Food Edition: Meals, Drinks, IBD and Cookies

You are what you eat, we’ve been told time immemorial. If that’s true, we have lots to be sorry about for the regretful state of our health from overeating and overdrinking. 

Let’s start off with a whopper of a “hamburger” story, and I’m not referring to anything Burger King is trying to foist on consumers. Rather, the Arizona Cardinals football team has unveiled the Gridiron Challenge Burger as part of its new lineup of stadium food. 

I would get nauseated writing all the ingredients, so I’ll let you tease your appetite by listening to the makeup of this seven pound (yes, your read that correctly, seven pound) hamburger: https://youtu.be/AshJsEeo0PU.

Perhaps breakfast is the meal you like to binge on. Well, then head off to Minnesota to take a bite into McDonald’s new McGriddles French Toast sandwich, being tested in Gopher State units: https://dailym.ai/2vJxOs3.

Has all that heavy food made you thirsty? How about some free beer? Sounds too good to be true? Yer right, if you live in Cleveland. 

According to The Verge, “Bud Light has put together something special for the fans of the eternally suffering Cleveland Browns: Cleveland Browns Victory Fridges, a bunch of custom-made, internet-connected fridges that will only open when the Browns manage to snap their winless streak (currently at 17 games and counting)” https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/8/14/17690362/bud-light-wi-fi-connected-smart-fridge-cleveland-brown-losing-streak-win

Sports and beer—natural companions. So, too, are politics and beer. But not everyone can disassociate one’s feelings for a beer and a specific politician.

After a co-founder of Samuel Adams Beer reportedly thanked Donald Trump for tax cuts, Somerville, Mass.,  Mayor Joseph Curtatone tweeted, “I will never drink Sam Adam’s beer again!” http://time.com/5367515/joseph-curtatone-sam-adams-jim-koch-president-trump/

Maybe those hardy meals upset your stomach. Maybe it triggered some IBD (inflammatory bowel disease). No problem. Just puff away on some marijuana, purely for medicinal relief, mind you, say scientists: https://dailym.ai/2BawymM

Ever wonder why scientists have yet to find the cure for all cancers? Must be because they’re too busy working on such humanity-saving research as to the exact way to snap dry spaghetti into two equal pieces (https://www.foodandwine.com/news/break-dry-spaghetti-evenly).

Finally, let’s get the lawyers involved. Which creme-filled chocolate sandwich cookie do you prefer, an Oreo or a Hydrox? 

Until relatively recently, those who kept kosher couldn’t answer anything but Hydrox as Oreo’s ingredients included lard while Hyrdox used vegetable shortening. That changed 20 years ago when Oreo switched to vegetable shortening.

The taste battle has been joined by a battle for shelf space in supermarkets. In a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission, Hydrox is claiming Oreo is unfairly “hiding” its cookies on grocers’ shelves from consumers (https://www.foodandwine.com/news/oreo-hydrox-rivalry-ftc-complaint).

I’m officially neutral on this choice. At one time my breakfast consisted of four Oreo or Hydrox cookies dipped in milk. Both soothed my craving. Both, equally and unfortunately, coated my teeth in chocolate and contributed to my many youthful cavities.  

The Re-Selling of a Would-Be President

Donald Trump generally has nothing good to say about George W. Bush, but his campaign has adopted an important strategy that helped propel W. into the White House. Just as Bush, rather than Al Gore, became the guy you wanted to sit down and have a beer with, Trump is recasting himself as an everyman who, despite his alleged billions of dollars of net worth, is a typical American who chows down KFC and McDonald’s like everyone else, who lets Jimmy Fallon muss up his hair, who seeks the comfort and approval of Dr. Oz to “reveal” his medical history. No doubt next we will be treated to seeing him read The Pet Goat to schoolchildren (as Bush was doing when informed of the 9/11 terror attacks).

He’s remaking himself into a lovable, huggable Teddy bear. 

The birther controversy? 

Who me? It was Hillary and her campaign back in 2008 that started it, he’s saying now, an allegation deemed false by independent fact checkers. 

(http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/16/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trumps-claim-hillary-clinton-/ 

and http://theweek.com/speedreads/649186/no-hillary-clinton-did-not-start-birther-movement)

Trump is taking credit for ending any doubts Barack Obama was born in the United States. Though he reluctantly admitted the truth Friday morning, the damage from his five year campaign to delegitimize the president remains. 

