News of the Day and Tomorrow: Nikki Haley, Trees, Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Profile in Discouragement: Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley appeared Sunday on CBS Sunday Morning. In a segment of the interview conducted by Norah O’Donnell about the impeachment inquiry, Haley said, “The biggest thing that bothers me is the American people should decide this. Why do we have a bunch of people in Congress making this decision?”

For a public figure who many are touting as a future Republican presidential candidate, the former South Carolina governor demonstrated a naive understanding of government. Haley should realize that senators and representatives are sent to Washington not just to rubber stamp their state’s voter preferences or to blithely rubber stamp or reject a president’s agenda, but also to be leaders, to exhibit profiles in courage by supporting positions that are good for the country even if they are not compatible with the narrow interests of their respective electorates or political parties. They, after all, swore an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. No such avowal is required of the general population, though newly enfranchised citizens and members of the armed services swear their allegiance to our country.

Moreover, to follow through on Haley’s premise, surveys have shown a sizable majority of Americans believe in compulsory background checks before a gun may be purchased. Similarly, other gun control measures are majority-favored. Yet Republicans continue to refrain from enacting any such proposals. 

Taken a step further, what Haley seems to be endorsing is the supreme executive, a president who really does not require any other branch of government. His or her way or the highway for anyone who disagrees with the chief executive. 

The impeachment proceedings and a Senate trial will show in startling relief just how far Republicans have subsumed their allegiance to the Constitution in favor of service to a president who has obstructed justice and encouraged foreign interference in our “free” elections. 

Later in the interview Haley acknowledged that Donald Trump’s verbal assaults on four first term congresswomen, telling them to go back to their own countries even though they are all U.S. citizens, was unbecoming from a president. But she defended his actions, saying of the representatives categorized by Trump as “the squad,” “Don’t bash America over and over again and not do something to try and fix it.” 

Huh? Has she not been keeping abreast of policy initiatives they have put forward? I don’t agree with all of their proposals but clearly they have been trying to do something to improve our country.

Tree Time: Last week a Norway Spruce from upstate New York started its travel to Manhattan for its crowning as the annual Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center. The tree will be festooned with appropriate decorations—some 50,000 lights— in time for a December 4 unveiling on live television. 

Gilda and I are “big tree” fans, and by that I mean we really like trees, especially big trees. Our favorite is a copper beech, or mostly any beech variety. 

One of our more interesting days while visiting Scotland recently was a visit to Dawyck Botanic Garden, a 65 acre garden and arboreta eight miles south of Peebles. The trees are magnificent, especially the Douglas firs. 

You might be interested to know that the majestic Douglas fir, so common in the Pacific Northwest, is named for a Scottish botanist, David Douglas, who “discovered” them during an 1824-27 expedition. He brought seeds of the Douglas fir and about 10 other conifers back to Britain.

While on the subject of trees, Normandy, France, is known for its apple trees. But the French, at least in Normandy, don’t eat the fruit. Rather, they wait until their particular specie of apple tree drops its fruit. The apples are then gathered and fermented into hard cider. As the climate in Normandy is not conducive to growing grapes for wine, cider with an alcoholic kick makes life très jolie. 

Once an Editor …: I’ve been retired for more than 10 years now from Chain Store Age but my LinkedIn page still attracts onlookers every week. Recently I’ve been inundated by one head hunter organization sending me job opportunities. I’m flattered but not interested.

Perhaps my admirers are impressed that retailers are coming around to my way of thinking, at least when it comes to one of my fervent opinions. About a dozen years ago I editorialized that the madness of Black Friday was demeaning to customers and store employees. As retailers desperately tried to corral more consumers they chose not to wait until Friday morning. Many opened their doors on Thanksgiving Day itself, another intrusion on family get-togethers, particularly for store personnel who had to leave hearth and home to harness hostile shoppers intent on beating anyone in their way to a desired purchase.

It’s not a tidal wave yet, but I am encouraged by the number of chain store companies that will be closed all day on Thanksgiving. Here’s a list of the retailers I am aware of: Army and Air Force Exchange Service, Academy Sports and Outdoors, Ace Hardware, BJ’s, Costco, Hobby Lobby, HomeGoods, Lowe’s, Marshalls, Petco, Sam’s Club, Sierra Trading Post, Stein Mart, T.J. Maxx, True Value. 

Too Much to Read? Here's More

Did you ever muse that there’s just too much to read? Of course, I am not referring to No Socks Needed Anymore, but seriously, there’s lots of intriguing (not necessarily good) journalism out there, so your faithful servant/scribe has taken it upon himself to alert you to articles or videos worthy of your time.

To start, I left out of my last blog a cute-as-a-puppy clip from CBS Sunday Morning’s tribute to Valentine’s Day love: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/love-story-reagandoodle-and-little-buddy/

Sticking with the subject of love, though not the pure kind epitomized by the doggie clip, here’s an eye-popping article on sex workers you might have missed from the Style section of The New York Times: https://nyti.ms/2UOmRiL

I cite The Times more than any other newspaper, but I am not elitist when it comes to recommending local media. Thanks to Gilda, who reads the local papers from Omaha and Boston where our children live, here’s a profile of John Pehle from the Omaha World-Herald of a mostly unheralded hero of 75 years ago who saved thousands of lives: https://www.omaha.com/columnists/hansen/hansen-an-omahan-saved-countless-jews-during-the-holocaust-then/article_357296fc-cd60-563a-a221-8c18456c5c9a.html

