By Michael Kaufman

(Note:  I was honored to be invited to read this tribute to my  father, originally published in the Summer 2010 issue of Jewish Currents, at the Second Annual Community of Jewish Writers event on Wednesday, May 11, in Schenectady.)

My father’s game was handball, basic. Not the three- or four-wall kind they have at the fancy gyms. Jack Kaufman played his handball outside on a cement court with a single wall. That was the gritty game he played as a kid in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and that’s how he still played when our family moved to the suburbs of Nassau County, and later, after he retired and moved with my mother to Miami Beach. For years she begged him to stop for fear he would drop dead of a heart attack in the middle of a game, but he never listened.

Had it not been for the Parkinson’s, he probably would have continued  playing into his eighties like his hero, Vic Hershkowitz.

The name Hershkowitz was as well known in our house as those of other great athletes my father admired: Sugar Ray Robinson (“pound-for-pound the greatest fighter of all time”), Joe Louis (“His best punch was his jab”), and Jackie Robinson (“I want you to remember this,” pointing to Robinson the first time he took me to Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers play. “This man is very special”).

And there was Hershkowitz. When he died in 2008, the United States Handball Association called him “the greatest all-around player in handball history.” From the early 1940s to the early 1960s, Hershkowitz won twenty-three national amateur handball titles. In his later years he won twelve Masters events. He was stocky and strong like my father, around 5’ 8” and 180 pounds. And like my father, he began playing handball in Brooklyn during the Depression.

“We couldn’t afford the other sports,” Hershkowitz told an interviewer. “It kept us off the streets.” My father said that too.

Once, when we were living in Oceanside, my father took my older brother Gene and me to the handball courts behind the high school and challenged us to a game. He was in his late forties then and my mother had already begun pleading with him to stop playing. Gene and I were decent enough players ourselves and we thought we’d have an unfair advantage playing him two-against-one. But he insisted and before long it was clear we were in over our heads.

He had us running all over the court chasing his bullet-like shots as he positioned himself perfectly to return our feeble responses. I don’t think we managed to score a single point. We were out of breath at the end while he had barely broken a sweat.

A scene like this can be ugly in a family . . . a father showing off his prowess and humiliating his sons. But Gene and  I loved every second of it, laughing as we staggered around the court in futile pursuit.

He was our Hershkowitz.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

It seems almost like role reversal as 321 correction officers and other employees of the Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in Warwick wait on pins and needles for a decision by the governor. Will their workplace receive clemency and their jobs be spared? Or will Governor Cuomo impose a harsh sentence when he announces which of the state’s 67 prisons will be shut down to satisfy the cuts mandated by the budget passed nearly two months ago by the state Legislature?

Mid-Orange is one of eight state prisons that together employ nearly 5,000 people in Orange, Ulster, Sullivan, and Dutchess counties.

Since moving to Warwick some 10 years ago our family has become friendly with more than a few people who work there or at one of the other facilities within commuting distance. This has helped dispel some of my preconceived notions: As a child I was horrified by the sight of chain gangs we passed as we drove south over winter vacation to visit my Aunt Isabelle and Uncle Stanley in Florida.  Black prisoners in striped suits, linked by chains attached to their legs, a weighted black ball attached at the ankle, were forced to labor in the hot sun under the watchful eyes of unsmiling, rifle-toting, uniformed white men.  My father would usually mutter “Gestapo” when we drove past the guards.

Our friends and neighbors who work at the local prisons bear little resemblance to those chain-gang guards. They are among the hard-working public employees whose pensions, healthcare benefits–even their very jobs—are under attack as if they are to blame for the poor economic conditions in our state and across the country. Often their “generous” salaries and pensions are not nearly enough to support their families so they take on additional work. Some mow lawns or do excavating; others supplement their incomes doing carpentry, painting or odd jobs.

The one thing they have in common with those southern chain-gang guards is that they are white and many of the prisoners they guard are black (and/or Latino).  Of course there are some non-white guards and white prisoners as well, but not enough to offset the disturbing fact that “more African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” according to Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Growing crime rates over the past 30 years don’t explain the skyrocketing numbers of black—and increasingly brown—men caught in America’s prison system, according to Alexander, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun after attending Stanford Law School. “In fact, crime rates have fluctuated over the years and are now at historical lows,” she pointed out in a recent lecture.

