Was it the water, the smell of Levy’s freshly baked bread delivered to my father’s deli? Is it the air laden with aromas from all the Italian, Greek, German, and Chinese restaurants, or the world’s best pizza billowing odorous air streams into the streets, making you want to manga? Was it the Fox theater on Flatbush Avenue where Alan Freed (who coined the phrase “rock and roll”) 50s rock shows featured Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Bill Hailey, and the Comets? Was it the Italian or Black kids singing acapella, echoing their fifties rock and roll chops in the subway halls or under streetlamps that created its musical vibe? Was it the aroma of the famous Nathans Hotdogs, the Ferris wheel ride taking your breath away as you circled the top and viewed the ocean and ant like inhabitants on the boardwalk at Coney Island. Or was it the immigrants and their first-generation children who refused to accept they were second-class citizens and overachieved?

In the 1880s Brooklyn was one of the country’s most prolific manufacturing centers. Its shipping ports handled more tonnage than Manhattan and more sugar refining than anywhere else in the country. Brooklyn’s ironworks, petroleum refineries, slaughterhouses, toys, food products, breweries, and electrical manufacturers were humming. Except for the few years our country experienced the depression, successful, local grocery and candy stores, butcher shops, and independent mom-and-pop clothing stores were omnipresent in each neighborhood.

Sections of Brooklyn were filled with vendors hawking their wares from pushcarts, much like Manhattan’s lower east side immigrant neighborhoods. Staples like fruit, vegetables, socks, hats, pots, and pans were sold. “Mister, you won’t find a lower price on these shoes; genuine leather, will last a lifetime, too much, make; me an offer.” These newly anointed Americans didn’t become rich. Still, they could live in an apartment with heat in the winter, hot and cold running water, and, if they were lucky, their own bathroom.

Maybe it was the connectivity and infusion of belonging, even if you were an immigrant. So many of our commonalities make the cliché “you can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can’t take Brooklyn out of the boy” relevant. Was it the endless parade of places you could escape to and expand life-affirming and educating experiences only a modest walk, subway, or bus ride away?

So much of the credit for Brooklyn’s achievers belongs to our collective immigrant first or second-generation parents. They sacrificed their existence to make us excel in the arts, education, and science. Or survive gangland style in the teaming tenements and the new world’s crowded, noisy streets.
Maybe a part of it was the immigrant neighborhoods that created a safety net in the new world and at the same time squeezed your ambitions, like a bursting pimple eagerly awaiting the freedom to escape the poverty and glass ceiling imposed by living in an isolated neighborhood.

Because of its Ultra-Orthodox Jewish residents, Brooklyn is nicknamed “the most Jewish place on Earth”, and home to the world’s largest Jewish community. With over 600,000 residents living in the borough, a population individually greater than Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem.

My father worked six days a week, about 10 hours a day, on his feet all day, at various Delicatessen Restaurants as a union counterman. He worked even harder when he had his own deli with my uncle. He’d come home from work, sit down for just a minute, and immediately fall asleep. Only to be awoken by my mother beckoning him to eat something. Like many children of Brooklyn immigrants, our parent’s work ethic was passed down to us. My brother and I are the recipients of it, earning a small piece of the pie, allowing us to increase ours.

All you had to do was peruse down the halls in the tenement we lived in, and the smells would take you on a journey around the world. The dialects from so many immigrant parents would create the signature linguistic style of the Dems, Dose, and the “so how ya doin” greeting influencing our diction. Now its morphed into the language of rap, with its unique and colorful style.

Brooklyn is a who’s who of the Famous and Infamous.

No other city or state in the country gave birth to so many influential over achievers in the late 1800’s through the early 1950’s. No borough in New York, not even the Bronx, Statin Island, Queens, or Manhattan.

So many celebrities, politicians, writers, and athletes were born in the Borough that gave birth to dem “Brooklyn Bums,” The Brooklyn Dodgers. It’s where Jackie Robinson, who started in 1947 at first base, broke the color barrier in major league baseball and brought dem bums to national prominence. The Brooklyn Dodgers is the only major league baseball team in the country named after a borough instead of a city or state. Jackie Robinson was one of two sports heroes of mine. Not only because of what he accomplished on the field and the abuse he had to overcome, but more importantly, the fortitude he exhibited in fighting for civil rights.

Sandy Koufax was the second of my all-time Brooklyn sports heroes. He was a left-handed Jewish pitcher born in Brooklyn. He played his entire Major League Baseball (MLB) career for the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers from 1955 to 1966. He is the youngest player ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. In the first game of the 1963 world series, he struck out a record 15 Yankees. I was blown away and so proud when I learned he was Jewish. At the time, only a handful of baseball players in the country were Jewish. His decision not to pitch during the Jewish High Holidays, even during a world series game, made him a hero to me.

Brooklyn gave birth to Jerry Seinfeld, Jimmy Fallon, Spike Lee, Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond, Michael Jordin, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Janet Yellen, the first woman to be the United States Secretary of the Treasury. Rita Hayworth. Larry David. Richard Dreyfuss. George Gershwin, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and John August Roebling. As well as Rudy Giuliani, Meyer Lansky, Neil Simon, Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Alan Arkin, Isaac Asimov, Red Auerbach, Cal Abrams, Henry Ward Beecher, Shirley Chisholm, Howard Cosell, Harvey Firestein, Bobby Fisher, Larry David, Jay Z, Mary Tyler More, Eddie Murphy, Mae West, Walt Whitman, and hundreds more that broke the sound barrier in their respective fields.

All Brooklynites are not created equal.

