School Day Memories

With the beginning of school in most communities I started reminiscing about my early education years at Yeshiva Rambam in Brooklyn.

I started first grade in September 1954 when I was five years old. As my birthday is in March I should have been enrolled in kindergarten, but my mother pressured the school to accept me into first grade or she would take my brother and sister out of the school.

Before I started school I would watch from our dinette window as my siblings boarded the yellow school bus each morning. Now it was my turn. I don’t recall anything from the initial bus ride but the return trip is imprinted in my memory.

First grade ended at 3 pm, 90 minutes before dismissal for my brother and sister’s classes. I would ride the bus home by myself. I stepped onto the bus and walked halfway down the aisle before sliding into a row on the right side. The ride home would take about 30 minutes.

The next thing I recall is waking up back at school. I had slept through the drop off in front of our house. The bus driver apparently thought I had made other arrangements to get home. As my mother worked full time she was not aware of my troubled ride home. Our housekeeper, meanwhile, did not realize I was lying across a bench invisible to the bus driver and her.

I’d like to say I handled the situation as any five-year-old would. Indeed, I did. I started crying. Only upon seeing my brother and sister did I stop.

That was the only time I recall ever sleeping through my stop, even as an adult commuting home for more than 30 years on Metro North.

My first grade teacher was Mrs Malka. She was a cheerful woman. She must have been in her mid 20s. Some 50 years later I recognized her sitting next to her brother in the pew ahead of me in our White Plains synagogue on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. For the next decade I looked forward to seeing her every year.

I would not have looked forward to seeing my second grade teacher. Mrs. Mare seemed to enjoy dispensing corporal punishment. Her two favorite cruelties were pinching one’s nostrils and grabbing a student by the upper arms, pulling them back and sticking her knee into the small of the back.

Naturally, my classmates and I complained of mistreatment but my parents, like all the others, reasoned that we must have done something wrong to warrant such discipline.

In third grade we had separate Hebrew and English teachers. Mr. Ben-Shemer was a jovial, Eastern European Holocaust survivor who wore garters to keep his shirtsleeves up. He played the concertina and would admonish us not to put our feet on the frame of the chair in front of us by saying, “When the feet go up, the brains go down.”

Mrs. Schlesinger taught English. She was a tall, prim woman with a less physical style of punishment. She would banish an offender to a wardrobe closet for an indefinite stand in darkness. She was reprimanded one day for leaving a student in the closet when the dismissal bell rang.

Good Morning Sunshine, But Another Painful Day

Let the Sun Shine In: After receiving the go-ahead from ConEd this morning, at 3:45 pm Friday, we went solar. Naturally, it’s been an overcast day, but I have confidence the sun will come out tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that and we will get the bulk of our electric power from solar panels. I’ll keep you updated on the SolarCity system’s efficiency.

False Hope: My hope to be kidney-stone free has been dashed. After days without pain a slight twinge poked my back Tuesday afternoon as I drove around. The pain has not returned again but my doc says the stone probably is still there, so keep peeing into the strainer and hope it shows up.

Meanwhile, I am beset by a different excruciating pain. I’m a teeth grinder. I wear an appliance while I sleep to protect against a loss of enamel from the grinding. I’ve been wearing a mouthguard for more than 20 years. I even wore it while commuting on Metro North. My friend Lloyd always knew it was time to stop the banter when I slipped the appliance into my mouth on the ride home from Manhattan. 

Grinding also puts excessive stress on one’s jaw muscles, resulting, in my case, in temporomandibular joint  disorder (TMD). Pain starts in the middle of my lower right jaw and travels up beside either the front or back of my ear to the top of my skull. I’m not sure why TMD has suddenly flared, but the pain can come, and go, at a moment’s notice. The pain can last for hours. Our dentist (a reader of this blog so I’ll have to be careful what I say—just kidding, Mitch) is taking a conservative approach. We’ve eliminated the idea the pain is tooth-related. We’re hoping a slight adjustment to my mouthguard will, over time, reduce and eliminate the cause.

