By Michael Kaufman

I got a phone call the other day from Greg Ball, the 2010 Republican candidate for Congress in the 19th Congressional District. It wasn’t a real phone call from Mr. Ball. It was one of those “robot” calls with a recorded message of his voice. I usually hang up on those kinds of calls…even the always cheerful holiday messages from Meir Borenstein, the local Chabad rabbi. For some reason he gets on my nerves even though I love his Brooklyn accent. “Hello! This is Rabbi Meir and Rivkie Borenstein calling to wish you a Happy Purim and to tell you about…” [Click]

But I listened carefully to Ball’s message and when it was over I felt a chill, because if I didn’t know better, based on what he said in that phone call I would vote for the man. It was an artful piece of demagogy crafted to appeal to anti-war voters like myself. No doubt he has a far different message for telephones that ring in households of his Republican base. 

In my phone message Ball never identifies himself as a Republican. He begins by reminding listeners that they voted for change last November, including the election of our “current Congressman,” who ran as a peace candidate. John Hall’s name is not mentioned. Ball observes, correctly, that Hall….er, the current Congressman, has been something of a disappointment because of his support for the Obama administration’s continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end he sounds more like a Peace and Freedom Party candidate than a Republican.

This is the same Greg Ball who spoke not long ago at a Republican fundraiser at the Warwick estate of Jonah Mandelbaum, the millionaire developer who never met a green field he wouldn’t like to build on…unless it was close to his house. As noted by fellow Zester Jeffrey Page, one of the big-name guests at this shindig was Bernard Kerik, the disgraced former police commissioner of New York City.

When it was Kerik’s turn to speak he defended the use of torture when questioning suspected terrorists. “Imagine if we could have prevented 9-11 with enhanced interrogation techniques like sleep deprivation, loud music, and even water boarding,” said the soiled ex-cop. “Would we have done that to save 3,000 lives? You bet.” This takes quite a bit of imagining, especially since no evidence has been presented that a single life was saved by the extensive water boarding that took place after 9-11.  We do, however, have Dick Cheney’s word for it….and also Peter King’s.

King, a right-wing Republican Congressman from Long Island, was the main speaker at the Mandelbaum gathering and he blasted the United States Justice Department for announcing plans to investigate the legality of such practices by CIA interrogators. King called it “a declaration of war against the CIA,” adding, “the information we obtained saved thousands of lives.” A newspaper report of the event noted there “appeared to be little disagreement” among the attendees. Needless to say, there was nary a peep on the matter from candidate Ball.

A photo accompanying the news article showed Ball addressing supporters and offered a glimpse of one of the spacious rooms at the Mandelbaum home. It reminded me of a scene in Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie:” Above the urinals in the well-appointed men’s room of the fancy corporate headquarters of the Engulf and Devour corporation is a sign that says, “Our toilets are nicer than most people’s homes.”

Mandelbaum’s spacious estate is a world apart from the apartments at Liberty Green, the senior housing complex he recently erected near where I live. The apartments, though small, seem nice enough inside, but the exterior qualifies it as one of the ugliest residential buildings in Warwick. It has already increased traffic on Grand Street to the point where several new stop signs have been added.

Liberty Green

Liberty Green is one of several Mandelbaum projects enabled by a $10.5 million grant awarded to his company by New York State last year, the largest multi-project award of its kind ever granted. “We’ve been meeting the demand for well-built, safe and affordable senior housing since 1996, when we built Devon Woods,” Mandelbaum was quoted in a local newspaper article reporting on the grant. “This award is an honor and we are committed to continuing to meet the housing needs of our senior citizens.” The article goes on to say that Mandelbaum is “well-known in Warwick for his contributions to civic and charitable organizations.”

I don’t know about his contributions to charitable organizations but he has donated many thousands of dollars over the years to local, state, and national  political candidates. With the exception of a $5,000 donation in 2007 to the Democratic Senatorial campaign (an election in which the Republican candidate had no chance) all of his donations were to Republicans. The most intriguing is a 2005 donation of $1,000 to Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. 

I suspect the local and state political donations have at least as much to do with the grant award than Mandelbaum’s commitment to quality, affordable housing for seniors. They also likely have something to do with the ongoing glut of development in Warwick. The Liberty Green home page links to a popup promoting the proposed “Community Business Zone” on Route 94 and to the official Town of Warwick Web site, which promotes the virtues of the recently formed Warwick Development Coalition. Mandelbaum is a member, of course, along with local elected officials and other Warwick luminaries. Do you think maybe I am on to something or am I just being too cynical?

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

There’s the kind of death where they put you in the ground. Another kind is where you survive unspeakable injuries that never heal.

Similarly there are judges who treat drunken drivers, and the misery they inflict, almost as a joke when they pass sentence, and those who understand that a drunk behind the wheel places everyone in danger and sentence accordingly.

Which brings us to Willie A. Thompson. In 1989, the third time Thompson drove drunk – at least the third time anyone knows about – he killed a cop with his car. He spent 11 years in prison for that. Last winter, in his eighth drunken driving arrest, Thompson slammed into trees and a fire hydrant, and for that, he’s been sent to prison for 15 years to life after telling the judge about his own troubles. “I’m very sick,” he was quoted by The Times Herald-Record. “I’m very sorry that things have happened the way they did.”

Thompson is 72 and indeed a sick man. It’s possible he’ll die in prison. He got his 15-to-life when he appeared before Orange County Court Judge Robert Freehill who concluded that the public needs protection from the likes of Thompson. Freehill deserves plaudits for sending him away.

Before anybody chirps, “But Thompson didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” allow me to introduce Barbara Rokas, whose dreadful injuries and terrible suffering demonstrate how drunken driving sometimes is not taken seriously.

In June 1990, Barbara Rokas was a first-grade teacher in Kearny, N.J. She estimated that in her 28-year career, she had taught 1,000 children how to read and do arithmetic. She loved her job and was good at it. She was on her way to confer with a colleague when she drove into the intersection of Stuyvesant Avenue and Chestnut Street. She stopped for the stop sign, then proceeded.

A teenager – 19 years old; too young to drink in New Jersey – came flying down Chestnut Street. He didn’t bother with such niceties as stop signs or brake pedals and smashed into Rokas’s car. His blood alcohol concentration was 0.19, almost twice the legal limit in 1990.

There was so much of Barbara Rokas’s blood on the pavement that an ambulance driver covered her face with a sheet. Then someone noticed that her hand moved. She was alive. And this is a catalogue of what that drunken driver did to her.

Because of him she needed 500 stitches to close her head wounds and many more to close other parts of her cut-up body.

He caused her to have brain damage.

He put her in a coma for 22 days.

He fractured her thighbone and broke her collarbone.

He paralyzed her entire right side due to nerve damage he inflicted through the fracture of her collarbone.

He left her deaf in one ear.

He left her with double vision.

He left her with severe memory loss.

He left her unable to get around without a wheelchair.

He left her with slurred speech.

Her injuries were such that when her husband went to see her for the first time in her hospital bed in Newark, her doctor issued a warning. This is what Bob Rokas said when I wrote about Barbara for The Record of Hackensack: “[The doctor] told me: ‘When you go in there, she’s going to look like she’s dead, but she’s not dead.’ He had his hands on my arms, sort of holding me up against the wall to make sure I understood what he was saying. I opened the door and went in. She was bald and her head was bandaged. I never saw anyone that color before. She was sort of yellow or orange. My wife.”

In fact, when her lawyers brought an action against the taverns that had served the 19-year old, they filled five pages with her injuries. This is what her lawyers wrote, “[She] has also suffered, and will continue to suffer, loss of the pleasures and pursuits of life and a diminution and impairment of her capacity to enjoy life.” Next time someone says, “But he didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” think of Barbara Rokas who remains one of the more courageous people you’re likely to meet.

She would need aides to help her live her life. It would take her two hours to get dressed in the morning and two hours to get undressed to go to bed. She required help to take a bath, comb her hair, brush her teeth, eat a meal.

Much, much later, if she and her husband wished to have dinner in a restaurant, people would stare at her and the very slow way she ate her meal. They would watch as one of her arms involuntarily slid along the table and pushed her plate away. 

“I have aides around the clock, seven days a week,” she told me in 2001. “My life is basically a zero.”

When the man who reduced her life to a zero appeared for sentencing, the judge likely knew that he didn’t mean to hurt her.

And so, for what he did to Barbara Rokas, the man would have to serve two months of weekend home confinement, the judge said.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Buildings are responsible for approximately half of U.S. energy consumption and carbon emissions annually and are growing faster than any other sector, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. Forty-three percent of U.S. carbon emissions and 76 percent of U.S. electricity consumption happen in buildings, through heating, cooling, lighting, hot water and appliances.

