The world in 500 words or less …

By Bob Gaydos     

Thomas Webster at the Capitol.

   History came to my area of slightly upstate New York twice in one week recently, but not in a celebratory way. The history was announced in newspaper headlines. Both involved “firsts.”  Some might have regarded these historic moments as simply the result of unfortunate circumstances, but they made me think of the choices we make.

        The headlines linked two of the biggest stories in the world — the Jan. 6 Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the war in Ukraine — with two men with ties to Orange County, N.Y. 

•  The Insurrection: Thomas Webster, 54, a retired New York City police officer, was the first person arrested in connection with the riot to defend himself at trial by claiming Capitol police officers had used excessive force against the violent mob seeking to overturn the 2020 election results and maybe hang Mike Pence. Interesting defense choice right there.  After viewing videos of Webster profanely berating the officer, beating him with a metal flag pole, tackling him and grabbing the officer’s gas mask, the jury took only two hours to find the former Marine guilty of assault and other charges. Married and with a family, Webster started a landscaping business in Orange County after serving 20 years as a New York City cop. He said he chose to go to Washington, D.C., alone and carrying that flag pole, on that fateful day to hear Donald Trump speak about how the election had been stolen. Webster said he became agitated as the pro-Trump crowd approached the Capitol. Once there, he joined the melee and, like many others, was photographed doing so. Now, the man who once served on the protective detail of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, faces a possible 20 years in prison. 
• Ukraine: Willy J. Cancel, a native of Orange County, graduate of Newburgh Free Academy, Walden volunteer firefighter, was reportedly the first American to die in combat against Russian forces in Ukraine. A former Marine who, reports said, had not received an honorable discharge and had never been deployed, Cancel was a corrections officer in Tennessee. But his family said he was also employed by a military contracting company. Soldier-for-hire might be considered an unusual second-job choice for a 22-year-old man with a wife and seven-month-old child. That company sent him to Ukraine, where he died. Cancel was praised back home for his service and bravery. A Go Fund Me site has been created on Facebook for his widow and infant child.

     I don’t know anything else about either of these men and am in no position to understand, much less judge, the choices they made. Their stories just reminded me that, what may seem to some like reasonable, even honorable, choices can have unintended, dire consequences. Even historic ones.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

 The world in 500 words or less 

By Bob Gaydos

Maybe it’s just me, but…

Alec Baldwin on the set of “Rust.” He says he didn’t know the gun was loaded.

— New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau fined producers of the film, “Rust,” $139,793 — the maximum amount — and issued a stinging criticism of safety failures in connection with the fatal shooting of a cinematographer and wounding of the director during the filming of the movie. Actor/producer Alec Baldwin, who fired the fatal shot, says he was told the gun was safe. He is probably not through with the courts and may rue the day he lost his gig playing Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.

— South Carolina has given the phrase “pick your poison“ a whole new meaning. Unable to procure the drugs to administer lethal injections to Death Row inmates, the state now offers electrocution or firing squad as the available means of meeting your maker. A recent candidate appealed both the sentence and method as cruel and unusual and a court has postponed his date with destiny. There have been only three firing squad executions in the U.S. since 1950, all in the state of Utah. Why is that not surprising?

— The reason South Carolina had to stop using lethal injections for executions is that pharmaceutical companies apparently forbid the sale of their products for that purpose. Wish they showed the same concern for some of their drugs that are killing people who are not on Death Row.

— Prescribing fatal overdoses of fentanyl for 25 seriously ill patients would seem to be taking the doctor-playing-god thing a bit too far. Then again, a jury in Columbus, Ohio, had no problem with it, acquitting Dr. William Husel of murder charges in a trial involving 14 of those deaths. Putting people out of their misery did cost Husel his job when the hospital fired him and 26 other employees who went along with his unorthodox treatment protocol. Why it took several years and so many fentanyl-induced deaths has yet to be answered.

