I was fired on Tuesday, July 21, for seeking the truth about whether or not holding this year’s Cedarhurst New York sidewalk sale would be legal.
At least I think I was fired. I never received a termination letter or anything in writing.
Nevertheless, I’m definitely out of a job.
For over ten years, I was the Executive Director of The Cedarhurst Business Improvement District, and the centerpiece of my position was the annual Cedarhurst summer sidewalk sale.
Year after year, it was an event I had always been proud of organizing, promoting, and running.
But to bring thousands of people to Cedarhurst this summer, smack in the middle of an epidemic and an array of emergency laws and executive orders established as a result?
Not so much.
And unless the event was legal and permitted, I wanted no part of it.
Do I need to explain why?
One of my favorite quotes (by F. Scott Fitzgerald):
“You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.”
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To be fired for doing my job? Well, that’s just flat out WRONG.
To be fired for seeking the truth? WRONG.
To be fired for wanting to ensure that the Cedarhurst Business Improvement District and the Village of Cedarhurst didn’t sponsor an illegal public gathering? WRONG.
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I get fired, and the Cedarhurst Business Improvement District now decides NOT to move ahead with the possibly illegal August Sidewalk Sale?
So WRONG.
We are in the midst of a pandemic.
I mean seriously, do I need to remind anybody of that?
Health officials have warned against large gatherings. The larger the crowd, the greater the chance that someone in it will have the virus. As the size of the crowd increases, so do the chances of COVID-19 exposure.
Duh.
When I was instructed to start work on the annual sidewalk sale in early July, I didn’t know whether the event was legal or not.
So, I got permission from my boss to make some calls to New York State and Nassau County to get a written statement as to the legality of the sidewalk sale.
Seemed like a no brainer, right?
Call your state and local government during a PANDEMIC and get the go-ahead. Or not.
Well, so much for a no brainer.
Over two weeks, I made at least twenty attempts to get someone in the State or County government to put something in writing.
It seemed that the only one who had the guts to put anything in writing was me.
And once I sent a written report about my findings, things got u-g-l-y.
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I heard a lot of nasty stuff about me. My mental health, my unwillingness to do my job, finger-pointing as to my allegedly redacting and tampering with my workplace databases.
There’s even supposed to be a taped conversation proving that despicable and untrue things were indeed said about me.
Unseemly, right?
I didn’t see anywhere in my Executive Director job description that said it was okay to kill people.
Okay, maybe that’s a stretch. Or maybe it’s not.
Because it’s no stretch that increases in new confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in 43 states this past week. And hospitalizations from the disease also increased. And COVID-19 deaths rose for the second straight week.
So why wouldn’t I question whether throwing a sidewalk sale party was legal or not?
Apparently, questioning the legality of the event was not allowed.
And refusing to work on the sale event unless I knew it was legal, was also impermissible.
And that’s why I lost my job.
Honestly, I really didn’t want to write this blog post.
But I felt compelled because I have something to say.
The character assassination by a certain village official against me was devastatingly vicious and wholly untrue.
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Anyway, too late for apologies.
Because that certain village official was the one who engineered my removal as Executive Director, so now the stakes are a whole lot higher, don’t you think?
For certain men, their actions aren’t a matter of principle. Their actions are a matter of power, and of winning—at any cost.
Even if it means trying to ruin someone’s reputation; in this case—mine.
My grandmother would always say that the only thing you have is your reputation and your good name, and to never let anyone take that away from you.
And I can tell my grandkids that during the pandemic, I sought the truth in order to protect a village, the merchants, the shoppers, and the community at large.
And for that, I was fired.
I’ll take it.
I’ll proudly wear that badge of honor.
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BulliesTeri
I am continually asking myself:
Why do I allow bullies to trigger me?
Long ago, I should have learned that bullies have no power over me. And most importantly, that bullies have no power at all.
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I was bullied for way too many of my younger years.
