Len'sLens

Sometimes the answer is no

2011-09-27T16:21:00.003-04:00

This isn't going to be a long post because there isn't a lot to say.

The Boston Red Sox just don't seem to have the will to win. But it's more than that.

God answers all prayers, all requests for help.

Sometimes, He says no.

How else do you explain the Sox losing as badly as they have to teams like the Baltimore O's. At this point, one would have to pick the Mets over these Sad Sacks.

There are highly paid players who look as if they want to hit the ball, but just can't. There are those, like Dustin (the lunger) Pedroia, who play flat out all the time, when perhaps a little more finesse is needed. There are those who stand a the plate, facing a pitcher who could not find the strike zone with a guide dog, where I could stand there and work a walk, and yet feel compelled to hack at the pitch.

Swinging at a pitch headed for the dirt is one thing, but swinging after the pitch has hit the dirt?

It has to be divine intervention. Terry Francona, the manager, is where he is because his predecessor, Grady Little, left a pitcher in too long. So what did he do last night? He left Beckett in one pitch too long. Beckett was tired. The pitching coach had run out and there was a man warmed up, or close enough so that a prolonged chat at the mound by the coach and then by the manager would have allowed the bullpen guy to finish warming.

But no....he leaves Beckett in for one last batter.

Wham. Inside the park home run. Four runs. Time for the Brooklyn Dodger refrain."Wait until next year."

So if the Yankees beat the Rays twice and the Sox manage to somehow win one, then the inevitable will be postponed for a few days.

Unless, of course, God changes His mind.

That's what miracles are.

Until next time....

It's time for reality in the U.N.

2011-09-19T15:37:00.003-04:00

Things are heating up in the Lens' world, both in serious and semi-serious orbits.

First, we have the attempt by the Palestinian Authority, or at least the part of it governed by the Fatah party, to petition the United Nations for full membership. The PA, which rules the West Bank territories given up by Israel in 1992, says it needs this membership because Israel refuses to negotiate in good faith.

That, my friends, is the dictionary definition of sophistry or, in a less refined milieu, pure bull crap.

The PA, through its president, Abu Mazen, says Israel refused to negotiate in good faith two years ago because it refused to extend a 10-month moratorium on building new homes for Israelis. What pro-Palestinian outlets, including The New York Times, consistently fail to mention is that the PA did not come to the table until nine of the 10 months had passed.

Then the PA sat down and the first thing it demanded was an extension of the moratorium. There were Israeli citizens waiting for homes and Palestinian workmen waiting to get back to work building them. So, Israel said no to this demand and the PA walked.

Another piece of bovine defecation swirling around the cesspool of misinformation put out by the PA is the business of East Jerusalem.

There is no such place. Never was. Jerusalem is and always has been one city over the past 3,000 years. In 1948, the Jordanian Army, the Arab Legion, took Jerusalem from the Jews who had lived there for thousands of years. In 1967, the Israeli Defense Forces took it, as well as the West Bank, back from Jordan.

When Jordan ruled this territory, two things were true that are not true now. First, no Jews could go to Jewish holy sites in Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem or the West Bank. Secondly, there was not one peep about self-determination from the Arabs who were ruled by Amman.

So, now we have to listen to Hanan Ashwari, that rich Palestinian liar, who spews her poison without any questions from American so-called journalists. She is given a free hand to spew her lies, half truths and flights of fancy. Why?

Put a sock in it?

My other problem these days is the rapidly sinking ship called the Boston Red Sox.

Just now, they lost to the Baltimore Orioles, a team with one of the worst records in baseball this year. They are now only a game and a half ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays for the wild card in the American League.

Yes, they are beaten up. Many of the stars such as Kevin Youkilis and Clay Buchholz are either playing hurt or not at all. Adrian Gonzalez suddenly can't hit. Carl Crawford, never worth the astronomical sum he is being paid, has a stiff neck. JD Drew, well, the less said about him the better. He's gone.

Pitching is pathetic. The rotation is the sick, lame and old. Last night's game was horrible. A wild pitch, four passed balls. This guy won his 200th game. Enough. Isn't there anyone who can pitch in the farm system?

And then there are the playing stars. David Ortiz seems to be the only guy who can hit, except for Marco Scutaro and, not often enough, Dustin (the lunger) Pedroia. Jacoby Ellsbury is doing fine, but it's not enough.

It's time, Sox, to get it going. If you cannot beat Baltimore, maybe it's time to rethink the hiring practices, get rid of the dead wood, and win some damn games.

Until next time...

Television doesn't add up to entertainment.

2011-09-09T17:13:00.003-04:00

I had some surgery on a foot (no, not to take it out of my mouth) a few weeks ago and, until very recently, I could not walk very much. I still am not supposed to, but cabin fever got to me.

I did get a lot of reading done, and, I must admit, watched a lot of television.

That is, I watched a lot of ads on television.

Thank heaven for On Demand, where one can watch shows starting a day after they appear on cable. The great thing is that on some networks, one can fast-forward through the product ads, which seem to be in the minority, and the ads promoting shows on that network, which seem to be in the majority. In the newspaper business, we call those house ads. I will call them that here.

A significant number of those house ads are promoting the very show one is watching at that time. Seriously.

In doing the television watching, a couple of things present themselves.

The first is that there are some pretty good shows on cable. The Closer, Burn Notice, Suits, Necessary Roughness are all pretty good. Most are better than anything on the networks, where dumbness prevails and lack of talent is rewarded, along with more than a jolt of masochism.

That having been said, the ads on television fall into two categories: dumb but harmless and dumb and not harmless.

First of all, I declare that lawyers should never have been allowed to advertise. That's one of the results of the Federal Communications Commission being gelded over the last decades. These ads are an affront. If you have been hurt by anything, call a lawyer. If you were dumb enough to take anti-depressants while pregnant, call the law firm of Dewey Cheatem and Howe. The big, bad insurance company isn't giving you all you deserve, we will. You owe nothing (except fees which can mount into the hundreds if not thousands of dollars in some cases) unless we win. We will leave no ambulance un-chased. If you died because of bad surgical technique, call us.

The next group that never should have been allowed to advertised is drug companies. If you have arthritis (most people over a certain age do) or pain or bad skin or flat feet or can't get an erection, take this medicine. This medicine can cause side effects such as bleeding, constipation, fainting, or, oh yes, death, but don't worry, call your doctor now. Can't get an erection, take this stuff but call your doctor right away if you suddenly can't see or hear.

Lose weight, gain weight, be a great cook, anything you want, just send in $19.95. But wait! Why get one of the useless thing that won't work. Get another for the same $19.95 just by sending separate postage and handling for around $8. If you order three, then the postage and handling is more than the item. So send it back. Oh, so sorry friends. Postage and handling are not refunded. Either way.

Do the advertisers think we are that stupid. Apparently, they do. And given the longevity of some of these ads, they just might be right.

Have a great weekend and for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbat.

Until next time...

The utilities should be ashamedl

2011-09-08T15:24:00.004-04:00

The rain has let up, at least for now. It looks as if the next Atlantic storm is going to hang a right and go on a vacation to England. The storm, Lee, that is causing all the problems for people in the Southeast and Middle Atlantic states, as well as upstate New York and Connecticut, is what steered Katia away from us and into the Atlantic on its way to England.

We're not out of the woods yet, with Maria looking as if it will either hit or skirt Florida and Nate following Lee.

We just got our electricity back in our synagogue on Tuesday, one of the last few dozen to be hooked up in New Haven. We had the work done on the building where the huge tree branch ripped down the wires Sunday. That was done last Tuesday night. Then we waited. Electrician called on Wednesday. Be right there. I called Thursday, told them we needed light so we could pray Friday night and Saturday. Supervisor said should not be a problem.

Called again on Sunday after our congregation could not use the synagogue on Friday or Saturday nights. Must have been a misunderstanding, I was told definitely by the end of Sunday. Called again Monday morning. The operator said she would have to make up a ticket. Finally, early Tuesday, the wires that always had been hanging from the pole were connected to the wires that had been hanging from the building for nearly a week.

Each day there was a promise made but not kept. Now the excuse it that the system UI uses to communicate to its crews is different from, and incompatible with, the system it uses to handle requests from its customers. And they say the utilities don't spend any money on infrastructure!!!!! A mom and pop business would be embarrassed to say they had such an old-fashioned and non-functioning communications system.

The people at SeeClikFix have offered to be a conduit for the separate halves of the UI system. They should not have to. This is up to the company to fix this.

That is, if it really is the problem. The real problem is the same one the city suffered last winter: thinking it could get through a major weather event with minimum resources and minimum planning. The utility has laid off a significant percentage of its crews to save money. The people it depended on to bail them out also were in the path of the storm.

That helpless feeling

I am amazed at the thick heads demonstrated by television talking heads when telling people how to get information during a weather event such as Irene.

Tune in your television. Wrong. No juice, no TV. Computers? Yes, you can get a couple of hours from the battery, but without electricity to power your modem, how do you get the Internet, how do you get the stations' Web pages.

Got a smartphone. Fine, for two or three house. With no electricity to recharge the battery, it goes dark all too soon. I know.

That leaves battery-powered radio. Great. Except in New Haven.

As I have said before, WELI, which had had a tradition of real news-gathering, is a cruel joke. By midafternoon, the announcers who had taken phone calls from people and tried to pass on whatever information they could glean from the totally overwhelmed electric utilities gave up, saying they had been on too long and needed a break.

So what did we get on WELI for the rest of the storm? Sean Hannity. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other syndicated yakkers. Nothing from New Haven.

WICC did a great job about Bridgeport. WTIC, another station that usually features the radical right, kept broadcasting news about the Hartford area. WCBS radio kept on 24 hours a day about New York.

I knew more about what was going on in my daughters' neighborhoods in Manhattan and Queens than what was going on in New Haven.

These guys should be ashamed.

Whether the weather

It has to be hard to be a weather person. You are wrong even when you are right. I understand that.

But why do weather people try to scare folks.

You, as a weather person, know that Katia is going to miss the U.S. But you as a broadcast or television weather person don't say that at the top of the news show. You says, "Will Katia hit Connecticut? " and then we have to wait 23 minutes to find out what you should have said right away: Katia will not hit the state.

Why can't we get a full weather report, at least for the rest of the day and evening, at the top of the newscast? If I'm ready to go out, I don't want to wait through five minutes of news, 10 minutes of ridiculous spots and three mind-numbing features about cats and people who walk their dogs while whistling before hearing if I need an umbrella.

Until next time...

It's great to see the light

2011-09-01T17:49:00.003-04:00

It is wonderful to have power again. Not political. Electrical.

After Irene blew through, we felt, and were, powerless. In every way.

No matter what title you give it, hurricane, tropical storm or extra-tropical storm, it did a lot of damage. We were not prepared. We were told to get a battery radio. Check. Flashlights. Check. Ice. Right. Get out the old direct-wire telephone, the one that attaches directly to the plug and does not require electricity to work. No caller ID, but so what. Hot water. Took care of that 20 years ago with a gas heater. City water, so no need to fill the bathtub. Grille in the back so food can be cooked before it spoils.

It would have been better if I had had better timing about having foot surgery so I could walk the neighborhood and commiserate with the neighbors, and that makes the feeling of isolation worst. But after the third day, there was work to be done and Starbucks in Orange had electricity and wifi. It became office central and they sold a lot of coffee and other stuff.

We really did not suffer because the house was dark. We had little damage outside and quite a bit of food had to be tossed, but we were lucky.

That does not mean that we should have been treated like serfs by the utility companies.

The worst part of the experience was the lack of information. The idiots on television had told us to tune in for updates. How do you do that without power? Yes, my trusty laptop had three hours or so of power, but that did no good if you could not get onto the Internet. Sure, we could have set up a 3G hot spot, for only for a few minutes until the smart phone ran dry of juice.

On the day of the storm, the disc jockeys at WELI tried to relay information until 1 p.m., then back to the syndicated (and cheap) right-wing yakkers. WELI, news radio, is a cruel joke. I wish the FCC had some teeth so we could get their license pulled. Licensed as caretakers of the public good my left cheek.

Calls to United Illuminating (another cruel joke) were answered with, in other words, "none of your business." The city's emergency information center staff members tried hard, but they had no information to relay. The electric or the nonelectric company had told the city one or two days more, then stopped telling them anything at all.

Finally they got the bright idea of looking for fixes that could put many people on at once. My whole neighborhood lit up the same moment I did. After four days.

Our junior senator, Dick Blumenthal, said he would conduct an investigation.

I wonder why the electric company doesn't have sensors installed one the poles or connections to identify ones that are out. Why not get a satellite photo of the area. They are expensive but also sharp. Do something.

These companies should be punished for not preparing for the storms that always come. Laying off a large percentage of its work force is not a way to prepare for anything except to rake in large amounts of money. Don't blame the stockholders. Blame the officers who pay themselves huge bonuses for keeping us in the dark. And powerless.

Until next time...

A decade later, the face of evil is no more

2011-05-02T01:27:00.002-04:00

It was a hell of a year, 2001.

We had returned from Israel in the spring. There, we had heard the bomb blasts from our womb of safety in the Old City of Jerusalem, had ventured out each day with a sense of adventure, a sense we were making a difference to the embattled nation and especially to its struggling merchants, both Jew and Arab.

Back at work at the newspaper in the New York suburbs, I looked with shock a the photo of what remained of a Jerusalem pizza shop where mere days before we had waited for the bus and had passed on the opportunity to eat in that Jaffa Road restaurant, not because of safety but because of the chain-store pizza.

It was a calm summer until that day, that terrible day, Sept. 11. I worked nights, so I slept past the first plane slamming into the World Trade Center. My wife awakened me. I showered as the second plane hit. Of course, the scene was repeated again and again and again on the television.

Get to work. That's the overarching goal of any news person during a disaster. Through the space shuttle disaster, floods, hurricanes, more blizzards than one could count on two hands, it was the same. Get to work. Be there fast.

Our Subaru wagon was two years old and I had no idea how fast it could go until that day. The needle went from 80 to higher along the Merritt Parkway. There were cops on the roadside, but they must have decided anyone going that fast on that day had somewhere important to get to. They didn't move.

We had an extra to put out, and we did with phoned in stories from the scene, that horrible scene, first of the plane hitting the building while the other smoked. Then came the staff photos from the wreckage, that horrible skeleton of buildings where thousands of lives ended. That great photo of the firefighters putting up the flag, Mount Suribachi all over again scores of years later. We had one great photo, but the people at a New Jersey paper promoted theirs better, were minutes ahead in sending it to the wire services, so theirs won the accolades.

The photographers came back, covered with this strange, clinging white dust. What do you think that is, they ask. Don't think about it, we say.

When you are a desk jockey supervising reporters and photographers, your first duty is to the reader, but your most important duty is keeping your people safe. That day, the paramount job was no physical safety, although that was important and there were lots of things that could harm you at the site. The principal concern was psychological safety, keeping those kids from asking too many questions, like about what was that stuff clinging to their clothes and skin and hair.

The company quickly brought in psych counselors for the kids and the older folks in the newsroom. We got advice from colleagues in Oklahoma City, who had gone through the first massive terrorist act on American soil since World War II. They sent advice and "we got through it and you will, too" messages. But looking at the faces of those reporters and photographers, you knew is would be years, if ever, before the nightmares stopped.

And that name started to surface. Osama bin Laden. This tall, skinny guy with the beard who said he was the force behind this terrible act. He was the target, all those years ago. We went to Afghanistan to get him. We got distracted into Iraq. We got that guy in Iraq, but always seemed one step behind Osama bin Laden.

We finally did get him. The president told us in an announcement just as May Day ended. May Day was a traditional day of revolutionaries and anarchists and, I guess, terrorists and it was Osama's last day. I love irony.

To those Green Berets and Deltas and Seals who got this bum, Well Done. I hope he saw his son die before his life ended. I hope he realized in his last seconds that he was over and we're still here. Yes, there will be more attacks, like those in Marrakesh, Morocco, where my wife and I had stood last year by this great plaza that was teeming and alive and loud and a little scary at night.

But those terrorists already had lost. The king of Morocco said the blasts would not stop reforms he had promised. The people would be a little freer no matter how many bombs these horrible people set off.

Yes, we got Osama. Obama si, Osama no. We can all breathe a little easier. The head is off the snake. Yes, the body will whip around for a while but eventually, it will die. They always do, thank heaven.

Until next time...

Len's Law -- If you bother to pass a law, mean it

2011-04-15T17:36:00.003-04:00

Happy Friday. Time for another edition of Len's Laws.

Len's Law: If you bother to pass a law, mean it.

The Connecticut General Assembly is again working to put some teeth in the distracted-driving law. It may cost around $500 and you may lose your license for a day if you get caught.

The chances of you getting caught aren't really too good, though. The hands-free driving and no texting while driving are really DUH laws. Nobody should do these things. But they do. I'm not sure how many people are stupid enough to text while driving, but stand on any corner and count the number of people yakking on their phones as they pass. Usually, it's more people talking than not. That's been my experience.

The state is trying to authorize cities and towns to install red-light cameras to catch the two or three drivers who pass through an intersection after the light turns red. Maybe those can be used to catch those yakking on their phones.

While you're at it, why not make eating, reading (no kidding), shaving, putting on make-up and fiddling with the radio illegal while driving. See where that gets you. I'd like to see the public hearing on that law: Ronald McDonald, The Burger King and Rachel Ray for Dunkin Donuts would be waiting to tell who this law is wrong, bad and unconstitutional.

Len's Law: If you bother to pass a law, mean it (Take 2):

Congrats to Congress on the weak-kneed, lily-livered law they are working on to cute the mortgage mess. Again, they are hiding under the desk.

Putting the fox in charge of hen safety has never worked. Putting the mortgage industry in charge of cleaning up the mortgage mess won't either.

Please don't listen to the do-gooders who say everyone deserves to own their own homes. It's what put us on the edge of the next Great Depression. If you can't afford to buy a house, you should not be allowed to buy a house. If you are too addle-brained to know if you can afford to pay $1,000 a month for a house, then someone needs to tell you you can't afford it. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae used to do that. Somebody needs to do it again.

Yes, living in a house with a yard and some trees and grass is nice. But not everyone can afford that. The rest of us shouldn't be sent down the financial rabbit hole because bankers are too greedy to know the difference.

Len's Law: Let's get real on Facebook. It's a great social networking site. We knew our daughter and her now-husband were getting serious, even though we were 5,000 miles away, when they changed their status on Facebook from single to "in a relationship."

But Facebook isn't a substitute for human interaction. Some independent (right!) "All-Facebook) http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-releases-same-hormone-as-cuddling-2011-04 Facebook site says being on Facebook is the same as cuddling. It releases the same chemical into the brain as cuddling.

You know -- maybe that's what's wrong these days. Too much Facebook and not enough cuddling. Facebook certainly has its place, but not between cuddlers.

Have a wonderful weekend. For Christians, have a wonderful Palm Sunday and for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbat and a meaningful Passover

Until next time...

Len's Laws -- a Friday Feature Second Edition

2011-04-08T12:01:00.007-04:00

Len's Law: Advertisers must drop the word "available" from their ads.
Don't tout something that costs extra. The car you are talking about, the one that costs less than the competition, doesn't have all those features in it. I love the ad that says, in big, bold type, the car costs $27.900. In baby type, "As shown, $39,800." With "available all-wheel drive" you can laugh at snow. But don't forget next winter that you were too cheap to go for the "available" all-wheel drive and snow is laughing at you. Why not just say how much the car equipped with all the stuff we were touting will cost and let the customer figure out if all those toys are worth it.

Len's Law: Don't say something is free when it's not. Free Credit Report Dot Com. If you have the word "free" in your name, you should be giving something out free. Free Credit Report Dot Com will give you your credit score and credit report free if you pay them $15 a month. Huh? Reports are free with enrollment in some credit watching company's service. That's fine...there are people who need this service. So say so. Don't have people singing and talking about your free credit report and then have the announcer mumble "Free with enrollment in..."

Len's Law: Be careful with people's information. How brain dead do you have to be to collect vital financial statistics and then have some dunderhead take the information out of a secure environment because he wants to work at home? And how brain dead do you have to be to delay letting people know for a month and a half while you conduct an investigation? You don't take your time letting people know that their financial information is at risk. It gets worse because you are not a bank where people voluntarily give you their information but a hospital where you take this information to make sure you get paid.

Len's Law: If you are a news organization, try to be fair and not stupid. First, in fairness, let me say David Avigdor is my friend. That doesn't change what I am about to say.
A certain on-line news site in New Haven was covering the trial of some people who were charged with being part of a mortgage-fraud scheme. Most of the coverage by one reporter was fair. He told both sides and kept the purple prose to a minimum. Then another person, an editor no less, covered final arguments. "When a mortgage scam mastermind was handing out “bags of money,” David Avigdor “did not receive any cash,” his lawyer claimed in a last-gasp attempt to defend the attorney and rabbi’s reputation." Last-gasp attempt to defend? Final arguments are the last bite at the apple for lawyers, but last-gasp has connotations that give an unfair taint to a story. Then a headline saying the jury could not agree. The jury had met for less than a day and send out a note asking for instruction about what to do if they could not agree. They never said they could not agree. Not yet, anyway. If you can't be fair, stay out of federal court, or any court for that matter. And if you think phrases such as "last-gasp attempt to defend" belong in a news story, perhaps you should ride your bike to a shoe store and apply for a job. You don't belong in journalism. You belong selling shoes. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Have a great weekend, y'all, and for those in the Tribe, have a great Shabbat.

Until next time...

No, it's not free and how 'bout those Huskies

2011-04-06T16:07:00.003-04:00

Free credit report isn't free

I do wish Comcast would stop carrying the "Free Credit Score" promos on its main page. It's a lie.

Everybody's getting into the act, including the federal government. Each year, each person is entitled to a free credit report. You need to go to the FTC Web site http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/freereports/index.shtml and request it. Don't go to one of the sites that say they'll show you how to get to your credit report. If the site has a ".com" in it, don't go there.

So, the government, for a change is telling us the truth but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You can get your credit report there, but if you want your credit score, you have to sign up with a commercial service.

Same thing with those tacky ads on television. Free Credit Report Dot Com does NOT give you a free credit score or free anything else. The announcer in the ad mumbles that you get the score with enrollment in their service. There also is baby type on the screen that says that.

I think the service is $14.95 a month. That's about $180 a year. For some people, that's a lot of money.

Some services, like American Express, will give you access to your credit report and one credit score free. That's part of the service. But AmEx only will give you your score in one of three rating services. If you want to see the other two, yes, you get it. Sign up and pay.

I guess you only get to know for sure when you try to take out a loan or buy a car or mortgage a house. Then you can ask the banker or dealer to run your scores. I'm sure they'll be happy to comply as long as you are serious about buying what they have to sell.

How about those Huskies

Yes, it was a dirty game. Who cares. The Connecticut Huskies are the rulers of the men's basketball world.

I love irony. At the start of the season, the women's basketball team was all it. Moore was three-time all everything and compared to Holdsclaw and Taurasi and Bird and Lieberman. The men's team was picked 10th in the Big East and already had a space reserved at the NIT. They weren't supposed to go anywhere. Rebuilding year.

So, here we are in baseball season with the Final Four down to the Final One, and guess who is cutting down the nets. And guess who just couldn't get it done. Irony.

Yes, the UConn men beat a team who would have lost to the Little Sisters of the Poor, but who cares. They had to play some pretty mean teams to get there: five games in five straight days in the Big East, no bye in the Big Dance. They worked for the chance to beat Butler. Kentucky was supposed to bring them back to reality and send them home.

Didn't turn out that way. More irony. Ms. Moore, Ms. everything didn't come back from Indianapolis with the team. She was off picking up yet another award while her teammates were taking what had to seem like the longest plane ride in history. Bad time to have a bad game.

Speaking of irony, Geno Auriemma was very politic when he talked about the officiating in that game. It was played in Indianapolis and not far from where Notre Dame is. When asked about it, Geno said the refs could have called some fouls one way or another, and they called them against the Huskies. A team that seldom was in foul trouble was called for being near another player. Notre Dame players were giving the UConn players whacks that you could to time for. Refs were like Sgt. Schultz: "I see nothing, nothing."

Geno didn't complain. He just had that face. You know, the one that says, "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck" it's bad officiating.

Until next time...

Surprised they fell for it

2011-04-03T17:37:00.003-04:00

Happy Monday.

I'm surprised at The New York Times. They fell for yet another Palestinian public relations trick.

Sunday's front page featured a fairly well-researched think piece about how Israel is facing a vote in the United Nations that, the writer concluded, result in the U.N. General Assembly recognizing a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel may be between a rock and a hard place, the piece concludes.

Fine. It's a legitimate point, if not a terribly realistic one. The United States and some other countries have said that a Palestinian state only can come about through negotiations, not actions by the U.N., which is notoriously anti-Israel.

But the photo that accompanied the story was a complete fabrication. It purported to show Israeli soldiers, armed to the teeth, staring at peace Palestinians praying over a piece of land they said was taken from them illegally by Israel. Arabs praying in the face of armed Israeli soldiers.

The problem is that the shot was obviously taken with a long, long lens. High-powered lenses compress shots. Watch a baseball game. It looks as if the batter is a few feet from the stands when, in fact, he's many yards away. It looks like the on-deck circle is a few feet from home plate when it's not.

Same thing here. The long lens compressed distance in this shot. The Israelis could have been the length of a football field away from the Arabs. And how would the Associated Press photographer know that these people were going out to pray if the Palestinian world-class public relations people hadn't told him and probably told him where to stand.

Now, even if the photographer fell for the PR ploy, I'm surprised the photo desk at the Times did. They know better...or should.

You have to give the Palestinians credit for good PR.

A few things about the story, if you please. First, everyone, including Ethan Bonner, the story's author, mentions the Palestinian position that they will not negotiate with Israel while Israeli building goes on in the West Bank. Bonner knows better about the peace negotiations. The Israelis had agreed to a 10-month moratorium on building in the West Bank to get negotiations going. The Arabs never came to the table for nine months. They showed up for the 10th month and stalled, then called for a continuation of the moratorium.

Never mind the obvious cynicism. Who got hurt by that? The Palestinians who worked on the projects. I know a guy who was one of the builders who had to stop working during the moratorium. He tried to keep his work force, mostly Palestinians, employed but had to let some of them go. The workers were the ones hurt.

Again, half truths and innuendos from Palestinians. And photographers who fall for them.

Until next time...

Len's Laws -- a Friday feature

2011-04-01T18:39:00.002-04:00

It's late and there is little time, but you all can look for a Friday feature called Len's Laws. The idea is stolen from New Rules by that other guy on HBO.

This week, we'll pick on television.

Len's Law: Television news people are forbidden to use the word, "actually." They seem unable to give a report without that word. Using the word "actually" signifies that the reporter or anchor is surprised by things like crooks being dumb, druggies robbing donut shops (where the cops are) and mayors trying to curry favor with their bases (in New Haven's case, super liberal bike-riders.)

Len's Law: Television weather people are only allowed to promo their forecasts once. After that, they must give the whole forecast, not ask if there will be a foot of snow and say the answer comes at the bottom of the program. This comes after they promoted the forecast at the top of the news show. One promo per news show.

Len's Law: Stop using Chickenman as a promotion. "He's everywhere, he's everywhere" belongs to Chickenman. Channel 3 is not everywhere.

Len's Law: Television channels and cable providers cannot promo themselves during their shows. I'm watching Law & Order; you don't have to tell me to watch Law & Order. If you can't get legitimate advertising spots, then run public service announcements. You're supposed to run them anyway.

Finally, Len's Law. Jon Stewart has to stop saying he's Jewish. He's not. Maybe he was born Jewish, but he has relinquished his right to tell anybody about this Jewish roots because of his backstabbing of Israel and anything really Jewish. He criticizes Israel for what's going on in the West Bank and Gaza, but says nothing about what's going on in Sudan, Chad, a half-dozen former Soviet republics, just about every Arab country in the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt and Morocco excepted). Jon carps at the United Nations, but acts just like the U.N. Israel is held to a higher standard, the one U.N. member forbidden to join the Security Council, but expected to live by its rules.

Have a great weekend and for those in the Tribe: a great Shabbat.

Until next time...

When will they ever learn

2011-03-30T16:19:00.007-04:00

It's like meeting an old friend, getting back to writing in this blog.
They tell me blogging is old-fashioned, that Facebook, Twitter and the like are the in things, now.
Good. I like blogging.
In future blogs, I'll record what happened in the past year. For those who, for reasons passing understanding, am interested in why I am no longer with the New Haven Independent and why I am no longer aloof from political commentary, all will be revealed. Suffice it to say one thing has everything to do with another.

Why start again now?

I've been sitting down for days now, trying to think of what a good return post would be. I didn't want to start on April Fool's Day. And a subject came up that needed my touch.

They'll never learn

We are coming out of a recession that cost many, many people dearly. Mc, too. We are recovering. Our life's savings, pension, and the rest are recovering, but we'll never get it all back.

So, may I ask, why do we want to start it all over again? Here's what I'm talking about.

Proposed mortgage regulations bring back former, and sensible, rules on mortgage underwriting. These are in essence what the rules were before the folks at Fannie Mac and Freddy Mac started sniffing glue or whatever addled their brains.

Under these rules, the proposed borrower would have to put down 20 percent, provide proof that he or she can make the payments required and do other things that make giving them the loan a good bet.

At the same time, banks that didn't want to adhere to these rules would have to keep a percentage of those loans in their portfolios, to have, as it is said, "some skin in the game." Mortgage brokers and bankers would no longer be able to do mortgage deals that were doomed to fail, walk away with their origination fees and let the market worry about the consequences. They would stand to lose if those mortgages went south, so they would be more careful about to whom they made loans. There would not be the "I don't have to outrun the bear; I just have to outrun you" atmosphere that permeated the mortgage game.

The absence of those rules is what started the mortgage mess. People who realistically could not afford to live in anything north of a refrigerator crate were getting mortgages on houses costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or people were getting loans on houses that they could afford, but then taking out second mortgages and equity loans to buy cars, take vacations or what have you. Then, when they got sick or lost their jobs, they lost their houses.

In any case, the Wild West atmosphere of the mortgage market was one of the main causes of the recession. Millions of people lost jobs, lost homes, lost hope. It will take years to recover, if we ever do.

You would think the new rules would be welcomed. But no! There are those, do-gooders who say the rules would keep people with limited incomes from buying homes.

They're right. It's supposed to. Not everybody can afford a home. It's too bad, but in a non-Socialist society, that's the way it is. People who had no business buying homes bought them, lost them and took millions down with them. Seniors lost a lifetime's worth of savings. People starting families lost jobs.

Now, these do-gooders want to take us down the same path.

When will they ever learn?

One of the things I want to do this time around is to keep these shorter, and on one subject.

Until next time...

Helen Thomas was a great reporter, but now it's over

2010-06-08T18:17:00.003-04:00

One of my most cherished possessions is a set of two original photographs: one of Richard Nixon standing at the door of the helicopter as he leaves the White House for the last time as president, the other of Nixon sparring with a young Dan Rather.

They are both autographed by Helen Thomas.

I acquired them at a Society of Professional Journalists auction in 1986, and bid on them with the proviso that Helen sign them. She agreed and I bought them. They are original prints that were used in the Baltimore Sun. They are framed so Helen's signature is visible.

I loved Helen Thomas because she was Helen Thomas, a feisty, no-nonsense reporter who asked the questions that so many would not ask.

She also kept her personal life and opinions out of her work. I didn't know she was Lebanese, and didn't care. When I think of Lebanese, I think of Danny Thomas, the beloved comedian who started the St. Jude Cancer Research Hospital that treats all children, Israeli, Lebanese, whatever.

Recently, however, Helen began to let her opinions about the Middle East come out in a nasty, biased way. As a Lebanese, she might be more upset that Syria has used that nation as cannon fodder. The actions of Hezbollah have brought death and destruction to that nation. Years ago, the actions of Yasser Arafat brought war to the Paris of the East, Beirut.

Christians and Muslims fought bitterly for years and the U.S. got involved, much to its regret.

But I don't remember Helen Thomas spewing venom at that time. When she asked a question, it was straight, with no adjectives or hyperbole.

Now, however, it is different and in the past few years, since leaving United Press International (or did UPI leave her?), she has let her personal opinions gush forth with bile. The end was inevitable.

To say Jews should go back to Germany, back to Poland, and then laugh. That doesn't make sense.

I think Helen Thomas has lost the ability to think clearly. She certainly has lost the ability to speak responsibly.

It was time to go and certainly Hearst encouraged her to resign. Whether they demanded her resignation or not I don't know or care. She is out of the spotlight and she can spew her bile wherever she ends up.

I won't speculate about why Ms. Thomas' brains seem scrambled lately.

But as for the pictures on my wall, they will stay there. They were signed by the Helen Thomas of 25 years ago, not the one who did not have the good sense of her old nemesis, Nixon, who knew when to quit.

Helen did not and so much the shame. I hope history is kind to her because for most of her career, she was a courageous and talented reporter, not a crone who didn't know the value of silence.

Until next time...

Good health to Clinton; WCBS blows it

2010-02-11T17:03:00.002-05:00

A chill ran down my back as I read a CNN bulletin that former President Bill Clinton was hospitalized with chest pains. I then read the comments on the CNN page.

UPDATE: It turns out he had two stents placed into an artery and he is in good spirits and looking forward to getting back to work. Whew!

The guy will rank as one of our best presidents for any number of reasons. He took the Reagan-Bush deficits and turned them into surpluses. He kept us from going into a stupid war, for a few years at least, until his successor...well, let's not get into that.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state, also is pretty bright, knows how to get things done. I keep hearing second thoughts from people who backed our current president, saying Hillary would have the same bright ideas as Obama, but would not wimp out when it came to pushing them through the Congress.

How is it that a man can have a huge plurality in both houses of Congress but we stalled by a few naysayers. Dear Barack: You need to use that bully pulpit to hit some people over the head. Chinless Mitch McConnell just says no. I guess he's channeling Nancy Reagan.

What is WCBS thinking?

News radio out of New York, WCBS (the only news radio we have in New Haven is WELI, which promos news but delivers none) is offering coupons to reduce the cost of parking one's car in Midtown and the Theater District.

What are they thinking?

The ad has two people talking about coming into New York from the burbs. One says, "Let's take the train." It's cheaper than driving. Not so, says the other person. We can get a break with a coupon from WCBS.

There you go. There aren't enough cars in Manhattan. I thought the whole idea was to promote mass transit so there are fewer cars blocking the streets in Manhattan and getting into stupid accidents because of bad driving or just plain selfishness.

It's bad enough that WCBS spends two minutes of every eight on traffic reports to help people who may well have alternate, cheaper, certainly less polluting sources of transportation into the city. Now, these nitwits are making it easier and cheaper to bring more cars into the city.

Sign!!

Where's all the snow?

I gotta do this. My brother-in-law and his family lived for close to 30 years in Niskayuna, N.Y. Where is that, you may ask. It's near Albany. Near the snow belt.

So, when his wife got a job hundreds of miles south, he sold his house and moved partly to get away from the snow. To Bethesda, Md. Where they have welcomed three feet of snow in the past week.

Sometimes, it just doesn't pay. Anyway, he lives in an apartment and soon will live in a condo, so at least he won't have to shovel.

It happens. My friend Carole Miller, she of the Oregon Ducks, decided she'd had enough of New York winters and moved to North Carolina about 10 years ago. She brought the snow and ice. Or so it seems.

In any case, how about those weather forecasters on television?Brutal Weather Headed Our Way. Not. Schools were canceled. Meetings called off. I originally had two meetings Wednesday: Both were canceled.

So, what happened? The foot of snow turned into three, maybe four inches. With the mid-February sun, all the shoveled sidewalks now are dry. I guess it could be worse; They could have forecasted four inches and we could have gotten the foot. But the way the weather yakkers were carrying on, all the models were converging on us getting whacked this time.

I'm rooting for the jet stream to stay just where it is. Let is snow in Washington. They're used to snowing each other.

Until next time...

Warm memories of the Blizzard of '78

2010-02-01T15:20:00.005-05:00

Happy Monday.

I see that at least one TV outlet, local public television, is planning a retrospective on the Blizzard of 1978. I don't know why now. It's not an even anniversary, but the storm started 32 years ago on Feb. 5. Channel 3 insists on calling it Storm Larry, because they name storms. Easier to remember, I guess.

I was there, in the middle of it. Remembering it is pleasant for me...it was a positive experience. It also reflected a bygone era when newspapers gave a damn about covering news and their employees.

My poor wife, pregnant with our second child and stuck home in Moodus with a 2 1/2 year-old doesn't remember it fondly at all.

It was funny afterward but not then...she was out shoveling snow because she thought I was coming home that first night. I was trying to call to tell her I was not coming home for at least two days and probably three. She couldn't hear the phone because she was shoveling. This, remember is before cell phones.

As for me, it was an adventure. Pete Zanardi, a talented sports writer and editor who lived in Chester, used to carpool to work with me. That day, his editor had told him he could stay home, but he drove in anyway with me so I wouldn't have to drive the 50 miles alone. That's a friend! He kept up a steady stream of conversation so I wouldn't think about the disaster that was occurring all around us. He even brought along a pint of brandy just in case we became stuck. More about that later.

So off we drove from Chester picking up Route 9, a four-lane limited access road that would lead us to the Connecticut Turnpike (Route I-95) and New Haven, where we both worked for the late, lamented Journal-Courier morning newspaper.

There was a cleared lane -- that is one that had only a few inches of snow in it, and we soon caught up with the plow that had cleared it and followed it down entrance ramps and up exit ramps. The radio, WELI which, at the time, actually covered news, was saying I-95 was a mess with cars littering the road. Not true. I'm glad we didn't listen. We lost the plow in Old Saybrook, but by then, we were almost at I-95.

So, we drove slowly along the turnpike, stopping to pay the tolls in Madison and Branford. We drove down an entrance ramp to I-91, up a few one-way streets the wrong way and into the newspaper's parking lot. We had made it.

At the time, the New Haven Register and Journal-Courier were at Orange and Audubon streets, now a parking lot.

Inside, it was barely managed chaos. We, who drive 50 miles, were assigned hotel rooms at the Park Plaza and listened to phoned excuses from people who lived 20 blocks away how they didn't dare try to get to work. We all had assignments...mine was signing off on pages as they made their way to the composing room. I was to be the last one out, but everyone waited for me. Nobody from the newsroom was left to their own devices. A few production people had to sleep in a convent that shared the block with the paper. They didn't have a good time.

We put out the paper. There were stories, some the usual stuff, some really bizarre. The funniest was from a photographer -- I can't remember who. Gov. Ella T. Grasso had closed the state highways. It was illegal to drive on them, unless you were piloting an emergency vehicle, but reporters and photographers were out there anyway.

One camera jockey came back laughing so hard he could hardly breathe. He was driving in on the closed I-95 when he approached the Branford tolls. As he slowed, a hand came out of the toll booth. The road was closed but the state still was collecting the quarter tolls.

We put the paper to bed. In the left hand column was a ruler as tall as the news hole -- about 18 inches, with a headline that said "It Snowed This Much." That was the brainchild of Bob Granger, the news editor, a man so beloved because, in spite of a Draconian management style, he never told a lie. Can you imagine: a boss who, if he tried to lie, his tongue would fall out of his head?

Reporters and photographers went out and got remarkable stories and photos. They told the story of the blizzard from macro and close-up perspectives. These people were the best.

Granger was famous for another headline. He had been ordered to juice up the headlines, so, when a man shot five people to death in a West Coast Chinese restaurant, the headline wrote "Chinese Diners Served Hot Lead." The bosses left him alone after that.

Another great head from the J-C. When Felix Frankfurter had to replaced on the Supreme Court, Connecticut Gov. Abraham Ribicoff let it be known he was interested. The headline was "Abe Relishes Frankfurter Role." Those were the days!

Back to the storm.

In order to collect for ads, the paper had to be published, which meant printed and distributed somewhere. We rode the six or seven long blocks to the Park Plaza hotel in delivery trucks, about 10 to a truck. The bottle of brandy rode with us for the two blocks that it lasted.

Speaking of booze, there was a copy boy, it was said, who was given the following order from Managing Editor Bill Guthrie. "Here's $200 cash. Go to the liquor store. If you come back with change, you're fired." Remember, this is 1978 money.

The paper had bought up every hotel room it could. The bosses cared about the reporters, editors, photographers, and the rest. In other papers, people had to sleep on their desks. Not New Haven, Not then anyway.

The delivery truck drivers told us they couldn't stop for fear of becoming stuck in the snow, which was still coming down too fast for plows to keep up. So we lined up, paratrooper style, stand up, stand in the door. We tossed out our bags, tossed out a few packages of papers, and jumped into the snow. No casualties.

On the way through the hotel lobby, we were accosted by businessmen offering obscene amounts of money for our rooms. Nobody even thought twice. Forget it.

We shared rooms, but the party was in the boss' room. One hell of a party. It spilled over into the hallways on the 17th floor. There were stories....if you know Mary O'Leary of the Register, ask her about her night. She was just trying to get some sleep -- she was quite pregnant -- but her roommate had other ideas.

The next day, we slogged our way back to the paper on foot along Church, Elm and Orange streets. We were kicked out of the Park Plaza because the Ice Capades show, which had reserved the second night, showed up. They had driven in from Canada and wondered what all the fuss way about. A foot and a half of snow is a spring day up there.

Anyway, we all transferred to the Howard Johnson's on Long Wharf. The booze, or what was left of it, made it, too. More drinking. Then, on the third day, our cars were plowed out and we drove home, tired.

My wife, by the way, wasn't interested in hearing the stories. She was too tired from shoveling a space in a driveway and keeping it clear so, if I could get home, I would have a place to park.

So, there's the inside scoop about newspapering and the Blizzard of 78. It was good training, because about 15 years later, there was another blizzard in another state and I had to run the paper and make sure the staff was housed properly, which I did. But that's another story.

Until next time...

Surprise, surprise, surprise

2010-01-22T11:31:00.002-05:00

Happy Friday.

I don't have much time today, but a couple of things need saying. So I'm saying.

That Martha Coakley got her clock cleaned in Massachusetts should be a surprise to nobody who was paying attention. So, the tale of the Democrats snatching defeat from the very jaws of victory goes on and on. And I can't even blame Dr. Howard Dean, the former DNC chairman, for this one.

Coakley was so certain she would win over this upstart state senator that she phoned it in. She expressed surprise that somebody actually wanted her to go out and campaign. What, shake hands in the cold outside Fenway Park? Unthinkable.

Back to that old saw again....you gotta ask. You all know the story told by the late Speaker of the House Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, who got killed in his first race for Boston city council and went to his landlady for a hug. He said to her, "At least you voted for me." She said she hadn't and when he asked why, she said, "You never asked me."

I guess that was lost on Ms. Coakley. Also lost on the Democratic brain trust, or brain rust, in the Bay State was how stupid it was to run on the health plan. People vote for their own self-interest. Massachusetts already has a great health plan, so this argument went thud.

So now, thanks to the GOP's marching in lockstep to the tune played by Mitch McConnell but written by the radical-right crazies on Fox News, the rest of us won't get a great health plan, or any plan at all.

Don't show your tefillin

It gets stranger and weirder in the air.

An observant Jewish kid got bored on an airplane going between New York and Lexington, Ky., so he decided to pray. So, he stood up, put on his tefillin, and started praying.

The flight attendant on the plane freaked, didn't know what that was all about, thought the kid was strapping explosives to his arm and head, and the plane landed in Philly. The cops and feds swarmed on to the plane and, not being the cultural wasteland that the stewardess obviously was, figured the thing out.

Thank heaven, nobody panicked and starting shooting .

First of all, this was from New York. People in New York are pretty culturally savvy, so I have to figure the flight attendant was from Bugtussle. And the kid's rabbi in White Plains was weasel-wording the whole thing, telling Jews it's OK to pray but don't put your tefillin on in public. Can you imagine what would happen if somebody told Catholics they shouldn't make the sign of the cross. Unimaginable.

Rich guys prevail

The latest poll shows that the two rich guys from Greenwich, one for each party, are leading the governor's race. Ned Lamont and Tom Foley, both guys with nearly unlimited budgets, are in the lead for the governor's race. In addition, some guy from Wallingford whose name escapes me is running for secretary of the state. But he doesn't know the name of his office. He kept saying secretary of state. If you don't know the name of the office you are seeking, don't seek it.

So, in other words, politics as usual in Connecticut.

And can you imagine what effect the Supreme Court decision letting loose the corporate coffers on the election system will have on all of this?

But in all of this, the weekend comes. It should be great weather wise. So, everyone have a great weekend and for all in the Tribe, a good Shabbos.

Until next time...

The Ides of January hath come

2010-01-15T15:18:00.003-05:00

Good MLK Day. Today is the iconic leader's real birthday, but we'll be celebrating it on Monday so the bonus babies on Wall Street and city, state and federal workers have a long weekend.

For the financial bonus babies, that means another day without them screwing up the financial system.

MLK, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had the shoulders the rest of us are standing on in the fight for equality for all. He worked when it was still dangerous to be for equality for all and against such things as separate bathrooms, restaurants and the rest. King, with the inspiration of President Kennedy inspired and President Johnson, got the work passed and we are all better off for it, even if we are Tea Party types or Sarah-ites.

That's one thing we don't have today. We have a president to inspire us, but we don't have anyone to get the stuff through the Congress, like LBJ did. We could have had Tom Daschle, the former senator, who could have strong armed the health insurance reform through, but we lost him to some chickencrap about taxes.

A friend who has been a bastion of liberal causes is starting to say that perhaps liberals have helped screw up the world. Perhaps.

AT&T: Shut up already

It would be hard for me to put into words my upset, actually anger, at AT&T's claims against Verizon.

AT&T claims that only AT&T phones allow you to talk and surf the Web at the same time. That's because their system supports the iPhone. Hopefully, that will come to an end this summer when, one hopes, the wonderful Apple phone will be available to Verizon customers.

But anyway, it's not such a big deal. Since you are probably going to be driving a car at the same time, maybe just being able to do one function at a time is safer.

But AT&T's 3G, third generation, coverage area is so anemic that the only thing many of these iPhone customers are able to do is redial their phones and wait for a Web signal. So, AT&T, shut up already. Nobody's buying. And, friends at Apple, I love your products (this blog is written on one), but hate that you put your own profit ahead of your customers' good.

Please fix that by offering the iPhone on Verizon as soon as you can.

All that baby type

Since I am ranting against things on television, let me get going on the baby type at the bottom of almost any ad. You know, the little paragraph with words much too small to read and displayed for such a short time that you didn't have time to read, even if you could see it, which you can't.

The ads go by on television, and a claim is made. Then comes those paragraphs of legal weasel-wording that the claim is only good (this is an exaggeration, but not by much) on alternate Tuesdays between 3 and 4 in the morning when the wind is from the west at more than four by less than six miles per hour.

How is this allowed?

A claim is made from a lawyer that you pay no money unless you win. The tiny type saying you are responsible for all expenses, costs, copying costs, phone charges and staff time no matter what, lasts a nanosecond on the screen.

The claim that the car has all this great stuff is countered by the wonderful word "available" in tiny type. The car starts at $23,000 -- the tiny type that appears for three seconds says "as shown, $39,990."

How is this allowed?

Think, then change

Let's change gears. It is possible that Susan Bysiewicz is not ready for prime time?

She is the secretary of the state (pronounced BUYsowitz everyplace but New Britain, where it is pronounced BySEVitch) who was running for governor and is now running for attorney general, who was for the state's public funding scheme when she was running for governor but won't use it running for attorney general where, one would suspect, she would be spending less.

Now she is asking the present attorney general whether she has been a practicing lawyer in Connecticut long enough to run for attorney general.

Maybe the time to worry about that was before she announced.

Hey, even Hamlet, in the guise of longtime Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, (you know, to run or not to run, that is the question) has settled on an office to seek -- Chris Dodd's Senate seat. Maybe she should sit down and think about what she wants to do, make up her mind, and than announce.

It's not as if the election were next week.

Made it though another week.

This is a long weekend for some of us...all government and quasi-governments (like the post office) are closed. Have a great week.

But think about two things -- Dr. King and his work, and those poor, poor people in Haiti.

We should all pitch in and help. Give through your church or synagogue or someplace you trust. Stay away from charities with large administrative ratios. You don't need to fund some bureaucrat's $300 grand a year salary or Jimmy Carter's anti-Semitic rantings. And, believe it or not, there are scammers out there, so watch out.

And thank God or fate or whoever or whatever you believe runs the world...there but for the grace....go we.

Have a great weekend and for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

New directions for a new year

2010-01-08T15:09:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year

So, it's twenty-ten, as it is being called instead of two thousand and ten. I'm surprised it took that long for the shorthand to kick in.

First of all, it's not the new decade. When the Christian calendar was started, there was no year zero. Zero as the start of a numbering process only started with computers, I think. Boy, is this subject is boring or what? Enough.

Training wheels on mass transit

There are some new things kicking in, and at least one of them is a really positive development.

The state Bond Commission, which is controlled by the governor and does what she wants, today (Jan. 8, 2010) approved $26 million for double tracking work and other improvements on the rail line that goes from New Haven to Springfield, Mass., by way of Hartford.

That means plans for real rail service north of New Haven are on the front burner. They are talking service as often as every half hour during certain weekday hours. This is huge. For decades, my wife worked in Hartford and had to commute each workday from New Haven.

She had two choices. (Don't say bus...nobody has that much time.)

She could drive or subscribe to a van pool. She tried to van pool for a while. It didn't work out because her job didn't allow her to be on the van the same time each day.

So, for most of the two-plus decades, she drove. Now, her successors might have a choice.

Everyone who has been to Europe, not on a bus tour, has experienced the transit system. You can get from anywhere to anywhere else by public transit. That's not the case in Connecticut.

But it might be better soon.

The release talking about the rail improvements said, in part:

"Current plans for NHHS (New Haven, Hartford, Springfield) line call for bidirectional service between New Haven and Springfield running Monday through Friday on a 30-minute peak period schedule.

"The proposal would add several new stations and enhance the Windsor Locks station with a bus connection to Bradley International Airport. Local bus service elsewhere would be reconfigured to connect with passenger stations."

In other words, you can get on a train in New Haven and ride to Bradley without having to worry about traffic, weather, tractor-trailer crashes closing I-91 for hours. Until the folks in New Haven wake up and allow Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport to be something more than a private-plane field with a few commercial flights to Philadelphia, this is great news.

Briefly

CBS has announced that Morgan Freeman will introduce the CBS Evening News with Katie now that Uncle Walter has a desk in that great newsroom in the sky. That means all three major network news shows are being introduced by actors. Apropos, isn't it?

Talk about irony. The Atlantic Monthly, which features articles so long that one's eyes glaze over and you lose interest long before you reach the end, is running an article in the January/February issue saying that one of the reasons for a lack of interest in newspapers is that the stories are too long. Arggggh.

The Journal-Register Corp., publisher of newspapers including the New Haven Register, has a new boss. He's John Paton, who comes from ImpreMedia, which bills itself as the largest publisher of Hispanic papers in the nation. He also has a reputation for knowing how to use multi-media in newspapering. That's important for an industry where some papers think that if something appears on their Web sites before getting in the paper, then the paper has scooped itself. The JRC went through a prepackaged bankruptcy proceeding last year and sold itself to a number of banks who turned from lenders to owners. Robert Conway, the former CEO who guided JRC through its bankruptcy, told me during one of the final hearings that he didn't foresee any more layoffs in New Haven. Here's hoping the new guy has the same feeling.

So, have a great weekend and, for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

2009-12-28T16:03:00.002-05:00

Happy Monday.

I hope all who celebrate had a wonderful Christmas and, before that, those who celebrate had a great Hanukkah.

Boy, this month went by quickly. There was some snow and some rain, a lot less than people in other parts of the nation did. We here were lucky....my daughter, son in law and grandchildren came for a few days and Andrea and Mike did most of the shoveling.

See Avatar

If you haven't seen the new flick, Avatar, do yourself a favor and see it. See it in 3-D...the flat-screen version has to be like kissing your sister compared to the 3-D experience.

The critics who said it was like seeing Star Wars and Jurassic Park for the first time were underselling the movie. It's like nothing you've seen before. It also has a plot line that carries the movie. There are no special effects...it is all one long special effect.

Just go see it. You won't regret the time. And kudos to the folks at the Connecticut Post 14 Cinema De Luxe in Milford for keeping the senior Wednesday rate going for this film. If you are over 60 years old, you can see any film all day Wednesday for $4.50, including Avatar in 3-D.

One of the compensations of aging.

Health-care screw-ups

One of the non-compensations of aging is being in the barrel for the battle over health care.

There are a few things that are strange and stupid about the bills that have come out of the House and Senate.

The first is, thanks to our friend Joe Lieberman, there will be no opening of the Medicare rolls to those from 55 to 65 years of age. I worked for Joe's election in 2006. I apologize. I was wrong. The reason I volunteered to help him win his seat was that he was an honest man, true to his convictions. And he was. I don't know what changed, why he changed, but I cannot say that about him any more.

He campaigned for the concept that one of the best ways to insure people of a certain age was to allow them to access the Medicare system years early. Now, all of a sudden, he's against it and holds the entire idea of health-care reform hostage until he gets his way.

I don't see the problem. Yes, having these new Medicare recipients will cost money, but first it will bring more money into the system. Medicare recipients pay close to $100 a month each. So billions of dollars will enter the system right away.

Lieberman and Ben Horse's-Patoot Nelson of Nebraska were able to hold the bill up to ransom because not one, not one Republican supported it. On top of that, we have to listen to that hypocrite Mitch McConnell talk about fighting health-care reform because Republicans are the party fighting for the nation. All of them, all in lock-step.

The GOP is the party of politics uber alles, politics over all. So let's not talk about how the GOP is the party of the people. It is the party of the insurance companies, of big pharma, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the others who have spent tens of millions of dollars fighting any kind of health-care reform.

Answer a question, please. How many people could we have insured with the money spent fighting for a system that insures huge profits and little else?

One of the things that is being thrown on the altar is the so-called Medicare supplement or Medicare Advantage plans. Yes, insurance companies are taking huge profits from these plans, lavishing perks on their executives and partners that most of us will only see on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

But they also deliver some sensible services to the people who pay for them.

For example, Medicare, for reasons passing understanding, doesn't pay for yearly physicals. Medicare Advantage (MA) plans do. That way, problems can be caught early, perhaps preventing life-threatening, and expensive, conditions from taking hold.

MA plans also pay for gym memberships. People who exercise get sick less, as a whole.

So, it would seem that MA plans should be kept, but stripped of the huge corporate profits. But that won't happen. Large Georgetown condos cost money. Look, I don't know if Lieberman is in the insurance companies' pockets. I hope not. But I haven't heard a good reason he changed his mind on health care.

The Terrible Ten

Since it's not likely that I'll write again before the secular New Year, which initiates the next decade, I have found a good list of mistakes made in the past one.

