By Bob Gaydos

One of the perks of being a journalist is the possibility of encountering history anytime you’re on the job. The recent White House confusion over whether or not to recognize Black History Month (the defense secretary says no, Trump says yes) prompted me to look back at my 40-plus years with daily newspapers to see if I had had the good fortune to personally bump into any of it.

I had. Several times.

    As a young reporter covering government and politics for The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y., in the late 1960’s early ‘70’s, I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing a young crusader for civil rights argue his case on the steps of the Brooke County courthouse. Julian Bond was eloquent and forceful as ever.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center, headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., was founded in 1971 with Bond as its first president. Its purpose, as its web site declares: “To ensure that the promise of the Civil Rights movement became a reality for everyone.” It is still waging that battle.

   I also was fortunate enough to be assigned to cover one of the many civil rights marches in Washington, D.C, at the time, riding on one of the buses from Binghamton.

     My next encounter with Black History was brief and totally unexpected and one for which I am forever grateful. Still in Binghamton, I was filling in as a sports writer covering some kind of special event whose details escape me. Except for one.

    Half listening to a speech from the podium, my eyes wandered around the crowd and suddenly stopped on a figure leaning casually against a sidewall. Couldn’t be. But …

    Another thing about working as a journalist — you learn to not worry about asking “embarrassing” questions. In this case, no need to be embarrassed. I was right.

    I got up, walked right over, stuck out my hand and said, “A privilege to meet you, Mr. Robinson.”

    “Thank you. Nice to meet you.” Soft-spoken as always.

     Then I went back to my seat, having shook the hand of Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. He was signed by Branch Rickey and started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, ending racial segregation in professional baseball, which had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s.

   Robinson enjoyed a sometimes tumultuous but  successful 10-year Hall of Fame career with the Dodgers, whom I hated as a lifelong Yankees fan. To honor his memory, on April 15 each year, all players in the major leagues wear Robinson’s number 42, which has been retired for all of baseball.

     My next brush with Black History came more than a decade later, in Charleston, S.C., where I was attending a conference of editorial writers.

     Jesse Jackson was one of the speakers. The outspoken minister/politician began his seven-decades long career as a civil rights leader as a protege of Martin Luther King Jr., eventually seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination twice and serving seven years as the District of Columbia’s shadow senator in Congress. He was always a force to be reckoned with.

   Again: “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jackson” and a handshake with history.

                                 ***

    I had one other connection with Black History, which was less celebratory and more personal. Jimmy Lee Bruce died in the back of a patrol car near Middletown, N.Y., on Dec. 13, 1986. He was 20 years old. He and a group of friends from Ellenville, N.Y., had gone to a movie theater in a mall outside Middletown. The group became rowdy. There was drinking involved. Off-duty Middletown police officers acting as security guards, escorted the group out of the theater, where a scuffle ensued. An officer applied the choke hold to Bruce and tossed him in the back of a police car, which had brought two on-duty Town of Wallkill police officers to the scene.

    The police then drove around for 7 ½ minutes looking for Bruce’s friends. When they returned to the theater, a state trooper, who had also arrived on the scene, shined a flashlight in the back of the patrol car and noticed the young man was not responding to the light. Police rushed him to a nearby hospital, but attempts to revive him failed. 

     Bruce was black, the officers white. A grand jury refused to indict the police for the death because they had never been trained in the use of the hold, which was actually banned. No one’s fault.

   I wrote an editorial on the incident for the Middletown Times Herald-Record at the time criticizing police for not properly training officers to handle such situations. It concluded: “For relatives and friends of Jimmy Lee Bruce there can be only frustration and anger. But then, put yourself in their place and read a grand jury report that says your son is dead because no one knew what they were doing, but no one is responsible. Then tell them the system worked.
    Maude Bruce, Jimmy Lee’s mother, was president of the nearby Ellenville NAACP at the time of his death. She still is. Last year, she was awarded the Ulster County School Boards Association Distinguished Friend of Education Award. The annual award recognizes residents from the county’s school districts and Ulster BOCES for their dedication and commitment to students and schools.

Maude Bruce

  The announcement read:  “As president of the Ellenville NAACP, Bruce initiated a school supply distribution event that ensures all students begin the year with the tools they need. She is a constant and welcome presence on campus, inspiring voter registration and civic engagement, hosting Black History Month assemblies, and presenting student awards. Bruce also sponsors the annual Jimmy Lee Bruce, Jr. Memorial Award, named for her son, which is given to a senior who has distinguished themselves as an advocate for equality, social justice and community service.”

     Yes, Black History Month needs to be recognized. 

                                   ***

(Note: Congressman Matthew F. McHugh, a Democrat from Ithaca, who represented the Middletown area in Congress in the 1980’s, was gracious enough to read my editorial on Jimmy Lee Bruce on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 25, 1987. That entered it into the Congressional Record and makes it part of black history.) 

By Bob Gaydos

  There are a couple of books strategically placed around the house that are challenging me to read them. Never mind read them, finish them. By strategically placed, I mean located so that they’re not staring me in the face, but can’t be ignored either. A perfect way to breed guilt. 

