Calamity Mitt

There’s an exegesis that major calamities suffered by the Jewish people occurred through the ages on the ninth day of the month of Av, known in Hebrew as Tisha B’Av. Calamities such as the destructions of both temples in Jerusalem 656 years apart, first by the Babylonians and then by the Romans. 

Tisha B’Av was commemorated over this past weekend, coinciding with Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel and Jerusalem. Need I say more? No, but I will.

Despite what Sheldon Adelson and other near-sighted people, including some of my friends, think, the worst development for Israel would be Romney’s election. As he so mis-ably demonstrated yet again on his “world tour” of England, Israel and Poland, Romney has no idea how to speak diplomatically. After publicly insulting the British, he publicly insulted the Palestinians. No amount of backtracking can remove his lack of diplomacy. Perception is reality in the eyes of the Palestinians. He has given them no reason to believe he would be an honest broker of a fair and equitable peace (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/us/politics/romney-angers-palestinians-with-comments-in-israel.html?_r=1).

Palestinians are industrious. Educated. They have been productive citizens and residents wherever they have been given an opportunity. The tragedy of the Mideast is that too many Arab countries used them as pawns, consigning them to live in squalor instead of absorbing them into society, as Israel did with Jewish refugees who had to flee repression in Arab countries. Romney naively attributed the economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians to “culture.” That’s but one of the reasons.  I don’t have the time or inclination to expound on the full set of reasons. Perhaps, given all his money, Romney can hire experts who could educate him on the differences between the two peoples.

As could be expected, Romney was well received by Israeli hawks for his no-questions-would-be-asked-nor-criticism-leveled should Israel decide to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Just as candidate Barack Obama in 2008 expressed sympathy for those living near the Gaza Strip under constant danger from missile attacks and condoned retaliation, Romney scored points when he said, “We respect the right of a country to defend itself.” Romney also fawned on the Israelis, and further angered the Palestinians, by saying Jerusalem was Israel’s capital. 

Interestingly, Romney, and for that matter, most other politicians, have chosen to stay silent on a more imminent threat to Israel and other Western countries, namely, the huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction in Syria that could fall into the hands of terrorists or unstable factions should the government of President Bashar al-Assad tumble. Would Israel and the United States risk a foray into Syria to secure these stockpiles? Israel is already distributing gas masks in its northern regions, but the threat would be far wider to the Jewish state, indeed, to the world at large if groups like al-Qaeda or Hezbollah had access to these WMDs. 

Romney always seems to be trying to say what he thinks his audience wants to hear. Back in Great Britain he opined he would restore the bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office. Sounds great to an Anglophile. Churchill was the symbol of British grit in World War II, the staunch anti-Communist thereafter, originator of the term “the Iron Curtain.” But what do India and other non-Caucasian members of the United Kingdom think of Churchill? Reading about the fall of the British empire, Gilda has related to me stories of how racist Churchill was, how he felt Indians were inferior people, and thus could be sacrificed (read that, starved) so Anglo-Saxons would have enough food during WWII. Millions in India died after their foodstuffs were shipped to the British Isles. 

Perhaps Romney wasn’t aware of this “small” fact. I, for one, wasn’t aware of it until recently. But I’m not running for president. My comments won’t anger a nation. 

Flights of Fancy

How fast can you get from La Guardia Airport to John F. Kennedy Airport? 

Mapquest says it takes 17 minutes to drive the 11.48 miles between the two Queens airports. I did it in 8 minutes one Sunday morning some 20 years ago. And that included paying and exiting the parking garage at La Guardia and entering a parking lot at JFK.

Just as I hope my blogs conjure up memories for my readers, I’m reminded of personal events by articles I read. Today’s withdrawal from the memory bank was prompted by last Sunday’s NY Times article, “Right Day and Airline. The Airport? Um, No” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/nyregion/for-fliers-mixing-up-la-guardia-and-jfk.html).

I was scheduled to fly to Las Vegas in early May for my first exposure to the annual convention of the shopping center industry. Back then, pre-9/11, it was not uncommon to arrive at an airport just minutes before departure time. I gave myself plenty of cushion for the 8 am flight by sauntering into the main La Guardia terminal at 7:40. I looked up at the America West flight schedule screen. Odd. There was no listing for the non-stop flight to Las Vegas. It took several seconds for it to register in my brain. My flight was scheduled to depart from Kennedy, not La Guardia!

