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The defining moment during this Republican presidential primary season came for me when Newt Gingrich suggested that school systems get rid of most of their janitors in order to hire students.  It wasn’t just what he said, it was the subsequent response and lack of response that cued something off in me. Yeah, I was upset that he feels that it’s OK for 12 year olds to mix together chemicals, stand on 10 foot ladders to change light bulbs in the gym, and mop up their classmates piss.  I get that.  I’m a father of a teen.  And I realize that this policy will end up causing some kids to be the target of abuse from a slew of their classmates as they intentionally urinate all over the floor so the poorest of the poor can mop it up.

What got me more was that he has no problem suggesting the mass firing of what I consider to be hard working under appreciated blue collar working class men and women who simply trying to provide a life for themselves and, perhaps, their family.

And what REALLY got to most of all was that the vast majority of well, us, didn’t even notice this last part.  Most focused on the comment about the kids.  We didn’t see that we’ve got a major presidential candidate who’s calling for a policy in which perhaps thousands of “union member” janitors lose their jobs.  Had to use those words “union member” for effect of course.

Most of the pundit class missed it.  Some quick points were made but everyone concentrated on the kids.  The pundit class views life through their often “fiscally conservative and socially liberal lens” that all too often doesn’t take into consideration those working class stiffs that they (and many of us)  pass in the hallway for much of our lives.

Republican primary voters missed it.  They probably heard “union member” and automatically internally justified it.  Damn unions.  Plus it wasn’t about the horrors of gay marriage, preventing the very rich from being taxed one more cent, or shariah law coming to a town near you.  I’m betting there weren’t legions of janitors at these rallies or debates.

Gingrich’s Republican opponents largely ignored it with the exception of Romney calling it “zany”.  Plus, sticking up for working class people doesn’t gain much of an advantage for GOP candidates these days.  See the previous paragraph.

Democrat operatives trashed him…again for having “zany” ideas and for painting it as a semi-racist slur.  OK…I get that.  Most of the people that live in “poor neighborhoods” are people of color (as opposed to “poor areas”) which could encompass emaciated old factory towns of the northeastern and Midwest US or rural areas that can be found in every state.
But the Democrats are now spending too much of their time these days concentrating on trashing the 1%.  Falling back on blaming the 1% for a situation like this is a cop-out because it’s not just the one percent that causes this or overlooks or ignores this.  It’s an overused slogan designed to assign and avoid blame and which allows us to avoid looking at major problems in greater detail.

What does this say about our polity?  Our culture? What does it say when we all seem to either miss or to not really give a shit that a quick policy point could result in a bunch of working class people – many of whom may already poor in their own right – could lose their jobs.  Jobs create dignity.  The same dignity that Gingrich says that he wants to install in kids.

What it says to me that we’ve lost our priorities.  Let’s face it.  Janitors aren’t chic.  They are (image wise) lower level blue collar workers who probably have little education.  Many of them are people of color…just like those same kids in these “poorest of the poor neighborhoods”.  Many of them are recent immigrants.   They aren’t the target of Madison Avenue, or of movie studio heads, or of …politicians.  They sort of trudge along silently behind the scenes making sure there’s toilet paper in the stalls.  We don’t know their names – or at the very least their last names if they have their first name on a name patch.  Or if they have families.  Or what they are like after work.  They’re janitors.

I’d like someone to explain to me how, in the economy, these relatively poorly educated working class types – many of whom could be their family’s primary breadwinner – are going to find comparable paying  jobs.  Will they have to go on some sort of government assistance…where society will look down on them even more?  And perhaps require them to take a drug test to qualify?

Again, janitors aren’t chic.  And the problem is that we’ve got a segment of the economic right that will look at a “union member” worker and deride them for having the audacity to want a better life and, apparently in this case, a steady job.  Then there’s the economic left that may be more with the janitors in spirit, but all too often look with disdain at the private sector and the captial that backs that sector up which DOES create jobs.  Then we’ve got social and cultural conservatives and social and cultural “progressives” that all too often try to dominate political discourse and then are more concerned about implementing their specific values on much of society.

Before I posted this, I did some research. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean salary for a janitor in an elementary or secondary school is $28,570 per year or $13.74 per hour.  That’s not much above the poverty line for a family of four according to the federal government’s most recent poverty guidelines. Now, let’s take a look at what this asshole Gingrich is about.

