By Jeffrey Page

It is very cold this morning, but the snow turned out to be less catastrophic than anticipated. The sun is shining, the sky is a rich blue and a few minutes ago a guy on the radio uttered one of the lovelier phrases in the English language.

“Pitchers and catchers,” he said, and it turns out that after today it’s just 13 days until the start of spring training for the throwers and receivers. The Arizona Diamondbacks report on Feb. 6, the Mets on Feb. 15 and the Bronx team on Feb. 14. All this means that winter will soon be over; never mind what the calendar or the meteorologists say.

Several days after pitchers and catchers report, the position players arrive for spring training. Then, on March 30 there’s an opening-day game with Los Angeles playing Washington in Sydney, Australia. The traditional opening day will be on the 31st. VIPs will toss first pitches, some people with questionable ability will sing the national anthem, the cheering will commence when the vocalists reach “o’er the land of the free,” umpires will cry out “Play Ball!” and there will be happiness in the land.

Now is a wonderful time of year. For one thing, it proves that we’ve survived another winter, this one more frigid than most. It is a time to think about the next six months in our futures and to at least consider the possibility that all will be well.

For Mets fans, however, it is tinged with the aroma of disappointment. It’s a time of welcome, but of fear and slight resignation as well. In other words, a year like most other years for followers of the Mets. As in so many summers past we stand at the cusp of another season of hope, rage and ultimately (in all likelihood) grave disappointment. But wait, this is baseball and therefore we hope. Miracles happen in this game. Maybe this will be the year of surprise and delight. Maybe this is the year of another miracle in Flushing. God knows we deserve it. God knows we need it.

I love the game: a double play, a bunt (rare nowadays) that catches the infielders glued in place, a game-ending home run in the bottom of the ninth, a perfectly executed hit and run, the long afternoon of a pitcher refusing, inning after inning, to give up a first hit. Or, just sitting in the warm sun of spring. That’s another thing I like about baseball – the day games early in the season and into summer when you can sit and talk, have a beer and take in that sun.

I detest the business of baseball: the fact that if you take a kid to a game and add up the price of parking, tickets, a pennant or other souvenir, maybe a scorecard, a round of hot dogs and drinks, maybe something more substantial as the game progresses, you spend enough money to have made a mortgage payment. And it irks me that the slowest, clumsiest, most inept players demand salaries in the millions and that part of those salaries are partially underwritten by you and me when we buy tickets.

But it’s baseball and I can forgive a lot when the reward is to watch players execute those plays that I can only wish I could duplicate.

Because it is winter heading into spring, it’s a time of remembrance as well. It may be 59 summers since the Dodgers of Brooklyn defeated the Bronx team in the ’55 World Series, but still I am shocked when I look up the Brooklyn roster of 1955 and realize that of the 32 players listed, only nine are living.

That fabled infield of Reese, Robinson, Gilliam and Hodges, gone.

The outfield of Furillo, Snider and Amoros, gone.

Our catcher, Campanella, gone.

Among the pitchers, Podres, Labine, Loes, all gone. But the great Don Newcombe (who pitched a 27-7 season), Carl Erskine, Roger Craig, the kid Sandy Koufax (“the kid” is 78), Tommy Lasorda and Ed Roebuck are with us.

Why do I go back to these guys every spring? Why do I think of them almost as members of my working class family? That’s a subject for deeper thinking and another column.

Wait ‘til next year.

By Jeffrey Page

All you needed to know was that President Obama was in South Africa for the final tribute to Nelson Mandela and that no matter what he said or did, he would be mocked and dismissed by Limbaugh and his fawning acolytes.

Sure enough, President Obama spoke movingly about what Mandela had achieved for his country after 27 years in prison, having been convicted of the South African felonies of being black and wanting freedom and equality. President Obama’s described the love the South African people have for Mandela, and for this Limbaugh savaged him. The First Amendment says you can do this; common decency forbids it.

Limbaugh’s hypocrisy is astonishing. For example, he spoke for the hard conservative core in his contempt for the Johannesburg handshake, the one between President Obama and Raul Castro, president of you-know-what and brother of you-know-who.

The handshake served as the catalyst for Limbaugh’s millionth dismissal of President Obama as “a socialist” and/or “a narcissist.” How does he make this connection? “He doesn’t get a thrill shaking Raul Castro’s hand,” Limbaugh said. “He’s hoping Castro gets a thrill shaking his hand.” (That’s been a Limbaugh trademark; to inform his listeners precisely what the people he loathes are thinking at any given moment.)