If you’ve gotten the impression I bounce from one pain to another, imaginary and not, let me assure you you would not want to suffer from these real aches. Still, Gilda has challenged me to keep a pain log for one month. Today’s entry has TMD.

Pain of Another Sort: If you think my pain is stressful, imagine how Ted Cruz must feel if any of his would-be supporters clicked on the following link: tedcruz.com.

There’s a presidential candidate not ready for prime time in this digital age. His chances of being the second bi-racial, Harvard-educated, two year-freshman United States senator to mercurially climb to the presidency is more remote than my going through a full month painless.

Driving to Work Down Park Avenue

Normally, Gilda drives down Fifth Avenue after exiting the Harlem River Drive on her way to Mt. Sinai Hospital. Her office is at 102nd  Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. Traffic has been slow recently on Fifth, so Wednesday morning she took Park Avenue south alongside the Metro North tracks, down past 116th Street.

It was a few minutes after 7:30 am when she rolled by the Spanish Christian Church, the epicenter of tragic destruction barely two hours later. At least eight people died in an apparent natural gas line explosion that leveled two five-story buildings including the one housing the church with apartments above the ground floor. Three more souls are unaccounted for. 

Last night, when she told me of her route to work, both of our skins went cold with the thought of what might have been. A momentary chill, and then on to another subject. 

But the thought lingered with me as I listened and read Thursday more reports on the devastation. How fragile our lives are, how dependent on the vagaries of fortune and misfortune. A plane from Malaysia disappears “Lost”-like, but several would-be passengers who missed the flight remain with us. A Metro North train passed by 116th Street just seconds before the explosion. Children trudge off to school every day with no expectation an Adam Lanza will show up at their classroom door. 

There are those who say live your life as if every day will be your last or that of your loved ones. Hug them and kiss them goodbye each time you part. How depressing! How utterly fatalistic to think that way. 

Yes, by all means caress and kiss, but do so because you truly love them, not because you think it might be your last joint contact. 

Park Avenue Memories

I wouldn’t swear to it but I’m almost certain The NY Times ran a picture Monday of the office building where I formerly worked on Park Avenue in Manhattan. The picture was large, running across five columns and was 7-1/4 inches deep. It accompanied an article on the legal battle between Major League Baseball and Alex Rodriguez over his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs. My personal office was on the sixth floor, at various times overlooking Park Avenue, or East 55th Street or East 56th (the picture on page three of the online story, by comparison, is postage size: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/sports/baseball/in-rodriguez-arbitration-two-sides-play-hardball.html?pagewanted=3&ref=sports). 

It was a great location for an office building. When you’re walking on Park Avenue north of Grand Central Terminal it’s a different world from the rest of Manhattan. Not as gritty. Often the esplanade in the middle of the avenue is adorned with flowers or works of art. There are few commercial establishments along the way, no hole-in-the-wall delis to grease up the street, though there are some fruit and vegetable carts and hot dog stands along some of the cross streets. Luxury car dealers, such as Mercedes and BMW, located showrooms on the avenue.  

Except for often seeing celebrities on my jaunts to and from the office and Metro North station, or being inconvenienced by the many movie, TV and commercial scenes shot along Park Avenue, especially around St. Bartholomew’s Church or the Seagram Building, nothing too exciting ever happened along the way. Except one year, about three decades ago, during the time the South African embassy was located in our building. At the time my window looked out on Park Avenue. Early one afternoon everyone was told we could not leave the building. There was a bomb scare, a suspicious package at the door of what is now a Staples Express. We were told to stay away from the windows, not to look out, as a bomb blast could send shrapnel and debris as high as the sixth floor, where we were. Of course we ignored that advice. Turned out it was nothing more than an abandoned briefcase. 

Another time, when my office faced East 55th Street toward Lexington Avenue, I missed by a few minutes watching a spectacular fire at the Central Synagogue on the corner of Lex and 55th. It was about 4:30 on a Friday. I left work early. Just minutes later the fire began. Roofers had not properly put away a piece of equipment that set the roof of the historic synagogue on fire. The roof eventually collapsed into the sanctuary which was completely gutted. 

