Not my "American Dream" for the Meadowlands

By Steve Janoski

Every time I see the heaping monstrosity rising from the flank of Route 3, I can’t help but shake my head.

That massive, gaudy orange-and-blue ulcer of a mall has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with the Garden State, from the officials who allowed the hugely inappropriate project to be recklessly built on environmentally sensitive land to the budget woes and overruns in time and money that have subsequently occurred.

It will look hideous once it’s done, just another manmade eyesore climbing out of the swampy Meadowlands, desperately being dragged to "completion" by its newest developer, the Triple Five Group.


Always having been much more of a naturalist than a shopper, I’ve had nothing but disdain for the project since it was announced back in 2003. I do realize what state I live in, though, and I knew there was little hope of trying to stop such a thing from being built.

But it just keeps getting worse and more bizarre, as the The Record reported on June 14 that the developer has asked for permission to strip yet another five acres of wetlands to construct a new indoor amusement and (ironically) water park on the site.

As that request is processed and reviewed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the article states, Triple Five is trying to finalize the $2 billion in financing necessary to complete the $3.7 billion mall.

With so much of Xanadu — or, as it’s called for the time being, the "American Dream Meadowlands Project" — already built, another five acres might not seem like much. And truthfully, it isn’t.

But by now, it’s just out of spite that I’m hoping that the environmental permits are rejected and that maybe the developer will be told to try and open the mall for a day or two before planning an expansion on a project that should have never been allowed in the first place.

As a reporter, I’m acutely aware of the constant battle between environmentalists and developers and the need for both open space and ratables. And, even though I tend to lean toward the green side (as in trees, not money), I understand that a balance must be struck.

But the Meadowlands has seen enough damage on our account.

It took us centuries to realize that the swamp was a little bit more than an expendable wasteland, a brackish tidal estuary where garbage and bodies and toxic waste could be dumped with little effect on the ecosystem.

And everything has been dumped there over the years. Even pieces of London rubble ended up in our marshy plain when, after the Battle of Britain reduced much of that city, sections of concrete were used as ballast in ships coming back to America and then thrown into the meadows by the military.

But even with the apocalyptic assault leveled at it by humans, decades of more stringent regulation, combined with the rise of conservation groups and a general change of attitude in regards to the wetlands, has started the entire region crawling towards recuperation.

Many species of animals not regularly seen in years, such as grey seals, fluke, and striped bass, have made their way back into the streams winding their way through the golden plain. Even the HackensackRiver, which was once so polluted that it could only support the hardiest of fish, has staged a modest comeback.

And that five acres, while it’s but a small sliver of the Meadowlands’ 8,500, should be preserved as well. The area’s wildlife has hung on with a white-knuckle grip, and the state should be trying to nurse it back, not allowing developers to further ravage it, even in the smallest amount.

I know that this argument has been made many times over in New Jersey, and I don’t expect anything other than more development to occur. And, being as the rusty-walled fool’s paradise has already been built, there’s nothing more that can really be done except hope that it somehow works out.

But in the future, I can also hope that the state pays attention to the cascade of mistakes that have left both the Meadowlands and the mall in such dire straits – and the next time developers promise the world a mall the size of Rhode Island, New Jersey tells them to find somewhere else.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/159828175_Not_my__American_Dream__for_the_Meadowlands.html?page=all

First volley in the war on obesity

BY STEVE JANOSKI

I've got to give New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg credit: the man's got…nerve.

I'm sure he knew the firestorm was coming last week when he announced his plan to combat obesity by banning the selling of sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces at places like restaurants, movie theaters, and fast food places, and he went ahead with it anyway.

And, as was expected, the naysayers have sprung from the woodwork with a glut of "reasons" why this is an awful idea. It won't help, they claim, because people will buy the same amount of soda, just in smaller containers.

They say it's "Nanny Bloomberg" once again overstepping his bounds, and call it a restriction on personal choice, on freedom itself!

Relax. It's nothing of the sort.

Make no mistake about it: Bloomberg is doing nothing that's going keep you freedom-loving Americans from guzzling gallons of soda, thereby retaining that inalienable right to die slowly and painfully as a result of diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and all the other illnesses associated with obesity.

What it is, however, is a public health initiative that's going to accomplish the same goal that his ban on smoking in bars, restaurants, and public parks has done over the past 10 years: make it exceedingly hard to ingest a thing that is truly, truly awful for you.

According to a recent New York Times report, a spokesman for the New York City Beverage Association — an arm of the soda industry's national trade group — criticized the city proposal, calling it a product of the NYC health department's "unhealthy obsession with attacking soft drinks."

"It's time for serious health professionals to move on and seek solutions that are going to actually curb obesity," said spokesman Stefan Friedman in the piece.

Right. Serious health professionals…you know, unlike the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, who blames sweetened drinks for up to half of the increase in obesity rates over the last three decades.

According to the article, the city reports that obesity rates are higher in neighborhoods where soda consumption is more common; this must be simply a coincidence, eh Mr. Friedman?

The brutal reality — which is a place where industry lobbyists for things like Big Tobacco and now Big Soda don't operate — is that over half of the adults in the Big Apple are either overweight or obese already.

But if you were a spokesman for an industry that sells sugary poison, why would you give any credence to that?

Let us be real about this: obesity is the greatest problem facing this country right now. You can live without a job, you can live without being able to read, you can live without knowing algebra, but you cannot live without your health.

This has nothing to do with vanity, and nothing to do with self-esteem: as one writer once put it, "Diabetes doesn't give a (expletive) about your self-esteem."

The health problems that fat people have (I often refuse to use that softening sobriquet "overweight") are amongst the most vicious, and when they come to fruition, they toss their weight onto the already-strained healthcare system, costing untold millions every year.

Obesity reduces life expectancy, and is one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide. Yes, you read that right: eating too much and moving too little is a major, major problem for the entire world, and it's every bit as serious as addictions to tobacco, alcohol, or heroin.

And what do good governments do when citizens are massively addicted to such things? They take steps to curb that addiction. If half the population of NYC were out-of-control drinkers, there would be an outcry followed by proposals on how to fix it.

Back in 1965, the smoking rate in the U.S. was about 42 percent. As the decades went by, however, many governments (especially New York City's) began placing heavy taxes and restrictions on cigarettes and smoking. Miraculously, the rate began to drop.

Now, the smoking rate in New York is just 14 percent, 6 percent lower than the national average. In West Virginia, where few limits are placed on the habit, the rate is 26 percent. Clearly, America needs that same kind of societal shift in the way it views obesity, and needs to be aggressive in fighting it.

So don't think of this proposal as a case of the government overstepping its bounds… think of it as the government trying to be something of a good shepherd.

A shepherd that watches large cows instead of sheep… and is watching them eat, and eat, and eat until they vomit, only to keep eating after that, to the detriment of themselves and everything around them, until they literally drop dead.

And whether you agree with the exact tenet of the law or not, credit must be given to Bloomberg for moving on it. He is one of the few politicians willing to take a tough, unpopular stance on an issue that is affecting more and more Americans every day.

Maybe, when this law succeeds and eventually spreads to the rest of the country (as so many NYC health initiatives have), you can write him a letter and thank him because you were able to watch a whole movie without needing an insulin shot.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/157690925_First_volley_in_the_war_on_obesity_.html?page=all

Wake me up when November ends

BY STEVE JANOSKI

With five months left until the fateful day, the general election circus of national politics is roaring with all of its pitiful melodrama, boring speeches, and media pundits who are hired simply to hash, rehash, and re-rehash what the boring speeches and pitiful melodrama all means to the nation.

I try to ignore the up-to-the-minute minutia because I am not one might call a "swing voter." (See "one who votes for a different set of principles every four years.") I know where I stand and I vote accordingly, and that more or less keeps me above the fray.

But I can never help but worry about the effect that all of the garbage "narratives" have on the outcome of a given election, and while petty issues have always been a part of politics, one could easily be inundated with worthless information due to the incessant tickers of the 24-hour news cycle.

The latest "story" to gain traction has come from the Republican camp. The GOP, desperate to win back the ever-important dog-lover vote in the wake of criticism over Mitt Romney's practice of strapping his dog's crate to car roofs for long trips, has attacked President Obama over a passage in his autobiography where he states that he ate dog meat while living in Indonesia at the age of 7 — at the age of 7.

Although it's disgusting that the election has gotten to this point already, I know where it comes from, and I can't say I'm surprised. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan explained it concisely when she said, "There are literally thousands of people in the United States now who are employed to cover these campaigns minute by minute, and they need something to say."

