If you read the indictment of Donald J. Trump you have to wonder what he planned to do, or did, with highly classified material that could risk national security. Some of the documents were marked not for foreign eyes. Others were marked to be shared with the heads of five governments: The United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, Trump kept top secret, classified, secret and confidential documents in boxes in a shower at Mar-A- Lago among other places where the public had access. Why was he so sloppy and why did he keep these documents.
This is the statement that Special Counsel Jack Smith made on Friday, June 9, 2023 after the Trump indictment was unsealed in Florida.
Good afternoon. Today, an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida, and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.
The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk.
Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice. And our nation’s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. Applying those laws. Collecting facts. That’s what determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the Department of Justice. They have investigated this case hewing to the highest ethical standards. And they will continue to do so as this case proceeds.
It’s very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. To that end, my office will seek a speedy trial in this matter. Consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused. We very much look forward to presenting our case to a jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida.
In conclusion. I would like to thank the dedicated public servants of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with whom my office is conducting this investigation and who worked tirelessly every day upholding the rule of law in our country. I’m deeply proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. Thank you very much.
And here is the indictment, which you can read for yourself and make your own judgments.
Scammers prey on our desire for romance and its possibilities and in 2022 they had very good year. Romance scam thieves raked in more than a billion dollars from people looking for love. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported that nearly 70 thousand people reported romance scams with losses totaling $1.3 billion. That’s more than ever before and the median loss was $4,400.
Many of these bad romance scam relationships start on dating apps. But 40% of the people who lost money to scammers say that it started on social media. Once the scammer developed a relationship with the target, they moved on to continue the conversation on WhatsApp, Google Chat or Telegram.
Sweet-talking crooks have standard lines that come with standard hooks that get you after they develop a relationship.
Here’s what they say in order of which line they use the most:
1. I, or someone close to me, is sick, hurt, or in jail.
2. I can teach you how to invest.
3. I’m in the military far away.
4. I need help with an important delivery.
5. We’ve never met, but let’s talk about marriage.
6. I’ve come into some money or gold.
7. I’m on an oil rig or ship.
8. You can trust me with your private pictures.
Law enforcement officials call that last romance scam “sextortion.” The thief gets your photos and then extorts money from you by threatening to put them on social media unless you pay up. Young people 18 to 29 years old were frequently the victims and more than six times more likely to be victimized than people over 30.
In all categories, more people reported sending money through crypto currency or bank wires. Once you send money that way you can’t get it back.
The Federal Trade Commission offers these tips to help you watch out for scammers:
1. Nobody honest will ask you to wire or send money via crypto currency to help them or to buy anything.
2. It’s likely to be a scam if someone asks you to send money to help them or a family member or friend.
3. If they ask for money on a gift card, you can bet that it is a scam.
The FTC warns you to watch out for suspicious contacts or messages on social media. If someone reaches out to you, report it to the FTC, Report Fraud.ftc.gov.
Little things jog 9/11 memories almost every day. When 9/11 actually appears on the calendar, I remember every bit of what happened all too clearly. I see my husband Nick Taylor and I walking against a sea of people down Varick Street minutes after the first plane crashed into the North Tower. People heading north were fleeing the terror in the towers and we were headed toward it so that I could report for my television station UP9 and the sister station Fox5.
Barbara Nevins Taylor 9/11 Screenshot
But the daily memory flashes almost always involve other people, too, those lost, those who behaved heroically on 9/11 and in the days after, and the people I interviewed.
I found these photos in my desk drawer recently and thought about the man and what he told me. I don’t remember his name, but I recall vividly the story he told me on West Street where we had our TV truck set-up in the days after the attacks. He lived in the Archive Building on Christopher Street and drove a motorcycle. When he went down to ride it to work that morning, he looked south down Greenwich Street and saw the North Tower in flames. He was a dentist and thought he could use his medical skills to help. So he rode down to the burning towers and began to try to take care of the people injured at street level.
He really wanted to tell his story not because of what he did, but because he, like many others I spoke with, wanted to find someone who was missing.
The scene was chaotic with metal and dangerous debris flying everywhere and people were bleeding and crying. Almost immediately after he arrived, while he was bending down over someone who had fallen, a man came up to him and offered to help. “He said his name was Manny and that he was a paramedic. We began to work together. He kept bringing people to me and I did what I could and then we heard a roar and more screaming and the South Tower collapsed and I dove under a firetruck.”
Photos from the days after 9/11
When he came out from under, the man was gone. The dentist was distraught. He wanted to find this person who had joined him to help others. “You called me doc,” he said as our camera rolled. “Please let me know that you are alive. You called me doc,” he repeated.
I don’t know if he ever found Manny. And I don’t know what happened to the dentist. But he and his story and the image of Manny maybe lost in the debris remain firmly embedded in my memory.
The idea for a road trip began in the Audi dealership in the last week of 2021. “Let’s get the car we want,” Barbara whispered in my ear. “We could die tomorrow and if we get a nice car, we can drive to Colorado in June to see the family.”
Barbara has a way of cutting to the chase, and that was good enough for me. So what that gasoline prices were going through the roof? The price of three fill-ups would buy an airline ticket, but weird weather and a pilot shortage meant your flight might never leave. We traded our old car in and started planning.
Colorado’s Vail Valley was our destination.
Edwards, Colorado, down in the valley west of Vail. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Lots of places we hadn’t seen and didn’t know lay in between. Time wasn’t a big factor. We started looking at maps and plotting routes. I’d never seen Niagara Falls, never visited my mother’s hometown in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That would put us on a path to Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, foreign territory to us both. We went to AAA, where members can get a set of maps and turn-by-turn instructions called a TripTik. We didn’t want to drive more than five or six hours a day. We searched for hotels that seemed interesting, and were in downtowns.
Our road trip TripTik from AAA. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
We left on Thursday, June 9, our two large rolling suitcases wedged snugly in the A3’s trunk and spillovers crowding the back seat. Traveling by car, you always think there’s room for another pair of shoes. Until there isn’t. We set off around noon, headed for Niagara Falls. The odometer showed 779 miles.
Barbara took the early driving shift. Following our TripTik — and Google maps, which does the same thing but with turn-by-turn voice instructions — we took the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey and continued west through the Delaware Water Gap into Pennsylvania, headed toward Scranton and turned north into western New York. Along the way, late spring wildflowers painted both sides of the highway in shades of yellow, pink and purple. We’d been locked in the city for going on three years. Now the flowers, the green hills and sheer rock faces, distant mountains, stands of hardwoods and firs, reminded us that there’s been a glorious country out there all that time. Near Syracuse, we turned west toward Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
We got to Niagara Falls around 8:30 and checked in to the Comfort Inn at 1 Prospect Point.
View from the Comfort Inn of the Niagara River and Park. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
We chose it because it was the closest hotel to the falls and the state park on the American side of the Niagara River. We headed for the Red Coach Inn across the way for dinner after learning that the falls were lit at night and we could saunter over after we ate. It was raining when we left so we grabbed our rain gear from the car.
The nightly fireworks were just finishing and people streamed from the park as we headed toward the falls. Waiting turned out to be a good thing because we didn’t have to elbow our way to the railing at the river’s edge. Below, a bank of lights lit the plunging spray in alternating colors. The sound alone signaled the water’s incredible force. Niagara Falls was magnificent, even in the dark without the fireworks.
Magnificent Niagara Falls. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Going down to breakfast the next morning, we shared the elevator with another couple. The wife was telling her husband about a mystery she was reading that disturbed her. “Ah,” I said, “the victim heard the sound of rushing water!” They laughed. After breakfast, we walked to the falls again, following the Niagara River’s northward flow from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.
We had to take a photo.
At the end of the river the panorama stretched before us in bright sunlight – the wide white-capped river flowing toward the brink, the roar of tons of falling water. At the precipice, the sun made rainbows in the mist from the rising spray. The falls you see in the distance are on the Canadian side of the river.
Niagara Falls looking across to Canada. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
The Canadian falls are wider, the American falls higher at 180 feet. And this video feels like it puts you there.
The park was filled with tourists enjoying the natural wonder and putting the pandemic aside for a bit. We lingered taking photos and talking to a young couple and their son from Texas. Satheesh Makam offered to take our photo.
Enjoying the beautiful falls.
And then we took a photo of their family.
Makam Family at Niagara Falls. Their son is thinking, Who are these people?
For us, the road beckoned. We loaded the car and crossed the nearby Rainbow Bridge to Canada and the quickest route to Michigan, our next destination.
Rainbow at Niagara Falls
We’d seen a sign on the highway heading into Niagara Falls that to enter Canada since the COVID pandemic you need something called ArriveCAN. Barbara investigated and downloaded an ArriveCAN app for each of us. We filled out the questionnaire on our phones and still we needed the help of a patient border agent at the crossing to help us with some on-the-spot corrections.
Once across the border, we headed almost due west leaving Toronto and London to our north. Our route took us through Ontario’s Niagara wine country south of Lake Ontario. Vineyard names along the highway let us know what we were missing. One in particular stood out: the Organized Crime Winery. Nice little bottle you’ve got there. Be a shame if you didn’t like it.
We left Canada a little west of Sarnia, crossed the Blue Water Bridge over the St. Claire River, south of Lake Huron, to a long lineup at the U.S. entry point where only three of seven lanes were open.
Welcome to Michigan via Ontario. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
Once through, we continued west and hit I-75 north to our destination of Bay City along the Saginaw River. We had a room in a Doubletree Hotel that overlooked the Saginaw, which flows into Lake Huron.
Saginaw River, Bay City, Michigan. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Bay City officials have revived their pretty downtown with festivals and fairs. This was a Friday night and people filled the river-facing restaurants.
A good number of shops on the main street feature antiques and there’s even a large store divided into an antiques mall with a lot of midwest Americana. Outside on the street, young people moved around on electric scooters that the city, with a private company, had placed strategically.
Photo by Marjo Jaroch, Courtesy Bay City Downtown Development Authority. Here, like elsewhere, life on the cell seems to triumph over real conversation. Photo by Mario Jaroch, courtesy Bay City Downtown Development Authority.
The weekend we were there tents and stalls lined several blocks. They featured jewelry, crafts, T-shirts, and food.
Photo by Marjo Jaroch, Courtesy Bay City Downtown Development Authority.
We walked along the river, wandered around, and enjoyed a meal. Then on Saturday morning, we got back on I-75. About fifty miles up the road, we stopped in West Branch to fill up. Eighty-nine octane was the same $5-plus that we were used to in New York; the tank took almost twelve gallons that clicked to $66.52 on the pump. The Audi calculated we were getting over thirty miles a gallon.
Pumping gas, West Branch, Michigan. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
Back on the road, we continued north for the Mackinac Bridge to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There I hoped to learn more about my mother’s family, which had a curious story.
We were in the third day of our journey now, heading to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the town of Iron Mountain. I wanted to explore a part of my past I’d neglected all my life. I’d visited English churches, villages and schools where my father and his forebears had set foot, but never been to where my mother came from. Call it a roots tour if you like. I had no idea what we’d find.
