By Jeffrey Page

I came up with a great idea this week. I’m going to write a letter to certain members of the House of Representatives to ask that I be permitted to opt out of my obligation to pay income tax.

My reasoning is uncomplicated: Paying my tax has simply become a little too burdensome and I need a break.

Ridiculous you say? Well, if a House subcommittee can allow schools to get a waiver on their responsibility to serve more nutritious meals in their breakfast and lunch programs because healthier dishes and menus are too expensive, surely it can get me a waiver on my tax responsibility.

At issue here is the agriculture subcommittee’s vote to allow school districts to opt out of complying with the new nutrition rules the Obama Administration put into effect two years ago. In 2012, school cafeteria officials were told they had to ease up on salt, sugar and fats in the meals they prepare for the kids, and at the same time increase the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables. The use of potatoes is limited. In pasta dishes, schools are required to use whole-grain pasta. Similarly only low-fat milk can be used. See anything wrong with this?

These Obama rules – the first revision in a generation – would provide up-close nutrition education for the kids and cut into the growing epidemic of obesity in young children. 

This doesn’t sound revolutionary. In fact, it sounds like what most responsible parents would serve their children.

But woe is us, some schools cried. In fact we can’t afford it. And they found a friend in Robert Aderholt, the chairman of the agriculture subcommittee, who suggested that making an apple available to a kid in first grade somehow is a complicated matter.

“Everyone supports healthy meals for children,” Aderholt told The Times. “But the bottom line is that schools are finding it’s too much, too quick.” Which is so much twaddle. I’d really like to see Aderholt address his shameless everyone-supports-healthy-meals line to a hungry student with a growling stomach and in poor health.

Can’t afford quality food for the children is about as legitimate an argument as a school district’s announcing that it can’t afford seat belts for its buses. I think the statement “Everyone supports seat belts on school buses but the bottom line is that schools are finding it’s too much, too quick” would be greeted with scorn.

But wait. Might Aderholt suggest that the federal government ought to pick up part of the cost of better food for breakfast and lunch?

He most certainly is not. Instead he says that the bill that goes to the full House of Representatives in a few weeks would contain measures to give up-against-it districts one year to get their cafeterias on track with the new rules.

Doubtless, Democrats will try and kill the changes, but they’re in the minority and however they choose to fight the new farm bill they’ll likely lose.

So the fights go on in Congress and once again, the constituency most at risk is the one with the softest voice. The children don’t win this fight.

I’ll let you when I get my income tax waiver.

By Jeffrey Page

Indian Point

I had conveniently forgotten to think about Indian Point and its attendant horrors, but as always seems to happen when you’re in a state of denial, the truth taps you on the shoulder and howls in your ear.

Several days ago I was at breakfast with some friends, a regular Friday event. I don’t recall what led to talk about Indian Point, but all of sudden there it was, the silent monstrosity that sits on the banks of the Hudson seeming to bide its time. I think everyone at the table harbored a fear that one of these days, Indian Point will do the unimaginable.

It will explode, or it will leak, or it will send plumes of radioactive smoke into the sky and force millions of people to wait to see where it comes down. Or it will be visited by people who despise us and it will fail to stop them from making off with material to make dirty bombs.

There seems to be enough radioactive waste stored at Indian Point to make more than a few such bombs. In fact, Riverkeeper estimates that Indian Point now holds about 1,500 tons of waste material – with no place to dispose of it permanently.

I have to wonder about security at Indian Point. A couple of years ago, a photographer and I chugged up the Hudson to do a story on sailing the river and the Erie Barge Canal. We were in mid-river as we passed Indian Point. My friend attached a very long lens to one of his cameras and started shooting pictures of the plant. Then the two of us waved.

Response from the ever vigilant Indian Point?

There was no response. No federal agents, no armed guards in fast boats, no loud warning buzzers played over big amplifiers.

If all this is not enough for the feds to reject the application by Entergy – the Indian Point operator – for a 20-year extension on its operating license, there is the matter of the size of the population near Indian Point. There’s another problem: Entergy’s evacuation plan is utter nonsense.

On a map, draw a circle with a 50-mile radius around Indian Point, step back and understand that roughly 20 million people are in that circle. People in Goshen, Middletown, Newburgh, the mid-Hudson, North Jersey, etc. Let us not forget that there’s an important federal interest in taming Indian Point – its proximity to West Point, just five miles up the river.

