Always a lot to talk about, and though I do the talking here, thankfully some of you email a response. (Response is so important!) And, much as I wish cyberspace hadn’t been invented (TV was bad enough), I worry that many in the 70-plus age group are being left out of society’s mainstream even more because they don’t have access to the internet.

Overcoming “being left out” takes a whole lot of doing, so let’s do some immediate good and help prevent a whole lot of falling. I’ve just learned www.icanwalk.com or 1-888-667-4046 can tell you about the revolutionary Sure Step cane that strangers stop me on the street to ask about, as I myself use it.

When I was waiting to get into the Vince Giordano Jam Session at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, Jane Russo of the American Heart and Stroke Association stopped to ask about the cane, remarking that a family member could use the extra stability.

So check it out, and—oh, how good for the heart and whatever ails us (especially those allergic to post-swing-era music) are the Sidney Bechet Society concerts? Special guest, music legend George Wein, now 82, needed a helping hand getting to the piano at the Giordano Jam Session, but not in getting his moving musical message across. Songs about elderhood are also needed; about family, friendship, love and even the “blues.” (Such liberating themes also belong in 85-year-old Barbara Cooke’s repertoire.) Check out www.sidneybechet.org for information about the November 5 “Sidney Bechet and the New Orleans Trumpet Greats” concert.

Here’s to making this happy pre-rock-era music part of election campaigns’ musical mix, along with bipartisan promises to get it back on the charts. And here’s to making elder people visible on those campaign trails and platforms—especially those needing canes and walkers and wheelchairs. But where is that first grandmother who takes such incomparable care of the first daughters? And where are the challenger’s elders? They must exist, since Mormons are known for leading healthy lives.

But critical elder problems are woefully missing from mainstream view; how many Yankee fans knew Joe Girardi’s dad suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for many years before his recent departure from this life? And this only made the news because his son, “with a heavy heart,” managed the first game of the ALS playoffs only 24 hours later.

And here’s to mainstreaming this grieving son’s tribute to Joe senior for teaching him “the value of hard work and making a living, and being a good husband and father.” He added, “If I could be half the father and husband he was, then I’m doing something right.”

That’s all-important, but now this son must teach the world about being, yes, a good offspring, but above all, describe the suffering, like no other, caused by this dreaded disorder, with no known cause or cure or truly effective treatment. And protest how it’s often hidden with even a stigma attached! Is this why so little was said about the late George Steinbrenner’s failing brain power? Attention must be paid.

With Halloween upon us, we might also pay attention to the spiritual elements of the holiday. There’s comfort and hope in this passage from the Litany of Commemoration that Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church used to print in its All Saints Day Sunday bulletin: “For dear friends and kindred ministering in the spiritual world; whose faces we see no more but whose love is with us forever … for every hallowed memory and our abiding hope that where they are, we shall be also.”

dewingbetter@aol.com

Still hoping clergy who blessed the animals on St. Francis of Assisi’s birthday will pick up on the following little poem of mine. Set it to music; it has a lot to do with love.

Why can’t a people (sic) be more like a dog or cat?

They don’t care how old, pretty or witty you are,

They’re always there for you

Why can’t a people (sic) be more like that?
Add a verse about the need to overcome age apartheid. Old people, who especially need these animal friends, should be able to have them.

Music has power … and Glen Campbell’s concert at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 13, which will show how he and his band perform as brilliantly as ever despite Campbell’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease, needs utmost support. So does pushing for “sing-along” places, so that this therapy to treat and prevent the disorder is widely prescribed and provided. Check out Charles Gourgey’s Music is Hope website.

And now the strongest of words, music and deeds are needed to save the city from the mayor’s proposed Midtown zoning change to permit a veritable jungle of huge new office towers to replace many grand old human-scaled buildings like the Commodore Hotel. All for corporate business—you know, with no thought for the city’s livability level or still incomparable skyline. Concerned preservation and civic groups and elected officials like Councilman Dan Garodnick need massive support. Garodnick warns about “the impact of thousands of new office workers … with implications for transportation, sanitation and public safety.”

Distinguished writer, playwright, lyricist, native New Yorker and longtime friend Sherman Yellen urges young people to also beat this drum “to save this city from this horrific cultural vandalism. The old stepped-back skyscrapers are as much a part of our heritage as the leaning tower is to Pisa. And taking the sky away from our 1930s skyscrapers is an insult to this great architecture, which requires the sky and cloud setting to show off its beauty.” These and Yellen’s other concerns with the obvious overcrowding and stress effects, deserve major attention—and a song!

On a smaller scale, but significantly altering a neighborhood landscape and public walking conditions, are the controversial designs for the replacement of the deteriorating stairs at East 81st Street and the East River walkway. The American Disabilities Act requiring wheelchair access means a more elevated two-block-long ramp with 8-foot-high side fencing. Numerous Community Board 8 members and some aware neighborhood residents find this design too conspicuous and “industrial.” They believe cyclists must be required to walk their bikes to protect pedestrians. Surveillance cameras are also requested for a walkway more hidden from public view and without an “emergency exit.”
The ramp replacing the aesthetically pleasing, wide concrete steps connecting the John Finley walk and the East 81st Street cul de sac will wind further into the area where 33 East End’s front entrance and 45 East End’s service entrance are located. How will this, and also the year and a half construction operation, affect these neighbors?
The East 79th Street Neighborhood Association, a key player in saving the City & Suburban Homes complex, explores all this at the Thursday, Oct. 11, public meeting starting at 6 p.m. in the City University building at 80th and East End.

I’m all for doing a Paul Revere, going around the nabe singing that old ballad reminder, “You know your happiness lies right under your eyes, right in your own backyard.” And adding, “Your unhappiness too, if you don’t demand the most visually pleasing and safest design possible!”
dewingbetter@aol.com

Bette Dewing

NEVER LET ANYTHING SEPARATE YOU FROM THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE

Or, as Abraham understood God to have told him, “Heyay beracha,” which means “be a blessing”—that is why we are here. Timeless counsel for all people from Rabbi Harvey Tattelbaum’s “A Thought for the New Year” homily published in this newspaper. And no doubt, his Temple Shaaray Tefila sermons offered many a lesson on being a blessing, including not letting anything separate us from the people we love.

This column is dedicated to Janie Villiers, my unofficial goddaughter who departed this life on Aug. 26, a victim of breast cancer. Somehow she seemed so indestructible, such a life force, that I did too little to overcome a difference that separated us so much this past year. Never count on cancer, or anything else, being in remission.

First, there was our blessed shared history; Janie’s aerospace scientist/race car designer English father met her mother, my best friend from Minnesota, at St. Thomas Church in New York (Google mistakenly says Janie and her brother are children from their father’s first marriage). And I was regarded as Janie’s godmother because, despite geographic separations, our families remained close through real mail and phone calls.

Her mother died tragically young of cancer, and then there was Cordon Bleu culinary school and catering work for New York showbiz celebs. Then she returned to London to care for her father. And maybe her hyper-independent spirit plus an intractable vision problem kept the beautiful, gifted and charismatic Janie from marrying. She so wanted a child.

Thankfully, generation gaps didn’t exist for Janie, and we remained “close family” through yearly visits but mostly through frequent and lengthy phone calls which often financially imprudent Janie said were well worth the cost. She was right, and although never at a loss for words, she was also an empathic listener and wanted to know how we introverts really were. And when there were problems, she never said, “Look on the bright side!” That alone makes one feel better. We both had a sense of outrage and also a passion to make things better. And Janie did—often in a big way, such as when I was hospitalized with bilateral pneumonia. Her long-distance badgering of medics improved my care, especially quieting a noisy roommate. Sometimes Janie did too much—going way over the top—but how much more blessed than the all-too-commonplace “doing too little.”

I will never stop needing to talk with Janie about this or that personal or societal matter. I intended to send her the Sept. 4 Times piece “First Lady Strives for Caring Image Above Partisan Fray,” which called Michelle Obama “The Hugger in Chief.” Janie’s response to Queen Elizabeth getting a hug from our first lady had been a resounding, “Now that’s the kind of affection and love the world needs most!”

Her “always there for her” friend Simon wrote, “She will be sorely missed.” An understatement. While most concerned with solving our immediate families’ disconnects, Janie was also a great extended-family ally who was so happy a grandmother lived in the White House. How she would applaud Mitt Romney for publicly lamenting a nest now too empty of offspring. And how she would boo Paul Ryan for saying it was awful the “bad economy” forced college grads to live at home. Though a preservationist, Janie also opposed “efficiency lighting,” small cars and heedless city biking.

There’s so much more, but if you remember just one thing from this so inadequate remembrance of our inimitable, irreplaceable Janie, let it be: “Never let anything separate you from the people you love.”

dewingbetter@aol.com

Bette Dewing

A smile can make everything better 

“I could show the world how to smile, I could be glad all of the while…” Well, there’d be infinitely more to smile about if songs like that again topped the charts.

Ah, but the physical act of smiling does makes us feel better. Supportive research must get out there! Smiling makes daunting tasks easier, like getting six burning topics into a 600-word column.

More critical is how smiling makes my walking without tripping on a bumpy crosswalk less likely—and even standing without tipping over when stone cold sober.

Another burning topic: Joe Califano’s Daily News op-ed “Bloomberg’s Blind Spot for Beer” (July 19) should be universally heeded.

But no smiling at bicyclists running lights or riding the wrong way, or drivers who don’t yield turning into our crosswalks—the foremost danger to walkers—or kamikaze walkers. Yell, instead, and also for lower speed limits! It can be done if enough of us try.

As for the Great Smiling Benefit, it sweetens relationship and social climates, deters meanness and violence and even lowers medical visit stress. Mt. Sinai’s pulmonary department nurse Teo smiled approvingly at the “Smile” embroidered on my shirt pocket and began to sing—beautifully—“Smile, though your heart is breaking…” And while I don’t buy smiling when hearts are breaking, singing like Teo’s sure makes me smile—and sing along, too. Singing beneficent songs, along with smiling, should be a universal health care mandate.

So should X-ray technician Sal’s greeting: “How are you doing, darlin’”? It’s Southern parlance the North should adopt. I use terms of endearment a lot now, not due to memory loss so much as it just seems a humane way to speak. So was the patience shown by breathing test technician Kesmil when I had trouble exhaling strongly enough.

So let’s smile and sing when alone and walking around, maybe using a walker or in a wheelchair, riding the subway or bus, wherever. The best things are often free—like the third annual Swingtime Big Band concert in Carl Schurz Park with music to get the pre-rock generation especially smiling. Thank you, Sylvia Slavin and son Ira, for alerting me to this terrific band’s live performance of the incomparable arrangements of Basie, Dorsey, Miller etc.

Two vocalists did justice to classic ballads like “Our Love is Here to Stay,” which too few know was written by Ira Gershwin in memory of his late beloved brother George. How we need family and friendship love songs and to get everyone singing along! Bring back those park pop-up pianos already!

But nobody needs smiling, music, endearing words and patience as much as frail elders do. Their concurrent, often incurable and distressing ailments need equal time concern and attention. And at life’s end, their obituaries must not merely say, “Cause of death was complications from Alzheimer’s disease.”

Except that’s how we learned that the “Queen of Soul Food,” Sylvia Woods, proprietor of the world renowned Sylvia’s Harlem restaurant, had contracted this dread brain disease.

Ann Curtis, barrier-breaking star swimmer and winner of two 1948 Olympic gold medals, was also a victim. But the extensive New York Times obituaries of these extraordinarily accomplished women said nothing about their awful late years’ struggle with this mind-failure scourge that afflicts countless thousands.

Surely this literal untold and unseen suffering relates to the relatively low funding of Alzheimer’s disease research, with the Alzheimer’s Association now reporting further federal cuts, even for research.

How long, dear Lord, how long?

dewingbetter@aol.com

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.