Bread Man Dead In Apartment 13

His name was Angelo. Angelo climbed the stairs backwards on his buttocks every day after work to get to his apartment on the third floor. He was in pain and there’s no elevator in this building. He worked for the bakery downstairs.

Angelo was born in this building. His mother had immigrated here  from Italy.
If you walked past Angelo’s door any time of the day or night, you’d hear him crying out because of his arthritis. That’s what they said he was suffering from. A neighbor told me that Angelo could have gone for medical treatments for his arthritis, if that’s what it was, but he didn’t trust anyone trying to help him.

I saw Angelo on an ambulance stretcher in the hallway one day, after the bakery had been closed for a couple of years. I wondered what Angelo had been doing inside his apartment alone all those years, since his mother had died a long time ago. The policewoman and emergency workers said nothing to me, so I said nothing, too. If I had known Angelo at all, I think I would have asked, “Where are you taking him?” I would have asked because, as far as I know, Angelo had no family in New York.

The police department stuck a bright green notice across the door of his apartment in the summer of 2009, when Angelo died. The green paper sealed that door tighter than any lock or steel latch.

A neighbor confirmed that Angelo was dead. Months later another neighbor said he doubted that there had been any memorial service for Angelo.

Today there was a bucket of soapy water and a long-handled mop outside of Angelo’s apartment. The handle of the mop was lodged diagonally in the doorway, barring all intruders. Some workmen had disposed of the contents of the apartment into huge, black garbage bags. About a dozen of these were stacked on the first floor for pickup by the sanitation department.
Two work orders were taped to the glass door near the entrance to the building. They said that the Greenwich Village Historic District had authorized construction work on the third floor of the building. The landlord was apparently ready to renovate apartment 13.

The apartments are pleasantly rectangular in that line. I mention this because in our building the apartments are usually oddly shaped. This row of buildings was built to house the influx of workingmen arriving from Italy in the early 1900s. The best guess of a neighborhood historian was that this building was built around 1911. The original architect’s floor plans were lost long ago.

When the crew is finished renovating apartment 13,  it will have new blond wood flooring. It will have a tiled bathroom. Each of these apartments originally came equipped with only a john and no place to bathe. A john is a small room with one toilet, but no sink for washing the hands and no tub for taking a bath. Maybe there were bathhouses in the neighborhood then. I don’t know.

The renovated apartment will have in addition a beautiful kitchen area with a sink, stove, refrigerator, counter space, and wooden cabinetry. The horribly cracked plaster walls will be removed, and the new sheet rock walls will be painted bright white.

They’ll probably make it into a one-bedroom apartment with a separate living room and even some built-in closets. These rooms originally had no closets, just three broad rough-hewn shelves above the kitchen sink. The renovated apartment will have air conditioning outlets in both the bedroom and the living room, and many other sockets in the kitchen for appliances. When Angelo’s mother first rented the apartment, this building was dark, not electrified.

When I moved here in 1971, the majority of the apartments were occupied by elderly Italian women wearing black dresses, stockings, and shoes. They were widows, born in the old country, afraid of the landlord and calling him “The Boss.” I was just a young woman then, 22 years of age, a recent college graduate. I passed them on my way upstairs, and never once did any woman in black turn to welcome me or talk with me. In their view, I should be married, not working. The Italian immigrants thought women who lived alone were up to no good.

This whole area, so trendy and upscale now, was in those days a poor section of Little Italy. The community was clannish in nature. They clung together and excluded all others.

They rejected Angelo as well, even though he was Italian. I heard from a neighbor that when he was a boy, everybody liked to pick on Angelo. He was yelled at by his irascible mother, a Mammy Yokum type (a cartoon character from the old L’il Abner series, which was published in the newspapers in those days). Angelo was bullied at school. The people at the bakery never gave him any peace when he grew up, either. He never married.

In the meantime, the whole world changed and this neighborhood was certainly no exception. The Village is now one of the most desirable sections of the city in which to live. Most of the young people in this building are paying very high rents.

