On This Spot

I stopped to give someone directions on Monday and ended up in a time warp.

I had just stepped out of my building at lunchtime when a little old lady stopped in front of the revolving door and asked for directions.

“Excuse me,” she said in what sounded like an Eastern European accent. “Could you please tell me where is 198 Broadway?”

She was speaking to a man standing by the door and I was about to walk away until I noticed the guy was ignoring her. So I stepped in.

“Where do you want to go?”

“198 Broadway,” she said, holding up a slip of paper. “My eye doctor is there.”

I work at 195 Broadway, so I didn’t think this would be too difficult. My office is located in this magnificent old building in Lower Manhattan that dominates one side of the street.

The place is a treasure, with this fabulous lobby that looks like something out of a Cecil B. DeMille picture.

It was the headquarters of AT&T from 1916 to 1983 and since they were a monopoly back then money clearly was no object. The place is like a cathedral of capitalism.

AT&T even installed a basketball court on the fifth floor so their employees could get a workout during the workday. I’ve been working there for several months now and I’m still amazed every time I walk through the front door.

But 198 Broadway? That was another story.

I looked across the street to the massive Fulton Street Transit Center project, which may actually be finished before the sun burns out.

There’s only one narrow building at the end of the block but it’s empty now, boarded up so it looks like a 12-story tombstone. Everything else has been torn down.

“This is 195…” I said, pointing lamely to my building. “But I think 198 Broadway is gone.”

She paused for a moment and then shrugged.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll just go there and ask them where he moved.”


She turned and walked down the street and I went in the opposite direction, not realizing until a few minutes had gone by that there was no “there” to go to and no “them” to ask when she got there.

I turned around and tried to find her, but the lunchtime crowd had already swallowed her up.

The hammers and the drills were going full blast at the construction site so I went over to St. Paul’s Chapel to walk around the tombstones and escape the racket, but the noise from nearby the Freedom Tower site was even louder.

I started seriously thinking about a vacation.

St. Paul’s is a survivor, unlike a lot of other structures in this town. It was completed in 1766 and George Washington worshiped here on his Inauguration Day in 1789.

After the 9/11 attacks, recovery workers at the WTC site rested at the chapel and you can find banners, letters and other 9/11-related items on display there.

From George Washington to September 11—and still going—that’s quite a ride.

Back in The Day

St. Paul’s is a popular tourist site and there are so many people walking around there taking pictures that sometimes you forget it’s a church.

I went there recently and was a little surprised to see an African American man on his knees before the altar devoutly praying while the out-of-towners moved around him. It was a strange, but comforting sight.

Still, I couldn’t get that lady and the phantom building out of my mind. I told my aunt about her and how disappointed I was that I couldn’t help her.

“You can’t help them all, dear,” she said.

No, I guess not. But I decided to do a little research about 198 Broadway and I learned that Central Telephone Exchange was located there in 1880 before being consolidated with other companies.

On July 2, 1902, The New York Times reported that Arthur S. Cox Co. and L.J. Du Mahaut had sold a six-story building at that location for Martha H. Andrew. The structure had been occupied by the Dennison Manufacturing Company, but was gutted by fire six months earlier.

“The price paid for the property is $325,000,” the article said. “The buyer is a builder, who will erect on the site a twelve-story office building costing $250,000, from plans by Walter H. Wickes.”

That would by my friend’s building, the future home of her eye doctor…and now a hole in the ground.

The building was once apparently home to a photographer, E. Muller Jr., who had taken a picture of a troop ship steaming past the Statute of Liberty in 1919.

On August 12, 1964 the Times reported that “the 12-story office building at 198 Broadway, between Fulton and John Streets, has been purchased by an investing client of Joseph S. Wohl, lawyer, from Daniel S. Levy and Joseph Richter.”

How strange it was must feel to look for a place and find that it's gone. I remember driving with my parents years ago by the ruins of Shore Road Hospital, the place where my siblings and I were all born, and seeing how it had fallen into disrepair, with weeds growing all around the property.

There’s a senior citizen’s home on the site now and I wonder if I might be making a return visit to the place someday.

I once helped an elderly woman cross Sixth Avenue near Leif Ericson Park and she told me about growing up in Bay Ridge when it was a much different place.

“This all used to be farmland,” she said, pointing to the park, the highway, and surrounding buildings. It was hard to imagine farms where there is now so much concrete and asphalt.

Old photographs can tell you a lot about a street or a neighborhood. You’ll see magnificent homes that are gone now and you’ll marvel at how much a place has changed.

But it’s not a smooth, magical transition. It’s done with drills, wrecking balls and dynamite. It’s the future rolling over the past and people can be swept aside.

I got on the subway that night and I saw a woman with a little boy in a baby carriage. He was a completely hairless fellow, kind of like yours truly, and he looked around the car as if he were an alien scientist studying a newly discovered species.

I imagined him years from now, as a young man, and I pictured myself as a senior citizen, approaching him and asking him for directions to a place that no longer existed.

I wondered how I would react when I got the news. And I wondered if he would try and give the old guy a hand or just keep walking.

You can’t help them all, dear.

'He Used to Be A Big Shot'

I dove headfirst into my comfort zone last weekend and I’m not the least bit ashamed.

I know I should get out more: meet people, visit museums, go to the opera, attend concerts, wrestle alligators, and parachute out of burning airplanes.

I live in New York, for God’s sake, there’s any number of things to do in this town, including alligator wrestling if you look hard enough. You can probably wrestle an alligator while diving out of a burning airplane if that tickles your fancy, though I don't know why it should.

But sometimes I don’t feel like doing anything social at all. Some nights, instead of expanding my world, I feel like drawing it in around me like a handmade quilt. Some nights I just feel like staying home and watching TV.

And that’s what I did the last week when Netflix sent me a DVD of old Jimmy Cagney movie I had never seen called “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.”

I didn't even know about this 1950 film until a few weeks ago, but it didn't matter. If you’ve got an old black and white gangster movie starring Jimmy Cagney, brother, you better save me a seat or you’ll be standing all night.

I could fill a whole Internet with praise for Cagney. Just look at the movies he's done: “The Roaring Twenties,” “Footlight Parade,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “Public Enemy,” “White Heat,” “One, Two, Three,” oh, God, it’s an unbelievable body of work and there are plenty of others that I haven't mentioned.

I have a personal fondness for a film he did called “Shake Hands With the Devil,” because, in addition to be a good movie about “The Troubles” in Ireland, Cagney also plays a character named Lenihan—and he spells it the right way, too.

I also enjoy a lot of Cagney’s lesser films like “City for Conquest,” where he plays a boxer who fights so he can send his brother to music school—yeah, really; or “Each Dawn I Die,” where he’s a reporter framed for murder and sent to prison.

While these may be referred to as B-movies--Geezer Alert!--they're still better than most of the crap you see in theaters today.

I admit I was a bit nervous about “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” because I knew so little about it and was concerned it could be a dog.

But as soon as the credits started to roll, I knew I was in good hands. I saw the famous Warner Brothers logo, heard the stirring anthem that starts off so many great movies, and I was on my way.

There I was in my living room, my feet up the coffee table, a plastic tray on my lap and munching on a bag full of roasted peanuts. I cracked shells while Cagney cracked skulls and it was great.


At one point I actually sat there and savored my feeling of contentment: nowhere to go, no one to see, no phone calls to return, no emails to answer, no lame conversations with doltish nitwits whose brains couldn’t fill a peanut shell.

I wasn’t even guilt-tripping myself to get up off my ass and go see the outside world. No, the outside world could stay outside for all I cared. I was truly at peace.

Familiar Faces

The film had a great supporting cast, too, with the likes of Ward Bond, Barton MacLane, Helena Carter, and Barbara Peyton.

I used to tease my mother when she’d get excited and call out the names of these lesser known players because, well, I didn’t know them. Just to be a smart-ass I’d shout the names of obscure people in the cast and crew: Harvey Lipschitz! Agnes Diddlebopper! Phineas Grupa!

But now, thanks to watching all these flicks with my parents, I actually do know a lot of these people and I get just as worked up as my mom did.

As always with these old time movies, there is the second tier of actors whom you know and enjoy, but just can’t name. One of the supporting cast members, Luther Adler, looked familiar to me and a quick search on IMDB confirmed where I had seen him before.

It turns out that he had starred in an episode of The Untouchables in 1962 where he played a gangster—no, really?—who had a gun-toting henchman played by a tough-talking Leonard Nimoy, light years away from the Vulcan pinch and the pointy ears.

I don’t want to spoil the story for you, but the future science officer of the Enterprise doesn't live long and prosper on Elliot Ness' home planet. He is gunned down instead of beamed up and his blazing demise occurs in the background of a dramatic father and son confrontation. It’s like, “oh, yeah, by the way, this schmuck gets killed, too.” Most illogical.

Speaking of getting killed, a whole bunch of people manage to do that in “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye,” but you might have already picked that up from the title.


This is by no means Cagney’s best movie; the pacing is not always the best, the love scenes are a bit clunky, the story is told in an unnecessary series of flashbacks, and I actually think Cagney is a little too old for the part. But I'm not complaining.

Some people have called this a sequel of sorts to “White Heat,” but this character is a bit cooler than the Oedipal complexed Cody Jarrett. None of the "top of the world, Ma" stuff in this movie, though Cagney does severely clock a guy who makes the incredibly dense mistake of telling our hero he's crazy. Don't these guys ever learn?

One of my favorite scenes happens early on when Cagney blackmails a corrupt cop portrayed by Ward Bond. The cop becomes enraged at first but realizes the hoods have him over a barrel. The scene ends with Ward Bond looking defeated and whipped while Cagney stands behind him and smiles from ear-to-ear. With this much charisma, who needs dialog?

While doing a little research on this film, I learned that Barbara Peyton, Cagney’s co-star, saw her life spin out of control with drugs and alcohol, until she was literally selling herself on the Sunset Strip. She died in her parents’ home at the age of 39.

And, years later, it turns out that Phil Spector and Lana Clarkson were watching this film in Spector's chauffeured car on the way to his Alhambra mansion the night of her murder. Kiss tomorrow goodbye, indeed.

I’m glad I didn’t know any of these things when I sat down in front of the tube with my bag of peanuts. This knowledge hasn’t changed my opinion of the movie, though it is a bit disturbing.

Naturally, you don’t make a habit of hunkering down with the DVD player night after night. I know there are people to meet, places to see and things to do. But every so often, you have to retreat, regroup, and wrestle the alligators another day.

Neverland Farewell

It didn’t take long, did it?

Michael Jackson was just dead for a few hours this evening when I witnessed a scramble for post-mortem memorabilia.

I stopped by a used book stand on W. 73rd Street and Broadway to see if I could add even more paperbacks to my already mountainous collection.

As I approached the stand, the proprietor—I guess that’s what you call him—a large African-American man, was arguing with a skinny middle-aged fellow with glasses who was clutching a copy of Jackson’s Thriller LP.

“I don’t want your money,” the bookseller declared forcefully.

“How much do--?” the other man tried to say.

“—I don’t want your money.”

I’ve bought so many books here, but I’ve never learned this man’s name. He is a local legend, though, and very protective of his patch of ground.

The guy with the glasses finally got the message, put down the record—which looked like a manhole cover next to a CD—and walked away.

“You have a blessed day,” the bookseller said in a way that made me doubt his sincerity and sat down in his folding chair.

I wanted to ask him what the dispute was about, but as I mentioned, he was rather large and rather upset. Most likely this incident was part of the first wave of Jackson-related bone-picking.

I bought the Spiritual Diary, a small paperback with a yoga philosophy lesson for every day of the year. The book guy wanted three bucks and I didn’t argue.