I understood a little about what this journey might yield. Barbara and I had traveled to Eastern Europe where all her grandparents came from. They fled brutality and anti-Semitism long before the Holocaust. And there was little left of the life they remembered.
Barbara and I visited Dr. Maria Shapira in Ivye, Belarus in 1992. She took us to the mass grave of 2524 Jews killed by the Nazis in 1942. Her granddaughter joined us to translate.
For Barbara it had been important to go, to breathe the air, to try to understand what made her people who they were. It was the same for me.
My mother’s family’s story is a little different. She and her siblings left Iron Mountain long ago too, but their parents and grandparents and other relatives are buried there.
Both of my grandparents are buried in this section of Iron Mountain’s cemetery.
There’s little left there of the lives they lived, but what we found surprised me. My family was a big part of the Iron Mountain’s history in the days of its iron mining boom, and their departure mirrored its decline. Their story also showed me something about how a family loses its Jewish identity and culture.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
After our fill-up at West Branch, we reached the straights of Mackinac, pronounced Mack-in-awe, in less than two hours. The straits connect Lake Michigan and Lake Huron and the bridge across them, the Mackinac Bridge, connects lower and upper Michigan. At five miles long, it’s the 27th longest suspension bridge in the world and its span between anchorages is the longest in the Western Hemisphere.
Mackinac Bridge. Photo by Justin Billau via Flickr. Creative Commons License.
We crossed the bridge and turned west on US 2 toward Iron Mountain.
The drive along the lightly-traveled two-lane was beautiful despite a spotty rain. We passed pristine sand dunes as we followed the shore of Lake Michigan. After some time the lakeshore fell away and we moved inland. To our right, in the miles of territory between us and Lake Superior, lay state and national forests, farms, and small towns. The UP is full of natural scenic destinations.
Kitch-iti-Kipi, or the Big Cold Spring, comes out of a limestone formation and has a natural temperature of 45 degrees all year. Photo by nbhaphotography. Courtesy UP Travel.
Hunters and fisher people love this area because it’s sparsely populated and unspoiled.
Bond Falls, Upper Peninsula, Michigan. Photo Courtesy UP Travel
Finns, Norwegians and Swedes were original settlers here. We got a reminder of that when we drove through the town of Norway as we neared Iron Mountain. We also saw signs along the road for Cornish pasties, a culinary import of the miners who arrived from Cornwall in the 1880’s to work in the iron and copper mines. Mom used to talk about how she loved pasties. She said, “The miners carried them in their lunch pails and heated them on their shovels down in the mines. We had them on washday with a big fat dill pickle or chow chow. That was a meal I often dream about.”
Making Cornish pasties at the Keewnaw Co-op, Upper Peninsula, Michigan. Photo courtesy UPTravel.
Iron Mountain was quiet when we drove into town that Saturday evening. We saw empty streets lined by old, low buildings, and few cars or pedestrians. It was a small town in the middle of its weekend lull. I frankly was a little disappointed.
Looking for Iron Mountain. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
We drove from the sleepy downtown to the outskirts and the Pine Mountain Ski and Golf Resort, where we had a reservation.
The Pine Mountain Lodge feels like a ski resort, even in June. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
On weekends, at least, it seemed the action in Iron Mountain was out there. Fred Pabst of the beer family had cleared Pine Mountain before World War II and installed one of his rope tows to lure skiers to the area. After the war, a pair of 10th Mountain Division veterans bought and improved it. Now it’s home to one of the world’s highest manmade ski jumps and regular international competitions. In summer golf takes over, and the course is rated one of Michigan’s best.
Families stayed in the hillside cottages when we were at the Pine Mountain Resort in Iron Mountain. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Sitting in the restaurant, filled with jerseys and photographs of Upper Peninsula sports greats, I did a computer search for Iron Mountain history and found websites rich with old photos and details. Historian William J. Cummings was credited in every case. I tracked down his phone number and called him. He answered and was surprisingly gracious about an over-the-transom Saturday night call. He provided a wealth of information, then and later, that put into context my mom’s accounts of growing up with her family.
Iron Mountain, practically on the Wisconsin border, started as a mining town in 1878.
Beginning of the Chapin Mine, 1879
A year later, the same year the Chapin Mine broke ground, a merchant from Menominee on the shores of Green Bay 70 miles south arrived in Iron Mountain, pitched a tent, and started business. He was Charles E. Parent, my great grandfather, my grandmother’s father.
His name was new to me. I was just beginning to learn what I might have learned from aunts and uncles and cousins if I’d grown up near them. But my parents lived in North Carolina when I was born and later moved to Florida, about as far from Michigan as you can get. I was a small boy when Mom took me to her sister’s family cottage at Black Lake. I remember taking shelter during a tornado warning and coming out from swimming with a leech attached to me, but if there were family stories told I didn’t pay attention. So I had no idea about the Parent family and how entwined they and my grandfather’s family were with the history and development of Iron Mountain.
We found this photo of what is said to be my grandfather Charles E. Parent’s home on a YouTube video posted by Terry Sr. We don’t know him.
The Chapin mine prospered, not least on the strength of a powerful steam-driven pump engine that cleared water from the mine shafts so miners could remove the ore. The influx of miners and the success of the mines helped Charles Parent move from his tent to a main street. Iron Mountain soon had hotels, competing rail lines, a hospital, and an opera house.
Rundle’s Opera House around 1900.
The building was still under construction when patrons sat on seats made from planks and beer kegs to watch “Monte Cristo,” a stage version of the Alexandre Dumas novel. Rundle’s Opera House hosted a grand ball to mark the formation of Dickinson County in 1891. A year later, when the second floor was finally finished, a local historian wrote that “the good theatrical companies never forgot to stop in Iron Mountain.” And in April 1897, the opera house exhibited a newfangled machine, a cinematescope that showed “animated pictures that actually seemed to move!”
By then my grandfather’s side of the family had discovered Iron Mountain. Mandel Levy, his older son Henry, and a nephew he had raised as a son after his parents died in Ontario, Canada, arrived in town in 1887 from Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where they had a department store. They were like other Jewish merchants all across America who perhaps started as peddlers and then set up shop in places where they saw there was business to be done.
The nephew was my grandfather, Isaac Solomon Unger, called Ike. His parents had come to Canada from Alsace, in what’s now eastern France around Strasbourg. Ike, with Mandel and Henry Levy, opened a branch of their Wisconsin store on South Stephenson Avenue, where Charles Parent had moved his clothing store. M. Levy and Company grew quickly.
Iron Mountain in the mid-1890s.
While the Parent store stuck to clothing, the M. Levy Company sold “Dry Goods, Clothing, Gents’ Furnishings, Groceries, Provisions, Flour, Feed, Boots, Shoes and General Merchandise.” It was so successful the partners sold the Wisconsin store to concentrate on Iron Mountain. Later a younger Levy son, Albert, joined the firm as did Ike’s bother Monroe. These newspaper ads, from the Dickinson County Library collection, stressed variety and price (and could have used some proofreading).
They eventually changed the name to Levy & Unger and Ike was doing well enough to propose to a woman from a prominent family.
Mary Parent, Charles Parent’s daughter, was 26 and Ike was 32. I wondered, going through this material, what it was like for a couple to get together at that point in their lives. It’s not unusual now, but then? They had retail in common and fashion. She ran a millinery shop on the second floor of her father’s store and Ike was a natty dresser. But while Ike was Jewish, Mary, called Mamie, was Episcopalian. That didn’t seem to matter. They married at her parents’ home in September, 1900, and honeymooned on the Great Lakes. Back home in Iron Mountain, they started a family. This where Judaism begins to get lost.
If Ike, his brother and uncle’s family practiced Judaism, they didn’t share it beyond the food they ate at the home of Mandel and Rebecca Levy.
Young Ike Unger Mamie Parent Unger at my parents’ wedding in 1942. She was still good-looking.
Clare, my mom, born in 1909, was the third of three girls and a brother followed her. Monroe, Ike’s brother, lived with the family in a big two-story house on a corner lot, and there was room for a live-in housekeeper as well. Mamie and the children went to church on Sundays, Ike and his brother didn’t, but Ike attended Christmas and Easter services where the children sang in the church choir. And as my Mom wrote in her personal history, “he never missed a church supper.”
He was a retail innovator and created dramatic store displays. He created drama for his children, too. They woke up on Christmas mornings to trees that hadn’t been there the night before. There was extra drama the Christmas that Mom and her siblings dashed downstairs to find that Santa had apparently forgotten them. Then their father “discovered” the fireplace flue was closed. He went on a search and found that Santa, unable to get down the chimney, had left the the tree and presents in the garage. Less dramatically, Ike also received patents for gadgets including a high chair seat for babies.
The grocery operation at the Levy-Unger store.
In the personal history Mom wrote for me, she said he loved the business world. “He followed every new trend. He thought the millennium had come, I guess, when Henry Ford came to our town, built a factory [in 1920] and paid his workers five dollars a day. This was the same Henry Ford who used to attend our high school football games,” she wrote.
And it was the same Henry Ford who purchased a weekly newspaper in Michigan called the The Dearborn Independent that he used as a vehicle to attack Jews and what he called, “The International Jew.” In 1931 Adolph Hitler had a portrait of Ford over his desk and when a Detroit News reporter asked about it he reportedly said, “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.”
It’s hard to know now about anti-semitism In Iron Mountain then. Maybe someone will read this story and share it with a family member. But for now, I can only imagine why my grandfather and his family kept their religion and heritage close. Their safety and prosperity were at stake. My mom always saw the best in people and she wrote that growing up Iron Mountain was “a regular melting pot with Swedes, Finns, French, Italian, Welsh, Poles, Arabs, Jewish people, and many more. We lived together in peace and harmony.” That wasn’t entirely true.
Although her father wore a yarmulke, Mom didn’t know that word. She called it a beanie or a skullcap, and thought he wore it to keep his bald head warm. She didn’t know she was Jewish and only years later recalled a childhood incident that she did not understand. She was bewildered when children from another family screamed, “Christ Killers,” at her and her siblings after they had an argument at an elementary school picnic.
In the meantime, her parents had become pillars of the local community. Her mother’s family claimed their history dated to the Mayflower. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and worked with the Red Cross. They golfed at the local country club and enjoyed dressing up and going out to dinner. Ike was a member of the Masonic Blue Lodge and in 1899, with other businessman, formed an association to crack down on chronic debtors. He even flirted with running for mayor of Iron Mountain.
Our visit to the town made me look closer at what my mother had written about her Jewish history. She had never told me that I was part Jewish until I met Barbara in 1976 and then it came pouring out. She wrote that she woke up late “to the fact that we did indeed have a part-Jewish heritage.” Apparently someone from Iron Mountain told people in a town where she was working that her family was Jewish. When she asked her Christian aunt and uncle about it they said, “What’s wrong with that?”
Ike Unger died of a cerebral hemorrhage in June, 1926. He was sixty, my mother was sixteen. That was the end of Iron Mountain for Mamie and her children. Not long after he died, she moved the family to Birmingham, a Detroit suburb. That’s where my mother later met my father.
