Category Archives: Education

Harrison Ford Species!

Harrison Ford may have no Oscars to his credit, but he has quite a menagerie of namesakes! A species of ant (Pheidole harrisonfordi) and a species of spider (Calponia harrisonfordi) are named for him.

Moviegoers will remember, however, that as Indiana Jones, Ford famously declared: “I Hate Snakes“. Now, he’s got a species of snake named for him too: “Tachymenoides harrisonfordi“! Read on!

Tony Bennett, RIP

I am so saddened to learn of the death of Tony Bennett, at the age of 96—one of the finest interpreters of the Great American Songbook. I’ve featured so many “Songs of the Day” by him throughout the years. We are so lucky that this native New Yorker left behind such a great musical legacy. A multiple Grammy Award– and Emmy Award-winning artist, he was a Kennedy Center Honoree, and a painter as well.

My sister, Elizabeth Sciabarra, had the pleasure of working with him and his wife Susan Benedetto, during the lead-up to the opening of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens.

Among my all-time favorites:

I Wanna Be Around

The Good Life

The Best is Yet to Come

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

For Once in My Life

If You Were Mine

Live at the Sahara: From This Moment On

And his timeless recordings with legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans

… the list goes on and on and on…

Postscript: I should also note that Tony Bennett was among the first artists to inspire my rhythmic sense! As a child, I used to walk around our living room coffee table to his bouncy version of “Put on a Happy Face” (from the musical, “Bye Bye Birdie“)

By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Unidentified woman with singer Tony Bennett, CC BY 2.0

Elizabeth Sciabarra Award 2023

A wonderful achievement! Congratulations, Hazel Ekeke, for being the recipient of this award, named in honor of my beloved sister.

From the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation:

Congrats to Hazel Ekeke, BTHS ‘23/ University of Pennsylvania ‘27! She won the prestigious 2023 Elizabeth Sciabarra Award, presented at commencement for her role in student government, the Black Students Union and for creating a sliding-scale babysitting business that brought her national attention on The Drew Barrymore Show. The award was presented by Dr. Mathew Mandery ‘61, Chief Educational Officer of the Alumni Foundation.

Left: Award presentation, photo by @eason_fann; and right: an Ekeke family photo of Hazel, holding the award, alongside her mother. 

Jackie Goldberg: “Fear is Not Our Friend, Love Is”!

As a follow-up to my Medium piece, “Welcome to the Culture Wars: Pride Month Edition!”, check out this impassioned plea for tolerance in our schools from Jackie Goldberg, current President of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education for the 5th District.

#Pride2023

This was also published on Medium.

Welcome to the Culture Wars: Pride Month Edition!

This article also appears on Medium and on C4SS.

The Woke Nightmare That Doesn’t End!

It’s in commercials! It’s on storefronts! It’s on social media, on television shows and streaming platforms! We may not be able to define what “woke” is, but, dammit! Like any obscenity, we know it when we see it! They’re ramming it down our throats and shoving it up our asses! Okay, okay, not the best metaphor to use during a “Pride” month celebrating sodomy. But you know what I mean!!!

Just a couple of months ago, Bud Light suffered a backlash because it hired a transgender spokesperson who shared a sponsored post on their Instagram account on the weekend of the NCAA Basketball Men’s and Women’s National Championship. Kid Rock stood up for family values when he used a semi-automatic rifle to shoot up cases of Bud Light for all to see!

Then, Target got caught in the crossfire of another controversy when it removed some “Pride” merchandise from some of its stores to avoid backlash. (And what is it with this “Pride” stuff anyway!? You don’t see Straight Pride Parades! Gimme a break!)

Founded on solid Southern Baptist Christian values by a man whose WinShape Foundation gave millions to bolster conversion therapy, Chick-fil-A’s COO (son of the founder) has always been steadfast in his opposition to same-sex marriage. But even they have now been infected by the Woke Virus! They hired a VP of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”!

