Bruce the Blog

Listening to Rick Finn talk about managing municipalities is music to my ears, and it would be as well to the ears of Yorktown residents who are demonstrably fed up by inattentive oversight and errant accountability. They demonstrated that much at the polls on Election Day.

Finn is city manager for Peekskill. He reports to the mayor and the common council. He is apolitical. He is a professional administrator who knows how government works and what it takes to get things done efficiently, as in cost efficiently, and effectively, as in doing what he must and can to meet the needs of those who serves.

While elected officials set a course for the ship of state, skilled managers like Rick Finn run the day-to-day operations. All of the city’s department heads report to him. When a request for FOIL is submitted, he has to sign off on it to make sure it is a reasonable request and that the city’s resources can handle it without undue cost at the taxpayers’ expense.

He’s well-informed and outspoken in a responsible way on matters such as supporting local businesses through economic development and marketing, the untimeliness of raising taxes, the advisability of shared services and other partnerships, and the sober but realistic outlook that economic recovery will move slowly — taking more than a year from now — and the economic engine and model that drives this great nation never will be the same, and now’s the time to adjust to the new order of commerce and infrastructure development.

Beyond Yorktown’s unenlightened stubbornness to modernize its management structure, New York State is “behind the times” compared to other states that have been quick to appreciate the value full-time administrators bring to their constituents, says Finn. He points out there are more than 3000 municipalities in the nation now with such positions, and the Empire State lags behind. Finn feels it’s because elected officials find the notion threatening, for no good reason. As this writer previously has noted, that irrational fear is a byproduct not of empirical evidence but of an uninformed perspective that needs an attitude adjustment.

“The world has become too complicated,” he rightly observes. “Unless you have a business background, [most first-time elected officials] don’t have the experience to run a town and only have a couple of years to learn. You can’t have on-the-job training.” Yet that is precisely what places like Yorktown set themselves up for by lacking a town administrator.

Finn had a compelling analogy. “A company in the private sector never would dream of asking people to vote for its next CEO.” Hearing that, I wondered aloud about a school superintendent and building principals being voted into their jobs. How comfortable would it make you feel  about the quality of education for your kids, knowing that the average voter is hardly in a position to judge who is best qualified for those critical administrative positions. Yet people think nothing of having their town run by amateurs. Go figure.

“Once they get over the cost factor,” observes Finn, “they realize there are fewer missed opportunities” when a professional administrator is running the town’s day-to-day operations, leaving policymaking to elected officials that in most cases are not full-time public servants anyhow. He adds the professionals can catch things “before they become real problems and are easier to fix.”

Finn also makes a critical point that rabid opponents of town administrators fail to grasp, or perhaps choose not to acknowledge: an ordinance providing for that position “can be written any way you want.”

The job of administrators like himself, continues Finn, “is to work with elected officials in an apolitical environment so they make good decisions.”

He rightly notes that “people have had it up to here with taxes and so on. They need smart management in municipalities.” After my informative, enjoyable lunch with Peekskill City Manager Rick Finn, and more sit-downs scheduled between us in the near future, it looks to me like Peekskill has itself a winner. Yorktown, take note before you become even more out of step with the best practices of town administration. 

I’d never been to Bean Runner Cafe (BRC) in Peekskill before Saturday night (Nov. 28). When I learned musical artist extraordinaire David Amram would be there to mark his birthday (a very youthful and vibrant 79), as well as the 1-year anniversary of the popular Greenwich Villagesque, post-Starbucks, java jewelbox, I bit quick. It sounded like a capital way to spend a weekend evening, and it turned out that Mr. Amram and Company sounded Great with a capital G.

First, Elyse and I, along with her sister Linda and beau Danny, supped at 12 Grapes on Division Street. It was jam-packed, owing in large part to the Michael Feinstein-David Hyde Pierce show at the Paramount around the corner, on Brown Street.

I had arugula salad followed by breast of chicken with spinach and butternut squash. It was succulently delicious. The two glasses of Carmel Mountain chardonnay didn’t hurt either. Wines by the glass at 12G are reasonably priced, $8 to $10, though the capacious goblets give the unfortunate illusion there’s less wine served than is the case. For my 190-pound frame, two glasses was just right, and I sure didn’t feel short-changed in the least.

Elyse had salmon, also praiseworthy, according to her taste buds.

We intended to make 6:00 p.m. reservations, but Grapes owner-hostess Jeannie Credidio counseled me on the phone that it was best we arrive about 5:30 p.m., allowing for wait service that had a full house to serve. She was right on the money, as we dined at a leisurely pace and padded out the door at 7:20 p.m. for the 7:30 p.m. scheduled start of David Amram at Bean Runner.

It mattered not, since the band did not get going until more than an hour later, but we wiled away the time chatting, sipping wonderful chamomile tea and white wine (it’s BYOB). As with 12 Grapes, there was not a seat to be had for the auspicious performance, and in fact it was SRO virtually out the door, with much bustling in the foyer area of the venue, where I spotted, among others, Jeannie Bloom, executive director of Caring for the Homeless of Peekskill.

Owned and operated by Ted Claxton and Drew Claxton (a stalwart member of Peekskill’s City Council), BRC quickly has caught on as a popular hangout, with well-considered and -placed discrete areas for reading, conversing, eating, music listening and, in a nod to young parents, child’s play. It opened a year ago, and Ted told the appreciative crowd at the outset that the couple’s dream started five years ago when they purchased the building and invested their savings. “It’s a struggle, but we’re making it, keeping the doors opened,” he said to patron applause. He acknowledged in the crowd jazz album designer Burt “Buddy” Glassberg.