She attributes the increase in imprisonment of black men to the fact that the so-called war on drugs “is waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color” even though studies have shown that whites use and sell illegal drugs at rates equal to or above blacks. In some black inner-city communities, four of five black youth can expect to be caught up in the criminal justice system during their lifetimes.

As a consequence, many black men are disenfranchised says Alexander, prevented by their felony convictions from voting, from living in public housing, discriminated against in hiring, excluded from juries, and denied educational opportunities. Thus it should come as no surprise that 70 percent return to prison within two years.

But here is the rub: If prison population levels were returned to 1970, before the war on drugs began, “more than a million people working  in the system would see their jobs disappear,” says Alexander. (Ironically, the decline in inmate numbers used to justify the impending cuts in New York State is attributable in part to recent reform of the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws: As a result, low-level drug offenders now receive lighter sentences.)

Meanwhile, mass incarceration continues to be seen as a boon to the communities in which the prisons are located. Aside from providing jobs, Mid-Orange supports a sewer district in Warwick, which lowers the maintenance cost for other customers, according to Town Supervisor Michael Sweeton, who calls the prison “a real asset.”

Contradictions abound.  But as Lani Guinier, author and professor at Harvard Law School has observed, Alexander “paints a haunting picture in which dreary felon garb, post-prison joblessness, and loss of voting rights now do the stigmatizing work once done by colored-only water fountains and legally segregated schools…[and] we all pay the cost of the new Jim Crow.“

Adds Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project and author of Race to Incarcerate, “We need to pay attention to Michelle Alexander’s contention that mass imprisonment in the U.S. constitutes a racial caste system.”

Yes, we need to pay attention and the system needs to be changed. Meanwhile, the 321 employees at Mid-Orange are still waiting for a call from the governor.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Some modern conveniences I can do without.  For example, I don’t like sensor-activated toilets and urinals that flush automatically. For me the timing always seems a little off and it makes me wonder if I am doing something wrong.  Even worse are the automatic faucets. I can’t tell you how many times I have stood at a sink, waving my hands around in a futile attempt to get water to come out, only to discover that I picked one that is out of order.

Sunday morning, during a break in an Empire State College program at the FDR museum site in Hyde Park, I couldn’t get the automatic paper towel dispenser to work. Fortunately, a fellow student more adept at dealing with modern technology showed me where the sensor is located. I had been waving my dripping hands around in the wrong spaces. 

Call me old fashioned but I would rather get lost driving than be told where to turn by a computer-generated voice. And please don’t get me started on all the other computerized gizmos and LCD (or is it LED) displays that clutter the dashboards of today’s new cars. I once heard a guy complain that his new car broke down and the mechanic told him he needed a new “mother board.”

All these things came to mind when I saw the headline over a News Brief in Monday’s newspaper: “Drive-thru casket viewing offers last look on wheels.” The article reported that the Robert L. Adams Mortuary in Compton, California is now offering “the ultimate in drive-thru convenience: drive-thru casket viewing.” Thus, “it is possible to view the deceased resting in a display window while cruising past in your car.” Thankfully this item did not appear in the “My Ride” section.

“You can come by after work, you don’t need to deal with parking, you can sign the book outside and the family knows that you paid your respects,” said owner Peggy Scott Adams. “It’s a convenience thing.”

 I admit I don’t know much about casket-viewing customs but this seems to me like a pretty disrespectful way to pay respects. Why not make it even more convenient by putting the casket on webcam so you can view it on line….after which you can Tweet your respects? Imagine….you won’t even have to get into your car to go to the drive-thru! 

The story mentioned that we are already accustomed to “drive-thru burger joints and drive-thru banks.” This led to some interesting speculation among our family members about additional potential uses of drive-thru convenience. We thought of drive-thru museums and botanical gardens, drive-thru psychotherapy, and drive thru haircuts. “How about drive-thru breakups?” our 19-year-old daughter suggested.

Readers are invited to suggest additional drive-thru ideas and/or other examples of conveniences you would be happy to live without. 

Meanwhile, for those who are celebrating Passover this week and anyone of any denomination who would just like to have a good laugh, have I got a link for you! Here is a high-tech version of the Passover story that may one day replace the traditional Haggadah because, you know, it’s a convenience thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIxToZmJwdI 

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Mike Pelfrey, ace-by-default pitcher for the New York Mets, deserves to be congratulated for his candor in discussing his relationship with the late sports psychologist Harvey Dorfman. According to reports in the New York sports pages, Pelfrey was devastated when he learned of Dorfman’s passing on Feb. 28. No longer would he hear Dorfman’s words of inspiration on those dark mornings the day after a rough start. If Pelfrey’s early-season outings are any indication, Mets fans can expect many of those this season.

