Greetings on this last day of July, which happens to be also a Friday, and so I resume my hobby after a few weeks off. A lot has happened in the world these last few weeks. The COVID-19 pandemic continues and the number of positive cases has actually increased recently in several states that probably tried to open back up too soon. This week witnessed the death toll in the USA alone passed 150,000. It is truly a somber and sobering time we live in. I hope you all are staying safe, wearing masks in public and social distancing.
The last few weeks has also seen the passing of three wonderful human beings. One is a local man, one was a national figure and one was an international civil servant who I had the pleasure of working with following the Indian Ocean tsunami. Why does it always seem like these tragic losses come in 3s?
However, none of the 3 died from the coronavirus. The local man was Alan Woodbury. His parents ran the florist shop downtown in Springfield in the 1950s to 1970s. So, Alan was also involved with plants and flowers and was very active in community affairs, volunteering his time on so many improvement projects around town. He had a great sense of humor and was a pleasure to work with. He will be missed by so many and the whole town of Springfield. His memorial service will be on Saturday and I plan on attending.
The national figure was John Lewis. You all have heard of him and his lifelong work for civil rights, justice and equality for all. He was involved with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the early 60s and was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington in August 1963 when MLK gave his famous “I have a dream” speech. He was only 23. He was beaten by state troopers on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma in 1965 when he led the marchers in their attempt to cross the bridge, when he was only 25. A dozen years later he became a congressman from Atlanta and served for decades in the House of Representatives. His memorial service was held today (Thursday, as I draft this) in Atlanta and 3 former presidents were in attendance and spoke.
I am proud to say the my parents were active in the NAACP and the civil rights movement throughout their lives and my Dad attended the 1963 March on Washington and my Mother marched from Selma to Montgomery with John Lewis and all the others in 1965.
The international friend and colleague was Miguel Bermeo. A great man about my age who served the UN in the developing world for more than 35 years. Miguel was head of the UN agencies in Sri Lanka (UN Humanitarian Coordinator) from 2001 to 2005 when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit several countries in Asia on Boxing Day of 2004. When the government of Sri Lanka could not quickly mobilize relief and emergency response efforts, Miguel stepped forward to coordinate not only all of the UN agency efforts, but also all of the international non-governmental organizations to commence the relief and recovery activities. Daily meetings of all these international agencies to coordinate all the various efforts worked wonders to speed relief to the affected populations and avoid overlap and duplication. In due course, when the government was ready and capable of taking over this role, he helped this transition and continued to support the S.L. Government with the coordination of the delivery of international organizations’ aid to the people of Sri Lanka. He and his wife, Lolita and their daughters, were good social friends, as well, and he will be truly missed.
After this rather somber opening, it is now time to delve into some recent material that some of you have sent to me.
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Who is your favorite Italian chef?
Personally, mine will always be Al Dente because he set the standard for how noodles should be cooked.
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I want to tell you about a woman who only eats plants.
You’ve probably never heard of herbivore…….
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A Senior's Version of Facebook
For those of my generation who do not, and cannot, comprehend why Facebook exists: I am trying to make friends outside of Facebook while applying the same principles. Therefore, every day I walk down the street and tell passers-by what I have eaten, how I feel at the moment, what I have done the night before, what I will do later and with whom. I give them pictures of my family, my dog, and of me gardening, taking things apart in the garage, watering the lawn, standing in front of landmarks, driving around town, having lunch, and doing what anybody and everybody does every day. I also listen to their conversations, give them "thumbs up", and tell them that I "like" them. And it works just like Facebook: I already have four people following me: two police officers, a private investigator, and a psychiatrist.
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BEST CAMP STORY YET
Dear Mom,
Our Scoutmaster told us to write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and got worried. We are okay. Only sleeping bags got washed away. Luckily, none of us got drowned because we were all up on the mountain looking for Adam, when it happened.
Oh yes, please call Adam's mother and tell her he is okay. He can't write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search and rescue Jeeps. It was great. We never would have found Adam in the dark if it hadn't been for the lightning. Scoutmaster Ted got mad at Adam for going on a hike alone without telling anyone. Adam said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn't hear him.
Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas will blow up? The wet wood didn't burn, but one of the tents did and also some of our clothes. Matthew is going to look weird until his hair grows back.
We will be home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Ted gets the bus fixed. It wasn't his fault about the crash. The brakes worked okay when we left. Scoutmaster Ted said that with a bus that old, you have to expect something to break down; that's probably why he can't get insurance. We think it's a super bus. He doesn't care if we get it dirty, and if it's hot, sometimes he lets us ride on the bumpers. It gets pretty hot with 45 people in a bus made for 24. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the policeman stopped and talked to us.
