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Leah Dunaief

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

It’s difficult to live in the suburbs without a car. In fact, it’s almost impossible to raise a family here without four wheels. Many people own more than one to accommodate the various members of the household. And the costs of maintaining a car are escalating, threatening to take away from disposable income and the suburban quality of life.

Here are some statistics from a recent article in The New York Times that quotes the AAA. 

The average annual cost in the first five years of ownership is now $12,182. Last year it was $10,728. This jump is a result of higher purchase prices, maintenance costs and greater finance charges. Just to put this in its proper perspective: “That’s 16 percent of the median household income before taxes.” And about 92 percent of households own at least one; 22 percent have at least three.

Here are some more facts. All those personal cars number some 223 million and together add up to trillions of dollars a year in spending. (I can’t even check this because my calculator doesn’t go up that high.) How much, by comparison, was spent on public transportation in 2019 for capital and operating expenses? The answer, while still up in the mind-blowing category, is only 79 billion. Just drop the zeros and you get the point.

Car expenses can be on a par with housing, child care and food for some families. The average payment for a used car is $533, according to TransUnion, while the average for a new one is $741 a month. Multiply that by the number of cars parked in one driveway for a household.  

Some examples of car expenses: monthly payments, which have gone up in the last year, either to buy or lease, gas, registration, insurance, regular maintenance, perhaps tolls, parking, car washes and maybe even an un-budgeted accident. While insurance covers most of that, still there is deductible, perhaps loaner costs, not to mention the toll of stress and aggravation, which we are not even measuring with a price tag.

Now to the other side of the equation. Some people love their cars. They love driving them, washing them, caring for them, even naming them. They love shopping for them.  They love proudly comparing theirs to other comparable vehicles in animated discussions with likeminded owners. Their car is a pleasure they don’t mind spending on because they get more from it than just passage from one point to another. For some, a car is like having another child.

Since I grew up in New York City, where public transportation is, for the most part, excellent, my parents never had a car. I remember when my dad made a careful list of the expenses connected with owning a car and decided we could take taxis all over town for much less. Of course, we never took taxis either. And neither of my parents had a driver’s license. My mother, who loved a bargain, was particularly delighted that one could take the subway for miles, from one borough to the next, even to Coney Island and Rockaway Beach from midtown Manhattan for only one 15-cent token. Having to travel in a car for her would have been a deprivation.

The other issue about cars, of course, is pollution. As we are thinking green, we are aware that automotive emissions are responsible for some 50 to 90 percent of air pollution in urban areas. Wherever they are, motor vehicles are a major contributor to air pollution.Those emissions affect global warming, smog and various health problems. They include particulate matter, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. All of those are toxic to living organisms and can cause damage to the brain, lungs, heart, bloodstream and respiratory systems—among other body parts.

All of that notwithstanding, it is said we have a love affair with our cars.

A scene from 'The Golden Bachelor' Photo from Facebook(ABC/Craig Sjodin)

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Lately, there have been numerous articles about older folks and aging in general. At least, it seems so to me. Remember Martha Stewart on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Probably the one now with the most buzz is “The Golden Bachelor,” the most recent in the long-running series of Bachelor programs shown on ABC.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to acknowledge that I have seldom watched any of the episodes on the so-called reality dating franchise. If I happened to be passing the television in my house, and one was on the screen, I might have been captured for a few minutes, especially by the beautiful settings in far away places, but it always struck me as improbably scripted.

Yes, I know there is some data showing that a few couples who met on the show actually married and went on to have children and make happy family lives for themselves. Good for those few, but it was too staged for me, and I never became hooked the way my mother, for example, was ensnared by “The Guiding Light” and other such radio soaps in her day.

It seems that television, in general, is suffering from a major drop-off in audience viewership, as people switch to streaming services. That is the case, except for older people, those above 60, who are reluctant to give up their favorite programs in favor of Netflix and hulu. So, some Bachelor television executive decided to give that older cohort more to watch, and as a result, we have been introduced to Gerry Turner, from Indiana, who is 72 years old and a widower looking for a new partner.

Now, he is not a billionaire jet-setting around the world but in need of a companion to make his life complete; rather he is retired from the food distribution industry and had a loving marriage that was cut short by his wife’s tragic bacterial infection. A father of two grown daughters and two granddaughters, who enthusiastically support his new role, he is attractive enough to hold the attention of 22 women contestants also looking for a mate. The women are between 60-75, range from divorced and widowed mothers and grandmothers, and in turn are alluring enough to put a gleam in Turner’s eye as he meets them for the first time.