Prosperity also began to wane in Iron Mountain. The town had 11,652 people in the 1930 census. The Chapin mine that spurred town growth closed in 1932. Other mine closings followed and the population slowly dropped. The 2020 census counted 7,174 residents. The family store became a J.C. Penny in the Levy-Unger building from the 1930s into the 1970s, when it closed. The building burned to the ground in 1982.
The family store became a Penny’s after Ike died.
And now in 2022, we walked on C Street where my mother grew up. Their house was up a hill in a tidy area of two-story houses a few blocks from downtown. The lilac bushes my mom remembered were gone but the house except for the siding looked as if it hadn’t changed much in almost a hundred years.It still seems like a nice community.
My grandparents’ house 100 years later. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
We visited the Iron Mountain Cemetery and paid respects to my vanished relatives.
Iron Mountain Cemetery Park. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
My grandfather’s grave in Iron Mountain’s cemetery.
We couldn’t touch them, nor could we revive lost conversations and moments that might have revealed more about their inner lives.
My mother struggled at points to find out more and to let me know that I had a Jewish grandfather and family. Well into adulthood, she covered religion as a newspaper reporter and decided to include the previously uncovered local synagogues. This opened her eyes to the Jewish religious calendar of Seders, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hosanna, and Chanukah. She wrote with some chagrin about her interview with a Jewish leader: “I called to ask him about the Chanukah celebration. I pronounced it Cha-Nuka instead of Hanukkah.” I was in high school at this time and one of my best friends was Jewish. She persuaded his family to invite me to their Seder, but didn’t explain why. She was trying. Finally, when I brought Barbara to meet her and my dad, the dam broke and the stories poured forth.
Now that I’ve been to Iron Mountain and have seen how remote the area is and how important it might be to belong, I understand a little. And knowing more about my family’s history, I know more about who I am. That’s why we went to Iron Mountain.
We also were on a travel adventure and were headed west. Come with us here.
And in case you missed it, take a look at our trip to Niagara Falls and Bay City, Michigan, here.
Discovering the Upper Midwest took us across the Menominee River into Wisconsin. After we left Iron Mountain, we had Wisconsin 70 West pretty much to ourselves. It carried us through state and national forests that we had no idea existed.
Public forests and attractions in northern Wisconsin.
We discovered that the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest has more than 1.5 million acres.
We had chosen the Upper Midwest route that would lead us to Rush City, Minnesota, but by the middle of the afternoon, halfway across Wisconsin, we were hungry. In a tiny berg called Fifield, we spied a sign that pointed us left along some railroad tracks. A couple of blocks later we pulled up in front of the Kountry Kafe.
The Kountry Kafe in Fifield, Wisconsin. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
A stocky fellow at the counter was the only other customer. He was eating his lunch and laughing along with Mike & Molly playing on a wall monitor.
We asked him what was good. Taking his advice, we ordered hamburgers. We told him we drove from New York and that the beautiful forests were a big surprise. “Yeah, different from New York, ” he said. “I was on Long Island back when I drove a truck to deliver windows for a company here.”
We told him that we lived in Manhattan and his eyes brightened with interest. “Can I ask you all a question?” he said after we started eating. “You don’t have to answer.” Barbara said, “It’s fine. We’re happy to talk with you.”
That was true. Part of our trip was about reacquainting with the America outside New York City, and we had fallen in love all over again. Like immigrant new comers, we embraced its beauty and marveled at how different it felt from the city, in a good way.
And like the journalists we are, perplexed by the divisions in the country, we took every chance we got to talk to store owners, bartenders, and anybody else. We wanted to understand why red staters feel the way they do, angry at government and wanting to be left alone to solve problems their own way. Partly, we thought, it’s an urban-rural divide. In cities you can’t have it all your own way, you’d mow people down just walking on the sidewalk. The density makes you realize how interdependent we all are.
Max Marvin in the checked shirt at the end of the counter is with other regulars at the Kountry Kafe, Fifield, Wisconsin.
Our counter-mate, Max Marvin, jumped into it, “Are you Democrats, liberals?” he asked. I felt us both thinking how to respond. Barbara went first. “Yes,” she said, “but I believe in fairness, not necessarily party labels. Nick may tell you something else.”
I put down my hamburger and said, “I’m a Democrat, no question about it.” He was quick with his next question, “Do you think government should tell us how to live our lives?” That got me going, given the leaked but still unissued Roe v. Wade decision. I said, “Well, it looks like some governments are going to be telling women how to live theirs, and conservatives are fine with it.”
The questions kept coming. “What do you think of Trump?” he asked. Barbara didn’t hesitate. “I knew Donald Trump in the ’80’s and ’90’s when I covered him in New York. He’s a con man, out only for himself. He hasn’t changed except that he became more successful at it. It’s amazing to me that millions of people believe his lies. But I have to give him credit for tapping into the discomfort and alienation of so many Americans.”
He sat back on his stool and said, “You knew Trump?” Barbara shook her head yes. It turned out that Max had served in Desert Storm and was wounded. He now receives disability services through the Veteran’s Administration.
But he wanted to talk politics. “Don’t you think if Trump were still president, Putin would never have invaded Ukraine. I think Putin was afraid of Trump,” he said, answering his own question. Barbara didn’t hold back. “Are you kidding? Putin manipulated Trump.” But again, he was still pushing. “Look what’s happened to gas prices. Don’t you think we should open more lands to drilling? There’s too much government regulation and interference.”
Without pausing, he went on to guns and this was after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed.
He wanted to know if a robber came into the cafe with a gun, wouldn’t we want him to have a gun. Barbara and I began talking at the same time. We explained the difference between this relatively remote community and our neighborhood in the Village, where it would be dangerous for people to walk around with guns. “Well,” he said. “What if those teachers in Uvalde had guns? Don’t you think that would have made a difference?” Barbara shook her head. “I don’t know about that. But I do know that I’m a teacher and I don’t want a gun, or guns in my classroom.”
“This is so good to talk like this without yelling,” he said. “I have a good friend who is a Democrat and we end up screaming at each other. It’s nice to have a real conversation,” he said.
We went on back and forth for awhile, finally shaking hands and agreeing to disagree as we said goodbye and got back on the road. We talked about Max as we continued west, passing lakes and anglers hauling boats.
One of many lakes in Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest
Here was a man who lived close to beautiful state and national forests maintained by the government. He received government services, but resented the government rules and regulations that make it possible for him to benefit. We didn’t get closer to understanding.
The forest gave way to farmland as we talked.
We crossed the St. Croix River into Minnesota and Rush City was just a few miles farther, about sixty miles due north of Minneapolis-Saint Paul. We chose Rush City, population just over 3,000, because it was on the way to Fargo, North Dakota, and had a hotel we found online that looked interesting.
The Grant House Hotel in Rush City, Minnesota. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
The Grant House Hotel, a squarish brick building, has been around since 1896. Investors bought and took it out of bankruptcy in 2020, and restored it as a period piece that harked back to its origins. There are public rooms, but no staff, at least when we were there. Superior Stays Minnesota runs it as an airbnb. They emailed us codes for the front door and our Room 5, aka the Von Perske.
The Von Perske overlooked the crossroads.
The place was comfortable and charming and the town itself reminded us of a place in one of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. The crossroads seemed like the heart of the town.
Crossroads at Rush City. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
Rush City in the 1880’s was an important milling town that processed wheat grown in the area. Now the big flour mill is a grim reminder of more prosperous days. Ardent Mills shut it down in 2020.
The empty mill adds to the feeling that the town itself is a character in a Jack Reacher novel.
We had arrived in Rush City late and ready for dinner. The restaurant in the hotel isn’t open, but management sent us two suggestions: the Bulrush Golf Club and Fiesta Cancun. Bulrush was a short drive, and one look sent us back to town and the Fiesta Cancun, a Mexican place that was an easy walk from the hotel. And what a happy surprise: the family-run place serves great food and is fun as its TikTok video, posted on Facebook, shows.
Leaving the next morning, we encountered the only other guests, a man who’d grown up in Rush City and his partner. The Rush Citian told Nick he remembered the hotel in decay and locals said it was haunted. And he believed it when they came in at two the other morning and found a bat flying around the first floor lounge. Superior Stays immediately sent someone to deal with it.
But beyond the bat, Nick asked, “What’s there to do here at two in morning?” “Oh,” he said, “we were hanging out with my parents.”
Rush City was a nice one-night stop. Leaving, we asked at the gas station — $4.74 a gallon for regular — for a place to eat breakfast.
A quick fill-up at Rush City. But where to go for breakfast? Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
The customers and clerks said, just go straight to Pine City. Straight was beyond us. We made a wrong turn and meandered through beautiful farmland to downtown Pine City, where we found Nicoll’s Cafe.
Nicoll’s Cafe in Pine City served up a good breakfast. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Next stop Fargo, North Dakota.
We wanted to go to Fargo because for Barbara it had a romantic pull. As a kid she’d seen Westerns and TV shows featuring Fargo. Nick was more intrigued with the connection to the Coen Brothers‘ movie with its famous wood chipper scene. The city is right across the line from Moorehead, Minnesota. It’s the largest city in North Dakota with around 125,000 people, or roughly the population of a few New York City neighborhoods. That’s 20,000 or so more than the 2010 census counted. It’s growing fast because a lot of young people who came to college in Fargo or Moorehead decided to settle. It also has an artsy community and a restored downtown.
Broadway North, one of Fargo’s main drags. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
We felt happy to find the Jasper Hotel. It wasn’t one of the roadside cookie-cutters we find so dispiriting but always come up first on Booking.com, expedia.com and the other travel bundling sites.
The Jasper Hotel in downtown Fargo. Photo by Dan Francis Photography.Lobby of the Jasper Hotel. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
The name comes from Jasper B. Chapin, the so-called Father of Fargo, but it’s a spanking new hotel and our room had floor to ceiling windows looking out over the town. Barbara had spotted a hairdresser, Salon 3/5, across from the hotel and made an appointment with Ryan Benz to get a wash and blow-dry. He and his daughter share the salon and he talked about the generational contrast in what their clients wanted. He turned out to be a talented professional who had studied in France, just what Barbara wanted.
With nice hair, it was time for drinks in the hotel lounge.
The tables in the lounge at the Jasper Hotel look out on to the main street.
We were sipping our drinks when we noticed a commotion just outside. A man with a beard and long hair who looked to be in his thirties was busy chalking something on the sidewalk. We went to the window to have a look. The words, written to be read from the hotel, were “TRUTH IS NOT THE OPINION OF THE POWERFUL.” Nearby, he had chalked something about free speech and, in a couple of places, “Let PK play.”
A sidewalk chalker’s message on the streets of Fargo. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
Once the police arrived, P.K. disappeared.
The hotel called the police, but P.K. had vanished. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
It turned out that PK was a guitar player — a very good one, according to the Jasper’s director of rooms Alycia Bilbrey — who liked to play outside the hotel. The problem was that he liked to play at one and two in the morning, and he liked to play loud. Hotel guests and the condo owners on the floors above were not amused but lately, I’m told, PK has moved on.