So now with the deaths of Jackson, Farrah Fawcett—in the same day, no less--and Ed McMahon a few days earlier, my mother’s theory about celebrities dying in threes seems to be accurate.

I really wasn’t a fan of any of these people, but I do regret their passing. It’s a shame that the death of a degenerate like Michael Jackson will overshadow the brave struggle that Farrah Fawcett put up before finally succumbing to cancer.

I didn't think much of McMahon, but I came to respect him more when I read his obituary. It turns out, among other things, that he was a veteran who served in both World War II and the Korean War.

Jackson and Farrah Fawcett were two iconic figures from my younger days and I still remember the pop culture hysteria that surrounded both of them. That famous Farrah poster was so prevalent at one time that there was probably one hanging in the Vatican.

And Thriller, God, that was all you heard on the radio. I actually started to like Michael Jackson’s music after studiously detesting the Jackson Five’s body of work for years.

I enjoyed the "Beat It" video and I even got a kick out of "Thriller" with the Vincent Price rap. It was entertaining as hell.

And then for Jackson it all fell apart in a way that no one could ever have predicted.

The plastic surgery, Bubbles the Chimp, the child molestation accusations, the Elephant Man’s bones—could this possibly have been the same person who enthralled the world when he moonwalked on TV?

The passing of time and the fragility of life are frightening concepts, but the moral corruption that seemed to ooze out of Michael Jackson brought creepy to a whole new level.

I started reading the Spiritual Diary as I the rode the subway home tonight and I thought today's entry was quite appropriate.

“Mind is the chief factor for governing the body,” it said. “One should always avoid suggesting to the mind thoughts of human limitations such as sickness, old age and death.”

It sounds like those yogis knew what they were talking about.

Have a blessed day.

Ride, Captain, Ride

I’d been running low on joy lately, both the emotion and the dishwashing liquid.

Replacing the soap was easy—I just went to the appropriate shelf at my local grocery store and grabbed hold of the plastic bottle.

But at the last second, thanks to the recession and my unflagging frugality, I forsook the Joy in favor of an eerie blue generic brand that was two bucks cheaper. How much Joy do you need in this life, anyway?

However, the cutrate suds didn’t cut the mustard—or the grease--and so my funk deepened. I was in a rut and desperately in need of a change.

And that’s when I got this email:

“I am Capt. David Charles, 50 Years Old from (England) United Kingdom. I work with Princess Diana Luxury Motor Yacht in United Kingdom. We are seeking applicants to work on the new year-round UNITED KINGDOM flagged Passenger ship. It’s a private own yacht. Accommodation will be provided by the Company. I will like to know if you are interested in working on the ship.”

All I know about sailing can be found in the lyrics of “Sloop John B,” but I was ready to sign up. I could see the whole wide world while swabbing the deck, hoisting the missen mast, and crowing in the crow’s nest.

I could also teach Capt. David Charles, 50 Years Old from (England) United Kingdom, how to speak the Queen’s English so he won’t write any more emails reading “I will like to know…”

Yes, I know this was yet another Internet scam, but it was a cut above the old Nigerian oil well routine, where some relative of mine that I never heard of gets his ticket punched in a wild muskrat stampede and now I’m next in line for all his wealth.

This yacht gig didn’t make any appeal for a bank account number or other such financial information like your average web swindle—though I’m sure that would follow if I responded to the captain’s e-mail.

Still, it’s nice to fantasize about chucking the daily grind and leaving the muskrat race behind for a life on the ocean. I could sail the seven seas as the world’s oldest cabin boy, which certainly beats the hell out of riding the R train to the office every morning.

We could go to exotic places like Burkina Faso, and while that may sound like an Italian soap opera star, it is actually a West African nation where Princess Achia Oyaba currently hangs her crown.

The princess wrote to me—and about 12 million other people--to say she was in a whole mess of trouble because her dad, King Oyaba “a very wealthy traditional ruler” and her “Senior Brother” were poisoned to death “by his rivals in the traditional chieftaincy title tussle about royalties and other related matters.”