According to Public Policy Polling, 59% of those who said they viewed Trump favorably think Obama was not born in the United States. In addition, two-thirds of such voters believe Obama is a Muslim (http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/poll-two-thirds-trump-supporters-think-obama-muslim#sthash.5sMlFugI.dpuf).

Trump is also refashioning his campaign positions to make them more appealing to non core constituency voters. He has, for example, appeared to soften on mass expulsion of all illegal immigrants the moment he gets sworn into office as well as proposing paid maternal child care. 

Of course, when you’re running for president, unlike when you’re engaged in a primary contest and must cater to hard core party voters, it is standard procedure to promise the world. Only a naive voter would expect all campaign promises to be kept.

But there is one way to measure the probability of some promise fulfillment. If a president comes into office with his or her party in the majority in the House and Senate there’s a good chance at least some of those promises will become law. That’s how the Affordable Care Act came into being, though it did not have all the features Obama had promised.

Hillary Clinton will need huuuge coattails to flip Congress Democratic in November. Her prospects of signing legislation for anything on her wish list are dim. She will be confined to be the resister-in-chief, pushing back against repeated attempts by a GOP Congress to roll back progressive legislation or executive actions of the past eight years. (She’ll also have to combat right wing determination to impeach her.)

Trump, on the other hand, may work with a GOP Congress to reverse much of what has been put in place, including Obamacare.

But the softer side of Trump may be more problematic for a President Trump. As currently constituted Congress has few Republicans who would go along with such progressive legislation. They would see paid maternity leave and other social welfare benefits as Trump-the-businessman has—as burdens on corporate profits.

Thus Trump would preside over a regressive administration, backed up, no doubt, by a more conservative bent on the Supreme Court and lower federal panels once he starts appointing judges.

To get to that pinnacle of ratings status—the presidency, or said another way, the entertainer-in-chief—Trump is trotting out all the theatrics he can. His supporters are rabid fans who care little about truth and integrity. They’ve been so conditioned by all the so-called “reality TV” shows.

So there’s nothing unexpected in recent polls that show Trumpsters more enthusiastic for their candidate than are Hillary’s supporters. It’s human nature for more people to complain than to compliment. 

Nonetheless, Clinton’s campaign must rev up the excitement quotient and, more importantly, the fear factor. Every day it must be pointed out what is at stake, not just for the Oval Office but also in Congress. 

Specifically, but not exclusively, at stake are:

• the prestige and standing of the United States as first among nations
• the balance of the Supreme Court as a progressive bulwark
• reform to Obamacare that does not strip it of meaningful affordable healthcare for all
• funding for Planned Parenthood
• a woman’s right to choose
• minimum wage increases
• safeguards against employment discrimination
• safeguards against food and drug abuses
• safeguards to worker safety 
• environmental protection including an acknowledgment that climate change is real
• business oversight legislation
• voting rights enforcement 
• the continued belief in National Parks 
• Wall Street oversight
• a thoughtful, reasoned foreign policy

The Great (Pizza) Debate. And the GOP, Too

OMG! Did you see the latest news from the debate? No, I am not talking about Thursday night’s Republican Party presidential gabfest (okay, maybe later in this post I will, but not now). More importantly, The New York Times reported Friday the decades-old epicurean debate as to which pizza shop serves the best pies in New Haven, nay, the world, might be drawing to a conclusion.

Sally’s Apizza has an uncertain future. You can’t say you’ve ever been to New Haven if you have not tasted and gone to gastronomic heaven gorging on Sally’s pizza, though some would argue (incorrectly) that Frank Pepe Napoletana down the block in Wooster Square serves the best pies. For details on what might bring this cousinly rivalry to an unsatisfying conclusion read The Times—http://nyti.ms/1TZ9FkF.

It wasn’t because I wrote this blog around lunchtime that I waxed nostalgic about Sally’s and the other eateries Gilda and I frequented when we lived two years in New Haven (1975-1977) and two more before that in Seymour, some dozen miles away, while I reported for The New Haven Register as she earned her nursing degree at Bridgeport University and then worked in the newborn intensive care unit at Yale-New Haven Hospital. 

On my reporter’s salary of $7,800 to $10,000 a year we didn’t have much spare change back then. Though expenses were far lower than today’s (gas was about 33 cents a gallon until the oil embargo of 1973 jacked it up to about a dollar, while home heating oil soared from 5 cents a gallon to 50 cents), eating out was a luxury. Even McDonald’s was a treat not to be indulged in too often (btw, back then McDonald’s and Friendly’s had almost exclusive fast food coverage where we lived, though I vaguely remember one of the first Subway stores in nearby Ansonia). 

