A sign of the times

A car enters the parking lot of a large supermarket and pulls into a handicap parking spot. Instead of displaying an official handicap placard, the young female driver reaches into the rear seat area and pulls out an old brown paper bag. The bag has writing on it, not neatly printed, but scribbled, as if to show it was written in haste.  Upon closer inspection, the words on the bag are “I am old and I forgot my handicap sticker.  Please don’t give me a ticket.”  After placing the bag on the dashboard, the young woman jumps out of the vehicle and scampers into the supermarket.

N.Y. Daily News fades away

I have  purchased a copy of the N. Y. Daily News for the last time.

I started reading it when I was a child in the 1950s.  My father worked the night shift at a financial printing plant in lower Manhattan and would purchase the early edition on his way home from work sometime after midnight.

When I sat at the kitchen table for breakfast before walking about four blocks to grammar school, the back page would stare me in the face with sports news.  I learned to read the newspaper from back to front.  I enjoyed the sports coverage (especially of the Yankees), the comic strips (long before Peanuts started), the gossip columns and sometimes even the hard news.

My best friend’s father once appeared on the front page when, as a policeman, he captured a burglar, and the News photographer captured the arrest scene.

My father served in World War II and his scrap book contains clippings from the Daily News.

I, too, clipped a number of articles, coupons and comic strips from the paper over the years.

Recently, I noticed that many of the features I liked in the newspaper have disappeared.  I started to only buy the Sunday edition because it still had a number of sections I enjoyed, including the comics, Parade Magazine, weekly TV listings and interesting sports coverage.  It was still a bargain at $1.50.

Then, they raised the price to $2.00, and instead of adding more value, they cut more features.

Now comes the news that they have fired half of their staff.  They claim they want to concentrate on online news. (See the news report at the end of this post.)

I had a further connection to this newspaper.  While attending law school, I worked for a law firm who had offices in the then Daily News Building on 42^nd Street in Manhattan.  The firm even represented the newspaper and I remember being sent into the press room to serve a subpoena on someone representing the labor union. 

But now, with this once great newspaper going down the drain, I do not intend to go down the drain with it.

So, to paraphrase The Beatles, “I heard the news today, oh boy” and it was not good.

Goodbye, old friend.

JULY 23, 2018 / 12:34 PM

Storied tabloid N.Y. Daily News slashes half its news staff

Reuters Staff

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Daily News, the city’s scrappy, 99-year-old tabloid, is laying off half of its editorial staff, as U.S. newspapers continue to struggle with sharply declining advertising revenue and readership, it said on Monday.

The cuts at the Pulitzer Prize-winning daily paper, known for eye-catching front-page headlines and taking on the city’s power players, including real estate developer Donald Trump long before he was elected president, drew criticism from both average readers and politicians who bristled at how the paper covered them.

Owner Tronc Inc said the cuts are intended to make the paper a stronger competitor online.

“We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and refocusing much of our talent on breaking news - especially in the areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility,” Tronc said in a memo to staff.

The Daily News employed about 85 journalists prior to the announcement, according to rival New York Post, owned by News Corp.

church meets state

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was a famous television personality when I was growing up in the 1950s.  He hosted a weekly show called “Life is Worth Living” from 1952 to 1957.  He died in 1979.

Five days before his death, he executed a will directing his funeral be celebrated at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and that he be buried in Calvary Cemetery in New York, where he had purchased a burial plot.  However, the then Archbishop of New York, Terence Cardinal Cooke, asked Archbishop Sheen’s niece and closest relative for permission to bury her uncle in the crypt at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  She consented and Sheen was laid to rest in a crypt under the church’s high altar.  His remains are still there.

In 2002, 23 years after Archbishop Sheen’s death, a process was started in his boyhood home of Peoria, Illinois to determine whether he should be canonized as a saint,

In 2014, the Diocese of Peoria requested that Archbishop Sheen’s remains be transferred to Peoria because a shrine was being built there.  Additionally, it was pointed out that his parents are buried there; most of his relatives live nearby and he was ordained as a priest there.

Joan Sheen Cunningham, Archbishop Sheen’s niece, now almost 90 year old, who had originally consented to her uncle’s burial at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, moved in state Supreme Court to have her uncle’s remains disinterred and transported to Peoria for re-burial.

The Court granted her petition to move Archbishop Sheen’s remains to Peoria, Illinois.