The princess’ command of English isn’t much better than that of Capt. David Charles, 50 Years Old from (England) United Kingdom, but then she’s not a native speaker so I’m willing to cut her some slack.

All Hands on Deck

This was exciting stuff, especially that bit about the “title tussle”—sounds like a pro wrestling event or something you'd see at a topless bar. I’ve never been involved in a title tussle before and now here’s a total stranger offering me ringside seats.


And it gets even better because the princess has a ton of dough she’s looking to free up.

“I am the only Daughter/person left in our family and because of this money (US$3.1M), I lost my Family and the Village/ his Rivals seized all our properties and froze our accounts by the new Government after the death of my beloved Father/Brother.”

The daughter person lost her beloved father/brother? That’s quite a kingdom, you got there, princess. Maybe you take a job on a luxury motor yacht and get away for a while.

After her relatives got whacked, the princess said she split for Burkina Faso, which translates as “the land of upright people,” and now she needs someone’s help to liberate all that money.

“Due to the pressure mounted on me, I therefore need your urgent assistance to move this money out from the Bank where it is right now. Although it will require you to act as (my father’s) Business Partner so that the Bank will effect the money in your account.”

This was getting better and better. I would commandeer the Princess Diana, lock Capt. David Charles, 50 Years Old from (England) United Kingdom in the head, and set sail for Burkina Faso.

I’d rescue the other princess, Achia Oyaba—wasn’t that a Beatles song?—and with all that money I could afford to buy real Joy instead of that generic crap. And maybe love would blossom between the princess and the lowly cabin boy and I could mount the right kind of pressure on her royal highness.

I was prepared for that, too, thanks to another e-mail entitled “Keep Your Erection” (I’ve got one of my own, thank you.), a free Viagra offer from “Be A God in Bed,” who, with a handle like that, should know a thing or two about the land of upright people.

So hoist up the John B's sail; see how the mainsail sets; call for the Captain ashore, I want to save the Princess.

But then my sea-faring fantasy was suddenly dashed against the rocks of cruel fate, a crushing blow that hit me right in the Achia Oyaba, and now there’s no Joy in Brooklyn.

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country.

Well, it was a nice dream, yacht, princess and all. I guess I’ll keep washing my dishes with the Blue Slime and think about how close I came to being a king--not to mention a God in bed.

But wait a second. I just got another e-mail from Mr. Nanado Benjamin, the Director In Charge of the Auditing Section of the Bank of Africa in—oh, yeah!--Burkina Faso.

Apparently the muskrats have gone wild again because one of his customers is deceased and now Nanado needs my “urgent business assistance” in transferring an abandoned sum of 27.7 million dollars immediately to my account.

Hang on, Princess, your cabin boy is on the way.

The Drive to Stratford Road

"So how’s your father?”

The question caught me off-guard—not only because my father died over two years ago, but because it came from a car service driver whom I mistakenly assumed was a total stranger.

My girlfriend and I were going to a party at my blogging buddy Flatbush Gardner's house and we had been talking to each other during the ride. I was feeling a little uneasy because I was ignoring the driver—I usually like to chat with them—but I thought I’d give the guy a break.

It had been a hectic day. My girlfriend was coming down from the Bronx to visit me and I was racing around all morning, doing my weekend chores and cleaning—or attempting to clean—my house so she wouldn’t faint or run out the door screaming when she saw the place.

And I was walking back from food shopping when I saw a young father and his little girl walking up Fifth Avenue.

The girl was blond, about 5 years old, and just beautiful. She was hopping around while her father was talking on a cell phone.

“Daddy, look at me,” she said and broke into a little dance step as soon as her father turned her way.

I felt a familiar twinge of envy and regret I get sometimes when I see someone with a young child and I wonder why I didn’t have children of my own. It’s pointless to go through this regret, but that’s never stopped me before.

And while I’m not a parent, my experience with my nieces has taught me how quickly time flies by and how little moments like the one the girl was having with her father are so precious and fleeting.

My nieces are 21 and 14 years old, respectively, but it wasn’t so long ago that they were doing the same kinds of funny things that little blond girl was doing and asking me to look at them.