I, however, was truly hoping that they'd say something of a bit more consequence that doesn't further encourage this awful practice of digging further and further back into a candidate's past to "expose" innocuous, meaningless events and shape them to reflect on that person's ability to lead.

Evidently, if one holds the slightest notion of running for president some day, they must watch every step and guard every action from childhood onwards so as to not give the media fodder in 35 years when they decide to put their name on a ticket.

Many of the presidents whose names decorate the very top of the "Greatest U.S. Presidents" lists would likely not even be seen as near electable today if the current standards had been applied to them.

Andrew Jackson, the legendary general nicknamed "Old Hickory," was a quarrelsome man who had killed an attorney in a duel 22 years before he was elected. It was said that he had taken so many bullets as a result of the practice that he "rattled like a bag of marbles."

Did that make him "unfit to lead?" Or, perhaps, in today's terms, "unelectable?"

Thomas Jefferson is another. His indiscretions with his own slaves have been slowly revealed over the centuries, and one can't help but wonder if they would have been laid out in detail the day after it was announced that he'd be writing the Declaration of Independence had Fox News been around.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt married his own fifth cousin. JFK couldn't keep his hands off of women, before or after being elected. Ulysses S. Grant (along with many other presidents, including W) was known as a heavy drinker in his youth. Lincoln was, well, ugly, as well as a borderline depressive.

And some of the finest leaders from other countries — Winston Churchill springs to mind — would never be allowed near the highest office given their natures.

Leaders, no matter how perfect they seem, are still just people. They are flawed. They screw up, they falter when others push on, they lose faith, they regret.

But elections are not about the past. They're about looking toward the future and putting faith in the intellectual ability of a candidate to set a strong course for the country and drag it toward that objective.

It's not about being a celebrity, and it's not about being perfect. It's about being the right fit for the nation at the time it needs them most. Like Jackson. Like Jefferson. Like Roosevelt. Like Lincoln.

It's troublesome that this country, which once prided itself on being the land where one could forget the past, forge a new life, and meet with unbridled success (so much so that it became known as the "American Dream") seems to be on this path of making the ghosts in one's closet the focus of so much attention.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

The death knell of the simple existence

By Steve Janoski


A man, however well educated, who has once sampled extreme simplicity of existence will seldom return to the artificial life of civilization. The burden of it is not realized until it has been laid aside.

-     English explorer Percy Fawcett

When I first wrote the initial draft of this column, it was by candlelight, on paper, in the earliest part of the night.

This wasn’t by choice, of course — it was during one of those rolling blackouts that struck every few days in the early fall when the wind would blow too hard and PSE&G’s infrastructure would shatter again.

These frustrating instances quickly exposed once again that society’s reliance on electricity is immeasurable at this point; it does indeed seem that we’ve forgotten how dark the night truly is when there’s no burning bulb to show us the way.

But as someone who divides his time between the gym and reading (neither of which require much light), I can honestly say that in small increments, power outages don’t bother me.

Yes, I was without an iPod or TV, but I am no great watcher of television in the first place; the cable could be out for six weeks and there isn’t a show I can say I’d actually miss.

I’d be lying if I said that I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time online, though, and my job would be drastically different.

Of course, I’m not sure how different, because I have only a vague awareness of how newspapers used to be printed in the days when phrases like “setting type” and “upper case” had real, tangible meanings.

But then really, isn’t that the problem?

Most of us don’t look at setting type as a necessary skill, but at one time, it was as prized as any other in the industry.

And the same thing has happened to other basic skills, like carving a piece of wood, using a forge, or even remembering a phone number — they have fallen by the wayside in the computer age.

Before electricity, candles were the “sine qua non” of life at night; now, they are for mere aesthetics.  People who have not yet traded in pocketknives for cell phones are looked on with amusement, as are those who cram a road map into their glove box instead of a GPS.

Call me a luddite (most do), but this worries me.

I cannot help but wonder if, in our zeal to make our survival easier, we are turning into one very fat, very lazy race that’s working so hard at improving the intelligence of our computers that we’re sacrificing our own.

Even the simplest of skills — navigation, fire-building, purifying water — are the culmination of thousands upon thousands of years of human experimentation, and their dismissal as quaint reminders of a time long past is a grave mistake.

The advancements made by computers are certainly a remarkable achievement, one that will bring great benefit to the human race…but with that comes a great danger.

We no longer “turn off.” We no longer “unwind.” Smart phones, Facebook, email, text messaging, they haunt us, swirling around us just inches away from our collective fingertips and inundating our minds with a constant swarm of useless information  that we’ll forget in the next instant.

The sun has set on the days of our self-educated forebears reading the classic works of literature by firelight in the cabins that they built themselves. No longer do we think that a man’s business is his own, or that anything can be solved by the labor of our hands or the power in our fists…the sun has set on “rugged individualism.”

When I was very young, my grandparents were close with a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania.  I don’t recall much about them, except that their children often ran barefoot through the hand-plowed fields and their wall clock had Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones.

But there was one man in that family, I remember, who made his own furniture — utterly beautiful works of art that would rival the best to be found in any store, and last decades longer.

There was no doubt, looking at every finished piece, every hand-carved loveseat or chair, that he’d let a piece of his soul soak into it.

At the end of my writing the draft of this column, I noticed that I had black ink on my right palm.

It’s been so long since I’ve had ink on my hands.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

One veteran’s longest day

BY STEVE JANOSKI

The red cover is faded and tattered, its gold lettering slowly beginning to wear to the point of illegibility.

The pages have taken on a yellow hue, and small, dark smudges of fingerprints — dirt? blood? — festoon the corners.


It sits quietly on the table, with its owner of nearly seven decades having recently departed this world after 88 years, with the story of how it came into his possession known to but a few.

Frank T. Semeraro was born in 1922. Following the death of his mother, he had to quit school early to work on his father's garbage truck, and came up in a hardscrabble Paterson existence in the earliest decades of the American Century.

His father had been wounded while serving in the Italian Army during the Great War, and had left that country just as Mussolini's shadow began to rise over Rome. As the storm of World War II began to gather, he was positive of one thing: he didn't want his son to go to war.

But, as the long fingers of fascism began to wrap around the globe, there would be few families who remained untouched, few children that remained unscathed. The Semeraro home on McBride Avenue was to be no different.

After the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the young Semeraro, like so many others, decided that he was going to go to war.

He planned to join the US Navy so he could fight the Japanese, but an ill-fated fishing trip left him so seasick that he reconsidered that course.

He decided to leave it up to the government, and figured that when they drafted him, they'd send him where they needed him. When the US Army called in 1943, it decided that he was needed in Europe, and so after boot camp, Semeraro was sent to England.

As 1943 wore on into the following year, rumors abounded over whether, where, and when the Allies would make their great landing on the European mainland to begin the final stage of the great battle to save civilization.

The plans for the landing, ominously named Operation Overlord by high command, were unknown to the troops on the ground…until the day that the call came.

And as they herded troops into the transports sitting along the coast of the English Channel on the morning of June 6, 1944, Semeraro wasn't sure where he was headed, but he knew that whatever was happening, it was big.

The seas were rough that day, and men vomited as the boats shook; a result, no doubt, of a brutal combination of seasickness and devastated nerves.

As they closed on the French beach, it's likely that the scene that greeted Semeraro was one straight from the depths of hell — steel abatis, known as "Czech hedgehogs," strewn across the sand as the great cement pillboxes of Hitler's fearsome Atlantic Wall rose into the heavens — but there was little time to take in the sight, for as they neared the shore, his landing craft was struck by a shell.

In an effort to save their lives, troops began streaming over the sides and into the water. Semeraro did the same, but realized quickly that his comrades, weighed down by their heavily-loaded packs, were sinking straight to the bottom and drowning.

Fearing this would be his fate, he pulled his knife and cut off his pack before desperately swimming for shore. Once there, however, there seemed to be no respite from the flurry of German bullets — until he saw one man waiving him over.

The man was another American soldier, and had already dug out a small foxhole to provide cover. When Semeraro reached him, the soldier began giving him his rations, weapon, and the like.

"I've got to get back to the boats, I need medical attention," the man told him. It was then he noticed that the soldier was holding his stomach and intestines together with his hands.

"Just wait for the others," he told Semeraro.

Before he left though, he handed him a small, red prayer book, Army issue, 1943, with its title, "A Spiritual Almanac for Service Men," printed across the front in golden letters.

"You're gonna' need this," he said, before disappearing back to the ships, never to be seen again.

