Penalty Box in the Classroom

As we sink further and further back into 19th and early 20th century precepts—when a woman’s place was in the home, cooking food and making babies, when children learned trades and received corporal punishment for misbehavior at home or in school—it is not surprising that examples of outmoded standards pop up. 

In upstate New York, in a school district with a student enrollment of some 60 percent Native American children, several classrooms have been found to have time-out boxes to discipline children years after such punishment was declared illegal 

(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/nyregion/school-timeout-box-discipline-new-york.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).

Reading that story brought back memories of my third grade experience at Yeshiva Rambam in Brooklyn. My school in the mid 1950s-early 1960s was Modern Orthodox, providing a strong secular education to complement religious instruction curriculum. But it was not without its complement of corporal punishment meted out by male and female teachers.

Mrs. Schlesinger educated her third grade students into the tribulations of solitary confinement. Her version of the modern day “time out” in the corner was to isolate an offender in a dark wardrobe closet in our classroom. Usually your term of sentence was 10 to 20 minutes standing in the dark, but one spring day Mrs. Schlesinger lost track of one of her inmates. So did the rest of the class. He was left inside his cell when dismissal came. His parents were not amused when he failed to show up at home when the school bus made its normal stop at their door. Mrs. Schlesinger reluctantly agreed to more benign punishments after that incident.

My classmates and I were not as lucky when we complained about our second grade teacher, Mrs. Mare. Mrs. Nightmare, as we surreptitiously called her, had a unique way of dealing with misbehaving children. She would tightly pinch your nostrils for 10 seconds or longer. If you were really deserving of re-education, she would stand behind you, grab hold of your arms just above your elbows, then pull them back towards her while sticking a knee into your back.

Of course we complained to our parents. But as they were mostly immigrant or first generation parents, they sided with her, believing if we were disciplined we surely must have done something egregious to warrant corporal punishment.

Our seventh grade Hebrew teacher, Mr. Kulik, was real old school. That means he saw nothing untoward in some physical contact with students. He took a particular interest in Walter, a chubby, not overly ambitious or attentive student. His patience finally exhausted one day, Mr. Kulik decided to eject Walter from the classroom. Physically eject him. He literally decided to throw Walter out the door. Trouble was, the door was closed. Walter, being round and pudgy, bounced off the door right back into Mr. Kulik’s arms. Only after two or three repeat tossings and rebounds did Mr. Kulik finally realize it was not Walter being insubordinate that kept him coming back time and again. I should note that throughout this ordeal Walter was laughing.

Elementary school trauma sadly seems to be unavoidable no matter the best intentions of legislators and administrators.

Is Authoritarianism Our Future?

If you were schooled during the age when civics was routinely taught in elementary and high school you would have learned the American government is an intricate system of checks and balances designed to restrain any of its three branches—the executive, the legislative and the judicial—from controlling all affairs of state. 

Here’s the way our government is supposed to work: The president cannot issue taxes, or impose indiscriminate tariffs. That’s the job of Congress. Congress declares war, not the president. The president nominates cabinet secretaries and federal judges but it is Congress that formalizes each appointment. Congress passes laws but a president may veto the legislation; to become law two-thirds of both the Senate and House of Representatives must vote to override a veto. Federal courts up to the Supreme Court adjudicate any disagreement between Congress and a president, as well as disputes between private entities and those between the government and the private sector. In addition, to limit the influence of the central government, the Constitution gave states control over any power not specifically assigned to the federal government. For example, each state has the authority to determine election criteria for its own office holders. 

The system has mostly worked out well for the last 249 years. Sure there have been cries of overreach, even injustice, especially when the justices of the Supreme Court voted to permit slavery (Dred Scott decision, 1857), desegregate schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954), and stop the counting of votes for president in Florida (Bush v. Gore, 2000). By and large, however, the system the Framers gave us has stood the test of time. 

In its 250th year, however, the foundational fabric of our country has frayed. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/us/politics/trump-imperial-presidency.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

It is tempting to ascribe blame for our predicament to Donald Trump. He does deserve our scorn. This predicament of unbridled executive power will be Trump’s imprint on America. Once out of the bottle the genie of orgasmic presidential power most probably cannot be re-corked. 