They say that all men are created equal, which can be true until you get home from the hospital.
Life started for me at the Brooklyn Jewish hospital, where my release was delayed because another Michael Rosen was born there, whose parents couldn’t or wouldn’t pay their hospital bills-giving my mother the perfect platform for raining me in with Jewish guilt. I heard, giving birth to me was like the aftermath of being constipated for a month, the pain, the suffering. Then to add insult to injury, getting me out of the hospital was like pulling teeth.

Jewish mothers’ control over their kids took many forms. For instance, did you know that if you ate grapes and swallowed the pits, a grape tree grows in your stomach? There’s also the cliché about not leaving leftover food on your plate because the kids in Europe are starving. Which most certainly was rooted in our struggling European heritage. The best, politely put, was that dating a non-Jewish girl would create a greater chance of getting children out of wedlock than dating a Jewish girl. I couldn’t wait to find my first Christian girlfriend.

Brownsville, Brooklyn, where I was born, was the densest tenement, low-income, populated borough in NY. It still produced some of the country’s most significant famous, and infamous citizens: Zero Mostel is known for his iconic role in Fiddler on the Roof; Mike Tyson, the heavyweight boxing champion; Abe Reles, the most feared hit man from Murder Inc. Isidor Isaac Rabi, an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, used in radar and microwave ovens. Al Sharpton Jr. an American civil rights activist, Baptist minister, talk show host, and politician. Lyle Alzado, an all-pro National Football League defensive end, and Paul Caravello, the drummer for the rock band Kiss.

Brooklyn a mosaic of immigrants.

In1636 Dutch farmers settled in Brooklyn; by 1855, half the foreign-born residents were Irish, and the rest were British and German. That changed dramatically when a second wave of immigrants started arriving in the late 1880s and continues today. In the 20s and 30s, most came from Europe and were Russian Jews, Italians, Poles, and a small mixture from Scandinavian countries. In the early 30s, a new wave came, African Americans escaping Harlem and the south and Puerto Ricans looking for the same opportunities my Grandparents had. They settled in neighborhoods where they felt welcomed and dominated different sections of the borough. It was Brooklyn’s strength as well as its weakness. Cocooning inhabitants was influential in their survival. However, when diversity was necessary within these conclaves, it was divisive.

As a result of Brownsville’s dominant Brooklyn Jewish heritage, several streets are named after Jewish community figures in the western portion of Brownsville, Brooklyn. In 1913, nine years after writer Theodore Herzl died, residents successfully petitioned to rename Ames Street to Herzl Street. One of the few streets outside Israel is named Herzl Street. Born in 1860, he was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine to create a Jewish state.
A block away, the incorrectly spelled Strauss Street was named after two former Macy’s and Abraham & Straus Department store co-owners, brothers Nathan and Isidor Straus. Macy’s was founded in 1858 by Roland H. Macy. Subsequently, the Straus brothers purchased an interest in the store starting in 1887 and assumed complete control in 1896. Isidor and his wife Ida died when they gave up their seats for children and young women on a lifeboat during the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Isidor also paid for Otto Franks passage to NY, which included a job offer. Otto Frank was the father of the famous Ann Frank whose diary was published after Nazis killed her in WW11. Otto Frank survived, both the Nazis and the Titanic.

The Macy’s 34th street flagship store, with 1.25 million retail selling square feet, is the largest in the United States and among the largest in the world. A&S (Abraham & Strauss), a downtown Brooklyn department store, later became a Macy’s. It was your shopping destination when you aspired to or became middle class. Down the block was Junior’s restaurant, known for having the “world’s most fabulous cheesecake.” The landmark location restaurant, founded in 1950, is located on Cheesecake Corner and Harry Rosen Way–aka Flatbush Avenue EXT and DeKalb Avenue. If you headed down Dekalb avenue, past the projects, Pratt Institute, and the local police precinct to Marcy Avenue, you ended up at my father’s Deli. Coincidently my father’s name was Harry Rosen, the same as Junior’s founder. Juniors is still flourishing today in the exact location on Flatbush Avenue.

Even after living down south for 14 years, Brooklyn is still in my DNA. When my southern neighbors and people at businesses I frequent ask where I am from, I tell them Mount Juliet TN, but my parents sent me to Brooklyn for elocution lessons.

Mike Rosen

The firing squad of loose cannons killing our children won’t quit until we bear down and insist the institutions that protect our society do their job. There is no one simple answer to this problem in America; we’re not living in a Hollywood movie with a white hat hero riding into the sunset. More guards at a school cannot protect our children or themselves against assault weapons.  

We need to put a firewall up against the NRA, who are amongst many lobbyists owning the soul of politicians that buy their way into office. Studies show about 90% of Americans support background checks for guns, yet most senators reject and vote against them. Why is that? 

No matter your abortion beliefs. A politician recommending a bounty paid to anyone who informs on anyone involved is how a dictatorship operates, not a democracy.

We need to insist on the separation of church and state. The extreme right and the extreme left are two sides of the same corrosive coin.

Most importantly, the fabric of our family cloth is wearing out. We need solutions to enable us to raise children in an environment that is safe, supportive, and disciplined.

What can we do? Vote! 

Vote for politicians who have answers, not accusations. Echo your voice to those who can represent your moral compass. If you don’t, the big pity party will again shed a stream of well-meaning tears, and again, nothing will get done.

As appeared in the 6.5.22 letters to the editor section in the Tennessean Newspaper.

Mike Rosen 

Mount Juliet TN 37122

Brooklyn, New York, in the 1940s was bubbling over with Italian, Jewish, and Irish immigrants, and their first-generation children. Tenements are bursting at the seams, spitting kids out onto cemented, dingy streets. They played stickball, triangle, stoopball, and Johnny on the Pony- Shadowed by mountains of brick and small kids’ heads poking out of gated windowsills. Where smells of immigrant cooking permeates the hallways and reminded us where we came from.