To fight the blaze firemen carrying hoses went into an adjacent apartment building. They entered---that is, they knocked down—the door of an apartment with windows overlooking the burning structure. I tell you this because of the only-in-New York coincidence that this apartment was the home of one of the doctors in Gilda’s medical practice at Beth Israel Hospital.   

My office home for 32 years, 425 Park Avenue, is scheduled to be torn down sometime after April 2015. About 10 years ago an electrical fire fried all the circuitry in the building one weekend. Some tenants were displaced for months until a temporary fix could be wired. 

It should be a lot easier finding new space for my former company. Instead of room for close to 150, just 35-50 spots are needed. It’s been a tough half-dozen years for the publishing industry in general, my company in particular. One of the benefits of early retirement is I don’t have to angst over the relocation process. A creature of habit, I couldn’t imagine commuting to anywhere but 425 Park Avenue.  

Inside Job, Twerp Alert, Happy Birthday

Gollum Crazy: I try to avoid depressing movies, excellent reviews notwithstanding.

Inside Job received excellent reviews. It is a documentary about the financial meltdown crisis. I went to see it yesterday while Gilda was at work. I am now depressed.

I’m not depressed because my savings were ravaged in the stock market fallout (they weren’t). I’m not depressed because my mortgage is higher than the value of my home (the mortgage was already paid off). I’m not depressed I lost my job because of the lousy economy (actually, the economy was a contributing factor to my “retirement,” but I’m happy to be retired).

I’m depressed because in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the vultures on Wall Street continue to believe they did no wrong and are just as powerful as before to screw our country and the rest of the world. I wonder how these people can sleep at night. Then I realize it must be easy to nod off into dreamland on a mattress stuffed with our dollar bills, make that our thousand dollar bills. Our system of finance rewards incompetence and chicanery. We have a system wherein credit rating companies (e.g., Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poors) are not accountable, hiding behind the argument their work is just “opinion,” therefore should not be construed as an endorsement of a company’s solvency. In other words, investor beware. Days before Lehman Brothers imploded, they still were issuing AAA ratings for its bonds.

Deregulation opened the gateway for financial excess and distress. Yet Wall Street and the banking community resist oversight. Republicans as well as Democrats share the guilt of blind acquiescence. Economists at prestigious universities have been co-opted by the lure of big bucks from financial institutions. Deregulation intensified a culture of greed and envy. Gross compensation (reportedly a record $144 billion in 2010) turned everyone into crazed Gollums, whose only thoughts are for “precious” bonuses to buy more, more, more that are “mine, mine, mine.”

It’s too painful to recount all the details. Go see Inside Job. You won’t be happy when you exit the theater, but you’ll be more informed.


Twerp Alert: Gilda is on a crusade, a jihad against twerps, who she defines as short, inconsiderate, measly-faced, well-tailored commuters who refuse to clean up after themselves.

On Metro North Tuesday morning she encountered a twerp who threw his discarded newspaper on the floor and refused to pick it up when the train reached Grand Central Terminal even after she and others admonished him and advised a newspaper receptacle stood right outside the door on the platform. Once before Gilda had remonstrated against this twerp, telling him it was not the conductor’s job to clean up after him. He’s apparently a slow learner, someone who believes he’s above participating in train car housekeeping, though he no doubt wants a clean environment during his commute.

Sounds to me like another one of those “entitlement” guys who got us into the financial mess we’re still in.


Happy Birthday: My father was a successful businessman. He sent his children to private schools, graduate schools, sleep-away summer camps, trips abroad. His one vice was buying a new car every five years. He bought Buicks all but the one time our mother talked him into a Cadillac. He was not stingy, not profligate. He provided for his family, friends and workers. He was charitable with his time and money for causes he believed in. He would have turned 100 today.

Snow Day, Once Again

Gilda went off to work this morning. Nothing unusual about that, except this is the morning after the post-Christmas blizzard of 2010.

As much as I tried to convince her to take a snow day, Gilda was determined to get to work. Though none of the spine surgeons would be in the office because they were on vacation, three patients were expected to show up to see her, come hell or high snow. She felt obligated to be there for them. Moreover, she couldn’t call the other nurse practitioner who lives in Manhattan to cover for her as he, too, was on vacation.

