1980: Not A Kid Anymore

All this year at my Facebook page, which you can view from the link in the sidebar here at my website by joining up yourself and 'friend'-ing me, I am taking a daily trip back in time to the 1980's.

Each month I am highlighting a different year chronologically, and this month have been featuring the music, tv, movies, and important events of the first year of the decade: 1980.

In 1980 the world changed, both in my own individual life and the world at large, in some of the most important and influential ways it ever would. Just one year earlier, as 1979 dawned, I was a 17-year old high school senior living in an apartment in South Philly with my dad and brother. Little did I know how much a life could change in less than a year.

I had been dating a girl, Anne Jacobs, ever since meeting her down at the Jersey shore in Wildwood, New Jersey during the late summer of 1976. We overcame the fact that I lived in South Philly without a car and she lived out in the Delaware County suburb of Prospect Park to become high school sweethearts.

Anne was a year behind me in school, and so while I was finishing up my senior year and preparing to graduate from St. John Neumann high school in South Philadelphia during the first half of 1979, she was still just a junior at Archbishop Prendergast high school out in Drexel Hill, Delaware County.

It was at some point in the late spring of '79 that we began to realize something big might be up. There were increasingly unmistakable signs to us that Anne had become pregnant, and by the early summer we knew it was true. We told our parents at the end of that summer, and I put my LaSalle University plans aside to go out and find a job.

Predictions for 2010

I don't own a crystal ball, nor do I have any special psychic powers or connections to the Almighty that would grant me privileged insight.

But I do understand a little bit about what is going on in the world, and it's a challenge to look ahead and try to figure out what a new year may bring.

The following are 10 predictions that I am willing to make for the new year that we just began. Every year brings with it major news developments, exciting sporting accomplishments, political intrigue, public scandals, celebrity gaffes, natural disasters, and other headlines.

We can take a look back at the end of 2010 and see how I faired with these:

1) Israel-Iran War: There is just no way that Israel can allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. If the mullahs are not overthrown and Ahmadinejad kicked out on his apocalpyse-desirous butt within the first few months of the year, Israel cannot wait much longer. It's a bit of an upset that the Israelis have waited this long. This will be huge.

2) American Congress: The Republican Party will make major inroads in both Houses of Congress in the 2010 mid-term elections. Probably not enough to take over either House, unless of course the Obama administration continues to bury the U.S. in debt and continues to take over private industry. My bet is the Dems up for election will paint themselves moderately enough to salvage a slight Dem majority.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

At some point when I was a young boy, I learned that Bobby Kennedy and I had shared the same birthday. This was in the early 1970's, when I was about 11 or 12 years old. At that point I really had no idea who he was, or that he had an older brother who had been an American President who had also been assassinated.

I actually do have a childhood memory of the 1968 U.S. Presidential election. I have a memory of living on American Street in South Philly, and most of the families that lived around us rooting for the Democratic Party candidate, Hubert H. Humphrey, to win the election against Republican Party candidate Richard M. Nixon.

While I didn't understand politics on any level, I sensed a strong 'vibe' from the adults both in my own family and my friends' families that this was a big deal. It was important in some way. It mattered. And since my people were rooting for Humphrey, well then, so was little soon-to-be 7 years old Matt Veasey.

As history tells us, Humphrey lost. I actually remember having the feeling for the first time in my young life of disappointment. I had no clue how all of the people around me could possibly be rooting for someone and expecting them to win, and then having that person lose. It just did not compute in my young mind, and I was disheartened.

Of course, as I said, I was about to turn 7 years old in just a few weeks. Between my birthday coming up, then Christmas, and the early months of 2nd grade at Our Lady of Mount Carmel catholic school with the gorgeous Ms. Sarah Hillock as my teacher, there was plenty to distract me in short order and take my attention away from a silly election.

Despite having that impression of the 1968 election, I have no first-hand memory of the vital national events that had happened earlier that same year with first the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and then of Robert Kennedy. It was only by somehow randomly stumbling upon the fact of our shared birthday a few years later that I began my own infatuation with the Kennedy's that would last for decades.

Will April's Showers Bring May Flowers?

April was a pretty rough month in any way that you want to size it up. Record spending, debt, unemployment. A major shift towards socialism by our government. Increased attacks on the sacrament of marriage by homosexuals and liberal thinkers. And then finally ending with an attack by a Swine Flu pandemic.

It's all a bit much for a normally happy soul such as mine to take in for one big reason. There is no end in sight.

President Obama was only recently elected, and just took office three months ago. He still has more than three years at a minimum in office, and if the magnitude, scope, and pace of his 'Change' continues as it has thus far it will be an agonizing three years.

One thing that I have come to appreciate over the course of these past three months is the utter joy and euphoria that Obama elicits in his followers. It makes me jealous, because frankly I have never, ever had that feeling for a President of the United States.

Forget Kennedy and Johnson, I was just a baby. As a young child, Nixon and Ford certainly were not high on my priority list. I liked Jimmy Carter at first. He spoke to my youthful desire for progressivism.

Carter was a minister and brought a certain amount of credibility and morality to the office, which was important to the country after the dishonesty of Nixon's Watergate. And he was intelligent too, a genius, at least that's the rep that the media was passing around.

But it was also Jimmy Carter who began to ruin things for my early liberalism.

