By Jeffrey Page
Let me say here, high up, that I was taken to task recently by a Zest reader, Duane Small, when I chided all sides in the debt limit fight for their inability to understand and employ the concept of compromise. To which Mr. Small responded: “Why is it, when one side has offered to give up almost everything it believes in, and the other side has offered to give up nothing, everyone who writes about it blames both sides for not compromising?”

An excellent point. I wish I had grasped it when I was writing that previous Zest piece.

The fight is over – for now at least – and the barking among House and Senate Republicans and Democrats, the president, the speaker, and the Tea Party is finished – for now at least. In the sudden quiet and calm, we recall:

That if anyone had even a scintilla of doubt, the Republicans have proved they really are the friends of that most oppressed class – America’s poor and struggling millionaires – and pass along to the rest of us the responsibility to pay to make the country work.

That Exxon, which reported second-quarter profits of nearly $11 billion, will continue to receive tax breaks.

That the fight over raising the debt ceiling will be reignited sometime in 2012.

That President Obama, wishing to prove himself above the fray, is a lousy compromiser because his idea of meeting the other side half way to conciliation is to wave a white flag.

That if the Republicans can resist nominating one of their resident goofballs, and if the nation is still saddled with high unemployment in 15 months, President Obama’s gone.

That President Obama could have done himself a lot of good by dropping the good manners, calling a news conference and declaring to Boehner and Cantor and McConnell, “Get stuffed, boys, the answer is no. Let’s settle it in the parking lot.”

That if the Democrats continue their current way of doing things, anyone betting on the future of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is a sucker.

That maybe what rational people need is a tea party of their own, an organization that will stand defiantly before groups of voters with its own one-word responses. Tax cuts for millionaires? “No.” End of discussion. Spending on social programs? “Yes.” End of discussion. You don’t like us? “Trust us, we’ll do more for you than the Republican protectors of millionaires.”

That the enormous agreed-upon cuts in federal spending will prolong the national economic lethargy and high unemployment by depriving people of government jobs rebuilding the infrastructure, which is in tatters.

That it’s time to make the links by, for example, informing decent people of the connection between Michele Bachmann and Joe McCarthy when she declares: “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?”

That for all the yelling in the debt limit debate, we’re about right where we were when it began. And that’s no place to be.

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page
Here’s a message for Obama and Boehner, for Cantor and Reid, for Pelosi and for all our local geniuses who are driving this debt limit issue to a brink that could be catastrophic on a grand scale and dangerous on a personal level.

It’s about your constituents. You remember us, right? You remember your last campaigns when you went out and swore that there was nothing – nothing! – more gratifying in the world than the privilege – privilege! – of representing us in Congress, of providing leadership in the White House.

Here’s another message: Control your blather. No one buys it. We don’t like being used as the little white balls in your never-ending game of partisan ping pong. If you believe you can get away with this brinksmanship on the debt limit, you should start checking the want ads. That privilege you treasure could be withdrawn in 17 months.

Listen, we’re the 60.1 million people receiving Social Security to the tune of $60 billion a month. Most of us don’t use that money for vacations in the south of France. It goes right into the economy to pay for groceries and gasoline, a movie ticket, the rent, a new tire for the car, the morning paper, taxes to keep things moving. Eventually, it is this spending that will rescue the economy.

Do you – Schumer, Gillibrand, Hayworth, Hinchey, the lot of you – understand this, or have your $174,000 congressional salaries and other personal wealth made you blind to what ordinary people must deal with every day as you play your political games. The fact is that your congressional pay is almost six times as much as the per capita income in New York. Fact is you don’t know much about us.

We’re also the 4.1 million veterans receiving $46 billion a year in various benefits for having served the nation. Much of that money goes into the economy as well.

And we’re the rest of the population, just plain sickened by what we see you doing.

Are you really going to watch the nation go into default, and watch your constituents miss a check or two all because you were too dumb to get off your butts and come to an understanding with the other side?