Metro North was operating on a Sunday schedule, which meant only one train per hour. To get to the train station, she gave herself a few extra minutes to navigate the streets in her Jeep (and to mush through the 11 inches of snow on our driveway which I had not yet cleared). Metro North fulfilled its obligation, bringing her to Grand Central Terminal where she boarded the subway down to Union Square, arriving on time, but a few minutes after her 9 am appointment, a woman from New Jersey, who called our home from Gilda’s office to find out if she indeed was coming in.

Those two women are really dedicated. As were the two other patients who showed for their appointments. Gilda was right to go to work. Now the only dilemma she faces is how to get home. As she was walking through Grand Central this morning Metro North announced suspension of all further service because of switch-related problems. She hopes they will be resolved before her work day ends (still no service at 1 pm), or she’ll have to spend the night at Ellie’s apartment in Brooklyn.

No matter how conscientious you are, snow always seems to have the upper hand. As I wrote last February, when I worked in the city, I had a deserved reputation for taking snow days at the drop of a snow flake. It came from my double experience in the winter of 1978.

In January, after a 20-inch snowstorm, I trudged to the train station from our apartment in downtown White Plains in plenty time for my normal 8:18 am transport. The train arrived on time. I sat down for the usual 35 minute commute. Four hours later, the train pooped out in the tunnel beneath Park Avenue. Snow had fallen through the grates, blocking all trains from entering Grand Central Terminal.

We couldn’t move forward or back up. Metro North decided our only exit was vertical. All on board had to carefully climb down onto the tracks and ascend one of the emergency staircases, taking us up to Park Avenue and 72nd Street. From there I walked 15 blocks to my office at 425 Park Avenue. When I got there I discovered the office was closed. After a few minutes to thaw out, I was back on the street, slogging my way down to Grand Central, 13 blocks to the south, all the way hoping there would be a train back to White Plains.

I was lucky. Double lucky. A train was set to depart momentarily, and I had secured a seat. Four hours later it pulled into White Plains. I had spent more than nine hours commuting in the snow. I vowed to be more circumspect in future snowstorms.

I had my chance two weeks later when another 20-inch storm struck. This time I sought assurance our office would be open. I called our VP administration who, by coincidence, commuted on my same train each day. He daily drove down to White Plains from Ridgefield, Conn. If anyone would be a no-show, Mike surely would lead the pack. But his wife cheerfully reported Mike had set off for work. I reasoned I had better show up, as well.

Once again, I trudged down to the station. The 8:18 am train again arrived on time. I sat down. Once again, the trip south took four hours. This time, though, it made it all the way into Grand Central. I engaged a pay telephone (this was pre-cell phone days), called the office and discovered it was, once again, closed!

Once again, I was lucky. Double lucky. A train was set to depart momentarily, and I had secured a seat. Once again, four hours later it pulled into White Plains. Once again, I had spent more than a full work day commuting in the snow. This time, I came to the realization that snow was God’s way of telling me to slow down, that work could be done at home just as easily as in the office. I soon garnered my well-deserved reputation for taking a snow day for anything more than a dusting.

Ethnic Pride and Shame

Ethnic pride is a powerful cultural marker. What Italian didn’t feel his chest swell when Rocky Marciano won the heavyweight boxing title? Or when Luciano Pavarotti hit a high C note? When rap stars dominate the music business, when the NBA and most Division I college basketball teams feature Afro-Americans, when Barack Obama took the oath of office, how could people of color not be proud?

When I was growing up, my parents always pointed out prominent Jewish actors, playwrights, politicians, physicians, even sportsmen, especially when their names might not have given away their pedigree. Kirk Douglas. Tony Curtis. John Garfield. Arthur Miller. Jacob Javits. Jonas Salk. Sandy Koufax—how proud we were when he declined to play in a World Series game on Yom Kippur (how disappointed I was when Ike Davis of the Mets chose to play a meaningless game on this year’s Yom Kippur).

I wound up doing the same not so subtle identification process for my children.

