Monthly Archives: February 2014

It’s Never Too Late for Activism

17 Monday Feb 2014

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BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I was reading and listening to obituaries of Pete Seeger recently, and noticed something peculiar. In many obituaries, Seeger, who made his living as a musician, was identified as an “activist.”  I wondered what exactly the 94-year-old composer of “Turn, Turn, Turn,” had done to earn him the title “activist.” And is that title meant as praise or damnation?

So I first consulted the dictionary, and found that activist is defined as, “an especially active, vigorous advocate of a cause, especially a political cause.” Since every public cause is a political one, I think that the definition would encompass anyone who is a vigorous advocate of any cause that affects more than a person’s immediate family and friends. So advocating for proper care for your father, who has multiple sclerosis, would not make you an activist. But advocating on behalf of everyone who has the disease would. It’s a lot like the job of “community organizer” that was sneered at an election or two ago.

Seeger’s obituary in The New York Times noted that, “He sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond.”

Clearly, for his active involvement in these causes, Seeger earned the title “activist.”  Seeger cared about others. His motivation was the polar opposite of greed.

But what about the rest of us? Shouldn’t we all be activists? Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young told us, “We can change the world, rearrange the world.”

It was the “Age of Aquarius.” Well, sadly we all know how that turned out. Self-interest trumped community involvement.

In the ‘80s, many embraced George Bush’s “A Thousand Points of Light” – a sort of “separate but equal” approach to community activism that stressed individual action. It was sold as an alternative to group action, particularly group action using community tax money. And what happened? Income inequality, crumbling cities, and two optional wars.

But some people like Pete Seeger, Tom Hayden, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Al Gore, and even Bob Barker recognized the importance and power of organizing community action. They saw that people working together supercharged their efforts. They didn’t fear government action. They saw that the ultimate community tool was government action. They worked hard to pass civil rights, labor and environmental laws that express the desire of the community for a better world. They all earned the title “activist.”

But is “activist” an honor or an epithet?  I think that depends on which side of the particular cause promoted by the activist you favor. There are certainly activists for both conservative and liberal causes. Frankly, I respect them all because even if I don’t agree with the cause they are promoting, I can respect the fact that they took the time to try to help the community.

As we move toward our “senior” years, we have one last chance to be activists. If we don’t, we face the prospect of an obituary of someone who was shamefully a “passivist.”  And that’s not someone who advocates against war.

How to Host a Murder(er)

13 Thursday Feb 2014

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do we ever really know who someone is?

BY MARGIE RUBIN

Twenty five years ago, I was teaching a group of elementary students with emotional and behavior disorders. Many of these students were bright, but their behavior kept them out of the general education classes. My goal, besides teaching them academics, was to help them learn coping strategies, social skills, and acceptable classroom behaviors. In other words, “how to do school.”  

And the best teachers of acceptable behavior were peers. Which brings me to my dinner with a serial killer. You see, a dedicated special-ed teacher would do just about anything to get his or her students mainstreamed.  The 4th grade teacher, whom I will call CIndy, took an immediate liking to me (mostly because I was pregnant and she had a thing for babies). She offered me a place for my students, and dinner at her house. As I munched on Ritz crackers and Velveeta, my husband bonded with Cindy’s husband (whom I will call George), over their love of carpentry, and the very cool hammer collection he had.  

Dinner was not memorable, but after dinner we were ushered into their velvet-walled  bedroom to watch their cheesy wedding video on the Hornblower yacht. We said our thank-yous, and made our escape as quickly as we could. A year later, I was no longer teaching at that school, but my dear friend had taken over my class, and pretty much begged me to have Cindy and George over to dinner with her and her husband. After all, I was the one with the baby Cindy could oogle over. And think of the mainstreaming opportunities.  

I  acquiesced, and invited everyone over to play “How to Host a Murder” a popular game in the ’90s we had gotten for a gift. I knew things were going to be strange when Cindy showed up at my house in a full-length mink coat. My only other memory of that night was when George was revealed as the murderer in the game.

Ten years later, my husband was reading the Sunday Chronicle, and yelled for me to come quick. On the front page, was a large picture of George. He looked a little older, and fatter, but we both recognized him immediately. The headline said that he was arrested for attempted murder of a prostitute. You see, according to the police, he had raped her, beat her with a hammer and thrown her into San Francisco Bay thinking she was dead. What he didn’t count on was her faking her death to get away. As disturbing as that was, what really did us in was the fact that George was linked to numerous murders of prostitutes spanning 20 years and yes, he had killed all of them with his nifty hammer collection. He got a 375-year sentence, and we got a story to share.

do you know 3

A (Hopeful) Thumbs-Up for Voltaren

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

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bob thumb

BY BOB SMITH

We’ve had a number of “physical decay” entries in this blog during the past couple of weeks. Not to pile on, but here’s my story:

For the past week, at least three times every day, I’ve taken a couple of grams of a white drug that you lay down in a line on a card. Yeah, you guessed it: I’m doing VOLTAREN.voltaren Although it sounds like the name of a Star Trek villain from the planet Org, it’s innocuous, perfectly legal, and no fun at all. It’s a topical gel whose active ingredient is diclofenac sodium, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug used to treat sore or inflamed joints and muscles. You rub it into the affected area (the tendons that attach my left thumb to my hand), and it’s supposed to seep in there, and relieve the pain.

This sounds suspiciously like ASPERCREME, or BEN GAY, or any of a dozen other old-fashioned liniments and ointments our grandparents used to use. I distinctly recall, years ago, seeing Maria’s grandmother diligently rubbing ASPERCREME into her gnarled, arthritis-ridden fingers, day after day, and thinking it was a total waste of her time and money. Well, the laugh – and the goopy gel of dubious therapeutic value – is now on me.

The weird thing is, I have no idea how I got tendonitis in the first place. My doctor says it’s common among gamers and others, like compulsive smart-phone users, who constantly repeat, for hours every day, sweeping, scrolling, and clicking motions with that thumb. That’s not me. Somehow, I got the pain without the hours of pleasure of putting Angry Birds through their paces or rapid-firing virtual automatic weapons at endless hordes of baddies.

Worse yet, I don’t even think the gel is working. It takes quite a bit of rubbing and massaging to get it to soak in, and when I’m done I imagine for a few brief moments that the pain seems to fade. But wouldn’t I get that effect from six minutes of massage with regular old hand lotion?

Let’s consider my options if this goop doesn’t do it: There’s acupuncture if I want to go the age-old-but-pooh-pooh’ed-by-modern-medicine approach, or the reportedly instant gratification awaiting me if I let them inject cortisone into the joint. They say the only thing that hurts after a cortisone shot is the spot where they poked you with the needle (and your bank account if it’s not covered), but there’s also the rumor that once you go down the cortisone road, there’s no turning back.

Let’s hope the mighty VOLTAREN does the job. Because if that glorified ASPERCREME doesn’t cut it, my choices are a bunch of little needles that might or might not work, or one bigger needle that almost surely will work but may doom me to a life of ever-less-effective injections. Do I want to be a human pincushion, or just another cortisone junkie?

And they say getting old isn’t any fun. Gotta go now – time to do another two-gram line.

My Letter to You, My Grandson, On the Day You Were Born

11 Tuesday Feb 2014

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frank closeup baby

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

You are just a few hours old as I write this. You surprised us by arriving three weeks early, but that’s just like your father. He came early too. I guess you were anxious to explore the world that you could only hear for months from the dark place where you were.

Well, as you will see, it’s a mixed bag of a world. On the one hand, you have been born into a nation full of guns, drugs and greed. But on the other hand, your nation is full of very good people, who fight every day to solve its problems. Perhaps by the time you reach my age, in 2075, the good people will have succeeded in righting some of the wrongs.Frank Pat Baby

You will grow up in a world very different from the one I grew up in. I was in college before I touched a computer keyboard. You will be using a computer before you can walk. I grew up in a world where television consisted of seven channels. You will grow up in a world with hundreds of television choices, and the ability to watch what you want, when you want. I grew up with news coming primarily from newspapers. Your generation will see news on paper as archaic as papyrus scrolls.

Frank SonBut some things will probably not change. For all of its history, mankind has had an affinity for war. I think it’s inbred in the species. I just hope that your generation can avoid the nuclear war that has been the world’s greatest fear since I was your age. I also fear that prejudice will remain with us. I know that your parents will teach you to treat everyone with respect, no matter what they look like. So I know you will never hate anyone just because they are different from you.

