New Year's Surprises and Resolutions

Have you broken your New Year’s resolutions yet? I am not in the habit of making any resolutions, not that I consider myself perfect in all ways. I just don’t see the need to focus on an arbitrary day to begin any transformative plan.

But I have been mulling a change that would affect you as well. I am considering reducing the percentage of blog posts that deal with the Trumpster. It is hard to imagine anyone who has launched more terabytes into the blogosphere but I will try my best to adhere to my resolve.

So what will I write about? Life. Just ordinary life. Take, for example, the surprise that greeted Gilda and me when we returned home from a less than 24 hour trip on Monday. The intake pipe to the master bedroom’s bathroom toilet froze during the frigid cold snap. Good thing our house has three bathrooms.

It wasn’t the first time we experienced this inconvenience since we remodeled the bathroom 13 years ago and put the toilet, and the offending pipe, up against an exterior wall (in the 20 year priors to the remodel, the pipe never froze as it was attached to an inside wall). 

Apparently, according to our plumber, frozen intake pipes next to exterior walls are a common predicament during prolonged cold snaps accompanied by high winds. All we could do, he related, is hope, and pray, the pipe wouldn’t burst while we warmed up the wall with a portable heater. After several hours we were back in business.  

More Tales From the Cold: Thursday’s “bomb cyclone” blizzard dumped eight inches on our driveway and front walk. But the high winds kept most of the snow from sticking to our solar panels. Around 4:15 pm I confronted the inevitable, suited up in snow pants, boots and balaclava and spent the next 45 minutes making sure to propel the fluffy snow in the direction of the wind. It was, actually, one of the easiest snowstorms I’ve ever had to clear.

Time to Break My Resolution: Heck, you might think I have no willpower, but keep in mind four days have gone by since the New Year began. So here are some Trumpian thoughts:

In case you haven’t heard about it, there’s an informative article in The New Yorker by Evan Osnos detailing how our bumbler-in-chief is making China great again. Here are two links, one to the print article (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/making-china-great-again) and the second to an interview Osnos did with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air (you can either read the transcript or click on an audio link: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/03/575288560/journalist-as-u-s-retreats-from-world-stage-china-moves-to-fill-the-void).

One of my takeaways from Osnos was that we no longer have just Russia to worry about concerning the integrity of our elections. Here’s a short clip from Osnos:

“I asked a strategist in Beijing, this very prominent figure, a guy named Yan Xuetong. I said, how long does the period of strategic opportunity last for China? He says, well, it lasts as long as Trump is in office.”

Thus, not only Russia but China, as well as other countries that have stroked Trump’s ego, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines, have a vital national interest in keeping the dumb-as-a-loon-in-chief in office in 2020 and in retaining a Republican controlled Congress in 2018. 

Interference in our electoral processes may well become commonplace, but Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are more interested in stopping state sanctioned marijuana sales than in preventing the sanctity of our most cherished right. 

News Flashes: One of New York WCBS TV’s field reporters Thursday evening confirmed that “slush is wet!” 

Does anyone else find it amusing that ABC News correspondent Eva Pilgrim reports out of Boston? 

Was anyone else surprised Gail Collins did not include any mention of Seamus, the dog Mitt Romney strapped to the top of his station wagon when taking his family on a vacation years ago, in a New York Times column about Romney’s potential candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by Orrin Hatch? (https://nyti.ms/2E38sXV)

Spring Thoughts Mean Only One Thing

If near-40-year-old Andy Pettitte can attempt a comeback to the rigors of major league baseball with the NY Yankees after being retired one year, perhaps there’s reason to believe I can return to the pitching mound after a three-year hiatus from Sunday morning fast-pitch softball.