The Trustees of St. Patrick’s Cathedral appealed to the next highest court.  Five judges of the Appellate Division, First Department heard the appeal and three voted to overrule the lower court so the remains could stay at St. Patrick’s until a hearing could be held to determine Archbishop Sheen’s wishes. Two judges dissented and agreed with the lower court, which allowed the remains to be transferred.

As of now, the matter is pending a further hearing (before the losing party can appeal to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals in Albany).  The remains will remain where they are until a final determination is made.

Interestingly, the majority relied, in part, on an affidavit of Monsignor Hilary Franco, who stated that he worked with Archbishop Sheen and was a close friend.  He wrote that Archbishop Sheen wanted to be buried in New York.  The majority noted a hearing was necessary to look into what the Archbishop’s wishes really were before they could allow a relative to control his remains.

My personal connection:

Monsignor Hilary Franco was the pastor of my parish church for many years and spoke often of Archbishop Sheen in his homilies.  I also dealt with him in my capacity as Town Attorney with regard to parking in fire zones near the church.

I appeared many times as a defense attorney before Judge Rosalyn Richter when she sat in Bronx Criminal Court.  She wrote the majority opinion.

I also appeared before Judge Troy Webber in Bronx Supreme Court.  She joined in the dissent. 

My iPhone 6

My iPhone 6 has been to almost as many places as I have.  Since April, 2015, it has traveled to Puerto Rico, through the Panama Canal, to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, California, Bermuda, St. Maartin, Haiti, Key West and Havana, Cuba.  Most of its journey was as a passenger in my right front pants pocket, but it came out occasionally to snap a picture or two (ok, exactly 6,592 pictures and 453 videos).

It’s been used more as a camera than a phone.  Screen shots from the internet have taken the place of handwritten notes.  I’ve played 1,744games of Words With Friends, winning 38% of the time (hey, I have some very tough competition) and there were 7 ties.

I play music on my iPhone and watch TV and YouTube clips.

I keep track of my banking and pay bills electronically.

I even track the number of steps I take.

My iPhone does not require food, sleep or shelter – just a few jolts of electricity every so often.

Quite frankly, it has replaced the dog as man’s best friend.  Now, if only it could cook, clean and sleep with me, I might not need,,,,

The year was 1959

The year was 1959.

I was 11 years old.

My parents, younger sister and I had come to Florida from New York by car for our yearly summer vacation.  After a stay at the beach in the Clearwater-St. Petersburg area, my father, the only one with a driver’s license, drove us to Key West, the southernmost city in the continental United States.  Until 1938 you could not get there by car, but now, 21 years after the only road into the city from the mainland was built, we drove the 125 miles from Miami to Key West.  My father, who dreamed big – we drove 3,000 miles to see Disneyland three years earlier, just one year after it opened – wanted to take a hopper plane 90 miles south of Key West to Havana, Cuba.  I don’t know why he wanted to do that.  He had lived in Paris after fighting the Germans in World War II only 13 years earlier, but did not seem to me to be a world traveler – we traveled mostly from New York to Florida during my childhood (the only exception being California trips in 1956 and 1963).

But in 1958, a rebel named Fidel Castro, along with his buddy, Ernesto Che Guevera, fought a dictator named Batista in Cuba and on January 1, 1959 took over country in the Cuban Revolution. Castro was a Communist and it was deemed too dangerous for us to fly to Cuba.  Afterall, who vacations in a war zone?

So on August 9, 2017, 58 years later, at age 69, and as the only surviving member of my childhood family, I fulfilled my father’s dream to set foot on Cuba soil.

The circle of life, indeed,

The irony is that in 2017, I saw what my father would have seen in 1959.  Not much is newer than that. 

My trip to Havana

I’d like to say I visited Cuba, but it was really just Havana for a few hours on two consecutive weekdays in August, 2017.  Nights were spent on the cruise ship that brought me to the island.  Saying I visited Cuba is like saying I visited the United States but only saw Washington, D.C. 

The Havana I saw was a study in contrasts.  From a five star hotel built in 1930 to run down and crumbling buildings, at least on the outside.  Cuba is a Communist country and as such, the government runs and controls everything.  Even the cigar stores are controlled by the government, although I was approached by locals wanting to sell me cigars on the black market.  Fortunately, I am not a smoker.

Since Castro took control of the country on January 1, 1959, things seem to have been going downhill.  I was in Havana on a Wednesday and Thursday in August and although I saw scaffolding on a few buildings, I saw no workers.  Indeed, it seems people don’t have to work because the government supports them.  I met one woman from Tampa,Florida, who told me her cousin was a doctor in Cuba and earned just $17 a month.  That’s just $2 more than I tipped the taxi driver who drove me through the city in a 1955 Buick.  These old cars are kept running, not by mechanics, but as they say, by “magicians” using Russian car parts.  They are passed down within the family and very few other Cubans own cars.

 ​

Cows are nearly non-existent, so there is no beef.  The meat they eat is chicken and pork.  For a port city in the Caribbean, I saw no small boats – they are banned for fear they will be used to escape to Miami.  I saw no grocery stores, no fast food restaurants, no movie theaters, and no banks.  These things are not necessary when people have no money.  I did see one church, which charged an admission to tourists since the government wasn’t supporting them.

There were two forms of currency, one for the locals and one for the tourists.  Americans are charged a 13% tax both when purchasing Cuban money and when exchanging it back for dollars, for a total of 26%.

The people seemed friendly enough, but I got the impression they have no idea what the outside world looks like.  Police and soldiers are everywhere and you are not allowed to take pictures of them.  One elderly woman  begged me for a ballpoint pen I was using,  It was a Bic, worth about ten cents, but to her, it was the world and she thanked me profusely when I gave it to her.

The bottom line is that if you are wealthy, you can do fine (ambassadors live in mansions), but if you are poor, you don’t know what you are missing.  Castro had banned Christmas until one of the three Popes who visited the island convinced him to allow it and now it is a national holiday.  But the everyday life of the average citizen of Havana seemed to consist of waking up, standing or sitting around and going to sleep.

The rest of the island may have beautiful beaches or other amenities but I did not leave Havana, which seemed stuck in 1959 and is taking its sweet time moving into 1960.

Survivor

I keep in touch with some of the people I attended grade school with through the magic of Facebook.  What strikes me is this – we all began at the same starting point, give or take a few months, but we will each be exiting the human race at a different age.  Some of my fellow classmates have already finished their journey and are six feet under or inhabiting a vase on a mantel.  I feel as if I am in a reality show called Survivor.  Who will be the last classmate voted off the planet?

Moral: Treasure each day while you can.

Creeping towards a simpler life

The following was written by me in 2006, about a year before I started this blog. I post it here for the first time:

It's difficult to write anything today without first checking the internet to see what someone else has written on the subject in question.

I've become a devotee of the philosophy of "less is more," so I did a Google search and found an article which claimed that the phrase "less is more" was first written in 1855 in a poem by Robert Browning.  I read a portion of the poem and couldn't understand it, so I'm going to use my own definition for "less is more."

"Less is more" is essentially the same as K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid).  I have enough education to use five dollar words, but I prefer the simpler ones.  Although the phrase "less is more" is catchy, what I really mean is "fewer is better."  A case in point.  There is a sign in front of a vacant lot near where I live and it reads: "NO PARKING ALLOWED."  Every time I pass that sign, I wonder what the word "allowed" adds to the parking prohibition.  In other words, isn't "NO PARKING" the same as "NO PARKING ALLOWED"?  Of course it is.

One place when the "less is more" concept should be abandoned is the sign at the express checkout lane in the supermarket.  When I see "12 items or less," I cringe.  It's "12 items or fewer."  Think of it this way: less time but fewer minutes.  If there is a number involved, it usually should be "fewer" not "less."  "But," you say, "fewer has more letters than less."  That's true, but I couldn't care fewer.

At breakfast the other day, I noticed a bottle of Heinz ketchup.  In big bold letters, the label proclaimed "TOMATO KETCHUP."  I immediately thought the word "tomato" was superfluous (see, I told you I knew some five dollar words).  I'm a child of the Fifties and never did I taste ketchup that wasn't made from tomatoes.  However,if figured I'd better check the internet for a definition of the word "ketchup."  Lo and behold, it turns out that when ketchup was first introduced, it was a "sauce made from fish brine and spices" but no tomatoes. However, in America, at least since the early 1900s, ketchup has been tomato based.  So, just as some words change meanings over the years, I'm calling for the elimination of the word "tomato" on the front of the Heinz Tomato Ketchup bottle.  Ketchup is ketchup.  That condiment we slather on hamburgers, french fries and everything else.  In my simpler world, ketchup isn't a sauce made from fish brine, no matter what the dictionary says.

