The Valley Viewpoint

Ulvade, Texas. A city that now takes it place along side Parkland, Buffalo, Columbine, Sante Fe, Newtown and many others. 19 kids…19. Innocent lives lost and families that will forever be altered. 19 kids. All at an age where their biggest concern should be fractions, the end of the school year, little league,cub scouts, girl scouts and all the other things a 10 year old thinks about. 19 kids….The debate has begun. Guns….take them away. This would never have happened if it wasn’t for guns. Would it be that simple. We live in an culture soaked in grapic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.
19 kids….
I’m saddened and incredibly angry…19 kids..

From the Urban Dictionary:
Eddie’s are extremely nice guys, are incredibly attractive for not only physical appearance but also their great sense of humor, they thrive on making others laugh and are very intelligent however having such a laid back attitude is their down fall.

Surrounded by friends, an Eddie is a one in a million.

Eddie Kowalski

Most divorced dads I have known over the years have had weekends and one night a week with their kid(s), at best. Sometimes every other weekend. And it’s no slight on how each custody agreement comes together. There are a million factors that play an important role in this decision. No judgment.
The judgment is what comes from the societal expectations of the single father.
I remember, when my daughter was little, taking her out to dinner, or to a movie, or to the zoo. Almost every time we were out someone would say something very nice to me.
It’s nice to see a dad out with his kid.
Your daughter is so well behaved. You are doing such a good job as a father.
These are not things anyone would have said to a mother out with her kids. Because that is the expectation. That the mother can handle it and the father is some kind of hero for taking his kids to dinner.
Maybe it’s changing, but 30 years ago I was always patted on the back when I was out with my daughter.
•For just being a father who loves his kid
•For knowing how to braid a pony tail.
•For figuring out how to navigate a public bathroom situation.
•For carrying her in my arms.
•For going down the slide at the playground and being an active participant in playing.
These are the reduced expectations of a single father.
I was just doing what a parent should do.
I’ve heard “Mr. Mom” many times in my life. I have always found it offensive.
This is where the gender stereotype of parenting lives. In the words “mother” and “father” and society’s definitions of these words. In same sex couples, some try to figure out who is the mother and who is the father instead of reveling in the co-parenting.
Mr. Mom is an oxymoron of course. An impossibility based on the definition of mother.
But what if I was a nurturer? Did that make me more of a Mr. Mom?
I was just being a parent. A loving one.
I am not a researcher. I am not a psychologist. I was just a single father who never wanted anything more in life than to be a father. I don’t expect any pats on the back for feeling that way.
We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.
So, before we all get on the ‘Let’s throw under the bus all divorced Dads’ lets take a step back and recognize that Dads, oftentimes,have a hand in raising and supporting their children. Let’s celebrate both parents for raising their children. And let’s celebrate parents who can put aside the hurt and anger that their divorce caused and come together to raise their children.

It’s graduation season again. The ceremonies seem to get more elaborate and there seem to be more and more of them. Pre-school. Primary-school. Middle-school. High-school. Under-grad. Grad-school. Everyone gets a ceremony. These days it’s all virtual as well. It’s like spring-training for wedding season–lots of wobbly-high heels and clip-on ties. I must confess, I’m a bit fatigued by the long procession of ceremonies, the endless awards given and received, the sashes upon sashes and stoles upon stoles. I think we’re approaching a precarious place in our culture when the old pomp and circumstance doesn’t require any real or remarkable circumstance in order to pomp.

And yet, I’m not here just to rain on the parade. If you’re graduating or moving on in any way, then you’re surely, and understandably, thinking a lot about ‘what happens next.’ As you move through this transition I hope that you have a very nice ceremony, but even more, I hope that you don’t fail to have the actual experience of transition, of transformation. Don’t let the noise of celebration rob you of the real pain of leaving or the real hope of change. Know yourself beloved, know this to be reason enough for hope, and let yourself be amazed by whatever happens next. Also, please recognize that the friends that you have made and who are graduating with you now will, hopefully, remain in your life forever. Let me tell you, the friends that I graduated high school with way back in 1976 are still my friends and I look forward to speaking to them almost as much as I looked forward to seeing them back when I was asking them for their Geometry homework!

