By Jeffrey Page

If the American experiment with popular rule comes to an end, I’m convinced it will be as a result of otherwise sensible people allowing mold to grow on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Often we don’t abide by what the framers had in mind. One glaring example is over the question of how the United States shall go to war. The Constitution, in Article I, spells it out within a long list of Congressional powers and authority. Congress declares war.

The last time that happened was 71 years ago, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Since then, American presidents have sent troops and fleets to wage war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, the Gulf and many other places with no congressional declaration sought or granted. I don’t recall any serious congressional objection to this presidential use of force.

In New York City, meanwhile, the mayor and his police commissioner are busy dismantling the Fourth Amendment – the one that forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures” – to ensure the continuation of their odious stop-and-frisk program. Briefly: A cop stops a “suspicious [read: nonwhite] person,” asks for identification, orders the “suspicious person” to empty his pockets, notices that along with some money and a handkerchief, the pocket contained some marijuana that is now showing, and promptly arrests the “suspicious person” for displaying marijuana in public. Never mind that to refuse to clear out his pocket renders the “suspicious person” guilty of ignoring a police officer’s command. Either way, there’s an arrest.

Last year, NYPD stopped and frisked 685,724 people: 53 percent were black (blacks comprise 26 percent of the city’s population); 34 percent were Latino (Latinos comprise 29 percent), and 9 percent were white (whites comprise 44 percent). The numbers suggest stop-and-frisk is something you might have encountered on the streets of Berlin around, say, 1939.

Racist? Not us, cry Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. If you bet $10 on the assumption that no relative of Bloomberg or Kelly has ever been stopped and frisked, pick up your money. You’re a winner.

If there’s been a popular movement involving huge numbers of middle class people marching on City Hall to protest this racist atrocity, I haven’t heard about it.

Now, in Middleborough, Mass., some residents are upset about people (especially high school students) swearing in public. And so, the Town Meeting voted to allow the police to fine people $20 for cursing in public. You might think the vote of 233 people who participated would have been about as close as 117 to 116 or that the measure would go down in flames. No such thing. The vote was 183 to 50. That’s 79 percent favoring a dubious move to get around the First Amendment.

It’s dangerous enough that the penalty for uttering a dirty word in public is strictly a police matter. It’s at an officer’s discretion, Police Chief Bruce Gates told The Patriot-Ledger.

Worse is the fact that there’s no official list of banned words. A dirty word is what a police officer on duty says it is.

Can you say “shit?” Probably not.

Can you say “asshole?” Maybe, maybe not.

And since this idiotic rule is up to the cop who hears it, can you say “cop?” Or “fuzz?” Can you call your boss a “son of a bitch?”

No one knows. But that’s OK in Middleborough where the people have accepted Gates’s explanation that the rule is not directed at what he called “ordinary swears,” whatever they are. Actually, he said, the rule is to prevent “profane [a word with religious overtones] language directed at some attractive female walking through town.” He didn’t say which member of the force will decide which females are attractive and thus deserving of protection or what official action he would take if he heard someone saying something profane to a female he finds unattractive.

What they’ve enacted in Middleborough sounds ridiculous. But it’s more than that. It’s dangerous. Oh, and I forgot to mention that children as young as 7 are eligible to be cited under Gates’s rule. He didn’t say what would happen if a kid and his mom and dad refuse to pay the fine.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

There are certain moments in our troubled relationship I wish I could forget, but things don’t work that way. Still, I want to write a little about him – mostly good stuff – so if these Zest of Orange posts last a hundred years, people living in the year 2112 will know that Al Page existed, was a part of this world, was a father (maybe not the best) of a son (maybe not the best) and a husband (maybe not the best).

He was born Abraham Pedratchick in the East End of London in 1904, the seventh and final child of a pious member of the local synagogue. Al had a beautiful singing voice and here the story quickly gets complicated. The father was deeply religious, but Al was pretty much an atheist. The father was adamant that the son become a cantor. At the age of 17, Al fled to America and to a sister already here. He changed his name to Al Page. He never saw his father again, but the nature of that troubled relationship was to shape part of him for the rest of his life.

