Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

("No People. No process. No policy.")

This is the fear that haunts us every day. That some enormous stress test will arrive at the President's doorstep and he will be wholly incapable of meeting its demands.

Mr. Trump has been playing President, at least in his own uniquely warped vision of what this entails, for these past two years. But he has not been called upon to act as President, demonstrating the capacity to address a crisis, not of his own making, with dexterity of mind and certainty of purpose.

There are so many arenas where calamity can arise. I shudder to conceive how Mr. Trump would have addressed the Ebola outbreak. I dare say he would have shut our doors, refused to provide our aid and expertise and watched as the death toll exploded and moved far beyond its borders, into our own homes.

Why can we not allow Mr. Trump a second term? Beyond anything else is that the odds increase every day that our luck will run out, that our nation will be faced with a serious problem that requires so much more than that of which Mr. Trump is capable, and that the results will prove cataclysmic.

It is not death by a thousand cuts that is the real jeopardy of this presidency. It is the tsunami that we will have no answer for that should keep all of us awake at night. Staring into the darkness, contemplating our own glaring weakness. And waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The Rejection

Dear Shouts TNY:


Yesterday I received three notes from you, all identical:

"Dear Robert,

We're sorry to say that your piece wasn't right for us. Thank you for allowing us to consider your work.

Best regards

The Shouts Department

The New Yorker" 

Well now I feel better, knowing that you took the time and energy to personally sit down and soothe my wounded psyche.

Couldn't you at least have created a series of different clever responses? After all, you are The New Yorker, this is the Shouts and Murmurs column, allegedly home to some of the finest wit in the nation. Start with a joke, or maybe even a riddle. Or, at a bare minimum you could have placed a smiling emoji at the end of each reply.

And what is this, sending out all these rejections at once? Are you trying to send me a subliminal message? Am I supposed to get the hint buried somewhere deep in this trifecta? I submitted the three pieces over a number of months. What do you do, alphabetical rejections? That is just cruel.

Am I really supposed to believe you are grateful for having been given the opportunity to read my words? If so, you have a funny way of making a person feel appreciated.

The polite response would have been to pick up a phone and call. I left you my number. Ask me what's new, how the family is, do I have any vacations planned. Let me know how much you care about me and that you are terribly saddened that I was not chosen.  That you lost sleep wrestling with this decision. Ask if I am free for dinner next week.

Tell me it came down to whether to accept my work or that of a Nobel Prize winner whose mother called you to beg on behalf of her only son. Lie to me.

I remember, a half century ago, getting multiple college rejection letters on the same day. This was worse.

Did you ever consider giving out trophies for everyone who takes the time and effort to submit to your publication? Something to assure us that we are all winners, that you didn't turn us down, you just ran out of room.

I am shocked that you are still in business given the way you treat those most loyal to you. With friends like you, who needs enemies? 

What would it take for you to print my words? A thousand dollars? A million? A horse's head in your bed? I know a guy.

You know, many others consider me a great talent. I could send you letters of recommendation from some very well regarded people. Very well regarded. Would that help? 

If you really want to show your appreciation, scribble little comments on any piece you turn back. Write things like "this sentence is hilarious" or "I laughed so hard I could barely breathe."

Even better, send me your thoughts in French. It will be an acknowledgement by you of the level of my sophistication.

I am going to end this letter now. My psychiatrist's office just called to remind me my appointment was supposed to start ten minutes ago.

I am sorry if I sound aggrieved. I really think you are the best. And that horse's head you may be receiving is just a joke. 

Very truly yours,

Your best friend Robert (but you can call me Rob)

Too Early to Call

("Why Trump Will Lose in 2020")

Now I can rest easy, knowing Mr. Trump's exit is a foregone conclusion. And yes, there is logic to the arguments proferred. BUT....

If we have learned one thing about Mr. Trump's ascendancy, it is that the bizarre is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Nearly two years remain until election day. While the President will never change his stripes and each day we will continue to live in fear of his next self inflicted wound upon this nation, what if 

a) Mr. Mueller's investigation proves damning but inconclusive as to the direct culpability of Mr. Trump

b) peace and stability break out with North Korea

c) the economy and the stock market do not stumble

d) the Democrats choose the wrong candidate (again)

e) a viable third party candidate emerges to siphon off Democratic votes

f) the probability of at least one Supreme Court opening looms large, and proves catalyst for a strong Republican turnout

g) trade wars with China and elsewhere don't escalate but somewhat diminish and become merely standard skirmishes

h) a myriad of other issues, including immigration reform and infrastructure projects make actual progress despite the President's worst intentions

i) no new calamity intervenes

 I am very hesitant to project what our universe will look like at election time and what forces will drive people to (or away from) the polls.