I raced back to my car, parked on the ground level of the garage. 7:42 am. Luck was with me. There was no one ahead of me at the parking lot toll booth. I hurtled onto the Grand Central Parkway into the Van Wyck Expressway, for once a road that lived up to its name. With virtually no other cars on the Van Wyck that Sunday morning, I floored the accelerator of my 1986 Mazda 626. I veered into a parking lot at JFK. 7:50 am. 

I could easily make the gate by 8 am if I just walked briskly but remembered the advice I’d been given to get there early as America West usually overbooked this flight and wasted no time in bumping no shows. The next flight was not until late that afternoon. I ran from the parking lot through the terminal to the gate, arriving just before 8, to find out the flight was delayed for half an hour because of mechanical problems. I checked in. My seat had not been given away. 

Arriving at the wrong airport led to my one and only helicopter ride. I wasn’t at fault that time. My La Guardia-bound flight was diverted to Newark. Rather than shuttle-bus a handful of us to Queens, the airline transported us in style, aboard a helicopter. The vertical sensation of lift-off and descent, plus the bird’s-eye view of the Manhattan skyline, made for a memorable experience. I truly get the whirlybird fascination.

Getting to the airport at an appropriate time is but one of the travel offenses I have inflicted on my family. During our family’s first trip to England around 1986, we almost extended our stay in the Mother Country. We had to race through the terminal, like OJ in an old Hertz commercial, to get to our plane before they secured the boarding area. When Gilda and I attended a retail industry conference in San Antonio, I was embarrassed to find out we arrived one day late and our room had been reassigned. Only through the intervention of the conference chairman did Gilda not terminate my existence then and there.

Perhaps my most almost-egregious mishap occurred during a trip to Luxembourg. I was a featured speaker at a SAP software conference. Gilda and I turned my speaking engagement into a two week trip through Amsterdam, Brussels and finally Luxembourg. We arrived in Luxembourg Monday evening. I was to speak Wednesday morning, so Tuesday we decided to tour the city. 

As we waited for our car to be brought to the front of the hotel Tuesday morning, I thought I’d go to the restroom on the lower level. The conference registration area was on the way, so I took the opportunity to tell the coordinator I’d arrived safely. She was more than relieved—she said they were wondering where I was. I was to give my presentation in 20 minutes! 

Zounds! Yikes! Sacre Bleu! I no longer had to go to the bathroom. Instead, I raced upstairs, found Gilda wandering the lobby and told her I had to hurriedly change out of my jeans into my suit because I was to go on in now less than 15 minutes. I made it back down with a minute or two to spare and with the resolve to double and triple check my schedules from then on. How embarrassing that would have been had I failed to deliver my presentation after enjoying a two-week vacation underwritten by their confidence in me? It makes me shutter to think of it even to this day.

Klimt-o-maniac and Other Faux Pas

Do you like to be reminded of your embarrassing moments? Obviously I do, otherwise this blog site would be much leaner. Being able to take a joke, be at the receiving end of repartee, is a trait to be cherished, so much so that the company I worked for included an analysis of one’s sense of humor, defined as not taking oneself too seriously, as part of its mandatory psychological test for all new hires.  

All that by way of reporting to you that this morning’s Weekend Arts section of The NY Times carried a 6-1/4” x 5” photo of Gustav Klimt’s “The Black Feather Hat (Lady with Feather Hat)” that is part of the Neue Galerie’s 150th anniversary celebration of the birth of the artist. The Vienna-born Klimt is remembered most for his stunning and somewhat haunting portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the most memorable of which hangs in the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue at 86th Street.

How this tidbit of art news relates to my embarrassing moment centers on other Klimt paintings that hang in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, which our family visited back in the summer of 2007. Enchanted by Klimt’s The Kiss, I wanted to point out a detail to Gilda. As a bifocal wearer, I’ve always had difficulty at museums gauging distances to paintings, no more so than when I extended my right index finger toward The Kiss. I accidentally, repeat, accidentally, touched the painting’s protective glass shield. Alarm bells blared. I jumped back, waving my hands like an umpire signaling “safe.” My family, especially Ellie who works for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was mortified. I beat a hasty retreat from The Kiss. 