And there’s the little matter of New York City. Indian Point is about 23 miles from Times Square.

The word “evacuation” should not be allowed when discussing Indian Point. Not when 20 million mostly panic-stricken people would be trying to leave the 78 square miles around the plant all at the same time.

You can’t evacuate an area when the evacuation routes are clogged. Ever notice what happens on Route 17 when two cars smack each other in Sloatsburg during the morning commute? The backup builds quickly and there’s no way out. And that’s just for a jam of a few hundred cars. Now picture that traffic knot with thousands upon thousands of cars trying to escape.

Indian Point needs to be taken more seriously by people like me – people who have managed not to think much about it lately. It needs to be always in the public consciousness. Remember, most of us never heard of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima until they blew.

And may I offer a piece of gratuitous advice for nuclear regulators: Before that license extension is considered, I suggest that the officers and directors of Entergy be required to move – with their spouses and their children – to Buchanan, N.Y., home of Indian Point.

I’m sure this has been suggested before. It’s time to suggest it again.

By Jeffrey Page

Not all cases of child abuse involve physical violence inflicted by an angry adult on a kid who somehow violated the rules of the house. Sometimes, in fact, the abuse is more subtle and physically painless, and is meted out by the people and in the place where you least expect it. That would be administrators making life temporarily miserable for pupils in school.

If you’ve got a child in school and if you happen to be one of the growing numbers of moms and dads who are opting their kids out of the New York State grade 3-8 English language arts exams and state math testing, you have to read this story. And possibly, you might have to take action.

Here in Test-Happy New York, parents have the authority to exempt their children from the endless rounds of testing – testing that, in the minds of some officials, apparently passes for education. Thus, a question: How does a school district care for the needs of students who are not taking the tests during the periods when testing is being administered?

In its May-June issue, NYSUT United, the bimonthly publication of New York State United Teachers union, reports that the policy in 72 districts holds that kids not taking the test remain in the same room with those who are. The policy is called “sit and stare” because that’s all that the opted-out kids are allowed to do.

Read a book? No. Write an essay or compose a poem? No. Invent a game with a pencil and a piece of paper? No. Walk over to the window and follow the antics of a squirrel? No.  This is the kind of torture that some school administrators are inflicting on children.

In fact, the kids not being tested are not allowed to do anything other than the words dictate: sit and stare – and possibly be bored out of their minds. Which seems like a doubly moronic policy since it would appear to annoy and distract test takers knowing that the lucky kids – the decliners – are seated just a couple of rows away.

What the “sit and stare” policy means for a third-grade test decliner seated in a room where testing is being conducted is that she must gaze at the wall for the 70 minutes a day (for three days) allowed for the English Language Arts test. You really have to wonder when was the last time any official of the State Education Department sat still and quiet for that long.   

NYSUT also reported that the policy in 93 other districts allows the students not taking the test to read quietly, a slight improvement. But still, those being tested and those who are not are lumped together in the same room.

Another 157 school districts do the only sensible thing by finding space in for non-test takers in rooms where testing is not being conducted so that they can participate in alternative educational activities.

It goes without saying that if you’re not allowing your daughter or son to be tested it is essential that you contact the school and find out what your kid will be doing during testing. If he or she is going to be ordered to gaze at a blank wall, you might want to make your voice heard at the next meeting of the school board. Clearly, an administrator who makes a kid sit motionless and speechless doesn’t know a thing about children and ought to be doing something else for a living.

Incidentally, if you decide that your kid will not be tested, you may be happy to know you’re in growing company. NYSUT United reports that 34,000 children have been exempted from testing by their parents. For a wealth of information about testing and opting out, check the New York State Allies for Public Education website.

By Jeffrey Page

U.S. Supreme Court Building

I’m not a constitutional lawyer. I’m just an American watching the U.S. Supreme Court change my country in ways that once would have been unimaginable.

For example, in Citizens United, the court decreed that corporations have the same rights as human beings. And now, the court holds that it’s essentially permissible for government to endorse one religion over another and put an end to the concept of religious neutrality.

Once, we were a nation of reason, a sanctuary for the tempest-tossed, a place where immigrants, no matter their faith, seeking peace and maybe even a little understanding, could go to get away from the mob. 