My salivary glands do get a workout when I recall three restaurants we patronized when we wanted to splurge or celebrate, especially after Gilda started bringing home a paycheck. For seafood we’d go to Jimmies of Savin Rock in West Haven. Sundays we would dine at the Bar B Q-Rest in Milford along Route 1 for a lobster special dinner—a one pounder for just $2.95. 

If we were feeling really flush with cash, or maybe on our way back from a family visit in Brooklyn, we would stop along the New England Thruway at Valle’s steak house either in Stratford or West Haven. Valle’s often ran a double lobster special. Gilda liked the prime rib dinner, but my favorite part of any meal was dessert, a large chunk of devil’s food cake smothered in whipped cream. Alas, the Valle’s chain closed in 2000. 

Okay, enough about food. Let’s get to the real red meat, Thursday night’s GOP debate. But first, here’s a truism reporters learn early on in their careers, but upon retirement and writing a blog it gets less and less important—never sit on a story!

I relate this bromide because Thursday afternoon I started typing a posting on Ted Cruz’s crude attack on Donald Trump and his “New York values.” Instead of pouncing on the subject I deferred, thus allowing Trump and other pundits to rise to the Big Apple’s defense. Ah well, you’re not paying me to be first with news and analysis. Besides, I was enjoying my time with Gilda during her day off.

Anyone who thought ISIS or some other foreign entity, such as Iran, Russia or North Korea, posed an existential threat to America should have come away with a clearer perception of who really could take down the United States—Barack Obama and his co-conspirator Hillary Clinton or any other progressive who might get the opportunity to break our economic system by imposing higher taxes and more regulations and by getting the opportunity to nominate three or four left-leaning supreme court justices.

All right. This was classic campaign rhetoric. What struck me most was the almost complete absence of understanding of the complexities and nuances required of a successful presidential candidate. Take, for instance, Cruz’s opening salvo (no doubt he could not believe his good fortune to be asked the first question). Though it was about jobs and the economy, Cruz launched into a diatribe meant to raise the boiling point of every red-blooded South Carolinian in the audience and anyone else listening who believes gunboat diplomacy is preferable to respectful communication. 

He excoriated Obama for not mentioning in his State of the Union speech the 10 sailors captured by Iran after they meandered into Iranian waters. Cruz promised if he were president a country that captured any of our servicemen or servicewomen and forced them to kneel in humiliation would “face the full force and fury of the United States.” Oh boy, are we ready for cruise missile launches to resolve situations that peaceful diplomacy could diffuse within 24 hours? 

Ben Carson at times exhibited a sense of humor but, to my thinking, not enough understanding of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Carson wondered how rancor and name calling had become so commonplace in our society. Surely, he opined, it did not come from our Judeo-Christian roots.

Huh? Is he ignorant of American history? Puritans, who came to this land seeking religious freedom, denied it to anyone who failed to practice religion as they did. That’s why Roger Williams was forced to leave Massachusetts to found Rhode Island on the principles of religious tolerance and separation of church and state, as well as respect for the land rights of Native Americans.

Did Carson not realize that our Judeo-Christian value system was a foundation of slavery? 

Did Carson not realize that our Judeo-Christian values failed to open the doors to millions of would-be immigrants from the Far East and eastern Europe, many of the latter group who were Jewish?

Yes, there are many good Judeo-Christian values, such as communal help for the poor and underprivileged, but most Republicans prefer bootstrapping rather than government assistance programs or increases in the minimum wage (which they’d really prefer to do away with altogether as they would Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare). 

I’ve worked myself up enough so I won’t dissect the rest of the GOP field.  Have a good weekend.

  

Who Benefits from the Collaborative Economy?

Driving around Friday morning I listened to a re-aired interview Brian Lehrer of WNYC public radio did with a co-founder of Zipcar, Robin Chase, who also wrote Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism. 

Chase advocated for greater freedom for companies such as Uber to operate without governmental oversight. In areas such as hiring drivers, she suggested, vetting their backgrounds was a task better suited to private companies than government. Answering one caller’s question about the lack of full time work and benefits these New Tech Age companies provide, Chase contended that large employers such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s were already staffing part-timers as a means of keeping a tight lid on benefits and wages. She argued that working for one employer full time was an outmoded form of labor, that it was better for workers to juggle several jobs and thus attain greater control over their lives. They would be cushioned against loss of income if their job with that one employer disappeared. 

