All posts by Teri

When the World Looks Away

Politics


In the summer of 1938, Hitler claimed that the Sudetenland, a border region of Czechoslovakia with a German-speaking majority, needed to be saved by Germany and threatened war if his demand was not met.

On September 30, 1938, the British and French leaders, hoping to avoid a war, agreed to this act of appeasement, officially allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland, without Czechoslovakian input.

If this illegal and outrageous land grab sounds familiar, well, you know the old saying: “History has a way of repeating itself.”

Less than one year later, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On September 7, 1940, Germany began conducting mass air attacks against British cities, starting with London.

While Hitler was advancing through Europe, Charles Lindbergh and the America First isolation movement believed that there was no American interest in stopping Hitler and that Hitler’s sworn policy to harass and persecute Jews was an internal German issue.

Lindbergh was the leading opposition voice to the U.S. involvement in World War II—until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States.

The defeat of Hitler and the horrors of Jewish genocide brought about the recognition of the State of Israel through the United Nations Partition Plan in 1947. The Partition Plan proposed to divide Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem designated as an international zone.

The Jews agreed, but the Palestinian Arabs and surrounding Arab states (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq) rejected the plan, leading to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel.

And now, here we are with Russia and its dictator, Putin, invading Ukraine—the first invasion of a sovereign European nation since the end of World War II. Putin’s justification for his Ukrainian land grab was eerily similar to Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.

The terrorist organization Hamas declared war by invading the sovereign state of Israel with a sneak attack, slaughtering men, women, and children, and causing the highest number of Jewish deaths since World War II.

Hamas’s justification for their war against Israel was the rejection of Israel’s existence, to improve its domestic popularity among Palestinians, which had seen some decline due to deteriorating living conditions under its governance in Gaza, and religious fundamentalism.

At a time when Ukraine and Israel are fighting for their very survival, it is shocking that no one has learned from the past and the lessons of World War II.

Instead of standing united against the Russian aggression toward Ukraine and Hamas’s murderous attack and threat to annihilate Israel and its people, isolationists like Tucker Carlson and Candice Own, along with their sycophants, praise and enable Putin, and disparage Ukraine, the Ukrainians, Israel, and the Jews.

And while Europe has stood steadfast with Ukraine against Russia, most countries have turned their backs on Israel, the Israelis, and the Jewish diaspora by making excuses for the terrorist organization, Hamas.

Both conflicts began with cross-border aggression against internationally recognized sovereign states, which is the most basic violation of international law.

Both of these declarations of war by vicious dictatorships and authoritarian regimes against Ukraine and Israel had a clearly stated goal:  to wipe Ukraine and Israel off the face of the earth.

The terrorist organization Hamas against Israel and the dictator Putin against Ukraine both assert that Israel and Ukraine have no right to exist, and too many around the world agree with these murderous regimes.

The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have affected the world in significant ways, including deepening political divisions and exacerbating political polarization, causing mass protests worldwide.

Both wars have strained the world’s economy through inflation and high aid costs, and have significantly influenced elections, both here in the United States and around the world.

The failure to learn from past mistakes and allowing history to repeat itself is due to factors like insufficient critical thinking, generational gaps in experience, or a lack of comprehensive knowledge about previous events.

The wars against Ukraine and Israel are what happen when so many around the world look away.

My Memory of 9/11

Poetry

September 11 A

On 9/11, my office was on the corner of Broadway and 4th Street. Every day, my round-trip, six-block, same-side-of-the-street walk from the E Subway West 4th Street stop to my office went like this:

I would pass a police command station permanently parked outside of Washington Square Park by New York University. In the morning, there was always the same police officer—a graying man in his fifties, bopping up and down to music emanating from his mobile post. Sometimes it was Elvis or The Beach Boys; sometimes it was Frankie Valli.

On the way home at night, I would pass the command post just about the time that the morning and evening officers were changing shifts. The evening officer was in his mid-twenties, and his music of choice was The Police, which I found hilariously ironic.

I got to know their names—Officer Tommy in the morning and Officer Kevin in the evening. Kevin, the one in his 20s, would occasionally play Beatles music, and I would compliment him on his choice, sharing with him how I grew up on the Beatles. When Kevin started to play less Police and more Beatles, Tommy would tease Kevin and say that he was playing Beatles music for the “Madam Publisher.” Kevin had the cutest, impish side grin, and he reminded me so much of my son.

And then came 9/11. Following the horrific events of that day, our office building was government-mandated to shut down for a few days. My first day back into the city and back into my routine was a tough one.

The smell was unbearable, and I panicked at the thought of what it was. There were flyers everywhere—faces of hundreds of men and women affixed to telephone poles, fences, park benches, and trees. Many of the flyers covered the sidewalks and streets, and the pedestrians walked oh-so carefully to avoid stepping on the faces of the missing.

As I approached my half-block point from the mobile police station, the music was also missing. In the distance, I saw Officer Tommy running toward me, saying, “Thank God, you’re okay. I haven’t seen you in a while. I thought something had happened to you.” As he wrapped his arms around me, I felt awkward but also comforted.

Then he placed his hands on my shoulders, and through tears, said, “Kevin, the night cop—you know, the kid—he went to the World Trade Center to help that morning, and nobody has seen him since.” With his hands still on my shoulders, we stood there for a few seconds, both of us slightly embarrassed. “He was my kid’s age,” Officer Tommy continued. “And now he’s gone, just like that.”

Every day, we would catch up for a few minutes on my way to the office. He would go to Ground Zero most nights after his shift to help “bring his brothers home.” And he never played music again.

One morning, Tommy told me he was struggling. I told him that I found writing poetry to be good therapy, and that he should try it. “I’m no writer. I’m a New York City cop,” was his reply.

But he followed my suggestion and one morning handed me a poem about 9/11, which I immediately read when I got to my office. I was looking forward to seeing him that evening to tell him how talented he was and how his poem left me trembling.

But he wasn’t there that night, or the next morning, or the morning after that. At first, I thought maybe he was on vacation. But after a week had gone by, I asked the officer on duty, “Where’s Tommy?” And he answered, “He’s gone. He retired from the force. He couldn’t take the job no more.”

In Tommy’s honor, below is the 9/11 poem he gave me the last time I saw him. How terribly sad that I never got the chance to tell him what I thought about his stirring and poignant poem or to say a proper goodbye.

HONOR GUARD AT GROUND ZERO
By my friend, Police Officer Thomas Brennan from the 6th Precinct

Rake gently over our brother’s grave.
Speak softly where he sleeps.
His soul ascends
His spirit raised
Raised well above these ruins of death
He speaks to us
We stand erect
Amid the numbing breeze of winter’s breath
We salute our brother and raise our palms.
Raised well above our breast
Our palms outstretched
We crease our brows, our minds, our hearts.
Where underneath our brother lies
In sorrow, we salute him.
Honor Guard

 

My Personal Bill of Rights for Friends and Family

Observe & Ponder

(On this day of all days, I need to remind myself that I’m enough not just for today, but for the rest of my time here.)

1. You may not always like what I have to say, but you’ll always know where I stand.

2. I’m not looking for a relationship primarily focused on your needs and feelings, with little to no consideration for mine.

3. If I try to explain to you how your actions have hurt me, don’t try to twist everything around.

4. Stop feeling sorry for yourself by making excuses and start holding yourself accountable for your selfish and hurtful behavior towards me.

5. Take responsibility for your actions and words for a change because I see right through your flimsy rationalizations.

6. Don’t try to gaslight and accuse me of “starting with you,” when I’m trying to be heard in the hopes of salvaging whatever this is that we have (or don’t have).

7. If I tell you how your behavior makes me feel, that’s not starting a fight—that’s open, honest, and caring communication. Because if I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t be trying to fix things between us.

8. You dismissing how I feel is manipulative and narcissistic, so don’t do it.

9. Put yourself in my shoes, and be brutally honest with yourself for a change.

10. Own up to your self-serving actions because you don’t get to wound me with your thoughtlessness, and then play the victim when I call you out.

11. I’m not being “cruel,” I’m being honest.

12. I’m not overreacting; I’m reacting to being disrespected, overlooked, pushed aside, and used by you.

13. You don’t get to cause me pain, and then get angry when I speak up for myself.

14. Stop lying to me and yourself—your little white lies are lies nonetheless.

15. I have a responsibility to myself to stand up for my beliefs and my boundaries.

16. If I’m depleted instead of completed, I need to stop caring about someone who finds it so easy to invalidate and discount my emotions.

17. Don’t even think about saying “but” after you say you’re sorry, because I’m tired of hearing your empty excuses.

18. I’m looking for two-way relationships, or I need to move on. Life is too short to end up at a dead end.

The Patron Saint of Whatever

Family & Relationships

I recently found an Infant of Prague medal that belonged to my grandmother in a small red box tucked away in my jewelry armoire. Before putting it back, I placed it on a gold chain and wrote a note on a tiny scrap of paper, in case anyone should find it, that it was hers, and as such, sacred to me, and to never discard it.

The Infant of Prague medal reminded me of all the patron saints that I prayed to over the years with my grandmother.

In Catholicism, there are over 10,000 patron saints (special protectors and guardians) for all aspects of love, life, health, death, and suffering, and many of them were an integral part of my early upbringing.

I was named after St. Therese, “The Little Flower,” aka St. Therese of Lisieux, known for her simplicity, purity, and courage. While we never really prayed to her, she obviously played a large part in my Catholic persona.

My grandmother had her patron-saint-praying down to a science.

If I wasn’t doing well in school, she prayed to Thomas Aquinas.

If her Caribou, Maine, family had troubles, she beseeched Our Lady of Assumption, who was apparently all in for the French Acadians.

The Holy Mary, Mother of God—the blessed Virgin Mary—was the big kahuna of all her favorite saints, duh. There wasn’t a day that went by that we didn’t pray to her for one thing or another.

If someone was getting engaged or married? It was the perfect time to give thanks to St. Valentine.

If there was a medical emergency, a family fight, or a recent death? She would muster up a prayer to Michael the Archangel. And she prayed to him when we had money trouble as well (which was a lot of the time).

When my dog Raleigh was sick, we prayed to St. Francis of Assisi.

Any time someone was baptized (including me at age five), she gave special thanks to St. John the Baptist. She also “prayed on him” anytime someone took to the water.

And then there was John, the Apostle, not the Baptist. He was her go-to for friendship, loyalty, and if you had burned yourself. Don’t ask me the why about the burn thing, I just know she prayed to him for burns when burns became an unfortunate part of our lives.

When one of her sisters was committed to an insane asylum, we were all relieved because she was an evil nut job. But my grandmother prayed to St. Dymphna, who was the patron saint of mental illness, to keep her sister safe, even though she got what was coming to her. And my grandmother would pray to St. Dymphna when she got “all nerved up.” I only found out years later that Dymphna was also the patron saint of victims of incest. I sometimes wonder if my grandmother knew that.

Speaking of victims, I chose St. Maria Goretti as my patron saint for my Holy Communion. My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother tried desperately to talk me out of choosing her because she was known as the patron saint for victims of rape. They were mortified at my choice. But, as the patron saint of young women and girls, who had a younger sister named Teresa, I wasn’t changing my mind about Maria Goretti, despite several nuns and Father McHale also trying to talk me out of it. Even at seven, I was extremely headstrong, although I have to admit that the paper I had to write and read aloud to my classmates at St. Ambrose about why I chose St. Maria Goretti was challenging and made the kids squirm.

I think my grandmother’s favorite saint was St. Christopher, because she prayed to him a lot, and for myriad reasons. He was her go-to saint for traveling on short trips, like driving around Bridgeport in a car or on a bus. He was also her saint of record for longer trips, like driving nine hours to Maine, and the one time I traveled with her on a plane to California so she could help out with another nut job sister. Christopher was also the saint she prayed to for all things child-related (good and bad). I’m reasonably sure that St. Christopher had his fill of me from her.

If she knew someone who was a desperado or seemed to be a lost cause, my grandmother would ask St. Jude to help them. Jude was also known for instilling hope in those facing impossible situations, which happened to us quite a bit, so I imagine she called on him way more than some of the others.

And for whatever reason, St. Augustine was the patron saint of Bridgeport, Connecticut. When I looked him up for this blog post to find out why, it said Augustine lived much of his life in impure wickedness and had many dangerous and bad habits, which pretty much summed up a lot of people who lived in Bridgeport at the time.

When my grandmother got “the cancer in her lungs,” we prayed to Raphael the Archangel, who was the patron saint of bodily ills. We prayed to him a lot, but he didn’t save her.

The Infant Jesus of Prague was the patron saint of freedom, who also watched over families and protected their health and their family lives. And if you came into money, the Infant was the one you thanked. People also turned to the Infant seeking healing and relief from suffering. I assume that the Infant was a favorite of my grandmother’s, because of the medal I found. I do recall that once the cancer spread to the rest of my grandmother’s already weakened body, I wrote out the prayer to the Infant of Prague on a piece of paper, which we used to recite every time we were together, in the hopes that the Infant would heal her, but to no avail.

My grandmother died anyway, in excruciating pain, and very young, and was taken from me way too soon. I often think about how different my life might have been, had she lived—even for a few more years.

Without her saintly influence and steadfast faith, I never prayed to a patron saint again, although I suppose one should never say never, for who knows what the future may hold?