Author Archives: Mark M. Meinero

Uncategorized

THE PLAYBOOK

We know what’s coming.

It’s happened so many times before. To George McGovern and Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton and Al Gore. John Kerry and Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

The crap machine is cranking up.

—–

She’s shrill. She laughs weirdly. She’s bossy. She wears sneakers.

She’s not that smart. She didn’t go to an Ivy League school. She went to an HBCU. She was an affirmative action admission to law school. Can you say “DEI” or “woke”?

She’s from California, a failed state. She’s from San Francisco, a radical city with lots of homeless people. She lives in Los Angeles with her entertainment industry lawyer husband. She’s beholden to Hollywood – the George Clooneys and Susan Sarandons.

She’s not really American. Where’s her birth certificate? Isn’t she really Indian? Isn’t she really Jamaican? Isn’t she really Canadian – she lived there for awhile? 

She’s not a real Christian. She’s Hindu, or Buddhist, or Jewish, or Zoroastrian, or atheist, or practices voodoo. The Bible catches fire when she’s near it.

She’s not really Black. She just uses that identity for political gain. She’s mostly Indian. There are white people in her family history – maybe even some who owned slaves. She married a white guy – a white girl wannabe.

She’s not really Asian. She might claim that, but is India really part of Asia? Is her loyalty really to the curry eaters? Is she cozy with the Chinese – they’re Asian too?

She’s a Black elitist. She belongs to those secretive Black sororities with their cult rituals. She only hires Black people for jobs. She has a chip on her shoulder.

She’s soft on crime. She opposes the death penalty. She lets drug offenders off. Her prosecution record stinks. She talks tough but is really a bleeding heart liberal. 

She’s showy tough on Black criminals. She’s part of the over-incarceration of Black men. Didn’t that noted humanitarian, Tulsi Gabbard, say so? She’s not in tune with hip-hoppers and rappers.

She’s both soft on crime and tough on criminals at the same time.

She lives in the same area code as noted Socialists. She’s beholden to Beyonce. She lives in the same state that Charles Manson did.

There’s a caravan of 90,000 migrants waiting in Guatemala for her to win. They might not wait – maybe they’re on their way, monitoring the latest news with their highly sophisticated migrant communications system. She’s building air-conditioned villas with swimming pools and free iPhones for migrants in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Pontiac, Pewaukee and Peachtree City. 

There will be taco trucks on every corner.

She’s no match for Putin. She’s no match for Xi. Kim Jong-Il doesn’t write her love letters. The Europeans and the Japanese and the South Koreans are going to roll over her. 

She’s not a friend of Israel. She’s not a friend of the Palestinians. She is a friend of Iran.

She never served. She’s got no military history. She wants to weaken our armed forces. Our servicemen will quit en masse. She’s never undergone the kind of rigorous military physical that reveals bone spurs in her feet.

She hates America. She said so – see this grainy clip of which there’s not the least bit suspicion of alteration or manipulation. She’d rather be in India. In Africa. In Jamaica. In the south of France.

She manipulated the process to get the nomination. She cruelly backstabbed poor Brandon…, er, Joe Biden, out of the race. What a terrible thing to do to this wonderful mentor! Joe Biden was the salt of the earth compared to her.

She’s not qualified to be President. She’s too smart for her own good. She’s not that pretty. She’s a shrew. She’s a slut. She’s a puppet. We need a special prosecutor or a House hearing to look into every aspect of her life.

What kind of name is Kamala? Shouldn’t it be pronounced Kah-mah’-lah? That’s how we’re going to say it for the next 100 or so days.

—

I’ve just scratched the surface of what’s coming for Kamala Harris and whoever her running mate is (there will be a whole other set of canards and exaggerations for her or him!)

Here’s the three things to know:

One, she is eminently qualified to succeed Joe Biden. She is fully prepared to unify the country and move us forward to the middle of this already crazy century.

Two, she’s not Donald Trump. She’s probably ticked off when her name is in the same sentence with Donald Trump. She’s not a sexual abuser, a grifter, a compulsive liar, a selfish jerk, a convicted felon, an insurrectionist or a traitor.

Three, she’s a tough person. She knows what’s coming. She’s ready. 

We need to be, too.

Standard
Uncategorized

THE LAST QUESTION

Here is the final question (from the New York Times transcript) in George Stephanopolous’ interview of President Biden that aired on ABC last night:

“And if you stay in, and Trump is elected and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?”