As noted by baseball writer Steve Popper in Tuesday’s editions, “Pelfrey was anointed as the Mets’ No. 1 starter this winter with Johan Santana sidelined for at least the first half of the season and if the pressure might have gotten to the nervous right-hander he then went out on opening day and struggled badly. He followed that up with another bad performance in Philadelphia. Monday he was improved, if still far from where he wants to be and where the Mets need him to be.”

Pelfrey says that when he spoke with Dorfman, “I laid it all out. It wasn’t just baseball. I talked to Harvey about my wife, about being a father, about past girlfriends….I talked to him about everything in life. Obviously that relationship is gone.” He says he hopes to establish a similar relationship with the new therapist recommended by his agent Scott Boras.

Pelfrey’s openness is a far cry from the secrecy that surrounded Babe Ruth’s therapy sessions with Hans Krumholz, a psychoanalyst who spoke of the Yankee slugger as “George R.” in a letter to Sigmund Freud seeking advice. A copy of the letter was forwarded to Zest of Orange by Ralph Krumholz of Warwick, a great grandson of the little-known therapist.

“I never knew much about my great grandfather other than that he had been a psychoanalyst and that our family has kept an envelope addressed to him by Freud…and that it has a letter in it,” Ralph explained. “I looked at it once a long time ago and I was disappointed: Freud had simply returned a letter my great grandfather had written to him with a brief note at the top saying, ‘I’m sorry but your name doesn’t ring a bell.’

“I didn’t bother to read further and only recently took the time to read what my great grandfather wrote to Freud. I was stunned when I realized that he had once been Babe Ruth’s secret therapist.”

“Dear Dr. Freud,” began the letter from Hans Krumholz. “You may remember me because I was your patient when I was a little boy. Back then I had a phobia about horses. Today I have a lucrative psychotherapy practice of my own in a suburb not far from Vienna. I am writing to ask your advice regarding a patient referred to me by an acquaintance, the team doctor of a professional sports club in America. The doctor is concerned about the patient’s habitual abuse of alcohol (which he says the patient thinks enhances his performance). The patient, George R, is apparently one of the best practitioners in the sport of baseball, about which I knew very little prior to this case.

“I am now familiar enough with the game to appreciate that it is fraught with homoerotic implications. The teams take turns at bat using large wooden phallic symbols to attempt to hit a ball thrown by an opposing player. The hitter stands at “home” and this is also the place where points (or “runs” as they are called) are scored. There are a number of ways in which the bat wielders can help their team score runs. The most dramatic is the hitting of a “home run” and it is in this aspect of the game that George R. excels.

“A large and I daresay overweight man compared to the image one might expect of a great athlete, George uses the thickest and heaviest bat of all the players on his team. Unlike many other batters he grips the bat firmly at the base of the shaft rather than “choke up” on it to get more but less powerful or significant hits. In this manner he hits many home runs, which makes him a huge favorite among the game’s aficionados.

“Yet despite his great success, George R. has an extremely weak and fragile ego. In one of our first sessions he confided that he has small feet for a man of his size and that as a result he thinks he looks ‘funny’ when he runs or trots around the bases after hitting a home run and other players make fun of him. I would hazard to guess he has similar fears regarding the size of his widdler. This seems an area worthy of further exploration in therapy.

“Also worthy of exploration is the symbolism of “home” in his chosen sport. George R. was sent away from his own home at age 7 after becoming “too much of a handful” for his busy parents. Young as he was, he was often found wandering the dockyards, drinking, chewing tobacco, and taunting the local constabulary. His beleaguered parents sent him to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a Catholic orphanage and reformatory that became his home for the next 12 years.

“While at the orphanage, young George particularly looked up to a monk named Brother Mathias, who he says became a father figure to him.  Mathias and several other monks introduced him to baseball. By the time he was 19, his baseball skills had caught the attention of Jack Dunn, owner of a minor league team. Because George was still too young to sign a professional contract without an adult guardian, Dunn became his legal guardian. This led teammates to jokingly call him “Dunn’s new babe.” The joke stuck, and George quickly earned the nickname ‘Babe.’ At least that is George’s explanation. I have a feeling there may be more here than meets the eye.

“George mentioned that he is sometimes so comfortable standing at home and awaiting a pitch that he can actually visualize where he will hit the ball for a home run. I suggested that it would be a good boost to his ego if he pointed to the spot before the pitch so everyone in attendance could see for themselves. I was delighted when he followed my advice….but he told me later that he will never do it again. When I asked why he grumbled, ‘because the pitchers would use my head for target practice.’  I wonder what he meant by that. 

“He also rejected my suggestion to remain at home plate for a few moments to watch the flight of any ball he thinks will be a home run. ‘Nobody will ever get away with that in baseball,’ he said flatly. Finally, he grew angry and uttered a vulgar term referring to female anatomy when I suggested that he pump his fists and raise his arms while trotting around the bases after a home run: ‘Bush!’ 

 “I would be most grateful if you can help me understand why George would say such a thing. I would also welcome any suggestions you may have as to the appropriate avenue to pursue next with him. Do you think this would be a good time for us to talk about his widdler?”

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com

By Michael Kaufman

The other day I was talking to my neighbor in front of his house as Rush Limbaugh’s voice blared inside from the radio. I like my neighbor despite his terrible judgment.  Rush was doing a segment similar to one he titled, “Teachers Run an Easy Money Scam on Fellow Citizens” for his website. He said, “Can we get rid of the myth once and for all that school teachers, anymore, are these average, ordinary (as Obama wants to say), next-door neighbors who are just doing everything they can to further the educational experience of your children?

“That’s not who they are. They are left-wing activists, active members of unions who are oriented first by a political agenda, second by their own well-being, and your kids come last. Can we just get that out in the open?” According to Rush, the teaching profession today has been taken over by “people who’ve found an easy way to make a living.”

This from a man who makes millions of dollars for sitting at a microphone and spouting whatever bit of stupidity and bigotry pops into his head. In this case he ignorantly maligns so many wonderful and dedicated teachers I know or have known that I cannot name them all….so I will name only two: India Kaufman, who teaches elementary school in Atlanta, and the late Alex Smith, who taught in the Warwick Valley Middle School.    

As for Rush, he would be an ideal candidate for an appearance on a new Survivor show being proposed in an email currently making the rounds on the internet. He would be one of six business people dropped into an elementary school for a full school year. 

Each contestant will be provided with a copy of his/her school district’s curriculum and a class of 20-25 students. Each class will include some learning-disabled children, children with ADHD, children who speak limited English, and several labeled with severe behavior problems. Rush and the other contestants will have to complete lesson plans at least three days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives, and to modify, organize, or create their materials accordingly.

They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences. Each month they will conduct fire drills, tornado drills, and [Code Red] drills for shooting attacks.

They will be required to attend workshops, faculty meetings, and curriculum development meetings. They will also tutor students who are behind and strive to get their non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the standards of learning (SOL) tests.  If they are sick or are having a bad day they must not let it show.

Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment to motivate students at all times. If any students do not wish to cooperate, work, or learn, the teacher will be held responsible. 

The business people will only have access to the public golf course on the weekends, but with their new salary, they will not be able to afford it. Lunch will be limited to 30 minutes, which is not counted as part of their work day. They will be permitted to use a student restroom as long as another survival candidate can supervise their class. If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials before or after school. However, they cannot surpass their monthly limit of copies.

Finally, the contestants must continually advance their education, at their expense, and on their own time. The winner of this Survivor season will be allowed to return to their job. 

Is there anyone reading this who thinks Rush could last a week?

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Which of the following statements best describes our new dog Benji?

A. He is the sweetest, cutest thing ever.
B. He is a demonic monster who takes special pleasure in torturing the people who love him.
C. Both of the above.

The correct answer is of course C. It just depends on how Benji is feeling at a given moment. When Benji is in his sweet, cute mode he will follow you around adoringly, obey your every command, and sit calmly in your lap as you stroke his hair or rub under his chin. He will look at you with the light of love in his big beautiful eyes and you will wonder why you didn’t adopt him sooner.

And just as you are getting used to these idyllic moments of joy, something will snap in his little brain and he will go completely bonkers. Those big eyes that a moment ago looked so beautiful suddenly take on a devilish glow. He may take a little nip at your arm before leaping from your lap to embark on one of his maniacal search-and-destroy missions.