My manual dexterity, like my eyesight, leaves much to be desired, so whenever I manage to fix anything around the house I consider that more than a minor miracle. So does Gilda. Currently, I’m on a hot streak. Within the last two weeks I fixed mirrored bi-folding doors of Gilda’s main closet (careful readers would deduce she has more than one closet) and replaced the electric timer for our outdoor lights. The last time I tried to stretch my winning streak to three, I flooded the basement of our first house. If you care to read about that sad enterprise, here’s a link: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/06/water-water-everywhere.html

Olympic Moment: Are you primed for the Olympics, beginning tonight? I can’t say I am. Not being a swimmer, I don’t relate to human fish knifing through the water, or doing somersaults on their way down from 12 meters above the surface. Nor do I get too excited about basketball. Or soccer. Or Greco-Roman wrestling. Or weightlifting. Definitely not weightlifting. 

The last sprinter that captivated me was Wilma Rudolph in the 1960 Olympics in Rome. I’m not a total snob when it comes to the Olympics. I do thrill to individual accomplishments, like that of Usain Bolt. But for the most part, over the next two weeks I suspect I will watch more Yankees games than Olympic moments. Tough choice tonight—opening ceremonies or Yanks vs. the hated Red Sox. Picture-in-a-picture, anyone?

Obamacare for Corn, Ichiro, Banking, Neo-Cons

(Editor’s note: Slight delay in posting today’s blog as I was constrained by holding Dagny during a quick trip to Boston to visit the new granddaughter and her brother Finley.)

As news reports of the drought across much of the nation, particularly in the breadbasket corn belt states of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, kept spreading in the media, I turned to Gilda last week to sarcastically suggest it wouldn’t be too long before President Obama would be blamed for this catastrophe. Sure enough, on Tuesday night’s Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert reacted to information that 90% of Iowa farmers had federal crop insurance by declaring it “Obamacare for our corn.”

It’s not too far fetched to think Obama would be blamed. After all, many of the water-parched states are electorally red, meaning they lean toward Republican and conservative candidates. Conservatives keep calling him a socialist, and in case you haven’t heard, Russia has been suffering from drought conditions for years longer than the U.S. It’s only natural, then, that God is exacting punishment on America because of its “anti-religion” leader just as He (for sure, not a She) is doing to the godless Rooskies. 

On the other hand, perhaps God is punishing those red states for being so intolerant to those who don’t match their DNA and beliefs, such as gays, Mormons, abortion rights advocates and immigrants (legal and illegal).

Ichiro to the Rescue? Now that Ichiro Suzuki is a NY Yankee, there is speculation he may finally make it to the World Series. If their play come October in any way resembles their last seven games, however, the Yankees once again will go home before the championship contest. 

Though they have the best record to date in baseball, they are vulnerable to good pitching that limits their home run output, as the games against the Oakland A’s and the Seattle Mariners showed this week. They won just two of seven games, repeatedly failing to score runs without the aid of a home run. Teams they would face in October would have better than average pitching, so a short playoff run is not inconceivable. 

Meanwhile, Alex Rodriguez’s broken hand injury, suffered in Tuesday’s loss to Seattle, is further validation he is a schlemazel. Three Yankees were hit by pitches during the game—Derek Jeter, Ichiro and A-Rod. Only A-Rod sustained an injury. He may be out six to eight weeks. As I wrote back in February 2011, A-Rod is more schlemazel than a schlemiel. 

“For those not familiar with the Yiddish terms, a schlemiel is a person who, despite the best of intentions, always fouls up. A schlemazel is an unfortunate soul, a person to whom misadventure always falls. To gain a deeper understanding of the distinction between the two, think of a schlemiel as a bumbling waiter who spills hot soup on a patron; the person drenched by the soup is a schlemazel. Active or passive, schlemiel or schlemazel, A-Rod can’t catch a break.”

Financial Misadventures: James “Jamie” Dimon, chairman, president and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has predicted there will be no more surprises similar to the $6 billion-and-mounting loss from speculative trading. He believes we need less, not more, regulatory oversight of the banking industry. Does anyone truly believe him?