As if that were not the ultimate indignity, the Texas Family Project, which has joined with Defend Our Kids to protect “our children’s innocence by uncovering and highlighting the left’s public displays of sexual degeneracy”, has announced: “We take no pleasure in reporting that Cracker Barrel has fallen.” Imagine that. We now have to be subjected to the outright pornographic display of a rainbow-colored rocking chair in a Cracker Barrel Instagram post! The Southern-born Old Country Store chain had the utter audacity to desecrate its Instagram feed with this:

You know it’s the end of the line when this company — a company that once fired employees because of their sexual orientation, that was forced to pay an $8.7 million settlement because it “discriminated” against black employees and mistreated black customers, a company that put the “Cracker” in Cracker Barrel (H/T EY) — goes woke! What is this world coming to?

And mind you, this whole woke nightmare is nothing new. Companies of every brand have been “taking lefty positions on political issues” for years now. Social media platforms and search engines like Google are hammering us with “left-wing algorithms”. In 2019, Nike recalled its Betsy Ross Flag Sneakers after Colin Kaepernick, who had the insolence to take a knee during the national anthem, criticized the design. Even AirBNB, Lyft, and Uber had the gall to protest former President Donald Trump’s America First immigration ban!

Is it any wonder that our courageous state legislators have risen to combat this tide of immorality?! Over 650 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced across 46 states to protect our families, our children, our very social fabric.

Does all this sound a little unhinged? A little hysterical maybe? OVER THE TOP?

Welcome to the Culture Wars: Pride Month Edition!

WTF is Happening?

It was in 2018 that Ross Douthcat introduced the phrase “Woke Capital” in the New York Times. But it was already part of the zeitgeist. Derek Thompson in The Atlantic noted the “politicization of the public sphere” that was leading “nonpartisan companies to take one partisan stand after another.” Thompson wrote:

In many cases, America’s corporate community has become a quiet defender of socially liberal causes. Nearly 400 companies filed an amicus brief in 2015 urging the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage, including Amazon, Aetna, Apple, American Airlines, American Express, and AT&T (and those are just the ones starting with the first letter of the alphabet). Hundreds of executives, many from tech companies, signed a 2017 letter urging the president to protect immigrants brought to the U.S. as children by saving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. When North Carolina passed a law against transgender-friendly bathrooms, the NCAA announced in 2016 that it would pull its college-basketball tournament from the state (and other companies withdrew their business, too).

Make no mistake about it, however. Though some corporate types are no longer quiet in what may in fact be a genuine endorsement of progressive social justice causes, many put their fingers in the air just to see which way the wind blows. As my friend Ryan Neugebauer observes:

Liberal Corporate Capitalism in its welfare-statist form seeks a stable society for profit generation. It doesn’t care what kind of families you have, who you have sex with, or what gender you identify with. All it cares about is profit generation. So, in the 1990s, a corporation could throw gays by the wayside when it was much more acceptable to be anti-gay and then do a 180-degree spin in today’s climate, with very pro-gay policies because the national opinion has changed. Profit determines values and actions.

Despite its general endorsement of conservative economic policies of lower taxes and fewer regulations, companies cannot bolster their bottom line by alienating more and more consumers through exclusion. Nor can they broaden the pool of cheap labor by opposing immigration. Still, even in today’s climate, by seeming to endorse a gospel of inclusion, many businesses are now alienating traditionalists. Just for noticing or marketing to marginalized groups, companies are being eviscerated by traditionalists as exemplars of “woke capitalism” and “woke corporatism”. This is not unusual. As I stated in a recent essay, “as privileged groups of people sense that they are beginning to lose a grip on their ‘traditions’, they fight like hell — [even] passing laws and regulations — to keep them in place. But the very dynamics of the market society they claim to value are such that traditions are among the practices that are often brought into question. That’s one of the reasons that Friedrich Hayek himself proclaimed he wasn’t a conservative.”

