Senior Advice

 My brother-in-law Richard Gardella moved to a Senior living facility this year at the age of 88. For most of his life he was a practicing attorney but from his earlier days as a newspaper reporter he loved to write about people. He still believes that everyone has their story. In his new home he has continued his practice of writing by profiling the seemingly ordinary people who reside in the facility as well as members of the staff. His first profile was about Larry Kirby, a decorated veteran of WWII, who published a book, Stories From the Pacific, about his experience during the war. Larry died at the age of 99 shortly after Richard completed his profile. In that profile Richard included Larry's written advice to seniors entering the facility. It is good advice for anyone, and I repeat it here with Richard's permission. 

Some people embrace their golden years, while others become bitter and surly. Life is too short to waste your days on the latter. Spend your time with positive, cheerful people, it’ll rub off on you and your days will seem that much better. Spending your time around bitter people will make you feel older and harder to be around.

Try to keep a healthy life. Pains and discomfort go hand in hand with getting older. Try not to dwell on them but accept them as part of life. Try doing moderate exercise (like walking every day), eat well and get your sleep. It is easy to become sick, and it is hard to remain healthy. That is why you need to keep yourself in good shape and be aware of your medical and physical needs. Keep in touch with your doctor, do tests even when you’re feeling well. 

Don’t stress over the little things from the past. You’ve already overcome so much in your life. You have good memories and bad ones, but the important thing is the present. Don’t let the past drag you down and don’t let the future frighten you. Small issues will soon be forgotten. Feel good in the now! 

Regardless of age, always keep love alive. Love life, love your family, love your friends, and remember: Love is more precious than the finest jewels.

Be proud, both inside and out. Don’t stop going to your barber or hair salon, do your nails, go to the dermatologist and the dentist, keep your perfumes and creams well stocked. When you are well maintained on the outside, it seeps in, making you feel proud and strong.

Don’t lose sight of fashion trends for your age but keep your own sense of style. You’ve developed your own sense of what looks good on you—keep it, and be proud of it. It’s part of who you are.

Always stay up to date. Read newspapers, watch the news. Go online and read what people are saying. Make sure you have an active email account and try to use some of those social networks. You’ll be surprised at what old friends you’ll meet.

Respect the younger generation and their opinions. They may not have the same ideas as you, but they are the future and will take the world in their direction. Give advice, not criticism, and try to remind them that yesterday’s wisdom still applies today. Never use the phrase: “in my time.” Your time is now. As long as you are alive, you are a part of this time.

Never regret not living with your children or grandchildren. Sure, being surrounded by family sounds great, but we all need our own space. They need theirs and you need yours.

Don’t abandon activities. Each evening after dinner, check the activity sheet and the next day get involved in at least one activity. Be active, be friendly, be happy.

Speak in courteous tones and try not to complain or criticize too much unless you really need to. Try to accept situations as they are.

If you’ve been offended by someone—forgive them. If you’ve offended someone—apologize. Don’t drag around resentment with you. Someone once said: “Holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Forgive, forget, and move on with your life.

Laugh. Laugh away your worries. Remember, you are one of the lucky ones. You managed to have a life, a long life. Many never get to this age, never get to experience a full life. Dear friends, enjoy a peaceful time at this point in your life.

Don’t worry…be happy. 

Larry Kirby in WWII.

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Happy Thanksgiving 2023

    

                                            

 

My wife and I are just thankful that we've made it to another Thanksgiving Day. Here is my annual Thanksgiving message.

To say I was born and raised in New York City would be a little misleading because in my memories of New York in the 40s and 50s, the city was a collection of small towns or villages. I was born in Woodside, a section of the borough of Queens, and the skyscrapers and streets of Manhattan were as remote for me as China would be to my grandchildren today.

Because of our insularity I can’t be sure if a Thanksgiving custom we had back then was unique to Woodside or whether it could have been found elsewhere throughout the great metropolis. Anyone else I’ve mentioned it to had never heard of it including my wife who was born a little bit north of the City in White Plains, the hub of Westchester county.