Every one of us who you represent understands what “compromise” means. Why can’t you? Or doesn’t it matter because you know that no matter what you do, no matter how much your people suffer, you’ll get your checks when we do not?

So here is what I want of you. Actually, here is what I am demanding of you as you posture and totter.

If Social Security and Veterans Administration checks fail to go out next week because you helped the nation run out of money, you must issue an immediate press release announcing that you will forego your salaries until we – the ones you go to for votes every few years – receive ours first.

Even later, when the crisis eases, you must not cash your paychecks for the periods when the government shut down. If you have an ounce of honor, you will endorse those checks and send them to Food Bank of the Hudson Valley (195 Hudson St., Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y. 12520).

To do less is to lose my vote.

Zest readers, do you agree?

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page
There are some things that need to be said right here at the outset.

–I love baseball.

–I don’t like the Yankees. Never have. But among individual players, I liked Don Mattingly and Bernie Williams.

–Since he began his career at shortstop for the Yankees, I’ve liked Derek Jeter. To me – admittedly no dyed-in-the-wool sports fanatic – Jeter seems to play the game with an admirable selflessness. He talks about “the team” a lot, and I believe him. I don’t know if I’m naïve about this.

–For the last few days, I’ve been taken with Christian Lopez’s own selflessness, which seems to be at very least as pure and unsullied as Jeter’s. Lopez is the 23-year old guy from Highland Mills who is a Yankees fan, a Jeter fan, has $100,000 in unpaid student loans, and who managed to retrieve the ball Jeter smacked for his 3,000th major league hit, a home run to leftfield.

Much has been made of Lopez’s willingness to present the ball to Jeter without demanding a dime. Wow, I thought, this is a man to be admired. I still think so. This, I thought, is a man you’d be proud to call your son. I still think so. This, I thought, is a man who understands that there is more than money involved when you possess something that your hero yearns for.

I saw the convergence of Jeter and Lopez not as the meeting of one hero and one common man but as the meeting of two men of equal grace.

What Lopez did, I would do, I said to myself.

Then I started thinking about the economy, about that $100,000 Lopez owes for his education, and about the contract Jeter signed with the Yankees just before the start of the season, the contract that gives him $51 million over three years.

That’s $51 million to play a fun game and then take a five-month vacation. That’s $51 million – put another way, $327,000 a week – to do for a living what 300 million other people in this country only dream of as they struggle to make their mortgage payments, wonder if their jobs are secure, worry about the effect of being laid off on their children’s education, and think about this damned economy and whether they’ll survive as the president and the congress turn it into a game of chicken. All this while unable to afford a ticket to a Yankees home game.

I changed my mind. Had I caught that ball out in the leftfield stands, I would have made it available to Jeter for a price.

Because $51 million could pay off the $100,000 student loans of more than 500 people or buy groceries for people trying to make ends meet. Because it’s for nothing more important than playing a game.

This is no shot at Jeter or at Lopez. They did what they had to do.

I would do what I have to do. I would make a deal with Jeter and if I had a kid about to go off to college, I’d rest a little easier tonight. Jeter would have his ball; my kid would have her education.

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page
Being a native of Bensonhurst and having spent my childhood in Queens, I know the Epic of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey as well as I know the preamble to the Constitution, especially those parts about forming a more perfect union and establishing justice.

In the grim, un-American days before 1947 only white ballplayers could hit, throw and run in the major leagues. Black players were relegated to the lower paying Negro Leagues. This made for situations that clearly illustrate the madness of racism. Such as the fact that a white guy named Bill Bergen, played 10 seasons in the majors in the early part of the century, racking up a career batting average of .170 and managing to hit a grand total of two home runs. And such as the fact that Jackie Robinson retired after 10 years with a career batting average of .311 and 137 home runs. Bergen took playing in the big leagues for granted; Robinson could not.