Semeraro stayed in that foxhole as long as he could on D-Day, listening to the gruesome bark of the German MG-42s as they mowed down American troops and turned the Channel's water red with their blood.

He held onto that prayer book later on as he fought his way off the beach and through the pillboxes and trenches of the Atlantic Wall, and then through the hedgerows of Normandy, where the Germans fought tooth and nail to try to keep the Allies from breaking out.

It stayed with him through the rest of his service, and after the war, too, as he established a family construction company, married, had children, then grandchildren, and then great-grandchildren.

The world would eventually come to know the ghastly horror of that day, and that beach — Omaha Beach — would come to join the ranks of places like Verdun, Antietam, and Iwo Jima as being amongst the most infamous killing fields in history.

And when "Grandpa Semeraro" (as he was known to all of us) passed away on Oct. 6, he joined all of the other spirits of the Greatest Generation who are slowly passing on to eternity, forever to be remembered as those valiant few who faced down true evil, and saved the world from unimaginable darkness.

This story was related to me by his grandson, Frank T. Semeraro, who is proud to share his grandfather's name.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com


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Spilt champagne from occupied Wall Street

BY STEVE JANOSKI

I was not paying attention, I admit it. But then again, neither was the rest of the media.

It's not on the New York Times home page, it hasn't been plastered across television screens, and nobody seems to want to speak on it - but it's happening, whether we all want to report on it or not.

These protestors who have been “occupying” Wall Street for the past three weeks, I'm not even sure who they are. The lone common thread appears to be that they are all young, liberal, and… well, that's it.

The few news outlets paying the protest any serious attention have said that some are protesting corporate greed, while others are protesting the undue influence that Wall Street holds over our politicians; recent statements released by the group have added such concerns as police brutality, union busting, and the economy to the list.

Chants have risen up in the concrete valleys of New York, with the refrain of “We are the 99 percent” and “They got bailed out, we got sold out,” and it's clear that the protestors are drawing inspiration from the freedom protests born of the Arab Spring.

For a while, they were easy to dismiss as a few hundred radical hippies trying to make something out of nothing, but as liberal celebrities like Michael Moore and Cornel West joined the fight, it began to garner more attention through, of course, social media outlets.

One particularly inflammatory video on YouTube shows Wall Street's elite dressed in their Sunday finest, drinking champagne and laughing dismissively while watching the protestors; Hunter S. Thompson himself could not have written that script any better.

And so this week, that rag-tag bunch of kids will be joined by the real heavyweights as several prominent unions embrace their cause, and endorsements from the AFL-CIO, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 (representing 38,000 New York city transit workers), and the United Federation of Teachers (amongst others) have come rolling in.

It is a safe bet that other labor organizations will follow their lead. People in other cities certainly have - protests in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C. either have occurred or are being planned.

What this odd combination of old hippies, young hippies, union workers, and anyone else who is out of work and angry about it seems to be tapping into is the silent rage that those of us in the middle class hold because our prospects for the future were left for dead in the ashen wreckage of the “financial crisis.”

They're not socialists, but they don't want every government safety net torn from under them, and don't want corporations to be deregulated to the point of no return.

They're the ones who realize that while American manufacturing lies in hazy ruin, union membership - which helped create the vaunted middle class - has fallen to record lows, and the prodigious wealth disparity is growing every day.

They're the ones who are angry that, unless you're a CEO, there are no jobs, no money, and no raises - not now and, from news reports, it seems not ever.

This is not the first time this happened; a dozen years ago, there was a fight in the streets of Seattle that caught the world by surprise when the nascent anti-globalization movement announced its arrival by bringing tens of thousands into the streets to protest the World Trade Organization and the unbridled power that the massive, multi-national corporations were gathering.

The attacks of September 11 effectively undercut that movement, and the foreign wars of retribution that followed it made citizens focus more on the external threats than the internal.

But now, as those perils begin to fade and America stares down the barrel of yet another recession, it seems that Americans are finally beginning to cast their gaze inward and wonder what happened to the nation that they once knew.

It seems like it was a lifetime ago, but it's only been nine months ago since the now-legendary Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in the middle of the street in Sidi Bouzid.

His final words before committing that single act of defiance that ignited revolution across the Middle East?

“How do you expect me to make a living?”

Well, give Wall Streeters enough champagne, and I bet they'll come up with an answer for you.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Bin Laden's backhanded victory

STEVE JANOSKI

When I drive through the heart of my state on the ever-chaotic Route 3 and the New York City skyline rises up in the hazy distance, it just doesn't look right without them.

I have never gotten used to the sight. At this point, I doubt I ever will.

The memories from that day are vivid — huddled around the cab of an old Chevy S-10 on our lunch period, listening to the car radio in astonishment as announcers caterwauled between updates on the Twin Towers and warnings about further attacks.

We may as well have been crowded around an arch-topped table radio listening to the first reports on Pearl Harbor as far as I was concerned.

"Jesus Christ," I said between pulls of a cigarette. "We're going to war with… somebody."

New York was our city, my city, the place I'd been brought every weekend since I was old enough to walk, and now it sat shrouded in a billowing fog of destruction that had been catapulted into the air as the ashes of firefighters and office workers mixed with the chalky dust of 220 floors' worth of sheetrock.

The psychological effect it all had on me was incalculable.

Ten years later, I suppose that gazing at that lacking skyline is the ultimate solemn reminder that nothing in life is permanent and that we are not all the heroes of our own movies.

Some of us go quietly, some gallantly, some with a whisper and some with a roar, but in the end, we all die, and every time it's a tragedy.

And sometimes the things we've built up around ourselves, our bridges and our skyscrapers and our countries, they die too — 9/11 taught us that much, and nothing has been quite the same since we learned that lesson.

And I don't mean that in the "9/11 changed everything!" way that some politicians do when they're seeking approval to invade this country or that country, but more that in 2001, America was robbed of its characteristic optimism, and without that, it seems to be hurtling toward a devastating end.

For years after 9/11, we turned into a crooked-back ogre, glaring with untrusting eyes and balled fists at every nation, a recalcitrant bully all too ready to call for war in the deserts of the Middle East or on the floors of our own Congress.

The scars are still there — now, a decade later, we are reluctant to help the people of the Middle East as they brawl in the streets for their own liberty, which we supposedly championed back then.

And 10 years later, we are not better off.

On the best of days, the country is going bankrupt, the infrastructure is crumbling, and our foreign wars are bleeding us dry. On the worst, we are told it's our last day on the job, that the rivers are rising, or that the bank is foreclosing.

Still, we have not learned. We call for war to prevent war, we build more to prevent flooding, we elect people who hate government to fix government; as a country, we seem in dire need of a logic class or two.

Sometimes, for all of our flight deck rhetoric about how we "stand strong" and "never forget," I wonder if Bin Laden actually succeeded.

Maybe, just maybe, he figured out that his strikes would foment a need for revenge that would so thoroughly consume America that it would recklessly charge down the path to massive debt and a crippled economy just for the chance to kill him, willingly suffocating itself in pursuit of "victory."

Maybe he knew us better than we thought — maybe, better than we knew ourselves.

Or maybe I've just lost that September 10 optimism I once had.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Borders' plunge shows booksellers' uncertain future

BY STEVE  JANOSKI

For the great majority of the American public that has not read a book since high school and is only vaguely aware that they're still printed, the slow death of the mega-chain Borders might slip by unnoticed except for the passing recognition of yet another empty storefront gazing out at the highway.

For some of us though, the ones who spent a great deal of time (and a great deal of money) in that cavernous building on Route 23, it is as if a dear old friend has passed.

I've always liked bookstores, as they actively catered to my two addictions: the printed word in all its forms, and coffee. And I loved them for it.

As a kid (and later, as an adult) I wandered their aisles for hours, reading pieces of this and that and marveling at the collected knowledge that sat upon the shelves, wondering if I would ever have the time to read all the things I wanted to.

I'll admit, I always liked Barnes and Noble better. It was, in my eyes, more the “Gray Lady” of that industry - more books, no music, and a bit more stuck up and crotchety. It gets away with this, of course, because it is a bookstore, and most of us who frequent bookstores are a bit stuck up and crotchety.

Borders was always like Barnes and Noble's reckless younger sibling - less books, more music, better prices, a bit more lively. How reckless they were, however, we weren't to know until they finally imploded last month and declared that they'd be going out of business.

Now, the place is a cemetery, and great towering shelves full of liquidator garbage sit where novels once did and a pall pervades the air as the signs declaring that “Everything must go” hang lifelessly from the ceiling.

It is a sad state of affairs…but there may yet be hope.