And here’s is the first sentence of Biden’s answer:

“I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”

Sorry, Mr. President. That’s not the right answer.

Biden should have stolen the words attributed to NASA flight director Gene Kranz in the movie “Apollo 13”: “Failure is not an option.”

That would have assured shaky Democrats, including me, that the president understands the stakes of the 2024 election – and why we are concerned about his debate performance last week.

Let’s be clear about what all Democrats and many patriotic Republicans believe: Donald Trump is the end of American democracy if he wins the election in 122 days. It’s not a question of whether he should be defeated – this isn’t Mitt Romney in 2012. It’s a question of he MUST be defeated. 

And what the president and his loyalists need to understand is that little else matters.

But one of those things is what’s driving this conversation. The fact that those who aren’t as steadfast in their commitment to defeating Trump – young people who don’t completely grasp the stakes and older voters more concerned about issues like the economy – have a tough time believing the best alternative is someone who reminds them of their aging parent or grandparent.

Biden does that every time he listens to a question with that slackjaw expression. 

I understand why this is hard for the president.

He is a man who believes in merit. It’s how he was raised. It’s why people think of him as decent and honest.

Biden believes his record warrants reelection. In my mind – and that of virtually all Democrats –  he’s right. 

He has turned the economy around – employment has hovered at 4% or below for a long time, and the jump to 4.1% reported yesterday is partly due to the fact that more people feel confident to look for a job. An advanced recovery is still creating 200,000 jobs a month – that’s a phenomenal number this far along.

If you try to drive anywhere this summer, you’re probably frustrated by some highway construction project. But that tells you two things: one, people are confident enough about their finances that they feel comfortable taking trips and, two, Biden delivered on the promise to rebuild our infrastructure.

Biden has also reestablished American leadership in the world. He’s been a key factor in Ukraine holding off Russia and in forging new alliances with Japan, South Korea and other Pacific nations. Europe and east Asia are shaking about the possibility that Trump will come back and continue cozying up to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Il. 

It’s just that merit won’t work in 2024.

The Republican Party is all-in on a would-be dictator. A compulsive liar and a self-centered brat. And unlike Great Britain, whose voters don’t have propaganda networks like Fox and Newsmax to tell them not to believe their lying eyes, Americans on the right have no sense of the truth about Trump. 

It must feel like betrayal to Biden and those still loyal to him. 

They canceled subscriptions to The New York Times when it called for Biden to drop out, wondering why a doddering Trump isn’t held to the same standard. They’ve lashed out at the Democratic elected officials who have suggested Biden reconsider. They wonder – as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did is his always excellent blog – why you pander to the least committed voters, who jump ship at the sign of danger.

The thing is that people worry that the ship they’re on is the Titanic – and they want to stop it from hitting the iceberg. That iceberg is the end of the American experiment in democracy. 

And if you think that’s overly dramatic, consider the presidential immunity decision of the Supreme Court. As well the Republican Project 2025 blueprint that even Trump is trying to back away from because of actress Taraji P. Henson’s brilliant recommendation that people actually read its totalitarian designs.

President Biden might have been able to allay the concerns of those terrified after the June 27 debate. He could have said he understood why supporters were upset and that he had given some thought to their worry. He could have said he was open to hearing an argument that he shouldn’t run from Democratic leaders. He could have said he would take whatever medical and cognitive tests were needed to make people feel better.

He didn’t.

He believes he merely had a bad night. He had a cold. Trump was distracting him (that was kind of a lie, the camera showed Trump being quiet when Biden answered questions). He was exhausted from traveling overseas.

Again, I understand how hard this is for Joe Biden and his loyalists. He’s a good man and a great President. He believes he deserves a second term. If he was the Joe Biden of 2020, he’d be right.

But he’s 81 – he’ll be 82 just 15 days after the election – and would be 86 if he makes it to the end of a second term. (And yes, Trump isn’t that much younger.) Americans who worry if he’s up to it are not Nervous Nellies – they’re rightly concerned.

Joe Biden didn’t do anything to change that last night.

Standard
Uncategorized

WARNING FLAGS

Of course you didn’t watch coverage of yesterday’s British parliamentary election.

Why would you? You were celebrating the day 248 years ago when, as Archie Bunker said, “we threw those people out of here.”

And, given the bleak U.S. election picture since last week’s debate, a break from democracy on the brink is understandable. (Note: I can’t tell you how happy I am using bleak, break and brink in the same sentence.)