Twenty-four of the largest and most influential architecture, engineering and development firms based in the U.S., which are responsible for a combined $100 billion in building construction annually, have joined forces with Architecture 2030, a leading nonprofit research organization. The building sector leaders are calling on Congress to pass the building energy reduction targets in Section 241 of the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 and incorporate timelines to reach carbon-neutral buildings by 2030.

“We — the building sector community — are on the front lines on this one. We have a big job ahead of us, and we need Congress to begin putting into place the code regulations and support necessary to help us get the job done,” said Ralph Hawkins, who is chairman and CEO of HKS Architects.

The building sector leaders have set targets of a 50 percent energy reduction in all new and renovated buildings today, incrementally increasing to carbon-neutral in 2030. These 24 firms are part of a powerful and burgeoning movement within the business community to push hard for changes that address energy consumption and climate change while opening new markets. On Sept. 22, 2009, 500 corporate executives from firms in about 50 countries issued the “Copenhagen Communiqué,” which calls for climate negotiators to finalize a new international climate treaty by the end of the year.

According to Edward Mazria, who is the executive director of Architecture 2030, “In order for the U.S. to take an effective leadership role on energy and climate change, we must address our building sector, and Senate building energy code legislation, coupled with the 2030 Challenge timelines, will make that possible.”

The climate crisis needs heroes, and Architecture 2030 believes that hero has taken the form of states, local governments and professional organizations.
“They have taken the lead on addressing this crisis,” Mazria said. Already, more than half of our states (27) are developing climate action plans, and 839 U.S. cities have signed the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. Also, three regional greenhouse gas initiatives have been established, and the 2030 Challenge has been adopted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Association of Counties, American Institute of Architects, U.S. Green Building Council and others. And the federal government has adopted the 2030 Challenge targets for all new and renovated federal buildings.

Here are a few ways to meet the 2030 Challenge in your town:

—Local governments can amend their codes, as long as they meet or exceed state standards. Ask your town board or council to incorporate the code equivalents, which can be found online at http://www.architecture2030.org, or the Architecture 2030 Energy Ordinance, which was approved unanimously by the council of Santa Barbara, Calif., the first city to officially incorporate the 2030 Challenge into its building energy code. The text is available at http://www.energy.ca.gov.

—If you’re building a new home or building, make it 50 percent more efficient than current building codes require. Check http://www.EnergyStar.gov to find out how and who can help you in your area.

—Invest in more efficient appliances and building equipment. Look for the Energy Star rating, and buy the most efficient appliances on the market. Replace all incandescent lighting with compact fluorescent or light-emitting diode task lights. Having a commercial energy audit will pay for itself in energy savings.

—Offset your building’s energy use by purchasing an equal amount of wind energy to be fed into the electric grid. This is more cost-efficient than having your own wind turbine, in most cases.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Bob Gaydos

 I got hooked on sports and journalistic writing in my early teens reading the likes of Jimmy Cannon in the New York Post. (Once upon a time, the rightwing bullhorn was the home of numerous great columnists.) Cannon  had a gift for observation and a sharp wit that made his writing enjoyable far beyond the limited confines of sports. And he invented what I consider to be the greatest gifts for all sports writers — a way to put together a column when you had nothing in your head but a random collection of unrelated thoughts.  
 
 Cannon’s “Nobody asked me, but:” columns are legendary. I remember looking forward to reading them in The Post and being disappointed when he chose to write about one topic. Truth be told, the approach has been shamelessly copied by every sports columnist who has followed Cannon, including myself in my earlier newspaper days. No one dares to use the signature Cannon line, but Mike Lupica of the Daily News and the Record’s Kevin Gleason are just the latest in line to patch together a bunch of one-liners and call it a column.

 So what the heck, why not me?

 Is it just me or isn’t giving Jerry Manuel another year as skipper of the Mets like giving the captain of the Titanic — “It was a great year except for that iceberg.” — another ship to command? And how do Howard Johnson, hitting coach for the run-starved Mets, and Razor Dull, the befuddled third-base coach, deserve new contracts?

 Is it just me, or are Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski really that annoying to listen to doing Sunday night football on ESPN? And gentlemen, cross your legs, please.

 And it was bush, wasn’t it, for the Tampa Bay Rays to avoid pitching to Mark Texiera during the last regular season series so he couldn’t break the tie with the Rays Carlos Pena for the American League homerun title?