I am too young to remember the days of the corner bookstore, and all too aware of the increasing influence of the e-readers like Kindle and Nook (neither of which I am onboard with yet), but I have a sincere hope that the crumbling of this brick-and-mortar empire will lead to some kind of resurgence amongst those individual booksellers who had been driven from the field upon Borders' arrival.

Maybe, just maybe, we will see a slew of small Bookends-type shops begin to pop up and fill the void left by the behemoth's fall.

After all, I am very particular about the books I buy, and I have an odd routine that I follow that involves opening to some random page and seeing if the thing can hold my attention long enough for me to justify spending money on it.

And then there's the feeling you get when you physically hold a book in your hands. It's as if you're holding a direct link to history, to the thoughts and musings of the greatest minds that have ever lived, like Paine and Dickens and Rousseau and Voltaire, who spent their lives collecting, disseminating, and fashioning a creation that has a weight and heft (both literally and figuratively) that has to be felt to be understood.

That's hard to replicate through Amazon.com.

For now though, Barnes and Noble sits on its Route 46 perch as the last of the old guard, the only surviving king on a decimated chess board, and few of us know where the game is headed.

Until we do, I suspect that old-school onlookers like me will grip tightly our printed versions of the New York Times and “Les Miserables” and cringe, waiting to see what this future holds.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Curtain call for the spirit of the Glorious Fourth

BY STEVE JANOSKI
Wednesday, July 13

It was a bit ironic that I read the story on the Fourth of July, as the crackle and boom of fireworks thundered through the night and citizens of the republic celebrated not only the birth of America, but of democracy itself.

Entitled "Saddle Brook joins other North Jersey towns by approving a teen curfew," it was written by Suburban Trends sister paper The Record, and chronicled the difficulty that township seems to be having with its youth gone wild.

The story said that residents packed a recent Township Council meeting, spreading abhorrent stories about teens drinking after dark, vandalizing property and — if you can believe this, being disrespectful while riding mopeds (have they no shame?)

The council responded to these shocking allegations of human indecency by quickly forgetting what country it lives in, and voted 3-1 to institute a teen curfew limit of 10 p.m. for all youths under age 17, set to go into effect on July 25.

Council members pointed out that neighboring towns like Lodi and Garfield have them, and because Saddle Brook doesn’t, it becomes a "hang out zone."

As a consequence, according to the story, unaccompanied teens found breaking the curfew will be "subject to a fine of $100 to $500, and two to eight hours of community service per offense."

While I am sure that these roving gangs of disrespectful moped riders are truly wreaking havoc on the lovely Saddle Brook neighborhoods, is that reason enough to paint all teenagers with one broad brush?

Forget the girl who works at a restaurant and doesn’t finish up until after 10 p.m. — no more walking home for her.

Forget the kid whose old man is a violent drunk, and his only respite was going for a walk in an attempt to hide from his own bleak reality; no, the two-stroke highwaymen have ruined that.

And, on a grander scale, how dare a governing body in the United States of America even consider banning any of its citizens from the streets?

While curfews are not a new thing, typically they are instituted in either times of extraordinary civil unrest, or to blatantly discriminate against a specific group, such as Japanese-Americans students during World War II or Jim Crow-era blacks in the South.

The resurgence of these laws directed against teenagers is punishing all the kids for the sins of a few, and the idea that any parent, or any American for that matter, is OK with the idea of a policemen stopping a person, even a minor, and telling them that the law says you can’t be out right now, is appalling.

If there is a crime issue, and residents are really frightened of the youth who hang out in the township’s darkened corners, then it must be addressed in the way that all problems should be addressed: through education, more parental involvement, and more sports.

These are things that will turn the teenagers away from the shadows, not some stopgap law that casts a much too wide a net in order to catch a couple sharks.

This law must be fought without hesitation and with ceaseless, brutal intensity, and the citizens of Saddle Brook should remind their council that telling any American citizen, regardless of age or color or creed, that they have a curfew, is taking a sledgehammer to the freedoms that were built with bricks molded from the ideas of the greatest minds of history and sealed with the blood of every American patriot.

Even more frightening is the idea that those raised with a government installed curfew will come to believe that such a thing is neither evil nor immoral — and they are the ones who will make the laws in the future.

I urge you people of Saddle Brook to take to the next council meeting, and tell these politicians that they have no right to legislate a curfew for any American except in a time of extraordinary civil strife, and that this blatant attempt to snuff out the freedoms of the youngest of this country’s citizens will not be tolerated.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com



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The most expensive paper crown in history

By Steve Janoski

“Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony…you can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”                                              - Monty Python and the Holy Grail

There’s a lot of things about Great Britain that I, try as I might, simply don’t understand: their hatred of guns, their apparent comfort with “Big Brother’s” cameras watching them from every stoplight and street corner, or those girly accents that do well to conceal the fact that they once had the largest empire in the history of the world.

However, on this Friday afternoon, as that country basks in the glow of its post-royal-wedding bliss, I can say that the one facet that totally boggles my mind is the obsession with “royalty” and a “royal family” still matters.

Like most of us in this country, I am a follower of and true believer in classic liberalism.  I vote in every election I can, even the ones where I have to write in Bill Parcells’ name (again) because I hate all the candidates, and the Virginia state motto, “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants”) has always appealed to a certain part of my nature.

I guess its this inherently independent, positively “American” streak that makes me wonder how any man can, in these early years of the 21st century, be willing to call any other man his “king,” even if that title is only in relation to a powerless figurehead like Prince William will one day be.

One colleague of mine referenced the Kennedys as a type of “American royalty” to prove that no country is impervious to this infatuation with people we think are better than us.

He’s right— there is some mystique to that clan, and it’s been furthered by the cursed Irish luck that befalls them every so often.

But the Kennedys became famous, above all, because they were movers— John F. Kennedy was one of the most influential Presidents of the last century while Ted Kennedy became, over his 138-year stint in the Senate, an intensely powerful man who took part in passing countless pieces of law. Who knows how much Robert F. Kennedy could have accomplished had he been given a chance to lead.

That family is famous for much more than just….well, being famous.

Furthermore, Joe Kennedy made his money the American way— from the ground up through the selling of realty, the importation of liquor, and the implementation of Wall Street practices that would likely be illegal today.

This is in sharp contrast to The Royal Family, whose wealth is derived from “hereditary title,” which means, more or less, through the accumulated results of blood and oppression over the centuries.

The Queen’s third great grandfather was actually America’s favorite king, George III. He’s the one who so generously gave all the royal property to the government— effectively ensuring that the public would always be on the hook to maintain them.

Even now, the Queen is supported by the British people— a recent CNBC article pointed out that she receives just under $84 million per year from the nation’s citizens in return for…I don’t know. Something.

Maintaining this expensive monarchy when they do so little is like making the payments on a Ferrari that’s got no engine block; most of the year, the family exists as little more than tabloid fodder— hardly worth the $84 million.

But of course, during this grand spectacle of “The Royal Wedding,” all of Britain stands up and cheers wildly whenever the couple kiss, and will sing their de facto national anthem of “God Save the Queen.”

This will last but a few months until those same tabloids begin plastering their front page with rumors about how the Queen is having an affair with an Elvis incarnate or how the King’s (inevitable) hairpiece gets up and ambles away during meetings.

And this will occur until one of them dies, at which point the nation will revert to its solemn, stiff-upper lipped ideal of how they should be acting in regards to “royalty.”

Bizarre.

Thomas Paine had it right when he said that, “Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

How this lesson escaped the enamored masses of Britons amazes me.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Sonya Kitchell to play West Milford

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

WEST MILFORD — When Sonya Kitchell brings her traveling show to West Milford's Music at the Mission in Union Valley Road on Saturday, April 16, she'll be bringing her string quartet with her.

That's right. A string quartet.


The 22 year-old Massachusetts native said that she enjoys playing with the "Brooklyn Strings" because they give her "more space" during her songs.

"When you have loud drums, guitar, bass…the notes all kind of mesh into each other and there isn't a lot of space," she said. "I think it's more melodic (with the quartet)…and it's a pleasure to work with them."

During the show, Kitchell will be playing electric guitar and piano, as well as singing the lyrics that she's written that are quickly earning her comparisons to the best in the business, such as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.

It might be surprising to hear the depth that lies in her words, which remain simple and concise — Kitchell's seem to speak to jagged experience that is unexpected from someone who's barely in the her third decade of life.

Of course, to her, it's not unusual — she points out that when the aforementioned singers were in what she called their "first prime," they were both young.

