Stranglers – "Straighten Out" (1977)

I’ll tell you things

That’ll make your curls

Straighten out

This post started out as one thing, and ended up as something very different.  

I took a long bike ride on Sunday, and planned to write a post about the history of the rail trail I rode that would include photos of flowers, old buildings, and train cars that I took while on the ride.  But I stumbled upon something that took me in a very different direction.  

What this post ultimately ended up becoming is interesting, I think, but also very sad.  So if you’re not in the mood for something like that today, feel free just to skip to the end and listen to today’s featured song.

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On November 18, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln took a Northern Central Railway train from Baltimore to Hanover Junction, Pennsylvania, where he connected to a Hanover Branch Railroad train that took him to Gettysburg:

Lincoln’s Gettysburg train
at Hanover Junction in 1863

The next day, Lincoln attended the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, and delivered the most famous speech in American history – the 271-word Gettysburg Address. 

*     *     *     *     *

Lincoln passed through Hanover Junction one other time.  On April 21, 1865, a Northern Central Railway train carrying the martyred president’s coffin left Baltimore and passed through Hanover Junction on the way to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

There it was carried by hearse to the State Capitol, where approximately 10,000 mourners filed past the coffin that night.

The next day, the coffin was placed on a train that carried it to Philadelphia, New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Chicago before  arriving at Springfield, Illinois on May 3.

*     *     *     *     *

The Northern Central Railway ceased operations in 1972, and the 41-mile stretch of its right-of-way that ran from Baltimore to York, Pennsylvania, eventually became a rail trail.

A replica of a Lincoln-era train
at Hanover Junction

The Pennsylvania portion of that rail trail is officially known as the York County Heritage Rail Trail.  On Mother’s Day, I rode the southern half of that trail from New Freedom – which sits just above the Mason-Dixon Line – to Hanover Junction and back.  

*     *     *     *     *

There are quite a few benches along the rail trail where tired hikers or bikers can stop and rest.  Nearly all those benches have small plaques commemorating a friend or family member who has passed away.

I happened to notice one such plaque that was a little different:

“End of watch” has two meanings when used by law enforcement personnel.  It usually refers to the end of a police officer’s shift, or “watch.”  But it can also refer to the date of the death of an officer who was killed in the line of duty.

Here’s an account of Officer David Tome’s death from a local newspaper:

David Tome died doing what he loved – being a police officer.

Those who knew Tome said he was a dedicated officer with Northern York County Regional Police, a great husband and father of two and an all-around likeable guy. . . .

While re-creating a fatal crash from earlier in the week, Tome was struck and killed Tuesday by a vehicle on Route 15, near Clear Springs Road in Franklin Township.  Tome and two other officers had set up orange warning cones in the middle of the right southbound lane of Route 15 about 9 a.m. when he was struck.

York County Coroner Barry Bloss said Tome's family is struggling to understand the death.

"They are absolutely devastated," he said.

Tome, 31, graduated from Spring Grove Area High School in 1996. His wife of seven years, Dody, was his classmate. The couple has a son and a daughter.

Tome became a police officer after graduating from Harrisburg Area Community College's 83rd Police Academy in 2003. He served as a regional officer for the past five years.

[Police chief Carl] Segatti said Tome was a good officer with a strong work ethic.  He loved and enjoyed his job in the uniformed patrol division, where he specialized as an accident reconstructionist, Segatti said.

Officer David Tome

The two other officers who were there at the time of the crash are doing as well as can be expected, Segatti said.  The police department closed Wednesday to mourn the loss of a fellow officer, he said. . . .

Fellow police officers have taken the death rather hard, a reality check that the job is often dangerous and deadly, several law enforcement representatives said.

"We like to think we are tougher than the average citizen out there," Segatti said. "We are when we have work to do.  But we have the same emotions as everyone.  We just don't have the luxury to show them."

Tome was struck by a 2006 Saturn Vue driven by Joanna Seibert of Dillsburg.  Seibert was shaken up by the crash and taken to Gettysburg Hospital for observation, police said.

