I Never Really Liked Halloween

Just five kids braved our cul de sac to trick or treat last night. Can’t really blame them or their parents who tagged along. I wouldn’t have gone out last night, either. Then again, I never really liked Halloween. I don't remember dressing up in a costume to go trick or treating as a youngster. My antipathy toward Halloween carried over to my parenting. I reasoned that since Halloween really was All Saints Day it was a Christian holiday, one good Jewish children shouldn't celebrate. Besides Gilda and I didn't want Dan and Ellie eating candy. I'm also not into scary movies, especially ones wherein a haunted house plays a central role. 

Perhaps my aversion to haunted houses goes back to my early childhood. Across the street from our brick row house on Avenue W in Brooklyn in the early 1950s stood a dirty grey, two or three story clapboard structure recessed back from the road. I say dirty grey, but in truth the house started off white. Years of neglect turned it dirty grey. The small plot of lawn in front of the house was overgrown with weeds.

No children lived there. The only person we ever saw going into and out of the house was a wizened geezer. He walked stooped over, his grey suit jacket draping a skeletal body. His cheeks appeared sallow and shallow, as if he had no teeth to keep them from caving in on his gums. A stub of a cigarette dangled from his lips. His grey hair ran wild. He was, to a young boy and his friends with furtive imaginations, a most scary fellow, the type of shadowy figure Scout and Jem envisioned of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Even his name made us squirm—Pupkis. 

My friends, Lenny and Richie, and I weren’t old enough to cross Avenue W by ourselves, so we never threw rocks or fuzz balls at Mr. Pupkis or his home. One day, maybe when I was eight or nine, Pupkis and his home were gone. In short order they were replaced by side-by-side adjoining brick homes. Into one of them moved a family with a daughter, Sherry, who became one of my sister’s best friends. The most memorable aspect of Sherry’s home was her living room furniture. Her mother encased the sofa and chairs in protective plastic. People did that back in the 1950s and early 1960s. 

One other noteworthy event occurred on Avenue W between East 18th and East 19th Street. A few years later on a Friday evening in the spring, just as our family was sitting down to Sabbath dinner, we heard sharp popping sounds—gunfire— from across the street, followed by a man’s anguished cry. We looked out the dinette window to see police detectives stuff a portly man handcuffed from behind into an unmarked car. Turned out he was a drug dealer. The detectives had pursued him down his driveway into his back yard, firing their pistols in the air to get him to stop fleeing. We didn’t know the family. I don’t think they would have been the type of folks my parents would have had as friends. 

More Sandy Fallout: Wednesday’s NY Times carried a letter from Joseph McCaffrey of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., arguing for early voting legislation in all 50 states so that future disasters, wherever they may occur, don’t limit suffrage opportunities. “Mother Nature is nonpartisan and could take out red or blue states in the future and severely affect national elections,” he wrote.

McCaffrey must be a Democrat as he tagged Mother Nature (another euphemism for God) as being nonpartisan. No self-respecting Republican, at least in this time of Akins, Santorum, Bachmann and Mourdock, would declare God to be anything but a card carrying member of the Grand Old Party. 

My Mistake: Another example of why it’s very hard to copy edit yourself. In Wednesday’s post I wrote Hurricane “Sally,” not Sandy (since corrected). My apologies. To those who wrote in, thank you. To everyone else, this is another example of seeing what you want to see, not what the reality is. 

More Sandy, Sandy, Sandy

Three days after Hurricane Sandy, the mailman finally resumed his appointed rounds, one day after the UPS man was able to deliver a package. So much for the “neither snow nor rain ...” motto of the U.S. Postal Service, which by the way, is not an official creed of the agency. Could Romney be right? Could private enterprise function better than a quasi-governmental entity? 