The tenants usually do not speak with me in the hallways when I see them, even if I say hello to them in passing.  They walk down the stairs with wires plugged into their ears. My neighbors are transients, and they probably see me as a throwback to a bygone era, just as toothless Angelo always was to me …

Divisions between people come in so many different varieties …

I want to say that I don’t know the dead man any better than you know him. I shouldn’t even be writing this, because I am not in possession of all the salient facts. Since the Village is an historic district, however, I thought I would tell you a little history, all that I know about Angelo, who lived in this neighborhood his whole life.

I used to see Angelo every day pushing down the street a cart filled with bread for Zito’s Bakery. Zito’s Bakery has been closed for many years now.
I never once said hello to Angelo, and he never once turned his head to look at me, even though Angelo and I lived in the same building for 38 years.
As soon as Angelo’s apartment is renovated, it will most likely go on the market for over $3,000 per month rent. I do not exactly wish to put it this way, but as I’m sure you know from reading the above, the dead man himself was worth nothing.

Angelo is survived only by his apartment, located in the heart of quaint, old,  Greenwich Village.

You may be wondering why I started talking about Angelo and ended by talking about Angelo’s apartment. It is a peculiarity of human nature that apartments are often seen as more interesting and valuable than the people who live in them. 

 Copyright © 2013      Barbara A. English       All rights reserved.

Seniors and Medications

Did you know that the average person over the age of 65 in America takes seven different medications every day -- four prescribed and three bought at the pharmacy without a prescription. One-third of these people will suffer some adverse medication event that requires a hospital visit. Ten to 15 percent of all emergency room visits are related to medication reactions in seniors. "There has never been a controlled study on a human being involving more than three drugs circulating in the body at the same time... For reasons I've never understood," says Dr. Williams in his newsletter, Alternatives, "most doctors don't seem to have a problem prescribing multiple medications. When questioned, they typically will say the drugs they recommend are safe and have minimal, if any, side effects."

Information from Alternatives by Dr. David Williams, volume 16. number 1, page 3.

Aromatherapy to Restore Emotional Balance

For thousands of years before tranquilizers and anti-depressants in pill form, people used essential oils. We can do the same thing today because essential oils are readily available. They are typically are sold in 5 ml or .5 fl. oz. sizes. Essential oils can be dabbed right onto the skin. But to fill a room with fragrance you will need an aromatherapy diffuser.

My favorite oils are:

(1) Cedarwood, which gives us the will to hold firm.

(2) Eucalyptus, for feeling hemmed in or suffocated

(3) Jasmine, for depression, restlessness, and nervous anxiety

(4) Melissa replaces intensity of feeling with serenity

(5) Myrrh heals deep wounds and eases feelings of grief 

(6) Rose Otto, which heals anger and despair; and 

(7) Rosemary, which sharpens the mind and aids concentration

Aromatherapy for Healing the Spirit by Gabriel Mojay is a well-written, comprehensive book on this fascinating subject.

Copyright (c) 2012    Barbara A. English     All rights reserved.

The 99 Percent

They say that 53 percent of the wealth of the country is owned by one percent of the people.

On the streets of New York we see immigrant workers on bicycles delivering food orders in the rain to customers who don’t even have to come out of their apartments to eat. The disparity between the affluent and those with few resources seems particularly apparent to me sometimes.

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama seemed to choose this topic as the theme of his re-election campaign. “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” He spoke of reclaiming or restoring our basic American values.

I am wondering about the demographics of the Baby Boom generation. Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. They are currently between 48 and 66 years old. This generation makes a huge bulge in the population of the country, constituting approximately 25 percent of the population, and the later generations are not as large. Do the younger generations think that the Baby Boomers took all the money and are keeping it for themselves? I must say, nothing is trickier to interpret than money statistics and financial reports.

But the point is well taken that some few individuals are amassing ever-greater amounts of money in the form of income, while the rest of us watch helplessly as prices go up. $20 used to pay for my groceries, but now I sometimes have to pay $60. We also watch helplessly as the cost of our medical insurance policies or prescription drugs rise by leaps and bounds, if we are lucky enough to have medical insurance coverage in the first place.

The oldest Baby Boomers are just now becoming entitled to Medicare and retirement through Social Security. The media bombards us constantly with stories saying that the Social Security system is running out of money … How could it be running out of money, since most of the Baby Boomers are still employed and are still paying into the system? What we hear in the media often does not make sense.

Anyway, most medical insurance in the U.S.A. is provided voluntarily by employers, and it is no secret that a person can be employed full time and still not have medical insurance.

Speaking about the haves and the have nots, the lawmakers in Washington have their own special medical insurance and therefore may be completely out of touch with how the “99 percent”—most of the people—are living. Maybe the lawmakers should try applying for Medicare and see how they like sorting through THAT pile of paperwork. After all, this is what the country expects the average senior citizen to be able to do, and most of the members of Congress ARE senior citizens. 

Some Questions for Discussion:

1.     Does economic inequality necessarily have an effect on democracy?

2.     What does wealth inequality mean in practical terms?

3.     Can economic inequality be seen and felt, or are these merely statistics?

Copyright © 2012     Barbara A. English

All rights reserved.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Some things can be hunted down, but happiness is not one of them.

Money cannot buy happiness. If it could, so many wealthy people would not indulge in self-destructive behaviors or commit suicide.

Regarding marriage, we were conditioned as children to expect “to live happily ever after.” But think of the couples you know. How many of them appear to be happy?

Regarding happiness in families, it should be no mystery by now that all families are dysfunctional and it is only a question of the degree of dysfunction. All family members are capable of pushing each others' buttons, as the expression goes. If we want peace, we must learn how to value peace.

The best way to avoid or stop an argument is to refuse to say anything. This is difficult, because we human beings enjoy the pleasure of fighting over and claiming our supposed rights.

A good case could be made that most people actively pursue misery, thinking that they will find happiness like a pot of gold waiting for them as a reward at the end of a life of self-sacrifice and suffering. Happiness is the opposite of that.  

I can consciously intend to be a happy person today. I can choose happiness without making it into a hunt or a chase. I can wish for happiness and then let that wish go. I can be happy today without paying for it first through suffering. I don't have to pay for happiness. Happy is something I DECIDE to be.

Copyright © 2011     Barbara A. English

All rights reserved.

For Emotional Balance: The Bach Flower Remedies

With the help of The Bach Flower Remedies, we can heal ourselves of most emotional imbalances. A few drops of Aspen or Mimulus, for example, and an anxiety state will disappear.

There are 38 Bach Flower Remedies. They come in 20 ml (0.7 fluid ounce) brown glass dropper bottles. One usually puts drops into water to be sipped as needed. I have found this book very helpful: The Bach Flower Remedies, Revised Edition, copyright 1997 by The Dr. Edward Bach Center.

Wild Oat is a fundamental remedy. When we take it for four consecutive days, we shall become clear about our main concern in this life; what we want to accomplish.

Olive is for exhaustion and Sweet Chestnut is for the depths of despair. The remedies are specific and much work has gone into differentiating one from another. For example, Hornbeam is for the kind of tiredness we feel in the morning or at the beginning of the workweek. We feel we are lacking the strength to get through. Later in the day or later in the week, however, we see that we have gotten through. Olive is used when the person has no reserves of energy left and is completely wiped out.

These flower essences make a fascinating study, and I certainly encourage you to begin your investigations immediately. The work of Edward Bach is not known as widely as it should be. If you are not able to locate a professional practitioner where you live, you may need to practice on yourself, but nothing will be lost by doing so. You will learn how to help yourself and perhaps help others as well.

From Aesop's Fables: 'Sour Grapes'

One hot summer's day a fox was strolling through an orchard until he came to a bunch of grapes just ripening on a vine hung over a high branch. 

"Just the thing to quench my thirst," he said.

Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning around again, he jumped up, but with no greater success. 

Again and again he tried to reach the tempting grapes, but at last had to give up. He walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."

 

Moral: It is easy to despise what you cannot get.

And so, if someone says he dislikes an obviously good thing, we say the person is suffering from "sour grapes." 

This wisdom is from the Aesop's Fable entitled 'The Fox and the Grapes.' It is a good example of how the ancient wisdom of these fables can be found in everyday English conversation.

The story above was adopted from the online version at www.aesops-fables.org.uk.

Copyright (c) 2011      Barbara A. English

All rights reserved.