It Might Be Time for a Communal Sing-along of "Who's Garden Was This?"

In lieu of Donald Trump’s uncertain belief in global warming and commitment to saving the planet, perhaps it would be timely to recall Tom Paxton’s haunting song “Whose Garden Was This,” written for the first Earth Day in 1970. Here’s a copy of the lyrics and a link to his rendition followed by the more well known cover by John Denver:

Whose garden was this? 

It must have been lovely.

Did it have flowers?

I’ve seen pictures of flowers,

And I’d love to have smelled one.

Whose river was this? 

You say it ran freely?

Blue was its color?

I’ve seen blue in some pictures,

And I’d love to have been there.

[Chorus:]

Ah, tell me again I need to know:

The forest had trees, the meadows were green,

The oceans were blue and birds really flew,

Can you swear that was true?

Whose grey sky was this?

Or was it a blue one?

Nights there were breezes?

I’ve heard records of breezes,

And you tell me you’ve felt one?

Whose forest was this?

And why is it empty?

You say there were bird songs?

And squirrels in the branches,

And why is it silent?

[Chorus:]

Whose garden was this? 

It must have been lovely.

Did it have flowers?

I’ve seen pictures of flowers,

And I’d love to have smelled one.

Here’s Paxton’s early recording: http://youtu.be/msKYLHwqvW4

And here’s Denver’s more pulsating version: http://youtu.be/q6N0oY_W9tM

Who knew birds were publicity shy? It is three days since I wrote about my build-it-up-tear-it-down tussle with nest building bird(s) without new construction appearing behind our awning. Who knew all it would take to scare them away was a blog post? 

Or maybe the female got tired of carrying around her eggs and couldn’t wait for me to give up so she found a less troubled spot to start her family. Whatever. I’m just hoping the bird(s) don’t come back this season, though I expect a new attempt next spring.

Writing 101: For those would-be fiction writers, The New York Times a few days ago published a list of writing tips from best selling author John Grisham (https://nyti.ms/2slAS9m).

Not to suggest I know more about writing than Grisham, but does anyone else have a problem receiving writing tips that include a grammatically incorrect sentence—no doubt, unwittingly, but still part of Grisham’s exposition and, sadly, not corrected by The Times. 

Here it is: “There is nothing original about this list. It has all been said before by writers much smarter than me.”

For those wondering, the correct wording should be “smarter than I.”

On the subject of books, does anyone seriously believe Trump read the set of Martin Luther King Jr. writings he gave to Pope Francis during his visit to the Vatican? And does anyone believe he read the Pope’s encyclical on the environment before making his decision on the Paris climate agreement? 

On the subject of correctness, sartorially speaking, can someone, perhaps Melania or Ivanka, please tell The Donald to button his suit jacket when standing up and strutting about. He appears rather boorish, not to mention paunchy, when his jacket is open.

Lest someone think I am picking on him because he’s a Republican, be advised that early during Barack Obama’s presidency I railed against the “shins of the president.” I criticized him for wearing ankle length socks that exposed his shins while sitting with his legs crossed for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. 

Shortly thereafter the fashion miscue was corrected. Hopefully, the stomach-in-chief will be advised how better to conceal his girth.

Political Correctness: Uh-oh. Trump unleashed a flurry of profanity and unacceptable behavior with his Access Hollywood bus talk about grabbing pussy. In the end he didn’t pay for his vulgarity, but the equivalency police that permits equal time to climate change deniers is not ready to forgive comedians who graphically express their feelings about our grabber-in-chief.

Stephen Colbert escaped censure or worse after he said Trump’s mouth was a holster for a male part of Putin’s anatomy. But Kathy Griffin’s career may not recover from her visually bloody display of a decapitated Trump head.

And now there’s clamor for Bill Maher’s head after he used the “N-word” in a repartee with U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) during his Friday night show Real Time (https://nyti.ms/2szS23b).

Maher apologized the next day for using the “offensive” word, but the fallout, particularly from black activists and conservatives who are eager to stifle his progressive, libertarian anti-Trump voice, is not likely to fade away in the short term.  

I don’t condone his remarks but viewed in context I cannot support calls for his dismissal from HBO. Maher has been among the most supportive of Afro-Americans both in terms of prior comments and inclusion as guests of his show. Nor do I think Sasse has to apologize for not reacting immediately to the N-word. 

After Saturday night’s terrorist attack in London Trump called for more security and the abandonment of political correctness. “We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don’t get smart it will only get worse,” he tweeted.

He also tweeted, “We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”,  apparently not understanding that the courts stayed imposition of his travel ban because it infringed on rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

As for relaxing PC standards, does that imply Trump is okay with what Colbert, Maher and Griffin said and did? After all, Trump hosted Ted Nugent at the White House despite the entertainer’s vile and suggestively threatening comments about President Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. 

So sad. 

Bernie Intercepts Pope, Hillary Smiles, Walmart Supplanted

News reports said Bernie Sanders met with the pope during his whirlwind trip to Vatican City. But I’m wondering if a more apt description would have been “Bernie intercepts Pope Francis.”

“This morning when I was leaving, Senator Sanders was there,” Francis told reporters onboard his papal airliner. “He knew I was leaving at that time and he had the courtesy to greet me. I greeted him, his wife and another couple.” The other couple were Jeffrey Sachs, an economics adviser to Sanders, and Mrs. Sachs.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/politics/bernie-sanders-pope-francis-vatican.html?ref=politics&_r=0

Staying on the same floor at the Vatican City residence where the pontiff lives, Sanders and his wife Jane were said to meet the pope in the foyer of the Domus of Santa Marta as Francis was about to embark to Greece to meet with Syrian refugees. No pictures of their encounter were taken but I could envision a Saturday Night Live-like skit wherein Sanders is pacing the hallway agonizing over the pope’s delay in exiting his room while Jane nudges him they have to get to the airport so they won’t miss their flight back to New York. Sanders is acting like a teenager waiting for a rock star to emerge after a concert. His wife is like a parent who only wants to get away from the long haired, tattooed scrum of young fans.

