Sick to Death

Monday, June 22, 2020

I won't hesitate to admit that I am low on the scale of patience and empathy.  I understand that those qualities are desirable in attempting to make a better world, but I may just be a bystander in the effort.  Even when I consider trying to do the right thing, I encounter the following (all from today's paper):

• “If it is God’s will that I get coronavirus that is the will of the Almighty. I will not live in fear,” said Robert Montanelli, a resident of Broken Arrow, a Tulsa suburb.
• “It’s all fake,” said Mike Alcorn, 40, who works in maintenance and lives in Wichita, Kansas “They’re just making the numbers up. I haven’t seen anybody die, not from coronavirus. I don’t even know anybody who’s got it.”
• Jeff Eskew, a 52-year-old from Oklahoma City, dismissed the virus. “I’ve been watching this closely over the last four months or so, and the numbers just don’t add up to me.”
• Donald Fanning, of Wichita, Kansas, wearing  an American-flag T-shirt, with American-flag suspenders, hitched to American-flag swimming trunks, when asked about the existence of racism, replied, “Get rid of Jesse Jackson and Sharpton and you’ll get rid of racism.”
• Trina Moore, 61, drove 10 hours from Denver to Tulsa to attend the rally. Her children are essential workers on the front lines of the pandemic, yet she said, “I just don’t believe in the virus thing."

Therefore, I will cease and desist from reaching out to, commiserating with, recognizing the good in, or seeking common ground with these folks.  I do not choose to walk a mile in their hobnailed boots.
. . . 

 

While LOMEX has a nice ring to it, I never knew the term until recently.  The Lower Manhattan Expressway was conceived in 1929, connecting Brooklyn and New Jersey by running a highway between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges and the Holland Tunnel.  It would have leveled much of the decrepit housing along the way that sheltered our grandparents early in the 20th Century, replacing it with high-rise residential buildings, according to the master plan.  https://www.tenement.org/blog/highways-and-highrises-visions-of-the-lower-east-side/?utm_source=The+Tenement+Museum+Newsletter+List&utm_campaign=8f4fb54569-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_02_20_10_54_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_42667ed4e8-8f4fb54569-239835045

Even with the support of the fabled Robert Moses, grand scale development was stymied there, in the main.  Instead, today, while European sedans do not whiz along Delancey Street unimpeded, Eurotrash stroll in and out of over-priced boutiques on Orchard Street.
. . .

College professor gets suspended after he asks student of Vietnamese background, named Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, to “Anglicize” her name because it “sounds like an insult in English.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/phuc-bui-diem-nguyen-laney-college.html

Now, here's my story.  Over 25 years ago, I volunteered to spend time with new Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.  It was an informal arrangement.  I met weekly with several men individually for an hour or two.  I showed them the sights as we walked around Manhattan.  I explained how to cope with some things that might mystify them -- an ATM, street addresses (what works in Brooklyn does not work in Manhattan), approaching a cop (not dangerous for a white man, I instructed back then). 

One young man and his family had a surname that, when read with a New York accent, "sounds like an insult in English.”  I urged him to change the spelling slightly to tilt the pronunciation into more benign territory.  He did and that was that.

Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Just as Covid-19 has proved fatal to some seriously ill people, it has given the final push to some companies already on the brink of disaster.  Recent major bankruptcies include J. C. Penney, Neiman-Marcus, J. Crew, Gold's Gym, and Hertz Car Rental.  In case you fear that this indicates severe economic dysfunction, rest easy.  The American way of doing business rolls on.  Witness this headline: "These Companies Gave Their C.E.O.s Millions, Just Before Bankruptcy."  J.C. Penney and Hertz, among others, "are managing to find millions of dollars to pay bonuses to their bosses," the same guys that drove them into the ground.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/business/ceo-bonsues-before-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html

The rationale for this behavior is wonderful.  "Companies have said the payments are meant to help them retain qualified executives through the recession and bankruptcy."  At a time when millions of people at all levels of competence are unemployed, these companies insist on holding onto those executives who failed them mightily.  Heaven forbid they get away and go to a competitor. 

Wednesday, June 24,2020
Child-raising, along with airconditioning repair, New Zealand geography and Slovenian grammar, is a subject with which I am inexperienced and remain ill-informed.  When I read the following, however, I instinctively feared the long-term outcome.  "A Bronx couple, wanting to shield their one-year-old from the gender pressures exerted on young children, use gender-neutral pronouns and outfits for their baby."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/raising-baby-grey-explores-the-world-of-gender-neutral-parenting?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker

I am not even sure that I want to be proven wrong.
. . .