Thanks to Peter Cohan at DailyFinance.com. He writes:

While it's always easy to see in hindsight, this disastrous decade could have turned out differently were it not for 10 horrible decisions that took place from 2000 to 2009. Here are my picks for this dubious distinction:

Al Gore's decision not to request a recount of all Florida votes. Al Gore won the popular vote count in 2000 by more than 500,000, and the results in Florida were close -- leading to a partial recount. Gore could have demanded a recount of all the Florida votes, which might have kept the election away from the Supreme Court. Though some think a statewide recount would have tipped Florida to Gore, we'll never know how much better or worse a Gore presidency might have been.
The Supreme Court's decision to in effect elect George Bush. This decision was a historic hijacking of a democratic process in which a country's citizens elect a leader, rather than its Supreme Court. Granted, the Florida voting was a complicated mess, but this outcome set a terrible precedent and led to what some argue was the worst presidency in American history.
President Bush's decision to ignore warnings of a terrorist attack in the summer of 2001. Bush received a Presidential Daily Brief in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." He also appeared to ignore people who who tried to warn him. If he had heeded those warnings, it's at least possible that 9/11 could have been averted. He did not, and thousands died.
President Bush's decision to let Osama Bin Laden escape in December 2001. The battle of Tora Bora could have led to Bin Laden's capture as he tried to flee into Pakistan. The U.S had him surrounded but failed to reinforce the position. So the architect of those terrorist attacks escaped.
President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. Bush knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and no tie to the 9/11 attacks, but he made both claims to justify going to war against it. Six years later, no Iraqi WMDs were ever found, and Iraq still doesn't have a flourishing democracy. But 4,370 U.S. soldiers are dead (plus untold thousands more Iraqis) and $800 billion worth of taxpayer money has been spent for that war.
Government's failure to regulate Wall Street. The idea that free markets would regulate themselves was strongly promoted by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, and during the decade that view prevailed in the White House. The result was to allow a weakly regulated $10 trillion mortgage-securitization industry to grow unchecked. And that led to millions of homes entering foreclosure; the end of Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers; and very nearly a global financial collapse.
Government's decision to let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt. History's biggest bankruptcy -- the $639 billion failure of Lehman Brothers -- was avoidable. While it might have been temporarily satisfying to let the market exact its pound of flesh, that decision to let Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008 rapidly eroded confidence in the capital markets. And if people had lost all faith in that, the social order may have collapsed.
President Bush's decision to more than double the national debt. During Bush's tenure, the national debt increased from $5 trillion to more than $11 trillion -- and it has since risen to $12 trillion. This decision to borrow so much money early in his tenure boosted the federal deficit to record levels and severely weakened the U.S.'s financial position. Adding to that weakness were the president's $1.3 trillion worth of tax cuts -- 32.6% of which went to the top 1% of earners.
Banks' decision to use too much debt and to mismatch assets and liabilities. Banks borrowed way too much money during the decade, and that made them extremely vulnerable when their leveraged bets went against them. At some points, Wall Street borrowed as much as $30 for every dollar of equity. And Wall Street's decision to borrow short -- meaning the big firms needed to refinance their balance sheet every week or month -- and lend long -- meaning they got repaid over the course of many years -- put the Street's daily survival at the mercy of the very short-term commercial paper market.
The SEC's failure to stop Bernie Madoff. As the Washington Post has reported, the SEC had numerous chances to stop Bernie Madoff's $60 billion Ponzi scheme during the decade -- although it turned out that his deception had gone on for decades before that. The SEC's ongoing decision to not pursue Madoff and his fraud cost many people their life savings.

Thanks, Peter. Lots to think about.

And to all of you, great readers, thanks for hanging in and have a great new year. Stay sober if you are driving. Remember, New Year's Eve is amateur night on the roads.

Until next time...

There goes another one

2009-12-04T15:16:00.002-05:00

Happy Friday.

First the ad. Unpaid, of course. If you like the Three Stooges, nyuk nyuk yourself over to the Jewish Community Center at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 6. Prof. Faye Ringel, who is an expert on the Stooges, will hold forth about them. There's a Klezmer musical program as well.

The best part is the cost: FREE. It's sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society (I'm a vice president). Come. Laugh. You'll enjoy. It's not fingers in your eyes. Yes, of course, it is. Nyuk, nyuk.

There goes another one

I heard from a former colleague at The Journal News, Gannett's daily in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Duchess and Orange counties -- basically everything from New York City north to Catskill the mountains. The news was not good.

Those who have been faithful readers know I toiled there for the better (or worse) part of 15 years through blizzards, September 11, war, more war. You get the idea. Most of the time, I had a lot to say about what went into the paper and where it went.

Then, about eight or nine years ago, a new group was sent by the geniuses at Gannett, you know the company whose stock went from $100 a share to single digits. That group. They did such a good job and TJN that circulation was nearly halved under their stewardship.

In 2005, they offered early retirement to, if I remember, 27 people. 25 took it. As for me, you can still see the scorch marks on the carpet.

In August, this group made everybody apply for their jobs. Out of, I think, 150 people or so in the newsroom, 25 didn't even bother applying. Another 75 were shown the door.

So, now they have decided to sell the building, print the paper in New Jersey, and fire just about everybody in production and circulation -- more than 160 people. This after closing down its production operation in Rockland County, selling its building there and moving the few editorial and sales people left into other offices.

They probably will do the same thing in Westchester, my source says. Either they will lease back some space in the building or move the once proud operation with five bureaus and 12 editions to a little office somewhere.

I guess maybe the new regime isn't so smart after all.

Disconnect by Ma Bell

There's a war going on between AT&T (Ma Bell for those too young to remember one huge telephone company connecting the entire nation, seamlessly, and conducting wonderful research projects) and Verizon, which started out life as New York Telephone.

The third part of this mess is Apple, makers of Mac computers (used to call them Macintosh, for from whence the apple reference comes). Apple put out the iPhone, a wonderful instrument whose Achilles' heel is that it operates on 3G. For those who don't know, 3G is Third Generation. The folks at Apple partnered with AT&T, probably because they had the biggest network of coverage.

Now the folks at Apple are pretty smart, but they apparently didn't read the fine print in AT&T ads, which says 3G not available everywhere, or weasel words meaning that. It turns out that 3G isn't available nearly anywhere.

A few weeks ago, a federal group -- i don't remember if was a judge or a commission, turned away a suit by AT&T against Verizon for a chart in Verizon's ad showing Verizon's 3G (read fiber optic) coverage as being in most of the nation, where AT&T's was pretty sparse in comparison.

To be fair, the judge or whoever told Verizon it had to explain that the sparsity was in AT&T 3G coverage, not total coverage, which is pretty near everywhere. In its latest ads, AT&T fails to come clean about that -- it just says coverage, not 3G coverage.

So, that leaves people like me, who would love to have an iPhone, in a quandary. I don't want to spend $400 or so for a phone that only works to its full potential in a small percentage of places . Now, I guess I have to wait to see if Google's Droid phone is as good as Verizon says it is.

Apple: You screwed up. Admit it. Say it...say it.

You still make one hell of a computer. These words are being written on one. Now if I can only find a wire to connect my beloved Mac Book to the monitor I just bought.

Snow joke

It looks as if we may get our first snow this weekend. Had to get the headline pun out of the way. Please, please television folk: Don't say it's winter's first snow. Winter is still more than a fortnight away. What's a fortnight? Look it up.

Have a great weekend and, for those in the Tribe, a wonderful Shabbos.

Until next time...

What to be thankful for

2009-11-24T18:47:00.005-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving week.

If you were looking for the weekly rant Monday morning, I'm sorry I missed. I've been a little sick. Nothing much, as it turns out, just a cold.

So, what do we have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving?

First of all, health, family, love, belonging, working, not being dependent on others.

The good sense to leave Gannett four years ago and not having to go through the horrible situation those left at that wretched company have to go through. The company's bottom line is getting better, the stock is going up a bit and these yakkers on television say it's because advertising is coming back. Baloney. The bottom line is rising because the company has fired half the staff.

The ones who are left are those who got the company into the horrible shape it was in in the first place.

But I digress. Things to be thankful for.

Personally, it's a wife who puts up with me, kids who have are really good people and those who are married have married really good people and are raising children who are really good people. So what if two of the boys are hellions.

I also have been able to support myself and my family with my labor and still am in no danger of needing anyone else's help. Sure, the savings has diminished, but it's coming back.

I'm thankful that the University of Connecticut football team was able to get itself together to be Notre Dame, one of the great programs in the nation. Yes, the Fighting Irish are not having a great year, but UConn also is suffering after losing one of its stars to a horrible and unnecessary murder. But this was a great win and everyone in Connecticut should be proud.

Things to be thankful for. Share yours, if you wish.

Black Friday

There is something to be said for racial memory, that memory with which we are all imbued depending on one's background.

For example, Jews talking about the Holocaust are sharing a set of thoughts that need not be expressed verbally. It's a base that every Jew, from Orthodox to secular to converted away, still shares.

Christians have that about Christmas. There is a set of values and beliefs that go without saying, that are buried in your consciousness. It's like instinct.

So, never having been a Christian, I don't get it when it comes to Christmas. I've gotten into trouble because of it. Once, when I was in charge of the Monday paper in Westchester, there was a fire. Nobody was hurt, although a few people were left homeless. Nobody died, nobody was injured, so I put a photo on the front page and ran the story and photos big on the local section front. The photos were good, but not prize-winners.

On Monday when I came into work, I was pilloried for not using the story on the front page. How could I? What was the big deal? Nobody was hurt. But, I was informed, the fire destroyed several families' Christmas presents. The children might have to face Christmas with no presents. Why didn't I blow out the front page with the story and start a collection to buy Christmas presents for these children?

I still don't get it. That's me. No racial memory of Christmas. To me, the whole thing about Christmas is a story about a certain guy who was the basis of a worldwide belief system. Giving gifts seems secondary, but that's all you hear about.

I still don't get why every last radio station has to play nothing but Christmas carols on the eve and the day, why every television station has to run sappy movies.

And I don't get Black Friday.

Last year, some poor guy was killed trying to stem the tide of manic people trying to buy Christmas presents. People show up at 4 in the morning, 5 in the morning. Still, in spite of that horrible tragedy. Stores are trying to mitigate the danger, but won't halt the practice.

I guess I'm not the only one.

From now, actually for about a month now, people are running around buying Christmas gifts for people they don't even like. And each person gets multiple gifts.

When I was much, much younger, I had the opportunity to spend Christmas with the family of a girl I knew. I was shocked. I brought one gift. These people, who were not in the best economic circumstance by any means, must have showered each other with a dozen gifts each.

To be completely truthful, friend wife and I once stood on line at midnight at the late and much lamented Comp USA. The line was long but moved quickly. We got a portable hard drive and a couple of thumb drives. It wasn't too bad. But other people were just starting their day, talking about going from place to place starting at 4 in the morning.

Sorry. I just don't get it.

But in any case, have a great Thanksgiving.

Until next time...

The pause that refreshes in so many ways

2009-11-15T17:35:00.003-05:00

Happy Monday.

In the past week, we've (my wife and I, not the royal we) have been fortunate to see all seven of our grandchildren -- and their parents, of course.

That's truly a pause that refreshes.

The little ones, in our case ranging from less than six months to eight years, have such a joy of living, such an optimism, such a positive slant on things -- whatever the problem, mommy and daddy can fix it.

Their problems can all be fixed. Yes, we've been fortunate. Even in our little one, who was undergoing surgery at the age of one week, is gaining by leaps and bounds, his chipmunk cheeks and round tummy showing the effects of parental love, good food and the best in medical care.

I know we've been fortunate, after seeing what happens to neglected, unwanted children or those born with medical conditions that are beyond the scope of science and medicine.

So, with all the complaining I do, both in writing here and verbally to friends and family, I really do know how blessed I am in so many ways.

They say the children will lead them. Let's say the children inspire us to make sure we act in a way that will keep them headed on the path to much health, happiness and success.

Number, please

That doesn't mean I'm going to stop bitching. Heaven forbid.

Ask me what I was doing for hours today. Let me tell you.

I was programming the phone books on two phone systems, one home and the other cells. Why? Because we now have to dial an area code for all phone calls, even to people who live next door. So, one has to sit here and put 203 in front of all my presets.

Connecticut is getting two more area codes, I guess they are needed because of the proliferation of cell phones and other devices.

Google is getting into the act with the Droid, a version of the iPhone that works on Verizon. AT&T has the iPhone sewn up, at least for now. Once that gets going, along with other phone systems, including the one that has pigs eating pork in its ads, the numbers will sell out like tickets to UConn women's basketball.

I'm sorry the iPhone isn't available on Verizon. I'd buy it in a heartbeat. The people who have it are having way too much fun.

But, I've heard horror stories of AT&T's lack of coverage. A woman who works at Yale in downtown New Haven says since she switched from Verizon to AT&T, she can't make or receive calls. A person with whom I used to work was shocked one day a few years ago when she called her husband in Bethel, a town in Connecticut near Danbury, to open the garage so she wouldn't have to go out in the snow. You guessed it: No service.

Well, I'm going to wait a while before even looking at the Droid. I want something that will work internationally, and something that will work well. Even the IPhone had problems (I'm not sure if you can change your own battery even now), so let someone else beta-test it.

I'll stick to my years-old Samsung that I got for nothing or next to nothing. It makes calls, received them and in a pinch, I can text with it. And it never, or almost never, loses calls.

How dumb is this?

The Hampshire Gazette is the daily paper in the Amherst, Mass., area, named after the county, not the college.

It contained a story that is hard to believe, but I am assured is true.

The good people of Amherst, Mass., in Representative Town Meeting assembled, have issued an invitation for two residents of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to live among them. No, not the Cubans, the guests of the government. In other words, suspected terrorists.

They say that those who move to Amherst should not be convicted of terroristic acts against the United States of America. One of those is a former Russian soldier who said he didn't get a fair shake in the Russian Army because he was a Muslim. He could not get Halal food (that's the Muslim version of kosher -- no pork), and was not allowed to pray.

So, how did he come to the attention of the U.S. at Gitmo? According to him, he ran away to Afghanistan. The Russians were on his tail, so he made up a story that he had been in training in an al-Qaida camp so the Americans would arrest him, not the Russians.

So, off to Gitmo he went. But there, instead of being patted on the back, he got locked up.

So on the force of this tale, which has my BS meter working overtime, the good people of Amherst invited him and a buddy to come live among them.

This guy is either dangerous, or a complete idiot. So are the naive people of Amherst who don't seem to think things through.

I'm told that the invitation will only take force if the State Department goes along with the gag. That make me confident beyond measure.

God bless fools and do-gooders.

Until next time...

Things ain't what they used to be

2009-11-08T18:36:00.004-05:00

Happy Monday

OK, here's the old codger ranting again about how things are not what they used to be.

Well, yeah. This week, things seemed to be not so good- all along the spectrum. There was nothing earth-shaking like my computer blowing up or other catastrophe.

It was the little things, like commercials. There were these two pigs eating a ham steak. That's so wrong for so many reasons, none of which had to do with my not eating meat in general and pig meat in particular. For the life of me, I can't remember what the spot was trying to sell, but that image was just so bad, so wrong.

Last week, we went into a store, one that is heavily advertised as a place that one remembers from childhood. Children, believe me when I say there was a time when department stores actually had people who helped you find what you wanted and knew their products.

I shave with an electric shaver. I don't really like it, but Jewish law says you can't use a blade so I do it. My wife bought this shaver for me and it's probably the best around. It came with a device that charges and cleans the shaver. To do the cleaning, it uses a fluid, an expensive fluid. So, off we go to this store.

Now, you will probably notice I haven't used the name. That's on purpose. I'm not really afraid of libel because I'm telling the truth, which is an absolute defense, but because it's not worse than other stores.

So, I went to this store because I had bought this fluid in this place when the store had another name. That store could trace its roots back to G. Fox & Co., a store that once had a policy that a customer was to be greeted with a minute of entering a department. Really.

So we went to this store last week to seek out the fluid. They didn't have it. They had the shavers, but not the fluid. I asked the children whom the store paid, probably at minimum wage, to be in this department. Now I could say that these kids were dumb, which probably is not the case. I could say they could care less about the customer, but were just interested in this conversation they were having. That would be true.

I asked this pair if they knew who sold the fluid, and of course they didn't. That didn't bother me as much as the attitude. Why are you asking us? Why are you bothering us?

Fortunately, another customer said he had had the same problem and had found the fluid at Wal-Mart, where I refuse to shop, and Bed, Bath and Beyond, where I found it.

Since I'm on this kick, here's a few other things that crawled under my skin this week.

Newspapers. Here's a cute monograph on what happened to newspapers. I don't agree with everything he says, but on most points. And, by the way,

Elections. Last week in New Haven, we had an election for mayor and the Board of Aldermen, which is the city's legislature. About 18 percent of the people voted. That was a joke, as was the ticket. There was no organized opposition to the longtime mayor. It's not that the mayor is doing a bad job. He's not. It's that there was a lot of time and money wasted on the election. There are 30 seats on the board, and there were real contests for two of them.

Bosses. Craig Dubow, the head of Gannett, my former employer, has a 20 percent approval rating among his employees, the few that are left. That probably has a lot to do with his dismal rating.

The fun part of this is that he is only the 21st most reviled boss in the nation, according to Glassdoor.com. The guy who runs LexisNexis has an 8 percent approval rating. As Maurice Chevalier sang in Gigi, "Oh, I'm so glad that I'm not young anymore."

Veterans Day

I hope some of the young, blond and banal are reading this. That's what I call what passes for television news anchors these days.

So, here it is again. This is Veterans Day. It used to be called Armistice Day, that day when The Great War ended. This is not the day we honor just dead veterans. That's in May.

So, please don't get it wrong again. Wednesday is the day when we honor all veterans, even those who are still alive -- especially those who are still alive. If you want to honor just dead vets, you have to wait until spring. Got it? Probably not.

Health care

I can't figure out why doctors, of all people, are against the health-care bill passed this past weekend by the House. The American Medical Association is for the bill, but doctors I know are against it. They also say the AMA doesn't represent them. Strange.

A couple of things. The bill is thousands of pages long, and most of that is gobbledygook that doesn't mean much to many people. It doesn't mean much to me.

There are two points I want to make, and then you all can have a tea party on my lawn if you want.

Point One: The administrative cost of private insurance is about 35 percent. The administrative cost of Medicare is 3 percent. So much for an expensive public option.

Point Two. It's not that uninsured people are getting no medical care. That's not true. They are not getting preventive care, which means when they do get medical care, it's usually drastic and costs lots of money. People who have no medical insurance come into the emergency room for everything from hangnails to heart attacks.

The problem is that those with hangnails are taking up time and space that could be used for real emergencies. You know, that's why it's called the emergency room.

So, instead of them paying say $75 for the hangnail in the doctor's office, we pay $500 in the emergency room. Notice I said we pay, not the patient pays. We, those lucky or old enough to have insurance, pay with higher premiums because insurance companies pay higher rates that include write offs of those charges rung up by those without insurance.

Making insurance possible for people who cannot afford insurance now spreads the cost out a little more. It makes sense. Do you hear that, Senator Lieberman.

Now, don't get me started on that guy.

Until next time...

2009-11-01T11:35:00.002-05:00

Happy Monday. Hey, I don't think anyone will be reading this on Sunday, so why not get the wishes out a day early.

Welcome to Eastern Standard Time. One would think that with an extra hour of sleep, one would be bright eyed and bushy tailed. Not so. Even though we avoided the usual lets-see-how-late-we-could-stay-up-because-there-is-an-extra-hour stupidity, Sunday was a lazy, lazy day.

It's November, the month of Thanksgiving. The family of five turkeys that had spent much of their mornings in our backyard has disappeared. Smart. Even though we wouldn't harm them, for many reasons, some of our neighbors might see them as an escape from having to pay two or three bucks a pound at the supermarket.

Silly season

Usually, the silly season is defined as the few weeks leading up to an election. Not so in New Haven. There is voting on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009, but it's not really an election. There are two or three wards, out of 30, in which there is a real contest. The race for mayor is a joke, with three independent, ill-financed, undefined candidates vying for second place against a longtime mayor running a professional, well-financed campaign.

The mayor has spent money sending flyers and four-color printed post cards many times. I guess he has money and many good reasons to spend it, mostly because legally he has to. (By the way, keeping with the usual practice of commenting on issues on which I report for the New Haven Independent, there will be no endorsements for political office.)

The silly season around here has to do with driving, walking, biking and other forms of locomotion.

Last Friday, I was stuck behind a left-turning car at a light on a major city road. The car turned just as the yellow light appeared, so I decided to sit and wait for the next green light. Count five seconds or so, a car goes through the light, now red. Count five or six more seconds, and another car goes through the intersection, followed closely by another. By the way, I shouldn't say car -- two of the three were SUVs.

For reasons passing understanding, once the weather starts to turn and the Thanksgiving - to - New Year's season is upon us, people start driving as if the other cars on the road were apparitions placed there for their amusement.

People act crazy. I'll bet that if you could see into their cars, you would see them, eyes glazed and teeth clenched. I don't get it. This is supposed to be the season for good will toward all people, not get out your will, you'll need it.

Pleasant memory

Friend wife and I took a couple of days off last week and traveled to Old Cape Cod. We have loved the cape since before we were married, nearly 38 years ago, but mostly go to the Outer Cape -- Eastham and north.

This time, we went to Falmouth, a picturesque town on the upper cape, which means the southern part of the cape.

There is a beautiful, 10-plus mile bike trail called the Shining Sea Trail that goes from Woods Hole, a one-industry (marine research) village to North Falmouth. It's flat, paved, off-road and a joy to ride. Last Monday was a perfect day for bike riding -- cool, a bit of a breeze, clear but not severe clear.

We chatted with a few fellow riders, some of whom were our age or older. There seemed to be a more relaxed atmosphere than on the Cape Cod Rail Trail, the 26-mile plus trail that leads from Dennis into Wellfleet. I don't know if it's the season, the place or just dumb luck, but we had a ball riding and chatting.

Falmouth is a more concentrated place than say, Eastham, which really doesn't have a downtown. It's an easy-walking town, although the tourist-agency maps tell you to stay off the main streets if you are biking. Good idea.

While we were walking along, past a large and well-maintained school and library complex, we came upon a lake. It was an hour before sunset, the light was perfect, and we stopped to take some photos of the lake. We saw this duck couple, one male and one female, having dinner.

They didn't seem to mind that we were taping their dinner feeding, so enjoy.

I think it mirrors people -- it doesn't matter how many times you have to go in circles, the objects is to get that morsel for which you are vying. Take that any way you wish.

Have a great week. And even if it is a ridiculously uncontested election, get out and vote. It'll keep you in the habit for when it does count.

Until next time...

C'mon, Connecticut Magazine. Get real

2009-10-23T15:40:00.003-04:00

Happy Friday.

I know it's a lot to ask for, but wouldn't it be great if the Filthy Swine, otherwise known as the New York Yankees, were to repeat the Chokes on Us, the worst choke in the history of sport, this year and lose to the L.A. Angels in the American League payoffs.

I saw the look on some of the Yankees who were on that fateful team, that "no, not again" look, as the Angels clawed back after the Yanks clawed back, and then went on to win, sending the Yanks back home to the new stadium and the virgin lawn. That's the lawn that other teams had not danced on. The Red Sox, in 2004, had danced on the old stadium lawn.

Maybe now, it's the Angels' turn. Wouldn't it be nice...

Page 2

I know it's hogwash, but the Connecticut Magazine ranking of the state's cities has gotten my goat.

The magazine, in its November issue, ranked many of the state's cities and towns on the following categories: education, economy, cost of living, crime, leisure/culture.

I think New Haven got a bum rap. Here's why.

OK, New Haven, like all cities, has crime. Some of it is fun to report, like the guy who robbed a downtown bank, got covered in red dye when the pack went off (notice, please, that I didn't say he got caught red-handed) and got caught while waiting to pay for a soda.

Most crime, however, is hurtful to the victims and the general community. But reading the statistics doesn't give you the whole picture. I think the city deserves more than a next-to-last rating for the work the chief and his officers are doing trying to contain it.

For education, the magazine used mastery tests and other scores, you know, like No Child Left Behind did. Wrong. How about the moves the city is making to bolster its education. All my kids went to New Haven schools during most of their elementary and secondary school careers. Two of them went to Russia on exchange programs, another went to Eastern Europe on a program. All went to college and two earned masters degrees. Not so bad. Don't blame the education system for the lack of parent involvement. Having Yale here doesn't hurt. Many high school kids take courses at Yale and Southern Connecticut. Not so shabby.

Cost of living, no problem. Leisure drew a first-place award, as it should. New Haven has as many cultural opportunities as any city its size -- and many a lot bigger -- in the nation.

The one that really gets my goat is Economy. The survey gave New Haven 14 out of 17, with the highest number being the worst. This is really stupid. What's the criteria? A score issued by the state that rates population, per-capita income, equalized grand list per capita, unemployment rate, mill rate and per-capita aid for children.

New Haven has a lot of nontaxable buildings, the highest in the state, between Yale, Southern Connecticut, other colleges, hospitals, and the like. It said adjusted equalized grand list that might take some of that into account. It should say so.

But, Charlie and friends at Connecticut Magazine, get out of Trumbull and take a drive to New Haven. You could have stopped by coming back from that eating junket you all took to the casinos.

The place is a forest of cranes. The new cancer center, the Gateway college project, the 360 State Street project, the buildings along Route 34 corridor including all the research buildings, the new research building that will start construction as soon as the state gets off its butt and turns over the Lee Connector to the city. Come on. Is there a place in the state as busy? I don't think so.

So, Charley, I think you know better. So, like the Dodger fan of yore, I'll wait until next year.

Page 3

Our friends at Gannett, my former employer, saw profits tumble 53 percent, but results still beat raised expectations, helped by cost cuts. The company's operating expenses fell 14 percent in the third quarter, according to a published version of the company's release.

Well, it didn't hurt that, at the Journal News, which forced all staffers to reapply for their old jobs, 22 said the hell with it and refused to reapply. In this economy, that is saying something.

So, if you think you have it bad, think of having it so bad you would walk away from your job. Or, as someone told me years ago, consider starvation as a viable alternative to working there.

That guy was wrong when he said it in 1991, but he'd sure be right now.

Page 4

It's Friday. It's supposed to be weepy, but who cares. It's the weekend. Gave a great one and, for our friends in the Tribe, have a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

The U.N. proves its uselessness

2009-10-16T16:45:00.003-04:00

Happy Friday.

My father, may he rest in peace, used to say Americans were at a great disadvantage on the world stage because we thought as Americans. We had our own way of thinking and felt that everyone else in the world thinks as we do or, if they don't, they should. Just ask George W. Bush.

I guess this is spread to South Africa, where a well-meaning but naive judge named Richard Goldstone, hired by the United Nations Human Rights Council to look at last year's fighting in Gaza, where Israel stepped in to stop the scores and hundreds of rockets that had been hurled at Israeli cities and towns from Gaza.

The council, which American Jewish Committee chief David Harris rightfully called the U.N. Human Wrongs Council, voted to condemn Israel and the Palestinian Authority is trying to get the Security Council to condemn Israel yet again.

Or did they. Let's see..they've flip flopped so often on this that one doesn't know what their policy is today. Yesterday, it was to get Israel condemned, along with Hamas, which has beaten the PA in elections and has taken over Gaza by force after Israel unilaterally left that sad territory in 2005.

Their are some truths here. The first one is that out of the nearly 200 countries in the U.N., including East Hatrack, West Oblivion, South Nowhere and others with populations the size of Utah and economies the size of a teen's weekly allowance, only one nation is ineligible for membership in the Security Council's governing body. Guess which one.

The second truth is that Israel's Gaza plan worked. Only a few, very few, rockets have been thrown at Israel since the fighting ended. It's like the separation barrier: Say what you want, but it worked.

Goldstone and the bleeding hearts led by Jimmy Carter and others in the Arabs' pockets have condemned the casualty rate and how not enough Israelis were killed. It wasn't fair. The Israelis were much better armed, better led and, it must be said, didn't present themselves as targets as much as they did in fighting , so fewer Jews died.

Tough.

If you go after the big dog, expect to get your ass bitten off. If you keep attacking Israel, which is still the best led, best equipped, best armed force in the region, then you have to take your lumps. The Arabs know this. They understand force. Sorry if this seems to be racist, or militarist or any other kind of ist you can think of. It's not politically correct, but it's true and the Israelis know it. Bibi Netanyahu knows it; Arik Sharon knew it.

It's not political but true. And the Israelis got sick and tired of picking rockets out of schools and hospitals so they went in with the message the Arabs understood loud and clear.

My father knew, and now you know.

End of the week.

I have to go...need to pick up something for friend wife and Shabbos is coming fast. Have a great weekend. Mazel Tov to Rhoda Zahler and her fiance, who will be called to the Torah Shabbos at BEKI. New York Yankees should lose if they get to play at all because of the weather, and for those in the Tribe, have a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

This time, they danced on our lawn

2009-10-12T17:39:00.003-04:00

I'd like to say happy Monday, but I can't.

There's no joy in Beantown. The mighty Red Sox have struck out.

OK, so that's not entirely correct, but they did lose three games to the Angels of Los Angeles, and they lost the last one at home, at the Fens. They danced on our lawn.

That comes from the wonderful 2005 film, "Reverse the Curse of the Bambino," in which long-suffering Sox fans celebrated the first World Series win in 86 years. "We danced on their lawn," participants said of the Sox dancing at Yankee Stadium after beating the Yanks after the New York Filthy Swine committed the worst choke in the history of professional sport.

Now, it's the turn of the Halos to dance on the Fenway Park lawn. They deserved it. They shut down one of the most potent offenses in baseball and beat a top pitching staff. Jonathan Papelbon, long celebrated as the best closer in baseball, faltered not once, not twice, but three times to let the Halos beat the Sox after being behind by a few runs.

It was no The Chokes on Us, but it was bad enough.

Enough said. As Sox fans have said many a time, just wait until next year.

Thanks, Rev

I heard from the Rev a few days ago. As those who follow this posting know, the Rev. is the exquisite editor and fine human being Jeff Canning, late of the Journal-News desk. He was smart enough to get out of that sad place while the getting was good.he

The Rev also is a careful, talented historian and one of the real experts about the history of the Lower Hudson Valley, most notably The Tarrytowns, now Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.

He also took a guest shot at teaching journalism at this alma mater, Manhattan College, and for reasons beyond understanding, he recommended this blog as one to read. Thanks, Rev., although I'm not sure this one is updated often enough to capture attention.

And, though nobody asked me, if one of you admin types at Manhattan College is reading this, you could do a whole lot worse than have the Rev on your faculty teaching journalism.

It's over

I don't know whether to be happy, sad or just relieved, but the Jewish High Holy Season has finally come to an end. We just took down the sukkah today and put it away for another year.

Choke on it, Bloomberg

I paid my traffic ticket to New York City today. I hope they choke on it. I was going to appeal my conviction, all done via email, but lawyers whom I trust say I won't win. Although I have a moral case, I don't have a legal one.

In July, a few days after my grandson was born and during the time he was hospitalized for surgery, I double-parked in front of my daughter and son-in-law's apartment house for no more than five minutes. Now, in New York City, or at least in the Washington Heights neighborhood, they clean the streets twice a week. So, everyone goes out and moves the cars twice a week. How do they do it? They double park for an hour and a half.

Twice a week, every week except during those times when there is no street cleaning, they double park for 90 minutes. I double parked for five minutes. They don't get tickets. I got one.

How was I different? I have Connecticut plates on my car. So, I got hit. And after writing an appeal to fairness and, of course, losing, I paid up.

As I said, from Mayor Bloomberg down to the guy who gave me the ticket, I hope you choke on it. And, of course, I hope the Yankees lose. Badly. I don't even care if it's the Dodgers who beat them. I can forgive the Dodgers for leaving Brooklyn faster than I can forgive the Yankees for being in the same town that would give a guy a ticket for double-parking to bring some food and other needed supplies to a family that just had a sick baby.

Yes, I told them all that. The answer from an automaton of a judge: It's not a legal defense. So, Mike Bloomberg, choke on it.

Until next time...

If you don't have a good idea, steal someone's bad one

2009-10-05T17:59:00.003-04:00

Happy Monday.

The headline has to do with the next item, not this one.

The Jewish holidays go on and on. Now that Yom Kippur is over, there is another week of holiday season with the holidays of Succos, Sh'mini Azeres and Simchas Torah.

The little huts, or some not so little, that sprung up near Jewish homes mark the holiday of Succos, when Jews eat meals in these succahs. The idea is to show how fragile our lives are and how we can live along with that. Some people sleep in the succahs, and most eat at least some meals in them.

In the first two days, observant Jews must at least say some prayers in the huts, which are not anywhere near waterproof. So, it was see how fast you can get through the ceremonies as the rain came down in buckets. But Sunday was glorious.

On Saturday night, Jews celebrate Simchas Torah, which is rejoicing in the Torah. Most Orthodox congregations read the Torah, the five books of Moses, in one year. Some Conservative and Reform congregations take three years. Anyway, the end of the Torah is read and immediately, the first verses are read, leading to the full circle of the yearly tradition.

Maybe that's where the Lion King writers got the circle of life. It's nice to think so.

The celebration is cool, with people dancing around and, of course, a little liquid refreshment is served to lubricate the revelers.

And after that, that's it until December.

This is what the headline is all about

You will remember the Journal-Register bankruptcy. If you live in New Haven or in other cities served by Journal-Register newspapers, you will remember it.

One of the nastiest parts of the whole thing was the successful attempt to pay some executives bonuses for firing a bunch of people and closing some newspapers. The bonuses added up to about a million and a half dollars. In Connecticut and Pennsylvania, the attorneys general tried to get the firing bonuses cut out of the final deal, but to no avail.

So it was interesting to read to today that Tribune Co. executives are in line for the same type of payments, even though hundreds of employees had been fired and newspapers closed or sold. This is taking place in the Delaware courts and it looks as if the judge will go along with this idea, just as the judge had in New York with JRC.

It always has been a function of bonuses to reward past performance, as well as to get those who didn't get bonuses to work a little harder in order to qualify for the reward. I have nothing against bonuses. I certainly took those awarded to me and felt they were well-earned.

But when hundreds if not thousands in Tribune, JRC and other newspaper companies are losing their jobs more due to management errors and omissions than anything the news people have done, perhaps it's not such a good idea. It's unseemly.

But I'm confident that the judge will allow this miscarriage and others will follow suit.

It's blood money. It's wrong. But that won't stop Sam Zell's people at Tribune and others from following JRC's bad example. After all, it's a long tradition to tip the executioner.

I've got a baseball question

I've wondered about something in baseball. If Mike reads this, or if Mat does, maybe one of them or another baseball expert can enlighten me.

This is my quandary. A batter steps up to the plate. The pitcher has trouble finding the plate. He throws ball after ball. In fact, one can say he couldn't find the plate with a map or a GPS unit. It would seem to me that the thing for the batter to do is put the bat on his shoulder and leave it there. Four pitches and you are awarded a walk.

But no!! The batter watches one of two balls go wide or high or hit the dirt a foot in front of the plate.

And then he goes hacking. He swings at pitch after pitch. He can't hit the ball. The bat isn't that long. But he stands there hacking and like as not, strikes out.

Why? Why does he do that? Does he think that something will snap in the pitcher's head and suddenly all pitches are right down Main Street? Right in the batter's preferred space instead of being so far off that the man in the on-deck circle is more likely to hit the ball than the batter.

Maybe someone can tell me. And then go tell Boston Red Sox Manager Terry Francona. Tell Tito to tell the batter to watch as the ball goes so far from the plate he may need a telescope to see it.

Mark, I think you've got it.

Congratulations to Mark Shiffrin. He and Avi Silberschatz had an op-ed letter published in the New York Times that says, in essence, that it is useless to try to get people to stop texting or talking on cell phones while behind the wheels and instead build cars that make the practice impossible.

Mark is a smart lawyer, the former state commissioner of Consumer Protection and a died-in-the-wool Republican. Still, I think he's hit on the only way to protect idiots from themselves.

Gee, why didn't Dick Roy think of that instead of trying for years to get this prohibition through the Connecticut General Assembly? Roy, a Milford Democrat and former newspaper editor, tilted against this windmill and ended up with the most disobeyed law on the books, perhaps even more broken than adultery or stealing grocery carts.

When walking, I try to count the cars that go by with the driver NOT talking on the cell phone. It's easier than the other way around because there a far fewer not talking than talking. Also, those who are wandering across busy streets far away from crosswalks also have a cell phone screwed into their ears. Are they lonely without somebody jabbering in their ears? Or are they listening to music because heaven forbid they be without entertainment for a few minutes.

What do I do? I've got this very uncomfortable Bluetooth device that screws into my ear, or at least seems to. But I use it because with the lack of skill and smarts evidenced by drivers in New Haven, it is advisable, nay necessary, to keep both eyes on the road.

Anyway, congratulations, Mark. I think you've hit it. The only way to keep people from doing stupid things is to keep them from doing stupid things.

And here come the Libertarians.

Until next time...

Blood money

2009-09-30T18:30:00.002-04:00

Good Wednesday. I hope all who celebrated had a meaningful Yom Kippur and an easy fast. It's a 25-hour fast, really more than that because you have to say the evening service, then wait for the food to be prepared.

It's physically and spiritually cleansing, however.

At the same time, my wife and I have been to funerals on succeeding Tuesdays. It's something we hope doesn't continue.

And now on to the subject of the day, corporations, media corporations, which make money by slaughtering (financially, that is) people who have given heart and soul to the place.

No, I'm not talking about the Journal-Register, which seems to have kept the word of its interim chairman not to lay off any more people in New Haven, at least.

This time, it's my former employer, the Gannett Corp.

An item on the WSJ wire:

"Gannett Co., publisher of USA Today, said it expects to report third-quarter profit that far exceeds forecasts on Wall Street, adding to hopes that the worst of the downturn may be over for traditional media outlets such as publishers and broadcasters.

"Gannett also announced plans to sell $400 million in five- and eight-year notes as it joins the raft of companies raising fresh capital to pay off other debt.

Following the announcement, shares of Gannett rose about 17% to $11.69 in Tuesday morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, extending a strong summer rally in the stock."

Well, whoopdy doo. It doesn't say how Gannett is going to accomplish this. It's selling bonds to pay off previous bondholders so it doesn't have to declare bankruptcy in 2011, as rumored.

Gannett is the nation's largest newspaper chain and publisher of The Journal News, a shadow of its former self, in Westchester.

A friend inside the paper, who is still employed, says that the latest bloodletting in August carried away some of the most talented people, especially photographers and photo editors. I won't mention the name of this friend because I want the friend to continue to be employed.

I couldn't believe who was let go. Three photographers who had won just about every photo award short of the Pulitzer Prize were let go. One had passed on the early retirement package that I took because that person needed the medical benefit and the income to take care of a sick relative. There is no mercy in Gannettland.

Two talented photographers who had been there for at least 20 years and two photo editors, including one who had been there for at least a dozen years.

The business editor and the financial editor, both gone. A great New York Giants beat writer, gone. A copy editor who had moved up from the South to learn Yankee ways, gone. The Yankees beat writer hit the road to Boston.

The place is a mess. But there are still managing editors, deputy managing editors, all kinds of middle managers. Glad to see the back of it. I wish those who are left much patience.

It slices; it dices

Are you as sick of stacked ads on television as I am? Sue and I counted 11 stacked ads between program segments on either USA or TNT or both.

One that gets my goat is the "free credit report." What a rip. Yes, if you sign up for the credit watch program, you can get a credit report. But you need to sign up for the service before you get the credit report, so how is it free?

In addition, on some of those that you get as a "service" through your credit card, you may get a report, but with some of them, if you want your credit score, you need to fork over $12.

And to top it all off, there are three credit-rating agencies from which you should get reports. You want the other two? Fork over another $30 or so.

So, you pirate guy, shut up.

And speaking of shut up, how about the WCBS sportscaster who is always talking about refinancing his house through this mortgage banker and not dealing with "my bank."

Well, Gary Stanley, if your bank is so horrible, why is it still your bank? Change banks and shut up. Please.

Bye, bye Bambi

In the lede of this posting, I talked about attending funerals on two succeeding Tuesdays.

This last one was for Bambi Bixon. Bambi's given name was Beatrice, but nobody called her that.

Bambi was one of the stalwart group that meets once a week to study the Hebrew Bible, hoping to get to all 24 books of it . Bambi was one of that group.

She was born in Brooklyn, married, had one son.

Bambi was a woman of sublime intellect, razor-sharp inquisitiveness, wonderful sense of humor and asked and gave no quarter. She had a difficult life, but found sublime satisfaction with her relationship with friends in Iceland. She went there every summer.

She loved things Norse, and I hope when she gets to heaven, as she surely will, it appears to her as the Hall of the Valkyrie.

She was a tough lady, a feminist to the end, and we will all miss her. She would rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, and if there is any justice, she will get to laugh with the saints, because she certainly belongs there.

Her funeral was a traditional Jewish affair that she helped plan as her final illness progressed as she knew it would. But in my heart of hearts, I would have loved to see her on a Viking ship, sailing slowly into the sunset as the flaming arrows set it afire.

Fare well, Bambi.

Until next time...

Happy Tuesday and here we go again

2009-09-22T14:31:00.003-04:00

Hello. Thanks for looking in.

As I said last week, it's been a long time, about a month, since there was something written in this space. A lot has happened, and some of that has to do with why it's been a long time since something had been written in this space.

So, let's get right to it.

First of all, thanks to all of you who have checked back from time to time, even though the same old, same old was here.

In fact, since this blog began in December, 2006, there have been more than 10,000 hits on it. Now, some places get that many hits in a minute or less, but this is one guy's blog with nothing to sell or no ax to grind. So, not bad.

Thank you all.

Speaking of that, I just got an e-mail asking me if, for money, I wanted to review others' blogs and products. No, thanks. It's not that I'm too precious, it's just that I want to be able to say what I want to say, when I want to say it.

The only criteria to which I want to adhere is that it's really my opinion, it's hadn't been bought and paid for, and (hopefully) the logic makes some kind of sense. That's the goal.

So, let's start out with the second 10,000. By the way, the counter doesn't count me. I have a way of making that happen. Isn't software wonderful...when it works?

So where ya been?

Many of you know I free-lance for the New Haven Independent, a Web-only news site that covers New Haven. I had a few stories to cover. More about that later. My daughter also had a boy. I talked about Aaron and his b'ris in a previous posting.

Well, when that was written, it looked as if he was headed to a full recovery. No so, at least not

then. He was taken back to the hospital, and, of course, we had to be there to help. He seems to be on the right path now, thank God.

Add a bit of personal illness, some other concerns, a bit of plain laziness and that's where the time went.

The Annie Le caper

As I said, I work for the New Haven Independent on a part-time basis. Those guys did a great, wonderful, marvelous job of covering the Annie Le tragedy, breaking lots of stories and angles but not giving out the name of the suspect until he was arrested.

Some news organizations could only say they were the first to give out the suspect's name when he was little more than a twinkle in the cops' eyes. Others messed up the coverage altogether. And then there are the cable channels, the headline channels, with their "experts," shrinks who knew little about the case but said the motive for the slaying of the Yale graduate student, must be unrequited love, class jealousy and a dozen other things on the part of the young man who has been charged in her slaying.

By the way, the crime has been called murder. It's not until a jury says it is. It's a homicide. The prosecution says it was murder, but haven't said which kind, whether murder, capital felony, or felony murder. It couldn't be arson murder.

If the defense can convince the jury that there was extreme emotional disturbance, then the verdict could be manslaughter. Unlike Law & Order, in Connecticut, extreme indifference to human life is manslaughter in the first degree, not Jack McKoy's ubiquitous murder in the second degree. So, for now, it's a homicide. You want to know more? Look it up.

By the way, I had little to do with the coverage. It wasn't planned that way...it just worked out that way. My old boss at the Journal-Courier of New Haven, Bob Granger, used to say that even the biggest story is still only one story out of many. I covered some of the rest. Some were pretty exciting, others routine.

Therefore, I feel I can comment about the coverage without patting myself on the back. Just so you know.

Marcia Chambers, who runs the Branford Eagle, which is part of the Independent family, broke the story about the suspect's former girlfriend telling the cops he made her have sex.

The story was well-documented and sourced. But the next day, it became "Yale hell-raiser's sex shocker" in the New York Post, complete with photo of the suspect dressed as the devil taking up Page One of the tabloid.

The latest is that paper's story saying that the victim's bones were crushed to get her into the utility space where her body was found. No basis in fact, the cops said.

The definition of a newspaper story I've always used is: The best possible version of the truth.

Getting it on the street first is good; getting it right first is better, getting it first and right is best.

That's what the Independent folks did. First and right. I'm as proud to be associated with these folks as any I've dealt with in my long practice of the craft of journalism.

That's saying something.

Apologies to New Jersey, New York and Maryland

Often in the past, l have excoriated drivers from New Jersey, New York and Maryland for being selfish, unskilled, witless -- you get the idea. I feel I have to apologize.

They have nothing on New Haven drivers. I'm not sure if they always have been this way and I hadn't noticed, or if some spore from the planet Stupidity has come to Earth and infected drivers around New Haven.

The light turns red. Traffic stops, but only after four cars have flown through the intersection. The light turns green. You had better count to five slowly before proceeding. Cell phones...sorry, Dick Roy, but yours is the least obeyed law in the state, including that against adultery. Dick Roy, by the way, is a Milford state legislator and former newspaperman who campaigned for years to get the cell phone ban enacted.

Stand at any corner. If the number of drivers not talking on cell phones exceeds the number gabbing while driving, you are witnessing a rare event. Phone in one hand, sandwich in the other. Wheel being grasped by two fingers, or perhaps one. Or that one is reserved for other drivers.

State law says pedestrians have the right of way at crosswalks. Ha!

Just stop for a pedestrian at a crosswalk. You're lucky if all you get is a klaxon blast from the car in back of you. And, of course, the dolt trying to cross the street takes his or her sweet time talking -- you guessed it -- on a cell phone.

Drive along Whalley Avenue east of Westville Village. Crossing of the street is done everywhere EXCEPT at the crosswalk. Walk a few feet along the sidewalk to the corner, dear pedestrian, and YOU have the right of way. Cross in the middle of the block, and you don't. Laziness or stupidity. Or both.

Speaking of stupid

We have been entertained in the past few weeks by a flock of wild turkeys in our yard.

Five turkeys live nearby and spend a couple mornings a week in our garden.

Today was especially entertaining. Two of the turkeys -- I think they are all hens -- got into our garden and couldn't figure a way to get out. They strutted down one length of fence, maybe 10 feet, and when they hit the corner, they reversed course, oblivious to the opening in the fence perhaps five steps away.

I thought I'd have some fun, so I got my wife's duck call (used in office pranks, not hunting) and sounded off. Now they really got nervous and they bumped into each other, walked along the fence opposite to the opening. My wife finally want out onto the deck and pointed to the opening.

No sale. But two others came along and must have said something like, "Hey, did you forget you could fly?" One flew over the chicken wire fence, which is all of three feet high. The other paced for another minute, then flew off.

The flock was last seen heading for another yard.

I guess they come to our yard because the word is out we don't cook or eat meat at home (or anywhere else if we have a choice) and they know we're not eyeing them for Thanksgiving.

Or maybe they just don't want to take a chance cross the street. After all, this is New Haven.

Until next time, soon...

Guest blog; I'll be back soon

2009-09-17T16:32:00.002-04:00

This guest column is by Susan R.A. Honeyman

I'm saddened by the death of Mary Travers. We saw her group earlier this year in Waterbury -- one of her last performances was a benefit for public radio. She was hooked up to an oxygen tank and so weak the she would often gesture for the audience to sing her part while she rested. Her singing no longer mattered, though. Instead her voice was the honesty and conviction in how she lived her life. The audience was so appreciative of the courage of this valiant woman. Instead of concert, we were just 2,000 friends singing together for a better world.
When the gracious depart, the world is diminished.

This is the Lens back again.

It's been a month since this blog appeared, and yet some of you have come back from time to time to see if that guy has anything worthwhile to say.

Thank you. Keep it up.

There were a number of things that demanded my time. I'm not to kind who can dash off a column in 15 minutes and have it make sense. So, if you can't say anything well, don't say anything.

One hopes that some of these demands on my time will end soon. Then again, i hope that other demands on my time never end.

I'll explain further when I come back -- soon. I promise.

In the meantime, to those in the Tribe, a wonderful new year, 5770. May you be inscribed and sealed for a good, happy, healthy and satisfying year.

And by the way, if you have been following the Annie Le case in any other place except the New Haven Independent, you are missing out. Find it here.

Until next time...

This one is hard to Digest

2009-08-18T16:31:00.003-04:00

There are a lot of magazines in the nation, some big, some small.

The biggest used to be the Readers' Digest. No more. Now, it's about to meet all its old friends in Bankruptcy Court.

For someone of my generation, that's hard to fathom.

Let me be perfectly clear here. I never liked it.

The Digest always had a right-wing approach, and the articles often were shadows. Writers were not able to develop plots or themes with the precis they were required to submit. But the Digest always paid well, either for the silly Humor in Uniform slices or Americana, many of which I suspect were fabrications wrapped around nuggets of truth.

But the articles were about the right length for bathroom reading. Don't get me wrong: I never subscribed, but my parents and in-laws did. But the Digest always was highest in circulation of any magazine with the possible exception of TV Guide.

The Digest also had Condensed Books, in which rewrite people turned novels into Pablum for those without the attention span to read the real things. There also were record collections, some of which also were condensed.

The Digest was printed in many languages, with the same condensed version of life.

I think the bankruptcy will be prepackaged, like the one from which the Journal Register just emerged.

Let's see -- The Readers' Digest Condensed Bankruptcy. It fits, doesn't it?

Page 2

Robert Novak died Tuesday of brain cancer. He was 78.

Like the Reader's Digest, I never liked him, either.

His politics was just a bit to the right of Attila the Hun and he wasn't a nice man.

How do I know? Let me tell you a story.

Back in 1970, I was a neophyte in the news business, first a reporter then managing editor of the Wethersfield Post weekly newspaper in Connecticut. I had been working in news about a year when I was invited to a luncheon in Hartford.

Thomas J. Dodd, the sitting Democratic U.S. Senator from Connecticut, was up for re-election and he was in trouble. He had been accused of using campaign funds for his own purposes and censured by the Senate. The accusations, by columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, had all but ruined his chances for re-election, but he decided to fight on.

The luncheon to which I had been invited was a last-gasp effort by Dodd, father of current U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, to retain his seat.

I was seated at a table near the back and found myself sitting next to Bob Novak, part of the famous columnist team of Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. He dutifully ignored me and everyone else at the table.

After the meal, Dodd rose to speak, tearfully all but begging for his seat. It was painful to see. But even more painful was the reaction of Novak. He stood, made rude noises, catcalls, everything but the Bronx cheer. It was disgusting.

I said something like, "Look, Mr. Novak, you are this famous columnist and I am working for a weekly paper in Connecticut, but don't you thing that after eating his food, you owe Dodd the courtesy to listen to what he has to say?"

He told me to shut up and mind my own business, or words to that effect. I was mortified.

That was the only time I met Novak in person, but as far as I was concerned, he was a rude person who didn't deserve the success he enjoyed.

And now he's dead. And so is Tom Dodd, who died the next year. And his son is having ethics problems tied to a mortgage he got for one of his homes.

And the world goes round and round.

Page 3

I am concerned with the thinking process, of lack thereof, of some of my fellow citizens.

I was listening to public radio, when the host was airing some comments from listeners about the health-care debate.

One would think that listeners to public radio are a bit more intelligent and informed than watchers of Fox News and listeners to the radio crazies like Rush Limbaugh. But based on today's performance, you might not be correct.

For example, one fellow from Tennessee was saying that he was dead set against any government role in the reformed health-care package. Dead set against.

He did say, however, that he was for making the insurance companies cover people with pre-existing conditions and making them cover people who now have no insurance coverage. He also did say he wants the premiums to be set low enough so poor people can afford them.

But no government interference. How can capitalism function if we keep fooling around with it?

I have a question. Who is it that is going to assure that the insurance companies cover the people they don't cover now, for less money than they charge now? Who if not the government?

Others say they don't want government bureaucrats deciding who gets coverage? Who, then? Would you rather have insurance company functionaries whose marching orders include saving the company money in any way possible? That's what he have now, which is why you have stupidity like no pre-existing conditions and sick people kept out of the system.

And, please, let's leave the Death Squad silliness to people like Sarah Palin, whose rhetoric shows what happens to the brain if one uses too much hairspray for too long of a time.

I have modified Medicare. I love it. Bring on government single-payer system.

Page 4

Thanks be to God and some great doctors, we had a bris for my grandson on Sunday, Aug. 16. And I can now introduce you to him by name: Aaron. He's named after my grandfather, Aaron Honeyman, who used the name Harry in his working life but was called Aaron.

The affair went perfectly. For those who are unfamiliar with Jewish practice, a bris, or more correctly Bris Milah, is a ceremony in which he is circumcised and he is officially welcomed into the Jewish people. In Genesis, God tells Abraham to circumcise himself and his sons as a perpetual mark of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. The bris is a continuation of that covenant. If you don't know what circumcision is, look it up.

It's an occasion of great joy, except perhaps for the guest of honor, who cries for a few minutes and then is just fine.

Aaron was born on the Sabbath, which ordinarily would have meant his bris would have been on the following Sabbath. Although the bris includes actions usually forbidden on the Sabbath, it is considered so important that for this one ceremony, these actions are not only allowed by mandated.

But Aaron's first few days of life were not ordinary. He was diagnosed with a condition that required surgery. You cannot give a Bris Milah to a sick child.

Aaron recovered, however, and last week, the doctors and the mohel, the person who performs the bris, all said he was healthy enough. So, with great joy, I can now report that Aaron, son of daughter Malka and son-in-law Josh, is officially welcomed as a member of the Covenant of Abraham. Mazel Tov!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For a video of the ceremony.

Until next time...

Dark, dark days for former colleagues

2009-08-13T14:42:00.002-04:00

Happy Thursday.

There was some vexing news in the New York Times this morning.

The Journal News, the Gannett paper from which I retired a few years ago, is slicing, no make that gutting its newsroom.

According to the story, everybody in the newsroom and advertising departments is out of a job. They will have to apply for their jobs, many of which have been reconfigured so their own mothers wouldn't recognize them.

When all is said and done, there will be 50 fewer newsroom jobs and 20 fewer advertising jobs. Last week, 57 jobs in information technology, production and finance. That makes a lot of sense in an outfit that is heavy on information technology and the Web.

This from a newspaper that has already sent advertising layout jobs off to India.

Those who follow this blog will remember that in July, Gannett cut some 1,400 jobs across the 80-plus daily newspapers it still owns, with USA Today not sharing the hit At the time, it said The Journal News, which circulates in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties would have to wait until August to find out its bad news.

It's August, and they found out the bad news this week.

The word out is that Gannett, in spite of slightly increasing advertising sales, may have to declare bankruptcy in 2011 because it won't be able to satisfy its obligations to its bondholders.

Gannett is the nation's largest newspaper chain. USA Today alone circulates more than 2 million copies a day, although many of them are either given away or sold for a pittance to hotels and airlines.

Back to the Journal News. According to the story, 25 percent of the newsroom jobs will be eliminated. Usually, one figures that a lot of open jobs will just go unfilled and that could be counted as part of the layoffs. But here, where they are taking all the the jobs and reshuffling them, I'm afraid that 50 newsroom people will be forced out the door.

The fact that 50 workers will lose their jobs is bad enough. But these are journalists, and this is a newspaper. People count on the newspaper to bring them the news, not necessarily the public relations releases that the government and business interests want them to read.

Good journalism shines a light on goings-on that some want to take place in the dark. Fewer journalists means fewer lights. There's also the BBI, the boring but important stuff, like, for example, if your garbage is going to be picked up this week. That's important, too.

I'm sick about this stuff. So many of the greats have already taken buyouts or early retirement offers, people like Dan Murray, who make sure the news got in the paper and Jeff Canning, who made sure it was accurate. People like Geoff Giordano, who put together the Twin Towers coverage and made it impactful but still full of facts. Folks like Mike Taylor, who knew everybody and everybody knew him. He knew stuff.

They're gone, and folks like Mike von Steenburg and Toni Maconi and Gary McGriff and Dan Donovan and Yaron Steinbuch and Reisman and Baird and Nancy Cutler have to work double duty to make sure readers have what they need. Yeah, I know I left out dozens of good and great reporters, editors and photographers and graphic artists and layout people and copy editors. The problem is there won't be titles like that. Who knows that there will be.

What there will be is 50 fewer people to assure that the reader gets his or her news.

Page 2

The crazy season is well along.

I remember when WTIC radio and WELI radio actually had news. Now it's the crazy screamers saying that the president of the United States intends to set into motion a strategy that could lead to the elderly being euthanized.

Think about that. It doesn't make any sense. Yes, people die because insurance companies and doctors and other professional screw up. But to schedule a meeting with life of death on the agenda? Please.

The screamers are ranting about government-run health insurance. The government will decide whether you get your surgery or your physical therapy or your wheelchair or whatever.

So, now an insurance company bureaucrat, supervised by a nurse, decides those things.

Look, I am under a government single-payer system. It's great. When I paid more in premium for a private insurer, I had a higher copay, higher fees and worse treatment. I have never been turned down for anything.

I remember, vaguely, the McCarthy era. A communist under every ashtray. Good people's lives ruined by hysteria. Here we go again. And who is in back of this stuff: insurance companies and others who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo.

People, citizens, screamers: You are being used and you are too scared or dumb or whatever to realize it. Wake up. Think. Ask yourself: Why would they do this? Conspiracy theories are fun, but not if they cost people's lives and health. Think, damn it.

Until next time...

A long time between posts, but a lot going on

2009-08-09T13:44:00.003-04:00

Well, hello again.

It's been about a month since I've written in this blog, but what a month it's been.

First of all, thanks to all of you who have looked in from time to time. Thanks for your interest and patience. I'll try to be a bit more consistent.

Things have been happening around here and that's the main reason I haven't had time for this blog. Let's start with the most important thing.

About a week after the last time I wrote here, daughter Melanie gave birth to an 8-pound baby boy, her fourth and our seventh grandchild. Here he is with grandpa.

It occurred the same way many of the births in our family have -- timing unexpected. She went to the midwife that Friday and was assured that she had plenty of time before the baby was to be born. We had a fine Sabbath eve dinner and went to bed.

At 6 the next morning, there was Mel knocking on our door with the news that she was in full labor and headed for the hospital. It's the Sabbath so there would be no phone calls or other information until after the Sabbath ended, after 9 that night.

Needless to say, it was a tense time.

The phone rang after 9, and it was her husband, Josh, saying it was a boy and Mel and the boy were doing well.

Well, daughter Esther and I went flying down to St. Vincent's hospital near Greenwich Village to see the baby and pick up Josh.

There was, however, a problem. The baby wasn't behaving quite right. But the next day, Mel and Josh talked us into heading out on a planned week away. Josh was home from work, Esther was available at least one day and, frankly, we would have been in the way. Besides, we had promised my step mom, who lives in Maryland, that we would visit and didn't want to worry her by not showing up.

Of course, we kept in touch from the Washington and Philadelphia areas. A diagnosis was arrived at and the news was the baby needed surgery, which was to be performed at the end of the week. We returned to New York and waited.

The surgery went well and the baby is home from the hospital and, as far as we and the doctors can tell, is doing beautifully.

That was some three weeks. We are grateful to, first of all, God, and the doctors and other medical professionals.

A couple of days after being born, the baby was transferred to the Morgan-Stanley Children's Hospital at Columbia Presbyterian. This is one great place. The NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) is designed beautifully and the staff are angels.

One thing we learned, although we knew it before, was why young people have little kids. I don't know how Mel and Josh do it, chasing after two boys, 5 and 2. Tamar, their 7-year-old daughter, is a joy and helps as much as possible.

My job most days was to take the 2-year-old to the playground. There are a number of really great playgrounds in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. So, Avraham Moshe, the 2-year-old and I go off and swing on swings and play on playscapes and I chase him around, then come home in time for his lunch and nap. It's amazing how fast a 2-year-old's legs can carry him.

Of course, the others have to be taken to camp in the morning and then picked up from camp and taken to all the places kids need to be taken. My pal is Raphi, who is 5. I got to spend a lot of time with him and he's a joy, too. So, that's what I have been doing the past three weeks.

Page 2

Word came Friday that the Journal-Register Co., the parent of the New Haven Register and 18 other dailies in the East and Midwest, had emerged from bankruptcy. What that did was cancel a lot of mistakes the JRC and its predecessor, Ingersoll Corp., had made in buying up a bunch of newspapers for, basically, promises to pay at sometime in the future, and then being unable to pay off those debts.

Much of that choking debt has been canceled and JRC now has financing to the tune of about $225 million, which a lot of experts say it should be able to manage.

The company has promised to pay much of the tax debt it owed to Connecticut. Unfortunately, the judge allowed it to pay a group of executives about $1.3 million for firing workers.

Some of the people who ran JRC before it filed for bankruptcy weren't really nice people. Ralph Ingersoll II, who bought the Register from Stewart Jackson and family, squandered a lot of money on failed schemes such as the St. Louis Sun, which never shone and set very quickly, taking scores of millions of borrowed dollars, and the hopes of a lot of journalists, with it.

I truly hope the new JRC will learn from the mistakes of the past and has the wherewithal to offer its readers the kind of news and other information it hasn't been able to lately.

I have a history with the company. I worked there for 14 years was laid off in 1990, four years after Ingersoll bought the paper, because the finances were in such horrible shape. But that sent me off to other adventures, including stints at some of the nation's largest and most famous newspapers, so I guess they did me a favor.

So I truly do with them the best in their renaissance. The Register has some talented and hard-working journalists who deserve a chance to do their best undeterred by the financial woes caused by past owners.

Page 3

Higher on this page, I mentioned a trip to Maryland and Pennsylvania. In the next few days, if things stay calm on the baby front, I plan to talk about those and some tips on how to get superior hotels for not much money, as well as some other travel hints.

Until next time...

Woe and more woe for print journalists

2009-07-09T14:04:00.004-04:00

"You certainly picked the right time to get out of the newspaper business," a friend said to me last night.

He's right, in a way. I am out of the newspaper business, but not out of the news business. I took a buyout from Gannett a few years ago. But I write and occasionally edit for the New Haven Independent, consult for newspapers and do this blog, which is more commentary, but commentary on the news.

But he's right as far as the newspaper business is concerned. In many ways, we are our own worst enemies.

A few examples. Hearst, which now owns four newspapers in Connecticut (Connecticut Post in Bridgeport, the Stamford Advocate, Greenwich Time and Danbury News-Times), announced that it is laying off 11 newsroom employees around Albany, N.Y., including the reader advocate. That's never a good sign. OK, that paper is located in Colonie, for geographic sticklers like the Rev, but who outside New York's Capital Region knows where that is.

The Journal-Register Co., which this week got permission to emerge from bankruptcy protection, got into trouble by, among other things, buying up newspapers willy-nilly, then having to close them because they could not pay the debt-service tab for having bought them.

I hope Hearst isn't repeating the pattern. I have some friends and acquaintances in some of those papers, and I am hoping they won't lose their jobs. Many have been working, as most journalists do these days, long hours for relatively little pay.

I heard from Tony Doris, a former New Haven Register-Journal-Courier reporter who is grinding it out at the Palm Beach Post in Florida as city hall reporter. He read my story about the Journal-News bankruptcy and wrote to bemoan what's going on in the newspaper business.

In Hartford, the folks at the Hartford Courant-Channel 61 amalgam ended up with egg on their faces over a sex and age discrimination lawsuit filed by veteran Channel 61 political reporter Shelly Sindland. In a story by Connecticut News Junkie editor Christine Stuart, the dirty laundry is hung out. Romenesko comments on the story to say, parenthetically on July 8, that it looks as if the Courant pulled the story.

On July 9, however, there's a complete story by Courant reporter Matthew Kauffman airing the dirty laundry, with comments from Courant execs that the other stories didn't have.

Better late than never. I'm glad that the Courant still has a sense of shame. And good for you, Christine Stuart, for getting this out there so the Courant needed to respond. On the other hand, kudos to the Courant for putting the masthead back on top where it belongs.

But I will be watching to see if the shirts get tighter. That's one of Sindland's complaints, that Channel 61's bosses wanted a younger and more sexy look on camera.

At places such as E News Now, bust lines are falling. I'm not complaining, mind you. You expect that at fluff sites where the "reporters" trumpet their inside sources among the celebrities.

But there is no room for that in the news business. Give me news judgment and institutional memory over exposed mammaries any time.

Things have certainly changed from the time that Channel 61 went on the air, trumpeting its anchor team of Pat Sheehan and Susan Christensen because they said they were better than the competition because of their experience and knowledge of the state and the region.

Page 2

In California, where nothing that goes on should surprise anyone, officials in Los Angeles are turning over rocks, trying to fix blame for the millions it cost taxpayers for Michael Jackson's memorial.

So, if I read the New York Times story correctly, the teary-eyed mourners, many of whom make more money in a day than the average Los Angeles taxpayer earns in a year, won't pony up for the security to keep them far away from their fans.

That's a shame. Not surprising, but a shame. The Jacksons, to whom the city was more than kind, don't feel they need to help pay for this. Somebody did pony up for the Staples Center, where the event took place.

But the charge for the police, the other security providers and the rest, should not be borne by the city taxpayers. We're not talking about a poor family trying to collect enough to ship a loved one back home to be buried. We're talking about a couple of dozen of these pampered ones sticking their hands into their pockets and coming up with what amounts to walking-around money for them.

If that doesn't happen, then the city should make sure the next such event is prepaid.

Page 3

I guess you don't have to be bright to be able to swing a tennis racket.

Ask Anna Kournikova. Enough said.

Until next time...

More of the same old story

2009-07-06T14:03:00.003-04:00

Happy Monday. I hope you all had a good Fourth. Couldn't go out to fireworks Saturday night because the Jewish Sabbath ended about 9:30, a half hour after New Haven's fireworks party started. Ah, well. Next year, it's on a Sunday, so we can have the same fun.

Well, well. About 20 minutes after I posted my blog entry saying Al Franken should be confirmed as the senator-elect from Minnesota, Norm Coleman, the one-term sitting senator who had been appealing the vote count, finally packed it in and conceded.

I didn't realize he read the Lens. (Just kidding...unlike some, I not that conceited.)

More of the same...

My former employer, the Gannett Corp. has announced 1,400 more layoffs from its approximately 42,000 international staff members. Most of the layoffs will come this week, the company has said. Many experts say Gannett will have to file for bankruptcy protection in 2011 because it will not be able to meet its obligations to bondholders,

All the layoffs will come from its Community Newspaper Division, which means that USA Today staffers won't be affected. I guess it helps to be in the same complex as the executives.

The folks at the Journal-News in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties of New York will have to wait until August to find out how many of them won't be working there when the buzzards leave Hinckley, Ohio, for the winter.

I've been through this layoff business a few times. It's a horrible time for the employees and their families who get the boot, but also is horrible for those who "survive." It's counterproductive for the company as well, since much of the workers' time is spent either polishing resumes, worrying or talking among themselves about the upcoming event.

It doesn't stop there. After the chosen ones have left, the "survivors" face a period of mourning and know the work is not diminished by the fact that fewer people are left to do it. The bosses' expectations are not lessened--if anything, they are heightened. So people who now are looking over their shoulders and are depressed by those empty desks now have to face larger workloads and more ridiculous demands.

It would be good to pin the need for layoffs on the bubble-headed bosses. After all, they created the situation in which the company finds itself. But you can't blame them for the economy's tanking and advertising, especially classified advertising, heading to the Internet.

They haven't found an answer to Craigslist taking so much of the classified ads, which were the backbone of local advertising revenue, but neither has anyone else.

I don't think I would recognize the place if I went back to Westchester. Much of the advertising design is being done in India. Personnel issues are done somewhere else. There is a television studio in the middle of the newsroom where Web casts are produced most days. I hear that isn't working out that well either, but that's hearsay.

The copy desk, which had designed and edited only news pages, now has to design and edit most of the newspaper's sections, plus weekly magazine-type publications, with fewer people than a couple of years ago when they only had news to worry about.

The top executives are still there in the newsroom. There's still an executive editor and managing editor and executive news editor. Same number of chiefs, just fewer worker-bees.

A few words

I suppose I should say a few words about Michael Jackson. Strange, talented, sick, driven, consumed. That's a few words.

Sarah Palin is another story. She could have had a big influence on the way this nation is run. She also is another one with many issues. Thank heaven the election came out the way it did. Could you imagine: the vice president rushing into John McCain's office, screaming that she is quitting because the press and those pesky Democrats were picking on her.

She didn't have much to say and spent a lot of time saying it. She didn't have any original ideas and spent a lot of time hawking old, in many cases bad, ideas. Her family is a near-perfect personification of dysfunctional. She is anything by a role model.

She's gone from the national stage, or soon will be. I hope the Republican National Committee realizes the bullet they dodged and allow her to sink into the tundra. Alaska is better off without her, as are the rest of us.

Until next time...

A milestone; enough already on Franken

2009-06-30T15:07:00.003-04:00

This is my 250th blog post. I wish it were more monumental, but so it goes.

My wife and I attended a talk last night on Iran and its implications for the Jewish community.

The three panelists, an academic who specializes in anti-Semitism, a woman who runs an agency that collects facts on human rights and a woman who arrived from Iran a decade or so ago and has published reportage, poetry and academic writing on the land of her birth.

We left unsatisfied.

The academic really didn't have much to add to what we already knew. He was out of his element and tried bravely to skew his knowledge to the subject at hand.

The information collector told us about what had happened 30 years ago when the Shah fled the country, with Jimmy Carter's help, and created a power vacuum that the religious fundamentalists who have ruled the country ever since took over.

It was instructive, especially when she said the death squads that had operated at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in the late 1980s were being reassembled. But she didn't connect any of this to what is happening today.

The young woman who fled her homeland painted an optimistic picture, saying that the Iranian opposition had a 30-year head start and that the mullahs were on their way out eventually.

Nobody spoke to the subject at hand: how all this relates to Israel and Jews.

OK, here's my take. I'm not an expert, but I have a theory.

We in the U.S. are used to our government riding over the hill, bugles blowing, flags flying, guns blazing.

What if the present administration is trying to subtly influence what is going on over there.

What if the theory is: Iran is the key to the Middle East.

If we can marginalize the Iranian regime, or even get rid of the mullahs and their beard Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pun intended), then the rest of the dictatorships will fall in line. Syria, Iraq, Hizbollah, Hamas, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, all of it, could fall apart.

That could not help but aid Israel. One speaker said the Iranians have been told to support the Palestinian cause, but now, they wonder where the Palestinians were when they need help. They are doing what they always do, bit the hand that feeds them. When Iraqi missiles were heading for Tel Aviv, the Palestinians were on the roofs of their government-provided houses, cheering Saddam Hussein. Nothing has changed. It's gimme, gimme but I don't have to do anything in return.

The panel talked about seeking resolutions in the United Nations condemning the Iranian regime for its murderous stomping on the dissidents in Tehran. Right. Fat lot of good that would do, even if we could get one passed.

Iran is the key. I hope President Obama is working way behind the scenes to help the people of Iran to toss out the theocracy that they have said time and again they do not want.

Enough already with Franken

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that Al Franken should be certified as the winner of last November's election. Tomorrow is July. Enough already.

The Republican candidate, incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman, has fought in one court after the other to upset the close election which Franken won by a few hundred votes. Now the Republican governor, who has said he would sign the certification, which has to bear the governor's signature, if the court makes him. The court didn't order him to sign, but did say Franken deserved to be the senator.

I know people in Minnesota are patent people. A group of us once waited, on purpose, through three traffic-light cycles to see if anyone would toot their horn at us. Nobody did. They just sat there.

But this is becoming a joke. The people of that state deserve to have two senators serving them. The governor needs to sign the certification and Franken has to be seated as soon as the Senate returns from its Independence Day break.

Enough already in Hartford

I don't know what's ailing Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell, but she cannot believe that offering the citizens of the state a huge drop in services in order to keep the wealthiest of our residents from having to pony up more taxes, is a good deal.

There are many programs she wants dropped that bring in a profit for state coffers. There are others that the weakest of our citizens need to keep living.

Remember, the cuts she is proposing are good for two years, not just one. We may be booming out of the recession, hampered by a budget that keeps the state from investing in its programs and citizens.

She needs to rethink her stand.

Until next time...

What is that bright, yellow thing in the sky?

2009-06-29T12:56:00.004-04:00

OK, so now it's a monthly. I'm going to try to do better. Really.

For the past couple of days, the sun has come out and it really seems as if summer, or at least late spring, has come.

It's pretty sad when one is walking along and the clouds split for a moment, and one realizes that it's hot and takes a few minutes to realize that it's officially summer. The clouds, rain, dreary mist is not what we signed up for.

They never learn

Last week, my wife and I had the signal honor and pleasure of being in attendance at an event honoring Rabbi Henry Okolica. This man has done it all--held together an Orthodox Jewish congregation in New Britain, where the Jewish community is a shadow of its former self; been a chaplain for state and local police, for the New Britain fire departments, for state and federal veterans' hospitals and homes. He was a television pioneer in the 1960s with a television program that lasted decades on WVIT-Channel 30 and its ancestors.

He so inspired students at the yeshiva in Waterbury that they drive twice a week to attend morning services at his synagogue, Cong. Tephereth Israel, located in the inner city of New Britain, to assure there is a minyan, a necessary quorum of 10 men needed to read the Torah.

It was at a fund-raiser for that yeshiva, held at a banquet hall in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, that Rabbi Okolica was honored. Rabbi Judah Harris and his wife, Rona, rode down with us and Rabbi David Avigdor and his wife, Suzanne, and son Yakov, to honor the memory of the Harris' son, Mitchell Elliott, who passed away years ago at a teen-ager, as well as Rabbi Okolica.

Rabbi Okolica was my rabbi in New Britain so many years ago. I told him about my six grandchildren. He told me about his 104 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I guess when you live into your 90s, you get to have a lot of grandchildren.

But to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, I didn't come to talk to you about dinners, I can to talk to you about health care.

One of the people who showed up at this event was Nancy Johnson, who represented Connecticut's sixth and then fifth district in Congress from 1983 to 2007, when she was defeated by Democrat Chris Murphy.

She's now a lobbyist trying to keep President Obama's health-care reform from being any kind of meaningful.

We talked for quite a long time about the subject, and it became clear that her focus was to keep the playing field level, or, if I may extrapolate, to keep any kind of government-run or even government-sponsored element from coming into the health-care plan.

She was worried that insurance companies would be at a disadvantage because they would not keep up their level of profit if they had to compete against the government.

Disclaimer: I am the beneficiary of a government-run, single-payer health care plan, the same as Ms. Johnson when she was in Congress and perhaps even now. Not the same plan, but the same idea. You go to your doctor, Blue Cross does the work and the government sets the guidelines. I love it.

Anyway, it was an interesting conversation. Nancy was a good pothole congresswoman, you know, you have a problem, you go to Nancy and she solves it as best she could. But I don't think she gets it as far as health-care is concerned. Too much money goes into corporate coffers.

Another problem is the high cost of delivery of medical care.

I had a conversation with a friend who happens to be a doctor. I won't identify him more than that.

I told him about my primary-care physician, and an infected cyst I had. My doc drained it, and gave me some antibiotic and sent me on my way.

My friend was shocked. My doctor should have sent me to a surgeon, who should have done an ultra-sound to make sure this was all it was and the rest. I should have been in pain for a couple of extra days before a specialist could see me.

At the same time, my friend was complaining about how insurance companies repay doctors. He gave a for-instance: Let's say a patient has a hurt arm. The patient goes to his doctor, who takes an x-ray and determines the injury is out of his area of expertise and sends the patient to a specialist. The specialist wants his own x-ray, being that a couple of days have probably past before the specialist could fit in the patient.

The rub for doctors is that insurance only will pay for one x-ray, so the specialist must eat the cost of the second x-ray and a radiologist to read it. Nobody should have to work for nothing, my friend says.

He right. But at the same time, you can't have it both ways.

There may be, in I hope there is, a sea change coming in the way medical service is delivered and paid for in this nation. I think Obama is on the right track, as long as he keeps on it. Lobbyists like Johnson are working overtime to be sure their clients' interests are protected.

Johnson said that's the way the system works and it's a good thing. If we keep the same system, she's right. But I don't think we should be keeping the same system.

One think on which Johnson and I are agreed: We have to develop a patient-advocate system. Too often, a patent is confused by dueling diagnoses. The heart specialist says this, the lung specialist says that and the patient, who in most cases does not have an MD, is left to figure things out. That's all kinds of wrong.

A couple of things to end. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. We have a pretty good health-care system here. It's too bloated, too profit-centered, too costly.

But it works most of the time. We know some wealthy Canadians who talk with pride about their health-care system but keep a residence in Florida just in case they need health care.

I remember a bus trip through the Jordanian desert with the guide going on and on about how great their health care is. At the same time, the former king would check into the Mayo Clinic every time he had a hangnail.

We can fix this. We should fix this. It's more important that just about everything.

This passing didn't make the headlines.

This is a tough week for celebrities. The deaths of Billy Mays and Farah Fawcett were eclipsed by Michael Jackson's demise.

But there was a passing that didn't make the headlines. Rebecca Lazarson passed away last Tuesday.

She was a woman in her 80s, 82 to be precise.

Here's what the obit said: devoted wife of nearly 61 years to Eli Lazarson died at Yale-New Haven Hosp. on June 23 2009. Born in New Haven June 2 1927 she was a daughter of the late Nathan & Ida M. Kaplan. Beloved mother of Norman (Audrea) Lazarson of Stevens Pa. Paula (Jose) Pagan-Rosas of Smithtown N.Y. & Loretta (Julius) Rubin of Middletown Ct. Dear sister of Ruth Polek of West Haven Saul Kaplan of Fl. Goldie Cohen of Holbrook N.Y. the late Ned Kaplan & Rose Cohen. Cherished grandmother of Elise Joshua Jason & Eric.

What the obit didn't say was that she was one of the bravest women anyone could ever know.

She suffered badly from the ravages of diabetes, lost a leg to it. She had an artificial leg but didn't allow her disability to keep her from going around. She complained little if at all about the hand she was dealt medically.

She was a synagogue board member who brooked no baloney. You didn't try to put something over on Rebecca.

You knew where you stood with her. No question. She had a lovely laugh that she exercised every time she could. She raised a lovely family, was a pillar of her secular and religious communities.

I guess you can't ask for more than that.

A wish for Bernie

Bernie Madoff got 150 years. The judge threw the book at him.

I have a wish for Bernie, who ruined the lives of millions directly or indirectly.

May you be taken to an old, rotten prison where the heat doesn't work in winter but works in summer.

May your roommate be a man with liberal halitosis and body odor who snores loudly and brooks no interference with his perverted habits. May he be big and brutish enough to make every waking hour, all 23 a day, a living hell.

Until next time...

GQ, you gotta be kidding

2009-06-05T18:27:00.004-04:00

This has been a week of moments. The president delivered a major address to the Muslim world, known as the Arab Street.

I know when I show up in synagogue tomorrow, all the right-wingers will be waiting for me, screaming "I told you so's" at me about Obama's talk. He's throwing Israel under the bus to cozy up to the sheiks. He's siding with dictators against a democracy.

He's soft on Iran, just because he's allowing Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 parties. Actually, I'd like to attend (can't--it's a Saturday) an Embassy bash, just to watch the Iranian diplomats dive under the table the first time someone sets off a firecracker.

I'll have to discuss all this with the "Obama's an Arab" set. By the way, the Arabs who called him "Abu Hussein" were dead wrong, unless he has a love child named Hussein salted away somewhere.

But I don't want to talk about that now.

I want to talk about pizza. I'm neutral about the subject of really great pizza because I can't eat any. Really great pizza isn't kosher. The Edge of the Woods in New Haven makes a pretty good kosher pizza (Sunday and Thursday, call first, no slices, a few toppings.)

But really great pizza isn't kosher. So, here comes the confession. I haven't always eaten kosher. I have eaten really great pizza right here in New Haven many years ago.

But now I can stand on the sidelines and watch the next version of the pizza wars.

GQ has come out with its list of 25 best pizzas in the nation.

They say a place in Chicago has the best pizza in the nation. You know, that thick stuff, I think they call it deep dish. This place doesn't have deep dish, as a reader pointed out, but Chicago is famous for its deep-dish pizza.

The bad news for New Haven is that the city, which calls itself the place where pizza was invented or at least begun in America, didn't even make the top five.

The best we could do is sixth. Sally's was named fifth runner up, sixth best.

Frank Pepe's didn't even make the top 10. It was voted 12th, beaten out by a joint in Port Chester, N.Y., for cripes' sake.

And the Port Chester (a pit if there ever was one--the village, not the pizza joint) place was cited for its clam pizza, something on which Pepe's hangs its apron, so to speak.

You have to fight through five-plus pages of rationale and complaining by correspondent Alan Richman before you get to the list. First is Chicago, then Brooklyn (of course, New York, not Brooklyn, Nova Scotia. Yes, that exists...nice place). San Francisco, Phoenix and Providence (that hurts) are mentioned until we get to New Haven. Then comes Los Angeles, Manhattan, Philadelphia and then the aforementioned Port Chester before we come back to New Haven. I guess there is solace in the fact we get two onto the list, but then again, just about everyone else does, too. Not Port Chester, thank heaven.

Anyway, I must confess I've eaten both Sally's and Pepe's pies (many years ago) and I agree with Richman about Sally's being better. The service at Sally's was better, too, all those years ago. From what people tell me, that hasn't changed, but I'd have to sustain a hearsay objection to that last statement.

But Chicago having the best pizza?Puhhleeze. Many years ago, while attending a Society of Professional Journalists convention in Chicago, I went great-pizza-joint hunting with my convention traveling companion Richard Peck, who has gone on to that great newsroom in the sky where every desk's bottom drawer has a bottle of Blue Label and you can smoke and cuss as much as you want, never get beaten on a story and they always save you a spot above the fold. Never mind, those not in the business. That's newspaper talk.

But we had to get Chicago pizza. I don't remember were he ended up, somewhere where the pizza was supposed to be great and typical Chicago. Fahgettaboutit.

So, Mr. Richman, thanks for starting the next pizza war. But if you ever want to start a fight about hamburgers, see Louie. Not that I've eaten there, either.

Page 2

It's raining as I write this, but tomorrow and Sunday are supposed to be nice, spring days. Enjoy, have a great weekend and, for those in the Tribe, a great shabbos.

Until next time...

It takes more than a few signs

2009-05-31T17:48:00.003-04:00

This blog is following the lead of many publications these days, going from a daily to a weekly to a twice-monthly to....well, whenever I can. Thanks to you who look in from time to time to time.

And now, the complaint of the day. Well, it's not really a complaint. It's a suggestion.

It has to do with street crosswalks.

My daughter lives in Western Massachusetts, where failure to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks is likely to get you hard looks (if you're lucky), a ticket (if you're caught, which is quite likely) or pulled out of your car, beaten, hanged and drawn and quartered (an exaggeration, but not as much as you might think.)

There are raised, lighted crosswalks in downtown Amherst and Northampton, crosswalks every few feet on Route 116 in South Hadley, the home of Mount Holyoke College and a serious, serious mindset about obeying the rule: When a pedestrian presents himself or herself at a crosswalk, traffic stops. That's all she wrote.

Now, this isn't a new phenomenon. In Britain, it's been going on for decades. Some Americans just don't cotton to those things. My friend Harold Snyder used to stick out the white cane he carried (yes, he's blind) at crosswalks in Oxford, England, when he heard a car approaching close to the crosswalk, just to hear the screeching of tires (or tyres, as they spell over there.)

He was talked to more than once by the constabulary, but, being an American, he continued to play the game, saying he had no idea the chaos he was causing. Right.

But, I digress. (If you're new to this blog, I do that a lot. It's part of the charm.)

Back to New Haven. The city fathers are starting to take stopping for pedestrians at crosswalks seriously. Or at least, they are spending money on signs, both those on stands that picture a crosswalk coming up, and the white plastic-looking signs by the crosswalks themselves.

Last week, there was a guy acting like a crossing guard at Fountain and West Prospect streets in Westville, standing in the crosswalk with his arms out, staring at cars that approached the crosswalk too quickly (not me!!!).

Fine. The law says people in the crosswalk have the right of way, unless the crossing is protected by a WALK light. Well, really, even then. Pedestrians have the right of way at crosswalks.

So far, so good.

Sorry, but it's not going to work. Just isn't. Take this to the bank.

The last statement is not an absolute. It has a big IF...

So, let's take that again. This is not going to work...

IF people don't stop crossing everywhere they darn well please -- everywhere except the crosswalk.

That means they need to walk to a crosswalk. You can't have people crossing in the middle of a block, a few yards from a crosswalk, a couple of feet from a crosswalk.

People have to stop being so darn lazy and move to a crosswalk.

I've been on this jag for a few weeks (Yalies and people who are on Whalley Avenue seem to be the biggest offenders), so I've been keeping watch.

Folks on Whalley, particularly in the area between Park and West Park (that's about three-quarters of Whalley between Broadway and Westville Village, cross in the middle of the street. They will cross a few feet from the crosswalk.

Yalies, and other people downtown, are really cute. They'll cross 10 feet from the crosswalk, darting out from behind a car or a bus. Oh, did I say darting. I meant walking with all the get up and go of a frozen sloth across the street in the middle of the block.

You get what I mean.

Look, I'm hardly the crossing police. But I don't want to hit anyone. I don't want to hurt anyone. I certainly don't want to listen to some idiot's mother screaming that I hit her kid, and deprived the world of the next Jonas Salk. (Look it up)

So, city fathers, when you trot out this campaign, please trot out the education package with it. Cross at the crosswalk. Every time. Walk the half block or 20 feet, or 2 feet to the crosswalk.

Believe me, I'll be the first guy to stop and let you saunter across the avenue.

Page 2

This afternoon (May 31, 2009), the Jewish Historical Society had a gala lunch or brunch, launching Volume IX of Jews in New Haven. Please read the piece in the New Haven Independent.

Dr. David Fischer, an oncology professor at Yale School of Medicine, writer of medical textbooks, teacher of doctors, healer and nice guy, was the editor and wrote many of the articles. OK, I wrote one, too, but still, buy the book.

It's a wonderful peek into many New Haven institutions and people whose names you will recognize whether you're Jewish or not. It's $25, but mention my name and I'll bet they'll let you have it for $25.

Page 3

Nobody asked me, but some of you know I do some reporting and writing for the New Haven Independent.

I've covered some controversial things, some fun things and some BBI things (that's boring but important).

Don't look for my opinion on those things here. I won't do that.

I'm from the old school where you didn't mix news and opinion. I guess Fox News won't come looking for me, because I really think people are smart enough to decide what they think on any issue for themselves -- without my help. Hear that, Limbaugh?

Until next time...

A pleasant surprise, a sad goodbye and some thoughts

2009-05-18T13:21:00.003-04:00

Happy Monday. It's been a while.

Let's start out with some good stuff.

Congratulations to Jennifer Weber, my niece, daughter of my sister, Paula, and her husband Joe Weber, of Marlborough, Conn., on her graduation from the School of Visual Arts, a prestigious, well respected college in New York. She's a cartoonist, quite a good one, and looking for a job. (hint, hint)

Those running her school, bless their little hearts, decided to have the graduation on a Friday afternoon. No biggie, unless you're an observant Jew. There are a few of those in New York. So, we weren't able to take her out afterwards, or help her move from her dorm to summer quarters in the city.

This is going to be like Arlo's "Alice's Restaurant"...I didn't come to talk about graduations, I came to talk (not about the draft) but about honesty and wanting to do a good job.

There wasn't time to drive back to New Haven after the graduation, so we spent the Sabbath with daughter Malka (many in New Haven know her as Melanie) and family in Washington Heights, Manhattan.

As we emerged from the subway, we meet son-in-law Josh and two grandchildren heading for the park. That's unusual for a Friday afternoon. The first words out of Josh's mouth were, "There is nothing to worry about, he'll be OK, but..."

There are few phrases as heart-freezing as those. Turns out Raphi, 4, had fallen and opened a small gash on the back of his head, and was bleeding a lot. Head wounds do that, but he had his his head hard, so Malka had taken him to the nearest hospital, Columbia Presbyterian, on 168th Street, and was not expected back before the start of the Sabbath.

Suffice it to say Raphi was fine after treatment and Malka showed up about 10 p.m., after having walked back from the hospital. Observant Jews don't ride on the Sabbath, unless it was an emergency. This wasn't, at least not anymore. They don't carry, either. So, a bag holding their cell phone, insurance card, some $40 in cash, hospital checkout forms, identifications, and the like, had to be left behind. Malka had tried to get the emergency room guard and others to take possession of her bag, and finally, in disgust and with a few choice words, she left the bag there and walked home.

Fast-forward to Saturday night. Malka and Josh were about ready to start canceling the cell phone, applying for new IDs and the like when grandpa (me), always the optimist or at least the proponent of never assuming the worst (or anything else for that matter), urged them to call the hospital to see if the bag was recovered.

It turns out that not only was the bag found and turned in, but the security department of the hospital had conducted a thorough inventory of the bag's contents and sealed them in a plastic bag with a copy of the inventory. Nothing was missing, not a cent and the cell phone had not been used. Although the guard on Friday night had seemed uncaring, obviously he either had a change of heart or someone else decided to take charge of the situation.

Let's hear it for Columbia Pres' security staff and a hearty thanks to all concerned.

Page 2

Yesterday, there was a memorial gathering for Rev. Sidney Krauser, who has been a stalwart at Cong. Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim in Westville. Mr. Krauser had touched many lives in the Jewish and general community for nearly 60 years before moving to Maryland three years ago. He died last month.

His daughter and many leaders of the Orthodox Jewish community talked about Mr. Krauser, but the essence of the many was best captured by a piece in the New Haven Independent by Paul Bass. Mr. Krauser had run the synagogue, making sure there was the minyan, the quorum of 10 men necessary to say certain prayers, especially the Kaddush for the departed that ties one generation to the other, and to read from the Torah.

He also took care of more mundane duties, making sure there was oil for the furnace, that the place was cleaned. During the days when the New Haven Orthodox community was thriving, he was principal of the Hebrew school. He oversaw the cemeteries and knew the location of every grave in the synagogue's cemeteries.

Sue and I met him in 2002, when we joined Bikur Cholim. He so much reminded me of the men in my father's synagogue in New Britain, men with Yiddish accents who followed Jewish law to the letter and had hearts that could melt gold. Usually, they had names like "old Mr. Cohen" or "old Mr. Lifshutz."

Nobody called Mr. Krauser old. Some people called him Sidney. I couldn't. He would stand on the Bimah, the stage from which services were conducted on Sabbaths and holidays and say things like, "Dis veek, ve got a good kiddish (post-services refreshments), no like last veek. Dis veek, it's a good kiddish,."

It seemed to lack tact, until you found out that last week's kiddish was his. This man read from the Torah, but he had it memorized. He also knew the Prophets and writings, from Joshua to Malachi, by heart. He wasn't a rabbi, but he easily could have been.

I'm sorry I didn't know Mr. Krauser a the height of his powers, but maybe it's better that we knew him when he could let down his guard and be himself. I remember sitting transfixed for hours as he told me his story.

They're mostly all gone now. Mr. Krauser and Norman Rubin in New Haven, Max Prager in New Britain. Those who were not rabbis but held their synagogues together.

Now, I guess, it's up to us.

Page 3

And another one bites the dust. The Tucson Citizen, which had been publishing for 22 years when the gunfight at the OK Corral occurred in 1881, is printing no more. It's now web-only.

The usual...no idea how many of its 60 employees will be affected, but most probably will lose their jobs.

Of course, one usually knows someone who works or had worked at that paper. Jon Ainsworth, still riding the desk at the Connecticut Post (at least I hope he still is...you never know these days), labored for that publication. It's a Gannett paper, and Gannett has announced that its paper publications, even its star USA Today, will take a back seat to the Web.

Page 4

A couple of quickies....I did a piece in the Independent about the upcoming hearings on the Journal-Register's bankruptcy and its plan to pay $1.7 million to executives, either for closing newspapers and firing people, or just for not leaving the company in its bankruptcy. That's the company that publishes the main print newspaper in the city and the second-largest in the state.

It seems the response was underwhelming. Only two people commented. One said, basically, why would anyone be surprised that people are being paid to destroy something?

That's pretty sad.

Also pretty sad was the fact that the mayor of New Haven (choose one) pitched a fit, threw a nutty, started screaming in public at the electric company for leaving the city.

Nobody has a quibble with his message. The mayor should be upset with the power company. That's his job: to keep business in the city, and the electric company could have cut a deal with the city on parking for its employees. That's the excuse it's using for moving to the site of a former movie theater in Orange.

I've met some really strange people who were heads of government. Probably the strangest was Abe Grossman, mayor of Meriden in the 1970s. He was known to take out his dentures and lay them on the lectern before speaking. He stormed out of meetings, but I never heard of him losing it on the public sidewalk.

Mario Cuomo was famous for screaming at enemies and even at staffers who didn't measure up to his standards. The late Gov. Ella T. Grasso could verbally peel wallpaper off the walls when angered and could teach a sailor to cuss.

But never in public. Not in this country. And certainly not in front of the cameras.

Until next time...

Some good news, a little bad news on newspaper front

2009-05-04T17:10:00.004-04:00

Happy Monday. Rainy days and Mondays...You know.

Some good news on the newspaper front: It looks as if The Boston Globe will live to fight another day.

According to Newspaper&Technology: The Globe's owners, otherwise known as The New York Times Co., announced that it had reached deals with six out of seven unions and would not be issuing a 60-day shutdown notice. It looks as if the six unions gave the paper enough of the the $20 million in cuts and givebacks it said it needed to forestall the shutdown. The Times had threatened to shut down the paper, the largest in New England, unless the concessions were reached.

The Newspaper Guild, which represents 700 editorial, advertising and business office employees, did not reach an agreement with the paper.

"We are very pleased to have reached agreements with six of the seven unions that were involved in recent negotiations," The Globe said in a statement. "As a result of these agreements, which are subject to ratification by union members, we expect to achieve both the workplace flexibility and the financial savings that we sought from these unions."

But all might not be well in Globedom. The Globe said it will now pursue other options with the Guild "to achieve as quickly as possible the workplace flexibility and remaining cost-savings we need to put The Globe on sound financial footing."

Maybe that's a good thing for the workers, or maybe it just puts the sword of Damocles over their heads a little longer. Pursuing other options could mean more layoffs or it could mean finding a way to make money from Web ads. Time will tell.

Now for the bad news. Two other newspaper groups have filed for protection under the Bankruptcy Act.

American Community Newspapers, which publishes more than 80 papers, mostly community weeklies, in Texas, Minnesota, Ohio and Northern Virginia, owes $273,000 to Gannett for printing. That's walking around money for Gannett, which is listed as ACN's largest creditor.

The other company, Vancouver, Wash.-based Columbian Publishing Co., owes $17 million to Bank of America. Columbian borrowed the money to for a building in downtown Vancouver and BofA wants its money. The company filed in order to address credit issues with BofA, it said.

That makes seven newspaper groups, some large, some small, that so far have sought protection under the Bankruptcy Act. Let's see: The other five are Tribune, Tribune Co., Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, the (Minneapolis) Star-Tribune, Journal Register Co. and the Sun-Times Media Group.

Page 2

Here's something you don't see too often: a newspaper announcing that it had filed for bankruptcy protection.

Columbian Editor Lou Broncoccio wrote a column detailing the bankruptcy and what led up to it and his hopes for the future.

That takes guts. Looking at your future hopes and dreams is one thing. Sharing the possible tearing asunder of those hopes and dreams is another.

The Columbian is a paper that covers Clark County, Washington. There were a lot of fires yesterday there: a longtime bowling alley caught fire, a man who had been burned died and another who somehow burned will survive, the paper said.

But the burning issue for Lou and his staff is survival. He said his group was tough and the tough survive.

I hope so, Lou.

Page 3

Hey, weathermen. Get your act together. No, not the most radical members of the Students for a Democratic Society, made famous by Bob Dylan (you don't need a Weatherman to tell you how the wind blows).

I'm talking about Geoff Fox and Brad Field (there's a real name for you) and whoever took over for Hilton at Channel 3. You know, weathermen. Those people who promo the weather at the top of the news show, then give the statistics and show the map halfway through the show, then promo the forecast, and who finally give the forecast five minutes from the end of the show. Those people.

Hey, don't you know it's May. Showers are for April. This is May. Knock it off.

Until next time...

Tribune Baltimore layoffs provide a clue to strategy

2009-04-30T11:36:00.002-04:00

There is bad news from Baltimore that may have repercussions closer to home.

The Baltimore Sun, owned by Tribune, is laying off fully a third of its newsroom staff. Closer to home, Tribune owns the soon-to-be-combined Hartford Courant and Channel 61, as well as the New Haven Advocate. More about the connection later.

It's not the number of layoffs, although I have ex-colleagues who work there and am worried about them. It's the jobs that will be eliminated that concerns me about where they are going.

For once, they're keeping the reporters. But they are laying off top editors, news photographers, columnists, sports reporters, copy editors, page designers and graphic artists. (The Sun's designers and artists once were at the top of their field. Other papers sent their designers to learn from them.)

The story says the newsroom was being restructured to fit in all media. It seems as if it is being structured to fit in all media except physical newspapers.

Here's Len'sLens' instant analysis. Let's see how close I come.

Top editors: You want editors who don't have a strong connection to newsprint and you want to get rid of those who believe a good number of readers and the few advertisers who are left want something the reader can hold in his or her hand.

News photographers: Who needs them? Just give your reporters cameras that can shoot still photos and videos. That's what Gannett is doing. Keep a couple of pros around just in case.

Columnists: Who needs them? Just let your reporters opine about their beats. Saves a lot of money. Who needs fair, impartial reportage?

Sports reporters: Keep a few around to follow the major-league and really big college teams. For the rest, get the small-college and high school coaches and members of recreational teams to send in reports and statistics. Besides, most people get their sports from their BlackBerries anyway.

Page designers and graphic artists: Don't need them if there's no page to design and no graphics to create for a newspaper. The artists you want are video designers and Web designers, not people used to working with a physical, 21-inch-long page. See ya!

Copy editors: You'll notice this is out of sequence, keeping the best for last, as it were. It's because this one concerns me. I almost said puzzles me, but it would only puzzle me if I thought the folks running the Sun cared about content.

Copy editors are the unsung heroes of newspapering. Yes, I was one at various times during my career, and still do some editing. That's called the disclaimer.

Cutting out copy editors is like a hockey or soccer team taking away the goalie. The copy editor is the last barrier to libel court, to embarrassment, to, for example, the ever-growing numbers of dumb mistakes that require corrections in the New York Times.

The copy editor should be able to think about the top story, to run it through in his or her head, and then say that this fight in Congress happened in 1858, not 1958.

No matter what format you are using -- paper page, Web page, video, Tweet, you need to have your facts straight. That's why I'm concerned about the copy editors. And the folks who are burning down the Sun should be, too, if they care at all about quality and the peace of mind of their remaining staff.

Believe me, you don't want to pick up a newsroom phone after your publication left out an ingredient in a recipe, or got an important fact wrong in some big shot's obit, or left the "s" out of Johns Hopkins. You get the idea.

Look, I know that editors who used to handle three stories a night now handle 30. But if you are going to blow the whistle on the governor, you damn well had better have it bullet-proof right. That's when you get your best copy editor on the story and give that person all night to parse it. Can't do it if you laid off all or most of your copy editors.

So, what's all this got to do with us? Watch what's going on at the Courant and Channel 61. See if it follows the pattern. See if that piece of paper, even if it looks dumb with the name running down the side, still rules the roost in a year or so.

Or see if Hartford gets a publication that tries to be all things to all people, and ends up being not much to not many.

I hope I'm wrong. Believe me I hope I'm wrong.

Trading in misery

Did you know there was a secondary market in bankruptcy claims?

A secondary market is like the secondary market in mortgages. You get a mortgage and the person who originated it sells it to somebody else. Here, you can sell your bankruptcy claims to someone else. Then they trade them, like pork bellies.

Talk about making money on somebody's else's misery. But then again, didn't thousands upon thousands of mortgage brokers make money on somebody's potential (or damn sure to be) misery? Enough said. Just remember, if you are tempted to make money that way, it really does come around to bite you.

Rant of the day

The word "after." It's used wrong in news reports all the time, and in television talking heads' advice on how to prevent the spread of the swine flu.

"He was injured after his car hit a tree." What happened: Did he come through the accident OK, but then get beaten up by witnesses? No. He was injured when his car hit a tree.

The latest: Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue after you cough and sneeze. So, you sneeze out into the open air, get your snot all over everyone, then cover your mouth and nose. Yes, most people know what they mean, but they need to get it right. They need (drumroll) a good copy editor.

Until next time...

A little niceness to end the week

2009-04-24T12:23:00.003-04:00

Living in New Haven is nothing if not surprising.

Certainly, New Haven is gritty. It's a city with crushing poverty and the threat of crime hangs over certain places.

But it is also a shining place. I just finished going through Charlie Monagan's Connecticut Magazine and its 50 places to eat before you die. Of course, eating kosher, you have a sum total of one -- Claire's Corner Copia's Lithuanian coffee cake.

But for those who don't have that restriction, New Haven offers much more than its share of wonderful gastronomical treats from haute cuisine at the Union League Cafe to the famous pizza on Wooster Street to the burgers at Louis Lunch.

There are world-class museums, great theater experiences. Yes, it's hard to navigate the streets without running into a beggar, but unfortunately, that experience is pandemic, even in smaller or richer towns. There are homeless in Greenwich. Deal with it.

The people also are shiny.

An experience: Westville Village is a triangle about three blocks to a side from the confluence of Whalley Avenue and Fountain Street to Harrison Street near the western end of New Haven. It has more than its share of traffic lights and traffic tends to get sluggish.

Driving west one day last week, I witnessed a rear-end fender-bender. An older econobox rear-ended an SUV. The driver of the SUV motioned for the two to drive to the curb, out of the flow of traffic, to sort things out.

It turns out that the driver of the econobox probably shouldn't have been driving it because instead of pulling over, he took a quick left into the triangle-shaped parking lot at the confluence of the two streets. It has a food shop there now but it used to be a lot of things, most recently a Dunkin' Donuts.

In any case, the driver was looking to escape. I pulled into the parking lot after him, wrote down the license plate, and watched him take a dangerous left through traffic and speed off toward downtown New Haven. I also noticed the hood of the car had been damaged, presumably in this crash.

I then left the parking lot the way I'd entered, pulled to the curb where the SUV driver who'd been rear-ended still was talking to a witness. As I was talking to him, giving him the plate number of the car that hit him, two other cars pulled up, one with a couple and another with a family. They also had pursued the econobox until they got the plate number.

The SUV driver said his car apparently suffered no damage, but he was glad to have the other guy's plate number, just in case.

I drove home buoyed by the knowledge that my neighbors were these kind of people. I'm sure this incident was repeated a million times a year in communities all over the country. I'm just glad it happened in mine.

Page 2

If this is Friday, then there must be another example of the newspaper business down by the bow and sinking fast. This one is from Tribune Co.

That privately held newspaper giant, bought about a year ago by real estate magnate Sam Zell, who now seems to realize that buying a newspaper, something about which he knows nothing, was a mistake.

Now, his lawyers have gone into court to ask that the corporation can pay bonuses to his executives and severance pay to the ever-growing list of laid-off workers. In this area, Tribune owns the soon-to-be-merged Hartford Courant and Channel 61, as well as the New Haven Advocate.

At least, it isn't paying bonuses to executives contingent on the number of people they fire, as the Journal-Register Co. is trying to to.

I hear the next session for JRC in bankruptcy court is May 6. If there is anything of local interest, especially with Connecticut Attorney General Dick Blumenthal's objection to the bonus-for-layoff scheme, watch for it in the New Haven Independent.

Page 3

For those in the New Haven Jewish community, there are a couple of events coming up in the next few days. On Saturday, April 25, a kiddish will be given at Cong. Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim to mark the first anniversary of Jerry Gross' death.

Jerry's kiddish will be sponsored by his wife, Ruth, and his children Jason and Daniel Gross.

If you want to join the congregation for services, that starts at 9 at the synagogue, 112 Marvel Road at West Elm in New Haven's Westville neighborhood. The kiddish, a post-services get together with good food, usually starts at about 11:30.

For those who read that there would be a kiddish for Sidney Krauser, the longtime shamos of Bikur Cholim, there has been a change of plans. A memorial is being planned for the end of the 30-day period of mourning. Plans will be posted on the synagogue's Web site: www.congbikurcholim.org.

Sorry for any confusion.

Page 4

Here it is Friday again. The weekend looks gorgeous, a great time to get outside. It's almost time to dig the garden, but this is April and it could still be wet. Yesterday, weatherman Geoff Fox was yammering about frost. I don't know what he was on about...I just checked the 10-day forecast there wasn't a low forecast below 46 degrees.

In any case, have a great weekend and, for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

Two men die; had little, but much, in common

2009-04-19T18:28:00.003-04:00

This week brought bad news on two fronts to our family, synagogue and that tiny fraternity of print newspaper editors.

On Wednesday, Bill Cotter died after a series of illnesses. He died too young at 62.

Today, April 19, 2009, , word came that the Rev. Sidney Krauser had left the Earth after suffering a series of setbacks. He was in his 90s.

It would be easy to say the two men had never met. After all, Cotter was an Irish Catholic whose roots were in the Lower Naugatuck Valley and Krauser was an observant Jew, an immigrant from Russia who survived the Holocaust. But in fact, they had quite a bit in common. And their gregarious natures made it possible their lives met, if for a brief time.

Cotter was known as Big C, just C, at the old Journal Courier of New Haven. The "big" had to do with his physical size, but also his abilities.. For a while, Big C was majordomo at the J-C, making a lot of things work. He held his boss' hands and worked behind the scenes to help them succeed. He was always a crackerjack editor and mentor. Sometimes it got him in the middle of a family issue.

For example, it fell to Big C to help his boss, Editor Don Sharpe, lose weight. Sharpe's wife, Jane, made C go along with Sharpe on his daily weight-loss walk along the entire Sargent Drive. C didn't tell Jane directly that the highlight of the walk was the stop at a restaurant for an ice cream sundae. But Jane found out and Sharpe did indeed lose weight.

I met C when he was a part-time copy editor. He worked a few days a week, after putting in a long day working for a coffee publication in New York, riding the train both ways. His family needed the income and C came through.

When my family moved to New Haven from East Haddam, C was there, hauling heavy appliances off trucks and up and down stairs. It cost me a couple of beers.

For a while, C drove an Opel reverse convertible -- reverse because can car had a top but the floor was a hint and a hope.

I'll never forget the night we got pulled over in West Haven. We were both pretty well oiled and C was driving me back to the paper. A cop pulled us over. We were both counting change for the one phone call we would be granted after our inevitable arrest.

The cop came back, handed Cotter back his license and registration, and stammered, "I'm sorry, Mr. Cotter. I didn't know it was you, Mr. Cotter." and drove away. We both looked at each other with disbelief and burst out laughing.

The only thing we could think of is that either the cop or his supervisors thought the guy driving the piece of junk Opel was another William Cotter, this one a longtime congressman from the Hartford area.

Cotter knew everybody. He was one of those guys who couldn't walk down the street a block without being greeted five times. That was in New Haven...I can imagine what it was like in his native Valley. He even ran businessman Joel Schiavone's campaign to be state treasurer.

We hadn't been super close, but Bill always had a kind word, a smile. He was good at his craft and good at life.

So was Sidney Krauser. We called him Mr. Krauser. There are no reverends in Judaism, but

he was called the Rev. Krauser as a mark of respect and reverence by Jews and others in all walks of life.

My wife and I met Mr. Krauser at the end of his more than 60-year career at Cong. Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim, where he was shamos, a kind of majordomo. He helped guide the merger nearly 60 years ao of two dissimilar congregations, one mainstream Orthodox, one Lubavitch Hasidic.

He also helped guide the synagogue from a large congregation in a palatial building at Winthrop and Derby avenues in Edgewood to a smaller one on Marvel Road in Westville. He ran the cemeteries, led services many times during the week, helped with High Holiday and other holiday services and basically ran the day to day activities of the synagogue.

He reached into the secular world to secure funding for the synagogue and to hire tradesmen for the many repairs that an older building needs. He never deviated from strict observance of his faith, no matter how difficult. If he couldn't walk to synagogue, he stayed in the building or secured a bed nearby.

He took my wife and I under his wing. I was the "grayser Levi," the "big Levite" and it fell to me almost every week to raise the Torah scroll after it was read. When I became president of the synagogue, I thought my job would be to sign checks and leave everything else to Mr. Krauser. It didn't work out that way. He had a stroke and required brain surgery from which he never fully recovered.

He moved a couple of years ago to the Washington, D.C., area to be near his daughter. He will be buried there, probably because he wanted it to be easy for his wife and children to visit his grave.

Two brave, good men who lived in their own worlds but traveled in many others.

Bon voyage to both. Bill, I hope the road to heaven rises up to meet you. Mr. Krauser, may you find a seat near the Heavenly Throne. You deserve it.

Until next time...

It just keeps getting better for Connecticut readers

2009-04-17T11:20:00.002-04:00

There are few enough places where Connecticut citizens can get real news about their state government, and now there is one less.

The New York Times this week said it is killing two weekly sections to save money. One is the Escapes section, which is no great loss.

The other is the Connecticut section, which is.

In truth, there hasn't been a Connecticut section for quite some time. The Times combined the metropolitan areas into one section -- Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut, then zoned it. That means that there are local pages that change for each locality.

I can live without the restaurant reviews and features, the ads for overpriced houses and even the lonely hearts ads.

But one thing I don't want to live without is the political coverage, especially in this vitally important year when there are election for the state and national legislatures next year and local elections this year.

With local papers as weak as they are, one counts on the perspectives of the two guys that the financially weak local papers laid off: Mark Paziokas, formerly of the Hartford Courant, and Gregory Hladky, formerly of the New Haven Register.

Last week's Connecticut section had both these guys on one page, and that's the kind of coverage we need. It's not that the reporters left at the local papers are lousy -- many of them are good. It's that there are so few of them that they don't have time to do an adequate job of covering the state scene.

So, with the Connecticut section going away, and the announcement that freelancers, like Hladky and Paziokas, are being cut back, it does not auger well for the coverage of the state political and legislative scene.

Page 2

Speaking of bankruptcy, it seems the New Haven Register's parent company's bankruptcy case has been put off yet again, this time until next month. The hearing of state Attorney General Dick Blumenthal's objection to the Journal-Register Co.'s plan to pay bonuses to some executives if they lay off enough people, has been put off indefinitely.

The AG's office says that's not unusual.

What that does mean is that the workers at the Register and other JRC papers will hang twisting in the wind a little longer.

Speaking of bankruptcies, even shopping malls are feeling it. The GGP, General Growth Properties, has filed for bankruptcy protection. Along with dozens of others in the nation, GGP owns two huge malls in Connecticut, the Mall at Buckland Hills in Manchester, and the Brass City mall in Waterbury. Small world time: Judge Allan L. Gropper of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan is handling both cases. Just a little trivia.

Page 3

Well, Passover is over. The holiday was wonderful for our family. My wife and I got to spend a couple of days with all the kids and all the grandkids at my daughter's New York apartment. It was wonderful, tiring, uplifting, challenging and all in all, great. And, by the way, it reaffirms why young people have kids, or should. No way we could do this full-time.

By the way, I haven't written recently, like in the past couple of weeks, because between Passover preparations and work at the New Haven Independent, time has flown. I'll say it again: Since I retired, I've never been so busy.

Page 4

This is supposed to be a glorious weather weekend, at least for Saturday. So get out and enjoy. For our friends in Christianity's Orthodox Rite, have a wonderful Easter. And for those in the Tribe, have a bagel and a wonderful Shabbos.

Until next time...

Sorry, Winston, it is the beginning of the end

2009-03-30T12:34:00.003-04:00

Winston Churchill, marking a 1942 victory in Africa against the Germans, said "Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

I've always liked that quote. It was inspiring and forward-looking: optimism from one of the great leaders and inspirers of our age.

But it is not for now. After reading that the Hartford Courant's publisher has been given his walking papers and replaced with the general-manager of Tribune's television stations, I knew this was the beginning of the end for real newspaper journalism in Connecticut.

The two stations, WTXX and WTIC-TV, will have studios in the Courant building. The press release accompanying the New Haven Independent story on the move, crows about "creating the largest print/broadcasting news-gathering operation in Connecticut."

"This is the future of media," said Randy Michaels, Tribune's chief operating officer. "Whether in print, over the air, or online -- the delivery mechanism isn't as important as the unique, rich nature of the content provided."

Michaels would have you believe this is innovation at its zenith, new, different, forward-looking. Nah. Gannett has been doing this for years in Westchester, with its LoHud.com (lower Hudson Valley - get it?), which started out with a WCBS-TV studio in the Journal-News building and now has a TV camera in the newsroom and a strong Web site, along with a daily newspaper and video updates at scheduled times during the day.

Gannett has figured out that if you put a story uncovered by one of your reporters on line or on television before it is printed in your newspaper, you haven't scooped yourself. I don't think the New Haven Register has figured that out yet.

Paul Bass, in his Independent story, asks if this move by the Courant is a strategy to save money or to increase the coverage of the state and the region by the Tribune entity.

It may be both. The Journal-News' newsroom has a lot of empty desks, and those still working there have been asked to do a lot more with a lot fewer bodies -- editing both the paper and the Web site, which is constantly updated. When you do that, quality has to suffer. I don't care how good you are, quality has to suffer when fewer people are asked to do a lot more.

Look at today's New York Times. On the front, eight people died in that nursing home tragedy. On the index page, it's six. The story says eight. Years ago, that almost never happened. Now, it's routine.

The Tribune release says the delivery system isn't as important as the news itself. When you are talking about news in papers and on the 'Net, that's right. Television is a whole other thing.

Stories for television are reported and written differently from those in print, whether that print is on paper or Internet. Photos, maps and other graphics are important to newspaper stories; photos, graphics and videos complement Internet-based stories such as those in the Independent. But the written word still conveys the story. Words can create images in readers' minds that photos and graphics cannot. They convey the facts.

Television is different. In television, the picture is king. Stories are produced differently, reported differently and certainly written differently. There is no 13-second sound bite in newspapers.

It's just different. So how does a guy who managed a television station run a newspaper? True, most newspaper publishers come from the business side of the business. But they understand newspaper ads, newspaper budgets, newspaper problems. Can this television guy understand the Courant and its problems and, more importantly, its potentials?

I worked in news in Connecticut for nearly 30 years. I worked in the Hartford-New Haven corridor for most of it. No matter where you were, you compared yourself to the Hartford Courant. It was always the 800-pound guerrilla, whether you liked it or not.

Were Bob Conrad and Bill Ryan of the Hartford Times better than anyone the Courant had at the state Capitol? Sure, but the overall package at the Courant was better. They had a dozen people to throw at a story, when the Times or the New Haven Register had maybe two. They had the money, the resources. No more.

I hope this works out at the Courant. Connecticut needs at least one strong daily newspaper.

Hearst has newspapers in Fairfield County, but Fairfield County thinks it's New York. Papers in New Haven and Torrington and Middletown are part of the bankrupt Journal-Register. Papers in New London, Norwalk, Waterbury, Rockville-Manchester, Windham and Meriden are independents somehow hanging on. Whether the businessman who bought papers in Bristol and New Britain from Journal-Register can succeed is still way up in the air.

I think sites like the Independent are the future of print journalism in Connecticut. I'm not saying that because I do work for it. I'm saying that because I don't think this experiment in Hartford will work.

As Tevya said in "Fiddler on the Roof," a fish may fall in love with a bird, but where would they live? I think there is a fish falling in love with a bird in Hartford. And I think that match is the beginning of the end for newspapers in Connecticut.

I hope I'm wrong. As God is my judge, I hope I'm wrong. But I don't think I am.

Until next time...

Just a few words, positively

2009-03-27T18:15:00.003-04:00

Happy Friday.

It's getting late and the sun soon will begin going down, but I just wanted to share a few words before it's time to sign off for the Sabbath.

First of all, I want all of you drivers out there, the ones with Connecticut licenses and registrations, to give yourselves a big round of applause. I mean it, give yourselves a hand.

Yes, it's me.

I returned the other day from Maryland, near Washington, D.C., and those people are really nuts. There is a plethora of intersections where there are multiple left-turn lanes. The problem is that often the number of lanes decreases very close to the intersections. That means traffic has to merge.

Thereby hangs the tale. Nobody wants to give up his or her spot or, heaven forfend, let someone merge in front of his or her car. There is a problem with signs. The sign over the lane here indicates that this ramp is on the left. Not so. The ramp is on the right; only the sign is on the left. So you have to blend over a couple of lanes. Hah!

There is also a lack of recognition of the blind spot. A driver will pull up on your right, the nose of his car (or her car) even with the center of your rear door. And stay there. And stay there. Then, when you need to move to the right, well, you get the idea.

Fortunately, the worst that occurred was some long honks on horns and evil looks, which, I assure you, were returned in kind. Oh, yes, those Virginia drivers are no better.

I think it may be the competitiveness of those who work for, or service, the government.

Page 2

It was such a nice day today that I feel like ending on a positive note. I will find something positive about the recession.

You say this is a hopeless task? Au contraire. It seems that attendance is forecasted to be down at major league baseball parks and prices are forecasted to at least not increase, if not decease.

That means it may be possible to find a ticket to a Red Sox game without having to pay a scalper, or Stub Hub, which is a legal, er, conveyance organization. The Sox have been sold out since popes were Italian, so perhaps that might change.

Page 3

Sunday marks the unveiling of Jerry Gross' tombstone. As those who have been longtime readers remember, Jerry was one of those guys whom everybody knew and liked. He was always looking out for others. Let's put it this way: At Jerry's funeral, there wasn't a dry eye or an empty seat in Jimmy Shure's funeral home. Everybody was there.

Jerry died after a car crash. The dangerous intersection that he lived on, and where the crash occurred, has not been fixed.

A tomb is unveiled after 11 months, the length of time Jews believe it takes even the worst if us to get into heaven. Jerry, I am sure, took a whole lot less time than that.

Page 4

It's supposed to be a crummy weather weekend, so stay in and watch the UConn games. Perhaps both UConn teams will make it to their respective final fours.

So have a great weekend and for those in the Tribe, who will have to watch the men's game on rerun, a wonderful Shabbos.

Until next time...

It's not the journalists' fault that newspapers are dying

2009-03-20T17:15:00.003-04:00

Happy Friday and happy spring.

I have a favorite thing to say on the first day of spring. I attribute it to the humorist Ogden Nash. I'm not sure he said it, and I don't want to find out because I like the ditty and I like Ogden Nash.

It goes: "Spring has sprung/ the grass is riz/ I wonder where/the birdies is."

Now please don't look it up and tell me that he didn't write this thing. It's a once-a-year thing and I've gotten it out of my system.

For those who don't know Nash, he wrote little poems like:A panther is a leopard/that hasn't been peppered. If you see a panther crouch/prepare to say 'Ouch.' Better yet, when called by a panther/don't anther."

Anyway, happy spring.

Page 2

I told you so! The depression in the newspaper business isn't the journalists' fault. It isn't that there aren't enough happy stories for young people, or enough stories about rock or hip-hop stars or enough stories about cars. People are still reading the paper.

It's the greed of the newspaper owners, many if not most of whom are corporate bottom-feeders and bottom-liners who have piled on too much debt. The papers, like, for example, the New Haven Register in Connecticut, make money. It's that the paper's owners, Journal Register Corp., piled on so much debt buying it and the dozens of other publications they had owned, that they finally drowned in the debt.

Read an expert about it here.

Some good news: The San Diego Union has been bought by a deal maker who thought enough of the newspaper business in general and the paper in particular to buy it. Thank you.

The Tuscon papers, one of which is owned by Gannett, still teeter at the brink. It's one of those well-close-it-unless-someone-buys-it deals. That way, the killer company can blame someone else for the paper folding.

In the meantime, papers still soldier on. I read the Register today. It had some news in it, thanks to Mark Zaretsky and Mary O'Leary. These veterans, among a few others, keep the paper going by hard work, sometimes with no pay for some of the number of hours they put in. Mark beat me on the Tweed story by working all day Sunday. I was at my daughter and son-in-law's playing with my grandchildren. That comes first. Could I have gotten the story had I been home that Sunday? I'd like to think so.

So instead I got the back story on how this deal was completed after 40 years of strife. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Reg is lucky to have people like Mark and Mary. Other papers also have reporters and editors they don't deserve, but they are getting rid of them quickly.

In Westchester, it was the Rev and Pennsylvania Mike and Dan the Van Man and many others. It's in the blood. Get the story. Make sure it's right. Worry about the fine points, like getting paid, later.

It's never been that way in the electronic media, for the most part. Of course there are exceptions.

Page 3

This wouldn't be Len's Lens without some carping, so here goes. Let me do my Andy Rooney impression. I've met him and have a good Andy Rooney story. But only in private.

Did ya ever think about how rude the checkers are in supermarkets? I'm not talking about the places like Trader Joe's or Edge of the Woods, a vegetarian, health-food supermarket in New Haven. They're fine.

I'm mostly talking about Stop & Shop. I don't know where they get these kids, but they can't be made to pass an intelligence test. They must work cheap, and that's all the test the store needs. I'm sure the problem isn't just at that one store. It must be chain-wide.

For example, I brought in a bag to pack my groceries in. It was a large, sturdy bag. All of my order would have fit into that bag. But the checker put a couple of things into the bag and then proceeded to bag the rest of my order in plastic bags.

Then she proceeded to hand my change and receipts to me. While I was putting these things away (maybe 10 seconds), the next order came flying down. She couldn't have waited those 10 seconds so I could clear my stuff off the counter?

This isn't the first time this has happened. Not by a long shot. Why do places like Trader Joe's have such nice, smart, genial checkers and Stop & Shop such dregs?

Look, Stop & Shop has gotten much better in stocking the kind of foods I like, in reacting to complaints.

For example, I like Ken's ranch salad dressing, the lite kind. So Stop & Shop replaced it with their own brand. The problem is: their brand isn't certified kosher, while Ken's is. I told them about it. Within weeks, the Ken's dressing reappeared. Wonderful.

Why ruin it with idiots at the checkout counter?

Page 4

Tomorrow is March 21, the traditional first day of spring.

It's also the birthday of two who are near and dear. Older one first. Paula Weber of Marlborough, my sister, will be one year closer to 60.

Mike Olkin, Andrea's husband, also celebrates a birthday tomorrow. When you are as young as Mike, it's pointless to tease about age.

Happy birthday to both.

Page 5

I put the snow shovel away today. If we get snow next week, blame me. Otherwise, it looks like a great weekend to get out and enjoy. The weather is slowly getting warmer and there is no hint of rain until at least Thursday. For now that is. So, have a great weekend and for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

Spring is sprung (almost) but print media is still frozen

2009-03-17T17:44:00.003-04:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day to our Irish friends. To everyone else, welcome to the continuing paper print media funeral.

I've been busy working at the New Haven Independent, one of the forward-looking news media that, one hopes, will be the future of what we now call print journalism. That and being sick kept me away from my favorite blog. To all of you who checked in from time to time, thanks. I'll try not to stay away so long. And yes, I feel much better.

This has not been a good month or so for print journalism. You already know the Rocky (Denver's former Rocky Mountain News) has closed, leaving Denver a one-newspaper town. Now, Seattle's P-I, the Post-Intelligencer, has published its last print edition, leaving this great city with but one newspaper and an on-line publication.

I just sent a nasty note to the folks at Helium, which started out as a blogging site, much like the Blogspot that hosts this posting.

They are soliciting contributions of opinion on various issues from amateurs. The latest was an issue in Fairfield (the solicitation mentioned a Fairfield County Board of Education which, of course, does not exist.) I got back a note, saying they are not displacing journalists, but just asking for opinions from citizens. The Independent has room for opinions at the end of stories. The Independent doesn't need a firm to solicit those opinions.

The folks at Helium think they are not hurting journalists. They are wrong.

With the goings on at Journal-Register and 48 people taking a buyout at the Hearst newspapers in Connecticut (Bridgeport, Stamford, Greenwich, Danbury and some weeklies). To take a buyout in this market is an act of desperation, brought about by two things.

I write about this from first-person experience, having taken such a buyout from Gannett, couched as an early retirement plan.

First, you take it because you realize that if you don't take the buyout, when the inevitable layoffs come, your name will be first on the hit parade. You realize that the incentives to sweeten the offer are, in all probability, much better than the parting gifts you will get with a real layoff.

Second, you realize that the place for which you are working is not even remotely the place at which you came to work years before. The management has changed, the strategies have changed, the things that were important to you are not important to management.

You signed on to improve your little piece of the world. That's not important to your bosses now. Money is.

The sad thing is you are forced to make the decision yourself. In my case, it was easy. The offer was really good, and the place for which I worked was run by people who did not see the newspaper the way I did. It doesn't make them bad people. Not in my case.

I had worked for the New Haven Register and the Journal-Courier. They were fine newspapers with dedicated, talented journalists. The New Haven Register still has dedicated, talented writers, editors and photographers.

I also know some of the people who work for Hearst, especially in Bridgeport. They are talented and dedicated as well. And, I would guess, some of them will be unemployed a month from now.

I wish them all the luck there is.

Until next time...

I'm feeling like an obituary writer

2009-02-27T15:34:00.002-05:00

If it's a day that ends in a "y", it's time to report that another newspaper has folded.

This time, it's Denver's Rocky Mountain News. Yes, it's far away from New Haven and far away from New York, but now Denver has only one news source that lands on the porch. The Coloradans who counted on the feisty paper now have to turn to the Post.

Closer to home, the Hartford Courant fired another few dozen from its newsroom and about 100 people altogether. I talked about one of them in my last post, but there are so many more stories. I just cannot go into them now.

I just sit in wonder as the brain trust that runs these papers plays out the end of their reigns, like a scorpion that stung itself. The scorpion lashes out with its stinger, madly trying this and that to save itself, but in vain.

The geniuses who now run the New Haven Register and other Journal-Register papers still haven't figured out that if you run a story on your own home page before it appears in the paper, you haven't scooped yourself.

The Gannett papers in Westchester and Putnam counties of New York, for whom I labored for nearly 15 years, still haven't figured out that you need to bring news to people that they care about. So now, to save a few dollars, they are printing the Poughkeepsie Journal in Westchester, which gives the PoJo a lot earlier deadline. So much for night meetings, sports events and the rest of the news people care about.

So what do the Journal-Register geniuses do? Instead of jumping at the chance to profit by Gannett's errors, they shut down the papers they own in that neck of the woods. So now, not only do the folks in Putnam County lose out once, they lose out twice. The daily Journal News has little Putnam news, but the alternative weeklies are no more.

And they wonder why chain newspapers are dying.

You would think the folks at Hearst who just bought three newspapers whose circulation areas border Putnam and northern Westchester would jump at the chance to compete in areas where a weakened Gannett circulates. Hearst publishes the Danbury News Times, just across the border from Putnam, and the Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate, which border southern and central Westchester.

So, will they? Only time will tell.

By the way, have you heard what Hearst is up to? They apparently don't have enough reporters to get the news, so they are partnering with Helium, a blogging service. They're paying $20 for a 400-word story and asking people who are Helium subscribers to give their opinions on various issues. The Connecticut Post in Bridgeport is one of the test beds for this scheme.

I just hope they hire enough editors to separate the bad writing and the rumor-mongering from real news.

One of the problems, as I've said before, with citizen journalism is that many of the citizens think opinion and rumors are news. They're not. News is defined as the best possible version of the truth. That means, you find out about a story, or cover a meeting and divine the truth. How do you do that?

If you have to ask, please, please don't answer the Connecticut Post's ads for Helium reporters.

Page 2

Here is the weekend already. I hope the rain and snow hold off. Sunday is March 1, and next week, we set the clocks ahead already. We've almost made it to spring.

Have a great weekend and, for those in the Tribe, a wonderful Shabbos.

Until next time...

That sickening feeling shows up again

2009-02-25T13:24:00.002-05:00

This is going to be a short post. I hadn't planned on writing today, but I have to.

Yesterday, as you who read the New Haven Independent already know, I covered the governor's visit to New Haven to cheer lead for her budget to a dozen business and academic leaders and tell them that all was going to be OK.

It turned out that the meeting was closed to the press and the governor was going to join us in the small conference room after she had her tour of Sargent Manufacturing (20 minutes) and the meeting (another 35 minutes.) So, as so often is the case, we cooled our heels.

One of the reporters in the room was Mark Pazniokas, the veteran Hartford Courant political and State Capitol reporter. I hadn't met Mark before...our paths hadn't crossed. I enjoyed chatting with him, with Tom Monahan, who has been kicking around for Channel 30 for more than three decades, and Jodi Latina of Channel 8, who is just a joy to be around.

Jody had an intern with her, who displayed the wide-eyed wonder of the young at a bunch of pros just sitting around telling war stories and talking, of course, about the state of the business and what had happened to the New Haven Register's parent company and the further bloodletting that was expected at the Courant.

Nobody in the room expected that Pazniokas would hear later that night, after he filed his stories, of course, that his 24 years at the Courant were over.

There also was a reporter from the Register who didn't take part in the chatting. After the news conference, which lasted about 20 minutes at which Pazniokas asked the most questions, I asked the Register reporter how she was doing. She said "I'm doing just fine."

Ah, the bright eyes of the young.

I write this because I really was shocked at Pazniokas' dismissal. I guess I shouldn't be after the now-bankrupt Journal Register Co. fired Greg Hladky, who had reported at the Capitol for 25 years or more and whose work was carried by five JRC newspapers.

I thought the Courant was better than that.

Silly me.

Until next time...

If you're surprised, you haven't been paying attention

2009-02-22T11:15:00.004-05:00

You've heard, I'm sure, that the company that owns the New Haven Register, Connecticut's second-largest newspaper, has filed for protection and reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Act.

You may not have heard, however, that under the filing, it asks the court permission to pay out $1.7 million in bonuses to 30 top managers and employees if it meets certain criteria.

If you're surprised by either of these facts, you haven't been paying attention.

What this means is that the companies that run the two largest Connecticut newspapers have declared themselves to be bankrupt. It doesn't necessarily means they are closing anytime soon.

The Tribune Co., owner of the Hartford Courant, is itself owned by Sam Zell, a multibillionaire real estate investor who knows little or nothing about newspapers. He's proven that.

The path of the Journal-Register Co. that led, almost as inevitably as a Greek tragedy, to bankruptcy court is much more twisted. I saw much of that from the inside. Grab a drink and get comfortable.

Let me take a little pause here and confess that I am not an unbiased observer of these proceedings. For nearly 15 years, I labored for the Jackson Newspapers, the company that owned the New Haven Register, the Journal-Courier of New Haven and, for a tantalizingly short time, The Hartford Times. That's where I joined the fray.

Through that time, from the inside and later from the outside, I saw this bunch snatch defeat from the very jaws of victory time and again.

When I signed on to The Hartford Times in 1973, it was owned by the Gannett Co., into whose employ I later signed on and, after another nearly 15 years (do you see a pattern here?) took an early retirement a couple of years ago.

Like many afternoon papers, The Times' circulation and advertising had fallen, due in no small measure to the advent of nightly television news. So, Gannett put it up for sale and the Jackson Newspapers decided to buy it.

Gannett had cooked the circulation books, so the Jacksons took them to court. The higher a newspaper's circulation, the more it can charge for advertising. Reporters for the Hartford Courant, The Times' longtime rival, read the Jackson's lawsuit against Gannett, found that The Times' circulation was much lower than advertisers had been told, and gleefully published all that, plus the Jackson family's infighting that came out during the suit. Advertisers deserted in droves.

At the same time, the Jacksons tried to bolster circulation in the poorer sections of Hartford. Unfortunately, the people they chose to partner with were some of the most hated merchants who, for example, boosted food prices whenever welfare checks were issued.

All this, plus some dirty fighting by Courant advertising sales people, led inevitably to that black day in October 1976 when The Times' presses ran for the last time.

Some Times employees ended up in New Haven, me among them.

It was not a wonderful time in New Haven. Lionel Jackson Sr., owner of the Jackson Newspapers, had the managerial style of a sweatshop owner. Pay little, demand much, but show your beneficence at Christmas by giving each worker a turkey.

As a consequence, some brave souls tried to certify The Newspaper Guild as a bargaining unit for the newsroom and advertising departments. The Jacksons brooked no union interference, the union was stupid and my first two years or so were tough, with no raises, bad working conditions and a cloud hanging over all our heads.

But then came the bright dawn. The Jacksons promised raises and vast improvements if the union were decertified. They were as good as their word. Old man Jackson retired and let his son, Lionel Jackson Jr., known as Stewart, run the papers. The effect was immediate. The Journal-Courier was redesigned, the staff was energized and the paper won dozens of journalism and design awards. It was great time to work there.

Of course, the Jacksons soon snatched defeat from the very jaws of victory again. The infighting plaguing the Jackson family had never stopped and Stewart Jackson finally decided he had had enough. In 1986, the papers were sold, first to a game show producer named Mark Goodson and then to Ralph Ingersoll II, a rich guy who used junk bonds (think Mike Milken) to put up the $185 million paid for the New Haven papers.

Ingersoll was chased from his company a couple of years later after a foolish and vain attempt to start a tabloid newspaper in St. Louis. The paper was sold to the Journal-Register Co. of Pennsylvania.

As the losses mounted because of the crushing debt, the recession that overtook the nation in the late 1980s and many bad business moves, layoffs were inevitable. I survived the first three rounds. In the fourth round, the editor and publisher, Tom Geyer, refused to lay off any more staffers, even under threat of being fired himself. He was sacked on a Monday, and I joined the class on Tuesday. It was October again, this time in 1990.

Since then, I've watched the fray from afar. I still have friends in the papers and they reported on one attempt after another to bolster the bottom line by emaciating the coverage and staff. The Journal Register tried bought more papers, hoping they would bail out the rising debt. It was doomed to failure.

The Register always had dedicated journalists who try their best to tell stories with words and pictures, no matter what is thrown in their path. That continues to this day, but is hampered by bad management decisions and ineptitude. They lost a talented city editor a couple of years ago because they didn't know how to integrate the physical newspaper and the Internet.

I have a stake in this bankruptcy -- I get a small pension from the Register. I'm not worried about that. If the place goes bust, the government guarantees the pension.

What I'm worried about is the staff of the Register. If they bought stock in their company, it's gone. They will have to contend with doing more but with fewer resources. I'm also worried about the city. It needs a daily newspaper. The New Haven Independent, for which I write, is doing a great job covering City Hall and some communities, but it cannot cover all the stories that appear in a daily newspaper.

I take no glee in seeing JRC go bankrupt -- not that they don't deserve it. The problem is, the fat cats will be fine. They always take care of themselves.

I worry for my friends and colleagues on the paper and I worry that yet again, a light that needs to shine on the politicians and bureaucrats who run our cities and towns will be dimmed.

Until next time...

Things have changed at Capitol; not for the better

2009-02-19T17:37:00.004-05:00

Happy Thursday.

Yours truly took a sentimental journey yesterday (Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009) to the state Capitol in Hartford to cover a story for the New Haven Independent. Back when I was working for the New Haven Register, nearly a generation ago, I spent quite a bit of time up there, covering statewide stories pertaining to New Haven business and real estate.

Back the, the press room was humming, with dozens of reporters squeezed into the two press rooms at the Capitol. There was a constant buzz in the room then. The major papers had a half-dozen people each and when the committees were conducting public hearings on bills about your beat, you got up there, too.

There was no way only a half-dozen reporters were going to be able to cover all that was going on. Jim Mutrie and Alan Schoenhaus and Steve Kochko and Chris Blake and Greg Hladky and many others stalked the Capitol, fighting for the beat on a story.

Today, there are just as many hearings going on...I covered one on Tweed-New Haven Airport by the Transportation and Commerce committees. At the same time, there was a hearing on the budget by Appropriations and Judiciary was also hearing from interested parties.

Was there interest? The line to sign up to testify before Appropriations was as long as a football field.

What has changed was the coverage. In one press room, Catherine Stuart, who calls herself CT New Junkie, was alone. She does a masterful job of covering the Capitol and the Independent uses many of her dispatches. Later, there was another reporter and another desk had some (Rockville-Manchester) Journal-Inquirers on it, which means a reporter lived there sometime.

The room was a mess of old furniture and chairs that looked as if they were the leftovers from somebody's garage sale.

The old press room was scruffy, but not like that. I didn't go up to the old auxiliary press room, which now is the television room. The accommodations might be better, but I was hauling around a lot of stuff and didn't want to climb another flight of stairs.

It was good to see Tom Monahan, the venerable Channel 30 reporter, wandering into the hearing room. A reporter for the New Haven Advocate was up at the Cap as well.

There is a lot going on in state government, yet the news organizations are cutting back and cutting back. The light that the press is supposed to shine on government leaves a lot of shadows for the politicians and bureaucrats to hide in.

It's a shame. Now, the Tribune Co. apparently has told its operating units, The Hartford Courant and the Advocate, to expect more cutting.

I just don't see how this will end well.

Page 2

It looks as if Benyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu will be the next prime minister of Israel.

Before you start putting on sackcloth and sitting in ashes, remember that true progress with the Palestinians has come while what people in this nation call hard-liners were in power in Israel. We went through the list last time, but Menachem Begin, Bibi (last time) and Ariel Sharon all presided over significant concessions to the Arabs.

Not that it did any good.

I just wonder if the Hamas is talking about a cease-fire because they feel Bibi will head the government and they also feel they can talk to him. Some Arabs are more comfortable with hard-liners than with wishy-washy types like Ehud Olmert, the guy who will be out of power when Bibi can form a government.

Bibi is an American-style politician, which means he knows how to compromise. I just hope Avigdor Lieberman (no relation) can be kept to heel. He's dangerous. And I'm glad the Cabinet won't talk about a cease-fire with Hamas until the terrorists hand back the soldier they captured years ago.

There's a sad old joke about marriage being a give and take situation -- he gives and she takes. That's what it's been like the past 60 years. Israel gives and the Arabs, as Abba Eban loved to say, never miss an opportunity to miss and opportunity.

Proud grandpa shows off

Below, there is some video of my granddaughter, Tamar Spoerri, getting her Chumash, which is a Hebrew name for the Five Books of Moses. It's a right of passage in her school and she did well at it. It also allows grandpa to show off his new skills. Journalists these days have to be proficient in video, as well as still photography. And you must know how to edit video.

I was taught by a master: Melissa Bailey of the Independent. It's fun and there is another example with the Tweed story I was referring to in the top segment.

So, as they say, without further ado, here is Tamar's ceremony, photographed and edited by Len of Len's (still and video) Lens.

Until next time...

Happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln

2009-02-12T14:57:00.004-05:00

Happy Thursday and happy birthday, Honest Abe.

Today is Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday. In my opinion, not enough of a fuss is being made about it. Mr. Lincoln has been an inspiration to generations of politicians, lawyers and at least one journalist (me).

I spent some time living in the Washington area about a decade ago and when I was really down, missing my family and trying to figure out things, I would walk over the Memorial Bridge from Arlington to the Lincoln Memorial. At night, when there wasn't anyone to throw a net over me, I might even have a conversation with Mr. Lincoln. It helped.

Anyway, happy birthday to a true genius and a man whom too many half-baked historians have judged through late-2oth and 21st century criteria. He knew that preserving the union was paramount. He knew the Emancipation Proclamation had no teeth, would not free one slave, but would burrow into the British psyche and would not allow England to enter the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy.

The South could never have won the Civil War. The North fought it with one hand tied around its back, just as we are now fighting a two-front war and you would never know it looking at Main Street America. It was the same back then. Many historians feel that England would never have entered the war no matter what, but Lincoln's genius checkmated any possibility and assured that the Union would come out of the war a strong state, ready for its place on the world stage.

So, happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln. I hope you would have liked what we did with the nation you fought so hard to preserve.

Page 2

The Rev, a dear friend and former colleague of whom I have spoken a number of times, posted a comment asking what I thought of the Israeli elections.

First of all, nobody yet knows how they will shake out. Both Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Prime Minister Benyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu are claiming victory, but there are 30-something parties vying in this election and it looks as if Avigdor Lieberman, the head of a rightist party, might end up the kingmaker.

That will take weeks to shake out. Until then, it'll be politics as usual in Israel -- in other words, chaos. But then again, it's the only true democracy in the region, so a little chaos should be expected. After the 2000 election, we in the U.S. don't have the right to criticize anyone.

For whom an I rooting? Let's look at the history. Except for the last time around, when Yitzhak Rabin tried to give away the store to Yasser Arafat and Arafat wouldn't take it, all of truly meaningful peace treaties were made by so-called Israeli hard-liners. That title is wrong, but that's another story.