 Just noticed, hockey started. Call me in May.

 Is it just me, or is it a fact that virtually no female driver in Orange County knows how to handle a four-way stop? (Oh sure, it’s OK for Beth Quinn to complain about women drivers, but God forbid a guy do it.). Proceed at your own risk.

 And while I’m in the car, is it just me or do all Yankee fans dread tuning in to a ballgame already under way and having to wait 20 minutes for John Sterling to give the score? Play by play, John, play by play.

 Maybe this is just me, but I’m not sure. When a waitress in a diner checks back with you two minutes after delivering your food by asking, “How’d everything come out?” doesn’t that shake your confidence just a bit in the kitchen staff? Same thing when they come back 20 minutes later and you’re taking a breather, maybe talking to a friend, and they ask, “Still working on that?” It didn’t seem like a job until then.  And is it just me, but when you are a man of a certain age — say over 60 — doesn’t it seem just plain wrong for a waitress of a certain age — say under 30 — to call you “Hon”?

 Maybe I missed it, but did any of the Mets’ opponents complain about not being able to hit homeruns at Citi Field? And if it’s just me making the decision, I leave the fences and wind currents and everything else affecting home runs at the new Yankee Stadium just the way they are, thank you very much.

 Watched the New York Giants play two crummy teams two weeks in a row and win, but fail to dominate them the way they should have because: 1. The Giants still have no clue how to call plays inside the 20-yard line; and 2. Brandon Jacobs has apparently decide to become a ballerina. And is it just me, or has it been a long time since the Giants sacked a quarterback?

 Maybe it’s just me, but did anyone notice Roman Polanski showing any kind of remorse in the past 30 years for raping that 13-year-old girl in California? And exactly how is it that he has “paid for his mistakes,” as some of his defenders have claimed? And shouldn’t Woody Allen abstain from commenting on any case involving young teenage girls? Tacky.

 Can’t decide if I want Lebron James, Dwyane Wade or Nate Robinson directing the Knicks’ attack next year. How ’bout all three?

 Is it just me or, with the purchase of the New Jersey Nets by a rich Russian, do we face a long season of newspaper headlines calling them the “Nyets” every time they lose a game? And by the way, how about that capitalism, comrade?

 In case you missed it, the boss of Amazon apologized recently for his company’s erasing unlicensed versions of two George Orwell books, “1984,” and “Animal Farm,” from customers’ Kindles. He also offered to provide customers with new copies of the classics for their electronic readers, or $30. In a world where is up is down and good is bad, that might be enough, but is it just me, or doesn’t this still leave Amazon with the considerable power to recall — erase — any of its digital books at any time? And doesn’t that still smack a lot of Big Brother? Or is just me?

 Hey, is it just me, or is this harder than I thought?

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com.

By Beth Quinn

My dog Tom is scared of the hamper.

It’s one of those round hampers on wheels. I keep it in a closet until it’s time to do laundry. Then I roll it to the top of the basement stairs and throw the clothes down.

I generally forget about Tom’s fear of the hamper and rarely think to warn him that it’s laundry day and I’m about to take it out of the closet. If I leave the hamper near a doorway, Tom’s trapped. He can’t bring himself to pass it. He’d stay stuck in one spot all day if I didn’t eventually put the hamper back in the closet.

Tom is a very kind dog as most yellow Labs tend to be, but he should probably be in treatment for panic attacks. It’s not just the hamper. A lot of things give him a case of nerves, such as the wind chimes and the swing set in the back yard. If a bit of a breeze comes up and the chimes start chiming and the swings start swinging of their own volition, Tom comes flying into the house so fast he’s probably got a permanent concussion from slamming head-first into his dog door flap so often.

You can imagine what today’s wind is doing to him. Right now, he’s sitting in the bathtub where, presumably, he’s safe.

I don’t mean to pick on him, though. It’s true that Tom is perhaps the most cowardly of the many dogs I have known, but Riley, our dead-and-gone German shepherd, could have given him a run for his money in the sissy department.

Riley had a phobia about thunder, which is not so unusual for a dog, but Riley developed extreme safety measures to protect himself. One night, he climbed right into the clothes dryer, which was no easy trick considering he weighed 100 pounds. Another time, he squeezed himself behind the toilet and got stuck. We nearly had to get the plumber over to remove the toilet after the storm passed, but Riley eventually worked himself free.