I knew the story of Branch Rickey, the principal owner of the Dodgers, breaking the color line of the “national pastime” and signing Robinson to a major league contract. He believed integrated baseball would be good for the players and good for the sport. Still, I picked up Rickey’s recently published biography by Jimmy Breslin (“Branch Rickey,” Lipper/Viking, $19.95) because no one tells a story or expresses moral outrage better than the great Breslin. As in: “Then some editors told me they never heard of Rickey. Which I took as an insult, a disdain for what I know, as if it is not important enough for them to bother with.”

Breslin tells us about Rickey’s insistence that Jackie Robinson, one of the game’s great competitors, had to agree never to lose his cool for two seasons, no matter what kind of racist crap was yelled at him by people in the grandstands and in opposing dugouts. It might be Rickey’s biography, but recalling the agreement, I realized I was more interested in another telling of Robinson’s story.

Breslin reminds us that while he was an army officer at Fort Hood, Robinson was court-martialed on charges relating to his refusal to vacate a seat in the white section of a bus and move to the back. Breslin includes some of the testimony of Robinson’s accusers and of Jackie himself. I had never seen this before. It’s amazing stuff, especially when you consider the time, which was 1944 (11 years before Rosa Parks made her stand in Montgomery, Ala.) and the place, which was Texas.

“I want to tell you right now, sir, this private you got out there, he made a statement. The private over in that room. I told him that if he, a private, ever call me a nigger again, I would break him in two,” Lieut. Robinson said.

Later, Robinson’s lawyer questioned the private.

Did he call Robinson a nigger, the attorney asked.

Why, heavens to Betsy, no, the private said.

So then why did Robinson make that threat against you?

“I don’t rightly know, sir,” the private said.

It took the jury 30 minutes to acquit Robinson.

Despite this encounter with Jim Crow on the bus, Rickey was satisfied Robinson was his man for the Dodgers.

I learned something else in Breslin’s book and only wish there was more detail to his account of the story.

Early in Robinson’s major league career, the Dodgers were playing the Reds at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. (Other versions of the story say it occurred in Boston.) Robinson was being heckled mercilessly by a stadium full of yahoos who objected to a black player on their green field. At one point, Pee Wee Reese, the Dodger shortstop and Robinson’s long-time friend, walked over and put his arm on Jackie’s shoulder and the crowd shut up.

No photographs of this gesture are known to exist. But in 2005, 33 years after Robinson’s death, a statue of it was dedicated outside the Brooklyn Baseball Gallery in Coney Island. Breslin reports that the Brooklyn borough president turned to Robinson’s widow, Rachel, and said, “This is so wonderful. You must be thrilled,” to which Mrs. Robinson replied, “Yes, it is.” But that was not the case.

“She hated it,” Breslin says, and goes on to explain that Jackie and Rachel always detested being patronized by white people. “The pat on the shoulder by Reese was viewed as a wonderful thing, as if to say: See, we like you,” Breslin says.

He continues: “The true record of the years of Pee Wee Reese and Robinson is contained in a photo of the two walking off the field side by side after an inning. They were looking down, ballplayers going to the dugout. Reese’s white left hand was only inches away from Robinson’s black right hand, but neither of them noticed.”

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page
I’ve been waiting for that mystical third Republican, the one who’d add his or her vote in the State Senate to those of two previously announced Republicans, and almost all the Democrats, and make New York a place where gay people can do what most people take for granted: Get married.

First Senator X was supposed to appear any day. Then Richard Long, the chairman of the Conservative Party, announced that any Republican who supports a same-sex marriage bill would suffer terribly by never again receiving the endorsement of the Conservatives. And all of a sudden, the talk in Albany turned from marriage to tenant rights in New York City.

But I’m still waiting. And I’m thinking about the freshness in the breeze when Sen. Roy McDonald, one of the two Republicans on record in support of same-sex marriage, spoke to reporters. “They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing and that’s where I’m going with this,” he said.

I’m also thinking about George Michaels, a man who discarded his political career by doing what he believed was right.

It was 36 years ago. New York was on the verge of adopting a law allowing a woman, in consultation with her doctor, to get an abortion any time she wished in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. This was three years before Roe v. Wade.