Sadly for us, the hotel restaurant Rosewild was closed the night we were there. It features farm-to-table North Dakotan fare with a Nordic influence and we were looking forward to it. But we decided to eat in the lounge. We shared a white fish dip with delicious dark bread and Nick had a burger. Barbara enjoyed a lovely risotto with barley, edamame and fried mushrooms.
The next day we wandered around downtown.
A store window honored the Uvalde, Texas students and teachers killed in that elementary school massacre and called for tighter gun restrictions. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.Amtrak trains still stop at Fargo, but the main depot now houses a bicycle company. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
We stopped in Stabo Scandinavian Imports on Broadway and browsed the rich array of interesting things from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
The Stabo Scandinavian Imports shop is full of tempting things.
We mentioned to a woman working there that we were visiting for the first time, and that a friend loved the Norwegian influence in the city because his mom’s family was from Norway. She laughed and said, “Everybody’s mother here has some Norwegian.”
We didn’t buy anything from Norway, but we did buy a Swedish Smorgasbord cookbook.
When we got back to the hotel we turned on CNN and learned that Yellowstone National Park was closed at least till Wednesday. Yellowstone River flooding had washed out roads and triggered rock slides over others.
We had a reservation at Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn for Thursday, but the video told us that wasn’t likely to happen.
We jumped online and started making plans and then we headed across the state to Medora, a town in the heart of North Dakota’s badlands.
And that became one of our favorite stops on the journey. More about that coming up.
When I knew Ray Scott back in the 1980s, he wouldn’t have forecast that he’d get a six-column headline in The New York Times for his obituary. Or maybe he would, because Ray Scott was long on confidence. Anyway, that’s what he got, and photos, too, one of them clowning with First Lady of the United States Barbara Bush in a bass boat on his Alabama lake.
Ray’s New York Times obituary
I met Ray on a rainy Sunday in December 1983. What took me to him was a story in that morning’s Atlanta Constitution about a fishing tournament. The winner, it said, would make $100,000. I called my friend Phil Graitcer, and soon we were driving through the rain to Lake Sidney Lanier, north of Atlanta, to see what this fishing tournament was all about.
What we found, as I described it in Bass Wars, the book I later wrote, was “a world I found immediately fascinating. The men returning from the lake had the aura of warriors; their sharp-prowed boats looked like chariots of war; as they emerged from the mist that enveloped the lake, they seemed to be escaping from the smoke of battle. Waiting for them on the shore were families, women and children huddled under umbrellas, as if expecting news of casualties.”
Ray was the artist who imagined and created this scenario. The story is legend in bass fishing circles. A traveling insurance salesman who traveled with his fishing gear, he was stuck watching sports in his Ramada Inn hotel room in Jackson, Mississippi, one rainy night in 1967. As he remembered it, he was watching a basketball game when the revelation struck him, and he rose to his feet and yelled, “That’s it!” “That” was making bass fishing into a spectator sport and bass fishermen into professional athletes. The tournament on Lake Lanier was the vehicle he invented going on twenty years earlier to do just that.
And there he was, standing tall atop a weighing stand as the fishermen came in. He had a boxer’s rumpled nose and a crooked grin and wore his trademark cowboy hat, and you recognized the entertainer and promoter in his easy chatter with the crowd. The bass, carried by the fishermen in mesh bags, had been kept alive in live wells on the boats. Now they would be weighed, released back into the lake, and the fisherman with the heaviest catch over the tournament’s four days would win the $100,000.
A local fisherman, not one of the big stars, won the prize. And I did too, because I turned that tournament into a magazine proposal and The New York Times Magazine piece that resulted into a book proposal, and that proposal into Bass Wars, my first book. And for Bass Wars I spent 1986 following the pro bass fishing circuit and got to know Ray.
The success of his “That’s it!” moment was already clear. He’d leveraged his increasingly successful and lucrative tournaments into B.A.S.S., the Bass Angler Sportsman Society that, with its half million members at the time, was the world’s largest fishing club. He launched Bassmaster magazine to quench a monthly thirst for fishing news, and ultimately published a total of six consumer and trade magazines. He’d created the so-called World Series of Bass Fishing in the Bassmaster’s Classic, a year-end tournament featuring the season’s top performers, with camera crews filming the action. Now, he was about to stir live spectators into the mix.
That wasn’t easy. The fishermen didn’t fish in stadiums. They normally disappeared to far-flung spots across vast lakes. But in Little Lake Harris northwest of Orlando, Florida, Scott’s staff had found fishing holes where the ten leaders after four days of fishing on an adjoining, larger, lake, would spend two days rotating among marked spots with views from the shore. MegaBucks, the tournament was called.
Along with thinking up new tournament formats and creating new sports heroes in fishermen like Rick Clunn, a three-time Classic winner, and Roland Martin, whose seasonal catches had earned him multiple Angler of the Year titles, Scott had draped the mantle of conservation around bass fishing. It was his idea to keep the caught fish alive in aerated wells in the fishing boats. When America’s most popular sport took pains to keep its prey alive, people outside the fishing world took notice. George H. W. Bush, the Texas wildcatter turned politician, was a friend. Ray headed Bush’s 1980 presidential campaign in Alabama before Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination. Reagan tapped Bush as his running mate, and Ray enjoyed bragging that he’d sat naked in a hot tub with the future Vice President of the United States on one of his Alabama campaign swings.
Not all of Ray’s moves were forward looking. When a woman fishing columnist and sports writer for the Orlando Sentinel applied to be one of the press observers in a boat with one of the Megabucks finalists, Scott said no. What was more, only men fished in B.A.S.S. tournaments. Apparently they were too delicate to pee off the sides of their boats if a woman was on board or in a nearby boat, even if they turned away. Or their wives would object. And that wouldn’t change, Ray said. People would be ice-fishing for bass in Little Lake Harris before he’d change that rule.
The year went on, a year marked by the realization of one of Ray’s dreams. The tournaments were now getting regular television exposure on cable’s The Nashville Network with a B.A.S.S.-produced half-hour show that aired three times on Sundays. It was getting rare to see a photograph of a contending fisherman without a TV crew somewhere in the shot. Ray even gave them advice on what to wear. Reds and whites didn’t play well on TV, he said.
Ray sold B.A.S.S. that year to a group headed by one of the company’s executives, but remained its chief showman presiding at the tournament weigh-ins. Two years later, his friend George Bush was elected President and among the post-election coverage was a New York Times story in which Bush said Bassmaster was his favorite magazine. Around Thanksgiving, Ray picked up the phone to hear Bush ask what he was doing on December 29.
What he did was host the President-elect at his home near Montgomery, Alabama. Bush arrived with the Secret Service and there was no naked hot tubbing this time. Instead, Bush and Ray spent six hours fishing on Ray’s private lake. “I’m embarrassed to tell you,” Ray said, “but he caught nine bass and I caught eight.”
The relationship caught the attention of the mainstream media. B.A.S.S. suddenly found itself fielding countless requests to know more about Scott and the organization.
Early in 1989, after Bush’s inauguration, I picked up the phone one evening to hear Ray’s distinctive drawl on the other end. He said he was calling from the Lincoln bedroom in the White House, where he and his wife Susan were enjoying the Bushes’ hospitality. He had just called to say, he said, that all things were possible with bass fishing.
So the page-width headline on Ray’s obituary wasn’t so surprising after all. He was 88 when he died on May 8 in Hayneville, Alabama. Rest in peace, Ray. I’m glad our paths crossed, and it was fun to know you.
You can jump into Ray Scott’s world with the audiobook of Bass Wars. It’s got a great story and equally great narrator.
I had an illegal abortion in 1965 when I was 18. A friend I grew up with had a boyfriend who knew Paul Krasner, founder and editor of The Realist. He passed on the number of a doctor in Jersey City who performed abortions in an apartment there.
Abortion didn’t become legal in New York State until 1970. Then the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion for the nation with the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973. Before that, women did what they could. In the 1920s and ’30s, my grandmother ran a candy story and had four children. She apparently thought that was enough. When she got pregnant a fifth time, she went to a woman who used a wire hanger to perform an abortion. The woman punctured her abdominal wall and she got an infection that almost killed her. It was a story my mother told often.
The notion that we are rolling back the clock to a time when a woman of any age has to get a scary and perhaps dangerous abortion horrifies me. I don’t want anyone to have to endure my grandmother’s experience, or mine, or worse.
My pregnancy snuck up on me during the winter of 1965. I missed one period and then another. My boyfriend wasn’t someone I really liked and I don’t think he liked me at all. We slept together in an apartment on West 84th Street that he shared with several other guys. One was a friend and I met Fred through him.
Fred had recently graduated from college in Virginia and moved to New York to work in finance. I was just starting out and didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do. I’d recently graduated from the High School of Performing Arts and unlike my friends didn’t go directly to college. I was trying to figure out who I was and where I wanted my life to lead.
I did know a couple of things for sure. I liked the body heat and messy passion of sex and took the opportunities when I could without getting hurt. I had discovered my sexuality in junior high and by the time I was in my last year of high school, I had intercourse on the green carpet of my mother’s living room with a boy who was just a friend. It wasn’t as exciting or even sweaty as the groping and touching with those I had been with before. And I felt nothing when it was over. He wanted to talk. I did not.
This was the sixties, remember, and many of us felt free to explore sexuality in a way previous generations did not. Although, I will say to my mother’s credit, she reminded me often that, “Your generation didn’t invent sex. It didn’t invent everything.”
By the time I met Fred, I’d had intercourse with a number of guys and found ways to make it more satisfying for me than that first time. But I was also working on myself, trying to hold my fire, develop discipline and focus on making good choices. He was the only person I slept with for several months and that’s all it took.
After I admitted to myself that I was pregnant, my body flushed with red-hot humiliation and fury at me. I wished for a giant eraser to wipe it away and make it a dream. It felt like the time a couple of years earlier when I was in a car accident, but worse. That happened so quickly. A friend drove into an intersection. A car slammed into us. We spun around and crashed into a light post and we could not spool the moment back. We were both okay then. But this time, I was not going to be okay. It did not seem possible to continue the pregnancy and have a baby. I was a baby.
I imagined what would happen if I had to marry Fred. He was from Norfolk, Virginia, a place that I had never been. I envisioned me in a little white house behind a white picket fence with a stroller. I wanted to scream. Pete Seeger’s version of “Little Boxes,” a satire about suburbia, replayed in my head like a damning ear worm.
I didn’t talk about marriage or keeping the baby with Fred. He was decent and supportive when I told him about the doctor in Jersey City and he said that he would pay the $500 cash fee. I made the appointment.
We stayed together in his apartment on the Upper West Side the night before. At about 6 a.m, we took the subway to 34th Street and then the Path train to Jersey City. We barely spoke. I was in a fog. When we got out of the train, the people rushing around and the colors swirled before me like a kaleidoscope. It seemed as if we had stepped into a carnival. We left the station and walked for several blocks to a red brick apartment building. The instructions guided us to the super’s door at the back of the building. We could not use the main entrance. The door was unlocked and we climbed the three flights and rang the bell at the designated apartment.