Look while you still can, I thought. Look while they still want to share things with you.

I came home and promptly got into a death match with the vacuum cleaner, which first refused to pick up any dirt from the porch carpet and then wouldn’t shut off until I yanked the plug out of the wall.

I handled the situation in my usual way—freaking out, cursing, calming down, and then realizing that I was the one who screwed up.

In this case, the hose was in the wrong nozzle and the power switch was fine, it was just that--well, this is a little disturbing--I couldn’t find the damn thing—even though I just turned the machine on two minutes before.

Stuff like this makes me nervous. My father suffered from dementia and one of the first things I noticed when his mind started to slip was that he became very forgetful...kind of like me.

I finished cleaning the carpet, my girlfriend showed up, and I called car service. We could have gotten there by subway, but I didn’t want her taking any more trains after making that haul down from the Bronx. And I didn’t feel taking the damn subway either.

The car showed up, I told the driver the address on Stratford Road, and we were off...for half a block.

“Where is this place?” the driver asked.

“I don’t know,” I said with a slice of attitude. “That’s why I called you guys.”

The driver pulled over and began tapping the address into the GPS unit. I regretted being snippy so I patiently read the address to him a couple of times, slowly spelling out “Stratford Road.”

The directions popped up on the screen, the thing started talking, and off we went. GPS is great, but I find it a little creepy. What's wrong with maps? What's so bad about rolling down the window--or powering down the window--and asking a guy on the street "where the hell am I?"

You Can't Get There From Here

I have to admit that I was a little ashamed at being so clueless about finding this place.


My father would have known where Stratford Road was in a second and he would have given you the directions easily.

He learned the streets of Brooklyn the old fashion way—by driving on them for years as a salesman until you could toss any street name at him and he’d toss the directions right back at you.

He had his own GPS unit in his head before age and illness took it away from him.

But I was also feeling bad because I’ve been going through a rough patch with my father lately, recalling the bad memories I have of him—the fights, the times he hurt my feelings or when I swore I'd never talk to him again. He's been gone so long, but I still holding on to all this misery.

I have no trouble remembering the things I should forget, but ask me to find the switch on the vacuum cleaner and I go into vapor lock. I need an emotional GPS unit to guide me away from the nonsense and point me in the right direction.

We turned on to Stratford Road and the computer was telling us repeatedly that we had arrived at our destination, arrived at our destination, arrived at our destination...

“It’s a good thing that we have the GPS thing,” I said to the driver.

“Yes,” he said. “The machines tell us what to do and we do it.”

I was thinking just how true and how unsettling that thought really was. And that’s when he dropped the question on me.

“So how’s your father?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had no memory of meeting him—oh boy—but then he said he used to take me and my dad over to the V.A. hospital for his checkups. And it all came back.

He was the closest thing we had to a regular driver back then. As I recall, he was from Egypt and he had been an electrician or some kind of engineer in his home country--and now he was driving cars in Brooklyn.

I was embarrassed that he had recognized me first. I told myself that his sunglasses had thrown me off, but I think the real reason was that I just wanted to forget those days when I was going to the V.A. with my father.

They were very stressful times; my dad could be very difficult and there was always the danger of him starting a fight with somebody at that hospital. I was also quite impatient and I wasn’t working at the time, so there was a layer of self-loathing on top of the whole mess.

I told the driver that my father had died in January 2007. As I handed him the fare, he turned to my girlfriend.

“He’s a good man,” he said, pointing to me, “he takes care of his father.”

I felt the guilt welling up in me, ashamed of holding on to those harsh memories when I should have let them go. I'm not a good man, I thought, when I was taking my father to the V.A., I really wanted to be thousands of miles away.

I shook the driver’s hand, wished him well, and we went to the party. I'm really glad now that I took car service.

And I’m thinking of that little blond girl I saw on Fifth Avenue, and how, when I was her age, I wanted to please my father, too; how I wanted to share things with him.

And how I used to say, “Daddy, look at me.”