The Limbaugh line of course is that good people don’t go around shaking the hand of a guy named Castro from an island called Cuba. But let’s see just how consistent Limbaugh is.

In 1985, President Reagan agreed to lay a wreath at the Bitburg Cemetery in Germany, the last resting place of about 2,000 German soldiers who died in World War II. All right, time heals many wounds and 40 years after the war ended, the United States and Germany were allies and remain so.

But there were other interments at Bitburg, such as the graves of 49 members of the Waffen-SS, which was essentially the 1 million-member private army of the Nazi party commanded by Heinrich Himmler. These were the troops that provided the military muscle to carry out the Holocaust.

Americans were aghast that President Reagan would go anywhere near the SS graves, but he rejected their pleas.

The Limbaugh connection to Bitburg? There was none. I checked the internet, The New York Times and other sites looking for a cautionary word from Limbaugh condemning, or merely questioning Reagan’s judgment. But from 1985 through yesterday Limbaugh apparently had nothing to say. What I did find was that 11 Republican senators (and 42 Democrats), plus 84 Republican House members (and 173 Democrats) condemned Reagan’s planned trip to Bitburg, which, incidentally, was scheduled to be made immediately after an earlier stop at the Bergen-Belsen death camp, where the Nazis murdered 50,000 Jews. If anyone can point out a negative reference by Limbaugh to Reagan’s Bitburg atrocity, I’ll be happy to print it.

So, President Obama shaking hands with President Castro, or President Reagan laying a wreath for some SS troops? For Americans there are two questions: Which is more offensive, which is more nauseating?

The answers are not complicated.

By Jeffrey Page

I never believed that the old wisdom of not letting friends fade from view could have any meaning for me, and of course as the years progress, I find that I should have called this one, should have called that one. If only I had had the time.

Wait. That business about time is a cop-out. It should read: “If only I had the urgency, the common sense, the fondness, and if only I understood that people don’t live forever.”

In the mail last week came the annual Christmastime note from my friend Cathy Portman. Long ago, Cathy and I were reporters at The Jersey Journal, the Newhouse paper in Jersey City.

In her Christmas notes Cathy reports the ups and downs of another year. For example, she bemoans the many friends who are moving to avoid New York taxes. And then, in a section addressed to me, was what someone with a guilty conscience (such as me) would fairly interpret as an accusatory finger. But knowing Cathy, I’m sure it was not.

“Did you know we lost Lois Fegan this past year?” she asked.

Lois Fegan. Even now, so many years later, she reminds me of Katharine Hepburn. Each one – stylish, smart, and striking – had a smile as wide as a piano keyboard and each gave you the impression that she was not to be trifled with. Theirs was a flair not often duplicated

Lois had been a dancer. She had been a reporter. In fact, during the Forties Lois Fegan became the first woman to cover a professional hockey team full time – the Hershey (Pa.) Bears. But then the war ended, the male reporters came home, and Lois found herself, even into the 1960s, reporting what was shamelessly called “women’s news.” Recipes, fashion, volunteerism, etc.

After an adventuresome courtship that would have made a great movie, Lois married Gene Farrell and followed him to Jersey City when he became editor of the Journal. She was named women’s editor – imagine that – and spent the next 35 years heading that department.

I recall several years ago when Cathy mentioned that she used to drive down to see Lois at a nursing home in southern Pennsylvania once a year, and I immediately made plans to do the same. Trouble was I never found the time (or, clearly, the urgency or the common sense or an understanding of mortality). Instead of going, I dropped Lois a note and got a warm response.

My desk in the Journal’s newsroom was a row apart from her desk and we used to talk about reporting and about the stories she and her staff covered. Several times, when she was short a reporter, she asked if I would write a story for her. Only then would she go to my editor, with whom it was always all right; Lois, after all, was married to the aforementioned Gene Farrell.

One such assignment was to interview Judith Anne Ford, who had become Miss Boone County, then Miss Illinois, then Miss America of 1969. I was at a loss. “What do we talk about?” I asked Lois, who had noted in Miss America’s press kit that Ford was coming to Jersey City to promote Pepsi Cola.

 “Ask her what’s wrong with Coke,” she said. I did, and the story wound up on Page 1. Pretty heady placement for someone with reporting experience of a year or so.

