Dr. Freud, Wake Up!

Recently I read in the Times that the decision makers of the Psychiatric profession at their annual meeting have declared the malady called “hoarding phobia”, an official mental illness: eligible for treatment by a certified shrink. Covered, thank the lord, by Medicare.

I’ve often wondered how they decided these things. So now I know. And I am delighted. Indeed, Dr. Freud should be alive to share this milestone of medical science. I wondered to myself how he would react to this historic moment.          

With me, saving stuff is sort of a personal thing. Not a disease, simply more of a sentimental habit.

Got it doctor? A habit, not a compulsion. Not an obsession.

I simply don’t throw significant stuff away. Dr. Freud, are you listening? For very logical, non-psychiatric reasons.

I have become more aware of this in recent years since Margie has become my partner. She doesn’t have my compulsion to keep things. She a cleaner, a straightener, a thrower away. As you know that hasn’t been labeled a sickness. Not Yet.

Stuff, it turns out, is in my mind the essence of life in these days of digital non-existence. Without stuff, what is there? what’s left that has any meaning? Digitalized faces and words, down in the bowels of some computer somewhere on a discarded iPhone...only to be relegated onto some cloud up there somewhere never to be seen or heard from again.

That’s not stuff. That’s not essence. That’s not human, doctor.

As I move more deeply into my octo years, I tend to fixate on this kind of stuff. For example, aging photos of my grandfather Maurice and Grandma Lida on the beach at Lake Erie in 1911. I never knew him.

But he is there in my heart, as a good looking man and a warm human being. I cherish dozens of hand written love letters between the two lovers when they were courting. They both worked downtown. Passion. You could feel it growing through the months of courtship... The earliest letter started with “Leda”, then Dear Friend Lida, My Dearest Lida, and then simply, Dearest. You could feel the passion growing, as Grandma Lida began more to respond, sometimes passionately...and then the wedding.

I know Grandpa Maurice through his written, articles in the Saturday Evening Post about Mark Hanna and President McKinley, about theater and politics in the Plain Dealer. His crusade to have Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice taken from the curriculum of the Cleveland schools for their anti-Semitic overtones.

Yes I know, Dr. Freud that sounds like censorship. But things were very different for Jews in the in the 1920’s and thirties. You must remember. When you got kicked out of Germany simply because you were Jewish.

And then, Dr. Freud, there was the fate of Grandma Belle, Grace’s mother, a magnificent woman who taught kindergarten in the New York City schools most of her life, starting in a one room schoolhouse on Staten Island. She died unexpectedly in the 80’s. And by the time we got to the apartment on the west side of Manhattan, her husband, a very pragmatic pharmacist, was cleaning out the closets of every stitch of her clothing.  He piled up the school things and other mementos, and wanted them out.

Sadly, there was a truck driver strike in New York. No one could pick up anything. So we decided to give it all to the custodian, a nice man with a family, who promised to get it all to the proper place, where it would be useful.

A couple of days later, after the funeral, we were walking out of the apartment on busy W. 79^th Street to hail a cab to LaGuardia, and there it all was, strewn on the sidewalk and the gutter. The essence of her life simply waiting for the rubbish drivers strike to end. There was absolutely no distinction on the sidewalk of this busy Manhattan street between the rubbish, the garbage and Grandma Belle. I had a lump in my throat, Grace was in tears as we headed out to the airport. She didn’t stop crying until we landed in Cleveland.

It was over, very much over.   

Today in the antiseptic digital age...they simply close down your Facebook homepage and it’s over. No muss no fuss.

“Dr, Freud, are you listening?” I said “It all started when I was a nervous little kid. I starting saving newspaper articles. I still have them.”

What? Am I covered, by what??? Yes I have full Medicare, and AARP gap.  You’ll be paid in full, don’t worry doctor. As I was saying, I was a little boy. I think I felt guilty when I thought about sex, and...Dr. Freud you’re dozing off again...Dr. Freud!

 

Weiner’s Tweets, Eliot’s Tarts, Truman’s Bomb

When God, in his wisdom, dictated the first chapter of the Hebrew Bible he describes in some detail how he created all the stuff in the universe. The sky, the sea, the animals, day and night; after each he declared “and it was so” and/or “it was good”. But when he got to the creation of man, he either intentionally or by accident left out the phrase “and it was good” which set off a chain of events for which it appears we are still paying dearly.