Perhaps, since “brown,” FedEx and any other company probably would not have to operate under the same constrictions imposed on the Postal Service, such as requiring congressional approval for rate hikes and service-related decisions, including the ability to cut off some delivery days and routes. Free enterprise is great but we should realize there are some functions that serve our national best interest if they are either government run or at the least government regulated. For example, could you imagine what would happen if the government did not oversee nuclear power facilities? How safe would you feel living near such a power plant. Even with government oversight I’m not too comfortable living within 28 miles of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, NY. 

Maybe government supervision of nuclear energy is easy to accept. How’s about something simpler, such as cell phone service. To be honest, our cell phone capabilities are lousy, far behind those in most other countries, including Third World nations. It’s because the government did not set national standards when the industry began. Only recently did consumers obtain the right to keep their telephone numbers when they switched carriers. 

Reagan and his blind followers were wrong to blame government as the problem. Waste is the problem. Even with occasional delays in getting my mail—mostly bills, promos for more credit cards and mail order prescriptions—our postal service is among the best in the world. If you have friends or relatives living in other countries, ask them about their postal horror stories.

By the way, if you didn’t know any better, you’d have sworn Barack Obama and Chris Christie were the best of buddies the way they hung together and talked effusively about each other during the president’s tour of wreckage in the governor’s state of New Jersey. Some reports say Republicans are upset with Christie for praising Obama when the election hangs in the balance. Obama, meanwhile, didn’t seem to hold a grudge for recent attacks Christie has launched on his leadership. The photo-op of Obama looking presidential visiting and comforting the Sandy’s victims was worth swallowing some pride. See, Democrats and Republicans can work together, or at least give the appearance of such. 

Turf Wars: Or should I say, tree wars. I wonder, what with all the downed trees, is there a nesting war going on among squirrels and birds forced to find new homes above us in trees already staked out by their rodent and aviary cousins? (Actually, squirrels live in nests called “dreys,” usually built in the forks of trees limbs.) 

In anticipation of winter, squirrels have been packing food away all around their neighborhoods. How’s the new landscape going to impact their winter feeding? Just wondering ...

More to wonder about ... The Pied Piper legend had him ridding Hamelin of its rats by luring them with his flute to jump into Germany’s Weser River where all but one drowned. I wonder, has Hurricane Sally basement and tunnel flooding killed off many of the rats that reside in subterranean Manhattan? Just wondering ...

Today being Wednesday I usually deliver food to seniors living in Yonkers. But the social service agency couldn’t get its food shipment so the ladies will have to hunker down for another day as a delivery is planned for Thursday. They’re a pretty resilient group, these octogenarians and nonagenarians (those are 80 and 90 year olds, for those not familiar with those terms), so I’m not too concerned they’ll waste away. But I do feel responsible for checking in on them, some of whom still live in free-standing houses.

A few limbs fell off some of our evergreen trees, but for the most part we emerged unscathed from the storm. Some 30 years ago, however, in our first house, we experienced a startling tree casualty. One Sunday as I was working in our breakfast nook around 9 pm, I heard what sounded like a mortar blast in our back yard. Half of an enormous weeping willow tree in one of our neighbor’s yards had snapped and fallen across three yards, ours included. Luckily, no house was hit. No damage except to the neighbor’s pocketbook. It cost more than $2,000 to have the tree chopped down, cut up and hauled away. Willow is not good firewood, so none of it was worth salvaging. Too bad, because at the time 80% of our heat came from wood I gathered for our wood burning stove.

Following Sandy

Gilda and I dodged another bullet. Our home was not affected by Hurricane Sandy. We did not lose power, Internet, cable or phone service. I still think I should have bought that small generator just in case we needed it to run our sump pumps. Perhaps next time I’ll be more aggressive. 

