Happy New Year?

Monday, September 14, 2020

Last week, I conjured up the Holy Land as it looked on the brink of WWII.  There is a companion website that brings the images into the 1980s, after decades of boom, bust and revival for us.  http://80s.nyc/   

 

2798 Pitkin Avenue was still standing, although free from my specter for almost three decades.

Aluminum siding apparently covered the stucco outer walls, a chain link fence protected the modest shrubbery and the upstairs balcony was shaded by a fixed awning.  A current Google street view (impossible to reproduce, at least by me) shows little difference.  The biggest change over the years was not to my old home or to most other buildings in the neighborhood.  I can see no evidence of teardowns, replaced by McMansions.  Instead, to a dramatic degree, the local population looks very different.  

When I was in PS 159, diagonally across the street, there were two Black students, children of the janitor of a small apartment house nearby.  The rest of us, 800-900, were white, Jews and Italian Catholics predominating.  Today, the student population is identified as 40% Asian/Pacific Islander, 31% Black, 25% Hispanic, 3% Native American, leaving a smidgen Plain White.  https://www.greatschools.org/new-york/brooklyn/2528-Ps-159-Isaac-Pitkin/#Race_ethnicity 

. . . 

Speaking of housing, the real estate section had an interesting chart of housing prices in the recent dark days.  The headline sums it up: "Fewer Homes for Sale, Higher Asking Prices."   https://nyti.ms/2Zpk18M 

"According to the report, in the second quarter of 2020 [asking prices] were up by an average of about 3 percent in those 50 metro markets compared with a year earlier, and about 5 percent above the first quarter of 2020."  The strongest markets, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles (an odd coupling); the weakest, Chicago and Dallas.  

. . . 

A couple of weeks ago, I presented and opposed the proposition that the screen be removed from orchestral auditions to facilitate racial balance.  This weekend, a sampling of musicians commented on the idea.    https://nyti.ms/2GD1EXh 

What I learned is that the supposedly objective practice of blind auditions is compromised at times by back doors and side doors to the process.  This weakens the supposed meritocratic approach.  However, none of the small group commenting called for an outright elimination of the screen.  One said, "if we are addressing these issues at the level of orchestra auditions, we're clipping the leaves when the roots are rotten."  This, by the way, is my view of the controversy over admissions to Stuyvesant High School.  Year in and year out, about one percent of admitted students are Black, in a city that is 26% Black, with a school population that is about 70% black.  Don't fix Stuyvesant, fix the public schools.

. . . 

What did we do to deserve this?

The New York Times now publishes weekly what I will always call its society pages; they call it Styles.  Its most critical function is reporting marriages, allowing me to tally how many people with Jewish names are being married by Universal Life Ministers.  This weekend, the front page of the section had two feature stories, making me regret that I had no birdcage to line or puppy to train.  The stories were about Paris Hilton ("famous for being famous") and the Kardashians ("famous for doing nothing"). It's not just the shared vacuity that links these people.  Widely-broadcast sex tapes helped elevate them to their ill-deserved positions in our cultural pantheon.  

 

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Got any outrage left?  "The Trump administration has secretly siphoned nearly $4 million away from a program that tracks and treats FDNY firefighters and medics suffering from 9/11 related illnesses."  https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-fdny-911-health-program-treasury-20200910-s7yam67j6vhmhbdzg6ordanfdm-story.html

. . . 

This is one Jew who is unmoved by the administration's role in effecting a rapprochement between Israel and some neighboring Sunni Arab states.  I'm pleased that it has occurred, but I am reminded of man's first landing on the moon on July 20, 1969.  Attached to the ladder that the astronauts used to climb down to the lunar surface was an engraved plaque intended to remain behind.  The plaque says: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." It bears the signature of Richard Nixon, undeniably the sitting president at the time.  His obituary in the New York Times omits this faux accomplishment.  https://movies2.nytimes.com/books/98/06/14/specials/nixon-obit.html 

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

This year has been very difficult for virtually (groan) all of us.  My friend Cindy W.M. suggests that "2020" be added to our vocabulary as a vulgar curse.  We Jews see the end of 5780 this weekend, starting Friday night.  5781 promises regime change, vital for our mental health.  Dear Joan Erber, however, has taken a big step to start my new year right immediately.  She brought me four pieces of deep-fried gefilte fish from Dovid's Fish Market, 736 Chestnut Avenue, Teaneck.  This should elevate my frame of mind right up to Election Day and then it is in your hands.  

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Just as I thought that I might rejoin the human race, a couple of stories come along that make me want to go back to the cave.  First, a survey of Holocaust knowledge among young Americans shows an amazing degree of ignorance.  http://www.claimscon.org/millennial-study/ 

An interesting angle is the geographic distribution of misinformation.  A Holocaust Knowledge Score by state shows absolutely no correlation between the size of the local Jewish population and awareness of basic facts of the not-so-distant past.  For instance, New York (9.1%) and Maryland (3.9%) are among the least informed, while Maine (0.9%) and Idaho (0.1%) are among the most.  You have to conclude that too many Americans are probably not biased, just massively ignorant.  My reaction to this is not particularly ethnocentric.  I fear that many other subjects would seem equally opaque to our fellow citizens, including geography, baseball, history and why wearing a mask is essential during a pandemic. 

Second, ignorance among Jews hardly differs from ignorance about Jews.  A survey in Israel shows that "One-third of Netanyahu’s voters believe COVID-19 was sent by God."   https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/one-third-of-netanyahus-voters-believe-covid-19-was-sent-by-god-642703 

While we know that Israel has a population component that is rigidly Orthodox, it currently measures about 12% (https://en.idi.org.il/articles/29348), that is far short of those who seem to face life with their heads in the sky, in the sand, in an anatomically difficult position.

Friday, September 18, 2020 

Welcome 5781!  We need you.