The Backstory

Through the power of obituaries, I now have the complete backstory about the hippie who on the first Earth Day in 1970 was wearing lettering on his back made with masking tape that spelled out: FUCK THE MOON FIX THE EARTH.

In 1970, the moon was very much on everyone's mind because on July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong of the United States was the first person to touch the moon's surface, fulfilling a vow made by President Kennedy that before the 1960s were over, we would have a "man on the moon." And so we did, if even President Kennedy wasn't alive to see it happen..

The fellow I saw with what some might call the first environmental slogan was amongst a scrum of hippies that were outside a store on the north side 17th Street, between Irving Place and Third Avenue.

The family flower shop was around the corner on 18th Street and Third Avenue, so I was always going through that area. The store these hippies were in front of was a store selling "Earth Shoes,"  shoes that were supposed to give you the feel of walking barefoot. They were made by Kalsø.

The backstory gets filled in when you read the obituary of Eleanor Jacobs, who with her husband Raymond, brought the style of shoe over from Europe and promoted them in the United States. The shoe had a so called "negative heel" that was lower than the rest of the sole. The shoes were wildly popular with the hippie sandal set, but soon fell out of favor after about 1977, the sales weakened by knockoffs and concerns expressed by podiatrists about the harm to the foot they might be causing.

Turns out in 1969, Eleanor and her husband Raymond were touring Europe, and of course doing a lot of walking and standing. They were in Denmark when Eleanor spotted a pair of what were then called "Anne Kalso Minus Heels." They were named after their designer, a yoga instructor named Anne Kalso. The shoes featured a wide toe box and a sole that was thicker in the front than in the back. Eleanor's chronic back pain was greatly relieved as she wore the shoes for the rest of their vacation.

Eleanor worked in the garment district, and her husband was a commercial photographer. They had a entrepreneurial spirit and opened a store on the first floor of their 17th Street brownstone, becoming the sole U.S. distributor. At that point, 17th Street was in between Third Avenue and Irving Place, a quiet residential stretch that had Willie's deli, St John the Baptist Greek Church, a real estate office and Washington Irving High School, along with other brownstones and older apartment houses on the block. The area is pretty much the same today.

They didn't really have a name for the store or product until they asked the convoy of hippies that were walking past the store one day in April 1970 where they were going. "Hey man, it's Earth Day! There is a love-in down the street in the park."

"Down the street in the park" was nearby Union Square, then and now a gathering place for all sorts of assemblies.

Smacked with marketing eureka, Raymond quickly named the store "KALSØ EARTH SHOES" and the rest became marketing history. Huge success, until the air went out of the balloon.

The Jacobses' business however was soon hit with competition and eventually they declared bankruptcy in 1977. According to Eleanor in an interview the Litchfield Enquirer in 2000, the bank that had lent them money "didn't trust us, nor our flower children. nor our unconventional marketing strategy despite our steady growth and profits."

Apparently, there is still an earth shoe called Earth Kalsø Shoes from a company that was revived in 2001, Earth Inc.

Who knows, the fellow who informed the Jacobses that it was Earth Day, might have been the fellow who had the slogan spelled out in masking tape on his back.

An Earth Day doesn't go by that I fail to remember his sentiment.

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Kitty Genovese and Sophia Farrar

Just when I thought I'd never read about the 1964 Kitty Genovese attack in Kew Gardens again, along comes Sam Roberts's obituary on Sophia Farrar, 92, a neighbor of Kitty's who was with her immediately after she was viciously stabbed in a mugging and tried to comfort her as she was taken away in an ambulance. Kitty died en route to the hospital.

It takes a reporter of Mr. Roberts's age to write such an obituary, most of which I have no doubt he could do from memory. My guess has always been he and I remember the same mayors and presidents, and probably saw Bambi when it was first run in the movies.

The obit might just be the piece that puts a lid on a story that really has never seemed to go away, particularly to this teenage resident of Flushing in 1964.