But just as coins have two sides, ethnic pride is but the positive side of ethnic shame. Here are two prominent residents on my list of shame:

Bernard Madoff
Pamela Geller

Madoff is obvious. Beyond swindling money, helped along, let’s be honest, by the greed of many of his clients, was his total disregard for the impact his illegal activity would have on the numerous social and charitable organizations that blindly invested with him. Sad as it is that many individuals lost their savings, it is far worse that he bankrupted or weakened entities whose sole purpose was to help their fellow human.

If you are not already familiar with Pamela Geller, here’s a link to a profile from Sunday’s NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/nyregion/10geller.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage.

To reject radical forms of Islam that have morphed into violence is not shameful. But Geller has transformed the perception of Islam from a major religion into an extremist movement. She incites hatred, intolerance, bigotry.

It is true. Some Muslims want to kill all “non-believers.” Nothing new here. Religions often are brutally intolerant—Israelites wanted to eradicate all inhabitants of Canaan; Christians killed non-believers during their conquests of the New World; Catholics and Protestants killed each other; New Believers and Old Believers fought for supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Shiites and Sunnis kill each other in the name of Allah. It’s hard to find any religion without blood on its hands, as God always seems to be “on their side.”

But Geller, who went to Hebrew school, should have learned that Jews flourished in the early Middle Ages under Islam. Indeed, Spain was a model of religious tolerance when Muslims ruled there, allowing Jews to rise to the highest levels of government, commerce and the arts. Either through ignorance or intent, Geller turns her back on history to paint an entire religion as evil. Her depictions of Islam are as cruel as any anti-Semitic canard. She is a demagogue empowered by the Internet and cable TV. I shutter to think anyone might think she represents the Jewish community.


Texas Massacre: If you’re a liberal and a New York sports fan, this was a great weekend. First, the Texas Rangers lost two home playoff games to the Tampa Bay Rays. Both teams will travel to Florida for the deciding fifth game of their series to determine who will play the Yankees beginning Friday night for the American League pennant.

Second, the NY Football Giants beat up the Houston Texans, 34-10.

Third, the Dallas Cowboys lost to the Tennessee Titans, 34-27.

Few states bring out the nasty in me as does Texas. For the most part I enjoyed my visits there (I probably traveled to Texas close to 100 times). But I can’t separate the state’s regressive politics (and George W. Bush) from their sports teams. I was delighted the Rangers, Texans and Cowboys lost.

Oh, by the way, Target dodged a boycott bullet as the Yanks defeated the Minnesota Twins at Target Field (and Yankee Stadium).


Have a Seat: Perhaps you saw the Op-Ed piece last Thursday in the NY Times from John Edgar Wideman. He’s a a professor of Africana studies and literary arts at Brown University. At least twice a week he rides the Acela from New York City to Providence, RI, and back, discovering along the way that he rarely has to share a double seat with anybody. Why? He presumes because he is a man of color. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/opinion/07Wideman.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=wideman&st=cse).

From more than 30 years commuting on Metro North, I can tell you he is 100% correct. As I never wanted to stand, I sat next to everyone and anyone, even if it meant taking the dreaded middle seat of a three-seat bench. My only bias was not to be wedged in between two portly passengers. If I sat at one end of a three-seater and a person of color sat at the other end, it was usually a given no one would take the middle seat, regardless of how crowded the train was.

Metro North is not like the subway where races mix, if not easily, at least commonly. Few Afro-Americans commute on Metro North. They are largely avoided. I am not alone in my convictions. Here’s how some other readers responded to Wideman in letters to the editor: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/opinion/l09seat.html?ref=amtrak.


??? For VP: Just as the baseball playoffs got under way, official, and unofficial, Washington entered its fall season with incessant speculation President Obama will shake up his team, switching the positions of Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. For the record, the White House denied any such move is contemplated.

As long ago as March 4, I opined Biden would conveniently and diplomatically be replaced on the 2012 ticket. I didn’t think it would be by Hillary. I picked former Indiana senator Evan Bayh, 55, a moderate young enough to give Democrats a good shot at holding the presidency in 2016 if Obama wins re-election.