Anyway, on Thanksgiving morning the children in our neighborhood would dress up as bums or hobos. It didn’t take much since back then we would usually wear our clothes until they literally fell apart. We would take our most worn and tattered clothing and rip and tear them a little more. Then, we would blacken a cork over a candle and smear it over our faces to simulate dirt. I remember my grandmother giving me a little pouch with a drawstring, or was it a pillowcase, that we hobos could sling over our shoulders.

Then, we were ready to make the rounds of our neighbors to ask, “anything for thanksgiving?” Inevitably, they would answer our plea with some of the bounty from the meal they were preparing. Usually it would be apples, or walnuts, or sometimes a few pennies. Don’t laugh. Twenty pennies were enough to buy a Spalding (Spaldeen), the elite of bouncing rubber balls used by us in so many street games.

I don’t know where the “anything for thanksgiving” custom came from. We lived in a small neighborhood that seemed to have been mainly Irish with a mixture of Italians. In my nearby Catholic school the majority of the kids seemed to have Irish names. There were Ryans, Regans, Dunphys, Moylans, and Healys. However, A few blocks down busy 69^thStreet were the Napolitanos who ran the grocery store. In the other direction lived the dreaded Gallos whose kids were the toughest in the school. 

But I’m not sure that “anything for thanksgiving”  was an ethnic custom. We were a predominately Catholic neighborhood and the idea of thanksgiving was part of our religious heritage even though none of us knew that the word “Eucharist” meant “Thanksgiving.” On the other hand, it could have been a peculiarly American response to the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Nothing had marked the depression so much as homeless men on bread lines or riding the rails. These were the hobos that we children imitated. Even though most of us could be considered poor, at least we and our neighbors would be able to sit down that afternoon in our homes to the best meal of the year. We did have a lot to be thankful for. The Depression was over, the men had returned from the terrible war, and the NY Yankees were on the verge of recovering their past glory.

Over 75 years have passed since those childhood years but I can truly say that my wife and I have much to be thankful for. Our grandparents came to this country from Italy with nothing but their own traditions, customs, and religion. Like most children of immigrants our parent came to love America and worked hard to provide for their children and give them a standard of living that is still the envy of the world. 

Even today, after a pandemic and divisive political campaigns, there is more reason to hope than to fear. I would just like to end this post with George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789. Thanksgiving did not become a National holiday until after our terrible Civil War, but Washington’s words are as meaningful today as they were in 1789.  

Thanksgiving Proclamation
Issued by President George Washington, at the request of Congress, on October 3, 1789

 


Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”



Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.


And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.



Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.


 

Go. Washington 

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Tokyo Stories

 

                                                                                          

Yasujiro Ozu is regarded by film historians and critics as one of the world’s great film directors. Born in 1903, Ozu is not as well known in this country as Akira Kurosawa whose Samurai epics were transformed into hit westerns. Nevertheless, Ozu was a prolific filmmaker whose career began in the silent era and only ended with his death in 1963. More than anyone else he depicted in his films the simple beauty of the lives of ordinary families especially as Japan emerged from the devastation of World War II. 

Ozu’s style was unique. He just seems to set his camera down low as if we were participants sitting low in Japanese style around the table as family members converse or enter or exit each scene. We just watch their comings and goings as the simple plots develop. He was also a master of film composition. Each frame is carefully filled as if it were a painting. There are no tricky or dazzling special effects, just ordinary life. 

Here is a list of some of these films, most of them named after the seasons: Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), Tokyo Story (1953), Early Spring (1956), Floating Weeds (1959), Late Autumn, (1960), End of Summer (1961), and Autumn Afternoon (1962). All deal with every day, ordinary life. 

Perhaps the best example is Tokyo Story, regarded as Ozu’s crowning masterpiece. The film follows an aging couple’s journey to visit their grown children in bustling postwar Tokyo. The couple are from the countryside and find it difficult to adjust to city life, especially when their grown children prove to be too busy with their own careers and children to pay much attention to them. It is only their widowed daughter-in-law, who lost her husband in the war, who seems to have any time and consideration for them. She works in an office and wears Western clothes but still retains the traditional Japanese charm and courtesy. Setsuko Hara, one of the most beautiful and charming actresses in film history, and an Ozu regular, plays the daughter-in-law in this deeply moving film.

