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Between You and Me

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Grace Kelly in a promotional photo for 'Rear Window' by Paramount Pictures. Wikimedia

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

While England had its favorite Princess Diana, we in America had a princess of our own for years. Many now were born after her death in 1982, but for those of us who remember her, she had terrific charisma. She was Princess of Monaco, her name was Grace Kelly and she came from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Last Saturday marked the anniversary of her death, also like Diana, in a horrible automobile accident on the steep slopes of the French Riviera. She was 52.

Hers was a true fairy tale story until the end.

Unlike many stars of stage and screen, Grace Kelly did not come from a hardscrabble background but was born into a wealthy Irish Catholic family, the third of four children. By all accounts, hers was a handsome household, and she was sent to good schools. Starting her career as an actress at 18, she began with helpful connections. Her uncle was a Pulitzer Prize winner in California and certainly smoothed her way with important introductions.

One well known story about her that came to symbolize her demeanor and rapid rise to success was her early interview with a director. She appeared well dressed and wearing a hat and white gloves. As her mother explained many times in subsequent years to the press, that was what a well brought up young lady wore to an appointment mid-century. Along with her blonde, blue eyed good looks, she carried a finishing school poise wherever she went. That certainly impressed many in Hollywood.

She also impressed the movie world by refusing to sign a long term contract with any of the studios, thus assuring her independence. Initially she found work as a commercial photographer’s model, but then she started getting small parts in movies and quickly moved up. Within a remarkably short, five-year period, she starred in movies with some of Hollywood’s most famous, and virile, leading men, including Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Louis Jordan, Stewart Granger and even did a famous duet with Bing Crosby in the movie, “High Society.” She also won an Academy Award for her role in “Country Girl,” in which she had a non-glamorous lead.

Grace Kelly was, by popular accounts, Director Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite actress and his lead in two of his movies. When she was sent to film “To Catch a Thief” on the French Riviera, she was introduced to Prince Rainier III of Monaco, who at the age of 32 was considered one of Europe’s most eligible bachelors. Monaco was known to Americans as a luxurious tourist resort famous for its Monte Carlo Casino. It was, and still is, a small sovereign principality on the Mediterranean, alongside France and close to Italy, ruled by the Grimaldi family since 1297 but only so long as the family produces an heir.

At the time of her marriage in 1956, Kelly was 26, and to the sorrow of many, retired from her acting career. While she was regarded, since she was an American and an actress, with some coolness at first by the Monegasques, they certainly took her into their hearts when she produced the Grimaldi’s first of their three children in 1957. That insured their tax-free status and Monaco’s continuation.

Not unlike Princess Diana, whom she met shortly after Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles, she worked hard on behalf of charities, especially for children. And according to an interview with her son, Albert, in 2014, Kelly was a “hands-on” mom, keeping their home as normal as possible in the midst of glamorous European life. Kelly even insisted on turkey amid Thanksgiving celebrations, neither one of which was common for Europeans.

I met Grace Kelly when I was an early teenager and infatuated with movies. It was an  evening on a Sunday, and I was peering into a shop window on Madison Avenue in the upper 70s in New York City. I don’t remember what I was looking at, but I became aware that there was someone next to me also glancing into the closed shop. I turned to face the woman, who then turned toward me. I knew that face.

“Are you Grace Kelly?”  I asked, thrilled. She had sea blue eyes and fabulous skin, which was so impressive to me in my early acne years.

“Yes,” she said smiling. “I am.” I noted that she had perfect white teeth.

After a moment, during which I froze, she continued smiling and walked uptown, past me.

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METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

The first time I ate in a restaurant alone, I was propositioned. It happened like this. I was attending the New York Press Association Convention in the Albany area in 1978. We had only recently started the first newspaper, and I was eager to learn as much as possible about my industry. 

I checked into the hotel ahead of my staff the night before the workshops were to begin, dropped my bag in my room, then went to the dining room for some supper.

“One, please,” I said to the maître d’ and was shown to a table for two along the wall. Feeling adventurous, I looked around the room, noticed that there were mostly men quietly eating together, then studied the menu and ordered my meal. It was a new experience for me, and I was enjoying my entrepreneurial role, stepping out in the business world. As I began to eat, a man in a suit approached. 

“Hello,” he said with a grin. “How are you doing”?