We took another vacation today.  In the company of Arthur and Lyn Dobrin, humane humanists, we visited Old Westbury Gardens, the former estate of businessman John Shaffer Phipps, born into the right family and married into an even better one.  It is a bucolic spread of 200 acres that offered ample shade on this hot summer day.  I had some reluctance hastening back to retirement. 

Friday, June 26, 2020
Is it Black or black?  The debate continues.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/black-african-american-style-debate.html

. . .

The next session of "Seinfeld and the Law" will be Tuesday, June 30th at 7 P.M.  If you wish to join on Zoom, the meeting ID is 844 7104 7726 and the password is cardozo.   

. . .

In spite of the giddy ignorance of some of our political leaders, the scourge of Covid-19 continues and even grows in much of our country and the world at large.  The eventual loss of lives and livelihoods will take years to measure.  However, the pain is widely felt already and will reach far into the future.  Not all of our losses are so life-changing, but are disruptive nevertheless.  

Costco has discontinued sale of their sheet cakes, offered in two standard motifs, "white, filled with two pounds of vanilla cheesecake mousse [!] and topped with white buttercream frosting; and chocolate, filled with two pounds of chocolate mousse [!] and iced with chocolate buttercream."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/business/costco-sheet-cake-discontinued.html

These beauties, roughly 12" x 18", fed a lot of people and were remarkably inexpensive.  Costco's explanation for ending the product is feeble.  It wants to "help limit personal contact and create more space for social distancing."  In stores or at birthday parties? 
. . .

Oh, Grandpa Alan, don't be so negative about your fellow citizens, your fellow human beings, your fellow passengers on Spaceship Earth.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1275905785927741446

Ft. Agnew?

Monday, June 15, 2020
Rayshard Brooks drank too much and fell asleep in his car that sat in the drive-through lane of a hamburger joint in Atlanta.  So, the cops came and put him in a cab and sent him home, right?
. . .

Last week, I noted the illogic of naming our military bases for defeated Confederate generals.  The only rationale that can be uttered out loud with a straight face for celebrating losers would be recognition of their dubious role in American history.  If that is the motive, here is my list of historic Americans:
Thomas E. Dewey
Adlai Stevenson 
Alf Landon
George McGovern 
Wendell Willkie 
Hubert Humphrey 
Alfred E. Smith
Alton B. Parker
   

Unlike the names that they would replace, none of my choices ever committed treason against the United States.  According to the Constitution, Article III, Section 3, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
. . .

For the past 3 months, I have been staying home from retirement, which isn't proving very demanding.  When I last worked 4-1/2 years ago, my presence was needed in or near New York State courtrooms, so telecommuting was not feasible.  Still, I was a bit surprised to learn that the conventional wisdom holds that productivity increases when working from home.  "[A] 9-month experiment with a random selection of 1,000 employees [of a Chinese travel agency] revealed that working from home led to a 13 percent increase in performance plus a 50 percent drop in employee-quit rates."   https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/f/wfh.pdf

Yet, after the study ended, when the original volunteers were given the choice of continuing to work remotely or return to the office, '[h]alf of them requested to return to the office, despite their average commute being 40 minutes each way."   https://www.techpolicy.com/Blog/March-2020/Nicholas-BloomAddresses-Working-from-Home-Challen.aspx  

The X-factor is the watercooler, the symbol of socializing (clinically rendered in the literature as schmoozing).  One might understand why the boss wants to keep employees far away from each other, under these circumstances. 
 It is also important to note that coronavirus-confined employees differ from the travel agency cohort in 4 significant ways: "children, space, privacy and choice." 
 
 Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Among the reactions to the United States Supreme Court's decision yesterday eliminating job discrimination against gay and transgender employees, I took delight in how the president of the Association of Christian Schools International lamented "the impact on the hiring policies of religious institutions that teach the biblical view of marriage." 
https://nyti.ms/2YGD8Kn

 Starting with Father Abraham, who did everything with Hagar, his wife's servant, short of stomping on a glass, through Judah's liaison with Tamar, his son's widow, and King David's seduction of Bathsheba, among other examples, my Hebrew ancestors presented a biblical view of marriage that seems to have gone unnoticed in some Christian schools.
. . .

To help you with your vacation planning, once you return to the open road, "Here Are the 98 U.S. Cities Where Protesters Were Tear-Gassed.”  
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/16/us/george-floyd-protests-police-tear-gas.html
. . .