Many consider Robert Mueller a hero. They can hardly wait for the special counsel’s report on the entanglements of the Trump campaign and presidency with Russia. But as this piece from NBC News notes, full disclosure of his findings is not automatic: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/you-may-be-disappointed-mueller-report-n971601

She’s not eligible to run for president for more than five years, but pundits already have her hat in the ring for the 2024 election, championing radical solutions to our national and world problems. The irony is that Trump’s declaration Friday of a national emergency so he could build a wall along our southern border (assuming the courts uphold his power to do so) makes freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a nightmare for conservatives (if she wins) and a dreamy candidate for extreme progressives. Here’s Politico’s take on it from a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/14/trump-national-emergency-border-precedent-225055?cid=apn

Elizabeth Warren provided an enlightened explanation of what might transpire in years ahead:  She tweeted, “Gun violence is an emergency. Climate change is an emergency. Our country’s opioid epidemic is an emergency.”

A future president could ban all gun sales, could confiscate all long guns, could limit ammunition sales, all under emergency powers. 

A future president could ban construction along shorelines, could order the relocation of residents along the shoreline, could order the construction of massive sea walls, all under emergency powers. 

A president could postpone indefinitely future elections under emergency powers. 

Sounds crazy but Republicans in Congress have forfeited their power. 

Think the courts will stop it all? Trump has been appointing federal judges who believe in the imperial presidency so don’t look to them for any brakes on presidential power. 

Dictators look for power vacuums to consolidate their hold. Republicans just let the air out of our checks and balances form of government. 

He doesn’t own it anymore, but Trump’s first major Manhattan project, The Grand Hyatt Hotel adjacent to and above Grand Central Terminal, will be torn down, replaced by a scaled down hotel as part of a mixed use development (https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-grand-hyatt-hotel-to-be-torn-down-11549567095). I wonder if he has any sentimental feelings about that news. 

Memory Unearthed: My Ties to the Lodz Ghetto

Here’s what I know about Łódź (Lodz).

My maternal grandparents were married in that Polish city at the beginning of the 20th century. Separately, they emigrated at different times to New York. First to arrive in America was my grandfather, Louis Gerson. His wife, Sarah, came later with their son, Solomon, and three daughters, Pola, Sylvia (my mother), and Victoria. A fourth daughter, Lily, would be born in New York. Sylvia was four when they landed at Ellis Island in 1921 from one of the last ships before immigration quotas were initiated that would ultimately doom hundreds, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands even a million Jews who would have sought refuge from the darkness engulfing Europe in the 1930s.

My mother and aunts were too young to remember and pass down details of life in Lodz. Except, that their regal mother would complain that compared to her apartments in the Bronx, her house in Lodz had parquet floors and was staffed with servants. Louis was a jeweler in Lodz, a trade he continued in New York. 

And one more story. Pola was once kidnapped by gypsies, but like the boy in O. Henry’s classic tale “The Ransom of Red Chief,” she was soon returned no worse for the experience. 

Unlike the immigrant benevolent society my father joined in New York from his hometown shtetl of Ottynia, to my knowledge and that of my brother and sister, our mother’s family did not keep up with relatives or friends back in Lodz. Accordingly, I was only aware of Lodz as a big city and would comment casually that my mother emigrated from there whenever mention of Lodz came up in conversation, in a film or TV show. 

So I was deeply intrigued by a recent CBS Sunday Morning segment of an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) entitled, “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross” (http://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/memories-unearthed-from-the-lodz-ghetto/).

The exhibit would run through July 30. Serendipitously, Gilda and I would be visiting the Boston area last week. Last Friday, we went to see the exhibit with Allison, our daughter-in-law. (There are no immediate plans for Memory Unearthed to tour other cities. The exhibit will return to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, where its condition will be assessed, and a determination made whether another venue is in the best interest of the collection, according to an AGO representative.) 

As TripAdvisor notes, “The third-largest city in Poland, Lodz’s historical and global significance is largely due to the ghetto that was built there during World War II.” 

Lodz fell to the Nazis on September 8, 1939, one week after Germany invaded Poland. According to Wikipedia, “The Nazi authorities soon established the Łódź Ghetto in the city and populated it with more than 200,000 Jews from the Łódź area. As Jews were deported … for extermination, others were brought in. … Due to the value of the goods that the ghetto population produced for the German military and various civilian contractors, it was the last major ghetto to be liquidated, in August 1944. ...

“Prior to World War II, Łódź's Jewish community numbered around 233,000 and accounted for one-third of the city’s total population. The community was almost entirely wiped out in the Holocaust. By the end of the war, the city and its environs had lost approximately 420,000 of its pre-war inhabitants, including approximately 300,000 Polish Jews and 120,000 Poles. ...

“When the Soviet army entered Łódź on 19 January 1945, only 877 Jews were still alive, 12 of whom were children. Of the 223,000 Jews in Łódź before the invasion, only 10,000 survived the Holocaust in other places.”

Two of those 877 survivors in Lodz were Henryk Ross and his wife Stefania. A photographer, Ross had been tasked by the Nazis to chronicle the “good” life in the ghetto, but he also surreptitiously focused his lens on the inhumane conditions in the ghetto and the cruel life its inhabitants endured and succumbed to. 

Ross buried more than 6,000 negatives hoping someone would unearth his documented history after the war. After he was liberated Ross himself dug up his cache. Water had damaged about half of the negatives. The MFA exhibited about 200 negatives and prints. (For a more complete background on Ross and the exhibit, follow this link: http://www.mfa.org/news/memory-unearthed.)

My mother and her sisters never spoke of any surviving relatives. In truth, they never spoke of Lodz, other than the comments noted above. 

Perhaps I was imagining a connection, but there in Negative 268 of Ross’ treasured records, a face hauntingly stares out at the camera. It is of a woman on a bed taking off or putting on a nightshirt. It is a face that to my eye resembles that of my mother and her sisters. A relative? I will never know. It doesn’t really matter. Jews have a saying, “All Jews are related to one another.” 

Look to the News for Inspiration

Whenever I lack inspiration for a blog post all I need do is read the newspaper or listen to the news on TV or radio. Some cases in point:

Watching CBS Sunday Morning on Sunday I couldn’t help but be thrilled by the show’s choice of Santa Fe as the backdrop for its annual special edition on design. Gilda and I will shortly be visiting the colorful capital of New Mexico, though not as a replacement for our previously planned and now scrapped cruise of the Black Sea with stops in Odessa, Yalta, Sevastopol and Sochi. 

CBS Sunday Morning also ran a feature on tennis great Venus Williams and her apparel company. She named it “Eleven,” a number dear to Gilda’s and my heart (among other reasons, we were born 11 days apart 65 years ago and our house number is 11). I liked Williams’ reasoning behind her name choice: “Eleven stands for being better than a 10.”

A third tie-in appeared, courtesy of a piece on treadmill desks (for the uninformed, these are raised desks you work at while walking on a treadmill underneath at roughly two miles per hour). 

Joanna Coles, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, shown in the segment walking on her treadmill desk, said, “I’m more contemplative on the treadmill desk. I find the action of walking helps me think better.”

Steelcase manager of health and wellness Carlene Stevens explained, “As we exercise we send endorphins to our brain which then kind of increases our innovation, creativity and it could increase productivity, as well.”

Which might explain why some of my best ideas came to me as I walked up and down Park Avenue on my way to and from Grand Central Terminal and work.

Road Trip: The Travel section of the Sunday New York Times carried an article entitled “To Campuses Without a Campus.” I was hooked by the first sentence: “The last thing a dad gets to really teach his daughter is how to drive a car.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/travel/to-campuses-without-a-compass.html?_r=0)

It reminded me of a trip Ellie and I took to Oberlin College in Ohio when she was 16 and recently licensed to drive. On our way home along Interstate 80, I felt sufficiently comfortable to let her drive across half of Pennsylvania and all of New Jersey while I dozed in the shotgun seat. Before nodding off I told her, just go straight, no turns. 

I awoke as we passed the toll booth for the George Washington Bridge. I panicked as I realized Ellie had never crossed a bridge and as soon as she entered Manhattan she would be an illegal, underage driver on a highway. The alternatives were frightening—proceed straight onto the heavily trafficked Cross Bronx Expressway or take the exit ramp from the bridge onto the Henry Hudson Parkway North, with some of the most belly-churning curves in the region. 

We chose the latter with Ellie trying to calm me down. Only, we didn’t go north, we wound up going south, while all I could do was loudly tell her to get off at the first exit. Ellie successfully maneuvered us off the highway. 

Ellie chose not to apply to Oberlin.

Recycling: The Sunday Business section depicted how cities and companies are trying to minimize food waste by encouraging composting (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/business/cities-and-companies-tackle-the-food-waste-problem.html). 

Gilda and I have been doing our fair share. For the last 18 months we’ve been placing uncooked organic waste in a countertop compost bin. When full, we dump the contents into an outdoor plastic garbage can aerated by holes I drilled into the sides and cover. The food is mixed with dry leaves I process in the fall in a leaf shredder I purchased for $25 off of Craig’s List.  

When the garbage can is full we transfer the contents to an outdoor compost heap. Last weekend we went to Croton Point Park for Earth Day celebration and picked up a plastic compost bin. 

Gilda the Gardener is thrilled. She considers her home made compost to be black gold.

In case you’re wondering, the organic compost does not smell.

Nail-Biting Time: Finally, the Workologist column of The Times dealt with a thorny problem of office etiquette, namely, what to do when co-workers cut their fingernails in public.

True confession time—until I was 28 I bit my nails. I couldn’t stop. Like smoking, I was addicted. But the day I started working in Manhattan 37 years ago I stopped. Cold turkey. 

That day I also began carrying a nail clipper wherever I went. It turned out to be among the most useful tools I could ever imagine. I prefer a nail clipper with a small file, the kind the Transportation Security Administration at first deemed a weapon and wouldn’t permit you to carry onto a plane in the months after September 11. I’ve used a nail clipper to cut those pesky strings that tie shoes together in stores. To slice through package wrappings. To cut a nail that I would otherwise bite off.  

But I try to never cut my nails in public. 

Fifty Years Ago Today

I was sitting in art class on Friday, November 22, 1963. Mrs. Franzblau was the teacher. No doubt, my high school sophomore classmates were like most of our predecessors. We made fun of her. We paid little attention to her. We giggled a lot and bantered a lot during the art exercises she tried to get us to master.

Suddenly, the loud speaker on the wall at the front of the room crackled with static. It was a few minutes after one pm. An announcement was made that the president had been shot in Dallas. All students were to return to their home rooms for subsequent early dismissal.

