The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 04:41PM 
I’ve been a Five Towns homeowner since October 2001 (well, if you count going to contract, maybe August of that same year) and in looking at all that time, I came to realize that I’ve probably lived in this home longer than I did anywhere at any one stretch for any time in my life. For some reason, although my childhood was consistent with the same people around me, we nevertheless had a peripatetic existence, a few years here and a few years there. Some of that was due to shifting economic circumstances (up and down) and some due to my mother’s wanderlust and what I would call her “house promiscuity,” God bless her, but she was always looking at new, bigger homes and like many Jewish husbands of the day, my father (after some perfunctory protest) went along and we traded up.
I myself, thanks to college and grad school bounced around, spending about nine years all told in two different apartments in Miami during the 80s (your 20s are a great time to live in the sunshine, no less than in your “golden years”) then in Manhattan in the 90s (in three different places) and then finally landing here in my present home after about two years of cramped marriage in an Upper West Side one bedroom (with a spectacular view of the Hudson River, I’ll grant you though). I came back to New York in great measure to pursue “high quality” religiously traditional and intellectual Jewish girls who were in short supply in Miami (although there were plenty of physically attractive women to be sure, kind of like L.A. in that regard) and Manhattan’s Upper West Side was the Mecca for what I was looking for.
Naturally, it ultimately was my fate to fall for someone from the Upper East Side and all the “mixed marriage” implications that it would portend, notwithstanding her 12 years of Jewish day school education. We found my current home while on a weekend visit to my parents here and though it needed a bit of work, it seemed as though this would be a great place to start a family. As you’ve doubtless read in prior columns, this was not to be as the marriage ultimately crumbled and she decamped for the supposed Nirvana of New Jersey (“the West Bank” of the Hudson). So, for more than two years now, I’ve been living in the house solo and as much as I love it and the neighborhood, I think it’s time for the place to go, or me to part from it.
The reality of needing to change my domicile came over me slowly over the past year or so as the different women I’ve been dating in this middle-aged version of single life have, to a woman, expressed in no uncertain terms whatsoever that the prospect of moving into my home would be an anathema to them – and we’re not talking about just one or two people here. And it’s not as though I ever asked anyone to do so or to get married. Unsolicited, I’ve been informed repeatedly that that house is a no-go and non-starter as all the ladies consider it to have “bad karma” as the locus of a previously unsuccessful marriage and/or they consider it to be “another woman’s house,” notwithstanding my offers to redecorate, repaint, re-paper and even re-landscape. Some have referred to it as a “mausoleum,” or a “tomb.” Mind you, many of these ladies currently reside in Lilliputian quarters (typically in Manhattan) where one needs a shoehorn just to access the bathroom, but no one, no matter how cramped their current situation, finds the prospect of this particular home (not of a house in general) to be attractive in the least.
So, in the firm realization that finding lasting love and companionship can only be enhanced by getting into some new digs, I’ve just recently put my house on the market.
Being a creature of habit who hates change, this is a momentous decision but as the old Jewish adage goes, “change your location, change your luck,” so I’m trying my hand at it.
If you know of a young couple starting out, this house is a good place to begin, or someone looking to downsize, the house’s size is very manageable for a couple with occasional visiting relations. The house sits facing the Woodmere Club golf course and has endless golf club, sunset and park-like views. From upstairs you can see a large pond with a fountain. There’s no one in back of the house either due to the expansiveness of a neighbor’s lawn. No end of sunlight. Full dining room, living room with fireplace, den, full finished basement, attic, three large upstairs bedrooms, two full baths, a small bedroom on the main floor with a half bath. Fully decorated and landscaped. Built in 1925 to solid pre-war specs, thick walls and tall ceilings. It also has an eat-in kitchen. Maintained with TLC. In one of the Five Towns’ best neighborhoods. Low taxes. I’ll even throw-in a custom-made sukkah for the back. If you’d like to take a gander at the place, call Lori at 516-410-4210.
Watching the internecine slugfest between GOP contenders for the Presidential nomination in the upcoming South Carolina primary brings to mind the story told of the violent civil strife that wracked the city of Jerusalem in the year 70 while the Roman legions were besieging the town. So caught up were the residents in their conflicts within that they practically forgot the existential challenge without.