    For some unexplained reason, I just stopped reading books a couple years ago. Cold turkey. As a result, I think I’ve been going through a slow, somewhat irritable withdrawal. They say the first step is recognizing and admitting the problem. So here it is: When I’m reading — books, not news articles or research for columns — my life is simply more manageable. Less irritable. More enjoyable.

    That’s my New Year’s resolution — start reading again and start by finishing those two books.

     About those books — “The Paper … The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune” and “Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend.” They’re both in my wheelhouse (newspapers and sports) and, I noticed in writing this, both biographies. Coincidence? I think not.

      The Trib was my favorite newspaper from the time I started paying attention to them in my teens. It was The New York Times with personality. Lots. The book was written by Richard Kruger, who worked at The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and was the last literary editor of the Herald Tribune.

    Also of note, the book was a gift from a good friend, now departed, Chris Farlekas. Chris was a legend in Middletown, N.Y., as a columnist for The Times Herald-Record, where we both worked, and as a producer and performer in scores of musical performances across the years. He also was a great gift-giver.

  This book actually got packed away in some box for one or another move from one place to another and didn’t reappear until a couple years ago. I sincerely apologize for that, Chris. And thanks again for everything.

      “Satchel” was lifted off the shelf of an open to perusal, old, private library, which shall remain anonymous. Basically, the books were there to be taken, so I took one. Actually a couple, but let’s stick to “Satchel.”

     It was written by author and former Boston Globe reporter, Larry Tye, a self-described avid baseball fan. It got terrific reviews and was a best-seller. Can’t wait to restart it.

   I’ll post something on the two books when I’m done. That will give me impetus to actually read them, never mind the fact I was actually enjoying both when I went cold turkey.

     In the meantime, I’m also reaching out for a little social media help. If you’ve got a favorite book, of any genre, you’d like to recommend, please do so in the comments section. New, old, classic, fiction, non-fiction, whatever. I’m eclectic. I’ve got a couple on a list, but I trust you guys. And I can use Kindle.

     And please don’t be shy. After all, you’ll be helping a codger regenerate some dormant brain cells he’s going to need to get through the next four years. Count it as your New Year’s resolution. Thanks in advance.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

The Washington Post’s ironic motto.

    The oligarchs are flexing their muscles. On the heels of stories that the owner of the Los Angeles Times killed an editorial supporting Kamala Harris for president, the Washington Post announced it would not be endorsing any candidate for president this year, or in the future.

      So much for the Fourth Estate. So much for a Free Press.

     These “non-endorsements“ are bought and paid for by the greed of super rich people, afraid of losing some money and influence if they say something that might, heaven forbid, offend someone.

      Something like maybe, “Don’t vote for the incompetent, felonious, lying fascist, but rather vote for the competent, sensible, intelligent candidate. The country’s future wel-being may hang in the balance.”

      In the most important presidential election of our lifetimes, the newspaper that drove Richard Nixon out of office is taking a pass because its owner, Jeff Bezos, is more afraid of what will happen to him if Donald Trump wins knowing that the Post endorsed Kamala Harris, than what will happen to everyone else in the country if Harris doesn’t win.

      You’re on your own folks. We don’t have an opinion. Except, the Post editorial board actually did have an opinion. Like the editorial board at the LA times, it was preparing to endorse Harris for president.

  Instead, Will Lewis, the Post’s chief executive, wrote, “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” Balderdash.

    The Post has been endorsing presidential candidates since 1976.

     This is where the politics of fear leads — newspapers, protected by the Constitution, become fearful of performing their duty. Of course, if the fascist wins, that fear will exist every day. That’s when greed and the desire to maintain power kick in. More silence. Look at today’s Republican Party.

     Editorial writers at the Post and the LA Times have resigned in protest, pointing out that this is not the time to remain silent. Indeed, maintaining a position of neutrality in this election falsely suggests that there’s no clear difference between the candidates, that they are pretty much alike, take your pick. We have an opinion on everything else, but this one’s up to you. No biggie.

   Patriotism apparently is not present in the Post’s roots.

                                    ***

    Full disclosure: In my 23-plus years writing editorials for The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., we took a pass on one presidential election. It was the 2000 race between Al Gore and George W. Bush. There was no concern about fascism, criminal convictions, sexual assaults, fraud, lies, ignorance of government procedures, secret foreign alliances, threats of reprisal and obviously declining mental competence with either candidate. Just which one might be better for the country, Gore, the current vice president, or Bush, the son of a former president and a governor of Texas.

    I preferred Gore, the  Democrat. So did Mike Levine, the paper’s editor. Gore was in keeping with the newspaper’s liberal tradition editorially. However, Jim Moss, the publisher, preferred Bush, the Republican. Not entirely surprising since publishers tend to be more conservative.

      Levine told Moss that I was going to write an editorial endorsing Gore for president. Moss said he wanted Bush. We asked why. His reasons didn’t sway us. Our arguments for Gore had the same result on Moss.