I haven’t become a storm-zombie, watching or listening to Hurricane Sandy 24-hour coverage. But from the little time I did spend pre- and post-landfall, here are some observations:

Prior to Sandy hitting the New York area, CBS-2 weatherman John Elliott, when describing the dangers expected from the storm, said, “We’re not trying to scare you.” Whoa! Of course he was trying to scare his viewers. He was trying to scare everyone into doing the right thing, such as evacuating from low-lying areas. Anyone who didn’t heed his warnings and had the capacity to vacate before Sandy hit but didn’t should be required to pay for any emergency help provided to rescue them.

I found it rather incongruous watching in-studio newscasters nattily dressed and coiffed while telling us about the storm and flooding. I’d have preferred a little more grunge, in the spirit of what their reporters in the field were experiencing. 

Bridges, roadways, tunnels, mass transit were closed. Ferry service was suspended, as well. Ferries? I couldn’t understand that at first. Aren’t ferries supposed to float, even over troubled waters? Gilda and her brother Carl reasoned the ferry terminals probably were damaged. Makes sense.

With Noah and the Flood a recent blog topic, Carl also reminded me Russell Crowe is filming part of a movie titled Noah on Long Island which, according to a noon report, has 90% of its residents without power. The biblical-based film is being directed by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan and The Wrestler), a boyhood and long-time friend of our nephew, Andrew, Gilda’s sister’s oldest offspring.

President Obama swiftly declared parts of New York and New Jersey disaster areas and eligible for emergency federal relief funds through FEMA. Ever wonder what Mitt Romney’s position is on FEMA assistance? Here’s an article from The Huffington Post:

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

On Sunday, according to HuffPost, “a Romney official reaffirmed the former governor's position Sunday evening in an email.

"'Gov. Romney wants to ensure states, who are the first responders and are in the best position to aid impacted individuals and communities, have the resources and assistance they need to cope with natural disasters,'” the Romney official said."

One has to wonder how any state would be able to afford the billions and billions of dollars it will require to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo already has said states do not have such funds, given their constitutional requirement to balance their budgets. Washington, on the other hand, can supply financing, even if it means adding to the national debt. 

As for Romney’s suggestion to privatize disaster relief, it would open a Pandora’s Box of  troubles including the possibility help would be doled out quicker to more affluent areas than poor neighborhoods. If government did that, voters could react at the next election. But there’s no recourse if private enterprise fails or shows favorites.  

There is a silver lining to all the destruction—replacement purchases by municipalities and individuals for capital goods, home furnishings and apparel will stimulate the economy. Lots of jobs may be created filling the new demand for goods and services. Contractors and related construction industry workers have reason to smile, assuming they didn’t suffer from Sandy. Romney, of course, would see these jobs as a plus, given that in his nominating acceptance speech he mocked Obama for promising “to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.” Obama’s idea doesn’t sound too crazy now, does it?

I guess we’re lucky Sandy hit this week and not a week later when the election might have been affected by more than just the campaigns suspending events. Had Sandy come next week, we might have had to extend voting beyond Tuesday in the states affected, most of which lean Blue. Then again, in places like Pennsylvania where Republicans now control the state government, there might have been some thought not to as a way of keeping Obama’s vote total low. (Yeah, I'm being cynical, but not too unrealistic.)

Gilda had the best comment—just let Ohio vote. Whomever wins the Buckeye State wins the presidency.

I wasn’t the only one to focus on the World Series ending on a called third strike. Here’s a link to an article from The NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/sports/baseball/called-third-strike-is-rare-way-to-end-world-series.html

  

Tigers Lose; Yanks, Mets Win

The Detroit Tigers did more than just lose the World Series to the San Francisco Giants Sunday night. They purged New York baseball of two forgettable, embarrassing memories.

Detroit reached the series this year by emasculating the Yankees. They swept the Yankees four straight, limiting New York’s scoring to just three innings over four games (39 innings). Their chief nemesis was a former Yankee, left-handed relief pitcher Phil Coke. He completely shut down the Bronx Bombers in all four games. Miguel Cabrera, this years triple crown winner and certain most valuable player, catapulted the Tigers into the World Series by smacking a home run in the final win over the Yankees. Detroit’s starting pitchers—Doug Fister, Anibel Sanchez, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer—manhandled the Yankees. Yankee fans were depressed.