I hope that you live long enough to see grandchildren and great grandchildren. The joy of new life is so invigorating. I hope that just before you turn 87, you remember me as you raise a glass to toast the year 2100. I can’t imagine what the world will be like then, but I’m fairly sure that everything I write now will still exist in some database then. It’s a tiny bit of immortality for all writers like me.Frank Grandson

I hope that we will have solved the global warming problem by then. Perhaps we will have abandoned fossil fuels, and harnessed solar or wind power, and made it practical.

Perhaps you will have computers implanted into your brains. I hope that cancer will be extinct as you enter the 22nd century.

But more than anything else, I hope that you will have had a life you can be proud of. I hope that you will always remember that the greatest joy comes from what you do for others. I hope that you will be a man for others – what our Jewish friends call a “mensch.” I hope that you will not be afraid to love, and to express it freely and often. And most of all, I wish you joy every day of your life. God bless you, Bryce David. Have a great life!

With lots of love (and tears in my eyes),

Your grandfather, Frank

My Birthday: Historically, Not a Fair-Weather Friend

10 Monday Feb 2014

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MARGO SNOW BIRTHDAY

It’s February. It’s my birthday. It’s snowy.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

February 10 was the coldest day of winter in 1957. My mother told me, many years after the fact, that she was glad to be giving birth to me, her first child, in the warmth of a Brooklyn hospital rather than in the new house she and Dad had just moved into.

While she and I were in the hospital, and my father was either visiting or at work, the house was robbed. Not exactly an auspicious start to my existence, although the robbery was an excuse for my father to buy our first dog, who grew up with me.

My mother was from western Canada and had been working in public health in Jamestown, New York. So she wasn’t exactly a stranger to many feet of snow, and intense cold. Brooklyn must have seemed like paradise.

In 1969, my birthday coincided with a nor’easter. I remember coming out of the elementary school, across the street from my home, and being unable to get over the snow piles. I remember the wind and the blinding snow. I don’t remember being as scared as I would be now.

Suddenly, my mother appeared, grabbed me and got us home. She said my sister had seen me from her bedroom window.

I never questioned that story. My mother knew everything, and so if that’s what happened, it happened.

Many years after she died, not much older than I am today, I wondered about that storm and about the day I was born. My husband, whose many hobbies include collecting weather records, confirmed that, indeed, February 10, 1957, was the coldest day of that season.

As for the 1969 storm, his compact disc of New York Times front pages reminded me that was the one people of a certain age will forever link with Mayor John Lindsay. The city was crippled, and it took weeks to plow out Brooklyn and the rest of the boroughs – bringing the city’s wrath upon Lindsay, who had just started a new term.

Another inauspicious moment: On my birthday in 1978, MH, then my boyfriend, and I enjoyed being off from college classes because the over-two-feet of snow that fell two days before was still blocking roads. We were on our own when it came to meals. It was a fun time for us.

Now, decades later, it’s not so much fun. Property owners, we’re out there shoveling our walks, begging our plow guy to clear the driveway (and paying for the privilege), and doing the penguin shuffle trying to walk anywhere outside the house. We’re more concerned about falling on ice, and not being able to get back up. We’re scared of broken bones, and going to the hospital.

We’re dreaming of February. In Bora Bora.

Well, on this birthday, I’ve given myself the gift of taking it easy. I have taken the day off, filled the feeders, and brought the birds to me instead of seeking them out in the cold. It’s a good day.

50 Years Ago, The Beatles Met the U.S.

07 Friday Feb 2014

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beatles redux

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I have long held that Baby Boomers are defined by the fact that they were all in school when President Kennedy was killed. And just a few months later, all Baby Boomers were witnesses to the British music invasion that began 50 years ago with the appearance of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

It was Friday, February 7, 1964, when Pan Am flight 101 arrived from Heathrow Airport carrying The Beatles. The newly-renamed Kennedy Airport was the scene, as hundreds of screaming fans turned out to see the four long-haired musicians from Liverpool.  The Beatles gave a press conference at which their long hair was a constant topic for questions.

“When’s the last time you had a haircut?” a reporter yelled.

“I had one yesterday,” George replied.

A little later that day, thousands flocked to the Plaza Hotel in New York, where The Beatles were staying. Meanwhile, WINS, WMCA and WABC went wall-to-wall Beatles as John, Paul, George and Ringo called in to the various New York disk jockeys. Chief among these was Murray the K, who managed to talk himself into the Beatles suite for a live broadcast. Thereafter, Murray liked to call himself the 5th Beatle.

The Beatles hysteria continued all weekend with its climax Sunday night on the Ed Sullivan Show. It’s hard to describe the Ed Sullivan Show to people who never saw it. I suppose it followed the vaudeville model of something for everyone. And so it was not unusual for Ed to introduce an opera singer, followed by a comedian, followed by a rock group followed, by a troupe of acrobats, jugglers or trained animals.

Anyway, on the evening of February 9, 1964, everyone knew that the Beatles were making their U.S. debut, and the audience was filled with screaming teens. The Sullivan show was the hottest ticket in town that night. I remember seeing that Walter Cronkite’s daughter was in the audience. Those of us without CBS connections had to make due watching on television.

Ed was a smart showman, who knew he had pulled off a coup in booking the Beatles. He was known as, “Old Stoneface,” because he rarely smiled on his show. But Ed was all smiles that night. When he said, “Here they are – the Beatles,” the screams from the audience surely pinned the needle on the studio sound meter, and Ed put his hands over his ears. The Beatles themselves were barely audible over the noise. This would be the norm for the next two years every time the group performed.

During the course of their performance, the CBS staff put up identifications (as if we needed them) of the four Beatles under close-ups of each one. That included a second line under John Lennon’s name that said, “Sorry girls, he’s married.”

I remember that the Beatles actually appeared on the Sullivan show three weeks in a row (the third performance was on tape). In between, they appeared at Carnegie Hall and in Washington D.C. – Beatlemania in the U.S. was under way.

That summer, their first film, “A Hard Day’s Night,” was released, and the same screams that always followed the Fab Four were heard in movie theaters throughout the country.

Beatlemania was one of the hallmarks of the youth of Baby Boomers. And now it’s 50 years in the past. Can you believe it?

On Meat and Men: I’ve Caved

06 Thursday Feb 2014

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loves meat 3BY LOIS DESOCIO

I am woman. Give me meat.

This girly-girl has recently gone Paleolithic. It started at a recent birthday dinner. It was at a steakhouse. As a lover of everything about a steakhouse (the dark wood, the long bar, the abundance of men) except steak, I’ve always been the odd woman out by ordering fish or pasta.

“Because you only order steak at a steakhouse,” has been the retort to my comments on the badly turned-out fish, or the limp and over-laden pasta that is usually standard fare at a steakhouse.

So that night, for the first time (I believe ever), I caved in, and proclaimed from my new “What-the-hey-I’m-59,” mountaintop:

“I’ll have the Blackened Rib Eye!” (Smothered in onions, mushrooms, and a Jack Daniels demi-glaze.)

It was good – good enough. But what struck me that night, and has stuck with me a month later, is what didn’t stick with me that night – the puffy, sloth-like aftermath of my usual order of a loaf of bread with a bowl of pasta, or anything with a glob of melted cheese on top.

I ate half the steak, and all of the accompanying broccoli. I got full fast, and stayed that way until the next day. (No late night, pasta-leftover, round-two in front of the TV.)

egg meatSo now I’m on a roll. I recently took the load of leftover sausage that was in my freezer from Christmas, put on Dean Martin (whose voice makes me cave), and hacked and clawed the casing from the sausage, pummeled and pounded it into a circle, mushed it together with the foraged-for-and-handpicked-from-the-local-market (which I walked to) cremini mushrooms – and baked it with an egg on top. The recipe is in line with the revival of the Paleo, or Caveman, diet).

And since it’s pretty much a done deal that we all have a ” … little bit of Neanderthal in us …“, I see nothing amiss about replacing my oatmeal, or leftover-quinoa breakfast, with a big turkey drumstick.

turkey leg

Breakfast.

So my life-long sidestep around meat may have taken a turn. In spite of descending from a family that loves liver, I’ve never craved a mutton chop like I do a potato chip. I’ve never said, “Yum,” at the sight of a blood-red Porterhouse. Meat is not crunchy enough for me, nor as consoling as a carbohydrate. But now, I’ve learned that the beauty of meat lies in its ability to satiate with just a small portion.

I now feel leaner than ever. I’ve trimmed most of the fat that had inched-up and stuck to my middle after the Christmas carbo-overload.

And, to be honest, a T-Bone is actually more in sync with the primitive, inner me; that cave-man girl. The one who doesn’t crave a knight in shining armor, but whose appetite has always been whetted by a hulk of a man who grunts just to her, and drags her off into his man cave to share his meat.