Much credit for booking the Amram date goes to Earl John Powell, whom I had the pleasure of meeting recently at the Caring for the Homeless of Peekskill (CHOP) fundraiser at Colonial Terrace, and repaired with him and Arne Paglia to the latter’s Division Street Grill for an apres-dinner social. Earl was the evening’s debonair gatekeeper,  but his true calling — as he and I have discussed before and will again — is carrying forth what Rich and Jeannie Credidio have brilliantly accomplished at 12 Grapes in making Peekskill in general — and Division Street in particular — a regional destination for bistro-scale performance that attracts top talent, young talent, adventurous artists and a steady stream of customers in the guise of diners, imbibers, dancers, romancers and lovers of music that soothes the savage breast.  That is the Credidios’ artful and ample contribution to locature (the cultural equivalent of locavore, or locally-grown food).

Not insignificantly by any means, Earl John Powell is the offspring of jazz eminence Earl Rudolph “Bud” Powell, who passed away in 1966 and has been classified in the same breath as Thelonius Monk as “the two most significant pianists of the style of modern jazz that came to be known as bop,” according to a 2001 biography by Alan Groves (”The Glass Enclosure: The Life of Bud Powell”), as reported in Wikipedia.

After opening with a bluesy (versus big band) arrangement of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the A Train,” Amram’s combo of Art Hightower and Kevin Twigg on percussion,  Don  Miller on bass switched moods with a piece from his score for Arthur Miller’s “Marilyn Monroe” stage drama, “After the Fall.”

Then Amram, a local who lives on Peekskill Hollow Road, told an anecdote about Philadelphia Orchestra’s legendary Eugene Ormandy, replete with Hungarian-accented impersonation of the baton-wielding maestro.  It was all about Amram’s composition of an endemic Native American Lakota rabbit dance — a Cheyenne concerto, as it were — that Ormandy couldn’t countenance.

Then guest musicians joined the music making: saxophonist Premik Tubbs and trumpeter Fred Smith, the latter a well-known Peekskillian who is a music educator as well as performer. They lit up the room with virtuosic “reedings” from horns of plenty interpreting the great Thelonius Monk (whom my dad took me to see when I was 7 at Carnegie Hall, of all places, in what now is considered one of Monk’s rarest recordings; little did I know, let alone appreciate, that on that stage also was John Coltrane, a revelation that blows me away 52 years after the fact. All I recall about the performance is how odd it seemed to my clueless musical sensibility that the man at the piano would get up in the middle of a number, amble offstage as if at random, then re-appear cuelessly to resume displaying his ivory tower of talent. Little did my late father realize that bemusing November 1957 concert would become a paternal gift for the ages to his son that waxes ever more precious as I grow keenly more aware of life’s endgame).

As it turns out, Amram noted that “In 1955,  Monk took me under his wing.” In most others’ mouths, Amram’s chronic sprinkling of iconic figures throughout his gig could well come off as tiresome. But he’s much too earthy and charming for such name-dropping to strike an audience as anything but matter-of-fact patter that underpins the musical notes with colorful annotations of his personal history, intersected by cultural history. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Bernstein, Miller, Ormandy, Joe Papp — all are dramatis personae in David Amram’s musical journey through the last half of the 20th Century until now.

The opening set — or first act, after a fashion — culminated in a remarkable riff conjured by one of Amram’s myriad musical gifts, improvisational lyrics.  The selection was “Pull My Daisy,” an Amram concoction that opened the film of the same name adapted from Jack Kerouac’s landmark “Beat Generation” play and poem. Amram opened and closed the piece with a wholly entertaining, even jaw-dropping “spontaneity” (a keyword of The Beat Generation philosophy) of words strung together on the fly, working in the names of guest musicians, the venue, the city, and whatever else popped into his fertile, mischevious mind. Somehow, he managed to make it all rhyme effortlessly and amusingly. Improv clubs like Second City could call on Amram to fill in for no-show cast members.

Scattered throughout his chatter are folksy philosophical bromides like, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” His way with words and music is a thing of beauty unto itself and David Amram is a joy to behold.

We regrettably had to leave at intermission before the second set began, with hometown chanteuse Michelle LeBlanc scheduled to perform, and we always enjoy hearing her highly skilled vocalizations of The Great American Songbook. But two things are certain: we’ll see Ms. LeBlanc again in one of the various venues she plays, such as Division Street Grill; and we’ll be back at Bean Runner Cafe soon to partake of more entertainment in our backyard.

 On an iTunes podcast of Big Ideas from last May I’m listening to, “Grown Up Digital” author Don Tapscott makes incisive observation that today’s “Net Generation” are “digital natives” while we grownups are “digital immigrants.” He says our kids are “bathed in bits,” as apt an alliteration for 21st Century culture as I’ve heard. Tapscott adds that this is the “First time in human history when children are an authority on something really important. I was an authority at 11 on model trains. Today’s 11-year-old is an authority on the digital revolution. Rather than a generation gap like we had in the ’60s, kids and parents get along pretty well today. There’s overlap in our iPods. Today, it’s a generation ‘lap.’ ” Tapscott says that “Kids are overlapping their parents on the digital track: who does the systems administration in your home?”

Losing a child is unfathomable under any circumstances. Having it happen on the cusp of what is universally a festive season only can magnify the already exruciating grief that at first leaves you numb, a curative anesthesia self-administered to help survivors endure wounds too raw to acknowledge.

For everybody else, it’s the holidays. For grieving families like those of Dan O’Connor of Yorktown and Erik Nicoletti of Somers, this time of year every year hence will carry a taste that is umistakably bitter.

Those are my inadequate thoughts on the way to paying respects to his family at the wake today (Friday, Nov. 27) of Yorktown High School junior Dan O’Connor. I don’t know his family, but that is besides the point. From clergy to relatives, from neighbors to friends, from classmates to educators, there’s nothing anybody can do to change what has happened or to make it better. Family and friends have no choice but to live through the horror of a tender-age person who was full of life yesterday and forever gone today.

All anybody can do — including those of us Yorktowners who have no direct connection to the family — is offer our condolences, pay our respects, show any sign of support. I can tell you it means something. That’s why I am going to Dan’s wake. That’s why the parents of Dan’s friends and acquaintances owe it to their children and to the O’Connors to urge them to attend the wake (Clark’s Funeral Home, 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.) and/or the funeral service Saturday, Nov. 28 at St. Patrick’s Church at 10:00 a.m.

Dealing with death is not a course taught in the public schools or in universities. It’s only a lesson that parents can instill in their children. Nobody wants to attend wakes or funerals. It’s never easy. It churns your stomach, even moreso under circumstances such as those that attended Dan O’Connor’s demise. But it must be done. Attention must be paid to the mourners. It’s too easy to avoid the challenge of what to say. Say anything. But say something. And, most important, show up to show your support of a family that never can be the same.

I can attest to that too. 

My wife Elyse, our daughter Elissa and I lost our son and brother Harrison March 21, 2003, the day after my birthday. He would have turned 22 this Sunday, Nov. 29. May he and Dan and Erik and all of our children no longer with us rest in peace. May those of us still here honor their memory by paying respects to those families who this past week have been rudely awakened by a mourning of personal apocalypse.

To fans of UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), MMA stands for mixed martial arts. To followers of this writer’s regularly scheduled screeds against drivers of dubious dexterity and judgment, MMA stands for Maddening Motorists Awards, which will be presented here, with as much fanfare and frustration as I can muster, as often as possible and necessary, which is, sad to say, virtually daily. Where it’s practical, I will take photos of the “honored” vehicles to post here.

 Today, there were at least four candidates vying for MMA honors, as follows:

1) The woman who pulled her vehicle smack dab in front of the door of The Cleaners at CVS Shopping Center on Commerce Street in Yorktown at 10:30 a.m., conveniently blocking the entrance for those of us dumb enough to park in an actual space. Those shirts and pants she had to carry must have been lined with lead and too heavy to carry from a nearby spot. Or perhaps I didn’t notice her parking permit that reads, “Don’t be jealous just because I’m less considerate than you.”

2) The woman who nearly did a wheelie (also at 10:30 a.m.) driving like a demon around the corner of the lot in front of CVS. But she gets no kewpie doll because she missed me. Or perhaps I didn’t notice her parking permit that reads, “If you think I’m driving irresponsibly fast in a parking lot where little kids may dart out at any moment, I could care less what you think.”

3) The man and woman in two separate cars who both earned a coupon to Lenscrafters for a free eye exam for parking at the Yorktown Starbucks lot (at 10:40 a.m.) in those hash-marked areas that explicitly mean “Don’t park here” because they serve as necessary buffer zones at the end of the aisle to leave room for a wide-enough lane cars can comfortably negotiate to make a turn or leave the lot. Or perhaps I didn’t notice their parking permits that read, “We are Especial … Especially Lazy.”

 4) The woman at 4:25 p.m. who was at stop sign where Arden Drive meets Mahopac Avenue. I was behind a school bus that had stopped on Mahopac Avenue (headed towards 35) to discharge students. The impatient motorist blithely ignored the bus’s flashing lights, a sacred sign that means do not move yous car until the lights stop flashing, the stop sign wings on the bus retract and the bus moves. Before the kids were off the bus, she made a right turn on to Mahopac Avenue. Good going … not.

I’d like to see somebody with a million bucks to give away — Buffett, Gates, Bloomberg, Winfrey, Woods, Sachs, Goldman, whomever — offer it to the first average American out there (let’s make it an Independent, political demographically-wise) who can prove s/he has read the entire health care reform encyclical, let alone understands its implications and effects on the average American (an oxymoron if I ever heard one).

Yet the media polls tell us to the precise percentage — give or take imprecise percentages that fall within those pain-in-the-ifs-ands-or-butts margin of error –  how many among us are fer it and agin’ it. If people were truthful, if genuine honesty struck the polled respondents like a pandemic of conscience run amok, the greatest percentage by far would be under the rubric, “Don’t Understand It.”

How can it be, then, that, to paraphrase Winston (the statesman, not the tobacco brand), never have so many not understood so much about so many sheets of paper yet nevertheless expressed highly emotional opinions about same (okay, so that doesn’t have the same orotund ring as the Churchillian turn-of-phrase).

Here’s my imprecise theory: secondary opinions. We all have heard about second opinions, those educated points of view sought by people, typically medical patients, who didn’t like the primary point of view offered them by a physician.

We in fact live in an age not only of second opinions but of secondary opinions, thanks in no small measure to the pandemic known as the internet (it makes absolutely no sense to capitalize internet, so “i” don’t).

Rather than do their own primary research that is a necessary byproduct of thinking for themselves, digitally evolved humans (which emphatically is not synonymous with highly evolved humans) knee-jerkingly fall back on the PLR research tool (Path of Least Resistance), epitomized by Google, of “received wonkdom.” It used to be called “received wisdom,” but now it has been co-opted, seemingly, and unseemingly, and seamlessly, by spinmeisters with agendas so shamelessly unhidden their self-serving political prejudices may as well be embossed in flashing neon on their furrowed brows.

Once the wonks’ positions are vetted, the lemming effect sets in. Those of sanguine political persuasion — or prejudice is more the case — fall into lockstep behind the screaming wonkers. “We don’t need no stinking facts to get in the way of what we are told to think by our mind masters,” is the proud rallying cry of the lemmings. The wonks’ corresponding cry is, “Let my lemmings go (off the cliff if they like because I’ll still have a lucrative career brainwashing another lemming-like constituency).”

Ah, yes, welcome to the atrophying age of Secondary Opinions, one and all.

Long may we flag in our intellectual pursuits of independent and rational thought.

To paraphrase Kermit (the frog, not the puppeteer sticking him up), it ain’t easy being grownup.

Publisher Bruce Apar with actress Frances Sternhagen, mother of “Rabbit Hole” star Tony Carlin.

[Editor’s Note: The following is an extended version of Bruce Apar’s Talking Points column that appears in the Nov. 18, 2009 print edition of North County News on page 8 and on NCNLocal.com.]

The Pulitzer-winning stage drama “Rabbit Hole” is a commercially astute and accomplished blend of craft, research and a topic most people are unfamiliar with, thankfully. There are two distinct audiences affected in profoundly different ways by this show: People who have not lost children, and people who have.
 
