Following are recent posts from our “Dear Editor” column. Please note that
· The opinions and recommendations below are not necessarily those of the management and advice should only be followed after consultation with a dispassionate neighbor in documented possession of common sense.
· Letters have been edited for brevity and for clarity.
DEAR EDITOR,
My spouse’s driving habits have descended into dangerous territory. He seldom uses a turn signal and, when he does, it’s usually to indicate left when he is entering a traffic circle, which is both illegal and illogical because, when you think about, one doesn’t have a choice which direction to go in a traffic circle, at least unless you’re hoping to play chicken. He also practices the rolling stop, the lane drift, and the no-look U-turn. He rides the brake, keeps his hands at 5 and lap versus 2 and 10, loses his temper at innocent drivers and pedestrians and, at night, he leaves his high beams on till we’ve pulled inside the garage.
We’ve been married over twenty years and I finally gave up trying to fix his driving mistakes about a year ago—it only ever leads to fights. I’d point out why somebody was honking at us or suggest that he should check his mirrors before backing out of a parking space and things would get very personal very quickly from there! Thank goodness my iPhone gives me something to focus on other than what’s happening through his frequently not-adequately defrosted windshield.
Anyhow, I love him and he is generally a generous and smart person—he has a successful career and, other than for imperiling our lives when we ride in his car, is very thoughtful towards me and towards the children—but I feel the trend will not reverse till there’s an accident, and maybe not even then given his tendency to blame others, and inanimate objects.
What can I do?
Along for the Ride, Lewisboro
DEAR ALONG FOR THE RIDE:
Your plight is not uncommon, nor is your spouse’s condition. In fact, the latter—due to divorce, intergenerational estrangement, and other modern ways-partings—is the more prevalent.
You say he is successful in his career and that you have been married twenty years? Are we correct in assuming he is in a position of upper management and that you would have trouble explaining exactly what it is he does? And that the two of you have a stable and comfortable existence (excepting for the nervous times in the vehicle)?
His syndrome arises from the confluence of a professional life of great abstraction and an over-rich approbational diet. It is known as Belichick’s Sclerosis and, pending an unprecedented psychological or medical breakthrough it can be cured only by the grave.
Like the arteries of a bacon-cheeseburger addict, your spouse’s neuro-behavioral pathways have become calcified and unable to pass his forebrain the real-time stimuli that good drivers accept as reality.
His mind has essentially shifted the conventional world’s double-yellow lines and—like any habitual cheat—he defends his course with vehemence.
You ask what you can do about it? The only thing to be done for his health, for your own and your family’s physical wellbeing, and for the sake of all of us who ply Northern Westchester’s roadways, is to keep him from the wheel.
Have you tried pretending to be carsick whenever you ride as a passenger? This way it is your frailty, not his disorder, that necessitates you driving. We learned this tactic from our neighbor G whose domestic partner drives more slowly than G likes, but it should work well here, too.
DEAR EDITOR,
What happened to people with regular jobs? I’ve been living here for over forty years and it used to be you couldn’t swing a pair of hedge-clippers without hitting an advertiser, dentist, publisher, journalist, lawyer, banker, or insurance executive.
These days, if you haven’t traded in for a cordless trimmer or upgraded to a diversity-minded yard service, you’re more apt to nick a crypto speculator, arbitration consultant, messaging guru, social media director or—for God’s sake—an angel investor.
I was accosted by a gentleman at a Peekskill gallery yesterday who described himself as an energy broker. Which I knew immediately was different from a power broker because power brokers do not look like Deadheads with blue-framed glasses, thousand-dollar Apple watches and orange-soled trail-running shoes. They also do not generally begin conversations by trying to tell you what it is they do and where they have vacation homes till you want to kick them in the groin and call the police.
This man makes probably ten times the national average income by somehow inserting himself into the process getting energy from the ground—or hopefully, increasingly, from the sky—to our homes and cars and businesses.
He would have us believe there is a “marketplace” where well-meaning traders get together and sell hydrocarbons and electrons to people who can package and transport them to consumers. And that with his astute involvement, the process works more efficiently. Without him, buyers would buy from the wrong sellers, and would do so at the wrong prices—prices that make the millions of dollars he’s presumably siphoned off to his bank account seem inconsequential.
Is he really adding value? Is he really wrestling chaos into order? Is he really making the world a better place by placing educated bets on the price of next week’s crude?
But I digress. What I’d like to know is simply what to do in situations like this. We all know a lot of the old jobs were full of b.s.—the insurance and banking industries always took care of their own a little better than, say, the Post Office looked after its. But am I wrong in thinking that so many of my new neighbors are now actively working against the public interest?