The Good Old Days

Do you know that weird sensation of connection to your roots that you often feel when you see an old family member, friend, lover, teammate, or co-worker for the first time in years, maybe even decades?

Depending on the circumstances of your meet, it sometimes doesn't hit you until later. But almost always we go through that exercise in mental nostalgia which carries us back to those younger days and the experiences that we shared with this individual.

The innocent memories of childhood. The fun times of high school or college. The struggles and amusement involved in our early work years. The thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat on sporting fields.

The life, death, and love of family. Sometimes that person is linked to another person, or a group of others, and our memories will branch off towards those folks.

Well these types of memories and feelings have been happening to me more and more lately thanks to the social networking website called Facebook. I have stumbled across more family members and old friends on the internet thanks to this popular behemoth than I could ever have imagined.

People who I worked with years ago. Those who I hung out with on the corners of South Philly as a youth. Some who I played ball with as an adult. And being a police officer for the past 19 years there are cops, both old and new acquaintances. Lots of cops. The site allows you to mentally catch-up with these people.

We share small biographies of what we've been up to, photos of our family members and friends, videos of some of our life experiences, music and other media that we enjoy, and conversations with one another and each other.

These meetings of late have also driven home another point to me as well. My own memories of what is classically referred to as 'the good old days' are truly long gone.

When 'SNL' Was Funny

A long time ago, in what seems now like it was a galaxy far, far away, the television program 'Saturday Night Live' actually used to be funny.

The NBC late night sketch comedy show was funny, like 'belly-laugh out loud' funny, and it was that way pretty much week-in, week-out.

I am talking here about the first few seasons, representing my high school days of the mid-late 70's, when the show first came on the air.

These were the days of the original troupe, known as the 'Not Ready for Prime Time Players' collectively.

Gilda Radner was doing her Emily Litella character on the news with 'Cheddar Cheese', er, Chevy Chase. Bill Murray was giving her Lisa Loopner character those special 'Christmas noogies'. Garrett Morris was shouting out the 'News for the Hard of Hearing'. John Belushi and Dan Akroyd were the 'Blues Brothers'. Jane Curtin was using new 'Shimmer' as a floor wax and a desert topping.

Why didn't they feature Laraine Newman more? Was she just not funny? Well, at least she got regular turns as the youngest member of the 'Conehead' family.

Television & the Presidency as a Time Machine

I was sitting at home this past Saturday night, just flicking around the dial, when a newly produced special report on the Fox News Channel titled "Television & the Presidency" caught my eye.

Being a bit of a history buff, especially American history, it was right up my alley: a historical perspective on the role that television has played in Presidential politics.

As I settled in the program moved quickly through Jimmy Carter's lame Presidency in the late 1970's. Those Carter years were fresh in my own experience, since I turned 15 years old right after his election.

Carter was basically the President of my high school years, and it wasn't pretty. The man was supposed to be some kind of genius. At least that was how the press sold him. But he just couldn't seem to solve any of the big problems that came along, from the gas crisis to unemployment to ballooning interest rates to the emergence of radical islam.

Every time a problem raised it's head, Carter talked and talked and got nothing done to solve it. At least that was my perspective as a teenager, but what did I know? And besides, it didn't matter, I didn't have a vote...yet.

In the fall of 1979, among the many other changes happening in my life, I turned 18 years old and had finally reached the age where I could register to vote. My family was historically a Democratic one, and the Party seemed to easily fit the liberal ideals that most appropriately espoused my own philosophy at the time, so I registered Democrat.

Any Port in An Islamofascist Storm

It has taken me over a month to finally formulate an opinion on the entire port sale issue, and there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain.

There is no way that anyone who had any type of knee-jerk response to the idea of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) purchasing an interest in a half-dozen U.S. port operations was basing their opinion on anything other than either emotion or ignorance.

However, that is not to say that in the end, many of those people are not right. The sale of any interest whatsoever in our ports, or in any vital American infrastructure, to the UAE is a mistake that should not be allowed to stand.

That is not an easy statement for me to make. I am a converted, hard-core capitalist who believes firmly in the ability of the free market to be left alone to sort out most any issue. As I read over the positions of the pro-deal folks, I was swayed towards their capitalist arguments, and was prepared to take up the mantle of the unpopular “let the deal stand” side.

But then, I would read and research some more, and be swayed to the anti-deal side. The side that does not trust an Islamic government that has previously shown outward and covert support for terrorists who murdered Americans, and which continues to take political positions such as the refusal to recognize Israel as a legitimate sovereign nation.

Finding the 'Right' Way

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Gingrich (L) and the Contract With America led to my vote for Dole (R) in 1996

On a brisk November morning back in 1996, I walked into a polling place located inside the H.A. Brown elementary school in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, signed my name in the register, and walked into the voting booth.

Though I was about to turn 33 years of age in just a few weeks, I was about to experience a first in my life.

As I pulled the handle and the curtain closed behind me, I faced the list of elective offices on the ballot, including that of the President of the United States of America, and searched the list for the one name that I was looking for above all others.

When I found the name of Bob Dole, I pulled over the small lever next to his name, forcing an ‘x’ mark into a tiny window, signifying that he would receive my vote. I pulled the handle back and locked in my first-ever vote for a Republican candidate for President of the United States, marking the beginning of a new era in my life.

It was the first time that I voted the Right Way.