I believe it is inconsiderate to believe Trump’s actions are part of a pattern based on a philosophy that rejects liberal democracy in favor of a unitary executive. Trump may be paralleling these ideas but he is not channeling them, for to believe so would imply that Trump actually sat down and read a book or treatise on government. In his more than a decade on the national scene Trump has never revealed any hint that he has read any books, even his own, in furtherance of a political philosophy and agenda. 

Trump’s motivation is as visible as his skin tone—he is obsessed with anything golden. He wants to be surrounded by gold. To possess as much as he can. To deplete his adversaries, even his worshippers, of as much lucre as possible to add to his fortune. He also is motivated by revenge, to punish anyone who has ever challenged his authority.

Trump has been the vessel for the abuse of checks and balances. But the reality is, it could have been anyone. Joe Biden tried to exert power never before thought to be presidential. The Supreme Court shut him down. 

John Roberts and his reactionary colleagues on the Supreme Court were simply waiting for the right vessel to install the autocratic president.

So, it is Trump 24 hours a day  The true programmers of our national and international nightmare are the six black-robed Supreme Court justices who legitimized his absolutism after Mitch McConnell circumvented Senate norms to secure the appointment of the conservative majority.

Will Trump’s successor be saddled with his actions and executive appointments, or will a tit-for-tat appointment process be the norm whenever a new president is sworn in, or whenever a federal appointee fails to satisfy a president?

Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, is quoted in The New York Times as saying history “strongly suggests that what we are seeing today will not, in fact, endure.” 

Perhaps, but a return to normalcy requires a Supreme Court that admits it made a mistake in granting sweeping powers and immunity to a president. Given the highly partisan bent of the six conservative justices on the court, it would not be surprising if they would reverse themselves if it reigned in a Democratic president. But if a Democrat fails to win the presidency, our authoritarian future, sadly, is assured. 

Trump Vents Grudges While America Suffers

As a journalist, albeit a retired scribe, I felt a professional obligation required my viewing a Wednesday night special address from the White House promoted by its current occupant. 

After all, big news can transpire. Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek reelection in one of his addresses. Richard Nixon announced his resignation as president. Barack Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden. 

Perhaps Donald Trump would provide news of national import to the American public, many of whom were eagerly tuned into the three hour finale of “Survivor,” only to be disappointed he interrupted it (https://mol.im/a/15393819).

They might have been assuaged by dramatic news. Perhaps America had invaded Venezuela, or convinced its president Maduro to abdicate. Or maybe Trump had convinced his handler Putin to throw him a bone and accept a cease fire in Ukraine, or at the very least stop bombing civilians. 

Instead, those who watched were subjected to a rerun of Trumpian blow-hardiness, a campaign stump speech without humor, long on attacking Democrats, full of imaginative statistics about his accomplishments. 

It is difficult to believe anyone other than a Trump acolyte could believe the cult leader. Trump has had ample opportunity to sound and appear presidential, but his New York gutter combativeness always gets the better of him. 

Pre-Internet Trump had to call reporters, often using a pseudonym, to vent his outrages. No longer. Now, the unrestrained near-octogenarian can type away in the dead of night his malevolent thoughts, disparaging anyone, like the tragically deceased Rob Reiner, who disagreed with him. 

Chief of staff Susie Wiles advised him to stop his retribution campaign after three months, according to Vanity Fair. But Trump didn’t. He is a protégée of Roy Cohn who taught him to counterpunch his detractors harder and longer.  

Trump’s behavior has become standard operating procedure throughout his administration.  Here are three examples from today’s New York Times concerning climate study, the military and healthcare: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/climate/national-center-for-atmospheric-research-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share;

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/us/politics/mark-kelly-defense-department-inquiry.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share;

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/us/politics/american-academy-of-pediatrics-hhs-funding-rfk-jr-vaccines.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share.