The plethora of televised debates is a healthy thing for American (and Republican) civil discourse – they are highly-rated civics lessons that are engaging ever more Americans in the process, and that’s a good thing. What’s a bad thing has been the demonization of Mitt Romney and capitalism by contenders such as Newt Gingrich and the now dropped-out Rick Perry, among others.
Under assault has been the time-honored, meaning-of-America ideal of free enterprise, profit and incentive. Romney has been attacked for having been a venture capitalist, for having helped create and lead a private equity firm that invested in new and struggling companies and for not paying subjectively high amounts of income tax, as if these were bad things.
It’s time to remind these pseudo right-wing Republicans that the business of America is business and that attacking Romney for having been a successful investor and entrepreneur is like attacking the American Dream in and of itself. It is as though in their blind quest to win the nomination, many of the candidates have lost all reason and will employ any possible populist pejorative, co-opting the jargon and invective of the far left to use against an economic conservative, which just boggles the mind.
Over the past few years the whole Sturm und Drang of the Tea Party has been lower taxes, flatter taxes and reduced spending. Is it Romney’s fault that the tax code as now constituted taxes investment income and capital gains at lower rates than it does active income? No. Is Romney dodging taxes? No. Is he earning money illegally? No. Did Romney initially pay higher income taxes when he amassed much of his wealth when working in private enterprise? Yes. Why is this even an issue? These are supposed conservatives using the lingo of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the class warfare ideology of the Obama-ites to bring down a Republican and it is wholly inappropriate and even illegitimate. Attacking Romney for being wealthy is disingenuous to the ultimate degree – show me anyone running for higher office who isn’t among the top two or three percent of American earners. Please. And that includes Democrats. Who else has the free time and can afford to run?
Amidst all this populist mudslinging, many of the GOP candidates have forgotten the dire challenges from without, namely, President Obama and the imperative of defeating him in November. It’s not enough to win a right-wing Republican beauty contest appealing to a narrow segment of primary voters, it’s about nominating someone who can appeal to Independents and to disaffected Democrats who can cross over come November and put a new President in the White House. It’s about having a new President who has actually run large organizations successfully, who has managed vast sums of money for others successfully.
Newt Gingrich is an amazing debater and highly eloquent but he is a divisive, polarizing figure who will be the Barry Goldwater of 2012 if allowed to be the nominee. Gingrich is highly and very morally flawed. He carried on a six year affair with his current wife while married to his second wife and he even asked his second wife for an open marriage. He left wife number two just when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He left his first wife right smack dab in he middle of treatment for cancer. He so antagonized Democrats and Independents when Speaker of the House that he all but ensured the re-election of Bill Clinton. He left as Speaker amidst a cloud of House ethics charges. And he’s arrogant. Rick Santorum is inherently decent. A God-fearing family man, but while in the Senate he voted for all the debt ceiling rises and many of the spending increases. He is so inflexible on personal status issues (like that of “choice”) that he will alienate a huge segment of the American electorate, which is primarily moderate to liberal when it comes to these things. He also has the charisma of a slug. Ron Paul has a foreign policy so naïve, so isolationist, so self-flagellating that it makes Obama seem right wing by comparison. And he’s a closet anti-Semite. Every national poll shows Obama defeating all three of these guys by a wide margin. Only Romney comes out ahead of the President in poll after poll. We need someone who has a realistic shot of beating Obama.
No – the way to go in South Carolina and for the Republican Party is to vote for Mitt Romney, get behind him quickly and get on with the business of straightening out this country, the sooner the better. Although we are in a little corner of Long Island, we are endorsing Mitt Romney for the GOP primary in South Carolina and for the Republican nomination in general.
For us, his most recent 30-second TV commercial sums it up best.
“President Obama wants to fundamentally transform America, I stand ready to lead us down a different path. This president has enacted job-killing regulations, I’ll eliminate them. He lost our AAA credit rating, I’ll restore it. He passed Obamacare, I’ll repeal it. I will cut, cap and balance the federal budget. If you believe that the disappointments of the last few years are a detour, not a destiny, then I’m asking for your vote. I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rourke,
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York…
– From “The Sidewalks of New York,” 1894 by James W. Blake and Charles Lawlor
Even back in the 19th Century, Manhattan was considered quite the exciting burg. The biggest city in America for at least two centuries now, “The City” is still the epicenter of American culture and nightlife. There are many Five Towners who trek into Manhattan on a daily basis for their livelihoods and quite a few who travel in frequently for entertainment or leisure – me – I live most of my life within a few mile radius of Broadway in Woodmere, so any trip to Manhattan is an adventure these days.
Since becoming single again, Manhattan has been an increasing part of my down time owing to the fact that more single women reside there than just about anywhere else in the metro area, so Manhattan is “date central,” and dating accounts for no small part of the Manhattan dining and entertaining economy.
For much of the preceding decade (as a consequence of married suburban living, no doubt) New Year’s had been kind of a mellow affair, typically centered around a nice dinner somewhere followed by the spectral televised visage of the stroke-addled Dick Clark struggling through New Years greetings on TV for a few minutes before Ryan Seacrest emceed the dropping of that giant crystal and strobe light ball atop Times Square.
This year, thanks to the affections of someone I’ve been seeing (and as opposed to last year when New Years coincided with the Jewish Sabbath) I was presented with all kinds of happening New Years options in the big town. Now, it should be stated categorically, that no matter how youthful my appearance, I am 53, and generally I’m not running around to all hours of the night and clubbing is nowhere on my radar screen, but for New Year’s, this year, I made an exception.
Resplendent in a black sports jacket and new lavender shirt, the karma of my cool attire enabled me to secure on-street parking within a few minutes of my arrival on the Upper East Side, which is no small feat. With my “De-fender” bumper guard fully deployed, I left the car for the next 15 hours, finally able to imbibe in alcoholic beverages beyond the legal driving limit for a change. This would be a lot of fun, but would exact a high price.
One of the great things about Manhattan New Year’s is that normally pretty women assume extraordinary beauty thanks to careful efforts at blow-outs, makeup and sharp outfits. When mixed with copious amounts of cocktails, the city becomes a whirling dervish of pulchritude in an order, scope and magnitude that one can’t imagine from the cosseted confines of suburban “Married-land.” Because it was unseasonably warm for this time of year, it seemed as though miniskirts were the de rigueur uniform among the comely.
The evening was long on glamour with stops first at a high-end live jazz spot followed by a townhouse party with a live Cuban band and then ending with another West Village basement jazz dive where thanks to the innumerable Jacks and Coke I consumed from 9:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m., the bass player and vocalist were appearing to me as though they were four people instead of two. Not having drunk to that kind of level in perhaps 15 or more years, this was quite an optical revelation. Classic jazz, (of the 50’s and 60’s variety) to be truly appreciated, needs to be augmented with wine or spirits to one degree or another, but this was a bit much.
Thankfully, post 2:00 a.m., the only eye-hand coordination I was being called upon to manifest was hailing a cab (as opposed to operating a motor vehicle – as I never drive buzzed or drunk) which somehow managed to happen. The next morning was where the piper had to be paid. I am proud to say that I’ve not had a hangover in more than a dozen years – proud because I was able to avoid this horrible malady by virtue of being moderate in my consumption of (mostly) wine and beer. Time and distance made me forget just what a terrible self-inflicted affliction a hangover can be and the novelty of this experience after such a long gap was compounded by the march of time – hangovers in fact get far worse when you’re over 40 and terrible when over 50. Frankly, it took me the better part of the next three days to recover from the experience, aided by getting to bed well before 11 on two successive nights and sleeping for the first time in more than a decade past 8:00 in the morning. Vast amounts of bottled water were brought to bear along with bland comfort food (pancakes) to soak-up the queasiness. Now that I’ve had a déjà vu New Years (the kind I might have had two decades ago) I’ve come to the conclusion that nostalgia for days gone by and one’s youth should remain just that – nostalgia and hopefully next New Years I’ll be back to a nice dinner out along with the live televised mummy of Dick Clark letting me know that we’ve arrived at 2013.
***
Eye of Newt
(This originally appeared on December 16th, 2011 on The South Shore Standard)
"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,--
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."
Shakespeare knew that “eye of newt” was a key ingredient for the roiling cauldron where Macbeth’s witches were conjuring up potions, ghosts and casting spells to help Macbeth attain the crown. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “newt” as “a small slender-bodied amphibian with lungs and a well-developed tail, typically spending its adult life on land and returning to water to breed.”
For those of you who may have been living under a rock these past few weeks (or since the 90s), the word “Newt” has been ubiquitous in the news because former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is now the latest in a never ending series of wannabee Republican Presidential nominees to have attained front runner status in January’s coming caucuses and primaries. Gingrich’s real first name is Newton. Middle name of Leroy.
Most famous “Newts” throughout history typically were “Knutes,” or a derivative with a “K” and no “w” in the mix. In the 20th Century there naturally was Knute Rockne, the legendary and storied Notre Dame football coach. In the Middle Ages there was King Cnut(e) The Great who ruled England, Denmark, Norway and parts of Sweeden from 1016 to 1035. And let’s look at the Newtons – there was Sir Isaac Newton who created the laws of gravity (among other prescient scientific inventions such as the first practical reflecting telescope and was one of the creators of calculus) and there are many other famous or near famous individuals with “Newton” in their names:
There was Huey Newton who lead the Black Panther Party and two very comely entertainers, the singer Juice Newton and the actress Thandie Newton. A “middle Newton” would be Olivia Newton-John of “Grease” fame. There are many places named “Newton,” among them Newtons in Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin and even New Jersey. There are “Newtons” in the UK, Australia and even Singapore. Two craters, one on the moon and one on Mars are named “Newton.”
Probably and arguably the most famous of the Newtons would be the “Big Fig Newton,” that soft and chewy cookie-cake hybrid that’s been around for well more than a century and manufactured by the fine folks at Nabisco, which is a take on millennia of fig pastries from across the globe. Newtons now come not just in fig, but in fat free fig, whole grain fig, strawberry, raspberry, minis and mutant Newtons in the form of “fruit thins” and “fruit crisps” (whatever they are).
No less of a presence these days as the cookie, former House Speaker Newt(on) Gingrich is sallying forth on his quest to be President of these here United States. His main competitor is a guy named “Mitt.” We have an incumbent named “Barack.” What does it say about the state of our nation that the most likely occupants of The White House all have names like “Newt,” “Mitt” or “Barack?” I submit for your consideration that this is the very essence of the crisis that is plaguing our great nation right now – the utter dearth of Toms, Dicks or Harrys (or even Franks or Bills) who are in serious contention to run this august republic. We have become a country of characters, cartoon or otherwise and these animated avatars offer us mere plebeians the crumbs instead of the cookie, rhetoric instead of gravitas, cacophony instead of symphony.
So help me, as much as I like Newt’s position on Israel (Mitt’s is pretty good too…) I find it hard to take someone seriously who walks around with a first name like Newt. When I hear the name “Mitt,” I think of weekend softball games and the new baseball mitt I bought at Mo’s last year (although to be fair, Mitt Romney did a pretty good job running the Salt Lake City Olympics).
It is a sad and sorry state of affairs that three years into the progressive experiment that is the Obama Administration our great nation has no one better to put forward to slay the Barack dragon than the aforementioned Newt and Mitt. By comparison to all the raging mediocrity surrounding us, the late President Gerald Ford is actually starting to look good by comparison.
We have no end of lizard-like Newts (the reptilian kind) from both parties slithering around the national body politic – Newts who defy the laws of gravity, who sing out of key, who clamor for our attention. The baby-boom leaders are cheap knock-offs compared to those who governed here through most of the prior century – when men were men, women were women, strangers didn’t call you by your first name, telephones weighed eight pounds and lasted for decades, oil and gas were cheap, we didn’t carry untold credit card balances, we listened to Pink Floyd on LPs and cassettes and drove cars the size of Patton tanks.
We’re weeks away now from the first primaries and 10 months of nonstop campaigning – America is in desperate need of salvation but where will our knight in shining armor come from? Too bad John Huntsman never gained any traction – we need a leader who can speak Chinese. Too bad Michele Bachmann doesn’t get taken seriously. Blame Newsweek’s batty cover photo of her for that. Too bad Rudy Giuliani has no appeal beyond a 40-mile radius of Manhattan. Too bad no one in the Democratic Party is challenging Obama for the nomination like Ted Kennedy did to Jimmy Carter. Too McCain isn’t giving it another go. Too bad Chris Christie decided to stay in Jersey. America – we may all be eating Newtons sooner than we think.
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