Library books

I went to my local library the other day because they were having a book sale.  After browsing for nearly an hour, I left empty-handed.  Oh, there were books that interested me, but what prevented me from buying any of them, was this: I have too many unread books on my bookshelves already.  Books that I purchased, intending to read, but never got around to reading.

Another factor in my not making any purchases is that lately I have been reading books on my e-reader.  It is so much more convenient and you can even read in the dark!  These electronic books take up zero space on my bookshelves and an added plus is that they sync with my smart phone so I can read anywhere at any time.

So, before I buy another book printed on paper, I am determined to first check my bookshelves for those books I have already purchased but never read.  The other books on the shelves - the ones I have read - will remain there because I like to look at them even if I will never re-read them.  Having favorite books look at you every time you enter a room is an experience that someone growing up in today’s world of electronic reading material will never realize. They will never know the joy of holding a real book.

I just hope the library isn’t selling all their books.

News in print vs online

Each day more and more people get their news from the internet.  Most of these people no longer read newspapers, except perhaps online.

They are missing something.

When you read things online, you tend to see the headlines and big stories, easily missing the smaller news pieces.  I came to this realization while reading an actual newspaper, printed with ink on paper.  Of course, the main news stories were on the front page, but it’s the smaller items on the inside that are the most interesting.  Those smaller stories, sometimes no more than a paragraph, are scattered throughout the newspaper.  If they are even on the paper’s website, they are not easy to find.

When you open a fullsize newspaper, sometimes you are faced with a huge ad for some product, store or company.  Many times, on the same page, there are small news items with headlines that catch your eye.  One recent one concerned the mystery of the gravestone next to Lee Harvey Oswald’s cemetery plot.  The gravestone read “Nick Beef” and until recently, no one knew who this person was.  The article identified the owner of the plot, who is alive and thus was not buried there, and explained why he purchased the cemetery plot.  The article was interesting but I can’t imagine anyone having seen it while reading a newspaper online.

Another advantage of an actual newspaper is that you can pick it up at any time, read it for a minute or two, put it down and pick it up again later at the point you left off.  How often is that done with electronic news?

So, too, you can clip an article and save it.  Has anyone ever been found with an electronic news article folded in his wallet?

Of course, internet news is delivered much faster than a one day old newspaper. 

But sometimes it’s nice to slow down and smell the newsprint.

A silver lining

Today something happened to me that has not happened for nearly 50 years: I received a silver coin in change at the grocery store. 1964 was the last year US coins were made of 90% silver. Since then, coins have been made of an alloy of metals with basically no intrinsic value. Since the last silver coins were minted, the price of silver has risen, making the value of pre-1965 coins higher than their face value. People routinely sell these silver coins for many times their face value. The buyers usually melt the coins to retrieve the silver. Today’s spot price is about $1.50 for the dime in question. The coin was a well worn 1943-S Mercury dime. The S mint mark indicates it was minted 3,000 miles away in San Francisco. Mercury dimes were last minted in 1945 when they were replaced by the current Roosevelt dime. They have virtually disappeared from circulation since 1965. The supermarket clerk who gave me the coin was an older woman. She either didn’t know the value of the coin or didn’t notice it as she counted out my change. I spotted it immediately because I used to collect coins as a hobby. I guess the moral of this story is: Keep your eyes open when dealing with money.

Recycling?

Scene: Waiting at a bus stop on a late spring afternoon. Action: A young woman comes to wait for the bus. She begins to eat pistachio nuts, tossing the empty shells onto the grass. One final unopened nut falls into to the roadbed and, unbelievably, she stoops to retrieve it, dodging traffic in the process. She then removes the pistachio nut and makes a final toss of the empty shell halves onto the grass. My first reaction was that this was littering, but as I looked down, I saw several cigarette butts and that tempered my reaction somewhat. After all, the nut shells were at least biodegradable, weren’t they? Still, the wonton act of tossing what amounted to garbage onto the beautiful green grass upset my sensibilities. Is there ever an excuse for tossing things you no longer want or need? Who raises people to do this? Certainly not my parents. I hold onto trash until I find a proper receptacle. I suppose that makes me a rebel by today’s standards.

