Aldo & Luigi

I first met my two friends about 11 years ago. We were returning home from New York City where I had back surgury. After a week in the hospital Kate and I started what was thought to be an uneventful 75 mile quiet drive to our home in Long Island. It was evening when we arrived and Kate suggested I get myself in the house while she brings in the luggage. As I am walking to the house, behind me I hear this high pitch “mew, mew, mew, mew”. Low and behold there are two tiny little guys running behind me up the five stairs to the deck and right with me into the house, as though they had lived here forever.





Not far behind is Kate, who if you must know is a very devoted lover of life. Well we are standing there looking at one another wondering what to do. Kate says, “The first thing we have to do is find these guys something to eat and drink and then we will see.” Since I almost drowned in Lake George some 50 years ago and was saved by a man who assured me he was sent by some sprit, I am far less judgmental about things that are not easily explained. We decide that Kate’s parents, who had recently died, had sent our two messengers to cheer us up in our hours of need. And indeed they did.


We live on the water next to a park. Cool weather brings field mice looking for the warm indoors. I am laid out on the couch. As the two new members of our family are fed and made comfortable, the entertainment begins. The kittens are listening to scrapes and scratches and are chasing each other literally up the walls across the counters and yes up on top of our kitchen cabinets as perches in our “great-room”.


We named our little tigers Aldo & Luigi. I am not sure why. It just popped into our heads. Watching them from my abode on the couch I began to understand the meaning of their play. Much of it is simply practicing what they will have to do to survive in the wild. And yet I watch as that practice becomes a fun game. Slowly but surely they become part of our household. They entertain us, but they also teach us about another world of living creatures.






We never decided to let them become outdoor critters. It’s Luigi (he’s the bigger and far more determined one) who discovers an open window minus its screen and out he goes to explore the world about. I am convinced that Luigi is at least Tutankhamen reincarnated. Most if not all these cats descended from early Africans who lived in the Egyptian palaces and earned their status by keeping the palace free of rodents. The Egyptians did indeed believe in an after life. Luigi has all the imperious characteristics of an Egyptian palace statue. In contrast Aldo, who is now referred to as “Little Aldo” because he is a very needy fellow,will rise to the occasion when a dog of most any size needs to be shown where the boundary line is for our property. (We are not that far away from these guys for us to be able to see some of ourselves in them, and that’s a humbling experience.)


It’s now 11 years later and here we all are on an overcast fall afternoon clearing away some of the summer overgrowth. Aldo and Luigi come tearing across the garden in sheer delight that all of us are together in nature. I envy their joy of running through the grass and am reminded of the importance of doing things for the sheer joy of it. And I am reminded to take inventory of my own store of things that are pure joy. What a gift that is.






As the evening takes over from the day, all of us are back in our great-room with a warm fire burning. Luigi and Aldo now teach us how to put the energy of joy away for a time of deep slumber. There is such sweet contentment in their coiling up, each in a place that either Kate or I have been as they know us more by our odor than by our name. I find myself watching them to see if somehow I might find that same place in myself to let go of all those chipmunks that run around in my head, reminding me of all those trivial things I think I need to do. No, I will be like my two friends here and be with them as they teach me to be in a state of “mindlessness”. Yes, of course that’s what I heard some meditation Guru tell me I needed to do. But it was Aldo and Luigi who actually showed me how to do it.


So you can see how indebted I am to these two guys for all they have taught me. As a nonagenarian, it is most important to tend to my garden of joys. I must never lose my connection to my Cathedral of nature and all its wonders. For if I do, a big part of what my life has been will be lost. They have taught me about the love that comes from loyalty and caring, as they speak to us in their language and we struggle to understand. (Kate can really have a full fledged conversation with them, and what a delight it is to listen. That is gift to me.) They are a constant reminder that we are not the only living creatures inhabiting this planet and of what we owe to them to try to pass it on to future Aldos, Luigis, and the rest of us.


In this our 11th year together I just wanted to share with you another part of our family. I do hope the pictures helped you to know who I was talking about. Thanks also to Robert, our grandson, for the pictures and endless tech support. You can learn more about him at The Vegas Year.

And a very special thanks to Kate as N.H.W.Y
Love Roberto

The Drug Question. What again?

