BEGINNINGS AND ENDS -- THAT’S HOW DAYS BLEND!

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, I begin with three guesses.  The first is that the last 2012 sunrise has likely made its appearance over your abode by the time you begin reading this!  I’m also guessing that the year two thousand twelve has probably long since permanently stamped its imprint on your psyche.  Its successes and disappointments are most obvious as you prepare to welcome 2013 into your awareness.  My third guess is more speculative: 2012’s full significance may not be apparent for some time to come!

You and I are of course familiar with the idea that "every day is the first day of the rest of our lives," but how significant that reality truly is can be a little daunting.  However, especially if it’s just a tad frightening, it can be dismissed or easily overshadowed by compelling events and circumstances.  Nevertheless, the patterns and the meanings of 2012 have been imprinted in our individual and collective awareness ultimately having an inevitable effect on who we are and what we do for the rest of our lives.

Thousands will gather this midnight in Times Square and at celebrative gatherings all around the world to usher out the old and welcome in the New Year.  Millions of people will privately celebrate 2013’s arrival with private parties.  Millions more however will pointedly try and avoid marking the passage of 2012 and the arrival of 2013 altogether. Still, the clock mechanism of our consciousness moves forward heedless of how we feel about it.

Like the 366 days in the leap year that have just passed and the 365 days just ahead, people and events great and small have been marked by this day.

Some people of note born on December 31st include:

General George Gordon Meade in 1815 who led Union forces to victory over the Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg from July 1st through 3rd in 1863;

World War II Army Chief of Staff (and later Secretary of State and Defense) George C. Marshall (born 1880) who proposed the “Marshall Plan” for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II;

Actor Jason Robards, Sr. (who appeared along with Elvis Presley in a 1961 movie “Wild In The Country”) in 1892; 

Simon Wiesenthal, born December 31, 1908, the Polish national who successfully hunted down Nazi war criminals; and

Singer John Denver (born in 1943 as Henry John Deutschendorf).

Among those who died on December 31st while the rest of us were looking forward to the dawning of a new year and new opportunities:

Thirty-nine-year-old Michael Kennedy, son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was killed in a skiing accident December 31, 1997; 

Country pianist Floyd Cramer died of cancer at age 64 the same day as young Mike Kennedy; 

Former IBM President Thomas J. Watson in 1994;

Professional football coach George Allen in1990;

Rock singer Ricky (born Eric Hilliard) Nelson who apparently free-based his way to eternity in the back of a chartered plane on the last day of 1985;

and, perhaps most tragically of all, baseball star Roberto Clement who died while carrying relief help to the people of earthquake-shattered Nicaragua from his home in Puerto Rico on the last day of 1972.

Historical events for December 31 include:

The opening of America’s first bank, The Bank of North America, in 1781;

Ottawa was chosen by Queen Victoria to be Canada’s new capital on December 31, 1857;

President Abraham Lincoln signed the legislation that paved the way toward West Virginia becoming our thirty-fifth state on the last day of 1862 (although West Virginia statehood would not become official until June 20 1863); 

The cornerstone of the Iolani Palace (the only royal palace in America) was laid on December 31, 1879.;

The same day that Royalist Hawaiians were celebrating their new palace, Thomas Edison was demonstrating his incandescent light bulb;

Ellis Island was opened on the last day of 1890 as a receiving center for immigrants; December 31, 1897 was the last day that Brooklyn was an independent “city”: it was officially incorporated into New York City on Saturday, January 1, 1898.

The ball dropped for the first time in Times Square in the last seconds of Tuesday, December 31, 1907;

On the last day of 1914, Colonel Jacob Ruppert and Captain  Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston purchased the New York Yankees for $460,000 and began building the team into its present dynastic status; 

On the last day of 1935, Charles Darrow patented the new game he called Monopoly; 

In 1961, the Beach Boys staged their first performance;

On the last day of 1970, Paul McCartney filed suit to break up the Beatles; 

On December 31, 1981, CNN Headline News opened for business; 

December 31, 1991 was the last day the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR) existed;

And, finally, it was on Friday, December 31, 1999 that Panamanians gained control of the Panama Canal -- thanks largely, of course, to former President Jimmy Carter.

Ultimately, December 31^st 2012, as every other day, belongs to you.  In your intellect and spirit there exists all of the material elements with which you may meld, for your legitimate happiness, the best strategies for taking advantage of those events and situations great and small that will occur throughout the rest of your life.