I’m not sure our temple team needs a 63-year-old pitcher, but our 64-year-old hurler jumped ship, signing with another squad. So there may be an opening if none of the younger arms proves reliable. Over my near 30-year softball career, reliable would be a good descriptor of my performance. I wasn’t the best pitcher in the league, but I was among the most consistent, almost always keeping our team competitive. Before I joined, the team would lose by double-digit scores as the pitcher, Mike, simply lobbed the ball over. While we still lost most of our games during my first season, the scores were much closer. Mike, however, was not a happy teammate. He protested his demotion to the bench, appealing to the leadership of the temple Brotherhood, the sponsor of the team. Sadly, they suggested to Mike it was time to hang up his spikes. He chose, instead, to switch temples, though his misfortunes continued on his new team and it, too, told him to ride the pines.

I retired three years ago when I was no longer the starting pitcher and couldn’t justify waking up early Sunday mornings from April through October. I’m still not sure the warmth and comfort of our bed won’t seduce me into staying home (this morning, for example, I rolled out of bed at 10:30), but I’m getting that old excitement back. Yesterday I even bought new cleats (just in case) and tried on my old uniform; it fit perfectly, with no tugging at the waist of the pants. Actually, I rarely wore baseball pants, preferring to pitch in shorts. To say my “chicken legs” weren’t a distraction to batters would be disingenuous, but hey, you’re allowed to try any legal means of changing the focus of the opposition. I also checked my glove to make sure the lacing was in good order. In short, I’m ready for a season with players almost all of whom are closer to my son’s age (33) than mine. First practice is in a week or two, first game April 22. Hopefully, I won’t get hurt.


I ventured back in time in a different way on Thursday, attending a luncheon of the Society of the Silurians at the Players Club on Gramercy Park in Manhattan to hear the featured speaker, Gail Collins, Op-Ed columnist for The NY Times, and an acquaintance going back more than 35 years to our days in New Haven when her husband, Dan, and I worked at the New Haven Register. (The Silurians, by the way, is an organization of veteran New York City journalists founded in 1924. As previously mentioned, I’m 63. With very few exceptions, I was the youngest in the room of 150, a record attendance, there to hear Gail talk about her career and her thoughts on politics of the day. Even society president Tony Guida, distinguished looking at 70 with a full head of coiffed, silver hair, couldn’t avoid noting the age of the assembled when he asked for all cell phones, beepers, pagers and pacemakers to be turned off prior to Gail’s presentation.)

Gail didn’t disappoint, regaling all with stories of her days as a Connecticut state capitol reporter before coming to New York in 1980. We took a few minutes before and after her talk to catch up. The only disappointment was Dan and another New Haven alum, Trish Hall, now Op-Ed editor of The Times, weren’t in attendance. But I did sit next to Times reporter Robert D. McFadden, a spry 50-year veteran of the paper, whose main assignment these days is writing pre-obituaries of the noteworthy and famous.

By the way, anyone who has followed Gail’s columns on Mitt Romney knows she always includes a reference to the star-crossed family trip to Canada when Mitt boxed the family Irish setter, Seamus, in a crate atop the station wagon as he, his wife and their five boys rode inside. Seamus eventually developed diarrhea, forcing Romney to make an unscheduled stop to hose down the dog and crate but not allow any of the humans to relieve themselves. Gail maintained Romney’s behavior provides insight into his character. Nevertheless, she indicated when the primaries are over she will retire Seamus from her columns. I’m not so sure, if Romney winds up securing the Republican presidential nomination. We’ll just have to wait and see.


After the luncheon and a quick stop at Gilda’s office on Union Square, I was off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini,” an exhibit I highly recommend but alas is closing today. One thing struck me among the painted portraits—several of the 15th century profiles of men looked vaguely familiar in their headdress. It was not until later that evening when watching the evening news that I realized the turbaned men hanging on the walls of the Met bore a striking resemblance to the millinery styles of the men of present day Afghanistan.


Saturday was Gilda’s birthday, her 63rd. Don’t worry. Gilda has no qualms about revealing her age. Indeed, she is vastly amused when people guess she is 20, even 30, years younger. Not wanting to jostle the crowds of St. Patrick’s Day, we spent a peaceful day together. Today we will tour the annual orchid show at the Bronx Botanical Gardens and then head off to Brooklyn where Ellie and Donny will prepare a birthday feast of one of Gilda’s favorite foods—fried chicken.