A thick-set, dark-haired man opened the door and motioned to chairs in a small foyer. Another young man sat waiting. A few minutes later, a woman maybe a little older than I was came out and they left together. It was my turn.
The man led me into another room where three or four men who looked like him sat at a table. He introduced me to the doctor. The doctor had a pock-marked face and seemed like he was in his thirties. His dark hair waved up off his forehead in what they called a pompadour. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to expose hairy forearms. Rings glittered on his fingers as he motioned me into another room.
There was a bed off to the far side and I didn’t head there right away. I stopped to look at pictures of strippers in spangles and pasties taped to the wall above a small sink. “Great,” I thought to myself, “This guy likes women and sex and what does that mean for me?” I was terrified but my feet would not move toward the door to flee.
The doctor came to the sink and washed his hands. “Take off your pants and panties and get on the bed,” he said. “Go ahead,” he said when I hesitated.
The white sheet was clean and I closed my eyes and got on the bed. “Good. Now count from one.” I stared to count and he put something over my face. The last number that I remember was 18, just like me.
I felt myself rolling and then I fell. My body hit the floor with a thud. I had rolled off the bed and I was alone on the floor in the room. The doctor came through the door. “You okay?” he asked. When I shook my head yes, he stuck out a hand and pulled me up. “You’re done,” he said. “You may have some bleeding. Not too much.”
Fred had heard the thud and was standing in the door. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Yes. Please let’s get out of here,” I said. We walked to the Path train and then headed back to New York City. I felt the pad the doctor had placed between my legs getting wetter and wetter. By the time I got home I was soaked in blood.
I bled for two day before going to my gynecologist Michael Truppin. He said that I should have come sooner, I could have bled to death.
So are we going back to abortion 1965 style, or maybe earlier like my grandmother’s time? I teach journalism at The City College of New York and every semester in one class, I pick a current issue, white supremacy, for example, or attacks against Asians, and explain how history informs journalism. I want my students to understand and appreciate that history brings us to the present moment and that very little occurs in a vacuum.
Abortion has a history and it is because of that history that laws were passed to protect women. The abortion horrors of the past led to the understanding that a woman needs to make her own decisions about what to do with her body and whether she should have children. This is a fundamental right. Don’t led zealots of any stripe take it away.
The movers finally came for Mom’s piano. Not movers, in this case. More like morticians we called to put the old piano down. It was with me a long time.
It’s there in one of the earliest picture I have of myself. I’m standing, head cocked to one side, in the living room of my parents’ house in Waynesville, North Carolina. I must be five or six years old. The tinsel-strung tree to one side shows it’s Christmas morning and my present, a bicycle, leans against the front of that piano.
Mom’s piano on Christmas Day when I was six.
It was a Leonard upright, made in Detroit, where she met my father, an immigrant from Great Britain, in the 1930s. It was probably her mother’s piano; Mom was born in 1909 so would have been just a teenager when Leonard stopped making upright pianos in the mid-1920s. That meant it was 100 years old, give or take. It lost a pedal somewhere along the way, but the wood finish was still good and it had clean art deco lines.
My mother played a little, but she had high hopes for my relationship with that piano. It came with us to southwest Florida when we moved there in 1953.
My mom Clare Taylor
She signed me up for piano lessons as soon as I was big enough to reach the pedals. But Ft. Myers Beach beckoned me outside, to the warm sand and soft surf just minutes from our house. The wind in the palms practically sang, “Don’t stay inside and practice the piano.” The fact that I had no ear for music didn’t help.
The piano became mine in the 1970s.
My parents Jack and Clare Taylor in Chapala, Mexico.
Mom and Dad moved to Mexico and the piano moved into my turn-of-the-century apartment in an old section of Atlanta. Barbara’s father played it when she and I were married there in 1983. It came with us when we moved to New York a year later. A crane hoisted it from the street below and movers guided it through a top floor window of our duplex apartment at the top of the four-story townhouse we now own. Since 1984 it occupied a corner of our living room.
Mom’s piano in our living room. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
We hired piano players for a party or two. I had it tuned once. Unused sheet music and an old Scrabble set hid in the bench seat. A vase and a ceramic piece memoralizing the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centers stood on the piano top. Plants clustered at one end. It took up some space that we could use. I started to consider it a burden.
But it was my mother’s piano. She died in 1990 and can’t scold me anymore, but I agonized. She cared enough about it to keep it all those years, and then to pass it on to me. I knew its value was mostly sentimental. Ancient uprights can’t find buyers. We were going to give it away, but for the $6,000 it would cost for the crane to take it out through the window it came in we could buy somebody a new piano.
That left a piano removal service. Google “piano removal” and what comes up is “junk removal.” I called Junkluggers of New York. They sent an estimate that I signed and returned. A date was set. On the morning it was supposed to happen, a supervisor called to say he’d looked at the job and believed his guys couldn’t deal with the weight of a piano down three flights of narrow 19th century townhouse stairs. He gave me two other company names.
I called Magic Piano Movers. “How big is it?” asked Nargiza Turayeva who answered the phone. I measured it, 57 inches wide, 40 high, and 25 deep. Not a big piano, and I once again, as I did every time I looked at it, admired its spare and economical lines. No frills. Its clean lines didn’t sway me this time, though.
But I thought they were going to back out, too, when Nargiza called me anxiously the afternoon before the job. She was worried. Her boss wanted to see pictures of the piano and our stairs. I set my iPhone camera to video, aimed it at the piano and then followed the route of narrow stairs and tight turns it would have to travel down to the front door and the street in a house built in the 1840s. Nargiza texted to say she’d received the video. The next day, Monday, three big men arrived at the appointed hour. I met them at the downstairs door and said, “I see it’s not magic that moves the piano, but brute strength.”
I didn’t mention skill, but these men had it. Jonathan, Sebastian, and Daniel were originally from Colombia and spoke Spanish to each other as they worked. They knew what they were doing. From a small tool bag they took out an electric drill and started undoing what workers in a factory in Detroit had done a hundred years before. They opened and took off the lid, pulled out the assembly of hammers that hit the strings, took the wood front off the harp, unfastened and removed the keyboard. Soon what had been the piano was only the harp and strings assembly lodged in its now skinny wooden case. The harp or plate was cast iron, though, so what was left was heavy.
Taking out the keyboard. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
The piano reduced to strings and harp. You can see the hammer assembly to the right. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com.
Soon they had it strapped to a cushioning pallet with a pad underneath.
Then they headed for the stairs. Jonathan, the chief of the crew, said, “Uno, dos, tres,” and they took on its weight.
And then what was left of it was down there on the street, the rest of it already taken down in garbage bags.
What do I think now that Mom’s piano’s gone? I don’t feel as guilty as I thought I’d feel. Seeing the object I’d known all those years reduced to its component parts told me that it was just an object, after all. Its beauty lay in the sounds it could make under the right hands, and I never learned to make them. As mute furniture it wasn’t much. It was just the piano’s ghost the Colombian-American Magic Piano Movers carried away the other day, and I hope it rests in peace.
My prostate surgery was still three weeks away. I tried to keep things steady and in perspective during those three weeks. I wanted to maintain my physical life while I still could. I kept my doubles tennis dates, went to physical therapy, and Barbara and I did our home yoga workouts together. And we made love. How my penis would work when my prostate was gone was a troubling question.
Another big question ate at me. Had the cancer spread? I was scheduled to have my bones and lymph nodes scanned, but not yet. So my life went on as usual with a lot of scary thoughts running through my head. “We don’t know until we know,” Barbara repeated over and over.
I had a literary agent named Al Loman who liked to say, when I badgered him to know if we’d heard from a publisher, “No news is no news.” That was the case here, too.
There was plenty to do in the meantime. I gave up details of my body chemistry in vials of blood and urine. I was plastered with electrodes for an electrocardiogram to make sure my heart rate was steady enough for surgery. Blood pressure cuffs squeezed my arms and legs to see if I was likely to stroke out.
The two scans were scheduled for the same day, January 25, a Tuesday. I reached the huge NYU Tisch Hospital complex on First Avenue at 2 p.m. Inside, I followed a maze of color-coded pathways and ended up in the Kimmel Pavilion at the corner of 34th Street. There Christina Comaniciu, a technician in the Nuclear Radiology department, jabbed one of my veins and injected a radioactive solution. “Are you Romanian?” I asked. She was, and we chatted, both of us masked, about the country that Barbara and I had visited a few years back to explore her father’s family’s roots. Then she sent me off with a reminder to be back at six. It was about two-thirty.
The site of my second appointment, NYU’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, was a few blocks west. I walked up a rising 34th Street toward the ridge line of Manhattan, looking from above my mask at other New Yorkers also masked for going on a third year now against the latest COVID variant that was extending the pandemic. The city seemed exhausted. Trash littered the gutters and homeless people huddled under scaffolds. I wasn’t the only person on the street with reasons to be anxious.
I arrived around my three o’clock appointment time, changed into a gown, and received an injection of more radioactive liquid. Then I was shunted into a room for the seventy-five minutes it would take for the solution to be readable. I had brought a book but was told to leave it and my phone in the locker with my clothes. A radio played inaudibly. The seventy-five minutes stretched to ninety and then more. Finally I pushed the call button. An attendant came in and turned if off. “I understand it’s a long time, but there are other patients,” he said, and left again.
This is what a PET scan looks like.
At last I was pushed into the room where the PET scan machine waited. Cradled in a concave stretcher, I entered the machine’s white donut hole of a mouth. The scan took over half an hour, and when I was dressed and released it was after seven. As I walked back east on 34th Street I saw a message on my phone that the bone scan people had tried to call me a little after six. It was seven-thirty when I got back for the bone scan, and nobody was there.
I finally tracked down an attendant who seemed puzzled to see me. After calling the doctor he relayed that the bone scan couldn’t have been done anyway, that the Flourine 18 from the PET scan would have made the bone scan impossible to read. A master stroke of scheduling, I thought.
I got a new appointment for that coming Saturday. A snowstorm started overnight and I walked through slanting snow on slippery sidewalks from the subway and reached the hospital at eleven. The radiation tech, named Mathu, told me it had taken him two hours to get there from his New Jersey home. He jabbed another vein and injected me with Technetium 99. “Don’t worry,” he said, “It has a short half-life.” Then I waited.
Outside the windows, the snow blew up First Avenue. I drank coffee and read Arnaldur Indridason’s Jar City, an Icelandic noir about human organs, genetic disease, and murder. I was called for my scan at two. In the scanning room, I changed into a gown and climbed onto a flat table that moved under the scanner.
I spent the next hour under the gaze of a variety of screens, overhead and on each side. Sometimes the screens moved, sometimes the table moved me at microscopic speed in and under them. It had stopped snowing when I finished. I wished Mathu good luck driving home, and then I headed for the subway.
My bone scan showed problems. But no cancer.