I thought about that the other day I when read that Anthony Weiner, that brilliant former New York congressman is now the front runner in the race for Mayor of New York City. He’s the fellow who allegedly took a picture of his crotch encased in his tight jockey-type underpants, and then put it out on Twitter for the world l to see.

Let us call it God endowed Human Nature run amuck.

And almost too good to be true, Eliot Spitzer, defamed New York Governor, has announced he is running for office in New York City. He was discovered to have been much too personally involved with a house of ill repute.

And then there’s that financial genius, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, touted to be the next President of France, and called in the media “the most intelligent man in France.” He was caught running around his luxury New York hotel room naked, chasing a 32-year-old West African chamber maid demanding sexual satisfaction.

One can only conclude that God is apparently still frantically but unsuccessfully struggling to repeal his initial error.

He, of course, knew he had a problem when he created the first man and then the first woman from his rib. The first guy did not need to chase her around the room. Or send a tweet. He simply tempted her and she fell into his arms.

 

With the exception of the great flood, there was a relatively quiet period for the next 400 years, while the Israelites were busy advising the pharaoh on economic matters, designing and then constructing the pyramids. But when the people of Israel began losing those top government jobs they left Egypt and began trekking eastward across the North African desert. Without pyramids to build and pharaohs to advise they got out of hand and started worshiping a calf made out of highest quality gold.

Alarmed about his obvious loss in popularity, God told his spokesperson (Moses) to go up the nearest mountain and come down with his ten amendments, as you might call them. To this day Israelites all over the world mark the anniversary of that event with a holiday called “Shavuot” celebrated in the spring.

It is not clear whether the amendments really changed anything.  The jury is still out.

As we still struggle with war and brutality in far off lands once occupied by those same Israelites, it is difficult pour over history and find much positive spin.

A new book, for example, tells us that Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day. Lincoln, we are told, either ordered or permitted young boys who deserted the army to be hung after being forced to sit on their own coffin for a day, before their terrible premature deaths. 

Darwin, whose father in law was a minister, fearing he had defied God’s word, waited years until he published the book that changed the way we look at history.

Another new book called Final Jeopardy, describes how some of the great technological minds at IBM spent years to create a robot-like device called “Watson” to outsmart the human brain, which managed to beat some of the best.

Mother Nature, in all her majesty, has not fared much better. In her pristine forms she is magnificent. Enough to move great writers and painters to replicate nature’s wondrous beauty. It seems we couldn’t leave well enough alone and thought we could conquer those forces which brought the earth to life.

We raped the forests, poisoned our rivers and our air in the name of progress.  We even tampered with the atom, the stuff of which nature is made. 

One of God’s own Israelites, Albert Einstein, found a way mathematically to tear the Atom, the fundamental substance of nature, apart. Others labored in the hills of New Mexico, to create mankind’s most devastating weapon, using the Einstein equation as its basis. Their monster was capable of killing or horribly burning hundreds of thousands of human beings at a time.

When the time came to use it, President Truman told the world that he “never lost a night’s sleep” over the decision. But, to his everlasting credit, we know for sure that he never knew that it led to the incineration of 200,000 innocent Japanese.  But one thing is certain; he never would have twittered an amorous message to anyone. Never.

Nor, as far as we know, did he ever chase a chamber maid around a hotel room. Or hire a call girl.  Probably because his lovely wife Bess would have hit him on the head with a broomstick.

He did, history records, call Paul Hume, the music critic of the Washington Post, a “son of a bitch”, for criticizing his daughter Margaret’s performance at the piano.  That’s as good, or bad as it gets.

    

God help us!

        

What’s it all about, Tommy?

Back in that other century, on his 90^th birthday, my “Uncle Tommy” jumped rope for twenty minutes at the downtown YMCA, without so much as breathing hard or turning red in the face. So notable was his achievement that there was a picture and story in the Cleveland Press. It was mentioned that he was a physical fitness aficionado, and went regularly to the summer Bernard McFadden health camp in Western New York, and was one of their prized students.

Tommy lived for much of his later years in a quiet house on the road to Chardon. He was never married, but was very successful in business, founding a food service business that eventually served a majority of the city’s factory workers called United Food Services.

Shortly after he reached that landmark birthday he was living in a disheveled apartment in the Statler Hotel downtown.  A year later he was dead, having been ripped off a by a couple who befriended him, feigning to care for him. He left no immediate survivors.

