A front-page headline appeared this week in the Times: "At Military Contractor's Trial, Telltale $100,000 Belt Buckle." My immediate reaction was, "I hope he's not Jewish." His surname, Brooks, allayed my anxiety until I read that he had spent several million dollars to celebrate his daughter's bat mitzvah.
I couldn't help my reaction, absurd as it might be. It shows that in my mind's darkest closet lurks the notion that we Jews exist in America on Gentile sufferance, that unless we lie low we could be driven out or worse. While one part of me acknowledges the extreme unlikelihood of such persecution in America, the other part of me says, "yeah, that's what they thought in Germany."
My whole upbringing led to this uneasiness, irrational or not. I remember standing in the schoolyard when I was in the third grade. I was vacantly looking into space when an older boy, whom I didn't know, came up to me, punched me on the right arm, spat out "Jew boy," and walked on. This was the only time during my school years that violence accompanied an anti-Semitic taunt, but it was not an isolated event. There were only few incidents, really, perhaps a half dozen, in which I would receive an unpleasant reminder that I was Jewish. As these things go the abuse was minimal, but it was sufficient to make me feel marked as a Jew and slightly alienated from the mainstream.
The Sunday school of our reform congregation taught us Jewish history. We learned about the sufferings of Jews throughout the Diaspora - kicked out of England, expelled from Spain, massacred during the Crusades, and so forth, a morbid curriculum that was repeated from grade to grade. If we were taught anything about Judaism's magnificent heritage, I don't remember it.
At Cornell, where I spent my first two years of college, I joined a Jewish fraternity. A gentile fraternity would not have considered me as a candidate for membership. and when I transferred to Harvard, that college had a Jewish quota. At Harvard Law School, I understood that I would be as unlikely to make the law review as to be hired by a firm like Ropes and Gray when I graduated. Times have changed. Fraternities at Cornell are now mixed with respect to religion, Harvard College no longer maintains a Jewish quota, and Jews now join white-shoe law firms. If anti-Semitism is not as prevalent in America as it once was, it is at least less overt.
Still, I sometimes think it would be more pleasant or at least less troublesome to be a Yankee, until I realize that I wouldn't be who I am if I were not Jewish, an identity absorbed with my mother's milk. So (with apologies to W. S. Gilbert), in spite of all temptation to belong to other nations, I remain a Jewish man. And that implies, at least for me, a degree of paranoia.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Barchester
I spent last week in Barchester, the cathedral town of Barchestshire County, in the south of England. You didn't know I was away? Not only had I left Brooklyn but I had also departed from the 21st century. I had been transported to the middle of the 19th.
Barchester and Barchestershire are, of course, the fictional creation of Anthony Trollope, and it was Barsetshire Towers that temporarily removed me from Brooklyn. It's fiction, yes, but its characters and their surroundings are so convincing that it seduced and bewitched me, providing the illusion that I was personally present at each scene. Even after I had finished reading the novel I worried about some of the characters. What will become of the handsome, feckless Bertie Stanhope and his sister, the crippled femme fatale, Madeleine Neroni, when their father dies? He is their sole source of support, and his income, from church sinecures, dies with him. They have no money of their own and no realistic prospect of earning any. What will they do? Trollope didn't tell us. It doesn't matter, I guess, since Bertie and Madeleine must have died long ago. That they never existed is irrelevant. They are real to me.
This was the second time I'd read the novel, yet I'd forgotten many delightful details. I had forgotten, for instance, that the ancestor of the unctious Obadiah Slope was Dr. Slop, "that eminent physician who assisted at the birth of Mr. T. Shandy." And I had even forgotten crucial scenes, such as the garden party at which the heroine receives marriage proposals from two unwelcome suitors and then quarrels with the man she loves. Such details and scenes were totally new to me, as if I had never read them before. Rereading the novel was like entering the home of a beloved friend, where I've spent many a pleasant evening, only to notice a vase. I ask my friend if it is new and he tells me that he inherited it from his parents and that it's always been there.
When you reread a masterpiece like Barchester Towers, you can savor the writing and pause to consider how the author manages his effects. You don't have to rush through the book to find out what happens next because you remember more or less the broad outline of the story. And of course you've enlarged your experience since the last time you've read it, so in some sense it becomes a different book.
