Scientific Consensus 2026

I was born on July 19, 1939 in New York City. Google AI indicates that my mother was lucky that day since the temperature in pre-air conditioned New York City only reached an unseasonable 81 degrees. Three years earlier, on July 9, 1936 the temp reached 106 degrees, what would turn out to be the  high for the whole twentieth century. 

As I wondered about temperature in July,  some recent news items came to mind. Last week smoke from forest fires in Canada drifted down into the Northeast area and created uncomfortable, even dangerous air quality. No one can blame President Trump since just three years ago in 2023, during the Biden administration, Canadian fires had caused similar air quality concerns in the area. Fortunately, the latest episode only lasted a few days, and the World Cup final was held in New Jersey's Meadowlands on one of the most beautiful days of the year.

More important was the news a few weeks ago that scientists in Europe had rejected their worst case scenario for Climate Change, and said that recent developments had made it implausible. The recent developments included human efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. It is hard to credit their explanation since China and India, by far the two most populous nations in the world are not leaders in renewable energy. 

Anyway, the fact that they would discard a worst case scenario that most scientists had accepted just a few years ago led me to revisit a post that I had written in 2017 on scientific consensus, The post was in response to a video of Senator Bernie Sanders berating a Trump appointee back in 2017.

I recently saw a video of Senator Bernie Sanders grilling Scott Pruitt, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the post of director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Throughout his seven minutes Sanders repeatedly demanded that Pruitt affirm that 97% of scientists believe that global warming is a grave threat to the planet; that it is caused by human activity; and that the government must take steps to shut down the use of fossil fuels. Of course, Sanders jumped in and interrupted every attempt by Pruitt to answer his questions. He ended by saying that he could not vote to confirm him, as if there was ever any doubt.

To be fair I must say that Sanders qualified his question by adding that the 97% figure referred to the percentage of peer-reviewed papers that had appeared in climate change journals and other similar publications. I think that this qualifier is overlooked when most people consider the question of scholarly or scientific consensus. I can certainly believe that 97% of these peer-reviewed papers support the human responsibility for global warming. What is hard to believe is that 3% of the papers were able to sneak their way through the peer-review process and cast doubt on the hypothesis. 

My own experience makes me skeptical about the whole peer-review process. For years I have subscribed to a couple of scholarly journals on the Renaissance. Inevitably, they feature articles or book reviews on Shakespeare. Never have I seen one that would even hint that the great plays and poems might have been written by a man of much greater education and life experience than the man from Stratford on Avon. 

Great writers like Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Henry James raised the question in the nineteenth century. Sigmund Freud shared the view that someone else was the author as did Shakespearean actors like Orson Welles and Derek Jacobi. Dozens of books on the authorship question have appeared in the past few years but most go unmentioned in the peer-reviewed journals.

My own experience in the field of Renaissance art history has also made me question the peer-review process. In the past twenty years, I have been able to arrive at plausible interpretations of some of the most well-known but most mysterious paintings of the Renaissance. I have done the research, written up my findings but found that the peer-review process is a closed shop, only open to peers. Necessity made me turn to the web and in 2010 I put my interpretations online and also created a blog, Giorgione et al..., to explore the subject further. 

Scholars often urge their students to “think outside the box” but rarely follow their own advice. Although their politics may be liberal and even radical, they tend to be conservative when it comes to their own subject. Graduate students have to be aware of the danger of criticizing their mentors. Professors must still publish to keep their jobs, advance their careers, or gain grant monies. It is very difficult to challenge the traditional wisdom or orthodoxy.  As one art historian wrote,

“To do so would be to question the competence of most of those who have written on the subject, and this is something that no one…wants to do…the longer those views have gone unchallenged the greater the authority that they have acquired.”

Galileo is a hero to so-called “freethinkers” but in his time, he stood virtually alone against all the professional scientists and mathematicians of his time who dominated the institutions of higher learning. He used a primitive telescope to destroy the elaborate system accepted by more that 97% of the leading experts. Oddly enough, a few Jesuit astronomers were among his early supporters.