"Certain people are insightful and notice things in life perhaps in a different way," she said. "I've always really enjoyed taking stock of human interactions and emotions and things that happen in life and the poetry in it."

Being as she wrote her first songs at age 12, she's also come into the peculiar situation of having to grow into her own lyrics.

"When I was 12 I had no idea what I was writing about…they were (things) that I didn't understand, but I felt like I could imagine it if someone was going through it," she said. "As I've gotten older, I've started to understand my songs more, and I'm singing something five or six years later and I'm finally able to relate to them."

Kitchell started honing her craft at the tender age of 7, when she asked her mother if she could take voice lessons and learn to sing.

Her parents, both of whom are visual artists, supported her decision to go the music route, and she was soon immersing herself in both singing and jazz while learning guitar from her mentor, June Milllington.


"I was really lucky that I grew up in a place where I was surrounded by talented and encouraging people," she said of her youth. "I had a lot of great influences."

The singer, who now lives in Brooklyn, still looks to her Western Massachusetts roots for guidance, especially when writing songs.

"I grew up in the country, and it has had a huge impact on who I am as a person and what I seek in life," she said.

Far from friends and without a TV as a child, Kitchell said that she spent a lot of time in the woods by herself, and that provided her the refuge from which to write.

"That's the space that was there for me to start writing and playing and singing….and to this day, I seek that quiet, and that space. It gives me the platform to be a strong artist," she said.

She takes little credit for some of her deepest songs — haunting ballads like "Soldier's Lament," which was featured during the ending of the season four finale of "The Unit," came from somewhere else, she said.

"I swear that song was written in 15 minutes," she said. "I didn't write it…some songs just come through you, and that's one of those that I don't have any personal experience with whatsoever (but) it needed to come through."

Kitchell said that she believes as a musician, she is something of an open vessel to whatever is around.

"Almost any great musician would never take credit entirely for their ability or the material that they write…they can't create without these things that are in the atmosphere, so to speak," she said.

The same can be said of her voice, which drips of painful years that she hasn't yet seen and sounds far older than it should.

"I think it's always been there," she said. "Some people believe in old souls, some don't…I do, and that's part of it, I think."

Next Saturday, she'll be playing songs from her 2010 EP "Convict of Conviction," which is full of material written over the course of the winter of 2009 when she spent time alone in the country.

She'll also be playing newer tracks that haven't come out yet, as well as favorites from her older albums.

When asked what she wanted from her next album to be, she had a simple answer— "the most awesome."

For tickets or more information about her April 16 show, go to MusicattheMission.org.

Veterans of the "Great War" deserve better

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

STEVE JANOSKI

Americans have never been too good at remembering our history. From the condos that decorate some of the Civil War's major battlefields to the callous disregard given to historic buildings that lie in the way of "progress," we've always been a nation that's looked more toward the future than the past.

Although that philosophy might be part of the reason that we've risen (as a country) to the heights we have in a relatively short period, there are also certain instances where this can lead to neglecting portions of our past that should have been honored more appropriately.

Unfortunately, when Corporal Frank Buckles passed away on Feb. 27, we lost our chance to show the last American veteran of World War I that our neglect was in fact a mistake, and that we would fix it as soon as we could by making a monument to those who fought in what is becoming a forgotten war.

World War I is abstract in the minds of many — a long-ago war fought on European soil that that is permanently overshadowed in the pages of the history books by its much larger sister war, fought just 21 years later.

The people who fought in it, though, were real people — like my great-grandfather who, although he died long before I was born, was part of the artillery corps in France.

When I look at the rolls of his regiment or the yellowed letters he sent home from the European front, that war becomes tangible — no longer dry pages in a history book, but something that really happened, that somebody had to live through.

The war, however, was always real for Buckles. He had gone to France as an ambulance driver at just 16 years-old, and saw first hand the devastation that the "War to end all wars" wreaked on men.

Before his death, Buckles had been a proponent of creating a national monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and was the honorary chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation.

Edwin Fountain, who sits on the board of directors for the Foundation, said that although a memorial exists in Washington to the "Great War," when it was originally dedicated in 1931, it was only meant to commemorate the 499 residents of that city who became casualties — not for the plethora of other Americans who died in the green fields of France.

Over time, as other war monuments were erected to honor the following wars of the 20th century, the WWI monument was neglected, and fell into disrepair — a terrible sin that has disrespected every one of the 5 million men who served in the war, and the 116,000 who never saw home again because of it.

Buckles called not only for the restoration of the D.C. monument, but also that it be rededicated as a national memorial. As the last members of the "Lost Generation" began to pass into history, he finally got some attention,

In 2009, he spoke to lawmakers in Congress about the need for a memorial — at the time, he was 108 — and for once, Congress listened.

Since then, Fountain said, about $7 million in stimulus money was secured in order to restore the monument in a way that will be tastefully done.

"We don't want to detract at all from the existing monument, because it's very peaceful, and it's been tucked off in the trees," he said. "It has a very different feel than the other (monuments.)"

"We want to add statues that will give it a national component, but would still be deferential to the original (purpose)," he said.

Restoration is currently underway, but Fountain said that only half the mission is completed, as the site still must be rededicated to recognize it as a national memorial.

Legislation is slowly making its way through Congress that would accomplish this, and Senate Bill No. 253 is a bipartisan effort that would authorize the establishment of this national memorial.

In the House of Representatives, the act is called, appropriately, the Frank Buckles WWI Memorial Act.

Fountain asks that citizens call their senators and congressmen and ask that they support the bill, which would finally give these brave men the posthumous honors that they all deserved to see with their own eyes.

I have to agree with him… it's only 93 years late.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Americans need to fan Bouazizi's flames

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

                                                                                 - Thomas Paine


Many times when you ask your typical apathetic American about politics, they'll offer one of two answers: "I don't really pay attention…it doesn't affect me" is the first, and "I'm only one person, what does it really matter what I do?" is the second.

But, as the flames of revolution tear across the Middle East's desert sands, we must remember that the firestorm that engulfs the region was lit by the sparks that blew off of one lone man's scorched body.

Mohamed Bouazizi was a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor who made his living selling vegetables. Everything changed for him one day in mid-December when, according to a recent TIME magazine article, a policewoman confiscated his unlicensed produce cart, slapped him, spat in his face, and insulted his dead father.

Bouazizi went to the provincial headquarters to seek help from the local municipal officials- they ignored him.An hour later, he returned to the headquarters, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself ablaze in the ultimate form of protest. He died days later.

What even Bouazizi didn't know, however, was that his one strike of the match would ignite the rage of all of the oppressed who have long suffered under the harsh rule of their autocratic Middle Eastern dictators.

Tunisia fell first. Then, the protests began in Egypt - weeks later, their dictator of three decades, Hosni Mubarak, fled from Cairo.

Even more remarkably, the fervor has spread: protests have erupted in Libya and Yemen, Algeria and Bahrain, Syria and Iran, as the citizens take to the streets clamoring for the collapse of their governments.

Those governments, in response, have acted accordingly; as Jack London once wrote, "The Iron Heel is getting bold."The Black Hundreds have formed, and there are pitched battles on the boulevards as pro-government forces try to crush the rebellious with truncheon and tear gas, batons and bullets.

The New York Times reported on Friday that dozens have been killed in streetfights in Libya; in Bahrain, security forces launched an attack on sleeping protestors, on women and children, that left four dead and scores wounded.Still, the people chant, "You cannot keep us down!"

In Iran, the opposition figure who led the protests against the results of the 2009 "election", Mir Hussein Moussavi, has disappeared as protests reach a fevered pitch. Some fear he's been "detained," and there are hints that the nation may be on the eve of civil war.

For years I have scoffed at the idea that America could push democracy on another country. I've repeatedly quoted the old saying that if the idea of democracy is so good, you won't have to push it on people- they'll steal it.

However, it takes a steel spine to stand face-to-face with the point of a bayonet and demand it, and even I, ever the idealist, am shocked by the strength and passion being shown by these brave souls.

I have heard some say that the United States must be wary of these protests and their results because some of the outgoing regimes are friendly to America, and we don't know who will take over in the power vacuum.

While that may be true, that line of thinking is also why the rest of the world hates us so much- the fact that a brutal dictator was friendly to the United States doesn't mean that the blood of his murdered citizens washes off his hands any easier.

For once, Americans, look past the confines of our borders, and be, just for the moment, citizens of the world! Realize that what these people are doing is the very thing that our Founding Fathers, so revered by both left and right, did all those centuries ago: seizing power from the cruel and unjust and declaring that they'd rather die on their feet than live any longer on their knees.