Starting tonight, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law is offering a six-part series on "Seinfeld and the Law."  

Meeting ID: 844 7104 7726 

Password: cardozo

The first session dealt with contraception and the law, using Elaine’s devotion to the Today Sponge (season 7, episode 9) as its jumping off point.  Until Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), airing that episode would have been illegal in Connecticut and several other states, which banned not only the sale or use of contraceptives, but discussion of their use, as well.  Connecticut’s enforcement of the law had been long dormant, but the ruling opened the door to Roe v. Wade and other cases unburdening sex and gender issues. 
 
While it had been 19 years since I sat in a Cardozo class, for one hour I returned to the best time of my life and I look forward to being transported backwards five more times this summer.
 
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
If you have been exposed to my writing for any period of time (sorry, no vaccine yet), you know that I spent a lot of time in restaurants, that is, until March 13th, the first day of my incarceration.  Since then, every meal served at Palazzo di Gotthelf came from the tender hands of America's Favorite Epidemiologist or occasionally me -- my lox and onions and eggs is known far and wide -- without any outside intervention.

Today, however, a special birthday warranted a special meal.  So, I ordered from Noi Due Carne, 141 West 69th Street, a Kosher Italian/Mediterranean restaurant, for curbside pickup.  We never patronized it before, despite its convenience, although we had enjoyed eating at Andanada, a tapas joint, the previous occupant.  Comporting with its name and Kosher requirements, Noi Due Carne has a fleischigs menu, but it sits next to Noi Due Cafe, a meatless Kosher Italian restaurant, featuring pastas and pizzas.
 
Having drawn our line of dietary observance immediately north of Haifa, we didn't need rabbinical certification for cheese pizza, so it was carne all the way.  We ordered Morocan Cigars, not really spicy ground beef with tahini ($14); Spiced Lamb Flatbread, with caramelized onion, tahini, arugula and tomato passata (puréed strained uncooked tomatoes) ($24); Chicken Liver Crostini, a very smooth paté with a fruit sauce ($16); Short Rib Tacos, with guacamole ($18); Roman-Style Baby Artichokes ($18); Hummus Pitriut, the addition of sliced mushrooms the only variant on your everyday hummus ($18).  Note that Google wants to search for "patriot" when you want to search for "pitriut."
 
This turned out to be a lot of food for two people, although they were all appetizer portions.  And, the prices were almost (but not quite) reasonable considering the sin tax applied to Kosher food.  The flatbread, the tacos and the chicken liver I would order again, without apologizing for their relationship to the Divine. And, most importantly, the Birthday Girl was happy.

 Friday, June 19, 2020
Another reason why my young bride is happy is the publication today of a major article that she worked on regarding the impact of the coronavirus on other health conditions, specifically cardiac failure. 
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2767649

While at first glance she is pushed back into et al. among the authors, I know better because I witnessed the depth of her involvement with this important research project. 
. . .

"Scientists Predict Scorching Temperatures to Last Through Summer"
"You're Going To Need a Lot Of Ice Cream"

Same story on-line and in print, respectively.  Which one speaks to you?   https://nyti.ms/3eg6BRJ

Language Arts

Monday, June 8, 2020
The New York Times printed the results of a survey under this intriguing headline: "When 511 Epidemiologists Expect to Fly, Hug and Do 18 Other Everyday Activities Again."  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/08/upshot/when-epidemiologists-will-do-everyday-things-coronavirus.html

These scientists evidently err on the side of caution.  They aren't anxious to gather in the sort of rowdy gaggles that epidemiologists were previously notorious for.  At Palazzo di Gotthelf, the challenge is to meet the expectations of America's Favorite Epidemiologist and that ain't easy.
. . .

Marjory Fields and Robina Rafferty both note that the horseshoe pattern of house numbering that bewildered us in Berlin (discussed here last week) can be found scattered through Great Britain.  We saw another confusing pattern in Florence, Italy.  Buildings in the central business district display a red number and a black number, different, of course.  Stores and businesses have a red-painted number, R is added when written, while residences in the same building sit behind a black-painted number.  Hardly intuitive.

While I don't have personal experience with it, I understand that the addressing system in Japan is designed to never get you there.  In most of Japan, streets don’t have names.  Blocks have numbers; streets are just the empty space between blocks.  Buildings on the block are numbered in order of age.  The first building built there is #1, the second is #2, regardless of its position.  I searched in vain for statistics on aspirin consumption in Japan compared to other industrial societies, but they have to have headaches galore.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

I have described West End Synagogue, my one and only synagogue, as a gathering of anarchic Jews and we have proved it again.  Tonight, for the third time in five days, we met to choose the words on a sign to be placed in our window to express our concern for racial justice. 

 
"Black Lives Matter" is the signature phrase for the current protests worldwide.  However, it contains a poison pill for many Jews, because Black Lives Matter (BLM) is more than just a phrase, it is also a movement.  https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/

 

A scan of the BLM website reveals no mention of Israel or Jews, but in August 2016, the Movement for Black Lives, of which BLM seems to be only a part although easily mistaken for the whole, issued its platform, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people and calling for a total academic, cultural, and economic boycott of the country.  Objections came fast and furious.  https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/from-left-to-right-jewish-groups-condemn-repellent-black-lives-matter-claim-of-israeli-genocide

 

Quick on-line searches for that controversial platform now lead to a "404 Unknown Site" message, sort of the equivalent of "It's not you, it's me" used to end a relationship.  But, the pain lingers, at least for some, which is why "Black Lives Matter" is not a good choice for a synagogue window.  

We looked at other alternatives, but eventually crafted our own language and very well at that.  

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

For the second time this week, we went on vacation today.  Sunday, we drove to Bethel, Connecticut to spend the afternoon in the lovely backyard of Denise and Rob, who, in ordinary times, shuttle back and forth to an apartment in Manhattan for work and pleasure.  I think that the Upper West Side's Power Couple did an effective job of bringing urban grimness and angst to the leafy suburbs. 

Today, we turned 90˚ east and drove to Roslyn Heights, to visit Jill and Steve, intrepid fellow travelers, last seen in downtown India in the far distant past.  Sitting in their very green backyard required no passport, checked luggage fees, inoculations or non-refundable deposits.  What a vacation.
. . .

I'd like to take a few moments for a pedantic exercise, although not entirely a frivolous one.  The article below, written 5 years ago, raised the question, "when to use capital letters or not for people who are identified with the label 'black' or 'white'"? 

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/language_corner_1.php

 

It concluded: "Language can reflect and foster bias and even invite violence, so respectfulness should always trump style or linguistic ambiguities."  Of course, a bigger challenge surrounds the issue of Who is what?  Alternatively, Why bother?

Thursday, June 11, 2020
"President Trump on Wednesday came out strongly against the idea of renaming U.S. military bases that are named after Confederate generals," after all, what better inspiration for our fighting forces than to be constantly reminded of defeat?  

. . .

 

Speaking of slogans, some protestors are calling to "Defund the Police," a position that will antagonize too many people, is easily parodied and does not describe the underlying policies.  As the headline says: "Cities Grew Safer.  Police Budgets Kept Growing." 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/12/upshot/cities-grew-safer-police-budgets-kept-growing.html

 

Ironically, as police budgets grew in the wake of 9/11, other municipal services often had to shrink to fit taxpayer sentiment.  This left more heavily armed and equipped police officers to cope with manifestations of social problems left less attended or unattended by service cutbacks in areas such as homelessness, mental health and drug abuse.  Even if our police forces were staffed entirely with graduates of Bard and Oberlin, I think that combining police work and social work yields unsatisfactory results in both fields.

 

Reform the police, refocus the police and regulate the police, but let's not offer an excuse for four more years of fascism by using glib slogans.

Friday, June 12, 2020

UCLA professor Gordon Klein has been suspended after a reasonable exchange with a student about changing or cancelling his final exam, because of the racial protests and the racism that led to them, that he followed with some snark, asking whether an interracial student should receive half an indulgence.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/ucla-professor-no-racism-in-refusing-to-cancel-final/2020/06/10/f5e6410e-ab82-11ea-a43b-be9f6494a87d_story.html

 

There but for the grace of a faculty appointment at a major university go I.

  

Colin Kaepernick For President

Monday, June 1, 2020
Today's New York Times print headline says "Twin Crises and Surging Anger Convulse U.S."  Unfortunately, the same population is suffering most in both matters.  While the immediate health crisis shows signs of diminishing, gratuitous police violence seems baked into society, evoking anarchic responses at times.

Yes, I know that policing is a hard job, with an inherent exposure to danger.  But, recruitment, training and supervision of police officers should fully take that into account in furthering the mission of protecting the civilian population.  We have more than anecdotal evidence that black and brown people are subject to prejudicial, reckless and/or lawless treatment in the name of law and order.
. . .