Through a family member, Seibert declined to comment Tuesday.

Based on a preliminary investigation, Seibert hit the brakes and tried to stop before hitting Tome.  The impact sent Tome's body over a guardrail and down an embankment, killing him instantly.

An autopsy conducted Tuesday at Lehigh Valley Hospital determined Tome died of multiple blunt force trauma.

 Officer Tome's fellow officers pay tribute to him 

Based on the location of the injuries, it appears Tome was hit from the back or the side, indicating he either did not see the car coming or saw it at the last second, Bloss said.

By the time Tome heard Seibert skidding on the highway, it was too late to get out of the way, he said.

*     *     *     *     *

Joanna Seibert was convicted of vehicular homicide in the death of Officer Tome.  This account of her November 30, 2011, sentencing is from another local newspaper article:

A Dillsburg woman convicted in a crash that killed a police officer was sentenced today to . . . 1 year minus a day to 5 years minus a day in York County Prison.

The judge rejected a request for house arrest for Seibert, who is pregnant.  She's due to deliver in mid-February, so Kelly ordered her to begin serving on March 14.

Seibert, 40, was convicted Oct. 12 of homicide by vehicle and tampering with evidence in the 2008 accident on Route 15 near Dillsburg in which Northern York County Regional Police Officer David Tome, 31, was hit and killed by Seibert’s SUV.

The sentencing came after two hours of emotional testimony from Tome’’ and Seibert’s families this afternoon.

Jamie Bell, Tome's sister, said there are mementos and monuments to Tome in York County, “but they're all we have. There's no David.”

She said she hadn't heard from Seibert since the crash and didn't care to hear from her today. “I am not going to forgive you,” Bell said. “As far as I'm concerned, you can go to hell.”

Seibert said she thinks about Tome every day and that if it would ease the family's grief she would trade places with him.  “But that cannot happen,” she said.

Tome was starting work on an accident reconstruction on Route 15 south near Clear Spring Road in Franklin Township south of Dillsburg when he was hit and killed on Oct, 21, 2008.  Seibert was speeding and tailgating the vehicle ahead of her and had been using her iPhone and applying makeup.  [NOTE: Seibert maintained she was distracted by something in her eye.]  

Prosecutor Tim Barker has called those three factors, speeding, tailgating and not paying attention, “the trifecta of death.”

In court documents, Seibert said she is pregnant and had asked the court to sentence her to house arrest.  Defense lawyer Ed Spreha said house arrest is appropriate because of a serious medical condition discovered in the fetus.  Spreha said the baby has been diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition that will require Seibert to relocate to the Philadelphia area for monitoring during the rest of her pregnancy. . . .

*     *     *     *     *

You might suspect Seibert and her lawyer of exaggerating the seriousness of her unborn baby’s condition in hopes of persuading the judge not to send her to prison.  But you would be wrong.  

Seibert gave birth to a daughter with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, or CDH – the “potentially life-threatening condition” mentioned in there article above – in February 2012.  

The little girl died six weeks later, on March 15.

Seibert had originally been scheduled to start her prison term on March 14.  But after her baby was born, a judge delayed her reporting date until May 9.

She eventually served ten months in prison. 

*     *     *     *     *

Most of the comments that were posted in response to a newspaper article announcing her early release expressed outrage:

– A wife without a husband, two children without a father for s lifetime, and the person who robbed them of him serves less than a year.  This disgusts me. . . . This punishment in no way fits the crime. 

– This is bullshit!!!!!  This wasn’t even her first offense of reckless driving!!!!!  She should have had to do life in prison . . . . Just sickening.

– This worthless bitch needs to rot in hell.

A few – very few – of the comments were more forgiving:

–It would be interesting to see how all those quick to judge (of course you have never made a mistake, needed a second chance, driven distracted . . . you’re all saints) would feel if the killer was your family member as opposed to the victim.  There are always two perspectives.  You could be changing a radio station tomorrow and hit someone . . . does that mean you deserve to fry, rot in hell, etc.?