Climate change has become like a new religion and its priests can be found in the scientific establishment. Their devoted followers march in street processions to proclaim their beliefs and attack heretics. For them the issue is settled and no further debate is necessary. What are they and Bernie Sanders afraid of? Why did he find it necessary to interrupt and ignore any attempt on the part of Scott Pruitt to reply? 

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Democratic Socialists and American Prosperity

Back in 2019, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (AOC), the now famous Democratic Representative from New York City, claimed that an entire generation "came of age and never saw American prosperity." I suppose that she and other Democratic Socialists still believe that they have not prospered in America. 

She only has to look in a mirror to disprove such a preposterous claim. The image at the left shows her in a designer gown that she wore to a fancy dress gala at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art that was packed with other successful people like herself. Her clothes, jewelry and make up probably cost more than most ordinary people pay for food. Didn't she grow up in Westchester county, one of the most prosperous areas in the country? Before she entered politics weren't the drinks she served as a barista signs of prosperity?

She also should look at the end of her arm and behold the ever-present mobile phone in her hand. How can the generation that has never seen American prosperity own these expensive phones with their equally pricy monthly plans? What about the laptops and other devices that are owned by practically everyone? They have the world's best libraries in the palm of their hands.

Moreover, every day these mobile phones and laptops have to be plugged into the electric grid so that their batteries can be recharged. Electricity is one of our basic human needs in the modern world but it is remarkably cheap compared to other things we buy. People hate their electric bills but most probably spend less on this vital resource than they pay on beer and coffee. Speaking of coffee, the ubiquitous Starbucks, where so many young people like to meet and hang out and pay exorbitant prices for a latte are certainly a sign of prosperity. 

AOC's words made me think of my own generation and compare it with the prosperity of her generation. Let's look at housing first.

I was 21 in 1960, and about to enter my Senior year at Fordham University. I had lived at home with my grandparents in the borough of Queens ever since my mother had died 10 years before. They owned a three family house on busy 69th Street, and we lived on the first floor. There were only two bedrooms and one bathroom. I did not have my own room but slept in the rarely used dining room adjoining the small kitchen. The bathroom had a tub with a makeshift shower attached.There were no countertops, granite or otherwise, in the bathroom or in the kitchen, Food was prepared on the kitchen table or on the stove. We never ate out. It was unthinkable for my grandparents to eat at a restaurant.

My father, stepmother and two brothers lived next door above a deli. Their apartment also only had two bedrooms and an even more primitive bathroom. At the same time, my future wife lived on the first floor of a two story home in White Plains, NY. with her parents and four siblings. Their apartment had only two bedrooms and one bathroom, as well as a tiny kitchen with no countertops. She and her two younger sisters shared the same bedroom.

 

What about communications? Cell phones had not yet been invented and I don't remember that my grandparents even had a landline by 1960. They communicated with neighbors and family on the front steps or in the back yard under the grapevine. To call a girl for a date I had to walk a couple of blocks to a payphone.

Like most families we only had one car. My grandparents never learned to drive, and my father, who dreamed of owning a Cadillac, had to settle for used Chevys. I only got my driver's license after graduating from college. Transportation by bus oe subway was the norm, although we did walk a lot. I never even rode a bike. Motor bikes and scooters were unheard of. Unlike my grandchildren, I never thought of traveling abroad, although by 1960 attending high school in Manhattan had opened my eyes to the wonders of NYC.

Although I never thought of it, I guess even with our modest lifestyles we were sharing in American prosperity. By 1960 my father and grandparents had converted their homes from coal to oil heat. No more backbreaking shoveling coal every morning. By then there was only one TV in the living room but with no remote. There was no gigantic flat screen color TV in every room. I had one pair of shoes and one pair of sneakers for sports. Everyone wore Keds back in 1960. There were no designer sneakers.

In 1960 I was about to enter my Senior year at Fordham University.  My father certainly could not afford the tuition but I had won a scholarship from his employer, the Bulova Watch Company. As the first in my family to ever attend college, It never occurred to me to live on campus, and so I had to take a bus and subway ride of over an hour each day just to get to campus.  It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as NY City with its libraries, museums, theaters, and movies became my campus.

In 1960 I had $250 in a small savings account, and no prospects for the future. If I had ever thought of it, I might have complained that I had not shared in American prosperity. But in the next year I graduated from Fordham with a fine education and no debt, won a NY State Teaching scholarship to attend Columbia University, and met the young nurse who would still be my wife today. 

I don't think my story is unusual for any generation. 

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I Are a Capitalist

A headline in the Wall Street Journal this week read: "401(k)s Are Minting Millionaires." The article explained that rising stock market prices over the past three years have created hundreds and thousands of "moderate millionaires." Money manager Fidelity, for example, reported that 654,000 of their 401k clients had balances over 1 Million. Benefits manager Alright reported that 3.2% of more than three million accounts tracked had balances over 1 Million. T. Rowe Price reported that the number of  retirement accounts over 1 Million had doubled from 2022 to 2023. Finally, investment giant Vanguard reported that of the millions of plans it administers, a record 88% were invested in the stock market.

A table in the article indicated that even the staid Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) had grown over 40% in the past three years. It is not hard to imagine that the number of plans with balances in the 500,000 to 1,000,000 range have grown accordingly, and that these younger people will also be millionaires by the time they retire.

In an encyclical letter written shortly after he became Pope. the late Pope 

Francis bemoaned income inequality and 'trickle down economic theories," but still said:  

“It is not the task of the Pope to offer a detailed and complete analysis of contemporary reality, but I do exhort all the communities to an “ever watchful scrutiny of the signs of the times.”

As an ordinary Catholic I would like to offer an anecdotal and incomplete analysis of the signs of the times based on my own lifetime experience. 

I have to confess that I am a Capitalist. I even remember the year I became a Capitalist. In 1965 I was hired, right out of graduate school, as an Instructor to teach History at Sacred Heart University, a small, recently opened institution of higher learning in Fairfield, Connecticut. 

Sacred Heart could hardly be called a university in those days. It was a small liberal arts college with the distinction of being the only Catholic college in the country staffed and run entirely by laymen and women. When I arrived the school was only in its third year of existence and the faculty was still in the process of formation.

Anyway, a few weeks after classes started the Business Manager of the school approached me to ask if I wanted to sign up for the fledgling school’s retirement plan. He explained that if I agreed to allocate a small percentage of my pay toward retirement, the university would match my contribution. 

My starting salary back in 1965 was about $6000 and I had a wife and one small child. Retirement was the last thing on my mind. Nevertheless, it seemed like a good deal especially since the university would match it. If I reduced my pay by 6% or $30 per month, the university would add that much to my account. Because it was a pre-tax contribution, the reduction in take home pay would only be about $25 per month.

After I agreed to sign up, the Business Manager told me that I would have a choice of where my small contributions would be invested. Sacred Heart University had joined with the great majority of colleges and universities in the country to utilize the services of the Teachers’ Retirement and Annuity Association (TIAA) to administer and manage its retirement plan. The university would deduct the contribution and send it along with their matching contribution to TIAA where it would be invested as I chose. 

At that time, there were only two investment choices. The first was a fixed or guaranteed account like a bank account. The principal in the account was guaranteed by the insurance company and it would earn a fixed rate of interest. The second option was a variable account where my contributions would be invested in a diversified portfolio of common stock. In this account, there were no guarantees. The principal value would fluctuate according to the vagaries of the stock market, and there could be no predicting what the actual rate of return would be.

Like the majority of teachers I elected to split my retirement equally between the fixed and variable account. I was not a student of finance or the stock market, and just decided to do what most others seemed to be doing. I had no idea that in electing to put half in the variable account that I was becoming a Capitalist.

The variable account was a relatively new creation. It was a mutual fund but since it was run by an insurance company, it was called a variable annuity. After years of lobbying TIAA had finally convinced the Government to allow insurance companies to get into the booming mutual fund business. TIAA’s variable annuity fund was called the College Retirement Equity Fund (CREF), and it would in time become one of the largest pools of investment dollars in the world.

When my little contribution went into CREF each month, I became a part, although very small, owner of practically every major company in the USA. Whatever their political feelings or philosophy, thousands and thousands of other college teachers throughout the country were also becoming Capitalists. We all were becoming owners of a slice of the American pie. Moreover, the government agreed not to tax our contributions or their earnings until we retired.  

Over the ensuing years the features of this type of retirement plan would be extended to a larger and larger segment of American workers. Self-employed individuals were allowed to use so-called Keogh plans. Corporations were allowed to set up tax favored 401k plans for their employees. Finally, the creation of IRAs enabled practically every American to have a stake in the American economy.

It’s true that few of us will have the income or assets of Rock stars like Taylor Swift, TV personalities like Oprah, or athletes like LeBron James. 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.

 

Trickle down economics may be an odious theory but I don’t call what has gone on in America in the past sixty years trickle down economics. It is something else and whatever you call it, it has worked to raise the standard of living in this country to the highest that has ever been seen in the world. Other countries have an emigration problem. Only we seem to have an immigration problem.

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Note: After seven years I left Sacred Heart University in 1972 at the age of 33. At the time, my retirement balance was about $10,000, but the only way I could get my hands on the money was to take a lifetime monthly income. Fifty three years later I am still receiving checks. The annual payout from the fixed account is about $500, and the payout from the variable account is now over $2000.

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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Advice for Seniors

 My brother-in-law Richard Gardella moved to a Senior living facility two years ago  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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Irish Heritage

    

On St. Patrick's Day I repeat an earlier post on our debt to the Irish.                                          

Practically everyone must know that the great migration of the Irish to America took place after the terrible potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century. However, even before that disaster the Irish had been the subject of persecution going back to the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century when King Henry VIII seized control of the English church. 

The Irish were longtime enemies of the English and when Henry, who considered himself King of Ireland as well as England, attacked their thousand-year-old faith the enmity only grew worse. Later, Henry’s daughter Elizabeth tried unsuccessfully to subdue the Irish Catholics throughout her reign. After the Puritan revolution in England in the mid-seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell brutally suppressed Irish resistance. By the end of the century William and Mary, after driving Mary’s Catholic father James from the English throne, delivered another devastating blow to the Irish at the battle of the Boyne.

The almost perpetual Irish resistance led the English and their Protestant friends in Ireland to pass penal laws that had the effect of depriving most Irish Catholics of all their rights including the right to their own confiscated properties. 

Many Irish left their homeland for good in the century before the great famine. They were sometimes called the “wild geese” and many of them made a name for themselves in Europe. In the nineteenth century the ruling family in Serbia was the Obrenovich family, heirs no doubt of some Irish O’Brien. Years ago, Ed Obradovich played linebacker for the Chicago Bears. His family must have come from central Europe but there must have been a Brady ancestor. I recall meeting a Polish American priest whose name, Okonski, must have derived from O’Conner. John Konecny, a long ago squash buddy, looked as Irish as Paddy's pig.

When the Irish came to America, they didn’t starve because of the availability of jobs and land. Nevertheless, despite separation of Church and State in America, the Irish were still objects of prejudice and discrimination primarily because of their Catholicism. I recall an American historian saying that the most long lasting and abiding prejudice in America was directed not against Jews or Blacks but against Catholics. That assertion may be disputed by some but the KKK was so called because its hatred was directed against Koons, Kikes, and Katholics.

Just because national or ethnic groups have been victimized by prejudice and discrimination does not mean that they themselves cannot practice such behavior when given the opportunity. Growing up in New York City in the 40s and 50s I vividly recall that only Irish need apply for membership in the City’s Transit Workers Union. I have never forgotten the resentment of my mother-in-law when her Italian parents were told by an Irish priest that they did not belong in predominately Irish St. John’s church and that they should attend the Italian church in town. 

Still, the success of the Irish in America means that we all are in their debt. I would just like to give a few personal examples. I was born and raised in the Woodside section of Queens, a neighborhood after WW2 made up largely of the descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants. My best friend was my cousin Pete whose father’s ancestry was Irish and German. Pete’s father, my Uncle Pete, was a New York City policeman who always seemed all Irish to me, and so did my cousin even though his mother was Italian. My next best friend was Dermot (Dermie) Woods whose family was very Irish. Both of Dermie’s older brothers had served in the Navy during the war.

St. Mary Help of Christians, my parochial elementary school, matched the ethnic make up of Woodside. There were some Italian kids in my class, but the majority was Irish. I still remember Richie Moylan, John Regan, Tom Fay, Charley Dunphy, and top student Pat Ryan who would go on to become a Jesuit priest and get a doctorate from Harvard in Islamic studies. His father was a saloon keeper. 

Most of the nuns were of Irish ancestry. They were of the order of St. Dominic and their formidable black and white habits helped them keep almost perfect order in classes sometimes numbering over 50 students. Only years later did I come to find out that many of them were barely out of their teens and still attending college.

It seemed natural for me to follow cousin Pete to Power Memorial high school in Manhattan. Power was a Catholic school for boys run by the Irish Christian Brothers whose most famous graduate would be Lou Alcindor, who would later call himself Kareem Abdul Jabbar. I still remember some of the Irish brothers with great affection and respect. There was Brother Hehir, my first home room teacher, a saintly innocent old man who was the butt of innumerable pranks and jokes by us “dirty little stinkers.” No one fooled around with wise old Brother Gleason, however. He was the Latin teacher with a passionate love of ancient Rome. Only years later did I discover that it was the Irish who had saved Western Civilization during the Dark Ages when monks in the mold of Brother Gleason preserved and later revived the lore and wisdom of antiquity. Finally, I remember Brother Conefrey who ran our honors class and exposed us modern barbarians to the wonders of English literature. 

Monastery Iona*

For some reason that still remains unclear to me I went to college at Fordham University, a famed Jesuit school in the Bronx. The Jesuits had been founded in the sixteenth century by Ignatius of Loyola, a young soldier from the Basque country in what is now northwestern Spain, but the Jesuit fathers at Fordham seemed to be largely of Irish ancestry. Nevertheless, in 1957 they taught and revered an old curriculum based on a model devised during the Renaissance. We studied Western philosophy, theology, history (eight credits in medieval history were required), rhetoric, literature, and language under scholars named O’ Sullivan, O’Callaghan, Mc Nally, Walsh and Clark. 

Three cheers for the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. 

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* Iona photo courtesy of David Orme.

I Lose My Job

Many people today are worried about losing their jobs, especially those with government jobs. In his recent speech to Congress, President Trump read a long list of wasteful and unnecessary spending on the part of the federal government and promised significant cuts. Even state and local government employees are worried since the loss of Federal grants might cause them to lose their jobs.

I know from experience that it is a hard thing to lose your job. Back in 1972 I lost my job as an Assistant Professor of History at a small Catholic college in Connecticut. The college had only come into existence ten years earlier as an experiment in Catholic higher education. It was to be run entirely by lay people although the local bishop would still head the Board of Directors. In addition, there would be no dorms, and the students would all be commuters or day hops. 

Initially, the school flourished as students and parents took advantage of the low cost. Also, during the Vietnam war many young men enrolled to avoid the draft. However, by 1972 the war was winding down and enrollment was dropping. As a result, administration decided to cut costs by trimming the faculty and did so by declining to grant tenure to anyone eligible that year.

Seven of us were denied tenure that year. Tenure is an unfamiliar concept to most people. For academics, it meant that once you receive tenure, it was almost impossible to lose your position thereafter. You have a job for life. In effect, the seven years I had been teaching there were a probationary period. 

I did have some paranoia about my dismissal. I thought that the administration had decided to terminate seven people just to get rid of me since I was the elected head of the faculty association. In academe it was not called a union, but it had some resemblance although there was no collective bargaining. I had also been overwhelmingly elected to the Faculty Senate during the years of student unrest that accompanied the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. 

Looking back now, I can see that while administrators might have been glad to see me go, I did not have a strong case for tenure. I was not a popular teacher since I had a reputation of being a hard grader. As an academic, it took seven years for me to complete my doctoral dissertation, and I had no publications to my credit. Coincidentally, I received my doctorate on the same day my tenure appeal was denied. 

So, in the Spring of 1972, I was thirty-three years old and out of a job. Complicating things was the fact that my wife and I had five small children ranging in age from 8 to 2. We had bought a small house in Fairfield with help from my father who provided the $2000 down payment. We lived from paycheck to paycheck and had only meager savings. Teaching jobs were nonexistent in the area, and we did not want to relocate our family.

I had to find work out of academe, but my doctorate made me virtually unemployable. Prospective employers would only laugh and say that someone with your education would not be happy or useful working for them. Eventually, the only employers interested in me were insurance companies always on the lookout for new agents who basically worked on a commission basis. No sales meant no pay. 

At that time, most academics looked down their noses at people engaged in business. Today, practically everyone goes to college to study business, but back in 1972 the business department at our school had only a few majors. Just as today, people in higher education tended to frown on those who worked for profit. Insurance agents were regarded as the lowest of the low in the business world, maybe just a notch above used car salesmen.

Nevertheless, I had no choice. I interviewed with a couple of companies but one seemed to have a novel approach. It was then among the leaders in the nascent mutual fund industry and offered low-cost life insurance as a supplement to mutual fund investing. I did fail their aptitude test that showed that I was an academic with no aptitude for sales. The office manager, whose contempt for academics matched mine for salesmen, informed me that he would not be able to take me on, but when I asked if I could borrow the study materials he had given me, he admired my persistence and immediately changed his mind. It was no skin off his nose since it was a commission only job. So, I became a salesman, a peddler of life insurance and mutual funds.

Needless to say, it was extremely difficult. Most new agents flunked out in weeks or months. The aptitude analysis was correct, but it only measured what I was and not what I could become. Only with the help and unflagging support of my wife, who went back to nursing, was I able to survive the first year and develop the knowledge, skills, and experience needed for success in this very competitive field. As the years went by, successful sales agents would morph into financial planners no longer dependent on commissions. Over the next 35 years I was able to build a very successful financial planning practice with hundreds of contented clients. 

In my case, losing my job was one of the best things that ever happened to me and my family.

 

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Turning 85 continued

 

Last week I republished a 2013 interview with a local reporter who was interested in my work at the Fairfield Senior center. Here is the second part of that interview. Eleven years have gone by and though I no longer teach courses at what is now known as the Bigelow Senior Center, I continue to present films in the Foreign Film Festival, and the Monday series of American film-noir classics from Hollywood's Golden Age. I also play chess there every Wednesday. 

Q. You are one of several highly respected teachers whose brief teaching stints, several times a year, for the Fairfield Senior Center‘s Lifelong Learners Program make you a valuable commodity. What is it about teaching Seniors that you enjoy?

A. I have always been interested in learning, and the best way to learn is to try to teach something. It is especially rewarding to teach in the Lifelong Learners program at the Fairfield Senior center. It is obvious just looking at the people in class that they are intelligent, educated, well traveled, and motivated. In my very first class on Renaissance art I asked if anyone had been to Florence, and practically everyone raised their hand.

So I get a chance to explore subjects that interest me with 40 or 50 people who really want to learn, and who also have a wealth of life experience that they can bring to class.

Cong. James Himes with Fairfield Seniors

Q. Do you enjoy traveling? What are your favorite places? Are they stuff for the New York Times travel section?

A. Linda and I have traveled frequently to Italy since 1997 when we visited our youngest daughter, an NYU student taking a summer program in Florence. Since then we have gone back practically every year. It was because of these trips that I began at series of talks at BACIO, an Italian-American organization founded by Leonard Paoletta, the former mayor of Bridgeport. *

In the talks I tried to discuss the history and the culture and the art of some of the places we had visited. Most of the world’s great art comes from Italy. These talks led me deeper and deeper into Art History until the subject became a passion even before I retired.

Incredibly, this interest led me to a great discovery. One of the most beautiful and mysterious paintings of the Italian Renaissance is the “Tempest” by Giorgione, one of the greatest of all Venetian artists who died at about the age of 33 in 1510, more than 500 years ago. Not as well known as Michelangelo and Raphael, Art historians place Giorgione along side them in the Renaissance pantheon. To this day scholars, while universally admiring the Tempest, his most famous painting, cannot agree on what it's all about.

Giorgione: The Tempest, Venice 1509

I believe that I have identified the subject of the painting. A short version of my interpretation was published in the Masterpiece section of the Wall St. Journal in 2006, and I have been developing the thesis ever since. I blog about the Venetian Renaissance at Giorgione et al...

Q. I see that you are a member of the Renaissance Society of America. What is that all about?

A. The Renaissance Society of America is an organization of scholars from all over the world who share an interest in the renaissance in learning and art that took place roughly from 1400-1650. They publish a quarterly journal of articles and reviews, and hold an annual meeting. In 2010 the meeting was held in Venice. At that meeting I presented my paper on the “Tempest.” 

Q. What do you particularly enjoy teaching at the Senior Center?

A. My course on the art of the Italian Renaissance, “A Tale of Four Cities,” is my favorite because of my interest in Renaissance Italy and its Art. This Spring I will repeat my “Italian Dreams” course which used four great Italian films to understand the reasons for the great migration of Italians to America. Next Fall, I will present a new course on four eighteenth century revolutions. The course is entitled “England and America in the Age of Revolution.”

Q. Do you feel that you have a following? That you have developed a rapport with your students?

A. All the classes have been very well attended. I believe that we have developed a following for the Foreign Film Festival, which I launched in 2009. The films are shown at 12:15 on the second Friday of the month. In our second season we showed  “Bakhtiari Alphabet,” a film about an Iranian tribal people and their adaptation to the modern world. The film’s producer and co-director, Dr. Cima Sedigh of Sacred Heart University, was on hand to discuss it with the attendees. We are also fortunate to have our China expert, Dr. Richard DeAngelis from Fairfield University, on hand to lead discussion of a number of films from China including the award winning “To Live.” In April we will feature Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in “Too Bad She’s Bad,” a wonderful early Italian comedy.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni

Q. When we watched Pagliacci, Tuesday morning, you asked your students to watch the faces of the adults and children in the operatic foreground? Why was it important that they look at the faces do you think? Did you get any feedback on that specific request?

It is very difficult for us to imagine our own parents and grandparents as young vibrant people with real emotions. Looking at those young faces watching the clowns makes me think of my own grandparents back in Italy before they came to America. Also, a good film is a work of Art. From my Art history study I have come to realize that you must try to see everything in a painting, not just the main figures. Franco Zeffirelli, the director of “Pagliacci,” put those images on the screen for a reason.

Q. What question would you care to ask that hasn’t been asked?  Why don’t you answer it?

A. It seems that I have said enough for now, but you might have asked, “Why do you do it?” When I used to counsel my clients on retirement planning, I liked to stress that retirement was not the end but the beginning of a new career. It was sad when people told me that they had no interests beyond work. Linda and I both believe that it’s important to keep active and continue to grow and learn. 

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*We made our last trip to Italy in 2017. It was kind of a farewell tour, and we had a great time visiting Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome. But even before the pandemic we realized that we had reached the age where foreign travel, like many other things, was getting too difficult.

Turning 85

  

I've just turned 85 and thought it might be of interest to new as well as old readers to repeat a post from 2013 containing an interview I did back then for a local newspaper. I had been teaching at the Lifelong Learners program at the Fairfield Senior center. The original title of the post was "It's a Wonderful Life." It is in question and answer form and will be presented in two successive posts.

Q. Let’s start with some background. Where were you born? Where did you go to secondary school? What did you like about going to school? Was there a favorite teacher? Why did you decide to go to Fordham? What was special about your undergraduate work?

A. I was born in 1939 and raised in NYC in the borough of Queens. My parents were second generation Italian Americans and we lived right next door to my paternal grandparents who were both born in Italy.

In 1953 I went to Power Memorial Academy, one of the many Catholic High Schools in NYC. It was an all boys school located in a very tough West Side neighborhood that was subsequently razed to make way for Lincoln Center. The school was run and staffed by Irish Christian Brothers although there were a few laymen on the faculty. A favorite teacher was the Brother who taught the Senior Honors Literature course. I was always an avid reader but he imparted a sense of the importance and value of the study of great literature.

I went to Fordham on a full scholarship provided by the Bulova Watch Company, my father’s employer. This competitive scholarship would have paid tuition and room and board at any college of my choice. Initially, I was going to Syracuse for Engineering but probably decided on Fordham because I was uncertain about a career path, and it was closer to home. Since Fordham’s Bronx campus was only about an hour and a half away by bus and subway, I didn’t see any need, in my naiveté, to live on campus even though the scholarship would have paid for it. There was no one to advise me since I was the first in my family to attend college, and my mother had died when I was 11. Like many other things in my life, it worked out for the best since NYC itself, with its theaters, sports, nightclubs, museums, and libraries, became my campus.

Even though I had been a top student at Power, I was not prepared for the rigors of a Jesuit education at Fordham. In 1957 Fordham was probably the best Catholic institution of higher learning in the country, and the class of ’61 was probably its best ever. Even though I was only an average student I was in a great learning environment. I say average but looking back I realize that the curriculum was broad and comprehensive including four years of Theology and Philosophy, as well as two years of Latin and French as requirements.  I majored in History, a subject which I had loved since grade school. There was nothing special about my work at Fordham. Nevertheless, even though I had only average grades, I aced the graduate record exams and was accepted in the MA program at Columbia. Finally, in my last year at Fordham I met my future wife, Linda Gardella, a nursing student at Cornell University Medical center in Manhattan.

Q. You have a PhD. What was your Master’s in? Did you have to write a Master’s thesis and what was it? Were your orals tough? And your Doctorate? That was in History. What was your thesis? Did you enjoy writing it? Might it have been what led you to teach at the college level?

A. I went to Columbia on a NY State Teaching fellowship. I guess it was then that I really began to think that I wanted to become a college professor. But just as at Fordham I found myself way over my head at Columbia, a world-class institution with an internationally renowned faculty. 

I decided to specialize in 18^th century British politics primarily because I was always interested in the American Revolution, and also because I had taken a wonderful course in British politics in my Senior year at Fordham with a really great professor. My Master’s thesis was on the political career of a British general and politician who was very active in the opposition to the War with America. After completing my Masters at Columbia I went back to Fordham to continue my studies in British politics under the mentorship of my old professor, Dr. Ross Hoffman. 

It took almost 10 years to complete my PhD dissertation on the political career of General Henry Seymour Conway. I loved working on the dissertation but it was really hard work. During that time Linda and I married and began a partnership based on mutual love and respect that has continued to this day. 

I taught in a Catholic High School for a year and then she worked as a public health nurse while I took a year off to complete my course work at Fordham. After a brief stint of government work with the Federal Aviation Agency in NY, I got a call for an interview at the brand new Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. 

Q. You still enjoy teaching, why did you leave it?

I taught History for seven years at SHU from 1965 to 1972.  Linda and I bought a house in Fairfield and began a family. I was teaching as well as doing research on my dissertation and thoroughly enjoyed both.  But the Vietnam era was tumultuous for America. As the war came to an end, enrollment at the University began to decline and in 1972 the University began to retrench. I was one of the faculty up for tenure that year and none of us had our contracts renewed. In the same year that I got my PhD from Fordham, I found myself out of a job with a wife and five small children.

Nevertheless, it again turned out for the best. I got a job in the Financial Services industry and managed with Linda’s support to survive the very difficult early years. Over the years I was able to build up a very successful career as a Financial Advisor before retiring in 2008. 

to be continued...