Scoutmaster Ted is a neat guy. Don't worry, he is a good driver. In fact, he is teaching Horace how to drive on the mountain roads where there aren't any cops. All we ever see up there are huge logging trucks.
This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out to the rapids. Scoutmaster Ted wouldn't let me because I can't swim, and Adam was afraid he would sink because of his cast (it's concrete because we didn't have any plaster), so he let us take the canoe out. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood.
Scoutmaster Ted isn't crabby like some scoutmasters. He didn't even get mad about the life jackets. He has to spend a lot of time working on the bus so we are trying not to cause him any trouble.
Guess what? We have all passed our first aid merit badges. When Andrew dived into the lake and cut his arm, we all got to see how a tourniquet works.
Steve and I threw up, but Scoutmaster Ted said it was probably just food poisoning from the left-over chicken. He said they got sick that way with food they ate in prison. I'm so glad he got out and became our scoutmaster. He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he was doing his time. By the way, what is a pedal-file?
I have to go now. We are going to town to post our letters and buy some more beer and ammo. Don't worry about anything. We are fine and tonight it's my turn to sleep in the Scoutmaster's tent.
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HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND
The story behind this Simon and Garfunkel hit song: College roommate who went blind reveals untold story.
It is one of the best-loved songs of all time. Simon & Garfunkel's hit The Sound Of Silence topped the US charts and went platinum in the UK.
It was named among the 20 most performed songs of the 20th century, included in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and provided the unforgettable soundtrack to 1967 film classic The Graduate. But to one man The Sound Of Silence means much more than just a No 1 song on the radio with its poignant opening lines: "Hello Darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again."
Sanford "Sandy" Greenberg is Art Garfunkel's best friend, and reveals in a moving new memoir, named after that lyric, that the song was a touching tribute to their undying bond, and the singer's sacrifice that saved Sandy's life when he unexpectedly lost his sight.
"He lifted me out of the grave," says Sandy, aged 79, who recounts his plunge into sudden blindness, and how Art Garfunkel's selfless devotion gave him reason to live again.
Sandy and Arthur, as Art was then known, met during their first week as students at the prestigious Columbia University in New York.
"A young man wearing an Argyle sweater and corduroy pants and blond hair with a crew cut came over and said, 'Hi, I'm Arthur Garfunkel'," Sandy recalls.
They became roommates, bonding over a shared taste in books, poetry and music.
"Every night Arthur and I would sing. He would play his guitar and I would be the DJ. The air was always filled with music."
"Still teenagers, they made a pact to always be there for each other in times of trouble.
"If one was in extremis, the other would come to his rescue," says Sandy.
They had no idea their promise would be tested so soon. Just months later, Sandy recalls: "I was at a baseball game and suddenly my eyes became cloudy and my vision became unhinged. Shortly after that darkness descended."
Doctors diagnosed conjunctivitis, assuring it would pass. But days later Sandy went blind, and doctors realized that glaucoma had destroyed his optic nerves.
Sandy was the son of a rag-and-bone man. His family, Jewish immigrants in Buffalo, New York, had no money to help him, so he dropped out of college, gave up his dream of becoming a lawyer, and plunged into depression.
"I wouldn't see anyone, I just refused to talk to anybody," says Sandy. "And then unexpectedly Arthur flew in, saying he had to talk to me. He said, 'You're gonna come back, aren't you?' "I said,: 'No. There's no conceivable way.'
"He was pretty insistent, and finally said, 'Look, I don't think you get it. I need you back there. That's the pact we made together: we would be there for the other in times of crises. I will help you'."
Together they returned to Columbia University, where Sandy became dependent on Garfunkel's support. Art would walk Sandy to class, bandage his wounds when he fell, and even filled out his graduate school applications.
Garfunkel called himself "Darkness" in a show of empathy. The singer explained: "I was saying, 'I want to be together where you are, in the black'."
Sandy recalls: "He would come in and say, 'Darkness is going to read to you now.'
“Then he would take me to class and back. He would take me around the city. He altered his entire life so that it would accommodate me."
Garfunkel would talk about Sandy with his high-school friend Paul Simon, from Queens, New York, as the folk rock duo struggled to launch their musical careers, performing at local parties and clubs.
Though Simon wrote the song, the lyrics to The Sound of Silence are infused with Garfunkel's compassion as Darkness, Sandy's old friend.
Guiding Sandy through New York one day, as they stood in the vast forecourt of bustling Grand Central Station, Garfunkel said that he had to leave for an assignment, abandoning his blind friend alone in the rush-hour crowd, terrified, stumbling and falling. "I cut my forehead" says Sandy.
"I cut my shins. My socks were bloodied. I had my hands out and bumped into a woman's breasts. It was a horrendous feeling of shame and humiliation.
"I started running forward, knocking over coffee cups and briefcases, and finally I got to the local train to Columbia University. It was the worst couple of hours in my life."
Back on campus, he bumped into a man, who apologised.
"I knew that it was Arthur's voice," says Sandy. "For a moment I was enraged, and then I understood what happened: that his colossally insightful, brilliant yet wildly risky strategy had worked."
Garfunkel had not abandoned Sandy at the station, but had followed him the entire way home, watching over him.
"Arthur knew it was only when I could prove to myself I could do it that I would have real independence," says Sandy. "And it worked, because after that I felt that I could do anything.
"That moment was the spark that caused me to live a completely different life, without fear, without doubt. For that I am tremendously grateful to my friend."
Sandy not only graduated, but went on to study for a master's degree at Harvard and Oxford.
While in Britain he received a phone call from his friend - and with it the chance to keep his side of their pact.
Garfunkel wanted to drop out of architecture school and record his first album with Paul Simon, but explained: "I need $400 to get started."
Sandy, by then married to his high school sweetheart, says: "We had $404 in our current account. I said, 'Arthur, you will have your cheque.' "It was an instant reaction, because he had helped me restart my life, and his request was the first time that I had been able to live up to my half of our solemn covenant."
The 1964 album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, was a critical and commercial flop, but one of the tracks was The Sound Of Silence, which was released as a single the following year and went to No 1 across the world.
"The Sound Of Silence meant a lot, because it started out with the words 'Hello darkness' and this was Darkness singing, the guy who read to me after I returned to Columbia blind," says Sandy.
Simon & Garfunkel went on to have four smash albums, with hits including Mrs Robinson, The Boxer, and Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
Amazingly, Sandy went on to extraordinary success as an inventor, entrepreneur, investor, presidential adviser and philanthropist. The father of three, who launched a $3million prize to find a cure for blindness, has always refused to use a white cane or guide dog.
"I don't want to be 'the blind guy'," he says. "I wanted to be Sandy Greenberg, the human being."
Six decades later the two men remain best friends, and Garfunkel credits Sandy with transforming his life.
With Sandy, "my real life emerged," says the singer. "I became a better guy in my own eyes and began to see who I was - somebody who gives to a friend.
"I blush to find myself within his dimension. My friend is the gold standard of decency."
Says Sandy: "I am the luckiest man in the world."
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It’s time for the TGIF Golden Classic
This one was a favorite of a good friend and former WFP colleague. (He knows who he is, but I’m going to protect his good name.)
TWO LADIES TALKING IN HEAVEN
1st woman:
Hi! Wanda.
2nd woman: Hi! Sylvia. How'd you die?
1st woman: I froze to death.
2nd woman: How horrible!
1st woman: It wasn't so bad. After I quit shaking from the cold, I began to get warm and sleepy, and finally died a peaceful death. What about you?
2nd woman: I died of a massive heart attack. I suspected that my husband was cheating, so I came home early to catch him in the act. But instead, I found him all by himself in the den watching TV.
1st woman: So, what happened?
2nd woman: I was so sure there was another woman there somewhere that I started running all over the house looking. I ran up into the attic and searched, and down into the basement. Then I went through every closet and checked under all the beds. I kept this up until I had looked everywhere, and finally I became so exhausted that I just keeled over with a heart attack and died.
1st woman: Too bad you didn't look in the freezer --- we'd both still be alive.
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Well, it’s hard to believe but the Major Leagues have resumed play with a planned 60 game abbreviated season that started last week. Some teams have had several players who have tested positive for the Covid-19 and I really wonder if MLB is going to make it through this season, where there are no spectators in the stands. NBA basketball is also resuming as is the NHL (ice hockey) even though it is mid-summer. I don’t know about today’s ice arenas, but I remember in the late 60s, the Boston Bruins playoff game in June almost had to be cancelled because of melting ice in Boston Garden when it was 90 degrees outdoors.
Oh well. Let’s just hope we can get through this pandemic and hope that things can return to what we knew before.
Keep the jokes coming and I’ll try to keep on keepin’ on.
TGI-Jeff