Sounds reasonable, until you look behind the part-time work trend. Companies use labor scheduling software to predict appropriate staff levels weeks in advance. Workers typically are hourly wage earners. Shifts are assigned, usually with no recourse to alter them. Assuming the worker has two or more part-time jobs to earn anywhere near a living wage for his or her family, it would not be unusual to work more than a standard 40-hour week. What’s more, the worker would need a spreadsheet to manage the hours demanded by different bosses. And, should a family need or emergency arise, imagine the mayhem required to alert and assuage the conflicting interests of multiple employers.

Yes, the Collaborative Economy is making millions, even billions, for entrepreneurs like Chase. But it is transforming America and other countries into polarized societies of Haves and Have Nots. 

Zipcar is making personal transportation affordable to those who cannot or do not want to buy or lease a car. Chase should be commended for being part of that revolution. But suggesting that the life of a multi-employed worker, responsible for his or her own benefits, is better than a full-time job is irresponsible and elitist. 

Free Range Child Rearing

I called home from work one day to discover Gilda had left 10-year-old Dan in charge of watching himself and seven-year-old Ellie while she went to and from the cleaners four blocks away. I went ballistic.

How could you be so delinquent, so irresponsible, I demanded of Gilda when I came home. She calmly responded there was nothing to fear, that Dan was more than capable at his age of caring for both of them in the few minutes she was away.

I bring this up now because of a segment on the Brian Lehrer Show I listened to Thursday. His WNYC public radio guest was Lenore Skenazy, author of the book and blog Free Range Kids, her conceit being that children today need more independence, that fear they will be snatched, or worse, has been overblown by the media and overtaken our collective psyches, particularly those of parents of young children.

Lehrer and Skenazy discussed the recent arrest of a South Carolina woman who let her nine-year-old daughter, armed with a cell phone, play in a popular park while she worked in a nearby McDonald’s. For details of the alleged charge of unlawful conduct toward a child, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in jail, and their conversation, click on this link (http://www.wnyc.org/story/less-hovering-more-exercise/), or for a CNN article click here (http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/21/living/mom-arrested-left-girl-park-parents/index.html?iref=allsearch).

I will avoid taking sides, though the Murray of 25 years ago clearly had an opinion. But I can’t seem to be anything but nostalgic for the freedom my friends and I had in the Brooklyn of the 1950s and early 1960s to play outdoors, even in the street, to walk two long avenue blocks to play in the PS 254 schoolyard all day where stocky-built, black curly haired Tyrone was the local bully, to ride city buses to school and sometimes often wait 20 minutes or more in the rain or freezing cold and snow for a bus to arrive. 

This was not the bucolic Stand By Me coming-of-age experience. Rather, it was an ongoing immersion into city life complete, for me at least, with a mugging in Coney Island when two early teenage friends and I snuck away on the elevated subway one Saturday afternoon to enjoy the rides in Steeplechase Park. It was a quick, almost casual, mugging. We were about to walk into Steeplechase. I held a $20 bill aloft and before I realized it wasn’t Stanley or Jerry reaching for the money, the twenty was snatched from my grip by three youths who jostled all of us before racing away. We were unsettled, but still had enough money to spend an hour or two at Steeplechase. 

We had to keep our trip secret. Stanley and Jerry came from families that prohibited traveling on Saturday, or touching money. I didn’t have those restrictions, but my cousin Michael was coming to our house that afternoon and I had some explaining to do about why I was not home to play with him. I fibbed that I was at the schoolyard playing ball and had lost track of time. 

Fast forward to Gilda’s and my parenting prerogatives. When Ellie started seventh grade we were surprised to learn she no longer qualified for busing. White Plains provides busing to students who live at least a mile from school. We hadn’t moved. The school hadn’t moved, so why had Ellie been stripped of busing privileges? Seems a new busing administrator had mapped out a different, less than a mile, route. 

Gilda and I were upset. Ellie was unperturbed. Gilda ferried her uphill to school every morning; Ellie relished the down hill walk home, even disdaining offers of rides from parents no doubt concerned about a 12- or 13-year-old girl trekking on streets without sidewalks with the need to cross busy Mamaroneck Avenue.  

Some parents are reluctant to send their kids to sleep away camp, much less for a full seven or eight week summer. We shipped Dan out when he was nine, Ellie when she was seven. When Dan asked for an all-night birthday party, we agreed, never thinking he and his friends would stay awake the whole time. But they did and it is still fondly remembered as another example of Forseter libertarianism. 