A Digression: The Problematics of “Woke” and “Capitalism”

It should be noted that, throughout all these discussions, I am bothered by the problematic usage of such terms as “woke” and “capitalism”.

As I’ve argued before, the very word “woke” verges on becoming what Ayn Rand once called an “anti-concept” insofar as it entails some kind of “’package-deal’ of disparate, incongruous, contradictory elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context”. Indeed, at this stage, it has become a mere pejorative, which in the hands of its ‘opponents’ is used as a bludgeon against any legitimate social justice cause. So, the moment I hear that word coming out of the mouths of its ‘critics’, I know exactly what they’re talking about. It’s an all-inclusive four-letter word to denigrate anyone who is interested in addressing the historic marginalization of people because of their race, religion, belief, sex, sexuality, or gender.

But problematic terminology is not restricted to the word “woke”.

For nearly twenty years now, I’ve avoided using the word “capitalism” to describe the socio-economic system that I value. That word was coined by left-wing critics who understood the system’s history in stark contrast to the “unknown ideal” projected by its ideological defenders. As I reiterated in a recent essay, “just as the state was not born of a bloodless ‘immaculate conception’, so too, capitalism, ‘the known reality’, like every other social system, arose from a bloody history. It emerged through the state’s violent appropriation of the commons, enclosure, and mercantilist and colonialist expropriation.”

Libertarian defenders of capitalism have typically used various modifiers to distinguish their model from the historical realities: whether they call it “free-market capitalism” or “laissez-faire capitalism” or even “anarcho-capitalism” in contradistinction to state capitalism or crony capitalism, they project an ideal that has never existed. That’s problematic not only for its defenders but also for its critics. Its defenders can’t easily bracket out state intervention when the state has been so integral to the historic formation of the system. And its critics can’t easily bracket out state intervention when many of the ills of the system are generated by it.

Laissez-faire capitalism has never been, is not, and never will be. Granted, by any measure, state interventionism has increased exponentially in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But not even the “Gilded Age” of nineteenth-century capitalism was absent such intervention. In virtually every industry — from transportation, energy, and manufacturing to the crucially important banking sector, it is big business that has led the march toward full-throttle corporate state capitalism, thru government subsidies, grants of monopoly, regulatory formation or capture, and a foreign policy of intervention abroad.

The economic instrumentalities of the system have always been organically intertwined with the politics of the state. It’s no wonder that theorists who focus on this area of study call it “Political Economy”. It has always been political. And it always will be.

The Importance of Markets

While capitalism has never provided us with free markets, or even freed markets, the importance of markets cannot be underemphasized. Markets long pre-date capitalism. But even within capitalism, at their best, they are conduits of human sociality. And for those who respect the value of “markets, not capitalism”, they can be useful, even virtuous, tools for the dissemination of social knowledge and the peaceful proliferation of exchange along a wide continuum of human interactions — whether through interpersonal, cooperative, or communal arrangements.

But if history has shown us anything, it’s that markets are not neutral. There can be markets in the slave trade, markets in human trafficking — all sorts of markets serving ends that no humanist can support. Markets are always embedded in historically specific cultural and structural contexts. This means that markets are shaped not only by the structures of politics and economics, but also by the cultures within which they function. Markets will tend to reflect the cultural attitudes of those communities they serve. If the dominant culture of a community places a high value on cosmopolitanism, markets will tend to reflect the tolerance and diversity that cosmopolitanism enriches. And if the dominant culture of a community places a high value on illiberalism, markets will tend to reflect the intolerance that such illiberalism breeds.

Because markets are not neutral, it should also be understood that market actors are not neutral. The idea that prior to “woke capitalism” companies were sashaying down the runway of nonpartisanship is laughable at best. Not saying a word is a political stance. Acting in ways that fortify “traditional” values is a political stance. Just because companies didn’t explicitly ‘market’ their products by slapping the colors of the ‘rainbow flag’ on them does not mean that they were being apolitical. If not rocking the boat helped corporations to sell products in states that had a history of segregation and Jim Crow or a history of criminalizing same-sex relationships and alternative lifestyles, their silence was a political stance. And sometimes, as in the case of Cracker Barrel and many other companies, corporate America regularly adopted policies of exclusion directed against marginalized groups.