'Let Our Hearts Be Stout'

This is the prayer that FDR read to the nation on radio on the evening of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

There's a line towards the end when Roosevelt prays for "a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men" that makes me think of the modern day parasites who sent our soldiers into a disastrous war.

"Unworthy men" would be the best way to describe them, and, unfortunately, our soldiers, our nation, and our world were not invulnerable to their schemes.


So let us pray that we learned we have finally learned from our mistakes, as impossible as that sounds. And let's see if we can bring back that sense of purpose and unity that made such an incredible task like D-Day possible.

My Fellow Americans:

Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation.

It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer.

As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances.

Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men.

And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944

Garden Party

I walked through the old neighborhood for the first time last night.

I was on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx with my aunt, sister, and girlfriend, who lives a short distance—though a world away—from the Italian enclave on Arthur Avenue.

We had spent a fabulous day at the New York Botanical Garden, wandering over through so much greenery we forget we were in New York.

It takes just under forever to get to the garden by subway from Bay Ridge, but you can get there in 20 minutes if you take Metro North from Grand Central.

Plus you get to pass through one of my all time favorite sites in New York, which provides entertainment, a history lesson, and fabulous architecture along with a transportation hub.

While waiting for our aunt to arrive, I saw a lady get on the ticket line with three huge parrots resting on her.

She was pulling a large cage on wheels, but I guess she wanted to give her crew some fresh air before packing them in the carrying case.

For a second I thought she was peddling stuffed parrots, but then two of them started gnawing her head, confirming they were the real thing.

It would be something if they took off and started flying around Grand Central. (Are you supposed to put salt on their tails to keep them from flying? Or is that for frying?) Fortunately they stayed put.

The garden is beautiful and for just six bucks you can walk over the place.(My girlfriend, being a Bronx resident, got a dollar off the entry fee.)

You have to cough up 20 dollars if you want to go into the greenhouses and take the trams that drive all over the place, but on a sunny day like Saturday, it’s much more enjoyable to walk.

I usually go to the gardens in the winter for the annual model train show at Christmas. Each time I do it, I always tell myself that I should come to the garden when it’s warm. And then I don’t.

We walked through the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden and then on the forest trail where we walked by a waterfall—remember this is still the Bronx—and down to a canoe landing area.


Winging It

My aunt is a burdening bird watcher, so she had brought along some binoculars for close-up views of birds and other wildlife. I could used them to watch the parrot lady in Grand Central Station.

Birdwatchers are depicted as kooks and weirdoes on TV shows, but I was rather enjoying myself. We spotted a rabbit near some bushes and I zoomed in on him with the spyglasses.

He took off just as a tram drove by us and my aunt said we never would have seen the little bugger if we’d been riding the van.

We were beat by closing time, however, and the tram driver gave us a lift back to the front gate. From there we walked down to Arthur Avenue with the intention of going to the restaurant we knew in the neighborhood.

It was too long a walk, however, so we asked a group of people-clearly several generations of one family—for a good restaurant. The old man group told us of one place a few blocks away.

“Tell them Tony the dentist’s father sent you,” he told us.

Arthur Avenue and the surrounding streets really like a little world onto itself. Like the Botanical Garden, it’s this special area with the big city. I felt like an explorer and a local at the same time—being half-Italian I sort of fit in, right?

The restaurant was very good—a nice local joint with good food and no attitude. The only drawback was a group of about 10 people making enough noise to sound like 30 people.

The biggest loudmouth of the group started to tell what I’m sure was a racist joke—I heard the line “there was this black guy...”—before he dropped his voice and continued talking. The group laughed a few moments later.

My girlfriend is from the Virgin Islands and hearing this clown made me angry. The thing is I’m pretty sure I know the joke this guy was telling. A joke is harmless unless it hurts you. Then it becomes personal.

We got out of there and walked around the neighborhood with the outdoor cafes, bars, and people all over the place. We went by Tony the dentist’s father’s house to thank him, but the house was dark. But I’m sure we’ll be back soon enough.