When Dan learned to drive at 16, we gave him a credit card. Thirteen-year-old Ellie got one, as well. Both credit cards have their pictures on the back. Nearly 20 years later the pictures have yet to be updated by the bank. The point is, we trusted them to handle the cards in a responsible fashion. They did.

Yes, bad things happen. But they can happen even in the most careful circumstances. It’s normal to be vigilant. It stifles growth and independence to be suffocating. 

More from Saratoga, Basal Cells and the Baby Carriage

My brother called when we were in Saratoga Springs last week. He had a bone to pick about one of my blogs. I thought he would be upset upon reading I might not return his old baseball glove after I cleaned it up (or even before). Nah. He was more concerned about his reputation, piqued about my implication that he did not have an outdoorsman’s gene.

He wanted to set the record straight—back in his college days he drove cross-country with his friend Marty for six weeks, staying in hotels for no more than a combined week’s worth of days. The rest of the time they slept in tents or under the skies. They trekked down and up the Grand Canyon. 

And, after he married Annette, he took her on camping trips, as well. I seem to recall this, but I’m waiting for confirmation from Annette.

Bernie reached me while I was in the parking lot of a Price Chopper supermarket in Lake George, about to go in to purchase a turkey sandwich. The town was virtually closed down for the fall and winter seasons. Even the McDonald’s had a chain across its driveway with a “see you next year” sign.

Along the Northway they’ve updated the rest stop road signs. Now the signs read “Text Stop. Rest Stop.”

It’s easy to tell the locals from the tourists up north. With temperatures hovering in the 40s, tourists like me bundled up in down jackets, sometimes over fleece vests. Locals, meanwhile, scampered about in sweatshirts and even just the occasional T-shirt. 

The local newspaper, The Saratogian, has transitioned to a mostly on-line news source. Its old building on Lake Street has been sold. The Saratogian’s staff awaits a new home. 

One thing I learned is The Saratogian is now owned by Journal Register Company, part of Digital First Media, the same outfit that owns The New Haven Register where I started my journalism career in 1972.

Mohs Update: It’s confirmed, I have another basal cell carcinoma on my nose. Seeing a surgeon on Friday to schedule removal. 

Third Life: The baby carriage Gilda’s sister gave us that I used to transport wood, that I put out to pasture (bulk garbage pickup) last week, apparently has a new life. Someone came to our cul-de-sac and liberated the conveyance before the sanitation engineers showed up. I haven’t seen it around our neighborhood carrying any babies, or wood.

Transitions From Legos to Purses, From Minimum Wages To Yankees and a Remembrance

This time I really do have a pretty legitimate reason for going dark over the last 10 days. For most of that period Finley and Dagny, along with their parents Dan and Allison, came down from Massachusetts to spend a stay-cation week with us. They enjoyed a trip to the Bronx Zoo, Coney Island (the boardwalk, kiddie rides, the beach and lunch at Nathan’s), Muscoot Park and LegoLand. 

But what might be considered the highlight of the visit, at least for Finley and Dan, was the retrieval from the attic of hundreds, if not thousands, of Lego pieces Gilda and I thoughtfully stored for our grandchildren some 25 years ago. I’m not sure who was more enthralled by this reclamation, Dan or Finley. Our grandson was genuinely excited by the battery-operated train, and the helicopter and police wagon with flashing lights and sirens. As much as the resurrected Legos brought back memories of Dan constructing a whole village on most of his bedroom floor during his childhood, Dan was clearly the most captivated. When all the grownups had stopped watching a movie to go to bed Thursday night, Dan stayed up another half hour, rebuilding planes, aided by the schematic instructions we had carefully saved.   

Friday morning Dan and Finley were back into the Legos. In case you’re wondering, we did not ship the Legos home with Dan and Finley. As if they needed a further incentive to visit, Finley and Dan (and when she’s older, Dagny) have another reason to venture south.

Anyone who believes racism, overt or subtle, does not exist, not just in our society but worldwide as well, was treated to another dose of reality this past week when Oprah Winfrey was steered away from looking at a $38,000 purse to a less expensive handbag in a Swiss boutique. Though the store claims it was just a misunderstanding, there’s little doubt the salesperson assumed a person of color could not afford a $38,000 purse, so why bother wasting time. 