I looked up, trying to recognize him. I had already met some of the other publishers but he was not one of them.

He threw down his room key at the edge of the table. “Come up in about an hour,” he instructed with a wink, his grin widening.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m the owner of the automobile dealership across the street,” he appeared to be boasting. 

There was a long pause as we stared at each other some seconds. Then he mumbled something, the grin disappearing, picked up his key, turned and left the dining room. At that point, it dawned on me what he was saying. I suddenly felt alone.

Fast forward to today. The CNN headline reads, “More people than ever are eating alone at restaurants.” It’s almost half a century later, women are totally commonplace in business and eateries are welcoming solo customers. 

In fact, OpenTable was quoted as saying that reservations for parties of one at sit-down restaurants had increased 8 percent in the last year, and that among 2000 of their patrons whom they surveyed in June, 60 percent had dined alone in the past year, including 68 percent of Gen Z and Millennials. Long gone were the days when single diners had to be accompanied by a book, pretend to be a restaurant critic with a pad and pencil beside the plate, or sit at a bar. Eateries are taking their cue and making pleasant and even social seating for solos.

So why this 180 degree change? It reflects societal change.

One explanation offered by CNN is that it’s convenient, with no cooking or cleaning up to do at home. Some are just trying out new restaurants. “Social media has made it easier for people to find restaurants well-suited for a meal alone.” Most telling is that some 30 percent of Americans live alone. People are marrying later and only 37 percent ages 25-39 are married with children. That compared to 67 percent in 1970. This last group is made up of those most likely to be eating meals at home and those missing from this last group are swelling the ranks of the solo diners.

In a recent survey of 1200 consumers, 60 percent felt comfortable eating alone at a casual dining restaurant.

CNN further suggested that some solo diners saw eating alone as ‘me time,’ a way of unplugging and treating themselves in an otherwise busy schedule. It’s also a way to make connections, if one wishes, chatting with bartenders, waiters, and other guests without any social pressure.

You might think that restaurateurs would not like a solo diner instead of a couple, but remember, restaurants sell seats, not tables, and they are finding ways to accommodate  this new trend.

So if you feel shy about going to eat alone, just go to the restaurant of your choosing, and you will find you will be welcomed without anyone caring.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

My last birthday, which we celebrated a couple of weeks ago, has been rough. But I am expecting a turn of fortune for the better, because bad things come in threes, and now I’ve experienced all three. Sharing the miseries generally makes one feel better, so here goes.

The first started off happily enough. 

I had been invited to a wedding reception in Maine. Now any excuse to go to Maine is a wonderful happening, in my mind, and it’s not just for the blueberry jam and the lobster rolls. The state is physically beautiful, with a shoreline that has attracted artists over the centuries. To go there in August is to get away from the heavy heat of summer. It is also no cultural sacrifice since summer stock and art galleries are to be found in many of the small towns and cities. Good museums too.

So we packed up the car and left a day early to have some exploratory time before the party. In our roaming, we met people from all over the country who had come with the same idea about vacationing in the northernmost New England State. When we arrived at our destination, we remembered and ate in a couple of our favorite restaurants and also enjoyed socializing with the 140 wedding guests as well as with others at the hotel over the Bacchanal weekend.

So far, so good, right?

When we returned home, as a result of all that socializing, we found we had brought an unwelcome guest back with us: a tenacious microbe that had taken up residence in our upper respiratory anatomy. Whether bacteria or virus, it has so far withstood two different antibiotic assaults and still troubles us with deep seated coughs. This was alarming because the family was arriving immediately upon our return to celebrate my birthday, and we didn’t want to share the bug. But that was just the first of the three miseries.

The morning of my birthday dawned sunny and warm, so we sat on the wooden back deck and ate breakfast. At one point, I had to blow my nose and stepped away from the table, walking the length of the deck to do so. Turning back, I stepped on one of the narrow boards in exactly the right way to cause it to fall through the deck, along with my left leg. It happened, as they say, like a bolt from the blue, and I fell backwards and screamed. It took two family members to extricate me, and I bear the discoloration and contusions on both sides of my lower leg as it heals. If you should see me around town, that explains my limp and wince as I walk.

Somehow, I was most outraged by the fact that it happened on my birthday. “My” day shouldn’t have started off that way.

The irony of the story is that the carpenter was scheduled to come to repair the deck the Monday after my children were to leave. He had offered to do the job the week before, but I didn’t want repairs to mar the family visit, and besides, I was away in Maine so I had put him off. Whoops, bad timing. A further irony is that I had placed a flowerpot on the bad board to prevent anyone stepping there, but it had been moved just before our return from Maine. Was this an accident fated to happen?

As to the third, I was driving to a dinner date last night when I realized a migraine was about to hit me. It always starts with a visual aura, in which zigzagging lines cross my vision much as, in the early days, a television screen used to break up when there was a disturbance overhead. I don’t get them often, but they are most unpleasant when they are triggered, this time perhaps by the medicines I am taking. 

Three and done, now, I hope. Thanks for letting me vent. 

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

Maine is a beautiful state. It is also a long drive from my house, as we knew before we started the drive. We were heading to a wedding in the Camden area, and the nice thing about going by car was that we didn’t have to fit all the special clothes into a suitcase. We could just hang them up in the back seat, put a few basics into a small suitcase, and we were off.

This was to be a unique wedding in our experience: no ceremony. We were going to party all weekend with relatives and dear friends and a bride and groom that had married the week before.

Guests came from all over the United States to party. They came from the northwest states, the Rockies, the Midwest and the South to wish this modern couple well and witness a truly modern event.

It began with invitations via email. When you consider that traditional snail mail wedding invitations from save-the-date to breakfast the day after run a couple about to tie the knot an average of $530, this was a clever cost-saving move. It should be said, though, that this couple is not average.

For one, they are 36 years old, late to the party, which averages 29 for the groom and 27 for the bride nationally. So they have learned a thing or two about wedding costs.

Second, she is an event planner and was able to put her considerable experience helping other couples spend their money to saving for a leaner wedding, notwithstanding the guest list of some 140.

While we did not witness the solemn event during which they would pledge their everlasting love, we did hear remarks from the siblings, cousin, mother and father of the groom, mother and father of the bride in a kind of spontaneous fashion rather than according to ritualistic assignments. We didn’t know who was to speak next until they gave their prepared remarks.

The setting along the shore was both bucolic and rustic. Indoor activities, like dancing and hors d’œuvres, were in a barn-like structure that boasted chandeliers. The building was set on a long, grassy lawn that led to the beach, and guests enjoyed walking its length to the water and, since it was early evening, watching the sun set.

Dress, as you might have guessed, was Maine Cocktail. Many of the men wore trousers and sports jackets. Not many of the younger men wore suits. The women‘s attire was varied, from long dresses to cocktail length and pants, mostly adorned with flowered patterns and lots of summer colors.

The food was as varied as the dress. Appetizers included pastrami knishes, egg roll hot dogs and crab Rangoon. The Maine course included a buffet, offering brisket, mac and cheese, BBQ chicken, a vegetarian dish and copious salad —  all happy food.

As original as this wedding may sound, it is something of a trend today. Just as dating apps and zoom weddings have become accepted, so have text message and email invites joined the era of digital romance. It is all part of a post-pandemic culture shift toward more casual gatherings. Some folks like it better. As Vogue magazine wrote, “The non-wedding wedding with less traditional clothing, casual food and spontaneous photography are growing in popularity.” 

And of course, this movement is prompted by increasing wedding costs. This more relaxed type of wedding is more affordable than the traditional highly structured wedding of yore. And a lot of fun.

PS: I thank Jeff Crilley, who publishes digitally “The Rundown” for journalists, for sharing the above observations.

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

Perhaps you don’t listen to the radio much, or at all. It’s a great way to turn to the latest news when we are driving in the car, where we in the suburbs spend so much of our time. 

I have my dial set at CBS NewsRadio on 880 AM, and I flick it on whenever I am on the road. I will also listen to the all news station just before I go to sleep at night and right after I wake up in the morning. I am, after all, in the news business and need to be aware of what is happening both in the world and on Long Island. Besides, I have always been something of a news junkie. So you can imagine my disappointment when I heard the latest news from the station.

CBS NewsRadio will no longer broadcast the news 24/7.

The station gave no explanation, but of course I know why: not enough advertising.

The media is being devastated in the pocketbook. It’s not just newspapers that are feeling the squeeze to the bottom line. It is also television, cable and radio. Many people are getting their news from online and social media. But those sources are not vetted and subject to the higher standards of a free press or broadcasting. They often contain biased or even total untruths and can dangerously spread misinformation.