But let’s be serious for a moment. The trip to Rome was an intelligent move. It linked Sanders to a popular pope and could help him secure votes in the Catholic and Latino communities of New York and California. 

Now for some Hillary time: Did anyone else notice during Thursday night’s debate that almost every answer Hillary Clinton gave was preceded by a smile or a giggle and a “Well, …” She really has to work on being less robotic.

The longer Hillary delays in releasing transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions the more credibility she is giving to allegations she played it soft with Wall Street and would continue to do so as president. 

Here’s what Seth Abramson, an assistant professor of English at University of New Hampshire, had to say on Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/release-of-clintons-wall-street-speeches_b_9698632.html?utm_hp_ref=politics. It makes you wonder … 

Who’s Number 1? If you’re like me and spend Sundays filling in boxes for The New York Times Magazine crossword puzzle, you might have been puzzled by the answer to 16 Down in the April 3, 2016, issue. The clue: six letters identifying the  “company that passed Walmart in 2015 as the world’s largest retailer.”

Now, I spent more than three decades following Walmart as the editor and publisher of Chain Store Age, a retail industry magazine, Internet site and producer of trade conferences. So I was more than a little surprised to read in a crossword puzzle some pretty earth-shattering news, at least as far as the retail industry was concerned. I was further caught off guard after I filled in the blanks and found the answer to be Internet retail pioneer Amazon.

You see, Amazon had worldwide sales in 2015 of $107 billion. That’s quite a tidy sum, but it was less than one-quarter of Walmart’s $482.1 billion!

Ah, but Walmart’s perch at the top of the retailing pyramid, a spot it has enjoyed since 1990, has been supplanted by another Internet upstart—Alibaba Group, China’s gargantuan company that accounts for 10% of the country’s retail sales. Alibaba announced this week its 2015 sales will total $490 billion.

Winners and Losers in Politics and Religion

The winner of the Wisconsin primary earlier this week was … the media!

Forget Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. They might have corralled the most votes in the Badger State, but the real victor was the supposed-to-be-impartial media, you know, those telegenic talking heads who care about ratings more than substance, the sizzle more than the steak. With Cruz and Sanders gaining momentum, the airwaves are guaranteed to be filled with paid commercials for the candidates in the biggest media markets of all (New York and California) and, most crucially, the national conventions of both parties this summer probably will command “huuuge” ratings and corresponding ad time rates.

Far from being neutral, the media have fanned the rhetorical fires by focusing on provocative statements from the candidates and their surrogates rather than on the substantive differences between the contenders. Earlier this week, for example, one broadcast network’s evening news program showed Sanders about to describe the policy divides between him and Hillary Clinton. But just as he was about to give specifics, the network cut away to air catfight comments from each candidate. 

Soundbites rule our national conversation. The media have been complicit in the dumbing down of our political system. And there’s nothing we can do about it. While the rest of us cringe at the spectacle unfolding before our eyes, media moguls are padding their bank accounts. 

Here’s what Leslie Moonves, chairman, president and CEO of CBS Corporation, had to say about Donald Trump and the media’s fascination with him during a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco in February, according to The Hollywood Reporter: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” 

“Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? ... The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” he said. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464)

Whose Side Is God on, Anyway? It’s quite common in sports for teams and players to invoke the help of God. It’s a quaint custom, making God an interested observer to, nay a participant in, the play by play transpiring around Him (or Her).

Darker are pronouncements by some clerics that natural and man-made disasters are unleashed by God as punishment for perceived sins, such as past illicit behaviors that have become accepted, or at least tolerated, acts between consenting adults in many localities. 

Which brings me to wonder, was God sending a message to North Carolinians Monday night when He/She guided Villanova University’s last second three-point shot through the basket, thus giving the Wildcats the NCAA basketball championship and sending the Tar Heels team back to a state that recently chose to deny equal rights to the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender) community? 

On the other hand, did Villanova, a Catholic school, benefit from a favorable Pope Francis bounce? Of course, the game was played before the pope offered little if any substantive comfort to the LGBT congregation in his 260-page treatise “Amoris Laetitia” (The Joy of Love), released Friday.

Are trailer parks disproportionally populated by sinful people, or is God just having fun feeding them and their belongings to twisters? 

These are not glib queries. Keep in mind America is a fairly religious country compared to other Western nations. Earlier this week I received a media pitch to review a new book, Righting America at the Creation Museum, by William and Susan Trollinger. 

For those who have not heard of the Creation Museum, it’s in Petersburg, Ky. Since opening in May 2007, the museum is said to have attracted millions of visitors to its displays intended to scientifically demonstrate the universe was created less than 10,000 years ago by a Judeo-Christian god. The museum is said to be “an extended brief for the Bible as the literally true and errorless word of God, and a powerful and unflinching argument on behalf of the Christian right.”

There’s even a “Culture in Crisis Room, where videos depict sinful characters watching pornography or considering abortion,” which brings us back to the modern day inquisition states are mounting against the LGBT community. 

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 21 states have passed laws that allow businesses to refuse service to people that offend a business owner’s religious beliefs. Yes, many of the states are in the Bible Belt, but Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as Illinois, are on the list (http://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/state-rfra-statutes.aspx).  

Mississippi is said to have gone further than any other state in defense of religion. Its recently signed law denies LGBT people marriage, adoption and foster care services from those religiously offended by their lifestyle. They can also be fired or refused employment, while property owners may decline to rent or sell to them. 

It’s all very disconcerting. The Bible is being used to discriminate at the same time it is being used to proclaim tolerance and love. Both sides draw inspiration from it. 

A recent CBS News poll, however, found a less than overwhelming number of people familiar with all that is contained in the Bible. Just 23% said they have read all of the Good Book, 21% have read most but not all, 16% have read about half and 9% have read none of it. Unreported was the status of the remaining 31%.

  

Hillary Time, A Correction and More Debate Thoughts

It’s almost time Tuesday night for the beginning of two weeks worth of Hillary Time. Here’s what I’d like to see from Hillary Rodham Clinton during the first Democratic Party presidential debate and as the key witness in the interminable Select House Benghazi Investigation committee hearing next week.

During the debate, Hillary—by the way, I am as guilty as other sexist commentators who refer to her by first name instead of her surname as opposed to using her family name as is usually done for male candidates, except, of course, when referring to The Donald—anyway, Hillary needs to be assertive and engaging. She needs to clarify her differences with Bernie Sanders without antagonizing his supporters. She must explain how she would accomplish more than Barack Obama did when working (or should I say trying to work) with a Republican controlled Senate and House. 

I have nothing against Sanders except the belief that he is unelectable (as are the three other announced candidates: Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb—you’ll notice I did not provide any description of their past titles. If you don’t know what offices they held you can understand why I am skeptical about their chances. I’m not going to spend the time mulling over Joe Biden’s entry/non entry into the race. Back to Bernie—can you imagine what the Republicans would do with his self-confessed claim of being a Democratic Socialist? No amount of explaining the concept would mitigate the extreme slurs that would be imprinted on the electorate’s psyche. Shades of Willie Horton, for those old enough to know the reference.). 

That said, here are some questions I hope to see asked and answered during the debate: 

*Given the very real prospect that both houses of Congress will be controlled by Republicans in 2017-18, what specifically do you feel you can accomplish legislatively?

*How would you balance income inequality given the GOP congress?

*Will you run on the Obama record?

*What changes, if any, would you like to see in the Affordable Care Act?

*What specific piece of enacted legislation are you most proud of having been the primary sponsor?

*Specifically asked of Hillary—Given polling data, how will you build trust with the American people?

*Many of the questions I posed after the second Republican debate would be applicable, so here’s a link to that post: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2015/09/questions-for-next-debate.html

Time to Testify: Next week Hillary cannot allow the select committee to manhandle her. She must not equivocate and must not allow committee members to interrupt her testimony. 

Recent news events have made it obvious the committee is political hackery to the extreme. Hillary should take a page from history and vigorously defend herself the same way Joseph Welch, chief counsel for the U.S. Army, rebutted Senator Joseph McCarthy’s assault on the integrity of the Army and the suspicion it, and his law office, had been infiltrated by Communists.

“Have you no sense of decency,” Welch’s acerbic rebuke of McCarthy, entered the lexicon of American politics. 

If the committee hearing devolves into a one-sided inquisition, Hillary should sternly state her unwillingness to participate any further and walk out, even if the committee threatens to hold her in contempt.  

How ironic that the congressman who exposed the political intent of the select committee, to undermine Hillary’s candidacy, shares the Wisconsin senator’s last name—McCarthy!

Correction Time: I was tripped up in my religious reporting. Pope Francis gave Kim Davis a rosary, not simply a crucifix. A rosary encompasses a cross which dangles at the end of beads.

More Debate Thoughts: And now more words about The Great Debate—was Chase Utley guilty of an illegal slide that broke the leg of NY Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada? 

First, a confession: I’m a NY Yankees fan. I don’t like the Mets. My bias notwithstanding, I believe Utley played old fashioned hardball, the type played by Pete Rose, Frank Robinson, Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson. 

They played to win, not injure. It’s unfortunate Tejada sustained a season-ending injury. Let’s keep the play in perspective. The most often printed baseball picture for many years was a shortstop or second baseman leaping to avoid a baserunner’s slide meant to plant him in the left field bleachers if a double play relay throw could be averted. 

Utley did his job. Major League Baseball should let the players police themselves. Utley plays second base. He will have to watch out every time he cover the base, especially when it’s a Met barreling down on him. 

My Tom Hanks Moment and Other Odds and Ends

Did you see the article or hear about Tom Hanks finding in Central Park the lost student ID card of a Fordham University undergraduate and then tweeting his discovery, “Lauren! I found your Student ID in the park. If you still need it my office will get to you. Hanx.”? 

The tweet included a picture of Hanks holding the photo ID card (http://strib.mn/1Lh7Mhv) (http://www.today.com/popculture/tom-hanks-finds-fordham-students-lost-id-wants-give-it-t48601)

Though we live during a social network age largely populated by the young, believe it or not Lauren did not have a Twitter account. She was thus oblivious to her star-savior until one of her professors sent her a link to Twitter. Now she’s into her 15-minutes of fame and has appeared on television.

I bring this to your attention because of my own quest to return a picture of a comely looking college student I found as I walked across the quadrangle of Brooklyn College one day in the fall of 1969. She appeared attractive enough to ask out (this transpired just weeks before my Gilda Days began, so please don’t think I was two-timing my future wife). 

Back then not everyone could marshall the resources required to find the pictured coed, whose name was either Judy or Linda—both monikers were written on the back of the photo. I, however, was editor-in-chief of Calling Card, the newspaper of the House Plan Association. I had the means and the moxie to print the head shot on the front page of our next issue under the headline “Lost & Found.” 

Sure enough, my scheme produced the intended result. Judy-Linda showed up a few days later at the Calling Card office. Alas, I didn’t ask her out. Her picture did her more than justice. 