Trump proclaimed he has made the United States into the most respected country in the world. Actually, he has turned America into a laughing stock, a country no longer to be trusted to support allies, a country that bullies friends, a nation that extends the divide between the haves and have-nots, a government where the rule of law is tossed aside to favor the elite—as long as they proffer coins to his causes, a government that focuses on revenge and retribution at the expense of comfort and compassion for the unfortunate.  

Passing On My Dale Murphy Glove

Dale Murphy once again failed to earn a plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Murphy was an exceptional center fielder for the Atlanta Braves. He hit 398 home runs, had a career batting average of .265, was twice named National League Most Valuable Player, was selected seven times as an All-Star, with five Gold Glove and four Silver Slugger awards.  But the committees that selected new inductees, including the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee that voted Sunday, have repeatedly left him disappointed. 

I never followed Murphy’s 18 year career from 1976 through 1993. As a New York Yankees fan, I didn’t see National League players except when they played the Bronx Bombers in a World Series. There were no inter-league games back when Murphy played. The Braves never played in the World Series during his career.

I bring up Dale Murphy’s career because a few weeks ago I officially ended my seven decade softball career, most of which I played wearing a Dale Murphy signature mitt. With pickleball encompassing my active sports time, I transferred to my son Dan my Dale Murphy mitt and my softball cleats. It has taken me these several weeks to accept the reality my softball days are over. 

I started playing softball my first summer in sleepaway camp, 1956. I was seven. 

Before heading off to Camp Massad Aleph in Tannersville, PA, my father took me to a sporting goods store on Kings Highway in Brooklyn to buy a softball mitt. My father had little knowledge of the game, so he was more than a little “farmisht” when the Bobby Shantz glove model I had chosen priced out at $20. Reluctantly, after more than a little begging on my part, he paid the asking price. I played with that glove for the next 20 years, replacing it only when the inside padding disintegrated in the palm of my left hand, about 40 years ago. 

Dale Murphy replaced Bobby Shantz. Bobby Shantz was a pitcher, a southpaw. Still alive at 100, Shantz pitched for the Yankees when they beat the Milwaukee Braves in the 1958 World Series. As a Philadelphia Athletic, he was named the 1952 American League Most Valuable Player. 

I pitched softball in pick-up games and organized leagues. A few friends from work at Lebhar-Friedman formed a team in a Bronx league. Named Loco Focos after a radical group from the 1800s, the team played Sunday mornings in Van Cortland Park, Allerton Avenue park, and fields along the lower Bronx River Parkway. We were not good.

Then I played for Lebhar-Friedman’s business league team in Central Park, on a field at 110 street next to the FDR Drive and on a field under the 59th Street bridge once the tennis bubble was taken down. We named our team The Chain Gang after Chain Store Age. One of the teams we played was from a police precinct. The cops thought our name meant we were ex-cons. 

We were competitive but not unbeatable so our Hispanic players recruited a player, Jose, a much better pitcher than I. Lebhar-Friedman required all team members to be company employees. No problem. Roger Friedman green-lighted his employment in our mailroom. 

Jose worked for L-F for several years but the baseball gods were less kindly to another mailroom denizen. Victor (I think that was his name) played left center field. In the bottom of the last inning of a game against another publishing company we had a three run lead. But they were rallying. They narrowed the score to a one run deficit. Two outs. Bases loaded. Jose got the batter, the president of their company, to hit a sinking line drive directly at Victor. He did not have to move. He reached down for the ball but it sank below his glove and flew right between his legs for a game winning hit.

The next day Victor lost his mailroom job. 

After our second child was born in late 1981 I decided to join the Brotherhood team of Temple Israel Center, part of the Westchester Hebrew Softball League. I was enthusiastically welcomed by all but the pitcher I replaced. Michael protested that the team was still losing. He dismissed the argument that though we were losing the scores were much tighter, single digits instead of double digits when he pitched. 

Michael took his beef to the TIC Brotherhood committee. They sympathized but advised him to hang up his spikes. Instead he changed temples.  

Within a few years the TIC team played in the league championship game against Jewish Community Center (now called Kol Ami). That year we had three first basemen. One broke his elbow earlier in the season. Two others were returning from travel when the game began. A player of lesser quality started in their place. JCC’s first two batters hit ground balls to our shortstop. His throws were mishandled. Instead of two outs, JCC scored three unearned runs. 