He charged $60,000 a pop for his speeches.  How long can a speech be?  Half an hour?  At the very least, Gingrich made more than twice as much in one day as the people he wants to be fired – you know, those union members – make in an entire year. His made somewhere between $1.6 and $1.8 million dollars in consulting fees from Freddy Mac and at one point has a monthly retainer of $30,000…giving him more in one month than what a janitor makes in an entire year.  And he’s also on record that he usually gave them one hour’s worth of work per month.  That would me he got paid about $30,000 per hour. Oh, yeah.  Let’s not forget his account with Tiffany’s.  Normally I would think this is a non-issue.  It’s his right.  It’s his money.  But it was to the tune of $300,000.  That’s more than 10 times the average public school janitor makes per year.

So instead of just blaming the 1%, or on “union member” people, we need to look into ourselves to figure out what type of people we are about.

Alan Jackson asked us almost ten years ago.  Now I’m asking you.

This week, for obvious reasons, is going to bring back a whole range of memories and emotions. 9/11 has been the seminal event of my lifetime. Close to 3000 people lost their live in one morning.

Where was I? I was actually in a small public library when I heard that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. Figured in was a Cessna or a Piper. Then it got hit again. I immediately went home and turned on the TV and began to see the carnage. It has haunted me still.

I ran up to my son’s school and picked him up from his kindergarten class as pretty much every parent was doing across America.

I lived in Alexandria, VA about 3.5 miles from the Pentagon. The smell of smoke and char lasted for weeks.

The memories of all of this still inspire hate in me. Hate that I don’t regret and hate that I don’t think is unhealthful.

I’ll probably try to make more posts on this issue throughout this week. But in the meantime, where were you when the world stopped turning?

I’ll be eternally grateful to their valor and sacrifice.

Most of the murder victims will be black and/or poor. If we put aside the killings in the drug/crime world, we’ll still have a lot of tragic untimely deaths of innocent people. People who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. People who the victim of someone else’s rage. But the media won’t really cover this. Their deaths – and their lives won’t merit an concern.

The thing is, the vast majority of people in this area are not socialites. We don’t rub elbows with the city’s elite. We can’t really relate to them in that capacity. It’s not as if we have all met the hostess that was murdered. But the media will cover it vigorously as if her life was more important and more valuable than all the others that will be killed.

I have a problem with that.

Maybe I figured that if I don’t start back on it now, it will never happen.  And allowing “never happen” is an all too familiar theme in my life.

The guitar, an Ibanez PF 5 is pretty well regarded.  I got it at Guitar Center back – I don’t know when – and it’s still in pretty good shape.

A friend, Jayrol San Jose, told me about JamPlay, a great site that’s got a ton of lessons and other cool stuff to keep busy.  Jayrol is a professional photographer.  Check out his site here.  Good stuff.

I have no idea what I’m doing here.  But I need to do this.

Our pasts will always be part of us.  But so will our future.  That’s something we all too often forget.

No doubt your recent past has been difficult, at times extremely so.  Lots of disappointments, lots of challenges.  More lie ahead.

It’s not that it’s not time to concentrate on what you’re dealing with.  That’s part of healing.  It IS time though to tap into this newness of life around us, grasping what if offers while never forgetting how much someone like you offers back.

It’s the first day of spring.

Last night I took a stroll throughout my neighborhood to walk off the huge amount of food I ate for the Thanksgiving feast.  It was a quiet, peaceful night.  As I made my way down the street I noticed something that I hadn’t seen in a while.  There were two houses next to one another that displayed American flags.

This took me back years earlier to the immediate post 9/11 period in which it seemed everyone in my then neighborhood proudly displayed somewhere in the front of their homes.  It was such a beautiful sight back then as it almost looked as if they were Christmas displays.  The red, white, and blue flowing in a slight breeze, often lit up by a floodlight.

It wasn’t just on my block, it was on blocks around.  They were everywhere.  Back then, there were record flag sales if I can remember correctly.  That means that many of us today should own our own flags.

Today I rarely see  flags displayed.   They aren’t nonexistent by any means.  Some people still will, nine plus years later, proudly have their flags unfurled out front.  But it’s far and few between.

Why is that?  Why have they been put away?  Or not been replaced?  Is that spirit that I so proudly saw nine years ago now gone?  If it is, why?

Today marks the 13th anniversary of my mother’s death.  She died suddenly one day, without much warning, of what was likely a stroke.  She was 71.

Eight months earlier, she (and I) had lost the other hero in my life, my dad.  As an only child, for me, that was it.  While I had other relatives from her generation and had wonderful relationships with many of their friends, my connection to what I was was now gone, poof, like that.  And I haven’t been able to get it back.

Her name was Ruth McVay and was born on May 5 1924 and grew up in the Smith Hill section of Providence, a mostly Irish and Jewish neighborhood.  She was the youngest of five children of James H. and Lilian Rose O’Neil.  Irish Catholics.

What amazed me was that nothing seemed to damped her spirit.  She lost her dad at the age of 15 and her own mother at the age of 18, yet she spent a lifetime remembering and loving them.  And this young part of her life, of course, meant that she grew up during the depression.

Yet she has that spunk, that indefatigable Irish spirit, that belief in live and those around her – especially in me – that makes life so wonderful.

When she was 19 – a year after losing her own mother – she began working at a construction company.  That’s where she stayed for 53 years.  Fifty three years.  People usually don’t last in the same job for 53 months these days.  She was, at least starting out, the only non-Italian in the place.  That could be a tough thing.

But it wasn’t.  Not with Cardi Corporation and the Cardi family.  They are now my family.  Loyalty was a two way street back then.

My parents married in 1954.  It took them seven years to finally have me.  Throughout my life, they always made me feel as if I was worth the wait.

My mom taught me charity.  She was the one who would walk around the neighborhood collecting for the March of Dimes.

She taught me about me legacy, about to never to sully our name.

She taught me a love for our country – and inspired in me a passion to learn and deeply value the progress of freedom.  That’s probably a major reason why I ended up in Washington DC.

She (along with my dad) taught me the love of children.  Because she loved me so much.  And she was a second mom to most of my friends.

And she gave me an inner strength, a strength that I so needed just a few months later in a most tragic situation.  If I didn’t have that strength, I don’t know how I would have managed.

She was one of the strongest, most passionate, most beautiful persons I’ve ever known.  She was my mom and I miss her every day.

That’s the challenge in life.  Recognizing that life itself is an opportunity.  Nothing is guaranteed.   Luck can play a role.  But the most important thing is to get up and try to accomplish something.  Each and every day.

Set goals.  Make adjustments in your life to achieve those goals.  Build a foundation for the future.

Of course all this is obvious.  It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to recognize.

In 2010, I’m starting a business.  Setting goals.  Laying down a foundation. Making adjustments.

Here’s to a new year.

When you’re an Irish Catholic growing up in New England in the 1960′s and 1970′s, you’re going to have a certain affinity with the huge Kennedy clan.  And that’s true even if you don’t fully embrace the politics.

While I was too young to remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I do remember the collection of books and magazine tributes my mother kept.  Basically, a ton of them.  Then Bobby Kennedy was taken in 1968, and the aura and the weight of the tragedy became part of the fabric.

Ted Kennedy, the youngest and at often times very irresponsible, became the one who would fully carry the mantle.  I’d say that he carried it in a manner worthy of the whole legacy of the family, albeit with a couple of huge scars that many conveniently forgot.

My first memories of him as the lead story are tied into Chappaquiddick.  I still don’t – no one knows – what happened that horrible night.  But I do say that  Ted Kennedy should be judged by that as he should be judged by the rest of his life.

And from what I’m reading that the rest of his life – or at least his work as a Senator is beyond impressive.  I say that as someone who would often disagree with his politics.  In a time of extreme partisanship, he was able to work with members of the other party, Orrin Hatch and John McCain, to name two, to fashion legislation that both maintain his principles and get passed.

Today we’ve got too many hard left and hard right types that seem to want to not give in.  That doesn’t mean that they’re sticking to principle; it means they’d rather score political points to screw the oppositon.

What’s struck me from all the accolades is that so many of people are coming out with stories of Kennedy’s kindness.  Phone calls to people who have a sick relative.  Adding a personal touch to the semantics of daily life.

So, yes, Ted Kennedy is a symbol of a bygone era.  An era where bipartisanship was used to produce a better government and a better American life.  And it’s that type of service that served as the foundation for my own idealism, ironically forged in part by reading and looking at those books and magazines my mother collected so long ago.  They made me proud to be an American (and an Irish Catholic to boot!).

RIP, Ted Kennedy, and thank you for your service to our country.