Rant #3,161: Making Every Minute Count

Short Rant today.

I have been tending to my mother, and unlike yesterday’s Rant, where I began typing things out at like 2 a.m. in the morning, today, I only started typing this out at about 7:30 a.m.

First off, thanks for all of the suggestions and other good words you had to say yesterday to me after that historic, bombastic and quite frankly, overblown Rant.

I went on and on because I needed to go on and on, and every word that I wrote I stand by as 1,000-percent truth—and I have absolutely no regrets for putting it up for all to read.

My family and I are in a real pickle here, with different thoughts going through my head at all times of the day and night.

As an example, I did not finish my day yesterday—meaning writing, working, taking care of my mother’s needs, helping my son and my wife as much as I could, speaking to medical personnel and even managing to do food shopping—until exactly 9:59 p.m.

I know that that was the time because I looked at my watch, it was that time, so I watched TV with my son for exactly one minute ,,, for the three hours before that, I ate dinner, chug-a-lugged soda like it was water, and tended to the mail—a lot of it having to do with my mother—and phone calls and many other things.

Top to bottom, it was one of the worst days of my life, but I did get things done that needed to be done.

Right now, I have no life, little time to relax, and I so wanted to watch the Yankees’ afternoon game from Oakland yesterday, but I missed doing that by several hours.

This holiday weekend might be a time to slow down a bit, as my sister and her family will take over the responsibility of caring for my mother starting on Saturday over to Sunday, so I will frankly have one single night of peace.

Today, while my mom and I both slept through the night, she got up at about 5:30 a.m. and I tended to her needs until about 7:30, and then I snuck in a little breakfast and then I started to type this all out.

So I am already pooped, and I have a busy day ahead of me.

My sister and I have opted for at-home hospice care for our mother, and we do have in some women who take care of my mother during the day on weekdays.

But when they leave for the day, it is pretty much all on me to get my mother ready for bed, and it isn’t easy.

And we have the monitor by my bed, so I am literally at the beck and call of my mother overnight, and as I said, it is not easy.

I am still coming the grips with the double-edged sword that is hanging over my head now—my mother is very sick, and my home situation might actually be in a worse condition.

Everything is intertwined, as my mother’s longevity is tied in with the longevity that we can stay in our home … and that bothers me to no end.

My family and I are in a horrible position on both ends of that sword, but I have to push on, because that is the way it is—

And even more importantly, that is the way it absolutely has to be.

Have a great weekend, have a great July 4, and I am going to take a couple of days off to breathe a little bit, so I will speak to you again on Wednesday.

Rant #3,160: Ain't Too Proud To Beg

“Sometimes, you have to do things for yourself. … We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”

This is pretty much what my mother said to me all those years ago when she decided that a reverse mortgage was the only way that she and my father could stay in their house and continue to live the lifestyle that they had been accustomed to.

My father had literally worked his entire life, and then in his 70s and still working as New York City medallion cab driver, the 16-hour days were starting to get a bit too difficult for him to maneuver.

My mother’s heart was in the right place when she decided to go the reverse mortgage route; she wanted to cut down on my father’s working yet keep their house and lifestyle intact.

There was one problem, one possible fly in the ointment here: they had a “tenant” in their house who lived upstairs in what became a legal, two-family home, and the “tenant” was my wife, my son and myself.

My mom figured that employing a reverse mortgage on the house would not only allow her and my father to live out their lives comfortably, but keep us as tenants as they aged gracefully.

They originally built up the house from a one-story to two stories to accommodate my then family—my then wife, my then infant daughter and myself—because we had been in several apartment rental situations during our couple of years of marriage, and they simply did not turn out well for us.

In fact, the last place the three of us lived was run by an acknowledged “slum landlord” who was being investigated by Nassau County for running not only the place we lived in as an illegal two-family dwelling, but also for running at least two other places as such.

My parents saw the situation that we were in and graciously did all the leg work to initiate the long path that they needed to take to add an extra apartment to their home, and to do it legally.

As they were doing this, my marriage was breaking up, and within a few months, my then wife had moved out, taking our daughter with her.

That part of this story is one for another time, but over a period of time, I was able to pick myself up and move on, as we divorced, shared joint custody of our daughter, and I continued to live in the upstairs apartment, eventually meeting and marrying the girl of my dreams and later, having my second child, my son.

But going back to what I originally said, the arrangement was working out fine … until my mother broke the news to me that they were going to pursue the reverse mortgage route.

I read up on reverse mortgages as my parents attended one seminar after another about this potential situation that they were looking into.

My mother, who handled the finances between my father and her, said she completely understood what having a reverse mortgage meant, and they finally decided that this was the only way to go, the only way that they could keep their home and their lifestyle intact but again, the fly in the ointment was my family—I had to legally sign off on this too, and that is where the answer to the question I had about my family’s future came up, and that answer at the top of this entry was my mother’s reply.

At that time, however many years ago it was, my wife and I were both working full time, making decent if not outstanding salaries.

In hindsight, what should have happened is that my wife and I should have bought the house from my parents for $1 and we would have reversed the situation: we would be the home owners and my parents would have been the tenants … much like the later “I Love Lucy” episodes, where the tenant Ricardos moved from Manhattan to the Connecticut “farmlands,” and the landlord Mertzes followed them to God’s country, with the two couples reversing the roles they had while living in New York City, and the Ricardos became the landlord and the Mertzes became the tenant.

It could all have worked out, but that is not a situation that my parents wanted, and quite honestly, it was never pursued as it should have been.

They literally begged me to sign the paperwork so they could obtain the reverse mortgage.

I begrudgingly signed the papers, because I felt that if my parents absolutely needed to do this, then as their son, it was my obligation to sign off on it.

Heck, these were my parents; I loved them each dearly, they had helped me out of rough spots in the past—my divorce for one—and now, they were in a rough spot and needed my help, so I gave it to them.

The situation worked for all these years, My parents were able to keep the house under their name and keep the lifestyle they enjoyed with the money they received each month, which they were under no obligation to pay back … and consequently, never did, not one cent of it.

My family enjoyed being right there with them, even though this thing continued to gnaw at me over all these years, even though I rarely talked about it—

Until my father got sick, and I saw unfolding around me a ball of confusion with this reverse mortgage that I never knew existed.

My father went to his grave firmly believing that my family and I would be entirely taken care of when he and my mother would leave this earth, as he was led to believe that there was plenty of money in the bank for us to live at the home for as long as we wanted to.

Unfortunately, this was an untruth, perpetuated by my mother, who my father trusted with not only his life, but his finances.

I later found out that my parents’ finances were in shambles, even with the reverse mortgage, and they had little in the bank to not only sustain my family and I, but also themselves.

I got wind of this situation during the final months of my father’s life, but my father kept on with thinking that everything was copacetic, so although I brought this situation up on occasion, my father was too set in his ways to really comprehend what I was talking about, and my mother kept mum on it, pretty much perpetuating this financial myth.

And my mother still was as sharp as a knife in her own life as my father’s was reaching its end point, and he trusted her entirely with their finances.

My father passed away a few years ago and sometime after, my mother showed signs of dementia, which we first discovered when she decided to throw out family heirlooms for absolutely no reason, some of which I was able to retrieve form the garbage and others which were lost to eternity.

We later found out that for months, she had not paid a single bill, and I eventually took over her finances and paid off everything I could. and I still do that to this day.

And yes, I did speak to my mother about the reverse mortgage while she still had all her faculties, before and after the dementia set in, and she later admitted to me that yes, this was pretty much a quick fix to ensure that she and my father could live out their golden years with splendor, and yes, she really had no idea or understanding what she was getting into.

Many months have now passed, and as regular readers of this Blog know, my mother just got out of the hospital, and she is a shell of her former self, with her body wracked by several cancers that are eating away at her like termites eat away at wood.

We have no idea how much time she has to go on this earth, and when you see how much my mother has deteriorated—from a vibrant women to one who cannot walk or do much of anything now but sleep—it just breaks your heart, and my heart is in pieces right now—for the right reasons and the wrong reasons.

