Rant #3,342: God Only Knows

So now these terrorist groupies have taken over a campus building, trespassing, breaking windows, bombarding themselves inside.

Finally, the school said that any students who are involved would be expelled, but the administration continues to do little to nothing to remove this human garbage from the campus.

Columbia University is private property, so the police cannot come in unless university officials ask them to get involved, something they have not yet done.

Everything remains at a standstill, but the longer the administration sits on their hands, the longer this will fester and the harder it will be to fully remove these groupies.

There was a press conference held where the mayor and other officials talked in circles about how outside forces were pushing the protests and the violence ... but all who spoke said that these had been "peaceful" protests until the outside agitators got involved--

Attacking Jewish students verbally and physically refutes whatever "peaceful" aspects of the protests these suits were soft-pedaling. 

And during this press conference, there was not a single, solitary mention of anti-Semitism, so now that the students have damaged school property, the issue of anti-Semitism has been pushed out of the spotlight ... if it ever was of utmost importance to school administrators and other officials to begin with.

And while all of this is happening, a truce that leans heavily toward Hamas' benefit sits without any reply from the terrorist organization.

What do these terrorist groupies have to say about that?

Now onto something else ...

As you know, I go the physical therapy for my injury twice a week, and this week, I went on Monday, and I still have to go on Thursday.

I have been going to this place since the first time I injured myself, and they are getting me into shape for the long run.

When I first began to go there for physical therapy, I had a couple of different therapists helping me, but in recent weeks, it pretty much settled on one woman, who has pushed me--and pushed me hard--during my sessions.

For my birthday, my wife bought me something unique, a Monkees jacket with the word "Monkees" on the front and small caricatures of Peter, Micky, Mike and Davy on the back.

I immediately put away my Yankees jacket, and until it gets warmer, the Monkees jacket will be my go-to jacket when I venture outside.

I wore it for the first time a little while after I received the gift on Sunday, and I did get a double take from one woman outside in the parking lot of the apartment complex we live in.

But back to physical therapy ...

Monday was a very warm day in my neck of the woods, and when I put on the jacket as we prepared to go to.physical therapy, my wife told me that it was warm outside, and I could leave the jacket at home.

It was warm, but I wore the jacket to physical therapy anyway.

As we entered physical therapy and I was getting ready for my session, the woman who is helping me made a mention of the jacket as I was doing the exercises that she assigned to me.

As the conversation picked up, it kind of veered off on a tangent, as I told her where I lived when I first began watching "The Monkees" TV show and buying their records way back in 1966.

"I lived in South Jamaica, Queens, back then," I said.

"South Jamaica ... where in South Jamaica?," she asked.

"Rochdale Village ... ever hear if it?," I asked.

She did a double take.

"Oh my ... I can't believe it ... I lived there to as a kid!," she stated.

We then started to compare notes as I was doing my exercises.

She is two years older than I am, and she lived there around the same time I was there, but I lived there a little bit longer than she did.

We went over all the different things there--the schools in particular--and I came up with a couple of names of "older-than-me" sisters and brothers of people i knew there.

She didn't know any of these people, but we started talking about some other Rochdale Village things of the past, like the community center.

She lived in section five, and i lived in section three, and I threw out a couple of more names to her, but nothing clicked as I did my exercises and then was iced down as the nearly two hour session moved toward its conclusion

As my wife said to me, "It's really a small world," and she is so right.

Rochdale Village was such a unique neighborhood, and certainly a great place to grow up in during the years I lived there.

It wasn't all good, there was plenty of bad, but I think I had a great childhood, and Rochdale Village remains a great part of my life, more than 50 years removed.

My mother often told me that wherever she went--on a vacation, on a cruise, to the mall or to the supermarket--she would always meet people from Rochdale Village.

I don't know if the latest proof of that axiom was found in physical therapy the other day, but God kind of works in strange ways.

I could have gotten anyone to watch over my physical therapy, but somehow, I matched up with this woman ...

Maybe it can simply be called serendipity at its best, but whatever it is, it is.

And it gave me a brief respite from that idiotic chaos at Columbia, involving young people who probably never can comprehend the magic of their old neighborhoods like I do with Rochdale Village.

And that is a shame.