This is a genuine threat to our democracy, which can only exist if people are correctly informed of what is happening around them and thus can support those officials who properly represent them. Even The New York Times, with a huge circulation in New York, has now decided to stop endorsing candidates in the state. 

Again, while the newspaper doesn’t give a reason for the omission it announced, I can fairly well guess why. It takes a lot of extra time and effort to interview candidates for national, statewide and local offices, and then to discuss the results and ultimately write up the endorsements. We know about that. And time means money. 

Yes, endorsements sometimes result in hurt feelings and displeasure on the part of the party or candidates not selected, but that has always been a factor in elections. Unendorsed officials, political parties and the media need each other, and after an election, they resume their sometimes shaky relationship. That, in itself, is not a reason for discontinuing the highly valuable service for readers of publishing the impressions of journalists who cover the candidates on a regular basis and have privileged personal access to them during interviews. “It mattered because it helped keep candidates honest, from taking cheap shots and saying what’s popular instead of what’s hard,” was one observation from a political source. 

The issue is money.

CBS NewsRadio offered a broad range of news categories, from international and national, to state and local information. It also gave health, economic, weather, traffic and sports overviews in a structured half-hourly schedule. All of that readily available news will be missed.

The pressure on news outlets is extreme today. Based on the old fashioned model, news has been supplied to the public freely with the underwriting of advertising support. But that model is broken. 

Advertising has drifted to the much followed digital services like Google and Apple, leaving traditional media adrift. While some advertising continues to flow to these media, not enough does to sustain all the outlets. 

For example, 6000 newspapers used to exist in the United States. Today, that number is about 2500 and are beset with financial woes. The New York Times decided to shift its base of support from solely advertising to the customers of their information, the readers. It installed a paywall for the readers. While that business strategy seems to be working for the NYT, it has so far failed any number of others. 

Community news media are also suffering. “Truth of the matter is, who I elect to the school board affects me much more than who I vote for for president,” was said by one media specialist. We, too, need help. 

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

If you like spy stories, read on. The riveting part about this one is that it is real. The account jumped off the front page of The New York Times to me on Tuesday and speaks to the state of the world today. The recent large East-West prisoner exchange unearthed this tale that could be a streaming series but is reality.

Slovenia, once part of Yugoslavia, is a small country in central Europe. It is bordered by Austria and Hungary on the north, Croatia on the east, the Italian port city of Trieste on the southwest and  it has coastline along the Gulf of Venice. Although controlled by the Soviet Union for most of post WWII, it is now a member of NATO and the European Union. 

It was there that Russian Anna Dultseva and her husband, Artem Dultsev, set up an online art gallery and passed themselves off as Argentines. He started a bogus high tech business. Using the name Maria Rosa Mayer Munos, she organized frequent trips to Britain and even arranged for art exhibitions in Edinburgh.

Tipped off by intelligence in Britain, the couple was arrested in December 2022 in their comfortable home near the capital, Ljubljana, as they were communicating with Moscow, using special equipment that bypassed phone and internet lines.

Their lives must have been constantly tense for the wife and husband. They had two children, a daughter, now12, a son, now 9, and a small dog. They kept to themselves, spoke to no one, and seldom had visitors, according to neighbors in the suburb. The children attended the nearby British International School, and the family spoke Spanish and English at home. 

Although people sometimes gossiped about them, wondering what they were doing there, they were mostly ignored because they did not cause trouble. Their financial filings might have sparked interest, since they showed little income, yet they lived in a three-story house with a small garden and a wooden fence and sent their children to a school that charged $10,000 per pupil. The art they sold was the kind bought in China for little money.

The authorities are still trying to figure out what the couple was up to since their arrival in 2017, although probably not fully activated until war with Ukraine five years later. Large sums of cash were found in the house, causing speculation that they were paying off a network of sleeper agents and other Russian operations throughout Europe. 

Apparently Russian intelligence has an elaborate network of deep-cover sleeper spies trained to impersonate citizens of other countries by Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the SVR. This is, apparently, a real life version of a television series called “The Americans,” that was in turn inspired by the arrest in 2010 of a ring of sleeper spies in the United States.

According to NYT reporter, Andrew Higgins, Russia has a long history of fielding such undercover spies “who burrow deep into target countries over many years.” This is something that President Putin has supported since his days in the K.G.B. These “illegal” spies have no diplomatic cover, no obvious connection to Russia, and suffer the consequences on their own if caught.

Whatever the pair did is considered to have been extremely important because, when they were released, were rejoined by their children, and landed in Moscow, they were greeted by a smiling Putin, who addressed the children with the Spanish words, “Buenas noches.” 

They were also greeted by Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR intelligence agency. If unaware of their parents’ real jobs, as the Kremlin asserted, those must have been two very confused children.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

Here are a couple of tidbits from the news that I think are worth sharing with you. 

First, good news for those who dislike having to endure colonoscopies, which I guess is all of us. A relatively recent diagnostic, this test has proven highly effective against colorectal cancers, but it essentially takes away two days from our lives: the day to prep by cleaning out the colon with a mighty laxative, an unpleasant procedure on its own, and then the afternoon to recover from the anesthesia at the end.

The FDA has now approved a simple blood test for detecting colon cancer when it is in the early stages and most likely can be cured. This is even easier than the fecal sample test, which is in turn easier than a colonoscopy but is not the most aesthetically pleasing.

The blood test, however, also leaves something to be desired. It has a poor record of finding precancerous growths, which a colonoscopy detects. These can be removed before they become malignant, but they have to be discovered.

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the United States, with 53,000 deaths expected this year. My father was among those felled by this disease many years ago, and had he lived long enough to have the benefit of the various diagnostic tests, his life might not have ended as it did. 

The idea is to have as many people over 45 tested as possible, and the blood test, called Shield by Guardant, can discover 87 percent of cancers that are at an early stage. But it only found 13 percent of large polyps. There is a false positive rate of 10 percent. Nonetheless, this is an advance in detection and perhaps an encouragement to be checked. As many as 50 percent of those who should be are not. For more information on this, look up the New York Times story published on Tuesday, July 30 or the New England Journal of Medicine on March 13 of this year.

Another interesting bit of news is the popularity of portable solar panels that cost some $217 each and work by plugging in to an electrical socket to give the home energy. They can be hung over the railing of a balcony or installed in yards and they are taking over the landscape in some towns in Germany. Each panel only produces enough electricity to power a small refrigerator, a laptop or even a portable air-conditioner in a bedroom. More than 500,000 of the systems have been set up, adding 10 percent more solar energy capacity to the country. Two-thirds of those were installed on buildings,“like hanging wet laundry in Italy,” commented one owner.

Part of the incentive for Germany is to move away from their dependence on Russian natural gas. It is also a great satisfaction for the people employing these systems to be taking steps toward providing a better environment. Most of the solar panels are made in China, although some, of lesser grade, are manufactured in Europe. These plug-in systems send the direct current (DC) produced by the panels from the sun to an inverter, which changes it to an alternating current (AC). Then they can be plugged into a conventional wall socket and feed power to the home. There are videos online explaining how these panels work and how to use them. Complete sets, which can be bought in big box stores, include mountings, an inverter, and cables, double the price.

A helpful concurrent development has been the small scale batteries that allow the panel users to store some electricity that can then be used in the evenings or when the sun is not shining. My guess is that before long, we will see those panels appear here.

The last item that caught my eye was about corn. Now, I love corn, especially on the cob. I enjoyed a lot of it fresh from the fields when my family visited relatives in the Catskills in my early years. Turns out, it’s a pretty healthy vegetable, if starchy, that is loaded with fiber. And fiber is good for us. It can even lower colon cancer risk.

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Photo from Staller Center Facebook

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

It may be summer, but the livin’ certainly hasn’t been easy. Events have been like rapid tidal waves breaking against the news shore. First came the fumbling performance by President Biden in his televised debate with ex-President Trump. Just as we were coming to some sort of terms with that, there was an assassination attempt on Trump’s life, with a bullet from a high powered rifle nicking his right earlobe as he began his speech at a rally in Pennsylvania. Millions of dollars then poured into his campaign chest. 

Next came Biden’s withdrawal, after his adamant refusal to do so, from running for re-election. That was quickly followed by Vice President Kamala Harris announcing her bid for the presidency a mere 105 days before the vote. She immediately garnered support from many other Dems and a rapid accumulation of millions of campaign dollars. Speculation about who her vice presidential choice might be now dominates the news. Somewhere in the midst of those events was the GOP National Convention and the announcement of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate.

It’s been a remarkable past month, and as the news has see-sawed between the parties, many have reacted with anxiety. I can suggest an antidote.

Go see the nightly selection of movies at the Stony Brook Film Festival at the Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University. This year is the 29th such offering, and you can judge what Alan Inkles, the director, and his talented staff call “the best in new and independent films.” It is a contest, and we, the audience, decide the winners. There were initially over 2000 entries that the staffers pared down, and until it ends Saturday night, there is still time for enjoying the program. Tonight and tomorrow will feature two movies, each preceded by a short. Saturday, July 27, the closing night, there will be one short, one full length movie and then a presentation of awards to the winners.

To me, movies are magic carpets that take us away from our lives to other worlds. We meet new people in different situations, whose stories may make us laugh or tear up, and we go back home somehow aired out. One we saw was “The Strangers’ Case,” a moving story about the terrified society enduring the Syrian Civil War, as Assad’s forces want to squelch the rebels, and the desperate people who try to flee. We view their plight as they become refugees in another country, strangers in a strange land, risking their lives on rubber rafts over open ocean to get there.

The convenience of attending this festival is top notch. Parking in the adjoining garage is ample and free, and the drive to the Center and back home takes mere minutes and is usually without traffic. Admission is reasonable, and there is pleasure in experiencing the movie with neighbors as a community. And, as in all good movie theaters, snacks are sold in the lobby. I even enjoyed my favorite ice cream pop, an almond-crusted coffee toffee delight, one night during intermission.

Another way to escape the inevitable current events stress is with immersion in a family visit. That, of course, assumes we don’t start talking politics at the dinner table. It just so happens that two of my sons have birthdays two days apart and right around the time the Film Festival opens, and so we get a double distraction from the news. They come, with my daughters-in-law, and we celebrate together.

Each of us has our particular task. One of my daughters-in-law decorates the house with Happy Birthday banners. Another makes her fluffy chocolate-covered cupcakes to host the candles. My job is to provide the food — their favorite dishes, of course — and to fulfill any specific request for a birthday cake. This year’s star selection was a banana cream pie. We happily endured the annual sugar rush that ensued.

As you might guess, after the family leaves, we all go on diets.

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

In some ways, the 2020s appear to be similar to the 1920s. We humans like to look for historical parallels, I think, in hopes of using the past to predict the future, futile as that might be. Call them coincidences between the two centuries, if you will, but let’s look at them and judge if history is repeating itself.

The most obvious is the raging coronavirus pandemic of this century and its resemblance to the Spanish Flu that began in 1918 and lasted into the early 1920s.The flu killed some 50 million people worldwide, with 675,000 being Americans. Covid killed 6.5 million, including 1.1 million in the United States. 

And although no plans existed for coping with a pandemic in 1918, individual cities did implement  school closings, banned public gatherings, issued quarantines and encouraged social isolation. Public health and medical advances have made huge strides, which account for the global change, although the world population has quadrupled in the last 100 years.

We can compare cultural shifts, too. Liberal views toward equality of women and minorities, drug use and sexuality blossomed then, as well as backlashes to these ideas, setting us up for issues that have followed. Marijuana became popular in what was termed “The Jazz Age,” especially among musicians and those in show business. These themes, along with their inherent tensions, are prominently with us today, even if we consider that we have made significant progress in some ways. 

Geographically, more of the population began to live in cities than on farms then, and that holds true for our cities and suburbs now. But the divide today is not so much physical as generational. Social media and video games are the provenance of the young, while older Americans still read, watch TV and film.

The stock market and the financial world are strikingly similar while a century apart. Stocks are roaring today, much as they did in the Roaring Twenties. America’s wealth more than doubled in the decade of the 1920s. But it was a time of immense economic prosperity for upper-class white American men. Most Americans, with minimal wages, only experienced income inequality. It was also a time of the one percent owning a widely disproportionate share of that wealth, some 23.9 percent. 

Sound familiar? And because the wages of the working class were not brought along with that of the wealthy, as consumers, they could not keep up their vital role. Consumers are responsible for as much as 70 percent of the economy. Depression followed. Again, today the top one percent own some 26 percent, and again income inequality is rampant.  

Then there was Prohibition. In 1920, the 18th Amendment banned the making and selling of alcohol. But alcohol didn’t simply go away. It went underground, making petty gangs who transported and sold liquor into powerful forces in the country. Fast forward 100 years and we have drug lords with the same sort of influence over society as a result of similar incredible profits. The legalization of pot is clearly an attempt to learn from the century-old Temperance Movement. The turnaround in policy toward cannabis has provided a big economic boon, as the product has made its way into fiber, food and medicine.

Technology in the 1920s was dramatic and had a profound effect on people’s lives. Fridges, vacuums, telephones, radios, electricity and automobiles changed daily living. Again, major technological innovations, coming along at an exponentially faster pace, are transforming lives today. Consider internet expansion, 5G connectivity, 3D printing and artificial intelligence among most recent debuts. A few people are amassing unprecedented wealth with these marvels. Here we go again with an ever-increasing wealth gap. Plus, both centuries saw workers worried for their job, first with industrialization and now with knowledge. Advancing technology provides miracles and threats. It is also a crucible for social unrest in both centuries.

And then there is transportation. Lindbergh crossed the ocean in 1927. We are on course to fly to Mars in 10 years. Both centuries’ 20s hosted marvels. But the 1920s set the stage for WWII. 

Are we learning from history?

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METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

Aging has become a frequent subject in the media, perhaps propelled there by our presidential race and its elderly candidates. We are all, of course, aging, and we all want to age well. This plethora of information gives us a chance to measure our health against standard values for our age. The statistics are also comforting: we are not alone with our symptoms and infirmities. We want to be equal or better than predicted for our age.

But are we?

I accepted a delivery from the messenger at my front door and reached for my wallet to pay him the charge. But herein lies the story. 

Years ago, I gave up carrying a pocketbook because I was getting lame from carrying everything in there but the proverbial kitchen sink. My doctor, whom I had visited with complaints of an aching shoulder, and who noticed my dead weight tote, pointed out that most men don’t carry pocketbooks and they seem to do fine. Men, after all, keep everything they need for daily living in their pockets. 

He advised me to do the same.

He was right. I observed men carefully at checkout lines in supermarkets and in restaurants. They settled the bills with whatever they withdrew from their pockets and went merrily on their way. They carried their door keys in their pockets, and some even took out a comb occasionally to run through their hair. I reasoned that I could do that, too,  with my lipstick. The doctor changed my life that day. And my shoulder never again bothered me.

Since then, I have bought clothes with pockets and used them instead of a pocketbook for my routine needs unless I am wearing a gown or a bathing suit. So I was wearing shorts that day, when I paid the driver, then replaced my wallet in my pocket. 

Or so I thought.

Later, when I was getting ready to go to my annual dentist appointment, I reached into my pocket to check for my wallet and panicked. It wasn’t there. I could feel the coarse material at the bottom. The pocket was empty.

What had I done with my wallet after I paid for the package? I pivoted to look next to the still unopened box on the front hall table. Nothing. Thinking I absent-mindedly carried the wallet into the living room and put it down next to my reading chair, I entered and found only the day’s newspaper there. Concern mounting, I quickly walked around to the kitchen and scanned the empty counters.

Now I was beginning to panic. If I didn’t find my wallet quickly, I was going to be late for my appointment. It came to me in a flash. I must have brought the wallet to my bedroom. I rushed up the stairs and into the room, searching the bedside table, the thickly padded bedroom chair, the ottoman and even the bathroom. No luck. 

Then I ran downstairs and repeated all those steps, hoping I had missed something the first time around. Still nothing. Wait. Had I looked in my closet, where I had earlier pulled out my sandals? Taking flight, I charged back up the stairs and into the walk-in closet. No sight of the stupid wallet.

Overheated and gasping for air, I realized I was going to miss the dentist. I sat down in my bedroom chair, dialed his number and got his receptionist. Breathlessly I explained my predicament and that I would call for another time. She was sympathetic and told me how often that happens to her with her car keys. I wasn’t mollified. I had everything in my wallet: driver’s license, insurance card, credit cards, money.

I hung up and leaned back into the chair, only to feel a lump against my lower back. What had I left in the chair? Nothing, but there was something in the back pocket of my shorts.

There it was. I had forgotten I had back pockets in these shorts. My wallet was running around the house with me the entire time. Duh! 

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