Another personal favorite is the 1959 film Floating Weeds, Ozu’s first color film and a remake of one of his early silent films. An aging actor takes his traveling theatrical troupe to a small seaside town to perform traditional Japanese drama to small and barely interested modern audiences. At the same time he reunites with his former lover and their illegitimate grown son to the chagrin of his current mistress, a member of the troupe. It is a beautiful story of human relationships in a changing world. The DVD set contains the 1959 color version as well as the original silent version of this timeless tale.

Most of Ozu’s films were filmed during the period of Japan’s recovery from WWII but Yakashi Yamazaki’s 2006 film, Always Sunset on Third Avenue takes a nostalgic look back at the period. The film was a huge success in Japan and won Japan’s equivalent of the Oscars in 12 of the 14 categories for which it was nominated. 

The Third Avenue of the title is a busy, crowded Tokyo street in a working-class neighborhood that will be very familiar to senior Americans who grew up in places like Brooklyn and Queens back in postwar America. The lives of these people bring back my own memories of days gone by. We see primitive electric refrigerators replacing iceboxes and putting the iceman out of business. We see residents crowding into the home of the first neighbor to buy a small black and white TV to watch wrestling. We see them buying Coca Cola at a neighborhood candy store and drinking it out of the bottle.

The neighbors are also familiar. There is a small auto repair shop run by a war veteran who is optimistic about the future of the automobile industry in Japan. Meanwhile, he and his homemaker wife and young son live above the shop. There is a young writer who ekes out a living by running a candy store and selling lottery tickets. He too has dreams of becoming a famous published author. There is the young woman who runs a small sake bar to pay off her father’s debts. There is even a doctor who like American doctors of the past makes house calls. He lives alone having lost his wife and daughter in a bombing attack during the war.  Just as in America they all have hope in the future now that the war is behind them. The symbol of their hope is the Tokyo Tower. We see it gradually rising to symbolize Japan’s recovery.

The film’s popularity led to two sequels that while not as good, tie up some of the loose ends from the original. I do not know if these films are available on streaming services. I used the DVD but one word of caution about the DVD. The directions to access English subtitles are in Japanese. It looks difficult but just takes a little trial and error to see this beautiful film. Here is a link to a brief video clip of one especially moving scene.

Watching these films it is hard to have anything but respect for the Japanese people, and it is sad to think that we had to engage in such a devasting war with them. On the other hand, Japan’s revival after the War is a tribute not only to them but to America. We had learned the lesson of WWI and rather than trampling our defeated enemy underfoot like Soviet Russia did in Eastern Europe, we worked to ensure the recovery of both Japan and Germany. More than the war itself, the peace that followed the war might have been the greatest achievement of the Greatest Generation.

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Obama's Complicity

Former President Barack Obama recently called the October 7 massacre of over 1400 Israeli civilians by gun toting Hamas terrorists “inexcusable,” but then went on to offer an excuse by claiming that it could be only understood by considering years of history in the area. In his remarks he went even further and said that “all of us are complicit to some degree.” Just who was he referring to when he said that all of us are complicit?

 

Was he referring to himself? Was he referring to his own failure to solve the problems in the Middle East during his eight years as President. Was he finally assuming responsibility for the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, or for the rise of ISIS during his tenure? Was he referring to his own wife and daughters? To what degree were they complicit?

 

Was he referring to the current President. After all, didn’t Obama say of his own Vice-President, “If you want something f---ked up, give it to Joe.” To what degree is Biden and his administration complicit? Actually, the leading members of the Biden foreign policy team were all members of the Obama administration. What is their degree of complicity?

 

Maybe he means that the whole Democratic party is complicit, including progressive radicals like the so-called Squad, some of whose members have openly expressed their detestation of Israel? Can he mean that the protestors on college campuses are complicit? 