Never could one of his sons take Al out for dinner. My dad had to pay his own way, and for everyone else if he could. Nor could anyone buy him a gift. When we tried, nothing was the right size, or the right color, or the right anything. It’s important for a kid to buy his dad a gift. But it made Al uncomfortable to accept. Even when his music system crashed, and he could no longer listen to his favorite Mozart and Brahms, and I offered to replace it, he would not hear of it. He would buy his own things. But he never bought a new stereo.

“What is with you?” I finally asked, and it turned out that his father had loaned him $50 for the voyage to New York and Dad didn’t repay it. He worked like a dog but never had enough to make even a partial payment, and this haunted him for the rest of his life. “No time did I have it,” he said quietly on the grass of the care facility where he was living with my mother after they lost everything to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. He died one year later.

When he arrived in New York in 1921, he took any work he could find. One of his earliest jobs was as an unskilled laborer painting the hulls of ships at dry dock on Staten Island. He used to take a banana and a bag of peanuts with him every day for lunch. Sometimes he couldn’t afford the banana.

Later he worked at a loan outfit and he said something complimentary about the hat that nifty girl was wearing. That was my mother, who’d recently ended a bad marriage.

They went out, had a good time. They got married. This was 1930, the Great Depression. The courtship may have been good. The marriage was not. They fought a lot, often about money. Throughout their years together, she said some really bad things to him. He responded, and said some pretty ugly things about her parents, my grandparents. Maybe he didn’t understand that you don’t insult your own kid’s grandpa. But how could you not understand that? He was not educated, but he certainly wasn’t stupid. Somehow they stayed together for 63 years. Maybe it wasn’t as terrible as I remember. Maybe each was getting something out of it, though once when I was about 8 my mother posed the devastating question: If Daddy and I broke up, who would you want to go with?

He and I had our moments. From adjoining beds – we both had flu – we watched the Dodgers lose that playoff series with the Giants in 1951. I was grief stricken and he rescued me with the magic words known by every Brooklyn fan: Wait until next year. He was gentle in offering advice about school and what I might choose to do with my life. And often he was harshly critical when he perceived my lousy grades as a rebuke to his advice.

Twice he offered some off-the-wall advice on sex. When I was about 12 he handed me a booklet and said “Read this.” Then he walked away. It was complicated and filled with bizarre illustrations and unpronounceable words that I’m sure Dr. Kinsey himself wouldn’t have understood. Years later when I was headed to Fort Dix for basic training, he told me to always be careful because some of the women around Army bases were there to get pregnant and snare a husband. Uh, that’s not why they were there.

In the Sixties he didn’t like the way I looked – the beard, especially – and told me so at every occasion. It boiled over one morning when I left to do some work at the library in New York. I walked out. Then I changed my mind and went back. You could hear the shouting in Canarsie. I moved out soon after that.

One more conversation would have been nice. There was so much to talk about.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

I got a letter from Orange County Executive Edward Diana a couple of days ago. Well, actually, it was addressed to “Postal Customer,” which was okay because I don’t expect the personal touch from politicians.

There were two parts to Diana’s cleverly constructed letter.

The first was a reminder that the county government center in Goshen remains closed due to damage caused by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. It went on to inform me of the addresses of the temporary headquarters of various government agencies.

I think Diana’s real purpose was to remind me that he has been crusading to build a new government center, but that nasty ol’ Orange County Legislature rejected it.

The fact is that the relocation of county services would inconvenience me only if I had to do business, say, with the district attorney at 40 Matthews St., apply for a pistol permit at 4 Glenmere Cove Rd., observe the Legislature at 15 Matthews St., and visit the Emergency Services Center at 22 Wells Farm Rd.

