Mortgage Our Future

My wife and I bought our first home in Fairfield CT back in 1966 for $21,000. It certainly was not affordable for us. I was 27 years old and my salary as an Assistant Professor at a small Catholic college was only about $6500 per year, or about $540 per month. My wife, an RN, could not work because our second child had been born six months before. 

Indeed, only a gift of $2000 from my father enabled us to come up with the down payment, and somehow a local bank approved us for a $19,000, 30-year mortgage to cover the balance of the purchase price. We had no choice. No mortgage, no home.

Actually, it turned out to be a no-brainer.  The monthly mortgage payment, with taxes and insurance, was about what we had been previously paying for rent, but now we had a home of our own to live in and care for. 

I did not realize it at the time but in taking on a mortgage loan we had entered into a partnership with the bank. We really were joint owners of the property. What were the terms of the partnership? The bank put up the capital and required us to make monthly payments of principal and interest. We were also responsible for paying for homeowner’s insurance and local property taxes that the bank conveniently lumped into the monthly mortgage payment. Any improvements or repairs would be our responsibility.

Initially, it seemed that the capitalist bank got the most out of the partnership, but as time went by, it turned out to be a great deal for us. Twelve years later our family had grown, and I had had a career change that was turning out well, and so we decided to buy a larger home. We sold our house for about $80,000, paid back the remaining principal, that was probably still around $17,000, to our bank partner, and pocketed about $60,000, a substantial increase in equity over our original $2000 down payment. 

Most of that equity went as a down payment on a larger home nearby that cost about $90,000. Now we had a new bank partner, another friendly capitalist institution that was willing to invest in us and our property. The terms of the partnership were much the same. 

Thirty years later with our six children grown we sold that house for about $500,000 and downsized to a small ranch house that would be more suitable for an older couple. Even though all those years had gone by, there was still a large principal balance on my mortgage because I had refinanced a couple of times as the house increased in value to help put our children through college.

Although still nearby, the ranch house was in a better neighborhood and cost about $600,000.  Even though I was about to retire, we still had a mortgage of about $250,000 and will probably continue this latest partnership with a bank until death or illness forces us to sell.  I still see no reason to pay it off. Taxes and insurance costs keep rising, but our monthly housing cost is comparable to current rental rates in Fairfield. 

Looking back now I still believe that our experience with capitalism was a positive one. The banks lent us their depositor’s money, and we never missed a payment. We labored to take care of the property and maintain its value. In the process the bank got its principal back with interest, and we were able to increase our equity. Both sides in the partnership profited. We were not alone. I suspect that home ownership is more widespread in the United States than anywhere else in the world.  ###

Thanks for the Memory

 

Here is my annual Thanksgiving message. This year I include a musical note at the end.

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, people would come to their doors and 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.

Today, we are also thankful for the memories of each other, of family and of friends, many of which only come back to mind when our children visit and go over their own memories. In thinking about these memories, a beautiful song from the past came into my head. 

Almost hidden in a really terrible film entitled The Big Broadcast of 1938, there is a real gem of a song which van be views on Youtube. In this beautiful vignette Bob Hope and Shirley Ross did more than sing the lovely melody.They acted or reacted to the very poignant lyrics of Thanks for the Memory, a song that would become Hope's theme song for the rest of his career. Click on this link to the Youtube clip. Also, note the very nice comments to the video. You can also watch below. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Dana Andrews MVP

 

 

Dana Andrews starred in Laura (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), two of the best films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Today, critics still regard them as among the best films of all time. In Laura he played a police detective in Otto Preminger’s directorial debut, and in Best Years of Our Lives he played an Air Force bombardier returning from WW II in a film directed by William Wyler that swept most of the Academy Awards.

 

Both films are examples of the way the Hollywood studio system could bring together craftsmen and craftswomen to produce almost perfect art. The direction, the writing, the cinematography, the set design, the costume design, and the musical score were all of the highest order. The casts, from stars to featured players, were equally superb.  

For Dana Andrews these two films were the high point of his career and established his screen persona. He was handsome but not a pretty boy, tough but vulnerable, calm and quiet but could seem to contain hidden emotions. He was not nominated for Best Actor in either of these films, but his presence was the central core in each film. In a way, he was like a baseball or basketball player whose largely unnoticed quiet competence keeps the team together on its way to a championship.

 

Dana Andrews in Laura

Laura is a good example. Andrews was surrounded by an outstanding cast who all get their chance to strut their stuff, but they all play off of Andrews. He is the glue that keeps them together. Gene Tierney, one of the most beautiful actresses of all time, catapulted to stardom in the title role. Clifton Webb, in his first screen performance, gave a bravura performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination. A young Vincent Price, and Judith Anderson, a great actress in her own right, rounded out the superb cast.  Credit must go to director Otto Preminger for keeping all this talent in place, but the mere presence of Andrews was essential in bringing them together. 

 

Harold Russell, Dana Andrews,Fredric March

In The Best Years of Our Lives Andrews did not receive even a nomination for Best Actor for his performance in this story of three servicemen returning to civilian life after WWII. Fredric March, a veteran actor, won the Best Actor award, and newcomer Harold Russell, a young naval veteran who had lost both hands in a training accident, won the Best Supporting Actor award. However, I believe that Dana Andrews was again the central core in this film that also featured outstanding performances by Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, and Virginia Mayo.