– Pray for her, her family and Officer Tome’s family.  If you judge, you will be judged!  We all are guilty of something!  Let ye who have not sinned cast stones!

*     *     *     *     *

I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to post a photo of the rail-trail bench with the plaque commemorating Officer Tone.

But once I started telling the story, I didn’t feel that I could stop in the middle of it.

The deeper I got into it, the worse things got.  Unfortunately, that’s the way life goes sometimes.

There’s really no good way to end this post, is there?

*     *     *     *     *

Today’s featured song was a non-album B-side released by the Stranglers in 1977.  (If a song as good as “Straighten Out” wasn’t good enough to be included on one of the Stranglers’ albums, imagine how good the songs that did make the cut were.)

The Stranglers in 1978

I first heard “Straighten Out” on  Steven Lorber’s legendary “Mystic Eyes” radio show in the summer of 1980.

Click here to listen to “Straighten Out.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Clockwork Orange – "Your Golden Touch" (1967)

I was a fool to cry so much

I was a victim of your golden touch

In the previous 2 or 3 lines, we met Bill Ashley, the drummer of Clockwork Orange, a band from Paducah, KY, that released a great psychedelic single titled “Your Golden Touch” in 1967.

Here’s part two of my interview with Bill Ashley.

*     *     *     *     *

2 or 3 lines:  The version of “Your Golden Touch” that I heard on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio program in 1980 was produced by the Cajun recording artist Doug Kershaw and released on his Creole label.  But you had recorded a different version of the song before you hooked up with Kershaw.  Tell us about how the original version of “Your Golden Touch” came to be recorded.

Clockwork Orange

Bill Ashley:  When we decided to record “Your Golden Touch,” we went to a recording studio in Lone Oak, Kentucky – just outside Paducah – which mostly did recordings of school bands and orchestras.  The studio was operated by Tommy Morrison, and we contacted Tommy and set up a date to record “Your Golden Touch.”  As I recall, Tommy was initially not very interested in the project, but he was a competent engineer.  We recorded two songs that day on a four-track tape recorder – “Your Golden Touch” and an instrumental cover of “Ferry Cross the Mersey.”  

2 or 3 lines:  That’s an odd coincidence – “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” which was a hit in 1965 for Gerry and the Pacemakers, was one of the first songs my eighth-grade band learned to play.  Were you happy with how “Your Golden Touch” came out?  

Bill:  The initial recording of “Your Golden Touch” was excellent.  Tommy Morrison added some reverb and that was all it needed.  He thought the record was great, too, and suggested we take it to Nashville to try and get a major label to release it. 

2 or 3 lines:  Is that what you did?

Bill: Yes, Terry and I went to Nashville and played it for several labels, but we got rejected every time –  it wasn’t what anyone was looking for.  Nashville was really only interested in country music at the time.  But Doug Kershaw had been outside of the studio door at one of the places we went to, and he heard the recording and asked us to bring it to his studio. 

2 or 3 lines:  Which I assume you did.

Bill:  Yes.  We went to his studio and he listened to “Your Golden Touch” again, and said he wanted us to re-record the song in his studio and release the song on the Creole label.  

2 or 3 lines: Doug Kershaw was kind of a big deal.  He was the most successful Cajun musician ever, and had a top ten country hit with “Louisiana Man,” which has been covered by over 800 artists.  Were you a fan of Kershaw’s?

Bill: We didn't know who he was, but we were ecstatic that someone liked our “Your Golden Touch.” But just after we got that good news, things started to turn bad. 

2 or 3 lines:  What do you mean?  What happened?

Bill:  Steve Rudolph, our organist, got on his motorcycle to go to his girlfriend’s house to tell her about our record deal, and had a terrible crash.  He was in a coma for days, and was unable to make the recording session, which took place in Birmingham, Alabama. We had to re-record “Your Golden Touch” without Steve – we used a studio musician instead of him.