But I’m not a criminal, I don’t wish to pack a gun, I have no burning need to visit the Legislature, and I’m not having an emergency. The only agency at the government center I ever have to deal with is the Department of Motor Vehicles, and I can usually do it by mail, or by visiting a DMV office in Middletown, Port Jervis or Newburgh.

Diana’s letter was an obvious attempt to remind people that services right now are not consolidated and thus inconvenient. But what it reminded me of was a letter I sent to the editor of The Times Herald-Record noting that Diana seemed happy to spend $75 million to build a new county office building even though one estimate for rehabbing the existing structure is $67.2 million. Just an estimate but do the math: Fix the old place and Diana could save nearly $8 million.

Elsewhere, the rehabilitation of the library at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth – a building similar to the government center – cost $43 million. Assume for a moment that the Goshen job would cost the same, and you have a savings of $32 million. But Diana declined to speak with the UMass architects because they had already discussed the undertaking with people in Orange County.

Now, while Diana seems free with tax dollars when it comes to a county office complex, he’s the picture of frugality when it comes to the future of the county’s Valley View Nursing Home. He asserts that 19 percent of all property tax revenues now go to support Valley View and that he projects this will climb to 30 percent by 2015.

I don’t know how good his numbers are, but if his math is as questionable as his prose, I have a problem with his Valley View arguments.

Read this one meaty paragraph from Diana’s letter: “More than 80 percent of the nursing home patients in Orange County already reside in private or not-for-profit facilities – institutions that are able to provide quality care for less because they are not required to operate under the stringent work, overtime rules and benefit packages imposed on public facilities. On average, the wage and benefit packages imposed on public facilities are 42 percent higher than privately owned nursing homes.”

That is crafty writing, but:

–The 80 percent figure is irrelevant. It doesn’t alter the fact that a large number of people in Orange County may not be able to afford a private facility.

–Diana’s contention that private facilities can “provide quality care for less” omits proof and conveniently fails to discuss whether those nursing home fees are lower as well.

–His description of wage and benefit packages having been “imposed” on public facilities is crass, especially when he uses the thunderous verb “imposed” in two consecutive sentences. An “imposed” benefit sounds like it was obtained by brute force. But benefits are obtained through negotiation. The workers were seated at one side of a bargaining table.

–Facing them were county officials negotiating in good faith and without guns pointed at their heads. In other words, the benefits enjoyed by Valley View workers were not grabbed but agreed to by both sides.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Marriage must not be a political football but a fundamental right. Some states understand this and allow women to marry women if they choose and men to marry men if they choose. In fact, we’re at a moment now at which half the half the people interviewed in polling say they have no problem with gay marriage.

Clearly, conditions for gay people will improve. Future generations will look back to our time and be stunned when they read about the people of North Carolina amending their state constitution – in 2012! – to ban gay marriages and civil unions. Twenty-nine other states have similar restrictions.

That time of unfettered equality will come, but not soon enough. For now, some still look at gay men and women with deep contempt. We may be headed in the right direction, but we can’t seem to move fast enough.

This story is about Tyler Clementi, a young gay student at Rutgers University in Central Jersey who entertained another gay man in his dormitory room, unaware that this encounter was being filmed by Dharun Ravi, his roommate. Ravi showed the tape as a piece of amusement – like a gay joke, like a pinky across the tongue and then the eyebrow, like an exaggerated lisp – to his friends. Clementi heard about this and, one day later, jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

Ravi was charged with 15 counts including bias intimidation (a fairly new statute in New Jersey), hindering an investigation, invasion of privacy. Never was he charged with actually participating in Clementi’s death, and a jury convicted him on all counts. He faced 5 to 10 years in prison.

And then, the ancient loathing (or indifference at best) of gay people came through. It was not enough that Tyler Clementi is no longer among us, not enough that Ravi’s camera was the instrument to get him to end his own life, not enough that Clementi’s parents are deprived of him. In fact, Ravi entered the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman for sentencing this week, and was not in a talkative mood at all.