Once, we took the opening clause of the Bill of Rights seriously: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” We didn’t know of any other countries that offered such extraordinary protections to minorities and nonbelievers. The United States was really special.

Sometimes, the great American experiment didn’t work, but such failure was usually corrected fairly quickly. In any case, at least the guarantee of religious freedom was written down and signed; at least we knew how things were supposed to be.

Oh, America! Where else was religious freedom so clearly stated?

This has been a country where the official rule is that a Jew can be a Jew, a Sikh can be a Sikh. And if anyone made being a Jew or a Sikh in America a problem, there was the Supreme Court – with no agenda of its own – to set matters straight. We believed that certain truths were self-evident. You want to pray? Go ahead and pray. Just don’t force it on everyone else.

But now the Supreme Court has decided – in yet another 5-4 decision – that a prayer at the opening of town board meetings in Greece, N.Y. is no violation of the First Amendment because atheists and ministers of all faiths are welcome to register on the board’s “chaplain of the month” roster. The “chaplain of the month” gets to recite the invocation at town board meetings in Greece.

The New York Times has reported that the “chaplain of the month” in Greece was almost always a Christian, that two-thirds of the “chaplains of the month” made reference to “Jesus Christ,” “Jesus,” “your son,” or “the holy spirit,” and that one prayer ended: “We acknowledge the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.”

That sure sounds like the establishment of a religion, a point the Greece Town Board naturally denies.

If the town board is serious about representing all its constituents and if it had noticed – how could it not? – that almost all prayers were Christian in nature, it would have made a stronger effort towards inclusivity.

All the board had to do was to get out into the neighborhoods of Greece and proactively invite Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, Shintoist, and clergy or laity of other faiths to sign up on the “chaplain of the month” list. And since God is everywhere, board members could even have ventured into neighboring towns if, for example, there was no Buddhist temple in Greece but one in the next town over. Incidentally, Rochester, a city of about 211,000 people, is just eight miles east of Greece and is home to 12 synagogues, a Sikh temple, five mosques, and a Baha’i community among other places of worship.

Just hours after the Supreme Court ruling, the Greece Town Board opened its meeting with a prayer by the Rev. Peter Enyan-Boadu, who, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported, “asked God to guide the board’s hearts and minds in the spirit of fairness.” He also called on God to bless the minds of the members of the town board, and finished with: “Thank you Lord, for being our source of guidance today.”

The Rev. Enyan-Boadu was from St. John the Evangelist Church.

By Jeffrey Page

— A gaming corporation says that part of its proposal for a casino in Sterling Forest would be the construction – at its own expense – of Thruway Exit 15B about halfway between the New Jersey state line and Harriman, the Times Herald-Record reported this week.

— The impact of such construction on Harriman State Park would be significant. In fact, Exit 15B arose as an issue about 20 years ago and most people understood that such a project would probably force the state to widen Route 17A, whose hilliness and narrowness just west of the Thruway are what keeps Warwick and some other towns as rural as they’ve remained. Expand Route 17A and kiss Warwick’s charm goodbye.

— The Times Herald-Record said that such a casino would create 2,000 jobs. But the paper didn’t differentiate between construction jobs and permanent staff positions. On the matter of permanent jobs, the paper says nothing about the number of croupiers and chambermaids – never known to be career-starting positions – who are included in that group of 2,000.

— Something else I haven’t seen – maybe I missed it – is a serious investigation into what casino gambling has cost other host municipalities. Supporters frequently talk up gaming’s positive effect on property taxes. But I wonder how much in new expenses is added to municipal budgets – and, of course, to local taxes – as a result of casino gambling. This would include such costs as additional police officers, more assistant prosecutors, and more social services and public assistance caseworkers.

— Have there been any studies on the possible increase in prostitution and drug use?

— It is not unreasonable to assume that local traffic would be nightmarish.

— Does the value of your home go up because more people want to move close to the casino for fun and/or jobs? Or does it decrease because of the very existence of a casino just minutes away?

— I can’t be the only one to understand that there’s no quiet time when it comes to casinos. The longer the house stays open, the more of your money it can squeeze out of you. The roulette wheels never stop turning, the dice never stop being tossed, the blackjack decks never stop being shuffled.

— Sure, placing a pile of chips on No. 9 at the roulette wheel is a lot of fun and might even give you a snazzy return. But who was the last person you know personally who played at the blackjack table and went home significantly richer?