      Moss insisted that the newspaper run an editorial endorsing Bush for president. I said I wouldn’t write it. Levine said he wouldn’t write it. That left it up to Moss. He decided to punt. Levine and I considered it a victory of sorts in that we avoided endorsing Bush and I wrote an editorial which, to this day, remains remarkably unimprinted on my brain. We had an opinion on the election, but no endorsement and I have no idea what I wrote.

      That was the hanging chads election in Florida which the Supreme Court gave to Bush. It was also the only time that Moss made any such demands on me editorially and even he compromised his position.

    Unfortunately, both Levine and Moss are no longer with us so I have no way to check my recollection of events, but I’m pretty sure I got it right. If any librarian reading this can find a copy, I’d love to see it.

        In any event, I’m glad The New York Times whose reporting on the campaign, has left much to be desired, still had the courage of its convictions this year to write a strong endorsement of Harris for president. I’m sure other newspapers around the country will do likewise. But the continuing growing control of newspapers in this country by a few rich, powerful entities is a threat to democracy that, I feel, too few Americans appreciate.

      Our founding fathers gave newspapers the protection of a free voice for a reason. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

rjgaydos@gmail.com  

By Bob Gaydos

Donald Trump speaks behind bulletproof glass during a campaign rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. (AFP via Getty Images)

  (Deep sigh.)

     My fellow Americans, the Trump era in politics began with Stormy Daniels, a porn star, talking about the size of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s putter. (He’s an avid golfer, as you know.). Eight years later, the candidate himself, Trump, is talking about the size of the golfing legend Arnold Palmer’s driver.

     No, you’re right, this has nothing to do with golf. 

     And before I go any further, I want to extend my sincere apologies to David Bernstein, my first editor (and publisher) at the Binghamton (N.Y.) Sun-Bulletin, and Donald Koster, my journalism professor at Adelphi College in Garden City (N.Y.), for resorting to such snarky symbolism to refer to male genitalia. You taught me better. But unfortunately, that’s where we are today in journalism and in life in general. There are no apparent rules. F bombs abound. Besides, the topic never came up about what to do when a political candidate started talking about someone’s penis at a public political rally.

     Yes, that’s where we are, people, courtesy of the aforementioned Donald Trump, convicted of 34 felonies in trying to stop Ms. Daniels from telling the world about his extramarital golf game and awaiting sentencing on the convictions. Trump was also found liable, in a civil trial, for sexually assaulting a woman in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store. He was ordered to pay her $85 million for the assault and defaming her when she accused him. Plus there’s the matter of attempting a coup when he lost his bid for reelection in 2020.

       Back to golf. Trump was talking about Palmer because the rally was in Latrobe, Pa., the late golfer’s hometown. What better reason to muse about the size of Palmer’s penis. What better way to make your supporters feel good about themselves, laugh and pat you on the back when you come in from recess? Yes, they laughed and for good measure also tossed the word s—t out at Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris. At his urging of course.

      This coarse intersection of the presidential campaign highlights again the absolute depths to which the Republican Party has sunk, with no leader willing or able to step forward and point out that, not only does their leader and presidential candidate have no morals, he is also losing his mind. What Trump did in Latrobe and continues to do everywhere he appears, wandering off into a verbal mishmash fantasyland, accentuated by lies and threats, is not the behavior of a competent adult, never mind someone who is capable of leading the most powerful country in the world.

        What will it take for someone, some family member or party leader to step up to say Trump must step aside for the good of the party and the country? So far, only Liz Cheney has shown those kind of, yes, cajones.

         A day after Trump (apparently no longer interested in talking about tariffs, immigration or abortion) reminisced about Arnold Palmer’s manly presence in the clubhouse shower, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives was interviewed on CNN by Jake Tapper.

        The speaker dismissed questions about Trump’s violent rhetoric about “the enemy within” and threats to use the military against his political opponents, specifically naming Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schaffer. Then Tapper asked, “Is this really the closing message you want voters to hear from Donald Trump, stories about Arnold Palmer’s penis?”

        Avoidance.

        Tapper persisted. “I’m sure that you think that a policy debate would be better than a personality debate. But if President Biden had gone on stage and spoke about the size of a pro golfer’s penis, I think you would be on this show right now saying you were shocked and appalled and you would suggest it was evidence of his cognitive decline.”

        The speaker, agitated: “Don’t say it again!”

        “We don’t have to say it. I get it.” Flustered: “There’s lines in a rally – when president Trump is at a rally, sometimes you’ll speak for two straight hours. You’re questioning his stamina, his mental acuity. Joe Biden couldn’t do that for five minutes. That’s how you started this segment. You said, what if Biden was in a rally like that? He couldn’t fill the room, Donald Trump does.”

         That’s how the Speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency and supposedly a leader of the Republican Party, responded to questions about his party’s presidential candidate riffing at a campaign rally about the size of Arnold Palmer’s … you know … don’t say it.

          I hesitate to point out, but, what the heck, the embarrassed speaker is a conservative Evangelical Christian from Louisiana with the unfortunate last name “Johnson.”

          (Sigh.) Sorry, David. Sorry, Professor Koster.

          God bless America. Vote for Kamala Harris.

                                        ***

(David Bernstein, before owning The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, established the Middletown Daily Record, the first offset daily in the country, in 1956. It later became the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. I worked there for 29 years, including 23 as editorial page editor. Donald Koster was a member of the Adelphi College English Department in the 1960s. I squeaked through as an English major. Adelphi became a university in 1964, the year after I graduated.)

If you flatten it, you replace it. That oughta be the rule of the road.

If you knock it down, you replace it ought to be the rule.

(I published this article a couple of years ago and I have since realized that it’s probably a piece that will bear repeating because (1) there are (hopefully) new readers and new neighbors who will not have seen it and (2) I keep noticing things to add to it.)

***

By Bob Gaydos

For most of my life, I’ve lived in small cities (Bayonne, Binghamton, Annapolis, Middletown) and one large town (Wallkill), which is really a mall-dotted highway surrounded by housing complexes. Throw in a few years living on college campuses. Basically, it’s been city or community living.

When you live with a lot of other people close by and you want to be relatively content, you learn the rules of the road, the do’s and don’ts of getting along. Mostly, it’s mind your own business and don’t make a lot of noise.

A few years ago, I moved to the country, a bit of upstate New York between the Hudson River and the Catskills that is often protected from major weather issues by the imposing Shawangunk Ridge.

Country living means owls, woodpeckers, coyotes and starry skies, oh my.

It’s nice. Well, usually. It’s quiet. Usually. In any case, it most definitely has its own rules of the road. Things a transplanted city boy ought to know. Something I call country etiquette.

The notion (see how I used the word “notion“ instead of “idea“?) that there was such a thing as country etiquette grew out of a recent conversation about a not uncommon country experience.

A couple of years ago, our quiet summer evening at home was disrupted by a loud squealing of tires and a loud thud. Right in front of our house.

We rushed out to find a car sitting in a culvert in front of our house, a distraught young woman sitting behind the wheel and our mailbox on the ground, post and all. I don’t recall who called 911, but state police arrived quickly, talked with the driver (who was shaken but not hurt), someone called a tow truck, we went back in the house and eventually everything was back to normal, except for the mailbox. Its career was over.

In short order, we replaced the mailbox and occasionally wondered what happened to the young driver. I suspected alcohol may have been involved.

A couple of weeks later, the whole scene repeated itself. Nighttime. Squeal. Thud. Car. Culvert. Young woman driver. Unhurt. Mailbox kaput.

Deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra once said. Same follow up. Police. Tow truck. Mailbox flattened.

Again, we replaced it and the new one has survived ever since. But here’s the thing. Neither driver offered to pay to replace the mailbox (they both got out of their cars and talked to us) or to have it repaired. Now, it seems to me that a basic rule of country etiquette ought to be that if you wipe out someone’s mailbox (and get caught at it), the decent thing to do is to make it right again. Pay for a new one.

And that’s what got me thinking about other rules of country etiquette. What are some things to help someone new get along with neighbors who may not live right next door? Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

— Having a handy supply of eggs is nice, but keep your chickens in your own yard as much as possible. Free range doesn’t mean the whole neighborhood, or, especially, the busy road.

— Don’t shovel your driveway snow into the road. It’s only extra work for the highway crews and it’s dangerous.

— When driving, wave at people walking along country roads. It’s neighborly.

— Walkers, please wear reflective clothing at night. It’s awfully dark out there sometimes and the roads are often winding and have no shoulder. We’d like to get to know you.

— Don’t let your dog walk on the road side. Preferably, don’t walk your dog on the road at all. Some drivers are less attentive than others. (See reference to mailboxes above.) And yes, clean up.

— Slow down for people at their mailbox. (A personal peeve of mine.) You can even wave.

— In fact, slow down in general. Posted speed limits are not merely suggestions.

— In special fact (and this is a new one added from personal experience), if you see someone backing out of their driveway or road to get on the typical two-lane road in the country and you are a good quarter mile away, slow the heck down. Let them get out in peace in one piece. It’s hard enough to back into a narrow country road with trees often blocking your vision without worrying whether that driver whizzing down the road is texting or talking on the phone or so totally engrossed in something on the radio that they don’t see you, even though you see them.

— In further fact, if you’re not going to back up a lot of traffic, just be nice and let people back out of their driveways even if they haven’t gotten their rear end out yet.

— Be patient with a farm tractor on the road. He’ll be out of your way shortly, or he’ll pull over as soon as he can. He’s working.

— Be honest at roadside honor stands. Act like there are cameras in the trees.

— Free stuff at the foot of a driveway is really free. If you want it, take it. Someone always does.

That’s what I came up with so far. If you have other suggestions, please leave them in the comment section.

While I’m at it, I figure I might as well add another feature of country living — a potpourri of handmade road signs. Here are a few I noticed:

— Corn maze, hay ride, pumpkins, pickles, sweet corn

— Beef sale

— Fresh garlic

— Sunflower patch, mums, hay for sale

— Farm fresh eggs

— U pick pumpkins

— Fresh key lime pie

— Baby Fox

— We buy ATVs dead or alive

Like I said, nice.

‘Til next time at pet-friendly Tractor Supply.

By Bob Gaydos

How will AI affect knowledge workers?

 I accidentally (by not being in charge of the remote) wandered into a YouTube Ted Talk by Cathie Wood the other day and, realizing I was a hostage, I half-listened for a while.

      Wood is founder and CEO of ARK, an investment company that in recent years has made her millions as well as making her the darling genius of every stock market/investment show on regular TV and YouTube. Tesla was her not-so-secret word. She’s soured on Nvidia. But that’s not what grabbed my attention this night. This talk wasn’t about what stock to buy. It was about artificial intelligence. AI.

    “Did she just say ‘knowledge workers,’?” I asked the person in charge of the remote.

      “Uh huh.”

      “What the heck are ‘knowledge workers’?” I said quietly to myself, so as not to disturb anyone actually listening to the talk. Google will know.

       And it did.

       A variety of Human Resources sources told me pretty much the same thing. “Knowledge work” requires a high degree of cognitive skill, competence, knowledge, curiosity, expertise and creativity in problem-solving, critical thinking, gathering data, analyzing trends and decision-making. The work involves solving issues, making judgments. Applying knowledge.

     It sounded important.

     “Heck,” I thought to myself, “I was a knowledge worker.”

      One source# confirmed that with this list of  professional knowledge workers:

• Accountant
• Computer Programmer
• Consultant
• Data/Systems Analyst
• Designer
• Engineer
• Lawyer
• Marketing/Financial Analyst
• Pharmacist
• Physician
• Researcher
• Scientist
• Software Developer
• Web Designer
• Writer/Author

    There I was. At the bottom of the list, but it was alphabetical. I was and still am a knowledge worker, at least in the words and world of Cathie Wood and all those other CEOs of hedge funds and Big Tech companies. 

      I used to be content being identified as a newspaperman or journalist. It was simple and understandable to everyone for about half a century. I wrote stuff to let people know what was going on in the world and maybe help them make sense of it. I tried.

      But the Internet introduced a new brand of people doing the same thing. Sort of. First, there came “influencers.” These are people who post information on social media platforms for others to view or read and react to. Well, I did that. Still do. But I didn’t get any contracts from companies to push their jeans or sneakers or other products. I guess I was not a very influential influencer.

      Then came the most insulting of all terms, the one so many professional HR people on Linkedin seem to be looking for daily: “Content creators.”

        The operating philosophy here seems to be, “We don’t really care how good or accurate or timely or well-written or even creative your content is, as much as we care that there’s enough of it to occupy our platform daily. Click bait is acceptable.”

        Some of the “content” is readable. Much is not, at least in the judgment of this knowledge worker.

        However, the salient point in this discussion is not so much who is or who is not a knowledge worker, but rather, is this a job title in danger of disappearing, not because the titans of industry have figured out yet another way to label mere mortals in a condescending manner, but because their seemingly vital jobs will be filled by computer chips.

      Wood, remember, was talking about AI. The question being, how will AI affect the need for all these knowledge workers in the future? Can these big firms save a bundle of money by having AI do the work of knowledgeable, creative people who are good at solving problems and decision-making? 

    To which I reply, “How can such a knowledge worker today even recommend a change that may eliminate his or her job?”

     AI is far from there, as anyone who watches some of the prepared programming on YouTube about how to make your life better, or what country to move to or Medieval history is aware. The content is often comparable to a poorly written fifth-grade essay plagiarized from a variety of sources and a “narrator” who often can’t pronounce the words correctly.

   It’s clear no human had a hand in presenting this program and, apparently, no human ever bothered to edit it to make it less amateurish. Because, you know, money saved. The lure of AI.

Cathie Wood

           But this is just the beginning, as Wood reminds us, and the Big Techs will go as far as they can, unless someone (Congress?) says “That’s too far.”

      The HR specialists I found in my knowledge worker capacity noted that “knowledge work” is intangible. This means it does not include physical labor or manual tasks. But if you work with your hands and you’re good at it, don’t get too cocky regarding artificial intelligence and your future. Wood has another scary word in her vocabulary: Robots. She loves them.

      Now, to be fair and thorough, I must note that there’s also another word that has been applied to people who do what I do, which included writing daily newspaper editorials for 23 years: Pundit.

       Here’s how Wikipedia, defines it: “A pundit is a learned person who offers opinion in an authoritative manner on a particular subject area (typically politics, the social sciences, technology or sport), usually through the mass media.”

        I’m not trying to beef up my obituary, but I think that fits me and this pundit suggests that other knowledge workers pay close attention when millionaire influencers like Cathie Wood start talking about replacing them with computerized content creators. Eventually it won’t be just rising stock prices and amateurish YouTube shows.

       And that’s my Ted Talk today.

(# Much of the information on knowledge workers in this column is from a piece by Robin Modell for Flexjobs. She is an experienced journalist, author and corporate writer and a contributor to the On Careers section of U.S. News & World Report. Clearly, a knowledge worker.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

(Updated to reflect the passage of time.)

By Bob Gaydos

JFK … at a press conference

 Eleven years ago, I wrote a column about what I see as the synchronistic connection between myself and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, beginning with the fact we share the same birth date, May 29. The key point in the column, at least to me, was my pledge “to remember to honor him not on the date he died, but on the date we both were born.”

      It’s a pledge that’s even more important today, I think, when there is such a dearth of public figures who inspire the kind of hope and pride in America that JFK did for me and millions of others. Hope and pride are two elements in short supply in today’s political debate. They’ve been replaced by deceit and anger, which only begets more deceit and anger. A path to ruin. So today, on what would be JFK’s 107th birthday, I choose hope.

       My connection with Kennedy began to take shape in my college years. His handling of the Cuban missile crisis allowed me to graduate on time. But as I was home waiting to report to Fort Dix, N.J., for basic training, JFK was assassinated, on Nov. 22, 1963, postponing my duty for a month. And 20 years later, as fate would have it, the first editorial I was asked to write as the new editorial page editor for The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., was to mark the 20th anniversary of Kennedy’s death. Headline: “The Measure of the Man.”

     Seven years ago, I wrote: “Much of it still applies. The legend of JFK — Camelot (Jackie, John-John and Caroline), PT-109, Navy and Marine Corps Medals, the Purple Heart, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” “Ask not …”, the challenge to put a man on the moon, the Peace Corps, the New Frontier, a limited nuclear test ban treaty — still far outweighs his failings, including extramarital affairs, hiding illnesses from us, escalation of the American troop presence in Vietnam and a reluctance to take a firm stance in the growing battle over segregation in America.

    “He is regularly rated as one of this country’s greatest presidents, a testament I believe to his ability to inspire hope, faith and courage in Americans, especially young Americans like me, at a time of grave danger. Much of that owes to his youth (he was 43 when elected president, the youngest ever) and his ability to eloquently deliver the words written for him by Ted Sorensen, a synchronistic match if there ever was one. But Kennedy, a Harvard graduate, was no slouch at writing either, having won a Pulitzer Prize for biography with “Profiles in Courage.”

    “… Kennedy’s (message) was unfailingly one of hope. We can do this. We are up to the challenge. We care. His average approval rating as president was 70 percent. He also ranked third, behind Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa, in Gallup’s List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century, according to Wikipedia.”

   The question I still ask myself is, what might JFK have done, what might he have meant to America and the world, if he had lived longer?

    In that column seven years ago, to my ever-lasting embarrassment on the Internet, I also said that I shared a birthday with another great communicator, Bob Dylan. I was off by five days (May 24). Belated happy 83rd birthday to the Nobel poet laureate anyway.

     On a positive note, I subsequently discovered that May 29 is also the birthday of Harry G. Frankfurt. The professor emeritus at Princeton University authored a 67-page essay entitled “On Bullshit.“ It was a New York Times best seller in 2005. And it also explained to me how a person like Donald Trump could say the things he said, flying in the face of other things he had recently said, none of which had any basis in reality, and keep doing it. It’s not lying, Frankfurt explains, it’s bullshit. The liar has to remember what he said. The bullshitter does not. He doesn’t care.

     Professor Frankfurt died July 16 of last year at 84. Like Kennedy, his message and memory will live on with me.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

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

By Bob Gaydos

Trains! Trains! Trains!

     Long ago and far away, in a bustling, friendly North Jersey place called Bayonne, a young boy (about 5) clambered out of bed in what seemed like the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

     He opened the bedroom door and entered a world of light and laughter and clinking glasses and aunts and uncles and … trains!  Trains! And tracks. And …!

       Oh! Oh! Oh!

    It was explained to the hyper-excited boy trying not to wet his pajamas that Santa had been there and brought the train set and set it up, but was coming back with more presents so the boy had to go quickly go the bathroom and then he could play with the trains for a few minutes and go back to bed and be quiet not to wake his baby sister sleeping in her crib.

       And so he did.

       He expanded on those trains and surrounding accessories for another dozen years with the aid of Santa, parents and aunts and uncles for many more Christmas Eve visits. The layout expanded to cover a side of the living room around a Christmas tree in another, larger, home until eventually, at the “request” of his mother, it moved to the basement.

        Then the boy went off to college and life.

       Those trains, the Lionel New York Central passenger line, are still in good shape, in storage now in a big box in the basement with all the rest, after the long run in Bayonne and a revival bringing joy for that boy’s own two sons some four-plus decades later in Middletown, N.Y.

        That Christmas Eve with Santa’s two-stop visit returned vividly to that young boy’s mind as he listened to the news last night, now some seven decades later. A reminder of a simpler time. 

