And Irving Fields, at 90-plus, plays piano nightly at Nino’s Tuscany restaurant, I have a dream that both his and the children’s choir repertoire will include “My Mother’s Eyes.” (heard on Willie Nelson’s Over the Rainbow). And get everyone singing along!
But could that restaurant piano sound be toned down a bit? And maybe add some “specials” so pre-rock era folks who long to hear “live playing” of these inimitable standards, can hear them more often? Sadly, we’ve lost another legend of that incomparable musical era. Phoebe Jacobs, noted publicist and tireless advocate and devoted friend of countless golden-era music artists like Ella, Louis and Peggy, departed this life at age 93, said her son Jerry Fella (May 6 Times). Ah, if only I’d been able to talk with her about saving and promoting this beneficent and magnificent music and hear her speak at the March 25 NYU music conference. But now to get her legacy “out there”—and gratefully remember your mother and mine.

There’s sure a lot to roar about, says this often cowardly lion, when it comes to roaring, as Mike Wallace once did, “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Ah, if only he’d roared against age discrimination; maybe 60 Minutes would have kept him on to show the reality of old age, even for the rich and famous. “I don’t like being old,” he said at 87, ruefully noting hearing aids breaking down again and glasses being too weak to read well, etc.

Obituaries say almost nothing about elders’ last years, but how thankful I was to hear these words from journalist Chris Wallace’s moving tribute to his dad: “I just can’t imagine life without him.”

Almost nothing was said about Dick Clark’s life after his 2004 stroke, something most elders dread as much as Alzheimer’s or other brain failures. Although his speech was impaired, like most wealthy people, comprehensive and ongoing after care was available to him. My cousin Virginia’s severe stroke left one side paralyzed; with little speaking ability, I wonder why her speech therapy was dropped.

Ah, but Virginia does have the spousal and family care that money can’t buy—and how we must roar for this so essential form of caring that even the rich and famous may lack. In part, it’s because communication with a speech-impaired person is so difficult and our society doesn’t teach communication skills in general, let alone the special needs kind.

But hallelujah! The Church of the Epiphany on York has become the first church selected by the National Aphasia Society for its pilot program, which was introduced following last Sunday’s service. Potentially redemptive it is, and not only when speech is limited by stroke or other brain injury or failure.

Aphasia is defied as “an impairment of the ability to use or comprehend words, usually as a result of a stroke or other brain injury.” The Aphasia Society’s mission is “to assist both survivors and caregivers with support and guidance, to raise awareness of aphasia and to help people with aphasia, no matter how severe, reconnect with each other and the community.”

But these communication enhancers help everyone, said the two impassioned presenters, members of The Church of the Epiphany.

To be continued. For now, remember that losing the ability to speak doesn’t mean lost intelligence or human feelings. My dear cousin Virginia managed to convey feeling “so trapped.”

Ways to help “untrap” even the most severely impaired include asking questions with yes or no answers. Speak clearly and fairly slowly, but not as if speaking to a child. Be patient, smile and reassure. Use gentle gestures, Use music. Keep the environment quiet (hear that, Earth Day organizers?). Include those with aphasia in any group conversation. That’s my Share the Talk Club’s first commandment.

Always remember the survivors’ instruction sheet statement: “We are still the same person inside. We are adults. We deserve respect and dignity.”

Again, this applies to everyone with disabilities—not least those caused by aging and innate shyness, conditions that undoubtedly prompt this columnist’s above-average concern for these life and health-enabling communication skills.

So let’s start roaring for all that, by, well, sharing this column, and above all, contacting The National Aphasia Association at 350 Seventh Ave., Suite 902, New York, NY 10001. Call 1-800-922-4622 or visit www.aphasia.org.

Attention has got to be paid!

dewingbetter@aol.com 

“Wind gusts today accelerate the brush fire risk.” This was the Good Friday and first day of Passover morning radio weather warning.

For several years I’ve wished high wind gust warnings stressed the danger to walkers whose balance is not stable, especially in a city with a great many elders. Not that we can gentle the wind, nor should the vulnerable remain homebound, but we can (if enough of us try) make the able-bodied aware of this danger and routinely—yes, even gladly—offer a helping hand.

Whatever happened to Boy Scouts helping old folks cross the street? And how to revive Hubert Humphrey’s core belief that “the impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor”? But we must demand that government make streets safer to cross!

Shouldn’t faith groups be on the vanguard of advancing this down-to-earth, “love one another” type of helpfulness? There’s a lesson from Deacon Susan, who gave me a helping hand to and from the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church Easter service. The intergenerational talk we shared was mutually helpful.

Here’s praying that this kind of helpfulness in one’s own congregation becomes even more of a norm—and in civic groups, too.

Incidentally, this column couldn’t be a stronger advocate for the worth and growth of faith and civic endeavors, but they’re never above needing some candid critiques.

And this whole society needs some consciousness-raising about those wind gust warnings, which last Friday were personally poignant because a valued neighbor had just died from complications resulting from a wind-related fall. And yes, Larry was “up in years” and suffered other health problems, but had it not been for the fall, he likely had, to quote poet Robert Frost, “miles to go before he [slept].”

Ah, and those many miles already traveled were surely enabled by Larry and Georgette’s sickness-and-health, 55-year marriage. Of course, his family will miss him most profoundly, but his neighbors will miss him keenly for his continued concern for the apartment house that in 1972 was converted from rent control to coop status.

Larry was one of the key tenant organizers who managed to get the asking prices significantly lowered. Non-evict clauses did not exist, and Mary, a Holocaust survivor, and widowed Helen, age 80, were among those who most reluctantly moved because they either could not afford to buy or feared future unaffordable maintenance hikes.

An original board officer, Larry was the kind of person that co-op and condo dwellers always hope to elect, one with extensive and common-sense business smarts and a genuine concern for the common good, like keeping down costs without jeopardizing the building’s integrity. This, he believed, kept the proprietary lease’s promise that “the primary purpose of the corporation is to provide homes.”

Although long off the board, his continued interest included letters to tenants recommending board candidates. Whatever the outcome, old lion Larry would at meetings roar (civilly, of course) for or against board actions. He also offered ideas and praise.

Larry and his family were good neighbors—truly neighborly. And don’t we need that.

We won’t forget you, Larry, nor will the building staff for which you had the greatest respect and affection.

And now—whew!—to keep advancing all of the above not-impossible dreams, which can be done if enough of us share them. I hope you will.

dewingbetter@aol.com

contact Bette Dewing at dewingbetter@aol.com

CBS News radio says the “taxi of tomorrow” has a partition that softens the blow to passenger’s heads when drivers make an emergency stop. An emergency room surgeon reported, “Every week, at least two such facial injuries occur.”
Who knew? Not this “traffic safety trailblazer” (Rep. Carolyn Maloney called me that in a 2006 tribute) who only takes cabs in an emergency and says that what’s needed—besides safe drivers—is a cab that won’t move until its passengers are seat-belted. Until then, let’s all tell the driver, “Don’t drive off until my seat belt is fastened!” And, please, won’t somebody up there (Rep. Maloney?) follow my life, limb and money-saving trails?
Ah, but 19th Precinct Officer Liam Lynch did say at the Community Council meeting on traffic safety that the flashlight I have attached to my cane “should be patented.” But how to light up every walker after dark? All-out enforcement of the bike head- and tail light law would give us a fighting chance. As usual, citizen traffic laments at the meeting were often about scofflaw biking, and a number of people attended because the subject was traffic safety.
Among them were 20th Precinct Community Council president Ian Alterman and traffic safety activist Susan Siskind, who shared fears and solutions. Alterman and Siskind are both great letters-to-the-editor writers, and Siskind speaks out most effectively at civic meetings. If only more people did.
Though a bike rider, Alterman is greatly opposed to the law-breaking kind. So here’s to the 19th and 20th Precinct people blazing some trails together to stop all crimes of traffic—kamikaze biking and walking and, the most lethal, motorists failing to yield when turning into crosswalks.
I gave Alterman a copy of Charles Komanoff’s trailblazing manual, Death by Automobile, with statistics and tragic stories to back up this claim. We must never forget how longtime 19th Precinct volunteer Alberta Kenny was killed by a school bus’s illegal turn at York and 79th Street.
Lynch also warned the East 79th Neighborhood Association about bicyclists who swoop in and steal iPhones. Police and civic activist Joy Zagoren also alerted us to covering our cards when using an ATM or bank machine because of a recent string of PIN thefts.
Infinitely more must be learned about the planned replacement of the staircase that connects John Finley Walk with the river walk before the 18-month-long work on it starts next spring. The “staging area” is the 81st Street cul de sac where 45 East End’s service entrance and 33 East End’s front entrance are located.
Loretta Ponticelli, who called attention to heedless kid scooter riders, was able to attend the meeting because Community Council officer Mary Ford could escort her there. The able-bodied helping those who are not is surely a trail to be followed. Photos help, like one of Ponticelli and Ford walking safely together, and of younger Council member Christine Donavan offering me her arm as we crossed Third and Second avenues on the way to our mutual bus stop.
The community relations officer said police will try to keep things “quiet” on St. Patrick’s Day. Helping one another not drink more than two a night is a trail in urgent need of following. And information about open-to-the-public A.A. meetings is an education everyone needs, especially after reading this paper’s story about pub-crawling’s appalling excesses. Intervention is another trail to be widely followed.
Some trailblazing hopes and prayers—not only for St. Patrick’s Day or the Lenten and Passover season.