Does anyone else find it ironic that the new basketball home of the Nets in Brooklyn will be called the Barclay Center, named for the same bank that is a key player in the Libor-fixing scandal? Barclay, along with other banks, reportedly shaved points in setting the interest rate banks charged each other to borrow funds. Hmmm...shaving points...basketball. Sports fans will immediately get the connection. All others, google “point shaving”.

Neo-Con Comeback? Mitt Romney, currently on a trip to England, Poland and Israel, leveled a broadside against President Obama’s foreign policy earlier this week. Nothing new here, it being the season of politics. Similarly, there’s nothing new about Romney’s foreign policy advisors. They’re mostly neo-conservatives, the same sad sack lot who brought us wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does the country really want to go back to a world view based on belligerency rather than diplomacy? 

While on the subject of politics, have you noticed the terms POTUS and SCOTUS creeping into coverage and TV fare? For the uninitiated, POTUS is President of the United States; SCOTUS is Supreme Court of the United States.

"Now Is Not The Time." WRONG!

Say what you will about New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, but he is not afraid to take on hot-button issues, whether it be his proposal to ban over-sized sugary soft drinks to combat obesity or his advocacy of stricter gun control laws made all the more pressing in the wake of the Aurora massacre. 

One is left to wonder about the leadership potential, the guts, the independence, of such politicians as New Jersey governor Chris Christie who lamely hewed to the Republican/National Rifle Association party line that now is not the time to have a discussion of gun control. To which I would answer (for Mayor Mike): If not now, when? (The full quote from the Jewish sage Hillel is,  “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”)

Okay, perhaps it is too soon to digest the full context of Aurora. But what about Columbine? That was in 1999. Or what about Virginia Tech (2007)? Or the shoot-em-up in Tucson (2011)? Just when will it be the right time to talk about appropriate gun control?

Both political parties have abandoned any pretense of relevancy when it comes to protecting our citizens. With almost unanimous support by our nation’s police chiefs for stronger gun control laws, ex-prosecutor Christie’s failure to speak out forcefully about this life and death issue shows him to be a gutless politician. Where is his outrage that a special interest group has co-opted our nation’s safety? 

Christie is no worse than President Obama or his mind-numbing challenger Mitt Romney. It is not enough to be healer-in-chief. When will we come to our senses and realize no one needs semi-automatic guns and large ammunition clips? These are not sporting gear. They are tools by which to kill and maim in the extreme. 

It’s time we abandoned the pretense that restricting these sales somehow violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms. It’s time we corrected our course and choose to go forward into the second decade of the 21st century instead of lurching backward into the 19th century when carrying firearms into a saloon was standard practice. We’re making it easier, not harder, for people to carry weapons, even concealed weapons. 

The height of absurdity will be seen next month when Republicans gather in Tampa for their nominating convention. Tampa won’t allow anyone to carry a water pistol near the convention center, but will permit the carrying of concealed weapons. 

According to a Monday NY Times article, “In May the city adopted a temporary ordinance that will clamp down on protests in dozens of blocks near the Tampa Convention Center. Among other things, the ordinance requires a permit for groups of 50 or more to gather in parks; sets a limit of 90 minutes on parades; and bans an array of items, including glass bottles, aerosol cans and pieces of rope longer than six feet. It also provided for an official parade route for protesters along with viewing areas.

“During public debates, some Tampa residents and City Council members opposed the rules, calling them excessive. Others complained that while the ordinance outlawed water pistols, actual pistols were allowed for those with permits to carry a concealed weapon. Although Tampa's mayor, Bob Buckhorn, had asked the state's governor, Rick Scott, to ban firearms during the convention, the governor has refused.”

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg vented his frustration today by suggesting police departments across the country go on strike to express their support of tougher guns laws, a work stoppage action by public servants hardly in line with the position he or any other mayor would sanction in normal times. Which leads one to wonder, do we have to suffer through a disastrous shooting at the GOP convention for our politicians to separate their act from the yahoos at the National Rifle Association?

The Real Mass Murderers Among Us

Safe to say, Afro-Americans have suffered more discrimination in our society than any other population segment. Yet, other than Colin Ferguson, the Long Island Railroad shooter who killed six commuters and wounded 19 others in 1993, I’m hard-pressed to recall any other instance over the last several decades when an Afro-American vented his frustrations and executed a mass shooting and murder as perpetrated last week by James Holmes, another white man, in Aurora, Colo., or in Columbine, Colo., or at Virginia Tech, or in Tucson, Ariz., or just last week ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where, thankfully, none of the 17 people shot in a bar died (okay, technically, the Virginia Tech shooter was Asian, but hardly a member of a discriminated race).