He did not apologize for what he had done. He did not explain why he had done it. He did not offer to address Tyler Clementi’s parents. He even declined to address the judge. He did not ask to be forgiven. He did not say he would never do it again. He did not say if he finally understands the inhuman stupidity of what he had done. He did not explain what he felt for Tyler Clementi. He did not say that he has learned anything as a result of Clementi’s death. He just stood there, not uttering a word.

The judge said: “I’m not condoning what this gentleman did.” Gentleman?

“I’m not minimizing it. I’m not defending it.” And then he went on to minimize it. He handed down a sentence of 30 days in the county jail, and you could not have been blamed if you wondered if a person named Tyler Clementi ever actually existed.

Thirty days works out to about 48 hours for every count on which Ravi was convicted. Thirty days in this case is not a sentence but a minor inconvenience.

We will reach the day when men like Dharun Ravi are called to account for their violations of the rules of decency and the rights of others. It will be a time when men like Tyler Clementi are as valued and respected as any other deserving man, say for example, a Jersey judge.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

It’s been 10 years since the death of Bill Lowry, one of the great people of journalism. To appreciate how great, let us consider for a moment his complete opposite.

That would be Rebekah Brooks, until recently the CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s herd of British newspapers. Now, The New York Times reports, she’s about to be charged with withholding information in the hacking scandal.

Recently The Times noted Brooks’ testimony before a Parliamentary investigating committee and her perhaps unintended revelation that her professional life was everything it should not have been. She told her questioners that she “kept in touch by telephone, text message and email” with her favorite British politicians, including David Cameron, the current prime minister. Hmmm.

The Times continued, “They met at lunches and dinners. They socialized at cocktail parties, birthday parties, summer outings, Christmas celebrations and, in one heady instance, on a yacht in Greece.”

So there you are, a reader in Britain trying to get unbiased information when the person who runs your morning paper is having a high old time with the people she’s supposed to cover.

Enough of Brooks.

In the mid-seventies, Bill Lowry was the Sullivan County bureau chief of The Times Herald-Record. He made sure that if you were going to work for him, you understood certain rules that only a blithering idiot could misinterpret. No, um, if invited, you would not sail the Greek isles with the people you cover.

In fact, you accept nothing but words from the people you write about, and you always check the accuracy of those words. He insisted we stick to a bit of old Chicago wisdom: You trust your mother but cut the cards.

If Bill was interviewing a source at the local luncheonette, he would insist on picking up the check. No one in his right mind ever would have believed that Lowry could be bought with a cup of coffee and a cheese Danish but he worried how it would look if a reader walked in at the moment that a mayor or a political party leader grabbed the check. At such moments, if struggle was futile, Bill would leave a $5 tip.

We worked in an office a block from Kaplan’s Delicatessen in Monticello, a place that made great mushroom and barley soup. It was snowing and bitterly cold one night when Anne Kaplan – she owned the deli and was mayor of Monticello – was closing up. She brought two quarts of mushroom and barley to the bureau. “To keep you guys warm,” she said and walked out.

Lowry ran after her to return the soup. Then he went to a nearby diner and bought coffee and sandwiches for his reporters. Annie thought Bill was crazy, and of course he was no such thing. We loved Lowry.

He and his brand of journalism infuriated a lot of people who were used to being palsy-walsy with reporters and editors. An example: Bill and I were covering local court one night. A woman faced charges of prostitution and theft of a john’s credit cards. The john didn’t want the case to be in the newspaper and the judge ordered the courtroom cleared – of the press and no one else. Understanding a perversion of judicial power when he saw it, Bill told me to leave but he refused to budge.

As a cop escorted him out, Bill yelled to me, “Write this story!”

When he wrote about unusual patterns in racetrack payouts he was threatened with physical harm. On any number of stories he spotted headlights in his rearview mirror that may or may not have been back there a little too long.

His heart was as enormous as his conscience. One example: He allowed some local characters to pass the time in the bureau including an old man we knew only as Mr. Barash. Mr. Barash appeared to be about 80 and spoke with a thick Yiddish accent. He would sit and stare out the big front window. “Nice day,” he would say more than once no matter what the weather. When it was time for lunch, Bill would get an extra sandwich for his guest.