— The judges who selected this year’s winners of the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award got it perfect. Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, was an obvious choice and eminently deserving, but the perfect selection was Rep. Liz Cheney, the only Republican in Congress with the guts, conviction and public name recognition to meaningfully stand up to the Trumpers spreading the stolen election lie and trying to treat the Jan. 6 insurrection as something other than a failed coup attempt. Forcefully defying the powers who can impact your political future takes moral courage, especially for Republicans today. I think JFK would applaud the choice. And, while I don’t share a lot of political views with Cheney or her father, Dick, I believe the former vice president should be proud of his daughter and her stout defense of the truth. Ironic, huh?

rjgaydos@gmail.com

The world in 500 words or less

By Bob Gaydos

Maybe it’s just me, but:

Alyssa Nakken

— Major League Baseball had a red letter day recently when Alyssa Nakken became the first female coach on the field, for the San Francisco Giants. Well-played.

— On the other hand, there was yet another sign that the people running the game have lost all sense of what once made baseball America’s pastime. With Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw six outs away from pitching a perfect game and having thrown all of 80 pitches, LA manager Dave Roberts pulled Kershaw from the game. Kershaw later said he was OK with the move. I doubt it. Imagine yanking Gibson or Ryan or Spahn or Seaver or Koufax or even David Cone, for Pete’s sake, in that situation. Baseball used to be a game of historic efforts and legends. Kershaw had a shot at history and deserved the opportunity. Moneyball isn’t necessarily baseball.

— Part two of what used to be baseball. Say that Kershaw stayed in the game and pitched two more perfect innings, but the score was tied at zero after nine innings. Kershaw gets to keep trying to be perfect and goes out to pitch the 10th inning. There’s a runner on second base. Kershaw didn’t put him there; baseball did. Is it still a perfect game? What if someone actually sacrifice bunts the runner over to third and the next better hits a long sacrifice fly that allows the runner to score? Do you yank Kershaw now because he’s actually losing a perfect game? Or maybe he’s on the road and just lost a perfect game. I guess with pitch counts we’ll never know.

— Confirmation of the eminently qualified Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court was a red-letter day for America. Less celebratory is the fact that 47 Republican senators had to tie themselves in knots trying to come up with reasons to vote against her that did not include “she’s a woman and she’s black.” Another shameful moment for the former party of Lincoln.

— The only nasty thing Attorney General Merrick Garland has caught recently is COVID-19.

— In another effort to bolster his base by lowering the average IQ score of Republicans in the House of Representatives, Donald Trump endorsed Sarah Palin for Alaska’s lone congressional seat. Well, for what it’s worth, she can spy on Russia from where she lives.

— The Taliban forbidding females to get schooled beyond grade six didn’t surprise me. But banning the growing of poppies, Afghanistan’s traditional crop? What the heck do they do for cash?

— Didn’t see this coming: There’s apparently a fertilizer shortage created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. should be OK as long as Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz still get to give speeches in the Senate.

— I just don’t trust Elon Musk on buying Twitter. Buy Texas. It needs fixing a lot more.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

(more…)

All the news in 500 words or less

By Bob Gaydos

Bob Gaydos

  Maybe it’s just me, but:

— Jada Pinkett Smith could’ve handled Chris Rock’s lame joke very well on her own. And besides, taking cues on appropriate behavior from movie stars is probably not sound social policy.

— Clarence Thomas should be permanently recused from the Supreme Court and his wife should be investigated for promoting an insurrection.

— Warming up to 41° from 23° is not my idea of spring.

— So is there a runner on second base to start the 10th inning this year, and, if so, how did he get there?

— Saying Merrick Garland has been an absolute disappointment as Attorney General pretty much says it all.

— Does anybody even go to the movies movies — where you have to pay for the seats and can’t bring your own popcorn — anymore?

— Alcohol-related deaths increased by 25% in the United States in the first year of Covid. Does that surprise you, trouble you or disturb your serenity in any way?