Since our family falls into the latter audience, that’s the undetached magnfying glass through which my wife Elyse and I watched the performance last Saturday (Nov. 14) at Hudson Stage in Woodward Hall Theater on the Briarcliff Manor campus of Pace University.  

Sitting alongside us was Kate, a fellow member of the bereavement group Elyse attends bimonthly at Yorktown’s Presbyterian Church: The Caring Circle.
 
I had never seen a Hudson Stage production, and suffice to say we will be back. The first-class team at work is led by producers Denise Bessette, Dan Foster (who also directed this production) and Olivia Sklar.
 
From their impeccable casting to the compact yet entirely serviceable set, these folks know how to mount an entertainment that gives little away to The Great White Way.
 
Becca and Howie are a youthful couple who lost their only child eight months earlier when four-year-old Danny chased his dog Taz into the street, only to be fatally struck by a car.
 
Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire sensitively and adroitly captures and conveys the essence of life after child loss.
 
His copious research is evident in the myriad emotional and situational touchstones we three can testify to: those friends and relatives who don’t know how to express condolences and so avoid the topic altogether; formulating responses to “Do you have children?”; wondering when, or if, the searing pain will subside; seeing the child in objects around the house and even when food shopping; indignation when others compare losing a child to losing a parent; sharing your grief with others in a bereavement group; the effect of loss on your faith; dreading the child’s birthday; and more. 

[Following this review further down the page are personal annotations on “Rabbit Hole.”]

What stands out most about this production is the acting, uniformly impressive, but not because it tries to be. That’s a mean feat in itself. The lead characters, in the persons of Susannah Schulman and Tony Carlin, are limned with the most naturalistic, minimalist and affecting acting you’ll see anywhere. Their interpretations are pitch perfect. (Carlin is the son of noted stage and screen actress Frances Sternhagen, who attended the same performance.)
 
Becca’s mother Nat and sister Izzy, portrayed by Lucy Martin and Theo Allyn, respectively, are there not only for much-needed comic relief but also as the consciences of Becca and Howie. They too are superlative. 
  Theo Allyn, bounding about the stage like a mischevious elf, reminded me of the character Anybody’s in West Side Story, a megawatt bundle of energy and attitude. Lucy Martin’s charming world-weariness is salted with a disarming approach to crazy-like-a-fox conversations that seem to go nowhere but arrive at their destination with all the subtlety of a brass band. Then there’s Brandon Gill as semi-mysterious stranger Jason Willett, the high school senior whose car caused Danny’s demise. There’s no denying the gifted Gill, a product of Juilliard, is mesmerizing. He is the proverbial discovery of whom it can be said in this performance, “You can’t take your eyes off him.”
 
His quietly intense Jason is gentle and vulnerable and sympathetic without being wimpy or shallow.  

His “secret” is the same as all the other piercing performances before us: it’s said writing is rewriting, and this is like a master class in the principle of acting as reacting.
 
I got as much out of watching these actors when they weren’t speaking as when they were. That’s something you don’t see often enough either on stage or on screen. That’s what authentic acting is all about. They all are fully in the moment every moment on stage.

I could cavil about the showiness of a couple of his set pieces, such as the slightly overwritten speech Becca’s mom delivers late in the show, sharing her hard-earned wisdom about losing her adult son, Becca’s brother Arthur.  
 
But even Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, those high priests of fictional families frayed beyond the fringe, were showy with their memorable verbal glissandos. That’s what stagecraft is all about: compressing emotions and life experiences into a two-hour crucible of thought-provoking, eloquent diversion. Besides which, audiences want to be enriched and enlightened, not tortured by emotions too raw to encounter even with a fourth wall to cushion the blows.

Between the Pulitzer-awarded writing, the wonderful acting, and the smart direction, there’s little not to like going down this “Rabbit Hole.”  Remaining performances are Friday, Nov. 20 and Saturday , Nov. 21 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 22 at 3:00 p.m., followed by a discussion. Tickets are $30, $25 for seniros and students, $20 for Pace staff and students. Call 914-271-2811 or www.hudsonstage.com.  [PERSONAL ANNOTATIONS ON ‘RABBIT HOLE’]

[Izzy telling Becca about punching woman in bar, saying, “I hurt too.”) Becca: “Don’t use him as an excuse to justify your behavior.”
 
[How relatives and friends deal with death]
Becca’s friend Debbie hasn’t called her in 8 mos since Danny’s death.

Becca’s husband Howie says because Debbie doesn’t know what to say, and Becca should call her. As example of how even those close have difficulty dealing with death, especially sudden death of a child, Howie reminds Beccas his brother talked only about the Mets at Danny’s funeral. Becca replies: “Your brother’s an asshole.”
 
When Becca utters phrase early in play, “When Danny died …,” I was holding Elyse’s arm and her arm twitched noticeably.
 
Becca has copy of children’s book “Runaway Bunny,” noting, “I like seeing his fingerprints” on things he touched.
 
Nat’s son (Becca’s brother) Arthur died 11 years earlier. Her mother chronically reverts to talking about Arthur and her own experience losing a son, as a way to not-so-subtly guide, and hopefully influence, Becca in starting to let go and finding comfort somehow in what is both a horrific and immutable reality. Arthur was a heroin addict who committed suicide at age 31. Becca tells her mother, “I resent you lumping them [Martin and Danny] together.”
 
This is something child-losing people experience when people grope for something consoling to say – which is virtually impossible to accomplish in the death of a young child – and end up unwittingly — and unintentionally, we like to believe, end up equating the loss of a child with the loss of a parent, or even, in my own experience, the death of a pet. The total lack of similarity between losing a parent and a child should not have to be explained to anyone: We all expect to outlive our parents, so their demise in our lifetime is not only expected, but accepted as a fact of life for which adults are innately prepared. Even when children have terminal conditions, we are better prepared for the inevitable, but hardly any more accepting of it.
 
