best of them, it would not take Management long to discover that we were imbibing beverages not included on their rather extensive wine list. They would, no doubt, see through our veil of refinement and boot us the hell out of there. Yet, it was not Management who encouraged our departure.

One of our group had been a wee bit too egalitarian and had invited a denizen of the Park, or some other outside abode, to join us in our Friday night soiree. This surely would attract attention so we made quick our departure but not before swilling our last drops of Bali Hai. Now where would we go?

Although it had stopped raining, the Park was no longer an attractive destination. The area that always proved an interesting hang out was not readily accessible and involved walking up hills and trekking through dales which would be under water this evening. Therefore, in defiance of Horace Greeley’s admonition, we headed east.

It was not long before we found ourselves under the Manhattan tower of the Queensboro, or if you prefer, the 59^th Street Bridge. Whatever you call it, you would not believe what you would have seen there.

I was never at the corners of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco but, surely, where I was now was the east coast equivalent. There were bikers. There were hippies. There were freaks of every denomination and inclination. I was sure someone had slipped something into my Bali Hai. I got a good indication of where we were when I approached what looked like a sidewalk café but of somewhat less reputable standing than our previous bistro. They served nothing but fruit juice. This led me to believe that you could purchase a variety of intoxicants none of which contained alcohol or any other legal ingredients.

It would have been a terrific place to people-watch were it not for the fact that you really didn’t want to get caught looking at anyone lest they kill you. It may have been the era of Peace and Love but that was only a slogan for this crowd. Nevertheless, we stayed for quite a while and even went back on a few occasions later that summer. But on this night, having had enough of Woodstock without the mud, we made our way to our regular late night haunt, Child’s for breakfast before our subway back to the Bronx.  We had our eggs and coffee and set off to the 59^th Street subway station and boarded our waiting number six IRT.

I have been hearing quite a bit about the disparity in fund raising for this year’s election between the Republican and Democratic parties. A continuing theme in these discussions is the role of Citizens United. This refers to a Supreme Court decision that ruled that independent corporations could not be limited by campaign finance laws limiting expenditures and donations.

In some ways this decision is consistent with other court rulings where in corporations are considered persons in terms of possessing the same fundamental right of due process. This legal fiction gives corporations the protection of law that individual citizens possess. Under this theory and the interpretation of its application by the Court, groups like Citizen United cannot have their free speech infringed upon and donating money is what speaks the loudest in presidential campaigning.

Because of this ruling, there is a new term being bandied about on the talking head channels, Dark Money. Of course the Democrats who are being out donated and out spent are up in arms, hence the moniker, Dark Money. They didn’t have any problems when their donors were piling it on. Nevertheless, I do think we have something to worry about.

Americans don’t read. In fact, as a nation, we probably devote more time to Jerry Springer than reading a newspaper whether on line or in print. So, TV is where we get convinced. Having the most money to spend on TV ads and campaigns is a decided advantage but that’s not the problem. Who is making sure that what is broadcast over the federal air waves is the truth. Should money give you the right to lie on a grand scale?

The benefit of one on one debates is that both candidates are there to defend themselves. Issue ads that attack an idea or campaign ads that attack a candidate are one sided, often vitriolic attacks. Made to smack the viewer in the heart of their emotion, TV ads create truth even where it does not exist. Just ask John McCain.

The trouble in partisan politics isn’t that you have two parties who fundamentally disagree with each other but rather, as displayed time and time again in Congress, you have two parties that would rather lose than let the other party win. The term statesman is nowhere to be found in Washington DC. So what’s a voter to do?

Well, earlier in the year I urged you all to vote for yourself. It still isn’t a bad idea. It would be great if enough politicians felt the wrath of the voter but they would have to care about us first. They don’t care about us only our $$$$. If you don’t have $$$$, you are SOL. Because politicians have to raise thousands of dollars a day, they have no time to listen to us. They may regret that they can’t listen to us but no one seems willing to risk losing an election in order to change the system.

We don’t have enough money to afford the Free Speech that our founding fathers provided us in the Bill of Rights.

Posted by The Newell Post at 11:29 AM 0 comments

My Catholic Church has endeavored to hide behind the concept of a Statute of Limitations in its defense against suits brought by victims of sexual abuse at the hands of its priests. This embarrasses me to no end and adds to the despair that all Catholics share regarding the sexual atrocities that were allowed covered up and enabled by Church leadership.

I do not remember reading about a Statute of Limitations in the Baltimore Catechism but I do remember reading about the concept of mortal sin. It seems to me that, if the Church continues to hide behind legal technicalities in order to avoid bankrupting the Church this will only add to the number of mortal sins that have been committed by our Church leaders. Catholics must take back the Church from these people who would destroy it.