— Don’t think all those Republican senators who broke bread with Putin a few years back will be visiting Moscow this Fourth of July.

— Having 20/20 vision (thanks to cataract surgery) after nearly 8 decades of being almost legally blind, is a blessing I appreciate every day.

— If Congress makes daylight savings time standard (still doubtful), shouldn’t we then call it standard time? After all, we’re not really “saving“ time, we’re just moving it around to suit our convenience.

— My heart goes out to the brave, proud people of Ukraine. They will pay a tremendous price, but Putin has lost his war.

— It’s difficult to see Andrew Cuomo being elected governor again in New York, even with marijuana being legal.

     That’s it. Remember local newspapers? Yeah, they were cool, huh?

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Addiction and Recovery

By Bob Gaydos

The absence of in person meetings lead to relapses, a study suggests.

   “Don’t drink … and go to meetings.”

    “Meeting-makers make it.”

    Those two bits of advice — “suggestions” as they are officially considered — have been welcoming newcomers to Alcoholics Anonymous ever since the group was born 86 years ago. 

     The message is simple: Alcoholics, especially those new to recovery, are more likely to get and stay sober if they keep regular contact with other alcoholics in recovery. The “all in the same boat” philosophy. “We” get sober, especially if some of us know how to do it and can guide others. Fellowship. Coffee. Hugs and handshakes. Easy does it.

      Then came COVID. No more hugs. No more handshakes. No more coffee. No face-to-face support and fellowship. And for some, no recovery. Or worse.

       According to a recent report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, alcohol-related deaths increased by 25 percent in the United States in the first year of Covid. Researchers from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) looked at mortality data to compare the number of alcohol-related deaths among persons aged 16 and older in 2019 and 2020. Deaths were considered to be alcohol-related if alcohol was listed as an underlying or contributing cause.

          The report found that the number of alcohol-related deaths, including from liver disease and accidents, jumped to 99,017 in 2020, up from 78,927 the previous year. That 25 percent increase is compared to an average increase of 3.6 percent annually for the previous 20 years. Perhaps not surprisingly, in response to the pandemic, many Americans drank more. They binged more. And more of them died because of it.

           The researchers cited the stress of living with all the changes and restrictions of Covid, including isolation, as a major factor in the increase in drinking and deaths. Of course, isolation and feeling stressed are major reasons many alcoholics drink. Recovery is largely about dealing with stress and other people without drinking.

         In addition to the Covid-related stress in general, it became more difficult to seek help at rehabs. Hospitals with recovery programs were swamped with Covid patients. The researchers say many people got discouraged and just put off looking for help.

            And for those meeting-makers, there were no more meetings. At least not in person. The researchers also said they assumed many people in recovery relapsed because they couldn’t access any in-person support, including from 12-step groups like AA.

           To be sure, Zoom meetings proliferated online and many AA members found themselves staring at their smart phones or iPads, communicating with alcoholics across the nation and, indeed, across the world. The messages were the same, just not in person. Make your own coffee. Hug your cat. It was new and, for many, a welcome lifeline.

         But for many others, this wasn’t enough. Having been resourceful about managing to get a drink, a lot of alcoholics in recovery did manage to figure out how to have meetings in person, safely.

         In New York’s Mid-Hudson region, some began meeting in their cars in parking lots. Once the weather warmed up, groups with venues that offered private space began meeting outside. Bring your own chairs and coffee. Meetings sprang up in parks throughout Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties. If there was a park pavilion with a large crowd of people sitting quietly and sipping coffee, there was a good chance it was an AA meeting. The restrictions or requirements changed with Covid. Masks, sanitizer, and social distancing were common place.  It wasn’t the same, most agreed, but it was far better than not meeting at all.

      COVID is not yet gone. It seems to keep reinventing itself. Local AA groups continue to adapt as well, most now meeting indoors, with or without masking and distancing rules. For many, the coffee pots are back. Zoom meetings continue.

      But the importance of in-person contact is not lost on many members.

       “The meetings are where I get my medicine,” says F.G., a longtime member from Orange County. “I need to see the faces,” he says.

        More personally, G.E., an Ulster County resident, says he was within months of 25 years of sobriety when he stopped going to meetings and eventually relapsed. Then Covid arrived. Back a couple of months now, he says, “I must treasure my sobriety. I have to respect it. I thought I could do it without the personal contact. I couldn’t. Now, I really enjoy the fellowship.”

       At least one study suggests there’s a compelling reason to continue to do so.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

    The world is in the third year of a deadly pandemic, Russia has started a brutal war in Europe, the United States is still reeling from an attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of white nationalists trying to overturn a presidential election, one of the country’s two major political parties has become a.cult led by a con man with fascist DNA … and there’s no baseball.

     Take it easy. I’m not putting the Major League Baseball lockout in the same category as the grab bag of historic events dominating our lives today (and I’ll add global warming). That’s actually the point.

     When the world goes, well, to hell, a person needs somewhere safe to go for a break. Sports in general and, in the bleak of February especially, baseball has filled that need for me.

     February typically means the Super Bowl ends the football season and pitchers and catchers report to spring training to start the new baseball season. But there was nothing typical with this February. With the contract between players and owners expired and no new agreement ready to be signed, team owners locked the doors to training facilities in Florida and Arizona. No contract, no getting into shape at our digs. Dumb.

       Both sides then toughened their negotiating stances in the contest between billionaires and millionaires on how to share the wealth from TV deals and over-priced tickets. And Rob Manfred, MLB commissioner, started talking about delaying the start of the season or shortening it. Dumber.

     Since my mid-teens, I have followed the practice of the late Chief Justice Earl Warren by turning to the sports pages to start my day. Time enough for the rest of the world. Sports for the most part is safe conflict. No one really gets hurt, except the gamblers.

     But lockouts and shortened seasons are not the headlines baseball fans were looking for. Not safe.

      Nor smart, from a business sense. Think about it. With all the grim news in the world and having already surrendered the national pastime crown to football by focusing on how fast a baseball can get to home plate and how much faster it can leave the park, baseball decision-makers blew a golden opportunity to grab some attention and provide some stress relief with positive, non-confrontational news. New contract! Who’s the talk of training camp? A comeback story? No more starting extra innings with a runner on second base?

       Instead, we got Derek Jeter quitting as boss of the Marlins because they apparently don’t want to win as much as he does, bigger bases to improve the success rate of stolen base attempts, a lockout and Opening Day pushed back two weeks. 

       Oh yeah, and no more shifts because major league hitters apparently can no longer hit it where they ain’t.

      You blew it, baseball. Fans were looking for a hit-and-run. Instead, they got an intentional walk. You picked a really bad time to play moneyball.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com. 

  I’m not Ukrainian. At least, I don’t think I am. That slight doubt exists because I spent my formative years (I hesitate to say I grew up) in Bayonne, much of which was like someone scooped up boatloads of people from Eastern Europe and replanted them in Northern New Jersey.

    Which, of course, is what happened.

    Our next-door neighbors were Ukrainian. A family a few houses down was Ukrainian, as well as one across the street.

     We were (are) Slovak. Or Czech. Or Russian. Or Polish. Or, most likely, some combination of the above or other Slavic nation. Amidst this polyglot of Eastern Europe a short bus ride from New York City, everyone seemed to speak the same language. It didn’t seem to matter what the nationality of the person was, my grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles all seemed to be able to converse with them.

        A stroll down Broadway with my grandmother on a chilly (“zimno” in Polish) fall day would produce a lot of smiling head nods and “dobre, dobre.” Good, good.

        It was all Russian to me.

        So was the mass I served as an altar boy at St. John’s Greek Catholic Church, which my father’s family attended, and at Saints Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Church, which the other half of my family ( and I) attended. In a city of churches, Eastern Europe was well represented. Including Ukrainians.

         This nostalgic trip down memory lane is prompted, of course, by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the outpouring of support and admiration for the courageous Ukrainian people from other peoples around the world. No matter the language, everyone seems to understand Ukrainian all of a sudden. And no one, except apparently Belarus and North Korea, is speaking the same language as the leaders of Russia.

         The sad reality of this misbegotten display of pride, power and paranoia by Russian President Vladimir Putin is that, while Ukrainians will obviously endure tremendous loss and suffering as a result of this invasion, ordinary Russians, who also wanted no part of this war, will suffer as well. Russian soldiers will die as well as Ukrainians. The worldwide outpouring of support for Ukraine has isolated Russia, again, from much of the rest of the world. Even those who speak the same language, want no part of Putin’s war.

         It’s been some time since I visited Bayonne and I understand if has changed quite a bit. But the churches are still there and I’d like to think that some of the children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren, of the neighbors who used to smile and nod at my grandmother on Broadway are still there and all still seem to speak the same language when they talk about Ukraine, shake their heads sadly, and say, “Bozhe, Bozhe, Bozhe.”

My God, My God, My God.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

   Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.  

From “ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot.

By Bob Gaydos

 I was born in 1941. I am chronologically old. However, in my opinion at least, I am not “an old man.” And I am definitely not “elderly.”

       I’m also a little annoyed at having to once again explain to the under-50 crowd the nuances of referring to the over-50 crowd. But obviously someone has to do it.

       A while back, I wrote a column headlined “I am not an old coot.“ Pretty self-explanatory. A health professional, apparently trying to be cute, had referred to me in that less-than-complimentary manner. I had apparently displayed an ability to think and speak for myself. I was not amused. In the vast spectrum of ways one can refer to persons who have lived a certain number of years, old coot is down near the bottom of the list. I have occasionally been referred to as a curmudgeon and I will accept that, even with a bit of pride. But in all humility, I figure I fit in someplace between old coot and village elder.

     That does not mean I feel that I am “elderly.“ This issue arose in a recent social media posting, the headline of which referred to an “elderly couple.”

      He was 64 and she was 61. That’s not even Social Security old. Someone left a comment that pointed this out. The poster defended the description by saying the male had referred to himself as “an old man,“ (See above. Like this younger gentleman, I may accurately call myself old, especially in comparison to others. It’s a fact. But “elderly” is another dimension.)

      The thing is, “elderly” is a loaded word and none of the images it suggests, even when accurate, is especially flattering to the older person being described. Some can be hurtful. And that ought to matter.

       I asked a few people what came to mind when I said the word “elderly.” I got back: feeble, infirm, doddering, technically challenged, sick, cranky, slow, boring, out of touch.

        I did not get back: experienced, knowledgeable, reliable, funny, comforting, competent, patient, concerned, aware, talented, smart or tech savvy.  

        Now, with those responses in mind, if you just went by the numbers to define elderly just think of all the actors, musicians, artists, writers, scientists, teachers, business, civic and political leaders who would be dismissed.

        Elton John, 74, is holding a farewell tour because he is a well-respected, talented, legendary musician who has contributed significantly to society for many years and wants to do other things. Does anyone think he is elderly?

        Whether you like her politics or not, there isn’t a sharper, more energetic,  more dedicated political leader in this country than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 81, a wise senior member of Congress.

        I recently watched a YouTube interview with linguist Noam Chomsky, who looked every bit of the 93 years he has lived. But elderly? A village elder, I submit.

       It’s simple. Numbers don’t always tell the story. Old age isn’t what it used to be, at least not for everybody. They say 60 is the new 40, 80 is the new 60. I don’t know.

        I do know those equations don’t hold up in the job market. It’s called ageism. I also think that seniors should show respect for younger people in general, remembering what it was like having to learn so much. And I think younger people should respect seniors for having put in the time to do all that learning. Of course, there are always exceptions.  

        Anyway, if you’re under 50, maybe think a little bit about how you refer to those over 60. About how you would like to be referred to when you are, say, 64 or 84. 

          As Shakespeare suggested, methinks some of thee may think I doth protest too much. Well, that’s the curmudgeon in me. Get over it. Someone has to speak out for the seniors in our society, so why not this old man?

* * *

”I grow old … I grow old …

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

   Every once in a while that perpetual motion machine I call my mind comes to a screeching halt with what I like to think of as a moment of clarity.  Like when I realized that every political story in the United States for the past six-plus years has been some version of the Republican Party capitulating to Donald Trump’s platform of lies and manipulation to secure power. Different details, same story.

     Recently, I looked at a list of potential topics for columns and had one of those moments. Here’s the list as it appeared on my phone: “NFL, Joe Rogan, supreme court, gerrymandering, Teaching history, the police.”

     “It’s all racism,” I said to myself. “We’re still arguing about its presence when our lives are full of it.”

     I will leave it to others to go into detail on each of these stories because they all deserve it and it will happen anyway. But my point here is that racism is everywhere in America, to the point that even commenting negatively on its presence almost makes it seem acceptable because it seems to be inevitable. That’s troubling, yet I persist.

      Touching briefly on that list:

• The NFL, its players overwhelmingly black, is being sued because team owners have a pathetic record in hiring black head coaches. And that’s with a league rule that requires diversity in interviewing for coaching positions. And then there’s still Colin Kaepernick, the black quarterback who was blackballed by the league because he took a knee during the National Anthem.
• President Biden was criticized by Republicans for saying that he would nominate a black woman to fill a coming Supreme Court vacancy. Outrageous! to make color a part of the process, they screamed. Sure, let’s just forget nearly 200 years of only white male justices on the court. Let’s forget it was even longer before a woman justice was approved. Who needs a court that represents all Americans?
• Efforts are being made in Florida, Texas and other states to prevent teachers from, well, teaching history. That’s because some people don’t like their children hearing uncomfortable facts about America’s history of slavery and racial discrimination.
• Republican efforts to redraw election districts to make it difficult for people of color (who tend to favor Democrats) to vote continue nationwide and, despite all the publicity, black lives still don’t seem to matter as much as others to some police.
• But Joe Rogan is the one that really gets me. The comedian/podcaster has been the center of controversy recently regarding the spreading of misinformation on Covid 19 via his podcast on Spotify. Controversy, of course, is pure gold for Rogan. Singer Neil Young pulled all his songs from Spotify because of Rogan’s spreading Covid misinformation and other artists followed suit. Spotify eventually agreed to put a disclaimer on Rogan’s broadcasts on Covid. But the attention on his podcast uncovered an old video which compiled his use of the “N” word in numerous segments over the years. That struck me as odd, being that Rogan is a white comedian and, in my experience, even the most down-to-earth, open-to-all-ideas, average white guy who is not Richard Pryor doesn’t get to do that. There is only one message there and it is racist. Rogan subsequently asked Spotify to remove 70 — that’s 70! — episodes in which he used the word. Sounds almost routine. He subsequently apologized, saying “it is the most regretful and shameful thing I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.” He said he had not used the N-word in years and hoped it would be a “teaching moment.“ Well that’s nice. Me, too. But, as he said, the video compiling the “shameful“ episodes has been out there for years. He could’ve been teaching his fans how wrong it was all this time instead of hoping it would just stay forgotten. Rogan also called release of the video and other criticisms of him “a political hit job.“ That kind of sounds like many of his shows from what I hear. Personally, I can’t recall any conversation in which I used the “N” word, even just to say I shouldn’t use it. I somehow learned early on that it was offensive for any white person to use the word. Using it in any context just gives it more credence. But that’s just me. 
• One more thing, Rogan, who reportedly has 11 million listeners, was also criticized for mocking on his show the way Asians speak English. He defended it by saying, “But that’s the way they talk.”

      Like I said, it’s all racism.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.