Sibling loss is another matter. They are blood too, but a child comes from within our body and our being. A sibling may or not be a mirror image. We don’t create our siblings, yet we produce children in our own image.  
 
Arthur’s situation is strikingly similar to my eldest brother Stephen, who also became addicted to heroin, and although his death was caused by crashing into a tree in the dead of night, my middle brother and our father always believed Stephen had just had enough of his sad life, which went downhill precipitously when our mother died suddenly of a brain anyeurysm when I was 9, Robert was 12 and Stephen was 18, a senior in high school.
 
Becca is tense and brittle. Her mother advises her to return to the bereavment group. Becca is wallowing in self-pity, which seems totally justified for someone whose 4-year-old son was killed after being hit by a car because he chased his dog into the street. It’s a freak accident that would devastate any parent.
 
Becca and Howie have not had sex in the eight months since he was killed or cleaned out Danny’s room in that time. She wants to sell the house because it reminds her too much of Danny and his absence. The one-set show economically incorporates a kitchen area on stage right (stage left to the audience), adjacent to a living room, behind which, on a platform, we see Danny’s room, sans any wall separating it from the living area.
 
When the mother tells Becca that she should go to the support group because “they understand,” Becca shoots back, “No, they don’t.” The observation is made that perhaps Becca is jealous of the comfort that others in her situation have found.
 
That speaks to the fact that though parents in group share losing a child, the respective circumstances that caused the child’s death can vary widely, and that creates distinctions in how people mourn and deal with loss, or don’t. Even kindred spirits of the most unthinkable kind can share emotions and antidotes only up to a point. Then it’s everyone for themselves.
 
Becca calls the members of the support group “God freaks” because that’s all they talk about as their way of rationalizing the loss. “My favorite,” she says facetiously, “is ‘God needed another angel.’”
 
Becca articulates how her faith not only has been shaken, but virtually extinguished, calling God “a sadistic p***k who says, ‘Worship me and I’ll treat you like s**t.” That mirrors – albeit to a more extreme degree – Elyse’s view of religion after we lost
Harrison. While
Harrison was in the ICU in what would prove to be his final hours, on life support, I was literally davening in the ICU lounge with a siddur and a yarmulke on my head. It was the only thing I could do at that point. I had done the same even before Harrison went to the hospital, while he was in his bedroom at night, coughing violently, which pained me deeply, and I was in the living room with a prayer book. He never knew what I was doing, of course; I didn’t want him to. After he passed, Elyse scoffed at what good my praying did.
 
Howie one night watches home movies of him and Danny. The next day, he returns to resume his viewing, only to find Becca accidentally has recorded over the tape, not realizing Howie had ejected the tape they use to record TV shows. Howie becomes enraged, launching a tirade against her attemps to “erase Danny” by removing his pictures from the wall. In fact, the play’s opening scene is Becca folding his clothes to either give them to her pregnant sister or donate them to Goodwill. “You’re trying to get rid of any evidence he was here,” alleges Howie, citing the clothes, his shoes, and Danny’s dog, Taz, which now resides with Becca’s mother Nat. The bitter icing on the cake is Becca’s wanting to move out of the house.
 
This recalled in my memory our leaving Harrison’s room intact for a while, eventually replacing his bed with a treadmill, and adding an elliptical machine to convert his bedroom into a vestpocket fitness area. Yet his dwarf-size desk and hutch remain, as do sundry posters on the wall and bric-a-brac such as little league trophies and puppets of Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, with which I put on impromptu comic interludes for him as a toddler when we lived on Long Island. He would laugh his little head off as Bert and Ernie cavorted with each other. I got as much enjoyment entertaining him as did he. (Bruce pausing here to sob.)
 
During this scene, the couple exchange momentary accusations about the indirect cause of Danny’s fatal accident. It’s the guilt trip, Becca saying that Howie left the gate unlatched for Danny to leave the yard. She then tells Howie he’s “not in a better place, but a different place” concerning coping with Danny’s death, adding, “It’s too bad we can’t be there for each other right now.”
 
Howie at another point tells Becca, “It’s too hard,” to deal with the situation.
 
When an open house is held to show to prospective home buyers, Izzy tells Howie it was stupid to leave Danny’s room intact because a couple of people asked about it. Izzy refers to it as bad “house karma” that drives away buyers.
 
The thorny aspect of how parents deal with conversations about kids is not plumbed deeply, but another aspect of child-loss that the playwright is careful to touch along the way. I’ve taken to saying of late with people who don’t know me, “I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and we run a foundation in memory of our son.” That makes the explanation as positive and constructive – and as unawkward – as I know how.
 
Izzy tells Howie that his talking about Danny and how he died is “something you enjoy doing.” I can well relate to that because I never stop talking or writing about
Harrison, my attitude being why should I and make no apologies for it. We can’t talk to him, or touch him, or hold him. All we can do is talk and write about him.
 
Another grace note, as it were, that we all doubtless can relate to, is Becca saying when she went food shopping everything she saw reminded her of Danny: “He liked string cheese and Froot Loops.”
 
Becca confronted a mother in the supermarket who was at first resisting, then ignoring, her young child’s nagging to buy a fruit rollup. She thought to herself, “Don’t pretend he isn’t there,” the obvious subtext being, “You’re lucky he IS there. Don’t take it for granted.” She ends up smacking the woman, which is a theatrical flourish that harks back to the opening scene when Becca is aghast that her younger sister punched out another woman in a bar.
 
At another point, Becca talks about how much she enjoys attending an adult education course in another town because, “I don’t get ‘The Face’ there from people who don’t know me. “Hey, how you doing? You hang in there. These are people talking about books, they don’t want to talk about their family,” which is a relief to her of course.
 
Becca’s mom Nat tells her daughter about a woman who would come to comfort her when she lost her son Arthur. “Consoling me became her hobby,” says Nat. The woman, named Maureen, told Nat, “I want to share in your grief.” Maureen was the only one of Nat’s friends willing to talk about Arthur. However, Nat came to realize Maureen was doing it for herself, not Nat. Nat told her off, and never saw her again.
 