How do I know? I watched the first episode, not on its Thursday night time slot but on a streaming service a couple of nights later. I admit it. I was curious enough to see what love was going to look like for the silver set.

The tone of the program was, if anything, conspicuously wholesome. What could be more wholesome than a mid-Westerner talking about how he lost his middle-aged wife of 43 years, whom he met in high school, and crying on national television? Still, Turner was called, “sexy,” and though the ladies were, for the most part, relatively restrained in their manners, the underlying message was, “Yes, older people can be attractive and still be looking for love.”

There is another message that seems to have emerged, as this quote from an article in The New York Times reveals.

“The prevailing narrative surrounding the growing number of unmarried older adults tends to focus on the risks of isolation and loneliness. [One in three baby boomers is single.] But Sindy Oh, a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, said she was struck by how different dating could be for her older clients because they had a much stronger sense of self. ‘They have accepted who they are, and they are presenting themselves as is,’ she said.”

This seems to fit what is offered by “The Golden Bachelor.” The producers note that when they cast for other Bachelor shows, intended for 20s and 30s participants, they sense that the auditioners feel they have to present a version of themselves that is what the show is looking for. But these women who responded were just themselves and could laugh about their age.

Older people still have hope.

 

Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

This year, when we attended the annual Publishers’ Conference, we experienced high anxiety adventures on both land and sea. Well, in a manner of speaking. 

The gathering of about 40 publishers was held at a venerable hotel in Boston.

We had a nice enough room overlooking some of the downtown, and it wasn’t until the second day that I noted what seemed to be a solitary fruit fly or gnat, perhaps, flying around my head as I was reading. Not paying much attention, I swatted at it, missing it, and continued to read. Later that day, I saw another-or was it the same fellow-in the bathroom? This time I managed to catch him and do him in. 

Deciding to pay attention to what might be turning into a private battle, I stopped at the desk in the lobby on my way to the next workshop and explained the situation to the clerk, who might have regarded me dubiously but nonetheless agreed to send up a combat team to the room. They, too, seemed unconvinced until we spotted two more such bugs hanging out on my pillow. They sprayed, assured us the problem was solved, and left, telling us there were no other rooms. Busy with the conference, I accepted that decision and went on with my schedule.

That night, in the dark, we were bitten. Nervously, we awaited the dawn, and upon our dire accounting to the front desk clerk, the management changed our room. 

Victory at last. And the hotel did graciously extend an accommodation on the tab when we checked out.

But the excitement in our trip was not ended. We were supposed to leave for home Saturday afternoon. Remember what the weather was like this past weekend? Right around the time of our planned departure, a tropical storm with ferocious winds was moving toward the New England coast from the South and another storm was about to batter the shore from the Atlantic, We were between them.

Should we go? Should we stay an extra day? We would be driving into the teeth of the ex-hurricane, even as we were fleeing the storm at our backs. And what about the ferry? We had hoped to sail home on the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry for that last lap, saving ourselves an extra hour-and-a-half drive. Would it be running? If so, did we want to be aboard in the midst of the tempest?

We loaded our luggage into the car, waved good-bye to the several people who told us they would be praying for us, and headed toward the Mass Pike.

To our great relief, the drive from Boston to Bridgeport, while sometimes in a mild rain and under black skies, was an easy and a fast one. The usual traffic on that route had been scared off the roads, the predicted thunder and lightning had not yet appeared, and when we called the ferry company en route, they told us they were still running “for now.”

We waited in the ferry loading area for 50 minutes as daylight ended, it began to pour, and until the next boat arrived. We were rewarded, after they unloaded, by being the first car to board. 

“Was the crossing difficult?” I nervously asked several crew members as I drove on. “It was rough!” came the answer. At least they didn’t sugar-coat, I thought.

The boat rocked, pitched from side-to-side, and anything not tied down crashed to the floor as we powered across the Sound. An occasional loud slam that shook the ferry when we hit a large wave, further reminded us what the water was like in the darkness. We were  ordered to sit; the food concession was closed. Some passengers covered their faces. And then it was over.

“Look, lights!” Someone yelled. We had crossed in under an hour, the fastest in my experience. The overhead door opened in front of us, and as the large ferry was artfully ushered to its dock, we marveled at the skill of the captain.