— Question: Does anyone living in southern Orange County really wish to have a casino just down the road?

— Finally, we should remember that Sterling Forest is both a water source for 2 million people in northern New Jersey as well as a pristine New York state park of 22,000 acres. When Sterling Forest was saved from large scale development nearly 20 years ago, when it was in private hands, it was the complicated result of two states working together even including New Jersey’s buying a small tract in New York’s forest. It was understood that New Jersey needed its water and we needed our park.

By Jeffrey Page

The Boy Scout brain trust looked fairly ridiculous last year when, faced with growing mockery about its refusal to admit gay kids, it announced a revised membership position. It still does. Gay boys? Finally, they could join.

But gay Scout leaders? Not a chance. Doesn’t matter if a gay man from the neighborhood actually knows how to build a cooking fire in the woods or can explain the differences between a bowline knot, a sheepshank, and a square knot, there would continue to be no place for him in scouting.

And now, at last, an organization that hosted a Scout troop in Seattle has told the Boy Scouts – as it is said – to take a hike. And with that, Troop 98 is history.

It seems that the national Scout organization took exception to the gay Geoffrey McGrath’s serving as a leader of Troop 98, which was based at the Rainier Beach (Wash.) United Methodist Church. The national office issued an ouster order to church officials: They could fire McGrath or they could be unceremoniously kicked out of the Scouting movement.

The church stuck with McGrath. The New York Times quoted the pastor, the Rev. Dr. Monica K. Corsaro, as saying, “We’re going to stand firm. Geoffrey attends our church and this is a way to support our youth in the neighborhood.”

She went on to describe the no-gay-leaders position as “a policy of discrimination.”

It is also a policy of dazzling hypocrisy.

When a boy joins the Scouts, he is required to memorize, understand and live by the 12 parts of the Scout Law, which declares that a Scout must be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Each part of the law includes a brief elaboration. More on that in a moment.

When I was a member of Troop 393 in Queens many years ago, we were told that everyone connected with scouting had to know the Scout Law and live by it. But in chasing down Geoffrey McGrath the national leaders failed nine of the 12 parts of the Scout law. Here’s the law in some detail with a look at how national scout leaders fared in abiding by it in the matter of Troop 98.

Are national leaders trustworthy? “People can depend on Scouts,” the law says. And the obvious question: Can people depend on Scouting’s brass hats to allow local people to establish the rules of membership? What, after all, is it that national is afraid of?

Are the leaders loyal? The Scouts demand that a boy display his loyalty to, among others, “Scout leaders.” McGrath was a scout leader who was dissed out of the movement on dubious grounds by national leaders.   

Helpful? “A Scout is concerned about other people,” the law says.

Friendly? “A Scout is a friend to all,” Moreover, “he seeks to understand others,” and “he respects those with ideas and customs other than his own.”

Courteous? “A Scout is polite to everyone regardless of age or position,” the law says.

Kind? “[A Scout] treats others as he wants to be treated.”

Obedient? I guess the leaders are obedient.

Cheerful? “He tries to make others happy,” the law says.

Thrifty? I guess the leaders are thrifty.

Brave? “A scout has the courage to stand for what he thinks is right.” (Compare the bravery of national scout officials with that of the Rev. Corsaro. In this, she defines bravery.)

Clean? I guess the leaders are clean.   

Reverent? “He respects the beliefs of others.”

Speaking of respecting the views of others, consider Corsaro’s response in an interview with the BBC: “I would really like them to honor their own bylaws to respect the religious beliefs of their chartering partners. Our religious beliefs include being accepting of all people.”

 By Jeffrey Page

Americans have never been enthusiastic about voting. Whether they saw it as a chore, or maybe something that interferes with a nice day off from work, they’ve avoided the polls to a degree that makes a laughing stock of a country governed by elected leaders.

Since the 1820s, the nation’s highest voter turnout was recorded in 1876 – a full 100 years after the colonies declared they would no longer be ruled by British kings and princes – when just 81.8 percent of eligible voters actually cast ballots. Even in the Great Depression of the Thirties, the highest turnout we managed was 65 percent.

