Last Week's World News Close to Home

A cruise. Seemed like just the right way for Gilda and me to celebrate our respective 65th birthdays (mine’s on Thursday, Gilda’s 11 days later). Gilda found a summer cruise that would incorporate a new region of the world for us to explore with the type of land tours that combine history and heritage, in our case, Black Sea ports with Jewish legacies. 

Cities like Odessa. Sevastopol. Yalta. For those not completely familiar with those cities, they are in Ukraine. Yes, that Ukraine, the one dominating most foreign news reports these days. They’re in Crimea, the peninsula of Ukraine where a sizable number of residents have Russian ancestry. Three other stops on the cruise would be in Turkey, another hot spot. We’d also visit Sochi, which by then, with the Russian Olympics long over, presumably would not be high on the Chechen separatists’ hit list. 

Last week our tour operator bit the bullet and cancelled the trip. Ah, well, maybe next year.

Salt of the Earth: The New York metro area mostly dodged a snow bullet Monday, though the streets, no doubt, were treated with salt to prevent icing from the dusting that did manage to trickle down. The availability of salt has been a major storyline this winter as municipalities have exhausted their normal supply and budget lines. 

When I attended graduate school at Syracuse University, I kept hearing the town referred to as Salt City. Until my last week there I assumed the nickname came from the liberal spreading of salt on city streets to clear the average 115.6 inches of snow every year (the year I was there it snowed 133.7 inches.) The nickname actually derived from the nearby salt mines at Onondaga Lake, to which I was oblivious.

The importance of salt as a life-sustaining commodity was impressed on me recently by Big History, a TV mini-series on the History 2 channel. It seems early mankind chose to inhabit locations not just because fresh water was available but also because there was ready access to salt. 

Our family visited a salt mine in Krakow, Poland, in 2008. The Poles have turned part of it into a museum, with salt sculptures depicting religious and national events. It is truly amazing what goes on underground. You might also find this clip from a CBS News broadcast last week enlightening and entertaining: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/ohio-salt-miners-relishing-harsh-winter-weather/

Deathaholics: Wall Street and banking firms are trying to induce young workers to take weekends off, this after a London-based Bank of America go-getter intern may have died from exhaustion after pulling three all-nighters last summer.  

When our family visited Japan back in 1991, we heard about “karoshi.” The Japanese economy was booming. Workers paid the price. They labored long hours. It was not unusual for workers to die in their tracks, while walking or driving to work. Passersby would simply shake their heads from side to side and whisper knowingly, “Ah, karoshi.” Simply translated it means, death from overwork.

Slave Labor: 12 Years a Slave won the Oscar as the best picture of the last year. The historical drama of Solomon Northup’s tenure as a slave in Louisiana still has bearing today. 

Consider U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu’s re-election campaign in the Bayou State. Though she is given high marks for working in the best interests of her state’s economic vitality, voters are upset the Democrat supported Obamacare. Here’s how one of her constituents explained his position to an NPR reporter:

"I don't vote for black people, lady. No, ma'am. I don't vote for black people. They got their place, I got my place. That's the way I was raised."

Here’s something to ponder about the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman confrontation, which commemorated its second anniversary last week: Where was Zimmerman’s gun during their fight?

During a WNYC interview last week, Lisa Bloom, NBC legal analyst and author of Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It, sharply criticized the prosecution for, among many points, not questioning how Martin knew about Zimmerman’s gun.

According to Zimmerman’s testimony, he was lying on his back while Martin pounded away at his face. He said he shot Martin only after the youth allegedly saw the gun and said he was going to kill him. But, said Bloom, Zimmerman’s gun was in a holster tucked inside the back of his pants. Only if Martin had X-ray vision and could see through Zimmerman’s portly body could he have known about the gun, she said. Prosecutors never asked Zimmerman to explain this dilemma, she lamented. 

I assumed the gun was holstered on his hip, in clear view. I never thought Martin was guilty of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time when an overzealous, possibly bigoted, Zimmerman defied police orders to back off. The more you hear about this case, and others reported by Bloom, the more injustice cries out.

The Jackie Robinson Story vs. 42

Having just seen 42, the biopic of Jackie Robinson’s struggle to break the color barrier in major league baseball in 1947, last Sunday, I was intrigued to watch the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story starring Jackie Robinson that was aired on Turner Classic Movies Friday afternoon. 

Biopics are usually quite syrupy. They play loose with some facts. Comparing two cinema treatments of the same story left me perplexed as to which one was more accurate. In some instances, both films produced shoddy history.