By Bette Dewing

I clip enough from The Daily News, The New York Times, this paper and sometimes the NY Post, to fill a 600 word bi-weekly column a dozen times over. And on every walk or ride on the bus (what else?), there’s more to report, too much that “doesn’t like me.”

The “doesn’t like me” phrase was coined by Bess, my dear and greatly missed mother-in-law on her 81st birthday. “These eighties don’t like me,” she wryly observed. Bess had the gift of speaking hard truths in a no-nonsense but very likeable way. Her chronic knee-arthritis had deprived her of being able to walk around her Chicago neighborhood. We hear what a hardship automobile country is for elders when they have to give up driving, but far worse is having to give up walking—or in truth, have walking “give up” on you.

About this “doesn’t like me” way of critiquing, lamenting and protesting—it’s something that all of us should adopt!

For example, “I hate traffic law-breaking motorists, bicyclists and heedless scooter riders, walkers and joggers!” would become, “They hate me!” Let’s put the blame where it belongs.

And again we are reminded of how the new city hybrid bus interiors surely do “hate us” with their cramped and multi-level design. We must get our laments in soon, however, because they’re ordering more. This is on the advice of Katie, a representative of the Straphanger Campaign. Let’s share our grievances with Joseph Smith, president of the MTA Bus Company, at 646-252-5872. Katie, incidentally, finds these buses that are operating on First and Second Avenues “really quite great.”

So call Smith and 311 and pressure media and elected officials who don’t see the total picture when going “green.” Most of them haven’t thought about the total bus experience but only “fast,” not “comfortable” or even “safe.”

The Civitas civic group’s rider survey on the new Select Bus System on First and Second avenues also needs feedback. Businesses in the area really “hate” the resulting parking and delivery restrictions from the new system. Although the survey can be found on the web at www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q32XJ5W; knowing that many bus riders don’t have this option, I say also call Civitas at 212-996-0745.

Well, The Times seemed to like my letter about the judge who charged a 4-year-old girl with negligence after she rode her bike with training wheels into an 87-year-old woman, knocking her to the ground. The woman suffered (the right verb!) a broken hip and died several months later, which columnist Susan Dominus said was from “unrelated causes.” Oh?

In the letter, I blamed parents and other adult caregivers for failure to train their charges to ride safely and to be concerned for others sharing our cities crowded walkways. I’m more afraid of children wheeling on walkways than adults illegally wheeling because of youngsters’ “inexperience” and their undeveloped sense of safety. I know of two serious (one ultimately fatal), accidents caused by heedless child-wheelers.

Of course, crossing-the-street danger from adult “traffic law-haters” is far worse. But for the safety of both bicyclist and other city travelers, a city bike should make a nice little sound—little jingle bells. But a very traffic-safety concerned bicyclist friend responds with “It would drive bicyclists crazy!”

But you can’t have it all, Charlie! It’s not a right, but a privilege to bring private wheels into a high-density city, one with much public transit. And prudent pedestrians, who bring only themselves into a crowded city, do have a right for safe and low-stress passage. So do public transit riders.

Cameras will now catch motorists riding in the Select bus lane. How about bicyclists? Of course, that would mean a license plate. Safety First persons would definitely love that! So would some bicyclists.
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dewingbetter@aol.com

By Bette Dewing

West Side Spirit’s “Building Service Workers Awards” section from last week’s edition has great news to live by—for everyone, but above all, for local policymakers. So please read it online or contact the paper for a copy. Read, share, emulate.

No, my column wasn’t in this “required reading issue,” but its “voice in the wilderness” and cries to advance our “village” and caring community, were mightily exampled in the 11 page profiles of the winners.

Share it with young people especially, who recent research finds are becoming increasingly less empathetic and concerned with the welfare of others. Small wonder, given the anti-empathy, the me-first themes that rule media, entertainment and the Internet. And the performer Lady Gaga is the number one Halloween costume of choice this year. Help!

All ages should read these stories where empathy and going the second mile is part of the winners work equation. Doing good deeds is the rule, not the exception or reserved for special occasions or only for certain tenants. All faith clergies could learn how their “love one another” creeds are acted out in their own backyard and could be acted by their congregations and parishes too.

This great believer in uplifting song power (everyone singing!) says, help the cause and revive old/good-timey tunes like: “You’ll find your happiness lies right under your eyes, back in your own backyard” and, of course, everyone’s favorite, “It’s a wonderful world.”

“Love thy neighbor” is sure appropriate with noisy ones being the number one lament to 311. Building workers are the front line of dealing with all manner of, unneighborly behavior and conflict.

Gee, this column didn’t start out to be about songs—but they sure help tell a story. So here’s to songs about building workers who create the village/community we need.

Such songs raise awareness of all the works that building service requires: the mental and physical multi-tasking, and being tactful to the untactful. Their street and building smarts are too little heeded by the bosses. And many have lengthy commutes in all types of weather, in darkness of night and early morning—and subway and bus service keeps getting cut.

These “everyday people” are often more like family than family for some residents, especially, but not only, for the elder ones. But one elder says her next annual greeting card shows a photo of her doormen and super. You get the picture.

Those alone, especially elders, know if they don’t show up at the usual time, the doormen will worry and check. These building workers have an empathic ear and response for the problems that tenants may share—more severe now with lost jobs and foreclosures.

And how we need a song about Rose, a truly neighborly East Side neighbor who fell outdoors two years ago with a second surgery needed. And when she finally, fairly recovered (thankfully she had a close and nearby family), she fell in her apartment. Ensuing weeks of surgery and multiple complications sadly caused Rose’s departure from this life two weeks ago.

Rose would surely head the list of doormen’s “favorite tenants.” She was always so concerned with their welfare, and how upset she’d be about Jose, one of her building workers, when he badly fractured one of his feet when it was struck by a car!

Her empathic and neighborly ways were what so endeared her to the staff and to those neighbors who welcomed “the village” Rose helped to create.

Again, read, share and emulate the Oct. 21 “Honoring the City’s Best Building Workers Award” section stories. And remember Rose.
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dewingbetter@aol.com

By Bette Dewing

“Help!” was the final word of my last column, “Overcoming Heedlessness,” and will be the last word of this column. But how to help and change things? Well, many years ago during the city’s acute water shortage, then-Mayor Ed Koch urged everyone “to talk about it” and act. Experience has taught me to copy media with the letters and calls that I make to elected officials, city agencies and 311.

A really out-of-the-box Rx for our ailing society would be for CNN’s new Kathleen Parker-Eliot Spitzer talk show to understand that there’s more to discuss and bring to light in our country than just politics.

There are pressing social conditions and issues such as the one that cost Spitzer his governorship. Sexaholics Anonymous and other such related groups get shamefully little coverage in our society, which increasingly misuses and abuses sexuality.

Why don’t they talk about the incredibly cruel bullying habits of too many young people, which have anguished some of the victims into committing suicide? A prime example is the story of 18-year-old Rutgers freshman and beloved son, Tyler Clementi, secretly videotaped by classmates, who then streamed a very private act over the Internet.

Thankfully, this highly publicized suicide has sparked international concern and support, but “no known cause” suicides like the 18-year-old Fordham freshman, Jacob Miller, who was found hanged in his dorm room that same week, lack such support. Only the Daily News covered this beloved son’s tragic death.

Let’s urge Spitzer and Parker to bang the drum loudly enough so that every despairing young person will know that their life is bound to get better, and also that if they end their lives, those who love them will suffer forever. Male consciousness in our society must be raised so that they know it’s OK and manly to share personal problems. And we must revive Warren Farrell’s Men’s Movement, which addressed the unjust, false pressures and demands that males face, often silently, in our culture.

Those prevention talks must also stress the Sept. 30th New York Times story “Four Suicides in One Week, Takes a Toll on Fort Hood,” about members of the Armed Forces who have committed suicide.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide among military personnel is four times higher than the national average. Attention must be paid!

In our little neck of the woods, I’d like to see more on the Oct. 5 story in the Times, “Subway Work on Second Avenue Orphans Stores,” by raising awareness for all New Yorkers—and above all, elected officials—to give our support and patronage to the stores and eateries that are struggling to remain open.

Also, we must protest sharp service cuts to bus and subway services and yet another fare hike. A severe hardship for many of us, as well as increased traffic dangers as more private vehicles crowd into our high-density streets. We must demand that city, state and federal government provide the funding to restore these essential services upon which the overall health and safety of New York depends.

In addition, we must report how many who complained to Rep. Carolyn Maloney about the new hybrid articulated bus’ serious flaws were told to list them in letters to be sent to the MTA. Then do another report on how the MTA’s page-and-a-half reply justified every unsafe and uncomfortable aspect of the bus’s multi-leveled and cramped interior.

We should also talk about a jury ruling against an elder woman whose pelvis was fractured in a fall caused by a bus driver’s “jack rabbit” start. And then warn how the hybrids start up that way “naturally.”

Just maybe Parker and Spitz will start a talk-show trend where attention gets paid to some basic, not trendy, human needs and dilemmas.

Send your comments to CNN at 212-275-7800, or visit them on the web at www.cnn.com/feedback/. Help!
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dewingbetter@aol.com

By Bette Dewing

For the record, what I wrote in the recent New York Times’ “Spokes” column (“I strongly fear there are too many bicycles in New York”) left out the next sentence after that: “I mean those who break every law in the books.”

And very much do I fear the increasing number of “private wheels” and walkers that are crowding these finite streets and sidewalks. By far, the safest way to travel is public transit and that has been cut back more and more.

Even when they follow all of the rules, the heedless motoring, bicycling, jogging, pram-pushing, motorized-wheelchair operators and walkers create a stressful environment.

If you remember nothing from this column, make sure and remind our elected officials, who are so scarily allowing the crippling of public transit, that traffic tragedies cost the nation more than 150 billion dollars annually. The human cost is, of course, beyond measure and lasting.

Also remember that elders and disabled persons are the most vulnerable travelers.

I tried to get this message across in a recent training class to 50 newly minted Manhattan District Attorneys, many of them from out of town. As much as I dread public speaking, I agreed to sub for local civic leader Betty Cooper Wallerstein. It took some hours to get the talk together with heavily highlighted talking points. A livery car provided the transit—I also have automobile fear. All pretty traumatic. Am I too sensitive? Yes, but most aren’t sensitive enough!

Traveling down East River Drive to the talk, what did I see out the car window, but a large storage company sign reading: “Storage with Parents Means Having to Visit.”

Anti-parents sentiment is everywhere! So I included, “Do stay close to your folks!” in my very brief address (I always fear taking more than my share of time) to the “Quality of life criminal offenses” class. Well, staying close to one’s family can prevent them.

But back to traffic crimes. They’re too often treated like mere quality of life violations. Often charges aren’t filed even when a traffic tragedy occurs. And quality of life problems that aren’t criminal adversely affect health and cause heart-stopping stress. New York has been called the number one fatal heart attack city.

Noisy neighbors are the number one grievance to 311; more than 127,000 calls have been placed this year alone, says an Aug. 27 Daily News “Noisy Neighbor” feature. Invaluable information on sound-proofing measures and overcoming the heedlessness to blame are found there. Yet this number one grievance is not in the mayor’s noise code. And noisy neighbors can lead to friction, even violence.

On to another topic. While the newly articulated speedy bus’ multi-leveled, cramped interior is not illegal; it can’t help but cause more rider conflict, injuries and costly lawsuits. The only official concern is “trip time,” not rider comfort and safety. I fear the speedier bus plan in high density Manhattan—anywhere, really.

One of my out-of-the-box ideas at the District Attorneys conference was dubbed the “smile crusade,” which tentatively noted: “Makes you feel better, calms the troubled waters. Less crime.”

But how to get these young D.A.s to remember or read my handouts? How to get them to remember that I was the only speaker who needed a steadying hand getting up and down the steps to the podium where I also needed a chair? And to make them realize how few disabled and/or elder persons address, or are able to attend, public forums—making this a social injustice they must surely overcome. And we’ll keep trying. Help!
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dewingbetter@aol.com

“Or as Abraham understands God to have told him, ‘heyay beracha’: ‘Be a blessing.’ That is why we are here.” —Rabbi Harvey M. Tattelbaum.

How do we do that? Well, surely by not over-drinking. —Bette Dewing

The above quote once ran in Our Town’s section for multi-faith clergy homilies and prompted my thanking Temple Shaaray Tefila’s then rabbi for his message.

To my request for some “being a blessing” specifics, he replied (in itself a blessing) that saying “thank you, acknowledging another,” was a specific that was too often missing, even in faith communities.

Every Rosh Hashanah eve sundown, I’m heartened to see dozens of Temple Shaaray Tefila members walk by on their way to John Finley Walk where they symbolically throw their sins into the East River. (Did I miss seeing any wheelchairs or walkers used in this year’s procession?)

But there was nothing to inform me on the holiday about the annual outdoor High Holy Day ritual in the “Paper of Record.” Instead, the above-the-fold front-page photo “heralds” Fashion Week in Manhattan opening, showing a bare-shouldered model on the runway. But her head being cropped from the photo made the feminism I embraced cry, “Foul!”

Indeed “foul” it was for a woman to be exploited as a sex object in general back then. Now woe is us that this once assailed sexual persona has become socially acceptable, even mandated.

Being a blessing means to protest, for example, the Times’ priorities and sins of omission because it’s the secular bible of so many movers and shakers. The below-the-fold front page does address the “fringe pastor” threat to burn copies of the Koran on 9/11 and the attendant “media glare.” But nowhere is it asked if the First Amendment should protect such an abhorrent act, one that threatens the security of American troops and Americans abroad and at home.

A “fringe pastor”? No, a traitor to the faith. The Baptist ministers of my Minnesota youth rightly warned against drunkenness from which all manner and degree of anti-social behaviors could derive.

Unlike tobacco and obesity, today’s big secular no-nos, alcohol deadens the brain’s judgment center (and kills brain cells!). And while alcohol-caused traffic crimes are punished (somewhat), the alcohol factor gets a pass in the weekend murders and other mayhem including domestic violence, mainly reported in the Daily News and the Post.

Slighted was alcohol’s role in the flight attendant’s headlined unorthodox, endangering airplane exit. Reviews of Tony Blair’s bestseller soft pedal his over-drinking regrets. Media downplay Michael Douglas’s confession that drinking, as well as smoking, contributed to his throat cancer, and some of his surely regretted behavior. And indeed, my greatest regret is ever having had “one too many.”

In a NY1 talk program, host and Times columnist, Clyde Haberman, seemed unperturbed by the Nocturalist columnist stating that the reported heavy drinking preceding the accidental falling death of the 17-year-old diplomat’s daughter only briefly spiked under-age-drinking crackdowns.

There could be no greater blessing than for the grieving mother and father to start a real movement against under-age, and over-drinking in general, including reviving the underused intervention process.

Over-drinking’s a frequent factor in the number one grievance to 311: more than 127,000 of them were called in this year against noisy neighbors, reports a must-read Aug. 27 Daily News “Noisy Neighbor” feature. A quiet neighbor is not just a blessing, but also an absolute must. But the city’s noise code has yet to include the countless that obviously are not. (To be continued.)

Whew! Time for some Big Apple smiling, and in faith groups (and schools!)—but not at wrongdoers. They need to be “outed” to give us more reason to smile—be a blessing—“why we are here.”
—
dewingbetter@aol.com

By Bette Dewing

Yup, a New York Times review’s claim that no one’s sensibilities would be offended by Eat Pray Love actually got me out to the movies. Except for a few offending words, I left the theater with a glow which made East 86th Street’s maddening crowds seem almost friendly. Do you ever miss the going-to-the-movie experience where your sensibilities weren’t offended and earplugs and deep pockets weren’t needed?

That glow faded on seeing subway construction fences crowding either side of 86th Street on Second Avenue. I’d just read 14th Congressional District Republican Candidate Dino LaVerghetti’s August 26th op-ed lament “Small-Businesses, The Forgotten Victims of Second Avenue.”

He talks about how with too little government help, so many of the affected small businesses in the area have closed since 2007. LaVerhgetti warns, “As it moves southward, the construction acts like a virtual Grim Reaper, felling everything in its path.”

Infinitely more could and must be done to save small businesses that in a 20/20-visioned world would be landmarked.

Meanwhile, the Home Depot invasion has felled 60-plus-year-old Thalco’s Hardware Store on Second near 76th Street, where this three-generation family business was headed by Jerry Cotler, who also owns the building. Cotler can’t help being rueful,

“Too many who now say how much they’ll miss us shopped a lot at Home Depot,” he said.

You know what we have to do to save our walking distance “everyday need-providers.” Their owners must organize and protest! Big time! The good news is Jerry will move to Florida where his closest relatives live. But, it’s more bad news for neighborhood survival.

Families of origin are the forgotten people in the Eat Pray Love heroine’s desperate search for post-divorce meaning. But that’s always been entertainment’s sin of omission, though a “fair and balanced” representation could not be more just, or more needed.

Dr. Martin J. Zion surely tried when he was rabbi of Temple of Israel of the City of New York. This excerpt is from his Aug. 10, 1980, homily, aired in this paper:

“Our fixation with personal autonomy has been psychologically devastating. The old, in their search for independence, end up alone. The young, isolating themselves from the old, in their yearning for freedom, end up confused, bewildered and depressed by problems which could have been handled so much better if aided by the older generation’s experience.’’

Amen! Blame all manner of social engineers; especially entertainment’s powerful pushing of potentially disabling generational divides.

Rabbi Zion lost his son on September 11 and, as we near that date, my thoughts are especially with the mothers, fathers, grandparents and siblings of those innocents whose lives were so brutally, sinfully, wickedly taken, especially those mourners with too little emotional support. Doubly wounded are those with little contact with their lost loved one’s children when the surviving parent remarries or moves away, either geographically or emotionally.

Mayor Bloomberg, himself a father, surely got this right: “Children who lose their parents are called orphans, bereaved spouses are called widows or widowers, but there is no name for those who lose a son or daughter, because this loss is a loss beyond words.”

And let Grandparents Day (September 12) not be one day of remembering in a year of forgetting. And never forget how human survival so greatly relates to Rabbi Zion’s impassioned belief, including the Fordham U study urging families to stay closely connected with off-to-college freshman boys, who keep their homesickness and other woes too much to themselves. So do men, in general. Beware of alcohol solace.

Rosh Hashanah Blessings to all!