The NYU Langone MyChart tells you when you have new test results. They come to you Joe Friday style, just the facts, relayed in dense medical language. The PET scan results came first. I was alone when I logged in and held my breath as I read, “No evidence of PyL avid lymphadenopathy.” I had to look it up. That’s a swelling of the lymph nodes, a lack of which I took to mean that they were cancer free. I sighed with relief, but the bones are a prostate cancer’s first metastatic target. When word came that those results were posted, I again read the medical language with bated breath, hoping I’d be able to interpret it. The words that said, “You’re clear” were these: “no evidence of osseous metastases.” I breathed again. When Barbara got home from teaching at the City College of New York we hugged and jumped up and down. She insisted that we dance.
That meant that prostate surgery — in clinical terms a radical robotic prostatectomy — was the right choice for me.
On Thursday, February 3, Dr. Samir Taneja‘s office called to say I’d be first on his operating table the next morning.
A driver from the car service we use waited on the street outside in the pre-dawn dark. We climbed in in pelting rain and were at the hospital by six. When I checked in using a tablet on the reception desk, I got a bracelet that said John Taylor. “Tell them that’s not your name,” Barbara said. She’d been urging me to let MyChart and Taneja’s office know that my name is Nick, although the official version is John Nicholas Taylor. “It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “If John Taylor gets cured of prostate cancer, Nick Taylor will be happy for him.”
About ten minutes after we checked in, a nurse came out with a bunch of charts and then called names. Those she called lined up single file, like elementary school, and followed her in like little geese. I was off-ramped into a small, pleasant cubicle. I changed into a large hospital gown and yellow socks with non-slip treads and climbed into a comfortable contoured chair. Once I was settled they let Barbara come in. She teased me about the shower cap on my head and took a couple of photos.
A pleasant young anesthesiologist interrupted our nervous chatter. He asked me about allergies and explained what the anesthesia would be like as he put an IV port into my left arm.
Waiting to be called for surgery. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
I have to admit that I was nervous. Dr. Taneja, wearing casual street clothes, came in a few minutes after the anesthesiologist. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “I guess I’m ready,” I said. “At least I’ll be in out of the rain.”
This was idiotic. I admit it. When Barbara said, “What?” I laughed and the doctor shrugged and walked out of the little space.
A few minutes later, a nurse came to walk me to the operating room.
It seemed crowded, at least six people in scrubs working. I hoisted myself onto the operating table. The anesthesiologist hooked up my IV and that was the last thing I remembered until I woke up in the recovery room.
The prostate surgery lasted about three hours and forty-five minutes. Barbara had gone home to wait for a call from the hospital. When her phone buzzed, Taneja was on the line. He said, “The surgery went well. He is doing fine. You can probably see him in an hour or so.” She gushed, “Thank you. Thanks so very much.”
Recovery after prostate cancer surgery
I was in a cubicle in recovery with a woman behind a curtain next to me moaning. I had my book on the tray table when Barbara came in. “You look great,” she lied, and kissed me. A nurse checked my blood pressure. It was 189 over 96, way higher than my normal 120 or so over 70. But I didn’t feel it. Whatever drugs they gave for anesthesia and to dull the pain made me feel happy and light. So Barbara and I chatted about nothing and then the nurse came back to say that Barbara had stayed long enough. She could join me in a room once I was settled.
About an hour later, I was settled in the room. It was early afternoon. Rain still fell and out the large window Queens and Brooklyn high rises loomed across the East River gauzy in the rain.
And Barbara was back. “How do you feel?” she asked. “I’m still figuring that out,” I said. I didn’t feel as loosey goosey as I did in the recovery room. I was conscious of the catheter in my penis and I felt a restricted band across my belly at the level of my navel. That was where the surgical incisions were, six of them where tiny robotic instruments went in to be manipulated by Taneja from images relayed to a computer screen. They told me where they were the first time I tried to lift myself without assistance, and from then on I used the bed control buttons when I wanted to sit up.
Feeling grouchy after prostate surgery.
I was grumpy. Barbara tried to distract me, pointing out the ferries nosing in from across the river and departing to return. “Look. It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s gray and miserable,” I grumbled. “No, it’s really lovely,” she said, adding “in its way.” We always say, “In its way” when we talk about something that is beautiful but too harsh to be inviting.
A nurse came in and took my blood pressure. “Oh, it’s still high,” she said. All my other signs were normal. An attendant came in and put some water and tea and apple juice and a carton of Ensure on the table. Another attendant came and helped me out of bed so I could walk around the ward with my catheter bag, wheeling my IV pole. Back in the room, I mindlessly watched CNN without the sound.
Barbara said she’d be back to get me in the morning. The night nurse kept checking my blood pressure, which dropped but only slowly. I didn’t feel it physically, but I knew I was anxious about what was next. I’d have the catheter for a week. I could feel the holes in my belly that were held shut with skin glue. A return to what I thought of as normal life seemed distant.
Sun was shining and I was ready to go home.
The next morning the sun was out and I couldn’t wait to go home. I called Barbara six times, each time reporting that I was waiting to get the final discharge from Taneja.
A physician’s assistant from Taneja’s office had told me I’d be discharged between nine and eleven. My nurse heard that and rolled her eyes. “It won’t happen before noon,” she said. I walked around the ward again a few more times, and climbed up and down a set of three small stairs.
Once the staff reached Dr. Taneja and he signed off on the release I called Barbara to pick me up. The online discharge documents took forever for the nurse to complete. I took off my gown and put on the clothes I’d worn to the hospital, then listened as the nurse told me things I’d need to know. Catheter 101 was the bulk of it, but another vital piece of information had to do with farting: “Don’t eat solid food until you start to pass gas.” So flatulence now was something to look forward to.
A driver called Jose from the car service waited downstairs. When I got in that car, the rest of my life had started. How different would that life be than the one I knew? I wondered.
On Thursday morning a man with red pants falling down below his butt stood outside the Washington Square Diner, “Gimme a dollar. Just a dollar. Come on man,” he begged one of the waiters setting up tables on the street. A block away inside Washington Square Park, men and women congregated on benches, some nodding out.
Congregating in Washington Square Park, Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
For a while these folks seemed to be confined to the northwest quadrant of the park near Waverly Place. Lately, they’ve spilled out into the central walk.. I go through Washington Square a lot and I’ve seen people in this area selling drugs to each other, and in a couple of instances shooting up. Recently, I tried to take a photo of guy filling a syringe. One of the men jumped up and yelled, “Hey. What are you doing!” I wanted to yell back, “What the hell are you doing?” But prudence made me walk away quickly.
We do not know when someone, maybe homeless, hearing voices, strung out on drugs, or in the middle of an alcoholic rage will strike out.
Homeless Person Camped out in the Subway. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
The problems of these human beings are tragic, in some sense. But the violence and threat is real, scary and can turn lethal, making many of us worry about our safety and the safety of our neighbors.
In Chinatown, near the Grand Street subway station, 25-year-old Assamad Nash, a homeless man, followed Christina Yuna Lee into her apartment and allegedly stabbed her more than 40 times. As she screamed neighbors called 911. When police arrived they found him hiding under bed.
A month earlier, 40-year-old Michelle Go was pushed to her death in front of of an R train in Times Square. Police say that 61-year-old Martial Simon turned himself in and confessed. The New York Timesreported that Simon has a history of schizophrenia and complained that doctors released him from hospitals repeatedly, before he was ready to live on his own.
City Hall photo. Public Domain.
Now New York Mayor Eric Adams, with Governor Kathy Hochul by his side, declared that he intends to focus on getting the homeless out of the subways. “It is cruel and inhumane to allow unhoused people to live on the subway, and unfair to paying passengers and transit workers who deserve a clean, orderly, and safe environment,” Adams said.
Adams’ plans combine enforcement of rules of conduct in the subway with a homeless outreach program. We’ll see more cops in the subways and they will enforce the laws against getting high and sleeping on the trains. “No more smoking, no more doing drugs, no more sleeping, no more doing barbeques on the subway system. No more just doing whatever you want,” Adams said. “No. Those days are over.”
Governor Hochul proposed $27 million for more psychiatric beds, $12 million for supportive housing and a $10 billion plan to help hospitals and improve staffing. She said that the state will increase the reimbursement to hospitals and health professionals for treating mental illness.
Many of the people we see on the streets and in the subways refuse to go to shelters, which many say are unsafe, or get treatment, so the governor said the state will make guidelines for commitment clearer.
“We need to talk about what’s involved in the removal and involuntary commitment for the highest need individuals, individuals who truly have demonstrated they’re not capable of taking care of themselves,” she said. “We need to issue regulations that’ll give those who witness this behavior, those who are in the subways, the law enforcement . . . the experts — give them more authority to take some steps to get people out of those circumstances and into a place so they could begin the healing. And this is long overdue.”
There are a lot of moving parts here. And homeless advocates and others have criticized aspects of the plan to remove people from the subways. We saw what happened when the subways were closed overnight for cleaning at the beginning of the pandemic. Homeless people who slept there moved out onto the streets.
This isn’t just a crisis of homeless in the subways. Pushing people out to the streets isn’t the answer. Let’s hope that the city and state are serious this time around.
My father died of prostate cancer. He didn’t know until it was too late, when the cancer was in his bones and lymph nodes. Like father like son often applies in prostate cancers. That’s why I had routine prostate screening. I paid attention to my PSA — prostate specific antigen — blood test results.
There was nothing remarkable in those results for a long time. Readings in the 3s. But in 2017, the lab reported a spike to over 5. Dr. Peter Zeale, my primary doctor for over thirty years, sent me to a urologic oncologist in the NYU Langone health system. Dr. Samir Taneja ordered a second test, and this produced a number back in the 3s. I went away relieved that the first result was a false positive.
There’s some argument these days about whether men should even continue to have prostate screening and their PSA tested beyond a certain age. I’m 76. The roll-of-the-dice thinking here is that if you get prostate cancer late enough, something else will kill you first. But prostate cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosed in the United States, and it’s asymptomatic until it’s too late. So the blood work from my annual exams always included a PSA test.
After 2017, my PSA readings crept up slowly, from 3.530 in 2018 to 4.110 in 2019 to 4.130 in 2020. When the lab work from my exam in September 2021 produced a PSA reading of 4.270, Dr. Zeale said, “I think you should have an MRI.” I contacted Dr. Taneja’s office to arrange it.
I met on December 1 with Dr. Taneja’s assistant, Samia Choudhury. She works with him in the Urology Department in an NYU Langone building on 41st Street between Second and Third Avenues. As we talked, I realized I was a stranger to the modern medical infrastructure. My regular doctor sees me in person and responds to calls and emails. But in this case, I was introduced to a medical bureaucracy. I wouldn’t even call the doctor’s office anymore. All my dealings would be handled through MyChart, an app where I’d learn of my appointments and test results and I could message any questions I had. I could even read the notes about me from the medical professionals on the other side.
Choudhury told me as our meeting ended to watch MyChart for my MRI appointment.
Walking back to the Sixth Avenue subways on 41st Street approaching New York’s magnificent main library, I realized I was on Library Way. Bronze plaques set into the sidewalk offered quotes for book lovers. The one that struck me on this day was from Georges Braque: “Truth exists. Only falsehood has to be invented.” I guess with the MRI I was after the truth.