I like to think that each God-given day blends beginnings and ends thus creating the energy from which we may borrow sufficient strength for all of our tomorrows!

A little hokey you say?  Well, perhaps, but it works for me!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

CHRISTMAS -- A TIME OF ESSENTIAL INNOCENCE

By Edwin Cooney

It’s true. There’s no use denying it. I’m a sucker for Christmas.  I always have been and expect that I always will be.

It isn’t that I have any better handle on how to attain “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” than those who would assume a position of world leadership -- Barack Obama included.  It’s just that there’s something to be said, at least in my view, for innocence.

It started when I was very young, of course.  I remember lying in bed one night in early December of 1953.  I was an eight-year-old student at the New York State School for the Blind in Batavia, New York.  From the room on the floor below mine came the sound of pipe organ music playing Christmas carols.  There was “Joy to the World,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” -- which, along with “From the Eastern Mountains" (a State School standard carol) and “O Holy Night”, are my five favorite Christmas carols.

“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” has a special significance. Somehow, I saw myself on that night long ago with the shepherds in the field at midnight seeing the star overhead, beckoning all of us towards Bethlehem.  My eight-year-old mind imagined the shepherds and me beginning our journey to see the baby Jesus for ourselves, with generous supplies of tasty Christmas cookies, fruit juice, and hot chocolate.  Exactly what happened when we got there or what life was like upon our return was, and still is, beyond my comprehension -- but anticipation of a long exciting hike through forests under history’s brightest star brought forth in me fifty-nine years ago a sense of euphoria, the power of which lingers with me today.  That glorious energizing song linked, for me, an occasion of two thousand years ago with my childlike anticipation of a happy adventure.

Christmas as a concept of a fresh start in life is, to say the very least, invigorating.  The very idea that a Being exists who translates to us as “almighty God,” who is strong enough and will at some point in all of our futures begin maintaining us forever in spiritual safety and security, is invariably reassuring in the wake of earthly pain and uncertainty.

Then, of course, there is that other side of Christmas, the Christmas of sharing and receiving all of the material things one can perceive.  In that world, cookies, juice, hot chocolate, eggnog, fruit cake and brandy are the realities that can launch us into flights of fantasy we thought we left behind as children.  Inevitably, Jesus and Santa Claus meet and merge into one incredible entity or Being.  Ultimately, both are so extraordinary that they are compellingly real.

Like everyone else, I’ve experienced Christmases that were real bummers.  Nineteen eighty-seven, the year my marriage broke up, was a definite downer and I can remember a couple of Christmases as a teen when I was somewhere at “Yuletide” where I didn’t want to be.  It’s also true that Christmases are a bit of a struggle without a love partner with which to share them, but overall I still see Christmas as a time of nurturing.

Many, of course, complain about the “over commercialization” of Christmas, but it seems to me that such criticism is poorly placed.  Why blame Christmas rather than advertisers for “over commercializing” Christmas?  I never let George Steinbrenner ruin the Yankees for me and I never let a national administration of an opposing party (regardless of policy) ruin America for me.  My love for my country, the Yankees, my two sons and for my new lovely fiancé isn’t predicated on perfection.  So, why should I let a bunch of greedy advertisers destroy Christmas?  Were I to do that, I’d be giving them far more power than they’ve ever deserved.

Let’s see now:

Every Valentine’s Day we celebrate romance, every Easter we celebrate rebirth, every Memorial Day we celebrate victory over slavery, every Fourth of July we celebrate independence and liberty, every Labor Day we celebrate working and workers, every Halloween we celebrate adventure through ghoulish fantasy (note:  have you ever heard anyone complain about the over commercialization of Halloween?), every November 11^th we celebrate our veterans and our freedom, every Thanksgiving we celebrate gratitude itself and every Christmas we celebrate Christ’s greatest gifts—loving, sharing and innocent joy. We celebrate these things because through our own commitment and dedication to the joy and satisfaction of these concepts and achievements, we live in a nurturing society.

Part of celebrating Christmas, or a similar holiday of another faith, is, after all, a celebration of our capacity to believe the incomprehensible.  In order to believe the incomprehensible we must be free of regimentation and innocent enough to leap doctrinaire and even spiritual boundaries.