There were similar incidents of being called on to help out with a “woman’s feature.” Once, soon after I got married, Lois heard me talking to a friend about how I made lox and eggs, and asked if I would write a story about it for her pages. Why not? With my year in the news business, I didn’t draw many political stories or other topical assignments. Mostly I wrote lots of obits, police news, and features such as the last voyage of the ferry boat Elmira out of Hoboken.

Lois died last June. I had missed the chance to reestablish a friendship with her, the chance to say thanks for those assignments, the chance to talk about her life as a woman covering professional hockey.

Next time there’s wine on the table, I’ll raise a glass to Lois. She was 97.

By Jeffrey Page

Walter Cronkite took a lot of heat over the years for what amounted to his 10 seconds of dead air. It was, of course, in the Kennedy story.

Did you tune in to CBS on Channel 2 in New York 50 years ago today? There was Cronkite in shirtsleeves, a dark tie in his button-down collar, and a pair of heavy black eyeglasses. CBS, like the other networks, had taken over the airwaves to announce that someone had fired on President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas and that the president was thought to have been hit.

For a few wretched minutes Cronkite could only report rumor and unconfirmed accounts of what had happened. He switched to a local reporter who was supposed to cover a luncheon where Kennedy would have spoken. Cronkite repeated several times that reports of the president’s death were rumors and that there was no official word yet. Then he said that Dan Rather, CBS’s White House correspondent at the time, was reporting that Kennedy was dead. But Cronkite was loath to report this as fact until officially confirmed.

And then it came. Someone handed Cronkite a sheet of paper. On went the glasses. Down went the voice. “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time….

Glasses off.

“ … 2 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.”

Thus began about 10 seconds of dead air as Cronkite seemed to gasp for breath. Once or twice he pursed his lips tightly, perhaps trying to establish control over his mien. He looked away from the camera for a moment, then inhaled deeply, and finally continued his report, noting that Vice President Johnson would be taking the oath of office as the 36th president. As he spoke these words, his voice thickened and he sounded like a man speaking underwater.

Critics have railed for 50 years that Cronkite lost his objectivity in that report. But I think this has been just a bunch of words spoken by people who have no idea in the world how they would have reacted if they were at a news desk when the story broke.

In watching tapes of Cronkite’s report on You Tube this week, I saw an American shaken to his very core by the loss of his nation’s president – his president. You didn’t have to be a Democrat to feel the loss of John Kennedy. You didn’t even have to like him. You just had to have a soul and a concern about your country.

I remember the waiting in 1963, hoping Kennedy would be all right and somehow knowing that we had lost him, just as I remember the waiting in 1981, hoping Reagan would be all right after he was shot, and being relieved when word came that he was alive.

Are you supposed to be objective when some 35-cent Marxist like Oswald kills your president? Or when some lovelorn loser like Hinckley tries to prove his devotion to a movie actress and nearly kills another president?

I watched that footage of Cronkite again and saw him as a reporter in a flawed news medium I would never be part of. And I saw him as E.E. Cummings might have described him: a “human merely being.”

By Jeffrey Page

I’ve been waiting seven days now for a former schools superintendent in Orange County to demand a retraction of quotes attributed to him by The New York Times. Surely he will say he was misquoted, or that his comments were taken out of context, or that the Times story was just dead wrong.

I don’t know the man but eagerly await his response because without it, he might be seen as an educator with some very bizarre beliefs about anti-Semitism and swastika display, and student violence.

The story, which ran on Nov. 8, was about the appearance of swastikas on school property and the continual physical and verbal harassment of Jewish students in the Pine Bush School District, and the fact that the parents of three Jewish children in the district have brought a federal law suit alleging that the Pine Bush district did little if anything to eradicate anti-Semitism employed against their children. Note: The charges were roundly denied by Pine Bush residents at a public meeting this week though The Times quoted a deposition by a Pine Bush principal who said, “There are anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred that we need to address.”

As a result of The Times story, Governor Cuomo ordered the state police and the Division on Human Rights to investigate. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is conducting his own probe. So is Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The community of Pine Bush and its school district of course will be vindicated or damned, but in the meantime, former Superintendent Philip G. Steinberg’s words speak for themselves.

The Times reported that Steinberg – who is Jewish and said he had been the victim of anti-Semitism in his life – had the gall to question the Jewish plaintiffs about their faith and about their original decision to move into the Pine Bush district. Instead of taking strong action against anti-Semitism, Steinberg acknowledged to The Times that he told the plaintiffs, “I said to them, ‘If being Jewish is so important to you, why would you move into a community that does not have a synagogue?’”