Actually, all my dogs have had their own particular psychological quirks. In some cases, they’ve handled it themselves. In others, we’ve tried to work with them on their issues.

Take Mike, for example. When I was a kid, we had a Dalmatian named Mike who suffered from poor self-esteem, especially when he compared himself to a dog down the street named Boots Jones. Mike’s solution was to stalk Boots as though he were going to beat him up. I think it made him feel like a hot shot, but it was always a case of false bravado.

Boots generally ignored the stalking until Mike was nearly on Gramps Jones’ property. (Boots belonged to Gramps, or perhaps it was the other way around, I’m not sure. I never actually saw Gramps, so Boots might have owned the house himself.) In any case, Boots would wait until Mike was within biting distance, then he’d slowly stand up, flex his muscles, crack his knuckles, narrow his eyes, and then … he’d yawn.

Utter indifference was what I read in Boots’ demeanor, but Mike was always certain his time had come. That yawn was enough to send Mike hightailing it back home, where he’d claw frantically at the door to be let in. Then he’d stand inside the storm door and bark at Boots, who had already gone back to sleep. Still, Mike’s self-esteem improved after giving Boots a stern scolding from the relative safety of our house.

One by-product of Mike’s feud with Boots was a nervous stomach, and he passed a lot of gas. This affected everyone in the family because Mike slept in front of the hot-air vent in the kitchen. When the furnace came on, everyone’s eyes started watering what with the acrid, noxious odor that wafted all the way up into the second-floor bedrooms.

I don’t know why we put up with it. At the very least, it seems my parents should have made different sleeping arrangements for Mike.

Come to think of it, perhaps it’s not the dogs in our family who are the head cases.

Beth can be reached at beth@ZestofOrange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Standing on line next to me at the unemployment office was a short, balding man wearing a rumpled suit and tie. He surveyed the number of people ahead of us and sighed, then complained, “My wife bought veal.” 

“Veal!” he repeated. “You know how much veal costs? I don’t have a job and she’s buying veal!” 

We chatted to kill time. It would be a while before we reached the counter to  face a cranky, unsmiling person who would eye us suspiciously and ask if we had looked for work that week. I saw the same man the next time I was there. “She bought veal again,” he said sadly. “I think she is in denial.”

This was a few decades ago at the unemployment office on 181st Street near St. Nicholas Avenue in Washington Heights…my old neighborhood. A visit to the unemployment office back then was a degrading experience.

Fast forward to the present.  The first thing I notice about the unemployment office is that it isn’t called an unemployment office. It is a “One-Stop Career Center.” Because my job was in Bergen County, New Jersey, my claim is processed in that state. My One-Stop Career Center is in Franklin, in nearby Sussex County. 

When I reported as instructed for orientation I noticed a group of seniors doing Tai Chi in a corner of a large gymnasium-like room. We newly unemployed people were sent to a classroom where we were greeted by a kindly woman named Paula, who told us we could call her at any time or come see her if we had any questions or if we needed help with our resumes or anything.  “Just ask,” she said. “We’re here to help.” I imagined a short, balding man in a rumpled suit and tie asking, “Can you tell me how I can get my wife to stop buying veal?”

I called once to tell Paula I needed to reschedule an appointment because I was going out of town to do some freelance work. She seemed delighted to hear from me and said there was no need for me to come in again…ever. “It’s just a frelance gig,” I explained. “I’m still unemployed.”

“That’s okay,” she said cheerfully. I was a little disappointed because I was going to ask if I could do a little Tai Chi on my next visit.

These days I use my computer to file online and the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (LWD) even sends me emails with links to job opportunities they say may match my recent job experience. They aren’t very good at this but I can’t blame them. I know an excellent headhunter who hasn’t placed anyone in my line of work all year. 

Still, it is a tad discouraging when the best the LWD (we must never say the u-word, unemployment) can come up with is a listing like one that came just the other day: “Spring 2010 — The Frisky Lifestyle Journalism.”

The description begins, “Please Note: Internships are UNPAID and structured to last approximately 12 weeks.” Okay, they never said it was going to be a perfect match.

“The Frisky is the first sex & relationships infotainment brand for women seeking an authentic, yet uniquely funny and irreverent perspective on love, life and pop culture.” Hey, sounds kind of neat once you get past the “infotainment” jargon. I once wrote for Women’s World. Maybe I’ll apply. Perhaps they’ll like me so much they’ll offer me a fulltime position.

“The Frisky offers a smart and sincere POV that informs, entertains and connects women from various walks of life by emphasizing their shared experiences in matters of the heart and body.”  Uh, I think maybe they need a woman for this. 

“The Frisky targets the sexually liberated, sexually savvy demographic of My Boys, Friends, and Sex and the City, whose audience has come of age in the digital era.” That does it. For guys my age, coming of age in the “digital era” has an entirely different connotation.

“They enjoy R-rated movies and TV-MA sitcoms, read womens magazines brimming with sexy articles and advertising and are nonplused by the ubiquity of explicit sexual material on the Internet.” What if someone has all the qualifications except they are NOT nonplused by the ubiquity of sexual material on the Internet? Should they lie just to get this plum of an unpaid temporary job?

 “They are highly web-savvy and seek a highly entertaining one-stop destination which examines the full spectrum of lifestyle topics through the universal lens of sex & relationships.” The web-savvy thing kills it for me. I admit it. I’m not a good fit.

Beth? Carrie? Shawn?

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

As Roman Polanski sits in a Swiss jail, fighting extradition to the United States to face a judge on his admitted rape of a young teenager, Whoopi Goldberg weighs in with one of the more bizarre quotes of the new century.

“It wasn’t rape-rape,” she said, as if to suggest that somehow it wasn’t really rape despite Polanski’s having pleaded guilty to it. Goldberg can know nothing about the crimes of Roman Polanski.

In this case, it was the 43-year old Polanski having his way with a 13-year old girl in 1977. Not rape? It defined rape. When it occurred, it carried an odd sentencing range: six months to 50 years. The story is that Polanski, in a deal, pleaded guilty to rape, had other serious charges dropped, and expected a minimum sentence. So Whoopi Goldberg notwithstanding, it was rape to Polanski, rape to the girl, rape to the judge, rape to the district attorney, and rape to Polanski’s defense team.

But when Polanski was seized with fear that the judge might slap him with major prison time, he fled to Europe, where he has resided ever since.

Polanski’s friends yammer about the supposed injustice of jailing him for something that happened so many years ago, and ask why the United States never went after him before. It doesn’t really matter because no matter how they slice it, the “something” was a rape committed against a kid.

And Goldberg neglected to discuss other facts of the case against Polanski, who was 31 years old when his victim was born. 

–The girl, Samantha Geimer, told the grand jury 32 years ago that Polanski drove her to the home of Jack Nicholson – Nicholson was not home – to shoot fashion photos of her. To get things started, Polanski gave her a Quaalude tablet and champagne and then suggested she take off her clothes and take a dip in the whirlpool bath. Then he took off his clothes and joined her in the water. They were alone, this middle-aged man and girl.

–CBS reported the following from the grand jury report: “The victim testified that after she left the whirlpool bath, Polanski told her to go to a nearby bedroom and lie down. Answer: I was going, ‘No, I think I better go home’ because I was afraid. So I just went and I sat down on the couch. Question: What were you afraid of? Answer: Him.”

–“He reached over and kissed me,” she said. “And I was telling him, ‘No,’ you know, ‘Keep away.’”

–He asked the girl if she were on any form of birth control. When she said she was not, he asked if she preferred anal intercourse. She said she did not. Then he had oral sex with her. When he was through, he had vaginal intercourse with her.

–“I was ready to cry,” she said. “I was kind of – I was going, ‘No. Come on. Stop it.’ But I was afraid.”

–Later, Polanski drove her home and advised her not to tell her mother or boyfriend about what he had done. She testified, “He said, ‘You know, when I first met you I promised myself I wouldn’t do anything like this with you.’”

–Polanski was indicted for furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, performing a lewd or lascivious act on a child under 14, rape by use of drugs, oral copulation, sodomy, and unlawful sexual intercourse with a female under the age of 18. All but the last were dropped in the plea deal.

Yes, Polanski and his family beat it out of Europe just before the Nazis inflicted themselves on his native Poland. Yes, he’s a renowned film maker. Yes, he suffered an unspeakable horror when Charles Manson’s gang stabbed his pregnant wife Sharon Tate to death in 1969.

And yes, Polanski deserves to do serious prison time for inflicting himself on a young girl. If what he did was not rape, there is no such crime. But you and I know there is.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

Purple Haze. Oil on stretched canvas, 8x10. For price and delivery information, contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

By Carrie Jacobson

There’s something about an abandoned house that speaks to me. I see these houses, I pass them day after day, and I watch nature take them over, take them back. As vines climb up their sides, as the fields push their way into the lawns, as the roofs fall in and the paint weathers off, these abandoned places speak more clearly to me. This one is on Route 17K, just outside Montgomery. Last week, the purple wildflowers shone softly in the autumn sun, and the goldenrod bent and swayed in the wind.

By Carrie Jacobson

The story so far:

Zoe and Kaja are traveling from the Pike County shelter to Middletown to find Zoe’s owner. They’re sleeping at the edge of the Delaware when the river rises and nearly sweeps them away. At the height of their trouble, they see Samantha Morrone, a young girl they’ve met on their travels. She’s adrift on a raft, being swept down the river. Kaja, the big red dog, rescues her, and then she helps get Zoe, a nearly blind lhasa apso, to safety. She also rescues Loosey, a cat who’s ended up in trouble on the river.

Kaja

Chapter 17

The sun is nearing the horizon as Samantha, Kaja, Zoe and Loosey climb the bank, toward the road. When they reach Route 97, Samantha sees they’re just about in Handsome Eddy, which she knows only because she thinks it’s such a funny name for a town. Well, it’s not really a town. Not much of a town. More like a wide place where rafters like to hang out.

Samantha is scared. She is cold and wet and her teeth are chattering, and she is scared. She knows she almost died out there on the river, and that’s scary enough. But when she thinks about what her parents are going to say, what they’re going to do, she’s even more scared.

Maybe she should just run away. Go with these dogs, wherever they are going. Never go home. She made it this far, she thinks. She can’t be in much worse trouble than she’s in now.

But she’s hungry, too, and so cold. The big red dog noses into a driveway. She looks at the house, and then looks at Samantha. The dog isn’t talking, not in words, but she might as well be. The dog is telling Samantha to go to the house. Call her parents. Face the facts.

She starts down the driveway, and then tells the dogs to sit. They do, and the cat sits, too, which makes Sam smile. She turns around once, and they’re still there. Then she rounds a curve in the drive, and nearly runs to the house.

She knocks on the door. Nothing happens. She looks for a bell, but doesn’t see one. She knocks again and waits. She begins to realize how cold and wet and scared she is. She’s trembling. Her hands are white, she sees, her fingernails blue. The day is cooling, and her wet clothes are starting to feel icy on her skin.

This time, she bangs on the door, hard, and when it opens, there’s a woman standing there, and Samantha has seen her before, and when the door opens, Sam smells dinner cooking, and out of the blue, just like that, she begins to sob. She flings herself into the woman’s arms, and nearly collapses.

“Oh, dear,” the woman says, “oh, dear! What has happened to you? Come in, come in, come in, now, and ssshhhh, stop your crying, dear, you’re safe now, safe and warm,” and, talking all the time, she nearly carries Samantha into the living room, puts her on a couch, wraps her in a blanket, and goes to make her a cup of tea. By the time she gets back to the living room, Samantha has fallen asleep.

Outside, in the driveway, Kaja and Zoe and the cat wait. They hear the door open. They hear voices. They hear the door shut. And then there’s nothing.

They wait. The sun falls. The breeze picks up. Kaja noses toward the road, and they set off. She looks back once. She can see that a light has come on in the house. She likes the girl. She could love the girl, she knows. But they have to go. They have to find Zoe’s man.

Mary Dubrovnik lets Samantha sleep for 10 minutes, then wakes her. The girl would sleep all night, Mary knows, but she has parents and family and they must be worried sick. The girl is familiar, she’s from somewhere nearby, but Mary can’t place her.

She wakes Samantha, and gets her phone number, and calls.

Angie answers. She’s breathless.

“Pete!” she shouts, when Mary gets the sentence out, “Pete! She’s safe. She’s, she’s – ” her words fall over themselves, and she begins to cry, and Pete takes the phone from her, finds Mary’s address and tells her he’ll be right there.

By the time he arrives, Samantha is warm, fed and nearly dry. By the time he arrives, Zoe and Kaja and Loosey have feasted on the remains of a roasted chicken from someone’s trash can. They’ve drunk water from a stream and they’ve found an abandoned car behind an abandoned shed, and curled up on the back seat, warm and safe and sheltered, and fallen fast asleep.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com