Goodbye 2019

I'm not going to sugar coat it, 2019 was a bad year. I lost two friends, one of whom I would see almost every day at shift change, to cancer in the earlier part of the year. Work has been hectic, because of understaffing, but I have to say that I and my small department have been able to handle everything that came down the pipe.

The latter part of the year involved climbing out from the low I hit in March and April. Staying busy was important- between work and volunteering, I was able to take comfort in routine. Having a support group of close friends was instrumental in buoying me up. Blogging also helped, the structure of sitting down and writing is therapeutic.

I'm not the sort of person to wax melancholy at the end of the year... like I said, the hits I took took place in the earlier months. I'm in a lot better shape than I was from mid-March to early-April, when I was hit with a set of two one-two emotional and professional punches. I won't be sorry to put this year behind me, though.

New Year’s Eve Eve

I’ve long maintained that New Year’s Eve is amateurs night, a night when people who don’t know how to handle their booze go out and overdo it, and end up getting stupid. Prices are jacked up, service suffers because servers are harried. I live in the Tavern District of Yonkers, I can pop into a dozen bars within easy walking distance- there’s no need to get involved in a rugby scrum just to grab a beer.

My friends and I figured out a workaround- we are meeting in a gin mill tonight, New Year’s Eve Eve. A couple of us work unorthodox schedules (and are working tomorrow night). It’ll be a more low-key night, a night without lines and outrageous cover charges... an altogether more civilized night, while being more economical. It’s a grand idea... and I’m not that keen on champagne anyway.

As if I Thought the Times' Antisemitism Was Bad...

Yesterday, I posted about the New York Times publishing a pseudoscientific op-ed piece that trafficked in antisemitic tropes, and last night, there was a heinous antisemitic attack in Rockland County, across the river from my beloved City of Y______. This machete attack was a terrorist attack, pure and simple- it was a attack perpetrated in the heart of a largely Hasidic village, in the home of a religious leader, during a religious celebration. The intent of the attacker was to show the Hasidic community that they weren't safe in their own community, in their own homes, to sow terror.

There has been a wave of antisemitic attacks in the New York metro area, including a previous assault on a Hasidic man in Monsey and a mass shooting at a Jersey City kosher market.


There has been a lot of tension in Rockland County, specifically East Ramapo, regarding the funding of the public school system- it's largely perceived that the Hasidic community is trying to defund public schools while funneling tax dollars into yeshivas. The attacker in this instance wasn't quite a local, he was a resident of a nearby town the next county over. I doubt that he was keeping abreast of the school district controversy. There is also a history of animosity between the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and the African-American community in the region (both the Hasidic and the Caribbean-American communities are also expanding from Brooklyn to Rockland as members seek affordable homes).

I don't have any answers here... I was raised to believe that diversity was a good thing, that getting along with people of all colors, creeds, and ethnic origins was not only the mark of a civilized society, but the path to a richer cultural life. I really don't spend a lot of time in Rockland (I joke that I draw a dragon on that part of the map while acknowledging that I am long overdue for a trip to Khan's Mongolian Grill), but it's in my backyard. It pains me to see such barbarism so close to home.

NY Times Publishing Protocols

I don't read the New York Times anymore. I don't click on links to the Times, I don't link to the Times... I don't say this with any joy, back when the world (and the Times) was not so awful, one of life's low-key pleasures was spending a post-bender Sunday sipping coffee and reading the Sunday Times damn near cover-to-cover, completing the crossword puzzle, naturally.

Every so often, I am reminded why I now shun this newspaper that I once loved, and this weekend is one of those reminders... the Times published a Bret Stephens piece about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence that cites a white nationalist 'race realist'. The idea that different racial groups have different IQ ranges, with Ashkenazi Jews at the top, is a pseudo-scientific update of the myth of the sinister Jewish plotter. One of the tenets of the current fascism is that wily Jews are fostering non-white immigration to the United States and Europe to promote interbreeding in order to lower the general IQ, resulting in a more easily manipulated populace. Yeah, claims that one particular group has a higher IQ are invariably connected to claims that other groups have lower IQ.

I don't even know if Bret Stephens, an Ashkenazi Jew himself, is aware of the full implications of his 'race science'. Being ignorant, though, is more damning than being evil- after all, the guy is a paid contributor to what passes as the paper of record. I'm not even Jewish, but I have a well-tuned ear for racist dogwhistles. Basically, Stephens is writing a seemingly flattering depiction of Jewish people, while not caring that he is trafficking in the foundations of a century-old antisemitic trope- I'm not privy to the New York Times publishing protocols, but I never thought they'd be publishing 'Protocols'.

The Lunatics Are Feeling Frisky

It's a big day in Loony Land, as the craziest of the MAGA Deplorables have convinced themselves that the final punishment and ultimate destruction of their enemies is coming to pass:

@PokerPolitics @travis_view not sure if you’ve spotted this yet, but a good subset of our favorite mouth-breather cult thinks ‘the storm’ is happening today, right now. some quality dissociation & kooky numerology going on in here: https://t.co/iSwaJL2qcg

— OLD MONEY B (@cmoneyburns) December 27, 2019

The inconvenient fact that this entire conspiracy theory started two years ago with an announcement that Hillary Clinton was in the process of being arrested hasn't dampened the spirits of those who believe that 'The Storm', which will sweep their perceived enemies off to Gitmo, is inevitable. This particular bunch of charmers was calling today 'Fry Day', in the hopes that the Clintons, John Podesta, Tom Hanks, and a host of others will be sent to the electric chair for a host of crimes against humanity... and you thought that liberals were the ones ruining Christmas!

The other big development in Loony Land was Trump retweeting a 'QAnon' supporter... this brought a troll army that would make Sauron proud to the mentions of jouralist Eliza Relman:

Good morning! Trump RT'd the QAnon conspiracy hashtag today. https://t.co/Ilrqx6Qa0G

— Eliza Relman (@eliza_relman) December 27, 2019

Her feed was flooded with various Cursed Conspiraboomer images, leavened with a couple of calls for her to be shipped off to Gitmo... lovely people in a peaceful research movement, there!

Of course, when nothing happens, as has been the case for the past 26 months, the true believers will double down and return to their cack-handed gematria- surely the next prediction of pain will be correct, and their enemies (you know, people like us) will be swept up in the righteous wave that will wash the scum off the streets. Any day, now, sure, the Q-waitus-interruptus will end.

Happy Boxing Day!

I am fortunate to have really good neighbors- my immediate upstairs neighbor is a dream, working hard in house and yard, raising her two kids to be accomplished persons. She herself is a firecracker, a small gal, but mighty- she competes in triathlons, she laughs loud and often, and she doesn't take any guff from anybody. When she found out I was stuck at work on Christmas, she put aside a dinner plate for me:

This being Boxing Day (she's an Armagh gal by birth, a Yonkers gal by choice), she brought down this fine repast and I gave her a bottle of Bailey's (perhaps the best ever use of surplus product) as we exchanged holiday greetings. Calling the day St Stephen's Day is more of a southern thing, and wren hunting is more of a rural thing- it's funny how, for such a small country, there is so much difference in customs throughout Ireland... and Yonkers.

I spent a good portion of the afternoon on an overseas phone call with my older brother, Sweetums. He's doing well, and he related a funny anecdote about how his kids wanted to stay up all night rather than having to get up early for Christmas (it's a longstanding family trait- NONE of us ever wanted to go to sleep, out of concern for missing out on something). In a new, though not atypical, development, they all watched Monty Python's Life of Brian on Christmas Eve, ensuring that the kids would be singing this all day long. My brother's take on it is that, even thought there's some spicy content, there are no explosions or shooting in the film- and his oldest has taken some Latin in school, so he got this joke. I reminded him that watching the film really wasn't any more irreverent than some of the Christmas Eve booze fests we've had over the years. It's good to know that Sweetums is raising the kids right.

It's been a good day connecting with family- the nuclear family and the neighborhood family. That's what Boxing Day is all about, and no wrens had to be harmed.

Christmas Cheery via Telecom

I had to work today, being 'essential personnel' in an understaffed department... somebody has to make sure that the place is still standing and the cat is fed. It's a low-key day on the job, and it frees me up for some St Stephen's Day drinking, though I'll pass on hunting the wren. Most of the day, though, I was in communication with family and friends, getting updates on everybody's antics- my goddaughter getting up at 4AM because she was so excited, nephews making pastries for holiday parties. It was a day for recounting funny stories about ruthless Christmas tree shopping and weird run-ins with Cajun carnies. Jokes both clean and ribald (one friend, talking about deserving a spanking, set me up to make the punchline: "Can't spell Christmas without S&M!").

Everybody is doing well, as is to be expected. Myself, I hit a Chinese takeout place on the way to work and had a quick lunch before feeding the cat- for Christmas, I gave her some whole milk (she's one of those cats which has had the stuff throughout her life). I've been the recipient of altogether too much Christmas chocolate, and one of our managers, who will be on vacation for two weeks, wrote a note telling me that I was in charge of distributing the leftover snacks in the employees' kitchen, and I have to confess that I took the choicest stuff for myself. In the interest of full disclosure, I've been eating junk all afternoon, as one does on Christmas. My upstairs neighbor texted me to tell me that she had a ton of food, so she'd prepare a plate for me, so breakfast for tomorrow is in the bag. I have a bottle of Bailey's with her name on it, for her Boxing Day coffee.

Here's hoping that everybody has had a lovely Christmas, free from worry and stress. As a Christmas gift, here's a choral group from Trinidad and Tobago singing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah





Watching that, dreaming of a green Christmas seems like a perfectly fine idea, no offense to Irving Berlin.