My mother is 92 years old, She has had a great life. She was married to my father for nearly 65 years. She raised two successful children and has five grandchildren who love her with all of their hearts.

But as she sits here deteriorating in front of my eyes, I know that when she goes to heaven, my family and I will have to go too, not to heaven, to a life of hell.

We cannot afford to continue to live here because of the tenets of the reverse mortgage, and we cannot ante up the hundreds of thousands of dollars that my parents received from the lender as they went through this situation, one they never really fully understood.

So where does that leave my family?

Pretty much nowhere, to be honest with you.

When her life expires, it will set us on an apparent six-month journey to pack up literally the past 30 years of our marriage—and for me the last nearly 50 years of my life, less the few years I spent not living in the house in my first marriage—and find another place to live.

Whatever proceeds of the eventual sale of the house has to be split with my sister’s family, so whatever we get from the house will be minimal.

I have started to get re-acquainted with the rental housing market to see what is out there, and even research the local town benefits for seniors, but they are scant, and clearly define what everyone already knows, that the term “affordable housing” clearly is defined by how you want to define it: either destitute housing for those who literally have less then nothing, up to premium housing of $150,000 or up.

My family and I cannot move from where we are, simply because my son gets a wealth of services that he cannot get anywhere else from living in New York State and Nassau County.

As a developmental disabled adult, he is better off here than probably anywhere else in the nation, so we really cannot move from where we are, and he is working in a part time job that he loves and where his employers love him, and I do not want to upset that apple cart, because about 75 percent of people in his position can’t get hired and do not work.

So this puts my family and I in a pickle not of our own design.

My mother is deteriorating, and while our full focus should be on her health and quality of life at this time, we almost have to look past that, to the inevitable, and concurrently focus on what the future holds for my wife, my son and myself.

It gnaws at me that I even have to think about such things as my mother lays there, feeble and frail, but I have to do this, because very selfishly now—and I am very guilty about this--life is for the living, and when my mother goes, we don’t have a leg to stand on.

We recently had the house appraised, and my thinking was right about the worth of this house, and with a ready housing market that has more demand than supply, this house will sell pretty quickly.

I spoke with the appraiser, and the house could be marketed as one which has a ready-made tenant who would help to pay for the mortgage with our monthly rent payments, but the likelihood of anyone wanting to enter into such an agreement is unlikely.

I have tried to interest my daughter in the house—the most likely successor to my parents as the next family-related owner of the house—but I can’t rely on her to do this, and I won’t ever blame her if she turns us down.

So the whole ball of wax here is that with al the research I have done on the situation, all that I have been told, and all that I know from the lender, my family and I are screwed every which way.

We literally have nowhere to go, as everything is dependent on how long my mother has on this earth. Her life—and death—is fully intertwined with our future, and our situation clearly stinks.

My entre family gets Social Security, as my wife and I retired—me forced to, my wife had to because she had had enough of the grind—and my son gets Social Security disability.

Due to m wife’s recent injury, she has not worked in more than a month, and has a Workman’s Comp hearing coming up next month.

She has no idea what is going to happen with that hearing, but she does know that she cannot do the job that she was injured at anymore … but she was never fired from her job, and cannot quit, because then her hopes of unemployment will go up in smoke.

Me, I lost my job—and virtually, the life I have led for decades—when the company I worked for went out of business in October 2019, and although I have applied for other jobs—full time, part time, freelance, both in and out of my specialty and expertise—no one wants a 66 year old as much as they didn’t want a 62 year old, the age I was when I lost my job.

The pandemic did not help, as the lack of hiring during that roughly two-year period naturally aged me even more, from 62 to 63 to 64, and eventually to 65 and to the current 66 as we went into the endemic phase of the existence of this virus.

I am very proud to have a freelance job, but let’s be honest about it, at this stage of the game, I should be making at least three times what I am earning from this job as a full-time worker, but beggars can’t be choosers.

My wife and I both had meager 401ks that currently sit in investment, but even if you put everything we have together, it doesn’t amount to much more than a hill of beans in today’s world.

As you know, I was forced to get a new car when the other unexpectedly gave out, and I can’t even enjoy the car, because it has presented me with a new exorbitant bill that I now have to pay off each month for the nest 72 months.

So right now, we have nothing, have no idea how things will turn out or when, and we sit in limbo.

And that is pretty much why I am typing this entry to you starting at 2 a.m. and finishing after 4 a.m., as I cannot sleep from worry, and I am typing this out with my mother’s monitor at my side, taking peaks at her as she sleeps away another night—or needs me to help her for a variety of reasons that I don’t have to spell out for you.

I am in a quandary because I have such mixed emotions about everything that is going on.

It is almost that I am hoping that my mother defies the odds—like former President Jimmy Carter has done—and actually survives in home hospice for not days or months, but years.

That would give my family and I a little time to breathe as far as looking for new living quarters, to assess our options, and to do what we need to do to firm up our own situation.

But on the other hand, that is just so selfish to think about right now, a my mother lays in her bed withering away to nothing.

I will continue to do research on this situation however long my mother has to go, but I do think of miracles, things that perhaps can be done to make the situation a better one for my family and I.

Of course, I could win the lottery, because someone always wins the lottery, but to be more realistic, there must be something else I can do to make my family’s future a much better one.

I could open a Go Fund Me account—or someone else could—to help raise money to keep us where we are, or at lest provide money to make it easier for us to afford another place where we can live.

Yes, it is begging, but like the song title goes, in the situation my family and I are in, we “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.”

I could devise a plan, where I throw myself at the mercy of the world, declaring that I will do anything—within reason—to get a certain amount of money to help my family and I out of this mess.

Honestly, I don’t know what else I could do at this point.

So, I am throwing myself at your mercy.

Do you have any ideas?

Do you know anyone who might like to move into a beautiful house in a great neighborhood with all the amenities and have a ready-made tenant to help them pay off their mortgage?

At this point, I am willing to listen to anything.

Thanks for reading this long Rant, but everything is starting to come to the fore now, I can’t sleep, I am worried about my mother,, and I hate to say it this way, but I am actually more worried about my family’s future …

I know that is an absolutely horrific thing to say,, but I have to be realistic.

My wife and I are both 66 years old, my son will be 28 years of age in a few weeks, and we are in an abyss that we didn’t create but will engulf us if we don’t do something about it, and do it soon.

Any ideas you might have will be appreciated.

And again, there has to be more to retirement, because I have had the worst retirement possible.

There has to be something better, there just has to be … .

Rant #3,159: All I Need

How many more days are left in June?

When will this month finally end?

I keep asking myself that, because the worst month of my life still has a few days to go—

And I am wondering what else is going to happen to me, will fall apart, and will not work anymore.

The latest item on the June 2023 casualty list is my computer printer, which gave out yesterday afternoon as I was printing out a story that I had just edited which I will probably send to my work today.

The printer took in one page after another, and after printing out the first page as it always does, it wouldn’t print anything out afterward.

I changed the ink cartridge, plugged and unplugged the printer several times, but lo and behold, the printer apparently does not work anymore, so I sunk about $100 into a new one, and it is on its way.

Hopefully that one will work, but at this point, who knows?

(Incredibly, the computer itself, which I thought was a goner a long time ago and still shows signs that it will be leaving us soon, has withstood this month, and actually started up fine today.)

What more can go wrong here this month?

I have no idea, but there is definitely a black cloud over my head and over the heads of my family that simply won’t go away.

We hired a plumber to fix the downstairs leak, and he will be coming on Thursday to do the job … so another several hundred dollars will literally be going down the drain on this job.

(And as an aside, do not use that fixit site that they advertise on TV, which is named after a woman’s name and starts with an “A.” Very highly priced, as far as I am concerned—use local people to fix your home problems.)

So I see that today is June 28, and then Thursday will be June 29, and then Friday will be June 30, and then this month will be in the rear view mirror for good.

What a horrible month this has been for my family and I!

My mother is doing as best as he can with the situation that she is in, and she is in the “comfort care” portion of her life now, where we, the nurses and the other people we have coming in each day are simply trying to make her comfortable.

It is a tough job, but she is not ready for any hospice care.

Her vital signs are those of someone half her age, and she just keeps on ticking and doing what she can do, which isn’t much, but it evidently could be a lot worse.

She sleeps a good part of the day, but her heart is healthy and everyone says that she is really doing quite well under the circumstances.

She eats, she can handle short conversations, and she is generally friendly to everyone who comes into the house to help her.

It is tough on me monitoring her as if she were an infant—and helping her when she needs help, from giving her a drink of water to I think you know what—but it appears to be working to the extent that it can work with someone at this stage of their lives.

I have no idea how long this can and will go on, but right now, at least, everything seems to be OK—not great, but OK.

My wife is progressing nicely from her head injury—the incident that kicked off this month of horror—but she does get frustrated that she doesn’t feel 100 percent herself on most days … but she is doing quite well based on what could have been.

My new car is something I really cannot fully enjoy yet, because of the circumstances surrounding my getting it … and the 72 months of exorbitant bills I will have paying it off.

It is just another bill added to the load my family and I already have, and since I just have this at-home job and Social Security—and my wife hasn’t worked in a month due to her own injury—it is really, really difficult to survive, but we are doing it, because we have to.

Everything is on our heads, but we have strong shoulders, so we can bear it all … but up to a certain point.

When we will get to that point is the million-dollar question, and I wish I had a million dollars to answer that question for myself, but honestly, I not only don’t have that type of money, I have nothing—

But I do have a very strong and caring family, and maybe that is all we will need to get by one crisis after another.

Rant #3,158: Don't Let the Rain Fall Down On Me

When it rains it pours, and it is literally that way at my house right now.

With all the commotion going on with my mother and everything else on top of it, now we have a new challenge to deal with, and it is probably going to cost us a lot of money to conquer.

The other day, one of the women watching over my mother told me that while she was doing the laundry, she discovered that there was a leak coming down from the ceiling near the washing machine onto the floor.

I have called in two plumbers for pricing, and the leak is extensive, and they may have to take down part of the wall in my mother’s bathroom to fix it—

So we are talking about a whopper of a repair.

The house itself is probably around 70 years old, and our family has lived in the house since 1971.

Consequently, since this is an old house, my parents fixed things here and there when they needed to be fixed, and there are some relatively new pipes in the house, but just on a visual inspection, most of the plumbing in the house appears to be older than I am, and after a while, those pipes are not going to be able to do what they are supposed to do due to age.

The leak appears to be coming from the bathroom and from the sink, the bathtub and perhaps even the toilet, so whenever any of these appliances are used, yes, Houston, we have problem.

So this problem is gong to have be fixed, no matter the cost—but perhaps we can get the cost down by literary pitting one plumber against another.

So far, I have gotten a quote from one plumber, and the second plumber would not provide me with a quote without doing a thorough diagnostic of the problem, which would cost me more than $300 alone, and after doing the diagnostic, only then would he give me a quote.

Maybe that is the right way to go due to the potential costs involved, but right now, I am not paying for a diagnostic on top of what I am going to have to pay for a repair.

I am mot made out of money, but these plumbers also know that I am at the mercy oft them, because there’s no way I can possibly fix this problem myself, less a Three Stooges situation where I would muck things up even more than they already are.

With everything happening one thing on top of another, I am getting the impression that a higher being is testing me—or perhaps punishing me—but somehow, we will get through all of this an emerge victorious—

Or at least I keep telling myself this, because what else can I say, what else can I believe in at this point in time?

Yesterday, my remote work job asked me to provide them with some charts that I had created related to sales of the various entities in military resale—basically store sales—and they seemed pretty desperate to get them.

Within minutes, I sent the material to the person who asked me for them, and when he received them, he sent me back another email and described me as “You are the best!”

Perhaps that is true, but I am having a hard time living up to that accolade during this major crisis time in my family.

This past month has been probably the worst month in my life, top to bottom, and there are so many things to do that I simply cannot relax.

Even when I am supposed to be sleeping, I am not, and when I finally get to sleep, I am awaked, like I was at about 4 a.m. this morning.

We have a monitor in my mom’s bedroom that is hooked up to my bedroom upstairs, and all my mother has to go is call out and we can come and help her.

So early this morning, while I was finally in a deep sleep, she called out, and I ran out of my bed and seemingly did not touch the floor as I got to her bedroom downstairs … she had soiled her adult diaper, and needed to be cleaned and needed a new diaper put on.

I give my mother credit, as he was able to be most of the work herself, but I did help her as best I could, and when I was done, I helped her back in the bed and she went right to sleep.

I went upstairs to my bedroom, and it probably took me at least an hour to get back to sleep.

I woke up late, thus the lateness of this Rant, and even when I was ready to start to write this, my mother’s attendant came to the door and had to be let in, which is no big deal, but then I had to speak with her, she had to speak with me, so it took some time before I could actually get down and start to write, as before that, I had to send out a story to my work that I had edited.

And today, I have to take my son back and forth to work, we have at least two plumbers coming to look at the leak, we have two nurses coming to the house to talk about my mother’s further care, and we have an appraiser coming to the house to determine what its worth actually is.

And I have my work to do, too, and hopefully, my wife will continue to improve with her head injury. She has had a few tough days Sunday and yesterday, but hopefully, she will be better today.

It is raining, it is a downpour, and whatever umbrella I am trying to use to dodge the raindrops isn’t working.

But I have to be strong about this mess, even after it seemingly gets bigger each and every day.

What alternative do I have?

Rant #3,157: Written In the Stsrs

Everything has a beginning, and as I have learned in my recent period of discontent during the past nearly four years, everything has an end.

Kids start to play Little League when they are five years old, and there are a select few that can make it from Tee Ball to the major league level, and even they cannot play forever, and are forced to hang up their spikes.

My late father started to drive at probably age 12, because the butcher shop that the family owned needed my father to work and do whatever he could to help his father, my grandfather. My dad finally got his license legally, and through one thing to another, he eventually became a professional and legal yellow medallion cab driver in New York City, and after more than 50 years behind the wheel, he had to give up the job he loved because he simply could not do it anymore.

Me, I have been writing all my life.

As a kid, I would create these little newsletters, and I seem to remember that I would sell these things to my paternal grandmother when I was at her house for $1.

I was always writing, whether it was for school or just for fun, and I knew that somehow English—certainly my best subject in school from day one—was going to be my path to success, whether as a teacher or something else related to the written word.

While I never wrote for the high school newspaper—even though I finally did get something printed in the Massapequa High School newspaper a few years after I left there, a remembrance of a teacher that I had there who set me on the course I took, and who had suddenly passed away—I moved on to college, and my writing experience blossomed as a member of the staff of the Dowling College newspaper staff.

During my four years at the school—1975 to 1979—I was the only constant on that newspaper, the only staff member to serve during the entirety of that four-year span.

(As an aside, during my freshman year, the editor only allowed me to join if I gave blood during a blood drive, and I did just that—that was how determined I was to be on the newspaper staff.)

And I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote—and edited—literally from 1975 to October 2019, when the company I worked for collapsed and I was left with nothing.

Happily, I am still making a living—not really “a living,” but as close to it as I can get right now—as a freelance writer for an Washington, D.C.-based association serving “military resale”—military stores—a job that I filled full-time for nearly a quarter of a century in my last full-time job.

But really, all of this began in college, on that Dowling student newspaper, and for years I have been looking for the scrapbook of my work from 1975 to 1979—the genesis of what became my career—and I came up empty.

I knew my scrapbook was somewhere in this house, as I was able to find my scrapbook of stories I did afterward for the late and lamented Island Ear newspaper—another stepping stone to my career--but those college writings were lost and/or misplaced … but I just knew it was here, and would not go down the tubes as Dowling College did, a school that went out of business a few years back.