I'm an early baby boomer, born three years into the population explosion of 1946-1964 when more than 76 million gained entry onto the nation’s census rolls. I'm therefore bemused when the John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination is portrayed as one of the defining moments of my cohorts. Truly, few of them were old enough to fully comprehend its significance. Bill Flanagan, born in 1955, a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning, said the death of JFK resonated so powerfully with those who were kids at the time because “it was the moment our parents went from believing in all the great things that were going to be, to regretting what might have been.”

It’s a nice turn of phrase, but I’m too basic a person to wallow in the psychology of the moment. I can’t say I remember my parents moping about the assassination, though they were deeply disturbed by it. It didn’t stop my father and mother from working hard in their small manufacturing business, from prodding their three children to excel in school. Like most families that fateful weekend, we watched the round-the-clock network coverage. I seem to recall being home from school Monday and watching the funeral on television. Yet it would not be until 1968, when Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were felled by assassins’ bullets, that sudden, unimaginable tragedy struck a more intimate chord within me. By then I was 19, a sophomore in college this time, old enough to recognize and fully comprehend racism, intolerance and inequality, old enough to worry about the war in Vietnam and what the prolonged conflict might mean to me, personally, if I were drafted when my college deferment expired. 

That’s not to say I was oblivious to national and international events as a younger teenager. I can recall watching Kennedy’s press conferences, at least the ones he held late in the afternoon after I returned home from school. I remember watching on television our United Nations ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, use aerial photographs to expose the buildup of Russian missiles in Cuba. Did I think the world was about to come to an end? Probably not. It was more like a war game being played out before our very eyes as we saw our navy intercept Russian freighters on the high seas. It was only later we learned how close to the brink of annihilation the world had come.

A wasted world is what is lamented at the end of Camelot, the Lerner and Loewe musical of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table that opened on Broadway in December 1960, a month after Kennedy’s election victory over Richard Nixon (the show closed January 5, 1963, 11 months before the president’s fateful trip to Dallas, and, coincidentally, my father’s birthday). 

Jacqueline Kennedy depicted her husband’s presidency with lyrics from the last song of Camelot, “a brief shining moment.” Just months after it opened, I saw the original Broadway production of Camelot, starring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, Robert Goulet and Roddy McDowall. Each year my parents, usually our mother, would take my brother, sister and me, individually, to a Broadway musical. I loved Camelot. My mother gave it mixed reviews. The next year we saw Kean, about the life and loves of Edmund Kean, the noted 19th century Shakespearean actor. I hated it. My mother loved it, partly because it starred Broadway legend Alfred Drake. I remember my mother favorably comparing Kean to Camelot. The public agreed with me. Kean closed after 92 performances, Camelot after 873. 

Venus, Jon Stewart and Red Light Districts

CBS Sunday Morning did a piece on Good Housekeeping’s Seal of Approval a few days ago. If a product carrying the coveted seal does not perform as promised, the magazine—not the manufacturer or the retailer—will refund the purchase price or replace the product. Which brings me to today’s mail and a copy of a magazine-sized glossy catalog of women’s apparel from Venus of Jacksonville, Fla. It’s 96 pages of soft porn images of fetching young maidens in bikinis and otherwise come-hither fashions. The back cover headline is “Sexy Sunrises are on your horizon.”

By the way, this hot catalog was not sent to Gilda. It was sent to me! I’m flattered Venus considers me, or Gilda, sexy. But I can’t help but thinking Venus and others of its ilk should adopt a Good Housekeeping-like creed—if their products don’t turn you into the personification of sexiness (at least to your partner’s satisfaction) in say, 60 days, you should get your money back. Or at the very least, they should remove you from their mailing list.

Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is no Sandy Koufax. You’ll remember the southpaw ace of the Los Angeles Dodgers forsook pitching the opening game of the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins because it fell on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Judaism’s holiest day. (For the record, Koufax pitched and won two other games in leading the Dodgers to the baseball title.) Stewart chooses to ignore, and even mock, Jewish holidays, working on Yom Kippur and other holidays including this week’s Passover celebration. Most Jews I know have a liberal sense of humor about our religion, so we laugh along with Stewart’s comedic send-ups. 

Monday night, however, one of The Daily Show’s best puns went unappreciated by what must have been an audience with few if any Jews, given that it was the night of the first seder of Passover. There wasn’t even a hint of laughter when Stewart’s reporting on the president’s trip to Israel was accompanied by the caption, “Barack Atah Adonai.” For the non-believers out there, and anyone else Hebraically challenged, Barack Atah Adonai is a play on “Baruch Atah Adonai” which begins every blessing and means “blessed are you, Lord our God.” In Stewart’s version, the Hebrew translates to “Barack (Obama), you are God.”  

Uh-oh: Retirement may cost me about 50 bucks. Since I don’t travel out of LaGuardia Airport too often these days I was unaware traffic lights were installed on an overhang above the departure ramp of the main terminal. As I drove Ellie and Donny to the United Airlines door, I was softly questioned by my son-in-law about gliding through a red light. 

I stopped at the next one and noticed a camera stationed to the right of the red sphere. Dread descended. No doubt my picture was taken at the prior light. No doubt I’ll get a notice in the mail in a few weeks demanding payment for going through a red light. No doubt my defense that no lights previously impeded my progress down the ramp will not absolve me from having to pay for the infraction. Ah well, it’s a small price to pay for an otherwise enjoyable retirement.