Andrews plays an Air Force Captain and bombardier who is haunted by horrific dreams and memories of lost comrades. His on-again, off-again, on-again romance with Teresa Wright is played beautifully and is central to the film. He also appears alone in what is a pivotal scene near the end of the film. He has lost his job, and his wife, and a new romance has hit the rocks. He is about to leave his hometown and waits at the airport for a flight to anywhere. He sees some de-commissioned and stripped-down bombers waiting for the scrap heap. He climbs into one and sits in the dusty cabin and the war memories come back. There is no dialogue but gradually we hear the engines starting one by one, and then the sounds of battle run through his head. It is one of the most iconic scenes in film history, filmed beautifully by famed cinematographer Gregg Toland. 

 

In between these two great films, Andrews starred in the 1945 war film, A Walk in the Sun directed by Lewis Milestone. He plays a sergeant forced to take command of a platoon after the death or incapacity of its leaders. His quiet competence keeps the platoon together on its mission. At the same time, he is the central core that keeps a fine cast together. Like most WWII films the platoon is full of characters, and they each get a chance to shine. At my age, it is difficult to watch war films anymore, but I can watch A Walk in the Sun over and over again. It is a faithful adaptation of Harry Brown’s small novel about ordinary men engaged in a dangerous mission, and Andrews’ performance helps to make it a classic. 

Today, it is hard to imagine that most people have not seen these films. I know my grandchildren don’t like to watch black and white films, and even baby boomers at my local senior center have never heard of them. But the directing, the photography, the sets, the writing, the great casts, and the haunting musical scores that permeate these films make them true classics that can be watched over and over again like any great work of art. The fact that Dana Andrews played an unforgettable role in each of these films earns him a place in Hollywood's Hall of Fame.

 

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Democratic Socialism

 

Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected Mayor of New York City, is a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist. Detractors call him a Socialist, or even a Communist because of his stated intention to take over the means  of production in the city. All three of these labels have at least one thing in common: a belief that private enterprise, or profit making business, is inherently inferior to government or public run production.

Whatever the label, Mamdani brings to mind a character in a novel by the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.   

Solzhenitsyn, arguably the greatest and most influential author of the twentieth century, did as much to shake the foundations of Communism in Russia as anything or anyone else. He began writing while a prisoner in Soviet labor camps for almost a decade. After serving his term, he was released into exile in central Asia. 

While in exile, he developed a cancerous tumor and was allowed to return to civilization for treatment. His famous novel, Cancer Ward, is a fictionalized version of his experience in the hospital. He is obviously the main character but he describes the doctors, nurses, and other patients with great sympathy and understanding. * 

However, he had little sympathy for Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov, the only Communist party member in the cancer ward. Rusanov was a party official who only consented to enter this remote facility until his wife could manage to pull strings and find an opening in Moscow. “But Pavel Nikolayevich was tormented no less than by the disease itself, by having to enter the clinic as an ordinary person. He could hardly remember when last he had been in a public hospital.” Rusanov looked down on the other cancer patients as riff-raff, non-Russian Asiatics, or even criminals. 

Solzhenitsyn uses Rusanov and his wife, Kapitolivna Marveyevna, as examples of how Socialist champions of the People can morph into privileged bureaucrats. We must remember that Communists in Russia, like Democratic Socialists in New York, were a small privileged minority despite their rhetoric..  

The Rusanovs loved the People, their great People. They served the People and were ready to give their lives for the People.

But as the years went by they found themselves less and less able to tolerate actual human beings, those obstinate creatures who were always resistant, refusing to do what they were told and, besides, demanding something for themselves.

The Rusanovs had an aversion to “teeming human beings, or jostling crowds.” They found travel on public transportation “disgusting” with loud, pushing, dirty workers struggling to get in. The worst thing was the “familiarity” of these people who would clap you on the shoulder and ask you to pass a ticket or some change along the car.

Eventually, the Rusanovs acquired an automobile of their own and avoided public transportation altogether. On railroads, they would only travel first-class on reserved compartments to avoid mixing with people “crammed in, wearing sheepskin coats and carrying buckets and sacks.”

Rusanov was a bureaucrat who had done very well in the Soviet system. He had a wife and two children, a car and a nice apartment as well as a small country place. It is true that he had never actually been a worker. He had never built anything, made anything, or designed anything. He had not even served in the military during the great patriotic war. His job had been to gather evidence and information that could be used to send enemies of the state to the labor camps.

Even though he loved Stalin, he was aware of the many shortcomings in his country. However, he blamed all Russia’s problems on speculation or what we would call private enterprise. 

Over the years Rusanov had become more and more unshakably convinced that all our mistakes, shortcomings, imperfections and inadequacies were the result of speculation. Spring onions, radishes and flowers were sold on the street by dubious types, milk and eggs were sold by peasant women in the market, and yoghurt, woolen socks, even fried fish at the railway stations. There was large-scale speculation too. Lorries were being driven off “on the side” from State warehouses. If these two kinds of speculation could be torn up by the roots, everything in our country could be put right quickly and our successes would be even more striking. There was nothing wrong in a man strengthening his material position with the help of a good salary from the State and a good pension… Such a man had earned his car, his cottage in the country, and a small house in town to himself. But a car of the same make from the same factory, or a country-cottage of the same standard type, acquired a completely different criminal character if they had been bought through speculation. Rusanov dreamed, literally dreamed, of introducing public executions for speculators. Public executions would speedily bring complete health to our society. (162)

Socialism did not bring equality to the Soviet Union or to any other Communist/Soocialist country. Supporters of Socialism have always blamed others for its failures, and claimed that they could make it succeed. Progressives in our country, like Rusanov, blame capitalism and private enterprise for our problems. They want heads to roll, figuratively, or maybe literally. In the Soviet Union the only true equality was found in the cancer ward. Cancer was the great equalizer and treated rich and poor alike.