With everything going on now, I figured it was a good time to start to clean out my house’s basement—at the prodding of a few people, actually—and lo and behold, as I was filling the third garbage bag with trash, I found my college newspaper scrapbook, and while it was musty and murky looking, it was fully intact!

After breathing a sigh of relief, I thumbed through it a little bit, but the pages were kind of brittle, as the scrapbook probably was in the basement for at least a decade or two.

I laughed, I cringed, I remembered a lot of different things related to what I had written, and I also felt a sense of pride … this was the real beginning for me as a writer, and no matter how cringe-worthy or bad what I did was, this is literally where it all started.

I guess those in other fields can point to similar things that they might have in their possession that they can say was the beginning ot their career … for instance, maybe an accountant can point to a list of long-buried baseball statistics he compiled years ago by playing his Strat-O-Matic baseball game as the first inkling of what he would be doing for the rest of his life.

But for me, this old and ragged scrapbook is a real time capsule of what I was doing and thinking way back when, the real and actual stepping stone to what I eventually did as a professional to put bread on my table to this day.

Yes, my full-time career ended abruptly just about four years ago, but I have carried on as best as I could as a writer—and an editor—and this scrapbook was the very beginning of that odyssey.

I am just so happy and fortunate to have finally found this thing, and while I do wince at some of it, I also laugh at a lot of it, too …

That scrapbook literally is my origin story, and boy, have I come far!

Write on!

Rant #3,156: A Little Bit of Soap

I went grocery shopping yesterday morning, and yes, the prices are horridly high, and based on these prices, I cannot understand why the government doesn’t just give in, admit that we are in a recession, and move on from there.

So anyway. I am shopping around, using a list prepared by my wife, getting items that we need and mentally checking off one item after another on the list.

I got to the cereal aisle, and my wife listed “Fiber One” as the cereal that she wanted.

I looked around, and they did not have it, so I texted my wife, “No Fiber One.”

She wanted wheat germ, but they did not have it, so I texted her, “No germ.”

My wife wanted decaffeinated coffee, and the shelves did not have any decaf at all. I texted my wife, “No decaf.”

She got back to me and texted, “What else are they not going to have?”

I texted back to her with what I thought was a clever response, “No soap, radio.”

She texted back to me, “What does that mean?”

After thinking about it a little bit, I texted back to her, “Oh, I guess it is an old ‘Rochdale’ thing, forget about it.”

(When I use the term “Rochdale” here, it does refer back to my old neighborhood in Queens, where we used different phrases and expressions that I think were unique to where we lived … a “Rochdale thing,” thus, refers to one of those phrases and expressions, but read on.)

When I grew up in the aforementioned Rochdale Village in the 1960s and early 1970s, there were lots of expressions and catchphrases that we used that might have been unique to the community, or at least we thought they were.

You have to understand this community at the time, which was a mix of black and white, Jew and non-Jew, Hebrew and Yiddish and ghetto slang and all of that mixed into one … so yes, there was going to be a unique set of expressions that were entirely germane to this neighborhood, or at least that is what I thought.

I know that one was “sike,” which basically meant “gotcha,” when we exposed somebody’s ineptitude in one ways or another.

We would not just say “sike,” but we would put our finger under our eye and push the skin down when we said this.

To this day, I have no idea why.

Another “gotcha” thing was “No Soap, Radio,” but even though I might have thought that this was a unique phrase to Rochdale, it really wasn’t.

Here is how it went:

Two elephants were sitting in a bathtub together.

One said, "Pass the soap."

The other replied, "No soap, radio!"

That is the all-time sucker joke, used to see if you are paying attention.

It isn't funny, was never meant to be funny, and quite frankly, it makes no sense.

But that is the point of the whole thing.

This “joke” began in New York City in the 1950s, and somehow as a kid in Rochdale, it got to us, and we used it to make sure that someone we were talking to was paying attention to what we were saying.

The way it is supposed to be played out is between three people: the joke teller, an unassuming person, and someone who is in on the hoax of a joke.

You tell the joke, your accomplice laughs his or her head off on it even though it is not funny, and the third unwitting person just sits there, not getting the joke—since there isn’t one—and finally, since he thinks they missed something, this unwitting soul begins to laugh too, because they feel they will look foolish if they don’t.

But there isn’t anything to really laugh about, so it makes the unwitting person look foolish when he finds out that he has been duped.

Sike!

There is actually an entire Wikipedia entry on this “joke” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio) that goes into all the social, psychological and other ramifications of pulling off this scheme, offering sides to this thing that I never knew existed.

Kind of strange, but I never knew that this “joke” had such implications.

I know that my friends and I used this joke to make others look silly, to demonstrate that they were not paying attention to what we were saying, and for no other reasons.

One person I knew who fell for this joke constantly was a guy named Bradley, who was duped so constantly by this joke that I wonder if he ever listened to anyone but himself.

Sorry, Bradley, for making you the pawn so many times using this “joke” on you.

I hope I did not harm you for life by using it on you so many times.

As for my wife, I guess “No Soap, Radio” never got to the Rockaways where she grew up way back when.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

But please, do pass the soap!

Rant #3,155: Superman

Today is going to be a very difficult day for me, a day that I will have to get through, and I am determined to do just that.

I have to take my mother to the doctor for a follow-up and learn about immunotherapy, a process where the person’s body itself is used to maybe not fully heal what is ailing the person, but at least keep whatever ails them at bay and on an even keel.

My mother, at age 92 and in a very frail condition, is absolutely not a candidate for chemotherapy, so this is our only recourse to keep her quality of life as good as it can be.

It is a controversial therapy, has its good points and bad points, but we really don’t have any other avenues to go down with my mother, so we are going to try this and see how it all works.

This is not the forum to go too deeply into this process, but information is widely available all over the Internet if you are interested.

We do have help coming in for my mother, trained health care professionals who have a lot of experience with the elderly, and older folks at this stage of the game too, but it does come at a monetary cost.

Would my mother be better off in a nursing home? Perhaps she would, but the familiar surroundings of her being home after nearly three weeks in the hospital really have been amazing, even in such a short period of time.

She was able to get around with a walker and with some help, she has eaten pretty well since being home—she even had ice cream—and I just see a little bit of confidence in her that she did not exhibit in the hospital.

But yes, after what she has been through, she mainly sleeps, which does help her healing but also demonstrates how truly weak and frail she is.

So today is going to be a major challenge, including getting her in and out of the car, but I will have a health care professional with me, so perhaps it will be a bit easier than I think it is going to be.

I have played it up with my mother, telling her that she will finally see my new car, but honestly, I would rather have my old car and have her like she was than having a new car and having her like she is.

The dementia she has was almost manageable, in a weird sort of way, but this other stuff she has … I just don’t know.

Me, I am just taking it one day at a time.

Somehow, I have managed to fit in my work in between everything, although I have not had the time to do as much as I usually do.

There are only 24 hours in a day, and sometimes, I am doing stuff at all hours—see yesterday’s Rant—and it is never enough, but it is the best I can do at the moment.

I guess my relaxation comes at weird times right now, like when I take and pick up my son from work and yes, when I write up this blog entry each day.

We have another family challenge today.

Today, I can’t pick up my son from work because I will be with my mom, so my wife is going to have to do it.

She was recently given the OK by her own doctor to drive short distances, but still suffering fron this head injury she has—happily, she is getting better every day—this is going to be a bit of a challenge for her, but I think she can do it.

I wish I had something great to tell you, something positive, something uplifting, but right now, things are at a low ebb, and I almost feel that I am drowning in the high tide.

But knowing myself, whatever happens, I will get through it.

I think I have proven over the past few years that I have the ability to shrug things off—even something like what I am going through now—and make diamonds out of coal.

It is a very difficult process, but the gift of laughter that I have certainly helps matters.

And then I look at my son, just like I looked at my daughter this past weekend, and I know that I have to push on, no matter what the obstacles are in front of me.

They need their father to be strong, and that really keeps me going.