No word on what she thought of how I looked.

Time to catch up on some recent newsworthy events:

Our long (two years, a looooong time for Yankee fans!) national nightmare is over. We are back in the baseball playoffs. Well, by the time I got around to actually posting this brief, our time in the playoffs was mercilessly brief. We succumbed 3-zip to the Houston Astros. 

Our beloved Bronx Bombers were flawed in more ways than I care to recount. But we still won more games than 11 other teams in the American League and 10 in the National League and that is good enough for me. Twenty of those other teams failed to make the playoffs.

Did anyone else see a similarity between the head of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, when she testified before Congress recently and Claire Underwood, the wife of the fictitious Frank Underwood of House of Cards? Tall, with short blonde hair and a self assurance that refuses to fade when confronted by men of intolerance and ignorance.

As the saying goes, it is hard to put the cat back into the bag once it is out.

It doesn’t matter who arranged the meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the rogue Kentucky county clerk who has denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Plenty of ill-informed people will believe the pontiff endorsed Davis. Like corrections buried deep inside a newspaper, the story line too many people will remember is the pope greeting Davis and giving her a crucifix, not that he was duped into meeting her by his representative in Washington. 

The lesson we can all take away from this affair is that even the Vatican is not off limits to political machinations (of course we knew that already but this was a very public display of a subjective agenda meant to undermine and embarrass a popular pope while advancing rigid church dogma not sufficiently supported in public by the leader of the Catholic faith).  

Let ’em Go: Government officials have admitted it is hard to stop American zealots from traveling to ISIS-controlled regions to join the Islamic terrorists. I say, “Let ’em Go.”

But with a caveat—revoke their American citizenship so they can’t return easily to the United States, or, at the very least, incarcerate them if they show up on our shores. 

Let them go to get killed in the desert. If they find living in this country so terrible, let them discover what life in the caliphate will truly mean. Let them go inflict mayhem on other Muslims if they can, not as some sleeper terrorist on unsuspecting Americans inside the U.S. I am not anti-Muslim. It’s just that it is time for the vast majority of Muslims to stand up for their religion and exterminate the cancer from within. Outsiders cannot do it without fomenting anti-Western civilization hatred.  

For Shame Scott Pelley, For Shame Erik Kirschbaum, For Shame New York Times

We have a warped sensibility when it comes to news reporting and commentary and I am not talking about some right wing or leftist news organization. I am referring to CBS News with Scott Pelley and the Op-Ed page of The New York Times as exemplified by an article submitted by Erik Kirschbaum.

On Thursday Pelley went ga-ga over Pope Francis. He devoted nearly half his broadcast to the pontiff's day in Washington, DC, and arrival in New York City. Now, I, too, am captivated by the prelate's visit. You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate the extraordinary humanity exuded by Francis and the courage he displayed in standing before many congressmen and senators who, even if they are Catholic, clearly do not agree with his positions on climate change, aid to the indigent, the need for diplomacy rather than confrontation, the end to the death penalty and acceptance of immigrants.

Pelley was obviously enthused by the papal visit, seemingly recognizing his newscast was tilted toward the bishop of Rome. He noted there were some other major stories to report and cut away from the pageantry to update viewers on two vehicle accidents that killed four people in Seattle and two in Houston. But the deaths of more than 700 Muslims in a human stampede outside Mecca in Saudi Arabia? Not a single word! Not a single word on a tragedy that also injured more than 700! Are the lives of six dead in America more important than 700 who died in minutes as they innocently tried to fulfill one of the sacred rituals of their faith?


I kept waiting for Pelley to mention the tragedy. Nothing. Not a word. For shame. For shame.

Earlier in the day I got around to reading an Op-Ed piece from Wednesday's Times. Erik  Kirschbaum noted that Americans of German descent comprise the largest national ethnic group in the country yet they rarely pronounce their heritage. He explained that reticence in historical terms, spending nine paragraphs describing how the fear of being challenged for dual loyalty during the first world war led many German-Americans to change their names or otherwise deny or subsume their teutonic background.

As for the impact of Nazi Germany and the Bund movement that was sympathetic to Hitler as possible causes of German-American antipathy to their fatherland Kirschbaum provided a mere six lines of mention. Are you kidding?

Okay, I can excuse Kirschbaum as he was trying to advance an argument. But I wonder how The Times could ignore the obvious downplay of one of the most traumatic periods in recorded civilization when a heretofore culture considered to be educated and civilized turned barbaric and inhumane. How could The Times run such an obviously incomplete commentary? For shame. For shame.

Thoughts on Hillary, Bernie, The Donald, Pope Francis, The Yankees

Before Hillary Clinton officially declared for the presidency, whispers abounded she was too old. If elected, she would be 69, two months and 25 days old by inauguration, January 20, 2017. Ronald Reagan was 69, 11 months and 14 days old when he took office.

How do you think she feels about Bernie Sanders who is seven years her senior? Or Joe Biden who was born five years before her?

I’m still unconvinced Bernie-mania will prove viable in the long run. Fringe candidates are good for raising important issues, but it is the center that wins national elections. What we are witnessing in Iowa and New Hampshire are small states influencing the national dialogue. Hillary is suffering from diminished expectations. Everyone thought she would win the nomination in a cake walk (as they also expected of Jeb Bush). Having to fight for what she wants is a good thing. No one should consider a nomination an entitlement. 

I’m not as sanguine on the Republican side because that party is comprised of crazies who care not about the proper role of government. Several of its contenders would like to shut the government down. Others would like to subjugate the Constitution to the Bible. Benjamin Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, doesn’t believe in evolution. If he has such irreverence for science, imagine what support a Carson administration would have for scientific research and development. 