The people who really gave up a lot in a failed attempt to buy peace were Menachem Begin, the guy who blew up the King David Hotel before the British left, and Bibi Netanyahu, who gave up 85 percent of the West Bank to the Arabs. Arafat, as the late Israeli hero Abba Eban loved to say, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Bibi gave up Hebron and Jericho. The Palestinians, with Israeli help, built a casino there and could have cleaned up, but again, they never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Instead of cleaning up, they shot the place up and now it's just another monument to that lost opportunity, as is the Palestinian parliament building in Abu Dis. That community easily could have become subsumed into Jerusalem and given the Palestinians their capital in that city.

Ariel Sharon, the man who was wrongly blamed for the Lebanon massacres in the 1980s, was the guy who hatched the plan to give up Gaza.

All in all, I guess I'm for Bibi. He's smart, articulate in Hebrew and in idiomatic English (studied at Harvard) and can speak well for Israel. He's tough, but the Arabs respect toughness and seem to do better negotiating with a tough person rather than a pushover.

I hope that answers your question, Rev. It's great to hear from you. We really do need to get together.

Page 3

I never thought I'd say this, but hurray for Congress.

I watched the hearings by Barney Frank's House banking panel Wednesday. Of course, there was the usual bombast by congressmen and women, but they got the heads of the major banks, Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo and others, to promise not to foreclose on owner-occupied houses until the committee comes up with its plan to help homeowners who can be saved.

Some bankers went farther, saying they would halt foreclosures not only on the loans they made or inherited, but would halt them on loans they were servicing for other banks or brokers. Frank said Congress was working on language that would protect the banks from lawsuits arising out of that.

The industry is starting to come around. I've seen copies of letters sent by banks to homeowners lowering interest rates, bringing loans up to date and other moves. The banks initiated those actions. Lawyers had postponed foreclosure sales, giving homeowners a chance to hold onto their homes.

This is all to the good. I just hope we learned our lesson -- not only the bankers and brokers, but all of us. In the end, it's each of us who must know what we can afford and what we can't. We must be able to say, "I can't afford this. It would be nice to have my own home with a backyard my kids can play in, but I just can't do this right now." It's hard to say that -- damn hard. But we need to be able to do that.

I heard one of the stimulus packages would make car-loan interest tax deductible. That's good for two reasons. It might help the car industry. And it takes away the impetus to take out a home-equity loan, which is tax-deductible, to buy the car.

How many formerly rich people are in trouble on their mortgages because they took the equity -- the difference between what a house is worth and how much you owe on it -- and bought the Bimmer or Jag or big Audi or Range Rover? The answer is lots.

Page 4

The more I read out this octuplets' mother, the madder I get. She's doing this all on our backs. Food stamps, state and federal aid, student loans and the rest were used to pay for this self-indulgent claptrap. California's Medicaid system and the hospital where she gave birth will have to swallow much of the rest.

The problem is, friends, that this selfish woman could start a backlash that would have people ganging up on folks who really need the aid through no fault of their own. That would indeed be a shame. We Americans are soft-hearted people, always willing to help the little guy who is struggling.

It's just too bad there are so many who undeserving or crooked people who are too willing to help themselves.

Until next time...

The winter of our discontent

2009-02-09T13:20:00.002-05:00

Wow, has it really been nearly a month between postings? With work, mostly at the New Haven Independent, and a bout of illness, time does fly.

The last time we got together, Barack Obama was still president-elect. Now, he's president and has been for nearly three weeks. Wow. He's had some stumbles, but mostly he's done what he said he would do, and is on the way to throw some more money into that huge maw that is the sinking economy.

Friend wife, who hasn't been a full-time journalist for many years and admits losing that killer instinct, carps about the state of journalism these days, and I'm not sure she's all that wrong. For example, we've lost some really good people who might have done well in the Cabinet because they messed up on their taxes.

Tom Daschle, who was to be health secretary, was forced to withdraw his name because he made so much money as a lobbyist and didn't pay taxes on some of it. I don't know for sure, but I'd be happy to bet a goodly part of my much-diminished savings that he didn't do his own taxes. I'd also bet that he really didn't set out to not pay his taxes on his whole income.

So, what do we get? The guy who could have played Lyndon Johnson to Obama's John Kennedy is no longer in that role. OK, I can be a bit obtuse some time. So, let's take this one step at a time.

I don't think there are too many people in the nation these days who feel we are getting the best medical care that's possible. There are too many disparate groups out there, each pursuing its own goals for its own good. We need a comprehensive medical policy, call it whatever you want: socialized medicine, single-payer, national medical plan or whatever.

Obama has great ideas, but, like John Kennedy, is a little weak on how to get them through Congress. Daschle would have been great with that, just like Johnson got many of Kennedy's ideas through Congress. But that won't happen now. The medical fix we get probably won't be as good as the one we could have gotten. Nobody's perfect. If a person can help the nation, who cares if it took him or her a little longer to pay taxes.

Page 2

Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean that you should do that thing. Ask Angela Suleman.

She's the mother of Nadya Suleman, the woman who gave birth to octuplets, eight kids at one fell swoop, while she already had six at home. Angela was caring for those kids at home while her daughter went out and got herself pregnant with the eight through in-vitro fertilization.

In fact, the same doctor who implanted the first six also did the eight-is-not-enough job. The grandmother calls the whole thing "unconscionable." She should know. She's the one who has to take care of the feeding and diapering and cleaning while her daughter sits in the hospital, doing interviews with the press and the media.

That doctor should lose his license, the mother should get her tubes tied and we should not have to witness this ridiculous display of ego.

Page 3

Everybody says so. It's the worst winter in a long time. There has been snow on the ground for weeks and, although we may be experiencing the January thaw in February, there's no reason to think the cold and snow will end anytime soon.

But, although the groundhog saw its shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter, the spring season has begun. Today (Feb. 9, 2009) is the birthday for the trees in Israel. Today, all the almond trees in the whole nation burst into bloom. It's a beautiful sight. Soon, flowers will fill the hillsides in the part of the nation that's not desert. The rainy season is coming to an end and soon it will be warm enough to swim in the Dead Sea or the waters of Ein Gedi.

Page 4

I covered our congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, as she blew into New Haven to cheerlead for the president's recovery plan. There, I saw an old friend and one of the best economists around, Nick Perna. Nick was one of my sources way back when. Come to think of it, that was the last time we were in trouble financially -- the late 80s and early 90s.

Nick also was one of the people who tried to warn people not to buy houses they couldn't afford and not to take the equity out of their houses to buy BMWs and Audis. Too bad more people didn't listen then. Now, Perna says that if the president's recovery plan is put into effect, we might see the beginning of the end to this recession in late summer.

I hope he's right. I'm sick of it. I've been sick of it for a long time now.

Until next time...

Conspiracy theorists: You were right about oil prices

2009-01-16T15:08:00.004-05:00

Before we get to the headlined matter, I want to lend my voice to those who are, or should be, shouting congratulations to the pilot who set down that crippled jet in the Hudson River yesterday (Jan. 15, 2009).

Despite the headline in the New Haven Register (for shame), it wasn't a crash or anything like it. It was a well-controlled ditching that kept the 155 souls on board that plane alive and, by the way, who knows how many on the ground from death or injury. Jets glide like rocks, and the pilot, Chelsey "Sully" Sullenberger, deserves our praise and adulation for putting that plane, loaded with fuel, passengers, luggage and who knows what else, down in the river ever so gently.

It's said a good landing is one you can walk away from. The splash-landing was expertly executed and everybody got out safely. I hope the new president pins a great big medal on this guy. He deserves it. These people who fly us around deserve the big bucks we seem driven to give to people who can bounce a ball while running or can emote while spouting lines written by somebody else.

Page 2 -- Back to the conspiracy

Did you see" 60 Minutes" last Sunday? If you did, then you know that all of us who said the run-up in oil prices had little if anything to do with market forces were quite correct. The experts interviewed for that broadcast said that, if anything, prices of oil would have gone down last year if market forces alone were controlling the market.

The run-up was 99 1/2 percent due to speculation. One guy said it was like a fly on an elephant. Speculators were buying the oil, flipping it for huge profits and so on. It was all paper gains. Some companies, like Morgan Stanley, actually took possession of the oil and, according to CBS, are storing some of it in New Haven.

It's not like in the 1970s, when ships filled with oil were anchored in Long Island Sound to keep supply away from the market. This is all paper. You know, a Ponzi scheme like Bernie Madoff's, except the folks who got hurt were the ones who were holding to oil futures when the air went out of the market. Some people bought oil for $60 a barrel and sold it for $140. And some johnny-come-latelies bought it for $140 and unloaded for $50. If you can get hold of the "60 Minutes" segment, do so. It'll do your little conspiratorial heart good.

Page 3

I know this will do absolutely no good, but I have to get this off my chest.

I am upset about people who cross streets when and where they feel like it, and traffic flow and their own safety, it seems, be damned.

I have a little something to say to bicyclists as well.

This seems to happen on Whalley Avenue east of the Fountain Street split.

People wander across the street in the middle of the block. I say wander because they saunter across the street, daring motorists not to slam on their brakes to avoid them.

If you are one of these people, or know one, please keep this in mind: It is the law in Connecticut that drivers have to stop at crosswalks to let pedestrians walk. In other words, genius, if you walked the few yards down to the corner, the cars would have to stop for you. It's the law. The pedestrian doesn't have the right of way otherwise.

Just walk down to the corner to cross and everyone will get home safely.

I've noticed that some of our bicyclists riding during snowstorms. The letter of the law may be with you, but it's really a dumb thing to do. Riding on sand is tough enough, but snow and ice has to be exponentially harder. It's tough on drivers, too. It's just stupid.

Yeah, yeah, I know New Haven wants to be a town where drivers, walkers and bikers can coexist, and most of the time I'm all for that. I used to ride from Westville to Sargent Drive in the dark when I worked at the Journal-Courier and Register.

Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Page 4

I have a question. There were news reports out of Gaza yesterday about how an Israeli star shell exploded over a U.N. warehouse full of food and medical supplies and set it on fire.

My question is: If the people in Gaza are starving for food and medical supplies, why is there a warehouse full of these things? Why aren't the U.N. people handing them out, or the Hamas people taking them and handing them out? Why are they still in the warehouse? Why is the U.N. complaining about not having supplies to hand out if there is a full warehouse?

Page 5

It looks like there will be some snow Saturday night and Sunday so, if you are out and about, please be careful.

Have a great weekend and, for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

A few thoughts before the snow

2009-01-09T15:45:00.002-05:00

Happy Friday. It's been a busy week around here, both with work and volunteer stuff.

It's also been a worried week, what with the war in Gaza going on with no end in sight. In fact, at this point, it's probably better to let the Israelis clean up the mess the Bush democracy-at-any-price strategy made with getting the Hamas elected in the first place.

A letter writer to the New York Times had an interesting point. "The citizens of Gaza knowingly elected a gang of extremist thugs that opts for war at every turn and puts its own civilians on the front lines. With freedom comes responsibility. When the people elect war, they get war. The Israelis have been very clear that they would continue to maintain a blockade until Hamas recognizes the Jewish state's right to exist. Again, if Gaza elects rejectionism and belligerency, complaints against the logical consequences ring hollow," writes a person from New Mexico.

"If all children of refugees decide to take up arms because they do not choose to be where they have found themselves, most of the world would be at war," the writer said.

Another writer said:"Perhaps the fact that Israel looks to protect its citizens with sirens and bomb shelters while Hamas, in turn, shelters itself by hiding among innocent civilians has more to do with the resulting death tolls than the actual force used," writes another.

Page 2

It's late and I need to prepare for the Sabbath, but if I don't complain about something, my readers might think it's not really my blog.

Just a question: Why do cashiers at supermarkets insist on wrapping your change, coupons and receipts into around each other, hand this mess back to you while you are trying to put your grocery bags into your cart, and then look at you as if you are slowing down the line?

I really do want an answer.

Page 3

I'll never forget the headline in the Journal-Courier of New Haven, "Brutal Weather Headed OurWay" I'll not identify the author because he's still laboring for a newspaper in the state (not New Haven). Of course, people who saw that headline were picking up their papers on a sunny, warm winter's day.

So I won't carp too much about the weather headed toward New Haven. But those who care should know that the Our Place Cafe and the rehearsal of the Mizmor L'Dovid Boys Choir, both scheduled for Saturday night, are canceled. We're supposed to get up to 10 inches of snow, starting Saturday afternoon and ending Sunday morning.

The weather people haven't been too accurate lately...it was supposed to be warm Wednesday. And some of these people should be wearing red noses and large shoes. When you act like a clown, you should dress like one.

Anyway, stay safe, have a great weekend and for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos. The snow should hold off until after services on Saturday, but you may want to daven Mincha early in the afternoon.

Until next time...

Some newspapers are saved; others are not

2009-01-07T11:57:00.004-05:00

It looks as if a buyer has been found for the Bristol Press and New Britain Herald. That's a cause for muted celebration, muted not because of the success for the five central Connecticut papers included in the deal, but for those in the New Haven area not included.

The buyer, Michael Schroeder, said he will keep both papers running at their current schedules. The deal includes the weekly Wethersfield Post, Rocky Hill Post and Newington Town Crier.

What it doesn't include is the group of local weeklies in the New Haven area that were gobbled up by Journal-Register, the publisher of the Herald, Press and New Haven Register. The Journal-Register then just regurgitated them and tossed them into the trash when they proved too expensive for the company's reduced means.

The self-serving release put out by Journal-Register about the sale didn't point that out. It said the company had tried really hard to sell the central Connecticut papers. That's like saying that a homeowner facing foreclosure tries really hard to sell the home rather than have to give it up for no gain. I hope the Journal-Register isn't too disappointed about not getting a gold star for its efforts.

I started out at the Wethersfield Post more about 40 years ago, back when it was owned by Chris Larsen, a son of Roy E. Larsen, one of the founders of Time, Inc. Daddy bought Chris the papers that would later be called Imprint, Inc., including the Post, Town Crier, West Hartford News and a couple of other papers and a printing operation in Hamden. Unlike Journal-Register, Larsen didn't bite off more than he could chew, at least not then, and took at vicarious delight in the lives and loves of the veritable children he hired to run his papers.

It was a good time and I learned a lot, not from Larsen, but from colleagues and competitors.

It's a shame when any newspapers go down. It's a boon to the cities of New Britain and Bristol and to the towns of Newington, Wethersfield and Rocky Hill. I hope they can get the backing of their advertisers and, especially, their readers.

The author of a comment on the Bristol Web version of the sale story said he'd now have to start buying the paper rather than get his news free from the Internet version. A lot of his friends and neighbors will have to, and should, do the same. These papers may not be great, but they are a great deal better than nothing.

Page 2

Just how dumb are the Bushies, who now have less than two weeks left in their jobs?

We reported before that they turned down the request of the new president to move into Blair House, across from the White House, so his kids can start school on time. He had to move into a hotel.

Now it come out for whom he was turned down. The former prime minister of Australia. It seems our soon-to-be-former president will be giving the presidential Medal of Freedom to the former Aussie leader for sticking with us on Iraq. So, the Aussie reserved Blair House for a day. Instead of sending this former official to the Hay-Adams Hotel for a day, the Bushies told the Barack Obama family there was no room at the manse.

So, Obama moved into the Hay-Adams. Laura Bush said Blair House also had some other events on the calendar. Right. So, on Jan. 21, the Obamas will be moved into the White House, the Bush family will head out of town and these former Bushies who turned down the Obamas will be seeking new employment. If they have any sense at all, they'll be seeking such employment in other than Washington or the federal government.

Page 3

It's amazing how much I agree with New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman these days. Read his column in today's Times.

Before New Year's, I wrote a posting about the war in Gaza. Some of you wrote back, mostly expressing horror at the growing casualties and saying that peace was better than war. I agree, but not when you are being shot at.

Look, I know I'm not going to get many of you to agree that Israel is right in going after Hamas tooth and nail. One of you suggested that I talk to Gazans. I have. I have been to Israel a number of times and have spoken with Palestinians and with Jews there.

Most of them just want to make a living for their families, just as we do. The problem is this Hamas has been placed in charge of a large number of them. The Bush administration must answer for that. It mindlessly pushed for democratic elections when the outcome was clear to anyone who knew anything about the Middle East. So now, Hamas is in charge and the other Palestinian group, Fatah, is weak.

How about a few tips in following the war. For example, when you see a gun-camera shot of a bomb hitting a building, watch for secondary explosions. That means there is ordinance in the building, which is probably why Israel was bombing it in the first place.

If the United Nations or the Red Cross complains about Israelis bombing their facilities, find out if Hamas people were shooting from there or if they had hidden ordinance there and why the U.N. or other group didn't complain to them. A clue: If they did complain, they wouldn't be around to ask. Also, ask about the lack of tooth-gnashing about suicide bombings in Iraq that killed hundreds just in the past few days.

Or better yet, ask your friends who have served in Vietnam or Bosnia or Iraq or Afghanistan how less dead you are if you're shot to blown up by a 14-year-old kid or an old woman with a gun or bomb.

William Tecumseh Sherman said it best: War is all hell. If you keep throwing rockets at Israel, it's going to come down on you like the wrath of God. And that's what's happening. In the last 60 years, civilians have suffered and died in Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Spain, Great Britain and the United States of America because of war or act of war. It's an incomplete list by half.

In 2005, Israel left Gaza, hoping to prevent more casualties. The Gazan government, Hamas, reacted by tearing down much of the infrastructure left behind and throwing rockets and mortar shells at Israel.

It's dangerous for the Gazans to get rid of Hamas. Some will be tortured and killed, It was dangerous for the Poles, Czechs, Yugoslavians, Baltic nations to get rid of the Soviets. Many died. But in the end, they won their freedom. The Gazans must do the same to the Hamas and their Iranian handlers.

Until next time...

A few hopes for the coming year

2008-12-31T12:53:00.002-05:00

Here it is: New Year's Eve and the end of 2008, thank heaven.

First of all, a heartfelt thank you to the steady readers of this posting. The thanks go double to all of you who have taken the time to write a comment about what I've had to say. I've agreed with many, disagreed with some, especially about Israel. But I appreciate the fact that most have been honest and express true feelings.

Last year, I set down some hopes for this year. Some of them actually came true -- such as electing a president and Congress who will actually have the good of the nation at heart. I know, I know, it's early, but at least Barack Obama and the Democrats are talking a good game.

We also may get smaller, more efficient cars and $45-a-barrel oil actually costs less than that now. The Arabs still think they can push Israel into the sea, and the Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, are still willing to die for that forlorn hope.

Finally, those in the mortgage industry are not being punished, as I hoped they would. The government is giving billions to those who didn't care or messed up. Those who kept up with their payments, no matter how difficult that was to have become and how much sacrifice that would take, are left to their own devices. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

So, how about next year.

Hope one: President Barack Obama is as good as his word and all the Democrats in the House and Senate, plus a few Republicans who love their country more than their party, will get together and start to clean up the economic and political mess left them by Bush-Cheney and the do-nothing administration.

Hope two: The rest of the world will forget the last eight years and remember that the U.S. has stood for what is good. We can again be a force for right and justice. The America Firsters were wrong in 1917, 1940 and are wrong now. We need to be the moral compass of the world...the United Nations certainly isn't doing it.

Hope three: That this nearly-trillion-dollar shot in the arm we are giving the economy spurs some improvement and fast. Those who saved for their retirement found that much of their savings has gone away because of the flight from the equity markets. The Roosevelt maxim that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," is as true now as it was during the Great Depression. If credit is loosened, people will begin to buy again. If the investors who run the markets stop being afraid of this or that or the other, maybe some of the people who saved their whole lives to be able to enjoy their retirement will be able to do that, rather than have to choose between food and medicine.

Hope four: People start to realize that Thomas Jefferson was right: you cannot have a functioning democracy without a strong, free press. The right-wing ideologues who inhabit the radio and Fox News Channel are not a free, fair press.

We have allowed big business to take over the news business. The Tribune Co., with real estate mogul Sam Zell at the helm, is down at the head and sinking fast. While Sam Zell's losing a fortune is him getting his just desserts, taking some of the nation's, and the region's, premiere news sources down with him is dangerous.

Ditto to the Journal-Register Co., a group who thought their house of cards would never blow over. Well, it has. While the New Haven Register, Middletown Press and Register-Citizen papers limp along, newspapers in New Britain, Bristol and a number of weeklies have but days to live. Sucking down longtime nameplates like the Hamden Chronicle, West Haven News, Branford Review, Clinton Recorder and others down as it sinks is indefensible.

Look, news is special, it's important and where you get it is important. You can't count on bloggers who don't know the difference between fact and rumor for news. News must come from sources like The New Haven Independent, where each story is vetted by an editor. Facts must be checked, fairness analyzed and importance determined. Weak as they are, the New Haven Register, Connecticut Post, Hartford Courant and New London Day are important.

Hope five: And thanks for staying with it this long. We need to expect more from our leaders locally. Is the mayor doing the job for New Haven and not pandering to what he feels is his base? Is the Board of Aldermen fulfilling its mandate as an independent check and balance on the mayor and the administration? Is the school board doing its job, not pandering to the loudest voices? Are those who pay the taxes being heard and fairly represented and not being bled dry? Ask yourselves these questions. If the answer is yes, then fine. If not, then do something about it. Attend meetings. Don't be afraid of being called an "ist". Talk up. Run for office.

Again, thanks for reading. Let's hope that this year is not as bad as predicted so that those of us who have worked hard and done the right things can start enjoying the fruits of our labor and those who have not can find the way, through education, to begin.

Happy new year to all.

Until next time in the new year...

When you defend yourself, you don't hold back

2008-12-28T11:57:00.004-05:00

The Israelis have begun a long-overdue response to the unprovoked, dastardly and cowardly rocket attacks on its civilian population by Hamas from inside Gaza.

For months, even while spouting propaganda about a ceasefire, the Iranian-backed Hamas has fired rocket after rocket into Israel. The latest bombardment used longer-range rockets that can target large population areas. Israel could not sit on its hands.

Most rational people will agree with those statements, but some are saying that Israel's response was disproportionate. Hamas fired off many rockets and mortars, and then Israel came back like an avenging angel, dropping bomb after bomb and firing missile after missile. It looks as if Israel will go back into the area that it left three years ago, at least for a little while.

Some people, however, say that Israel's response is disproportionate.

Let's look at that.

Is it disproportionate to use whatever force you have available to stop an enemy from harming your civilian population? Isn't the protection of its citizens a primary duty of any government, be it city, state or national?

A little runt goes after the big guy, kicking him in the shins, hitting him from the back, telling lies about him, making his life miserable or worse. When the big guy finally has had enough and hauls off and cleans the runt's clock, it is disproportionate?

When I was 16 and my sister was 10, she was being bothered by a kid a year or two older. He was bothering her at the school bus stop. One day, I made it my business to be at the bus stop because she had complained about this little twerp's bothering her.

When I arrived, he was sitting on his bicycle and had her pinned up against a fence. I told him to knock it off. He asked what I was going to do about it. I told him I would throw him over the fence. He said he wasn't going to get off his bike, so I wouldn't be able to carry out my threat.

Well, it so happened that I had gone out for football that year and I was in pretty good shape. So, I picked up the bike, with him on it, and tossed both over the fence. As my sister and I walked away, he was crying and screaming threats. Needless to say, he never bothered my sister again.

Was that a disproportionate response?

The point is if you attack someone who can wipe up the floor with you, then you shouldn't be surprised if they do just that.

What should Israel do? They tried talking. They used their own soldiers to pry its citizens out of their homes in Gaza and gave Gaza to the Palestinians. What did the Palestinians do? They used Gaza as a base from which to attack Israel.

Should Israel count the number of rockets and mortar shells fired from Gaza and fire only that number back at Gaza. Most of the rockets used by the Hamas against Israel are not guided. The gunners have no idea where the rockets will go and couldn't care less. They have killed their own people in Gaza with errant rockets. They don't seem to care? Should Israel do the same?

At the same time that Israel is targeting Hamas bases and rocket pods, it is allowing food, medical supplies and fuel into Gaza so the civilian population will be harmed as little as possible. This is not the action of a cruel tyrant state.

The Palestinian population must realize that its election of Hamas as the ruling entity in Gaza is the worst mistake it has made and it must do something about it. It will take guts to toss out the ruling Hamas thugs. Until the Palestinians living in Gaza do that, however, they will continue to be the pawns in a chess game directed not by their elected representatives, but from Tehran and Damascus.

The Palestinians are the ones being hurt by the Hamas and its Iranian rulers. And they are being hurt disproportionately. But only they can free themselves.

Until next time...

Some hopeful signs for the new year

2008-12-26T11:43:00.002-05:00

Happy Boxing Day.

Well, Christmas is over, and with it those horrible Target ads with bad poetry and people gushing as if they swallowed too many happy pills. Target wasn't the only one with horrible ads urging people to give (read buy) for the holiday, but they were so frequent. I may boycott Target for a month or so.

It's part of what my friend The Rev calls the rank commercialism of a holiday meant to bring hope to the masses.

The only hope we seem to read about is the hope by merchants that the weeks between Thanksgiving and the end of the year will bring in sufficient business to make up for a lackluster year. Today, merchants are hoping that people will return gifts they didn't like, trade up for more expensive ones and buy things they had hoped to receive but did not.

It looks as if those hopes will be dashed. In some cases, it's Darwinian -- extinction of those who are not fit to survive. Case in point: I was in a store buying a handmade gift for a Christian friend. I spotted something I didn't really need but would have liked to have. It was priced at $40...a bit rich for my purse, but within range. Three times, I mentioned that to the storekeeper...asking him how much the item cost. Now, this guy had a going-out-of-business sign in the back of his store. My wife and I were the only customers in the place.

In many societies, and in the minds of smart merchants, my bringing up the item and the price three times would have signaled a willingness to purchase the item, but for a lower price. It should have begun a bargaining process and likely would have resulted in a sale. But he didn't get it, and I didn't buy it.

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In six days, it will be 2009. 2008 has been a horrible year for a lot of people, including those who were counting on investments to get them through their retirement years or enhancing their incomes. People with mortgages they could barely afford are finding that they can't afford them at all. People who had followed the rules, bought houses they could afford and who were struggling to keep up with their payments while paying $4-plus a gallon for gas, shelling out more for food and clothes and education for their families, are finding themselves left out of the freebie benefits pond.

Money seems to be going to those who bought houses they knew or should have known they could not afford, or who took out the equity in their homes to buy cars, vacations or pay off credit cards with tax-deductible money, counting on the rocketing housing market to keep on going forever.

But there is hope on the horizon. The election of Barack Obama should bring relief to those who don't own oil companies or know people who do. Fuel prices have come down, so you can now fill up your car for $20 (notice I didn't say SUV), heat your home without selling your eldest child and buy food at more reasonable prices (unless you need to eat kosher meat, then all bets are off.)

Among hopeful signs: The Lebanese Army found and dismantled eight Hisbollah rockets aimed at Israel. A couple of years ago, that would not have happened. One notices that the people at the nearby United Nations post did nothing. Useless United Nations -- that's a redundancy.

Another very hopeful sign is the realization by banks and other mortgage holders that they need to be part of the solution after being a large part of the problem.

According to a friend who knows of these things, banks and others are taking the initiative to stave off foreclosures. In one example, a mortgage-holder lowered the interest rate on a trouble mortgage, lowered the payments and transferred the amount in arrears to the end of the mortgage period, bringing the loan current. That's not an isolated incident, my friend said.

Congratulations to the banks involved. It's smart business. You should tell people you are doing this....it's great public relations and corporate citizenship.

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I have stopped sending e-mails or letters to the editor to the New York Times. But if I did, it would read something like this:

In your well-reasoned editorial on immigration in the edition of Dec. 26, you used the kosher slaughterhouse at Postville, Iowa, as an example of how the current immigration strategy hurts immigrants.

The people who ran that operation should suffer the worst fate that could be imagined. No thinking person could debate that.

But why is this one business singled out constantly? There are many, many other slaughterhouses that transport illegal immigrants into this country, but them to work in hellish conditions, offer attractive women better working condition in return for sexual favors, assign children to dangerous work. None of these nonkosher businesses are mentioned in stories or editorials. Why are Jews mentioned as the only examples of these travesties?

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In a couple of days, Len'sLens will offer its second annual hopes for the new year list. Stay tuned and rest up.

Have a great weekend...rest up from the shoveling, the caroling, the gift opening and the commercial-watching retching. And to those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos, and a happy Hanukkah .

Until next time...