The Proliferation of Identity Politics

Given that we have always lived in a political economy, and that markets are never neutral, why does it seem that we have reached a point in history where there is this vast proliferation of groups at war with one another? And why has this manifested with such virulence in identity politics?

On these questions, we can draw lessons from two of capitalism’s most vocal defenders: Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand. It was Hayek who argued in The Road to Serfdom that as the state comes to dominate more and more of social life, state power becomes the only power worth having. This sets off a war of all against all, in which groups vie for political power at the expense of one another.

Rand saw further that this power struggle was endemic not only to political economy, but to the very genesis of the state, which was born from “prehistorical tribal warfare.” Political elites have historically perpetuated racial hatred, scapegoating and subjugating racial and ethnic groups to secure power. But “the relationship is reciprocal,” said Rand: Just as tribalism is a precondition of statism, so too is statism a reciprocally related cause of tribalism. “The political cause of tribalism’s rebirth is the mixed economy,” marked by “permanent tribal warfare.” In Rand’s view, statism and tribalism advance together, leading to a condition of “global balkanization.”

Since statism and tribalism are fraternal twins, as it were, and the “mixed economy” has always existed in some form, Rand argued that intensifying state domination of social life has an impact on every discernable group, not just every economic interest. Every differentiating characteristic among human beings becomes a tool for pressure-group jockeying: age, sex, sexual orientation, social status, religion, nationality, and race. Statism splinters society “into warring tribes.” The statist legal machinery pits “ethnic minorities against the majority, the young against the old, the old against the middle, women against men, welfare-recipient against the self-supporting.” Her point here is a keen insight into the inexorable nature of social conflict. Given that these are the conditions that exist, given that “this is a society’s system, no power on earth can prevent men from ganging up on one another in self-defense — i.e., from forming pressure groups.” Got that? In self-defense.

Identity politics, which has proliferated since the 1960s and 1970s, has been characterized as “a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these identities.” Typically, “identity politics is deeply connected with the idea that some groups in society are oppressed and begins with analysis of that oppression.” But here’s the thing. An insidious form of “identity politics” has always been at work in this country. It began in this country as a tool of the oppressors, not the oppressed. It began with the “Western” conquest of indigenous peoples, the building of a slave economy, and, later, the tyranny of Jim Crow segregation. “Identity politics” was ensconced in this country’s constitution the moment it allowed states to count three-fifths of enslaved people toward their congressional representation. It was furthered even after slavery met its bloody end in the Civil War, when Southern states relied on Jim Crow laws and the KKK to subjugate, oppress, brutalize, and murder ‘uppity’ blacks who wanted to pursue their own rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

So, let’s not kid ourselves when we look at marginalized groups today as caught up in some kind of grand woke conspiracy to destabilize white, male, heteronormative elites. White, male, heteronormative elites were using their identity as the basis for political policies for more than 200 years before marginalized groups began to use political and economic means to redress power imbalances. In self-defense. That doesn’t make it right or wrong, but it does put things in perspective. It also helps us to understand why right-wing traditionalists are now using their power to reassert their historically privileged status.

Concluding Thoughts

That said — let there be no mistake about where I stand on the frontlines of the culture war.

I am on the side of those who have been marginalized and who are fighting against the encroachments of right-wing reactionaries who seek not merely to take away the hard-won freedoms of the oppressed but who are engaged in a cultural campaign against any semblance of “virtue signaling” on behalf of the oppressed.

Even if that “virtue signaling” takes place in the simple act of selling a rainbow-colored rocking chair during Pride Month.

Given my long-time association with libertarianism, I’d like to address, in this concluding section, the campaign against “wokeness” that has manifested in libertarian circles.