Beyond the black humor (pun intended) of perhaps the richest woman in the world (white or black) not being treated royally, here’s my question—who really needs a $38,000 piece of stitched leather? The excesses of the outrageously wealthy over the last two decades have been grotesque, with too many buying automobiles for sums greater than many people pay for homes. Oprah is a symbol to many who struggle every day. Why would she so blatantly flaunt values that do not correlate with her core audience?

When I was young, our relatives and family friends would put a dollar inside any new wallet my brother, sister or I received. Lee double-dipped when she received a new purse. It was always a nice surprise to find the cash inside our new wallets and purses. I wonder, how much does Stedman have to put inside Oprah’s new pocketbooks? Anything less than a cool grand would seem rather cheap, don’t you think?

Speaking of cheap, I’m pretty supportive of fast food workers seeking a more livable wage. One of my first big stories in trade journalism for my former company dealt with efforts to raise the minimum wage back in 1977. The restaurant industry railed against it, claiming any increase would shove operators over the brink, forcing them to close down, resulting in fewer foodservice employers and employees. My publisher wanted me to write a story supporting those assertions, but the facts, as I researched them, showed otherwise. That story wound up winning a corporate prize as the best news article of the year.

You might have heard Fox Business News anchor Neil Cavuto last week rant that too many people disdain working for fast food eateries. “It’s like jobs aren’t enough these days,” he opined. “They damn well better pay well or folks just really aren’t going to apply for them at all. Did I ever tell you that when I was a kid, you’d be grateful for any job you could find. Now a lot of kids are just the opposite, turning up their nose at fast food jobs that go begging at 11 bucks an hour. It’s true!”

The 54-year-old commentator said that when he was 16 he eagerly took a minimum wage job at $2 an hour at Arthur Treacher’s in Danbury, Conn., the first rung on his ladder of success. But as Mother Jones pointed out, Cavuto has a problem with math, which kinda kills his credibility as a financial expert. His $2 an hour in 1974 adjusted for inflation would be about $9.47 today; “Cavuto made the equivalent of $1.22 per hour more than the current minimum wage in Connecticut today and $2.22 per hour more than the current federal minimum wage (of $7.25).”

Mother Jones noted “Cavuto's riff also misses the larger point, which is that the living-wage fight isn't about 16-year-olds with no kids whose parents cover their basic living expenses. The median fast food worker is 28 years old, and the median female fast food worker is 32. Their wages have dropped an average of 36 cents since 2010. And they're making less than Neil Cavuto ever did.”

On another fast food point, I stopped in McDonald’s a few times recently. The Golden Arches might still be considered fast food, but I can vouch that service is definitely NOT fast. With its extensive and growing menu McD’s has a real systems problem from the time an order is placed until food is delivered to the customer. 

It’s hard to watch the NY Yankees these days, even when they win, which they don’t do often enough. Forget about the A-Rod mania. No one will come out ahead in that fiasco. Friday night’s and Sunday’s games versus the Detroit Tigers showed how fragile the Yankee season is. Mariano Rivera blew two saves (three in a row going back to last Wednesday in Chicago against the White Sox, the first time Mo has done that in his illustrious career). In 54 previous innings against the Tigers he had yielded just two home runs. He gave up three in two appearances this weekend. 

If Yankee fans can’t count on Mariano to nail down victories, who can they rely on? For the moment, it seems to be Brett Gardner, both in the field and at bat. He made a game-saving catch Sunday against Torii Hunter and then belted a game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth. This after getting the game-winning hit Friday night after Mo blew the save. 

Gardner’s heroics would have been appreciated, and Rivera’s travails lovingly tolerated, by Herb Bilus who passed away August 1, a week after his 92nd birthday. Herb loved the Yankees, the NY Football Giants, politics, current events, poker and other card games, his community of Bloomfield, NJ, and, most of all, his family.   

Even to funerals I rarely wear ties these days. Yet it would have seemed disrespectful not to wear one to pay my last respects to Herb. So there I was in tie and suit, at the service and then internment in a cemetery with a picturesque view of the New York skyline. Herb was one of the Tom Brokaw-coined “greatest generation,” a Coast Guard veteran of the D-Day landings. As the last of the vanguard who made our world safe for democracy die off, taps reverberates through the grassy knolls of their final resting places. Often it can be a recording. For Herb, a solitary live trumpeter played the soulful notes as an honor guard saluted and then rolled up an American flag that draped his coffin.

I knew Herb for just 25 or so years. He was the father, father-in-law and grandfather of some of our family’s closest friends. Here’s a reprise of what I wrote about Herb on the 66th anniversary of D-Day:

Surrounded by two of his three daughters and their husbands, three of his six grandchildren, two great grandchildren, a grandson-in-law and a couple of friends of the family, Herb Bilus had steak for dinner Sunday evening. Sixty-six years ago to the day, June 6, 1944, Herb enjoyed another steak off the shores of Normandy after his Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) #96 delivered its first load of soldiers to Utah Beach as part of the greatest invasion in history.

Hard to believe Ensign Bilus and his cohorts would stop for a hearty meal while the fighting raged, but his commander had promised steak for all officers if they came through their first mission successfully, and so the officers, perhaps even the total crew of 22 Coast Guard sailors, celebrated their good fortune before going back to secure another load of 120 4th Army infantrymen bound for the beaches of France. Herb’s LCI was part of Flotilla 4, a group of 24 LCI ships. They made their initial drop during the sixth wave, roughly six hours after D-Day landings began. By the end of the day, four of their ships were lost off Omaha Beach.

It was off Omaha Beach Herb witnessed true courage, and fear, under fire. It was the task of each LCI to deliver its precious cargo of fighting men as close to the beach as possible, close enough so they could wade ashore without being sucked under by the weight of their packs. Anyone who has seen the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan may remember scenes of GI’s dropped off too soon. As they hit the too-deep water, they sunk to the bottom, drowned before firing a shot. Saving Private Ryan was closer to D-Day reality than any other movie, says Herb.

On one of their runs at Omaha Beach, under heavy incoming fire, a high ranking Navy officer ordered Herb’s ship commander, a Coast Guard lieutenant, to lower his ramps to drop off troops. The lieutenant disobeyed the direct order, arguing the water was too deep. While the Navy man dropped off his load to a watery death, Herb’s skipper steered his ship closer to the beach, giving his soldiers a chance to get to shore “safely,” if such a term can be used to describe any landing that day.

The lieutenant, Marshall was his first name (Herb recalls his last name but I’m going to leave it out for what will be evident shortly), was unusual for a couple of reasons. Jewish by birth, Marshall refused to use his last name. It was too ethnic. Even when a telegram came for him under his full name, he would not acknowledge it.

Herb also suspects Marshall was gay. He was a real dandy, going off by himself during shore leave, wearing felt gloves and carrying a swagger stick. An artist, Marshall painted a mural about Flotilla 4 in the English estate house provided to them in Dartmouth by the author Agatha Christie.

They lived in close quarters aboard LCI #96. Herb has trouble reconciling current opposition to lifting the ban on allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the armed forces.

In a few weeks, Herb will be 89. He’s considered a youngster at his independent living residence in downtown White Plains. They don’t start counting your years until you’ve completed nine decades. Herb’s full of life and stories. Those interested in reading more about Herb’s exploits can do so by linking to an oral history he provided Rutgers University: http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/alphabetical-index/31-interviewees/804-bilus-herbert.

For those who don’t know, Herb’s daughters are Jane Gould, Pat Lager and Fran Bilus Feldman.

  

Bursting Bubbles of Childhood

Gilda and I are grandparents, as well as being a great (grand) aunt and great (grand) uncle, which means we’re not constricted or restricted by the strictures of parenthood. English translation—we can spoil little kids by letting them do what their parents deny them. No TV for little Finley? Not on our watch. No junk food for little Sophia and Dylan? Ha! Who better to introduce them to McDonald’s French fries? 

All this by way of saying when I grew up in the 1950s my parents had a few rules for me and my siblings that by today’s standards seem really quaint. Our father did not believe in long telephone conversations, whether incoming or outgoing. My sister Lee was particularly and repeatedly chastised, and in turn distraught and embarrassed by our father’s yelling for her to hang up, not because someone important might want to reach us, but rather to keep the telephone bill from being too high. Our mother fell victim to this restriction as well, which forced her to talk to her three sisters from the telephone in the dinette only late in the evening, after Dad had gone to bed. 

We also couldn’t walk around the house shoeless. If we dared trod in our socks or barefoot, Dad would casually walk near us to playfully, but with real intent, try to stomp on our exposed feet until we retreated to put shoes on. Naturally we’d complain, but our mother would explain going without shoes was a sign of mourning, an event from which our father wanted our household to be spared. 

I thought this Old World superstition was confined within our Brooklyn row house walls, but two weeks ago, as I listened to the end of a Jewish literature class given by the author Gloria Goldreich, I learned the practice of shunning shoeless sashaying around the house was quite common among first generation European immigrants. 

My parents also didn’t want us to chew gum, though the occasional peppermint Chiclet made its way from our mother’s purse into our mouths. They especially disdained our chewing bubble gum. A thin rectangle of pink bubble gum came with each packet of baseball cards I collected. I could keep the cards, but was expected to discard the gum. 

The one haven where we could chew bubble gum, chunks of Bazooka with the requisite three-panel Bazooka Joe comic strip inside the wrapper, was Paul’s Barber Shop on Avenue X between E. 21st and E. 22nd Streets. Paul’s (later Paul and Phil’s when the latter became a partner) was an old-fashioned barber shop, complete with swirling red, white and blue pole out on the sidewalk, scissors and combs soaking in a blue tincture of Barbicide disinfectant, a round stainless steel towel warmer for those getting a shave, and a trapdoor in the floor near a sink where cut hairs were swept into. With every kid’s haircut you got a packet of Bazooka.

I went to Paul’s until I moved away from Brooklyn after I landed my first job at The New Haven Register. I stayed with Paul’s even after Frankie’s opened on Ocean Avenue a block closer to our home when I was a teenager. I resisted Frankie’s razor-cuts that promised to straighten, for a while, my naturally kinky hair. Besides, Phil started giving razor cuts, and though they were more expensive ($10) than his regular trims, they still cost less than Frankie’s. 

The barber shop was a refuge to chew Bazooka—much preferred to Double Bubble—and read comic books (before ultimately matriculating to Playboy). Now, it seems, Bazooka is transforming itself. A new marketing campaign hopes to make the brand more appealing to chewers of all ages. Bazooka Joe, the eyepatch-wearing icon of the brand, along with his sidekick, the red-turtleneck-over-the-mouth clad Mort, no longer will be tickling funny bones as kids of all ages masticate their way to bubble heaven. Ah, well. Another reality of the past becomes just another memory (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/business/media/bazooka-gum-overhauls-brand-and-loses-comic-strips.html?_r=0). 

Reflections on Contradictions

Just back from a 10-day visit to Israel, some quick reflections...

I must be getting old.

Six times I’ve been to Masada. Six times I climbed the snake path to the summit where Herod built his palace and fortress retreat more than 2,000 years ago.

On the seventh time, I rested. I took the cable car to the top and back. Once on the plateau where 900 Jewish rebels martyred themselves rather than submit to Roman rule in 73 CE, I opted to sit in the shade after an hour while Gilda and our friend Gemma trekked on toward the southern flank of the desert promontory overlooking the Dead Sea.

On my first visit 45 summers ago, I slept overnight in a barely inhabitable hostel at the base of the mountain, rising pre-sunrise to climb the rocky trail before the desert heat would make the exercise incalculably difficult. Today, a modern visitor center—complete with a McDonald’s!!!!—greets all who come. I resisted the lure of a kosher quarter pounder and fries, instead choosing from the cafeteria fare three of Israel’s signature foods: hummus, falafel and schnitzel.


Ice Capades: Israelis have wised up, at least as far as ice is concerned.

In years’ past, I would be given a cube or two of ice with my soda. Now, they willingly filled a cup to the brim with ice.


Cinematique: Israelis love going to the movies, but they’re in no rush to get to their seats.

Seats are sold on an assigned basis so you know in advance where you’ll be. Moreover, commercials and previews last about 20 minutes before a feature film starts, so a 10 pm post time gives you plenty of leeway to settle in before 10:20.

If you’re watching a comedy, like Bridesmaids (in English with Hebrew subtitles), be prepared for two-stage laughter. The first stage starts when those reading the text get to the punch line before the words are actually spoken.


A Matter of Taste: Gilda loves salads, but Israeli salads were so enormous they almost got the better of her. They burst with flavor and freshness.

Though our nation can point with pride to the efficiency of our food distribution network, Israeli produce more than matches our output. Indeed, comparing the taste of Israeli cherry tomatoes to those sold in U.S. supermarkets leaves an American feeling decidedly inferior.


Who Knows: There must be an explanation, but I don’t know it.

At the Western Wall plaza, a holy site to all Jews because of its proximity to the Temple Mount, religious authorities, and some self-appointed vigilantes, do not permit men and women to stand together and pray. They don’t allow women to walk around with exposed shoulders.

Yet, along the tunnel tour that hugs the Western Wall along its northern path, at the point closest to where the Second Temple stood, the sexes freely co-mingle in prayer, with no one monitoring female attire.

Religion—go figure!