We all recognize Mr. Trump is beyond horrid and that his act is wearing extremely thin even among many in his own party. But who would have ever projected in early 2015 that this charlatan, this buffoon, would cast aside 16 fellow Republicans and then ride to victory despite his glaring personal depravities and indisputable pathological unreadiness for the task to be undertaken.

So, I cannot rest easy and will not until our national nightmare is officially declared at an end. And while the author believes, based on his 2016 prediction that he is now prescient, count me as a most reluctant skeptic

Poo, Poo, Poo

One of my mom's many superstitions involved warding off evil spirits when she was reporting something positive. "Poo, poo, poo" was a critical declaration uttered at the end of such a tale, a statement made in a kind of half spit. It meant, I do not take this good luck for granted and I fervently hope it remains. I understand and appreciate my good fortune and thank the gods for watching over me and my loved ones. 

Or at least that was my translation.

I fear my daughter recently forgot her poo, poo, poo.

My son in law is out of town for several days so the task of caring for my precious young granddaughter has fallen on the able shoulders of my younger child. Sunday evening my wife stayed overnight at her apartment, to keep the two generations of ladies company.

That night, for 12 straight hours, with but a few second interval for grandma to place a binky back in her four month old granddaughter's mouth, there was heard nothing but the wonderful strains of peaceful, uninterrupted silence. It was the best sleep in the baby's short history.

But rather than utter the requisite poo, poo, poo, my daughter made an egregious error. She reported of her recent conversation with several similarly situated young moms who warned her of a regression in sleeping habits of others at exactly this tender age. It was, in fact, the anti poo, poo, poo utterance, virtually inviting disaster. It left a gaping hole where the poo, poo, poo would have stood guard.

In the wee hours of the following morning we received a text from our daughter chronicling the endless night, filled with hourly cries from the crib, a recitation of how quickly the worst followed the best. Her message ended with her plea, in jest, for grandma to return to work her magic. 

This past evening, grandma was in fact back in the city. Hopefully she recalls the life lesson my mom tried to pass along to those she loved. So, should our granddaughter pass a quiet night, my wife must report the same with the requisite three word protective shield. 

Only then will the baby's progress be assured. Poo, poo, poo.

Mo's Autograph

I once got Mariano Rivera's autograph.

It was in his rookie year of 1995. At that time, Mo was just a skinny young kid trying to figure out a way to stay in the bigs. He was then but a marginally effective starter, threw with maybe a little less velocity than he would soon find on his pitches and that cutter, which he must have thrown 10 million times in the coming years, was not yet being incubated.

This was a universe where it did not cost a year's salary to take your family to the game, where good seats were within one's contemplation and the secret police was not standing guard, obstructing your entrance to a section which your tickets did not otherwise permit you to occupy.

In those long ago days, my kids and I, together with one of my friends and his two children, had a partial season package. We sat in a section with some of the wives and significant others of the ballplayers. And thus, there were people around us who players, like young Mariano, might have known.

On this particular occasion we arrived well before game time, as was our habit. And we were allowed to gather near the field, pen and paper in hand, to get autographs of the young men who wandered over from their station on the diamond.

We stood behind the screen at home plate. And I distinctly recall Mo coming by to chat with a young woman who stood next to my kids and myself. I think he spoke to her in Spanish but that might be a manufactured memory.

I do know I found a scrap of paper and thrust it through the screen for this very young nobody to sign. We would accept the signature of any ballplayer because you never knew who might one day turn out to be the first player unanimously elected to the baseball Hall of Fame.

Over the years, my kids and I gathered the signatures of many ballplayers. We have them on baseballs now yellowed with age, long hibernating in cabinets.. These names and our recollections of them as faded as the ink that is now barely legible. Their careers, in large measure, largely forgotten. The worth of this collected memorabilia next to none.

 Yet I have absolutely no idea where that autograph of Mo might be. In the intervening years there were a million ways in which it could have been lost or intentionally discarded. For all the times I might have, in other contexts, uttered the words, "its not worth the paper it is printed on", this does not hold true in this instance. Somehow I still hold out hope that maybe, just maybe, one day it will turn up.

I guess the odds  of that happening are about as good as that young man who stood but a few inches from me that afternoon turning out to be possibly the most unique player this game has ever seen.

Mr. Trump, Tear Down This Wall

AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS POST IS SCHEDULED TO APPEAR IN THE RECORD, A BERGEN COUNTY NEWSPAPER

How can the Democrats agree to funding a border Wall? The literal optics would be horrid, a daily reminder that somehow there was merit, not lunacy, in the central thrust of this presidency. It is the line in the sand, a bridge (ok, a wall) too far.

As for Mr. Trump, he is made wholly of ego. If sliced open, he would reveal only hot air and a pristine, unused brain. This man cannot fathom his way out of a paper bag, much less the maze he has manufactured. The Wall is his beating heart. Without it, in the warped universe he inhabits, he can only imagine the Emperor would be revealed with no clothes.

And so, we have the perfect storm. In its wake the dystopia Mr. Trump projected has become reality. The crisis he has imagined, now a wholly different, terrible crisis. Millions of lives harmed each day, government now responsible for nothing beyond chaos. Suffering the central theme of this debacle.

I have a suggestion for Mr. Trump and his psyche. Tell this country you will be the adult in the room. Tell us you can no longer allow the pain to linger. Tell us you are responsible for our emotional welfare and as such, you will end the shutdown, and abandon your vanity project. Tell us you care. Don't say you blinked. Say you led.

In Mr. Trump's world, everything is a zero sum game. Only winners and losers. Make yourself a winner, Mr. Trump. Be the bigger man.

Mr.Trump,tear down that Wall.

The Music Teacher

"Hey Google, play the music from Hamilton."

"Hey Google, play James Taylor."

"Hey Google, play Carly Simon."

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is actually not what would best hold the attention of my granddaughter, not yet four months old, but what do I know? 

My granddaughter's room is filled to overflowing with books appropriate for her tender station. I could read from dawn to dusk of first words, of Dr.Seuss, of ten little fingers and ten little toes on boys and girls around the world, of lions, tigers and bears, of love and kindness for nature, for family, for the pets that share our homes and touch our hearts. 

The two of us joining in the exploration, a wondrous journey through words and pictures that will help to shape a brain ready and eager for knowledge.  

But there are no records here, no record player, nothing to hold or see. My son, at two, could reach into a mountain of albums, locate the cover he wanted, take the record out of the sleeve, place it just so and put the needle down exactly on the song he wanted to hear. Now we have access to an endless universe of music but, as a new grandparent, I desperately need some guidance on what corner of that globe harbors the perfect selections.

Could my granddaughter possibly enjoy listening to what she was being subjected to? I think she has a love of a good beat, for when her uncle commands Google to play something with a compelling rhythm, and then he dances and tambourines or otherwise rattles in time, my granddaughter's face lights up the room. But maybe, or even likely, it is her uncle that is the real cause of her uncompromising joy.

No such response accompanies James Taylor's "Whenever I see your smiling face", even though lyrically it is perfect. Not a hint of interest. Nada. Rien.

I guess I could just ask Google what it thinks is most suitable, but Google doesn't seem to relish lengthy discourse.

Or maybe I could request Google to play "favorite children songs." But that sounds far too generic, too sterile to me. I need to at least have some input in the decision making process. Otherwise, I will have fully ceded my grandparenting responsibilities in this forum to an inanimate object. I will be irrelevant.

 I want to be the best grandparent I can be. But like a first time parent, I have to learn my way around this new planet. It has been a long time since there was something this small in my arms and the world has exploded in the intervening years. Taylor Swift is several generations too new for me and Sesame Street was in its infancy last time I checked in.

 And my listening to NPR, watching MSNBC and reading the New York Times has not exactly prepared me for this new post. So I ask my granddaughter to be patient with me and forgive my trespasses.

 I am an old dog and we all know how hard it is for us to learn new tricks. "Bow wow says the puppy."Or is it ruff ruff? "Hey Google, give me a little help here."

This is definitely going to take some time to master.

Living While Bald

(Letter of Recommendation-"Balding")

I am 66 years old, having spent more than half of my life staring at the open spaces on top of my head where thousands upon thousands of hair follicles died a cruel and untimely death. 

I forever tell myself that I am perfectly comfortable in my skin (for that is the only universe my head has known in decades) but the sad truth is I am not. 

I have periodically grown facial hair, the mustache through the 80's and 90's, in retrospect a definite mistake, or the on again off again (in multiple senses) affair with a full beard. Yet this experiment inevitably ends with the realization that this effort is fooling no one into believing I could be cast in the lead in a remake of "Hair".

I definitely still have hair envy even as more and more of my contemporaries join the ranks of the follically challenged. One or two of my friends retain every fiber and strand from their youth. I gaze upon them with equal measures of awe and disgust.

A further complication is that I have no eyebrows, lost somehow in a storm, or maybe burned off when I tried to light the stove. Compounding the problem is the inescapable realization that my face is perfectly round. In my self portrait, there is virtually no distinction between my face and an eight pound Caucasian bowling ball.

I once inadvertently shaved my head (that is a separate tale) but I bore an uncanny resemblance to Uncle Fester. Thus, the few remaining holdouts on the sides of my head are now cut back only to a "two." Like a bowling ball with a shadow on each side.

For nearly a half century I wore contact lenses but I basically abandoned them in recent years for several reasons. One was that glasses give my face some definition that is otherwise lacking in a bald man with no eyebrows and virtually no upper lip. Oh, I may have forgotten to mention that one other minor defect.

I have never been a fan of hairpieces because, well they mostly look like hairpieces. Or maybe it had something to do with the fear of seeing my hair on top of a styrofoam head in the bathroom in the middle of the night.

And I was too lazy to sign up for that experimental trial they were running decades ago on a sample group to determine if they could regrow hair (it was probably for minoxidil or some other equally useless product).

Anyway, for myriad reasons, none very good, I remain a landing area for local planes and will likely be one for the rest of my days. 

I always thought that the perfect name for a company specializing in bringing back what was not irretrievably lost would be "Gone Today, Hair Tomorrow." Only, in my case, my follicle disappearance would just be entitled, "Gone Boy."

The Updated Mother Goose

Dumpy Trumpy sat on his Wall

Dumpy Trumpy had a bad Fall

And an even worse Winter

Bad, bad black sheep

Are you just a fool

Yes sir, yes sir

Just ask Nancy Pelosi

Head, shoulders, knees and toes,

Head, shoulders, knees and toes

See, I told you I could name four body parts

Early to bed and early to rise

Means we are going to get a bottomless pit of tweets this morning

Don and Ivanka went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water

Actually, just Ivanka went 

Because Don was busy watching Fox and Friends

I'm an authoritarian ruler

Stupid and stout

Impossible to handle

Cause I don't negotiate, I just pout 

Its raining, its pouring

Actually, half the country is under water

While the rest suffers devastation from endless wild fires

But climate change is a fiction

Donald, Donald how does your garden grow

How the hell should I know

Go ask the illegal Mexican immigrants I hired 

Hey diddle, diddle

This job is a riddle

And how could a cow possibly jump over the moon

What idiot wrote that

  Little Donny Trump sat in his office

  Eating a burger and fries

  He got fat

An Immediate Reply from My Best Friend (No, Not Publishing THE LAST POST)

AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS POST IS SCHEDULED TO APPEAR IN LETTERS TO THE EDITOR IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

("The People vs Donald J Trump")

The problem with the analysis of Mr. Leonhardt is that it suggests the Republican leadership will return to a fact based universe, instead of the fact free one which now prevails. The one where climate science is ignored, where economic realities of trickle down are treated as fiction, where every day Mr. Trump takes us all on an excursion into a fantasy land concerning immigration. It is here that the Republican party has willingly chosen to reside.

Those who have shut their eyes, turned their backs and held their noses for the past two years will not go easily into battle with Mr. Trump. No matter the damage he has done to party or country, they have shown no discernible backbone. While Mr. Leonhardt's heart is in the right place, I fear his head may unfortunately be in the clouds.