And between us? I often feel regret for my aggressive response.
But then, I don’t.
I feel vindicated.
I feel like I’m making up for all those years that I was torturously bullied.
I decided a long time ago that I could be the heroine in my story.
Sometimes the story works out, and sometimes it doesn’t.
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Back in 1975, my baby sister got a dollhouse for Christmas.
It was a classic white clapboard house with a black shingled roof and black shutters. It had eight good size rooms and was a replica of the house she lived in, so I dubbed it “The Blind Brook House.”
I was a Delta flight attendant, living in Miami at the time, but thirteen hundred miles didn’t stop me from being obsessed with all things dollhouse. That Christmas, I spent a fortune on furniture for Blind Brook and spent countless hours helping my sister set it all up.
I loved that dollhouse more than she did, and for whatever reason, it never caught her attention. By the following Christmas, it was relegated to the attic, where it languished for sixteen years.
The dollhouse was dirty and cobwebby and needed a paint job. My daughter was three years old at the time, and I figured she would love it. But like my sister, she didn’t have much of an interest in it at all.
Ironically, it was my seven-year-old son who loved Blind Brook. He helped me paint, carpet, and install stairs. We cleaned off all the furniture and set up the rooms according to his layout.
Soon after, my son lost interest in the dollhouse. So once again, it ended up in an attic—this time mine.
When we moved in 1996, the dollhouse was yet again rediscovered.
I wasn’t sure where we would put it, or if we even had room for it, but there was never a doubt in my mind that the Blind Brook house was coming with me.
At the time I dusted it off, and even though it needed a paint job, no one was interested in working on it with me, so I stuck it on a table in my daughter’s room with the front of the house facing forward, and we all forgot about it.
In 2017, my two granddaughters discovered the house and asked me what was behind the front door.
They were obsessed with it and wanted me to turn it around so they could see it from the back. I had all but forgotten that the house was full of furniture, and they loved it.
When the coronavirus death toll spiked and took my Aunt Mary, I bought another family—a husband, a wife, a little girl, and three more babies.
There were no ventilators, no masks, and no federal government leadership.
As I listened to the grimmest of grim reports day in and day out, I would take a daily reprieve from reality. With scissors, glue, and tape in hand, I went into fantasy mode.
I couldn’t do anything about the horrors outside my house, but I was in complete control of Blind Brook.
I tried to stay away from the news and binged on Dead To Me. By the time I finished Season Two, we were at 100,000 dead.
What could I do? What could I do?
I set my mini self up in the Blind Brook television room and invited my friend, Robin, and my sister G for some wine and cheese, and potato chips. I sat back with Robin and we watched Dead To Me together, side by side, while my animal-loving sis played with the kitten.
The 1996 film A Time to Kill is about Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), a heartbroken black man whose ten-year-old daughter was brutally beaten and raped by two white supremacists.
As the two men arrive at court for their trial, Hailey takes the law into his own hands and shoots and kills them.
He hires Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey), a white rookie lawyer to defend him, but getting him acquitted in the small segregated town of Canton, Mississippi seems unlikely.
The chain of events following the death of the two rapists and the subsequent trial of Hailey is fraught with racial tension and revenge by the Ku Klux Klan.
I will never forget Brigance’s closing argument because it profoundly affected me in a way I did not expect.
Now I want to tell you a story. I’m going to ask y’all to close your eyes while I tell you this story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves.
Now comes the hanging. They have a rope; they tie a noose. Imagine the noose pulling tight around her neck and a sudden blinding jerk. She’s pulled into the air, and her feet and legs go kicking, and they don’t find the ground. The hanging branch isn’t strong enough. It snaps, and she falls back to the earth. So, they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck, and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge and pitch her over the edge. And she drops some 30 feet down to the creek bottom below.
Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body, soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood — left to die.
Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl.
Now imagine she’s white.
The defense rests your honor.
60,000 Dead My “Friends”
CoronavirusTeri
I thought he was my friend
until on March 18
he spewed his hate
and labeled me
a New York liberal.
His snarky friends
from
nowheresville
were making fun of
Cuomo and Scarsdale
while my family
was in lockdown and
my Aunt Mary was dying.
It’s a blue state thing
they wrote.
Like if I live in a blue state
I deserve to die.
I told him off.
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“I think it’s because you are too much
for the guy. And Teri, I’m saying that in a good way.”
That’s what a true friend said.
My Aunt gave her ventilator
to somebody else.
She was buried on my birthday
and by April 6
10,000 in the U.S.
were dead.
What do 10,000 people
look like?
I found a photo
and printed it.
I ran my fingers over the
tapestry of faces and flags.
No red or blue or
black or brown or
white demarcations.
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because it was
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changed.
April 11
was always a
sad day.
But this April 11
20,000 were dead
and my sad seemed
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I printed a second copy
of the 10,000 photo
and glued it
next to the other one.
It felt wrong to glue them
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And then 10,000 more by
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and this time it felt
right to glue
them together.
I wept because
the triptych was
beyond words.
Four days later
Another 10,000.
Up to 40,000 now.
I printed the photo.
But I refused to glue it.
And then there was that
imbecilic friend
who wrote that more
people die from
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Dr. Nobody.
I wanted to cut
her down to size
with my words.
I won’t rest until
I do.
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read this
and dump me.
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It took me three days
to finally print the
photo out.
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in the U.S.
and the WHO says
the worst is yet
to come.
And now today
another 10,000.
60,438 dead
in the U.S.
I thought about how to
share this with you.
I asked myself if I should print it out
yet again.
Yes, show them.
I didn’t want to,
but I felt compelled to
print and glue
them all next to
each other.
To show you
60,000.
The Passover Story During Coronavirus
CoronavirusTeri
My husband and I zoomed the first night of Passover with some of the kids and grandkids last night, and I have to say that I enjoyed it, but I held back the tears as best I could. I quietly ate brisket and broccoli souffle with my husband and tried to think positive thoughts.
This morning, I got a Passover story in my inbox, and amidst all of my angst, I got a good laugh out of it.
I decided to create my own Passover story. I hope it makes you laugh.
THE SEDER
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During the Seder, we Jews eat brisket, matzah, all things potato, and other uber-rich fattening foods, retell the story of the exodus from Egypt, and drink four cups of very sweet wine.
THE SEDER PLATE
The centerpiece of the Passover table is the Seder plate, which holds a shank bone, parsley, lettuce, horseradish, a roasted egg, and haroset, a mixture of apples, walnuts, and wine.
But my in-store grocery shopper couldn’t find any of that. So, deep-six the plate.
THE FIRST CUP OF WINE
Nobody likes Manischewitz, but it’s all we got, okay? So, hold your nose and bottoms up.
THE WASHING OF THE HANDS
Near the beginning of the Seder, we perform a ritual washing of the hands. A splash of water from a bowl, and that’s it. Seriously? Not this year. Don’t just splash them. And get rid of the bowl. Get up and wash your hands at the sink with soap. Scrub a dub and sing the ABC’s twice.
How is this night different from all other nights?
Well, the two of us have been holed up in this house for the last three weeks, so this night is pretty much the same as every other night.
On all other nights, we don’t dip even once. Why on this night do we dip our parsley twice?
First off, we don’t have any parsley. And second, because salt water is a disinfectant or something like that. So change it up and gargle instead of dipping.
4. On all other nights, we eat either sitting upright or reclining. Why on this night do we recline?
Because, seriously, I can’t even keep my head up with all this anxiety and mishegas.
THE FOUR SONS
In telling the Passover story, we use our imagination and tailor our questions and answers.
The wise child asks: How can I help flatten the curve?
The wicked child asks: I’m too young to worry about staying in, washing my hands, and all the boring stuff. Screw quarantine. Can’t grandma take one for the team?
To him we say, there’s always one like you in the family.
The simple child asks: Are we going to be okay?
To him, we say, not if the wicked child has anything to do with it.
And to the child who does not even know how to ask:
To him, we say, don’t worry, Governor Cuomo will speak on your behalf.
THE PASSOVER STORY
Pharaoh was an ignorant and vengeful man who cared nothing for science or the welfare of his people. He dismissed the White House Pandemic team, cut funding to the CDC, cared only about lining his own pockets, and getting a mail-in voting ballot.
Even God lost his patience and visited a terrible plague upon Pharaoh’s land.
Pharaoh sort of heard his people’s cries, and said, “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
The people begged Pharaoh for coronavirus tests, and the media questioned him about when they would be available for everyone. Pharaoh threw a hissy fit and told reporters, “You should say congratulations—great job, instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question. Everyone who wants a test can get one,” he shouted and then hurried off to get tested for the coronavirus.
Moses’ jaw dropped and he made an emergency call to New York’s Governor Cuomo.
The people began to die. “I don’t take responsibility at all,” Pharaoh sniped. “We can’t let the cure be worse than the disease,” Pharaoh insisted.
The nurses and doctors went back to saving lives, and the Israelites helped their little ones with their homework.
“No one could have seen this coming,” Pharaoh whined. “We’ve done a great job,” he repeated time and time again.
Moses and the Israelites maintained their social distancing, stayed hunkered down at home, and listened to Gov. Cuomo’s daily updates.
The people again begged Pharaoh for tests. “We’re the federal government. We’re not supposed to stand on street corners doing testing,” the Pharoah loudly proclaimed. Then he scurried off to get a second test for the coronavirus.
The nurses and doctors continued to beseech Pharaoh for masks. Pharaoh had a theory that masks were going out the back door and ordered reporters to look into it.
When Moses reminded him that death and unemployment were through the roof, Pharaoh asked him if he had seen his daily briefing ratings. Pharaoh said that what was through the roof were his television ratings—better than Monday Night Football and even better than The Bachelor finale.
THE SECOND CUP OF WINE
All this talk of Pharaoh is stressing me out. I’ll drink anything at this point.
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Go and wash your hands again with loads of soap, and cap it off with a Clorox wipe.
TIME TO EAT!
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THE SEARCH FOR THE AFIKOMAN
Seriously? Two dollars for finding the Afikoman? I spent the last two days cooking and sanitizing.
THE THIRD CUP OF WINE
Three cupsh down. I hasen’t felt thish good in weeksh.
OPENING THE DOOR FOR ELIJAH
Are you crazy? Keep the door shut. Don’t you dare let him into this house. Unless he has toilet paper.
Last week my dear friend Ann was still alive, and my Aunt Mary didn’t have coronavirus.
What a difference a week makes.
After listening to Governor Cuomo’s daily news briefing today, I went online like I do every day.
I frantically clicked around from website to website. I scoured Home Depot, Walmart, Staples, Bed Bath, anywhere, for paper products.
$59.91 for a box of 125 tissues?
OUT OF STOCK. DELIVERY UNAVAILABLE.
My mind goes back and forth. My mind goes forth and back.
IN-STORE PURCHASE ONLY.
I weigh the options: Go to the grocery store and risk my life, on the one hand, skip the grocery store and save my life, and run out of toilet paper on the other.
I count my rolls of toilet paper and tissue boxes. I’m running dangerously low.
I ask myself what to do, as I sip my almost black coffee, afraid to use too much milk, lest I run out of it, and milk goes the way of toilet paper, and paper towel, and tissues, and spaghetti sauce.
Last Wednesday, I spoke to a BFF on the phone for an hour or so. This week she’s dead.
My Aunt is sick, and who knows when or if I’ll ever see her again.
I miss my kids and my grandkids. I miss my daughter’s dog and my friends and my consulting gigs.
I wonder who will be next, and pray that all this ends soon.
I can’t sleep and finally pass out at 3:30 am if I’m lucky. I wake up close to noon because my time clock is off.
I go to bed to the news, and I wake up to the news.
And it’s all bad. And inside, I rage at the nutjobs who say it’s all fake.
I cover my hands with my shirt when coming into contact with phones, tablets, keys, faucets, steering wheels, or doorknobs.
Bathrooms drive me insane. It takes a village for me to navigate my way through public toilets and sinks.
And I detest planes, and trains and subways.
I don’t like carpet, I don’t like curtains, and I refuse to use a kitchen towel more than once, so I can’t even tell you how many rolls of paper towel I go through in a week.
And if you’re wondering, NO, I have not been buying up unreasonable amounts of paper products.
Primarily because I already had a shitload of it in my house.
And despite a plethora of products, I’m still manically worried that I will run out.
I change my bath towel, washcloth, and hair turban two times a week, I strip my beds every seven days, including the mattress cover, and spend a vast majority of my free time cleaning.
Heck, I wash down my furnace and water heater on a bi-monthly basis.
So, you get the picture.
Now, I’m sure I’m overblowing my situation, but for the past few days, I have been waking up congested.
Under normal circumstances, I would be alarmed, so now, with coronavirus looming over all of us, I have become obsessed with every clearing of my throat. And okay, I have the sniffles and sneezed twice this morning.
Of course, I went online and googled “Foods that reduce mucus.”
Dr. Sebi was a Honduran herbalist and healer, although many thought he was a nutjob. In 2016, he was arrested in Honduras for carrying around too much cash. After several weeks in jail, he contracted pneumonia and died.
After reading about Dr. Sabi, I went to mucus-research town. After reading umpteen articles, I was on a mucus-free tangent.
While I am trying to be humorous and not spend too much time watching the news (especially Trump), I hope and pray you are all safe and sound and look forward to better days.
My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Six: Tit
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[Catch up on earlier Chapters: Disclaimer, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five]
Chapter Six
TIT
It was August 1960, and I was getting ready for first grade.
I was excited but also nervous. Mem was even more nervous than me because I was going to be walking to school by myself. The walk wasn’t a long one, but I still had to do it alone.
Both Mem and Mom worked a 7 am-3 pm shift, and because we didn’t have a car, they both had to take early buses in the morning. And Mere Germaine was living too far away to help out, so I was on my own.
Mom said that moving Mere Germaine back in with us so she could help out was yet another reason why we had to get out of our White Street apartment.
After church, for three Sundays straight, Mem walked with me to the school, warning me about cars, strangers, and stray dogs.
On day one, Mem packed me a paper bag with a jelly sandwich, and a chocolate doughnut from the batch she had made fresh the day before. She wrote “R R” on my right hand in pen so I wouldn’t get lost.
My walk was uneventful until I started down the second hill. There was a group of girls slightly ahead of me. The biggest one turned around and yelled: “Whatchu lookin at?”
I looked behind me to see who she was speaking to, but there wasn’t anyone else there but me. When I turned back around, she was in my face. “I aksed chu a question.”
I looked down at my lunch bag, too afraid to answer. “Watchu got in the bag?” She grabbed my lunch and ran off to catch up with her friends.
Later that day in the playground, I was hungry and didn’t feel much like playing. Plus, every time I looked over at the mean girl, she gave me the finger. When I asked some of the other kids who she was, one girl told me that her name was Tit.
“Who would name a kid, Tit?” I asked, and the girl told me that her real name was Barbara Titone, and she was a bully to everyone, even her friends.
Oh, she was a bully, all right. And husky. And since she was in the third grade, she towered over scrawny me.
After school, I ran all the way home, terrified that Tit was going to come after me. And those hills were a killer.
When I got to the apartment, it was empty. Mem and Mom’s shifts were over at 3 pm, but it took time for Mem to get back by bus. And Mom had a second job as a dance instructor for a local Arthur Murray Dance Studio, so it was me myself and I, until at least 5 pm.
Between being afraid of the refrigerator, the scary hallway, the shoebox cabinet, and the vermin, I sat at the table in the kitchen until Mem got home, even though I had to pee. Since the only way to get to the bathroom was via the hallway, there was no chance I was doing that, so the only choice I had was to hold it in.
I didn’t mention anything to Mem about Tit, but the next morning I told her I had a stomach ache and didn’t want to go to school. Mem told me she wasn’t having any of my nonsense and to pack up.
For the next few weeks, Tit made my life miserable. Back then, I didn’t know what a butch was, but if ever there was a butch, Tit was it.
And her name might make you laugh, but there was nothing funny about being taunted day in and day out.
In the morning, she would torture me and take my lunch, and in the afternoon, she would just torture me.
One day on my way to school, Tit was particularly aggressive and shoved me so hard that when I fell, I hit my head on the pavement and wet myself.
As I sat in a puddle of urine, Tit laughed with her friends, singing ♪ Tony needs a diaper, Tony needs a diaper ♪
I didn’t want to say anything to my teacher about what happened, so I had to stay wet until my clothes air-dried. Tit told everyone at school I pissed myself, and I was humiliated. Plus, my clothes dried all smelly and crusty, and the back of my head was throbbing. That’s when I started to fantasize about how I was going to get back at Tit.
Even though I knew it was hopeless, I needed to take some kind of action because running away from Tit every day was both mentally and physically killing me.
The next day, on what I knew was going to be yet another torturous walk to school, I was feeling brave.
That was until I caught sight of Tit. And like a coward, and before Tit could even grab it, I handed her my lunch. So much for bravery.
But when Tit turned her back to me and began singing, ♪ Tony needs a diaper; Tony needs a diaper ♪, an uncontrollable storm of fury invaded my body.
I let out a guttural sound, and in a fit of rage, I pounced on Tit from behind. Tit fell on her knees, and when she rolled over, writhing in pain, I jumped on her stomach and straddled her. Then I punched Tit hard in the face, once with my right fist and then with my left. Tit was holding her hands up to her face and crying. I yanked her hands away and slapped her in the face a couple of times while repeatedly calling her shitty titty.
Then I grabbed my lunch bag, winked at Tit, gave her friends an evil grin, and asked if anybody else wanted what Tit got. While they all looked down at the sidewalk, I roughly elbowed my way through the girls and strutted the rest of the way to school.
We both got called into the Principal’s office, and when nobody but Tit was looking, I imitated one of those nasty rats from our shoebox, and put my two hands up like claws and gave her a creepy bucktooth face. And from what I could tell, Tit was scared titless.
When Mem came to get me at school, she wanted an explanation for why I beat up “Barbara.” I told her all about the Tit taunts, and how I was going to shove her tits down her titty mouth. My dirty words mortified Mem, so we stopped at the church on the way home, where she ordered me to recite the Lord’s Prayer five times. I knew Mem was more worried than mad, though, because she didn’t threaten to wash my mouth out with soap.
That night Mem and Mom spoke together in French to figure out what the hell they were going to do. I knew they used the swear word because Mem said in French, “enfer.”
Mem told Mom she was horrified at my violent actions and words. And Mom told Mem she was worried I was going to take after my father’s side of the family, and that was yet another reason why we had to get Mere Germaine back.
That night, as I laid in Mem’s bed, I wasn’t obsessing about the rats or the mice or the cockroaches. I was happily and busily conjuring up all sorts of ideas for how I was going to torture Tit.
STAY TUNED FOR CHAPTER SEVEN: A NEW SCHOOL WITH A SIDE OF BAPTISM
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Disclaimer
Chapter One: In the Beginning
Chapter Two: To Know Yourself Is to Know Your Family