Am I just old-fashioned, smothered by the silencing mores of my upbringing? Should I be—as my kids used to say—getting up in their grills? Asking pointed questions? Maybe not kicking them in the groin but at least trading in my chardonnay for a malbec (for better odds of making a positive contribution to their technicolored ski sweaters) and throwing it at them?
What advice do you have for dealing with people you suspect of being bad actors, of operating on the wrong side of the common good, of shoring up norms that should in no way be norms?
Am I wrong in thinking that, at this stage in our history, keeping civil tongues in our heads is somehow an act of complicity?
Thanks for any wisdom here.
Tongue-Tied, Cortlandt
DEAR TONGUE-TIED,
In our opinion, you’re not overpolite. If there is one controversial line to which we hew at The 914, it is that civility—lately impugned as a tool of elite repression—is not only important but necessary to any civilization worthy of the label. Because of results we feel are easy to predict, we refuse to fall in with the burgeoning school of invective that holds that, if one is not rude, things will not get done. That said, we also refuse to fall in with our neighbor E’s assertion that the anti-civility movement was hatched and is being promoted by the RAND Corporation.
All that to say, we are not appalled by the occasional thrown Malbec and, to our knowledge, the activity has led to no successfully prosecuted lawsuits. But we find there can be just as great satisfaction in, as you suggest, going the pointed-question route.
The ascendancy of Bullshit Jobs over the past few decades is alarming but—despite their layers of self-protecting obfuscation—their inner workings can be both discernable and pervious.
So, yes—we encourage you to comport yourself like a reporter, especially provided you do so in a way that does not lead to thrown drinks, epithets, or fists.
As is the case in most matters of journalistic endeavor, we reference The Handbook for general guidance. And, in a situation like this, a single local directive—one of the tome’s more colorful and commonly deployed—leaps out:
“Follow the money and, when it invariably leads you to your subject’s shame-hole, train your light, and let the exposition begin.”
If you need advice or clarification beyond that, please write back.
DEAR EDITOR,
I am fresh from reading the latest New York Times Real Estate section’s puff peace on the B.M. [Briarcliff Manor] and am frankly looking for a meaningful way to vent about it. And to beg your concurrence.
I mean, Briarcliff needs to have its real estate market further propped up!? What the literal [expletive]!? This is what our nation’s most renowned newspaper chooses to write about while we see temperatures hitting the 60s in late December? While Covid cases spike to record levels? While our infrastructure crumbles? While our public transit continues to operate behind that of countries that our last President decreed to be [expletive] holes? While our schools celebrate the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday with pajama parties (because, we suppose, he had a dream)?
This is not news that’s fit to print—it’s not even news! What can be done?
Bears Suck, Pleasantville
DEAR BEARS SUCK,
We pride ourselves on providing dispassionate, action-ready advice but your note, while terse, is layered with multiple contexts and subtexts and we have been challenged with this reply.
For one thing, we are cautious about contributing to inter-village rivalry. The generations-old tension between Pleasantville (Panthers) and Briarcliff (Bears) is well-documented. Pleasantville is the more working-class Italian-, Irish- (and recently Latin-) American hamlet with the walkable village while Briarcliff, with its two golf courses, Hudson River views, and distinctly pedestrian-unfriendly roads is the more posh commuter town. Dashing Mad Man Don Draper settled his family in Briarcliff. Dave Barry, the homespun (other than for his toupee) humorist lately of Florida, is a graduate of Pleasantville High.
But for almost a century they have been of much the same scale—lately each about 1,500 students across their elementary, middle and high schools—and of much the same uncomfortable mix of old-timers and here-while-the-kids-are-in-school urban professionals. And, as such, they frequently compete for employees, businesses, homeowners, and scholastic sports trophies.
But, judging at least from your signature, you know—at least in your bones—all of this.
So please take our response not as an act of partisanship for or against your Briarcliff neighbors. Our hackles are merely aligned with yours regarding that other entity you mention, The New York Times.
We have reviewed the piece you cite—“Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.: A Village ‘Between Two Rivers’” and, while we never enjoy adding smirch to any of the fourth estate’s pillars (much less one of its most massive and street-facing ones), we, too, are appalled at its lack of journalistic integrity.
We all understand that the Real Estate section (see under the third S in The Handbook) is not a place any of us goes for straight news. Its is a mercenary mission to draw in Houlihan Lawrence and Sotheby’s ad dollars while scratching the itches of certain portions of the readership who are either actively looking for places to live or who have heightened interest in the whereabouts of the Joneses.
