The Maroon Vol. 2… No. 24 Tuesday, March 29, 2022
“Bringing us all to a place we don't want to lose."
Observer: You Only Get What You Give
Macky’s New York: Alone In A Cyclone
William Peay: Tales From The Wood…
RHS Athletic Hall Of Fame: Save The Date: Nov. 5th 2022
Anne Robinson: Did You Know…
M + A NYC: Mighty Are We As One
James Stroker: Hope Coach
Jim Schoneman: Rock Hound
Siobhan Crann Winograd: Around The Village
Bruce Emond: In Memory Of Jessica Berg, RHS 1985
Observer
You Only Get What You Give
When I feel the events of the day are starting to upset me, I sometimes find listening to 20th Century Rock n Roll has a soothing effect on me. It allows me to write what’s on my mind.
Let’s start with the Village of Ridgewood Council. The latest news concerning them involves eliminating Dining Corrals from the streets in front of local restaurants, after the restaurants paid for the space all winter. This same council has denied hybrid access to their meetings, thus preventing people from viewing & participating in the proceedings over the Internet. Lastly, the council approved a $24,000 expenditure to install noise reducing panels on the Pickle Ball courts on Glen Avenue. A simple request to keep the noise down just wasn’t enough, eh?
These sleights of hand only make me madder about the real issues in the Village. For instance, nobody seems to remember the war in the Ukraine has spilled over into our little part of the world. There may not be shelling in our backyards but there sure has been an increase in the number of cyber attacks. Just ask the New York City Public School System where 920,000 records were recently stolen.
Ask yourself what the Village would do if this same sort of breach occurred. I suspect nothing. They currently have no means for someone to report an incident, which also means they likely have no procedures for handling a cybersecurity breach. Think I’m mistaken? Fine. Prove me wrong. Show me how to report a cyber security incident and I’ll apologize.
The Village operates under the laughable policy called “Security By Obscurity.” By this I mean, they might say they have a Cyber Security Remediation Plan, but that it’s a secret. This make no sense because it doesn’t provide for a systematic approach to identify and fix gaps before they do harm, as well as a way to resolve issues that have already occurred.
Next time a Village Council meeting goes off on a wild tangent about noise on Pickleball courts I sure hope someone asks, “How is the work going on the Village’s Cyber Security Remediation Plan?”
Village Council meetings are the proper forum for these sort of discussions, as we are talking about databases of information about school children and every home in town, which they manage and are responsible for. I’m sure the Village’s Information Technology Department would be more than willing to speak to the matter, since they will be blamed for the Village Council’s negligence.
Macky’s New York
Matthew Cortellesi Photography
March 26, 2022 - Coney Island
Alone In A Cyclone
The beach in the winter is both haunting and exhilarating - I feel an emptiness and an abundance - it's a state of half life where you can float between what was and what will be.
Shot looking south with Cyclone and Q train pulling into station
Time 10am.
#ny1pic
William Peay
Tales From The Wood…
Formerly the Cheese Shop... man, I loved their beef jerky.
RHS Athletic Hall Of Fame
Save The Date: November 5, 2022
Visit The RHS Athletic Hall Of Fame
Anne Robinson
Did You Know..
California passed legislation that will go into effect this September mandating that middle schools start no earlier than 8:00 am and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 am. In 2017, the NJ Department of Education released a report citing the science, research, and evidence showing positive outcomes for adolescent students when schools start at 8:30 or later NJDOE Study. At that time, they recommended later school start times but came short of a mandate. In a press release last Friday, NJ legislators announced the introduction of a bill that would require all NJ high schools to start no earlier than 8:30. Elementary and middle schools were not included in the proposal.
M + A NYC
Mighty Are We As One
Inspired by art, designed in New York, and made by hand with love by artisans all over the world. Shop home décor and wearable accessories at www.mplusanyc.com
James Stroker
Jim Schoneman
Rock Hound
Whitefish Point on Lake Superior, March 25, 2022 at 10:00 AM, looking towards a bright sun. To the right is the Whitefish Point Light Station marking the entrance to Whitefish Bay. To the left is Lake Superior, with pressure ridges and ice still several feet thick extending about ¼ mile out onto the lake. In between is some exposed shoreline littered with lots of cedar driftwood. What a bonfire we could have!
Although the Whitefish Point Light Station complex has been converted into a shipwreck museum, the light is still in operation and is the oldest operational lighthouse on Lake Superior. On the night the Fitzgerald went down, the light was working, but the station’s radio beacon had been knocked out. It didn’t matter though, because by the time the Fitz would have been within sight of the light, her fate had already been sealed. Her holds were just too full of water, either from leaky hatch covers, or a hole in the bottom of her hull caused by bottoming out on the Six Fathom Shoal out by Caribou Island. Captain Jesse Cooper, who captained the SS Arthur Anderson and was following the Fitzgerald six miles behind when she went down, went to his grave believing the Fitzgerald had struck the reef, and that’s what did her in.
Siobhan Crann Winograd
Around The Village
DINING CORRAL UPDATE: Last night Ridgewood's Village council met and despite the massive petition, scores of persuasive letters, and many smart public comments, the majority bloc of KNUDSEN, REYNOLD & SEDON succeeded in striking an unwanted and unwelcome blow to our struggling town. As of April 1st this much loved outdoor space within the corrals will disappear most likely at night and paid for by our taxpayer dollars. Sigh.