I have long identified as a dialectical libertarian. Indeed, given my own values as expressed here and elsewhere, I am a dialectical left-libertarian. For years, I criticized those right-libertarians who had fallen into the trap of reductionism: reducing all issues to the cash nexus or to questions concerning The State and The Market. Rand rightfully criticized libertarians for being oblivious to the role of culture in the struggle for human freedom and personal flourishing — for it is culture that typically engenders bottom-up social change.

Given my dialectical predilections, I appreciated the fact that by 1990, libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard, who had long believed in the sole necessity of a “nonaggression axiom” as the basis for a libertarian society, finally recognized that libertarianism could not succeed without a “certain cultural matrix”, which he called “Liberty Plus”. Those in right-libertarian circles who followed him have indeed placed greater emphasis on the importance of culture. But in doing so, they’ve embraced reactionary cultural norms.

The libertarianism that nourished me in the late 1970s and early 1980s welcomed cosmopolitan values. Today, right-libertarians have championed a stultifying cultural conservatism in their attempts at “Getting Libertarianism Right”. Mind you, it’s not just “right”, but “alt-right”: it is a vision that aims to build a stateless society based on such “Western” “family” values as hierarchy, white-male dominance, the segregation of the races, and the expulsion of “degenerates” (that is, those who identify as LGBTQ+).

As I argued in Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism, this vision of “Liberty Plus” will result in minus liberty. Hayek long noted that markets evolve in ways that will challenge traditions. That is part of their dynamism. In an increasingly interconnected, global community, right-libertarians seek a society that will use private property as a tool to hermetically seal off their own chosen set of deplorables. They oppose state-enforced segregation and state-enforced integration, but their anarcho-capitalist vision of private property fiefdoms is based on the centrality of exclusion: the power to segregate, to separate, or to annihilate those whose values they deem as destructive to their bizarre vision of social order.

There is no foreseeable future in which such an anarcho-capitalist social order might be possible, let alone feasible. Hence, we are left with an obscenity far greater than the rainbow-colored rocking chair sold by Cracker Barrel or any of the Pride merchandise offered by Target.

When those who are supposed to be on the frontlines of the battle for a free and open society end up embracing illiberalism of the worst sort — and its war on difference, diversity, and tolerance — I can think of no more insidious way of undermining the struggle for human freedom and individual authenticity.

Welcome to Mars, NYC

It was like the surface of the Red Planet around here yesterday, as smoke from Canada wildfires turned the NYC skyline to a red-orange hue. The Air Quality Index hit an unprecedented 484 yesterday, giving NYC the most hazardous rating of any city on the planet. Things should improve over the next few days, but the dramatic difference between yesterday’s skyline view and the day before was caught by Earthcam

Happy Pride Month!

No better time to proclaim it than now!

Elizabeth Sciabarra (“Ski”): A Celebration of Life (Video)

This presentation was edited, in chronological order, from a collection of videos taken by Frank R. Harrison on May 6, 2023 in the auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High School for “A Celebration of Life“, a tribute to my sister, Elizabeth Ann Sciabarra (aka “Ski”). I’ve also added the full slate of on-screen tributes from that celebration, featuring: Pamela Taylor Hurst, NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Deirdre DeAngelis D’AlessioKaren DiTolla, Congresswoman Nicole MaliotakisRose De PintoJoel KleinErnie Logan, the Brooklyn Tech Chorus, and Valmira Popinara.

This isn’t a perfect transfer by any means, but I’m happy that it is now being made available to all those who were unable to attend.

In his heartfelt remarks, Charles Pomaro pointed out that my sister was sometimes referred to as “Queen Elizabeth.” In truth, because she was born in 1952, the year in which Queen Elizabeth II ascended the British throne, some of her own relatives had taken to calling her “Queenie” when she was a child. So, it was rather ironic that this celebration was held on May 6, 2023, the date of the coronation of the Queen’s son, Charles III.

In keeping with that spirit, all I can say is: Long live Ski! And long may her love reign.

I know in my heart that she would have been so moved by this outpouring of admiration, respect, and affection—and even by its Michael Jackson touches, since MJ was one of her favorite artists.

Thanks again to everyone who made this event possible, for providing us with a glimpse into the depth of my sister’s love and the breadth of her impact. Check it out on YouTube.

Also, see this tribute posted by the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation …

Elizabeth Sciabarra: A Tribute

“What you leave behind is not engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” – Pericles

On Saturday, May 6, 2023, Brooklyn Technical High School and the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation hosted a wonderful tribute to my sister, Elizabeth Sciabarra (aka “Ski”). It was attended by a few hundred people and streamed to thousands.

Below is a video montage celebrating Ski’s professional life in pictures. I’m especially delighted by the use of the R&B dance track, “A Night to Remember“, as its musical backdrop. I remind folks that, back on October 17, 2021, when my sister was near death and nonresponsive for 12+ hours, I played this song for her, knowing it was one of her favorites. Within a few moments, I saw her gradually emerging from the darkness as she began to sing along, a tear slowly making its way down the side of her sweet face. I’d later joke that while Lazarus may have had Jesus, Liz had Shalamar. She’d go on to live another 13 months, fighting gallantly, as she always did, against all odds.

My sister’s fight ended on the evening of November 26, 2022. But her impact on the lives of countless others has lived on—and the May 6th tribute provided a fitting glimpse of that impact. (I will provide a link to the streaming video of the ceremony as soon as it becomes available.)

For an audience perspective on the event, check out this compendium of clips from Frank R. Harrison in 9 parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, and Part 9.

On behalf of my family, I’d like to extend my deepest appreciation to the many people who planned and coordinated this project. A special shout-out to those who appeared in various capacities, including emcee Marc Williams, Mathew M. Mandery, Jim DiBenedetto, Pamela Taylor Hurst, NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Joe Kaelin, Charles Pomaro, Deirdre DeAngelis D’Alessio, Karen DiTolla, Congresswoman Nicole Maliotakis, Rose De Pinto, Joel Klein, Randy Asher, Ernie Logan, David Newman, Valmira Popinara, Alumni Foundation President Denice Clarke Ware, Alumni Foundation Executive Director Courtney J. Ulrich, Lisa Trollback, and Carol Cunningham, who led a concluding “Legacy Cheer”. And for their wonderful contributions in dance and song, our cheers to the Lady Dragons, the Jazz Band, and the Chorus, which performed the Tech Alma Mater, the lyrics of which were always dear to my sister’s heart.

My love and thanks to everybody who made this unforgettable Celebration of Life possible.

Elizabeth Sciabarra, Warrior

So many wonderful tributes have been posted about my sister, Elizabeth Sciabarra (aka “Ski”), not only throughout her life and illness, but in the aftermath of her death on November 26, 2022. A lifelong educator, she had an immeasurable impact on countless numbers of people, be they students, colleagues, friends, or family. She has been praised as a gifted teacher and leader, a strong, yet caring coach, a humane and empathetic advisor. Every testimony provides yet another vantage point on the truly organic whole that comprised every aspect of my sister’s remarkable life.

We are a little bit more than two weeks away from a Ski Celebration that will take place at Brooklyn Technical High School on May 6 (3-5 pm). Those who are interested in attending the event either in-person or virtually, should register here.

Don’t hold anyone at Tech accountable for this post; I take full responsibility for it. Today, I’d like to share some stories of which few people are aware. These stories come with a PG-13 rating: Though I’ve been careful to substitute a “&” for every questionable “u”, there’s no doubt that the language here may not be suitable for all audiences. But I don’t want to sanitize the fierce quality that was my sister’s wrath. If you pissed her off, threatened the people she cared about, or stepped over any of her definable boundaries, look out! She was a Warrior—in defense of her bodily autonomy, family, home, and social justice.

The Bar Incident

One night, she was out with friends at a bar and was having a nice time. As she leaned over the bar stool, some guy behind her apparently touched her, uh, behind. She turned around and asked, “What’s up buddy?” The guy apologized and said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” She gave him The Look.

A minute later, that same guy brushed up against her yet one more time. “Hey,” she shouted, “watch your hands!”

The guy just ignored her. But my sister was steaming.

A few moments passed … and the guy grabbed my sister’s butt. She turned around, full fisted, and clocked him so hard in the face, he went down with a broken, bloody nose. Bedlam ensued and she was escorted from the bar.

The guy declined to press charges.

Score: Ski, Warrior in Defense of Bodily Autonomy, 1; Sexual Harasser: 0

The New Year’s Eve Incident

Some years ago, I was DJ’ing a New Year’s Eve party at a local catering hall. Some drunk guy came stumbling in with his girlfriend two hours after the Times Square Ball Drop and had missed the promised “champagne toast” at midnight. He demanded his champagne, but I told him it was too late. He grabbed me by the throat, threatening to “hurt” me. I kind of backed off, and let it go. Moments later, when I told my sister of the incident, she bolted after the guy and cornered him on a stairwell, screaming: “You threatened my brother! I’ll kill you!” When his girlfriend started to laugh, she turned to her and yelled: “And you—you f&cking bimbo! Shut the f&ck up!” She called security and had the two of them removed from the premises.

Score: Ski, Warrior in Defense of Family: 1; Drunk Jerk and Girlfriend: 0

The Apartment Incident

A few years later, something rather odd happened at our apartment. No matter where we’ve lived in this neighborhood, it was always a rental on the second floor of a two-family house. This story takes place in our current apartment, where I have been living since 1986. It was the late 1990s, and our trusted dog, Blondie, a Chihuahua-mix with a Napoleon complex, often barked menacingly at strangers near and far. But she was very loving to all those she trusted.

One afternoon, my brother Carl called us—he only lived a few doors down—and told us that he’d be coming over for a cup of coffee. My sister was in her bedroom, straightening up, and I went downstairs and unlocked the door so I could return to working on my computer. The entrance door to our apartment was to my back, and I expected my brother to enter at any moment. Not a minute later, I heard the door open downstairs and I heard someone walking up the steps to our place.

Blondie suddenly became maniacal. She was barking as if the apartment were under siege. “Blondie! Blondie! Stop! It’s Brother!!!”, I hollered. “Come on in, Bro!” And I returned to my computer screen.

The door opened behind my back, and the dog simply lost it! She started lunging. I turned around and it was not my brother. It was some strange man, whom I’d never seen on our block or in our neighborhood, mumbling to himself. Blondie started nipping at his heels. Being ever the diplomat, I looked up at him and exclaimed: “Sir, can I help you? Who are you? I think you’re in the wrong apartment, sir.”

The dog’s barks were now deafening, as the guy walked into our bathroom and started cleaning his hairbrush in our sink. And I’m still trying to be gentle: “Sir! Sir! I think you must be lost. Who are you looking for? I don’t think you’re in the right place.”

Well.

My sister came out of the bedroom and started screaming: “What the hell is going on out there?” The dog had gotten positively violent by this point, as my sister moved toward the bathroom. She was shocked to see this strange man over our bathroom sink. Diplomatic negotiations had broken down. “Who the hell are you?” She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, opened the apartment door, and forcefully pushed him down the stairs: “You need to get the f&ck out of here!!!” As he departed, my sister locked the door behind him and marched back up the stairs. When she entered the apartment, she gave me The Look.

 “What are you, crazy?! Why were you trying to reason with the guy? You don’t know this guy! You don’t know what he was capable of! What the hell is wrong with you?”

I meekly returned to my seat. A few moments later, my brother rang the bell, and I went down and let him in. Blondie was calm. A re-telling of the story, however, elicited such uproarious laughter that we could hardly catch our breaths.

Score: Ski, Warrior in Defense of Home, 1; Intruder: 0

The Car Incident

Many of my sister’s students have celebrated the fact that she gave a voice to the young women at Brooklyn Tech, an all-male school up until 1970. Having started teaching at that school in 1972, she would go on to coach its cheering squads and took its dance teams all the way to national championships.

She was also known to accompany kids from the school to the subway stations when the high-crime Fort Greene area of Brooklyn had more in common with the “Fort” than the greenspaces of its famous park.

Early in her tenure as principal of New Dorp High School on Staten Island, while she was on stage speaking during an assembly presentation, some kid opened the back door to the auditorium and announced: “She’s a bitch!” She raised her fist in the air and owned it: “Yes I am!”—to applause.

She also went out of her way to ride the buses on various occasions with African American kids all the way to their Stapleton and St. George neighborhoods, to send a message to anyone who might want to target students for taunting or bullying.

Racial problems were certainly not endemic to Staten Island, however. In the early-to-mid-1980s, our Gravesend section of Brooklyn was far less integrated than it is now, populated predominantly by whites of Italian and Southern European descent. As Wikipedia reports, back in 1982, African-American “transit worker Willie Turks was beaten to death in Gravesend by a group of white teenagers.” On Christmas Day 1987, “white youths beat two black men in the neighborhood in an apparent ‘unprovoked attack’,” which led to protests in January 1988 by the Reverend Al Sharpton, who “led 450 marchers between Marlboro Houses and a police station, and were met with chants of ‘go back to Africa’ and various racial epithets from a predominantly white crowd.” In 1989, in the wake of the murder of Yusef Hawkins, black protestors were welcomed to the neighborhood by whites who held up watermelons, while hurling obscenities and bricks at the demonstrators.

It was in this lovely atmosphere of cosmopolitan tolerance and racial harmony that my sister decided to invite a group of mostly African American cheering squad members to our apartment on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The mood was festive, and everyone had a great time. But we saw some young white punks across the street from us who were not very pleased. Under her breath, Elizabeth said to me, “These sc&mbags better not make any trouble with my girls here.” At the end of the day, she made sure that all of them got home safely.

The next morning, I walked out to get the Sunday papers. As I passed our car, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Every window had been bashed in, the glass splattered both inside and outside the car. I walked upstairs and calmly informed my sister what had happened. She was uncontrollably enraged. We both knew who had perpetrated the deed. Looking out the front window, she saw one of the obvious culprits who was visibly irate the day before at the sight of black kids entering our apartment. Nothing could hold her back. She flew down the stairs and stomped across the street, fuming, as a crowd began to form. She went straight for their ‘leader’.

“You! You!” – going full throttle right up to the guy’s face. “You bashed my windows in! You motherf&cker!”

“Ay, ay,” the guy said, clearly shaken. “Watch it, lady. I know people!”

“I know people too!” she shouted. “And they’re gonna break your f&cking legs if you touch my car again!”

The crowd went completely silent. I was right behind her. And we both turned around and went back upstairs.

The black kids would return to our home many times thereafter. And nobody ever touched our car again.

Score: Ski, Warrior in Defense of Social Justice: 1; Bigots: 0

Four incidents. Four victories. One TKO. My sister was a champ in the boxing ring of life!

Postscript (21 April 2023): See Facebook for comments. On Facebook, I added this point:

I just wanted to thank everyone who has reacted, posted, or dropped me a note. I added a postscript to this thread, which I repeat here to highlight it:

It is not without some irony that 28 years ago on this date [April 21, 2023], my mother—Ann Sciabarra—passed away after a five-year battle with lung cancer. She was an incredibly strong woman. The apple(s) didn’t fall far from the tree. We all inherited some of her toughness and loads of her empathy. My sister was definitely my mother’s daughter. For a hilarious vignette in memory of my mom, which illustrates the point, check out this post from Mother’s Day 2021 [also on Facebook].