Author: Judge Michael Boyajian

The Injustice of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: A Postmortem

By Michael Boyajian

There was a time that although I am not Irish I would exuberantly celebrate the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York.   With spirits high from the pending arrival of Spring I would wear green, work the governor’s brunch before the parade, watch the parade with my wife up by the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we would enjoy a fine lunch of corn beef and cabbage followed that very evening by another meal of corn beef and cabbage.  All day I would get choked up by the passing bag pipers and elderly Irishmen would come up to my wife and say she had the map of Ireland on her face.

Saving the Tuba Player

By Michael Boyajian

The proposed Obama Administration education reforms make for a good start but do not go far enough at least in New York State.  The simplest way to level the education playing field and equalize the system is to revamp the school financing formula. 

Rising Tide for Same Sex Marriage

By Michael Boyajian

The Fishkill Democratic Committee gathered recently for its monthly meeting and to hear from Didi Barrett who is expected to run against New York State Senator Stephen Saland an opponent of same sex marriage.  Didi Barrett is important to the gay community because she is a candidate who has pledged to support same sex marriage and because she is the first of many candidates who will ultimately be running this year in support of marriage equality making it a movement unseen since the days of abolition.  After the debacle of same sex marriage in the state senate last year the gay community vowed to field candidates against all those who had opposed the measure.

The Trauma of War

By Michael Boyajian

When I was younger I used to watch war movies, mostly John Wayne stuff like his cavalry trilogy, his World War II forays and finally the Green Berets.  As kids we all played with our G.I. Joes dressing them up in Marine dress up or a frogman outfit.  All the neighborhood kids would run around the block playing army with toy guns.  How did we know how to play army?  Well, they were broadcasting the Vietnam War on television every evening.

School’s Out Forever

By Michael Boyajian

The pariah of school cuts to arts and music has raised its ugly head once again.  Those who use but one side of their brain have decided that only math and science count when it comes to financing our schools.  By corrupting and taking a hard right off Plato’s conjectured road they say to hell with art, music, philosophy and the humanities in general without giving thought for a minute to the simple modern world facts that those with musical skills excel in science and that without the art and literature of science fiction there would be no landing of a man on the moon.

A Brilliant Sunrise

By Michael Boyajian

I started out a recent Friday night drinking an O’Doul’s listening to Who’s Next.  Ahh, the other side of fifty.  Where trying to catch a buzz from a non alcoholic beer is like trying to suck water out of a mouthful of pebbles.

The Sociological Aspects of CB Radio

By Michael Boyajian

I am a real radio freak going back to my childhood when my late father and I would peruse the now non existent Radio Shack catalog.  We would find and purchase radio kits, shortwave radios, marine radios, police scanners and the new at that time FM radios.

Of Snow and Buffalo

By Michael Boyajian

The snows that recently hammered our region seem to be overwhelming with 100,000 losing power in the mid-Hudson Valley while politicians conveniently disappeared and ever frugal Mayor Bloomberg closing New York City’s schools for the seventh time in thirty two years but this is nothing compared to the typical snowy winter in Buffalo, New York.

Nothing to Fear from Labor Union Card Check

By Michael Boyajian

My father was a big labor union man.  The unions put food on our table, gave us healthcare, put us through college and provided my dad with a pension when he retired.  He had one rule for the family.  We could talk about any politics that we wanted to around the kitchen table but we could never bad mouth the unions.

The Invisible Sea of People Without Jobs

By Michael Boyajian

Back in 2008 when I was laid off from my state job as a judge the Poughkeepsie Journal wanted me to do a column that would track my job search.  I considered the idea but then decided against it.  You see, being laid off without cause was a humiliation that I did not want to share at that time.  I was especially unnerved because I had recently adjudicated with great success two of the biggest cases in state history and also because I had never been reversed on appeal as a judge.