But I watched the BBC’s coverage of the returns for three reasons – one of which is not that I’m scouting places to live in the event the unthinkable happens in November.

One is that BBC election coverage is really entertaining. Great graphics, interesting commentary. The vote count has the drama of the constituency announcement – once ALL the votes are counted, the candidates go on stage and an official reads the results. The candidates include everybody, including people such as the guy from the Monster Raving Loony party.

And we in America have an advantage – we can watch at reasonable hours while the British have to stay up all night.

Second is the fact that I just came back from a wonderful trip to London (Let’s Go Mets!) with my family. Not only did we hang in the central city, we went out to Salisbury to see Stonehenge and to outskirt places west and south of Piccadilly Circus. So I wanted to see how the good people I met last month voted.

The third reason is more pragmatic.

Months before the 2016 presidential election, the British people voted on a binding referendum to determine if the country would stay a part of the European Union. It was a dumb move by the then-and-not-about-to-last-much-longer Conservative prime minister David Cameron, compounded by the fact the vote only needed a simple majority for approval.

The vote was 52% out, 48% stay. The results crossed party lines and reflected a well orchestrated scare and isolationism campaign. 

It was a precursor of what would happen in the United States on November 8. It should have been a warning to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

So should last night.

Yes, Labour – a party more aligned with U.S. Democrats – emerged with a massive majority, meaning that leader Keir Starmer has become prime minister. 

But Labour, thrashed in the 2019 election, had a strong tailwind. The Conservatives had been in power since 2010 and through their bungling gone through five prime ministers. One of them was Boris Johnson, who it would be understandable to think was part of the Monster Raving Loony party.

The now-former PM, Rishi Sunak, is ostentatiously wealthy and not particularly adept at campaigning – in particular, leaving a D-Day 80th anniversary commemoration for a political event.

Labour, still a major party in the country, won. It has a 174-seat majority – that’s like the Democrats or Republicans having more than 63% of the seats in the House or Senate.

Why should the U.S. Democrats be concerned?

There are two issues in the U.K. that have the same footprint on this side of the Atlantic.

One is immigration. A thing I noticed on this, my third trip to London, is how diverse the population has become over the past 40 years. I saw more hijabs than I see in New York. I heard more different languages on the Underground.

The benefit is a more vibrant city. The food is not nearly as terrible as it was in the 1980s. There are young people out well into the night – in the ’80s, the streets were deserted after 10 p.m.

But as in this country, not everybody in Britain is enamored with this. A lot of muttering about “not having a country anymore.”

That’s why there was Brexit. And among the leaders of that movement was Nigel Farage, a Donald Trump wannabe who doesn’t have Trump’s advantage of a right-wing sycophant mediascape; there’s no Fox News in the U.K.

Farage decided to get behind something called the Reform Party, whose idea of reform is actually retreating to the Britain of the past. MBGA doesn’t really work.

The Conservatives were gutted by Reform. Their seats went to Labour, but about 4 million of their votes – perhaps enough to swing the election – went to Reform. Farage won his seat, as did only three other Reform candidates. 

It’s the raw numbers that are scary. You could probably still say Britain moved to the left if you add Labor, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.

But Farage is just getting started. He’ll be in a good position to help his buddy Trump this summer and fall by trying to foul up the works in Parliament. And he’s got a soapbox for his bigotry and xenophobia.

The other concern for American democrats (and Democrats) is Gaza.

Independent candidates opposed to Labour’s somewhat equivocal stance on Israeli action in Gaza stole some votes. One party leader expected to be part of the Sturmer government lost his constituency because of defections from Muslim voters in the district.

Gaza is a thorny situation for the U.S. and its allies. This country has always supported – correctly – Israel’s right to exist. It took Harry Truman just 11 minutes to recognize the nation when it came into being in 1948. But Israel’s reaction to the October 7 terrorism of Hamas has provoked a humanitarian crisis that doesn’t just trouble Muslims.

The idea that Palestinians deserve some sort of entity of their own is not unreasonable. Most people in this country – including many if not most American Jews – believe the solution to this long-standing problem is the two-nation one that gives Palestinians a country of some kind and Israel iron-clad security from terrorists.

The people who don’t want that are Hamas and the supporters of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and neither side seems to care what price is paid to affirm their stance. 

There’s a certain irony in the fact that there’s almost a tacit alliance between two sides that are shooting each other. If I was wearing the tin foil hat right-wing America seems to embrace, I could imagine a coalition between Netanyahu, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Vladimir Putin and Trump to make life miserable for Joe Biden all the way to November 5.

The results showing weakness in Labour’s Muslim vote is a warning to Biden or whatever Democrat replaces him if he drops out. The Gaza crisis needs to be solved. Quickly. Both because it’s the moral thing to do and, if Trump wins, there will be no reason for it to stop.

Standard
Uncategorized

GOING THERE

 A lot of the support for Donald Trump comes from so-called Christian Nationalists, people who believe the United States of America was meant to be a nation rooted solely in Christianity.

These are people who clearly haven’t read an American history book or seen “Hamilton.” But let’s not go there for now.

I’m not a religious person. I’m not sure I believe in God. Like most other Italian-Americans, I was baptized in the Roman Catholic church. Like many other Italian-Americans, I stopped thinking of myself as Catholic a long time ago.

Again, let’s not go there for now.

From my perspective, there are two basic things wrong with the idea of the U.S. as Christian. 

One is that so many Americans aren’t. There are Jews and Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, people who believe in multiple gods and people who don’t believe in a god at all. They belong here too. But let’s not go there now, either.

Second is that, despite what these Christian nationalists believe, the United States is already imbued with Christian values.

It was Jesus who told the story of the Good Samaritan. How a Jewish man beaten by highwaymen was ignored by two fellow Jews. But a Samaritan, from a splinter group at odds with mainstream Judaism, took the man to an inn and paid for his care.

“Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?,” Jesus asked. “He who showed mercy on him. Go and do likewise.”

Until now, the United States has prided itself on being a good Samaritan. We helped fight Nazism and Japanese fascism in World War II. We see starving people in other nations and send food and clothing. After this week’s horrific hurricane in the southern Caribbean, you can bet there will be notable American efforts to provide aid to those in need in Jamaica, Grenada, Mexico and wherever else it’s needed.

What’s warped about the so-called Christian Nationalism is that it seems antipathetic to being a good neighbor. That’s best displayed in the nonsense about immigration.

Yes, it is a problem that so many people feel compelled to cross our border illegally. But almost all of them are doing so out of fear and desperation. The Christian thing to do would be to solve this – find a way to look at mothers and their hungry children as humans and not terrorists.

The so-called Christian Nationalist solution is internment camps, family separation and mass deportation. In what way does that show the mercy Jesus sought for those in need?

But let’s not go there now.

Because the United States is also imbibed with Jewish values.

According to the Torah, Moses never made it to Canaan, the Promised Land. But he kept striving to get there. He led the Jews out of Egypt, distributed God’s rules of civil conduct and put down any effort to deviate from following God’s leadership.

The U.S. Constitution speaks of establishing a “more perfect union.” That is what our goal should always be. It’s not clear that we will ever achieve it. It doesn’t matter. Just trying to get to that version of the promised land is noble in itself.

And like Moses, this country is a leader. We set the bar for the ideas of freedom and democracy. George Washington could have decided he wanted to be a king – he chose otherwise. He wanted to be a citizen, like the rest of us.

After Monday’s Supreme Court decision, Donald Trump is no longer like the rest of us. But let’s not go there for now.

Because the United States is also imbibed with Muslim values.

Muslims don’t believe there is some old guy with a white beard named God sitting on a throne in heaven. They believe God is one with everyone and everything, that the woman walking the dog that just peed on my mailbox is a representation of God – as is the dog, the mailbox and the pee.

That sentiment is echoed in our national and state parks. The beauty of Joshua Tree and the majesty of Niagara Falls. It’s echoed in our great cities, like my hometown of New York. 

It’s echoed in the guy selling shark jerky on a Kauai roadside or the woman tending to a nursing mother on Navajo land.

We embody Islam when we appreciate the world we have and try to make it better.

These spirits of so many different beliefs make the United States of America the greatest nation on earth.

Or they did. All that is at risk now. If we succumb to Trumpism, we lose what makes us special, what makes us wonderful. We lose the pride we should have when we’ve corrected our mistakes – working to end slavery, Jim Crow, sexism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia and more – while at the same time realizing that the promised land of being better is still further away. 

And we quash the fringe benefit of all this: becoming the innovative nation that invented the telegraph, microchips, jazz and baseball.

We are Christian – and Jewish and Muslim and other religions and none at all. Christian Nationalism – in the incongruous form of a bloated adulterer, thief, sexual predator and false god –  is not what America ever was or ever should be.

