What's that in the Sky?

Today I finally had a reason to buy a pair of sunglasses. Somebody fixed the sun. It hadn't been working for quite some time.

Warm, dry weather and sunshine returned to New Jersey and NYC causing funny headlines.

Newsflash: Sunshine Returns to the Big Apple

Let's hope the sunshine cheers up all the beaten, gray souls in these parts. According to Pete Hamill's op/ed piece in yesterday's Daily News, the mood of the nation (well, New York) is only grim.

There seemed to be some problem with the link so here is Hamill's entire piece.

From politics to weather, dark times gnaw the soul

In the year World War II ended, I was 10, and the emotions of that time have stayed with me for a lifetime. Late that spring, we kids all saw the first newsreels from Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen and learned that evil and horror were part of the world. That summer, we saw ferocious combat footage from Okinawa, and later we gazed at the tundra of blackened rubble that had been Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than a few of us had bad dreams.
At the same time, a charge of almost invincible optimism was driven into us that summer and stayed for a very long time. The optimism was so real you felt you could grab it and hold it in your arms. The good guys had won the war. The people who built concentration camps had been wiped away. Now everything was possible. All you had to do was work.

That immense gift would sustain me through the darkest times of the years ahead. Only now, in this dark, drizzly season, has that optimism begun to fade. And I know I'm not alone. Over the past six months, in conversations with old friends or with strangers, I keep picking up a new kind of bleakness.

"I can't even watch the TV news anymore," one friend said. "Three dead in Gaza gets one minute, followed by another American shot in Iraq, a minute and a half - and then they cut to Scott Peterson and I turn the thing off. Even in 1968, in the worst of everything that year, there was some hope. Not now. It's gone, and I don't think it's coming back."

The bleakness index contains many items: the mediocrity and cynicism of politicians in both parties; the merging of religion with politics, from Peshawar to the Potomac; the growing power of true believers in our government; the wretched runup to the Iraq war, the war itself and the bloody aftermath. We've known since 9/11 there are lunatics out there, some so crazed with religious visions that they'd try to knock down the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the world's glories. Reason has fled. Vandals haunt our nights.

Meanwhile, the American government says it feels free to launch preventive wars, the way the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. Vice President Cheney's old firm, Halliburton, is building a prison camp in Guantánamo, complete with execution chamber. And the bloody quarrel between Israelis and Palestinians goes on and on.

It's hard to find consolation, for popular culture is also a wreck. Most prime-time TV is insulting to human intelligence. Movies are comic books. Popular music is calculated junk. Exuberance is gone, along with joy or even the artistic defiance of the '60s.

In public life, facts don't seem to matter much. Through sustained propaganda and ingenious presidential photo ops, illusion dominates the political debate. In Iraq, nobody's found weapons of mass destruction or a factual link to Al Qaeda. Yet the polls show that as many as 65% of Americans are in favor of their own deception.

I keep picking up signs that even the tough spirit of New York is being eroded. The resilience that followed 9/11 is being frittered away. Part of this is because our most terrible tragedy was hijacked by Washington politicians with larger schemes in mind. What has replaced the feeling of unity is death by a thousand small wounds. More and more New Yorkers feel they're being gnawed at by a faceless, rodentlike city government, hit with absurd tickets, forced to pay higher taxes and fees just to live in their own city.

Many blame Mayor Bloomberg for all this, and he must take a huge share of responsibility for the clumsy way he's explained our budget crisis. But other factors add to the malaise. Sports have always helped bind New Yorkers to each other. But the Mets are dreadful, the Yankees are turning again into a dreary soap opera, the Knicks face a dismal decade. The weather has expressed perfectly the city's sour mood: gray and relentless, unforgiving and soul-dimming. I know, I know: I grow old.

But young people mention these things to me too. When we talk, I wish they could have the youth that I had, when the world seemed to burst with possibilities. Instead, I cite the words of the Italian writer Antonio Gramsci, who wrote from one of Mussolini's prisons: "Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intelligence."

A useful motto for old Dodger fans who passed through so many defeated Octobers. At least once, we did beat the Yankees in the World Series. Now I'd settle for three straight days of sunshine.

Happy Summer

The birds were singing just awake and the Kerouac inky blue sky had just a hint of rising light as I drove home after a busy night behind the bar about seven hours ago. Just before sleep there seemed to be promise of a fine first day of summer.

But now at the crack of noon there is no joy. The skies outside the windows are only a flat dull color of Central European gray. The air is cool and dead. Summer is here only the weather doesn’t know it.

Whatever the weather the party is on down the Shore to celebrate young Edward Cunning’s graduation from Seton Hall University. Congratulations Eddie!

Time sure does fly. I easily remember Eddie as a wide-eye 11-year-old on his first visit to Ireland. When I first became friends with the Cunning clan of Hoboken I was a young shooter on The Hudson Dispatch and Eddie’s father was a narco Sgt. with the Hoboken cops. Now I often share the work with this tall, smart young man behind the bar at The Quiet Woman pub and his father is a captain.

Well, at least the traffic should be light heading down the shore. And Eddie’s father has tents ready to protect his guests from the rain. Despite the weather I am sure all will enjoy.

But this foul weather is knocking everything out of whack. And the grim economy isn’t helping either.

Usually the Hoboken bar scene dies between Memorial Day and Labor Day each year. Come Friday afternoon all the cool souls head for the beach. Some splash out cash for a house in Belmar or on LIB for the season. Others go down for the weekend and hit the beach in the sun then bar hop along the Atlantic all night.

This year the weather is lousy and too many people are out of work and those working are afraid that they may be let go. People are staying very close to home and spending a few bucks at their local bar instead of a weekend at the shore. And as their barman I am very happy to see them and listen to them bitch and laugh about it all over a cold beer.

But today is my day off. So, off to the Shore and the party. And tonight will be my turn to talk and laugh with the bartender from the relaxed side of the bar. Cheers.

DUCK SEASON!

Go Devils, Go Devils, Go Devils!!!!!!!!!!

Thunder Road

Thanks to my old pal India Mike for the fine Chinese buffet this evening and the whiskey rocks after. This was Mike's good luck gesture to me: Tomorrow morning I will once again take the road test for a New Jersey driver's license.

Good Lord, it has been 16 years since I last took this test. Forgetting about driving during the many years in Europe and then a Manhattan job now has me feeling like a nervous 17-year-old again.

But the desire to be free behind the wheel again, racing up some Jersey highway is strong. I have a good feeling about it. But if I do fail, I probably won't be writing about it here.