A few days ago a headline in the New York Times caught my eye. We the US of A is proposing to aerial spray the Afgan farmers’ poppy fields to eradicate their opium production. Wonder why we are hated in places like Afghanistan? We are pissed because we’ve got to many cocaine addicts in the US. So what do we do? We punish the Afghan farmer. Am I cuckoo or what? Why don’t we spray the users who create this market instead of the suppliers who are just good capitalist businessmen?

As a nonagenarian (thats what I am), I have tried to calculate how much money we have spent in our “war against drugs”? I have run out of the billions, so that means I am in the trillions. And what have we to show for all that? Obviously not much as it appears that every year we seem to start over again, like now with the Afghanistan problem. Before that it was Columbia. And before that it was the Asian crescent. And before that China, and on and on. Some smart economist observed, “it’s far more lucrative to grow poppies for opium than, for instance, avocados or cantaloupes.” No kidding.

I must admit I am a beneficiary of poppy growth. I have an ongoing back pain problem for which I take Oxycodone or Oxycontin, both opiates derived from Opium. So how come they can make and sell these drugs for the benefit of a lot of people who suffer all kinds of physical pain? Ah, the dirty little secret. These poppies are legally grown in Turkey and sold to American pharmaceutical companies to be manufactured into pain relievers. They are taxed and legally marketed. So what have we learned from that? Nothing.

There was a piece on 60 Minutes about the “Medical Marijuana” experience in California. It turns out that doctors have been very casual in writing prescriptions for “pot.” Now of course the Feds are moving in to put a stop to this egregious behavior. It would be a lot more intelligent to take an overall look at what has been the effect on the general population as a result of this loose use of marijuana. We might learn that smoking pot does not necessarily lead to “Refer Madness.” Which brings me to my experience as a young child during Prohibition.

I was supposed to be delivering “olive oil”, but of course it wasn’t. I first figured that out by the large tips I was given for delivery to a lot of fancy addresses on the upper east side of Manhattan. I was actually delivering either Gin or Whiskey or both. Then came repeal and the song “Happy Days Are Here Again.” And they were happy because now people who enjoyed a drink before dinner could have one that wasn’t made in somebody's bath tub, from which people often died. Once it was legal, it was taxed and created substantial income for the various levels of government.

Why haven’t we learned from the Prohibition experience? I believe there is simply to much money being made in the illegal drug market--from the growers to the wholesalers to the street peddlers--for them to easily give it up to legalization. Talk about a powerful lobby. I learned about the “street sale” at Mobilization for Youth, the Lower East Side New York program to get delinquents into the job market. The kids in the program would often tell me, “Mr. Schrank, in one night I can make more money on the street than I can make in a month in that fuckin’ mattress factory you want me to work in.”

We could do in Afghanistan what was done in Turkey--legalize it, tax it and control it. That’s what is done with my Oxycodone. But the Warlords in Afghanistan would have no part of that. And all those who profit from it here at home will support the Warlords. One final observation. Since we live in a market economy, haven’t we learned that as long as there is a demand there will be a supply? Obviously we haven’t, for if we had we would be arresting more of the demanders right here in the good old USA instead of being the world’s jailer of narcotics dealers from Columbia, Mexico, Panama and anywhere else we can catch a dealer.

PS - How much did it cost the US taxpayer to keep Noriega in jail for umpteenth years? Why not bill Panama? That’s where he was dealing?


Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.

Remember the Locked Box?

The more I listen to the, you should excuse me for what are called “debates”, the more I feel like Alice in Wonderland. There seem to be two important strategies. One is to say nothing that might expose the fact that the candidate has a core group of beliefs. The other is to go after the front runner so maybe I can become the one.

A good example of this behavior is the Dems on Social Security. For Gods sake, first take a stand by simply saying, “Heah, the Social Security Trust Fund has been raided by the Federal Government. To make it viable, PLEASE PAY BACK TO THE INSURANCE FUND WHAT WAS TAKEN OUT OF IT.” Just that simple act of paying back what was taken out of the Social Security Fund would make the system viable for the next ten years, Yes, after that we need to make some adjustments, BUT we have time to do that. We are not in the state of melt down as some have suggested. Does anybody remember the presidential debates back in 2000 between Gore and Bush? They proclaimed it to the heavens,”THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND IS A LOCKED BOX.” Talk about “humbug”! That’s what my German born father would said. I like the professor at Princeton who calls it “Bullshit.”

Dems, wake up and stop wringing your hands because we get the distinct impression that you really are not ready to LEAD, and what we need most at this time is LEADERSHIP.


Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.