Dear Santa, if Christmas is for the innocent, an annual ticket to a place of innocence is precisely what I want sticking out of the top of my Christmas stocking!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

(First posted December 2008)

THE TENTH SON OF NOVEMBER 6TH

By Edwin Cooney

Monday night, August 12^th, 1974 was a hot, sticky night in Washington, D.C. as Gerald Rudolph Ford, our newly minted president, stood for the first time before his many friends and colleagues in the 93rd Congress.  Jerry had something to confess that night, but since I’m writing this column and he’s not, I’m going to make my confessions first before relating what his confession was.  As much as I insist that memorizing dates isn’t essential to learning about or enjoying history, the truth is that I love dates.  Dates, the historical ones that is, are markers in the study and enjoyment of history that can lead a person, intellectually and emotionally, from one concept or story to another thus bringing history to life. Here are some examples:

As many of you are aware, presidential and midterm federal elections are by law held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in every November of a year divisible by four, so there are eight dates in November on which we may elect a president.  The dates are November 2nd through November 8th.  Twelve years ago, which was five years before I began writing these weekly musings, I wrote an article that was never published called “The Seventh Son of November Seventh.”  It was about the possible fortune of George W. Bush, the candidate I had not voted for, as he prepared to take up his presidential duties on January 20^th, 2001.

I speculated on his presidential future by comparing and contrasting the experiences of the six presidents who had preceded him to the White House who were elected on November 7^th.  Four years ago, I wrote a column called “The Eighth Son of November 4^th” in which I noted that, like five of his November 4th predecessors, Barack Obama as a presidential candidate represented a state other than his native one. I also did a little comparison of the events that had occurred during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1800), Andrew Jackson (1828), James Buchanan (1856), Grover Cleveland (1884), Calvin Coolidge (1924), Dwight Eisenhower (1956), and Ronald Reagan (1980), all men elected on a November 4th before President-elect Obama.

Today, approximately six weeks after his re-election by a vote of 65,599,965 to Mitt Romney’s 60,861,735, Barack Obama officially becomes the tenth president elected on November 6^th.  In 1792, George Washington was re-elected president as was Thomas Jefferson on November 6^th, 1804.  In 1832, it was Andrew Jackson’s turn to be re-elected president on November 6^th.  On November 6^th, 1860, Americans living north of the Mason-Dixon Line voted to give Abraham Lincoln a crack at being president after having served only one term as an Illinois Congressman from 1847 to 1849.  Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and Herbert Hoover in 1928 are the two lesser presidential lights against which President Obama may be linked as a son of November 6^th.  However, William McKinley, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan—-re-elected in 1900, 1956 and 1984 respectively—are indeed formidable acts to follow.  Jefferson, Jackson, Eisenhower and Reagan were generally regarded as less effective in their second terms than in their first four years, but some of that analysis is a bit partisan.

President Obama’s recent victory is in stark contrast to most people’s analyses just one year ago as to what was likely to happen in 2012.  The Republicans were covering their substantial ideological differences by asserting that it would be “…anybody but Obama in 2012.”  Conservative talk show hosts were asserting that no president with an unemployment level above seven percent had ever been re-elected. What they weren’t asserting however was that the unemployment rate in 1984 when Mr. Reagan sought re-election was 7.2 percent.  Still, the president prevailed on November 6^th, 2012.  The rest, of course, is up to him.

If the legacies of seven of the nine men who preceded him after November 6^th to Pennsylvania Avenue’s most famous address are any indication (Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, Eisenhower, and Reagan), Barack Obama could have quite a successful second term.  However, if the performances of Benjamin Harrison and Herbert Hoover are the real indicator of the future, the president himself might wish he had rested on his laurels and taken a cushy job with a well-heeled liberal policy think-tank.

My second confession is that, fascinated as I am with dates, I didn’t realize that in 1788 George Washington wasn’t voted into office in November.  In the ten states that participated in our first presidential election, the voting took place between Monday, December 15^th, 1788 and Saturday, January 10^th, 1789.  Washington was unanimously elected with 69 electoral votes and received a popular vote of just 38,818 in the six states that held popular elections.  I wasn’t aware of that bit of historical date trivia until I began my research for this article. 

As for President Ford’s confession on that historic August night, it had to do with what we today call “earmarks.”  Looking over at House Speaker Carl Albert of Oklahoma, President Ford, who was about to ask a Democratic Congress to restrain its big spending habits, confessed that as a member of the House, he had often voted for worthwhile spending projects for his Grand Rapids, Michigan constituency while voting against “wasteful boondoggles" in Oklahoma.

If it can be argued that dates and circumstances are mere historic trivia, it can also be persuasively argued I believe that what often appears trivial may ultimately provide the key for making sense out of it all.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

HAVE YOU EVER MET…?

By Edwin Cooney

I know you’ve done a lot of things in your life, been a lot of places, owned some interesting and valuable stuff, learned much, forgotten more than you remember and so on  -- me, too!  I wonder, however, as you think about whom you’ve  met and what meeting and knowing them has done for you, what do you conclude about their significance?

The first blind man I ever met was an old codger whom people called "Titty-tote."   He had a dog named Dagwood (not a guide dog), walked with a long white cane which I recall was made of wood, and talked like he was missing most of his teeth.  I didn’t really want to grow up like him, but he was a pleasant man -- or at least seemed to be so.  After meeting Titty-tote at about age four, I didn’t come across a blind man using a cane until I was forced to do so by cane travel professionals in the early 1960s when I was about age 15.

While attending summer camp in 1957, I met Alan who was then about my age -- I was eleven going on twelve, Alan, who suffered from Muscular Dystrophy, was in a wheelchair.  The general prognosis of Alan’s disease back then was that he probably wouldn’t (and probably didn’t) live to be much older than twenty-one.  Although it was natural to wonder how much Alan knew about his condition, of course, I never asked him.  I’ve since wondered if he knew of the likelihood that his life span would be short and wondered further what he thought and felt about it all.  I’ll never know, but surely he must have known!

Over the years, I’ve known a number of talented musicians, people with prodigious memories, people who fought in World War I, World War II, the Korean “police action,” and the Vietnam conflict.  I’ve met people of different races and ethnic groups.  I know lefthanders and right-handers. I’ve even met a man who lost both of his hands as well as his sight in an adolescent accident.

I’ve met winners and losers, the generous and the stingy, the mean and the sunny-natured, the wise and the foolish, the smart and the dumb, the sincere and the insincere, the handsome, the beautiful and the homely.

The celebrities I’ve met include former Yankee catcher Elston Howard, five time Yankee Manager Billy Martin, and Jack Kemp (who quarterbacked for the Buffalo Bills in the mid to late 1960s, served in Congress and in President George H. W. Bush’s cabinet, and was the GOP vice presidential candidate in 1996). I also met Richard Nixon during the 1968 presidential campaign, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York in May 1978, New York Congressman Barber B. Conable, former New York Mayor John V. Lindsay, and former President and First Lady Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter.  Meeting celebrities was thrilling, but rather impersonal for the most part.

Meeting people isn’t easy for many as it can be emotionally intrusive.  America’s thirtieth president, Calvin Coolidge, was so shy as a youth that he’d remain in the barn or in the field if he heard strange voices in his parents’ house.  Young Coolidge mastered his fear of strangers enough to eventually be elected to the City Council and to be Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, to the Massachusetts Legislature, to the Lieutenant governorship and governorship of Massachusetts, as Vice President and ultimately as President of the United States of America.

Every memory, clear or dim, good or bad, is invariably connected to someone we’ve met.  Still, the key question remains: How can we evaluate and ultimately measure how much value we bring into any relationship?

Winston Churchill countered the inevitable question asked of the elderly ("are you ready to meet your maker?”) with a statement of his own: “The question isn’t whether or not I’m ready to meet my maker; the question is whether or not my maker is ready to meet me!”

Therein lies my question to you and to me: what do you suppose it would be like to meet yourself?

If your response is something like, “Well, that depends upon my mood or circumstances," then surely that has to tell you something about your self-perception. If you're confident that you’d enjoy meeting yourself, it may be because you’ve never really been very self analytical or perhaps because you're rightfully self-confident.

As for me, I’m always a little surprised whenever someone reveals his or her reaction to something I’ve done or said or the way I’ve done or said it.  Although I’ve done so with limited success over the years, I’ve tried to live by the golden rule.  I’ve tried to modify my least attractive tendencies so as to limit their effect on others and their inevitable consequences upon me.  Still, I know I possess both negative and positive characteristics like everyone else.  Nevertheless, there remains a suspicion on my part that if I were to meet the Edwin Cooney that everyone else has met since November 28^th, 1945, I’d perceive myself very differently than I ever have.

Of all the people you’ve ever met, have you ever really and truly wondered what it would be like to meet you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

AMERICA’S BIGGEST DEMAND

By Edwin Cooney

One of the most effective teaching tools is the strategy of linking situations and events to people and their needs.  Therefore, history is invariably more meaningful when it’s described as the story of a people rather than as the story of a nation’s political, economic or military history.  Thus when we write or speak of America’s needs or demands, that’s a general description of America’s collective will.

On a number of occasions over the seven years I’ve been writing these columns, I’ve identified fear as “public enemy number one.”  Since the conclusion of the 2012 presidential campaign I have been asking myself:  “What great collective or American need did the outcome of the recent presidential election reflect?”

Many, depending on their political orientation or priorities, would offer different responses to that question.  Conservatives would say that the re-election of President Obama indicates the triumph of secularism over “family values” and America’s tendency toward socialism over property rights. They would also say that there is an increasing shift from traditional “American values” in foreign affairs to a more internationalist or world order tendency of viewing and evaluating events.

Liberals, on the other hand, would likely assert that the re-election of President Obama is an affirmation of human values over property rights, a triumph of the collective well-being over the well-being of the powerful and the privileged, and the people’s insistence that government and private enterprise have a legitimate role to play in our domestic economic affairs.

An objective view of these two general evaluations of the meaning of the outcome of the 2012 presidential campaign could conclude that both views have some merit.  The problem with both of these points of view is that they don’t get to the heart of what America’s ongoing demand has always been and, as I see it, continues to be.

Hence the key question is: does America generally demand what it needs most?  Since America is ultimately the sum and substance of you and me, and since we all can be a bit fickle now and then, the answer to that question is necessarily mixed.

A sometimes jealous world has often observed that America’s most continuous demand was for the “almighty dollar.”  However, not even that reply gets to the heart of America’s greatest national expectation, for if one answers the above question by identifying a material object, one can never discover what America’s real demand is.  So, here goes.

As I see it, historically, America’s most consistent demand is that all problems crying for solution and all goals worthy of attainment must be realized “now” rather than over any extended period of time.  Nowhere in the world must a national itch be more quickly and effectively scratched than here in the "land of the free and the home of the brave.”  Our national impatience is almost institutional.  Impatience is neither good nor bad all of the time, but recognition of the existence of that tendency can be instructive.  Here are some historical examples of instantaneous problem solving at its worst and at its best:

July 4^th, 1776: The Second Continental Congress, while declaring the colonies free and independent states, wrote into the Declaration what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr called “that promissory note” by declaring that “…all men are created equal.”  If "now"  had a more eloquent and subconsciously lingering moment, history does not record it.

May to September 1787: In their valiant effort to construct the framework of a balanced government, "now" forced the Founding Fathers to evaluate white males' first class citizenship while at the same time constitutionally devaluating white women and especially blacks and Indians to second class status.  Hence, this was the immediate solution for "now" to solve a political need for balanced representation brought about one of America’s most seriously flawed examples of political and social inequity.

April 1803: President Thomas Jefferson laid claim to high public office because he insisted he would more consistently follow the dictates of the letter of the Constitution. Jefferson followed the demands of "now" by purchasing land offered by Napoleon of France. “The Louisiana Purchase” more than doubled the size of the United States.  Jefferson’s act was clearly constitutionally questionable, but perhaps -- for "now" -- it was more justifiable in April 1803 than unwise.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended civil rights by freeing captured slaves whom he would have had no authority to free in normal times, but "now" clearly demanded it. In February 1942, FDR caved into political pressure from the west coast to intern Japanese Americans for the duration of World War II.

"We want all of it now" was the cry during the summer of 1963 as American blacks sought to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation with their demand for national and social justice.

Tuesday, November 6^th, 2012: "Now" appears to have at least temporarily steadied our national political nervous system by returning to office a seemingly indecisive president and a quarrelsome Republican House of Representatives.

Risky decisions will always continue to confront our national leaders for a very simple reason:  a free people will always be an emotionally and spiritually hungry people.  If a hungry people may at times be bellicose, a free and hungry people will almost never be complacent.  The consistent demand for steadfastness, accountability and rationality "now" will permanently keep complacency -- freedom’s deadliest enemy -- at bay.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY