Monthly Archives: December 2010

Buchanan Street

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On the eve of this new year I find myself thinking of my friends on Buchanan Street in Pearl River, New York, a hamlet 40 miles or so from New York City. While I was born in New York City and, as far as years are concerned, lived a large majority of my life in the city, my fondest childhood memories are of my Buchanan Street.

My childhood friends, then and now, are family in my heart. I can’t or shouldn’t speak for them nor can I know what your childhood friends are to you. I don’t think it is a matter that they should or should not be one thing or another. They are what they are. For me, they are family. When I think of Jeffrey Graf (I loved his dog, Monty), Barbara Malmet, Patty Costello, Mark Jewel, Brian Baxter, Billy Damrow, Richard McConville, Billy Scott, Cindy Fine, the Guercis, Fitzgerald’s, Hausers (they always owned Saabs),  Gunthers and more, my heart warms, my eyes wet up, and I find myself smiling. Playing stickball or football on the street, one or all shouting, Car! Car! C-A-R! as warning when a car approached. Sledding down Van Buren Street, the best sledding hill in the world in my book.

When we grew up there in the 1950s and 60s, the area was rural. Our homes were surrounded by woods and streams, filled with deer and wildlife. Many of us were highly skilled tree climbers and fort builders. And we played cowboys and Indians (I was always an Indian), and of course we played army, meaning we were the American Army killing the hated (and still hated) Nazis. Many of our fathers and uncles, including mine, fought them.

Some of us have touched base over the years. Facebook has helped with that. A year or so ago I had some wonderful conversations with Patty who to this day possesses a rapier sharp mind, equally sharp memory, and, like me, a deep appreciation and love for our days on Buchanan Street.

I think of all of them with love because I love them all. And if any are in the “sound” of these words, I wish you happy new year and hope life affords us time to gather again, perhaps on Buchanan Street.                                                                        (Jeffrey, Me & Patty)

Slimy Jim Demint

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Opposition to the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation bill was despicable enough, but you can’t get any lower than Senator Jim DeMint who didn’t want to work on the bill around the Christmas holiday because doing so would be, to use the word dimwit DeMint used, “sacrilegious”.  The bill is named after James Zadroga, an NYPD detective who died January 5, 2006 of respiratory disease attributed to his rescue work at ground zero.

The Zadroga bill provides desperately needed health care and compensation for 9/11 workers for five years

A New York City firefighter who recently appeared with Jon Stewart on the “Daily Show” said he was unaware of any firefighters who refuse to answer calls on religious holidays. 

Makes one wonder exactly what rescue services  DeMint might expect or condone were his house to catch fire on, well, Christmas.

However, if DeMint’s home were ever to catch fire on Christmas, his beliefs should be respected. Let it burn.

Time With My Father: Chess & Chess.com

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When I was a little boy my father taught me how to play chess. He gave me a book on chess with an inscription that read something to the effect of, For my son, Peter, who will some day be a far better chess player than I am. How I wish I still had that book.

Anyway, he taught me chess and soon we played almost daily and studied the games of chess greats like Jose Raul Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Emanuel Lasker, Akiba Rubinstein, my personal favorite, Sammy Reshevsky, and, of course, the new kid on the block at the time, Bobby Fischer.

I became a good chess player. In fact, one occasion I played and beat a chess master, my one and only claim to fame in chess. I am not a good player now. In fact, I am a very poor player. As we get older there is more on our mind and this makes it much harder to clear the thinking-decks in order to concentrate on the game of chess. At least this is true for me.

But I have always loved chess, for the game itself and, of even more importance, it connects me to my father. My father was an extremely good chess player. He was playing me when he was in his forties and fifties and although his prediction that I would become a better player proved true, had I played him when I was in my forties and fifties I would have lost every game.

My father was the only person I’ve ever let beat me. It got to the point where I could beat him every time, and while he never complained or uttered sound nor syllable of distress, I couldn’t bear it, and so, on occasion, would let a game slip away. In fact, I think the games I let slip into his win column were, on reflection, the best games I’ve ever played. My father left the world when I was 15 and as those close to me know, I would give up the rest of my life in the blink of an eye to hug him one more time.

Recently, I began looking for a place on the web to do chess problems. In doing so I ran across a wonderful website called Chess.com. It is best chess site out there as far as I’m concerned. I now gobble up 25 or so chess problems a day, my rating is a paltry but proud 1300 and I have renewed my relationship with chess and, of course, time with my father.

It’s All About Respect

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In order for relationships of any kind to work, each person must be able to be who they are safely with the other. I’m talking about emotional, physical, spiritual, and intellectual safety. It is all about respect.

Too often people give up who they are to remain connected to another. It never works, at least not if happiness and fulfillment and your ability (and right) to be you is concerned.

Judgment is one of the primary poisons that can make being who you are risky business. People see the way you look or hear the way you sound and in the blink of an eye draw all kinds of conclusions, more often than not inaccurate ones. If you are black or Latino, Gay or Lesbian, Muslim, female, Jewish, and so on, the judgment flies. When I met my first wife she’d just left the high-paying field of modeling for a low-paying job in marketing. When I asked her why she’d made the change she said, “I was tired of people talking to my looks and not me.”

Judgment precludes respect. This holds true if you live with a disability as well.  I’ve seen people who for some odd reason conclude that people who use wheelchairs must be hard of hearing. People often draw the same baffling conclusion about people who are blind.

And then there is the number one well-founded complaint I hear from people with disabilities; we are treated as if we’re children. There is no respect in that.

Respecting others is rooted in a commitment to accept others for who they are, which requires being on the lookout for when a lifetime of inaccurate teachings may be skewing your view of another, including your view of your self.

Many of us are slaves to our histories and as a result do not see ourselves clearly. If you were raised being told you were stupid or ugly or bad you may still be under the grip of those damaging inaccuracies. Equally true, if you were raised being told you were better than  or smarter than or better looking than you too are under the grip of damaging inaccuracies.

Dare to discover your truth and the truth of others; doing so is all about respect, for others and your self. Others deserve the respect. So do you.

Note:  The title of this essay is the title of the book I am working on about my experiences in the field of brain injury.

My Mother Dancing

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When someone I love dies the years seem to pick up speed. They fly by. My mother Leona was 68 when she died nine years ago yesterday. It doesn’t feel that long ago. She was and always will be one of the greatest discoveries in life for me. She had to give me up for adoption when I was a baby. We had my first seven days together and that was it. She was only 20 when she handed her son over and returned home utterly destroyed. This is not the missive to explain all this, or how I know all this other than to say we left nothing about the subject and circumstances of my adoption untouched by conversation.

We were reunited on January 8, 1987, a moment in both our lives so filled with emotion for the both of us I’m surprised we didn’t burst. But then again, we were cut from the same cloth. To be more precise, I am cut from hers. She had the ability to not only allow moments of enormous amounts of emotion, she welcomed them.

She also loved to dance, and dancing contains worlds of emotion. She may have suspected that, like her, I found it and still find it impossible to remain physically still when music is on. To this day I find myself utterly baffled by people who can sit still while music with, say, Latin rhythm is on. I always want to tap them on the shoulder and ask, Don’t you feel that? However, she certainly had no idea I’d danced professionally and when I was a little boy my family would play music just so I could keep dancing, I couldn’t get enough.

The evening my mother and I reunited and found each others arms again we went to her home, after first going out for coffee. There my “new” sister, Sunday, said, “If you’re in this family you better love to dance.” My friend Dane was with me. Dane looked at me and said, “You want me to tell them.” And so he told them about my days dancing with the Joffrey Ballet and dancing pretty much every time I ran into music.

On October 2, 1987, the first birthday we had together since the day I was born, my mother and I went out to dinner, and then we went to a club and danced all night. She was a great dancer, the greatest dance partner I’ve ever had.

I love you, Mom, miss you terribly, and I’m still dancing.