Without completely repeating the story which is so ably recapped in the obit, the era of the 1960s in Queens is firmly etched in my memory. After all, I was born in Flushing when Truman was the president, and lived there for 43 years.

The World's Fair opened in Flushing Meadows in 1964, after much delay and cost overruns. Shea Stadium opened, finally giving the Mets a home after spending their initial, hapless years at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. The city was jumping.

Traffic through that area of Queens on the expanding Long Island Expressway was an absolute mess. The World's Fair and Shea were being built at the same time. Houses were sprouting up in Nassau and Suffolk counties like dandelions. The migration out on the Expressway was measured by the exit number of your new home. "We're just 10 minutes from..." People were buying lawnmowers and rakes.

The story of the mugging and death of Kitty Genovese took hold in the consciousness of the nation after the NYT ran a story in their Sunday Edition by A.M. (Abe) Rosenthal, an executive editor, that basically painted the residents of Kew Gardens as a callous. indifferent lot who listened and watched a woman be savagely murdered at 3 a.m. and basically went back to bed.

The reporting was false, and Mr. Rosenthal stood by it even after more was known about the response of the residents and the inaccuracy of the reporting. He was interviewed in his antique-filled apartment for the documentary, 'The Witness," produced by Kitty's youngest brother Bill and pretty much thumbed his nose at any hint he was wrong.

The Rosenthal piece rapidly gained traction as an example of indifference to the plight of others. It basically slandered an entire community and borough. When the story about 38 "witnesses" who did nothing was unfurled I remember thinking to myself, how did they know it was 38? They counted that many heads that popped out of windows and then went back to bed? The image from the words was too far fetched.

Mr. Rosenthal took the number from a police report that counted 38 people who were interviewed after the mugging. Some did try and call the police. Some only heard screams, but actually saw nothing, and considering where they were in some buildings, could not have possibly seen anything.

In that era, there was no 9-1-1 centralized way to reach the police. You either dialed O for Operator, like in the movies and asked for the police, or you knew the precinct's phone number and they answered. They were never too eager to answer the phone. It was a different world.

I always remember my father and a neighbor asking each other if they knew the telephone number for the local precinct if they had to call them to report something. Neither man did.

The above photo included in the online presentation of Mr. Roberts's obit is of Sophia Farrar in 1960 with her young family, probably taken on a Sunday when everyone seemed to dress up, going to church or not. Your "Sunday best."

How odd it is to look at a photo from an era I was a teenager in, It looks like it was taken by Matthew Brady at a Civil War site. I almost expect to see a tent pitched in the background near a wagon wheel.

The Kew Gardens area where the mugging took place is basically unchanged around the Kew Gardens LIRR station and Austin Street. There are still Tudor style buildings, and the viaduct over the tracks with stores is still three, but I've  been reading is in imminent danger of collapsing. The "Ponte Vecchio" of Queens.

To Mr. Roberts's credit, he clears the air of Mr. Rosenthal's obstinance and quotes Joseph Lelyveld, a NYT executive editor in the 1990s as admitting that the reporting that omitted the presence of Sophia Farrar coming to the aid of her friend and neighbor as "inexcusable."

There are plaques and memorials all over the city. Perhaps there should be something there for Kitty and Sophia.

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DT

President Trump is right, although I didn't know he made a trip to Nassau County, New York and met my wife, because I've come to conclude I'm living with a domestic terrorist.

It wasn't always his way. Perhaps it's the work-form-home syndrome that's set in rather than the nearly 45 years of  marriage that have come to affect her cerebral cortex, because believe me, she's become a little crazy.

The house is sufficiently large enough and empty of offspring that even with her being in the 25th week of working from home, we barely collide during the day. I'm in my 10th year of retirement, so up to now haven't been spending much time together during daylight hours other than on weekends.

She's been going to work and taking part in all that entails: water cooler chatter, break room gossip, and cake for co-workers' birthdays. I get it. Staying home is dull, and it has to be affecting her nervous system.

