Five borough race...sort of

This coming Sunday is the New York Marathon, and if, unlike me, this is something you can enjoy either on the sidelines cheering on a family member or a friend who has been lucky enough to win a spot in this world class foot race, or watching the highlights on the local network coverage, more power to ya! This race and others like them: NYC bike race, Staten Island half marathon, Staten Island bike race, or even the innocuous sounding Bay Street restaurant walk, drive me to distraction.

Why, you might ask yourself, should I be even the slightest annoyed with people who are enjoying a run, a ride or even a stroll in the lovely October weather? Because my street is closed for most of the day, and I am a virtual prisoner in my own home!  

Now, runners come from all over the world to take part in this event. We even meet them at the Tourist Kiosk at the Staten Island Ferry where I work on Thursdays. We had one gentleman and his wife from Finland who stopped by last week to scope out the best way to get to the starting point at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. God help me, I had to tell him to take the ferry and get on one of those damn buses that block my personal building egress along with his wife and his whole retinue of cheering Finnish fans. I hope THEY have fun! I will be sulking on my terrace, shaking my fist, muttering under my breath, and eating pancakes...I will actually have the time to make them this Sunday.

So, in preparation for this event, today I made my own two and a half hour 'round the city touring event hitting all five boroughs in the process...well...mostly the edges of the city, as I drove from Staten Island through Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx to get to an appointment in Mount Vernon. On the way back I toured the bubonic parts of the Bronx, Queens...mostly highway, back through Brooklyn and home over the VZ Bridge. And, boy, how the place is still strangely familiar, yet also eerily different!

Across the bridge and through the tunnel up the East Side, Willis Avenue Bridge, and through the Bronx on the way up through Yonkers and onto Mount Vernon. To get home it was down the Hutch, across the Whitestone onto the LIE and the dreaded BQE, a nightmare no matter when one is on it, under the promenade and back across the VZ.

The familiar neighborhoods are there: Bay Ridge, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, Williamsburg, the East Village, Hell's Kitchen, Murray Hill, Upper Eastside (where I went to college), past the Stadium...Yankee for you who need the reference, Fordham, City Island, Co-Op City, Flushing, Whitestone, Maspeth...all looking so very familiar, yet so very different with new skinny glass apartment buildings popping up all over pointing ever upwards and casting new shadows on old neighbors. These new edifices all seem to be struggling to peer over their older neighbors to see the water, the skyline or a patch of urban green offered by something as simple as a park or even a cemetary.....any green will do.

I remember when my parents finally moved from Brooklyn to Connecticut. My Dad said he had finally gotten out of Brooklyn and had happily bought a nice condo apartment in his beloved Danbury. I said, "Pop, you couldn't afford to live in Brooklyn." It was true then, and it is still true today.

You know that old adage, "You can't go home again."? Well, you can, but you need to bring money.

Parenting the old fashioned way.....

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" Luke 11:13


As I read through this morning’s Gospel, I was struck by what I thought was hopefully, a novel and interesting topic: Biblical parenting skills. In this passage we have Jesus making some rather telling observations on parenting from a man who was, as far as we know, childless. He talks about keeping the doors of the house locked up when the kiddoes are in bed. Good idea. He then goes on to talk about feeding children some interesting things: snakes and spiders. I have known some fussy eaters in my time, but I have to say baiting and switching on the dinner menu was never a good mealtime strategy.


Now, I think Jesus’ suggestions on how to parent your child are interesting suggestions in a very long line of actions on the part of Biblical parents whose own parenting skills were, well, questionable to say the very least. There is quite a list of parental behaviors that are real head scratchers, and just plan psyche damaging if we really think about it.


I mean, we have those original rivaling siblings: Cain and Abel. Now, I will grant you that Adam and Eve may NOT have had any real help or example of how to be a parent, but raising two sons who were such polar opposites could not have been easy. and they really could have used some heavenly assistance and guidance in helping these two learn to deal with each other.

Raising Cain.... and Abel, for that matter, ended up in disaster….you know how that story ended.  And that was just the beginning of a long list of parental gaffs and missteps.