Let’s not go there. Ever.

Happy Independence Day!

Standard
Uncategorized

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS

For the past three nights, I’ve watched my TV set with jitters.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I worried that my resurgent Mets would run afoul of the Yankees. I hate watching the Mets lose to the Yankees as much as I hate any scenario in sports – or anything else for that matter.

I needn’t have worried. The Mets bludgeoned the Yankees both nights. Mr. Met’s legions triumphed over the guys with the 27-rings shirts and the bandwagoners in pinstripe shirts with the name on the back.

So I hoped to go 3-for-3 last night watching the debate between President Biden and Donald Trump. Sure, I had the same sense of dread as the other two nights. But they turned out OK, so maybe the debate would too.

Uh, no. 

You could tell when he walked onto the stage that it was going to be bad. He looked like a befuddled old man trying to find a seat on a park bench. His gait was halting. His mouth formed a circle like the one in Munch’s “The Scream.”

He painfully reminded me of my father’s final years, when a vigorous, strong man was diminished.

I would trade both those Met wins for Biden holding his own. Alas, I can’t.

Since then, I’ve had three thoughts that, even though you didn’t ask, I’m going to share.

ONE: Within five minutes of the debate’s end, I sent a campaign contribution to the Biden-Harris campaign.

I wasn’t completely sure how I felt in the moment. But like many other Democrats, I think of Joe Biden as a hero. He took on Trump at a perilous moment in 2020 and, despite the mewling of Trump and his sycophants, beat him like a drum.

And Biden has delivered a remarkable presidency. Which leads to…

TWO: History has its eyes on you, as they sing in “Hamilton.” 

Much was made of the fact that Biden kept referring to the presidential historians who rate Trump the worst president ever. And, OK, maybe he shouldn’t have dwelled on that.

But in 2074, when late-century historians evaluate Biden’s presidency, they’ll see his legislative accomplishments, his focus on economic fairness, the quality of his staff, and the humanity and decency that comes naturally to him. And they’ll put him in the pantheon of greats – in the same line as Washington, Lincoln and FDR.

Unless…

THREE: History is written by the winners. If historians in 2074 have to be certified by the Stephen K. Bannon School of Historical Revision and Correction, Biden won’t come out so well. 

The 388 million Americans of that time will hear how Biden allowed 6 billion people to illegally cross the border. Because all 7 billion of them got put on Social Security and Medicare, those programs had to be canceled. And the 8 billion terrorists who came into the country were only foiled from their nefarious plans by the wisdom of Tsar Donald I.

Even among those remaining who remember democracy in the United States, they will blame Biden for allowing Trump to get back into the White House.

How Biden looked and sounded last night are one thing. It’s what he failed to do and mention that have me shaken. The effort to ban IVF and birth control. The threat to LGBTQ rights, including the same-sex marriages of people such as my daughter and her wife. The 2025 Project, a playbook for totalitarianism.

It might have been OK if Biden just had one bad night – as many Democratic leaders are calling it – against Nikki Haley or Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney. It’s another to have it against Donald Trump.

We’d be screwed if the soldiers invading Guadalcanal in 1942 and Normandy in 1944 had a bad day. That’s how you have to look at what happened with the president last night.

I don’t know how this is all going to play out. How would the Democrats nominate another candidate?Who would they nominate? Would they pick the next in line, an apparently very unpopular Kamala Harris, or come up with a fusion ticket of Democrats and Never Trump Republicans.

I’m as scared as you are. I think I’d feel better if Joe Biden came to the realization that people who are fond of him feel the same way.

Standard
Uncategorized

0 – ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS

For ten weeks, I’ve looked at the changes in the world over the course of my life, which is exactly 70 years long as of the moment this posts on the blog.

Change usually doesn’t happen quickly. We often tend to think of our existence as getting through another day. It doesn’t seem exciting or even seem to be a change at all. Then you think about it and wonder when everybody started drinking bottled water.

The premise of these about-to-be 71 pieces was imagining what it would be like to tell my parents about what would happen in my lifetime and their response to it. And perhaps what I’ve enjoyed most about doing this is channeling my parents, who aren’t here to see this; it has been a joy in my imagination.

To be honest, I think my Dad would scoff at a lot of what I’ve described; my Mom not so much. Some of what has transpired since 1954 would seem like science fiction or bad political drama to people of that time.

