Bruce the Blog

I’ve been known to get cranky, along with others, about the curious cluelessness some people exhibit in how they drive (headlights off in inclement weather, which is a state law violation, or dim bulbs at dawn and dusk, so the vehicle is barely visible until it’s on top of you, perhaps literally). There’s also the parking porkers who illegally occupy handicap spaces or lazily hog two spaces, often because, for reasons unknown, they backed in, which takes longer and is harder to execute than head-in parking. Go figure.).

Then there are those health nuts at some fitness centers who create their own space close to the building so they don’t have to walk a few extra steps from the many open spaces further back in the parking lot, even though they’re about to run a couple of miles on a treadmill and perhaps pump some iron. After all, you don’t want to overdo it by parking in the same marked spaces the rest of us overweight peons sheepishly pull into. We need the exercise; you only need a sense of civility.

I thought maybe I was overdoing it when I muttered to myself as I came upon an 18-wheeler totally barricading my side of the road while moored at the delivery bay in back of Panera Bread on Maple Hill Street in Yorktown, just up the road from the Post Office. To get around the truck’s cab, you’re forced to veer into the other lane, but a sharp bend in the road makes it impossible to see oncoming vehicles. OK, I figured, how often is that truck here anyhow, and the street is not a main thoroughfare. So I got past it as soon as I passed the truck, unscathed. Whatever, I figured — the road is lightly traveled, and maybe I worry too much about the annoyances of everyday life that are arrayed against us like so many muskets at a Revolutionary War re-enactment. They look foreboding close up, but in reality, nobody’s about to get hurt. Live and let live. Live and let go.

Wouldn’t you know it, though, that a couple of days later, I got a phone call from a Yorktowner complaining vociferously about the exact same thing. Whaddya know? I guess he takes those muskets seriously too. This no-nonsense fellow even called the police department, twice, but does not know if they followed up on his complaint. He only knows that truck keeps on truckin’, and keeps on stickin’ its nose way too far out into the road where it doesn’t belong.

Please, Panera, do something as soon as possible. That size truck is not practical for that location. Let’s not wait for an accident to happen.

 I have a few built-in thermostats I reflexively use to take the temperature of periodicals in the course of determining the caliber of journalists at the helm.

1) Dates: They are most correctly and cleanly written as on the folio of a periodical or on a calendar, which is to say Feb. 9, 2010. Inexplicably, even the same publications that present dates the correct way on their cover or on the folio of each page are prone to clumsily present the date inside their pages as Feb. 9th, 2010. That’s the way it’s said, not written. The culprits surprisingly include Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. In the latter case, its chief editor is a trained reporter, which rarely implies a comparable skill in editing. Both periodicals are at a far remove from the height of their previous powers as among the most revered and cleanly edited consumer periodicals, as reflected by their flouting of the most standard, obvious style conventions.

2) State abbreviations: In journalism, the abbreviation for California is Calif., not CA, which, like every other two-letter state abbreviation, is a postal code used in the context of street addresses, not a textual abbreviation. Journalists with a sense of style and dedication to the details of their craft know that; other journalists are just lazy and don’t care, so they moonlight during their day job as mail carriers.

3) Advertorial: It’s not only because this non-word is reviled by the American Society of Magazine Editors that I make it known to all staffs I’ve ever run that I don’t want to hear or see the oxymoronic term appear on anything I publish or used in conversation with advertisers. My rationale is rooted in the most simple logic and respect for language and our audience: Everything that appears on the printed page can be classified as one of two things: if it’s placed by the pub’s staff, it’s editorial: if it’s paid for by someone else, it’s advertising. The duplicitous purpose of the neologism advertorial is to confuse and mislead people into thinking the content so labeled is either neither editorial or advertising or is both editorial and advertising. Either way, there’s no such thing.

4)  This is the latest litmus test that separates the pros from the shmos. It’s not everyday you see any business fairly bragging about violating a federal regulation. Yet that’s just what free periodicals that list U.S. Post Offices among their distribution locations are doing. The pros know it’s against U.S. postal code for periodicals to be displayed for distribution inside a post office. You can’t blame the shmos for not knowing any better.  

When now-suspended Yorktown High Principal John Sullivan first arrived at the school as an interim principal three years ago, one of the first students to strike up a relationship with him was Andrew Steinmetz, who had the distinction of being class president all four of his high school years.

Young Mr. Steinmetz, whose family is close friends of ours, is a natural leader. He is a freshman focusing on communications and politics at the University of Pennsylvania, and it would surprise no one who knows him to see him in the future as a high-profile media personality, perhaps holding forth on TV for the 2020 Presidential Election.

It’s also no surprise that he and his YHS cohort — which includes past class officers Ari Cohen and Kate Tessi — are planning to be present Tuesday, Feb. 26, at the Yorktown Board of Education meeting where Mr. Sullivan’s suspension is scheduled to be addressed and adjudicated. Presumably, the options are: the suspension will continue, with no immediate resolution of his status; it will end, with his reinstatement as principal; or it will end, with his termination as principal.

“Some of us will be speaking,” Andrew told me Saturday, Feb. 16, from the Philadelphia campus, where he was pledging a fraternity. “We think there will be a pretty large turnout of current students and some of them will be speaking too.

“In talking to many of the students in the building now, everybody wants to have their voice heard.”

He allowed as how even alumni like him and the others are concerned about the impact of a possible change in leadership and how it might affect YHS students, something about which he has direct experience.

“Are they going to have their principal back or be thrown into transition? Change in leadership is a difficult thing. It took us a couple of months to adjust to Mr. Sullivan when he came in. It takes awhile for a new administration to gain the trust of the student body.”

Mr. Steinmetz continues, “As difficult as a transition as that is, Mr. Sullivan made it easy because of his accessibility to students. I was in his office every single day just having normal conversations. That’s something a lot of administrators lack, the ability to have a level conversation and connect with young people. That’s something he excels at.”

The Yorktown High Class of ‘07 graduate told me that he is “trying to understand the other side of the story here. I’m trying to take an objective look at this. There’s no reason why the district would draw such negative attention to itself if they didn’t have justification to do it, but I just don’t see the rationale for it.

“I think it was done for personal reasons, kind of a power struggle, but people can work around it.” He is referring to the icy relationship between the principal and Yorktown Schools Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano, who issued the suspension (see story on home page of NCNlocal.com).

He also remarks that the high school has seen marked improvement under John Sullivan’s leadership, a point on which there is a broad agreement in the community of parents and students.

“He is an excellent principal,” continues Andrew, “and the buillding needs him around to continue its progress.”

Just about all of the reaction and commentary on the Sullivan suspension has emanated so far from his supporters and sympathizers, in large part because Superintendent Napolitano and the Board of Education have stated that they are prohibited from commenting publicly on personnel matters. However, they presumably will be commenting on this personnel matter at the Feb. 26 Board of Education meeting at Mildred E. Strang Middle School (7:00 p.m. in the cafeteria).

That leaves an inference that they choose not to comment on it until then, perhaps on advice of legal counsel, or perhaps they have a game plan that calls for revealing reasons on Feb. 26 that are a lot more compelling than a missed meeting and incomplete performance evaluations of staff.

If that’s in fact where all this is leading, Andrew Steinmetz, for one, would find it unsettling: “It’s not going to be good if they [Board of Education] pull a trick play out and we all are supporting him and didn’t know there was more information, and we all look foolish. I really hope this whole thing all works out.”

The Yorktown High Class of 2006 graduate said he was planning to get in touch with Dr. Napolitano to share his sentiments in support of his principal and friend, John Sullivan.

What happens next? That’s the question countless students and parents, and other relatives, of students are asking about the shocking news that Yorktown High School Principal John Sullivan has been suspended by Yorktown Central School District Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano. The suspension is effective immediately, as reported first anywhere Thursday, Feb. 14, on the home page of our website NCNlocal.com under “Latest News.”

The rumors and speculation are flying faster than frisbees, but the truth remains elusive to the public, which already is impatient, frustrated and fairly demanding to know more about what happened and why.

The facts of the matter are known only to a handful of insiders, including, of course, the protagonist and antagonist in this local drama. The biggest — and central — question of all is who is whom?

It is a testament to Mr. Sullivan that several students took it upon themselves to issue a statement of support, which we have published in full at NCNlocal.com. You can read it by clicking on the corresponding Latest News headline at top of the home page.

However, this story has just begun, and we have reason to believe there is much more to come from both sides, with the principal and his loyalists on one side, and the superintendent, the Board of Education and their allies on the other.

Even though the student statement aforementioned is signed “Representing the Yorktown High School Student body,” it is signed only by nine seniors, out of a class of approximately 300. That no doubt is due mostly to the lack of time the students had in preparing the brief document. As a substitute for being able to gather more signatures, the students substituted the quoted language above.

Yet, I received a call from an adult inside the school Friday who noted that while half the student body may have been protesting outside, the other half remained inside the building. For whatever reason — and no doubt there were varied reasons — these students were not moved to “take it outside.” One of those reasons, according to the caller, was that the students felt they did not have sufficient information on what happened to object to it.

That’s an interesting, moderate and mature reaction to the rapidly unfolding situation. It also means it was not accurate, or even fair, for the nine students who did sign the statement to presumptuously claim their sentiments reflected the state of mind of the entire student body.

There’s a telltale sentence or two at the tail end of the student statement that strongly suggests they were coached in writing at least part of the position paper. “The student body recognizes that the suspension is not due to a violation of contract, but rather a clash of personalities.” How would students, on their own, know anything about a confidential contract between their principal and his employer, the school district?

One way is for faculty members to advise them of such details. We are not saying that teachers or any other members of the high school staff partial to the principal asked students to do their bidding for them, but if they did, we’ll know soon enough.

In the meantime, random conversations we had with parents Friday revealed some recurring questions that inquiring minds want to know, including:

If there was, in fact, cause for suspension, why was it done disruptively in the middle of the school year instead of waiting for the end of classes in June?

Why are a missed meeting and not completing performance evaluations cause for suspension?

After this episode, which makes our school district look like a “laughingstock,” why would any worthy principal want to work here?

Those are some of the comments we’ve been hearing. Finally, with the next Board of Education meeting set for Tuesday, Feb. 26, where the suspension will be publicly addressed, parents are saying there better be some extremely good justifications presented at that time for why their children’s education and (as one said) even their college acceptance opportunities are being jeopardized by this shock to the system.

The Board of Education has a lot of explaining to do, but they don’t need me — or anybody else for that matter — to tell them that. They already know it.

To be continued … to say the least.

Here’s the thing. If you’re not a morning person, like I am not, the mere thought of bounding on to a treadmill within minutes of slumping out of bed is enough to make you want to crawl right back in bed. Hard to slim down and tone up that way.

The alternative is to slouch into a fitness complex like Club Fit after work, which is what I’ve been trying to do with some regularity, not very successfully. I should be going three to four times a week, but lately, it’s been about half that frequency.

When I am there, I enjoy it, as much for the social ambience as for the adrenaline-pumping workout regimen. Invariably, I’ll run into two or more acquaintances and gab a while, always a surefire way to avoid the pain of muscle gain. The exercises are invigorating, to be sure, and if they are done according to protocol, you shouldn’t pause more than 30 to 60 seconds in between sets on a piece of equipment, and shouldn’t dally too much between exercises on different pieces of equipment. That’s in theory. In practice is another story that we don’t have time to tell right now.

Lately, I’ve been adding weight to the leg and upper body exercises in my prescribed workout circuit. If you don’t strain, and grunt, and hurt for the last couple or three reps of a set, you might as well be doing leg lifts in bed, or building biceps by brushing your teeth.

By going heavier on the weight, I’m not exactly following the expertise of personal trainer Erick Omondi, who advised me to add a third set rather than add more weight for two sets. It’s partly a time managment thing. Three sets on each of eight exercises is eight additional sets versus two sets per machine. There’s also the tedium factor inherent in three sets. I’d rather work my way up the weight ladder before pulling off a trifecta on each exercise.

I also added, on my very own, dear (that’s for my wife’s benefit), the abdomen machine, also known informally as The Cruncher, at least by me. But I have a very long way to go to lose my gut. Besides, I’m not a beer drinker, so it stands to reason I won’t be seeing any six packs in the near future, either in my fridge or in my stomach.

Another improvisation I’ve taken to the last couple of times at Club Fit in Jefferson Valley is using dumbbells instead of a machine to work those biceps. In fact, I rarely see anyone on that machine but always see members bring them bells.

The other day I ran into a male friend of my daughter’s who works at the club. He very generously — and inaccurately — complimented me on my dumbbell-lifting prowess, saying he saw me the previous time hoisting 50-pound weights, which I don’t expect to ever be using for a single arm in this lifetime. He’s a good kid and I figured he was just trying to make me feel good by grossly overstating the reality of my extremely modest ability. Even so, I couldn’t imagine where he got the idea that I would or could lift a 50-pound weight for a single-bicep exercise.

When I got to the bicep exercise, which is nearly the last one I do, I picked up my more typical 20-pound dumbbells for each hand and took my position in front of the mirror, the customary way to make sure your arms stay pressed close to your torso for maximum effect.

It was only then I solved the mystery of why the young man was so impressed with the old man’s heavy-lifting prowess: in the reverse image of the mirror, where he must have glimpsed me, the digits 20 handwritten in white marker on the barbells appeared as — you guessed it –50. At least it’s not only in my dreams that I can lift 50 pound dumbbells. Now I also can do it in my reflection.