Wheels of Misfortune, Real-Time Homeland, Hipsters, MOM's to the Rescue

The wheel is a marvelous invention, surely one of the main reasons civilization has advanced from the cave. But a wheeled snow shovel? As far as I am concerned, I might as well still be a Neanderthal.

I had so been looking forward to a slight snowfall to test-drive my new wheeled snow shovel. I was disappointed to hear rain tapping against our bathroom skylight when I woke up in the middle of the night. But when the alarm went off this morning I was rewarded with a light, white covering on the driveway and walkway. Even before eating breakfast I eagerly unhinged my new toy from the hook it was hanging from in the garage. 

A total disaster. I won’t bore you with details of either my ineptitude or the poor design of the shovel. The only consolation is the friendly customer service rep said she would send a mailing label so I wouldn’t be charged for return freight and I didn’t even need the original invoice which came with the shovel. Good thing, because I can’t find it. 

I’m really bummed. The shovel had looked so easy to use in the promotional video I watched on line. Ah, well ...

Homeland Update: Ever wonder what a real life Carrie Anderson, the CIA agent/analyst trying to uncover a turncoat American serviceman, would look like? She’d more likely resemble a grandmother than the fetching Claire Danes of the Showtime program Homeland, if one goes by the picture of the woman who spearheaded the effort to find a mole inside the CIA, the notorious Aldrich Ames. 

Jeanne Vertefeuille died December 29. She was 80. For those who missed her obituary in Sunday’s NY Times, here’s a link. It’s a fascinating story of dedication, reminding us that truth is often more engrossing than fiction (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/us/jeanne-vertefeuille-who-helped-catch-aldrich-ames-dies-at-80.html?_r=0).

Connected at the Hip: During a profile aired on CBS Sunday Morning a few days ago, Scarlett Johansson was asked if she feels any older, now that she’s been married and divorced. “No,” responded the 28-year-old actress. “I feel wiser, maybe. I only feel older in my right hip. But I’m attributing that to Marvel" (for whom she plays the Black Widow in the Avengers comic book-inspired film series).

The morning I turned 35, I woke up with a pain of unknown origin in my right hip. It went away pretty quickly, but I always wondered why my body sent out a ping of rebellion, considering I do not angst over birthdays. Seven weeks from today I’ll celebrate another birthday, the one immortalized by the Beatles (64, for those who have no idea what I’m talking about).

MOM’s to the Rescue: Advertising works. I made a nice living on that premise. But not all advertising is appropriate, especially when targeted to influence those who cannot always discern the hidden messages being sent their way. 

Accordingly, MOM’s Organic Market, a Washington-Baltimore based regional grocer, is taking off its shelves all packaging that features cartoon characters from children’s books, films and television, even those from educational TV like Elmo and Dora the Explorer.

The 10-store family owned retailer can hardly hope to influence the national market, especially when adults have to be willing and knowledgeable participants. Last month I bought Finley a drinking cup with a race car floating in its base. I thought it was cute and would make meal-time fun. Little did I realize the car was a licensed product of the movie Cars; the suspended auto was the star, Lightning McQueen. Even though 3-year-old Finley had not seen the movie, he knew the character. 

In my defense, I’m a grandparent. Aren’t we supposed to spoil our grandkids? Still, I agree with Susan Linn, Director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, who said, "Using beloved media characters to sell kids on a particular brand of food is wrong, even if it's healthy food. Children should not be trained to pick foods based on the cartoon on the box” (or, I might add, the car in the cup). 

The First Debate

In a discussion between fellow presidential debate moderators aired today on CBS Sunday Morning, Jim Lehrer told Bob Schieffer he would consider a successful debate one in which the things “that matter most to the voters, to hell with the candidates, to hell with the moderators and to hell with the handlers, to hell with the pundits, but the things that the voters care most about have been discussed and have been discussed in a way that they can now understand what the differences are. That's what these debates are really all about.”

With that in mind, here are some questions I would like Lehrer to ask, this first debate Wednesday night being restricted to domestic issues. (I’d also like to see Lehrer challenge Barack Obama or Mitt Romney if either skirts around a question and simply delivers standard campaign pablum. Let’s get some real answers.) I figure the 90-minute debate will include 15 questions at most. Here are 16, just in case the debate runs a little long:

1. Are Americans better off today than we were when President Obama took office in January 2009?

2. What are your specific ideas for job creation? 

3. To balance the budget and reduce the deficit, program cuts would have to be enacted and tax loopholes would have to be closed. Please provide specific areas that would be affected under your next budget?

4. Would you accept a “grand bargain” of spending cuts tied to a slight tax increase?

5. Do you believe in global warming? Scientists have charted the rise in sea levels? What steps should we take, if any, to protect our shorelines?

6. What is your view of evolution? Do you believe Creationism should be an alternative taught in our schools? Do you believe dinosaurs and man lived at the same time?

7. Explain your evolved positions on same-sex marriage (Obama) and the right to an abortion (Romney)?

8. Do you support the Dream Act? How would you deal with our illegal immigrant population?

9. What are your views on government regulatory agencies? Would you do away with any and why specifically those agencies? 

10. Do we need to raise the age eligibility for Social Security and Medicare? Should we means-test for Social Security and Medicare benefits?

11. Is it government’s obligation to provide all Americans affordable health care as a right? What specific changes still need to be enacted to health care?  

12. What level of safety net protection is appropriate for government to provide the unemployed, school children, the impoverished?  

13. Do you see any danger in the disparity between the earnings of the average worker and that of corporate management?

14. Neither of you is a hunter. Explain your position on the right to possess assault rifles and super-sized bullet magazines, both of which are not necessary or used for hunting?

15. What is the proper balance, if indeed there is any need for balance, between a comprehensive energy policy and protection of our environment?

16. Are we better off with federal-administered programs or with programs pushed down to the individual states to administer?

Gee, that’s 16 questions and I didn’t ask about their plans to end the housing crisis, or how they feel about the effect super-PAC money has on the political process, or the need, if any, to provide more regulation on the financial industry, or what is the proper role of the federal government in education. 

Let’s hope we get some real answers to whatever questions Lehrer poses. Let’s hope the candidates aren’t merely posturing or engaging in a sound-bite-off. We have too much at stake.

Twinkies and Other Food Tidbits

Gilda thought I’d be devastated. She told me Hostess, the maker of Twinkies and other soft confectionaries, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. So kind of her to be concerned for my culinary welfare, but no, sweetheart, I have no fondness for Twinkies, I replied. My cravings are for Drake’s Devil Dogs, or Yankee Doodles, and the occasional Ring Ding. No my sweet, Hostess filing a second bankruptcy petition just three years after emerging from similar protection was no reason on my part to be alarmed.

Of course, that was before I read the newspaper article and discovered Hostess owns Drake’s and has for more than a dozen years. I plead ignorance because I haven’t eaten a Devil Dog, Ring Ding or Yankee Doodle in more than 15 years.

I wasn’t always a snack food snob. Back in my 20s, I consumed Drake’s products daily. My routine before embarking on my morning police department checks in Derby and Seymour, Conn., was a breakfast that included a Devil Dog or three-pack of Yankee Doodles. By 10 am in the New Haven office, I’d take a Coca-Cola and Baby Ruth break. I had another Coke at lunch and at least another one with dinner. That’s at least three sugar-packed Cokes each day, though Gilda would tell you I sometimes started the morning off with another one at breakfast as I don’t drink coffee except on rare occasions. It was no surprise then that by my mid-30s my triglycerides had zoomed past the 1,000 mark (less than 200 is considered healthy). They’re under control now, but at the cost of giving up almost all sweets, including Drake’s cakes. I’ve learned to even enjoy Diet Coke.

Growing up in Brooklyn, my family usually stocked the cupboard with cakes from the Polish bakery two blocks away. Marble cake, seven layer cake, checkerboard cake, cherry, blueberry, and custard danishes. You could always find a piece of cake on our dinette table. My parents, especially my father, enjoyed a piece of cake with his coffee each night. Our children always knew when my parents were coming to visit by the sudden appearance of cake in our house.

I really miss not snacking on cake. It really pains me when we have to dump leftover cakes we put out for dinner parties we host. I inherited my father’s desire for cake. But I also inherited my mother’s inability to cope with too much sugar.


Fish & Chips: CBS Sunday Morning ran an interesting piece on the quintessential British fast food, fish & chips, which recently celebrated its 150th anniversary as a pillar of the English diet.

Surprised me that fish & chips is so young a dietary staple of the mother country. Even more surprising was the belief that a Jewish fishmonger was responsible for at least the introduction to the English menu of the fried fish component (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8419026.stm). Gee, I always though gefilte fish was the extent of Jewish influence on seafood cuisine.


Princes of the Fisherman: Please don’t take this the wrong way, no sacrilege is intended, but I was amused the other day when a reporter asked New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan if he was doing anything special before his investiture as one of the 22 newly named cardinals by Pope Benedict XVI. He replied he was trying to lose weight to get into his new uniform.

Which made me wonder, why is it that so many religious leaders, of all denominations, are, shall we say, more corpulent than one would expect from religious orders that cherish not only piety but a certain amount of asceticism that would preclude the over-indulgence of food?

Just asking...

Statistically Speaking

I peaked in fourth grade. Don’t be so smug—you probably did, too.

Handwriting legibility peaks around fourth grade, according to professor Steven Graham of Vanderbilt University, speaking to CBS Sunday Morning last Sunday.

I have already testified to that reality in previous blogs. I received an A in penmanship in fourth grade, much to the consternation of my parents. They were so astonished, based on their daily review of my handwriting, that my father prodded my mother to complain to my teacher about the grade she gave me. Her defense—on the papers she graded I had painstakingly penned in proper cursive form, thus confirming that even at the tender age of nine I knew how to game the system.

Proper penmanship, said Graham, helps convey not just your ideas but your status. “People form judgment about the credibility of your ideas based upon your handwriting,” he said.

If that’s true, about one in five leave us clueless, as some 20% of those polled by CBS Sunday Morning said they don’t write by hand, compared to 45% who write “all the time” and 35% who write “sometimes.” Presumably, those 20% compose directly onto their computers, smart phones, iPads or devices. Count me among the 35%.

Also count me among the 16% who rated their penmanship as “poor.” Eighteen percent labeled their writing “excellent,” 37% as “good,” and 28% “acceptable.” Who knows what the remaining 1% think.


As long as we’re talking surveys, according to the Tax Policy Center, 47% of American households don’t pay any federal taxes. Of those “tax units,” 50% earn under $20,000 a year. Another 22% are senior citizens, 15% are low income families with children, and 13% fall into the “other” category.

Included as “other” are 444,000 tax units in the top 20% of all income earners.

Here’s where political debate gets interesting. President Obama wants to tax these high income earners as part of his budget balancing plan. Republicans say they want to “expand the tax base,” meaning they want to tax the near 41 million who pay nothing because they earn less than $20,000 a year. No, The Republicans are not trying to get blood from a stone. They want them to get jobs so they’ll earn enough money to be taxed.

But here’s the rub. Those with the money are not spending it to create jobs, or jobs that provide a living wage. At least they haven’t for the last decade when the elite earners of our society have benefited while the working class and middle class have seen their earning power erode. Speedily resolving this conflict will determine how long our economy remains in the doldrums, because it’s not only taxes that are not being collected. Without jobs, or jobs that pay enough to leave some discretionary spending, Americans will not ring up retail sales or pay for services such as dry cleaning which together account for two-thirds of our gross domestic product.


In a nation as rich as ours—and we still are a rich nation—it is shameful that, according to the federal government, hunger affects one out of every five households with children.

When I dropped off my monthly food donation at the Ecumenical Emergency Food Pantry of White Plains this morning, I was told contributions are down but the need is up. That reality was underscored by a report on tonight’s CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. Households unable to meet their food needs at some time during the year have increased by one-third from 2006, before the recession, to 2010. The 2010 figure today hit 14.5%, compared to 10.9%.

“Hunger is at an all-time high...There’s nothing worse than a hungry child,” said Hannah Hawkins, founder of Washington, D.C.’s, Children of Mine Youth Center.

Not So Very Good Morning News

Harry Smith is one of my favorite newscasters. I don’t go out of my way to watch him—I rarely have tuned in as he anchored CBS’ Early Show for 17 of the last 23 years. Yet, when I see him substitute host on the CBS Evening News or CBS Sunday Morning, I feel quiet comfort that the news will be delivered professionally, with appropriate gravitas, for Harry Smith is a good reporter. There’s something about his demeanor, his calm, cadenced Midwestern voice, his comfort with his skin—he’s bald, you know, not one of those newscasters who gels up his hair, like Chris Wragge does on the local WCBS-2 New York station.

Oh, did I mention it was reported this morning that Harry will be replaced by Wragge? Reality is mimicking fiction. It’s like the William Hurd character edging out Albert Brooks’ in Broadcast News. Looks over substance. If Wragge’s earpiece ever falls out...well, you get the picture.

Smith’s demotion could not have been too much of a shock. After all, The Early Show is a distant third in the ratings, behind NBC and ABC in the morning time slot. And it wasn’t just Smith who got the heave-ho. CBS replaced the full cast. Even weatherman Dave Price had it rain on his parade.

People lose their jobs every day. So far, CBS has not fired any of the replaced anchors. I’m not faulting CBS for making the changes. Rather, I was taken by a paragraph in the NY Times article:

“Mr. Smith said in an interview that the reshuffling ‘had been on the horizon for a while.’ He braced himself for it by taking a ‘long walk on a cold golf course’ last Sunday, he said, pausing to reflect on how fortunate he had been to report from places like Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the earthquake there last winter, and from New Orleans after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last spring. He sounded philosophical, not disappointed. Mostly, he sounded content.

“’I’ve been at this a long time,’ he said, ‘and I’ve literally given it every possible thing I can give it.’”

I can identify with that “long walk.” Mine wasn’t on a golf course. Mine took place in November 1987 along the blocks surrounding my office on Park Avenue and E. 55th Street. I had just been told that Chain Store Age General Merchandise Trends would cease publication in January 1988. I was the publisher and editor, a nine-year veteran of the magazine. Almost all of my staff would be absorbed by other publications within our company. I would wind up heading up a nascent newsletter division for our company for 10 months, before joining a different edition of Chain Store Age as its editor and associate publisher (then publisher) for the next 20 years.

I remember that long walk. Not the details of what I saw or heard. Rather, the emptiness I felt. I couldn’t focus on anything. I wasn’t angry. Like Smith, I knew the staff and I had done everything we could to keep the executioner’s song on hold. We had succeeded in forestalling the corporate decree by a year. But living under the threat, under the sword of Damocles, for nearly two years took its toll. Still, it was not a feeling of closure, of finality, when the news came. It was a feeling of emptiness. Deflation. Futility. And though I know better, it was a feeling of inadequacy, a feeling I had not done enough.

I’m long over those feelings. If he has them, I hope they soon pass for Harry, as well.

TV Fare

I deviated from my normal practice of watching a recorded version of CBS Sunday Morning by watching it live yesterday, meaning I had to sit through (actually lie through, as I was in bed at the time) all the commercials. Fortunately for me (not for CBS), there weren’t too many of those distractions, but I was struck by how often the ads hyped record albums.

It’s not uncommon for Christmas albums to be promoted this time of year, and there were a few of them, but the ads were not restricted to Yuletide offerings. They encompassed a variety of performers and styles, from Eric Clapton to Andrea Bocelli to Susan Boyle, Norah Jones and Bruce Springsteen. There even was one for Jackie Evancho. Jackie Evancho? This 10 year old is apparently a singing sensation, a crossover soprano, who finished second in the fifth season of America’s Got Talent. Who knew? I’ve never really watched more than a minute or two of that show, though Gilda and I do tape and watch Dancing with the Stars (which brings me back to one of my favorite subjects, politics—from the outset I predicted Bristol Palin would go deep into the show because there was no way her mother’s supporters wouldn’t be phoning in their support of our country’s #1 unwed teenage mom. I’m almost tempted to call in myself to vote for anyone but Bristol, who, I must admit, has been rather game but really pretty lame as a dancer).

Back to the record albums. Older people, I believe, are still buying albums, as opposed to downloading from iTunes and the like, so it made sense for the ads to show up on a program that attracts an older demographic (what a relief to see something advertised on a newscast other than a product for incontinence, erectile dysfunction, diabetes management or some other condition of aging). For the next five weeks we all need to inure ourselves to the onslaught of holiday songs, in stores and promoted on TV. Of course, my cheeky comment on this phenomenon is that I’m waiting for a Christmas album from Matisyahu, the Orthodox Jewish reggae singer. That, to me, and not Jackie Evancho, would qualify as a crossover singer.


Maher and Moore: While riding the exercise bike this morning I watched last Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher—guests included author/director Nora Ephron, documentarian Michael Moore, CNN’s Jessica Yellin (there’s something comical about a political correspondent having a last name that sounds like someone screaming, the typical way politicians talk these days), defeated senatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, Dem.-PA, and ex-Ark. governor, now perennial GOP presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee.

It’s always comforting, reassuring, to hear famous people express the same thoughts that meander through my mind and sometimes make their way into my blog. For example, Nora Ephron wondered why it is that middle class people don’t understand that millionaires should pay more taxes? Why aren’t they supporting Obama’s push to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?

Because of the “lie” they were told that anyone can become a millionaire, said Moore. Just in case they achieve millionairehood, they don’t want to jeopardize their good fortune. I guess that’s why so many people buy lottery tickets...

Broadcast live, Real Time provided a painful memory when viewed Monday. Commenting on Obama’s countenance after the election, Maher said the president “looks like a broken man. He doesn’t look like it’s made him angry. He looks like the Dallas Cowboys, like he’s given up on the season.”

Ouch! Having watched the Cowboys dismantle the NY Giants at the Meadowlands yesterday, I can only say that football, like politics, is a sport with infinite comebacks. Some recent (last 62 years) examples—Truman, Nixon, Clinton and today’s NY Times profile, Dick Armey (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/us/politics/15armey.html?_r=1&hpw).


Comeback Trail: I had studiously avoided the comeback trail being blazed by George W. Bush on all the talk shows with the release of his book, Decision Points. But there he was, our 43rd president, with his coyishly smiling wife, Laura, being interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning and I was too lazy to get off the bed (Gilda, on the other hand, chose that moment to seek breakfast downstairs). I could fill volumes with my analysis of his analysis of his eight years in office, but I won’t.

I can’t resist, however, pointing out both Bush and Obama have recently voiced their everyman qualities by noting they pick up the poop their dogs leave behind. Too bad we (Americans and other nationalities) have to do clean up for the mistakes they both have made in office.

Middle Class Values

Less than five weeks until election day. The battle for the middle class vote is fully engaged. Forget for a moment where your political sentiments lie. Consider a more open-ended question—just who comprises the middle class these days?

Time was, middle class was mostly a statistical evaluation. It generally meant households with incomes ranging from $30,000 to $80,000. Given that today the poverty level for a family of four is $22,050, the $30K threshold might be a little low. Probably the same holds true for the top level as well.

In any case, purely statistical measurements do not suffice when assessing who is part of the middle class. Today it is more of a psychographic classification, reflecting not just income levels but also, among other things, education, aspirations, professional status, a family’s total mindset. To some, middle class life means enough income to allow a spouse to stay home with the children, or to get a new car every three to five years. Ethnicity is a factor as well. Asian Americans place a different level of importance on education than other groups. Hispanic Americans shop as multi-generational units. We have attached symbols to middle class living that heretofore might have been represented just as “the American dream”—home ownership. The housing crisis of the last few years has pretty much turned that dream into a nightmare for too many.

Back in 2002, married friends of ours living in Scarsdale (an upscale Westchester County, NY, community) decided to move to Manhattan. At their going away party, I walked into a conversation among several couples lamenting their paycheck to paycheck existence. As 2002 was the last time the country suffered through a recession prior to our current state of mismanaged economic affairs, it was not surprising to hear such talk. But it was disconcerting to hear their self-categorization as middle class. These, after all, were lawyers and stock brokers, doctors and accountants, real estate developers and corporate executives, couples whose annual household incomes easily topped a quarter of a million dollars a year, who lived in one of the country’s wealthiest areas, who drove the most expensive foreign cars, belonged to country clubs, took several vacations each year and sent their children to summer camps and private colleges. I suggested to this small gathering of grumblers they were not middle class, that they lived in a cocoon of privilege and their paycheck to paycheck lifestyles were the result of choices made, some good, some questionable, about their spending priorities. (Fear not, concerned reader—nobody punched me out. I remain friends with all of these “enlightened” complainers.)

But it is now 2010 and the debate is raging on the wisdom and morality of keeping or repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, those families earning more than $250,000 a year, the very people I chided for their middle class in-sensibilities. I’m not going to bang you over the head with my opinion about the tax rate. Rather, I present to you the contrasting views of Ben Stein and Linda McGibney as delivered these last two weeks on CBS Sunday Morning. You decide:

Ben Stein: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6881783n

Linda McGibney: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6902335n&tag=cbsnewsVideoArea.0