In the last few days alone the little fellow has chewed and swallowed (or tried to swallow) an amazing array of household items, only some of which are food-related. These include a penny, a 3-inch nail, a whole thigh bone from a cooked chicken, a small flashlight, the plastic cap of a container of fluticasone propionate nasal spray, toilet paper, a pepper mill, shoes, socks, underwear, a used coffee filter and grounds, one of my wife’s fancy earrings, and the dough hook from the Kitchen Aid mixer.

Although he enjoys playing with his own toys he seems to take extra pleasure in running at full tilt around the house with something he knows he shouldn’t have in his mouth.  He delights in evading capture and then pausing to look at us from a safe distance, chomping merrily in defiance, laughing at us with his eyes.

The nail was especially worrisome.  We were afraid it would cut up his insides and he’d die if he swallowed it. He didn’t. However, he did swallow the chicken-thigh bone in its entirety. My wife Eva-Lynne wanted to call the vet immediately. I opted for “watchful waiting” as Benji seemed to be suffering no ill effects. The next morning he vomited it up, still in one piece.

The dough hook was too large for him to swallow and it remains fully serviceable despite the presence of numerous tiny teeth marks. We will have to take the earring to a jeweler to see if it can be repaired. If not maybe we can let Benji chew on the other one so they can be worn together to effect an artistic “funky” look.

On the brighter side, he has gotten the hang of relieving himself outside and sparing our carpets and floors from contact with his bodily fluids and solids. This has led me to an idea that I think may yield great financial reward. It occurred to me during one of my walks with Benji.

You know how there are all these books that give new parents instructions on how to toilet train their children? Try Googling the topic some time if you don’t know what I’m referring to. Or just take my word for it: There is a glut. But is there really a need? What happened during all those years there were no books on the subject? Do you think the world was full of adults walking around peeing in their pants?

Anyway, my idea is to adapt that successful model and to write a book entirely devoted to the subject of “toilet training” puppies and young dogs. Maybe I’ll even write several books on the subject, one for small dogs, another for larger breeds, perhaps one on training older dogs. For illustration we can take pictures of Benji and his friend Linus as they go through the various stages of doing their business….that is, if Benji doesn’t swallow the camera first.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Duke Snider won almost every game he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers with a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning. Those games, all against the Giants and Yankees, were played at an imaginary Ebbets Field in the driveway of my Aunt Sadye and Uncle Joe’s house on Reads Lane in Far Rockaway. Grandma Kaufman lived upstairs.

Duke Snider (1926-2011)

The brick wall on the side of the house was the perfect target for the pink rubber “spaldeen” that served as the baseball. The neighbor’s hedge on the other side of the driveway was the outfield wall. Those were all I needed to be pitcher, catcher, umpire, batter, fielder—and even the announcer–for those epic contests against the Dodgers’ arch rivals. “Runners on first and third, one out….The infield is at double-play death.” (I hadn’t learned the word “depth” yet.)

For a ground ball I would throw the spaldeen near the bottom of the wall, field it, and throw it back to the wall so I could catch it as the first baseman. “Top of the fourth, two outs, nobody on…. Alvin Dark the batter for the Giants…. Here’s the pitch from Erskine…. grounder to second… .Gilliam up with it, throws to first…. side retired.” Ground balls that got past me were hits. Fly balls that went over the hedge (“on to Bedford Avenue”) were home runs. The neighbor never complained.

The 1919 Chicago White Sox had nothing on me. My games were all unabashedly fixed, although I had an occasional slipup….like the time I tried to have Snider make a great catch to rob Mickey Mantle of a home run but I threw the spaldeen too hard and too high up on the wall so it sailed into the neighbor’s yard.  Or the time I tried to get Willie Mays to hit in to a double play with the bases loaded but the usually dependable Pee Wee Reese bobbled the ball and then made a bad throw to first.  Of course the good thing about having all the games at Ebbets Field was that no matter what happened I could still arrange it for the Dodgers to win….and for the Duke to be the hero.

Jackie Robinson was my father’s hero, for reasons I would understand better later on. But for me, no one came close to the Duke. My parents bought me a little Dodgers’ uniform with the number 4 sewn on the back, Duke’s number. I copied his batting stance, his stylish uppercut swing that looked good even when he struck out. Even now I can make the case that during the years that he, Mantle, and Mays played in New York (1951-1957), he was every bit as good with the bat and glove as those two all-time greats (although he was never the base runner they were). But someone looking only at their lifetime career statistics would have no clue. The Duke ended his career with a total of 404 home runs. Mantle had 536, Mays 660.