Oh how emotions can change in a week. Detroit’s bats went as silent as  the Yankees’. San Francisco’s pitchers shut them out in two games. Detroit scored runs in just four out of 37 innings. They were as inept as the Yanks had been when hitting with runners in scoring position. Fister, Sanchez, and Verlander lost games. In perfect payback, Coke lost the final game.

The Yankees and their fans could feel a little less frazzled by the team’s failure in the playoffs.

And for good added measure, the NY Mets, their former all-star outfielder Carlos Beltran and their fans may sleep a little easier after watching Cabrera take a called third strike to end the Series when all of Detroit was hoping for a home run to tie the game, or at the very least a hit to prolong the contest. Shades of Beltran standing immobile at the plate, his bat on his shoulder, to end the seventh game against the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2006 National League Championship Series.

Vindication?  No. Absolution? No. Just recognition that hitting a baseball, especially at a critical time, is among the most difficult sporting feats. New York baseball, once the home of the Giants, salutes the world champions for giving us back some measure of sanity and acceptance that every season cannot end with a salute down the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan.

Waiting for Sandy

Waiting for Hurricane Sandy to make landfall in Westchester County, I am troubled by thoughts I have not done enough to prepare. Gilda and I have gone round and round about the wisdom and efficacy of buying a portable gasoline powered generator (our subdivision is not serviced by natural gas so we can’t get a backup whole house generator). Walking through the Christmas Tree Shop on Friday I was tempted to make an impulse purchase of a 3,500 watt generator for $299, but Gilda talked me out of it when I called her. Over 28 years we’ve never had a power outage, though we have come close. Several years ago a tree fell across our cul-de-sac street, land-locking us for a day. How it didn’t sever any power lines is beyond me. I’m worried our good fortune will run out.

Anyway, the real danger should we lose electricity is the loss of sump pump power. Our basement would flood quickly as we are the lowest house in our development situated over a high water table. Our sump pump has an emergency backup battery. If we do lose power I hope it’s not longer than the life span of the battery.

I’m not a Chris Christie fan but watching the New Jersey governor’s press conference on Hurricane Sandy preparations I was impressed by his beefy determination to be ahead of events. His non-nonsense stance epitomized New Jersey’s tough-minded attitude. Also worth noting that Christie said President Obama called him to assess the state’s readiness and its working relationship with FEMA. Nice to see Obama acting proactively and Christie giving props to a Democrat.

Lots of people and organizations giving tips on how to prepare for the coming deluge. I ignored most of the suggestions but for some reason decided storing water in buckets and even a bathtub was a good idea. 

Dan, Allison, Finley and Dagny are stranded in Sarasota, Fla. Dan’s ultimate frisbee team, Boston Ironside, was playing in the national championship tournament. They’ve finished second three out of the last four years. They came into the tourney rated number one in the country, but lost in the semi-finals Saturday to a team from Texas, Doublewide, which wound up winning the title Sunday afternoon. Small compensation was the NY Giants’ thrilling, nail-biting, clinging victory over the Dallas Cowboys early Sunday evening. Dan’s family can’t get out of Florida until Tuesday at the earliest. My brother, as well, is stuck on the east coast of Florida. 

Be Prepared

If I were president of the United States running for re-election and faced with a shifty opponent, I’d marshal all my resources in the coming days to react swiftly and humanely should a crushing blow land. I’m talking, of course, not about Mitt Romney but rather a transmuted Hurricane Sandy, or the “Frankenstorm” being predicted to strike the Eastern Seaboard and parts of Ohio and West Virginia as early as Sunday after Sandy’s winds mix with an early winter storm coming from the west. Politicians can’t do anything to prevent storms, but they sure can suffer the consequences if they fail to react appropriately (see George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina, or New York City Mayor John Lindsay and the snowstorm that buried Queens). 