Big Shout out to Pamela Perron who was an advocate for business, citizens and facts. Still hopeful that the pedestrian mall will survive this total craziness. Next town meeting is April 6th, please continue to show up and support our town.
And if anyone wants to meet in a corral for a drink, Mike and I are available for that.
Bruce Emond
In Memory Of Jessica Berg, RHS 1985
A flood of memories of my years at RHS in the early 1980s came back to me this morning. And for those of you who were LGBT+ at the time, like me, I want to share my story as I also honor the memory of Jessica Berg, a 1985 graduate who died tragically just a few weeks before graduation.
I suddenly thought of Jessica, the day after an old photo of me winning a national writing award came onto my timeline. Remembered the shock of her death - so sudden, we were in AP History class, and Ms Aslanides announced it to our stunned silence.
And also how truly kind she was. When I first came to Ridgewood and was put in a year above my actual class (we had only been in the US 6 months), I was so confused about many things, including why Americans didn't say the h on those Italian pasta sauce adverts with all those delicious 'erbs.
Here I was, English and a bit of South African, dealing with a lot of insecurities, but mostly about being gay, scared and feeling out of place ... and Jessica was one of people who went out of their way to make me feel OK. Not that I could open up to her about being gay but she invited me to the Sadie Hawkins dance right off the bat and made a point of including. I still remember it, just as I remember the cringey moment of believing that I should kiss the girl I was dancing with because otherwise I would stand out. And it was weird and strange and didn't feel natural at all, and so I stopped taking any calls from that girl (which led to an upperclass woman, a mean girl, thin as a rake and brimming with venom like a vulture, spouting across the room at the beginning of my journalism class, "C&** says you won't take her calls - we think you are a HOMOSEXUAL ... "oh, that word, so stinging, more even than if she had said FAG, and I sat the rest of the class fixed to my seat, believing everyone's eyes were boring into me, knowing that I had that despised H label (we were reading The Scarlet Letter with Mrs Connolly as I remember).
There was that underlying and sometimes blatant homophobia as would be expected in a 1980s school setting, when movies like Porgy's were playing in movie theaters, and you had Michael Caine saying he had to drink a bottle of whisky in order to kiss Christopher Reeve in the scene from Deathtrap playing on HBO ad infinitum. maybe it was just that you knew you couldn't really say anything. There were a couple of times in classes when I wanted to speak up, for example, when we read "The Zoo Story" with Mr Rooney and I sensed that there was something underlying in the relationship between the two men meeting by chance, or fate, in Central Park.
We also had Roy Cohn - yes, Citizen Roy - come in to Humanities class, glib and urbane, as much as one can be when over tanned and reptilian, of course making no mention of his pulling strings for his Army buddy or how he had played on homophobia during his association with McCarthy. I could put two and two together that he was gay, but the closet was so deep that you knew he would deny it to his dying day. And so he did.
Thank God for Evelyn Shalom who, when one of the popular crowd made a quip about "fags," shut the whole class down and went through why he felt that was insulting and such a disgusting thing to be. And there I sat, in silence, feeling that I was, like that boy had blurted out, also a disgusting human.
So that was why I overachieved, tried my hardest to be the best at everything, ate virtually nothing for years, didn't ever go into the cafeteria, stuck to the library. I was scared, so scared, of being known. There was a man in my English class who was effeminate, at least in my viewpoint - high voice, high hair, skinny - and I avoided any acknowledgement of him (even though we sat next to each other) as well as the couple of boys who were active in social clubs and always stuck together. Didn't want anyone to put two and two together (not that they were necessarily gay, but that was me and my assumptions).
It was always there though, and sometimes I couldn't keep up the act; I suddenly developed a huge crush on the boy I played tennis with and just couldn't face him, literally. I remember I suddenly couldn't compose a coherent sentence without stammering or going red, and his rather confused reaction at what was up with Bruce. I also went on the NJ Boys State - why, why - as the alternate when everyone else with sense pulled out, a militaristic camp which included one session where the leaders - adult men - gave this vile run-down of all the slang terms for women's genitalia as what we would do to it in graphic terms that still rankles me to this day. I wish I had the balls to report that kind of crap at the time; disgusting.
So I thank God for the people like Mrs Connolly, Mr Rooney, the one-of-a-kind Ms Aslanides, Mrs Derven - who years later still remembered how I had reacted and that it had passed her mind that maybe, just maybe, I was gay and that why I shut down - and Mrs Shalom.
And for people like Jessica and [Bonnie Amsterdam Birnbaum] and my friend Phil and his sister Sally. Otherwise I wouldn't have made it out of RHS alive; I felt so alone being gay and not really knowing who to turn to and sometimes really desperate.
I have gone on to have a journalism career - interviewed the likes of Michael Buble, Victoria Beckham, Martina Navratilova and Jane Birkin - and come to realize that my sexual preference (and it's not all about the sex people) did not matter to people who mattered, and if it did, then these were people who really did not matter to me.
So Jessica is long gone. I often wonder if I could have been there for her too, and if only she had gone on to university - I believe she was going to Bates - and lived out her life.
For I know that she would have been a brilliant, kind and upstanding person; she was to me and that is a memory that remains.