Bill chased important stories such as the fact that some of the most god awful slums in Newburgh were owned by some of the most respectable politicians. He wrote compelling stories about the trials and sentencing of the serial killer Son of Sam. He wrote about the treatment of poor people by the affluent, and about the conditions under which poor people had to live.

He sought to relieve misery by exposing it for as long as it took to change, possibly the result of his education by the Redemptorist Brothers at an upstate monastery where he came this close to becoming a priest. Instead he joined the Army. Later he switched to journalism, and practiced the brothers’ fourth vow after poverty, chastity and obedience – perseverance.

Later in his career, Bill went to The Record in Hackensack where some assignment editors liked his writing and sent him to write about the 1986 World Series. The Red Sox beat the Mets 1-0 in the first game, and Bill wrote: “So here it is, the opening of the World Series. Some 55,000 fans jam Shea Stadium to overflowing. Millions more watch on television across the country. Can Christmas be far behind? It’s The Game. And it’s a bore.”

He believed that animals – but especially dogs – had more integrity than people. He brought countless strays home to his place in Walker Valley. He once told a colleague that the only really important story he ever wrote was one that prevented a horse from being put down.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Mischief is afoot at the New York Public Library, where the management wishes to redesign the grand old building at 42nd and Fifth and turn much of it into a huge circulating library – “the crown jewel of the branch system” – the breathless president of the library says.

In doing so, the Daily News reports, roughly 3 million books and papers would have to be relocated out of the stacks in midtown and housed in Princeton, N.J. This means that if you’re doing research in the main reading room at 42nd Street – known as “Room 315” to everyone who’s ever worked at the library – it’s possible you’d have to wait 24 hours for the material you need to be delivered to New York.

Management is focused on that crown jewel business, plus the availability of $150 million from the city to spiff up a world class research facility that needs no spiffing. Serious users of the library see the project as a diminishing of its importance.

Some library stories.

–Let us return to the early Sixties when I worked in NYPL’s Current Periodicals Division – known simply as “Room 108” – in the southeast corner of the first floor. Room 108 housed the most popular magazines of the time such as Life, Time, Consumer Reports, Ramparts, the Saturday Evening Post plus any number of social sciences and medical journals. It also was the repository for some famously obscure, less-in-demand publications. I don’t recall specific titles in this last group but every so often a patron would fill out a call slip asking for something like the Journal of Guernsey Cattle Management in Southwestern Manitoba.

–Life and the other favorite titles were available at the call desk unless Patron No. 1 was already reading an issue that Patron No. 2 requested. We drew some interesting characters in those days such as a slightly crazed Patron No. 2 who’d sit down and stare Patron No. 1 into hurrying up.

–Many of the less popular titles were shelved in the stacks, which were closed to the public. One of my jobs was to find requested publications in the stacks and bring them to the reader in Room 108. It was a pleasant break from the routine of refiling magazines that had been returned to the call desk. Once, it became a little more complicated.

I was wandering through the miles of stacks looking for the American Journal of 18th Century Northwestern Anthropological Studies (which did not, and does not, exist) when I heard a noise that sounded like a suppressed groan. As I rounded a corner, I encountered a most remarkable sight. It was a man, on top of a woman, both on a large wooden desk. Flesh was visible. I believe the expression is in flagrante delicto. I stopped on a dime, turned, and returned to Room 108 to inform the patron that the number he requested had been sent to the bindery and was not available – the standard explanation for periodicals we couldn’t find.

Others have related such stories. I saw it.

–The job didn’t pay much, but Room 108 was a great place to work. My supervisor was a tall, gray-haired Russian émigré named Mrs. Patterson, whose first name for me is long lost. We liked Mrs. Paterson because whenever there was a complaint about a clerk – “He didn’t say, ‘Good morning,’” or “She didn’t get my magazine quickly enough” or “Whaddaya mean someone else is reading it; there’s no one else here” – she almost always took our side.

–The boring part of the job was reshelving all the magazines that had been returned. Every so often, I’d see something interesting and start reading. This annoyed Mrs. Patterson.

–The summer heat in Room 108 could be brutal and there was no air conditioning in Current Periodicals. We had a device that was a combination thermometer and barometer. When the combined readings reached a certain number – I think it was 100 – the library closed Room 108. On especially bad days, one of the clerks would stand by the weather instruments and surreptitiously rub the little bowl of mercury to make it go a little higher a little faster. I think this scam worked once.

–The marble lions guarding the façade on Fifth Avenue were placed in 1911 and were never named Leo or Lena. In fact for their first 20 years they had no names at all. But during the mid-Thirties, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia named them Patience and Fortitude, two traits he believed New Yorkers would need to get through the Great Depression. The other story about Patience to the south and Fortitude to the north is that they are reputed to growl every time a virgin walks past.

–The reason you sometimes had to wait more than a half hour for the books you requested to be sent up from the stacks – when there was no one ahead of you on the call line – was occasionally because the clerk took an interest in your material, or because he was napping.

–Short take: The library’s whimsical telephone number in those days before all-numerical numbers also provided its location – OXford 5-4200.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

Sen. John McCain

By Jeffrey Page

For the first anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama reminded the nation of the 10-year hunt for him. In doing so Obama noted – not very subtly at all – that he was the commander-in-chief who approved the operation.

Senator John McCain quickly went on the attack, using extremely strong language even for American politicians of the 21st Century, when the rules of decency and civility have been tossed. This is a time when the elected and their electors find it easier to slander their opponents than to discuss ideas with them.

Obama, McCain said, converted “the one decision he got right into a pathetic political act of self-congratulation.” And he added: “Shame on President Obama for diminishing the memory of Sept. 11 and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad.” Do you suspect that McCain will never get over the fact that he lost the ’08 election.

The incomparable Mitt Romney chimed in, essentially saying that the decision to deploy the Navy Seals to get bin Laden was no big deal. After all, Romney said, “even Jimmy Carter” would have done the same. Was he implying that Carter wasn’t much of a military leader or that he didn’t have the guts? How easy it is for a candidate who’s waffled on every issue to to criticize Carter who – remember? – ordered the failed hostage rescue operation in Iran.

I don’t have much patience for politicians who condemn their opponents for being, uh, politicians. But McCain’s sanctimony tests the limits of my tolerance. (I’m holding off on Romney for now; he might change his mind any minute.)

Is McCain’s real message that had he been elected, he would have let the bin Laden anniversary pass without comment? And does he expect anyone to believe that?

Some questions and observations:

— Can you imagine McCain’s venomous outcry if Obama had said nothing at all about the anniversary? Insult to the Seals, he would have blustered.

— McCain may condemn Obama for statements regarding the bin Laden operation, but this works both ways. So let’s consider some of McCain’s remarkable silences.

— Shame on John McCain for saying not a word in 1985 when President Reagan decided to place flowers at a German cemetery whose graves include those of 49 Waffen SS soldiers.

— Shame on John McCain for remaining silent when President George W. Bush performed a pathetic political act of self-congratulation by hot-dogging a Navy fighter onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. There he announced that major combat operations in Iraq were over; he was off by several years and many casualties.

— Shame on John McCain for being mute about Bush’s diminishing the memory of American troops killed and wounded in Iraq with the syntactically challenged observation: “There are some who feel like – that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on. We’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” That may have been the only time in our history when a commander invited an attack on his own troops.

— Shame on John McCain for inflicting Sarah Palin on the nation and for his silence when she tried to hoodwink us into believing she had significant foreign policy experience because Alaska is just 50 miles across the Bering Strait from Russia.