But change has come. And it wasn’t just the 70 things I described. I can think of a bunch of ideas that I couldn’t get into this countdown or thought about after I had set the list.

Often people my age or older get nostalgic for the past, aka, the good old days. They seem to think things were better back when – when we were kids, when we were teens, when we became young adults, and so on.

The extreme of this is the MAGA movement. It’s only partially due to Trump, who has masterfully exploited it. It’s mostly due to some notion that there was a better time than now, probably back in the 1950s and 1960s when they were kids or young adults.

It wasn’t a better time. Even if you’re a white male, whose privilege gave you an advantage over the rest of the population. We eat better and more interesting stuff. We have a wider array of entertainment. There are sports teams in more major cities. Certain diseases have been eradicated and others have better treatments that offer easier and longer management.

We’re a better society when everyone participates. And the idea that more people can, whether because of law or science, is a positive.

But not everything is better.

Social media is a way to communicate with friends – or among people with horrific ideas. Plastic makes things lighter and cheaper – and is almost impossible to degrade. We can do amazing things with a computer or smartphone – or disengage at the dinner table and in a theater. There’s more to entertain us – and some of it is garbage.

The future is not linear. It really is two steps forward and one step back. Not everything will get better right away. 

And some terrible things are persistent: racism, cancer, war, religious bigotry, radical nationalism, ignorance, misogyny and more.

But even they are not intractable. I won’t see 2094 (or maybe there will be some breakthrough in the next few years that will allow me to live to 140). However, I’m confident and hopeful that the world will be a better place. In part because of the things we do and work on now. 

My plan is to revise this countdown in 2034 to see what progress has been made in the next decade. In the meantime, with some of the rest of you, I’m going to begin enjoying my septuagenerian status.

Standard
Uncategorized

1 – THE WHOLE WORLD IN YOUR HANDS

How I spent my Saturday:

I set an alarm for 7 a.m., playing Miles Davis’ “So What”

I checked the weather forecast.

I bought a train ticket

I told my son, who was staying with a friend in Brooklyn and with whom I used to routinely spend 3 hours on a video chat when he was in Seoul, that I was leaving for a Met game.

I looked to see if there was traffic on the way to the train parking lot.

I bought a scone and an Easter surprise for my family at a bakery.

I checked to see what time the next train was coming. 

I boarded the train and showed the conductor the ticket.

I listened to songs associated with the Mets.

I played a variation of Mille Bornes, the French road race game. 

I checked my recipe for Chateaubriand that I made for Easter dinner to see if I needed any other ingredients. I had already ordered the demi glace concentrate for the sauce.

I wrote down the missing ingredients I needed.

I boarded a New York City subway train.

I checked to see what was going on in the news.

I got to Citi Field and told my son I’d meet him at the subway station.

I followed him as he went from Brooklyn to Flushing, just as I followed my daughter when she flew from Los Angeles to New York last week.

I met him and we walked to the ballpark, where he’s working this season.

I went for an hour-long walk in Flushing Meadow Park and recorded how far I went and how long it took me.

I entered the Met game with my ticket.

I texted my son to tell him I’d meet him at Shake Shack; I didn’t tell him I dislocated a pinky in a fall at the ballpark gate. (Not everything has to be done right away)

I bought a chicken parm sandwich and a bottle of water.

I kept score of the game, which the Mets lost 7-6.

I took pictures of him working at the game, then sent them to him, his mother and sister.

He told me where to meet him after the game outside the ballpark.

Got back on the subway.

Bought dinner at a Manhattan diner.

Called my wife to tell her about the dislocated pinky. She wasn’t happy.

My son took a picture of me walking down a street for a project.

Got on the train for home.

Listened to a playlist of songs by artists from California.

Checked to see if I wanted to purchase and download any new songs.

Played Mille Bornes again.

Unlocked my car doors. Started the motor to warm up the car.

Used a flashlight to see my way through my lightless garage.

Showed my wife all the pictures of our son taken that afternoon.

Here’s what would stun anyone alive in 1954:

Every single thing on the above list was done on a device the size of a dollar bill.

We are coming to the point that we take smartphones for granted. But they are an amazing achievement of the human race – and the smart version of cellphones have been around for less than 20 years.

It’s estimated that three-quarters of the world has smartphones. The world has 8 billion people. Do the math.

Or, better yet, let your smartphone do it. There’s probably a calculator on there too.