I have to be strong for my wife as she goes through her ups and downs, I have to be strong for my kids, and I certainly have to be strong for my mom.

I might not be Superman, but at this juncture, a little Clark Kent will do.

Rant #3,154: Love All the Hurt Away

Well, I am back—

And so is my mother.

In one of the most excruciating, yet joyous days of my life, we brought my mother back home yesterday.

It was a very long and difficult day for my family and I, but somehow, we brought her back home, hopefully to live out her days where she is most comfortable, in her own home.

The day started out very badly for me.

I had an early appointment for blood work for an upcoming doctor’s visit.

When I went to check in, I discovered that my driver’s license was not in my wallet—so for the first time in 50 years of driving, I lost my license.

I looked all around for it, to no avail.

It could be anywhere, but since it is not in my wallet, it is lost.

I scurried down to the local Department of Motor Vehicles office, and within minutes, I had a temporary license—the new one should come in the mail in two weeks.

I guess there is a first time for everything.

And then later in the day, when I found out that my mother was going to be released from the hospital, I drove there, but it took several hours for her to actually be released.

My sister got there first, and since my mother was in the hospital for nearly three weeks and had undergone rigorous testing and major surgery, there were lots of things my sister and I had to do to get her out of there, and will have to do to make her time at home worthwhile.

We supposedly have a woman coming in during the next couple of days, but I foresee the evenings as the biggest challenge, because at least right now, my mother will be alone, with no help watching over her.

So a lot of her upkeep will be on my sister and I for those off hours, and primarily on me, since we are both living under the same roof.

With all that had to be done yesterday, I barely ate much of anything, and running on mainly Coca-Cola, I finally was able to sit down and somewhat relax sometime after 9 p.m.

I have no idea when my sister was able to turn off her own motors, but it was probably at a similar time.

And consequently, even though I supposedly went to sleep myself at 10:30 p.m., here I am, it is sometime after 2 a.m., and I cannot sleep at all, so I figured I might as well write myself to sleep, which I often do when my worry level is on high, and that level is off the charts right now.

I honestly do not know how we are going to manage this situation.

We want my mother’s quality of life to be as high as possible, but she has literally been through hell the past nearly three weeks, and even to get her from my sister’s car into the house was an incredible feat.

She had to be almost lifted out of the car, and while she did do some walking as she went into the house, she simply cannot maneuver around like she used to …

And then there are the 24-hour, around the clock needs that she is going to have, and I just don’t know how I am going to pull this off.

I want her to be as comfortable as possible, but I have things that I must do myself—all compounded by my wife not being 100 percent just yet as she battles the aftermath of her head injury and numerous other issues that I have to deal with now and into the future—and I simply do not know how this is all going to work out, in particular at night and during the early morning.

I am clearly up right now so early in the morning because I am over-tired and over-worried about my mother, but I don’t know if I am up to the task of taking care of her during these early hours.

At this point, we probably need around-the-clock help for her, but since we don’t have that help at this point, the onus is going to be on me during these early hours.

I just don’t know if I can do what she needs for her to be comfortable.

I have so much on my mind right now that I am ready for my head to burst.

I feel exhausted, worn out, and not at the top of my condition, proven by the fact that I somehow lost my driver’s license for the first time ever.

I can’t sleep, as I admit that this whole business is overwhelming.

With the help of my family, I know I will do the best that I can to do the best for my mother, but I hope I can do the tasks at hand so that my mother is comfortable.

She is just so frail, physically, right now, and I feel that I am just so frail, mentally, right now.

It is not a good mix.

Rant #3,153: My Brave Face

How was your Father’s Day?

Mine was pretty quiet.

With everything going on in my family, the celebration had to be low key and that is exactly what it was.

I visited my mother in the hospital, my wife and son gave me gifts, and later in the day, my daughter visited, also gave me a gift, and then we all went out to dinner in a local restaurant, a national chain where the portions have become so small that I was actually hungry directly afterward and for the rest of the day.

A nothing with nothing Father’s Day, but I guess that in my case, that type of celebration had to be on the bill rather than anything extravagant.

Over the weekend, I discovered some new things I did not know about with my new car.

I unwittingly I discovered how to turn on and off some of the supposed safety devices in the car.

I am a good driver and I really don’t need all the bells and whistles going off to alert me that I am this close to that or someone is so close to me.

And I also finally determined, without a shadow of a doubt, that while my car is equipped to carry satellite radio, it is not built into the car as a standard feature.

No big deal, because I can listen to satellite radio through my phone’s app and have it in the car through the car radio via Bluetooth.

It is not as good as just pushing a button and you have it, but it is good enough, at least for now.

I mainly listen to satellite radio on the weekend—during the week I generally listen to the music on a thumb drive that I update every week—so this new setup is slightly annoying, but once you get the hang of it, it really is no big deal.

I did have to go back to the dealer on Friday so that they could explain an icon on the dashboard to me, one which I went through the materials that came with the car and looked up on the Internet, both to no avail.

It is a symbol that pops up on the dashboard when I accelerate the car, and I was worried that it was telling me something negative.

After somehow taking a picture with my phone of the dashboard with the icon (see above), I went back to the dealer, and they told me that the icon simply signified that the automatic lane control was working; I was driving correctly in the lane I was on, and not jutting in and out.

They told me that to test it, when no other cars are around, take my hands off the wheel for a moment, and the car will not veer out of the lane or lean to one side, which I did try, and the explanation was correct.

It is a safety feature that I cannot turn off, so now that I know what it is when it comes up on the dashboard, it tells me that the car is performing as it should be.

Another thing that I found out is that the air conditioning in this car is not as powerful or strong as it was in my previous car.

It works, it does cool you down, but the other car’s air conditioning was seemingly colder than this one, but maybe it is just my imagination … but I don’t think so.

Also, the headlights are a bit stronger on this car, so I can see better while driving at night.

I am sure that there are other things in the car that I have to learn whether on purpose or through driving, so right now, while I still yearn for my other car, I am learning about this new car in a hurry, because I am still doing an inordinate amount of driving, including the mileage I am putting on to go an see my mother in the hospital.

My mom is doing OK right now … which means she is doing the best that she can be doing under the circumstances.

We don’t really know when she will be coming home, but she is going to need a lot of help when she finally gets there, and at least early on, it is going to be a different type of living experience for her, until, or if, she can get her bearings, physically, mentally and emotionally.

It is not going to be easy, but I do believe she will be better in her own home than in the hospital, and can live out her days in the comfort of her own home, however long that may be.

We shall see how all of that works out.

My wife is getting better by the day, but this head injury doesn’t go away so quickly, and she continues to have good days and bad days and days in-between.

But she is much better than she once was, and as she follows the regimen to a “T,” she will benefit now and in the long term as she recovers from this injury.

Like I said, there is just too much going on around me to really have any joy or celebrate anything right now.

I, and for that matter, my sister, are just too pooped and too strung out from the situation with my mother to really let it all hang out, and we are the ones who must remain well, because if we falter, the already heavy load we are bearing will come crashing down upon all of us.

We just have to stay as strong as possible, and I think if we can do that, we are all gong to make it.

Life can be rough, and right now, I think it is really rough, certainly the roughest time I have ever been through in my 66 years of life.

I just have to tell myself each and every day that things will get better, even if in my heart, I have my doubts.

But I have to put on a brave face, and that is exactly what I am doing as we go through all of this day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

I have an early appointment tomorrow, so I will speak to you again on Wednesday.

Speak to you then.

Rant #3,152: If I Could See the Light

Oy vey!

Everything is happening to me and around me during this period of time, and it appears I am like the Pigpen character in the “Peanuts” comic strip—

While I don’t have a perpetual dirt cloud over me like he does, I have a rain cloud, and right now, it is raining cats and dogs and just about every other animal I can think of.

While driving back from dropping my son off at work--and planning to visit my ailing mother in the hospital during that trip—my car started to give me problems—no acceleration at all—and somehow, I was able to drive it about two or so miles in this condition until it finally gave out.