Duke’s home-run total would have been a lot closer to Mantle’s were it not for Walter O’Malley. When O’Malley, the Dodgers’ owner,  broke Brooklyn’s heart and took the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1958, he also took the home runs out of Duke’s bat.  The Dodgers played their first four seasons in La La Land in the cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum, where the right-field fence measured 440 feet from home plate. Snider, who had hit 40 or more home runs every season from 1953 through 1957, hit only 15 in 1958 and would never hit more than 23 again.

Legend has it that Don Drysdale, the Hall of Fame Dodgers pitcher and Snider’s roommate, wept when the team sold Snider to the Mets in 1963. But for old Dodgers fans it was a chance to come out and cheer for our hero again. At first it was a thrill to see him standing in center field at the Polo Grounds in a Mets uniform, to shout at the top of our lungs when he came to bat, “Come on DOOK!” But soon it became clear that for Duke the thrill was gone. He scowled and shivered uncomfortably in the outfield during the cold-weather games in April. He didn’t run out ground balls, which angered some of his younger teammates who had illusions about the team’s chances of success that year. (Duke knew they were none to none.) He ended the season with 14 home runs, 45 runs batted in and a .243 batting average in 354 at-bats (his most at-bats since 1957).

That was his penultimate season and it was not without its good moments. There was the time the Dodgers were in town and Snider came up to bat against Drysdale. Drysdale grooved a fastball down the middle of the plate and Snider timed his signature swing perfectly to hit a home run. After the game Drysdale said with a wink, “I just wanted to see if he could still hit the fastball.”

For those who were there it was a glimpse of the Snider of old, the great hitter who had once explained in an interview with The Sporting News, “In the split second from the time the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand until it reaches the plate you have to think about your stride, your hip action, your wrist action, determine how much, if any, the ball is going to break, and then decide whether to swing at it.”

There was one last forgettable season in 1964 with the San Francisco Giants. He hit only .210 with four home runs and 17 RBI in 91 at-bats.  But no one will remember him as a player for the Giants or the Mets—and only the Californians will think of him as a player for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was and will forever be the Duke of Flatbush.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

You can’t blame the pet adoption people for not telling you everything in their ads. I doubt there are many people searching for a dog that will hump their daughter any chance he gets. But that is what he does whenever Gahlia is home from college. They can’t very well write, “Looking for a dog that likes to eat his own feces….and then lick your face?” How about, “Foot Fetishist’s Delight: This little fellow loves to lick your bare feet and toes….and bite them too!” Or, “Want a cute little dog that chews everything in sight?

Before we adopted Benji I had never heard of a “wee wee pad.” Now I just wish someone would invent a “doo doo pad” to go with it. Benji thinks any rug or carpet in the house is the perfect place to deposit his bon bons. As my wife Eva-Lynne pointed out the other day, “We didn’t know how good we had it with Petey.”

Petey, alev ha sholem, was our last dog. When we adopted him from the Warwick Valley Humane Society he was already trained to relieve himself outdoors. When he wanted to go out he would get our attention by shaking his collar to make noise.  You’d take him outside and he would go right away. No muss no fuss. He did have an odd predilection for defecating on a slope, but if none was available, he’d go on flat ground.  His one disgusting habit was eating cat turds out of the litter box, but even that doesn’t seem so disgusting now.

I used to be amused by the way our neighbor Andrea would plead with her dog: “Come on Linus, make poo poo.” We often walked our dogs together and I always felt a little smug when this happened. I never had to plead with Petey.  Now I don’t feel so smug.

I have walked Benji at length in the bitter cold, on our treacherous icy driveway and nearby roads. When I heard myself imploring, “Come on Benji, make poo poo,” I was humbled. And since it seemed somehow unmanly to be saying those words, I changed them to, “Come on Benji, get the feeling” and later still, in frustration, to, “Come on Benji, will you please make a crap already!”

Eva-Lynne decided we should keep a log of the times we take him out for a walk and record the results. This has proved helpful. A typical entry by Eva-Lynne will read, “7:45 a.m.—Peed, no b.m.” Or “peed and b.m.” My first entry was, “8:30 a.m—Nada!” It took several days before I could joyfully write, “Peed and crapped!” I drew a smiley face at the end.