And then we were home. We slept well that night.

A market scene in Marrakesh, Morocco. Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

A number of calamitous events have dominated the news lately: floods, fires, hurricanes, cyclones. They have caused thousands of deaths around the globe in places that are remote for us, and as such, inspire our compassion and even our financial aid, but they are not particularly part of us. We are not personally connected to them.

An exception for me was the recent earthquake and its devastation in Morocco. It breaks my heart to think of those welcoming people lying dead in the streets of the picturesque rural Berber villages, the quake stealing lives, destroying families and homes in its wake, continuing still, with its deadly aftershocks. At least 3000 dwellers are estimated to have died in the mountains southwest of Marrakesh. 

I visited Morocco some years ago and found it to be one of the more exotic and memorable of destinations: the calls to prayer five times a day, the women’s total cover-up abayas with only their eyes showing, the dramatic Atlas Mountains crowned with snow in the distance, the wonderful food, especially tagines or casseroles, the conspicuous patriarchy where only men sat in the coffee houses smoking and laughing, with few women on the street, the special sunlight, the bold colors and omnipresent scent of spices, the squares filled with vendors in hooded djellabas tending their stalls of foods and crafts. Also I saw water carriers, musicians, snake charmers, along with an acrobat and an animal trainer holding a colorful beast on a leash.

A special standout was the ancient city within Marrakesh, with its red walls constructed from the red sandstone and its Medina, a concentration of narrow alleyways, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The City was founded in 1070, right around the time the Normans were conquering England far to the North and west. Marrakesh grew rapidly and became a cultural, religious and trading center. Eventually sultans built fabulously decorated palaces, sumptuous mosques, citadels, casbahs and monuments, richly decorated with Moorish calligraphy, geometric shapes and ceramic tiles, some of which were visited before the quake. Who knows now what remains?

There is something about the sunlight in Marrakesh that has attracted artists. Colors seem more intense. Delacroix, Matisse and Dali, among many others, spent time there, painting behind the walls. Churchill loved to secret himself with his paints and brushes, creating what has been considered quite good art. One such painting, “Sunset over the Atlas Mountains,” was painted in La Mamounia, a beautiful hotel, two-centuries old but dramatically updated, with a 20-acre magnificent garden, where I, too, stayed with my tour. Is it still standing and intact? 

In Morocco, residents drink mint tea. It’s surprisingly refreshing from the heat during the warmer seasons, and it was a mark of their hospitality that a glass of the tea was offered as one entered a store. Our tour was led to a rug emporium, and sure enough, we were given glasses of mint tea. I accepted mine gratefully and sat on the sidelines as salesmen rolled out rugs for many of my companions. I did not need a rug, and so I watched as the scene unfolded.

“Be careful,” our tour guide whispered in my ear. “By the third mint tea you will buy a rug.”

I laughed. I kept accepting refills. We were there for perhaps an hour when the guide summoned us back to the bus. I was intrigued by the couple in front of me, who had been negotiating the price with the salesman for a dramatically colored large rug. Now they turned away as we all got up to file out. Panicked, the salesman called out after them the price they had been offering, but they didn’t turn back. 

Desperate, he saw me eyeing the rug. “Would you like to buy?” he entreated.

“How much?” I asked. He dropped the price even further.

I bought the rug. It sits on my living room floor, connecting me to Marrakesh, which will never again be the same.  

METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

My favorite meal of the day is breakfast. Now I’m not one of those happy people who awaken with the dawn, but I will say that my first thought after I open my eyes is usually breakfast. It used to be that I had to get up and walk the dog, but that’s history. Now, as soon as sleep is over, I am hungry.

Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I don’t eat past dinner, and that my dinner usually ends by 7:00 p.m. or even earlier. That means I have been fasting for at least 12 hours, maybe even 14, so my lustful appetite would seem valid. I start thinking about what I am going to make for breakfast while I am brushing my teeth. It’s almost never what you might expect.

I guess the traditional American breakfast is eggs and toast, and maybe some sort of meat, like bacon or ham. Or people start the day with cold cereal and milk in a bowl or hot oatmeal, with maybe some fruit on top. That’s if they have time to fix breakfast. 

Many people just run through the kitchen, put on their jackets and rush out the door to work or to school. Perhaps they might snag a roll or a piece of fruit on the way out, maybe even a cup of coffee if they remembered to plug in the pot the night before and to push the button on the way to the bathroom in the morning. Incredible as it sounds to me, I even know some people who eat nothing until dinner—a big dinner that then stretches right up to bedtime.

So what do I eat?

I might eat an egg with some veggies thrown in if it’s a weekend and I have time to cook. I particularly like English muffins with Irish butter and one of any number of different jams I harbor in my fridge. More often I will heat up some green lentil pasta that I prepared in advance, top it with low sodium spaghetti sauce and a couple of spices, and munch away. (Don’t Yuk! Just try it.) The green lentil flour, which comes in a box, is loaded with good nutrients: 11 grams of fiber; 25 grams plant-based protein. My favorite shape for the flour is rotini; it makes me think I am eating wheat pasta. And by the way, it’s made in Italy.

Or, I might finish off the previous night’s leftovers. That could be anything from shrimp, which I love, or a kind of white flaky fish like branzino or salmon. Now you might be taken aback by the nonconformist choices I make in the morning, so I will explain. I have had the pleasure of traveling to a number of different countries and eating their traditional breakfasts, so I am not in the least put off by eating my leftover sushi that I brought in the previous night. It makes me think I am in Bali.

On rainy mornings, I have the urge for pancakes because my mother, when I was a child, often made silver dollar pancakes for breakfast when it rained, especially if it rained really hard. The wonderful smell would fill the kitchen and bring us quickly to the table. I never put butter or syrup or powdered sugar on them; they were just delicious straight from the pan. I confess, though, that now I hardly ever have time to make them. I’m too busy looking for an umbrella.

Instead I grab a smoothie, filled with frozen fruits and dark green leafy vegetables, like baby bok choy and baby kale, that is pre-made in the refrigerator and carry it to my office, where I sip it through a straw for a couple of hours.

Another unorthodox breakfast that I enjoy is a salad, one with cucumbers, tomatoes, pears and walnuts, perked up with a little balsamic vinegar. I don’t care for iceberg lettuce much, preferring romaine and mixed greens.

I have learned that only some 35 percent of Americans eat breakfast every morning. How about you?

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

A book whose subject caught my eye this week is, “Young and Restless, The Girls Who Sparked America’s Revolutions,” by Mattie Kahn. The story appeared in the New York Times Book Review this past weekend, and I read of these female exploits, marveling at the young ages of the subjects.They were indeed girls, most in their teens or younger, not yet women by today’s standards. Now my mother, who was born in 1906, was only 11 when she began her work life, a graduate of 8th grade with a further degree from a bookkeeping school. While I have long been amazed at that, these stories begin with the Lowell mills girls in 1836 and Harriet Hanson, 11, who led a “turn-out” of 1500 young women refusing to work.

I was not familiar with the Lowell mills history. It seems Francis Cabot Lowell was impressed by the textile factories he saw in England and returned to Massachusetts to build similar workplaces and participate in the Industrial Revolution. For the most part, the workers were girls and young women. The early mills were a kind of “philanthropic manufacturing college,” to which such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe came to lecture. These were the first places where girls, who were not the daughters of rich men, and hence not at finishing schools, could gather and learn as they worked. It was here, at a factory in Lowell, Massachusetts, where the first all-female-staffed magazine in American history was started.

When the girls were informed that their pay was to be cut, they went on strike. Hanson organized the walkout with what she later called “childish bravado.”

The book tells stories of many more such young women—girls really—protesting in different circumstances. “There’s Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, who led 17,000 people up New York City’s Fifth Avenue on horseback in the 1912 march for women’s suffrage.” Anna Elizabeth Dickenson was an abolitionist orator in her teens and became the first woman to address the House of Representatives. Heather Tobis (Booth) at 19, “founded the legendary abortion referral service Jane out of her dorm room. Clyde Marie Perry, 17, and Emma Jean Wilson, 14, integrated their Granada, Mississippi schools in 1966 and then successfully sued to stop expulsions of pregnant students like themselves.”

Perhaps the girl who interested me most because she overlapped with my life was Alice de Rivera, dubbed by the New York City media as the “crusader in mini-skirts.” She was 13, had scored on a citywide test in the 99th percentile in math, but was denied the right to take the entrance exam to Stuyvesant High School in 1969 because she was female. She and her parents, Joseph, a psychology professor, and Margaret, an educational therapist, lived in Brooklyn at the time, and the high school she was supposed to attend did not have appropriate classes for her further education. Stuyvesant, one of the best high schools in New York City, did.

Now I am familiar with Stuyvesant. I went to the all-girls Hunter College High School in the 1950s, and we would periodically have “socials” with the Stuyvesant boys. They were more like milk-and-cookie gatherings, but nonetheless at one of them I was asked out on my first date.

Alice de Rivera met with the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, where she was introduced to Eleanor Jackson Piel, who took her case pro bono. Fighting educational sexual segregation was a radical idea at the time. Most specialized schools and even the Ivies were all-male. But on the grounds that it violated Alice’s 14th Amendment of equal protection, they filed a lawsuit on January 20, 1969 against the state’s Board of Education. She received a lot of publicity, and by May, the Board voluntarily repealed Stuyvesant’s sex restriction. It was a cultural precedent that broke barriers.

What happened to De Rivera? She and her family moved out of New York City, so she didn’t go to Stuyvesant. Today she is a physician, living on a farm in Maine with her husband, a retired math professor, and working at a clinic she started, helping Lewiston’s large population of Somali refugees. She also works at another facility that serves people who can’t pay for their medical care.

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

You have probably heard about a police raid on a local newspaper in a small Kansas town.The act was so egregious that it prompted emails from friends around the country who were concerned about us, even though the event happened some 1500 miles away.

We should all be concerned.

To fill you in, local police and county sheriff’s deputies seized computers, servers and cellphones belonging to the seven-member staff of the Marion County Record. They also searched the home of the publication’s owner and semiretired editor, along with the home of a city councilwoman.

This ostensibly had to do with how a document about a local resident got to the newspaper, and whether that person’s privacy had been violated. But according to the editor, the real issue may be tensions between the way officials in the town are covered by the paper. Newspapers, making up what has unofficially been termed the Fourth Estate, after the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our government, have long enjoyed legal protections in their news coverage “to speak truth to power.” Newspapers historically are considered the watchdogs of government, informing readers about the actions of public servants, which creates what one press association director described as “healthy tensions” between the two.

While the Record has a circulation of about 4000, its owner has had a long career in journalism, both as a reporter on a daily and as a professor at the University of Illinois. His father worked at the Record for half a century before him, rising to be its top editor, and the family eventually bought the newspaper, along with two others nearby, according to the New York Times in an article this past Monday. 

“On Sunday, more than 30 news organizations and press freedom advocates, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, signed a letter from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to Mr. Cody [chief of police] condemning the raid,” according to the Times.

The issue in question had to do with the copy of an official letter sent to a Record reporter privately via Facebook that instructed a resident how to go about restoring her driver’s license after a drunken driving citation. That resident was now seeking approval from the City Council “to operate a liquor-serving establishment.” The letter had been given to a city councilwoman with the apparent intent of affecting the decision, but the newspaper owner denied sharing that letter with the councilwoman. Meanwhile the resident is in ongoing divorce proceedings, she pointed out.

So was the letter forwarded by the newspaper? Was the resident’s right to privacy violated by the newspaper? Apparently that was the nature of the search. And while news media are sometimes subpoenaed by government officials to supply interview notes and sources, “The search and seizure of the tools to produce journalism are rare,” according to the NYT. And while”federal law allowed the police to search journalists when the authorities have probable cause to believe the journalists had committed a crime unrelated to their journalism…[not when] the alleged crime is gathering the news,” according to the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Needless to say, the newspaper is having great difficulty trying to publish its next edition without its computers and servers that contain other filed stories, pictures, layout templates, public notices and ads.

Newspapers have become fragile entities. Since the arrival of the internet, many of the advertisers that traditionally supported newspapers have moved away, forcing newsrooms to shrink in size and even to close entirely. Some 2200 local newspapers have disappeared in the last 20 years, creating what are called, “news deserts” across the nation. From 2008-2020, the number of journalists has fallen by more than half. 

But communities are vulnerable to ill-conceived and rapacious actions without news sources to inform and defend them, as well as to educate, entertain and tie them together as a hometown.

METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

My oldest grandson is now engaged to be married. At twenty-eight, his timing is altogether appropriate, but it is a wonder to me. The idea of having a grandchild tying the knot, when I am only 35. All right, 45. Um, 55? Oh, never mind. You get the point.

Further, I am intrigued by how the couple is going about the process, especially in contrast with how my husband and I wed. I’ll explain.

Not long after the initial phone call from my grandson telling me the exciting news of their engagement, I was told that the wedding was planned for two years hence. That was, of course, fine, but I couldn’t help but marvel compared to what my husband and I did. 

We informed my astonished parents that we wished to marry in six weeks. My husband-to-be was moving to a new apartment at that time, and we thought it would be romantic to start our lives together then. In those days, couples decidedly did not live together until after they married.

My grandson did the traditional thing, getting down on one knee. The scene, though, was anything but traditional. He managed to position himself onto the floor of the Tomorrowland People Mover car as they went through a tunnel at Disney World, one of their favorite rides, and popped the question.  Her parents were in the car behind them, and as she witnessed what was happening, her mother enthusiastically screamed with delight.

My husband told me he loved me and asked me over the phone to marry him. I never did get an engagement ring. It should be explained that he was at school in Chicago at the time, and I was in Boston. 

We had a wedding in New York City, where I grew up, with all the trimmings, including bridesmaids, groomsmen, a full ceremony, music, hors d’oeuvres, dinner, dancing and 175 guests. I wasn’t even there for the planning. I was working in Boston right up to the weekend before the event. My mother managed it all. And after the wedding, she practically collapsed for a month.

I did come back for a wedding dress fitting. It was all done efficiently. My mom and I went to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where there were multiple shops that took care of such needs, and climbed the brownstone stairs to the one recommended, I don’t remember which one. I picked out the material, style and trimmings I wanted, measurements were taken, and presto! The day before the wedding, it was ready, fit perfectly, and I wore it, long train and all, the next day.

My granddaughter-to-be, on the other hand, had the great pleasure of trying on many and ultimately picking out her dress with the company and input from her mother and the groom’s mother. Photos were sent, via cell phones, to others tuned in. It must have been a leisurely outing that provided a joyful lifetime memory for all.

There is to be a bridal shower brunch to honor the bride-to-be back in the place she grew up, with her many friends and loved ones in attendance. That, of course, wasn’t an option for us, given our tight schedule. I don’t think it even occurred to me, more is the pity, because such events are part and parcel of the delicious anticipation for my grandchildren.

Her friends put out a request for favorite recipes to be sent, with the plan of providing the couple a Friends and Loved Ones cookbook. What a clever idea. I only knew how to cook breaded veal cutlet, mashed potatoes and canned peas, which I practiced on my roommate each night for three weeks before the wedding. And we weren’t registered anywhere for gifts. We just opened the envelopes and counted the money immediately following the wedding that night on our flight to Chicago.

There will undoubtedly be a bachelor party. In fact, my grandson just returned from one for a dear friend that involved a three-day cruise to Mexico. Yes, Virginia, times have changed. And why not?

Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Who could forget the frantic scene of Berliners tearing down the Wall? That one action marked the beginning of a changed world.

It was 1989 when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. Officially the end of the government came on December 26, 1991, with the 15 consistent republics gaining their independence, but the disintegration had been apparent for some time. Berliners were able to tear down that Iron Curtain, symbol of East-West separation and the Cold War, because the Soviet soldiers simply walked away from their posts. 

Why did they walk away? 

They hadn’t been paid in many months due to acute economic problems, food shortages and widespread political upheaval in the Soviet Bloc and in East Berlin, the Communists’ foothold in Western Europe. Government and its systems were bankrupt.

Yes, the West had won the Cold War. But as its name indicated, it was not a military war. It was an economic war. In trying to globalize Communism, the Soviets had spent themselves into insolvency.

Once again, the West seems to be locked into a struggle with Russia, the successor government to the Soviet Union. This time there is a military, “hot” war, but the economic war remains. And the Economic War may ultimately dictate who wins. The western allies have been sending hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of armaments into the battlefront of Ukraine, and the Russians have been doing the same, not only militarily in the Ukrainian war front but also within their country. 

The internal toll was revealed in a front page article of The New York Times this past Tuesday. The domestic economic fallout of the Russian effort is enormous. There is a state-led spending boom that has propped up the Russian economy from the effects of far-reaching sanctions imposed by western countries. As a result, this economic boom has helped maintain popular support for President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian war effort. But Russian economists have warned of a threat to the country’s financial stability. Can their economic high be sustainable?

Russia’s expanding military production and the increased funding for Russia’s poor in the form of higher pensions, salaries and benefits like subsidized mortgages, particularly offered in marginal regions with the most military recruits, is fueling inflation. Lending by the government has stimulated the economy and kept down social unrest. Mortgages supplied by Russia’s top 20 banks rose 63 percent in the first half of this year, with one out of every two mortgages subsidized by the state. Soldiers’ salaries are much higher than average local earnings, and families of those who die get payments that can be greater than their annual earnings. And with 300,000 men called up to fight, worker shortages are extreme and salaries have risen, furthering inflation.

Even as Russia’s federal government has spent almost 50 percent more in the first half of this year than in the equivalent period in 2021,  the country’s energy revenues have fallen by half.  “Sanctions have forced Russia to sell its oil at a discount and European countries slashed purchases of Russian natural gas,” according to the NYT. And hundreds of thousands of predominately white collar workers have left the country in protest of the war or to avoid the draft, an additional loss to earnings.

So once again, money is pouring out, and not just from the Russians and their allies. We, too, are spending prodigious sums to maintain the war effort, and doing so in the aftermath of previous huge outlays to sustain Americans during the pandemic. Our economy seems strong, for the moment, even as our growing national debt seems to bother few officials. 

The war in Ukraine has become one of attrition, with Russia and its allies waiting out the American-led coalition in the belief that we are a short-term nation in our war endeavors and will withdraw sooner or later. While that may well be, whoever withdraws first may be the side in financial ruin.

'The Capture of John Andre' by John Toole. Wikimedia Commons

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

But for the fact that three militia men were playing cards and having lunch in the bushes alongside the Albany Post Road south of the West Point fort in 1780, we might be speaking English with a British accent. 

It was down this road that British Major John Andre came galloping, and when the three stopped him near Tarrytown, N. Y. to ascertain his business, they searched him and found detailed maps in one of his boots. It was key information about the fort, and the men realized the rider was a spy, trying to get behind the British lines in New York City.

As it turned out, Andre was coming from a meeting with Benedict Arnold, the commander at West Point, who was about to turn over the fortification to the British and join them in the Revolutionary War. The fort was a most important installation, blocking the British garrisons from moving up the Hudson, splitting New England from the rest of the colonies and connecting with their troops in Canada. This strategy could well have ended the war. 

The British troops had tried to overwhelm the fort but failed. There was a British ship moored in the Hudson, and when Arnold got word that Andre had been captured, he boarded the ship and crossed over to the other side of the river where the British were camped, making his escape and marking him for all of history as a traitor to his country.

The Fidelity Medal

Andre was recognized as an important figure and turned out to be head of British intelligence. The Colonists questioned him in detail. The map and information he carried would have allowed the British to enter and capture West Point. Andre confessed his role and ultimately was hanged as a spy, much as Nathan Hale had been four years earlier.

During the time Andre was held prisoner, he succeeded in charming his captors. A well educated man, of keen wit and culture, he was appealing to the upper-class American officers, including Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette, of the Colonial Army for his patriotism to his country. Ironically, we have heard of “Poor” Andre and Benedict Arnold, but most of us have never heard of John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart, the three who captured the Brit. That is, until now.

Van Wart and the other two were farmers in their early twenties and were part of a local militia attempting to protect the much harassed residents sandwiched between Washington’s forces in the Hudson Highlands and the British army in Manhattan. That is why the three were stationed along the dirt road. Andre tried to bribe the men to release him, but they handed him over to American forces. 

The men “were recognized by the Continental Congress with hand-wrought, silver military medals, now considered to be the first ever awarded to American soldiers,” according to a New York Times article in last Saturday’s issue. And while two of the three medals were stolen from the New York Historical Society in 1975 and never found, the third was held by the Van Wart family for over two hundred years and has now been donated to the New York State Museum in Albany, where it can be seen starting in the fall.

The three men met with Washington, were given the medals, and each a plot of land and a lifetime annual pension of $200, which was then a “princely sum.”

Van Wart died in 1828, and the medal was passed down through the generations of his family until it reached Rae Faith Van Wart Robinson in White Plains. She was inordinately proud of her ancestor and kept the medal in a shoe box under her bed, taking it out to display at historical events. She never married, had no children or siblings, and when she died in 2020, she instructed that the medal be given to a museum where it could always be viewed and the story told. The front of the medal prominently bears one word: “Fidelity.”