I’m up at bat, tapped broomstick in hand when from the 6th floor my name is screeched out echoed through the chamber of buildings. Michael, I need you to buy a loaf of bread. “I’m in the middle of a game” I don’t care what your in the middle of; we’re getting company tomorrow; go now, or your Father will hear about this. So now, the biggest play of the day was not two sewer lids up in the outfield but catching my Mother’s change purse containing 18 cents in nickels and pennies. Which feels like 10 pounds when it’s rocketing down from the 6th floor into my hands.

The holidays. 

The entourage descending on us for the Jewish Holidays was my Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and Grand Parents, usually from my Mothers side of the family. Occasionally those from Dad’s family that she anointed were invited. Since my dad worked for a Deli we could afford the throng of 24 or more who crammed into our one-bedroom apartment, where we played musical chairs and could smell the garlic on each other’s breath. They sat on the floor, on the bed, in the hall, wherever there was an inch of space.

If you were sardined in the hallway, you could hear the toilets chain yanked every 5 minutes. Niagara Falls was tranquil in comparison. I think waiting their turn is where most of my relatives learned to dance. 

Our Family.

We could walk to almost all of my relative’s homes or friends of theirs. They continuously surrounded us. It was hard to get in trouble without these guardians of the American Dream finding out. Our safety net covered most of Brownsville, Brooklyn. When my Aunt got Polio, her two boys stayed with us in our one-bedroom apartment for a month, so my Uncle could get on his feet and figure out how he would survive without her help.

We were poor but weren’t crippled by it. On the contrary, it brought us all together. We lavishly celebrated weddings and Bar Mitzvahs on a grand scale, with as many as 150 people. It was the culmination of a Jewish immigrant’s success in the new country. I remember my Bar Mitzvah, where without telling my father, my Grandfather, in his joy, invited the landlord and his wife, the local butcher, the grocer, and his boss, who owned the tailor shop where he worked 6 days a week, 10 hours a day.

Then there was my cousin Murray, whose Mother insisted he plays the accordion at every affair. He was about 11 years old and as wide as he was tall, so getting down on one knee with his accordion and singing Mammy was as stressful as listening to him, but he was family.

During the summer, our tribe escaped the tenements and two family brick attached homes and vacationed in the Catskill area of upstate NY. We rented one-bedroom bungalows which included a mini refrigerator, a tiny rust, stained sink and a closet sized bathroom with a pull-down chain and wooden handle to flush the toilet. Air conditioning was the holes in the screens, which were there to let the flies out. We slept well on old lumpy mattresses. 

The husbands usually came up on the weekends while we were there with our mothers and aunts, cousins, and friends for the whole summer. We picked fresh berries together, swam in the lake, and explored the forests. Generally we ate in the communal kitchen next to a rec area playroom where on the weekends our family would create their own shows. We sang, we danced, we made fun of ourselves, we were alive and breathing the fresh mountain air, for many of us this was the gift of America.  

Chasing the American Dream.

Eventually, my father and uncle with the help of a loan from my grandfather, who raised five children in a one-bedroom apartment, bought a Deli Restaurant in Bed Sty, Brooklyn. If we needed extra hands during holidays when we did a lot of catering and take out business, our family chipped in. If a relative needed extra money or food, or work they were always welcomed in the deli. 

I started working in the Deli when I was about 11 years old; it’s where I learned about the world. It’s where I met Spanish and Black families who wanted the same American Dream and had the same strong family core values we did. The Deli was the neighborhood’s social gathering place. Stories, music, laughter, heartaches, and troubles blended over a beer and a hot dog.

At thirteen, my family moved to an upscale, two-family, three-bedroom apartment on a tree-lined street in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, where I went to Junior High School. Now we traveled to see family by car. With our brand new 1952 Studebaker, the one where it was hard to tell if we were coming or going. Our families started spreading out as they saw more sunlight, dinned out, and vacationed in Florida instead of the Catskills. We were riding the dream. The next step for my parents was brainwashing my Brother, and me to become the cliché of Americanized Jewish families. We must become Doctors or Lawyers, and if you were not that smart, an accountant would be acceptable. If you’re female, marry a Doctor or Lawyer and or become a teacher or social worker. Either way college was a given. 

In the middle of this acceleration, my Fathers friend talked him into purchasing a log cabin home in the wilds of New Jersey. He loaned my father the $1,000.00 down payment on this-one bedroom cabin with an enclosed porch that faced a creek in the woods running through the property. He showed my father how renting it would more than cover the mortgage, which it did. The first couple of weeks we stayed there, no one could sleep. The sounds of nature, water running through the creek, and the symphony of the wind singing through the night made us zombies. We were used to the trucks and honking cars echoing up to our old 6^th-floor apartment.

Now we spent summers in Lake Hiawatha, NJ, where we fished, swam and built tree forts in the woods. During holidays and the summer months our Catskill clan would fight the Lincoln tunnel traffic, and visit us for long weekends. Our communal, cabin home, became much like sleep away camp. While my Brother and I slept on the porch and my parents in the one-bedroom, the rest found space on the large living room floor. Sometimes the sound of someone expelling gas would penetrate the silence, and the whole house shook with laughter. We all cooked and ate together, played together, took long bicycle trips and explored the wilds of what was to become our families new home town.  

We eventually moved to Lake Hiawatha, NJ, full time, where I was the first graduating class of Parsippany High School. The school was built on a farm which was sold like many other farms to make way for urbanization and the pattern of America’s growth. 

Families are growing apart.