Later, I read the notes in MyChart from our session and looked at myself through her eyes.
Psychiatric/Behavioral: The patient is not nervous/anxious.
Constitutional: He is oriented.He appears well-developed and well-nourished.
Neurological: He is alert and oriented. No gait.
Psychiatric: He has a normal mood and affect. His behavior is normal. Judgment normal.
I walked Library Way again on December 11, a Saturday at 2:10 in the afternoon. On the eleventh floor I was shown to a tiny dressing room where I stripped to my boxer shorts and put on a gown that was open at the back. I climbed onto a gurney with a pad below my knees to lift my legs. I was wearing earphones and an attendant asked my choice of music. “Reggaeton,” I said, but quickly rethought that and changed to piano jazz. After a few minutes someone wheeled me into the room where the magnetic resonance imaging machine hulked, its mouth open like a feeding fish. Now I knew why one of preliminary questions asked if I was claustrophobic. I’m not. My wife, Barbara, suggested I keep my eyes closed and remember to breathe. Now and then, the music stopped and a barely audible voice told me to “breathe in, breathe out, stop breathing.”
Home again, MyChart informed me that I would have a video call from Dr. Taneja that coming Thursday, Dec. 16, at 1:40 p.m. Taneja came on and without much preliminary chit chat said, “It’s two-thirds likely that you have cancer.”
I felt myself leaning in to the computer. When Barbara was diagnosed with 9/11 related lung cancer, she said, “Okay. What’s next? What do I need to do?” I took my cue from her and I was ready to face whatever was before me.
Taneja explained a biopsy would confirm his opinion and let us know whether it was an aggressive form of cancer that had to be dealt with quickly.
The relentlessly efficient MyChart soon informed me the biopsy was set for the first Monday of January 2022.
So on January 3, Barbara and I went together and when I was called in for the procedure she waited doing one of her favorite things, listening to an audio book. It was research, since she also narrates them.
In the biopsy room, wearing yet another gown open at the back, I was told to climb onto the operating table and lie on my left side. An attendant placed a firm pillow between my legs. A large video screen hung on the wall facing me. It showed a blotchy mass in shades of gray.
Dr. Taneja joined the room. I hadn’t seen him in person before now, at least since 2017, and I actually couldn’t see that much of him as he stood behind and over me sliding the biopsy probe up my anus. A local anesthetic killed any pain I might have felt. I asked if I were his first biopsy of 2022. He said dryly that I didn’t have that honor, that I was his second.
“What’s on the screen?” I asked.
“That’s your prostate.”
The probe started making snapping noises. That was the robot snipping tissue samples, said Taneja. It snapped quite a bit. I asked how many samples he was taking. “Sixteen,” he said. “Is that high or low,” I asked. I thought a lower number of samples would indicate a smaller cancerous area, which would be a good thing. “It’s exactly average,” he said.
The next call came, not from Taneja, but from Choudhury, the physician’s assistant. She appeared on my computer screen call wearing serious glasses and a grave expression. “I’m sorry to say,” she said, “you have cancer.”
I wasn’t surprised, given Taneja’s odds and my family history. But I didn’t know if Choudhury was the person I wanted to hear it from. It felt like the kind of news you should hear from the doctor. In fairness to her, she was thorough and professional. She said it was the aggressive kind of cancer and while there were other treatment options, “If you want to live another ten years, surgery may be your best option.” Then she explained that a radical prostatectomy has problems of its own.
Barbara was off-camera on the other side of my desk and we looked at each other. Surgery was the obvious answer. “I’d like to schedule surgery,” I said. “How soon can he do it?” Barbara asked.
“We like to wait five to six weeks after the biopsy to make sure that there is no bleeding,” she said. She went on to sketch the prospects with chemotherapy and radiation. Both had drawbacks, but chemo or radiation, if unsuccessful, would also make a successful surgery less likely.
After the call, Barbara did research and called around. Taneja was talented, smart and one of the top prostate surgeons in New York if not the country. A medical professional told that the best prostate surgeons are not known as the best communicators. Yet I wanted to communicate directly with the doctor and feel comfortable with him.
I messaged him in MyChart asking for a video session so that I could get a better sense of him and he of me. I wanted to be recognized as an individual patient, a person.
And I finally got a message that Dr. Taneja would have a tele call with me on Thursday, Jan. 13. In the call, he patiently went through a description of his findings and talked about surgery. He explained that he wanted me to have a bone scan and a PET scan. Both would help to learn if the cancer had spread beyond the prostate. He wanted to know exactly what he was dealing with. I felt comfortable with him now and I was ready to get rid of the cancer.
Barbara and I had discussed this. Prostate surgery is something no man wants. It’s in a bad place for surgery, right at the bottom of your bladder, and if it’s removed what goes with it is a little sphincter that keeps you from peeing in your pants. But I wanted it out.
After five that afternoon, his office called to offer February 4 or 9 for surgery.
Cryptocurrency is the latest lure used by scammers to steal your money and it is a growing problem. Crypto crime is said to have cost consumers throughout the world $14 billion in 2021. That’s up from $7.8 billion in 2020, according to Chainanalysis.com. In the U.S. 7,000 consumers lost more than $80 million in crypto scam investments between October 2020 and May 2021, says the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Now the FTC warns about a new crypto scam that gets you to withdraw money the traditional way, and use a QR code to deposit it in a cryptocurrency ATM.
But before we get to the details, it’s important to note that many of the victims are younger Americans. People ages 20-49 were more than five times more likely than other age groups to report losing money on cryptocurrency, the FTC found. And those in their 20s and 30s have lost more money on crypto investment scams than on other frauds.
The latest FTC alert involves crypto scams that use one or more of several standard play methods employed for decades to bilk people out of money. One may involve a romance scheme where someone contacts you via social media or a dating site. A Montreal man told a Canadian TV station he lost $400,000 to a woman who said she was originally from China, had bad English, and would only communicate with him online. She got him to put money into Bitcoin mining and he was never able to recover his money.
The FTC has also seen an increase in crypto telephone scams. A scammer calls your cell and says you have won a lottery or a prize and need to deposit money to claim it. Or they might say they are from a government agency or a utility and they have a new way for you to pay a bill with cryptocurrency. If you seem to believe them and continue the conversation, they’ll stay on the call and give you instructions.
They’ll ask you withdraw money from a bank account. Then they will send you a QR code with their address embedded. And because they are ever so helpful, they will guide you to a store with a cryptocurrency ATM. They’ll ask you to buy cryptocurrency with your money and scan the QR code. The money gets transferred to address on the code and it is gone.
The Bottom Line
If someone says you have to pay by cryptocurrency, wire transfer or a gift card, consider it a scam. You will not get your money back.
The FTC wants to hear from you if you have been contacted by a scammer. Go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov
Bigelow pharmacy in Greenwich Village thought it was ready. Customers snapped up the first batch of at-home COVID-19 tests in early December. So the pharmacy reordered. But during the third week in December, it sold out 1,600 tests in three days, far more than it imagined people would want. “It’s crazy,” Ian Ginzburg, Bigelow’s owner said. “People freaked out. I don’t know if they will continue to freak out.”
Bigelow Pharmacy ran out of COVID-19 test kits.
There’s plenty of reason to freak out. COVID-19 cases doubled in one day in New York and they continue to rise. Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “We’re facing a major challenge with the Omicron variant. This is an urgent situation and we need to act urgently. We are seeing a very substantial rise in the member of cases in a way we haven’t seen previously.”
The mayor said the city would increase testing substantially with more pop-up sites and more at-home test kits. But he called on the federal government to help increase the number of kits available. He said that he “…would urge that the President invoke the Defense Production Act and use every tool that the private sector has and the public sector has to continue to provide supplies here and around the country.”
Pop-Up sites are busy and often run out of swabs.
And testing is now a major part of the Biden Administration’s effort to control COVID. “We have to do better on testing,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical advisor on COVID, told CNN’s Jake Tapper. Testing, he said, has to go hand-in-hand with the two-shot vaccines and boosters. But COVID testing seems rocky, at least in New York City
When you want to get a test, you find long lines outside COVID testing sites.
City MD on Avenue of the Americas in the Village always seems busy. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
And then there is the wait for results. One of my students — I teach journalism at The City College of New York — tested positive. A week earlier, I sat near her at a computer helping with a video story. Although I didn’t have any symptoms, I thought it was a good idea to get tested. The lines at three places near where I live were long and I ended up at a Labworq. The q is the way they spell it.
It’s quick and easy to get a COVID test at one of these pop-ups. The results take a while.
You register through your phone on the spot and give insurance information or show some kind of government ID, and then a technician takes two nasal swaps. The swaps go in a sterile tube with your name and phone number. Then you wait. The online information says that the results will come back in 24 to 48 hours. But I had the test on Tuesday and by Friday afternoon, I still hadn’t heard a thing. If I had COVID, this would be a big problem for me and the others with whom I had come in contact.
I emailed customer support and received a reasonably quick response. “Your results are not ready yet. I cannot tell you exactly when the results will come since it does not depend upon me. I am doing everything in my power to ensure that the laboratory knows that your result is subject to urgent processing.”
And a little while later, I received an email from the lab, not the same company, and the results were negative. Good for me. But others may not be so lucky and it would be helpful and important now to make sure labs can process these tests in a more timely way and that more at-home kits are available to all of us.
Joe Namath was a great football player and George Foreman a great boxer. Their athletic prowess doesn’t necessarily make them experts on Medicare, yet you can feel the appeal as they insistently push insurance companies’ Medicare Advantage plans on cable TV. This is the time to review your Medicare plan and your Medicare Part D drug plan, but the advice of celebrities on TV might not be the best. That’s why it’s a good idea to review the Medicare and drug plans you have now to see if you need to make a change. You have until December 7, 2021 to make changes that will go into effect on January 1, 2022.
Medicare Advantage plans may be great. They do offer extra benefits that may include gym memberships, some vision, some dental care and some over-the-counter medication. Most also include a drug plan so that you won’t need a separate Part D plan.
Medicare pays the insurance companies and they have to follow rules set by Medicare. But they can also charge different out-of-pocket costs and set their own rules for doctors’ referrals and referrals to other providers.
That’s the sticky part.
You likely will have to use doctors, healthcare facilities and physical therapists in their network. If you find all of your healthcare providers on the insurer’s list, then Medicare Advantage might be the way to go for you.
But, and this is a big but, if your doctors, medical centers, physical therapists and others are not on the list, you might want to seriously think about choosing a Medigap supplemental program. These programs cover the 20 percent portion of your bill that Medicare doesn’t pay.
A couple we’ll call Pete and Pat joined Medicare in 2014 and 2019. Medicare Advantage worked for them until Pat fell and broke her knee and injured her hand. The specialists she needed were not available in the Medicare Advantage plan they had. “We didn’t realize how limited it would be until we had a problem,” Pete said.
Just a quick overview here. Original Medicare Part A helps pay for hospitalization and inpatient care. Part B helps pay for doctor visits and outpatient care. When you enroll in Medicare you get part A automatically. Then you can opt in for part B. Then you want a plan to cover what Medicare doesn’t pay.
