Rant #2,178: Echo Valley 2-6809

Echo Valley is a city in Washington State, where skiing is king.

It also serves as the basis of the name of a song by the Partridge Family, where David Cassidy laments that he should have called that number, because there was a girl on the other end of the line ... and when he finally calls the number, the number has been disconnected.

Oh well, there are a lot of fish in the sea, so David certainly moved on, but that sad song says it all.

Anyway, Echo Valley also serves as the name of a very interesting podcast that I discovered pretty much by accident.

Let me give you a little background first.

What is bubblegum?

We all know that it is a chewy candy that can lead to some nasty cavities, but it is pretty much part of our lives from early on.

(Me, I am not a candy eater to begin with, so I used to give whatever bubblegum I got to my sister, and the resultant cavities followed.)

Chew, chew and chew some more, until all the flavor goes out of it.

That is pretty much the idea behind bubblegum music too.

Bubblegum music, or at least when a certain type of music was denoted as bubblegum music, came to us in the mid-1960s, although its origins probably go back way before that.

But let's look at when a certain type of music was defined that way ...

The Beatles took the world by storm with their feel-good music, seemingly coming at the right time to help the world to heal after the assassination of one of our most popular presidents, both nationally and internationally, John F. Kennedy.

Hitting the American airwaves literally weeks after the assassination, the Beatles made us feel good about life again, and their boy next door looks--and that hair--really set the pace for us to get up by our bootstraps and move on from that terrible tragedy.

The Beatles sang about love, girls, relationships, and pretty much what other performers sung about back then, but they did it in such a novel way that even non-music lovers couldn't help but notice.

But there is only a short time when you can sing about those things without everything growing stale, and the Beatles moved on from that, or at least the way they handled their music moved on, and they began to produce music, pretty much starting in 1966 or so, that dealt with other subjects, including inner turmoil, in a more adult way (and yes, they still sang about love, girls and relationships, but again, in a more adult way).

A new generation of kids were starting to stand out in the world, taking over after their older brothers and sisters--who had grooved to the early sounds of the Beatles--had grown with that group and yearned for more progressive sounds.

The kids who were about seven years old to about 10 years old in 1966--my generation--wasn't yet ready to fully move on with the Beatles, and something called "The Monkees" was there to soothe our musical soul, talking about the same things the Beatles did but with that early-Beatle tone and mystique.

Music people saw that this type of music could sell millions and millions of records--they certainly saw it with the Beatles, and it was clearly perpetuated by the Monkees--and they believed they had a formula to create a new genre of music that would appeal to younger kids and do it with double entendre themes to make even older kids take notice.

Existing acts like the Monkees, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Tommy James and the Shondells, and Tommy Roe were categorized, sometimes unfairly, as bubblegum acts, but the genre needed a central axis, and it found it on one particular label.

And thus, around 1967 or 1968, came bubblegum music, with groups and phantom groups coming and going and making hit records on a label almost designed for this type of music, Buddah Records.

You had the 1910 Fruitgum Co., the Ohio Express, and countless other creations that spouted out "1,2,3 Red Light" and "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" with glee and kids ate it up, with these acts selling millions and millions of records.

The actual bubblegum craze lasted maybe two years, and the Buddah acts still were cranking out records, but another generation of kids had moved on.

There was still bubblegum music out there--Bobby Sherman and the aforementioned David Cassidy, anyone?--but heck, even the Monkees moved on from there with "Head," Tommy James moved on from there with "Crystal Blue Persuasion," and Tommy Roe and the Raiders would also eventually at least try to get out of that area.

Well, back to the podcast ...

I simply discovered this podcast by someone posting a note on Facebook about the Monkees' Micky Dolenz appearing on the "Echo Valley" podcast.

I downloaded the show, and the hour-long show featured maybe five minutes of Dolenz talking about his Monkees days, but the other 55 minutes featured an array of bubblegum music that I either did not know existed or hadn't heard in ages.

The premise of the show is that one Professor Bubblegum is the mayor, the librarian and the archivist of Echo Valley, which here is a fictitious town that is a haven for bubblegummers and bubblegum music.

So over the hour-long podcast--which now numbers 125 episodes at this writing, beginning in 2011--the Professor takes us on a whirl through the town and its inhabitants, everybody from the Monkees to the Partridge Family to the Groovy Ghoulies to Josie and the Pussycats to the 1910 Fruitgum Co. to the Lemon Pipers to ... well, I think you get it.