And in the 11 presidential elections from 1972 to 2012, the average turnout was an anemic 53.6 percent, with the vote of 1996 falling to 49 percent. Some people say it doesn’t matter who’s in office so why bother voting? That argument will not stand the next time you use Obamacare, the next time you need an abortion, the next time there’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and certainly not the next time Paul Ryan proffers a budget that eliminates funding for early education.

Remember the public service announcements about the importance of voting? The message that suggested a free society could remain free only as long as its citizens exercised the franchise? Americans are deaf to such appeals now.

Some people see this lack of interest in the electoral process as dangerous. Others see it as an opportunity.

We’re supposed to be a nation that treasures its freedom in the voting booth. But now, some politicians see an opportunity, through statute, to make voting more difficult and inconvenient. Thus they discourage certain voters from going to the polls while encouraging others to pull the appropriate levers or slip their ballot into the computer.

Given our national apathy, who’s going to complain?

The New York Times recently ran an extraordinary story whose headline was shocking, even in this time of rabid partisanship in Congress: “New GOP Bid to Limit Voting in Swing States.” The report basically was a catalogue of measures that Republicans are supporting around the country. The truth here is that the Republican Establishment is engaging in voter suppression, which kind of negates the GOP’s eternal yammering about being the “party of Lincoln” and striving for a government of, by, and for the people.

In a nation where we don’t carry in-country passports, some Republicans would force people to carry voter ID cards to prevent election fraud – a rare offense. The existence of pre-Election Day voting makes casting a ballot convenient and easy, especially for working people but some on the right would cut the number of such “early days” or eliminate them altogether.

In Ohio, the governor killed a measure that allowed people to register and vote on the same day, another convenience. Ohio feared voter fraud, but again, there have been no reports of voter fraud.

Great American politicians believe that in a democracy, you encourage as many people as possible to get to the polls and, if needed, you provide assistance for them in the voting booth.

Great American cynics believe that party comes before nation so you educate your base, and then make voting as complicated and inconvenient as possible for the people whose votes you can’t count on.

By Jeffrey Page

Donald Rumsfeld

After several years out of the public eye Donald Rumsfeld – genius of all geniuses of the war in Iraq – returns.

Nowadays, Rumsfeld is being “courted” by some possible Republican presidential candidates. One such matchup is Ted Cruz’s hiring of Victoria Coates to be his foreign policy adviser. Victoria Coates? She was an aide to Rumsfeld when he ran the Pentagon for George W. Bush. Additionally, The Washington Post recently noted that several Republicans are reaching out to policy makers from past GOP administrations. Cruz, for example, has a sit-down scheduled with Rumsfeld himself.

Donald Henry Rumsfeld. As secretary of defense he gave us the misery of a war fought for dubious purposes and based on alleged evidence of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Thousands dead and wounded, a treasure’s worth of funds spent, and we never found those weapons.

It took a while, but Rumsfeld finally was shown the door. Between his performance at the Pentagon and some of his bizarre comments over the years, the door should have opened sooner, and you wonder why anyone would “court” him today. But, he left and did what people like him do all the time – he vanished, rose briefly with the publication of his book, and then seemed to disappear again. And now he might return – again.

Think back. Recall Rumsfeld as an alumnus of the Wiseacre School of Political Oratory with a major in condescension. In 2003 there were reports that some troops in Iraq had engaged in looting. Of course Rumsfeld was asked about this and sneeringly responded: “Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

Got that?

There was always more when it came to Rumsfeld. Sure, his Pentagon might have misled Bush about the war and its progress. That’s one form of disrespect. But Rumsfeld dissed the troops themselves.

Do you remember this? Late in 2004, Rumsfeld paid a Christmas visit to U.S. forces in Kuwait. He praised the troops, and then took questions. Specialist Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee National Guard asked why he and his fellow soldiers had been equipped with light vehicles that lacked proper shielding. (Remember, this was a time when roadside bombings were killing and maiming troops regularly.)

Wilson also asked why, in order to protect their own lives, the troops were forced to scrounge through Kuwaiti landfills for scrap metal, fashion it into substandard shields, and attach them to their light vehicles.

Rumsfeld asked for a repeat of the question and you knew he had been snared. Wilson complied, adding, “We do not have the proper armored vehicles to carry us north.” The troops applauded.

Rumsfeld’s response will live forever as something you simply don’t say to the people who actually do your fighting. “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have,” Rumsfeld said.

Which was verbal trash.

Because if you plan a war for months before you intend to wage it – as the Bush Administration had – you use the time to supply your army with the proper equipment in big numbers. I noted in a column for The Record in 2004 that the only time you’re forced “to go to war with the army you have” is when the enemy is landing in the Bronx and time is precious.

There was more. Soon after Rumsfeld’s appearance in Kuwait, the Pentagon announced it was “aggressively” addressing Wilson’s complaint.”

But then the Associated Press reported it had interviewed another soldier who had expressed the very same complaint of substandard shielding to Rumsfeld – 15 months earlier – during the secretary’s visit with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital. The soldier who spoke with AP recalled that Rumsfeld said at the time of his visit, around September of 2003, that he was working on the problem of the missing armor shields.

Which proves the old adage that I just made up: “You go to war with the secretary of defense who stands behind for his troops, not the secretary of defense who can’t equip his army properly and who sneers when he hears complaints.”

By Jeffrey Page

What is it with these entitled parents who allow their children to create a racket in a restaurant or run up and down the aisle of an airliner while screaming at the top of their lungs? You know what I mean; I know this has happened to you because it has happened to everyone.

Look, before I write another word, let me declare without reservation that I like children. I like their exuberance, their spunk, their sense of adventure and their imagination. They’re terrific. It’s with some of their parents I have an issue.

On an uncomfortably cold and windy afternoon my friend and I ducked into a place Ridgewood, N.J. for lunch and a break from the weather. The place was noisy, but it was the noise of lunchtime conversation, maybe slightly on the loud side. No big deal.

But as a hostess showed us to a table I heard a screech. There was something animalistic about it. I heard it again and got a look at the kid it was coming from. It was a little boy who then quit screeching and just started crying. Then he made guttural sounds as though he were in distress, like being eaten by a wolf.

The boy, about 4 or 5, was seated in a booth at the window with three other children who seemed two or three years older. In all, they were three boys, one girl, no adults.

A minute later they were all screaming at one another. The boy who had been screeching and then crying now switched to screaming at no one in particular. He ignored his lunch. So did the others.

It was a madhouse and I wondered where the parents were. Then I saw a dad-looking man walk over, lean down, and say something to the young screamer. And the boy responded.

“NO! NO! NO!” he explained. Then, ignoring the presence of a grown-up, the other three started taunting the young one with shouts and imitations of a crying child. Their noise was nothing less than an infliction on everyone else in the restaurant, courtesy of the father, who was useless.

And what did he do, this dad? He walked away, leaving the four children alone at what turned out to be their table. Dad, on the other hand, was seated two booths away with some friends, probably the parents of the other children.

I wonder if Dad thought the display at the kids’ table was – what? – cute? Endearing? Precious? Or maybe just too much for him to be bothered. I thought that his decision in favor of inaction was an act of supreme indifference directed at everyone else in the place, the secret message being: You don’t like it? That’s too damned bad.

When we mentioned the asylum quality of the atmosphere and bizarre seating arrangement to the hostess, she informed us that the children and their fathers were new to her, that she had never seen them before.

Maybe, maybe not.

In any case, it seems a given that when children behave badly – or when adults behave badly for that matter – it makes good business sense for the manager of a restaurant to walk over and lay down the law. Control your children now or be gone. Maybe in a neighborhood place, the boss is afraid of a boycott by angry moms and dads who think their children are the smartest and most charming in the whole wide world.

But doing nothing is a dangerous policy. Sure, the people with noisy kids will be back, but patrons who wish for lunch in peace will be alienated and look for other places.  

Our time at lunch reminded me of a flight I took to Los Angeles to see my mother and brother. Seated behind me was a couple with a little boy aged about 4. He was unhappy sitting in his father’s lap and made this known in a voice of extraordinary shrillness. He kept yanking on the back of my seat. Once, no problem. Twice, well he’s just a kid. When it happened a third time, I stood and asked the dad to control his son.

He apologized. And a minute later, the boy was running up and down the aisle and whooping it up. Thus, anyone wishing to sleep, read, watch a movie or carry on a discussion with a seat mate could not. While the boy ran around, his father read a newspaper in peace. The mother, with ear buds, was engrossed in something and never looked up. Lucky him, lucky her.

Finally, a flight attendant asked Dad to control the boy. Which he did, though the crying and whining never stopped.