So, President Obama, forget about any planned campaign stops early next week. Your priority is to appear presidential. Get yourself to the stricken areas lickety-split. Make sure FEMA responds in a timely manner. Declare disaster areas and the availability of emergency relief funds. Don’t let Romney say you’re ignoring the pain and suffering of people in the affected areas as you care only about keeping your job. 

Speaking of keeping a job, word came yesterday that Mariano Rivera, the NY Yankee relief pitcher beyond compare, is considering retiring rather than return post-injury to the 2013 roster. Why would the all-time saves leader not want to try another run for glory? Doesn’t he want to re-unite with Derek Jeter, once he recuperates from his injury, and possibly Andy Pettitte should he decide to come back? 

Perhaps Rivera’s been pondering the team’s playoff futility record over the past 12 seasons. Eleven playoff qualifications, World Series appearances in 2001, 2003, and 2009, but just one title (2009). Better than most teams, but surely not up to the standard the Yankees set for themselves. Their hitting prowess seems to vanish all too often in the playoffs, as it did this year. Too often the team’s closer has not even entered a game, so why put oneself through more than six months of practice and games? Rivera has nothing to prove. He is the best. He already has five World Series rings.

Time to spend more time with his family. My guess is Rivera will opt to conditionally retire from baseball. He won’t come back unless his successor, Raphael Soriano, decides to leave the team or gets injured. So, Yankee fans, be prepared to never hear “Enter Sandman” ever again, except for the day Rivera’s uniform number 42 is officially retired. 

Perhaps you’ve noticed fewer posts of late. Not that there’s less to write about, it’s just I am very discouraged by the quality of the rhetoric in this campaign and the inability of too many Americans, especially women, to grasp the social changes that would transpire if Romney wins. Romney may claim to tolerate a woman’s right to an abortion in cases of rape, incest or danger to her life, but he lacks the spine to stand up to the ultra-right wingers, which include his vice presidential running mate, who want to outlaw all abortions and even believe contraception is heinous and should not be permitted. Nor does Romney champion equal pay for women. Nor does he support funding for Planned Parenthood which provides health care, not just abortion services, to millions of women who cannot afford regular doctor’s visits. Romney says hundreds of thousands of women lost their jobs during the Obama years. The actual figure is less than 100,000, bad, yes, but understandable given the economy Obama inherited. Romney blasts Obama for investing stimulus money in failed companies. He says half of the companies that received stimulus funds have filed for bankruptcy. CNN, however, points out just 8% of the stimulus companies have failed, compared to 22% of the companies Romney invested in during his years at Bain Capital. 

I don’t normally watch Fox News. I admit most of what I view of it comes from clips on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. Snippets can be made to sound whichever way you want them to sound, but when they play an extended clip you really have to wonder how these people get away with what they say. Take, for example, recent comments by Peter Johnson, Jr. Saying that he had no evidence to back up his claim, Johnson opined the deaths of our Libyan ambassador and three other Americans were acceptable to the Obama administration if it meant militants would be appeased. What upsets me is that Johnson, or apparently anyone on Fox News, can make a claim without evidence. What upsets me more is that people take these rants as fact. That they believe the birthers. That they care about what Donald Trump says. 

In the ongoing rage over Republican comments about rape, one has to be struck by the fervor these GOP candidates possess that God intended these despicable acts to occur. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, that they truly believe all events are God’s will. With that reasoning in mind, why is it they deny the legitimacy of Obama’s election in 2008? Are they willing to work with him if he wins re-election, for surely God would have shown his pleasure in Obama if he triumphs a second time? Are they prepared to accept God’s mysterious ways if Obama emerges victorious from the fires of election politics and Electoral College mathematics? They may be true believers, but doubtful they have it within their souls to go that far in service of their deity.