In fairness to Benji, he was trained to do his business indoors by his previous owners. They live in an apartment complex in Suffolk County that does not allow pets. So they kept him inside at all times until his recent rescue by the Save-a-Pet people. They told us Benji is a poodle/shih-tzu mix. Others have suggested he is a Jack Russel/shih-tzu mix, which would explain why he sometimes takes one of his toys between his teeth, and shakes it violently and growls as if he were killing a small animal. (If you go on line and look at the pictures of the two mixes, you see that he could be either.)

My daughter Sadie thinks Benji is bipolar, because when he isn’t acting crazy he will sit peacefully on your lap or at your feet. He likes it when you pet his head or under his chin. At those times he is a sweet, gentle soul.  But in the blink of an eye he can turn manic. One of his favorite activities at these times is to gallop at full speed around the kitchen island, repeatedly, in an oval pattern. We can shout “Benji! Benji! Stop!” all we want but he is oblivious. He is in the zone—like Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes. 

What can I say? He eats his own feces. He humps my daughter. He chews everything in sight. And I can’t help but love the little guy.

Michael can be react at Michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

When it comes to the information super highway, I drive like a little old lady. And I am going to have to keep it that way if I ever expect to finish any work. Even without Facebook, Twitter, Blackberry, phone texting, or “apps” of any sort, I always seem to get stuck in traffic.

It begins as soon as the Yahoo home page welcomes me to my computer screen with the latest news headlines. Gino Cimoli died? Damn! Wait, what do they mean, “….first Dodger batter?” I click the link to the full story. Now I see….They meant he was the first-ever batter for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I remember when he played for Brooklyn. He wasn’t great but he made the National League All-Star team one year. I was 10 and away at Camp Greylock, a summer camp in Massachusetts. We watched the game on TV there. I went to Greylock because my friend Frank Brown went there and he loved it. Frank lived in Spring Valley but we knew each other because our parents were friends. When Gino Cimoli came up to bat in the All-Star game all the Brooklyn Dodgers fans cheered.

Greylock. The head counselor was named Murray Zung. Some of the kids thought he was mean. They would jokingly say, “We want Zung hung.” A couple of decades later when I was covering a dermatology meeting for a medical newspaper I noticed one of the doctors had the name “Murray Zung” on his badge. I asked him if he’d ever worked at Camp Greylock. He looked at the name on my press badge and shouted, “Mikey Kaufman!”

I think I’ll take a quick look at my email first before I get down to work.  Maybe there will be something important regarding school or a work assignment…. What’s this….something from my brother?  Did he find cousin Lakshimi?…. No, but he found a review of a dance performance she gave in Boston in 1949. He sent a link to the review in the Harvard Crimson.  (Click) The reviewer enjoyed Lakshimi’s interpretations of traditional dances of India. He was less kind to Uncle Wana (“Maestro Singh” as he called him). Apparently Uncle Wana provided a confusing narration as he introduced the various dances.

Wana was married to our Aunt Gertie, my mother’s older sister. He was a musician and musicologist who taught Indian music and dance in New York City for many years. Among his pupils was John Coltrane, the great jazz saxophonist. My brother studied with Wana for a while and did quite well. I took a few lessons too but I wasn’t very good. Gertie and Wana have been dead for a long time and my brother and I lost touch with Lakshimi. I wonder if we’ll ever find her…..or her two daughters.

Okay, time to get to work. Wait. I better check my Zest of Orange email. I haven’t looked at it in a couple of days….There is only one but the subject line is a bombshell:  “Ever been to Ecuador?” Yes! The sender’s address includes the name Larry and I know immediately who it is from. The message says only, “1963? Just wondering.” It is unsigned. He knew I would know, even though we haven’t seen each other for 40 years.

Larry was my roommate during a summer trip arranged for U.S. high-school students by a company called Scholastic Trips Abroad. A couple of weeks before our scheduled departure there was a military coup in that country. President Carlos Arosemena was ousted after serving only 20 months in office, during which he promoted reformist causes such as low-cost housing, progressive income taxes, and yearly bonuses for workers. Perhaps most importantly he was friendly towards Cuba, which caused an ongoing conflict with the Ecuadorean military….and unease in Washington. The organizers of our trip assured our parents that everything was under control and all would be well. They were wrong.

 I reply to Larry, explaining that I’d looked for him “a gazillion times” over the last 40 years but had never been able to track him down. And he replies immediately, saying he’d looked for me a gazillion times too and now, thanks to the internet, he’d found me. “I’m living in California near San Francisco, two kids, divorced, semi -retired if I can’t find work….