That’s where Medigap or Medicare Supplemental Insurance Plans come in.
Because Pete and Pat joined Medicare before January 1, 2020, they are eligible for a supplemental plan in the Medicare Part F category. They’ll each pay a monthly fee that is likely to be a little over $300. It will cover the Medicare Part B deductible and hospitalization up to 365 days and skilled nursing for 100 days. It will also cover doctor visits and outpatient care without co-pays and it will pay for lab tests.
Congress didn’t like Part F because it didn’t require Medicare recipients to pay for Part B out-of-pocket costs or Part B deductibles. So it did away with it. Your representatives in Washington apparently thought this would control medical costs.
If you joined Medicare after January 1, 2020, the closest option is a Medicare Plan G.
Take a close look at what you have, and what you need. You have only until December 7, 2021 to make change your plan for 2022.
Also take a look at your Part D drug plan to make sure that it covers the medications that you use. Insurers change their offerings, what they call their formulary, every year. So you want to take care to ensure that you are covered.
Forget the ads and the first things you see on Google. Try Medicare.gov and compare plans.
We hadn’t traveled since the beginning of the COVID pandemic nearly two years ago. The months of lockdown and isolation took a toll, some physical, some mental. It was greater than I realized. I lost the ability to do things I took for granted; even the simple act of walking was harder, and my confidence eroded. Barbara and I never shied from challenges on our wide travels, but I wasn’t sure about the “twilight tour” at El Yunque Puerto’s Rico’s rain forest. Yet I agreed to go.
We failed to book in advance and discovered that was a mistake. On a Monday, we looked for a Tuesday trip. Spontaneity during COVID doesn’t always work. The U.S. Forest Service oversees El Yunque and limits the number of people who can be on the mountain every day. The day trips were all booked, but a twilight tour of El Yunque run by a private company seemed attractive.
We were staying on Puerto Rico’s southeast coast at Palmas del Mar in Humacao, an hour from El Yunque.
Palmas del Mar, Photo by ConsumerMojo.comView from Palmas del Mar toward Vieques, Puerto Rico. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
The roads in Puerto Rico are good but not as brightly lighted as they are in New York. We realized that we didn’t want to drive back down the mountain on a dark highway after the hike. So we looked for places to stay nearby. Barbara found The Rain Forest Inn, which looked lovely. They only have a few rooms and the owner Bill Humphries said they were booked three months in advance. He suggested that we try the Wyndham Grand Rio Mar Hotel just down from the mountain on the island’s northeast coast. “They have six hundred rooms. They must have something,” he said. He was right.
Wyndham Grand Rio Mar, Puerto Rico. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
The next day we checked into the hotel, hung around for a bit and then we drove toward the Angelito Trail Head a few kilometers inside El Yunque. The road was twisty and narrow and we felt the magic of the rain forest as we followed the GPS directions to the meeting spot up the mountain.
Native palm tree in El Yunque National Forest. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
We had signed up and paid online and filled out disclaimer forms about our ability to do a little walking. The folks at El Yunque Tours told us to arrive a few minutes before the tour’s 4:30 start. Other cars were parked along the road when we got there, and Angel Robinson and Jorge Candelaria, our guides, waited by a van filled with gear.
Angel and Jorge in the colorful shirts at the El Yunque Tours truck with snacks. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Soon our group of about twenty, couples and families, gathered around a small table set with a tray of mango and passionfruit slices. Angel said, “Watch out for the passion fruit. It can lower your blood pressure,” and he talked about how he discovered that.
Passion fruit, Photo by Najibzamri Courtesy Pixabay. Creative Commons License
Turns out passion fruit contains ascorbic acid, and a National Institutes of Health study indicates it may have benefits for the heart. But on the mountain we were just discovering that Angel was a trove of information. “I’m one of those people who likes to know everything, ” he said. “I’ll probably tell you more than you want to know.”
Angel and Jorge handed out backpacks and towels, snacks, and water to fill them with. We set off toward the trail, Angel talking all the way. “Anyone know what U.S. state is both the easternmost and the westernmost?” he asked. “It’s Alaska,” he declared triumphantly in the silence. “It’s on the 180 degree meridian, so it’s both the farthest east and farthest west.”
We knew this was going to be a funny trip and I began to forget about my fears or concern about walking.
First we stopped to take a group photo and Angel explained that there would be two of those. Once we he took the photo, we began the walk down a path into the forest. “You won’t see any monkeys here. That’s a myth,” he said. “You may see scorpions and that’s about the most dangerous thing that you will encounter.”
A short way in, Angel stopped to reveal that El Yunque wasn’t really a rain forest at the moment. Hurricane Maria in 2017 destroyed the forest canopy that blocked sunlight from the forest floor.
Red Firespike in El Yunque, Puerto Rico. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
The low growth that spurted up made the forest more of a jungle, at least temporarily. When the tall trees grow back, many of the lower plants will die and the jungle will become a rain forest again. “One day wiped out 90 years of growth. It’ll grow back but not in our lifetime,” he said.
Angel Robinson, El Yunque Tours, Puerto Rico. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
He also explained El Yunque’s name. It comes from the Taino, the natives who were here when the Spanish arrived. They looked to the cloud-shrouded peaks of the Loquillo Mountains at the heart of the 29,000-acre forest and called it Yuké, or white land. El Yunque is a modern corruption. He explained that Puerto Rican Spanish is a hybrid language that incorporates Taino terms not heard in Spanish elsewhere. “You Spanish speakers can’t understand us sometimes, right?” Angel laughed. He also pointed out that we use Taino words in English. When we talk of hurricane season, the term descends from hurakan, Taino for “god of the storm.”
He showed us the leaves from some trees that turn inside out and show white when the weather turns stormy.
White underside of a leaf in El Yunque National Forest. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
He also talked about how much the Spanish learned from the Taino about the medicinal properties of plants and trees and found coffee and cacao. The skinny tree below is a cacao tree.
Cacao Tree in El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
But the coffee plantations and timber cutters threatened the forest in the 19th century and King Alfonso XII of Spain proclaimed it a reserve in 1876. Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States in 1898 to end the Spanish-American War, and President Theodore Roosevelt declared it a forest reserve in 1903. That makes El Yunque the second oldest national forest in the federal forest system. Only Yellowstone is older.
We walked a little farther along the descending trail before Angel stopped us to explain the difference between native, or indigenous, plants and those that arrived naturally from somewhere else by wind or water. Endemic plants, as they are called, differ from invasive species because they got here on their own. To illustrate, Angel called attention to the black mask he wore over his nose and mouth: “I’m allergic to the dust that blows here all the way from Africa. Seeds could get here that way, too.”
He explained that coconut palms are endemic and planted themselves after slavers and other sailors dumped the coconuts that they had used as ballast to steady their ships. “The trees just planted themselves and now they ring the island,” he said.
He moved on and stopped beside the tangled base of a big tree.
Fallen ausubo tree in El Yunque National Forest, Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
Hurricane Maria, he said, had blown it down across the trail. Crews that came to clear it found the wood almost impossible to cut. “This is ausubo,” he explained, “the world’s second hardest wood.” He then spun a story of Sir Francis Drake’s 1595 defeat in the Battle of San Juan that you don’t find in the history books: Drake’s fleet failed to sink the vastly outnumbered ships of the Spanish defenders because they were built of ausubo and the English cannonballs just bounced off. Indigenous to Puerto Rico, it’s the island’s most important timber tree because the wood can last 500 years.
One of our group, a grizzled New Jerseyian named Mick, helped Angel explain another fact of the rain forest. “You can’t tell this tree’s age because it has no rings,” Angel said, pointing to the stump of the ausubo. “Does anybody know why it has no rings?”
“Because there are no seasons here,” Mick said astutely.
Angel looked a little surprised. “That’s right,” he said. “Puerto Rico has no seasons, so none of the trees have age rings.”
We stopped a few more times to gather around Angel as he told us more about the forest, of tree sap with medicinal properties and breadfruit trees and thin straight branches hollowed out as blowpipes to deliver medicine.
He showed us a huge stand of bamboo that had been planted by the Forest Service to stop erosion along the path. Bamboo is invasive and grows very quickly so it was a good solution for the changing forest.
We heard rushing water and the sound grew louder at each stop. Then the trail brought us past a waterfall to a river pool big enough to swim in.
Las Damas pool in El Yunque National Forest. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
El Yunque Tours had told us to plan on swimming at this Las Damas pool, and Barbara and I peeled down to our swimsuits and with the kids and few other adults waded into the cool water.
Some of the kids who wanted to make a big splash swung from a rope dangling from an overhanging tree. In a few minutes we toweled off and changed as twilight fell. Angel and Jorge handed out small red flashlights. These would light our climb back to the trail head without disturbing the night creatures we passed. But first we paused to take a photo.
Red lights glowed in the dark and so did we. Photo by El Yunque Tours
We walked through a concert of night sounds. The dominant instrument played, “Co-qui, co-qui” over and over in countless overlapping repetitions. These were the mating calls of tree frogs named for the sound itself, Coquis.
Frogs are as small as a little finger. Photo by El Yunque Tours.
Seventeen varieties of the species live in El Yunque, and all of them must have gathered to serenade our ascent along the trail. They were close, at our shoulders and elbows, and when our red flashlight beams found them it seemed impossible that such tiny creatures could make such large sounds.
The male coquis were smaller than a quarter. The females they were propositioning are larger, but they were high in the trees out of sight as they weighed which of their suitors had the most appealing call. Angel said, “The male sings and the female climbs up. She stops to make sure she likes his singing and then the male sings again and they do this some more until they finally get to the top. And then it’s a role reversal. She lays the eggs and leaves. He builds the nest and stays with the eggs until they hatch.”
Jorge stayed behind with us and helped us spot the tiny frogs waiting for their favorite love song. “I grew up in the mountains and I love nature. I like sharing it with people. But I need to work on my English,” he said. “We’re trying to learn Spanish, so we understand,” I said.
The red lights gave us a glimpse of the bioluminescence in the forest. “You see much more of it in the warmer months,” Angel said. But we did see glimmers of it in the low branches and on the forest floor.
In the middle of the walk back up, Angel squatted down and put his light into a little natural carve-out in a tree stump. “Here, look!” he said. “There’s a scorpion.” A few of us bent down to look and sure enough there was the black arachnid curled up ignoring us.
This wasn’t the one we saw. But this is what a scorpion looks like. Photo by the U.S. Forest Service.
Back at the trail head, we turned in our backpacks and towels and took stock. Angel and Jorge had been great guides, but I felt something greater than even the fine tour they had given us.
It was the exhilaration of remembering exhilaration, of knowing adventure still existed after the bleak pandemic months, of feeling whole again. I turned a corner that night, and I look forward to the path ahead.
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Mamie Parent Unger at my parents’ wedding in 1942. She was still good-looking.
Iron Mountain Cemetery Park. Photo by ConsumerMojo.com
My grandfather’s grave in Iron Mountain’s cemetery.