I know responsible parents who buy a separate seat for their young daughter and travel with plenty of games and toys. The extra seat is an expense, but childless passengers have a right to travel as comfortably as possible. A kid, as cute as he or she is, running in the aisle and making raucous noises makes a flight that much more stressful.

There’s not much you can do about irresponsible parents on a flight in progress. But in a neighborhood restaurant, the manager most certainly can do something about out-of-control kids. Inform the parents: Take charge or be gone.

You’ve had similar experiences, right?

By Jeffrey Page

This is the story of how I scandalized some senior officers and non-coms of the 69thInfantry on a St. Patrick’s Day during the Sixties. The 69th is the military unit whose forebears have led the St. Pat parade every year since around 1766.

Not many people were aware of it in the Sixties, but there actually were two St. Patrick’s Day parades up Fifth Avenue every year. The second was the big one, the procession of bands playing “Garryowen,” “The Wearin’ of the Green,” and “Danny Boy,” of men in kilts playing the pipes, of soldiers of the 69th occasionally breaking ranks to shake an onlooker’s hand. It was floats and beer, and students from Catholic high schools striding behind their schools’ banners. It was some otherwise sensible young people with green hair. It was pins declaring “Kiss Me, I’m Irish.”

The earlier parade, which stepped off at 7 a.m., had no musicians but for a lone drummer who beat a steady rhythm so we could maintain a unified leftstep-rightstep-leftstep. There were no rifles, no steel helmets, no gas masks. And no onlookers, as we marched quietly from the 69th’s armory at Lexington and 26th to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Francis Cardinal Spellman would conduct a military mass.

The battalion knew I was a newspaper reporter and ordered me to bring my camera and take pictures of the men on the march and of senior officers and non-coms being greeted by Cardinal Spellman. I told the major issuing this order that I was a writer, not a photographer, but he wasn’t listening.

And so, early on March 17 the two battalions of the 69th formed on Lexington Avenue. Sgt. Bates blew a whistle. The drummer began to drum. The sergeant major cried out “Forward march!” and we were off.

(Ahh, Sgt. Bates. When I enlisted three years earlier, having passed the draft board’s pre-induction physical, Sgt. Bates told me my obligations including marching in the parade every year of my six-year enlistment. What if I’m not Irish? I asked. This seemed like an exquisitely reasonable question. It was no such thing. Sgt. Bates, in words that live in my family to this day, declared in a voice you could hear in Hoboken, “Page, I don’t care if you’re a god damned Bolshevik, you will march in that parade.” And so I did.)

Now, three years into my enlistment, I tailed behind Lt. Col. Klauz – the battalion commander – into the cathedral and stayed for the mass to avoid missing the meeting with Cardinal Spellman. We were taken to a private room, and there was Spellman, the hawkish archbishop of New York, who had blessed Army weaponry and who had reduced the war in Vietnam to a battle between the North Vietnamese and Jesus Christ.

One by one, he blessed the officers and non-coms, and all appeared pleased. I kept snapping pictures of these small meetings, praying that they would come out well.

At the end, Spellman gestured toward me and asked, “Who is this young soldier?”

“Our photographer, your eminence,” Col. Klauz said.

Spellman waited a moment and then stuck out his hand to me. I guess I should have noticed that it was palm down.

I extended my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Cardinal Spellman.” Silence for a moment and then the sound of 15 or 20 officers gasping slightly.

Spellman smiled and departed. One of the non-coms – I think it was the sergeant major – grabbed me by the arm and demanded to know what the hell I thought I was doing, which didn’t sound like the kind of talk you’re supposed to hear in a church.

“You do not shake hands with a cardinal of the church,” he said in a military lockjaw that was pure sputtering rage, “you kiss his ring. And you do not call him ‘Cardinal Spellman’ you call him ‘your eminence.’ And you do not say to a cardinal of the church ‘Nice to meet you.’ He’s not exactly your new drinking buddy,” he explained as he growled.

I guess I should have known, but I didn’t. How I was expected to know all this was beyond me, I said in a voice devoid of sputter – one does not ever sputter to a sergeant major – adding that I was Jewish. At which point his face turned a deep shade of red I have not seen since. It was much like the color of a beet – a bleeding beet.

All was forgiven, although with three years left in my enlistment, they never again asked me to shoot pictures of the parade. Funny how things work out.