I called AAA, had a tow truck come to get me and the car, and with my description of what had happened, the tow truck driver said it sounded like my alternator died, and that the station he was going to drop the car off at would do a full diagnostic on the car to find out what it was.

That part, with labor, would have cost me at least $600.

I was able to get home, and I was told to give the station at least an hour to run the diagnostics on the car.

After giving the station even longer time to run the diagnostics, I called them up, and they told me they had to run further diagnostics on the car, which, of course, made me think it was not the alternator that was the problem.

I called again sometime later, and they told me that the car was dead.

D-E-A-D.

It seemed that after more than nine years and 98,000 miles on the car, the engine had ceased and the car was as useless as an old 8-track tape cartridge.

During the day, I went to get out of the car whatever I could salvage, but my 2014 Kia Optima was no more.

During the afternoon, my wife and my son accompanied me to the local Kia dealer, and my goal was to buy another car, either used or new.

And after several hours, that is just what I did, with the down payment taking a huge chunk out of my bank account and with the subsequent monthly payments also sure to stick a fork into my finances … but I had no choice.

We looked at a couple of cars, and with my finances—current and future—now In disarray and my head probably in a similar state of mind, I settled on a used car, another Kia Optima, but this one from 2020 with less than 30,000 miles on it.

It was sort of a compromise choice.

I did like their 2023 Kia Forte, but I knew that I could not presently afford to buy a new car.

We were shown a couple of other cars—not electrics or hybrids, thank you--and while they were all nice, I still wanted to protect my money as much as I could, so I chose the car that I thought would do that in the best way.

I also wanted a car that replicated, to a certain extent, the car that I had driven for the past nine-plus years and for nearly 100,000 miles, so the one I chose—a deep blue one—fit the bill.

It took a few hours, but the car is now in my possession, and I will be going about my business today as if I still had the old car—drive my son to work, visit my mother in the hospital, and drive wherever else I have to drive to with my new used car.

I guess I should be excited with this car, but while the car is much the same as the other car, there are things I still have to figure out with it,, including how to hook up my phone to it and how to get my satellite radio on it.

The screen in the car is much larger than what I had, but not huge like the newer cars feature, and this car appears to be a bit smaller than the other one I had, with less trunk space, but I can live with all of that.

I got nine years out of the other car and nearly 100,000 miles, so I figure with this car, if I can get six or seven years out of it, that will be a plus.

But with everything happening at once to myself and to my family, this is just another burden I will have to bear during a very, very difficult stretch for us, one that is seemingly becoming more difficult by the day.

Nothing is going right at the moment for us, and I am starting to look back over my shoulder all of the time to see what the next challenge is that will be thrown at me out of the blue.

And I worry about my finances … during the pandemic when I was out of work, I was able to sock away a good amount of money because I was only spending my unemployment money on groceries and on gas, and on little else because the world closed down, but now, a lot of that money is being eroded by our standard of living returning to somewhat normal and prices being sky high to begin with … and now I have this to deal with.

The good thing is that I did not have to hit my main savings accounts, at least not right now, to pay for my new set of wheels, but the future is uncertain, to say the least.

And yes, this all worries me, and to prove my point, I am typing out this Rant at 3 a.m. in the morning, because if I thought I would be able to sleep the night after this last personal fiasco, well, that thought was put to rest pretty quickly.

Have a good weekend, have a good Father’s Day, and yes, I will be here on Juneteenth … by that time maybe I will have figured out the phone and the satellite radio …

But my finances … Fuggedaboudit!

Rant #3,151: Bits and Pieces

It’s time for another “Bits and Pieces” entry, where I talk about topics that I don’t believe demand a full Rant’s worth of coverage.

So let’s dive right into it!

Trump Pleads “Not Guilty” To Indictment in Federal Court: I am going to start off this entry by stating that I voted for Donald Trump twice for President and I do believe that as our Commander-In-Chief, he was a good President, made some good decisions, and honestly, if I asked myself if I was personally in a better position when he was President versus Joe Biden as President, I would have to pick the former over the latter in a landslide—

But when Trump lost the election to Biden, Trump went ballistic, and his overall behavior—whether it was in taking pride in the Insurrection or just his overall, sore loser’s attitude—simply turned me off, and no matter what the circumstances, I will never vote for him again, whether he is running for President or for dog catcher.

That being said, this latest craziness he has gotten himself into is one for the books.

Taking all your highly volatile and Top Secret paperwork and storing them in your house and in rooms that are highly accessible to anyone is really kind of stupid, and yes, it is against the law.

But Trump continued to trump the law on this, pretty much stating that all of these materials—even the most volatile, Top Secret ones—were his, because they were all constituted while he was President, so he can do with them what he wants.

This is of course very untrue, and now, if convicted of this crime, he could see 20 years in prison.

And yes,, he is guilty as sin on these charges.

However, I do believe that Trump is being targeted by those who are very afraid of him in 2024, and they are doing everything in their power to make him look bad, even while he makes himself look very foolish on his own.

They know that at least right now, he is the only Republican candidate that can beat Joe Biden, and they are doing everything in their power to temper that, even though the more they throw at him, the more popular he seemingly becomes.

So the plan is not working, and while Trump himself makes himself into a dunce with his actions, others making him look like a fool have failed miserably on their quest.

Let’s remember that even if he is found guilty, he can still run for President from his jail cell … and remember, whatever his shortcomings—and there are so many—he did get the second highest vote total ever for President, with Biden getting the most votes ever … and with Biden not being a very popular President, we could have a jail bird as our leader come November 2024.

Former Marine Indicted Over Chokehold Death of Mentally Ill Subway Performer: Yes, we are talking about indi8ctments today, and here is another one, a huge story in at least the New York Metropolitan Area that we all should be aware of.

Several weeks ago, Daniel Penny, a former Marine who is now a college student, was one of the many New York City subway riders who was being verbally harassed by Jordan Neely, a man with serious mental problems who was well known underground as a Michel Jackson impersonator.

The confrontation was a fierce one, as Neely was threatening passengers, including Penny, and the confrontation became so fierce that Penny put a chokehold on this guy with severe mental problems—and a rap sheet a mile long—and, unwittingly, choked the guy to death.

This led to a series of protests in the subway—including blocking trains from coming through—and eventually the death was ruled a homicide and Penny was indicted.

Penny has said that he feared for this safety with this guy yelling and screaming at he and his fellow passengers, and others have come forward and said pretty much the same thing—some of the passengers even helped restrain Neely as the choke hold was applied.

This is almost a Bernard Goetz-type story, where a normal citizen takes the law into his own hands when he believes that he is in peril.

Penny did what he did, is remorseful, but like I said he did what he did … but the media here in New York has pretty much labeled him guilty—also fully buying into the untrue scenario that this was a racial crime, as Penny is white and the dead man was black--so who knows what his future holds.

They have painted Neely as this happy-go-lucky street performer, until it unwittingly came out in the wash that he had a bout 40 arrests for similar violent behavior towards others, had been given mental help by New York City, but walked out of whatever facility he was in each and every time, and was pretty much abandoned by his family because of his illness—

Until they saw dollar signs, and all of a sudden, they became very visible.

What is that all about anyway?

My Employment Situation: You might remember that about four years ago, when the company I worked for about a quarter century went out of business and I was thrown to the curb, whenever I did a “Bits and Pieces” column, I would comment—or not comment—on my employment situation which never raised about the “dire” level.

Although I do have a freelance job, it really hasn’t raised too much above that level to this day.

Anyway, since I was forced to take early retirement and Social Security way before I wanted to do so, I have applied for a handful of jobs here and there, primarily those advertised by the local Newsday newspaper, which recently started up a streaming news service.

For months, they have listed probably a dozen or more positions that I could easily fill--both full time and part time--everything from editorial assistant to writer to editor to even courier driver.

You might also remember that they covered my plight in their own publication, with stories about older workers looking for employment during the pandemic.