References

It occurred to me that there are a number of references in my last post that a younger audience may not understand. Terms like “Amway,” “God’s waiting room,” “grammar school,” “baby-boomers,” and even “jumping the shark.” One of the sad things about getting older is that many people you speak with do not understand the references you make. I’ll continue to make them in the hopes that someone will understand them. Even if it’s only me. For the rest of you, there’s always Google. --

Jumping the shark

I’ve been on Facebook since January 8, 2009, originally joining so I could “friend” my younger daughter in order to see the pictures she posted. Neither my wife nor older daughter are on Facebook, but almost everyone else I know is. As a result of the recent 50th anniversary of my graduation from grammar school (yes, I am an older American), several of my classmates from those early days have connected with me on Facebook. Some post pictures of food, their travels, the games they play or their hobbies. We ‘baby boomers” don’t all retire to “God’s waiting room.” Indeed, one of my female former classmates moved back from Florida to New Jersey to be closer to her grandchildren. It’s that woman who has convinced me that Facebook has jumped the shark. She recently started a business selling jewelry and now her Facebook posts are nothing more than ads for her business. It’s one thing for advertisers to bombard you with requests to buy their products; it’s quite another when your friends do so, too. A number of years ago, when one of my daughters became friendly with one of her grade school classmates, we invited that child’s parents to our home for a summer barbecue. To my dismay, those parents used the occasion to push an Amway agenda on us. That was the last time we socialized with that family. Now it may be time to “de-friend” my grammar school classmate who is using Facebook to sell jewelry. And I probably won’t wait until Jimmy Kimmel’s National De-Friend Day in November to do it.

The pursuit was trivial

It finally happened. Notwithstanding the vast amount of knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years, albeit mostly trivial in nature, I’ve hit the wall I saw coming. I predicted that soon many quiz show questions would be about Harry Potter or those Lord of the Ring/Hobbit characters. Since I know absolutely nothing about these fictional people, and do not care enough to learn about them, I knew I would be at a disadvantage. I thought they would show up on Jeopardy first, and maybe a few questions have. But, to my dismay, these topics have made it into my local crossword puzzle. Recently, two of the first three “across” clues were: Head of Slytherin House, in Potter books (five letters) and “The Hobbit” dragon (also five letters). If this trend continues, I will be reduced to a trivia relic.

Back to the Blog

By accident, I came across a blog someone wrote with only four entries, all on the same date in 2009. I started a blog on October 25, 2007 and have 86 entries to date, but none since February 7, 2012. Lest any reader think something happened to me, I thought it was time to blog again. In truth, I never stopped writing, just publishing. Now I will do both. I’ll start with an observation about the shrinking size of products. I remember when a Hershey bar cost five cents. Then, instead of raising the price, they reduced the size of the bar. I don’t know if that was the first instance of shrinkage, but the trend seems to have accelerated in recent years. I bought a box of Kleenex tissues the other day. The price was right – just a dollar. But the number of tissues in the box seemed low – just 100 (no, I did no count them). It occurred to me that every time I used a tissue, whether to blow my nose or squash a bug, it cost me one cent. By the way, I refrain from using the word “penny” because as a numismatist, I know that the penny used to be a coin in England, whereas the coin we commonly refer to as a penny is actually a one cent piece. The government says it costs more than one cent to make one cent, even though they haven’t used copper since 1982. Anyway, this got me to thinking about how much these shrunken items really cost per unit. Four chicken McNuggets for a dollar comes to about 12 ½ cents a bite. A $3.00 slice of pizza is about fifty cents a bite. Rising costs and shrinking products, coupled with the state of the economy, makes one wonder how close we are to making even the dollar bill worth hardly anything. Newspapers have recently gone from 50 cents to a dollar, while at the same time, cutting content. Even the Sunday comics, a staple of my youth, have been cut down to fewer than a dozen. It was easy to purchase a 50 cent newspaper when you received two quarters back. It’s more difficult to say goodbye to a whole dollar bill. They say as you age, you shrink. So I guess I’m right in tune with what’s happening.

Now this is interesting

When the classic song, “American Pie,” recently had its 40th anniversary, New York Daily News critic, David Hinckley, suggested that the “value of the song as a catchy tune and cultural mile marker may outstrip the profundity of its lyrics.”

Nevertheless, people have been fascinated by those lyrics for decades and have attributed various interpretations to them. But Don McLean, the man who wrote and sang the song, had this to say: “I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas.” He then added: “You will find many ‘interpretations’ of my lyrics but none of them by me.”

