Rant #2,392: Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

Happy Earth Day!

It's the 50th anniversary of the day that we celebrate and honor our planet, and try to keep it as healthy as possible.

Right now, or course, the planet's inhabitants are in a tizzy with the coronavirus in out midst, but we will fight this thing and beat it to a pulp by the time all of this is over.

When it is over is another story.

Many people want it to be over RIGHT NOW, and I mean RIGHT NOW, in large type. They believe that their liberties are being absconded with by something that they clearly do not understand.

The problem is that we, on the whole, do not understand what we are dealing with, but we get a clearer picture of it every day.

it is a process, and this process is going to take time.

Those that want to reopen everything in their communities--and who are jumping the gun because they have such a mental need, not just a monetary one--to get back to normal, are truly missing the boat here.

If we jump the gun, there is a distinct possibility that this thing will come back, and come back in even a stronger version than we are dealing with now.

We cannot have that happen, not with the great strides that we have made to at the very least mitigate the virus.

So to those people, I would say that your rights are not being taken away--they are actually being protected--and "freedom" will come in due time ... but not before it is safe for you, for your families and for everyone.

Then we have another faction that is warning that if this thing lasts into the summer, well, there is going to be trouble.

I am not a fan of New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio in any way, shape or form, but he made an announcement the other day that was vital, that was necessary, and yes, it was probably the most difficult thing he has had to do as mayor of the city where the coronavirus is at its epicenter.

He basically canceled the summer for the city, by stating, in particular, that there would be no city pools that would open, and no beaches would be open either. No parades would be held at least for the time being--he later kind of recanted that, stating that there will come a time when we will have at least one parade, to celebrate the work of first responders in battling this virus--but basically, he told city residents that they would be on their own this summer because of the pandemic.

So instead of other city leaders embracing this decision, one city leader in particular made one of the most virulent, racist comments I have ever heard made, and it is only because of the liberal media and the PC Police that he had not been taken to task for what he said.

The borough president of Brooklyn--whose name I will not mention because he doesn't deserve to be named--pretty much went against what the mayor said, and gave a warning ot others that fed into every racial stereotype we have been fighting to eradicate for decades.

He pretty much said, and I am going to paraphrase him, that if the mayor wants to close all beaches, pools, and put heavy restrictions on the use of parks, that he is giving the mayor and the city fair warning: with nothing for the youth that he oversees in his borough to do with their time, then "there will be an increase in crime" in the borough and in the city.

If not programs are put into place to give this youth something to do during the hot days of summer, when many of them live in apartments without air conditioning, there is going to be trouble.

Well, by doing that, we know exactly the "youth" that he is referring to, and he has branded them as some type of human subspecies who have no idea how to keep active, and they only thing they will know how to do on their own is to rob, pillage and destroy.

Isn't this the stereotype that we, as a civilization, have been fighting against for years? Isn't that a stereotype that labels one particular group as something akin to foaming at the mouth animals?

I cannot believe that few have taken his comments to task. I was appalled when I heard him say this, He basically gave carte blanche approval to reckless behavior in his borough and throughout the city.

What's more, by saying this, is he any better than the white supremacists who actually believe this?

Maybe Mayor deBlasio didn't say anything, and maybe others kept quiet, because what the borough president said was so ludicrous that it wasn't worth a reply.

But it demanded a response, and the response should have been that the disease doesn't care who you are or where you live, and we must take matters into our own hands to try to eradicate it. If it means taking away beach, pool and park privileges for one summer, people will adapt and make the best of it.

That should have been the response, but it never was made.

Shame on the Brooklyn borough president for making such heinous, racist, anti-human remarks. He should know better, and when his constituents can vote him out of office in 2021, I hope they won't forget this utter lapse in judgment.

(Of course, since there are rumors that the mayor's wife will be running against him in 2021, this may have been an early swipe at the mayor's wife through her husband.)

Anyway, back to Earth Day ... do you remember the first Earth Day, 50 years ago?

It was a Wednesday, I was living in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, and I was ready to not only turn 13 years old, but I was also days away from having my bar mitzvah ... which means I was just a few days away from getting really, really sick.

Nerves got the best of me, and I got up to 104 or 105 degrees of fever in the ensuing days, but on April 22 of that year, I was still OK.

(More about my bar mitzvah in a few weeks here at the Blog.)

Anyway, I remember the day quite well.

On the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, I went into downtown Jamaica with my friend Andy. We used to frequent a book store somewhere off Jamaica Avenue--I forget the name of the store or exactly what its address was--but we took the bus from our development into the downtown area, and walked about a block or two to this bookstore.

This type of bookstore back then would evolve into the head shops that were around in the early to late 1970s, but at that time, that facet of the store was not as pronounced as it probably became in just a year or two.

Andy and I just knew it as a bookstore that carried all different types of books and comic books, and with the day off from school--I believe 1970 was one of the first years that New York City actually gave students off for the spring break, and I don't think we got off for Earth Day per se--we decided to go to the store and browse around.

The store also featured X-rated comic books. It was the first place I ever saw that had a rack of these comic books right there for anyone to look at, so all of the early "Fritz the Cat" and similar comics were there for the public to see.

The place had sort of a mixed bag of customers, including kids like us, but also, people who came to be known as potheads and even older people looking for something out of the ordinary.

I don't remember what I bought there that day--no X-rated comics for me!--but I must have purchased something, maybe a few regular comic books.

When Andy and I were done celebrating the ecology by purchasing these books and not discarding the paper in the street or in the ocean, we took the bus back home, put our books safely away, and maybe played some ball later on in the day.

It may have been "the age of Aquarius" back then, but we were still at the "age of innocence," and we did what any normal kids with a brain back in 1970 would do to while away the day.

Are kids any less creative today? Can we get through the summer if this thing stretches out to the warmer months?

I think we can, and I think our youth can, too.