Aside from its being one of the more vile questions you’re likely to hear a public official ask a resident, Steinberg apparently was unaware that most communities in Orange County have no synagogues. So where would he suggest a Jewish family live?

It doesn’t end there He used a classic anti-Semitic stereotype when he descried the law suit against the district as “a money grab.”

And in response to a complaint about the alleged harassment of two Jewish girls, Steinberg said: “I have said I will meet with your daughters and I will, but your expectations for changing inbred prejudice may be a bit unrealistic.”

Changing “inbred prejudice” may (or may not) be unrealistic, but asking a school administrator to take responsibility for changing unacceptable student behavior is simply asking him to do his job.

Steinberg, perhaps unwittingly, raises a fundamental question: If anti-Semitism is inbred in Pine Bush – which it probably is not – what actions did he take to eradicate its manifestations, such as physical harassment, Nazi salutes, and a swastika remaining posted on a bulletin for weeks after it was reported?

By Jeffrey Page

I have two terrific stories to tell about Mike Carey who began his career as a photographer at the Times Herald-Record 44 years ago and who has just retired as the newspaper’s local editor.

I got to the Record in 1973 and was assigned to the Sullivan County bureau to work for the great Bill Lowry. Around that time Bill was writing investigative pieces about the “superfecta,” an exotic wager at Monticello Raceway whose payoffs often were stupendous and in which heavy favorites occasionally were passed by horses whose winning percentage was so bad you’d swear they only had three legs.

A man named Leon Greenberg was president of the track and also a Sullivan County International Airport Commissioner. He didn’t like Bill – or Bill’s colleagues, such as me – on several counts. There were those superfecta stories and there was the fact that Bill embraced the waggish explanation of why the name of the little-used county airport included the word “international.” Why? Because migrating Canada geese often landed on the runways to rest and never were disturbed by takeoffs and landings.

One day I got a tip that Robert Abplanalp, a friend of Richard Nixon’s, was interested in being the fixed-base operator of the airport and would be flying in to discuss matters with the commission. We were told there was to be no press, which didn’t stop us.

I met Mike at the airport and we waited. Across the terminal about 25 feet away stood Greenberg and the other commissioners. Greenberg was furious at my being there and ordered Mike and me to leave, but a sheriff’s deputy reminded him that the airport was public space.

At which time, Greenberg turned slowly from the deputy and started walking toward me while muttering a little too loudly, “I swear I ought to …,” whereupon Mike, bigger, broader, and taller than Greenberg, stepped in front of me and asked, “Ought to what?”

Greenberg turned away and to this day I believe that my nose owes a great debt of gratitude to Mike Carey. For a while, he generously used the pronoun “we” when telling the story.

Then there was the Patty Hearst story. There had been rumors that the kidnapped heiress-turned-terrorist had spent some of her time on the run in Sullivan County.

Finally, a UPI reporter covering Hearst’s bank robbery trial in California called to ask us if we knew anything about a creamery in Jeffersonville because there had been trial testimony that that was where Hearst and some of her cohorts spent a summer. It turned out to be a creamery converted into a house.

An editor in Middletown sent Mike up to Monticello so we could have photos with the story. I was set to drive to Jeffersonville, but Mike, who seemed to know every inch of the paper’s circulation area, said he wanted to shoot from the air.

He contacted a pilot he knew and the three of us climbed into a small plane. I announced that I hated flying, and Mike said I’d write a better story if I could see just how close Hearst was to Main Street.

Just go low and slow, I asked the pilot.

We were at about 1,000 feet when Mike spoke words I’ll never forget: “Hey, can you do any tricks with this plane?”

Before I knew it, the plane was rocking and rolling side to side. Then the pilot aimed the plane downward. Not 90 degrees but certainly about 30 degrees, which was steep enough. I held a handle and heard Mike laughing, then asking, “You OK back there?” I was not OK.

(When I spoke with Mike this week, he said, “I’d heard the expression about someone’s being so sick as to have a green face, but I never saw it. With you it was true. You were green.”)

Once Wilbur and Orville up there in front were finished with their tricks, we headed for Jeffersonville and after two or three passes, Mike spotted the creamery.

He got terrific pictures. Hearst really was very close to town.