Take, for example, the simple facts of when, how and where the Brooklyn Dodgers clinched the pennant in 1947. In The Jackie Robinson Story, the Dodgers clinched in front of their home fans at Ebbets Field. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning and a man on second base, Robinson tied the score with a double. He scored the deciding run when the next batter singled him home. 

In 42, the Dodgers were shown playing the Pirates in Pittsburgh. Robinson hit a late inning home run to win the game. General manager Branch Rickey, the driving force behind baseball integration, was not at the game. He was depicted back in Brooklyn listening to a broadcast as he never played in or watched a baseball game on a Sunday, a promise he had made to his mother, a devout Methodist, as was Rickey. 

So here’s the truth—Robinson had little to do with winning the pennant-clinching game. Actually, no Dodger deserves credit. The Dodgers captured the National League flag that year after the second place team, the St. Louis Cardinals, lost a night game at home on September 22 to the Chicago Cubs. For good measure, the Dodgers went out and won their game the next day against the New York Giants. The score was 6-1. Robinson played only part of the game. He went hitless in two at bats. He had no runs batted in. He was removed from the game after batting in the fourth inning, with the Dodgers leading 2-1. 

September 23 was a Tuesday. Rickey would have been at the game. It was, after all, a home game, at Ebbets Field. 

FYI, Dan Bankhead picked up a four-inning save for the Dodgers on September 23. Bankhead was an Afro-American teammate of Robinson. 

In The Jackie Robinson Story, a spring training exhibition game between the Dodgers and their farm team, The Montreal Royals, had to be cancelled because the city of Sanford, Fla., would not permit white and Negro players to be on a field at the same time. In case you’re a little startled, yes, that’s the same Sanford, Fla., that George Zimmerman hails from. I’ll let you draw any conclusions as to how prejudices have changed, if at all, in the ensuing 66 years.  

Pitching Our of a Funk

I was in a funk most of Sunday afternoon.

Before you jump to any conclusions, I was not depressed about our new bed. My back was almost free of pain after just one night. 

The other day my friend and former research partner Leo, who celebrated his 92nd birthday last week, sent me a note from Tucson asking how I was doing, as he said my “blogs tend to portray your life in nostalgic and depressing fashion.” To which I replied, “I will admit to nostalgia, Leo, but not to depression, though In checking the dictionary definition of nostalgia it might infer some sadness ("a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time"). 

“Could be also that I am depressed about GOP efforts on the state and national levels to return our society to one that is less caring and compassionate and more unequal and intolerant. I've avoided writing about politics for the most part over the last few months because of the never-ending march backward. Not being a paid commentator I can choose to take a vacation from the encroaching reality.”

I should have said I was “distressed,” not depressed, as I am about the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman verdict, another example of an unjust but probably judiciously correct outcome given the known facts in the case, the need to prove guilt beyond a shadow of doubt, and Florida’s insane “stand your ground” law. 

No, I was in a funk for a very superficial reason. It was because I stunk up the softball field Sunday morning (and couldn’t even blame my back for a lousy pitching job). In just three-plus innings, before I wisely took myself out of the game with the bases loaded, I walked more batters than I have in all the games I pitched this season combined. I put my teammates into a three-run hole they could not overcome. I was angry at myself because I did not measure the distance between home plate and the rubber before the game started. It was at least two feet too long, so pitches that normally would have crossed the plate as strikes came in too low, hence the many walks. It wasn’t until the third inning that I mentioned it to the umpire and the home team pitcher. We corrected the distance, though by then I had already damaged our chances. 

I stayed in that funk until the evening when Gilda and I enjoyed a showing of the film 42, about Jackie Robinson’s 1947 debut as a Brooklyn Dodger, as the first Afro-American to play in the major leagues. The movie was emotional and inspiring, but what truly elevated me from my funk was the appearance of one of Jackie’s teammates, a pitcher who perhaps more than anyone else would have reason to have remained in a funk since 3:58 pm October 3, 1951, when the pitch Ralph Branca threw to NY Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson in the bottom of the ninth landed in the left field stands for a game-winning, National League pennant-winning home run. 

Now 87 and still sharp of mind, able to recall minute details of his and other ballplayer careers, Branca appeared at Pelham, NY’s Picture House with his son-in-law Bobby Valentine, the ex-NY Mets,  Texas Rangers and Boston Red Sox manager, and Marty Appel, the former NY Yankees public relations director during the George Steinbrenner-Billy Martin-Reggie Jackson era. They engaged in a 45-minute conversation about the film, for which Branca served as a technical advisor, and baseball in general.  

Over the years I’d read how Branca recovered from the trauma of serving up the fastball that Thomson launched into baseball immortality for himself, infamy for Branca. Indeed, until Thomson’s death several years ago the two would appear together at conventions and other gatherings. If Branca was able to get over it, then so could I. After all, I didn’t have the whole borough of Brooklyn lamenting my existence.  

Aside from observing that your emotional life can go on, here are some comments Branca made about 42 and baseball:

The “shower scene” where Branca asks Robinson to join him in the shower with the rest of the team, where it’s played for laughs to suggest homosexual overtones, did not happen that way, he said. He merely told Robinson go with him to  the showers, that a team showers together. 

Branca was pitching against St. Louis when Enos Slaughter spiked Robinson in the calf at first base. Branca wanted to hit Slaughter with a pitch the next time he was up but Robinson told him not to. Slaughter led off the top of the eighth inning. Branca was pitching a perfect game at the time, 27 up, 27 down. Slaughter singled, the Cardinals’ only hit of the game. Branca was upset he didn’t throw at Slaughter.

Asked who was the best player of his era, Branca didn’t hesitate—Joe DiMaggio. As to who was the best center fielder among Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, Willie Mays of the Giants and Duke Snider of the Dodgers, Branca remained loyal to his teammate, reasoning Snider had the best arm of the trio and had to defend a more difficult turf as the Ebbets Field fence was more irregular with hard to play angles.  

He wasn’t in 42, but there was another Afro-American who played for the Dodgers in 1947. Dan Bankhead, a pitcher, joined the team in late August, Branca recalled.

A native of Mount Vernon, NY, Branca asked a tough trivia question: Which two unrelated major leaguers grew up in the same house at different times? Answer: Branca and Ken Singleton whose family bought their Mount Vernon home from Branca’s family. Singleton played for the Mets, the Montreal Expos and the Baltimore Orioles. He is now a sportscaster for the Yankees. 

Returning to the film, Branca said “Dem Bums” was not written on the side of the Dodgers team bus.

  

The team’s away uniform should have been grey with Brooklyn written across the chest, not Dodgers. Several pitchers on opposing teams in the movie had their throwing arms mixed up (righties were shown as lefties and vice versa).

When the Dodgers clinched the 1947 pennant in Pittsburgh, general manager Branch Rickey was not at the game. Rather, he was shown listening to a radio broadcast at Ebbets Field. Branca explained that Rickey, a devout Methodist, was fulfilling a promise to his mother not to play or watch a baseball game on a Sunday.

Don Draper and I Wore Madras Plaid

For devotees of Mad Men, one of the more amusing scenes during Sunday’s last episode was the appearance of Don Draper at a suburban dinner party wearing a Madras plaid sports jacket, made all the more humorous by its tight, perhaps too tight, fit. I can’t relate to the tightness factor (as a youthful stick-of-a-man, most clothing draped me in excess), but I can identify with the Madras sports coat.

As a high school graduation present my parents sent their 17-year-old son on a six week trip to Israel, followed by two weeks in Italy and France. My brother Bernie initiated this gift of passage with a teen cruise to Israel after his graduation four years earlier. Instead of a similar trip two years later, my sister chose to spend her college sophomore year in Israel, which she talked our parents into extending to her junior year. Now it was my turn to venture to the Promised Land, only I would be more of a freelancer, spending time with Lee and with various family friends and relatives rather than an organized tour.

It was early July 1966 (about a year after the Mad Men episode). I’d like to say I was mature for my age, but I wasn’t. I was a gawky, painfully thin, horn-rimmed bespectacled young man. When the El Al plane landed in Israel in the midday sun, debarkation was by landing stairs rolled up to the aircraft. My sister waited behind a fence off the tarmac, a few hundred yards away. She had no difficulty recognizing me. She cringed at the sight of her younger brother decked out in a red, white and blue Madras sports jacket. Though Madras might have been au courant fashion for men in the United States, how absurd was it to be wearing a Madras sports jacket in 100 degree Israeli weather? Maybe our father would have felt the need to bring along a sports jacket, but why would a teenager? Lee wasted no time in telling me how funny I looked. Needless to say, the jacket never graced my shoulders again for the next six weeks.


Apology Time: I’m lazy about many things but usually not about my writing. Sunday I was under pressure to conclude my blog before going to meet friends for dinner so I didn’t fact check the filing deadline for this year’s taxes. In the back of my mind I thought I remembered hearing the deadline as Tuesday at midnight, but I didn’t check. Instead I wrote that because April 15 fell on a Sunday there was another day before tax returns were due. Oops. It’s tonight. Sorry about that.


Zimmerman’s Side: Sunday’s post also contained a remark that we haven’t heard George Zimmerman’s version of events that led to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. I was reminded by a reader that Zimmerman’s father had told Fox News his son shot Martin after the youth attacked him, breaking his nose and repeatedly hitting his head (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/29/george-zimmermans-father-claims-trayvon-martin-beat-his-son-threatened-his-life/?cmpid=cmty_%7BlinkBack%7D_George_Zimmerman's_father_claims_Trayvon_Martin_beat_his_son%2C_threatened_his_life

Of course, all that is hearsay, which many discount because police videos of Zimmerman entering custody that night show no bruising. Even assuming he cleaned up before the video at the police station, I would expect police would have taken pictures of his battered head when they first questioned him. Absent those pictures, I assume the special prosecutor did not find sufficient reason to believe his father’s version.


Could sex be the reason ABC’s Good Morning America ended the Today show’s reign as the most watched morning news show after 16 years? NBC News executives are probably too polite to imply the relationship, but I’m not bound by their prudence.

Consider: After 852 weeks, GMA overtook Today by some 13,000 viewers for the week of April 9-13, according to Nielsen, the tracking agency. Isn’t it strange that on April 12, cable viewers in Colorado Springs and Pueblo, Colo., had their GMA telecast pre-empted by several seconds of hard-core porn, mistakenly transmitted by their cable provider (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/television/colorado-tv-station-krdo-airs-porn-good-morning-america-article-1.1061350?localLinksEnabled=false)?

Could those over-the-top 13,000 GMA watchers merely have been cable subscribers hoping for repeat exposure to nudes, not news, of the day? I know it’s far-fetched, but then, there still are some people out there who believe Sarah Palin is qualified to lead our country.

Taxing Times

April 15. Taxes due. Well, this year because April 15 falls on a Sunday you have an extra day to file. Lots of people gnash their teeth at the idea of forking over money to the government, be it federal, state or municipal. I kind of take my father’s approach. He used to say he wouldn’t mind paying $100,000 in taxes as it would mean he’d have had a very good business year.

Of course, not everyone agrees with how government collects and spends our monies. One of the more tongue-in-cheek commentaries on the “fairness” of our federal tax system comes from Al Lewis who writes a column for the Wall Street Journal that appears every Sunday with our copy of the Westchester Journal News. Here’s a link to his thoughts, “Time to Pay Up, Chump”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304356604577340051572237414.html?KEYWORDS=Al+Lewis


Florida Bound: Now that George Zimmerman has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the slaying of Trayvon Martin, will that be enough to quell the rage and outrage of this seemingly senseless killing, or will a conviction be the only thing that can cool racial tempers?

Trayvon’s mother said the family just wanted Zimmerman arrested so he could stand trial. Sybrina Fulton even said on television she thought the shooting was “an accident,” though she later refined her comments to mean the encounter between Trayvon and Zimmerman was accidental but became a case of the Neighborhood Watch captain profiling her black teenage son before killing him.

We have yet to hear Zimmerman’s account of the tragedy but I’d be truly surprised if he is convicted. He might not even have his case decided by a jury. A judge may well throw out the case based on Florida’s Stand Your Ground defense statute which allows deadly force if threatened. Dave Ross, a CBS News radio commentator, provided several examples last Thursday of first-degree murder charges dismissed by judges, including one where the alleged murderer, Michael Monahan, was 20 feet from his victims, yet claimed he felt threatened. Arrest, said Ross, doesn’t necessarily lead to trial. You can listen to Ross’s short commentary, "Will It Go to a Jury," by following this link: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/audio/888-dave-ross/

By the way, in case you’re wondering what the Stand Your Ground law says, here’s a salient portion of it: “A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

The National Rifle Association casts the debate on the death of Trayvon Martin as a gun issue, a right to bear arms issue (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/us/nra-criticizes-trayvon-martin-media-coverage.html?_r=1). But would it have made a difference if Zimmerman had knifed Trayvon to death? The issue is Stand Your Ground, not gun control. Dave Ross gave an example of Greyston Garcia who used a knife after chasing a thief and then being attacked by the perpetrator. Apparently, pursuing someone and then being threatened is sufficient legal grounds in Florida to have a judge invoke a Stand Your Ground dismissal.

All of this brings out my dark humor side. Friday night over dinner with friends, I couldn’t stop talking about asking anyone I dislike or just want to tease if they would like to go to Florida with me. I’d knock them off in some secluded spot and claim a Stand Your Ground defense after placing a knife or gun in their hand. Actually, as Monahan's case revealed, those threatening you don't even have to be armed. Or close by. The sordid deed doesn’t have to take place in Florida. About two dozen states have similar Stand Your Ground statutes. Of course, I was only joking during dinner (aided by a large glass of chilled vodka). The real effect of all these laws is that one should never lose one’s temper anymore. You can never tell whether the person to whom you are directing your anger feels threatened and takes the ultimate defense, straight to your heart.


Mister Roberts: While we’re on the subject of judges, here’s an interesting fact. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation encountered problems with the Supreme Court, and he considered “packing” it with more judges favorable to his thinking, the swing justice on many of the cases was Owen Roberts. Many of the decisions rested on interpretations of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. How fascinating that the current Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts (no relation) must decide if the Commerce Clause gave Congress authority to pass the Affordable Care Act.


Charity Work: Is it time to start a charity for Levi Johnston? We’ll call it Condoms for Levi. If you haven’t heard, the former boyfriend of Bristol Palin has impregnated another girl, though this one’s mother probably won’t be running for higher office. http://m.nypost.com/p/pagesix/levi_johnston_pills_girlfriend_pregnancy_n19w4FVk1Zz95zAbYOWxIP


For the Birds: Some people have dogs to clean up leftovers. I have birds. Leftover Passover matzo and really hallucious-tasting Crispy O’s (a Passover kosher version of Cheerios) will become bird food now that the holiday is over. In case you haven’t figured it out, hallucious is a Yiddishism for vile or atrocious. But birds being the scavengers they are, I have no doubt they will eat away, as long as they don’t break their beaks on the hard as rock Crispy O’s.

Trayvon (and George), We Hardly Knew Ya, But We're Learning More and More

So far we've learned the following from the death of Trayvon Martin:

1. No story no matter how seemingly clear and simple it seems from the outside, no incident is black and white. Like an onion that is peeled, there are hidden layers of nuance and fact. Take, for example, the pictures of Trayvon and his killer, George Zimmerman. Zimmerman’s initial picture showed a heavyset, brooding person. He looked like an enforcer from “The Sopranos,” while Trayvon, even in his football uniform, looked too small to tackle a peewee player, hardly physically able to challenge someone of Zimmerman’s demeanor and girth. Subsequent pictures show Zimmerman smiling and friendly, while Trayvon’s cherubic face has elongated and matured, shrouded inside a hoodie. The visuals provide a very different storyline our minds fill in until all the facts are known.

2. Have you noticed that the deceased is often referred to by his first name while the shooter is called by his last name? Is it a not so subtle way of inferring guilt and innocence as well as conveying boy status on 17-year-old Trayvon ?

3. In any alleged crime the victim as well as the alleged perpetrator will lose all semblance of privacy. Their pasts will become part of the story, either adding to their sainthood or demonization, depending on who is commenting.

4. Police will be challenged no matter their response, more so now that video of Zimmerman’s arrival at the police station apparently shows little to support the claim his nose was broken and bleeding and the back of his head was bashed.

5. Stand Your Ground laws invite vigilante justice or avoidable harm. When the only witness for the deceased cannot provide living testimony the law is a prescription for unacceptable remedies of suspect behavior.

6. Neighborhood Watch programs should be advisory arms of the police. Its members should adhere to police instruction. As the name implies, the volunteers are there to watch, not confront.

7. Politicians, especially presidents, would do well to refrain from commenting on criminal cases until all the facts are known. Doubtful Trayvon’s parents and George Zimmerman would want to smooth things out over a beer in the Rose Garden of the White House.

8. Our culture responds to symbols. That includes clothing. Gangs identify through colors and particular garb. A hoodie has come to symbolize non desireables. Not everyone who wears a hoodie is a hoodlum, but when the media always shows criminals in hoodies an impression is bound to be created. Geraldo Rivera was onto something when he cautioned parents not to let their teenage children roam the streets in an outfit that invites suspicion and fear. The hoodie didn't kill Trayvon, but the gang culture that has adopted the hoodie as part of its uniform surely contributed to the mindset that led his death.