The answer to all these questions is No, No, No, No, No.  Of course, when Obama says that all are complicit, he is not referring to his own family or political friends and allies. He is referring to an abstraction. Politicians like him can never bring themselves to blame a real person who commits a crime. Whether it be a mugger, a looter, a rapist, or Hamas gangster, they cannot call them out but implore us to consider their actions in context, or in the light of history.  Some progressives even consider looting and shoplifting to be a form of reparations.

 

On the other hand, when protestors entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021, people like Obama never urged us to put the event in context or consider the historical background of that protest. The protestors were immediately branded as insurrectionists out to overthrow the government. Eventually, some were brought to trial, convicted, and given prison sentences unlike the left-wing protestors who attacked and burned Federal buildings in the previous summer. 

 

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August Wilson: Fences

 

 “Fences” stars Denzell Washington who also directed this 2016 film adaptation of the stage play of the same name by August Wilson. Actually, “Fences” is one of a series of ten stage plays by Wilson about life in a Black neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Wilson wrote the screenplay for this film and received a nomination for best screenplay despite having died in 2005.*

Denzell Washington does a great job as the lead character Troy, a garbage man for the city of Pittsburgh, who has never gotten over the fact that he was born too early to break the Major League Baseball color barrier. He is angry and bitter despite the devotion of his loving wife, played beautifully by Viola Davis. 

Troy also has two grown sons neither of whom is he able to appreciate or even understand. The eldest son, the product of his first marriage, is a  musician whom the father will never go to hear. The other son is a seventeen-year old high school football standout who is being recruited to play in college, an idea totally opposed by his father. Troy has toiled for years to support his wife and children, as well as a brother who was permanently mentally damaged by a head wound while serving in WW II. Troy is a man who understands his responsibilities despite the fact that he ran away from home in Alabama at the age of 14 after a brutal beating by his own father. 

Watching the story play out on the screen I could not help but think that the situation of Troy in Pittsburgh was not much different from my own father’s in New York City’s borough of Queens back in 1956. Like Troy my father had somehow managed to buy a home in a poor to lower middle-class neighborhood. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment with one tiny bathroom. There was a kitchen with an old table where we had our meals. There was no dining room. It makes me laugh today when I watch home shows on TV where the young people insist on granite or better countertops. We had no counters at all. 

My father was born about the same time as Troy to parents who had migrated to New York City from impoverished, rural Italy. He was of that second generation that had one foot in the old world and one in the new. In a sense, Troy’s situation was similar. He was an immigrant to industrial Pittsburgh from rural Alabama. After running away from home Troy turned to robbery to survive but wound up in prison where he learned to play baseball.

But August Wilson’s Troy is a man who was never able to fulfill his baseball dream. He is a strong talented man but still winds up in Pittsburgh working on a garbage truck. My father was a mechanical genius who could fix practically anything but never even got through grade school. He was working in his father’s grocery store when he got married but went to work in a defense plant when WWII broke out. After the war he became a shop supervisor or foreman, and even invented a couple of valuable processes for which he got little reward or recognition. 

There were so many things about Troy that reminded me of my father. He was outgoing and sociable. He had many friends with whom he talked, drank, and played cards. They all liked him. My mother died when I was just 11 and though my father would never forget her, he soon found another caring woman in much the same way as Troy did.

I was 17 in 1956, the same age as Troy’s younger son. I was not an athlete but I was an outstanding student. In both cases our teachers were expecting and urging us to go to college, something our fathers did not value or understand. Troy’s son became a Marine but I went to Fordham University the same school that Denzell Washington attended.

August Wilson’s film is about the Black experience in America but Wilson also claimed that he wrote to show Whites that Blacks experienced many of the same things as they did. He wrote,

I think my plays offer (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans," … "For instance, in Fences they see a garbageman, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman's life is affected by the same things – love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives.

He certainly succeeded in "Fences." The film did not win the Best Picture award, but could have. Denzell Washington did not win the Academy Award for Best Actor but his performance was also good enough to win. Viola Davis should have won the award for Best Actress but apparently she and her advisors decided to seek only the nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

 

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* Wilson was from a bi-racial family. His father was a German immigrant but Wilson took his Black mother's name after the father walked out.