On Sunday, February 5, 2012, Hinckley printed some interesting interpretations he received from readers as a result of his article on the 40th anniversary of the song. Whether they are true doesn’t matter. But they sure are interesting.

Concerning the lyrics, “Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry and them good old boys were drinkin’ whisky and rye,” one reader wrote that in the 1960s there was a bar in New Rochelle, New York, across from Iona Prep, where McLean went to high school. The bar was called the Levee and was a popular hangout for local high school students. However, although the drinking age at the time was 18, the bar was “dry” for the high school students.

Another reader added that one day, when the Levee bar was closed, McLean supposedly drove to the Mug Ale House in Rye, New York, where he drank whisky “in Rye.”

Okay, now I understand.

What's wrong with America

Like millions of Americans, I sat in front of my television set prepared to enjoy Super Bowl 46 (I refuse to use Roman Numerals since I’m not in Rome) on Sunday, February 5, 2012.

I watched the singing of the National Anthem. Then, just before the kickoff, NBC played a clip from an upcoming movie, the Dictator, staring Sasha Baron Cohen. The final scene of the clip showed the actor at a track meet, preparing to race what appeared to be a 100 yard dash. He fires off a pistol and begins to run. As the other runners follow suit, he turns the pistol on them and shoots them down.

At first, I thought this was funny. But then it dawned on me that millions of young people had just watched our National Anthem being sung and were waiting for the football game to begin. And this movie clip was the image that someone thought was appropriate to show them? An “athlete” shooting his fellow runners? Worse yet, this commercial was soon followed by one for the 2012 Summer Olympics. I started to wonder what a young child would make of this.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not if favor of censorship. But there is a time and place for everything. This was neither the time nor the place for this movie clip.

Simply put, what’s wrong with America is that common sense no longer prevails.

Old Friends

On January 19, 2012 I attended a multimedia presentation tracing the career of Simon & Garfunkel by legendary New York rock and roll disc jockey Pete Fornatale. The event, which was titled “How Terribly Strange to be 70,” was held before a capacity crowd of about 300 people at the Budarz Theater inside the Ossining Public Library.

Mr. Fornatale, who graduated from Fordham University in 1967, played video clips of the famous duo, both of whom turned 70 recently. The title was taken from one of their songs, Old Friends, from their Bookends album: “Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a parkbench quietly. How terribly strange to be seventy.”

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met when they were students at a Forest Hills, Queens high school and began singing together in the early 60s as “Tom and Jerry.” By 1965 they had a number one single, “The Sounds of Silence” under their real names. Towards the end of the decade, Fornatale was teaching English at a Catholic high school (“in order to avoid the draft,” he admitted). One day he read the poem Richard Corey to his students. They were unimpressed. The next day, he brought in a Simon & Garfunkel album and played their musical version of the poem. From that day forward, Fornatale said, he had the attention of his students, one of whom was Mike Francessa, the radio “sports pope.”

After the video clips, Mr. Fornatale introduced a special guest – Art Garfunkel himself. Garfunkel had been having throat trouble for about a year and wanted to practice singing before a live audience. I was sitting in the front row, having arrived late and been fortunate enough to snag one of the new seats that were set up in front to accommodate the overflow crowd. Accompanied by someone on piano and another fellow on guitar, Garfunkel sang about six songs, but sadly, his voice was that of a 70 year old man with a throat condition. He also looked like a 70 year old man. The top of his head, which once sported a white man’s afro, was now bald and the hair on either side was short. He wore sneakers, jeans and a white dress shirt that was not tucked in, presumably to cover his moderate stomach paunch.

Fornatale had quoted James Taylor, who said that the secret of life was enjoying the passage of time.

To that I might add, “and remembering the good times.”

Being 70 may be inevitable, but reveling in it is not much fun.

Destined to join the Occupy Wall Street crowd

A young man traveling on Metro North railroad was wearing black dress shoes with laces as he sat across the aisle from me early one afternoon. I noticed this because he put his feet on the seat cushion facing him. He took out his cell phone and called a friend to ask, “Wanna get some food?”

A female conductor came by to take my ticket and I wanted to ask, sarcastically, whether it would be okay to put my feet on the seat facing me like the young man was doing. But I didn’t. And the conductor said nothing to the young man, who continued his cell phone conversation, speaking loud enough for me to hear, “I’m not home, dude. I was in the city. I had like interviews and shit.”

Now, that’s a young man who will soon be joining the Occupy Wall Street crowd when he doesn’t get hired.