How else do you explain the sudden expulsion from the downstairs medicine chest items of mine that are health related. "They get in between my lotions." They've been cast aside to the adjoining counter top, like a crazy ex-girlfriend who has dumped her boyfriend's clothes, bike and bowling ball on the sidewalk. My preferred cold remedies have been evicted.

Okay, granted the Daytime and Nighttime bottles of the generic NyQuil are a little large, but hey, considering unit pricing, they were a steal, especially with my Bonus Bucks coupon from CVS. And with a little re-arranging, I made them fit.

It was obviously the "little re-arranging" that did it. I strayed into North Korean airspace in what is basically a large medicine chest, certainly large enough for a geriatric couple to comfortably
co-exist with their life sustaining medicines, potions and lotions.

My own little corner of this penthouse of space did expand a little due to the addition of four safety cap canisters with tiny print of prescription medicine that were added to the already small variety in place. A recent health event has necessitated taking up a little more space. I'm not being denied that space. I must still be loved.

But suddenly, even the variety of band-aids has came under scrutiny. I ask you, if a finger is pricked, am I the only who bleeds?

The medicine chest dispute won't however require third-party arbitration, and certainly won't require taking any Millennial advice from the NYT on how to survive the pandemic.

Forty-five years of marriage have taught us how to survive each other in all conditions. Negotiations are underway.

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David and Goliath

The returns aren't all in yet, but the click count for the prior profane posting on the NYT eliminating their TV listing section has taken off—just a bit.

It gained a retweet from a respected former journalist, and was acknowledged by a current one as a column, "that beat them up." Another current one seems to hear the pain. Nothing personal, just a screed.

How I'd love to think that the tirade, along with no doubt others transmitted to the NYT, would have the effect of restoring the TV listings page. Time will tell, but it's not on "our" side. We'd need a reprieve from Governor Sulzberger.

Many, many years ago I once shamed the Paper of Record into restoring the entries, or the race results to the sports page. It didn't last long, and when they finally disappeared for good, I was resigned to their elimination.

We have to face it. The Children of the Times will effect their changes regardless of what the Old Guard says. There's beach erosion, and there's print erosion, and right now we're experiencing both. Overall, it's all climate change.

I'm not sure I've figured out a work around for what would have been a daily intake ("consuming") of TV listings. The paper has correctly pointed out that more people are at home working and binging on TV shows. Given that acknowledgment, they still whacked their TV listings. This "streaming" thing might be bigger than all of us.

I've expressed my worry to the obituary page editor Bill McDonald that if they whack the obits page like they've whacked the sport and TV listings, then they can count on one less grey-haired reader whose life will outlive their readership. Cancellation is always an option.

A way perhaps to revive the TV listing page could of course lead to advertising. What's wrong with that? Newspapers once upon a time were completely fueled by advertising. Probably what keeps the obits page going these days are the paid death notices, which can be quite lengthy, and therefore quite expensive and lucrative. The page is a profit center. Why not the same for the TV listings? There was never an ad on the what was the old TV page.

If the next health scare results in more paper work than just insurance claims and co-pays, then the offspring may be faced with the task of fulfilling one of my sarcastic wishes made several years ago.

Only half-kidding, I made it known I wanted to be buried with three newspapers. The Wall Street Journal over my brain; the Daily Racing Form over my heart, and the New York Times swaddling my rear end.

And my wife and I have raised the two daughters who just might do this. They feel my pain.

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Wrong-Headed

The NYT took part in writing its obituary the other day. They explained why after 81 years of providing TV listings they were now NOT going to provide TV listings in their print edition.

If you're not aware of how the Times reports things these days they not only attempt to bring you news of Malaysian malaise, but they also try and tell you the "backstory" of how clever they were to deliver the story, any story. They do this on Page Two.