Later we went back to the bureau where Lowry asked how it went. “Smooth as silk,” Mike said. “Page is fearless at a thousand feet.”

By Jeffrey Page

I’ve just received my renewal notice from The New Yorker and as usual I’m tempted to let my subscription lapse. I have no complaint with the magazine’s journalism or its arts reviews, but I find that some issues wind up in the discard pile almost immediately because I have no time to read all that’s in them. And there is plenty in them. Sometimes I don’t even look at the cartoons.

When the stack of read and un-read New Yorkers reaches an unusual thickness on my shelf, I drive them over to the volunteers’ magazine wagon at St. Anthony Hospital. And once again I think about giving up on The New Yorker.

But then, the next issue arrives and this time I do have time, and again I realize how much I enjoy this magazine. A good example is in this week’s issue; it’s a 26-question quiz about some of the utterances and actions of several members of Congress during the shutdown of the federal government.

I looked at this quiz and was reminded that while there surely are left-wing jackasses in this world, they’re vastly outmatched – in severity, volume and in some cases, sheer stupidity – by some remarkable idiots on the right.

These are the people who place party above nation and who will say anything so long as it serves to demean President Obama, and/or trash the Affordable Care Act, and/or defend the Tea Party’s successful shutdown of the government, and/or deny the damage they would inflict on the United States should they force a default on the nation’s debt repayment.

I thought I had been on top of these stories and all their wretched details, but The New Yorker called my bluff with its quiz which, when you read it and think about it, is actually more an essay than just an entertaining yes-no exam.

For example, what did you think about the future of America when Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla) declared – the following contains no typographical errors – “This country isn’t ran by just one individual; it’s ran by four branches.”

And how did you react when Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb) was asked if he planned to forego his House salary during the shutdown and said he planned no such thing, and added: “I’ve got a nice house and a kid in college.”

Or when Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind) said of his shutdown-happy colleagues, “We’re not going to be disrespected…. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” No typos in this one either.

Or when Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) predicted that today’s congressional aides will eventually get salaries of $500,000 if they become lobbyists. “Meanwhile,” he said, “I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year.”

And when the ever dependable Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn) said of the shutdown, “We’re very excited. It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it…. People will be very grateful.”

Remember when the House of Representatives was called “the people’s house?” It was a time when a member making the standard pay of $172,000 wouldn’t have dared complain about being “stuck” with such a salary. To hear Stockman come this/close to calling his pay a starvation wage is to hear a complaint splendid in its indecency.

But this class of Tea Party zealots thinks nothing of using their mouths and tongues as weapons to slap across the faces of a population of 300 million struggling Americans. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

By Jeffrey Page

New Jersey seems to have a rule against electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate, most likely because the state GOP has convinced itself that Jersey is a sleeping conservative giant just waiting to be awakened by the kiss of a right wing, anti-choice, anti-Obama, anti-tax firebrand. And if he’s anti-evolution as well, so much the better.

But Jersey Republicans pay no mind to polls indicating that as the party veers to its right – and then to the right of the Tea Party – it loses popularity at every step. New Jerseyans loathe taxes as much as Grover Norquist, but lean at least slightly left in most other respects.

And from Bergen County along came Steve Lonegan, whose political resume highlights his three terms as mayor of Bogota, a place where nothing much happens.

Lonegan secured the senatorial nomination and smug liberals smiled. Goofy Steve Lonegan? The guy who’s against everything? Never happen.

Except it almost did happen, and while Lonegan said on election night this week that this was his last run for elective office, his showing was strong enough to cause observers to look twice and to cause Lonegan to think twice. An almost-win for Lonegan, the candidate who would do away with Social Security and Medicare if he could only persuade 300 million other Americans to join the fight. He got 44 percent of the vote in losing to Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Who is Steve Lonegan? The Record’s political columnist described him as “colorful and ultra conservative,” which tends to libel all the other colorful ultra conservatives who live in New Jersey. Lonegan is not colorful. Lonegan is grim.

During the campaign against Booker, Lonegan described Newark, the state’s biggest city, as “a big black hole” into which millions of dollars of state tax revenues have been poured.

It was an unfortunate description. Booker is a black man. African-Americans comprise 53 percent of Newark’s population. I can’t believe that someone in the Lonegan campaign didn’t whisper in his ear that you don’t refer to such a city as a black hole, no matter what you think of it and no matter how clever you think you are.