He was good gentleman. Short, with twinkling bright blue eyes and curly hair. Frequently giving his nieces and nephews gifts on special holidays. Tommy talked a lot when there was someone to listen and I can remember one lunch time parked at the corner of 12^th and Chester talking for half an hour about something before I got a chance to mention some charitable ideas I had. He always came through with a smile.

And he did a give a lot of money to the Cleveland Sight Center.  There is a plaque there at 101st and Chester that bears his name. He was generously involved in the Hebrew Free Loan and other charities. It is said that on the way home from work he would often stop by the site of many of his beneficiaries to see if all was going well.

His funeral was well attended in the Mausoleum at Mayfield Cemetery. It was so cold that the radiators stated banging during the service, as if someone out there was trying to protest the Rabbi’s words. And then they buried him in the cold wet mud of a Cleveland winter.

I started to wonder: ”What’s it all about, Tommy?”

Is there any meaning in the lonely childless life...that ended with jumping rope and getting ripped off?

Certainly his charitable instincts, regardless of his motive, have done good work that continues well beyond his death.

And it is said that in the light of a full moon, the shadow of a little man with twinkling eyes and a broad smile can be seen merrily jumping rope in the parking lot of the Sight Center or the Jewish Federation.

As if to tell the world, in his own unusual way, that his life had meant something after all.

  

Our Dicey Encounter with the Egyptian Army

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A month or so before our Swan Cruise ship slipped into the vast harbor of Alexandria, a gang of Islamic extremists had invaded the resort area not far from the pyramids and killed a number of tourists. Germans, as I recall. The idea was to break the back of Egypt’s then highly successful and lucrative tourism industry in an attempt to weaken and then overthrow the dictatorship of Mubarak.

We even got a call from our travel agent telling us that we could opt out of the trip, if we wished, with no penalty.  But they noted that the US State Department had issued no formal warning. So we decided to live dangerously.  So did most everyone one else in the hundred or so of the roster, who, it turned out, were primarily classic, stoic Brits. Even though the British government had issued an alert, cautioning its people about the hazards of traveling in Egypt, these hardy folks weren’t about to be intimidated by a bunch of radical Muslim Arabs blowing up places. 

So we all sailed out of Athens on this 18-day tour of a lifetime into Mediterranean history, complete with books and lectures. We had pretty much forgotten the mayhem at the pyramids, until our last port of call. As we marched down the gangplank at Alexandria, it seemed as though we had entered another world, another century. Half-naked men wearing only loincloths sitting crossed legged, smoking pipes and selling stuff. Women in full religious garb. And in the midst of it all was this modern truck loaded with teenagers all in the uniform of the Egyptian army. They, presumably, were to be our protectors.  Perhaps personally sent by Mubarak. Each was armed with a rifle. Many of them seemed confused about how to hold their weapon, or, God forbid, use one. They, a bakers dozen of youngsters in khaki, were to be our constant companions during our stay in their homeland. To guard us from the terrorists.

While waiting for something to happen, they were mostly directing traffic away from us. But their presence made a difference. We felt relatively secure in this strange, embattled land. People moved out of their way. Cars dodged us. I wasn’t sure who was in charge but the uniforms helped keep order.

And it worked pretty well. They protected us as we visited the great museums in Cairo, had lunch at the Hilton, and so on.

Then we headed out to the pyramids. Everyone posed for pictures on a camel, climbed around the religious relics, bought souvenirs. Did all the pyramids things. At dusk we were told to get back on the buses and head to the ship in Alexandria. “So far so good'" said one of my Brit friends and we headed north. As darkness fell and we were speeding past those so “terrorist ridden” resorts, I heard a cracking sound near the bus ahead of us.

“What was that?!,” said someone. “Was it a shot?”

My God, I thought, is this my worst nightmare coming true?

The stoic British couple started talking about the long, happy life they had lived together. My thoughts were a little more desperate. I ran to our driver.

”The troops, the soldiers, where are are they?,” I asked our driver, who had pulled up behind the stopped bus ahead.

“They went back to the barracks for supper. They don’t work nights”. My heart palpitated.  Here we were in the blackness of this road to Alexandria, naked of any protection.

“It’s okay,” The driver said in broken English. 

“The first bus has engine trouble and is backfiring.  We’ve called for help and they’re on the way.”