2 or 3 lines:  So you went from being excited about recording under the guidance of a major recording artists like Kershaw to being devastated by Steve’s injuries.  I assume his condition weighed on everyone’s mind at that recording session.

Bill:  The Birmingham session did not turn out as well as the original session we did in Lone Oak with Tommy Morrison – partly because Steve was not there, and partly because we had been performing live a lot and were exhausted.  But Kershaw released the record even though we were disappointed in it.  The original recording at Tommy Morrison’s studio really represented the true essence of the Clockwork Orange.

*     *     *     *     *

The Lone Oak version of “Your Golden Touch” was never released, and few people other than Bill and his bandmates have ever heard it – until today, that is.

Bill had a copy of the demo on a minidisc – remember those? – that he converted to a .wav file and e-mailed to me.

A minidisc held one-third
as much music as a CD

That recording has some sonic flaws.  It was made from an acetate recording that was made more than 50 years ago from the original master tape.  (Bill has been unable to locate the original tape.)

A couple of years ago, a London company bought the acetate copy from Bill (who made the minidisc copy before shipping it off to Merry Olde).  They told him they hoped to enhance the quality of the acetate copy and eventually release the recording, but Bill hasn’t heard anything definite from them as of yet.

I’m hoping that company is able to produce a recording of the Lone Oak version “Your Golden Touch” that does it justice.  Until that happens – assuming that it does happen – all we have is the somewhat rough recording that Bill sent to me.

Click here to listen to the original Clockwork Orange recording of “Your Golden Touch.”  The Doug Kershaw-produced version was very good, but this one is even better.

*     *     *     *     *

My thanks to Bill Ashley for not only answering my questions but also providing me with a copy of the original recording of “Your Golden Touch.”

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, Bill isn’t sure when he’ll next be appearing live.  But if you travel to Key West or anywhere on Florida’s Gulf Coast once life is back to normal, check out the local concert listings to see if Steve Hopper and the Wolf Island Band are playing in the neighborhood.  (If you do get a chance to see them, I’d suggest you request “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problems.”)

Clockwork Orange – "Your Golden Touch" (1967)

I was a fool to cry so much

I was a victim of your golden touch

Bill Ashley taught himself to play the drums in 1965, when he was a 15-year-old living in Paducah, Kentucky.  His first group was Clockwork Orange, which released a single titled “Your Golden Touch” in 1967.

I heard “Your Golden Touch” on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show in 1980.  He’s not sure how he became acquainted with the record – which didn’t sell enough copies to make the Billboard “Hot 100” – but he did.

After a fair amount of Googling, I was able to track down Bill Ashley and interview him about Clockwork Orange and “Your Golden Touch.”

*     *     *     *     *

2 or 3 lines: One of the most memorable and disturbing movies I ever saw was A Clockwork Orange.  I initially assumed that your band took its name from that movie, but you formed Clockwork Orange several years before the movie was released.

The first edition of A Clockwork Orange

Bill Ashley: Danny Powley, our singer, had read the book the movie was based on – we had no idea when we formed the band that there was going to be a movie.  Originally the band was named “The Clockwork Orange,” but we dropped the “the” at some point.

2 or 3 lines: So how did Clockwork Orange get its start?

Bill: The group was organized by Elliott Payne and Terry Frasier.  Elliott moved away and leadership of the band was taken over by Terry, a gifted guitarist who had been playing since he was five.

2 or 3 lines: Was everyone in Clockwork Orange from Paducah?

Bill:  Yes, we were.  In addition to Terry and Danny Powley, the members were Barry Yancey on bass, Steve Rudolph – who played the Hammond B3 organ and trumpet – and me.

2 or 3 lines: Did you play a lot of live gigs?

Bill: We were in high demand at colleges in the area – all the way from southern Illinois to Nashville.  We were gone every weekend playing, and we developed a great style and became very close.

2 or 3 lines:  What kind of music did Clockwork Orange play?

Bill: We were influenced by the psychedelic music of the day – groups like the Electric Prunes and Strawberry Alarm Clock, to name a couple. 