The measure had been approved by the State Senate. Governor Nelson Rockefeller said he was ready to sign it. All that had to happen was for it to be approved by the Assembly.

George Michaels was a Democrat from a conservative rural district upstate. He supported a woman’s right to choose abortion but always voted against it since, being a politician, he liked the idea of being reelected time after time.

A vote was scheduled in April 1970, and before he made the trip to the capital, Michaels spoke with his son’s wife. The Associated Press reported years later that Michaels told her if the bill failed, it might be voted again in the next session.

“In the meantime,” his daughter-in-law said, “thousands of women will be mutilated and die because of that stupid legislature.”

“Boy, that rocked me,” AP quoted Michaels.

He went to Albany. The abortion bill came up. Michaels voted against it.

And it went down by one vote.

But then Michaels addressed the chamber. “I realize, Mr. Speaker, that I am terminating my political career,” he said – The Times reporting that his hands trembled as he grasped the microphone – “but I cannot in good conscience sit here and allow my vote to be the one that defeats this bill. I ask that my vote be changed from ‘no’ to ‘yes.’” And for women in New York, the Dark Ages ended.

Michaels was right. It was political suicide. A five-term incumbent, he suddenly had challengers in the 1970 primary, which he lost. He was 80 years old when he died in 1992.

Where’s the one Republican needed to stand tall now?

Where’s that one Republican who will acknowledge out loud that which he privately knows is the truth: That gay people pay taxes, obey the speed limit, raise children, go to church, and pursue happiness with a fervor equal to everyone else’s.

Where’s the next George Michaels?

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page
No one ever accused New York of hurrying. For example, it took the state 35 years to do something with the ruins of the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge, which fell into disuse in a 1974 fire after about a century’s use.

From the charred remains, the state converted the bridge into an exquisitely situated path with a clumsy name: “The Walkway over the Hudson State Historic Park,” which no one can say three times fast.

I didn’t hurry either. It took me almost two years to finally visit the bridge, and what a pleasure. It connects Highland in the Town of Lloyd to the city of Poughkeepsie. When you get right down to it, the bridge is just a place to take a pleasant walk, but one that happens to be 212 feet over the surface of the great Hudson. And then you realize what might have happened. The span could have been ingloriously torn down and forgotten, or just left to rust itself into collapse.

But activists saved it. Once, the bridge carried a lot of trains. Now it carries a lot of baby carriages and people out for a walk. It’s a place of wonder. But first, a little history.

The crossing was a marvel of late 19th-century engineering and construction, an active rail span for 86 years through much of the 20th (carrying as many as 3,500 freight cars a day), a brooding hulk from the time of the fire to its opening in 2009 as a path for pedestrians.

Advocates of saving the burnt bridge and converting it to public use had a winning argument: Transforming it would cost about $38 million while tearing it down would cost about $50 million. Is there a politician or bureaucrat who can’t do such easy math – even in the state Legislature.?

The bridge is a 1.28-mile saunter. It is 24 feet wide, thus making it a curiously shaped state park of 3.7 long, very skinny acres. The guardrails are four and a half feet high.

The view is sensational. For a minute or an hour, turn your back on Poughkeepsie just downstream from the walkway. Face north and you get an idea of what the river looked like to the Mohawks and Iroquois who lived along it, and to Henry Hudson and the crew of the Half Moon as they sailed up to what is now Albany in 1609.

To the north, the Hudson is quiet, forested, unremittingly green and generally undeveloped. Upstream it bends slightly to the northwest through the northern Catskills and then disappears from view.

Another of the walkway’s attributes is its quiet. There’s nothing on the bridge that makes a mechanical sound except for the occasional passing of a police car. Just about all you hear are people’s voices, usually calling out to their children. You’re high enough that even when some people pass beneath the bridge on Jet Skis, you hear only a slight, distant stir.

There are plenty of people on the bridge – 750,000 since the official opening in late 2009 – but it never seems crowded. You hear snippets of conversation, an occasional dog bark, the far-off noise of a lawn mower as a guy cuts his lawn on the Highland side.

Forget the cop car. Forget the Jet Skis. On the bridge, people move in more primitive ways. They walk. They skate. They run. They bike. One guy even crosses on a unicycle. One little girl, about 4, gets off her bike to explain to her mother, on her own bike, how the brakes work. “OK, and now let’s go,” Mom says.

Logistics: I drove to Highland and parked in the walkway’s small lot. The fee is $5 for four hours, but free street parking is available as well. There are bathrooms, a food stand and an information tent on the Highland side, and bathrooms at the Poughkeepsie end.

I used to think the view of the Hudson from the walkway of the George Washington Bridge couldn’t be topped. Then I went to Highland.

Oh and by the way, the GWB shakes. Like a leaf in a storm.

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page
Of course he should resign.

Anthony Weiner has rendered himself useless, a distraction, a joke, even worse, a punch line. If he were to remain in Congress for the next 10 years, there is little he could hope to accomplish because to get things done you have to be taken seriously.

If the Democrats are smart, they’ll get behind Weiner – and push him as hard as they can to get him out of the House as fast as they can. They’ve got more important business, such as the start of the 2012 presidential season. And Weiner, it turns out, is an early Christmas present for the Republicans, a distraction from the GOP’s own miserable lot of possible presidential candidates.

Pretend you are John Boehner, the speaker of the house, and you just heard Sarah Palin declare from the bottom of her idiotic heart “I haven’t heard the president state that we’re at war. That’s why I too am not knowing – do we use the term intervention? Do we use war? Do we use squeamish? What is it?”

Or you’re Boehner and you have one guy who used to make pizzas wanting to be president. You’ve got Rick Santorum, who was voted out of office as the senator from the Great State of Uterus. You’ve got Michelle Bachman who scares everyone and is loved by the Tea Party, which doesn’t love you. You have Romney and his early version of Obama-like medical care. And you have, as Bob Gaydos so artfully puts it, the guy who used to be ambassador to China.

You’re Boehner.

And then, along comes Anthony Weiner, the man who singlehandedly gave the tabloids in New York the opportunity to use the words “putz” and “schmuck” in 72 point type on Page 1. You turn to heaven and say, “Thank you, God.”

Weiner the schmuck claims he has broken no laws and therefore doesn’t wish to resign from the House.

Not since Bill Clinton declared to a grand jury “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” has anyone in political danger parsed as well as Weiner. He is deeply ashamed, he said. But not mortified enough to do the gentlemanly thing. He wept at his news conference. He’s sorry for what he has caused his wife of one year. “She told me we are going to get through this,” he said. We’ll see when it all calms down a little. His behavior amounted to “a deep personal failing,” he said. We knew that, right?

But resign? Never – a word that sounds like it carries a sense of finality. Except in politics, of course, it doesn’t.

One of Weiner’s more telling quotes: “I have not been honest with myself, my family, my constituents, my friends, my supporters and the media.” Aside from his dog, if he has a dog, who else is there? He has lied to everyone as in e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e. And he won’t resign? What is he waiting for, the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

One reporter asked about the ages of the women who received the artwork of Weiner in skivvies. A very dangerous question.

And this response, more than any other, is reason for Weiner to quit the House and find himself a job, preferably in the former Yugoslavia.

“I don’t know the exact ages of the women,” he said. But he sent the pictures anyway, knowing that to send them to a kid can get you tossed in a lockup with some strange characters who might find you cute?

“But they’re all adults,” he said. How did he know?

“At least to the best of my knowledge they were all adults,” he said. Ah ha, a step back. He didn’t know for sure.

“And they were engaging in these conversations consensually,” he said. Well if he doesn’t know whether they’re adults, and if he has otherwise lied to us, how can we be sure that their looking at him in his boxers was consensual?

And now, the line of the, uh, explanation that should get Weiner a one-way ticket out of Washington: “Someone could theoretically have been fibbing about [their age] and that’s a risk,” he said.

Fibbing about their age? And that’s a chance he was willing to take? He would risk his marriage, his reputation, his career, his good name, his place in history, his political future on the possibility that a woman is too young to see him in his underwear? And he’s not resigning?

Goodbye Weiner.

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page
During last year’s congressional campaign, Nan Hayworth assured voters that she was a Republican who supports a woman’s right to abortion. Sort of. She says she still is. Sort of. And thus there’s a self-imposed asterisk next to her name.

Now that she’s been in office for about five months, it turns out that if you need an abortion and you can just go ahead and write the check, or if you have private insurance, that’s fine with Hayworth. But she says she has a problem with federal funds being used to pay for elective procedures, including abortions. Women who get such government help likely are not rich, so Hayworth would establish a two-tier system based on how rich a pregnant woman might be.

If you’re of the working poor or on welfare, and you’re pregnant and need an abortion, Hayworth doesn’t want to know about it – or about you. For the record, an ophthalmologist who almost certainly took a pay cut when she went to Congress where the salary is $174,000, Hayworth will never face the dilemma of wishing for an abortion while not having the money to pay for it.

She proved her lack of compassion by voting to add new and stricter restrictions to the Hyde Amendment, the measure that bars the use of federal money for abortions.

In an attempt to cover her tracks, this is what she told the editorial board of the Times Herald-Record: “I am not taking away a woman’s right to choose. But it is her responsibility, or her community’s responsibility, if they have chosen to pay for that procedure in other ways. But it is not a federal government tax responsibility.”

So Hayworth supports a woman’s right to choose – except when she doesn’t. For her to blithely declare that she’s not taking away a woman’s right to choose and then deny that right to women who are not as well off as she is, amounts to the living definition of hypocrisy.

Note to Hayworth: A choice that is beyond a woman’s means is no choice at all.

Hayworth further disgraced herself by also voting to end all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, whose abortion activities are pretty low in number despite what the anti-choice forces in Congress have to say. Factcheck.org, for example, reports that only 10 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clients receive abortions, and that abortions represent just 3 percent of the organization’s total services.

So what does Planned Parenthood do in the other 97 percent of its business?

Among Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion services are breast examinations, screening for ovarian cancer, birth control, cholesterol testing, blood pressure monitoring, thyroid screening, pregnancy tests, diabetes screening, stop-smoking clinics, anemia testing, administration of flu shots, and such men’s matters as infertility, treatment of urinary tract infections, prostate cancer screening, and treatment of erectile dysfunction.

How can anyone possibly justify cutting funds for these essential services? Especially someone with Hayworth’s medical background.

* Is Hayworth prochoice? Is she not prochoice? Does anyone know?

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page
Certain politicians think we’re a bunch of blithering idiots. How else to explain some of their statements when they seek forgiveness for their sexual or fiscal transgressions?

They look mournfully into the TV camera. They lower their voices. They sob once or twice but not too loudly. They dab at a tear. They tell us they’re sorry and offer explanations that are bizarre. And that, they hope, is the end of it.

The absolute, undisputed champion of this form of “apology” is Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House who once closed down the federal government because he was furious at having to sit in the rear of Air Force 1, far from President Clinton, on a flight back to Washington.

Recently, on the subject of his adultery, Gingrich declared: “There’s no question, at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

I knew about Dr. Johnson’s famous observation that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but now, thanks to Gingrich, I learn that love of country also happens to be the arch enemy of marriage, devotion, and honesty.

Can you hear Newt in the throes of passion informing his girlfriend, “Yeah, I love America; now let’s get it on!”

Newt, you’re telling us that America, the admittedly beautiful, is so alluring – so sexy – that your love of it forced you into the arms of another woman and she roused in you the same paroxysmal feeling in your loins that the nation did? Newt, give us a break.

Nowadays, Newt is thinking about running for president next year.

Let us now take it down a peg. Allow me to introduce Mr. Thomas W. Greto, a gentleman from South Jersey who is running for the State Senate.

The Associated Press reported over the weekend that Greto ran for a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1994 but disappeared around Election Day. It turned out that he was in jail on charges of having embezzled $400,000 from “friends and associates” in a business deal gone bad, AP said. It should be noted that Greto describes himself as a pro-business candidate and can be heard on the Internet proclaiming, “I want to restore fiscal sanity to New Jersey.”

Eventually, AP reported, Greto was found guilty of deceitful business practices, and spent two years behind bars. Get ready. Here comes Greto’s Great Gingrichism.

“It’s passé, it’s years ago,” Greto told the AP reporter over the weekend. “I know the Lord forgave me.”

Greto might hope God has forgiven him. But since God is not known to be an American citizen, and therefore likely not eligible to vote in Jersey, what Greto really needs is for the people of the First Legislative District of New Jersey to forgive him. They might not be so forgiving.

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page
Early on a morning in late summer 10 years ago, I was at my desk in the newsroom of The Record struggling over a story about the rarely improving condition of New Jersey highways.

The phone rang, an old friend calling. A minute later the guy at the desk next to mine leaned over and said he thought World Trade Center was on fire. The towers, just 11 miles away, were visible from the newsroom, which was in Hackensack. We all ran to the windows. We could see the smoke. It was the moment the world changed.

Then we gathered at the TVs. Then the other tower was hit. Then the Pentagon. Then the fourth plane went down in Pennsylvania.

I felt a creepy horror when I thought about the randomness of it, and how possible it would have been for me to be aboard one of the planes. I thought about my wife and daughter and how I wasn’t ready to take leave of them. The dread has never entirely abandoned me – and I wasn’t even among the people who lost someone on Sept. 11. I can’t begin to imagine how they deal with their losses this many years later.

And I still wonder how I would have responded as a passenger. Would I have stood up and been part of the group that tried to regain control of Flight 93? Would I have joined a charge of the hijackers? Would I have cowered? What would I have done if I realized there was no way out of this, that if I ever had control of my life I had none now? Would I have understood that I was about to die?

An editor told me to go to Newark Airport, but issued no assignment. The airport was closed. I wound up at the Vince Lombardi service area on the Turnpike. There was a view of the towers. People stood in that universal pose of profound grief – wet eyes, raised brows, hand over mouth. Ismael Koroma, a trucker from Steubenville, Ohio, said: “You can’t imagine something like this in your worst thought. Things like this don’t happen in America.” But of course, they do.

The publisher of The Record agreed that we needed to print an extra. I wrote a long story about reaction such as Koroma’s. The newsroom staff spent days, months and years covering the attacks. In doing so, we got to know scores of people the dead had left behind. We wrote their stories. Wrote their grief, wrote their rage.

Over the decade, I’ve often thought about the woman whose husband was killed and whose families – his and her own – would never speak to her again after she remarried. I’ve thought about the Port Authority commissioner from Bergen County who was expecting a lunchtime visit from the agency’s new executive director and whose last call to him was to find out what kind of sandwich she should order for him. He was killed. I’ve thought about the widows and the orphans, and even about all the cars that went unretrieved from railroad parking lots all over North Jersey the evening of the 11th. And I thought about the cops and firefighters killed at the trade center and got a germ of an understanding of the nature of courage.

Whenever I go across the George Washington Bridge I think of the Port Authority workers assigned two days after Sept. 11 to unfurl the huge 90 by 60 feet flag from the bridge’s superstructure and how a crowd of them then gathered 200 feet out on the pedestrian walkway to remember their friends killed at the trade center, and to recite the Lord’s Prayer as the smoke continued to billow from the dead towers.

And always, through 10 years of life and work, of discussion and contemplation, I wondered about the killer. No matter how seriously the cause, what are you when you order the deaths of 3,000 unarmed people? Do you still lie to your people and to your god by referring to yourself as a human being?

I’m thankful for having lived to this time, to the particular Sunday night just past when the news that I often believed would never come actually came.

He was dead.

How sweet the justice if 3,000 people could return to life if only for a moment to hear the words: The country survived. The city survived. But he is dead.

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.