But, nevertheless, this is The New York Times and the piece passes itself as an article with an author (who appears to be from Tarrytown) and a date of publication, just like the real McCoy. And it is hard to ignore the journalistic lapses that leap at us at even during a cursory read—
· Fuzzy headline: The “Town Between Two Rivers” in the title is in quotes, a convention that suggests that the statement is less than a fact. The piece states that referenced rivers are the Hudson and the Pocantico—which, at less than five feet wide in most places, might be more reasonably called a stream. Which is maybe why the quotes? But this begs the question—other than for maybe wanting to emulate the tone of a real estate prospectus—why did they feel they had to include the statement in the headline at all? One might also note that all three Village schools, the public works department, and hundreds of homes are on the wrong side of the Pocantico.
· Fuzzy numbers: There is more than one example of murky math in the piece. Our guild demographer took a dive into one of these: The Times says the median household income for the Village is listed as $181 thousand on the U.S. Census website. This appears to be a little on the low side. The National Center for Education Statistics has the Briarcliff household median at $216 thousand per year. This discrepancy may stem from the fact that, as the piece does point out, there are on the order of 800 residences (out of somewhere more than 2,200 total) in the Briarcliff zip code that the Census measures but which are outside the Briarcliff school system. I.e., about a third of residences can claim to be in Briarcliff Manor but the kids that live there cannot attend Briarcliff schools—they are consigned to Ossining schools. Ossining is far less wealthy than Briarcliff. The median household income in Ossining (home to the prison, home to a population that is more than five times more black and three times more Hispanic than Briarcliff) is about $88 thousand.
But more importantly, the demographer asks, why is The Times falling in with median convention in the first place? Are not the frontward sections of our nation’s leading newspaper relentlessly concerned with highlighting income inequality?
The median is the middle-most score on a list of values and is often used by optics-concerned entities to disguise very large or very small members at either end of a data list.
If one takes the true—mean—average income, better factoring in domiciles making multiple millions per year, Briarcliff’s household income is more like $315 thousand a year, meaning our state’s governor ($225 thousand salary) would need a domestic partner who earns at least $90 thousand to feel upwardly mobile in Briarcliff.
· Fuzzy descriptions: That said, some of the math is perfectly clear. And there are plenty of interesting (if unvetted by us) stats including the reported jump (according to data provided by a private, city-based real estate service) in median Briarcliff home price to $955,000 in 2021 from $882,000 in 2020. (Though, again, it seems possible the median versus mean average has been chosen for optical reasons—perhaps making the Village seem more affordable, much as car dealerships used to advertise lower sticker prices in order to get potential buyers onto the lot?) But there are bits of grave imprecision elsewhere. For instance, a new resident’s home is described in brochurese as being “steps from popular biking and hiking trails, and close to the village’s elementary school.” Is not saying something steps away in this context like a weather forecaster saying a snowstorm is days away? Okay, how many days? How many steps?
There is a bike path that appears to be less than a hundred yard from the home’s described location and the elementary school is a half-mile walk (which we suppose is “close”) but our cartography group could not find any hiking or biking destinations of greater propinquity than that.
· Fuzzy other bits: But what most set our journalistic alarm bells ringing was the last frame of the companion photo-section. The “slide-show” that accompanies the article shows the multi-million dollar public library, the town oyster bar and other eateries, a bike path, an 1850s Episcopal church, and then—in what appears to possibly be what we in the Guild refer to as a Jessica Rabbit bit, a potential piece of staff sabotage snuck into the works much as Disney animators notably did in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”
In what passes itself as an example of Briarcliff’s beautiful residential architecture, we see a yellow Victorian house. But one may notice that the house, located just steps north of Briarcliff’s main commercial district, has some commercial signage upon it—signage which reads, “Thompson & Bender” and “Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations.” A quick Internet scan reveals that T & B is a Westchester firm that has been charged with reputational work for various companies including, according to their client list, 27 commercial and residential real estate companies, and the Briarcliff Manor Chamber of Commerce. Is it possible the photographer may have snuck one by the section editor, revealing a publicity or marketing or advertising interest conflict?
This is an advice column not an investigative piece so we will only speculate. And we will not give even a casual thought to a Pleasantville profile the New York Times real estate section published in 2016.
At any rate, we would leave our response here but feel compelled to respond also to the last line in your note, which does not seem to have to do with either Briarcliff or Pleasantville, but might. You say, in a litany of things the Times might cover, something about a school pajama party to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Internet has helped us to locate a private school in Arizona that is about to hold such a party. And we have located a company that has made “I have a dream” pajamas. But, if you, or if any of our readers, has heard of any similar event here in northern Westchester, please immediately send us (914editor@gmail.com) a tip. We will quickly dispatch all available resources to investigate, and you can be assured of nothing fuzzy in our coverage. Flame-resistent polyester PJs and puffy slippers notwithstanding.