2 or 3 lines: “Your Golden Touch,” which was written by Terry Frasier, certainly has a psychedelic feel.

Bill:   Terry had begun to write his own songs and suggested that we record “Your Golden Touch” when we decided to release something original.

2 or 3 lines:  I had no idea until recently that “Your Golden Touch” was produced by Doug Kershaw, who was a fiddle player from Louisiana who sold a lot of record in the seventies – I guess “Louisiana Man” is his most famous song.  I understand that he wrote the flip side to “Your Golden Touch,” which was a song titled “Do Me Right Now.”

Doug Kershaw (circa 1969)

Bill: Doug Kershaw wrote that song on the way to the studio because we had no other material to record.  

2 or 3 lines: I take it that “Your Golden Touch” didn’t sell very well.  

Bill: We sold very few recordings, so we went back to doing live performances.  But the band just wasn’t the same without Steve.  He eventually did recover, but it took a long time. 

*     *     *     *     *

2 or 3 lines: Do you keep in touch with the other members of Clockwork Orange?  Are any of them still involved with music?

Bill: All of the original members of Clockwork Orange are alive and well, but none of them are still performing today except myself.  Terry Frasier still lives in Paducah, where I saw him several years ago – but quit playing guitar decades ago for some reason and never returned to it.  Danny Powley

went to Vietnam and never returned to performing. He lives in Paducah, too. Barry Yancey moved to Texas and never returned to performing.  Steve Rudolph eventually recovered from his motorcycle accident and lives in New Orleans.  I look him up whenever I play in New Orleans.  I last saw him this past January.

The Clockwork Orange (circa 1968)

2 or 3 lines: So you are still drumming?

Bill: Yes, I’m the only original member of Clockwork Orange still performing – 55 years after we formed the band.  I’m 70, and still perform regularly, mostly in Florida and along the Gulf Coast.  I often play with Steve Hopper, who is a very popular tropical rock, or “trop rock” performer, and have been on some of his albums – including Anywhere There’s a Beach, which was recorded in Muscle Shoals in 2017, and went to #1 on the trop rock charts.  

[NOTE: Click here to listen to the title track of Steve Hopper’s Anywhere There’s a Beach album.]

2 or 3 lines: So you’ve left Paducah for warmer climes?

Bill: I left Paducah in the early seventies and moved to Florida. I lived on Anna Maria Island, which is near Bradenton, for many years. The music scene on the west coast of Florida in those days was great. I usually played six nights a week with many excellent musicians.  I’m very glad I was able to keep performing music, and I’m sorry the others in Clockwork Orange decided to quit. I really miss the great times we had and the music we created.  I will never forget those times. 

*     *     *     *     *

The next 2 or 3 lines will feature a never-released demo of “Your Golden Touch” that Clockwork Orange recorded before they met Doug Kershaw.

Bill Ashley thinks that recording is superior to the Doug Kershaw-produced recording that I heard on the “Mystic Eyes,” and I tend to agree.

But I’ll let you and your fellow 2 or 3 lines readers decide that for yourselves.

Click here to listen to the Doug Kershaw-produced recording of “Your Golden Touch.”

Dr. John – "Right Place, Wrong Time" (1973)

Refried confusion is making itself clear

Wonder which way do I go to get on out of here

The previous 2 or 3 lines presented several theories that have been put forward to explain why New York City has a COVID-19 death rate that is 50 times greater than the COVID-19 death rate in San Francisco.

Most experts believe that the difference in death rates in the two cities resulted from the fact that San Francisco (and its neighboring jurisdictions) ordered residents to “shelter in place” before New York City.

Residents of the San Francisco Bay area were directed to stay the f*ck at home on March 16.  The governor of California followed that up with a statewide order on March 19.

The next day, the New York governor issued a similar stay-at-home order that had an effective date of March 22.

