The Valley Viewpoint

Have you ever had the time of your life and not even know it?
Is Heaven a place where you go or is it something you carry within you? Can you be in Heaven every single second of your life if you’d just take the time and recognize that you’re already experiencing it if you’d only stop for a minute? By doing so, does it make the difference between a living Hell, where, in my experiences, I was always behind, always unhappy, and always unfulfilled — always a step behind on my writing, my relationships with my family, with my friends, and with my kid, and a living Heaven, where even if I had wanted more out of life, all I had to do was stop and look.
I guess what I’m saying is that I believe in Heaven on Earth, and I believe it’s found anywhere you seek it.
Here’s where I found it:

I found Heaven on being able to drop my daughter, many years ago, off at school. I remember stopping for breakfast, sometimes, and having that time, just the two of us, to chat about her world and mine, to introduce her to music, and to make up music with her, to talk about values as well as about nonsense. It was just as much fun picking her up and I wish I did it more often.

And I found Heaven with many of my friendships that began with fellow Xavier High School classmates that have now stood the test of time. There’s not a lot you can hide from someone who knows you since you’re 13 years old! Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence—just getting through to the real part of your life—but it’s more than that. Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it’s just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life experienced with those guys. Pain. Loss. Love. Gratitude. And what we all so fondly refer to as wisdom. That’s Heaven.

I found Heaven with some of the Jesuit teachers I had. The teachers of my life saved my life and sent me out prepared for whatever life I was meant to lead. Like everyone else, I had some bad ones and mediocre ones, but I never had one that I thought was holding me back because of idleness or thoughtlessness. They spent their lives with the likes of me. They lit a path for me and one that I followed with joy.

I found Heaven in finding my voice. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Find you voice and you will find Heaven’s justice.

I found Heaven with the family that I was raised in. My family taught me that, sometimes, the manner of what they gave me was worth more than the actual gifts received. So Heaven, to me, was found in bungalows in Rockaway, tenements in Manhattan or the Bronx or Sandy Hook, NJ.

I found Heaven in learning to be humble. One of the great challenges of growing up has been trying to get over myself–to become humble. My, once proud, streak of independence only persisted because I thought that everything I had become and everything I had accomplished was because of my own effort. I did it all by myself. I did it as if there were, well, no parents, aunts, uncles or cousins. I guess that’s normal in adolescent life. But, in my adult life and in my life now, I see over and over again that this is simply not true. Everything that I have I’ve been given. I’ve never done it alone. I’ve never been lacking. I’ve always had everything I need and I am profoundly privileged. God has graced my life, and called me to seek gratitude and humility in response. Maturity now or middle age, calls me forth to go further still–beyond humility and into generosity. My parents, grandfather, aunts and uncles, have lived their lives for me and in turn I seek to honor them by trying to be there, as best as I now can, by helping and being kind to others So, thank you, Mom, Dad, Nagh, Sissy, John, Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Dottie, Elsie, Georgie, Mary and Jack, Raymie and Liz.

I found Heaven in watching the little girl that I used to take to breakfast before kindergarten, graduate with honors from Boston College and finish her MBA from UCONN ranked number 1.

I found Heaven, over the course of a career, that allowed me to get many friends jobs and I’ve seen Heaven experiencing laughter with many former and current colleagues.

I found Heaven with the recognition that the only real fun of working in a profession so closely associated with the law is to stop people from pushing others around. I’ve also found Heaven, on one occasion, seeing an opposing lawyer sanctioned for his crime of, simply, being an arrogant jerk.

Lastly, I found Heaven in trying to be bolder with my talents and more forgiving of my weaknesses.
So acceptance, and sadness — well, I believe they can coexist. Sadness is inevitable — we’re only human, and trying too hard to rise above it only hurts more. But I do accept. I accept that all life is finite, and I accept that all of our times will come soon. And I accept that Heaven is here. All I’m saying is that you don’t have to look too hard for something that’s already here.

Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th 1776. History rarely records what happened to some of them.
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and were tortured before they died.
Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
Two lost their sons who were serving in the Revolutionary Army, and another had two sons captured.
Nine of the 56 fought in the war and died from wounds or hardships caused by the war.
These men were not ruffians or rabble-rousers; they were well-spoken men of means and education.
Twenty-four of the 56 were lawyers and jurists, eleven were merchants, and nine were large plantation owners.
All of them signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Signer Carter Braxton, a wealthy planter and trader, died in rags.
The properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Glwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge and Middleton were looted.
Thomas Nelson Jr. and Thomas McKeam died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis’s wife was jailed and she died there.
John Hart had to flee his dying wife’s bedside. His children fled for their lives. He died of exhaustion. Norris and Livingston had to hide out in the forest and live in caves.
I wonder how many people today would in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” all for the sake of freedom.

Liberalism isn’t really about making the world a better place. It’s about reassuring the elites that they are good people for wanting to rule over it.

That is why Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for having good intentions. His actual foreign policy mattered less than the appearance of a new transformative foreign policy based on speeches. Gore promised to be be harsher on Saddam than Bush, but no one remembers that because everyone in the bubble knows that the Iraq War was stupid… and only conservatives do stupid things.

Liberal intelligence exists on the illusion of its self-worth. The magical thinking that guides it in every other area from economics to diplomacy also convinces it that if it believes it is smart, that it will be. The impenetrable liberal consensus in every area is based on this delusion of intelligence. Every policy is right because it’s smart and it’s smart because it’s progressive and it’s progressive because smart progressives say that it is.

Progressives manufacture the consensus of their own intelligence and insist that it proves them right.

Imagine a million people walking in a circle and shouting, “WE’RE SMART AND WE’RE RIGHT. WE’RE RIGHT BECAUSE WE’RE SMART. WE’RE SMART BECAUSE WE’RE RIGHT.” Now imagine that these marching morons dominate academia, the government bureaucracy and the entertainment industry allowing them to spend billions yelling their idiot message until it outshouts everyone else while ignoring the disasters in their wake because they are too smart to fail.

That is liberalism.

What will they say about you when you’re gone?

I attended a funeral last week of a woman who I recently had come to know. A 92-year-old pillar of her community, she was eloquent, brilliant, devoted and religious.

The service was sparse and simple. Mostly prayers and thoughts. First, several of her grandchildren spoke, followed by her two daughters and her son.

Each of them mentioned something they had learned from their mother or grandmother. A life lesson that was indelibly etched in their hearts.

One grandson spoke about her kindness and how she lent him money to buy a car — on “very favorable terms” — meaning when he could afford to pay her back, he did.

Her eldest daughter spoke about how her mother’s wonderful and devoted marriage set an example for the next generation.

Her youngest daughter laughed at how she used to get, as a holiday gift, a book of stamps, because, her mother said, “they will come in very handy when you send letters.”

And her son told poignant stories of how his mother bravely broke up neighborhood fights, made him wear a coat even on a 75-degree day in the winter — because, she said, “it’s a winter 75 degrees!” — and insisted he “Clap!” at a neighborhood parade, to show recognition for those marching, warning him that TV was turning his generation into passive observers.

He also told of how his father, early in his parents’ marriage, had a bout with cancer and began to withdraw from the family, fearing he was dying and not wanting the kids to miss him when he was gone. And how his mother firmly but lovingly reminded her husband, “How do you want us to remember you?” — as a kind and caring patriarch, or a distant, removed one?

By the end of the service, everyone had laughed and cried. It was clear a life had been well-lived, had touched countless others and had left behind warm and comforting memories.

Contrast that with an obituary that ran back in 2016:

“Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick born Jan. 4, 1935 and died alone on (March 15, 2016). She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible.”

The obituary, submitted by her children, went on to blast the woman as mean and abusive:

“Everyone she met, adult or child, was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit.”

Far from the tears shed at the funeral I attended, this woman’s offspring were glad she was gone:

“We celebrate her passing from this earth and hope she lives in the afterlife reliving each gesture of violence, cruelty and shame that she delivered on her children. Her surviving children will now live the rest of their lives with the peace of knowing their nightmare finally has some form of closure.”

Wow. I guess “may she rest in peace” is out of the question.

You wonder how awful this woman had to be to be memorialized this way. According to an Associated Press account, the children had been removed from her care in the 1960s and had been estranged for more than 30 years. Their case was so awful that it helped lead to legislation in Nevada allowing children to sever ties to abusive parents.

“Everything in there was completely true,” Patrick Reddick told the AP. He called his mother a “wicked, wicked witch” and said that while the main purpose of the obituary was to bring attention to child abuse, it was also to “shame her a little bit.”