We sat there for about an hour, and then we were on our way again to the Alexandria harbor and then on to the fresh air and sanctity of the Mediterranean Sea, wondering whether the soldiers, our so-called protectors, had a good dinner and were tucked into their beds by their drill sergeant.

I can’t help but wonder what these, “boys”, (our protectors) are up to now, as revolution, mass murder and mayhem prevail in that once magnificent Land Of the Pharaohs.   

Saying Kaddish for Grace

We were talking about Grace, my wife of 47 years who died seven years ago last April. It was a broad ranging discussion about this very special human being when he unexpectedly snapped the question.
“But Did You Love Her”?
I stopped short, stunned and a bit surprised. Didn’t expect it.
"Did I what?," I stammered.
“Grace, your wife, did you LOVE her?”
Funny. I had to think about that. My mind whirled a bit. It’s a lifetime, we’re talking about. There were the ups and downs that come with the territory. But for 47 years, we shared our home, shared our bed, she cooked for me…took care of me when I was sick, cheered me after tough days at the office. She did the laundry. Did the shopping, helped with the bills, kept the check book. Shared our love for our little girl… raised her sent her off to school and then to college.
A woman ahead of her time, she got her Masters, worked as a high school guidance counselor in poor, rough neighborhoods. And later as a volunteer counselor to released offenders who were eligible for community service jobs.
She loved the work and from what I know, this little woman was respected by those huge guys getting her help in staying out of jail.
But that’s a different kind of love. More like respect, admiration.
Did you really love her? He was persistent. When she got sick with a fatal chronic lung disease, she was tethered to an oxygen canister that she couldn’t live without. It was awkward. Heavy. Yet that gutsy little gal pulled that device around for more than three years to that job downtown on the seventh floor of the county sheriff’s building three days a week. There were days when she couldn't drive and I picked her up.
I watched this brave little gal, walking out the door with a broad smile on her face...talking with sensitivity and enthusiasm telling about these parolees she was helping.
The day before she died was a relatively good day. She had shopped in the nursing home store, sat in the dining room with a bevy of friends and our daughter. I had left early that day and called her from our daughter’s house. We talked for a short time about the Cavaliers in the playoffs. About LeBron James.
And just before we hung up Grace said "Bud, I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I responded, fully expecting to be with her the next morning.
At 2:00 am she died.
Did I love her? Did I really love her? Of course I did…
And by the way, thanks for asking.
For nearly half a century, Grace, this tough, tender little lady, was my wife, my life that we shared together. Maybe we didn’t talk about it enough. Maybe we were too busy dealing with the vicissitudes of life. Whatever it was, thanks for asking.
On the chilly December day before I left Cleveland for Texas, I stopped by her little gravesite in Mayfield Cemetery to place a couple of small stones on her marker, as is our custom. Took a deep breath and repeated quietly the words etched in the marble.
Simple words:
“As long as we live you too will live, as we remember you.” I swallowed hard and once again said good night.
And murmured loud enough for her to hear,
“I love you, really. And I always will."

Musings of a New Father - 1961

My Life With Guns

            The first time I ever saw, heard or touched a gun was in Mr. Tubaugh’s ninth grade English class when Don Glasser accidentally fired a starter pistol at the ceiling.

           There was, to say the least, mayhem.  Naomi Garber, who  was  sitting next to Don, screamed hysterically and ran out of the room shrieking. “I’m deaf, I can’t hear!!”

            Mr.  Tubaugh, a round, bald headed little man with a small mustache, turned beet red and appeared to be suffering from an attack of some kind, from which he recovered quickly. Don, who in later years was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, was in shock. I grabbed the pistol and gave it back to it's owner, whose name was Bernstein and had recently moved into the neighborhood.   It was a memorable moment, still etched vividly in my aging brain.

            I thought of that bizarre junior high school moment the other day, after the terrible assault and killings in Newtown, Connecticut.  Guns had not been a part of my life or life style in the middle class, close in suburb where I grew up. We saw them in Tom Mix, and an occasional gangster flick…but not real. Pure fantasy.  In the real world I hated the idea of guns, that are designed to kill randomly, at the whim of  madmen. Or in the case of war or rebellion, kill on purpose, and all too often without an ounce of conscience.     

         Thus it was unpleasant, unfamiliar and somewhat irreverent for me four years later when a drill sergeant, in the 379^th Infantry regiment, shoved an M-1 rifle in my hand and announced to our group of the uninitiated, fresh out of  high school draftees, that this was our first day to learn how to kill. With precision.

        It was like performing in a movie.  I did exactly what I was told.  Propped the rifle on my shoulder aimed at the target and squeezed the trigger.  I must confess that in that moment in time, it felt good.  As the gun fired and propelled the bullet toward the target, I felt a sense of satisfaction in my body as if the gun were an extension of my being. Yes, extension of my being. Got it?

         What’s more, I had hit the bulls eye, earning a black eye from the recoil and damage to my ear that has left me with a ringing to this very day, perhaps to remind of that testosterone driven moment in my life.

         In spite of my initial success at marksmanship, I was assigned to regimental headquarters company, to perform duties as assigned.  Never again did I carry an M-1  rifle during the war or have a desire to use one, particularly on another human being. It was a blessing.  A twist of fate.

        But I have been left  with the lingering question, accented by the recent mass killings;   what it is that drives men, even some otherwise good men, to want to kill another living thing?

       But that we’ll have to leave to the psychologists to explain.           

Politics and Yom Kippur Don’t Mix. Or do they?

           My magnificent mother, whose lifetime in Cleveland literally spanned the 20^th century, (born in 1898 at 30^th and Orange, died 1989 at Mt. Sinai Hospital), was a tough, independent and lovely woman.

          Although she was a member of The Temple and often turned to Rabbi A.H. Silver, a personal friend of the family, for advice and comfort, she was more a pragmatist, and fatalist, than a religious Jew.

          When her husband William Weidenthal, publisher of the Jewish Independent, died in 1931 at the depth of the Depression, she was left, in her 30’s, with twin five year olds. She courageously (or perhaps stoically) told her friends, “It was meant to be”, and plunged ahead, without complaining, doing what was necessary to maintain a stable family.

          She took over the Weidenthal Co., our printing and publishing plant on Bolivar Rd. (just west of 9^th St.) and successfully ran it for a number of years. She insisted years later that she was no feminist. She left the kitchen and got into business because, “I had no choice”.

          Mother was by nature a serious Republican. She Disliked FDR and the New Deal with a passion. (It should be noted that in pre-depression days, much of the Jewish political establishment in Cleveland was Republican).  As a loyal son, I stood by her, and the cause.

          When Alf Landon the colorless governor of Kansas was nominated to challenge FDR in Cleveland Public Hall in 1936, I was excited about it and determined to do my part for the family.

          I recruited two friends at Coventry School, went down to the printing plant and printed out posters declaring LANDON FOR PRESIDENT.  Then we walked over to the Landon headquarters at the Hollenden Hotel, scooped up as many sunflower buttons we could fit in our knickers pockets and then headed back to the Heights.

          We were naively certain that our campaign efforts would swing Landon for Ohio, or at least Cuyahoga County.  As it turned out, it was a landslide for FDR. 
 Among my young Jewish friends who by now were almost entirely New Dealers, I was a rebel with a lost cause.

          In 1940 it was Wendell Willke, the One World idealist from Indiana who captured my allure. I was taken by his world view, and mother, now owner of Evelyn Wayne, a children’s store in Shaker Heights, continued her dislike for FDR. (Among other things, she resisted posting an NRA sign in her store window, as dictated by Washington.) When it was announced that Willkie would be coming to Cleveland for a campaign appearance at Public Hall, there was no doubt that I would be there.

          The situation got dicey when Grandma Kolinsky, an observant Jew, discovered that Willkie was coming to town on Yom Kippur. Her grandson, she declared at the dinner table, would not attend a political rally on the holiest of holy days. (It had been my habit to walk her to and from the synagogue on Superior Rd. up from Mayfield each year on the High Holy days, which complicated the problem.)

Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

Wendell Willkie, Republican presidential candidate, campaigning with Harold Stassen in 1940.

        Over her protests, and somewhat guilt stricken, I rode the street car down to the terminal where the man from Indiana had arrived on his campaign train. I raced alongside his open car up Euclid Ave., down Ninth St. to Public Hall, where he gave a stirring speech in front of thousands of enthusiastic Gentiles and one Jewish teen-ager from Cleveland Heights, who thought he was cheering on the next president of the United States. Sadly, no such luck.

        Again a landslide for FDR. No hanging or pregnant chads. And no one even thought about asking for a recount.

I’ll Be Seeing You

Here I am at the Cleveland Clinic, of all places, where they have the best doctors, for some of the sickest people in the world. Kings, sheiks, movie stars fly here from all over the globe, seeking cures for ailments that others can’t help.       

My first appointment ever at Cleveland’s LeBron of medicine.  And I’m a little apprehensive even though I’m not really sick.  Never liked hospitals or doctors.  Too many bad experiences as a kid.  My mind had long ago been infected was unpleasant memories. I had drifted into day dreaming of as we rode down the hill toward Carnegie.

       Didn’t sleep well the night before, since the appointment was very early. Much too early for me. My daughter was picking me up for the short drive down the hill, and will join me for the session. “Patients” are invited to bring a significant others. So I’m bringing Susan, a wonderful human being, and a marvelous giving, caring daughter.  I am so lucky, I thought. I was up, wobbly but wide-eyed by four thirty, dressed by six, and somewhat awake well in time for the arrival of my ride.

           As we approached the pink granite pyramid like Crile building that has become the centerpiece of this amazing campus, I marveled at how it has changed the face of “Uptown” Cleveland, as we used to call it. (107^th and Euclid down to 79th St.)

           If anything has changed radically in this town, it has been this neighborhood. Once it was ablaze with nightclubs, movies, hotels, the Alhambra bowling alley and pool hall, the Trianon Ballroom where our high school fraternity had sponsored Tommy Dorsey band and kid singer Frank Sinatra.  Lindsay’s Sky Bar, where Nat King Cole played with his trio, well before he was a famed singer on his own.  Where I hung out on Army furloughs during the War. Every sign of life you can imagine

       Now it is an impersonal looking industrial type complex of stone and steel and glass buildings for the sick, the very sick and the dying. A new kind of Cleveland that no one thought they would ever see in our town. Not in my day, at least.   

“There’s a Booik”

      When I was a little guy, perhaps four or so, it is said that I would stand at the window looking out onto busy Euclid Hts. Blvd. and declare without a moment’s hesitation,” There’s a Booick, there’s a Thevrolet, there’s a Pymouth!”

It is clear that even in those tender years I was hooked on cars; marking the beginning of a lifelong, passionate love affair with automobiles.                                             
 And, I have come to recognize, the feeling is mutual.

This is part of that story.

Cars that have loved me

         To almost everyone, the yellow, American Motors Hornet Sportabout, with the fake wood sides looked ridiculous. I thought it was really cool. Bought it from Tom Ganley at his first agency on Lake Shore Blvd. back in the early 70’s.

Not In My Backyard

Tilting at Turbines 

        Not too long ago, while driving through the vast, unpredictable landscape of Northwest Texas, we came upon a swarm of enormous windmills, planted as far as the eye could see, in every direction.  
         Now better known as “wind turbines.” Everywhere. They are apparently beloved by many environmentalists and engineers alike, touted as the wave of the green future. the cure to the so-called global warming. And that’s scary. 

        The novelty and the pervasiveness of these monsters distorting the Texas skyline, grabbed my attention. It was nothing like I had ever seen before. My initial reaction was of amazement.  They must be creating enough power to light the whole city of Ft. Worth, I thought to myself.  Not really, I have been told.  Possibly part of Abilene. Not enough power lines exist in the area to do much more.
        My next thought: what a blight on the natural environment.

Andrew and Me

Andrew and I spent last weekend together without his mom, who was off to a high school reunion in Wisconsin.

It turned out to be a somewhat traumatic and intellectually challenging experience for both of us.

He’s three, and pretty smart for his age.  He knows and understands words.  He has good instincts.  He seems to sense what is happening around him. He knows when it’s time to go to the bathroom, and almost always knows how to tell me. He announces in his own way when he is hungry or thirsty. And when I put his food in front of him he won’t touch it until I put grated cheese on top.

I sense that he really likes me. He follows me wherever I go, even into the privacy of my bathroom. He sits under my chair when I eat. He even comes with me to den to watch the Indians game…and unlike me he seems rather relaxed about it.

Is he suffering like I’m suffering? I asked myself, after my once beloved team began to fall apart.  My jaws were tight, my mouth dry I was sweating, wondering what this embarrassing performance  means to the reputation of my beleaguered town…I’m beginning to hate the coach, the owner and everything about the team. I even hate the announcers. 