New York City nurses

So San Francisco (and its suburbs) only shut things down a few days before New York City did.  But many experts seem to believe that a difference of even a few days in issuing stay-at-home orders could have made a big difference in slowing the outbreak, as infections spread exponentially in the population.

From Vox.com:

The difference of a few weeks or days on public action and orders telling people to stay home may not seem like a huge deal.  But it really is significant with the coronavirus, because the number of cases and deaths, especially early on in an outbreak, can double every few days if protective measures aren’t in place. . . .

[O]nce a community confirmed a coronavirus case, and especially after it saw a death, there was a good chance it already had a much more widespread outbreak — since most cases are mild (though still potentially very unpleasant) and even the worst cases can take days or weeks to show major symptoms.

“Your chance of the first case being the one that comes to your attention is very, very, very, very small,” George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the UCSF, said.  “By the time you have the first death, you have to figure that there’s been three full weeks of transmission, and there are at least several hundred cases in the population.”

So once a city, state, or country is reporting a few Covid-19 cases and especially deaths, it’s typically safe to assume there is a much bigger outbreak going on — just one that’s not fully visible, at least yet, to the public. . . .

It’s in this context that a six- or three-day lag in issuing a stay-at-home order could really matter.

“I’m loath to criticize, and hindsight is 20/20,” Rutherford said. “But you’ve got to start early. You’ve got to do it before deaths start to accumulate.”

*     *     *     *     *

New York City may be a COVID-19 horror show, but no one seems to be holding New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, responsible.  

The late Ronald Reagan was sometimes called the “Teflon President” because criticism and blame never seemed to stick to him.  Maybe we should start calling Cuomo the “Teflon Governor.”

The Teflon Governor

As Variety magazine noted last month, the coronavirus crisis has turned Cuomo into a TV star:

High on the list of things that nobody could have predicted just a few weeks ago is the emergence of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as a buzzy daytime TV draw. . . .

“The Andrew Cuomo Show,” as it were, is a strangely compelling mix that is part ‘West Wing’ revival, part therapy session and most important, a credible source of important information about the contagion that has abruptly upended every aspect of life in the U.S. and around the world.

But both Cuomo and New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, have some ‘splaining to do for the pickle the city has found itself in.

*     *     *     *     *

De Blasio has taken his share of heat for not taking the coronavirus seriously enough – especially compared to San Francisco mayor London Breed.

On February 25, Breed declared a local state of emergency.  On March 2, she warned local residents to prepare for possible school closures and other disruptions.

That same day, de Blasio poo-poohed coronavirus, tweeting that he was “encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives [and] get out on the town despite Coronavirus,” and recommending that they go out and see the movie The Traitor.

But Cuomo was just as overconfident, telling the press on March 2 that “We have been ahead of this since day one.”

“Excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers [but] we think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York,” Cuomo continued.  “So, when you’re saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”

Not exactly.

*     *     *     *     *

New York City may have been under a stay-at-home order several days earlier if de Blasio had his way.  The day after the San Francisco stay-at-home order was issued, he warned New Yorkers to be prepared for a similar order.

De Blasio and Cuomo

But Cuomo pulled rank on de Blasio.

“That is not going to happen, shelter in place, for New York City,” Cuomo told the New York Times. “For any city or county to take an emergency action, the state has to approve it.  And I wouldn’t approve shelter in place.”

Cuomo said that such a drastic policy would create unnecessary fear and panic.

“Quarantine in place, you can’t leave your home,” Cuomo said. “The fear, the panic is a bigger problem than the virus.”

Not exactly.

*     *     *     *     *

Cuomo and de Blasio have been engaged in an ongoing political food fight for several years.

From CNN:

In 2015, the two differed over topless women in Times Square, with the governor looking to swiftly squash the practice, while the mayor aimed to take a more deliberative approach by creating a task force on the issue.

Squabbling over Times Square toplessness is one thing.  Allowing the rivalry to get in the way of a prompt response to a life-threatening pandemic is quite another.

Topless Times Square entertainers

More from CNN:

The seriousness of the situation was clear when some local leaders rebuked the mayor and the governor for continuing their fight amid the pandemic. 

“I don't have the time,” tweeted Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. “I don't have patience for petty back-and-forths in the middle of a deadly pandemic.” 

Adams then directed a message to both men: “Cut the crap.”

*     *     *     *     *

A few days after kneecapping de Blasio, Cuomo did an about-face and issued a statewide stay-at-home order.  But experts believe that his foot-dragging was costly.

No less an authority than Dr. Thomas R. Frieden – the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former commissioner of the New York City Health Department – said that if the state and city had adopted widespread social-distancing measures a week or two earlier, including closing schools, stores and restaurants, then the estimated death toll from the outbreak might have been reduced by 50 to 80 percent.

*     *     *     *     *

Cuomo and de Blasio continued to bicker as COVID-19 raged.

From Vox.com:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said [on April 11] that the city’s public schools would remain shut for the rest of the academic year, a decision that was widely expected given the scale of the coronavirus crisis in New York City. . . .

But this is New York, so before anything happens, the mayor and the governor must squabble about it first.  Barely hours after de Blasio said the nation’s largest school system would rely on remote learning through June, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described the mayor’s decision as an “opinion.”

De Blasio lands a left!

“You can’t make a decision just within New York City, without coordinating that decision with the whole metropolitan region because it all works together,” the governor said Saturday at his own separate news conference following de Blasio’s.  “That's his opinion, but he didn't close them and he can't open them.” 

The city would normally have the jurisdiction to close its schools. But Cuomo issued an executive order on March 18 which required state approval for any local ordinances.  Cuomo also issued an order that said schools would be closed statewide until April 29, at which point the closures would be reevaluated.

A spokesperson for Cuomo’s office said the governor is continuing to look at the question of schools with the facts and information available, but that he is looking at the issue with the entire state — and with what the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut choose to do — in mind.

Cuomo lands a right!

A de Blasio spokesman wasted no time in reminding people about Cuomo’s ill-advised decision to drag his feet on a stay-at-home order:

Freddi Goldstein, de Blasio’s press secretary, pushed back after Cuomo’s press conference. “The Governor’s reaction to us keeping schools closed is reminiscent of how he reacted when the Mayor called for a shelter in place.  We were right then and we’re right now,” Goldstein wrote on Twitter.

*     *     *     *     *

There’s one other possible explanation for the New York City coronavirus sh*t show: bad luck in the form of a “superspreader.”

From LiveScience.com:

In addition, a man in New Rochelle just north of the city happened to be what is called a superspreader.  For whatever reason, whether immunological, social or biological, a superspreader can infect many more people than expected for a particular pathogen. 

In fact, the virus was passed from this New Rochelle man to more than 100 others, said George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

"New York had multiple, multiple, multiple introductions from Europe and also had the misfortune to have a superspreader at the beginning," said Rutherford. 

If the New Rochelle super spreader had been a resident of Palo Alto or Berkeley, San Francisco might have been the city with the highest COVID-19 death rate in the country.

*     *     *     *     *

Luck certainly plays a HUGE role in our lives – both for good and for ill.

But we don’t like to admit that.  We prefer to view events with 20/20 hindsight and blame someone else when something bad happens to us.

It don’t make no never mind to me if you want to say Andrew Cuomo screwed the pooch on this one, or whether he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But if you hold him responsible in part for the fix New York City finds itself in, it’s only fair that you also hold President Trump responsible.

And vice versa, of course.

(I just lost a lot of you, didn’t, I?  But you can’t have it both ways – although most of the people in this country have tried to do so.)

Click here to read the very thorough New York Times account of New York City’s response to the pandemic.

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New Orleans native Dr. John – who was born Malcolm John Rebennack, Jr. – died of a heart attack a little less than a year ago.

“Right Place, Wrong Time,” which was released on the In the Right Place album in 1973, peaked at #9 on the Billboard “Hot 100” that summer.

Click here to listen to “Right Place, Wrong Time.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: