Trick or Treat

As a youth I believed it was better to be on the receiving end of the Trick or Treat equation. Now that I move to the door upon hearing the doorbell ring and dispense candy, I believe it is better to give than to receive.

The giving of candy is more rewarding, even if the candy not one of the five major food groups. It makes me forget my aches and pains, and gives me pause for some reflection.

As I watch the troops of kids and their adult chaperones make their way through the neighborhood, I vividly recall doing the same, except I don't remember any adults. I could have a faulty memory, but it was Ridgewood circa 1960s/1970s, and as children we did go outside and make our own mistakes sometimes. Gathering as much candy as we could certainly qualifies as a youthful transgression. No doubt we were gladdened by the hunt and the competition to keep up the pace of acquisition. For days on end afterwards we got to decide what to eat and what to throw/give away. I know parents around town who secreted some of the candy themselves, mostly so kids wouldn't have belly aches from eating too much candy and to many chips.

Now I am left only with the aches of age and the pains of reminiscing too much about times which occurred well over forty years ago. I recall that after the eighth grade the charm of roaming on Halloween had lost its charm. Most kids stopped around this time. Probable it became just too easy and we also didn't want to be seen around little kids. Either way I am heartened by the giving and won't ruminate too much about the easy pickings of days gone by. The well worn phrase: "Trick or Treat!" still makes me smile.

A Better Place

We all want the world we live in to be a better place.

It doesn't take a love of the Beatles or an incessant nostalgia for 1960's and 1970's to understand where this comes from. Even when there are days you don't understand what people are going through, you still can be compassionate.

We can also be aware that the traditional practices of social interaction which have brought us to 2017 probable will be replaced in the coming years as more people come to understand that currently our society values corporations more than people or the environment we inhabit. Ironically, corporations were created by people and later given standing so that their continued profits, no matter the social cost in pollution and ruined lives, were not to be disputed. Please remember this is not a Socialist or Capitalist position, only an observation that our world hungers for community as opposed to unbridled individualism.

Yes, a new theory of value will displace our current outmoded ones. For instance, clean air, clean water, friendship, and community are all working their way into the popular vernacular. These are examples of real wealth, not the phony MBA theories being taught in our graduate schools and the arcane metrics they espouse.

When the time comes and you feel the processes you engage in and undertake, and the results you achieve are more important than meeting an arbitrary monetary target then you will have created a better place for yourself and those around you. Imagine that.

There's More To Life Than Being Happy

The title of this post was inspired by a recent TED Talk I watched by Emily Esfahani Smith

She says Life is about belonging. To me this rings true. It's like when I first went into our local Italian butcher shop. The owner was waiting on me and plying me with samples to entice me to buy. I had ordered $80 of delicious looking food and had pulled out my credit card to pay. The owner then had to put an end to our bonhomie and tell me that he only accepted cash. I was a little flustered but the owner saved the day by telling me I could pay him next time.

Imagine that, "Next Time."

I regained my composure after he said this and told him I would be back. He insisted I take everything and to not rush on his account. This made us both very happy. He had graciously offered his delectables and I had accepted. We both tacitly had agreed that we belonged with one another and to one another, and had cemented this bond over his fresh mozzarella.

It's often the trivial things which offer to me the best explanations of what Life ultimately means.  I don't doubt for a minute that there is more to Life than being happy. I also don't think we ought to be made miserable by our surroundings if we can help it.

I have had this sort of courtesy which I just detailed extended to me by other people in my neighborhood. Each and every time I have gone with my gut and accepted their kindness. Usually it's nothing more than a trifle or a platitude, though every instance has momentarily lightened my heart and helped me to forget the aches that come with Life's late-in-life storms. It's the feeling of affiliation that's driving these interactions. We don't necessarily stop and chat just to make ourselves feel happy, but that is often the end result; the unintended consequence of acting human and finding a bit of happiness for our trouble.

The Gig Economy

The "Gig Economy" originated with the first child who walked across the street after a snow storm and rang the doorbell of their neighbor to inquire whether they wanted their sidewalk shoveled. Or maybe it was raking the leaves from their lawn or cutting the grass and bagging the clippings.

According to The Atlantic magazine: "In the late 1970s, 77 percent of high-school seniors worked for pay during the school year; by the mid-2010s, only 55 percent did. The number of eighth-graders who work for pay has been cut in half." 

To hear people talk today about the Gig Economy it's if the rise of contractors in society is something new. Kids were the original contractors, negotiating for their jobs and manner of payment. The fact that this is now a term for describing adults and not children is what is novel. When it involved children there was still a safety net for the children, namely, they had a home to return to and a school they were required to attend. Now that this term has been appropriated and celebrated by corporations it is something else for us all to ponder.

When as children we worked outside the home we were not contemplating our retirements or how we would pay for our healthcare. Today as adults we all have to consider the issues around the "defined retirement" plans being replaced by 401k accounts and the variety and complexity of healthcare options. When you add the need for contractors to be constantly selling their services it can be overwhelming for the average person. No small wonder we have a huge segment of society,  according to the U.S. Census Bureau, opting out and having a doctor declare them disabled. This government bureau goes on to state that as of 2017 there were nearly 40 million Americans with a disability in 2015, representing 12.6% of the civilian non-institutionalized population.

Coincidence, maybe. This is not to disparage anybody with a disability, only to point out that given the alternatives of being an adult contractor in a brutally competitive global economy, this is a course of action that many people consider.

Landlines Versus Phubbing

40 years ago teenagers would monopolize their family's landline telephone with endless one-to-one conversations. While today with the 10th year anniversary of the Smartphone's preeminence in our culture, a new method for teenagers to communicate with one another has emerged: Phubbing.

According to reliable sources on the Internet:

phubbing. (PHone snUBBING) The constant use of smartphones and lack of human interaction. For example, "phubbers" are people in the company of others who are endlessly texting or checking e-mail.

I have seen this firsthand with my nephew and with a slew of co-workers who believe that being available to an incessant barrage of tweets and messages makes them more valuable employees. In both cases I feel there is cause for worry. This is not my nostalgia for a simpler age. It is more like the declaration of the news anchor from the 1976 American satirical film written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, Network:

"I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

I can't say that I will ever reach this level of hysteria though it is disturbing and contrary to all I hold to be good and true. How we ever got to this sorry state of affairs is something I will have to give some more thought to and comment in another post. For now, simply ask yourself if you know a Phubber or are one yourself. If the thought of leaving your home without your smartphone leaves you feeling somewhat disconcerted you might be contributing to this problem.

Kenneth Humiston RIP

Mr Humiston was my Math teacher senior year at RHS. His deadpan humor made the lessons easier to understand and remember. He was also a well-known soccer and basketball referee. Here's part of the obituary. I substituted a picture of him from our Class of 1977 yearbook. It's better to remember him in his prime, especially since I hardly recognized his more recent photo. Forty years away from his classroom will do that.

Kenneth W. Humiston, 87, of Saratoga Springs and Chateaugay, New York and formerly of Oradell, New Jersey, died peacefully at home October 2, 2017.

Born in Chateaugay, New York, he was the son of the late Kathleen (Harvey) and Clarence Humiston.

He graduated from Plattsburgh State University and received his Masters Degree from Pennsylvania State University. He taught mathematics for 35 years at Ridgewood High School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. During those years he officiated soccer, basketball, baseball, and softball. He was past president of the Bergen County Soccer Officials Association and past president of the Bergen County Umpires Association. He was a member of the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials.

He proudly served for two years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Toul, France.

Do Americans Still Read?

Back in the halcyon days of youth my we read to our parents. This was after they decided that they had been reading to us for long enough so it had became our turn.

Reading became a habit for me after I learned to piece together words into sentences in the first grade. Not long after this I began to dutifully go outside, no matter the weather, and retrieve the NY Times from the driveway. I may have only read the Sports pages, after a cursory glance at the front page, but it was reading and sports writers like Leonard Koppett and Dan Daniel were very literate and would be called bibliophiles today. Later in my life I would read Sam Lacy, W.C. Heinz, Ring Lardner, and Dick Young.

Leonard Koppett, New York Times

Sam Lacy, Washington Post

W.C. Heinz

By the time I reached High School I would read the Wall Street Journal my father brought home each night, after he had read it on the train from NYC. Vermont Royster wrote for the WSJ Editorial page in those days. he had studied Latin and Greek. He received two Pulitzer Prizes and his Christmas and Thanksgiving editorials were reprinted every years since he wrote them. 

Funny how no female sports writers are on my list. Mostly because they weren't allowed and when they were the treatment they endured was nothing short of a travesty.

I have often wondered what kind of journalism requires one to navigate the sweaty, smelly confines of a locker room? I guess that would be the definition of a Sports Writer.

Now we live in a more visual society as opposed to the tactile one of my youth, where the ink from the newspaper remained on your hands as a reminder of your reading endeavors. Children might still read to their parents today but it's probable from a tablet or phone. I'm not sure this is an improvement. What's more, at this risk of being labeled an incurable nostalgic, I would also say the quality of the writing isn't the same either. Whoever heard of a Sports Writer today who had studied Latin and Greek? No writers come to mind with this sort of pedigree, male or female. Though I am sure I could be proven wrong in maybe one or two instances nationwide. That's saying quite a bit as New York City area has 11 major sports team, including the Liberty of the Women's National Basketball Association.

The Truth Resonates

You usually know the truth when you hear it. Maybe not initially but a few hours or days later it dawns on you that what you heard, you saw, or you read was the truth. Call this striking a chord, or an idea or phenomenon which repeats itself in your mind, that is what we call the truth.

Here is a famous photo of someone telling the truth. It pained him mightily to tell us the President Kennedy had been mortally shot in Dealey Plaza in Texas. This is as apparent today as it was over 50 years ago.

Once he reported the news it checked the clock to make sure he had got it right.

 

 This is how it felt this mornig after hearing about the passing of a Rock n Roll Hall of Famer named Tom Petty. He was only 66 and had been with the same band for 40 years. Often times we think people will be around forever, that is, until they aren't. 

Music writer Bob Lefsetz gave the following as part of a eulogy for Tom Petty:

Once upon a time music was art.

Tom Petty made art.

Today I was in Reseda.

Tonight I drove down Mulholland.

But one thing's for sure, I'm free fallin'. Out into nothin'.

But tonight Tom Petty didn't leave this world for a while, but for all time.

And I just don't want to accept that.

But I have to.

We all have to. Plus, try to recall the sweet memories, though tinged with sadness, that these musicians left us with.

October Gardens

It's hard for me to believe but it had been 25 years since I last had a hand in a garden. Not that I had many opportunities living in the NYC area and other urban settings. Though this last spring I knew it would happen as our new place already had a working garden and could easily handle an extra set of hands or two.

Now it is October and we are picking the last of the tomatoes and peppers. The herbs and medical plants are still with us too. During the summer we had an abundance of mulberries, black and white. It's funny how so few people appreciate the taste of mulberries and there were countless yards with trees filled with berries that nobody picked. This goes hand in hand with the fact there are countless streets throughout America named Mulberry. As James Thurber once wrote, " You could look it up!"