Thus, in Saturday's paper they explained why after 81 years of providing TV listings they were wisely NOT going to provide TV listings starting as of the print paper's Monday August 31, 2020 edition. And lest you think they gave us all a reprieve, they didn't. I opened Monday's paper, and no TV listings, as they proudly announced.

The Times of course will continue to cover riots, protests, coronavirus outbreaks, presidential elections, hurricanes and statue topplings. They will not however tell us what's on Turner this evening. Or HBO, or Showtime, or even Channel 2 with their 5-word reviews about the show.

The Times of course is being run by people who buy $6 coffees and pay for it with a tap of a key fob. As I've gotten older I've gotten used to the fact that the people running things have gone to school with backpacks and cell phones attached to their hands. They don't carry books to school, but rather passwords to log onto who knows what.

Listen to some of the claptrap reasons The Times has now abandoned providing TV listings:

• The majority of subscribers won't even notice the removal of the TV grid and the What's on TV column after this weekend's papers. (Oh yeah? Where's the results of the survey you didn't take?)
• For years now the Times has published the grid only in its New York City edition, and not the national one. (What the fuck do you think "New York" means on your masthead?)
• We are firmly in the streaming age, and the TV grid no longer reflects the way people consume television. (What a load of elitist bullshit. "Consume" television! Like I fucking eat it! I may watch it, but I do not eat it!)

So, just as I've recently gotten access to Amazon Prime and Netflix, I can longer find out if there's something streaming in the print edition. We're in the "steaming" age, but I can't find out what's streaming! Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The Times's Culture Desk, should have his passwords revoked!

Their "Finale for the Daily TV Listings" obituary by Sarah Bahr (who I'm sure doesn't remember the same mayors and presidents as I do) goes on for two 8-inch columns. It is filled with more condescending comments about how people don't even want the listings, and about how if they do complain, The Times will listen. "But now [Mr Cruz] he thinks even those who don't like the decision will accept it." Don't tell what you think I'm going to accept, you smartphone, online, condescending editor.

The Times seems to have forsaken the part of their name that indicated where they are published from, namely New York.

They no longer seem to have a New York section to go along with their International and National sections in their A section. They don't send reporters to sporting events, even if it's to the home town playing someone. Seen an Islander score lately as they skate their way toward this year's Stanley Cup? Seen any box scores from the Mets and The Yankees.? Tell me about it.

A lifetime ago in the middle '60s when I was in high school, a kid in home room class who sat behind me, Mark Goldberg, grumbled that the New York Times was only good for stories about "Belgium imports." His critique has stayed with me all these years.

And if the NYT can now use language that they once would have never contemplated, even if it is a direct quote from a Republican Congressman directed at Alexander Ocasio Cortez (known by her Twitter handle as AOC), then I can use language that wouldn't have been allowed in print years ago.

The [New York] Times sucks!

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Prince Anthony

Yesterday was Wednesday. I don't know if Wednesday is still Prince Spaghetti Day in Boston's North End, a section that I'm sure is still filled with Italian families. Or, if really every day is Prince Spaghetti Day in Boston. Doesn't matter. They still make Prince spaghetti and other pastas, and I'm not aware that I ever had it. 

The reason of course for remembering Prince Spaghetti Day is that the young lad who races home for the family's pasta meal on Wednesday, Anthony Martignetti, playing himself, in what is really a famous commercial, has just passed away at 63, possibly from a severe form of sleep apnea.

The one minute commercial opens with Anthony's mother leaning out of the apartment window and calling his name twice, in a heavy, loud Italian accent. "An-tony...An-tony." Anthony, who is really not within earshot of his mother's voice, must still have the ears of a collie, or a clock in his head, because at he same time Mom's yelling his name, Anthony is running home like a guided missile, all skinny arms and legs churning in a sprint.

He races through the street market, past the bocce courts with the arguing men, and like a young colt bounds through the streets of Boston's North End and makes his way home and arrives out of breath at the top of the stairs, happy and hungry.

The commercial was set in 1969, and clearly shows that Moms had no cell phones to summon their young, and their young wandered far enough way from home to play and explore a distance that if it were to happen today would have the parent calling the police and reporting a missing person.

When I first spotted Mr. Martignetti's obit in the NYT, I wondered who on the paper could even still remember 1969? Then I saw the byline of Sam Roberts and knew that Mr. Roberts, who is as old as I am, or perhaps only slightly younger, remembers the same mayors and presidents that I do.

The genesis of the commercial is as interesting as it is familiar. Some advertising fellows scouted the area in hope of finding non-actors who could appear in a commercial for the Prince spaghetti company. They found Anthony and some of his friends, and with Anthony not giving them any lip about directions, they cast his as the youngster who races home for his meal.

When the commercial airs I always thought Anthony looked liked the Boston Bruin hockey player Phil Esposito. I still do. Phil of course came to the Bruins from the Chicago Black Hawks, and eventually wound up playing for the Rangers, in a still hard-to-fathom trade.

We used to play roller hockey in a school yard on 32nd street off Third Avenue in Manhattan on Sunday mornings. Oddly enough, the school yard was right next to the offices of New York magazine. We were a ragtag assembly of youngsters and young adults, ranging in age from perhaps 12-22. Five of the players were from the Burek family, and if they didn't show up not only was there no one to play goal, there weren't enough skaters to pass the puck (a roll of electrical tape) to. Thankfully, they usually all showed.

One Sunday a young women with a clip board wandered by the fence and started to chat us up while we took a break between periods—our own self-timed playing intervals.

She introduced herself as someone who wanted young subjects to make a Frito-Lay potato chip commercial. She didn't want the "older" ones of us; she wanted the youngsters, our Anthonys. She was legit, and soon after names were taken, permission slips signed, and a date was set, a scrum of the fellows gathered in a corner of the school yard, sticks and skates, dressed in their mis-matching hockey "uniforms" and were crunching on potato chips and telling the camera, "They're terrific."

I don't remember how much money was paid to the lads, but the commercial ran for a long time, long enough that Jimmy, Joey, Nicky and Paulie could look back at themselves and laugh.

Prince spaghetti is still around, and is part of a larger food conglomerate.  I've never seen it here in New York, being exposed to Ronzoni, and now Barilla and De Cecco. Growing up it was Mueller's elbow macaroni, a Long Island City company that I'm sure folded. As a young adult I bought some Mueller's hoping to remember childhood, and tasting it I can only wonder why they weren't an epidemic of deaths.

In the Prince commercial, the woman who played Anthony's mother was really his neighbor. I didn't grow up in an Italian neighborhood, and the only time I can remember my mother calling me was when she leaned out of the front door in 1955 and told me Dodgers had just beaten the Yankees in the World Series.

She was gloating, because she knew I liked the Yankees, but not enough to watch them on TV in the afternoon, as all Series games were played in the daytime then. I can still remember being in the neighbor's driveway with my friend Archie and hearing the news.

I really didn't care that much, and was too young to be affected by the Dodger/Yankee rivalry. But one thing was for sure that day. It was not Prince Spaghetti Day for Yankee fans.

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They're Calling My Class

I'm noticing I'm having a bit of a more visceral reaction to reading obituaries, particularly when they are someone who is around my age, or is someone I know something of that is not mentioned in the obit.

Because of my own health scare and the fact that I've crossed the Rubicon of being in my 70s, I pay particular attention to those that pass away who are around my age. They're calling my class.

Yesterday's paper featured three obits, all for people around my age, or even younger. Peter Tytell, 74, the typewriter repair expert and documentation analyst has passed away. Over the years there were stories about the repair shop of his parents, then his, and of his work reviewing the authenticity of typed documents for lawyers and law enforcement.

I distinctly remember the kerfuffle around the authenticity of the purported Air National Guard letter that was said to grant George W. Bush special treatment in the early '70s at the time of the Vietnam war. Doubts about the letter's authenticity began when it was pointed out that a typed letter of the 1972 era could not have produced a superscript "th" after a numeral. A superscript would be say a "th" elevated like an exponent after a number.

No typewriter of the era was capable of such a format. Word processing programs like Word and WordPerfect could produce text like that, but they came along quite  bit after 1972. The letter was a fake.

The controversy surrounding the letter was made prominent when CBS insisted a hole-through-a-pot that the letter clearly showed special treatment accorded to the man who was then president, George W. Bush. In particular, Dan Rather on the evening news would refer to the veracity of the letter often, even after it was pointed out that the use of a "th" rendered the letter a phony.

The role Mr. Tytell played in identifying the discrepancy is in the obit, along with the genesis of the story first getting aired in a "60 Minutes" segment on CBS. It is mentioned that CBS's review of the matter resulted in the firing of a producer and three executives for their role in perpetuating what would now be quickly called "fake news."

Unmentioned in the obit is the part Dan Rather played, and how it eventually led to his departure from the network evening news. He wouldn't let it go.

Of course the obit is about Mr. Tytell—whose name alone would seem to foretell his vocation—and not Mr. Rather, who is still with us at 88 years old. We'll just have to wait for the final words on his life.

Many crime stories, fiction and non-fiction, have a typewriter at their center, and how someone could, or could not have produced such a piece of text. Who typed the ransom letter is traced to who owned the unique machine whose keys would stick and mis-strike the ribbon, making a distinct impression on the page. Mr. Tytell was there to identify the machine that was used. Find the machine, find the perp.

I always thought how much the story would have changed had the ransom note left by the alleged kidnapper of Joan Benet Ramsey been typed out, rather than handwritten. Someone would have been nailed. and Mr. Tytell probably would have been called in.

Peter Tytell's father was equally famous for identifying which typewriter created certain documents and was also called as an expert to either certify or debunk a document. When his father Martin passed away at 94 in 2008, he too rated a tribute obit in the NYT.

Another obit in yesterday's paper was for Ben Cross, 72 an Oscar-winning best actor for his role in Chariots of Fire, the story of Harold Abrahams and the 1924 Paris Olympics. The 1981 film featured great music from the Greek composer Vangelis, and won the Oscar for best picture.

The photo accompanying Mr. Cross's obit accompanied the review I read in the NYT when the movie first came out. I remember the theater on Main Street in Flushing, the Prospect, that was still there in 1981 where I saw the movie, pre-cable, pre-VCR days.

Another obit a few days ago was for Niels Lauersen, 84, a Manhattan ob-gyn doctor who was convicted of defrauding insurance companies by portraying non-covered in-vitro fertilization, IVF treatments as another payable surgery, securing insurance payments when contractually there should shouldn't have been any payment. The fraud was massive and long-standing.

I knew a great deal of the backstory of this individual since in my prior life I worked for one of the insurance companies that was defrauded, and gave testimony at the two trials for the prosecution.

I became aware first hand of the influence someone can exert in the media to get a favorable story out  there about themselves in the NYT and Time magazine, as Dr. Lauersen did before the trail. Constraints of the obituary naturally didn't allow for more of Dr. Lauersen's story to appear. And that's okay. Nothing can be served by revealing more than what made it into the obit.

In addition to the two Thursday obits for 74 and 72 year-old subjects, there is the one for Amer Fakhoury, 57, a detainee released from jail in Beirut. Someone quite younger than myself.

And the contemporary angle and even younger prevails today, Friday, when there are obits for  Christine Jahnke, 57, a speech coach for women in politics, and Ann Syrdal, 74,  a force behind female computer voice.

There are those who like to joke that when they open the paper and don't see their obituary they know they're still alive.

Who are they kidding? In all great likelihood when they leave us, no one is going to write about them anyway. And they won't even know about it.

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