David Brooks is an excellent op-ed columnist for the New York Times. His essays are always thought provoking and most often enlightening. They are never polemics trashing one political party or the other or one candidate or the other. A recent column was entitled The Great Divorce. At first I thought he was referencing the novel by CS Lewis but rather than addressing the issue of life after death as Lewis’ work had done, Brooks wrote of the ever expanding gap between the two social castes in twenty first century America.

I have been saying for years that when I was a mail clerk for P. Lorillard Corp back in the late ‘60’s early ‘70’s when I was making about five thousand dollars a year that the CEO of Lorillard was probably making at most a hundred grand maybe two hundred. Certainly he was not making a million. After all in 1968 Mickey Mantle was only making a hundred grand and Joe Namath cashed in at four hundred grand. The point being that the gap between me, the lowest paid employee in the company, and the CEO was only about ninety five G’s or one hundred and ninety five G’s. Today, that gap would be measured in the millions.

But, Brooks’ article was not focused on the income and wealth gap but the cultural gap that divides us. The stimulus for his article was a book by Charles Murray, ‘Coming Apart.’ In it Murray describes that the gap that we have most recently been focused on, that being the One Percenters versus the Ninety Nine Percenters does not tell the tale. The real gap is between the Top Twenty and Bottom Thirty.

Certainly focusing on the One Percenters is a more attractive strategy as very few of us are members of that group. Blaming them for all our problems and for the problems of the poor and the uneducated takes some of the heat off of us. It’s not our fault that so many people have fallen through society’s cracks. Certainly the Bottom Thirty can blame them, and anybody else for that matter, for their lowly fate. The Ninety Nine has found absolution in the One Percent. No need for repentance. No need to change. No need to do anything at all except point the finger of blame.

When it comes to the Twenty Percenters, however, many of us can no longer hide behind the very rich. More importantly, neither can the Lower Thirty. Poverty can be blamed for a lot of things. The fact is we have always had a poor class in this country and while there have always been social issues affecting the poorest including substance abuse and violence, (just watch Gangs of New York on Netflix to illustrate this), it is only in our recent history that we have seen such a widespread rejection of traditional social and moral values among the poor.

A familiar vignette that I have witnessed on numerous occasions is a mother walking her toddler on a cold winter’s day on a Brooklyn avenue. The mother is not holding the child’s hand, the child has no gloves or mittens on, and the mother is otherwise

preoccupied with her cell phone conversation. I just look and think that she has money for a phone and a phone plan but no money for gloves for her child?

On another occasion, a few years ago, I was a member of our school board and I called the Superintendent just to check in. It was another cold winter’s day and the Superintendent was out of the building. About an hour later she called me back and explained why she was out of the building. One of the children appeared on the school’s doorsteps without a coat. She asked the child why she didn’t have a coat on and was told that she did not have one. The Superintendent brought the child into the building and immediately went out and bought the child a coat. This is a touching and terrific story about a great lady but I include it hear to ask where were the parent’s of that child?

I can understand that a family could lack the resources to buy clothes but in this day and age all they would have to do is to ask.

On another day, in the spring this time, I observed a parent smoking a joint in his car while his kid played little league baseball with my son. Sorry, I don’t care how poor you are, how uneducated you are, or what kind of a sad sack life you had as a kid, stand up and be a man. Be a parent. Hock the phone, get some mittens. Go to a church, ask for help. Get your ass out of the car and your head out of your ass and go watch your kid play baseball!

The biggest disappointment I have in our President goes back to his inaugural address. On that day in 2009 he declared that ‘The Era of Responsibility’ had arrived. I took this to mean that parents would be held accountable for the actions of their children much as Wall Street Executives would be for their financial actions. Instead, we have gotten the same bull shit that it is the schools and ineffective teachers who are to blame for the academic failures of our children. No parent is ever put on notice for sending their child ill prepared for school. Talk to teachers and find out if kids arrive at school with homework done or if the parents have ever read to their children. For the Top Twenty parents the answers to these questions would in all likelihood be yes. For the Bottom Thirty, probably no is the more common response.

Growing up in the Bronx in what I had always thought of as a middle class lifestyle, all of my friends had parents who worked, who struggled to put us through Catholic Schools, who made sure we went to school prepared, who made sure we had warm and clean if not brand new clothes and who taught us how to interact with people. The fact is we were not middle class economically. Most of us lived in small apartments. Some of us had a phone. Some families had a car. But all had middle class values. Work hard, fly right and get a good education.

In education today we keep hearing about “First Generation” students. These are students who are the first in their family to go to college. In my neighborhood, we were First Generation high school students. The fact that out parents had not benefited from a formal education beyond the eighth grade did not prevent them from being good parents. The fact that our parents did not make more than ten thousand dollars a year did not prevent them from enriching our lives in every way. Perhaps the greatest thing they did for us was to show us how to be a parent with or without money.

This is what really made them The Greatest Generation and it’s their values that need to be adopted and adhered to.

 (Note: This was written in April but baseball fans might enjoy it, nonetheless.)

This week is opening day for major league baseball. I wrote ‘week’ because Major League Baseball, the organization as opposed to the game, determined that there should be a number of opening days. For example, there was the opening day for the Mariners and A’s which occurred last week in Japan. Then, last night was opening ‘Day’ (more irony) for the Cardinals and Marlins because the Marlins have this new ballpark requiring its own opening day. Then of course we have opening days on Thursday and Friday. Life used to be simpler and so was baseball so I guess we have to get over it. What some baseball fans can’t or refuse to get over is the designated hitter or DH. To them I say, get over it.

The DH came to the American League back in the ‘70s when baseball was dying. Football became king and attendance at baseball games was dropping. The Yankees no longer had competitive teams and pitching was dominant. Since only the true purist likes watching grass grow or pitching duels as they are more commonly called, the AL initiated the DH at the same time when both leagues lowered the pitching mound to give some advantage to hitters. No one had thought about steroids at this time. The NL did not want the DH and if you listen to baseball analysts or fans of the NL you would think that the DH has ruined baseball.

Forget for the moment that at the time that the DH came into the AL that the NL was putting in Astro Turf all through the league, and in my view, this had a greater, negative impact on the game than the DH ever did. Even the NL has walked away from artificial turf but they still hold true to their anti DH bias. The thought is that the DH takes all the strategy out of the game, leaving the manager with nothing to do. They are right of course.

There is nothing like being at a NL game when in the fourth inning in one of those white knuckle, pitcher’s duels we finally have a rally as the number eight hitter draws a walk. The stage is set. The score is 0-0, bottom of the fourth, man on first, and no out. The number nine hitter, the pitcher, is in the on deck circle. He wipes some pine tar on his bat, kicks off the weight that he used to make his bat seem lighter when he gets up, and he approaches the batter’s box. What will he do? What will happen next? I am on the edge of my seat trying to anticipate what the manager will call here. What happens next is simply amazing.

The pitcher looks over to first just daring the base runner to take off. He toes the rubber and pitches from the stretch. WAIT, IT’s A PITCHOUT! What a sneaky bastard! He wanted to see if the batter would tip his hand while at the same time trying to catch the base runner in a preemptive pickoff. Man, can it get better than this?

Well, the batter did not tip his hand because he, being a pitcher himself, knows all the tricks of the game. Then, with the second pitch on its way, the batter/pitcher squares to bunt! I couldn’t believe my eyes what a call that was! Now, with the ball dribbling towards the first baseman the base runner scampers all the way to second as the pitcher/batter successfully returns to the dugout being high fived and backslapped all the way in. Baseball is such a cool game. But it gets better.

The next batter hits a hard grounder to the second baseman giving the base runner the opportunity to run to third. Now there are two out and the runner is stranded after the next batter strikes out looking. It was exciting and ever so close to seeing a run but the pitcher’s duel continues.

Then in the seventh inning and our pitcher who so expertly executed the bunt is now facing the heart of the order but there is a problem. His pitch count is up to 80 and he just doesn’t have the same zip on his 85 MPH fastball. What do you think the manager will do? I was going over this very question in my mind and I was coming up empty. It’s a perplexing problem that only the most seasoned strategist could solve.

Just when you thought there was nothing that could be done, the manager hops out of the dugout and heads for the home plate umpire. What IS he doing? He talks to the ump for a minute at most and then heads to the pitcher’s mound. He takes the ball from the pitcher and pats him on the ass. I’m making no judgments. Then he motions to the bull pen for a lefty, a crafty lefty no doubt because this is one crafty manager. But wait! What else is he doing? He’s bringing in a new first baseman! The DOUBLE SWITCH! Oh MAN! This is BASEBALL BABY!

You see, the original pitcher is due to lead off while the original first baseman was the last man up in the previous inning. So, by bringing in two players at the same time the new pitcher will take the place of the old first baseman in the batting order thereby taking the pitcher out of the lead off spot next inning and substituting the new first baseman in his stead.

This is unbelievable. I always tell my kids that you never know what you are going to see at a baseball game, history is only one swing or, in this case, one of the most clever strategies of all time, away.

You see, in the AL we don’t have this type of excitement. The only time we bunt is when the players are really, really tired. The pitcher never hits because pitchers never hit. We let the DH hit rather than putting up the pitcher who winds up looking like a complete Nuttsy Fagin with a broom in his hand.

The pitcher gets to continue to do what he does best which, of course, is pitch. Now granted the AL has sacrificed the thrill of the double switch in favor of, oh I don’t know, exciting baseball, but we have learned to live with its shortcomings. But next week when I go to my first Yankee game I will think back to those exciting NL moments when the pitcher bunted and the manager double switched and I will think:

THANK GOD ALMIGHTY I WAS BORN A YANKEE FAN