Lonegan has a fast lip. I imagine he thinks of this as a strength, but often he reveals himself to be a stammering dolt. In debate with Booker, Lonegan said, “You may not be able to swim in [the Passaic] river, but it’s probably, I think, because of all the bodies floating around of shooting victims in your city.” No one swims in the Passaic except demented fish; bodies are not routinely dumped in it. That makes Lonegan either ignorant or a jerk.

Lonegan opposes the very existence of Social Security and Medicare, opposes the minimum wage, opposes abortion in any circumstance, and of course he believes that Obamacare is the work of the devil. Or of Karl Marx. Or was it Mitt Romney?

Lonegan may have been at his cruelest when talking about the victims of Hurricane Sandy as reported by Mother Jones Magazine: “That is tragic for them to see their home being destroyed, but remember that every day around this country, somewhere, somebody is suffering a tragedy of equal or worse impact and we don’t run and hand them a check.”

And he might have been his most inane when, in 2006, he attacked McDonald’s for putting up a billboard in Bogota with a picture of a glass of iced coffee and with the words “Un frente helado se aproxima” – a cold wave is coming.

He said the billboard suggested that Bogota – it was named for the Bogart family, early European settlers – was home to hordes of illegal immigrants. Lonegan couldn’t be bothered with the fact that 39 percent of Bogota’s population was counted as Hispanic in the 2000 census and that if you’re illegal and hiding out, you don’t submit to the census enumerator.

His outrage was restricted to the McDonald’s sign. In classic Lonegonian logic, he had nothing to say about the signs in Italian identifying La Famiglia Ristorante or the sign in Korean outside the First Evangelical Church with its mostly Korean congregation.

You can laugh at Lonegan. You can dismiss him as loopy. But while you’re breathing that sigh of relief over his loss to Cory Booker, don’t forget that number – 44 percent of the vote. Lonegan will be back.

By Jeffrey Page

Two places you don’t want to be: where the buffalo roam and might get riled up, and in a congressional corridor as members of the House and Senate elbow one another out of the way in a rush to call the press back home in the district with major announcements.

That a compromise on the government shutdown had been reached? No.

That House Speaker John Boehner had scheduled a vote to end the shutdown? Are you kidding? Allowing such a vote would irritate Tea Partiers, and probably cost Boehner his speakership in the short run and his very seat in Congress in the long run. Can’t have that. Calling such a vote would take courage, principle and virtue.

The prevailing urgency of our representatives is to demonstrate that they’re ordinary folks and are suffering like the rest of us during this wretched shutdown. In doing so, of course, they avoid the question of how this shutdown came about.

They are not like you and me and 300 million other Americans. They are not about to be told by a supervisor to stay home, stay furloughed. They are not wondering where the money will come from to heat the house, to buy school supplies for the kids, to make a mortgage payment.

When they talk about the sacrifice being made by the public, they never mention that their sacrifice is a little less severe than ours. That’s because they receive individual salaries of $174,000 while the average household income for the rest of the nation is about $51,000.

Still, our esteemed representatives are engaging in a spirited game of Let’s Pretend.

Let’s pretend we have even an inkling of what our constituents are going through, and the way we’ll do it is to write a press release stating that we’re giving up our salaries – they come to $3,400 a week – as long as those 800,000 government workers remain off the job.

Sounds high-minded, noble, and sincere, doesn’t it? Well, thanks to The Washington Post, we have more information about more than 200 representatives who are patting themselves on the back.

We understand your suffering, Congress says. Actually, what Congress understands concerning the people they represent could fill a thimble.

Here’s what The Post has reported.

–Some members of Congress are foregoing their pay for as long as the shutdown continues; no strings attached. Such strange bedfellows include Reps. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Ami Bera (D-Calif), and Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo).

Not good enough. At a time when federal employees have been forced off the job, the nation needs a specific guarantee that representatives giving up their paychecks now will not go to the treasury to claim that pay once the shutdown is over.

–Another group in the House and Senate are accepting their paychecks but informing anyone who’ll listen that they intend to give the money to charity. These include such people as Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) who is giving her shutdown pay to “a New Hampshire charity,” whatever that is, and Senator Tom Carper (D-Del) who’s giving his salary to “a Delaware charity” whatever that is.

Not good enough. If some members of Congress are going to pretend to understand what the nation is going through, they must be prepared to identify the charity they’re giving to so that we – the people – can know for certain that a “New Hampshire charity” or a “Delaware charity” doesn’t translate to a reelection committee.