One of our veteran first basemen showed up in the second inning. JCC managed just two more runs over the final eight innings. Facing JCC’s ace pitcher, Joel, TIC scored three runs. We lost 5-3. I’ve always said we won the last eight innings, but softball is a nine inning game.

Some years later JCC/Kol Ami’s team disbanded. Joel joined the TIC team. He started most games; I played Mariano Rivera closing out the last few innings. In 2006 Joel pitched us to a championship against the team from Greenburgh Hebrew Center in a game marred by a fight at home plate started by Greenburgh’s catcher after one of our runners slid home, successfully. Both combatants were thrown out of the game.

A week later I was confronted by a past president of the Brotherhood. He vehemently asserted our team had disgraced TIC because of the fight, that we should give back our trophy. As he wasn’t at the game I asked who told him about the incident. He said his daughter was there. 

I told him she was wrong. For the next three years we never spoke, until he approached me one day to apologize. What prompted his change of heart? Seems his daughter no longer was married to the catcher! 

Joel left our team a few years later. I went back to being the starter. But my fastball had lost some, perhaps lots of, zip. The team had regressed offensively and defensively. But the real reason I stopped playing at 65 was that I no longer enjoyed the burden of waking up at 7 am every Sunday from April through October for a 9 am game. My pickleball games usually start at 2 pm.

Reflections on a Thanksgiving Snow Storm

It is still snowing in Syracuse, part of a Thanksgiving storm blanketing much of northern New York, reminiscent of a 1971 Thanksgiving weekend blizzard that closed the thruway and delayed my return to graduate school from Brooklyn. 

It’s an occasion worthy of a retelling of my holiday experience 54 years ago. 

Here’s how the National Weather Service described the 1971 storm: 

“Heavy snow in Catskills and across the Upper Hudson Valley. This heavy snow began on the day before Thanksgiving and continued into Thanksgiving day. Albany picked up 22.5 inches with amounts up to 30” reported elsewhere. This storm turned the busiest travel day of the year into a nightmare, with many stranded travelers not making it to their destinations on Thanksgiving. This storm was the greatest November snowstorm on record and one of the greatest ever.”  

With all highway traffic shut down, I was forced to wait until Monday to return to school from my parents’ home in Brooklyn. Roads were still barely plowed in New York City, but as I got closer to Syracuse the highways were almost totally clear. Even city streets were passable. I remarked to myself that Syracuse sure knew how to handle snow. I further wondered what all the fuss was about, why travel had been restricted on Sunday.

I parked in front of the gingerbread-style, three-story house on East Genesee Street where my studio apartment occupied part of the top floor. As soon as I stepped out of the car the extent of the snowfall became apparent. Snow engulfed my legs up to my hips. I struggled to reach the front stairs, then made my way to the third floor.

I opened the door to find half my apartment covered in snow. The roof had caved in under the weight of the snow. It took several days for the landlord to repair the roof.

The rest of the winter passed without incident, though I was nervous each time I ventured out driving in the snow. Syracuse, after all, is considered the snowiest large city in the contiguous United States, averaging about 128 inches year. Snow is such an expected part of the city that it is not uncommon for a radio station to provide a prize to the person who predicts the first date a measurable amount of flakes hits the ground. A day in mid October won the year I was there. That year it snowed 133.7 inches.

Syracuse’s nickname is Salt City. I assumed the moniker came from the liberal spreading of salt on city streets to clear the snow. Actually, it derived from nearby salt mines. I had no idea there were salt mines until I heard a story on the radio explaining the origin of the nickname during my last week in Syracuse. 

My red with black vinyl top 1969 Buick Skylark weathered the winter with no dents, no fender benders, no scratches.

On a bright, warm early June day, diploma in hand, I packed the Buick up in the driveway shared with the house next door. My getaway was a few moments away. As I bent into the car to reposition my stereo, I looked out the passenger side window and saw another student’s car backing up, slowly, inexorably, toward me. I screamed, “Stop!” I waved my hands. To no avail.

Thunk! Broadsided in sunny, summer daylight in my passenger side door. I shook my head in disgust. So close to escaping Syracuse intact.  

Water, Water, All the Time: 80 oz a Day

How much water do you drink every day?

Doubtful you keep track, though many of you, like my daughter Ellie, always has a bottle at hand. So, including liquid accompanying meals, do you swallow 20 ounces? 40? 60 or more? Are you pishing it away all day? All night?

Water is said to be good for you. I accept that, but, honestly, I rarely have a thirst for it. Or for any other drink. I try to stay hydrated when playing pickleball but over the course of a 2-3 hour session I imbibe perhaps 10 ounces in the form of sugar free lemonade flavored Vitamin Water. Over dinner, I often cannot finish a 7.5 ounce can of Diet Coke.

I’m musing about water because I might once again be suffering from either kidney or bladder stones, a condition that may be flushed away, if one is fortunate, by the consumption of what I consider to be a prodigious amount of liquid, 80 ounces per day.

I’ve coped with the alternative medical remedy, details of which I will spare you, except to note that a catheter was involved.

So, one might assume that confronted with the choices I would opt for drinking lots of water. After all, more than half a century ago, in June 1970, drinking 80 ounces of water for 10 straight days kept me away from being drafted during the height of the Vietnam War.

My college deferment had run out. In the draft lottery at the end of 1969 my birth date, March 6, was picked 139th. At the beginning of June a formal letter from the Selective Service System ordered me to show up 10 days later at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn to take a physical to determine my eligibility to be one of 162,746 young men to be inducted that year into the military, mostly for service in Vietnam.

The Brooklyn College bookstore carried a booklet, “1001 Ways to Beat the Draft.” I had no debilitating disease or condition, nor was I a conscientious objector. I simply had no desire to get shipped to the rice paddies of Indochina. The booklet, however, did offer a glimmer of hope.

Seems the military has a standard of acceptable physicality based on a person’s height and weight. A six foot person—my height—had to weigh at least 131 pounds. I weighed 134. I was really skinny. But my path to survival of the not-necessarily-the-fittest was clear. Get thinner!

I had 10 days to lose enough weight to get under the minimum, and then some, because the booklet also said they could keep me for three days of observation. Read that, time to fatten me up for the kill.

God bless Dr. Stillman, as in Dr. Stillman’s Water Diet. His regimen, much like the latter day Atkins Diet, permitted only proteins and required drinking 80 ounces of water a day. For 10 straight days I avoided all carbohydrates, all fruit, anything but meat, fish, eggs and water. For years my mother had tried to fatten me up, forcing me to drink milk shakes spiked with a raw egg that my sister gleefully recalls preparing, even threatening to send me away to a special camp for the undernourished. Now faced with the prospect of her youngest child being shipped off to Vietnam, she reversed course. She worried I was eating too much of my restricted diet. She removed food from my plate.

The fateful day at Fort Hamilton, the scene played out much as it did to Arlo Guthrie in the film “Alice’s Restaurant.” The sergeant told us no one, absolutely no one, would fail the intelligence test. We walked around the physical area in our skivvies, holding our valuables in see-thru plastic bags. Medical technicians poked our arms to draw blood. They couldn’t find the veins of a really fat guy ahead of me. He fainted. He earned a deferment. At the urine sample station, real or sarcastic offers and requests for extra fluid abounded. At the weigh-in, I tipped the scales at 124 pounds. I was REALLY skinny.

Ten days. Ten pounds. They could still keep me for observation. I cautiously approached the decision desk. They could keep me on base for three days, or ask me back for another physical in six months. They deferred me for a year.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was forever safe. The draft never reached number 139 again.

To celebrate my immediate victory, I took advantage of the free meal provided in the mess hall. I remember eating breaded, yes, breaded veal cutlet, corn niblets, mashed potatoes, rye bread, banana cream pie, Coca-Cola. Army food was delicious.

Can I discipline myself again to drinking 80 ounces a day? The stakes are not nearly as high. Time will tell …