— And shame on John McCain for saying he would support the repeal of don’t ask-don’t tell only when the military informed him that such a change would not harm morale, unit cohesion or performance. That assurance soon came from no less than Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But McCain, facing a conservative primary challenge, went silent.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Word that a developer is turning the old movie house at the Monticello Mall into a modern five-plex recalls the curious, and sometimes outrageous history of movie theaters in Sullivan County.

On the gentle side of things in the Seventies were the Rivoli in South Fallsburg and the Strand in Loch Sheldrake, both owned at the time by Sam Rosenshein, who also served as the Fallsburg supervisor. The theaters had long passed their glory days and were brooding hulks. Still, Rosenshein kept them open. But they were only crowded on Saturday nights in summer, when they were patronized mostly by tourists. Rainy days brought kids from camps.

When you went to the Rivoli in those days, your shoes stuck to the floor, you sensed that the seats were rarely if ever cleaned, you knew that the popcorn didn’t exactly taste like it was just made, and that if you breathed deeply you were inhaling air that smelled like something swampy.

But what was it? Ahh, it was a dampish combination of muskiness and mildew. That odor and the fact that no theater in the county ever showed the Marx Brothers was why I would take my daughter to the movies in Middletown or Chester, or down to the city if we needed a touch of Groucho to brighten our day.

Sam Rosenshein, an older gent and a genuinely nice guy, kept the Rivoli and Strand open year round. This might have had to do with the fact that he also owned Poppy’s, a popular-priced restaurant just a few blocks from the theater. Rosenshein would lock the Rivoli and then join his customers for coffee and Danish at the restaurant.

Though the Rivoli was quite unpleasant, I still recall it was there that I saw “The Late Show” with Lily Tomlin and Art Carney, having missed it in its initial run of the county. I have no idea why I remember this.

It was at the Rialto Theater in Monticello that the owner, Rick Dames – he would later gain a rep for showing porn – played “Travels With My Aunt” for an audience of seven on a blustery cold night. Dames said the old comedies would never draw an audience. He was right. Once he played a W.C. Fields double bill and said the crowd amounted to 12, which included a friend of mine and me.

Later at the Rialto, he showed pornographic features and then offered the movie “Snuff.” Snuff films, designed for the sickest among moviegoers, purportedly showed the actual murder of women. Some  advertising copy for “Snuff” ran: “The film that could only be made in South America where life is cheap.” This resulted in some local feminists bringing obscenity charges against Dames, who eventually left the county.

The county used to be rich in movie houses – the Roscoe, the Ritz in White Lake, four in Monticello, two in Liberty, the Peace Palace in Woodbourne, among others – but as summer tourism declined so did its theaters. The only active movie house in the county nowadays is in Callicoon.

The prospect of a new theater in Monticello is a treat for anyone who loves film.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Dear Newt, Forgive me, but the temptation to kick you when you’re down is just too great to resist.

We all knew a kid years ago who said that if he wasn’t picked for a stickball team he would take his stick and go home. In you, we have someone who has no stick – just a big mouth and a smart-ass attitude – and still insists on having things his way or else …

Or else you’ll go to the Republican convention with your pathetic showing in the primaries and demand to be heard. Once you’re up at the rostrum you’ll be sure to let America know – yet again – how smart you are, how perceptive, how talented, and how much in demand you are.

Demand? You’ve won a grand total of two primaries in states with glorious traditions, Georgia and South Carolina. And now, after Rick Santorum’s withdrawal, you insist you’re the man to put Mitt Romney on a path that’s conservative enough to meet your failed expectations. “I am committed to staying in this race all the way to Tampa so that the conservative movement has a real choice,” you said after Santorum quit.

In truth, the conservative movement has had a choice for months, but the choice wasn’t you. Everybody except you understands this. Your inability to see this following defeat after defeat is astonishing. In the 15 primaries in which you and Ron Paul both appeared on the ballot, he beat you 15 times.

Newt, you’re 68 years old, a time to face facts. Nobody likes you.

What is it about you that makes people cringe? Could it be your insufferable hypocrisy? Or maybe it’s your insulting quote on same-sex marriage. You said, “The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.”