“I talked to Frank Brown lately. He is in Rockland County.” I had forgotten:  Larry was from Spring Valley and we had both known Frank before we ever met. 

Larry wants to know if I have Facebook so we can share pictures or a webcam so we can talk on Skype. I have to tell him I am not that high tech. If I had stuff like that I’d never get any work done. 

Damn! Gino Cimoli was 81.

Well, I see it is about lunch time now. I’m hungry. I’ll get started on that work right after I eat some lunch.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Many years have passed since the term “glittering generalities” popped into my head. My old teachers often used the term to describe certain bad writing traits among their students. Now it seems as if those students are enjoying the last laugh. They write State of the Union speeches for the president and rebuttals to the State of the Union speech for his opponents. Some may see this as an improvement over vitriol but I’m not so sure.  At least vitriol can be highly specific and accurate at times.

The online dictionary site WordIQ.com defines “glittering generalities” as “emotionally appealing words so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that they carry conviction without supporting information or reason. They appeal to emotions such as love of country, home; desire for peace, freedom, glory, honor, etc. They ask for approval without examination of the reason. They are a typically used by politicians and propagandists.” As Al Roller, my former managing editor used to say of the copy we churned out on behalf of pharmaceutical company-sponsored publications, “It’s beautiful. It says everything and it says nothing.”

But this is not a time to be speaking in platitudes that say nothing. President Obama’s State of the Union speech was a lot like Andrew Cuomo’s inaugural speech earlier this month. “At the end of the day, we’re all Americans,” said Obama, invoking the “American Dream” theme that has always been a crowd pleaser. Only now it wouldn’t play too well before a crowd of thousands of retired General Motors workers, who lost their pensions when the company was on the verge of collapse and did not get them back when the company was bailed out by taxpayers like themselves.

Nor would it play well to the thousands of Wyeth employees who lost their jobs after that pharmaceutical company was acquired by the giant Pfizer, which received millions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) prior to the acquisition.

Then there are the 1,100 Whirlpool workers who lost their jobs at the Evansville, Indiana, plant last year when the company shut it down and moved operations to Mexico–after receiving $19 million in “smart grid” stimulus money. The company, which markets appliances around the globe under various brand names, was in no danger of failing. It just wanted to improve the profit margin for the shareholders. As Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America’s Future wrote at the time, “Whirlpool knows that taxpayers will shoulder the unemployment and other costs. Whirlpool employees aren’t the only ones losing their jobs…. Closing a plant like this also means all the supplier, transportation and other third-party jobs go away. More than 100 blind or disabled individuals could also be left jobless. The Evansville Association for the Blind has issued a public plea, asking businesses to consider using their employees.

“There will be more home foreclosures,” Johnson continued. The plant closing will put a strain on local businesses, perhaps even forcing some to close down, he noted. “Whirlpool is profiting from making all this someone else’s problem.”

When workers at the plant planned a rally to save their jobs, they received an ominous warning from management. “We have reminded the Local 808 leadership that the decision to close is final and is not under further consideration,” wrote Paul Coburn, director of operations, in a memo published on the front page of the plant newsletter. “In the last six months we have delivered strong results in spite of having to see a good deal of our equipment taken out of the building and moved to its new location. I believe that it is a testament to your character that you have continued to work hard to preserve the positive reputation of the Evansville workforce during this period. With this in mind, we have shared our concern with Local 808 leaders that these negative activities will only hamper employees when they look for future jobs.

“The entire community is aware and sympathetic towards the situation we all face. We fear that potential employers will view the actions of a few and determine whether they would want to hire any of Evansville Division employees in the future. We hope that this is not the case, but think it is certainly a consideration. Since the announcement, we have operated extremely well working together. We are trying to make this difficult situation better by providing a wide range of support including applying for and securing the TAA grant; offering TAA meetings on site; offering computer and refresher courses on site; counseling retirement age employees of their options; communicating as much information as we have on what to expect, and many other things.

“We are disappointed that Local 808 is not also focusing energies on the transition, where it will make a difference.  None of us like this situation, but at this time we have to make the best of it and take positive actions towards our future outside of Whirlpool.”

Our future outside of Whirlpool? While many of the Evansville workers are still collecting unemployment checks and searching in vain for new jobs, Coburn remains at Whirlpool, where he was recently promoted to Division Vice President. Such has become the American Dream.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.