Every soul that leaves a corpse on the glowering streets of any Middle Eastern capitol is joining the ranks of the greatest of the world's patriots, from those Frenchmen that stormed the Bastille in 1789 to the Germans who took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall.

And with the living, the spirit of every American patriot, from Thomas Paine and Sam Adams to Thomas Jefferson and Washington himself, stands defiantly, called back to action once more.

Remembering Jack Lalanne

BY STEVE JANOSKI

I first read about Jack Lalanne when I was 16 years old.

At the time I had been playing football for three years, and was just getting serious about weightlifting when I came across an article in Men's Health which featured freelance writer Joe Kita deciding to take Lalanne up on an open $10,000 work out challenge.

As I recall, the only thing Kita had to do was keep up with the legendary figure who was, at the time, 85 years-old. Even then, Lalanne smoked him, with Kita writing that Lalanne lifted at least 40 lbs. more on nearly every exercise.

I read that article so many times that I can quote pieces of it nearly verbatim over a decade later.

It was full of one-liners that only a character like Lalanne could say and not sound like an overblown salesman, and although many of his quotes sound comedic in their tone, there was gold in each - simple nuggets of eternal truth that were as solid as the iron he lifted.

Lalanne said that he spoke to his muscles during his daily two-hour workouts and felt that the berating scared them into working harder.

"C'mon you bastards!" Lalanne told them. "See? You gotta' talk to'em. These muscles are saying, 'I can't do it anymore.' The hell you can't! I won't feed you! You sons of bitches work for me!"

He told Kita that he woke up every morning "with an erection a cat can't scratch," and outlined in seven words his philosophy on nutrition - if man made it, don't eat it.

"Look at my corvette," he told Kita. "A '98 - one of the finest sports cars I've ever had. Would I put water in the gas tank? Well, think about the crap people put in their bodies - white flour, sugar, all this processed food. It's just like using water for fuel.

With that, nutrition, and the consequences of neglecting it, became crystal clear.

And that was Lalanne's talent: taking the complicated and breaking it down with an analogy that everyone could understand, and then using his words to inspire a change.

He grew up in California, a self-described sugar addict who had headaches and bulimia and dropped out of high school at 14.

At 15, however, he heard nutritionist Paul Bragg speak in what has become a mythical turning point in his life, and took up the mantle of healthy living.

He opened a gym in Oakland in 1936, and trained women and athletes with weights - ideas that were literally light years ahead of the curve at the time.

His TV show ran from the 50s to the 70s, and encouraged the average American to exercise in any way they could, even with water bottles and a chair; his remarkable feats of strength showed that he lead the life he preached.

At 43, he did 1,000 pushups in 23 minutes. At 60, he swam Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco while handcuffed, shackled, and towing a boat.

Six years later, he towed 10 boats carrying 77 people for over a mile in North Miami in less than an hour; four years later, at 70, he towed 70 rowboats a mile from the Queen's Way Bridge to the Queen Mary - another mile - while handcuffed, shackled, and fighting the ocean currents.

What Lalanne understood, what he espoused, and what he embodied, was the doctrine of pure, hard work. He wouldn't let you say that it was your job's fault you are fat, or society's, or your thyroid's - and even if it was, it was your job to right the ship.

And in America, where all the rough edges must be ground down so no one's fragile feelings get hurt, he was an old school reminder that hard work pays off, and that you're responsible for how you look and how you feel.

His life, which ended on Jan. 23 at the ripe age of 96, could be epitomized in one quote from his TV show pulled off of an old YouTube video.

"I like to think of life as a battlefield," Lalanne says, his thick arms protruding from his trademark blue jumpsuit as he sits on a backwards chair.

"Every morning when we open our eyes, we wake up, we have a battle on our hands. Either you're gonna' win the battle that day or you're gonna' lose it, you're gonna' have life working for you, or you're gonna' be working for life. What's it gonna' be?"

We always knew what your answer was to this question Jack. Thanks for the inspiration.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Whitewashing America's History

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Words are perhaps the most powerful of things. They can illuminate, devastate, and forever alter the realities of the world, exposing the fraudulent and eviscerating the powerful within the single sweep of an ivory page.

They can erupt in explosions that dwarf the fiercest bomb, and from the printing of the first Bible to Thomas Paine’s legendary "Common Sense" to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s "Uncle Tom’s Cabin," they have inspired new thoughts, generated new beliefs, and ignited revolutions.

In our shallow society, many remain unaware of the potent power they possess by putting pen to page, but for proof of its impact in the present day, one need look no further than, of all places, Montgomery, Alabama, where the literary world has been set ablaze over the controversial decision of editor Alan Gribben of NewSouth Books Inc.

Gribben has decided that NewSouth will attempt to strip Mark Twain’s classic "Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn" of its racist epithets in an upcoming edition due out in February; in it, the word "nigger" is to be replaced with "slave," and the word "injun" is to be replaced with "Indian."

Gribben’s reasoning? The book is left off of many school reading lists because of its use of the words, and isn’t as widely read as a consequence, he says.

"We may applaud Twain’s ability as a prominent American literary realist to record the speech of a particular region during a specific historical era," writes Gribben in the introduction to the book, "But abusive racial insults that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority nonetheless repulse modern-day readers."

Gribben goes on to say that for 40 years he has discussed Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in public forums such as college classes and libraries, and he has always refrained from using the slurs.

"I invariably substituted the word "slave" for Twain’s ubiquitous n-word whenever I read any passages aloud," he said. "Students and audience members seemed to prefer this expedient, and I could detect a visible sense of relief each time, as though a nagging problem with the text had been addressed."

Well yea Alan, by eliminating the blatant racism that’s built into this piece of nineteenth-century literature, you sure do eliminate a lot of those "nagging problems," don’t you?

Now, instead of the children who receive this book thinking about how horrific the thought process was of the average white American back in the 1840s, they can believe that slaves and masters alike walked hand-in-hand in harmony under the magnolia trees.

They might even wonder why Jim was trying to escape in the first place….if Gribben mixes in a little "Gone With the Wind," I do believe he could construct his very own mythical history of the Old South.

Hell, while he’s at it, why doesn’t he just go take out the parts mentioning slavery altogether?

We’ll call Jim a "runaway servant" instead, because the term "slave" will surely offend the Southerners who still call the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression." They’d jump at the chance to throw some white paint over their blood-red history.

And, instead of making it along the Mississippi River, let’s have it take place along the St. Lawrence River, so we don’t generalize and make it seem like the South was the only place that owned slaves.

Oh wait, it was? Well, what’s that matter? We’re revising history, so let’s move the Mason-Dixon somewhere up around New York State to make them feel even better.

We should probably edit the letters of Abraham Lincoln too, being as he used now-derogatory racial terms frequently, and even once said that he didn’t believe the black man was equal to the white.

If people knew this, they might be repulsed! Cut it!

What Gribben conveniently forgets is that literature is supposed to make us confront difficult issues— even if it’s the hideously revolting racism that lies in America’s past, as evidenced by our active participation in the subjugation of a race of people.

When it comes down to it, the removal of these words and the butchering and desecration of this American masterpiece by one pompous editor from a book company based in the first capital of the Confederacy is a crime nearly unparalleled in literary history.

It is a historical whitewashing of epic proportions that is equivalent to tearing out the pages of every German history book that covers the years of 1933-1945.

George Orwell once wrote that, "Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past."

I’ll be damned if I’ll ever let a member of the politically correct Gestapo control the past, and this publisher should be boycotted and driven out of business; its revisionist filth should be burned in glowing piles in the streets.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Better to wear out than rust out

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI

When you go through elementary and middle school, there’s always "next year" to think about. You’re a year closer to high school, a year closer to driving, a year closer to being 18, a year closer to 21. Something exciting always lies around the bend that’s making right now worth it, and you just can’t wait until "the future" is here.

That wide open world is an electrifying one where you could still be president or an astronaut or a pro baseball player because life hasn’t really arrived and showed you the beating you’re going to take. Instead it waits and watches our ignorant youth, smiles at our idealism, and then plots our demise.

But when it stands and delivers, it does so fiercely. Some of us it kills outright before we reach our prime. Others get in trouble, either with the law or other things, and spend the rest of their time fighting for redemption. A few take off, and shoot right to the top of the food chain in whatever they do. These folks are rare.

Most of us end up somewhere in the middle though, and after high school or college, we find a "real job," which sounds the death knell of looking forward to "what’s around the bend."

In some professions there’s something like a promotion or pay increase to work toward, but many times those are vague hopes, moving targets that can seem so far away that working "toward" them can feel like a Sisyphean task.

It becomes all too easy to settle into what some might call a rut, even in a job you love. The days charge by, the calendar years change, and life rolls at a downhill pace that leaves us wondering where the last decade or so went.

Even our hobbies can take on a mundane feeling, and it becomes rare that we step out of our narrow box and feel the intimidation or discomfort that comes inherent with doing a new thing. We’re too old, too fat, too slow, too tired to be bothered.

This has led to what writer Richard Strozzi-Heckler once called a "muted nation of spectators," a country full of people who live and die by what happens in the sporting arena or on reality TV— not realizing that their own reality is slipping away with every minute.

Strozzi-Heckler blamed this on the manner in which we’re educated.

I disagree. I think it’s just a matter of being human.

We fear the things that we don’t know or haven’t experienced, and breaking through the bars that keep us in the cages we’ve created is just too much for some.

We like patterns, stability, and comfort— and our living room couches tend to be quite comfortable. We forget that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole.

In the last year I’ve found that there is only one way to break this, and although it is simple and sounds easy, it’s a violent transition that is more difficult than it seems: get out in the world, and do things.

As we age, we must, must, must try new things in the attempt to constantly improve. Go somewhere different, join a class, learn a trade, just do something that makes you better than you were an hour ago.

Nobody can set the goal for you, and that’s what makes it both easier and more difficult. I knew I wanted to formally learn to box, but stepping into a boxing gym, no matter where it is, is difficult. It is intimidating, and uncomfortable, until you get a sense of the place.

But that in itself is an adventure. Having that feeling, the worried quiver in the pit your stomach, over something that isn’t all that scary is worth it because once it’s conquered, it’s gone. It’s a tiny victory that no matter how seemingly insignificant, makes us just a little bit tougher, a little bit smarter.

I’ve tried to live this creed out in the last year. I quit smoking, joined a gym, shot a gun, went to a live boxing match, read as many books as I could, and learned to hit a speed bag, All of these were skills or things that a year ago at this time, I couldn’t do, or hadn’t done.

And although they’re not going to win me any medals, although nobody else cares whether I did them or not, they’ve made me believe that over the course of this year, I’ve made progress.

I’m a physically stronger, smarter, better person than I was at this time last year. I was not static, I did not rust on the couch, I did not watch others live while my own life leaked away.

A friend of mine who took up running in his mid-50s sent me an e-mail a month ago talking about a 5K he had run on Thanksgiving morning.

"Funny thing about life," he wrote. "Some participate, most just watch. I suppose both have their merits."

I disagree with him as well. There is no merit in just watching.

In 2011, don't watch. Do.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/recreation/112644679_Better_to_wear_out_than_rust_out.html?c=y&page=1

Remembering the "Greatest Generation"

JANOSKI, STEVE

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 

On Oct. 23, a monument was dedicated in Fort Lee to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

According to an article in The Record, dozens of veterans who fought in that epic battle were on hand for the ceremony, as well as a crowd of about 150, mostly senior citizens.

Assemblywoman Joan Voss, D-Fort Lee, was also in attendance, and her observation on the makeup of the crowd was a disheartening statement to read just a few days before Veterans' Day.

"Where are your grandchildren? Where are your children?" she asked.

Where were they indeed. What could have been more important?

This country has always ignored, forgotten, and neglected its history. We have spit on our veterans, we build condos on our battlefields, and the average American knows so little about history that it makes me wonder exactly how much public schools are worth.

But have we really forgotten World War II already, just 65 years after its end?

As I had written previously, my grandfather, who served in the Pacific Theatre, recently passed away.

This was a stinging reminder that the generation who literally saved the world from the great, enveloping darkness that was Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is dying, and dying quickly.

Military veterans aside, my generation is a spoiled bunch in comparison. We've faced no great "Great Enemy," never had to storm beaches under hails of flying lead.

The average person's "sacrifices" for the War on Terrorism are nonexistent, and life has continued much like it did for the past two decades for most of us.

That generation was not so fortunate. Instead of throwing baseballs, they threw hand grenades; instead of shooting deer, they shot men.

Their triumph in that war was the one of the great accomplishments in all of human history, and an enduring testament to the will and courage that regular men can exhibit when placed in extraordinary circumstances.

We are here, we are free, because of their actions on those bloody beaches in the South Pacific and the frozen forests of Western Europe, and their actions alone.

My grandmother once told me that she remembered her father, a veteran of the U.S. Artillery during World War I himself, pointing out the veterans of the Spanish-American War during a parade, and telling her to remember them, because there weren't many left.

We are that point now with the World War II vets.

As time takes its cruel toll, the old soldiers' memories fade and their bodies fail. Every day, we are losing more of than just our family members— we are losing our past, and a piece of our identity as Americans.

Some things can bring it back to us.

A couple weeks ago, I held an M-1 Garand, the American rifle that won World War II, in my hands. I put the wood stock close to my cheek, felt the kick of that when it fired, heard the distinctive "ping" of the cartridge ejecting that you heard so often in "Saving Private Ryan."

I tried to imagine shooting it at another soldier in the woods instead of a target at the range. Tried to imagine hitting that person, knowing I ended his life, and then having to do it over and over again.

On Oct. 23, a monument was dedicated in Fort Lee to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

According to an article in The Record, dozens of veterans who fought in that epic battle were on hand for the ceremony, as well as a crowd of about 150, mostly senior citizens.

Assemblywoman Joan Voss, D-Fort Lee, was also in attendance, and her observation on the makeup of the crowd was a disheartening statement to read just a few days before Veterans' Day.

"Where are your grandchildren? Where are your children?" she asked.

Where were they indeed. What could have been more important?

This country has always ignored, forgotten, and neglected its history. We have spit on our veterans, we build condos on our battlefields, and the average American knows so little about history that it makes me wonder exactly how much public schools are worth.

But have we really forgotten World War II already, just 65 years after its end?

As I had written previously, my grandfather, who served in the Pacific Theatre, recently passed away.

This was a stinging reminder that the generation who literally saved the world from the great, enveloping darkness that was Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is dying, and dying quickly.

Military veterans aside, my generation is a spoiled bunch in comparison. We've faced no great "Great Enemy," never had to storm beaches under hails of flying lead.

The average person's "sacrifices" for the War on Terrorism are nonexistent, and life has continued much like it did for the past two decades for most of us.

That generation was not so fortunate. Instead of throwing baseballs, they threw hand grenades; instead of shooting deer, they shot men.

Their triumph in that war was the one of the great accomplishments in all of human history, and an enduring testament to the will and courage that regular men can exhibit when placed in extraordinary circumstances.

We are here, we are free, because of their actions on those bloody beaches in the South Pacific and the frozen forests of Western Europe, and their actions alone.

My grandmother once told me that she remembered her father, a veteran of the U.S. Artillery during World War I himself, pointing out the veterans of the Spanish-American War during a parade, and telling her to remember them, because there weren't many left.

We are that point now with the World War II vets.

As time takes its cruel toll, the old soldiers' memories fade and their bodies fail. Every day, we are losing more of than just our family members— we are losing our past, and a piece of our identity as Americans.

Some things can bring it back to us.

A couple weeks ago, I held an M-1 Garand, the American rifle that won World War II, in my hands. I put the wood stock close to my cheek, felt the kick of that when it fired, heard the distinctive "ping" of the cartridge ejecting that you heard so often in "Saving Private Ryan."

I tried to imagine shooting it at another soldier in the woods instead of a target at the range. Tried to imagine hitting that person, knowing I ended his life, and then having to do it over and over again.

One veteran at the Fort Lee ceremony knows that feeling too well.

"I killed so many men," he said, while shaking his head.

The memories haven't left them. The ones who survived, the lucky ones, as we call them, gave everything to save us. They came out alive and nearly traded their humanity doing it.

So if you've got the time, remember them this Veteran's Day. When the clock tolls at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, and commemorates the German signing of the armistice to end World War I, thank whatever god you want that you were lucky enough to know any of these guys.

George Patton once said, "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

We have the opportunity.

Thank God…but them too.

http://www.northjersey.com/community/history/more_history_news/107140928_Remembering_the__Greatest_Generation_.html?c=y&page=2

Washed up meatheads are cringing

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI

We see you through the glass windows of the gym, and we are cringing. We're the people that are in the gym early on New Year's Eve, after work on Christmas Eve, and all the days in between. As washed-up meatheads, we've put a lot into lifting over the years, having started because our football or wrestling coaches made us.

But we caught the bug, got addicted to the iron, and became enamored with the simple act of lifting something heavy off the ground. For some of us, it's the utter simplicity of it — as Henry Rollins once said, "200 pounds is always 200 pounds."

Life's problems fade away, for there are no dead-end jobs, whining girlfriends, or problems of any sort while in the gym. It's just a simple 200 pounds that needs to be lifted, and we're there to do it. It is our release, and our haven from the outside world.

But every year, in the first weeks of January, we get inundated with "The Resolutioners," those of you who have decided to get in shape for the new year, and pack the bench presses and Nautilus machines in your pursuit. Our workout takes an hour longer because the gym is so crowded; one can hardly take a step without tripping over dumbbell left out by someone who doesn't know gym mores.

For a month, we are driven crazy, and our schedules and programs are destroyed until you all retreat back to your couches sometime in early February, shaking your head and saying, "Well, I tried."

Does it sound elitist? It sort of is. And there's lifters out there, some of the biggest guys you'll meet, who are far more vulgar than I when talking about the Resolutioner phenomenon. But one thing that you might not believe is that there are plenty of us who don't want you to fail. We don't want you to go home, and we don't want you to be a sloth any more than you do.

See, we are always looking for people to join us in our pursuit of being stronger — we just don't want pretenders. We don't want people who talk on their cell phones in between sets on the bench press, all the while telling us they're "almost done" with the machine.

We don't want those that dress up to go to the gym, and treat it as if it's an underground club in New York City. We don't want the people that are there to get in the way.

We want people that are deadly serious, and willing to put in the work and sweat and blood in order to better themselves. We want people that will find the simple joy of lifting and working out, as we have, and to enjoy the feeling of looking at a bar that has three 45-pound plates on each side and thinking, "I just lifted that, even though four months ago I never thought I'd be able to."

And we certainly love to talk about theories and programs and nutrition, and to support those that are entering into athletic competitions or powerlifting meets.

Remember that, when you're walking around the gym this week, confused about what to do and where to start. Remember that if you're serious about learning, you can walk up to any big guy or in-shape woman who looks like they know what they're doing and say, "Hey, can you help me out for a second?"

The odds are that they will be more than happy to help you out. Once they see you in the gym consistently, don't be surprised if they end up dropping little hints and tips that took them years to learn.

The Resolutioners should not be intimidated — realize that everyone started out where you were once, and everyone simply put in the work to change.

It can be done, and it has been done by countless Americans who were just fed up with how they felt. And also remember that we are pulling for you, even if we won't tell you.

Good luck.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/health/fitness/81418282_Washed-up_meatheads_are_cringing.html

Don't gamble with America's history

Wednesday, July 14, 2010
BY STEVE JANOSKI

As a child, my fascination with American history, and the Civil War in particular, could not be sated.

I had watched all of the movies and read all of the books, and did my best to tear the words off the pages and form lucid pictures in my head of what the scenes in America’s epic wars must have looked like.

Nothing, however, was comparable to the extraordinary experience of visiting a battlefield itself.

Though it may seem a dreary and boring chore to some, I loved walking along the ground I had read about so often, and tried hard to imagine the sights and sounds of war, though they were difficult to conjure against the often picturesque landscapes that exist so many years later.

Of all the places I visited, however, none held the same allure as Gettysburg.

The small hamlet has an aura about it that cannot be explained; it’s as if history rises up through the ground and floods the streets, enveloping every crack, every facet of its residents’ lives.

Bullet holes still festoon the buildings’ brick walls, and the hotel in which Lincoln composed his immortal Gettysburg Address still stands.

The gently sloping hills and slender ridges around the town where the battle was fought are quiet now, in stark contrast to the broiling hell that consumed them over three brutally hot days in July of 1863.

From July 1 to July 3, the South’s Army of Northern Virginia and the North’s Army of the Potomac clashed in a battle that was so indescribably horrifying, so sadistically violent, that by the end of the fighting, 51,000 Americans were considered casualties.

8,000 of these were killed outright in the fighting, and left their corpses to bake and rot under Pennsylvania’s summer sun.



These were men—American men—with families, with children, who gave up their inauspicious lives in Maine and Minnesota, in Alabama and Virginia, to fight for what they thought was right, and paid that ultimate sacrifice.

If there is any holy ground in this country, any land that should remain untouched as long as America stands, it’s the acres of dirt that once soaked up the blood of these hardened American warriors.

But, as a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer points out, not everyone holds this view.

In this case, the proposal calls for a $75 million, 600-slot casino to be built just a half-mile from the southern edge of the 6,000-acre Gettysburg National Park on a section of the battlefield that saw action, but isn’t owned by the National Park Service.

It’s being proposed by former Conrail chief executive David LeVan, who had a similar request for an even more massive casino shot down by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2006 due to heavy opposition.

LeVan seems to have a special interest in building this monstrosity next to the battlefield— not surprising considering the weight that the Gettysburg name carries in relation to tourism.

The typical developer claims have been made: the casino won’t be visible from the battlefield, it will bring jobs to the economically depressed area, etc.

But, if there’s one thing we’ve all learned living in North Jersey, it’s that developers will say whatever they have to in order to get approval to build something, but when that something is complete, it rarely works like the developer said it would.

There are many who are far more intelligent than I that feel the same way, as nearly 300 historians, including more than one Pulitzer-prize winner, have signed a letter protesting the development to the Gaming Control Board, saying that its construction would be an "insult to the men who died there."

They are exactly right.

Can you imagine the outcry if LeVan wished to put a casino right on top of Ground Zero in New York?

Or maybe, a strip club inside of Independence Hall?

Should it be approved, the casino would be the prime example of capitalism run amok, destroying that which should be sacred to a people in the name of jobs, money, and profits.

Perhaps LeVan would be otherwise convinced if he read the words Lincoln spoke when commemorating the Gettysburg National Cemetery in November of 1863, for no one could say it better.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

Do not forget what they did, Mr. LeVan.

Find somewhere else for your casino.

As a child, my fascination with American history, and the Civil War in particular, could not be sated.

Crushing the last smokes

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Since I was 16, everyone and their mother has informed me about the evils of smoking.

Women (and it was always women) would come up to me outside pizza places while I was enjoying an after-meal cigarette, and impart their knowledge on me of the human body and its propensity to die.

"Oh honey, you know that causes cancer!" they said.

I'd roll my eyes.

"Does it? Oh wow. Thanks. You've saved a life right here lady. I'm forever in your gratitude," I said as I'd stub it out and walk away.

Yea, a little harsh, but I don't offer advice to strangers who seem to be minding their own business, and I never liked those that feel its their job to do that for me.

But it's been a decade of smoking for me now, and even a hard-headed fool like me knows that the older I get, the more the damage stacks up.

That, along with my turning 26 this year, has convinced me that I'm apparently in this for the long haul, and I should start walking away from the things that are gradually killing me.

So the day before my birthday, I took my last drag of a Marlboro light, crushed the remainders, and started the dark, arduous journey to freedom.

When people tell you the first three days are the worst, they're not kidding.

A friend of mine, who was watching me chew gum and jitter with a scowl on my face while at a barbecue, asked me how I was doing with it.

"Well…let's just say that right now, I'd cut the head off a baby seal with a spoon and beat an orphan with it to get another smoke," I said, shaking my head.

He laughed. Kind of.

It's a difficult thing to take something that you did 20 times a day, every day, for 10 years, and just stop — a non-smoker asked me what it was like, and I said it was like being told that you can't use your left arm ever again.

After three days though, and some tribulations that came in the form of massive cravings while drinking beer, it started to dissipate.

Two weeks later, I've become used to not stopping for a cigarette when walking into or out of a building or bar.

I like waking up in the morning not coughing so hard my stomach wrenches, or being able to go a couple extra rounds on the heavy bag without gasping for breath.

My tongue has returned to the pink color that I assume it was supposed to be, and I can actually taste things that I've been eating and drinking for years like coffee and wheat bread (which I've now realized that I don't actually like that much).

I won't dramatize it by saying lies about how I've got a new lease on life… but I do feel better, and I'm almost convinced that it was worth it.

I miss smoking insanely; it was a nice crutch, and a good way to be able to disappear from awkward situations or other places I didn't want to be in, if only for a few minutes.

By quitting, however, I'm truly hoping that I dodged the one place that I really didn't want to be — and that was in some doctor's office in a few decades, and having him tell me that I have lung cancer.

And that's worth whatever I've got to deal with in the meantime.



http://www.northjersey.com/news/health/96534534_Crushing_the_smokes.html