The New Normal Run Amok

   I winced the other day when the main story on page one of the New York Times declared pretty much without equivocation that births out of wedlock are the “New Normal” in America.
   My initial reaction was one of sadness for the nation and for the mothers who either by choice or by pain of abandonment go it alone.  But mostly a personal pain for the children, primarily for the boys, who must grow up without a father.  You might call it, as does the Cleveland Plain 
Dealer, "Fatherless in America. A national tragedy.”  I was startled to learn the 76 % of children  born in Cleveland out of wedlock.  fatherless boys we are told are much more likely to end up in jail, to fail in school, to become jobless.
   A national tragedy you bet.  If we wnt to fix  America, here's a very good place to start.
   I drew partly on my own experience as I wrote this story about “LeBron and Me” a while ago touching on this subject.. This is a slightly expanded and updated version that tells it as it is, or, at least, as it is for me.…

LeBron and Me

I felt an eerie, uneasy kinship with LeBron the other night as I watched him slowly, painfully walk off the court in Miami, in defeat in game six with Dallas in the NBA playoffs.

I wondered how he really felt inside.  This huge boy in a man’s body, lifted by passion and athleticism to heights few mortals ever reach,

What are his inner resources? To whom can he turn as he feels the pain of loss? Not to the man who made his mother pregnant at age 16 and never returned.

I think I know something about that sense of loss. And the inability to deal with it likes a “man”, so to speak.

Like LeBron, I grew up without a father.  It was not good experience.  This devastating loss of the man in your life leaves a hole in you gut a mile wide. And it never really goes away.  No matter how hard you try, on the basketball court or on the courtyard of life.

Particularly when the man you came to depend on disappears, or in LeBron’s case, was never there at all.
I was enchanted when he told the journalists at a news conference after the playoff loss that it was truly up to “the Man upstairs” to determine when he would ultimately win that coveted championship ring. Something, he had indicated he wanted more than anything in this world.

Hunting Down The Welfare Queens

             I was attracted to Joe Nocera’s column on the Op Ed page of this week’s New York Times (Living in Fear of the NCAA) that tells us of the probing into the very personal financial lives of the families of some college star athletes. The column set my mind wandering back 60 Years to a time when I found myself professionally involved in what you might call, the hunt for “welfare queens”, a similar, but slightly different situation.

            I was a young reporter quite new to the business, and somewhat naive to the realities of big city daily journalism. I was assigned to the “health and welfare beat” of the Cleveland Press. The job was touted by my top editors as key for Ohio’s largest newspaper that had earned a reputation as serving the fundamental needs and interests of the hard working blue collar population of our great town.

           Our  compasionate concern for the working poor, the sick and helpless, and their struggles for a decent life in our heavy industry town separated our newspaper from the rest. Indeed, Time magazine had just listed The Press one of the ten greatest newspapers in the nation. 

Coming To Terms With The Enemy

       It is often said that time is of the essence.

       Indeed:  As the seconds, minutes, days and years, tumble relentlessly by, the movement of time emerges as a haunting, implacable enemy.  Chasing you from behind.  Catching up even as you seem to run faster. And then leaving you in its dust once more.

          I don’t like that. I never have. 

          I recall, many years ago, as a young journalist, I was dating a very attractive red-headed social worker who I had met while covering the Juvenile Court. She was a joy to be with. One night we drove down to Perkins Beach, a lovely, fairly private place to park to look at the stars, or whatever.

After philosophizing about the beauty of the brightly lit downtown skyline, I put my arm around her and moved close, as though to kiss.  She pulled away. “Too soon”, she whispered through her warm, perhaps passionate breath.

“Finite anxiety” was the problem, she said almost clinically, concerning my move to caress her.  Too frantic. Too focused on time, advised this lovely young Baptist who declared that she believed in reincarnation. For her, time was a friend. For me it was the enemy.  Needless to say that relationship, with its excellent potential, never went anywhere.

Time had taken its toll.

I have often wanted to stop the movement of time.  To make it stand still to force it backwards.  To dispose of it entirely.

          Now that I have moved well into my golden years this intense pursuit of the runaway clock has become much more than an intellectual enterprise.

 I have tried to convince myself that time itself does not actually exist except as the concoction of some Middle Ages scientists who were trying to calculate the movement of the sun around the earth and, after Galileo, the earth around the sun.

         But, as the age of reason progressed, time became almost pervasive. The master, rather than the servant. There was the March of Time weekly feature at the movies, Time Magazine, and of course, Timex watches which “keep on ticking when they take a licking,” as John Cameron Swayze used to say on the radio.