Nat delivers a set piece that passes on to her daughter her metaphorical description of how the emotional hell that attends losing a child changes over time. She alludes to it being “something you crawl out from under, and it becomes like a brick that you carry around in your pocket.”
 
When the young man whose car hit Danny visits with Becca – Howie has no interest in talking to him – he begins talking about how much fun he had on his prom night the prior Saturday. Becca is attentively and pleasantly listening, then abruptly bursts out in heaving sobs.
 
My inference was nothing more than the young man’s presence finally got to her. However, Elyse hit it on the head as we were leaving the theater when she said how much she related to that moment because it was about Becca thinking about all the milestones she won’t be able to enjoy with her son, like a prom. I told Elyse one area where we differ in mourning
Harrison’s absence is I dwell on what was and she dwells on what won’t be.
 
Howie and Becca remark about the onset of Danny’s birthday. “That’ll be hard,” he says. I thought about
Harrison’s birthday in two weeks from the performance we saw. It’s not as hard as it was in the first several years after he died, but, then again, it’s never easy either. It never will be.
 
The play’s end focuses on Becca getting back together with her friend Debbie, the mother of Danny’s friend Emily, as the couple talks about attending Emily’s birthday party.
 
“What are we going to do?” Becca asks Howie. The question clearly is meant to signal their predicament for the rest of their lives.
 
Those are the first words a broken Elyse said to me in the ICU after the surgeon told us
Harrison was gone. “What are we going to do?” she cried. A few hours prior, as I paced nervously just outside the ICU, there was an outbreak of activity, with a nurse shouting, “Get the defribillator!” There were several patients in the ward, but my gut — and my months of grim premonitions — told me right away it had to be Harrison. My fears escalated exponentially when the nurse’s next words were the cruelest any patient’s family could hear: “Get a social worker!” I took measured steps to Elyse, who was out of earshot, calmly gazed at her with crestfallen resignation, held her, and said, “Prepare yourself.”

She refused to believe my admonition. “No!” she anguished. She was right: nothing can prepare you.
 
“What are we going to do?” is the same question Becca asks Howie.

Howie answers it with a more immediate, specific plan: He tells Becca they’ll make their friends comfortable by first asking about their kids, and “pretend we’re really interested in that,” and then they’ll send the little ones inside and let their friends talk about Danny. It’s a purging process.
 
The play’s final lines are apropos and understated and naturally tentative:

Howie: “We’ll figure it out.”
Becca: “Will we?”
Howie: “I think we will.”
 

What kind of persons would decline attending a Pulitzer-winning play about a married couple because, in the play-no-goers’ exact words, “I’m afraid.” What sort of domestic drama — save for Tennessee Williams’s verbally violent “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” —- could instill such fear?

The singular answer: People who recently lost a child not wanting to watch a play about people who recently lost a child. To that explanation might be added … by a writer who had the enviable task of only having to imagine such a merciless fate.

Elyse and I and our college-sophomore daughter Elissa lost Harrison 2,427 days ago, on March 21, 2003. My son died within 24 hours after the date I was born. That’s not a coincidence; that’s ironic, a word often misused to mean coincidence. But it’s irony by design, because March 20, 2003 was the earliest of several operating dates offered us by heart surgeon Dr. Thomas Spray at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP: an ironic name for a medical institution). We jumped at the chance for the open-heart surgery to occur on my birthday because — irony alert — we superstitiously believed it was a good omen. We were half right; in retrospect, it was an ominous date with destiny.

“Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire, about a couple coping with the most primal loss of all, is at Hudson Stage in Briarcliff Manor. We are seeing it tonight (Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009, two weeks before we observe Harrison’s 22nd birthday, I write with tear ducts beginning to moisten. Our ritual is to visit his gravesite and bring birthday balloons, a paradoxically mournful totem that reaches toward the firmament where our curious culture makes believe spirits of loved ones reside forevemore, when their actual remains lie six feet below. That’s ironic). I’ll post a blogview of it Sunday, Nov. 15.

Because Hudson Stage, located at Pace University in Briarcliff Manor, is around the corner from our friends Doug and Linda Press, we called them to inquire about having pre-show dinner at a nearby bistro. Turned out they were seeing Broadway musical “Next to Normal” about — what else — the loss of a child. That’s a coincidence, but an ironic one.

Even the locale of Harrison’s demise is somewhat ironic, because he was born in Philadelphia (Nov. 29, 1987) in what would be the last few months of the three years we lived there before moving back to New York when the entertainment magazine I helped launch folded after the stock market folded in October of that year. The only reason Harrison’s final act of three open-hearts was performed in Philadelphia is because the renowned pediatric cardiology Dutch surgeon who presided over his second — an artificial valve implant in 1998 — refused to do the third. Dr. Jan Quagebeur offered Harrison’s parents the sub-zero chilly but subsequently truthful explanation, “I don’t think Harrison has a bright future.”

Perhaps even more than his actual passing — for which I was fully prepared, haunted appropriately by the surgeon’s prognosis, having previsualized The End of Harrison more than once in fitful bouts of doubled-over convulsions fraught with inconsolable sobbing, the likes of which I fear ever again having to experience — the pathetic state Elyse and I were in walking out of Dr. Q’s office that cold day in January 2003, then staring out into the void in the breezeway of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on Broadway and 158th Street as the valet fetched our car, is one moment I can’t bear to revisit, along with the final moments at Harrison’s bedside, when, in his drug-induced hallucinations, he said deeply unnerving things to me I’ve never shared with anyone but Elyse, and probably won’t divulge until the inevitable play or book about him is completed, by someone who’s been to Hell and back rather than taking a virtual round trip.

The aforementioned people who would rather not see “Rabbit Hole” with us tonight are members of the bimonthly bereavment group Caring Circle Elyse attends regularly. She asked others in the group if they wanted to go. Alas, their loss is too raw, within the past year or two, to endure two and a half hours of what they are sentenced to endure the rest of their lives: adventures in grieving.