I learned from a book review that Philadelphia brought rationality to house numbering in an urban setting in the mid-19th Century.  Odd numbers on one side of the street, even on the other.  Each block's numbers increase by groups of 100, so that the relative location of a building is immediately apparent from its address.  While we American urbanites now take that for granted, it is not a universal convention.

This is a map of present-day Berlin, reflecting two different numbering schemes in use, having nothing to do with the previously hostile division of the city.

The only inconvenience that we experienced on our trip to Berlin in 2017 was trying to find shops/restaurants on those red streets.  In the absence of a grid system, buildings are numbered sequentially up one side of a red street until it ends and continue to be numbered incrementally down the other, effectively creating a horseshoe pattern.  Blue streets are numbered in the familiar zig-zag pattern.  Until we understood that, we often trotted back and forth, fruitlessly looking for disappearing buildings.
. . .

In the last couple of years, I have become a fan of Fordham University's Center for Jewish Studies and attended several of their programs.  That's right, Fordham, the Jesuit university.  Right now, attendance is virtual and last night I thus attended anthropology professor Ayala Fader's discussion of her new book "Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age," dealing with Haredi, ultra-Orthodox Jews, who sample the outside world through the Internet.  Doing so represents more than just an exercise of curiosity, it's a sinful activity, a leap from faith.

Professor Fader, probably unrelated to Mr. Richard Feder of Ft. Lee, New Jersey, gathered her material through face-to-face encounters arranged by word of mouth, admittedly unable to take a macro, statistical view of the subject, since Haredi communities are tightly bound and suspicious of outsiders.  Yet, according to her, there was a consistency in the stories she heard, almost entirely from men, because Haredi women are generally denied access to computers or smartphones.  The phrases "in the closet," "off the derech" (path in Hebrew) and "double lives" were often repeated.  You should listen to her at  https://youtu.be/19xerx3ni1M.

Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Happy Birthday, Good Doctor.
. . .

These days of involuntary confinement have so many of us high-risers wishing that we had gone into greater debt to purchase that larger apartment.  I realize that those of you out there who wait for public television broadcasts of "Great Performances from Lincoln Center" or see Metropolitan Opera on movie screens  don't typically face the same space constraints.  Chacun à son goût, as we often muttered on the playing fields of Brooklyn.

If you would like to come in from the cold, here is chart of the economics of living space in many New York neighborhoods.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/realestate/most-space-for-the-least-money-new-york-city.html   One residential square foot can cost from $243 to $1,344.  For better or worse, Palazzo di Gotthelf leans towards the top of the range, or it did when people had jobs.

Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Rest easy defenders of democracy, Steve King, the fascist congressional representative from Iowa lost his bid to return to Washington yesterday, only getting 28,977 votes in the Republican primary election.  That was 36% of the vote.  By comparison, the Nazis got 37.27% in the German federal election of 1932.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federal_election

So, we got room to spare.
. . .

For a moment, I would like to express a narrower concern.  Would the crossword puzzle constructors allow Etta James (née Jamesetta Hawkins, 1938-2012) to rest in peace?  In the last couple of weeks, she seems omnipresent.  Just this morning, a moderately easy puzzle day: "James who sang 'At last, my love has come along.'"  The spelling of her name is very useful, I know, but one might substitute "_____ Kett, retired comic strip character" or rework the puzzle slightly with "Precedes boy or girl" = ATTA or "Brutal farewell?" = ETTU.
. . .

You want a recipe?  Here's a recipe that you won't have to go shopping for.  Three ingredients!  Great results.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/dining/ferran-adria-potato-chip-omelet-recipe.html

Thursday, June 4, 2020
An article about Jeffrey Epstein's finances had this interesting tidbit: "JPMorgan was Mr. Epstein’s primary bank for more than a decade, but some bank officials became uneasy about doing business with him after his 2008 guilty plea to soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida.  JPMorgan cut ties with Mr. Epstein . . . in 2013."  How decisive.
. . .

I found a comforting headline in these troubling times: "Boris Johnson Pledges to Admit 3 Million From Hong Kong to U.K."  Just think of all the new restaurants in London.

June 5, 2020
If you have a choice, be healthy, wealthy and white.  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/04/opinion/coronavirus-health-race-inequality.html?campaign_id=29&emc=edit_up_20200604&instance_id=19080&nl=the-upshot&regi_id=599756&segment_id=30074&te=1&user_id=1353d3a345e55ff509b5cbb17ed36984