Space between families grew as we all found ourselves adapting to the American Dream, making new connections while losing our tribal connectivity. And yes, my Brother became a Lawyer, Graduating from the University of Tennessee, meeting his wife there, and eventually settling in an upscale-developed suburb in New Jersey. I met my wife at College in Manhattan. We raised our family on Long Island, where I commuted to my VP job in New York City working in Advertising.

Florida is calling my parents. 

Like many Jewish and Italian first generation Americans, Florida was there retirement mecca. We visited with them once a year with our kids, and they drove up to us once a year. All the while, my Father complained that the Long Island Expressway was a racetrack. The older he got, the slower he drove, until at age 75, he realized the trip was too exhausting for them. He would drive 45 miles an hour in the expressways 60 miles an hour zone, wondering why irate drivers were giving him twisted head looks.

Driving to Florida with our kids for two days, and the occasional hurricane- like rainstorms was always a challenge. One time we drove in tandem with friends of ours who were also visiting their parents. Our kids were losing their patients and misbehaving, so we came up with the ultimate solution. We switched kids in our cars and achieved golden silence for hours.

We finally arrived in Florida and couldn’t help but notice the tears of joy in my parents’ eyes. The glow of seeing their Grandkids and us was unmistakable and heart rendering.

The Cousins Club.

My parents had a cousins club, which met almost every month in Brooklyn for over 25 years. As theirs disbanded, my cousins and I formed our own group, which also lasted about 25 years. The difference was that we were now spread out and traveled to New Jersey, Statin Island, Manhattan, and Long Island to meet once a month. We paid $25 dues at each meeting, which went into a savings account. The monies were used to go to the Catskill Mountains for a weekend, eat dinner out in Manhattan, or see a Broadway show. During the summer we had a picnic with all our kids. We clung to our past and talked about the future. We were all family. None of our parents went to college. All of their children did. We chased the dream, and most of us had our own homes, two cars, and upper-middle-class lifestyles. 

We watched our kids grow up and assimilate as we pushed them through college and careers to chase our version of the American Dream. 

Their dreams delivered them to Los Angeles and Fort Wayne, Indiana, where they live with their spouses and our Grandchildren. Our cousin’s children live in Las Vegas, California, Colorado, Florida, Upstate NY, Long Island, New Jersey, and North Carolina. 

Facebook and Zoom are now the vehicles for our hugs, kisses, laughter, stories, and tribulations of assimilating.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing the American Dream. What’s wrong, perhaps, is the way we interpreted and chased it.

Now, like my parents, our kids visit us once a year, and we visit them once a year.

Last year we had a zoom conference to fill the void when forty of us met to remember my cousin’s young wife, who died of cancer. Usually, we would have had an unveiling at the cemetery and would come to his house afterward to console him and catch up with family. Being scattered all over the country and Covid forced us to meet through a vehicle that has a brain but no heart. 

This service was for the wife of the same cousin who stayed with us when his Mother was hospitalized with Polio at eight years old. I would have given anything to be there in person to give him a big hug and cry with him.

My wife and I are retired to a planned adult community in Tennessee, where the sunsets on our lake in front of the stately clubhouse, with tree lined walkways and picturesque flowers starring at us along its nature trails. We are 20 minutes from the world’s music capital; a stone throw from rural and historic America and are truly grateful for our new, cherished friends. 

We grasped the dream and executed its demands; however, the warmth of our family womb has been replaced by a light blanket during a cold winter’s night.

Mike Rosen

It’s a fabric filled with senators, congress members, presidents, governors, and all of us. Of all the essential textural millions of threads, I believe small and large town mayors and community boards are the most important. They are the most direct conduit by which millions of Americans can affect and keep our voices heard.

Democracy works from the ground up; dictatorships work from the top down. Voting is our cumulative voice that presses our Politian’s buttons. For the most part, a dictatorship is an overachieving person’s narcissistic singular demand that dictates how you live and breathe. 

We need to get more involved in the dilemma that forces our politicians to compromise the values and standards we believe work for all of us, not special interests. For example, when older people must choose between food and medication, how do our officials effectively mitigate the problem. When we also need prison reform, pandemic assistance, and drug rehabilitation, and at the same time, pay attention to our growing educational needs. How do we citizens pick and choose solutions with limited funds and resources? 

My hometown of Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, is bursting with growth and all the problems it brings. In my eleven years here, we’ve experienced increased crime rates, traffic jams, and a shortage of schools and ambulance services. When North Mt. Juliet Rd. was finally increased from a two-lane road to a four-lane one, the traffic got worse instead of better. Infrastructure planning and updates did not keep up with growth. 

Several years ago, our 55 and older community was facing a dilemma that would compromise the lifestyle we bought into when we moved here. One thousand fifty-four homes were built here, with a clubhouse that holds about 180 people and an indoor and an outdoor pool accommodating a modest number of residents. The development builder convinced the mayor and our town representatives that it would greatly benefit Mt. Juliet if they built another 500 Del Webb homes adjacent to our area. However, the developer wanted these 500 homes, which would house between 700-800 residents, to use all our existing facilities.

Our politicians had to choose between us and a prominent builder’s influence, excessive growth, increased traffic, extra ambulance services, and unsafe access to entrances and exits, when development took precedence in Mt. Juliet. 

Over 200 Del Webb residents rallied at a town hall meeting, met with our elected and appointed representatives, and vehemently protested this intrusion into our lifestyle. Our representatives listened to us and came up with a strategic compromise. If our developer built a separate entranceway, additional roads, and improved infrastructure, they would approve it; the cost would have been about two million dollars. That was the last we heard about this expansion. 

Previously we even had to fight for that fire station and ambulance. When you have a community of 55 and older residents, these services can mean the difference between life and death. Five extra minutes in responding to a heart attack victim can be a death sentence. 