Well, I recently figured I had nothing to lose, so I applied again for a few part-time jobs, but I used a different cover letter this time—saving them the math and flat-out telling them that I was 66 years of age.

Again, I figured I had nothing to lose, as I heard nothing from them when I used a standard cover letter … I figured using an “un-standard” one might raise an eyebrow.

Well, after waiting several days for a reply, I haven’t heard a peep from them, and yes, I have to say that I believe in my heart that it has to do with my age—

But go prove it.

And the ads still run, the ads for those particular positions still run, and whether it was at age 62 or age 66, I can’t get hired because of my age, but I cannot without a shadow of a doubt prove it even though it is pretty obvious what is going on here.

What, me worry?

That part of my life is over, and has been over, for some time, and I have a lot of other worries that are much more important to me than this kind of utter nonsense.

My advice to all of you remains the same: DON’T RETIRE UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO.

The end.

Rant #3,150: Let It Be

Here it is the middle of 2023, and we are still talking about the Beatles.

There will never be another musical act that revolutionizes what we listen to, how we look, how we act, and how we think as much as the Beatles did, and I had to really, really laugh when the media—always grasping for straws and never doing real reporting—compared the recent Taylor Swift concerts in the Meadowlands with the Beatles concerts at Shea Stadium nearly 60 years ago.

Wishful thinking, perhaps, but please, don’t count me in to be as stupid as others who believe this trash reporting.

Now, we have learned that the Fab Four will be taking on Swift and other pretenders in the current music world, by planning to release a new song to the masses—their so-called “final record”-- using artificial intelligence and other tricks to make the song palatable for today’s generally clueless music audience.

This announcement made a trickle of news yesterday, but not that much is known about this project, to be honest, and the announcement really came out of left field.

Paul McCartney, in an interview he did with BBC Radio 4, said that the currently unnamed recording is thought to be based on a rough demo called “Now and Then” that John Lennon made in 1978 as a solo artist.

McCartney said during the interview that the song uses artificial intelligence to isolate Lennon’s vocal. He said, “We had John’s voice and a piano and could separate them with AI. They tell the machine: ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.’

“When we came to make what will be the last Beatles record—it was a demo that John had that we worked on and we just finished it up, it will be released this year—we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI. So then we could mix the record as you would normally do.”

Sounds gimmicky, and it is, almost as if McCartney is implying that since we have this new toy to use—artificial intelligence—we might as well use it to get this song out.

The Beatles have used the technology of the time to put out other songs way after the band’s actual demise.

You might remember that in the 1990s, they put out a few songs—“Free As a Bird” and “Real Love”—using Lennon demos and electronically Scotch-taping new musical performances from McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison to make the songs somewhat palatable.

Here, I don’t know what musical involvement McCartney and Starr will have, if any, so technically, it really isn’t a Beatles song—but way back when, “Yesterday” was technically a McCartney solo tune without any other Beatles involvement, but it was put out under the “Beatles” banner by Capitol Records, so it is not like something like this hasn’t been done before.

And how will it ultimately be released?

You can bet it will be a digital download first, because that is how music is disseminated today.

But I will bet to appease music fans like me, it will also be released somewhere down the line on a CD and on vinyl.

Will it be a hit?

Who knows, but it will be something of a novelty, just like “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love” were, so it is something that I, at least, will have to have in my collection, preferably on vinyl.

It should be, at the very least, something fun to listen to, but I hope it doesn’t start a trend.

Even though artificial intelligence is a relatively new concept, we have already been warned about its potential, both good and not just bad, but very, very bad.

I think we might be putting the cart before the horse, applying it to just about everything without being able to put in safeguards to it so it does not run rampant.

It all sounds like a science fiction movie, but if we don’t have these safeguards, we will be part of that “movie,” but the movie will be real.

Honestly, it all sounds pretty freaky to me, and while I understand McCartney’s direction on this, I think it might be time to … well … let it be.

You can read the entire story at https://bestclassicbands.com/new-beatles-song-paul-mccartney-john-lennon-now-and-then-6-13-23/

Rant #3,149: We Are the Champions

I am back, and for once, I have a little good news to report.

This past Saturday, my son’s team in the 2022-2023 Nassau County Police Activity League Special Needs Unit Bowling League received their trophies as the first place team in the league for this season.

This team has been together several years now, and they finally reached the top rung of the league this season.

It was really a great season, and if you don’t think that bowling can be exciting, you weren’t around my son’s team this season.

The team bowled so well, picked each other up, and they bowled some incredible games leading to the title.

This league and the entire NC PAL SNU program, is a very unique one; from what I understand, there is nothing else like it in the country.

The program was set up so that boys and girls—and now men and women—who have special needs could find a safe and comforting and yes, highly competitive outlet to participate in many different activities, including everything from archery to yoga, basketball, baseball, bowling, as well as many other social activities.

These now young adults have been labeled their entire lives by social norms that pretty much exclude developmentally disabled people, or at least classify them as something less than the norm, whether it is in school or in social settings.

I, personally, have learned so much about these people, adding on to what I have learned through my son’s own life during his nearly 28 years, when he was classified and misclassified and we were told by those with doctoral degrees that we should prepare him for the scrap heap.

We never believed that, and his story is far from being unique; I have spoken to other parents with children in this program, and one after the other, I pretty much hear the same story from each one of them.

And then I get to know these young men and women through the great equalizer—sports—and I find out that not only can these supposedly discarded people play sports with the best of them, but they can do just about anything they set their minds to—have jobs, socialize, go to college, and do just about everything that at one time they were told they could not do.

My wife and I are just so proud of out son in general, but when he excels at a sport, it just brings it to another level.

This past bowling season, during the 30-week session, my son never missed a week, playing in all 60 games, a mark reached by just him and three others.

He rolled 8,468 total pins, which placed him fourth overall in the league.

His 141 average was seventh best in the league—and up six pins from the prior season--and his high game was 216 with two turkeys, or two instances of getting three strikes in a row—which included one time with four in a row.

His high series—two consecutive games totaled together—was 386.

As the cleanup bowler for his team, he lead them in all the categories I just described to you.

He capped everything off this past Saturday, when in a game that did not add to the standings, his team beat the second place team in the one game they bowled before the awards were given out, and he bowled a 171.

I just really enjoyed watching how each member of his team picked the other up when it was needed, and the team bowled some incredible games when they were all on for a particular week.

I hate to harp on this, but I will anyway.

When my son was about five or six, our local school system sent him to a doctor to determine his mental capabilities.

This doctor had every degree imaginable on the wall of her office, so on face value alone, you had to be impressed by the level this doctor had reached.

Well, she saw my son for about five minutes, if even that, during which she took him in the hall and played some type of short game involving a rubber ball.

She came back into the office, and flat out told my wife and I (paraphrased), “You should be prepared for the worst with your son. He is not going to be able to do much of anything as he gets older …I would classify him as ‘mentally r--.”

Well, we were aghast as she told us this, and I let this woman with all her degrees have it after I heard this. “You have no idea whet you are talking about … this kid is as ‘mentally r—“ as you and I are … and I am reporting you to the school, because you should not be determining any kid’s future like that after maybe five minutes of seeing him.”

I did just that and we never heard form this so-called doctor again.

All the while, my son had completely defied whatever she said: although yes, he is “developmentally disabled,” he graduated high school, he has a job, he has social contacts, and he can play sports—not just bowling, but basketball, and he played seven years of Little League baseball.

And yes, he is quite smart … maybe not the conventional “smart,” but this guy turned himself from coal to diamonds with a lot of hard work and ability far beyond what this idiot doctor told us way back when.

Congrats to my son, congrats to his team, congrats to the entire program, an entity that proves time and time again that no one should ever be labeled as “lost causes.”

Here is a link to the program’s web site: https://g.co/kgs/XpBK61

Here is the link to the program’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NCPALSNU?mibextid=ZbWKwL

Rant #3,148: The Air That I Breathe

Our air quality was better yesterday.

But honestly, it still stunk, literally and figuratively.

Depending on where you were, the air either felt pretty much back to normal or it remained rancid.

Driving as much as I have been doing lately—I am currently averaging about 60 miles a day with all my jaunts thrown in together—I went from one situation to another, and while it was better, we still aren’t our of the woods yet (or the Canadian woods if you get my drift).

I saw plenty of people with masks on outside, which was a recommendation for people who had to be outside for one reason or another.

I also saw people who were obviously oblivious to what was going on, including one guy by my son’s work who lit up a cigarette right by where I was parked … I mean, at this point, even non-smolders like me feel we are smoking three packs a day, but I guess to a smoker, four or five packs a day is no big deal.

And while we have been told that the current situation will dissipate soon, evidently, it isn’t totally going away right now, and other areas along the Eastern Seaboard are now being affected.

Now, I know this is considered a natural dissenter, but this pall is coming from one country into another … isn’t Canada liable for some remedy to the ills that we are battling?

What happens, God forbid, that over time, we find that there has been an increase in lung cancer and other cancers and diseases and ills directly related to these brush fires?

Is Canada off the hook entirely because these fires have not been set purposely?

I would think that they would owe us something—money, technology, something—because these ills have originated from their country.

It is a simple question, and I don’t know if there is a simple answer to that question.

It’s like during our own recent debt ceiling fiasco, I asked the question about the repaying of bills by countries that owed us billons and billions of dollars—if we started a push to collect this money, would we offset our own debts?

This never came up in any discussion of the debt ceiling problem that I heard about or read about, but it is a simple question … but again, I assume that there isn’t a simple answer to that question, either.

And again, we are living in a very illogical time, where wrong is right and everything is topsy turvy, so I don’t expect to get any answers to my questions—and certainly not logical answers that make the least bit of sense—any time soon.

All I know is that I still feel a bad taste in my mouth and throat from this residue in the air, and since I will be doing lots of driving again today and over the weekend, I doubt that it is going to get any better for me, and millions of others who are suffering from this un-Purple Haze.

And as a result of it, are we ever going to be able to say again, “Breathe in the fresh air?”

I don’t have an answer to that question, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.

So try to have a good weekend. Stay indoors with the air conditioning on if you can.

I will speak to you again on Tuesday—I have an early appointment on Monday-- and hopefully, by then, we will all be able to breathe a little easier.

Rant #3,147: When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

What do you make of all of this smoke that is in the air?

We have been told that it is the result of the residue of the Canadian wildfires that has somehow blown several hundred miles south of that country into ours, and a wide swath of the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. is getting this haze.

We are certainly getting it here on Long Island.

I saw a report yesterday that our air situation is far worse than that of India, which normally has the poorest air po9lution in the world—

Not just worse, but about three times worse.

This makes it completely unhealthy for anyone to be outside, because whatever we are breathing in is not good for us.

Heck, we are being told to wear masks outside right now!

It really is very bad, especially for someone like me, a highly allergic person whose allergies are bad enough this time of year without the stink of this residue adding insult to injury.

Throw into what is in the air to my usual wheezing and coughing and blowing my nose, and what you have really is a mess.

That rancid burning smell is in my nose and my throat, and my eyes are being affected by it.

It takes me a while each day to see clearly, and my eyes are itching up a storm each and every day.

Some people think that this is more than just wildfires blowing their ashes over here, that this is some evil plot to see how much we can stand of it.

I won’t go that far, but I never remember such a thing happening in all of my 66 years, so I understand where these people are coming from.

On Tuesday night, I was watching the Yankees-White Sox game at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and there was a brown haze over the Stadium that was so bad that I said to my wife, “How are they even playing this game under these conditions?”

The next day, the game was postponed, and will played today as part of a doubleheader … that’s if this haze isn’t as bad, but from what I have heard, the haze isn’t going to leave us until at least Saturday at the earliest.

Nobody talks about this, but will there be any lingering effects of this pall on our health?

I don’t know, but when I feel like I have just smoked a pack of cigarettes each day of this pall, I really have to wonder about that.

I mean, I have no idea whet it feels like to have smoked a pack of cigarettes, since I never smoked, but if this is how it feels, thank goodness I never got into that habit.

My maternal grandfather smoked heavily during his lifetime, and my father smoked up until my mother was pregnant with me, but I never was enticed to try tobacco, and based on what we are going through right now, I made the right choice in my life.

I see people smoking today, on top of this haze that we are experiencing, and I think that even they should cool it while this thing hangs around.

As for me, I am even tasting it in my throat today, constantly clearing my throat.

As for my family, we have all the windows shut, even though it is kind of warm in the house, and in the evening, we use the air conditioners to try to circulate the air in the house while we are asleep.

I don’t really know what can work against this brown pall, which makes the setting sun look like a sort of burnt orange disk in the sky—but we are doing our best to get through it.

You know that old song, “When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes?”

Well, I now have smoke in not just my eyes, but in my nose, my throat, and probably every other opening in my body, and I can rightfully say that it makes me uncomfortable, and I don’t like it …

I am counting the moments until this thing goes away permanently, and never comes our way again.

And that plea is not just blowing smoke!

Rant #3,146; The Show Must Go On

My mom remains in the hospital.

She had another test late yesterday, and we still await word on when she can come home.

My wife feels a little dizzy today, and hopefully, like on other days since she had her accident, that will burn off and she will be OK for the remainder of the day.

I feel a different kind of dizzy, because I have to cover a conference today, a meeting that in lieu of the current circumstances with my family, could not have come at a worse time.

I have so many things to do with my wife and mother ailing, that to take out time to listen to such a meeting—and then have to carve out even more time to write something up about it, and have it finished sometime today—really puts me in a bind.

I will be able to do it, but you can pretty much throw today down the drain, as it will take up most of my day, along with the other things I have to do, and it will probably prevent me from seeing my mother today.

That bothers me, but that is the way it is, and if I can get through today, I think everything will be all right—

Until next week, when I have another conference to do.

The only good thing about that is that hopefully by that time, we will have a better bead on my mother, and she will presumably be home.

Right now, everything is like an abyss, and I just have to get to the end of it in my own brain and then, everything will settle down a bit.

It is funny that I use the word “abyss,” because with all of the construction at the hospital that my mother is at, you really have to learn to navigate an actual “abyss” to get to her room, and then to exit when you are leaving.

I am getting better at my navigation, but that is not a good sign, as it only means that my mother has been in the hospital too long and that I am starting to get used to the ins and outs of the place.

I don’t want to get used to all that; I want her home.

And I want my wife to continue to improve in her condition, which is happening, but in very small doses.

Every day is different, there is no consistency from one day to another, but I think the prognosis is good as she navigates her own abyss.

We didn’t do much for our anniversary yesterday, as I had plenty of work to do and after that was done, I went to the hospital for a few hours.

Hopefully, we can do something this weekend, and there are some good things to look forward to in the coming days.

Today, the pool man will be here, and hopefully, he will be able to prepare our pool for the summer, and we can use it when everything slows down (and the weather heats up).

And then, this weekend, my son gets his trophy for being a member of the first-place team in his bowling league, and that will be a lot of fun to be a part of.

He and the other members of his team deserve that trophy—they have been a team for several years now—and I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces—and hear the cheers--when they get their awards.

It should be a fun moment, and certainly take me away from the misery the past few weeks have been.

But let’s not put the cart before the horse.

I have to get through this meeting today and then everything will be fine, at least for now, on my end.

My wife has to get through another day, and my mother needs to keep her chipper attitude as she goes through one test after another.

And then we will all reach the finish line of what is going on now, and everything will return back to what is normal for our family … which is pretty much a “new” normal for us.

I just don’t think everything will get back to the old normal any time soon, but I think we can all live with a ‘new” normal, as long as we are given the opportunity.

In show business, they say “The Show Must Go On,” and it is the same for our current lives.

Our show will hopefully go on, but the recent events my wife and mother have gone through belie the fact that I don’t think that things will be exactly the same, but we can certainly get through that after what the two of them have been through.

Onward and upward!