“Pagan behaviors?” Really, Newt, you ought not pass judgment on other people’s wishes to marry when you have defined marriage in your own life as courtship, marriage, affair, divorce, courtship, marriage, affair, divorce, courtship, marriage and counting.

Is it that self-delusion that turns people off? Recently you said you were the only candidate who could prevent Romney from getting the nomination. Newt, you couldn’t stop Minnie Mouse.

And now, your sugar daddy, Sheldon Adelson, says it seems like enough is enough. After pouring $15 million into your campaign, Adelson said it’s about the end of the line for you.

With a little luck, America is through with you, too.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

To listen to some presidential candidates and their radio lapdogs tell it, the country is going straight to hell because taxes are too high, services are too available, morals are too loose, gasoline is too expensive and, oh yeah, the teachers have teamed up with Barack Obama to bring America down.

Teachers have it easy, the absurdist right says. Their pensions are killing us (suggesting they got those pensions not through collective bargaining but by out-and-out theft). And the ultimate slander: Teachers are lazy. I can tell you this is false based on my one-hour as head of a class of young primary grade kids.

A friend who is a veteran teacher had asked a scientist she knows to talk with her early-grade students about asteroids, comets, planets and the solar system. She told the kids to write essays about their meeting with him.

Now she wondered if I would spend an hour with a small group of children, look at their writing and make some suggestions. I had done this for her once before when I covered transportation for The Record in Hackensack, but that time she was in the room and in charge.

This time, she’d be outside at the school garden with some of her other pupils. I would be in charge in her classroom.

What could be less complicated than tending to six kids? So, on to asteroids. I asked them to write about the most important thing they’d learned from their scientist.

I wasn’t prepared for a bunch of young people all speaking at once. But as soon as one said something it was as though someone threw a switch and they all chimed in – on various topics of interest. They weren’t listening to one another. The noise grew.

“One at a time,” I said, but they never heard me. They just kept going. Don’t get me wrong. They were sweet kids, with a lot on their minds. Except for the one kid over on my left who just stared out the window. He put his hand to his face. I wondered if he was all right.

“Problem?” I asked.

“Just thinking,” he said casually and I noticed that he wrote little but seemed to have the correct answers most of the time when I asked a question. Now my question was, “What is an asteroid?” I wasn’t testing them. I just hadn’t considered the universe lately.

One of the girls wrote about their guest from science and I suggested she include his name. “Good idea,” she said and was about to say something else when one of her friends informed me, “She’ll write his name now.”

A boy said he wanted to write about an asteroid belt. “An asteroid belt?” I asked. He assured me I would understand just as soon as he wrote his paper. He spoke loudly and dominated our study area. I found myself paying more attention to him than to the others. He found his own banter most amusing. No doubt, a bright kid.

Just as I was wondering how a professional teacher would restore some order and calm, one of the girls leapt out of her seat, ran across the room and returned with a bell. “Ring this,” she said. “It will be quiet.”

I rang it. It had a nice shrilly sound. Instantly the room was quiet. The calm lasted for a minute or two, and then the kid interested in asteroid belts said something that cracked everyone up. And again the question rose in my consciousness: What do I do now?

I didn’t have to think for long. The hour had flown by even if each minute seemed to drag along at tortoise speed due to my ignorance about what to do next.

They flew outside to join their teacher at the garden. I wish I knew where she gets her energy — I was exhausted. Before they yammer about the easy life of teachers, I think critics of teachers ought to spend a day maintaining order while teaching kids how to read.

They were a great bunch of uninhibited kids even if I never got that promised explanation of an asteroid belt. I was tempted to ask my friend how she does it hour after hour, day after day, but remembered the response from a professional magician when I asked “How’d you do that?” after one of his tricks.

“Very well,” he said, and my friend would be justified in saying the same thing.

Any teachers – or their informed critics – reading this? How easy is teaching?

jeffrey@zestoforange.com