NCAA Brackets

As always, I’m in an NCAA Tournament pool. I know NOTHING about college basketball – zip! I do some simple statistical analysis so I don’t look totally stupid.

As it turns out, the NCAA selection committee also does analysis. My picks are often close to theirs. Here’s this year’s picks. Wish me luck.

Continue reading “NCAA Brackets”

Murray and Max

There is really no story to go with this photo. It’s just a great photo featuring my uncle, Murray, and his grandson, my cousin, Max. It was shot by my cousin, Michael.

Murray lives in Maryland. Max lives in California. Their being together is a treat all by itself. Add in their expressions and… well, it’s just a great photo.

Uncle Murray is Moving

New York is different that the rest of the United States. I can’t imagine there is a part of country where a higher percentage of the population lives in apartments. And, because of New York City’s rent control and stabilization laws, many people stay in those apartments forever.

My parents lived at 6543 Parsons Boulevard, Apartment 5E, from the early 50s to the late 80s. Our next door neighbors are still in the building, having moved in in 1953.

I’m not sure how long Uncle Murray has lived in his apartment, but it has to go back to the early 50s as well.

Before cable they had the worst TV reception I had ever seen. I remember trying to watch baseball games with my dad, Uncle Murray, Cousin Michael and some other family members. Every time a plane approached La Guardia Airport, the signal would go nuts. I seem to remember the TV sporting rabbit ears with tin foil for good measure – as if you could fool the signal into being watchable.

This from an apartment with a line-of-sight view to the Empire State Building where the TV transmitting antennas used to be… and are again, since 9/11.

The apartment is on the ground floor, facing out onto a busy street. It is in Queens, a short walk from the Flushing el, so not far from Manhattan by public transportation.

In that apartment you are never far from the noise of the neighborhood. If a car alarm goes off – if the bus goes by – if a horn is honked (and all of those seem to happen continuously) – you will witness it from inside the apartment, even with the windows closed.

But it is quiet in comparison to my grandparents’ 23rd floor apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. From their windows they could see two elevated trains lines and the biggest yard in the New York City Subway system. The building was right at a curve which caused the heavy metal wheels on the train to squeal a little around the clock. It squealed as each set of wheels in the 8 or 10 car trains passed by.

I have been told Uncle Murray is leaving his apartment, moving closer to my Cousin Judy and her family in Maryland. It will be good for Murray to be closer to people who love him.

It will be the end of an era, as the last of the Fox family leaves New York City.

Uncle Murray will also end another, more universal, era. He is the last person I know whose telephone number is still remembered as a word and 5 digits. Uncle Murray is the last of the TWining-8’s for me.

Until he closed his store, it was the only other number I remembered non-digitally. That was STillwell-6 (I think).

When I was growing up, our home number was JAmacia-6-4308 and then AXtel-1-9790. At some point, the phone companies of America decided that wouldn’t do. I remember hearing some sort of propaganda about how all digit dialing would be easier to remember. I don’t think they were running out of numbers because you can make an exchange combination out of every number combo… though you’d need to use XYlophone for ’99.’

Later, AXtel-1-9790 became 291-9790 and then got changed to 591-0434 when we get our first area code – 212.

I never quite understood why there were exchanges like AXtel. What is an AXtel? Even Google asks, “Did you mean: axtell ?” ‘291’ could have been AWning-1 or AWful-1 or CYrus-1.

New York Telephone made some bad choices other than AXtel. On Staten Island there was an exchange, Saint George. Was that SA or ST?

Today, I know my number should be CEntral… though it’s a ’23.’

Back to Uncle Murray.

I can’t imagine how he’ll pick up and pack fifty years worth of memories? What will be found that had been lost? What will be found that should have been lost? Does he still have the Playboy Magazines I found under his bed forty some odd years ago?

I’ll have to call Uncle Murray this weekend. I want one last chance to dial that number.

Cousin Michael

Over the past few months, and more so recently, I have renewed my friendship with my cousin. That’s not a big deal in most families. My family is very small.

My dad is one of three children, my mother two. Much of my mother’s extended family never made it through World War II. I shudder to think of their fate.

I have one sister and she has three children. None of us live near each other.

My sister’s in Wisconsin – her children away at school most of the year. My folks are in Florida, living the ‘Club Med for Seniors’ lifestyle. Uncle Murray is still in Queens, New York – but his children are in Maryland, Florida and California. You get the point.

And then, there are the relatives I don’t speak with. I won’t go into it here, but it’s my guess every family has its dysfunctionality. Us too.

Cousin Michael was among my closest friends growing up. Through our late teens, in the late 60’s, we were together all the time traveling with friends to Manhattan on Friday’s and Saturday’s to see rock acts at the Village Theater (aka Fillmore East).

Michael was there when I saw Grateful Dead and Moby Grape on the bill with the Joshua Light Show. For a few bucks we saw dozens of shows in that ratty old theater with torn seats on the Lower East Side.

I remember summer evenings with Michael and our friend Larry, taking the subway to Greenwich Village and then walking down McDougall Street past the record stores and head shops. Sometimes stopping at Blimpies for a meal.

In those politically charged years we talked lots of politics. The Vietnam War was raging, and we were of the age to worry about being asked to go there, Michael, who was bolder than I, was much more active. We were all opinionated.

When I left for college, and then a few years later moved to Florida, we drifted apart. It’s only now that I am hearing about what he did during those years. His life would make a pretty compelling book. It would be interesting as fiction – but as a true life tale, it’s fascinating, spiced with familiar names in unfamiliar surroundings.

Michael’s life is very different now. He and his wife Melissa, and their son Max, live on the West Coast. Over the years, Michael mastered the art of education, and has all manner and form of degrees. A few weeks ago he added a PhD to his collection.

I think being married and having a child has been really good for Michael. I’m confident Michael is good for them too.

Recently, Michael and I have been spending more time together on the phone. It’s a shame he lives so far away. I get the better of the deal, calling when my minutes are free – and his probably not.

He is intellectual and analytical a good conversationalist and good sounding board. It’s a shame we lost so many years of friendship.

He, Melissa and Max will be joining us for vacation this summer. I’m looking forward to seeing them again. Las Vegas is not Greenwich Village. Though maybe, in 2004, we go to Las Vegas for the same reasons we went to Greenwich Village. I’m sure we’ll have this discussion later.

Bad News, Bad News

Helaine woke me up early this morning. She, as my driver, is concerned about the forecast for tomorrow. The map piece on the left, a little snippet of what I’ve looked at, says a few things. It shows between &#188″ and &#189″ of liquid equivalent over Connecticut by 7:00 AM tomorrow. The two sets of lines show it won’t be too windy but it will be cold enough aloft snow. Other maps, that you don’t see, show this event over at, or before, 7:00 AM.

Bottom line, 3-5″ of snow on the ground.

If you’d like to be a geek in training, these forecast maps are part of an ever changing suite of maps published around the clock by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, in Silver Spring. MD.

I called Southwest. They’ll move me to today – if I pay about double my current fare!

The plan right now is for Helaine and me to get up early and do our best getting to the airport. The hope is I-91, our main route, won’t be too bad. However, I-91 is the road that separated me from the radio station early this season when &#188″ fell!

This story is not yet over.