Everyone knows that Zohran Mamdani's background is not that of an oppressed worker or downtrodden peasant. Like other Democratic Socialists, his parents were well off, he went to the best schools, and never held down a real job. He is a member of a privileged elite who has somehow managed to capture the support of the Democratic party in New York City.

*Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward, 1968. Penguin books, 1971.

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Today's Quote: The urge to save humanity is almost always a face for the urge to rule it. H.L. Mencken

Election Day 2025

 

 

 

I have voted in every election, national and local, since I turned 21 back in 1960. I have always regarded it as a civic duty. Yesterday in my hometown of Fairfield CT was no exception even though only local positions and issues were on the ballot.

I must confess that I knew practically nothing about any of the candidates or town charter revision issues on the ballot. So, I fell back on identity politics. I have been a Republican for over 50 years and so tend to vote straight Republican even in local elections. This year was no exception especially when insider information alerted me to some nefarious goings on in Town Hall by the new Democratic administration.

I did make two exceptions. I voted for a Democratic friend who was running for a minor office, and I voted for a Democrat who was running for the zoning commission who spent some time discussing zoning issues with me and a friend while canvassing our neighborhood. He seemed affable, and well-meaning. Of course, my vote is usually meaningless since my district has been gerrymandered to normally vote Democratic.

Anyway, I offer the above as a preamble to my thoughts on the elections that made headlines yesterday. Elections are not always decided on issues or substance but on perceptions. These elections seemed to be examples of identity politics. Answer this question. If you only looked at images of the three candidates in this year’s New York mayoral election, who would you have voted for?

Zohran Mamdani, the eventual winner, looked youthful, energetic and self-confident. Andrew Cuomo had the appearance of an aging bloodhound. He appeared to be a relic of a failed past that even Democrats would like to forget. Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, was another relic of the past. The young Guardian Angel of the Giuliani era is now an old man. 

New York has always been a city of the young, with waves and waves of immigrants replacing the older generations and taking their place in politics. I believe young people supported Mamdani because he looked like them, not because of his radical views. What else would explain why nearly half the voters identified as Jews in polls supported him despite his apparent antisemitism? Of course, he also had the almost unanimous support of New York’s large Moslem community.  

I know little about the issues in the New Jersey and Virginia, but I suspect that identify politics were also at work in those states. Pollsters had predicted tight races, but two attractive Democrat women won going away despite obvious problems during their campaigns. 

The Democrats have learned their lesson and are abandoning the old timers in favor of the new. It looks to me now that Chick Schumer is toast and that AOC, if not Mamdani, will take over. 

Republicans must take heed. Trump is Trump and no one can duplicate him. He is old but still appears young, energetic, and charismatic. Moreover, he has a great sense of humor and can even joke about himself. Republicans must also abandon the old guard and come up with new faces. They may not be Trump, but they can at least try to be as authentic and genuine as he appears.

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Government Shutdown

 

The current government shutdown is in its fourth week. What is the issue? It is not Medicaid, or SNAP (food stamps). These are covered in the Continuing Resolution (CR) passed by the House of Representatives. The House resolution is called a "clean"one because it does not change anything. All current programs would be continued. The Democrat minority in the Senate, however, has used the filibuster to block the CR and demand the continuation of Federal subsidies for participants in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Apparently, Obamacare enrollment has never reached expectations, while claims have skyrocketed to the extent that large premium increases are expected next year.  

 One of the first things I learned when I went into the insurance business over 50 years ago was that insurance was simply the prepayment of claims. It is paying in advance to cover some future bill or expense. It does not matter if it is life insurance, automobile insurance, or medical insurance. The same basic principle must apply. A policyholder pays monthly or annual premiums and these premiums are pooled with others to pay eventual claims. 

 

Medical insurance is no different. It only had its origins in the 1930s during the Great Depression. At that time hospitals and physicians were finding it increasingly difficult to collect from their patients, many of whom were out of work. As a result we had the birth of the “Blues.” Both Blue Cross and Blue Shield were products of the Depression. In short, people would enroll in these plans and pay a monthly or quarterly premium that over time would build up enough of a reserve to cover their future claims. This idea seemed to benefit everyone. Doctors and other health care providers would no longer have to go after their patients like collection agencies; and the patients would not have to come up with a large amount of cash to handle large, unexpected medical bills. 

 

However, to avoid excessive or frivolous claims that raise the cost for everyone, most medical insurance policies included deductibles or co-insurance to reduce or eliminate small claims. This was right out of Insurance 101 since actuaries were well aware that the most cost effective strategy was to make the patient bear part of the cost out of pocket.

 

However, the use of medical insurance to cover future health care costs only took off after World War II. The war had finally taken the country out of the Depression and the economy was booming. In a major change the Federal Government allowed corporations to purchase group medical insurance plans for their employees. Employers were not required to provide health insurance but the government altered the tax code to provide a great incentive. 