There is a mild plot to every telecast, which uses music from records, TV shows and TV commercials to carry out the show's theme.

This isn't all nonsensical bubblegum. One episode actually delved into the question of "What act was the first boy band?" and very interestingly, it was not the Monkees--it was, according to Professor Bubblegum, the Comedian Harmonists, a pre-World War II German act which was created with much the same resolve as the Monkees were--and a short history of the act was given on this particular podcast, even delving into the group's Jewish ancestry and their negative experiences when they came to the United States at the outbreak of World War II.

So yes, the show is as lightweight as air, but it can be a bit heavier, with mild histories thrown into the mix with bubblegum music, a story segment where the Professor reads from comic books and magazines of the day which touch on bubblegum and bubblegum-related acts, and just plain fun.

If you are interested in hearing/downloading this podcast, you can begin at its beginning at http://echovalleymusic.blogspot.com/2011/06/echo-valley-episode-1.html and go on from there.

And no, I have no idea who Professor Bubblegum is, and like many Buddah bubblegum acts, I don't really care to know what is real and what isn't ... just go with the flow and I guarantee, you will not be disappointed.

And if you don't choose to try this podcast out, like David Cassidy sang in "Echo Valley 2-6809," ...

I should have called that number ... ."

Classic Rant #831 (October 25, 2012): They Done Did It

The NHL's New York Islanders have announced that they will be moving to Brooklyn in 2015, playing their games at the brand new Barclay Center.

They will be abandoning Long Island's Nassau Coliseum for better digs, much like the Nets left the Coliseum in the 1970s.

The Islanders will now join the Nets at the new venue, leaving the Nassau Coliseum with nothing.

And I do mean nothing.

The Coliseum has no professional sports teams in its roster. It has become a maybe third-rate venue for the circus, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the WWE, but with the Barlclay Center as its new rival, it will have a hard time attracting even tractor pulling at this juncture.

I just knew this was going to happen.

I wrote about this some time ago here. The Nassau Hub, including the Nassau Coliseum, has been a political football for years.

The Islanders first brought up the need for a new venue more than 20 years ago, and ironically, what happened there happened in Brooklyn--and Manhattan--in the 1950s, when New York City turned a deaf ear on the Dodgers and Giants' desire for their own new digs.

Nothing happened then, and the teams left.

Nothing happened now, and the Islanders left.

And as usual, you can blame the politicians, who would rather carve out their own political agendas rather than do something that we all can be proud of.

And you can blame Islander ownership, who thought too big, couldn't answer certain questions, and tried to cover up their inadequacies by laying it all on Nassau County taxpayers.

Well, with the Islanders gone, what do you do with this area? Do you make it into a mixed-use haven for housing and technology and retail, do you retain some aspect of an arena as part of the plan?

What do you do?

Supposedly, we will all find out next week, as we have been told that a master developer will be named for the area.

My thought is that the area will be zoned for mixed use, and there will be some type of arena at the site, or at least some type of sports and entertainment-related venue there..

Whether it can viably compete with not just the Barclay Center, but also Madison Square Garden, is doubtful.

What you need is a developer with a vision for something totally different for that venue, something that the other two sites do not offer.

I was thinking of an outdoor stadium with not only a retractable roof, but also a retractable field. I believe there is one such place in existence, in Hawaii. There was talk for such a stadium for the Mets before CitiField was conceived.

Make it a smaller venue, like the minor league Ducks play in in Central Islip. It can be used for both outdoor and indoor events, including concerts.

Why not? Think outside the box ...

Something all those involved in this fiasco didn't do.

And ironically, the Nets, the former Coliseum tenants, played the Knicks in a preseason game there last night.

The Nets wore their throwback 1970s Julius Erving-style jerseys, because the Knicks refused to wear their home jerseys.

And to add insult to injury, the Nets were designated the home team for last night's game.

Yes, yesterday was a dark day for Long Island, and it had nothing to do with the Nets' new black and white logo and motif.

The whole situation stinks, but when you get politicians involved, this is what you get.

And when they do announce what they are doing with the Nassau Hub, unless it's something really special that includes some type of arena, I can guarantee that you will hear a collective yawn coming from all those who remember the Coliseum as something of a special place.

Brooklyn, here were come ... ?

(And to add insult to injury, I just received my occasional "Coliseum Connection" email--heralding the Islanders move to Brooklyn! Do you believe that they have the nerve to send something like this out--and with all the information about Brooklyn yet. Talk about sticking the knife in and turning it!)

Rant #2,177: Yellow Submarine

One of the most delightful, and surprising films of the 1960s re-emerged last week in theaters, and this week, on record.

"Yellow Submarine," the Beatles' cartoon movie, shouldn't have worked, couldn't have worked, but it did, on so many levels that it is considered an animated classic 50 years after its original theatrical run.

Just in short, if I remember the story correctly, the Beatles owed United Artists one more film after "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help," two very, very successful endeavors.

A script was handed in that would have been a musical western, but it was pretty much rejected by all sides, including Paul, John, George and Ringo, who at this point in their lives, were not that much into creating another romp like the other two films were.

But they had to fulfill their contract, and the thought came to mind that a Beatles film could be made, even with minimal participation from the Fab Four, if it was animated.

The Beatles had a cartoon on American television during this period, that wasn't very good, but was very popular. Produced by Filmation Studios and Al Brodax, the show, on ABC, kept the Beatles in mind with the younger viewer in mind, sort of a counterpoint to "The Monkees," which had captured the young kids that the Beatles had left behind.

The studio was chosen, much to the chagrin of many, and then the story gets a bit muddled. A storyline based on the song "Yellow Submarine" would be used--again, one of the Beatles' most popular songs for younger listeners, and probably chosen to snare the kids to see a cartoon in movie theaters--but pulling another rabbit out of the hat, the song would be used as a basis for a psychedelic romp through an imaginary land called Pepperland, where the boys met up with many strange characters, including the Blue Meanies.

Sort of innocence colliding with modern culture at the time ... the Beatles were still not that intrigued, agreed to allow the use of a couple of their minor tunes along with "Yellow Submarine," but their participation would still be minimal, and like the TV cartoon, they would have voice actors mimic their actual voices (the Beatles later agree to appear in a segment as themselves late in the movie).

Anyway, the film was somehow made, and incredibly, it gained almost universal acclaim, and stands as a classic of its genre; sort of a psychedelic kids movie with great music to bolster its kind of thin plot.

I do have an interesting personal story about the film that I am going to tell in abbreviated form here. I was 11 years old when this movie opened, and one of my classes at I.S. 72 in South Jamaica, Queens, New York was art.

The teacher was one of those teachers who either liked you or didn't. Those she liked loved her, those she didn't, well, they just wanted to get through the class and move on to something else.

I was in the latter category, as were my friends. One friend in particular and I were called up to the front of the room one day when our class was working on something or other.

"You boys have no artistic talent at all, and I want you to see "Yellow Submarine" to show you what true art is," she said to us. Yes, she actually said this to us, but again, this was 1968, not 2018, where you could not get away with this type of nonsense.

She also wanted us to write a short paper, summarizing the story and what made it artistic.

We both did just that, but what she said has stuck with me all these years later, and if I saw the teacher today--I believe she is still with us--I would let her know that the way she handled this was all wrong ... maybe we were not artistic, but we were talented. My friend is a doctor, and I am a writer.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and this art teacher was blind.

Anyway, back to "Yellow Submarine" ...

The film reopened in theaters for a brief theatrical run last week, and while I am sure it might today seem a bit dated, the movie still holds up to a certain degree. No, I did not see it in the theater this time around, but after seeing it on VHS tape and later DVD, and even later, Blu-ray over the past several years, I can attest to the fact that in 1960, it was pretty revolutionary, but in 2018, it is simply an artifact of a different time.

Whatever the case, it is a good film, and along with the short theatrical run, a limited-release single picture disk was also released from the film's soundtrack, featuring the title tune and "Eleanor Rigby," so the single stands as a re-release of the original hit single, but this time, as a picture disk.

It is a nice companion to the film, and I did buy it, and I received it in the mail yesterday. This is all courtesy of my wife, who bought me a store gift card for Father's Day that I used for this purchase.

I guess to sum it all up, if you have not seen "Yellow Submarine," try to find it on tape or DVD or Blu-ray or whatever format you can, and try to look at it through 1968 eyes, even if you weren't around way back then.

It is a nice fantasy movie, which kind of tries to be a "Wizard of Oz" in cartoon form. While it doesn't hit that goal, it is still a really nice film that you can watch with young kids and not have to explain too much, even though some of its themes are really from the psychedelic era.

And the title song ... was that one of the first rock and roll drinking songs or just a nice sing-along?

Ask the Blue Meanies, I guess.

Classic Rant #830 (October 24, 2012): Message In a Bottle

Well, not really.

But today is the 151st anniversary of the first transcontinental telegraph message.

On this date in 1861, Chief Justice Stephen J. Field of California sent a message from San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln, who was in his office in Washington, D.C.

The line was built by Western Union Telegraph Company.

With the wonders of the Internet, we often forget that it took many, many baby steps to get there.

From smoke signals to instant messaging, there were lots of stops in between.

We had carrier pigeons, and, of course, sending a letter has been around forever, but later, we had the most important invention in communication, the telephone. People could talk one on one with each other, and actually hear their voice.

This was basically the way that most people communicated with others in the late 19th and throughout the 20th century.

But with the uptick in technology, today, the phone is almost inadequate, and that's why while we still communicate by phone, our phones can do so much more today.

Little could Lincoln and Field realize that their act set off a technological breakthrough in communication that continues to this day.

And as for Lincoln, the President that is perhaps best known for being our leader during the Civil War and freeing the slaves, as well as being gunned down by John Wilkes Booth, well, he was at the forefront of that era's technological boom.

You could say that if it wasn't for him getting Field's communication on the other side of the line, these other technological breakthroughs would not have happened ... or at least, would have been put off until this initial breakthrough was perfected.

So, while Lincoln was called "The Great Emancipator," he was also possibly the world's first tech geek too.

Rant #2,176: Every 1's a Winner (Not)

Today is July 9, the 190th day of the year.

Just so you know, 169 more days until Christmas. I think I got that right.

My family and I had a nice weekend, and how was yours?

The weather is hot in my neck of the woods, and it is going to get even hotter this week.

My allergies are bad--right now, I am not seeing clearly out of my left eye--and the entire weekend, my left side was bothering me.

Talking about sides, can the year be more different than what is happening in New York baseball, where the Yankees are battling the hated Boston Red Sox for the top spot in the American League East, with both teams on pace to win more than 100 games this season, while on the other side of the fence, the Mets appear to already be playing out the string.

As the All-Star break nears, the Yankees are on pace to win about 104 games, while the Red Sox are on pace to win 106 games.

Not only would this scenario put the Yankees in second place in their division, but it would force them to play a dreaded one-game Wild Card playoff with another team, where one team wins, and moves on to the playoffs, and the other team loses, and goes home.

This seems unfair to either the Ynakees or the Red Sox, because it appears that one of those teams will be the Wild Card team--they win over 100 games, yet they aren't in the real playoffs until they win another one-game playoff?

There has been lots of chatter that because of the situation this season, that the playoff seeding should be changed.

Rather than have a second place team in such a situation play a Wild Card game, simply seed the playoffs with the teams with the top records in order, which this season, right now, would put the Red Sox as the first seed, the Yankees as the second seed, and the 2017 World Series winner the Houston Astros as the third seed. Each is expected to win at least 100 games, and it is only fair that they get in.

The Cleveland Indians are, at least right now, the Central Division winner, and right now--even though their record is inferior to the three teams I just mentioned--they will be in the playoffs without a Wild Card even though they have the fourth best record of the qualifying teams.

It just plays out as wrong.

Most years, you don't have such a situation, but this year, you do, and it involves baseball's two marquee teams, the Yankees and the Red Sox, so the problem is magnified 100 fold.

And let's be honest about it, all this revolves around money, and the networks showing the playoffs--Fox and TBS--would love to have the Yankees and Red Sox go as long as they can in the playoffs, and perhaps even end up playing each other for the American League championship, to boost national ratings.

Baseball has become such a regional sport now, and there are really three teams that can draw national ratings at the playoff level, and that is the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers. The Dodgers went to the World Series last year, and could do it again.

Yankees-Dodgers ... Red Sox-Dodgers? This is what Fox wants, and that is not really a knock on the Astros, the 2017 World Series winners, but for national ratings, the big boys are the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers.

And no, the Mets are not in that group, and this is one of the few years that me, as a Yankees fan, has had to soothe certain Mets fans I know on Facebook from completely jumping ship.

The Mets are terrible. They have little or no fight in them, they don't score any runs--they were shut out by the suddenly hot Rays 9-0 yesterday and only posted two hits, and while their pitching is good, the team's talent is thin as Olive Oyl is.

The team began the season 11-1, but since then, the team has gone 24-50, and the only team preventing the Mets from being in last place is the Marlins, who sold off virtually their whole team this off season and are percentage points worse than the Mets in the standings.

The Mets have had some tremendous injuries, including to their great starting pitchers--the only asset they have--and their minor league system is almost completely barren of talent.

The team is currently swimming in a sea of mud, stuck between a rock and a hard place about what to do to improve themselves for not just this season, but for the future.

Do they trade one of their great starting pitchers to get young talent? They have few trade options other than their starting pitchers--Jacob deGrom, perhaps one of the best pitchers in baseball, is in that mix--so do you just mark this season off now, and build for next year, or do you sit on your hands and do nothing?

And what can you do to look respectable during the crosstown rival Yankees juggernaut?

I swear to you, I have had to talk to long-time Mets fans on Facebook from jumping ship this season. I tell them you have to stay with your team through thick and thin, because if you stop rooting for them, not only do you seem like a fair weather fan, but you lose your own dignity by doing so.

Heck, I rooted for the Yankees when they were a last place team--1966--through the dark days leading up to the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s through another dark period, the mid to late 1980s, and through the return to the promised land in the mid-1990s to the present time.

The Yankees have seemingly not missed a beat in 25 years or so, but if they were a last place team like the Mets nearly are, I would continue to root for them.

Mets fans should stay the course, because through a couple of savvy moves, they can find themselves relevant again pretty quickly.

The Yankees have proven that, the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies are proving that this year, and Mets fans should simply take a deep breath and take it all in, because this regular season has the rest of July, August, September and the start of October  to go before it mercifully ends for them.

Me, I am concentrating on the Yankees.

Can they overtake the Red Sox during the regular season?

Yes, we will find out in due time.

Classic Rant #829 (October 23, 2012): Gotta Get Up

Getting up in the morning isn't the easiest thing to do.

Especially during the week--when we have work, and if we're younger, school, to look forward to, wouldn't you prefer to stay in bed?

And last night, I really could have slept longer.

I had a busy day at work, and had physical therapy afterwards for that pinched nerve that I have in my neck (I have learned to live with it a bit better, but honestly, it isn't going away so quick).

I don't go into work as early, so I have about an hour more of sleep each night.

But I really didn't want to get out of bed this morning.

My wife woke up, and once she put the hall light on, I knew I was a goner.

I just got my son up from his own slumber, and he also looks like he could use a bit more bed time.

Funny, on the weekend, when I am supposed to be more relaxed, I really don't sleep that well.

I stay up later, but that doesn't prolong my sleep at all.

And on Sundays, forget about it.

I haven't had a good sleep in months, if not years. For some reason, I can't sleep on Sundays. I am up at all hours and constantly look at my watch to see what time it is.

My mother has often told me that I was a bit of a fussy sleeper when I was a baby, and that I would only sleep outside the house, not inside it.

I would sleep in my baby carriage, but once I was in the crib in the house, I was a holy terror.

I guess it was those bars; they probably made me feel like I was in some sleep jail.

So while I go in and try to get my son up again from his slumber, I, too, would love to just crawl back in the bed and take a couple of more hours to get myself ready for the day.

But it isn't going to happen.

In fact, if I even tried to go back to sleep, I probably wouldn't be able to.

Once I'm up, I'm up, and that's just the way it is.

Rant #2,175: Colours

With all of the nonsense that goes on on Facebook that I described yesterday, there are often glimmers of hope that the social media network can be a useful tool for discussion, if people give other people the chance to voice their viewpoints without getting completely hysterical if their viewpoint doesn't happen to match yours.

Whew, that was a long sentence!

Anyway, on Facebook yesterday. somebody brought up an interesting question: When did you first see race? When did you first see that the color of one's skin was different than yours? And does society perpetuate the question of race through its laws and actions, making it virtually impossible to not factor in race into just about any equation?

These questions were good ones, so I decided to reply. At this point, for some people, anything I say is going to ridiculed and ripped apart, but I decided long ago that if that is the way you feel about what I say, that is your problem, not mine.

I brought up an incident--too strong a word is "incident," but for lack of a better word, I will stay with it--that happened when I was probably seven or eight years old, but I will get back to that one later.

The more I thought about it, the more I dug even deeper into my past to answer that question. I did not change my answer then, but I will post my definitive answer now.

I think the first time I might have seen that people could be different than me--not really that their "race" could be different, I was certainly too young to understand that--was when I was about five years old, and my family and I lived in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, New York, a pretty hardscrabble community of the time of mainly blue collar, but many white collar families.

I was a very active kid, always running around with my friends, and one day, we noticed that the basement of the building I lived in had its door open, which was very unusual.

A year or two earlier, the glue-sniffing craze literally began right there in the basement of my building, and we used to see teens led out of there by the cops, caught doing this stuff to themselves.

Since that time, the basement was always closed, so kids had no place to hide when sniffing glue.

Anyway, the basement was open, and my friends and I saw that there was a family in there: a mom, a dad, and at least three or four kids.

And they looked different than us. I don't know if I perceived it as such, but they were different than us, because their skin color was, well, darker than ours.

They were squatters, homeless, had nowhere else to go. I don't think I realized that at the time, all I knew was that they were living in the basement of our building, on the sly, only to emerge when they thought no one would see them.

And the baby's name, I swear to you, was Swee' Pea.

That is all I knew at the time. When you are five years old, you don't realize, or understand. much else.

About a year or two later, right before we moved from the community to South Jamaica, Queens, in the brand new mixed-community development known as Rochdale Village, a family moved into our community in Kew Gardens Hills that we knew was different, as the kids spoke no English.

I was now seven years old, a little more cognizant of my surroundings, but even though the kids had a darker skin than I did, I doubt I really got that part of the equation.

The kids--who I suspect all these years later were Hispanic and perhaps Puerto Rican--did not speak English, and I seem to remember we helped them to understand the language when we played together--I think there was a boy and girl probably around my age in that family.

Jump forward a few months, and my family moved to a brand new, very interesting community that rose right in the middle of one of the longest standing, most famous ethnic communities in the U.S.

Rochdale Village was a project that rose on ruins of the old Jamaica Race Track. It was designed as a mixed-race community, with, at least at the beginning of its existence, probably a 75 percent white/25 percent black racial mix, which replicated the New York City union rolls at the time, or the prime element that just about all of the applicants had to have in order to apply for the right to live there, which was generated by a lottery.

The project brought not only housing to the community, but retail, schools, and a mixed racial makeup that this area had not seen in decades.

Some people loved it, some people hated it, but there were no gates on the community, so the existing community could avail themselves of all the good the development brought to that community if they so desired.

Anyway, I was probably seven or eight, the place was new, buildings were literally going up all around me and my friends and my family. That was certainly a magic time of my life, and I made many, many friends there, a few of which I still have today, more than 50 years later.

I believe I was in Rochdale Village Day Camp, so I must have been eight years old or so. We went to the beach--Jones, Rye, somewhere else, I don't really remember--and we were putting on our bathing suits and getting ready for swimming.

We also took out our sun tan lotions, putting it all over our bodies so we would not get burned.

As I was getting ready, I saw my friend putting the lotion on his body as much as I did.

His skin was as dark as could be--in parallel to mine, which was as white as could be.

I remember saying to him, "Why do you need sun tan lotion? Your skin is so dark."

His reply: "We burn too," and that was that.

Very innocent. No racial overtones involved. Nothing nefarious about the question or the answer.

But looking back, that was probably the very first time that I saw race, saw a real difference, at least in skin color, in people, and that not everyone was like me.

It is amazing what you can absorb and understand at eight years old that you couldn't previously get when you were five years old, but yes, those three years made the difference.

And yes, society does perpetuate the question of race through its various actions.

Race should not permeate anything we do, but that is pretty much a pollyans-ish wish that simply cannot happen in a society where numerous races are, in the best case scenario, work, live and play together.

Case in point is the hairbrained scheme of New York City Mayor deBlasio to get rid of the specialized schools in the city, the elite schools that educated a segment of the student population that is absolutely brilliant.

He does not like the racial makeup of the student body of these schools--which today is predominantly Asian--so to force more "inclusion," he either wants to lessen the entrance requirement for certain segments of the student population or make them open and free schools with open enrollment, effectively destroying these schools and what they set out to do.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong, but again, this is beingdriven by racial prejudice on deBlasio's part, even though he and his backers don't see it that way.

Whatever the case, situations like this, that impact our children, do put the onus on all of us in our society, where race--and the differences we supposedly have--is the main focus of seemingly everything.

This is just plain wrong.

We are all Americans, and yes, there are differences between all of us, and yes, these should be celebrated, but the main goal--I guess you can say that it is something akin to "live long and prosper"--is the same for all of us, whether we are white, black, yellow, brown, green, or purple.

And yes, I often do wonder about little Swee' Pea, probably the first black person I ever saw, even though I did not realize it.

I also think that today's kids get hit with the race "ticket" way earlier than my generation did, so that five year olds today probably "get it" better than seven year old kids did in my generation.

And I don't know if that is good, or bad.

Ponder that over the weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.