Through their gangs, blacks have the unfortunate habit of shooting and often killing their own, both gang members and innocents, often children unlucky to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Those are serial events, not the singular violence shooters like Holmes trigger. You’d think if anyone could be justified in taking it out on society it would be an Afro-American, or maybe an Hispanic-American. Thankfully, they don’t.

I don’t mean to belittle the tragedy in Aurora, but the real tragedy of America is that gang-related murders evoke little more than hand-wringing and not enough resolve to alter the conditions that are killing hope in minority neighborhoods. In Chicago, for example, 272 have been killed this year through June 30, mostly from gang-related incidents. That’s up 36% from a year ago. 

Since the mass assault in the movie theater in Aurora we’ve been trying to analyze the alleged shooter, determine his motive, flesh out his psyche, somehow try to figure out what would drive an individual to do such an extreme act against society. Perhaps it would be more worthwhile to figure out why whole groups of men have abandoned social mores. Let’s figure out how to stop their discriminate and indiscriminate shooting rampages.

We’ll never stop random acts of mass murder, no more than we can eradicate random acts of terrorism. But we must work to stop what has become “institutionalized” murder by gangs, even if it’s against other gang members. We don’t tolerate Mafia wars. We shouldn’t tolerate minority wars. We cannot allow neighborhoods of our cities to degenerate into semblances of drug-cartel controlled Mexico where the value of a life has lost its true meaning. 

Getting back to James Holmes, did anyone else look at his picture and think he resembled the devil incarnate, what with his lips turned up into a smirk, pointy ears, arched eyebrows and two wisps of hair on each side of his head looking for all accounts like horns? Click on this link to see a picture of Holmes. Make up your own mind: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1118502.1342871848!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/james-holmes.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/james-holmes-aurora-shooting-suspect-med-school-dropout-loner-neighbors-article-1.1118501&h=491&w=635&sz=30&tbnid=ISjZJ4mf-HKI4M:&tbnh=92&tbnw=119&prev=/search%3Fq%3Djames%2Bholmes%2Bpictures%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=james+holmes+pictures&usg=__LG6xslFseV5rCVNdS1W0W4GxJ-Q=&docid=C6KP7QA6-EN9NM&sa=X&ei=hKQNUNqnH4m40QGviNDIAw&ved=0CFoQ9QEwAw&dur=547

Harlem Nights

As I recall the meal some 15 years ago, it was not too memorable. At least as far as taste goes. But as a cultural experience, it was worthwhile.

I’m referring to a pilgrimage to Harlem my staff, Gilda and I made one evening to eat in Sylvia’s Restaurant. The famed soul-food eatery is experiencing additional melancholy recognition these last few days, ever since it was announced Thursday owner and founder Sylvia Woods had died at 86 after suffering the last several years with Alzheimer’s disease.

At the suggestion of Matt, one of our editors, we took the subway uptown to 125th Street that warm, summer evening. About six of us. Some of us must have eaten fried chicken. Maybe some collard greens. Perhaps there was a pork chop. Like I said, the food did not register as among our greatest meals (a review confirmed to me by two other participants that evening). We did not feel different, out of place. We did feel we had tasted part of the culture that makes New York City vibrant.

Some 30 years earlier, during my freshman, or maybe sophomore, year at Brooklyn College, I enjoyed another Harlem experience, a Bill Cosby and O.C. Smith concert at the renowned Apollo Theater. My friend Paul and I were among the few white faces in the crowd. This was, after all, 1968. Few Caucasians ventured onto 125th Street at night back then, even to see Bill Cosby. We sat high up in the balcony, as far back as we could.

Smith performed first, taking particular pleasure in singing his hit, “Little Green Apples,” to Cosby’s wife, seated in one of the stage-right boxes. Cosby emerged from the wings to visually express his pique at being so publicly cuckolded. The crowd roared.

Cosby ended his routine around midnight. The Apollo was just heating up, but we didn’t stay. It was a long subway ride back to Brooklyn.