It’s a 24/7 job that never takes a second’s rest. Everything you do. Everything you are. Everything you become. It all derives from losing not only part of your parental identity, but losing something so deep inside you — in the bottomless pit of your stomach — that it can be replaced by a soul-devouring demon that transfigures your entire being into a dysfunctional, unrecognizable mess if you let it.

Elyse and I are going to “Rabbit Hole” because we believe we can withstand the grim spectacle after 6-1/2 years. Maybe even learn a little something about ourselves from how someone imagines people like us to behave with each other and with others. We’ll see if that is the case or if we have to watch the show through a saline screen and a soundtrack of sniffles. Regardless of how long it’s been, as child-losing parents are wont to say, the pain doesn’t leave, but rather you learn pain management of the emotional kind. I attend the Caring Circleg once in a rare while because my pain management dosage is administered through the Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation, now my life’s work.

Dr. Quagebeur’s prescient expert analysis notwithstanding, Harrison’s future has remained bright, enlightened by his radiant spirit that glows for all to see through the Foundation that proudly bears his name and his image.

It’s human nature. When we don’t understand something, either by ignorance or by stubbornness or by willfulness, we tend not to like it, or to dislike it, or to repel it, or to hate it. It could be a thing, it might be a person, it may well be a group of persons belonging to an affinity group of the like-minded, or of like-ancestry.

In the case of Yorktowners who don’t understand the role of a town administrator, it’s a thing — for now. If — more likely, when — a town administrator at long last is brought in to professionalize the running of Yorktown, the small band of loud people who don’t care to understand the role of a town administrator may well turn their animus to a person, being the one who fulfills that function.

The anti-town administrators — on second thought, let’s call them, for argument’s sake (since these people are more interested in arguing than in assessing the benefits of the position), “frown administrators” (since these people seem more interested in frowning on solutions than helping to figure them out) — like to keep things cozy and, in their minds, community-minded. In our view, they are being pinchingly provincial.

The fact of the matter is most people in Yorktown don’t have an opinion on the virtues and vices of the town administrator position because they are tending to full-time jobs and full-time families. I’m not aware of any poll that was taken, scientific or otherwise.

The fact of the matter is towns like Yorktown shouldn’t be run by elected officials who are amateurs at running towns. It’s not just here. It’s like that almost everywhere in the U.S., if not the world. Towns of a certain size elect officials in many cases with zero experience running anything. The reason, with very rare exception (including the current officeholder), Presidents of these United States are elected from governorships, not from Congress, is that governors and mayors have to run sizable infrastructures. Senators and congresspersons do not. They have to represent.

The typical first-time town supervisor or village mayor is not necessarily elected based on having run anything successfully, but on what might be called the “palitics” of the community. The number of connections to people, the likability factor, the perception of competence and intellect and sensibility. None of those attributes presume administrative skills, which are presumed essential for running a town or a village.

That’s what a town administrator does. Runs things. As a professionally-paid manager. So elected officials can go about their ceremonial, back-slapping, consensus-building, agenda-setting, quality-of-life-sustaining duties.

It all makes perfect sense, which is why towns and villages throughout the country, including next door to Yorktown in Peekskill, employ city managers and town administrators.

One day soon, so will Yorktown. Because it’s the common sensible, responsible thing to do.

“Being in love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s the epigrammatic line from 1970 novel and film, “Love Story,” the kitsch classic fluke by Harvard English professor Erich Segal.

Being in love with the New York Yankees means never having to say, “I’m satisfied.” The team’s superstar captain Derek Jeter, after his franchise won its 27th fall classic last week (more championships than any American professional sports team), said, “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” during the post-ticker tape parade ceremony in front of New York City Hall.

Wusup, DJ? What’s with giving some fresh fodder for Yankee haters to chaw on. I can hear the “Yank this, Yankees!” crowd saying, “What a bunch of arrogant, spoiled brats. Nine years a long time? Those wimpy Yankee yahoos wouldn’t last a single winter in Chicagoland. They’d forsake the Cubs after 7 innings on Opening Day. They got nothing.” And the windy Second City Cub scouts would be, of course, absolutely right. Yankee fans are a tender lot. Nine years without a title and they’re ready to go into withdrawal. It’s as if that overwritten Jack Nicholson character in “A Few Melodramatic Men” bellowed, “You can’t handle the drought!” (He still would have won the Oscar, as well as the Emeril, for eating the scenery with relish; Oscar voters are all-day suckers for shameless overacting).

Of course, Gentleman Jeter, known for his meticulous manners and close-to-the-vest reticence, didn’t mean to sound foolish. It just came out that way. Who can blame him for being preternaturally spoiled – this is the cosmic icon who won four championships in his first five years in the big leagues. If Hollywood wrote that script, audiences wouldn’t know whether to hiss or laugh at the phoniness of such improbability.

But that what makes Jeter a sports celebrity who transcends the playing field, a unique presence in the same league of his own as Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan. Check that last one. Compared to those two, Jordan is a craven celebrity for fairly flaunting his shallowness. Jeter and Woods are schooled in discretion and minimalism. Jordan, by contrast, is merely bland and seemingly devoid of the slightest gravitas, if you excuse the apparent oxymoron. If Jeter and Woods are narcissists, they are able to intellectually compartmentalize it so it’s palatably packaged. Jordan’s narcissism is at once winsome and wince-inducing.

As a lifelong Yankee fan, whose earliest memories conjure names like Bob Turley, Moose Skowron, Bobby Richardson and relief pitcher Luis Arroyo (who one year had 15 victories AND 29 saves); and as a father who lost a Yankee-rooting son six and a half years ago, I admittedly have lost much of the zest and pleasure that used to accompany my cheering, and biting my nails, during a Yankees championship run and seemingly perennial trophy ceremonies.

Maybe that’s why I’m still scratching my head over why the City of New York determined that a ticker tape parade was in order for what, after all, is a fifth championship in the past 13 years. Once upon a time, ticker tape parades were reserved for the most extraordinary heroes performing almost otherwordly feats of historic proportions. Charles Lindbergh as the first aviator to cross the Atlantic. That’s pretty special, doncha think? Or saluting World War II and Korean War legendary General Douglas MacArthur. A hero out of central casting, to be sure. Or the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, a beacon of freedom that brings tears to the eyes of immigrants eternally thankful to kiss the shores of democracy in the globe’s greatest land of opportunity.

So how does winning a Super Bowl or World Series qualify? It doesn’t. But ours is a culture that caters to the cheesy and curtsies to cheap sentiment. Professional athletes aren’t war heroes like Ike or McArthur, nor inspirational icons like Lady Liberty, though they are mercenaries who rake in millions, often in spite of underperforming in the clutch.

I’ll see my point and raise the righteous indignation another notch: It’s become axiomatic that in the Steinbrennerian corporate culture of THE New York Yankees, ending the season empty-handed — that is, without holding the World Series hardware — is deemed a dismal failure, four million fans through the gate notwithstanding. So, by that measure, by winning the World Series, the Yankees did the job expected of them, right? Then let us get this straight: the Yankees received adulation of heroic proportions for merely doing their job. Makes sense to me.

What’s a society to do? Not much except accept that quality and the recognition of same ain’t as good as they used to be. Another example is the standing ovation. It used to be the highest form of tribute known only to an elite echelon of performers. Today, it’s an obligatory twitch that afflicts audiences whose idea of talent is an American Idol winner or a second-rate Vegas lounge act or a karaoke inebriate.

But at least the ticker tape parade featured Rudolph Guiliani riding in a car, and Jay-Z soaking up – or was it sucking up? — the aura around A-Rod. Was there a more valuable ex-Mayor in the playoffs than Rudy Kazootie? No doubt the crowd would have been deeply disappointed if Rudy didn’t deign to show up. You can just imagine how they had to twist his arm to be there because he’s ultra-busy these days not running for New York governor but getting his jollies letting everybody think he will. And how would A-Rod have reversed his once-fallen star as a playoff performer if it wasn’t for Jay-Z? It was heart-warming to see him once again prop up A-Rod by giving him moral support on the parade float. Those two, it can be said with certainty, run the gamut from A to Z.

None of my carping changes the fact that I started getting down with Jay Z’s rap anthem, “Empire State of Mind,” that he sang to close the City Hall “Keys to the City” ceremony. Then the unthinkable occurred to me: with the Yanks in a new stadium, isn’t it about time they also had a new theme song to retire Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” which is getting a bit creaky and speaks to a dying generation (OK, not exactly dying, but also not the future of Yankee fandom). All things have their day, and I say, bring on “Empire State of Mind” and perhaps save Ol’ Blue Eyes for special occasions, like Old Timers’ Day.

Speaking of which, hanging out last Saturday with Tommy John, who told me he doesn’t always get invited to Old Timers Day, writing it off to “politics” that plays a role in that annual Stadium retrospective, I learned that Joe DiMaggio would get dressed in a separate room before the ceremony, and that while he always was kind to Tommy, was known to refuse autographs even when requested by his teammates. Say it ain’t so, Joe.

I always will cling to precious memories of Yankee Yuniverse.

There I was in the last row of the right-field upper deck when Reg-gie! Reg-gie! Reg-gie! knocked his record three homeruns in 1977, each blow raising the decibel level of the stadium to lift us higher and higher until the crowd floated out of the stadium onto the Bronx streets chanting his name in unison for all the world to hear. It was euphoria for the masses.

There was the time at the end of July 1978 I went on a one-week vacation to Club Med in Martinique, leaving my Yankees 14+ games behind the league-leading Bosox. The season was assuredly over for the Bombers. Club Med made its reputation on being so isolated and stress-free, there was no TV, radio, phones or newspapers. As soon as I stepped into the airport on the return trip seven days later, I grabbed a newspaper and my mouth dropped open when I saw the Yanks now were seven games behind, a feat that meant while I was sipping drinks with tiny umbrellas, my team had to win virtually every game while the Sox had to lose every one. Vegas doesn’t have odds long enough to anticipate that scenario. The ‘78 season came to be called, “The Greatest Comeback Ever,” capped of course by Bucky F. Dent’s “bat out of heaven” homerun in the single-game Fenway pennant clincher.

Then there was the time Harrison and I were at Game 1 of the 1999 World Series against the San Diego Padres. We went to the food court and heard a huge roar, which turned out to be Chuck Knoblauch’s 3-run homerun that pulled the Yankees within X of the Padres. That game was the first time I heard anyone yell, “Hip, hip, Jorge.” It was Harrison. His next move was to reverse the bill of his hat and say it was a rally cap. Next thing we know, the stadium is quaking as if a tremblor hit it, in response to a thunderous grand slam by Tino Martinez.

Or Game 1 of 2000 Mets series, when Harrison and I found ourselves next to a woman who wore Paul O’Neill’s jersey number and told us his boyhood drums were in her home. She never confirmed the relationship but years later, I deduced that, based on her resemblance and her age, it must have been his sister, who was a reporter for The New York Times. I have a photo of Harrison with her in the stands.

Or Game 1 of the 1996 series that was a washout in both senses of the word. As it rained on the stadium, Braves’ rookie Andruw Jones rained two homers on the Yanks in a 12-2 route. But we braved our way back for Game 6, following the Yanks’ remarkable three straight wins in Atlanta’s house, and watched as Joe Girardi hit a critical triple, and Wade Boggs rode the outfield in postgame triumph in back of a mounted NYC policeman.

I never went to a ticker tape parade for the Yankees. It only would have been to take Harrison, whose 38-inch height, due to dwarfism, made such a sojourn into a crush of wall-to-wall humanity impractical at best, life-threatening at worst.

I also know Harrison was watching the Yankees’ latest ticker tape parade, his smile radiant as ever, and singing every lyric of “Empire State of Mind” right along with Jay-Z because there is joy in New York, the mighty Yankees have struck gold once again.