Then there is Lot, you may recall him as a relative of Abraham who lived in the debased city of Sodom. The one whose wife would later turn into salt, but that is a story for another day and another relationship. Lot just did not have a real handle on what were healthy familial relationships. As he shelters three angels in his home, he offered to send out his daughters and a concubine who just happen to live with him to be ravaged by the mob that gathered outside his home demanding that he hand over his angelic visitors instead.


And then there is Abraham himself. When his wife, Sarah, realizes she is barren and unable to conceive a child, she hands over her maid to Abraham who bears his oldest son, Ismael. When Sarah’s jealousy rises to unbearable levels, Abraham sends his son and his mother, Hagar, out into the dessert with only a limited amount of water knowing full well that he was condemning them to certain death. Only by divine intervention did Hagar and Ismael find redemption and did not perish in the heat and the sand.


Abraham did not fare so well with his second child: Isaac, the child of Sarah’s old age. When commanded by God to bring Isaac to the mountain top to offer as a sacrifice, with a heavy heart, Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son, bound him, laid the him on the bed of sticks and wood on the altar and was about to plunge his knife into the boy as an angel of the Lord stilled his hand for this was a test of faith. I always wondered what kind of relationship those two had after that encounter. I am sure it had an impact on how Isaac parented his children those raucous twins: Esau and Jacob.


Rebecka, Isaac’s wife, gave birth to two very different sons in this set of twins. Esau was a rough and tumble kind of guy and his younger brother, Jacob, was more cerebral. Jacob was his mother’s favorite, and he knew it. He was smart and crafty, and at the rare age of 15 had “swindled” his older brother out of his birthright.  When their blind father was close to death and asked for his firstborn con to enter his tent for his blessing, Rebecka disguised the younger twin who was able to trick his father into bestowing the special blessing on him instead of his elder brother. This resulted in a real family feud, and Jacob took exile in the land of his mother’s birth and then wound up marrying not one, but two of his cousins….Talk about a troubled family…this one really put the “fun” in dysfunctional! 


And remember, these were the righteous ancestors of Jesus. No wonder he struggled with fitting examples of good parenting, there was plenty of questionable parenting in that family tree.


But the crux of today’s Gospel is not how poorly some parents have done in helping their children to grow and thrive. It is about our relationship to the living and loving God who has created us all and who is ready to bestow his Holy Spirit on us all. We are but mortals who struggle in our everyday lives, in our relationships with family, friends, spouses and children. We need to stop, sit quietly, breath deliberately and make the time and place for the Spirit, that the Father is waiting to give us; can find that space in us where it can dwell, grow and nurture us in ways that will help us nurture those around us as well.

Flags, Flaps, and Fighting

So, I am currently seeing someone who is an avid soccer fan. Well, actually he is a fanatic "football" fan whose understanding and use of that term is vastly different than this American-born person's. To me football is played in the fall and winter with an oddly shaped ball that looks more like a loaf of bread then the spherical shaped orb one normally envisions when making the mental connection between the word "ball" and the image that pops into one's head.

To him football is what I think of as soccer, and players run around in shorts and knock the ball around with their feet and sometimes their heads...no hands allowed. And whilst I grew up with images of Super Bowls with all the surrounding hoopla that has come to be expected on that super of all Sundays, he follows the games of the World Cup. I have heard many times how the World Series that Americans embrace is not a global event, and how the World Cup truly is, yet I still haven't given much thought or time to following what some have dubbed "The Elegant Game".  Just so you know, I don't really care about the World Series either, but I have started to follow the brouhaha swirling around the winning USA Women's World Cup Soccer/Football team more as a social, political and economic conundrum.

First of all, I believe in "equal pay for equal work", an economic dream for most women. In most professions there is still a disparity between what a man makes and what the equally qualified women makes, and that has held throughout my lifetime. The excuses I have heard as to why this happens in the realm of professional soccer starts with the argument that American men don't play professional soccer because the "big boy" sports here are football, baseball and basketball, and end with the argument that soccer is a "girl's" sport in America, so that is why the women's team is better than the men's. I know that neither of those argument hold any water, nor are they credible. But there are people that I know, whom I thought were rational beings, who have stated these and similar arguments since the women's team had such a stunning win.

Much of the swirling uproar is centered on the person of the co-captain of the American team, one Megan Rapinoe, one heck of an athlete. She has lead her team to not one, but two World Cup titles. She has been playing professional soccer for over ten years on three continents for a variety of professional teams. She is the consummate player and inspires her team mates and others to hone their skills. She has become a role model for many young women, and has earned the ire of others.

Ms. Rapinoe, besides being one heck of an athlete who has appeared in the famed Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, is also an out and proud lesbian in a committed same sex relationship. In addition, she has indicated that she would not be visiting the White House if invited....I did think she jumped the gun on that one, since she announced it before the team won the Women's World Cup, but, hey, I think it was a very "jock" thing to do (no way getting around the sexism inherent in that phrase). If a guy made that statement, I don't think there would be as much flak about it. And then there was the flag drop and the "salute" during the National Anthem.

There has been quite a bit of very nasty and negative noise on social media about the often mis-perceived behavior of this one unabashedly loud and proud woman. I have seen folks refer to her as "Purple Head" as if that would bring her to tears...I think "ya gotta" do better than that! We have photos of her on bended knee at the playing of the national anthem...hey, were I can be found most Sunday mornings, that is an act of reverence and submission. And I don't see anything wrong with anyone taking a knee when the anthem is played, but, alas, I am coming from another viewpoint. Other folks are up in arms because they say she threw the flag on the ground and stomped on it....Stop already! The flag fell and was picked up immediately by another player. And, golly, gee whiz, she did not put her hand over her heart when the national anthem was played at the NYC parade. Well, here goes for those of you who were outraged: the hand over the heart "salute" is optional, not mandated.

So, do you want to know what the real deal is here? Dare I say it? Sexism, misogyny, and big time homophobia. Boys and girls, your prejudices are showing.

Interesting experiment...busing NYC

Nativity Bed-Sty

As a retired white woman of a certain age who grew up in a racially segregated city, I was "bused" from my white ethnic neighborhood into an overwhelmingly black neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. Yes, the segregated city I lived in, and to a lesser extent, still live in, is the largest city in the nation: New York City. In 1957 my parents bought a four bedroom house in the Vanderveer/East Flatbush section of Brooklyn located a healthy ten block walk from the last stop of what was then known as the IRT #4 and #5 train. We had been living in the Fordham section of the Bronx in a fifth floor apartment close to where my parents had grown up. My Dad had a job in Brooklyn, and drove every day to his job along the waterfront in Red Hook. It just made sense for us to live closer to his place of employment.

We would have twice the space with plenty of room for the then seven of us: parents, four kids and my maternal Grandmother who lived with us, a backyard and a garage for my father's car! We moved in late summer, and my mother wanted us enrolled at the local Catholic school as soon as possible. But it was in the middle of the post-World War II baby boom, and seats were tight. After spending a week or two at the local public school; by sisters and I were shoe-horned into spots at a Catholic school. Only one of us would be gong to the local parish school; two of us, including my 8 year old self, would be taking a bus every morning to an underpopulated school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, just under an hour's ride away. 

Bed-Sty, as it is lovingly known, was a neighborhood of brownstone row houses and parks that had flipped over during the post war years from a white population to a prominently black one, many of the newer inhabitants were from the South, the Caribbean or even Africa. The school that I attended, Nativity, had been built by Irish and Italian immigrants in the classic style of San Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna, Italy, a Romanesque building with a high vaulted ceiling and a replica of Michelangelo's Pieta in the back. There were two school buildings a rectory and a convent that created an inner courtyard where students assembled in the mornings and played in during lunch recess.

Nativity's school was underutilized since the shift in population resulted in a decreasing number of Roman Catholics in the neighborhood. The Diocese of Brooklyn looked at this as an opportunity of sorts, and began sending the overflow from other more whiter local parish schools into what some would consider to be "The Hood". So, like Senator Kamala Harris, I was part of a busing experiment. Unlike many white ethnic parents who balked at sending their children into minority neighborhoods and minority schools, my parents sent two of their soon to be five children into what those parents would consider to be an undesirable situation. And guess what? We thrived.

My sister who attended the local parish school sat in a classroom of fifty students; I was in a class of thirty. Her classmates all looked alike, white ethnic New Yorkers: Italian, Irish, German-American. My classmates were from all over: Hungarian and African refugees, Puerto Ricans, Afro-Caribbean, Central Americans, Asians, as well as the kids who looked like me.  We all studied together, ate lunch together, played together, and worshipped together which set us aside from other "forced" bused kids. I spent six years in a multi-ethnic and multi-racial environment, and it formed me in unmeasurable ways, ways of tolerance, inclusivity and an openness to learn and expierence new things. I developed a love of Cuban black bean soup, fried plantains and banana pudding that, thank heavens, I can usually get somewhere in this city when the craving strikes. 

That youthful formation has also resulted in a very unique lens through which I view society. In those early years all of my classmates were smart, bright, eager to learn and valued by our teachers, the good Sisters of St. Joseph. They showed no favoritism; they valued each of us for our personhood, not for how society may have viewed us. This rubbed off on each of us. We treated each other as equals, no one was better than anyone else. We were all held to the same set of expectations, and we met them. We truly liked each other and cared about each other. My expierence was an unexpected outcome in an unintended social experiment. It was an invaluable lesson in the universality of being human. We all got along; we all learned; we all valued each other as uniquely wonderful creatures, and we were friends.

Fishers of Men...and women....and children

"Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people”

As is true for many of you here, I grew up in a household where eating fish on Friday was the norm.  It was at that dinner table that I developed my love of seafood: flounder, halibut, cod, shrimp, lobster, fresh sardines and tuna, smelts…I especially loved those little critters…. salmon, trout, bass, and herring in cream sauce. It never seemed like any kind of depravation to skip the meat on Friday and enjoy homemade fish and chips,  fried flounder fillets, creamed salmon on toasted points, or the occasional lobster bisque or a cold  shrimp cocktail with my Father’s tabasco and horseradish laced sauce. I looked forward to Friday night dinner and was actually disappointed that the Church loosened its insistence of meatless Fridays in my teen years. One of the jokes in my high school days was what was going to happen to all those souls who were doing time in purgatory for eating a hot dog on Friday? I just figured they got paroled to go inside the pearly gates.

Into my married years, my husband brought along with his pool cue and train set, a full complement of salt water fishing gear. I actually think his love of fishing in the bay and ocean was a genetic throwback to his Swedish ancestors who, we found out later, owned a fishing business in Sweden. He would go fishing with his work buddies several times a year. Now you need to know that Bob only caught the fish.  He did not eat the fish, okay maybe some broiled scallops, but in his book they were not fish. And, most importantly, he did not clean fish. So one hot August day when I was five months pregnant with my first child, my husband came home from a fishing trip with a rather large blue fish. Now he knew that I liked fresh bluefish cooked on the grill with olive oil, garlic and lemon, so he thought he was doing a wonderful thing when, instead of selling the fish to the fish mongers who waited for the fishing boats to return to Sheepshead Bay, he thought it would be a lovely gift to bring the fish home surrounded by packed ice…and it was the whole magilla: innards, scales and fins.  He then opened the refrigerator and took out a cold beer and made himself comfortable firing up the grill so I could enjoy the fresh fish he had so lovingly brought home to me…the five month pregnant wife who could not even look a dead fish without feeling more than a tad nauseous. I held my nose, wrapped that sucker in a plastic grab age bag and gingerly tossed it into the garbage and brought out a nice steak to grill instead.  He never came home again with a whole fish.  He actually was happy to pay the deck hands to fillet the fish for him. It was a teachable moment, and he was somewhat teachable.

In today’s Gospel we have a fish related story as well.  Peter and his fishing crew are about to pull into port after a very disappointing fishing day. They caught nothing.  They were tired and sore, ready to call it a day and go home to sleep. Jesus instructs them to drop their nets again….nets that had returned empty. When they did, on faith alone, their nets became so full that they needed other fishermen to help them bring in the haul. Peter then exclaims: "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Then Jesus says with all authority, “ Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people”. Now I have to admit to you that I like the older translation “…fishers of men”, but I digress. And that is still a role that as thoughtful Christians we are called to be.  We are called to be the conduits of the Good News in our community, our workplace, our families and the world. We know we have a message to share with others, and today we can review and renew our commitment to become those fishers in our neighborhood.