Smartphones are the thing that would have stunned my parents the most in April 1954. There have been a lot of amazing things that I have discussed over the past 10 weeks, but smartphones take the cake.

 A cake you can order from a bakery in Minneapolis on your smartphone.

Standard
Uncategorized

2 – ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Marriage had already changed a lot through the first half of the 20th century.

By 1954, the idea of arranged marriage – your parents selecting your spouse – had pretty much ended. Many of the early 20th century immigrants, from every part of the world, had brought the idea to America.

The idea that superseded it, of course, was love. It sometimes bothered older people that younger people chose their spouse on that basis. But that’s how it worked.

One of the reasons for arranged marriages was the notion of keeping your tribe intact. A mixed marriage in an Italian family was when somebody from Venice married someone from Sicily.

But that, too, began to change as Americans began to intermingle with people of different backgrounds. Irish and Italian. Polish and Spanish. German and Greek.

There remained some taboos. The first was race.

It was all right, supposedly, for white people to marry white people, Black people to marry Black people, Asians to marry other Asians, and so on. 

Interracial marriage caused people to gasp. And the words used to describe it had negative bias: Miscegenation. Mongrelization. Octaroon.  In some states, any form of interracial marriage, but particularly Black and white marriage, was illegal.

Yet, as time passed, love prevailed.

People just married who they wanted anyway. And, finally, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Virginia law barring interracial relationships, specifically in the case of the appropriately named Mildred and Richard Loving.

Interracial marriage produced mixed-race children, who seemed unbothered by the idea. As of the 2020 Census, more than 10% of the nation’s population says it is multiracial. 

One of those people became President of the United States.

And, of course, two of them are my children, who have been telling people since they were tweens that they were Chitalian.

The final taboo didn’t fall until this century. 

People of the same sex have loved each other since we evolved into humans. But often it has been looked on as some kind of sin, as if a loving sexual relationship between two people could not possibly involve two men or two women.

But some brave people said the hell with that. They not only wanted to share their love with the person they loved, they wanted everyone to know and respect it. 

So they fought for the right of people of the same sex to marry each other. 

It’s an idea that seemed impossible when this century began, just a few years after an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. President Bill Clinton complained about the law. But given the veto-proof majorities in both houses, he acquiesced and signed it.

That didn’t stop love.

The idea of same-sex marriage was not popular even as recently as 2008, when California narrowly approved a state constitutional amendment banning it. But that amendment proved to be the basis of legal appeals, and then state referenda and legislative action.

Until, in 2015, the Supreme Court – in Obergefell v. Hodges – ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry.

In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote of those seeking the right to marry: “Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

And that ruling gave people like my daughter a chance to be happy.

Seventy years after my birth, my family would have startled my parents had they known what was coming. But, in the end, they’re exactly like us, because they were bonded by one thing that no arrangement or prejudice can overcome.

Love.

Standard
Uncategorized

3 – THE SHAME

I’m proud to be an American.

People from everywhere converged here – by choice or not – to form a country, one of the most influential and powerful in the world. We encourage imagination. We are more than the sum of our parts – and more than any one part alone. We gave the world jazz, baseball and drive-in movies. Miles Davis, Babe Ruth and Meryl Streep.

But in the last 70 years, one thing has been to our everlasting shame.

Mass murder with guns.

People were probably always able to walk into a place and start shooting; the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was 95 years ago. But especially since the 1960s, the number of horrific multiple killings – of people seemingly at random who had no idea they were targets – has grown wildly.

The first in this trend was the 1966 shooting at the University of Texas. A sniper climbed the Main Building tower and shot away for more than 90 minutes before being killed by police.

The 15 people murdered that day was the most fatalities in a mass shooting – a record that did not last long.

The killer in that case might have had brain tumor issues that contributed to his violence. One would think that, particularly with something as lethal as a gun, making sure people with such problems are not given access to sophisticated weaponry.

Right. (use sarcastic tone)

About as long as these shootings have increased, forces who support unlimited firearms have been not just pushing back against regulations, but loosening them and making it easier to get guns.

They cower behind the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The one that starts “A well regulated Militia…” As if that would fit the description of who these people are.

At the same time, the weapons have become more sophisticated in terrible ways. The weapon of choice in mass killings is often the ArmaLite Rifle-15 (that’s what AR stands for) or its copycats, a semi-automatic weapon that can fire hundreds of bullets in a minute with devastating power.

This confluence of events has led to a travesty. There is no place in the United States safe from anyone with a warped idea of revenge, justice, societal change or fun.

Grocery stores. Movie theaters. Hospitals. Nightclubs. Places of worship. Workplaces. Post offices. Concerts. Parades.

All are horrific. But the places that strike me as the most depraved and obscene are schools.

The murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 should have been the last straw. Someone decided to kill kids and educators that day, after first killing his mother. Most of the victims were in kindergarten and first grade.

There was revulsion and there were tears. Tears galore. There were thoughts and there were prayers.

What there wasn’t was anything done.

Two states, Connecticut and New York, took steps to limit semi-automatic weapons. But the federal government, despite President Barack Obama’s eloquent, heartfelt plea, did nothing.

Because members of Congress – of both parties, but Republicans especially – took their marching orders from a bag of pus and puke that headed the National Rifle Association. 

That had the unmitigated gall to tell the world that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

These shootings take place with hundreds of well-trained law enforcement personnel present. Or none. It doesn’t seem to matter. 

To add insult to injury, there were other worthless trash bags going around saying shootings like this were hoaxes aimed at taking away Americans’ guns; that the mourning parents were actors and the incident never happened.

If this nation couldn’t act when 5-year-olds were murdered, it seems like a reach to believe there’s anything that will make this nightmare end. 

That doesn’t mean we should stop trying. It’s not about ending the Second Amendment because, believe it or not, the Second Amendment has nothing to do with this. This is just greed, selfishness and a lack of respect. 

It would do nothing to end Americans’ rights if we banned weapons that kill a lot of people in a short time, if only because those people being killed had a right to live that supersedes even the Constitution.

I would be proud to be able to say our home is the safest place in the world. Can’t say that right now.

Standard
Uncategorized

4 – LIQUIDITY

My Dad never let not knowing the words to a song stop him from singing it.

But in the case of one song, he wasn’t that far off.

Whenever he would do any hard physical work, or when we wanted a soda or juice, he would sing these lines from a song covered by one of his favorites, Frankie Laine:

“Don’t you listen to him, Dan

He’s a devil, not a man

And he’s burning in the sand

For water

Cool, clear water”

That is not exactly the lyric. But that’s not the point.

The point is that he was ahead of his time in the hydration movement. No adult I’ve known has been as good as he was as having a glass of water whenever he needed it.

But even the 1954 version of Dad would find it odd that, in 2024, just about everyone carries water with them.

Military personnel and campers used to carry canteens, those round cloth-covered containers. Bicycle riders sometimes had bottles attached to their bike’s frame.

The idea of going to the store and buying one 20-ounce bottle or a case of them is relatively modern. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think about when it became widespread.

I suppose one reason is that people were less trusting of their municipal water systems. I live in a place where the tap water is awful. It really can’t be imbibed unless it’s run through some kind of filter – for us, in the refrigerator or through a purification system.

Another reason is that the two biggest soft-drink companies – Coke and Pepsi – both invested heavily in bottled water. Pepsi introduced Aquafina in 1994; five years later, Coke’s Dasani arrived. Both are basically municipal water that has been filtered. There are some regional brands that sell bottled spring water.

And, as I mentioned, people have been made much more conscious about dehydration. It exacerbates diseases and illnesses, and brings on some of its own.

Hydration was also the impetus for one of the other inventions of our lifetime: sports drinks. 

In 1965, scientists at the University of Florida were asked by the school’s football coach to develop something that would restore nutrients and minerals to an athlete’s tired body. The school’s teams are the Gators, hence Gatorade. Four years later, it was marketed to the public; my Mom said it tasted like sweat and there’s probably something to that.

Like just about everything else on this list, bottled water and other drinks are not an unmitigated blessing. 

It usually comes in a plastic bottle, and when those bottles are exposed to sunlight, they can leach the chemicals that make up the plastic into the water. Microplastics have been blamed for diseases of their own.

There’s also the problem of what to do with all these bottles. Much as we discussed with plastic bags, they seem to end up all over – particularly in places that don’t offer some sort of financial or legal incentive for recycling them. Coke has indicated it will try to get Dasani into bioplastic bottles that are more environmentally friendly; it’s also using cans, which frankly is not a great way to drink water.

This world still has public drinking fountains. You can still get a glass of tap water in a restaurant.

But when you walk down the street or go to a sporting event, you can count on almost everybody having a bottle of water.

It might not be cool. It might not be clear. But it sure is water.

Standard