–Other senators and representatives sending their pay to charity are specific. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) says she’s sending her pay to the Consortium of Catholic Academies and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is donating his pay to the Mormon Church. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) is giving his paycheck to the March of Dimes, and Rep. James Langevin (D-RI) is supporting the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and the Rhode Island Good Neighbor Energy Fund.

Not good enough. Such pledges must be accompanied by promises that the representatives and senators will not list such donations as charitable contributions on Schedule A of their income tax returns.

–Finally, since this shutdown has much to do with the Tea Party’s demand that the Affordable Care Act be repealed, the really sincere members of this fringe ought to consider giving up their health insurance for themselves and their families. They ought to sample what life is like for people who can’t afford to insure the health of their children.

That might be good enough.

By Jeffrey Page

Something that really annoys me is not being taken seriously. Such as when I write a polite letter of complaint to an official of a corporation or to a public servant, and receive a response – or no response at all – suggesting that no one gives a damn about my protest and that I’ve been dismissed with a patient smile and a chuckle.

As I wrote here last May, I sent a letter to Rex W. Tillerson, the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, explaining that I was tearing up my Exxon Mobil gas card and switching brands because I disapproved of the company’s shareholders rejecting – for the 14th year in a row – a proposal to extend formal anti-discrimination policies to gay men and lesbian employees of the company. I included with the letter the shreds of two Exxon gas cards.

Exxon’s answer? There was no answer until the last few weeks. First, Exxon announced that as of Oct. 1 it would extend health insurance benefits to both spouses in same-sex marriages. Then, a few days ago, I opened the mail and found three brand new Exxon Mobil credit cards and some promotional information. Was Exxon waiting for me to say “Good job” by sending those cards?

But as far as I’m concerned, Tillerson stepped in a bucket, first with gay employees who were forced to wait so long for benefits, and then with me. I accept the fact that he doesn’t spend his workday in the Exxon complaint department, but I would think that when a cardholder sends him two cut-up credit cards and letter of explanation, he would direct someone to send my name via interoffice mail to the appropriate department with the directive: “Cancel this guy.”

I haven’t bought Exxon products since May and will have to think long and hard about becoming a customer again.

Am I now supposed to run out and pledge allegiance to Exxon for doing what it should have done at least 14 years ago? In the name of decency and fairness, I don’t think the answer comes that quickly.

                                                                      * * *

The phone rang a couple of days ago.

“Mr. Page,” a woman said and without even waiting for me to say “Yes?” went on to explain why my chimney needs a sweeping. How she would know this is beyond me. Anyway, I said I wasn’t interested and at that moment heard her using the words “serious,” “danger,” and “fire.”

I said thanks and again told her I wasn’t interested, and as I walked over to the phone’s cradle to hang up, I heard her use “fire” and “danger” again.

It seems that I get a call from various chimney sweeps every time the season changes – even as spring turns to summer. The reasoning presumably is that you can’t be too careful.

A while back, after reading an article about telephone sales tactics, I specifically asked not to be called again. I thought telemarketers were prohibited from calling if you request not to be called. But chimney sweeps are a persistent lot.

I also noted that they call you by name but you don’t know their names. So I asked a caller for his name. And abracadabra, the guy hung up on me.

All you have to do is wander from the prepared script they have in front of them, and the balance of power shifts back to you.

* * *

I bought a few items at Staples and the cashier handed me a slip from the cash register that said in part:

10% off

any one item

on your next purchase

Valid in store only.

Even with the promotion’s brief three-week duration it sounded like a good deal. But when I got home and read the details, I understood – yet again – that when it comes to retailing, there are two English languages.

In our version of English, “10% off any one item” means “10% off any one item.”

But in the retailers’ version “10% off any one item” means “you’ll get 10 percent off any one item when pigs fly.”

Why do I say this?

These are the restrictions on the 10 percent off deal (printed in type so small I had to use a magnifying glass to read them): My future discount on “any one item” is not valid on Back to School Savings Pass, ink and toner savings pass, desktop or laptop computers, tablets, netbooks, Apple products, Bose products, Amazon Kindle, Nook, HP ink and toner, Epson ink and toner, custom printing orders placed online, gift cards, mobile phones and mobile phone services, Staples Easy Tech professional-grade and on-site services, depot repair and parts, phone cards or postage stamps.

What this signifies, I imagine, is that I can get a few pennies off my next purchase of paper clips.