Seniorsplaining

The phenomena known as "mansplaining" received this odd nomenclature from women who were just plain tired of and disgusted with those men, in their personal, social or professional life, who insistently feel the need to overly explain, incessantly repeat, or otherwise attempt to "dumb down" what these men think are ideas and concepts that women have difficulty understanding.  And I can attest to the fact that often men I have worked with were constantly interrupting, talking over and condescendingly over explaining things to women who are perfectly capable of communicating with these numbskulls, if they would only just shut the (beep) up!

I cannot tell you the number of times at staff or faculty meetings, I have had to listen to one of these guys pontificating on and on about stuff I already knew and needed no further explanating. I can remember many a union  gathering where a chorus of women were yelling, "Just call the question!" when one of these long winded bags of masculine hot air attempted to review and lecture the rest of the room...usually interrupting one or another female, along the way.

These habits are more than annoying, and I am glad we have a word that identifies this problem. Now, as I have been residing in the happy contentment of retirement, these is yet another issue that is raising the hackles on the back of my neck. I call it "seniorsplaining".

"Seniorsplaining", and it is a word of my own invention, so I get to define it as I see fit, is the elaborate process of younger, non-retired service workers to literally raise their voice level, slow down their speech and talk to anyone who has grey hair as if they were instructing a five year old in how to button their coat. Slow, loud, and distinctly condescending are the three descriptions of this speech pattern that I have encountered in retail venues, restaurants, doctor's offices and  especially The Apple Store.

On a recent visit to a doctor's office, before the exam began, I indicated that I would be sitting on the chair the technician had just vacated so I could remove my shoes.

"Just be careful", she said , "It has wheels, and we don't want you to fall, now, would we?"
No S--t, Sherlock! I thought to myself. It is amazing that I am allowed to drive a car with four wheels and push the shopping cart around the local grocery unassisted!

At a local restaurant, one I will NOT be patronizing anymore, a young waitress asked if I wanted the menu with the large print,"Many of our older customers have trouble reading the regular menu", she said to me. Guess what, sweetie, that is why I am wearing glasses, just like you, in case you did not notice.  What do you use yours for?

On a recent trip to National Parks in British Columbia, the group I was with...three other retired people, stopped in a small town to eat a quick lunch. Now this was huckleberry country and ever since I was a kid, I loved huckleberry pie, and was looking forward to getting a slice if one was available.  There was a sign on the wall. "Ask if you don't see what you want."
 So I asked the waitress, "Do you have any huckleberry pie?"
 Her response was,"We have apple, peach and cherry pie."
"That's nice, but that is not what I asked you", was my reply.
She then repeated again a bit louder and rather curtly, "We have apple, peach and cherry."
"A simple yes or no is what I expected, do you have any huckleberry pie?" I asked again.
"No," she replied.
"Okay, I will skip dessert", I said.  She was visibly annoyed, but had not listened to my request.

But the prize for the most annoying "seniorsplainers" goes to the young, hip, tech savvy staff of The Apple Store. These employees of the most influential technology enterprise are the most annoying "seniorsplainers" of all. I gird my loins every time I have to go into an Apple Store, and I often leave in a more frustrated and angry state then when I enter.

When I finally had to replace my I-Phone, and yes, I had the original I-Phone ( I still have it and it is in pristine condition); I became the object of intense curiosity among the staff who all asked to see it, touch it and made what they considered quite humorous comments about how nice it looked and how come it took me so long to get a new one.Well, basically , it worked pretty well until I began to use it to do more than make a phone call. I was not happy about how I was treated as if I were a dinosaur and found their delight at handling this "fossil" of a phone rather juvenile.

I had decided with the assistance of my daughter, on which phone I wanted. I told the young man helping me and he said, "Oh, you do not want that one.  It is too complicated for people your age."
Hey, sonny boy, I graduated from college and have two Masters' degrees. I think I can figure out how to use this phone; it comes with an instruction booklet? I think I can handle this.

After a recent trip, I reluctantly went to the Apple Store near me with a very specific request.  I wanted to transfer photos from my I-Phone to a small disk so I could free up some space on my phone. This became a three person discussion on what they thought I wanted to do. They then tried to sell me an accessory they thought I wanted, I actually already had this same one, and it was not able to do what they thought it would.

" I know people your age can't understand this technology; you think it is hard, so I am here to  do this, so you don't have to!" one of the young men said to me.  I said, " Well, thank you. My hair may be grey, but I still have a functioning brain." I then left the store and have not been back.

My suggestion for the technicians, waitresses, and Apple employees is this, people my age, those with grey hair and glasses, do not want to be talked down to, nor do we want to be patronized.  Remember, one day you will be where we are today, and what goes around, comes around. We are your future.

South America! Take Me Away!

Having spent seventeen days traveling around the east and southern tip of South America on a 2,500 passenger ship, the world, for me, has become a bit smaller and upside down at the same time. Walking the streets of Buenos Aires and Montevideo the in the days and week before Christmas was surreal: Christmas Trees and ripe red cherries; sunlight and fairy lights; tinsel and tangos; rain, hail, sleet, snow and sunshine all in one day; lots of contrast and comparisons. The least of it is that the seasons are reversed....December 23rd in Buenos Aires was a balmy 83 degrees Fahrenheit making it difficult to get on the plane on the way home hearing about the cooler temperatures awaiting us in NYC.            

And I learned some interesting things about South America, many of which I found astounding, to say the least. Did you know that.....

• Genetically Chileans, Argentinians and residents of Uruguay are a good eighty percent European with the countries of Spain and Italy heading the list, but many other immigrants came form Poland, Germany and areas of Eastern Europe. Each of these countries has a thriving Jewish population, as a matter of fact, two of our local guides were grandchildren of Jewish immigrants who came to the area from Eastern Europe just prior to World War II.
• There are very few descendants of indigenous peoples in these countries of South America. They were systematically decimated by the Spaniards either by diseases or by the sword. 
• Only about ten percent of the population of Argentina is of African descent, even though slavery was an important part of their history. Slaves were often forced to serve as the first defense against invasion, and they perished in higher numbers that the descendants of Europeans. 
• The Spanish actually settled Argentina twice. With the first attempt came men and cattle. Almost half of the men were killed by the local indigenous folk, so they re-grouped and departed quickly leaving the cows and bulls behind. When the Spanish returned some years later, the cows and bulls did what cows and bulls usually do, and since there were no natural predators, reproduced at  an alarming rate and were enjoying the bounty of the grasslands we now call the Pampas. Thus the Argentine beef culture was born.
• Argentinians are not vegetable eaters; beef eaters-yes; green vegetables-not so much. Which is a real shame because the produce that I saw and ate was excellent, great tomatoes and grapes, peppers and cherries. Steak, lettuce and tomatoes seems to be the go-to meal.
• And the steaks???? Absolutely wonderful!
• Local economy is terrible: run away inflation makes it necessary for folks to use the ATM every day and often by 2:00 in the afternoon, the ATM's start to close down because they run out of pesos. Most merchants and restaurant folks prefer hard currency: US dollars and Euros are the way to go. The economy makes it difficult for anyone to save money to buy a home, so most people rent.
• Eva Peron is more than a Broadway musical. She is still revered by the populace having played a major role in obtaining the right to vote for women.
• Argentina has an official religion, Roman Catholicism ; Uruguay does not. It is a decidedly secular state that has legalized marijuana, gay marriage and abortion; Christmas is called "The Family Holiday". Catholics have felt discrimination, and, in recent days, have mounted a campaign to return Christ back into Christmas.  The Argentinians are  struggling with reproductive rights as I write this.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. At one point we were 400 miles from Antarctica! We saw glaciers and penguins, and cormorants, and whales, and dolphin and lots of tango dancers! I even got to practice my decidedly New York accented Spanish.