        A time of family, community, innocence, hope and peace. A time worth remembering and, perhaps, removing from the boxes in the basement. 

rjgaydos@gmail.com

The following is a reprint of a column I wrote 10 years ago. I am re-posting it today on the 60th anniversary of the assassination of president John F. Kennedy because of its significance in my life and because of the times we live in. Would things have been different if Kennedy had lived to continue serving? I have no way of knowing. I’d like to think the answer is yes. Joe Biden is the oldest elected president this country has ever had. Kennedy was the youngest. They share the same dedication to protecting our democracy. I continue to celebrate Kennedy on the birth date I share with him and I honor his memory on the anniversary of the day he was taken from us. A day history was altered forever.

By Bob Gaydos

John F. Kennedy

 The first editorial I wrote for the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., appeared on the 20th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I wrote the headline, too: “The measure of the man.” 
      Trying to “measure” the meaning of the life of a man who was literally loved and idolized by millions of people is no easy task, especially for a rookie editorial writer’s debut effort. But that’s what newspapers do and, in truth, I took it as a good omen that remembering JFK was my first assignment. He was a hero to me as to many young men my age when he was elected president. It was a combination of things: his youth, his wit, his easy-going style, his intelligence, his words, his sense of justice. Plus, we shared the same birthdate: May 29.
     As fate would have it, JFK would come to be remembered, not on his birthday, but on the anniversary of his death. And not so much for what Americans received for having him as president for 1,000 days, but rather for what we lost by not having him much longer.
     That first editorial said, in essence, that it would take more than 20 years to measure the meaning of the man. It acknowledged the things we had learned about JFK in the years since the shooting in Dallas — the flaws that made him human — as well as what I felt were his positive contributions. Thirty years later, no longer a rookie editorial writer — indeed, now retired after 23 years of writing editorials — with Nov. 22 approaching, I realized I had to write about JFK 50 years after his death (because that’s what old newspaper guys do). Before I started, I asked one of my reliable sounding boards, my son, Zack, what he knew about JFK. Zack is 19 and better informed than a lot of young people his age, so I figured his answer would provide me with a fair sense of what our education system had been telling kids about Kennedy.

   “He was the first Catholic president,” Zack said. Correct. “He had an affair with Marilyn Monroe.” Uh, correct. ‘There’s still some theories that there was more than one shooter.” Right. “Do you think the Kevin Costner movie (“JFK,” directed by Oliver Stone) was true?” Well, the people portrayed were real. “The Bay of Pigs didn’t go too well.” No, it didn’t. I took the opportunity to point out that Cuba was the site, not only of Kennedy’s biggest failure in global affairs, but also his biggest success.

     I was a little older than Zack is now when the world stood at the brink of a nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missile-launching sites in Cuba, aimed at the United States. I was a senior in college and knew full well, as did all my classmates, than no 2-S deferment was going to exempt me from what might happen if the Soviets did not — as Kennedy demanded — remove their missiles. Kennedy ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade Cuba to prevent the shipment of Soviet missiles and equipment. Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet president, who had initially denied the existence of the missile sites, sent a naval fleet to Cuba, loaded with supplies and armed for battle. As the world watched and waited and prayed, Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged messages. Kennedy prevailed. The Soviet fleet stopped short of Cuba and turned around. I lived to write this remembrance. Kennedy was dead not long after.

     So here I am 50 years later, still looking to take the measure of the man and still wondering how that is possible. Kennedy had the gift of engagement. He appeared to be comfortable with whomever he was speaking. He had tremendous appeal to young people, being so different from the older, stodgier presidents who preceded him. He created the Peace Corps — a legacy that continues to this day with not enough fanfare. He made many Americans — and this is not a small thing — truly proud to be Americans. Not in an arrogant, flag-waving, we-know-better-than-you way. Just proud. And he cheated on his wife and kept his serious health problems a secret from us and sometimes needed to be prodded by his brother, Bobby (another tragic loss) to take the proper (courageous) stand on issues.

      So the question I still ask myself is, what might JFK have done, what might he have meant to America and the world, if he had lived longer? What did we lose at Dealey Plaza? Certainly, whatever innocence we still possessed. The wind was sucked from our sails as a nation and our domestic politics have slowly and steadily deteriorated into such partisanship that is virtually impossible for any president to speak to the minds and hearts of a majority of Americans the way Kennedy did. Maybe it would have happened even if Kennedy had lived a longer life and gone on to be an ambassador to the world of what America stands for. Or maybe not.

     It dawns on me in writing this that it is an ultimately frustrating task to try to take the measure of another man or woman. I know what JFK meant to me personally. I know a lot of others feel similarly and others do not. I know what history has recorded (he was also the youngest man to be elected president) and what the tabloids have told us. I have a sense of what I would like to think Kennedy would ultimately have meant had he not died so young. But it’s only speculation.

     The only man I can truly take the measure of is myself. It is 50 years since that morning when I was waiting at home to go to Fort Dix, N.J., to begin six months of active duty training. How do I measure up today? That’s a question I work on every day. It wasn’t always thus, but the years have a way of insisting on perspective. Maybe the answer will appear in some other writing. I have neither the space nor the inclination to do so here. I will say that, on balance, I’ll probably give myself a passing grade, but there’s still some stuff I’m learning. For now, I’m through trying to take the measure of JFK, as man or president. Let the historians have at it. I’m going to try to take his advice and ask not what life can do for me, but what I can contribute to life. And I’m also going to remember to honor him not on the date he died, but on the date we both were born. 

By Bob Gaydos

Barbara Bedell

 A colleague with whom I spent 29 years carefully avoiding talking politics died the other day. In my sorrow at her passing, I contemplated what it would be like talking politics with her today.

    She would have hated it.

    Barbara Bedell was a prominent fixture at the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, NY, when I started working there in 1978. She was an even more prominent fixture when I retired from the newspaper 29 years later.

      She remained another 10 years, cranking out her daily column of news you can’t find in local papers today. Fund-raisers, charities, non-profits, civic organizations, the stuff that makes a community. Names, names, names. Everyone wanted their name or their group mentioned in Barbara’s column.

      I worked at a desk next to hers for about a decade. It offered handy access to the famous Bedell candy dish and was close enough to share gossip.

     Barbara knew a lot of people. But she also knew about being discreet and had learned to reconcile her somewhat conservative political views with the decidedly liberal views offered daily on the paper’s editorial page, editorials written for the most part by me.

     I knew she was a longtime, loyal registered Republican, a Ronald Reagan Republican, from her proud roots in Annapolis to stops in South Dakota and Poughkeepsie. She often donated to Republican political campaigns, but she never let her political preferences influence who was mentioned in her column. Or who was not. She played it straight.

     It was that straight-shooter trait I remembered when I ran into Barbara four years after I had retired. I was working on a column for my blog and the 2012 presidential campaign was in full swing.

   Not having talked politics in a while, I asked, in total innocence, “What do you think of the presidential candidates your party is offering?”

      She did not disappoint.

       “It is absurd, insulting. None of them is qualified. It’s embarrassing. Obama is going to win in a landslide. I couldn’t vote for any of them.”

    “Not even Romney?”

    “No.”

     “But how did this happen? How did this gang become the Republican Party’s best and brightest?”

     “They’re not. And all those (Tea Party) Republicans who got elected last time are going to lose next time. It’s a disgrace. I got phone calls from all the Republican campaign fund-raising committees. I told them not to call me. I’m not giving any of them any money.”

       “So who would you like to see run for president?” I asked Barbara.

        “Hillary Clinton. And don’t use my name.”

        “Spoken like a true Republican,” I wrote.

         It was a great kicker for the column, but how prophetic those last lines proved to be.

         A disgrace, she had called her party’s leading figures at the time. The Republican candidates for president in December of 2011, when Barbara and I had this brief conversation, were Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and the two Mormon candidates, Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney.

       The field ate each other up. Huntsman was too smart and reasonable. Romney simply said whatever the audience of the day wanted to hear. He won. Then, as Barbara predicted, Obama beat him.

        The story at the time was that loyal Republicans kept quiet about the candidates’ obvious lack of presidential qualifications until and unless they were vying for the same nomination. Republican candidates could see their fellow candidates’ flaws all too clearly. They keep quiet about them only when it suited them to do otherwise.

    The traditional party faithful, the “moderates,” as Barbara described herself, mostly kept their opinions of the candidates to themselves. And Barbara was wrong about one thing: Some of those Tea Party candidates kept winning. As a result, the party core steadily became more and more conservative, anti-science, anti-immigrant. anti-education, anti-gay, anti-anything but white, Christian nationalist philosophy.

      Mostly, they kept this to themselves as well. Then Donald Trump came along and let them out of the closet to trumpet their ignorance, intolerance and occasional inclination to violence. Party leaders, well aware of the shortcomings of Trump and many of their fellow elected Republicans, again kept it to themselves.

      And so fear and cowardice have become the bywords of the Republican Party today. It doesn’t matter that what you know in your heart is true, just do not speak ill of the ignorant elite if you don’t want to lose your job, or worse.

    Today, having become the party of Trump — a man twice impeached, found guilty of sexual assault, charged with campaign finance fraud for paying hush money to a porn star, indicted for attempting to overturn the legitimate results of an election, a conspiracy to threaten the rights of others, a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding before Congress and obstruction of an official proceeding, about to be indicted for a separate conspiracy to overturn the results of a legitimate election and indicted for concealing and refusing to return classified government documents  — the continued silence of most Republicans is deafening.

      So what would my departed friend and colleague, Barbara Bedell, think of the Republican Party candidates for president today?

       I don’t think she’d mind me speculating. Listening over the divider that separated our desks, I think I can hear her muttering quietly, “They’re a disgrace, Gaydos. An embarrassment to America. And you can quote me.”

rjgaydos@gmail.com