The sooner firefighters arrive, the sooner they can save lives. The sooner our police department can respond, the sooner they can save lives. Now the fire station and ambulance are in danger of being moved to another location. We are currently creating awareness about it and appealing to our local representatives. 

Our communities’ problems are minuscule compared to what’s happening in a Louisiana prison for teenage offenders. Several weeks ago, the prison was cited for keeping these kids in ankle chains and solitary confinement for 12 hours a day so they could control them. Instead of getting state-mandated schooling 6 hours a day, they were lucky if they received 2 hours a week. These teenagers are filled with rage and would lash out at the guards and, in some cases, throw feces at them in fits of anger and frustration. When they get out, they will most likely act out on society. 

If you do your due diligence and read the other side of the coin, you’ll find that the prison is entirely understaffed, with only two poorly trained guards for 30 inmates. The educator who managed to teach was 84 years old and recently passed away. There are no funds for new teachers or the counseling these kids need. When the warden asked for more help and funds, he was told none was available. So now what happens? Band-aid measures will be applied, the story gets buried, and we wonder why we have increased crime. 

What can we do as citizens? Get involved and make sure your voice goes up the ladder of democracy. If enough of us pressure our mayors and local officials, our voices can travel up to our Governors, members of Congress, and senators. 

1.Educate yourself and be sure what you read is vetted and factual. Go to town meetings, find out what other problems exist in your area.

2.Learn about your town’s budgets, how and when they are allocated, and who the influencers are. 

3.Think about how you would set priorities and raise funds.

4.Make your voice known. Gather small groups of interested friends and like-minded people, write letters to your representatives, and invite them to speak at your local church, school, or other venues.

Most importantly, being an informed voter makes the tapestry of democracy more substantial and more sustainable. Learn from what the world is going through now. Free speech, voting rights, and unshackled media are on the side of democracy. Controlling media, indiscriminate book banning, and being jailed for speaking out is top-down autocratic suffocation. Democracy is a job. We all must work at. 

Mike Rosen

Sleep tight, you’re a smart young girl, you’re strong, and I know you’ll be all right, just be yourself, mom says to me. 

I close my eyes, anxiously dream of tomorrows journey, and try to see what will be. 

I start walking down my new path to school, and see a special tree. And the tree says to me, would you like to be me? Of course, I would; it’s better than being me. So let’s trade places says the tree, of course, says me. 

So now I’m so well grounded and know who is me. I’m a tree. I have roots and green leaves and surrounded by so many more of me. I’m tall and strong and thick, and so still, that is…when the wind leaves me be. 

But when the rain wets my branches or the chill of winter makes me brittle, and my limbs shiver and shake this new me is so hard to take, I don’t want to be me.

When the spring comes and my limbs grow and sprout, and I start remembering seasons past, I start thinking; do I still want to be me? 

As I reach for the sun, it says to me, would you rather be me. Of course, I said I don’t want to be a tree. I want to see the forests and bears, the birds, and those who travel the seas. 

Now I’m the sun. So I rise in the morning and set in the afternoon, I give light to darkness and warmth to the cold. Ah, this is me but do I want to do this till I’m very old. It’s so hot up here and cold at night and all though I see the seas and so many trees, is this really what I want to be. 

Is up and down all there is for me? 

My rays reach out and see the jungle full of lush vegetation and wild things that prowl the paths they command. Is this for me? Of course, says the mighty tiger that says he would rather be me. 

So I earn my stripes, I run, I hunt and fight for my space. I put fear in all who are near, and then run, catch my prey, rest at night and start all over again, the very next day, and the very next day.

A loud noise rings out is that sound meant for me. Should I run, should I hide, is someone after me. I run through the paths that once were mine, and fear runs through me for the very first time. I suddenly stop and see a bird so much afraid of me. I say to the bird, would you rather be me.

Of course said the bird I want your stripes, of course, said the tiger I want your flight. So now I’m free to fly where I want and really be me. Now I’ll find my flock and soar and sway and swoon and dive and be free.

Now its time to look through the forest and find a tree that’s best to nest my own new family and me.

The wind, rain, and the snow and cold says oh no, my friend, this may all come to an end. Now I lose one of my own to nature’s fury. Luckily for me, the tree intervenes, and its leaves and branches ease its descent.

Now the sun comes up, and the stillness in the forest makes a vacuous sound. There is a crack in the shell, and a little beak sticks out and says, help me be free; help me be me.

The family swoops down and surrounds the shell and says, don’t fear; you’ll soon fly and be what you will learn to be. 

But who will I be said the newborn? Can I be that girl walking to school? 

That’s me says the mother….

Ask her, she says. 

The little girl realizes they are all looking at her. She then looks at the sky, looks at the trees, looks at the forest, and looks down, and says to this newborn inquisitor; you should be what you want to be. 

As for me…I just want to be me!

Is it me or old age or what? Not only are the rolls of toilet paper getting narrower and smaller and my butt getting bigger, the apples in the supermarket are on steroids, forcing me to pay for more than I want to consume in one sitting.

The bottom line, my cost per poop has gone up substantially.  

You know what else ticks me off the large, round container prunes come in. You struggle to get the cover off the lid, pull up the plastic covering with the tiny, tiny tab, and finally open it up and wallah you look down this cannon of cardboard and find a third of the prunes missing. Who ate these prunes? Because prunes have a high fiber calling in my life, I put up with this, one, they taste good, and two, enough said.

Now let’s talk about more apples, not the eating kind, the technology kind. Between my wife and I, we have a bushel of these, an I-Mac computer, a Mac Pro laptop, two I phones, and two I pads. These are the real rotten apples. Do not get me wrong their the Rolls Royce of communication tools; however, they turn on you every few years. Either the operating systems need updating, you need more speed and memory to run the new apps, or you need the higher resolution retina display. Do we own these machines, or do they own us? 

I am venting because, back a few years ago, I am sitting in my new office waiting for my internet and phone installation, one of two high-tech monopolies, is now well over 3 hours late. 

When most of my peers are retired, I’m still working as a marketing/branding consultant, and yes, the irony is I have gone from creating with magic markers to computers. At the time I moved from a home office filled with noisy phone conversations, a 7lb. Maltese that screams and yelps at anything that moves (I tell clients she is my office manager), Gardner’s who cut the lawns with mowers that sound like 747’s and friendly neighbors popping in just when I am on the phone with a client… to the peace and tranquillity of my own office. 

However, my next-door business neighbor is a trucking delivery service, complete with a women dispatcher whose language is replete with words that rhyme with truck. 

So now, six hours later, the internet/telecommunications installation genus shows up, apologizes profusely, and says I will have you up and running in an hour. The building is already equipped and wired with its router boxes. He is down the hall for eternity comes back with the bad news, he can’t use these routers. We need to run a cable across the attic to the other side of the building, climb into the Chiropractors office ceiling and hook it up in his area. Ok…go to it; no, I am not a cable installation guy. I’ll have a specialist come in first thing in the morning. The first thing in high tech language is 5 pm, the next day when two cable people on overtime finish at 8 pm.

Give me a Crouqill pen, some parchment paper, the pony express, let me grow a beard, work in a robe, and wear hand-sewn underwear, and i’ll be a happy communicator.

Ten years ago, my wife and I traded corn beef sandwiches for corndogs, Bob Dylan for Willie Nelson, and moved to Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville from Long Island, New York. So little by little, we got with the program. You-all unapologetically spills out in some of my conversations, as well as adopting southern politeness and demeanor not commonly found in the streets of Brooklyn. However, all this uncalled-for unsolicited politeness gets on my nerves sometimes.                    

Let’s take Lowe’s, for example. Up north, greeters were far and few in-between. Generally, they were hiding in the isles looking busy, and when you found one, you received the famous who me, “what, what, what” look. Down here, you are greeted instantly with an army of red vested smiling faces, all standing in formation across from a long row of registers, to break through the line, you either have to ask a question or be aggressive with your shopping cart. Now you’re up the aisle, need to ask a question, and all the red vests have abandoned ship.

Before you get to Lowe’s, you pass a sea of box restaurants all couponing for your business, with greeters trained like robots, overly solicitous, however well-meaning and sweet. But please let me eat my fried chicken tenders in peace, don’t come by every 5 minutes and ask me how’s it tasting when I have a mouthful and complaining to my friends about being interrupted while I’m complaining. 

And here is the biggie…stop asking me where I come from. In response I usually say, I was born in Tennessee; however, my parents sent me to Brooklyn for elocution lessons.

In all fairness, I need to admit; the volunteer state is slowly changing my blood pressure. When I go back to New York or visit our kids in California, I get honked at and given some very explicit hand signals for driving too slow. As well as waiters giving me the evil eye when I linger too long at their table. Or holding up an elevator to let another passenger in or greeting strangers with a smile.

So now I say thank you, over and over again, to whomever serves me at my new adopted home, the state of Tennessee.

Bless your hearts.

Mike Rosen

By Mike Rosen (as it appeared in the Del Webb Down Home publication May 18, 2012).

It was another Friday ritual for us at Del Webb, a time, Carol and I have lately reserved the evening for mellowing out instead of going out. I still work from home; Carol is a more typical Del Webb resident, retired and taking part in all that makes life special here: golf, women’s club, antique hunting, sewing, decorating, socializing, and giving me honey-do lists. 

This past Friday was, however, different. I just returned from my morning 20-20-20-workout class. As I park my car, I noticed this force of nature (aka Sidney Payne) bounding out of an SUV behind me in the driveway with two packages in hand.

 “Mike, I have your survivors shirts…have to run and deliver a bunch more.” 

Boom, gone. 

It was a startling reminder that Carol had committed us to participate in the Relay For Life Fundraiser honoring cancer victims and survivors at Charlie Daniels Park, Mount Juliet TN (our new home).

Both our Parents experienced and succumbed to cancer. Ours was diagnosed earlier enough so that we didn’t have to experience the extreme suffering and indignity that cancer can ravage upon the human body and spirit.

Along with marriage, raising kids, college, grandchildren, and charting our way through life’s waterways, the reality of cancer was a light that only blinded us when it was occasionally shined in our faces. 

Friday night would be such a time. We arrived at the park to see a sea of purple shirts—those who are supporters, others that are survivors, friends and strangers who would soon touch and bond with us in a way we have never experienced before. 

We quickly took up some real estate with our chairs and settled in, when we realized the little white bags at the edge of the large oval walking path would have the names of loved ones on them. They would also have a candle cradled in a wooden base, which would be lit in their memory after dark. 

We quickly walked the path and found our parents’ names and were taken aback with the love and memory of their lives and what they meant to us when we were woven together. 

The most disturbing memory for me was the ghost of my mother-In-law Lil’s face, which I saw whenever I looked and walked down into my basement office in our former Long Island NY home, after she passed. This is where we had set up an area for her to live and be cared for while she battled terminal breast cancer. 

When we finished walking the path, we were invited to sit and have dinner in a special tent set up for survivors where we were served by friends, neighbors and volunteers. The attention was starting to make me feel uncomfortable. 

After dinner, survivors were asked to walk the Circle Of Life Path. The skies were resting their light while the little white-bagged candle monuments illuminated the pathway for us. People gathered at the edge of the path and started to clap and cheer us on. I proceeded stoically holding my wife’s hand while holding back tears and embarrassment for this undeserved attention. 

Halfway around the path, just as we passed the little monument with my parents’ name on it, there stood a group of Junior Marines from Cumberland University. In front of them were four young public school students proudly wearing the same uniform, standing at rigid attention and saluting us as we passed. I’m not a war hero, I was never in the service, my heart was pumping while tears welled up in me…and I cried.

This was an affirmation of what we could be when we come together and honor our experience and elevate the human condition. 

The evening was filled with joy, meditation, remembrance, survivor stories, entertainment and several hardy souls who continued to walk The Relay for Life all through the night. 

Sidney Payne; thanks to your tenacious and over the top personality this event touched a lot of hearts and lives. Please accept my salute to you and the other volunteers who put this together, in my eyes you are a General amongst Privates. 

Author’s note: It’s almost nine years since that day and while most of us are still living in Del Webb, some have either moved on to nursing homes, are now living closer to children or have passed. The memory of those candles and how people from all walks of life, different religions, different parts of the country opened their hearts will always be one more light that is ignited by humanity.

When I was about 11 years old, Brian, a black man who regularly had dinner in my father’s restaurant befriended me. He was a conductor for the NY subway transit system, as well as a landlord, and businessman owning a couple of brownstones in the changing, (1950’s) Williamsburg / Bed Sty section of Brooklyn. 

I was mesmerized by his intelligence, his sophistication and felt his angst and frustration at not being accepted outside his immediate world.  Even at a young age I recognized the disdain that his own neighbors had for his success, unintended lofty behavior, and well-deserved self-righteousness.

As I grew older I looked forward to his wisdom and friendship. Then one day he said to me I heard your family is moving out of Brooklyn to New Jersey. I said Oh yes with a great grin. 

He looked into my eyes and said; do you think I will ever be invited to your new home.

I didn’t have to ask what he meant; my heart broke as this cold truth stunned me to the core. I will never forget Brian and his burden of living a life in limbo. 

Sixty-Seven years later, various social triggers remind me of him, his friendship and his glass ceiling. 

This writing is dedicated to Brian. 

Look through your own light. 

I looked at brown faces and from a distance they all look the same to me. Then I meet brown people and start to discover what there is to see. 

I no longer see people who look alike to me. I look through my imposed curtain, and look deep into their hearts, and I find me. 

Why does it take so long to discover what we should see? Cultural blindness causes so much pain, misconceived behavior and out of focus sight.

We ask others to see for us and then complain about what they say they saw, even if they may be visually illiterate and can’t really see what should be seen. 

A bright young waitress I meet, full of dignity and charm drew me into her light, and I looked into it, to record what I should have seen so long ago. 

The next time, I went to the restaurant and expected her to brighten my space; I was taken aback when another waitress took her place. 

This beautiful brown girl with her charming West Indian accent and illuminating smile was so proud of where she was. When I spoke I dove into her eyes because I wanted to see all that I was missing, all that I could see. 

A successful, retired, executive I know with the manors and worldliness of a saint, I meet in a building where we mentor small businesses. A white maintenance man asked whom he was here to see. My heart sank, don’t you know he belongs in this place, can’t you see who he is. 

When this intrusive questioner saw my face he apologized to my acquaintance for what he thought he saw, because of me maybe he finally saw what he should have seen, or maybe it was my angry eyes that told him how to see. 

The wrong people tell us what we should see. Their eyes are blocked from humanity. We need to focus on the individual not the imposed, mass visual. Perceptions can be changed but first we must see what our hearts guide us to see.

Color is important, language is important, heritage is important, individuality is supremely important but knowing the value of what you see is the only righteous way to see. 

Stand up for what you see. Let your heart televise it through your lens. Don’t wait like me in my old age to word-up what you see.  

Look through your own light, focus your vision, and see for yourself, not what others want you to see. 

Mike Rosen 2.10.2021

Photo: pixels-Sharon-McCutcheon

I was born in Ashland City, TN.

My Mother was a wild woman, living an un-caged life, overweight, and muddy, somewhat odiferous, always fun and protective.  

My father was a pedigree as well as mom (although you would not have guessed it), however, my father was a no show. Rumor has it that he had a lot of Girlfriends.

Living on the farm as a puppy could be fun and dangerous at the same time. Playing with chickens, dodging cow hoofs, getting lost in the cornfields, and challenging my siblings for attention and food was exhausting. 

The room I lived in was in the family’s ranch house, although it didn’t smell much better than my cousin’s barn accommodations. The farmer’s wife cared for us. Although she was hearty and rough, (with callused hands) she bathed and groomed us incessantly so some very deep-pocketed family could adopt us.

“Come on kids, we have visitors; two northerners who talk funny and wear pressed clothes.” They entered and started grinning as soon as we appeared on their site. 

Although I feared being separated from my siblings and the unrestricted, wild life of home, I did recognize that in this next chapter of my life I could be a princess. So I warmed up to them, and put on my adorable puppy persona. 

They picked me from several of my siblings and negotiated an outrageous adoption fee. This immediately told me my life, as a princess was ordained.

On my way to my new home, I am determined to be more than a princess; I am to become the Queen of Scout Drive.  

I imagined my self in a King size bed, and all my personal grooming and hygiene needs becoming my new family’s priority.

The first couple of nights were a nightmare.

The accommodations were totally unacceptable. I didn’t slide around in their pristine car on the way to our estate to end up in a gilded cage. So now the battle for sleeping rights was on. I howled and carried on all night long; as soon as they came to inspect and see if their investment was ok, I calmed down and put on my puppy demeanor.  I tried to escape the cage; however it was no use; these people are experienced zookeepers. 

The lights go out and wait till they are comfortably back in bed, and I let out another round of my vocal ammunition. This goes on for two nights; my throat is raw, their eyes are red, their hands are shaky.  Stage one of my strategy is working. 

On the third night, they think bringing the cage into their bedroom and playing Mantovani is going to work. Wrong, my prey is now in closer hearing range. 

On the fourth night progress is being made, although not entirely up to my expectations. They set up this plush semi-circular bed (which probably cost them some decent bucks) and grin from ear to ear as they gently put me in my new bed and talk baby talk to me. 

Not on your life, this is not the big picture, which is joining the two of them on their king-size Beauty Rest. After four nights of arduous training, they finally get the picture and acquiesce. 

My diminutive 4-pound, fluffy body allows a multitude of sleeping opportunities. Fortunately, they each sleep with two giant pillows. I usually adopt the back pillows against the headboards and switch from side to side depending on who has to take a wiz at night. Sometimes I nest further down on the bed between them and use certain body parts as my personal pillows. Of course, the danger, is rollovers; these are hefty people with big behinds; I don’t want either one of them getting up with me embedded there.

Recognizing and growing my food pallet. 

I am a Maltese, descended from ancient Greek and Roman times, where wine and cheese and gourmet vitals were abundant in households who could afford the pleasure of a Maltese’s company. 

My food has to be organic, with no fillers and artificial flavors. 

Food training these two city slickers was easy. You sit in a strategically located corner of the kitchen, at the time the food you like is being prepared and stare them down with that enduring, guilt processing look until they realize your gourmet preferences. 

Atlantic fresh-caught salmon, soft and moist, shredded and mixed with my organic kibble, is a favorite. Light, fluffy scrambled eggs sporadically placed with my dry food will do for breakfast. Green apples are appalling, red apples work for me as well as small samplings of authentic Georgia peach. However, I must confess, I lose my cool when it comes to homemade popcorn; I’m not beyond sticking my head in the bag as my tail wags so hard I think my rear end will fall off.  

My demand for privacy during go times. 

As opposed to most canines, open fields, neighbors. lawns, vacant lots, and fire hydrants, I consider gosh. My business is done indoors on soft, absorbent pads; it’s the only civilized way to relieve oneself.  Besides, tall grass tickles me in unmentionable places. The pads are changed a couple of times a day, enabling me to keep my paws a safe distance from any previous excretions. 

My go place base is on the left wall partially down the side of the sunroom. Getting these enablers to create some privacy for me was easy. I would make a little noise, spin around, crouch my backside down in the go position, and then turn my head sideways towards them with an embarrassed, pleading look in my eyes. 

It worked; I now have this majestic five-foot-tall, four-section privacy screen, which not only provides some modicum of decorum but also keeps visitors from using or viewing my facilities. 

My enablers give me a treat when I do number two on the pad, thinking they are training me. It’s the other way around. Reverse psychology enables me to get a treat for what comes naturally. All I have to do is an end-run around the privacy screen, power walk through the kitchen into the living room, stop and stare at them. 

I walk them once a day. 

We walk for exercise as well as for socializing. I start out with a jolt of speed, so they now have to chase after me, and then I suddenly stop when they least expect it. Sometimes to assess my surroundings, sometimes just to keep them off trajectory. Sometimes for a treat, or to let neighbors go on and on about how cute I am, all basically to show my enablers, who is in command. 

They still haven’t learned that other species of my kind are not relevant. I am not generally fond of dogs. Either they are aggressive like their enablers, or they smell like them. If my relatives are small, they jump around like they have attention deficit disorder or worse; they embarrassingly stick their nose in my business. Talk about embarrassing species, I mean, really!

The only exception is Buddy, my aging, gentle, sweet boyfriend. He calms my nerves and is never aggressive or inappropriate with me. Buddy was a rescue and has some hang-ups with fast-moving vehicles; whether it’s a bike or a car, he becomes the Road Runner and has to be corralled. At a block party, he de-shoed a bicyclist who was speeding down the hill outside our house. As the whole neighborhood was trying to catch Buddy, he spotted me in the front doorway, at which point he did a double take and came to swoon over me. 

Protecting the family.

Even though I am now only 7 lbs., my capability as a watchdog is shockingly effective. Biting a 250 intruder is not my style; however my pre-warning barking system is incredibly effective. I perch myself on the top of the living room couch and bark at anyone walking by. It’s especially fun to run the length of the house from window to southern style window and bark at the top of my lungs. Even though this is unnerving to my enablers, it has allowed me to establish street creds and serves as a reminder to them about household seniority. 

Greeting guests.

This is my favorite. I jump up and greet them like we were long lost, friends. I go from one to the other and don’t calm down until they sweet-talk me. Many of them have learned gently rubbing the back of my ears goes a long way with me. Or having me wrapped around their neck like a scarf, where I can control them and view the other visitors. Sneaking a little treat from the table for me doesn’t hurt either. You guessed it; I’m a little needy. 

Going to the groomer while medicated. 

Looking adorable takes a crew. My enabler brushes my teeth almost every morning, and applies eye stain, eliminating that clown; raccoon look so common amongst my peers. Monthly grooming is horrendous; I scream, wiggle, and shout all the way there. To calm my independent nature, the veterinarian prescribed some tranquilizers for me, which temporarily puts me in la, la land.

You realize I’m put in a harness, in front of other canines, and while completely exposed, they bathe me and take the sheers to me. I might as well be in a three-ring-circus; it’s degrading but a necessary sacrifice. It’s all worth the process, especially when the enablers pick me up and fawn all over me; their guilt is worth every second of humiliation. They really should hire a personal groomer to come to the house. As you might have guessed, I’m working on it. 

Mike Rosen 2.18.2021

Photo: Mike Rosen