Still, this was three decades since they’d had to deal with her. The social norm when someone dies is to shout the good and whisper the bad — or at the very least, say nothing — part of what is suggested by the term “paying your respects.”

But as Johnson-Reddick proves, that doesn’t govern every death. Or every life. And the abuse you dish out may come back to you.

Most of what we do in this world is a rehearsal for our funeral. No matter how much you say, write or decree, in the end, you are summed up in speech and print by others, their memories, their impressions.

What will they say about you after you’re gone? The only similarity between these two mothers is that they were eulogized not by a list of accomplishments, but by how they treated others.

Something to keep in mind if you’re thinking about your legacy.

Fuming from the stunning decision by prosecutors to drop charges in the “hoax” attack case against “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel blasted the move Wednesday, saying all the evidence police collected against the TV star should be unsealed as the FBI opened a review of the disposition of the case.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of the criminal charges against Smollett, two law enforcement sources briefed on the matter told ABC News on Wednesday. The sources insisted it is not an investigation, but a “review.”

“He’s saying he’s innocent and his words aren’t true,” Emanuel told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America.” “They better get their story straight. This is actually making a fool of all of us.”

But Cook County State Attorney Kimberly Foxx, whose office dismissed the charges against Smollett, insisted that the actor did not receive any special treatment. She said Smollett was allowed to dispose of his case through an alternative prosecution program, just like 5,700 other people her office has charged with low-level felonies over the past two years.

In an interview with ABC News, Foxx said Smollett qualified for alternative prosecution because he doesn’t have a history of violence, lacks a criminal record and was charged with a class four felony, which is one step above a misdemeanor. She said her office would rather put resources towards prosecuting violent criminals.Smollett is African-American and openly gay. As soon as he reported his attack, members of the African-American and LGBT communities jumped to condemn it. Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris both called it “an attempted modern day lynching.” GLAAD issued a statement: “We condemn these despicable acts, as well as the racism and homophobia that drove them.”

Everyone is using their identity politics to frame this story for their own purposes, instead of pointing out the real rotten tooth in this national grimace.

Lying.

Bold, bald-faced, bang-your-fists-and-swear-it’s-real lying.

The biggest victim here isn’t race, sexual preference or a political party. The biggest victim is the truth.

Advocacy organizations, politicians and fellow actors who were loudly holding up Smollett to bolster their positions and are now saying, essentially, “Well, whatever he did, let’s not lose sight of the real issues …” have already lost sight of the real issue.

We can’t lie like that. We can’t abuse people’s trust like that. In a world where video can be edited, sound can be deleted, and we increasingly cannot believe our eyes or ears, the real issue, the greatest threat of all, is when we cannot believe each other.

I just finished reading a book of poetry, ‘Major and Minor Chords – My Life in Poetry’ by Jesuit PJ Murray.
Now, if you’re anything like me, reading poetry, when I was in school, was akin to trying to mix cement with my eyelashes. Then, I discovered this wonderful collection.
Literature; well written words, not only need to be read, they must be shared. Pick up this book, it’s well worth it.

Of all the titles that I’ve had, the one that I’m most honored to have is ‘Dad’.

For all the guys out there who are lucky enough to be a Dad; particularly a Dad to sons, this article, by Emilie Kao of the Heritage Foundation is worth reading.