I hope you understand that what happens next has everything to do with what’s already happening. I hope you understand that who you will become has everything to do with who you already are. I hope you understand that the love you’ve known and the love you long for have their meeting place in you and — if you can make a place for both of them — you can remain in love, no matter what happens next.

Rumi suggests that we “sell our cleverness and buy bewilderment.” Best commencement speech ever…and at six words it would be the shortest too…win-win. Many like to tell you about what will happen next and many more hope to profit off of your curiosity and need. And yet, precious few are willing to affirm the amazement to be found in what already is, the beauty in your being who you already are. More than a seeker, become a lover. Sell your cleverness, buy bewilderment, and what happens next will, necessarily, amaze you.

Congratulations, class of 2022!

Stop showing up for people who have no interest in your presence. I know your instinct is to do everything to earn the appreciation of those around you, but it’s a boost that steals your time, energy, mental and physical health.

When you begin to fight for a life with joy, interest and commitment, not everyone will be ready to follow you in this place. This doesn’t mean you need to change what you are, it means you should let go of the people who aren’t ready to accompany you.

If you are excluded, insulted, forgotten or ignored by the people you give your time to, you don’t do yourself a favor by continuing to offer your energy and your life. The truth is that you are not for everyone and not everyone is for you.

That’s what makes it so special when you meet people who reciprocate love. You will know how precious you are.

The more time you spend trying to make yourself loved by someone who is unable to, the more time you waste depriving yourself of the possibility of this connection to someone else.

There are billions of people on this planet and many of them will meet with you at your level of interest and commitment.

The more you stay involved with people who use you as a pillow, a background option or a therapist for emotional healing, the longer you stay away from the community you want.

Maybe if you stop showing up, you won’t be wanted. Maybe if you stop trying, the relationship will end. Maybe if you stop texting your phone will stay dark for weeks. That doesn’t mean you ruined the relationship, it means the only thing holding it back was the energy that only you gave to keep it. This is not love, it’s attachment. It’s wanting to give a chance to those who don’t deserve it. You deserve so much, there are people who should not be in your life.

The most valuable thing you have in your life is your time and energy, and both are limited. When you give your time and energy, it will define your existence.

When you realize this, you begin to understand why you are so anxious when you spend time with people, in activities, places or situations that don’t suit you and shouldn’t be around you, your energy is stolen.

You will begin to realize that the most important thing you can do for yourself and for everyone around you is to protect your energy more fiercely than anything else. Make your life a safe haven, in which only ′′compatible′′ people are allowed.

You are not responsible for saving anyone. You are not responsible for convincing them to improve. It’s not your work to exist for people and give your life to them! If you feel bad, if you feel compelled, you will be the root of all your problems, fearing that they will not return the favours you have granted. It’s your only obligation to realize that you are the love of your destiny and accept the love you deserve.

Decide that you deserve true friendship, commitment, true and complete love with healthy and prosperous people. Then wait and see how much everything begins to change. Don’t waste time with people who are not worth it. Change will give you the love, the esteem, happiness and the protection you deserve.

This morning, WKIP’s Hudson Valley Live Show interviewed Rob Astorino, former Westchester County Executive and current Republican candidate for Governor.

https://clyp.it/xclnw1uv

Former Orange County NY Executive Edward Diana and two other officials with the Orange County Industrial Development Agency plead guilty to numerous felony charges in Goshen yesterday. The agency’s former managing director Vincent Cozzolino plead guilty to the most serious charge of corrupting government and must pay $1 Million in restitution with 5 years of probation. The I.D.A.’s former CEO Laurie Villasuso plead guilty to the same charge and must pay $175,000.00 in restitution. Diana served on the I.D.A.’s oversight board for the past six years. He plead guilty to two counts of offering a false instrument for filing and must pay $90,000.00 in restitution. Prosecutors allege Villasuso and Diana were both paid employees of Cozzolino’s consulting firm. Who paid no attention to Cozzolino’s plan to use the I.D.A. to line his pockets. Cozzolino’s consulting firm is called Galileo Technology Group. Diana served 3 terms as Orange County Executive.
Another sad example of corruption in New York. The history of the government of New York is also, in large measure, the history of the misgovernment of New York. It is an entertaining history, full of thieves, rascals, and knaves, full of bold schemes and brazen misconduct. Now and then, as if in some ancient legend, a hero emerges to fight the bad guys. In this story, the hero’s are Orange County Legislator Jimmy O’Donnell and DA Hoovler who rooted this out.
Always, below the surface, serious questions press for attention—questions that strike at the heart of our faith that “we, the people” possess the qualities that are needed to make self-government work. The story of corruption in New York is the story of the bosses who have organized and profited from that corruption, but it is more than that. It is the story of the contractors who have gotten rich from their arrangements with the bosses, but it is more than that. In the end it is the story of the people of New York ,shrugging their shoulders, selling their votes, going about their business. That’s the sad thing about this story and we’re all left the poorer for it and we get the government we deserve.

Random Sunday morning thoughts.

• Recognize that the people who you went to High School with should always remain your friends precisely because we share the silly, not the serious. Because we tell the same funny stories. Because we knew each other when we were at our happiest and most innocent.
  • It’s a safe bet that no one really wants to listen to you about what it really was like before the internet.
  • Dogs are fine, though. 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. I thank and think often of the dogs that I have been lucky to have, Trixie, Dutchess, Geek, Casey, Rosie and, yes, another Casey…..
  • Nothing tastes as good as 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. Father Aracich…….you were right.
  • It costs nothing to forgive people who have wronged you. Forever bearing the burden of anger, on the other hand, will eat you alive. (Still working on this one!)
  • Not to lose your dignity, even when confronting illness. Not to bend your principles. Not to be cruel. Not to be unforgiving. Not to act like small things don’t matter — birthday calls, congratulations calls, condolence calls. Anniversary calls.
  • If you have writer’s block, lower your standards, and then revise.
  • To believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking.
  • Nobody expects you to know everything. Nobody expects all your views to be right. But if you’re going to write about a subject, take the time to really understand it. Don’t just dissect it so you can dismiss it. Don’t just listen to everything the people on TV say about it. Embrace it. Hold it. Understand it. Let it change you. New ideas are scary. Explore them anyway.
  • Stand up to hypocrisy. If you don’t, the hypocrites will teach. Stand up to ignorance, because if you don’t, the ignorant will run free to spread ignorance like a disease. Stand up for truth. If you don’t, then there is no truth to your existence. If you don’t stand up for all that is right, then understand that you are part of the reason why there is so much wrong in the world.
  • It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse
  • Nothing exists without a purpose. Every experience you have in this lifetime was written for you to grow into the light you were meant to be.
  • 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, even when you’re lucky enough to speak to them every day. Love you, Jenny Kowalski
  • 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.

This week, I got the word that a former teacher of mine, Mike Sehler SJ passed away. The fragility of life is something that I, like a lot of people, don’t stop to consider.
I first met Father Sehler in ’75. He introduced me to James Joyce/James Agee. A quirky, intellectually gifted and, yes, sometimes arrogant fellow. I was immediately drawn to him. I can remember one class where he just talked about the then breaking news of Florence Ballard, one of the original members of the Supremes, who died in 1976 at the age of 33. “Gentlemen, can you imagine being that famous and dying at 33?” He spent that whole class talking about life’s ironies. I loved his sensitivity. Mike also said that ‘the English alphabet has just 26 letters. 26 letters and in the right hands these 26 letters have given the world literature’. He also once told me to make sure to only read the classics because there’s ‘not enough time’ to get through all the entire world of literature. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of his teaching. Mike’s gift to me and all the other kids he taught was to just appreciate the dazzling beauty of language.
Because of him I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in “Lonesome Dove” and had nightmares about slavery in “Beloved” and walked the streets of Dublin in “Ulysses” and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” I’ve laughed out loud reading Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinions for their sheer brilliance and have been humbled by the blazing intellect of Charles Krauthammer’s editorials.
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 is just the same story playing out with different characters. I’m eternally grateful for going through those years with the likes of Mike Sehler.
Keep him in your prayers.

Dear High School Seniors,

I know you weren’t expecting a commencement address. It’s still April, and you haven’t even gotten to throw up at the prom yet.
But you are at a crossroads. In a matter of days, you will get letters from colleges you applied to. Some will be thick. You will like those. Some will be thin. You won’t like those so much.
I am here to say don’t fret if that letter is thin. You will survive. You may even prosper.
It seems incredibly hard to get into colleges these days. You wouldn’t think so, given what they charge. You can run an airport on their room and board bills.
Yet last year places like Princeton and Brown had nearly 20 percent increases in applicants from the year before. The University of Chicago jumped 42 percent. You’d think they were giving away diplomas, instead of asking for your house, your keys and your first-born.
But even worse than the financial burden on your parents is the implied standards they are setting for you kids. Today, excellence isn’t enough. Gandhi would be put on a waiting list. I was lucky. My daughter was able to be accepted at Boston College in the class of 2012 that had over 30,000 applications for 2,250 places.
When I was applying to college, you needed good grades, a decent test score, and one Jesuit willing to forget the time you pulled the fire alarm and write you a recommendation.

Today, you need to cure cancer.

Preferably before your junior year.

And the application itself? Some universities use the “common app,” which permits millions of kids to stuff their credentials into the same essay question.
But let’s talk about those questions. They ask you to write about an experience that changed or influenced you. And instead of writing what really comes to mind (a first kiss after football practice or, in my case, the time a classroom wall collapsed on my fellow Xavier Alum, Louie Franco – still one of the singularly funniest moments of my high school days), you may feel compelled to write about saving manatees from extinction off the Gulf Coast. Even if you never did save manatees. Because you heard about some kid who actually did save manatees, and he also carried 100 pairs of pajamas to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and he also plays jazz bass (upright) and in his spare time finished a sequel to “Catcher in the Rye.”
Oh, and he scored 36 on his ACT.
I’m not sure such uber-students really exist. But people talk about them. You hear about them getting in to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford. So much so, that good, intelligent, ambitious kids don’t even want to apply to those places, because they don’t feel “special” enough. It’s as if schools today put out a vibe: “What, you don’t know how to reconstruct a hydraulics system? You should have studied harder — in grade school.”
Well, Seniors, relax. Because here’s the thing. When you get older, you realize college doesn’t make you, you make college. Many an Ivy Leaguer is now lying on a couch, and many a community college grad is running a profitable company.
Ironically, just as elite universities have become so precious in their selection, they are being debunked as the only way to success. The Internet has changed everything about information flow.
Remember Matt Damon’s character in “Good Will Hunting” who taunts a Harvard student by saying in 50 years he’ll realize he “dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a (bleeping) education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library”?
So believe in yourself. You can springboard from any decent school. Open those mailboxes. And if choice No. 1 doesn’t come through, just remember, even Michael Jordan watched two players picked ahead of him in the NBA draft.
What’s that? … Who’s Michael Jordan?

Thank you, and good day

There comes a time, in everyone’s life, when they first encounter our legal system. Usually happens right around the time when they are buying their first house, dealing with small claims situations, work related matters or maybe even family issues. Most folks approach their ‘day in court’ with the expectation that ‘justice is blind’, fairness and balance will always play out, lawyers and judges know what they are doing and all grievances can, and will, be worked out and the scales of justice will always balance. After having spent a lifetime dealing with our system; albeit on the employment law side, I am always saddened to tell folks new to the system that our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do not correct, and the rise of mandated arbitration has ushered in a shadowy system of privatized “justice.” The legal system has become an incomprehensible farce. The expectation of justice when someone is first confronted with the system has been gleefully exploited by the lawyers. Yes, I know that there is something oddly comforting about talking to a legal guy once the billable hours clock has started running; you have passed the magical point at which a lawyer becomes your lawyer. Your lawyer is warm, your lawyer is sympathetic, your lawyer makes notes on a yellow pad and nods in all the right places. I’ve seen many an individual who have suffered through these exploitations only to express dismay after receiving their first bill; sadly realizing that their ‘case’ is not even close to being concluded. No, my friends, our system promotes and rarely concludes issues.
If I sound jaded, I confess, I am. 25 years in Employment Law can do that to you.
I leave you with these parting thoughts:
Who knew that most new judges are required to attend less training than manicurists, who need 400 hours of experience before they can take their final licensing exams in California?
As Charles Dickens wrote: “The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.”

America has gone over to the revolution.

Looking back, the sweep of the capitulation becomes stark.

First came the plea of atheists not to have their children forced to participate in prayers at school. Fair enough. Americans do not believe in compelling people to do as they disbelieve.
Then followed the demand that no child be exposed to prayers or religious books, including the Bible, nor have any day or week set aside as a holiday if connected to Christianity.
Out went Christmas and Easter. In came winter break and spring break. Coaches of high school teams were ordered to dispense with prayers before games. The coaches complied.
No matter what the majority wanted, the minority prevailed, thanks to a Supreme Court whose dictates were never challenged by democratically elected presidents or Congresses, nor ever defied by a Christian majority.
In the sexual revolution there came first the plea that abortion in extreme cases be decriminalized, then legalized, then subsidized, then declared a right. From crime to constitutional right in two decades!
Under Obamacare, Christian businesses must dispense abortion-inducing morning-after pills to employees.
On gay rights, first came the demand that a bar in Greenwich Village patronized by homosexuals be left alone by the cops.
Next came the demand that homosexuality be decriminalized and then that this, too, be declared a constitutional right. And so it went.
Soon, same-sex marriages will likely be declared a right hidden in the Constitution and entitled to all the privileges and benefits accorded traditional marriages. Next, those who refuse to provide services to same-sex weddings will become the criminals.
And the process has been steadily proceeding for generations.
First comes a call for tolerance for those who believe and behave differently. Then comes a plea for acceptance.
Next comes a demand for codifying in law a right to engage in actions formerly regarded as debased or criminal. Finally comes a demand to punish any and all who persist in their public conduct or their private business in defying the new moral order.
And so it goes with revolutions. On the assumption of power, revolutionaries become more intolerant than those they dispossessed.
The French Revolution was many times more terrible than the Bourbon monarchy. The Russian Revolution made the Romanovs look benign. Fidel Castro’s criminality exceeded anything dreamt of by Fulgencio Batista.
Looking back, one appreciates why we hear so often, “This isn’t the country I grew up in.” For it isn’t.
But how did this moral-cultural revolution succeed so easily?

How was it that the Greatest Generation that won World War II let itself be intimidated by and dictated to by nine old men with lifetime tenure who had been elected by no one?
How did this happen in a republic where minority rights exist but the majority rules? Why did Middle America meekly comply and not resist?
What explains the rioting we have seen? The GOP simply cannot stand up to media denunciations as intolerant bigots, especially if the corporations upon which they depend threaten economic reprisals.
With the Democratic Party irretrievably lost, and the Republican Party moving to neutrality in the culture wars, traditionalists should probably take comfort in the counsel, “Put not your trust in princes.”
When that father and daughter at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Ind., said their religious beliefs forbade them from catering a same-sex wedding, they were subjected to a hailstorm of hate, but were also showered with $840,000 from folks who admired their moral courage.
Religious folks who do not believe in collaborating with what they think is wrong should go forth and do likewise.

Courage as well as cowardice is contagious.