Trump almost sounds sane compared to them. By the way,  The Donald is 16 months older than Hillary.

The Christian Way?: To secure a free ticket to see Pope Francis in Philadelphia later this month one had to be swift and lucky. The 10,000 tickets allotted to the masses were scooped up in 30 seconds.

But if you really want to see the pontiff pontificate, it could cost you $500 or more to buy a “free” ticket on various Web sites. Now I ask you, is that very Christian of the sellers?

At first blush I thought not. But upon further reflection I wondered if The Holy Father’s visit might in some way be a blessing for the less fortunate who might be selling their tickets to secure food for their family or some other staple of life. Sure, some quick-buck artists might want to make a fast $500. But even if just one of the sellers is indigent Francis would have contributed, indirectly, to their benefit. 

I’d like to think positively about this one.

Bronx Cheer: I think it is time to write about the New York Yankees. They deserve a real Bronx cheer, not the euphemistic “boo” commonly associated with the phrase. Regardless of what happens in their four game series beginning Thursday night with the front running Toronto Blue Jays, it must be said the Yankees have made the summer surprisingly pleasurable.

A few weeks ago, after the Blue Jays swept the Bronx Bombers at home, I thought the team we expected to see this season—too old, too slow, too frail—had finally shown up after overachieving in the first 100 games of the year. Yet, despite injuries and the dogs days of August, the Yankees have shown true grit, refusing to play their age. They have the third best record in the American League, just 1-1/2 games behind Toronto in the AL East. 

I was a huge Derek Jeter fan. Early this season his replacement seemed lost on the field, a perfect manifestation of the leaderless Yankees. Over the summer, however, we have witnessed the transformation of Didi Gregorius from a scared, overawed replacement into a full-fledged diamond at shortstop. 

Didi has grown up before our eyes. He has made plays darting, dashing, lunging and throwing that Jeter could not make even in his prime. At bat, he has become a deft hitter to all fields. What he hasn’t done, so far, is develop Jeter’s knack for the dramatic. Jeter’s signature moments came in important games either in the post-season or against arch-rival Boston. Didi’s legend will grow if his teammates help get him to the stage. He can’t do it alone.

Yankees fans should be grateful for what we have had this season. Who would have thought we would be in  first place for the better part of the summer? Who’d have thought Mark Teixeira would enjoy an MVP season until a leg bone injury sidelined him a few weeks ago? Who would have thought Alex Rodriguez would resurrect his career? We were ready to boo him. Instead, we’ve imagined him leading us to the promised land of playoff and championship baseball.

George Steinbrenner’s children have instilled financial accountability to the team. But at a cost to attaining the goal of ultimate victory. George would never have stood pat at the trade deadline. He would have recognized the need for more starting  pitchers, for more young bats. George would not have let the Mets outshine him. 

When the season ends and free agency begins, it will be fascinating to observe what the Yankees will do. Will the team try to snatch Yoenis Cespedes from the Mets? Will they go after another slugger or a top tier pitcher or two? My guess is they will pick up two quality starting pitchers and either a power hitting third baseman or outfielder.

Governors Front and Center in Race for President

Rightfully so, the nation for the last two weeks has been engrossed in several dialogues—on race, on marriage equality, on Pope Francis and his encyclical on global warming and its impact, particularly on the disadvantaged, on foreign trade agreements, on negotiations with Iran and its nuclear capabilities, on the threat posed by ISIS. Important issues, issues that have overshadowed another debate, one that is especially pertinent to Republicans.

There’s a not so silent argument going on among presidential hopefuls and their respective supporters debating whether anyone hoping to attain the highest office in the land needs prior executive experience. Otherwise, as those who favor gubernatorial or business experience often admonish, the country might wind up with another “community organizer” running America. Those without a governorship or a CEO title on their CV suggest that time served in the (once) greatest deliberative body in the world, the U.S. Senate, gives them the cred to lead the nation forward.

If recent history can be a guide, the debate would wind up as a teiku, what the Talmud describes as a stalemate in deliberations that will only be adjudicated when the prophet Elijah returns to Earth to herald the beginning of the messianic era. 

Let’s consider the history of the presidency going back 50 years:

Lyndon Johnson never ran a state government but as president was a masterful manipulator of Congress, a byproduct of his long tenure as a senator from Texas. If not for his failure to control our deepening involvement in Vietnam and the domestic turmoil it engendered, he would rank among our most progressive presidents. 

Richard Nixon had scant congressional and senate experience, but he was vice president for eight years, albeit never really close to the decision making of president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Watergate, and Nixon’s expansion of the war in Southeast Asia, cloud much of what we think of him. Yet he did have domestic and foreign policy triumphs, including opening relations with communist China, creating the Environmental Protection Agency, and ending the military draft. He was not liked, but he was effective.

After a long career as a congressman and a short time as vice president, Gerald Ford presided over a depressed economy battered by high inflation. He’s remembered for one signature executive decision—the pardoning of Richard Nixon.

Four of the next six presidents (Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) served as governors. It’s hard to separate one’s political leanings from an assessment of each of their terms of office. 

Carter oversaw the Camp David Accords but was viewed as an ineffectual leader by most onlookers. 

Reagan was an undisputed great communicator. Conservatives loved him (even though he raised taxes 11 times). He forged an aggressive anti-Soviet Union stance. But his foreign policy was stained by the Iran-Contra scandal. He championed supply-side economics, another tainted legacy that rewarded the rich at the expense of the middle and lower classes. 

Putting aside the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton posted an impressive list of accomplishments, among them the longest economic expansion in the nation’s history with ancillary growth in jobs and home ownership.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A legacy of misguided foreign and domestic responses to 9/11 by George W. Bush. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited from Clinton. The wars and his failure to avert the Great Recession left the nation mired in debt.