In the wake of the Parkland massacre, the age-old question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” has a newfound relevance.
As another mass school shooting stunned Americans, it is time to talk about not just how to protect students from shooters, but also about what must happen so that fewer students become shooters in the first place.
It is crucial to talk about how more American children can grow up with the emotional, psychological, and spiritual security that comes from relationships where one is deeply cared for, connected, and known.
For what lies inside so many school shooters is a deep void of identity and relationship that they tragically seek to fill through nihilistic violence.
There is a sobering theme repeated over and over in the biographies of school shooters—the fatherlessness of a broken or never formed family.
Among the 25 most-cited school shooters since Columbine, 75 percent were reared in broken homes. Psychologist Dr. Peter Langman, a pre-eminent expert on school shooters, found that most came from incredibly broken homes of not just divorce and separation, but also infidelity, substance abuse, criminal behavior, domestic violence, and child abuse.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, scholar Brad Wilcox called attention to the work of criminologists Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, which found the absence of fathers to be one of the “most powerful predictors of crimes .” He explained that fathers are role models for their sons who maintain authority and discipline, thereby helping them develop self-control and empathy toward others, key character traits lacking in violent youth.
The late rapper Tupac Shakur said, “I know for a fact that had I had a father, I’d have some discipline. I’d have more confidence. Your mother can’t calm you down the way a man can. You need a man to teach you how to be a man.” Shakur, who was murdered in 1996, started hanging out with gangs because he wanted to belong to a family.
In addition to structure and discipline, a boy’s relationship with his father can be a profound source of identity—or not. Dr. Warren Farrell, author of the “The Boy Crisis,” says that when a boy asks “Who am I?” the answer is that his identity is comprised of half his dad and half his mom. If he thinks his father has abandoned him, he fears he is not. Boys who do not have a strong relationship with their fathers may lack a model of healthy masculinity. Many of the school shooters struggled with a sense of “damaged masculinity” and sought to become “ultramasculine.” Langman says that at the end of this spectrum is “getting a gun to suddenly have power.”
In fact, the fathers of three of the most infamous school shooters were absent from their sons’ lives. The father of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, had not seen his son in two years and later told reporters he wished his son had never been born. The adoptive father of Nikolas Cruz died when Cruz was 5 years old. And the father of 6-year-old Dedrick Owens, the country’s youngest school shooter, was in jail when his son killed his first grade classmate. Dedrick Owens’ father has said that he suspects his son’s crime was a reaction to his absence.
Since the 1965 Moynihan report, the breakdown of the American family has been hotly debated. Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s finding that fatherlessness would lead to poorer outcomes for African-American children was published at a time when only 25 percent of African-American households were led by a single parent. Today, 24 percent of white non-Hispanic families are headed by a single parent and the rate has reached 66 percent among African-Americans. If we don’t reverse current trends on marriage, the number of fatherless children will only grow.
Ultimately, if we make fatherlessness and family breakdown a partisan issue, we all lose. Both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush promoted a National Fatherhood Initiative in their administrations. Because strong marriages promote strong bonds between fathers and their children, the Trump administration should emphasize both.A good starting place would be to reduce the marriage penalties that have been built into our welfare system. A next step would be to elevate the contributions of ordinary men doing the extraordinary work of fathering. And if we directed 1 percent of the attention and media coverage we give to athletes, musicians, and movie stars toward fathers, perhaps more boys would grow up seeing them as role models. President Donald Trump, his Cabinet, Congress, and other leaders can also use their bully pulpits to lead in this direction.
And the good news is that communities are devising creative ways to help make up for the absences of dads. One example is in Dallas, where Billy Earl Dade Middle School held its annual “Breakfast with Dads.” To ensure that all 150 male students who wanted a mentor would have one, an organizer put out a request on a Facebook page for 50 “volunteer fathers.” Nearly 600 men from all different walks of life and careers answered the call.
We cannot provide every fatherless boy with a dad, but we can start by respecting the unique role that fathers play in the lives of boys and encouraging more men to step into the lives of children who need a male role model.
To understand the brokenness of our children, Americans must take a deeper look at the brokenness of our families. We must do this together. We must be the keepers of all our country’s sons so that they can grow up to be one another’s. If we are going to prevent the next Parkland, we need to take seriously the need all our young boys and men have for a dad.

https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/the-crisis-fatherless-shooters

The column, written by George Will,  has to be read.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will031419.php3?fbclid=IwAR2o4S3phooNUEx7FI9gdUyHIbwj42zEcNV9WaREouMP2pu-H0QNuan7pP4

So today, my daughter decides to prank me while she is on a business trip in Amsterdam. Prior to her leaving, I ran through the list. Where are you staying? What’s your schedule? Don’t go alone to the city’s Red Light district………now, Jen has lived in Europe when she was a college student….the closest I’ve ever been to Europe was the last time I was on the No. 7 train out of Flushing. ‘Relax, Dad’ was all she said. I smiled but still tried to adjust my schedule to hers, so I could ‘keep track’ of her. Today, my phone rings. ‘Dad,……..I’ve been TAKEN’….”. While my heart jumped through my chest, Jen laughed hysterically and said that I’m no Liam Neeson.
Very funny…..
Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Jen was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything. As a parent, you experience the most of everything. The most love, the most fear, the most hurt and the most tired, the most of every emotion. One, day, my daughter will know all about this when she has a kid. Now, all I have to do is wait for her return flight….and not watch TAKEN 2……

So this afternoon, at work, my colleague Jessica asked how long it’s been since I graduated high school. “43 years”was my reply, quickly followed by my statement that there are more shorter days ahead of me than the longer ones from my past. She was more than kind and told me that wasn’t so until I reminded her that in 43 years, if I’m still around, I’d be a young 103 year old. I got to thinking about my age now. Sixty is a big round number, seeming to mark, once and for all, the difference between middle age and the thing that comes after that. Who else turned 60 last year? Madonna, in August. Prince and Michael Jackson would have, too, if they’d made it. As for me, I had always hoped I would arrive at this age with equal measures of joy and acceptance — grateful for what has mostly been a happy life, even if wistful that there are surely more days behind me now than ahead. I had imagined myself being 60 sitting in an Adirondack chair, listening to all my intolerable 1970s music while my loved ones expressed their adoration, Cat Stevens-rock notwithstanding. I offer the following additional observations about what it means to be 60 now.   First off, siblings are great, but never forget that sometimes what you need most are your cousins.  Dogs continue to amaze me. A dog loves a person the way people love each other only while in the grip of new love: with intense, unwavering focus, attentive to every move the beloved makes, unaware of imperfections, desiring little more than to be close, to be entwined, to touch and touch and touch.  Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels, except for maybe fresh pizza hot out of a wood-fired oven, garnished with kosher salt and freshly chopped basil leaves.  It is unlikely you will ever speak a foreign language as well as you did in high school. ( Father Aracich, my Jesuit Italian teacher from high school, would tell you that I never could speak ANY language).  It costs nothing to forgive people who have wronged you. Forever bearing the burden of anger, on the other hand, will eat you alive.  It is impossible to lose weight unless you also stop drinking or get really sick. If you have writer’s block, lower your standards, and then revise.  You never stop missing your parents, no matter how old you get, no matter how long they have been gone. Or, for that matter, your children.  Admit when you are wrong. The older you get, the more frequently you’ll have the opportunity.  Have a sense of humor about everything, including the things that are the saddest.

And Jessica, you’ll be a ‘young 80’ in just 43 years!

Jefferson Crowther, the father of 9/11 hero Welles Crowther, a Boston College graduate, known as “the man in the red bandana,” died Feb. 13. He was 73. The cause was prostate cancer, said Alison Crowther, his wife of 47 years. He is also survived by his daughters, Honor Fagan and Paige Charbonneau, and their families. Jeff and Alison Crowther repeatedly shared their son’s story of heroism on Sept. 11, 2001, to inspire leadership and character development. Welles Crowther died in the Sept. 11th attack on the World Trade Center. They helped establish the Red Bandanna Project and a family foundation, the Welles Remy Crowther Charitable Trust, toward that mission.

“He was a great protector,” Alison Crowther said of her husband.”He was always taking care of me and our family, a wonderful father and husband. He was a gentleman with a wonderful sense of humor, which is what attracted me to him. He was very funny.”

Tom Sipos of WKIP and I had the opportunity of interviewing Alison Crowther, the mother of Wells, who was a 9/11 hero, on Tom’s Hudson Valley Live Show last year. With the news  of the death of Well’s Dad, I wanted to attach our interview here. Give it a listen and say a prayer for Wells and his Dad. The heavens are rejoicing with the reunion of Wells and his Dad.

Well, St. Patrick’s Day is almost here. My grandfather, Patrick McLoughlin, left Ireland as a young man to seek, what he felt, would be a better life here in the US. Family stories, told to me as a child, portrayed a young man, the eldest in his family, being walked to the train by his mother who watched him depart. He would return to Ireland just once more many years later. What must the day he first left been like? My grandfather never talked about it. For he had an immigrant’s heart. That heart marches to the beat of two quite different drums, one from the old homeland and the other from the new. The immigrant has to bridge these two worlds, living comfortably in the new and bringing the best of his or her ancient identity and heritage to bear on life in an adopted homeland. Still, this St. Patrick’s Day, I wonder what that day at the train station was like for a mother and for a son. My friend, Chris Brown, sung about this and today I want to share it because I think it’s what my grandfather’s family said to him the day he left Castlebar. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody!