Some days during this pandemic, I am in mental free-fall.

It is all I can do to focus on my work, my family needs, my writing, my music, my own health. I toggle maniacally from The New York Times, to the Washington Post, to FaceBook, to texts, to What’s App.

What’s the latest? What’s the latest? What’s the latest? I’m mentally breathless but fortunately not literally breathless.

Which brings me to my emails. Work related emails have slowed considerably. The good news is that online vendors continue to pelt me with offers.

And, for that, I am grateful.

Thank you Shepler’s for telling me all about the great cowboy boots that are now on-sale. Thank you, Allysia, of PianoTV for posting another lesson I probably will never get to.

Thank you, Tiffany & Co., for reminding me that Mother’s Day is coming up. It would be nice to get my wife a dandy new ring, but that is financially impossible at the moment. But keep those offers coming.

Thank you Fjord Vineyards for your wine offerings, Chess.com for challenging me weekly, for Music Villa, the Bozeman-based guitar store, for the cool videos of new Martins.

A special shout-out to you, Cerches Arche, the fancy French shoe store, for reminding me of the trip to Paris that won’t happen this year, and maybe next year as well.

My comments may seem sarcastic but, in truth, they are not. Without your constant reminders of what once passed for “normalcy”, I might just float away on a cloud of covid-19 madness.

There’s a certain sleepy sadness on this cloudless Sunday. The streets are hushed. There are people about, and they are wearing masks and behaving as they should. Yet there is a palpable poignancy that reminds us that this is not normal, should not ever be considered normal, and should be remembered always.

People talk in low tones as they walk their dogs, ride their bikes, play catch with their kids. It is as if there is an unspoken agreement: tone it down, lower the volume, respect the virus’ power.

On any other sunny Sunday, leaves in bloom, parkland lush, a bright blue sky with unlimited visibility, there would be the sharp crack of ball against bat, the chatter of soccer players, the high-pitched gleeful scream of the little ones.

But not today.

Today is somber. Parking is plentiful, roads are clear, sidewalks are empty. Soot is gone and parked cars remain clean for days, weeks. There has been no alternate side parking, the bane of the boroughs, and yet the curbs are clear of city detritus: cigarette butts, empty cans, food wrappers.

With masks and gloves have come a semblance of courtesy. Respect. Concern for the well-being of fellow citizens. Calm and quiet has replaced manic energy and cacophony.

We await direction from our national leaders, yet in truth we expect none. For we have been reminded of that most American of virtues — or vices — and that is: go-it-alone frontier can-do spirit. This differs from the English “blitz” resilience, which for me is based upon “we’re all in this together” societal glue. Here, we say those words — “we’re all in this together” yet we are reminded, daily, that we are in this fix alone. One medical misstep and we’re stuck in a hallway at Methodist, or Elmhurst General, or the Allen Pavilion, or Woodhull. And good luck with that.

The cavalry is not coming. The good guys don’t always win.

We’re not exactly sure of what a “bootstrap” is anymore, but we sense that we better find them, and soon, and we know that we better start pulling ourselves up by them.

Because we’ve been told a second wave is coming and that it could be worse than the first. Don’t count on a cure. Don’t count on a vaccine. Don’t count on a job. Don’t count on medical coverage.

Which is to say, it’s no wonder that, in 2020, spring fever is cause for concern, not joy.

Which is why, despite the beauty of this glorious Sunday, my interior warning lights flash in bright red: “BRACE YOURSELF!”

Me and Mimi Stolzenberg had our share of tussles over the years. Many was the time I wanted to wring her scrawny neck, truth be told. She was a force, and not always for good — the prototypical mother-in-law, on steroids.

She was a Real New Yorker, opinionated, loud, and in-your-face. She was a lot for me to handle, when I first met her at age 23 or so. She immediately started to steamroll me, and I pushed back hard.

But politically, and morally, she was always on the right side of the issues. The yellow playground-image poster of the sixties (“What if they gave a war, and nobody came?”) hung in her kitchenette. She was a fearless progressive and supporter of the underdog. As a child, she entered the NYC public school system barely understanding English, for only Yiddish was spoken in her home.

She had a lot of tough breaks over the years, challenges that would have flattened lesser mortals. Her first-born son died young, and her husband followed suit two years later. He died of a broken heart, I imagine, although the three pack a day habit sure didn’t help.

But Mimi? She was a grinder. She kept chipping away at life as best she could, creating a household atmosphere where learning and self-improvement were fostered and cherished — and enforced. Overbearing? According to her kids, that was an understatement.

To her credit, and against all odds, she earned two masters degrees in primary education when she was well into middle age. She taught kindergarten in South Ozone Park for decades, was a macher (that is, a big cheese) in the SEEK program, and pushed her students until they all READ by the time they went on to first grade.

After retirement, her former students wrote her Christmas cards with words of appreciation for their first teacher.

No one lives forever. But this virus is an inglorious way to go out. The De Witt Clinton High School, all-id part of my brain says “Hey, pick on someone your own size, covid-19. Let’s take it outside…” The adult part of my brain says, “Hey, take care of your loved ones, appreciate every day, and STAY SAFE!”

Alev hasholem, Mimi Stolzenberg.

I’m waiting for a moment like this, to unite us, coast to coast:

It is 9/21/01, 10 days after that terrible Tuesday. Me, Ronni Stolzenberg and Daniel Kleinman agreed we should go out to eat and get out of the house. We went to 200 Fifth which is a sports bar with many monitors and a very mixed crowd. That is, liberals of all colors, religions and views, and conservatives, from blue-collar white ethnics to Wall Street Masters of the Universe.

We wait for our burgers. There is a pre-game show for the Mets; it is the first game in NYC on TV after 9/11. On the monitors, the crowd at the stadium stands and the music plays.

Suddenly, the restaurant is silent. Everyone — EVERYONE — stands, sings and cries. It was heartbreaking and yet weirdly wonderful. I’ll never forget that moment when, for once, we were ALL on the same page and truly in it, together.

Oh, and the Mets won, off Piazza’s HR in the 8th.

NEWS ITEM: Nelson Bryant, New York Times “Outdoor Life” Columnist, Dies at 96.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/sports/nelson-bryant-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1

I always loved the woods more than the seashore. Growing up in outer borough New York City, we had access to both. A ride on the 12 bus would take us to Orchard Beach, on the Long Island Sound. Beach-loving families would ride down to Manasquan, New Jersey for a week of ocean fun.

I, however, preferred the 90-mile car ride to Sullivan County, in the Catskill Mountains — the Jewish Alps — where many working class families summered in bungalow colonies for a few hundred bucks a month. Ah, the woods! The cool, fresh air of early morning and evening. Weenie roasts. Catching fireflies and salamanders after a soft summer rain. And oh those rainbows.

No wonder I joined the Boy Scouts, which were decidedly uncool back in the sixties. In my rainbow coalition troop, we learned how to handle ourselves in the forest. We kids became skilled in the art of cookouts, camping, hiking — skills so foreign to the tenement apartment dwellers of the Bronx.

I loved reading Nelson Bryant’s work in The New York Times, once I graduated from the tabloids to the Times. Bryant was the outdoorsy dad I wish I had, sure-footedly explaining the fine points of fly fishing. Duck hunting. Deer tracking.

And his descriptions of his Martha’s Vineyard stomping grounds — my goodness! I finally got to The Islands in my late twenties, first at a Nantucket B&B and, then a lengthy rental of a stone house on Lobsterville Road, in the Gay Head section of The Vineyard.

Oh my. Here I found both “the woods” and the seashore. Nelson Bryant’s outdoors proficiency inspired me and, in time, my family rented homes in upstate New York where I initiated my son into the wonder, the majesty, of forests. Today, he vacations upstate with friends, hikes, swims and fishes, and dreams of owning his own place up there one day.

So, here’s to you, Nelson Bryant — and to your fellow NYT writer Verlyn Klinkenborg, author of the stunning series “The Rural Life” — for keeping the campfire flames burning in my heart. Yours was a life well-lived. Congratulations.

Things snap into focus when you’re 29 and a cultural icon is suddenly taken.

On that day, the herd was thinned and a powerful voice of a generation was lost. Real New Yorkers remember that day as if it was yesterday. Most of us guys were watching football — Dolphins – Patriots — when we got the news from an unexpected source: Howard Cosell.

Some moron, some NOBODY, shot John Lennon in the back, outside his Upper West Side home in The Dakota. We were aghast. Poleaxed.

At 29 and in career ascendancy, I took much for granted. I suppose I expected John and his mates to grow old gracefully, having passed the early death age of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

In a sense, The Beatles were our wiser, worldlier, older siblings. My wife and her suburban childhood friends were true Beatlemaniacs, and had seen the Fab Four live in venues throughout NYC. Even in my blue-collar/working class section of The Bronx, where Schaefer Beer was the “hallucinogenic” of choice, The Beatles were acknowledged champions, having dethroned The King, Elvis Presley, back in the 60s.

After hearing the news, I made a round of calls to my friends. DJs at radio stations such as WNEW-FM talked us all down from the ledge and kept us sane.

I made the mistake of calling my parents, lifelong Bronxites who had finally decamped to a safe, if sterile, New Jersey suburb a few years earlier. My father was non-plussed. “I heard. I never was much of a fan,” was all my dad could muster. His response only served to underscore our arthritic relationship, which clearly had deteriorated to bone-on-bone.

I worked in the marketing communications department of a major international photo news agency at the time. In the week that followed, paparazzi descended upon The Dakota and environs, to get images of celebs who came to pay respects.

One of the agency’s shooters, trying hard to make it to the agency’s top tier, called our boss, who put him on speaker. Breathless, the photographer screamed: “I got Ringo! I got Ringo!”

The call made me sick. The buzzards were circling to pick apart the carrion. In the days that followed, it got worse. I did my usual Pisces thing. I retreated from the temporal and dove far under water, only coming up to play my favorites. I especially liked “Working Class Hero.”

But some months later, one of his new songs was released. I loved “Watching the Wheels.” Why? Because that was me! He was my big brother, writing that song for ME! Me, intent on writing, when everyone around me shook their heads.

John wrote: “People say I’m lazy, dreaming my life away. Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me. When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall; Don’t you miss the big time boy, you’re no longer on the ball? I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round. I really love to watch them roll No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go.”

Remember Amadeus? Salieri, that hack, hated his guts.

RIP John Lennon, dead 39 years today. Keep dreaming. Keep striving. Don’t stop. Fuck all the naysayers. Pigs can and DO fly.

We’ve torn each other to shreds, these last few years, and we’re in pain, and that is why I involuntarily convulsed during the new film, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”

This movie is far from what you might expect, and far from a Mr. Rogers biopic, per se. Truth is, this is far from any type of picture I expected. Know this: I am freighted with truckloads of Real New Yorker cynicism. My remarks are pointed, my aim is (usually) true. I DID expect this movie to be a weepy, Tom Hanks vehicle, with Hanks as a sainted, fatherly figure in a “Lassie Come Home” type of manipulative pap.

Wrong. Rather than corny crapola, here is a highly effective father/son saga for the ages that underscores JUST how much kindness, how much healing, we need, and will continue to need, once (if?) our national nightmare is over in 2020, with the help of our better angels.

Matthew Rhys plays Esquire feature writer Lloyd Vogel. You know Rhys from “The Americans” and this Welshman’s American accent — check that, his entire performance — is pitch perfect.

SPOILER ALERTS HERE. WIMPS CAN STOP READING NOW.

He, Rhys/Vogel, is assigned to write a short, fluffy, piece about the real-life king-of-calm, Fred Rogers. Chaos ensues.

Or, rather, self-awareness ensues. The Rhys character is us, the audience. And we are, he is, largely, broken. His dad, a bloated, boozy Chris Cooper (always excellent) was a stone cold prick to his family, a selfish, toxic, bastard. It was ME, ME, ME, just when his family needed him most.

Gee, sound familiar. We have tried to stuff President Chaos’ Kryptonite into lead-lined boxes in our hearts, but his poison has become OUR poison and it has leached into our souls. We’re in a fight for our country’s existence, and we’ve limped back to our corners, and our trainers have worked on our cuts, and administered smelling salts, but to no avail; we’re about to be TKO’d, yet we come out at the bell for the 15th round and keep flailing.

That’s Lloyd/Rhys, the story’s protagonist, when we meet him.

How many times have you flared up in the last four years? How many times have you daydreamed about popping someone right in the nose? Road-rage much? Light someone up on social media?

Can you feel your anger’s onset? Are you able to push in your psychic clutch and reroute your rage? More to the point: how do you feel after you explode? How has it affected your relationships with loved ones, or at work?

These are the areas “A Beautiful Day…” explores. What the Rhys character unearths for us, the audience, is that we as a people are more in need of superheroes than perhaps ever before. But not ones that “are faster than a speeding bullet”, or “more powerful than a locomotive”, or “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

Nope. Maybe, just maybe, we need superhuman kindness. Someone who listens. Cares. Encourages. Helps us to help ourselves and, in the process, each other.

Forget our roads and bridges: what we need RIGHT NOW is someone who can help us rebuild our societal infrastructure.

Anger is OK, Mr. Rogers said. It’s a perfectly valid emotion, but acting out is counterproductive. Martial arts experts know the power of restraint, which takes incredible strength. Lashing out is easy. The ability to identify and process the cause of the pain? That’s another story.

We’ve torn each other to shreds in recent years, and look what we’ve done to our country — to ourselves — in the process. If it’s corny to wish for kindness, for healing, for calm, then at this point I’d have to say the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.

For once, let’s try a little tenderness. Fred Rogers would certainly approve.

You know I have a thing about gizmos, right? Like, I’m a late adopter — I am the last to get onboard with a new technology, or platform, or device.

I’m an analog guy in a digital world. Bytes and bits can kiss my grits.

But even Neo-Luddites like me evolve. Change is s…l…o…w…but it does come, at some point. In fact, I just made a list of the newfangled things this old-skool, Real New Yorker now uses.

What new things are you using these days. Here are mine:

• Soda Stream: I make my own seltzer. This gizmo has a small footprint on the counter and makes months worth of seltzer from a single cannister of gas. When it’s used up, you swap it for a new one at Staples, for far less than the cost (and hassle) of shlepping bottles of seltzer from the supermarket. I’m saving the planet, one grepse at a time.
• Fit-Bit: I use it at the gym and when I’m out and about, to track my BPMs and how far I’ve walked. It’s fun and gives me a sense of accomplishment. Plus, it was a neat gift from my son.
• IPhone: Man, did I resist getting on the Apple bus, because Apple is rotten to the core, as far as I’m concerned. But my trusty IPhone 6 is a Swiss Army Knife. Does everything I need, and the apps for music theory, instrument tuning, and photo post-production have lots of value. It’s a good tool. But Apple still sucks. I’m not trading up.
• Amazon Fire Stick: Amazon sucks too. BUT: this thing works like a charm and gets me great steaming gobs of onscreen entertainment. Beam me up, baby.
• Google Nest: Google sucks too!!! (Three in a row.) But this three-pod system flawlessly flings the power of the Interwebs around my L-shaped apartment, with aplomb. It was cheap, easy to set up, and works great. I’m sure I’m being spied upon with it, but yes, it does solve a consumer problem.
• Philips Sonicare Electric Toothbrush: I NEVER thought I’d buy something like this. My new dentist said they are better than the others out there, and would be a game changer, in that my mouth would feel like it does after a cleaning. In a moment of weakness, I ordered one. HOLY SMOKES! She was right! This thing is amazing. Easy to use, small footprint, powerful — and now I actually look forward to doing my oral hygiene.

So, yeah, I’m a late adopter. But I do adopt. How about you? Any new gizmos in your household?

We were all looking forward to going to the custom car show at the Coliseum that weekend. Suddenly, teachers started crying. We were told that classes were dismissed.

We lined up for the 38 bus outside of JHS 143, as the news spread. We were shocked. We wore his campaign buttons with pride and even put them into the heels of our shoes, for taps, as we walked down the school hallways. His posters were in every bar around Fordham Rd. and Kingsbridge.

He was our Paul Bunyan. He was a war hero. He beat that sweaty POS, Nixon (and HIS campaign offices were EMPTY! Not like our hero’s offices, always jam-packed with kids asking for buttons and fliers.)

The next Sunday we watched our b&w tv’s as they brought Oswald down the corridor. Suddenly, BLAM!, some fat schmuck named Jack Ruby rubbed him out, in front of everybody! Sick shit. It was the day I realized that we — us kids — all had to go it alone, had to be self-reliant, and not trust any of them; the certainty of childhood, that adults could handle things and run a proper world, was obliterated. I was 12.

Here are my Real New Yorker remembrances of Halloweens past. Add yours in the comments section and have fun tonight:

— Going to Fordham Road to buy crappy machine made costumes, then getting home to doctor them up: more blood! (Ketchup) More eye darkening! (Burned corks fished out of the garbage) More designer detail! (Dad’s old crushed fedora)

— Meeting on the top floor of our tired old Bronx apartment house and working our way down, clambering down the steps and bang bang banging on doors!

— Once finished, we’d head across the street to Fordham Hill Apartments, THE MOTHERLODE! Many buildings! Many apartments!

— Coming home with two (or more) filled shopping bags filled with candy and coins (yeah, folks put pennies, nickels and even dimes in the loot bags) and eating ourselves sick!

— Picking out the candy corn (thrown loose and unwrapped into our bags), hard candy, and raisins and giving them to our little siblings (hey, what did they know, right?)

— Falling asleep in a pile of candy wrappers, floating in a sugar high.

We dressed as ghosts. “Bums.” Pirates. Cowboys. Indians. Devils.

Favorite candy? Mounds. Almond Joy. Nestle’s Crunch. Chocolate covered mints.

Worst? Candy corn.

Worst of all? Apples and raisins. I mean, we were junk-food loving kids; what were they thinking?

Worst experience? As a little kid in a group of similar mopes, getting egged by the “big kids” from Devoe Park.

OK, your turn? Add your kid-Halloween memories below! BOO!!!!!