His father, George Bush I, arguably, had the most impressive resume of any president of the last 50 years. His four years in office reached its peak in the formation of a wide ranging coalition against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. But his failure to connect with the public, coupled with conservative anger at his raising taxes despite vowing not to, and the third party candidacy of Ross Perot, thwarted his second term bid.

Barack Obama, arguably, had the least impressive resume before entering the Oval Office. Despite Republican militancy from Day One of his administration, Obama’s legacy includes passage of the Affordable Care Act extending health coverage to millions as well as overseeing the economic recovery. 

So what are we to make of it all? Reagan and Clinton are revered by their respective parties, loathed by the opposition. Bush II and Carter are disdained by both parties.

Johnson-Nixon are symbols of failed expectations muffling great accomplishments. Ford and Bush the Elder are afterthoughts, no more thought of than Franklin Pierce or Chester Arthur.

Obama alternately frustrates and excites Democrats. He is  demonized by Republicans.

Looking further back in history our greatest president— Abraham Lincoln—revealed little public success prior to his election. He served but two years in Congress, six years in the Illinois state house. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the other hand, and his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, served as governor of New York, among their other appointed and elected positions. 

George Washington was a general; before that a member of the House of Burgesses in Virginia. Woodrow Wilson was governor of New Jersey. Thomas Jefferson was Washington’s secretary of state then vice president under John Adams. But being secretary of state and vice president didn’t help Martin van Buren rise to greatness as a president.

The aforementioned undistinguished Pierce was a congressman and senator. James Polk and Calvin Coolidge were governors. Warren Harding was a senator.

So there you have (most of) it.  Being a governor is no ticket to success as president. Nor is a legislative background. It is a hung jury on the value of a military career. Washington—a plus. Mixed reviews for Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Eisenhower (though Ike is gaining esteem of late).

With so many governors seeking the presidency(by my count there are 8 from the GOP, along with two Democrats, among the 20 or so hopefuls), we are bound to hear lots of talk about their being used to making executive decisions and working across the aisle to forge a united way forward. 

Just keep in mind that history is no guide. It all depends on the man and woman behind the talk.

Pope Francis Calls The Wrong Leaders To Rome

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, or should I say a Maudlin Murray, but I had to ironically smile when I read these two paragraphs in the Sunday New York Times story on Pope Francis’ first day in the Holy Land and his invitation to the presidents of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to come to Rome to pray with him for peace:

“Father Jamal Khader, head of the Latin Patriarchate Seminary in Beit Jala and a local spokesman for the pope’s visit, said the invitation to a joint prayer was ‘taking the negotiations to another level – a meeting in front of God.’

“He said the idea was for inter-religious dialogue, to ‘make religion part of trying to find a solution instead of it being seen as a negative and a complication.’” 

To believe that these secular politicians, Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, can have sway over religious fanatics is truly laugh inducing. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad etc., etc., and so forth, are intolerant religionists dedicated to the annihilation of Israel. The pope would have an easier time mending the thousand-year blood feud between Sunnis and Shias than inviting two leaders who have no influence on their religious brothers to talk peace, especially when one of them, Peres, is slated to leave office shortly and the other has repeatedly threatened to resign. If Francis truly wanted an “inter-religious dialogue” he should have extended an invitation to the rabbis and imams whose rantings foment much of the loathing, intolerance and violence indigenous to the region.

On the Israeli side, hard core Orthodox sects are spewing hatred not just against gentiles living in the ancient “promised land” but also against other Jewish denominations such as Masorti, the Conservative movement’s Israel-based wing. They have sprayed graffiti on churches, mosques and synagogues. They have attacked Palestinians. They have vandalized military equipment. At least  for now they have not attacked other Jews.

From this cauldron of rising intolerance Francis hopes to stir up a potion of peace from a prince of peace in whose name wars, genocide and enslavement have been waged over millennia and whose adherents are as fractured as those of Mohammed and the Torah.

It is to sadly laugh.

I applaud Francis for his crazy optimism. That is, after all, one of the basic job functions of any pope, to give hope to those who otherwise live in the bleakest of worlds. Let's hope Francis can pull out a miracle from under his papal frock. But let's not be deluded into believing god, in whose name too many atrocities are perpetrated, will finally hear the outcries of his children and send them salvation, or at least a path to a solution to an intractable problem.

Transformative Week: Person of the Year and 50 Years of Mustang

Who would you pick as the Person of the Year? Before you start to rack your brain for a worthy choice, here is Time magazine’s 10 finalists for the declaration it will make Wednesday. Listed alphabetically, they are:

Bashar Assad, President of Syria;

Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder;

Ted Cruz, Texas Senator;

Miley Cyrus, Singer;

Pope Francis, Leader of the Catholic Church;

Barack Obama, President of the United States;

Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran;

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services;

Edward Snowden, N.S.A. Leaker;

Edith Windsor, Gay rights activist.

Keep in mind that to be the Person of the Year a candidate need not be a do-gooder. Evil can win as well, and I’m not referring to Barack Obama in the eyes of too many deranged-thinking folks.

Hands down, in my opinion, the winner will be Pope Francis. I’m not a Catholic, but he has transformed in his short reign the way the Catholic Church is perceived, or should be perceived. True, he retains some of the more rigid dogmas, such as being anti-abortion and against women as priests. But he has instilled a renewed sense of purpose to aid the needy and not be overly materialistic. His influence travels well beyond his papacy. 

My second choice would be Jeff Bezos. Retailing, one of my mentors (David Mahler) taught me, has been a continual evolution in streamlining the distribution of goods, from the individual shop to the five and dime to the mail order house to the department store to the discount store, the specialty store, the shopping mall, the category killer store, to the Internet. With Amazon.com, Bezos has set the gold standard for Web retailing. Amazon won’t destroy store retailing, much as Wal-Mart did not wipe all other stores off the retail landscape. But Bezos has been a transformational thinker in the way product is distributed, not just in the United States but abroad, as well. 

All the others on the list, except for Obama, are temporary figures on the scene of current events. 

Only Mustang Makes It Happen: Back in 1968, I drove a fire engine red Mustang. It was a 1966 model, but I identified with the snappy advertising lyric hyping the current year model:

Only Mustang makes it happen,

Only Mustang makes life great!

Mustang warms you, and transforms you.

Mustang, Mustang, '68!

The car that transformed the Ford Motor Company under Lee Iacocca will be 50 years old Thursday. Last April I wrote about my red Mustang, so I’ll just provide a link (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/search?q=mustang) and instead tell you about the last time I drove a Mustang, an aquamarine convertible rental on the island of Maui, some 20-plus years ago. 

Gilda and I traveled to Maui for the annual convention of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Normally, just one editor from my staff, Marianne, covered the event, which alternated between Hawaii and Palm Beach. We’d already been to Palm Beach, but not Maui, so I asserted some executive privilege and we accompanied Marianne. The NACDS, at that time under the direction of Ron Ziegler, President Richard Nixon’s former press secretary, spent lots of money on their annual get-together. The convention feature appearances by William Safire of The New York Times, Benizar Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, Liza Minnelli and Bob Hope.

But I didn’t need a car to see them. The Mustang was to get around the island, especially to drive up the road to Hāna, known for spectacular waterfalls along the 52 mile highway, and beyond Hāna to visit the gravesite of Charles Lindbergh. The climb to Hāna passes through tropical rainforest. Its mostly a switchback single-lane road, with some 620 curves. Without traffic it takes almost three hours to get to Hāna.

Our trip turned out to be an excursion to hell and back. On the way up the mountain we got stuck behind slow moving cars we could not pass because of the numerous curves. Maui had been suffering from a drought. Ergo, there were no waterfalls to behold. There also were no restaurants along the way, no rest stops to relieve ourselves. We finally arrived in Hāna a few minutes before 2 pm. We had hoped to eat lunch in the only sit-down restaurant in Hāna, but discovered it closed sharply at 2. The only open food shop was a greasy spoon shack we reluctantly patronized. 

We had to get back to our hotel for the conference evening event so we had to forego visiting Lindbergh’s grave. On the way down the mountain, Gilda and Marianne got car sick from all the sharp turns mixing with our greasy lunch. On numerous occasions they opted out of the car to walk a half mile or so in the mist that was now swooping in off the coast. We didn’t get stuck behind any cars or trucks, but our pace going down was significantly slower than when we went up to Hāna. Happiness was reaching the straightaway at the bottom of the road and opening up the throttle of the Mustang to whisk us back to our hotel. 

Be Ethical and Advocate for Social Justice

I found this quote in a BBC News article on the partial shutdown of the U.S. government rather amusing and disturbing:

“Paul Broun of Georgia, who is currently running for a Senate seat, said he would not vote for legislation that ‘does not fit the Judeo-Christian biblical principles that our country was founded on’.”

Among the 84 votes that the Republican congressman has cast against the wishes of his party’s leadership was a vote last January to deny disaster aid to Hurricane Sandy victims. 

Christian charity!?! Harrumph!!!

I wonder, just which biblical principles do Broun and his fellow travelers agree with? Do they include polygamy? Or slavery? Or perhaps he’s in favor of, according to Jewish law, land redistribution to original owners every 50 years when the jubilee comes around? There are lots more inconsistencies between Broun’s and the Bible’s views on the way one’s life should be conducted, but perhaps the deepest chasm is between the latter’s exhortation to care for the needy and the former’s indifference to the plight of his fellow man, woman and child.

As the fight over Obamacare has shown, the world is living in increasingly doctrinaire times. Dogma for dogma’s sake. Fie on good will and fellowship. Principles and partisanship over peace and probity. 

Even Pope Francis is feeling the heat from those within the Catholic Church who wonder what happened to their ecclesiastical leader. Why is he emphasizing serving the people and not the papacy with its crimson-robed functionaries? 

No religion is immune to internecine bickering, though Islam seems to be more bent on warfare from within than dialogue. How disrespectful of another point of view are the repeated bombings of mosques and funerals by those not sharing the attacker’s version of Islam. Hundreds of years ago Christianity—Catholics, Protestants, Russian Orthodox—fought its share of wars of intolerance. Two thousand years ago Jewish factions killed those who didn’t agree with their visions of Mosaic law. 

With few exceptions, today’s Jews don’t kill one another, even when the debate is over their existence in Israel and the lands conquered in the Six Day War in 1967. There are, however, ongoing battles for the soul of the Jewish state in Israel and for the soul of Jews in the Diaspora. In Israel, the debate has many levels. One is over territory and security. Neither side wants to undermine the security of Israelis, but those who would relinquish total control of the West Bank see nothing secure about continued control of more than a million Palestinians. It would be state suicide to confer citizenship on the Palestinians; it would destroy the Jewish soul to retain the Palestinians in their current stateless condition. 

On another level, the secular foundations of Israel are under assault. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are pressuring for a more rigidly religious state, one that increasingly separates women from men. They haven’t blown anybody up, but they have exhibited behaviors abhorrent to Western sensibilities. 

The soul of the Jewish Diaspora, particularly in America, is in play, as well, as highlighted by this week’s release of a survey of U.S. Jews by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. In a nutshell, the study found fewer American Jews identify with their religion’s rules or religious institutions, though they continue “to feel pride in being Jewish and have a strong sense of belong to the greater Jewish community.” As the Associated Press reported, their connection is based mostly on culture and ancestry. “A large majority said remembering the Holocaust, being ethical and advocating for social justice formed the core of their Jewish identity.”

Being ethical and advocating for social justice. Nothing restrictive about those values. Be ethical to all. Advocate for social justice for all. Yes, remember the Holocaust, but also remember that other religions and people have their tragedies to commemorate. That’s also a part of being ethical and advocating for social justice.  

I'm Really Sick This Time

My wife and friends all think I'm a hypochondriac so there's no additional shame in telling you I feel lousy. I'm sick. No temperature, but I've got a hacking cough, sore throat and a stuffed nose. I've felt this way for about six days now, which means about another four to seven days of misery. I don't even get the benefit of staying home from work since I don't have an every day job anymore.

Tuesday morning around 5:30 I finally succumbed to my hypochondria and looked up strep throat on WebMD.com. I lacked the symptoms. I checked out how to treat a plain sore throat. It advised to take pain killers to relieve the discomfort of swallowing. It worked, so I’ve continued medicating, have gargled with salt water and imbibed cups of tea laced with honey. 

Finley’s not aware of it, but I’m blaming him for this health setback. Come to think of it, Dagny had a running nose when they were here for Passover. Hmmm ... I rarely get sick. I’m more prone to complaining about body aches (which are real, trust me, but are mainly due to my disinterest in exercising, stretching, limbering up). Well, I guess this is a counterpoint to the joys of grandparenthood. 

Colbert Joins the Attack: Move over, Mel Brooks. Stephen Colbert has joined the ranks of those who make fun of my given name.

During Monday night’s Colbert Report, the comedian was riffing on the liberal initiatives of Pope Francis, specifically his washing the feet of two women as part of last Thursday’s pre-Easter celebration. Colbert even went so far as to state, “There were no women in the Gospels. It’s a common mistranslation. Jesus was actually born of the Virgin Murray.”

Then he showed a picture of a cloaked man, which, to be honest, didn’t really look like me but did bear a striking resemblance to Gilda’s brother Carl. 

Five Finger Discounts: Did you see the article in today’s NY Times about retailers using databases to screen out job seekers who might have been involved in stealing from a previous employer? (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/business/retailers-use-databases-to-track-worker-thefts.html?hpw&_r=0)

It’s no secret employee theft is a bigger problem than five-finger discounts perpetrated by customers. So controlling internal theft is a big issue for retailers. 

The Times article dealt with prospective employees. For those already on the payroll, Kmart had a different tactic to thwart theft. I’m not sure if Kmart is still doing this, but years ago its store managers used to monitor the level of purchases made by their store staff. They reasoned that employees could not find merchandise such as paper products or toiletries for less than what they would pay at Kmart. So if someone wasn’t buying such goods at work, they probably were secreting the stuff out the back door. Closer observation of the suspects ensued. 

Brooklyn On My Mind: Next Friday, the movie 42 will premiere. It’s a biopic of Jackie Robinson. From the clips I’ve seen it looks like a winner.

I can’t remember actually seeing Jackie play in person for the Brooklyn Dodgers but I’m sure I did. Growing up in Brooklyn, we had a sweet access to Ebbets Field. If you sent in a quarter plus 10 wrappers from a Borden’s Ice Cream bar, you’d get a general admission ticket for a seat along the left field foul line. I wasn’t a Dodgers fan, but my brother Bernie was, so he took me along to games. 

Bernie has fond memories of visiting Ebbets Field, sitting in box seats behind first base with our mother, courtesy of tickets provided by one of our father’s sales representatives, Mr. Schaenman, who had an office in the Empire State Building. I can remember going to his office, riding the ear-popping elevators up to the sky to his office to pick up tickets for games, to Yankee Stadium for me, to Ebbets Field for Bernie, until they moved to Los Angeles, that is. After that Bernie would take me to Yankee games, though he didn’t become a fan. We’d always have box seats at Yankee Stadium, low enough that after the game we’d be close to the field and able to walk out on the outfield grass to the massive exit doors in center field (it was a different time back in the 1950s and early 1960s.) 

Anyway, Bernie remembers a game at Ebbets Field when he arrived early to watch batting practice. Though he tried to get a baseball hit into the stands, he couldn’t. At the end of batting practice a policeman suggested he go after a ball headed for the seats, but he got there too late. The ball dribbled back down onto the field. However, Billy Loes, a Dodger pitcher, retrieved it and handed it to Bernie. I don’t remember us ever having a baseball, but I must have been less than seven years old when Loes played in Brooklyn, and I never played catch with a real baseball. Too dangerous. You miss catching a baseball and it could knock your front teeth out. That’s what happened to a friend one year at summer camp where they specifically told us not to play with a baseball. Too dangerous. They were right. 

Bernie says he lost the ball a year or two later while playing on the street, probably down a storm sewer. Sewers were a real hazard when playing in the street or even on the sidewalk in Brooklyn. We’d lose at least one ball each time we played, until our arms were long enough to fish the sphere out of the sewer. No, we didn’t actually reach the bottom of the pit with our fingers. We’d elongate a wire clothes hanger, fashion one end into a loop, then go fishing for the ball down the sewer. Most times we’d reel in our lost balls, though they were usually Spaldeens or Pensie Pinkies—lightweight pink bouncers. Baseballs, being far more dense, were difficult to raise up. In case you suspect I’m making up this sewer fishing, here’s a corroborating post from another blogger: http://stillabrooklynkid.blogspot.com/2011/08/games-we-played-spaldeens-and-sewers.html.