 

Unlike other forms of compensation the cost of the medical insurance would not be considered taxable income to the employee. This was important especially to high salaried employees at a time when the highest tax rate was 70%. In other words, employees covered under such a group insurance plan could now have most of their medical expenses paid with tax-free income. It was a no-brainer. Instead of giving all employees a taxable salary increase, the employer could give them a tax-free benefit that would cover future health related costs.

 

The employer sponsored plans were incredibly attractive to all concerned and sparked a veritable revolution in health care in this country. Employers could deduct the cost of their plans as an ordinary business expense while employees could rely on their pre-tax medical insurance plan to cover major medical expenses. Since these were group insurance plans all employees had to be covered even if they had pre-existing medical conditions. Increasingly these group insurance plans came to dominate the market.

Nevertheless, the basic principle of insurance still governed these group plans. They all involved a pre-payment of claims most often through automatic payroll deductions.

 

This system of corporate sponsored insurance worked remarkably well for the great majority of Americans for many years. There were obvious problems, however, that needed to be fixed. People would lose their coverage when they lost or changed their jobs. Self-employed people did not ordinarily have access to these plans. Unemployed workers would eventually lose their coverage. People with pre-existing medical problems would find it almost impossible to get coverage on their own.

 

Attempts had been made to deal with these problems but critics of the system still insisted that over 30 million people were without medical insurance. Even if that number was accurate it would be wrong to say that all those people lacked access to medical care. One of the problems with the system was that so many people refused to purchase medical insurance and just went to the local hospital ER for even ordinary care.

 

Instead of trying to fix the problems in the old system, proponents of the Affordable Care Act sought to overhaul the entire health care system in this country. Now instead of getting a tax break as an incentive for providing employees with medical insurance, employers would be forced to provide such insurance or pay a penalty. Even though the Obama administration had arbitrarily extended the corporate mandate for a year, some employers still chose to drop their plans.

 

More importantly, at the time the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2014, President Obama indicated that it would not be so affordable, and that Federal subsidies would be needed for a couple of years to help participants pay their premiums. As it turned out, the subsidies did not go away. Because of these subsidies many enrollees in Obamacare did not have to pay the full premium for their medical insurance. No matter what you call it, it was no longer insurance but welfare.

Even with subsidies it would appear that most of the un-insured did not find the plans attractive, or were not able to navigate the red tape necessary to enroll. The expected number of plan participants never materialized.   

 

When Obamacare was passed the Federal government was over 17 Trillion dollars in debt. Now the debt is over $37 Trillion. How is the government going to pay these subsidies?  Will it just print more money and add to inflation, or will it have to raise the taxes on everyone. It is a problem that deserves careful study and cooperation, not drastic measures like shutting down the government, and shutting down the benefits of the needy. 

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A Senior's Day

For those who think Senior citizens have nothing to do all day, below find a guest post from my brother Joe about a typical day. Joe is 81 and a retired NYPD sergeant. After his wife Anita died almost 11 years ago, Joe found a companion in Norma. In the process he adopted her family, or they adopted him. Bri and Matthias are Norma's great grandchildren who are both doing well at Joe's high school alma mater, Msgr. McClancy in Queens. I retain Joe's unique spelling and grammar.

 Here is a run down of my day’s activities.

I start off the day by checking my iPad, first for my sleep apena results. Note today’s reading 0.9 great. Next I have some oj and cherios with raspberries and blackberries as blueberries are weigh too high. They have a new gimmick as they pack the blue berries in a larger container but it’s really the same 1 pint. At $5.99, come on, man.

Next I have a teleconference with my sleep apena Dr., the modern wonder as you don’t have to go to the office and wait. She goes over my results with me and says the machine and me are working very well. I ask her to go over the setting on the machine as I had to adjust the humidity, since it seemed I was getting water boarded. You're doing great she says see you in 6 months. Pay co pay later.

Norma's son John will take us to 14th and 4th ave, union square for her therapy session at 1230. Afterwards I will take Norma to the Polish bakery for coffee and a roll, ok I cheat and have a danish, best prices in Williamsburg.

So far so good, as I await Bri softball game which will be played in Staten Island at 430 pm. I am going to watch it on my iPad as traffic is horrendous at that time.

Suddenly, I get a call from Bris father, Richie. Game canceled, he is not happy. He informs me that Brianna will be going to Cheerleading from 6-8pm and could I pick her up as he is taking Matthias to a college fair. Ok.

I now go early to the school hoping that they finish early. As I have about 3/4 of an hour,I start reading my book on Auschwitz. Note, almost finished the authors 5  years in captivity is over, but not his post traumatic ordeal. It’s now 8 pm and no signs of the kids, I call mom and ask her if she picked up Bri? She says Bri knows you are picking her up. Terror. Finally at 825 pm Bri says she coming out. These cheerleaders practice more than the soft ball team. In January, they will be going to Disney for a tournament. Bri get in and as usual asks if we can get something to eat, as she no longer likes Mcds, we go to her favorite deli by her house for grilled chicken sandwich.

Matthias come out and asks me about Columbia, I wanted to tell him you don’t go there to play baseball but say that’s where my friends nephew went before transferring to Vanderbilt, note he went on to play 10 years in majors. One good thing about it being 9 pm is there is no traffic.

I now go home and Norma says where have you been? I change the channel to see the Phillies lose in the 11th, 2-1. As I am now eating a cup of yogurt, I check my emails,Trump is upset that I don’t respond to him, I never should have bought that hat in 2016. Next I see that the kids mom, Antoinette, has sent me two emails re first marking period and except for an 89 in Bris algebra all 100 and 99s. Are the teachers at McClancy judge fans with the 99s?

Question how many women other than Antoinette Funicello do you know with that name? After all these years, I am a 5 year old boy upstairs at 4911 69st and mom is making me sunnyside up eggs, I loved the way the end was crispy. Never was able to do that.

Well, almost finished, but before that I check to see how the Giants are doing against The eagles. What they beat the Super Bowl champs, now that’s another story.

I almost forgot that some where between all this , I took Norma to bank and tried to have her son put on her account, even though I know her passcode. Prior to this at another branch the female rep said technically I was not supposed to do her banking.Funny the ITM machine, never said you are not Norma. Can you imagine Baba going to an itm machine. Different world.

It’s not over as Norma ask I could stop at the pharmacy to get her non diabetic cough syrup.

Ok, with all this when did I take my 9 pm meds? I carry backup meds in my wallet

Now that I have either amused or bored you , have a good day, as Richie for now is picking up the kids today. If you think this is too much, Remember, the Lord only gives you what you can handle.

Forgot, as I was driving to school, the song Forever Young came on the radio as Brianna must have switched the channels.

Ps . 15 days to Daemen first gave, October 25, the day I joined the NYPD. Going to be hard to watch without # 3 in lineup.

Bri softball coach gave her #20 shirt, she was always #1 but will have to wait until his daughter graduates. At least unlike Matthias she is playing.*

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*Matthias is a Senior with an "A" average who also pitches for the Varsity baseball team. Bri is a Freshman who made the girl's Softball Varsity team.

Peace Deal News

  

I have been a regular reader of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) for over fifty years. Even though I worked in the financial services industry, I liked the Journal more for its editorial content than its business news. A few years ago the Journal was acquired by media giant News Corp. It was an unprecedented deal since it was agreed that the traditionally conservative editorial pages would be independent of the new owner. 

Sure enough, the Journal’s editorial pages have remained largely conservative and pro-business. However, since 2016 the WSJ editors and commentators have never been able to swallow Donald Trump to the point where it is hard for them to say one good word about him, his actions, or his policies. They don’t appear to hate him in the manner of left-wing commentators, but they seem to regard him as a rogue relative whose presence they would prefer to ignore. 

So far this year I do not recall the editors of the Journal writing anything good about the President. No one can blame them for consistently opposing his tariff policies but where is the applause as he brokers one peace deal or cease fire after another. They have even been strangely reticent about this weekend’s peace deal that included the release of the Israeli hostages.

Last Saturday, they did bury the following at the end of an editorial that praised the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a courageous female opponent of the Venezuelan dictatorship. 

“If Mr. Trump helps Ms. Machado and the Venezuelan people restore democracy, and help free Mr. Lai from prison, the President will deserve the Nobel next year.”

In their opinion, the unprecedented Peace deal in the Middle East as well as the others negotiated over the globe in the past nine months are not good enough.

Journal political columnists have been equally reluctant to praise the President. Karl Rove, a regular columnist every Thursday since he left the Bush administration, has never forgiven Trump for his criticism of the Bushes. Despite his political astuteness, he finds it almost impossible to give the President any credit. 

Holman Jenkins, usually an acute political observer, has to almost tie himself in knots rather than give any praise to obvious achievements of the Trump administration. After all these years, he still cannot understand the President’s popularity and insists that James Comey won the election for him back in 2016.

Peggy Noonan has been the lead political columnist in the Weekend edition for years. She has never liked Trump as a person or politician. I recall that in 2016 she admitted that she voted for Edmund Burke, a long dead British political scientist, rather than cast a ballot for either Trump or Hillary Clinton. She must feel that she would become a pariah among her political friends if she ever said a good word about President Trump.

Finally, last Saturday she had to break down and give President Trump a grudging hand for brokering the Gaza peace deal. She wrote,

"Give it to him. Give him your applause. Sometimes pessimism reaches a point of moral error. Sometimes hope is the only realistic approach.

So give it to President Trump, whose White House has produced the first progress in the Mideast since the grave crisis of Oc. 7 began. He announced Wednesday with typically Trumpian words. He called it, “a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization.”

Finally, the release of the hostages on Monday led to an editorial, albeit not the lead editorial, with this headline:

“Trump’s Hostage Triumph in Jerusalem.”

Despite the headline the editorial was full of caveats and warnings. It was left to global affairs columnist Walter Russell Mead to finally give credit where credit was due.

“Only Mr. Trump could have made this happen. No other living politician could have reassured Israel, threatened Hamas, and patched together a broad coalition the way he has done. Mr. Trump has his shortcomings… but he is a leader who bestrides the world scene like no other.”

Apparently, the news dam has started to leak.

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Anna Magnani: The Rose Tattoo

At a local library book sale, I picked up a DVD of The Rose Tattoo, a 1955 film adaptation of the play by Tennessee Williams, one of the foremost American playwrights of the twentieth century. I had seen the film years ago, but my memory of the plot was muddled. I did recall that the film starred Anna Magnani, an Italian actress, and Burt Lancaster, the well-known American film star.

While watching the film at home, I turned to my wife and said that Magnani must have won an Academy Award for her performance, something that a quick online check verified. Magnani played a Sicilian woman who had come to America after her peasant family had arranged a marriage for her with an Italian man working as a truck driver in the American South. Initially fearful of marrying an unknown and unseen man, her fears were overcome on their first meeting. He was a handsome hunk with a beautiful rose tattoo on his formidable chest. He also had a touch of nobility in his blood. She came to adore the man whom she claimed was a baron.

Unfortunately, after fifteen years of marriage the man turns out to be a smuggler who transports more than bananas in his truck. At the beginning of the film, he dies in a truck accident while fleeing the police. She is left alone with a beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter to care for and must eke out a living as a seamstress in her home. Worse gets worse when rumors begin to fly that her beloved husband had been a philanderer.

The rumors foul the memory and reputation of her spouse, and most of the film deals with her efforts to deal with them. Complicating things is the intrusion of another Italian truck driver with a body like her late husband’s but with little else. He is poor and clownish and played well by Burt Lancaster in an unfamiliar role. There is also a subplot involving a budding romance between her daughter and a young sailor.

However, the movie is all Magnani. Tennessee Williams said that he wrote the original stage play with her in mind after seeing her in post-war Italian neo-realist films. He called her “volcanic,” and she certainly is. There had never been anything like her before in American films. In The Rose Tattoo she is earthy, vivacious, and sensual all at the same time. In a word, she is Italian. Subsequently, she would be followed in American by other fiery Italian actresses: Gina Loll0brigida and Sophia Loren come immediately to mind.  

Coincidentally, in 1955 the Best Actor award went to Ernest Borgnine, himself an Italian immigrant, who played a second-generation Italian American butcher in Marty which that year won the award for Best Picture. Looking back I can see that the success of these two films was a remarkable achievement that marked the acceptance of Italian immigrants in America. It took three generations but Rome was not built in a day. 

Since Edward G. Robinson played an Al Capone like ruthless gang boss in the 1930s, Italians had usually been portrayed as either mobsters or cheap hoodlums. There were some notable exceptions but 1955 marked a real turning point. It’s true that mob films like the Godfather were yet to come, but Marty and The Rose Tattoo portrayed Italian Americans as ordinary people, albeit full of life and emotion.

I often think that most people living through great historical changes do not realize what is going on. During the Italian renaissance, for example, I doubt if most people had even heard of Leonardo, Raphael or Michelangelo. I was a sixteen-year-old third generation Italian American living in New York City in 1955 and I do not recall seeing either of these films at the time. I certainly did not think that films like these had any historical importance.

My paternal grandparents had moved out of their Italian neighborhood in Manhattan years before to Woodside, a section of the borough of Queens that was then, as well as now, a true melting pot. On my block facing busy 69^th Street, there was an Italian barbershop on one corner, and an Irish family on the other. In the center of the block my parents lived above a deli next to my grandparents’ home. The deli was run by a German American family as was the neighborhood soda fountain and candy store across the street. My parents could understand Italian but only used it with their parents, not with their children. They wanted their children to be American.

Now that I think of it, perhaps nothing contributed more to the acceptance of Italian Americans than the success of baseball’s New York Yankees. Before his retirement in 1951 the Yankee center fielder Joe DiMaggio had been the best player on the greatest team in baseball. Even after his retirement, the Yankees, led by Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto, went on to complete a string of five straight World Series victories. I think it safe to say that the Yankees were beloved in New York’s Italian American community. It is true that 1955 was not a good year for the Yankees. In that year they lost to the hated Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, and the great DiMaggio’s marriage with movie idol Marilyn Monroe came to an end. 

Nevertheless, 1955 marked the real arrival of Italians in America. The way was open for films like Moonstruck and My Cousin Vinny as well as the Godfather epic with its host of imitators in both the movies and on TV. Of course, it would not be long before pizza would become as American as apple pie.

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The Industrial Revolution and Socialism

Climate Change activists date the current warming trend to the onset of the Industrial Revolution. It seems obvious to me that their alarmism about Climate has more to do with an animus against the Industrial Revolution and its effects than concern for the environment. Capitalism and free enterprise are associated with the Industrial Revolution. A recent study showed that today 50% of college students consider themselves to be Socialists. The percentage of their professors must be even higher. 

Over fifty years ago when I taught a unit on the Industrial Revolution as part of a basic course in Western Civilization, I thought then and still believe today that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant developments in the history of the world. If you do an image search for Industrial Revolution, you will see countless images of smoke-belching factories of 150 years ago, but you will not see an image of the ubiquitous latest mobile phone pictured above. Before the Industrial Revolution life was indeed "nasty, brutish, and short."

Try to imagine a world today without the following:

Electricity

Clean water delivered by pipeline to your home

Modern sewers and waste removal systems

Automobiles

Home heating without firewood

Computers

Televisions

Air Conditioning in homes and cars

Trains, Planes, and Buses

Indoor Plumbing—before the IR there was no such thing.

Elevators

Washing Machines for clothes and dishes

Hospitals with their incredible technology

Cell Phones—most important of all!

It is hard to believe but our ancestors before the Industrial Revolution had none of these essential elements of modern life. Actually, many parts of the world today still live in the pre-industrial age without many of the items listed above. 

Industrial Revolution is the term given to the transformation of manufacturing from homes and shops to factories employing hundreds or even thousands. The transformation began in Great Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and eventually spread all over the world. However, before there could be an industrial revolution, there had to be three other revolutionary developments. 

First, there was a Demographic Revolution involving a substantial increase in population. This increase happened not so much because of a rise in the birth rate but because of a decline in the death or mortality rate due to a dramatic drop in infant mortality, a drop caused by advances in diet and sanitation. For example, in Italy in 1860, 232 of every 1000 infants died in the first two years of life but 60 years later only 127 of 1000 infants died during the same period. 

An Agricultural Revolution accompanied the Demographic Revolution. Human ingenuity devised new methods of farming, land management, and animal husbandry to feed the growing population. While doomsayers like the British clergyman Thomas Malthus were predicting mass starvation, they could not predict that the profit motive and human resourcefulness would provide for the needs of an ever increasing population. 

A Transportation Revolution also accompanied the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was the great age of canal and railroad building. At the same time, steam power replaced wind power as a safer and more reliable source of energy. The revolution in means of transportation allowed mass migrations of people from rural areas to the urban centers of manufacturing and commerce. It also allowed goods and services to be delivered faster and at less cost. Lower costs meant that not only rich people could afford them.

From the beginning the tremendous social, economic, and political changes caused by these revolutions had both good and bad consequences. Rural areas lost population and industrial cities became overcrowded. Writers and social commentators were quick to point out the terrible working conditions in the factories, and the deplorable living conditions in the slums surrounding the factories. 

Moreover, critics objected, as they do today, to the incredible disparities in wealth and income between the factory owners and financiers (capitalists) who profited and the workers who toiled. The misery of the urban poor could not be overlooked. Nevertheless, in countries that did not industrialize, like Ireland or southern Italy, the poor were even worse off and literally starved to death either from actual food shortages or malnutrition. Why else would millions from Ireland and Italy leave their beautiful countries to live in the overcrowded cities of the New World?

I suspect that the Industrial Revolution still has a bad name today. Capitalist is a term of opprobrium and even capitalists shun to describe themselves as such. Even union members whose pensions are invested throughout the American industrial sector do not realize that they are capitalists. Of course, Progressives are outspoken in decrying the terrible effects of corporate greed and inequality.

It’s true that few of us will have the income or assets of CEOs, politicians, Rock stars, TV personalities, or professional athletes. But more than anywhere else in the world, we do have the opportunity to acquire and keep property. We can even buy and sell shares in the companies we work for. You may call it Capitalism but I prefer to call it a free-enterprise system. Whatever you call it, it has worked to raise the standard of living in this country to the highest level that has ever been seen in the world. 

Students today are asked to evaluate the relative merits of Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism. All three systems were responses to the Industrial Revolution. You can judge for yourself which of the three systems did the best job of providing the necessities of life listed at the beginning of this essay. Why are people still fleeing today from Socialist "paradises" like Cuba, Nicuagua, and Venezuela? 

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Forgiveness

  

 

I did not choose to watch the memorial service for Charlie Kirk because I did not want to be reminded of the murder of that young man.  Even though I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before the day he was shot by a sniper, the shooting filled me with such horror and revulsion that I could not bear to follow the story. 

However, I did hear that Erika Kirk appeared at the memorial service and forgave her husband’s killer before a crowd of 100,000 and a national television audience. It was a magnanimous gesture on her part but one that led me to contemplate the nature of forgiveness.

Charlie and Erika Kirk are Christians and I’m sure that in her grief she was following the words of Jesus to forgive your enemies. But over two millennia Christianity has developed a way of dealing with forgiveness that is still relevant today.

I learned it in grade school at St. Mary Help of Christians in New York city. It had to do with the now almost forgotten sacrament of Penance. As children we learned that three things were required for our sins or wrongdoings to be forgiven.

First, we had to be sincerely sorry for what we had done before we could even ask for forgiveness. Second, we had to resolve to not do it again. We had to have, what was called then, a firm purpose of amendment. Only then, could we be forgiven.

Even after we were forgiven, there was one final step. We had to do penance or repair the damage that we had done. I know that as children, the penance was trivial just as our childhood sins were trivial. The priest in confession would usually just ask us to say some prayers, usually five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys.

Now in my old age I realize that this simple formula can work whether you are Catholic or not. The teaching of the nuns contained a universal truth. In order to gain forgiveness when we offend or hurt someone, we must begin by saying that we are truly sorry for what we have done and promise that we will try to avoid doing it again. Then, the offended party can offer forgiveness, but even after we have been forgiven, we still must repair the damage we have done.

Here's an example from childhood. You break a neighbor’s window. You say you’re sorry and promise you will try not to do it again. He forgives you, but you still must find a way to repair the damage you have done. You must pay a penalty or do what used to be called penance. 

There is no sign as yet that Charlie Kirk’s murderer has shown any sign of sorrow or repentance for what he has done. So far, there seems to be no “firm purpose of amendment,” no sign that he would not do it again if given the opportunity. There is no sign that he would not kill Erika or her children. Nevertheless, her faith is so strong that she offers forgiveness.

Even if he is forgiven, what can the killer possibly do by way of penance? What can he do to repair the damage he has done to Charlie, Erika, their children, and their families? How will he ever repair the damage he has done to his own family? It is so sad. Even if he is given the death penalty, how can that come close to repairing the damage?

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History Lesson

 Edward Hutton's book on Lombardy, published in 1912, was the first of his Italian guides that I ever read. My Aunt Nan gave it to me on the death of her husband, Joseph Foppiani, over 30 years ago. His mother must have given it to him when he was young with this inscription, "Joseph, know thy country." Hutton, an Englishman who spent most of his life in Italy, was a student of Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance history. He began his tour of Lombardy with a discussion of the early history of Cisalpine Gaul, the name of the region during Roman times.

 

When I think of Lombardy, there comes back into my mind a country wide and gracious, watered by many a great river, and lying, a little vaguely, between always far-away mountains, a world that is all a garden, where one passes between fair hedgerows, from orchard to orchard, among the vines, where the fields are green with promise or shining with harvest, and there are meadows on the lower slopes of the mountains. And the whole of this wide garden seems to me, as is no other country in the world, to be subject to the sun, the stars and the great and beautiful clouds of an infinite sky; every landscape is filled with them, and beneath them the cities seem but small things, not cities truly, but rather sanctuaries, hidden in that garden for our delight, reverence and meditation, at the end of the endless ways, where only the restless poplars tell the ceaseless hours.

 

It is my purpose in this book to consider the nature and the history of this country, to recapture and to express as well as I may my delight in it, so that something of its beauty and its genius may perhaps disengage itself from my pages, and the reader feel what I have felt about it though he never stir ten miles from his own home. … (1)

 

The Pax Romana: it is the work of the Empire; a thing in our Europe hard to conceive of, but proper to Christendom, and perhaps if we could but see it to-day only awaiting our recognition. 

 

Those first four centuries of our era in which Christendom was founded  and Europe appeared, not as we know it to-day as a mosaic of hostile nationalities, but as one perfect whole, have never been rightly understood; they still lack an historian, and the splendour of their achievement, their magnitude and importance are wholly misconceived or ignored. In our modern self-conceit we are ignorant both of what they were  in themselves and of what we owe to them; and largely through the collapse of Europe in the sixteenth century and its appalling results both in thought and in politics we are led, too often by the wilful lying of our historians, to regard them rather as the prelude to the decline and fall of the Empire than as the great and indestructible foundation of all that is worth having in the world.

 

For rightly understood, these first four centuries gave us not only our culture, our constitutions,  our civilization, and our Faith, but ensured  them to us that they should always endure. They established for ever the great  lines upon which our art was to develop, to change, and yet not to suffer annihilation or barrenness. They established the supremacy of the idea, so that it might always renew our lives, our culture, and our polity, and that we might judge everything by it and fear neither revolution, defeat, nor decay. They, and they alone, established us in the secure possession of our own souls, so that we alone in the world develop from within to change but never to die and to be--yes alone in the world—Christians. 

 

And if the whole empire then took on a final and heroic form in those years of the Empire and the peace, Cisalpine Gaul more than any other province then came to fruition….and if we turn to the province itself, there is scarcely a town in that wide plain that did not expand and increase in a fashion almost miraculous during that period. It was then the rivers were embanked, the canals and our communications established for ever. There is no industry that did not grow incredibly in strength, there is not a class that did not increase in well-being beyond our dreams of progress.  There is scarcely anything that is really fundamental in our lives and in our politics  that was not then created that it might endure. It was then that our religion, the soul of Europe, was born, and little absorbed us so that it became the energy and the cause of all that undying but changeful principle of life and freedom which, rightly understood is Europe. Our ideas of justice, our ideas of law, our conception of human dignity and the structure of our society were then conceived and with such force that while we endure they can never die. (17-19)

 

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Lombardy, New York, 1912.  

 

 

 

 

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Sending Messages

The video image of the recent destruction by an American rocket of a speed boat carrying suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean sea provided laughter on a late night TV show as if the participants were watching a Road Runner cartoon. But even if the men on the boat were participating in a deadly trade, it was not funny. Eleven human beings were obliterated in an instant.

I don’t know how the military knew the boat was carrying drugs, and I don’t know if it was legal for our military to attack it in international waters, but the destruction of the speedboat sent a clear message to all drug traffickers and their backers. The waterways are no longer safe for their traffic. To fully understand the strength of this message click on this link to a 13 minute account of modern weaponry, or see the video below on the US naval presence off the coast of Venezuela. The video is a must see even if you only watch the first half.

The news last week carried another message of a different kind. A local court (I don't remember where) convicted a man of using a knife to repel a home invader. The message of the court decision was clear. In the opinion of that court, it is not ok to defend yourself from a home invader. If you attempt to do so, you, not he, will go to jail. To drive home the message, a local policeman advised people to leave their car keys at the front door so that potential car jackers will not have to enter your house. Who could fail to understand or take advantage of such a message?

That case reminded me of the situation in California where a law specifies that thefts of less than $950 will not be prosecuted. People were quick to get that message. New businesses appeared that organized small crime. Other businesses went out of business. A few years ago on our annual trips to Alameda we would observe a huge Walgreen’s going up on its main street. On our last visit it was gone along with many other Walgreen’s throughout the state because of rampant shop lifting.

Some powerful messages often go unspoken. Many years ago, a co-worker told me he owned a 44 Magnum of the type used by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies. Other than a childhood BB gun, I have never owned a gun. When I asked him why he owned such a powerful weapon, he replied, “Better to be carrying a coffin, than to be carried in one.” That sounded creepy to me and I never thought to purchase a gun myself, especially with a house full of small children. 

Nevertheless, from that time on I always felt a little safer in the realization that a potential home invader might think that instead of an unarmed wimp like me, there might be a Magnum toting guy like my co-worker inside waiting for someone to make his day. 

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