Barchester Towers is the second of five novels in the Barchester series, employing many of the same characters from novel to novel. If you haven't read any of them, I envy you, for you have a treat in store. And if you have read them, you know what I mean.
Barchester and Barchestershire are, of course, the fictional creation of Anthony Trollope, and it was Barsetshire Towers that temporarily removed me from Brooklyn. It's fiction, yes, but its characters and their surroundings are so convincing that it seduced and bewitched me, providing the illusion that I was personally present at each scene. Even after I had finished reading the novel I worried about some of the characters. What will become of the handsome, feckless Bertie Stanhope and his sister, the crippled femme fatale, Madeleine Neroni, when their father dies? He is their sole source of support, and his income, from church sinecures, dies with him. They have no money of their own and no realistic prospect of earning any. What will they do? Trollope didn't tell us. It doesn't matter, I guess, since Bertie and Madeleine must have died long ago. That they never existed is irrelevant. They are real to me.
This was the second time I'd read the novel, yet I'd forgotten many delightful details. I had forgotten, for instance, that the ancestor of the unctious Obadiah Slope was Dr. Slop, "that eminent physician who assisted at the birth of Mr. T. Shandy." And I had even forgotten crucial scenes, such as the garden party at which the heroine receives marriage proposals from two unwelcome suitors and then quarrels with the man she loves. Such details and scenes were totally new to me, as if I had never read them before. Rereading the novel was like entering the home of a beloved friend, where I've spent many a pleasant evening, only to notice a vase. I ask my friend if it is new and he tells me that he inherited it from his parents and that it's always been there.
When you reread a masterpiece like Barchester Towers, you can savor the writing and pause to consider how the author manages his effects. You don't have to rush through the book to find out what happens next because you remember more or less the broad outline of the story. And of course you've enlarged your experience since the last time you've read it, so in some sense it becomes a different book.
Barchester Towers is the second of five novels in the Barchester series, employing many of the same characters from novel to novel. If you haven't read any of them, I envy you, for you have a treat in store. And if you have read them, you know what I mean.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Relativity
In Trollope's Barchester Towers, seventeen-year-old Griselda Grantly asks her archdeacon father if the new rector, Mr. Arabin, is a young man. "About forty, I believe," said the archdeacon. "'Oh!' said Griselda. Had her father said eighty, Mr. Arabin would not have appeared to her to be very much older."
This passage reminded me of my college graduation exercises, when I could find little to distinguish the 25th reunion class from the 50th. What was true for Griselda Grantly at 17 and for me at 21 continues to be true. At my wife's 50th college reunion, the Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes remarked that the graduating seniors look at us and wonder how anyone so old can be ambulatory.
When I was in grade school, all my teachers seemed old beyond reckoning, although most of them were probably well below fifty. Even my high school teachers seemed old to me, with the exception of my English teacher, who was in his twenties. I was able to recognize his youth because he wasn't that much older than I was, but as for the other teachers, I saw them undifferentiated as to age. They were simply old.
Sixteen years ago, when my wife and I were dining in New Zealand - I forget what town we were in - we asked our young waiter what there was to do at our next stop, Queenstown. "Bunji jumping," he said, then paused, "but I guess you're beyond that now." I was only 62 and my wife 57, and although it's doubtful we would have gone bunji-jumping at any age, we could have done it even then, but to our young waiter we might as well have been ninety.
Whatever principle is at work here, it also operates in reverse. Even when I was in my fifties, my late uncle used to address me as "young man," and my 97-year-old friend, who died last year, saw me as youthful. Today I look at my endocrinologist and wonder if she's old enough to drive. Anyone under 45 seems young to me, but that age keeps rising. It used to be 35 and before long, if I'm lucky, it will be 55. It's not that I'm getting old exactly; it's just that more and more people seem so young.
This passage reminded me of my college graduation exercises, when I could find little to distinguish the 25th reunion class from the 50th. What was true for Griselda Grantly at 17 and for me at 21 continues to be true. At my wife's 50th college reunion, the Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes remarked that the graduating seniors look at us and wonder how anyone so old can be ambulatory.
When I was in grade school, all my teachers seemed old beyond reckoning, although most of them were probably well below fifty. Even my high school teachers seemed old to me, with the exception of my English teacher, who was in his twenties. I was able to recognize his youth because he wasn't that much older than I was, but as for the other teachers, I saw them undifferentiated as to age. They were simply old.
Sixteen years ago, when my wife and I were dining in New Zealand - I forget what town we were in - we asked our young waiter what there was to do at our next stop, Queenstown. "Bunji jumping," he said, then paused, "but I guess you're beyond that now." I was only 62 and my wife 57, and although it's doubtful we would have gone bunji-jumping at any age, we could have done it even then, but to our young waiter we might as well have been ninety.
Whatever principle is at work here, it also operates in reverse. Even when I was in my fifties, my late uncle used to address me as "young man," and my 97-year-old friend, who died last year, saw me as youthful. Today I look at my endocrinologist and wonder if she's old enough to drive. Anyone under 45 seems young to me, but that age keeps rising. It used to be 35 and before long, if I'm lucky, it will be 55. It's not that I'm getting old exactly; it's just that more and more people seem so young.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Letting Go
When I spoke to my friend Elaine Yaffe about her blog post "Letting Go" (www.botholderandwiser.blogspot.com), she quoted a wise man who told her that "life is a matter of letting go: of parents, of children, of friends, and ultimately of life itself."
Among the many ludicrously false ideas I harbored when I was young was the notion that once my children reached college age, I could stop worrying about them. My children are now in their forties, but of course I've never stopped worrying about them, even though there's no particular reason to worry. But worrying about them is one thing and letting go of them is another. To let go of one's children is to allow them to become independent and to make their own mistakes.
My mother died too young to let go of me, but had she lived longer, she probably would have been like my father, the soul of discretion and tact about my behavior and choices after I had left home for good. He clearly had let go of me, although it was just as clear that he worried about me, as can be seen from the single indiscreet question that he asked me after I had grown up: "Why don't you go out with that nice A-- P-- ?" I guess by then I had let go of him too, because my response was an irritated "Leave me alone, Dad." (Gentle Reader, I married her.)
Naturally, as we get older we lose more and more of our friends. When the Times arrives, my wife looks first at the obituaries to see if she knows anyone on the list. And when my alumni magazine arrives, I no longer look first at my class notes, which have crept alarmingly close to the front of the magazine, but at the obituaries. At my wife's 50th college reunion, the university chaplain, the Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes, said that fewer and fewer classmates attend each reunion until finally all will be together again and the class will be complete.
Letting go of parents and letting go of children are losses that are also gains. We want our children to be independent of us and we want to be independent of our parents. But losing friends to death is unredeemingly painful, and the only letting go that's possible is to abandon the idea that they could have continued to live, if not forever, than indefinitely. Letting go means accepting their deaths.
Living forever would be an unimaginably horrible fate, but as long as we are in reasonably good mental and physical health, few of us would want to cut life short. Still, death confers at least one benefit: knowing that we are to die, we value life, and, as is the case with all precious things, the less of it that's left to us, the more valuable it becomes, so that after we've reached a certain age - seventy for some, perhaps, eighty for others - we're thankful for each day. Therefore I hope that when the time comes I'll be able to let go and not "rage, rage against the dying of the light." I hope I will go grateful for the privilege of having been alive and for having lived so long.
Among the many ludicrously false ideas I harbored when I was young was the notion that once my children reached college age, I could stop worrying about them. My children are now in their forties, but of course I've never stopped worrying about them, even though there's no particular reason to worry. But worrying about them is one thing and letting go of them is another. To let go of one's children is to allow them to become independent and to make their own mistakes.
My mother died too young to let go of me, but had she lived longer, she probably would have been like my father, the soul of discretion and tact about my behavior and choices after I had left home for good. He clearly had let go of me, although it was just as clear that he worried about me, as can be seen from the single indiscreet question that he asked me after I had grown up: "Why don't you go out with that nice A-- P-- ?" I guess by then I had let go of him too, because my response was an irritated "Leave me alone, Dad." (Gentle Reader, I married her.)
Naturally, as we get older we lose more and more of our friends. When the Times arrives, my wife looks first at the obituaries to see if she knows anyone on the list. And when my alumni magazine arrives, I no longer look first at my class notes, which have crept alarmingly close to the front of the magazine, but at the obituaries. At my wife's 50th college reunion, the university chaplain, the Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes, said that fewer and fewer classmates attend each reunion until finally all will be together again and the class will be complete.
Letting go of parents and letting go of children are losses that are also gains. We want our children to be independent of us and we want to be independent of our parents. But losing friends to death is unredeemingly painful, and the only letting go that's possible is to abandon the idea that they could have continued to live, if not forever, than indefinitely. Letting go means accepting their deaths.
Living forever would be an unimaginably horrible fate, but as long as we are in reasonably good mental and physical health, few of us would want to cut life short. Still, death confers at least one benefit: knowing that we are to die, we value life, and, as is the case with all precious things, the less of it that's left to us, the more valuable it becomes, so that after we've reached a certain age - seventy for some, perhaps, eighty for others - we're thankful for each day. Therefore I hope that when the time comes I'll be able to let go and not "rage, rage against the dying of the light." I hope I will go grateful for the privilege of having been alive and for having lived so long.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Enemy Within
Our apartment in Jerusalem, which overlooked the garden and eucalyptus trees of a romantic Ottoman building, had high ceilings and lots of light, and we fell in love with it almost as soon as we stepped inside. On our first inspection, while we were standing in the living room, we heard a loud explosion. A booby-trapped refrigerator had been unloaded at Zion Square, a few blocks away, killing 15 people and wounding 77. It was the first of many such explosions that we would hear from inside that apartment.
To maximize casualties, suicide bombers would blow themselves up in the central market or in city-center cafes and restaurants or in busses when the vehicle had reached the center of town. Since we lived downtown, we heard a lot of explosions, followed by the sirens of police cars, ambulances, and fire engines. Often the explosions occurred only an hour or two after my own passage through the fatal site.
At first I tried to act normally, reminding myself that I was more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than in a terrorist attack, but after a while I lost my cool. I abandoned busses in favor of taxis and avoided the most crowded downtown streets, walking on parallel streets less likely to serve as targets. My wife and I bought cell phones so that we could notify each other that we were safe when one of us was outside during a bombing. And when one of us left the apartment, the other would watch him or her depart. Would this be the last time we saw the other alive?
New York, of course, is not immune from terrorist attacks as we learned on that crystalline autumn morning in 2001. Nonetheless, now that we live in New York, we figure that the chances are exceedingly small that either of us will die as a victim of terrorism. Still, each of us watches from our apartment's open door as the other stands at the elevator, waiting to descend to the lobby and the outside world. Will this be the last time we see the other in good health, before he or she is killed or incapacitated, not by a bomb but by a heart attack, stroke, or burst aneurysm?
We know we are being ridiculous. We know that the chances of a medical catastrophe occurring outside the apartment on the very day that we watch the other waiting for the elevator are pretty slim. Even so, we look at each other and see mortality. So ridiculous or not, we worry, because the enemy is now within.
To maximize casualties, suicide bombers would blow themselves up in the central market or in city-center cafes and restaurants or in busses when the vehicle had reached the center of town. Since we lived downtown, we heard a lot of explosions, followed by the sirens of police cars, ambulances, and fire engines. Often the explosions occurred only an hour or two after my own passage through the fatal site.
At first I tried to act normally, reminding myself that I was more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than in a terrorist attack, but after a while I lost my cool. I abandoned busses in favor of taxis and avoided the most crowded downtown streets, walking on parallel streets less likely to serve as targets. My wife and I bought cell phones so that we could notify each other that we were safe when one of us was outside during a bombing. And when one of us left the apartment, the other would watch him or her depart. Would this be the last time we saw the other alive?
New York, of course, is not immune from terrorist attacks as we learned on that crystalline autumn morning in 2001. Nonetheless, now that we live in New York, we figure that the chances are exceedingly small that either of us will die as a victim of terrorism. Still, each of us watches from our apartment's open door as the other stands at the elevator, waiting to descend to the lobby and the outside world. Will this be the last time we see the other in good health, before he or she is killed or incapacitated, not by a bomb but by a heart attack, stroke, or burst aneurysm?
We know we are being ridiculous. We know that the chances of a medical catastrophe occurring outside the apartment on the very day that we watch the other waiting for the elevator are pretty slim. Even so, we look at each other and see mortality. So ridiculous or not, we worry, because the enemy is now within.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Stages
In a recent post, Elaine Yaffe gives us a humorous piece, "Letting Go," about a monitor lizard that she permitted her youngest child to buy and tend in the basement of their home, as it grew into a six-foot long monster (www.botholderandwiser.blogspot.com). The best humor, Mark Twain wrote, trembles at the edge of tears. "Letting Go" does that, for it conveys the poignancy of a beloved child's leaving home.
The day our eighteen-year-old son left home to report for his compulsory military service in Israel was one of the bleakest of my life. As I watched him, from the open door of our apartment, while he descended the stairs to the street, I told myself that if anything happened to him, it would be my fault. I had brought him to Israel and I had stayed there when I could have left. In fact, his service proved to be a positive experience for him, but of course I couldn't have known that when we said goodbye.
Our daughter also served in the Israeli army, but her joining the service was not traumatic for me, since the military is reasonably safe for women. But after her service, when her mother and I drove her up to a Boston suburb, where she was to begin her undergraduate studies, as we unloaded her suitcases in front of her dormitory, I cried.
They say the only thing worse than your children's leaving home is their not leaving home. Even so, it's hard to let go and allow them to make their own mistakes. It's hard not only because we continue to worry about them, but also because their leaving home marks a milestone in our own lives. We've passed one more stage in life, a reminder of our mortality.
If we're lucky, we pass through other stages too: our children marry, our grandchildren are born, our parents die, we ascend our professional ladders, and we retire. By that time, we've begun to notice the gradual lessening of our strength and energy. As one of my college classmates wrote on the occasion of our 55th reunion, "I spend more and more time doing less and less." We vary as to how we react to this weakening of our capacities. Some of us engage in furious activity in an effort, perhaps, to deny the passage of time. Others rage against it. Still others accept it with grace.
I hope to be among those who accept it with grace, although sometimes it's a struggle. Letting go? I've let go of a lot of things recently. I've finally given up the dream of repeating my long freighter voyages, since physicians and hospitals would be out of reach for weeks at a time; I've had to give up my evening preprandial whisky, a serious blow; and, a more important loss, I've watched my unfinished history pack its bags, to steal a phrase from Billy Collins's "Forgetfulness." When I look at other people my age, these relinquishments seem laughably trivial. I can still walk in Prospect Park, still manage the subway stairs, still meet my friends for lunch and dinner, still indulge myself with the Sunday Times, and still admire the sunsets. I know I'm fortunate. So I'll try to not to bitch about this latest stage, about what I can't do any longer or what I've had to give up. Instead, I'll do my best to enjoy what's left.
The day our eighteen-year-old son left home to report for his compulsory military service in Israel was one of the bleakest of my life. As I watched him, from the open door of our apartment, while he descended the stairs to the street, I told myself that if anything happened to him, it would be my fault. I had brought him to Israel and I had stayed there when I could have left. In fact, his service proved to be a positive experience for him, but of course I couldn't have known that when we said goodbye.
Our daughter also served in the Israeli army, but her joining the service was not traumatic for me, since the military is reasonably safe for women. But after her service, when her mother and I drove her up to a Boston suburb, where she was to begin her undergraduate studies, as we unloaded her suitcases in front of her dormitory, I cried.
They say the only thing worse than your children's leaving home is their not leaving home. Even so, it's hard to let go and allow them to make their own mistakes. It's hard not only because we continue to worry about them, but also because their leaving home marks a milestone in our own lives. We've passed one more stage in life, a reminder of our mortality.
If we're lucky, we pass through other stages too: our children marry, our grandchildren are born, our parents die, we ascend our professional ladders, and we retire. By that time, we've begun to notice the gradual lessening of our strength and energy. As one of my college classmates wrote on the occasion of our 55th reunion, "I spend more and more time doing less and less." We vary as to how we react to this weakening of our capacities. Some of us engage in furious activity in an effort, perhaps, to deny the passage of time. Others rage against it. Still others accept it with grace.
I hope to be among those who accept it with grace, although sometimes it's a struggle. Letting go? I've let go of a lot of things recently. I've finally given up the dream of repeating my long freighter voyages, since physicians and hospitals would be out of reach for weeks at a time; I've had to give up my evening preprandial whisky, a serious blow; and, a more important loss, I've watched my unfinished history pack its bags, to steal a phrase from Billy Collins's "Forgetfulness." When I look at other people my age, these relinquishments seem laughably trivial. I can still walk in Prospect Park, still manage the subway stairs, still meet my friends for lunch and dinner, still indulge myself with the Sunday Times, and still admire the sunsets. I know I'm fortunate. So I'll try to not to bitch about this latest stage, about what I can't do any longer or what I've had to give up. Instead, I'll do my best to enjoy what's left.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Military Glory
All able-bodied Jewish males in Israel, after completing their compulsory military service, must devote one month a year to service in the army reserves until they reach the age of 50. At least that was the case when I lived there. So shortly after becoming an Israeli citizen in the mid-1970s, I received a notice to report for reserve duty.
When I arrived at my post, I was directed to the quartermaster, who issued me a uniform - pants, shirt, belt, cap, and because it was cold, a padded, hooded jacket, a "dubon," as they are called. These items had already endured serious wear and tear by regular army troops and, by the time the reservists received them, were at the last stage of usefulness or perhaps a bit beyond it. Buttons were missing, lapels were torn, the fabric was stretched to bagginess, and few items were entirely free from holes. It was the rare reservist who received anything that would fit him, so shirts would be too large or too small, and pants would be too short or too long, and although both the shirt and pants would be khaki, the shades of khaki seldom matched.
So one summer, after two tours of duty, when I had to stand in line to receive a mismatched, sad-sack uniform and, and at end of the tour, when I was eager to get home, had to stand in line to hand it back, I decided to buy a uniform of my own. I was spending the summer in America that year, and bought one at an Army-Navy store. The top and bottom matched and they required no ironing.
A few months later, on the first day of my next tour of duty, I stood in formation while the sergeant called the roll. We were not an elite unit, not a combat unit, but one that would be assigned to guard duty at various places. (The reserve's acronym, haga, is jokingly said to stand for "he was once a man.") The sergeant finished the roll call and looked us over. His eye fell on me, standing in the center of the middle row of flabby middle-aged reservists.
"Look at the man!" he cried, pointing at me. My heart sank. what had I done? He walked over to me and repeated his injunction, "Look at that man!" He paused as I waited for him to make a horrible example of me. "His shirt has all its buttons, his pants are pressed, his belt buckle is shiny. Now, that's a soldier!"
When I arrived at my post, I was directed to the quartermaster, who issued me a uniform - pants, shirt, belt, cap, and because it was cold, a padded, hooded jacket, a "dubon," as they are called. These items had already endured serious wear and tear by regular army troops and, by the time the reservists received them, were at the last stage of usefulness or perhaps a bit beyond it. Buttons were missing, lapels were torn, the fabric was stretched to bagginess, and few items were entirely free from holes. It was the rare reservist who received anything that would fit him, so shirts would be too large or too small, and pants would be too short or too long, and although both the shirt and pants would be khaki, the shades of khaki seldom matched.
So one summer, after two tours of duty, when I had to stand in line to receive a mismatched, sad-sack uniform and, and at end of the tour, when I was eager to get home, had to stand in line to hand it back, I decided to buy a uniform of my own. I was spending the summer in America that year, and bought one at an Army-Navy store. The top and bottom matched and they required no ironing.
A few months later, on the first day of my next tour of duty, I stood in formation while the sergeant called the roll. We were not an elite unit, not a combat unit, but one that would be assigned to guard duty at various places. (The reserve's acronym, haga, is jokingly said to stand for "he was once a man.") The sergeant finished the roll call and looked us over. His eye fell on me, standing in the center of the middle row of flabby middle-aged reservists.
"Look at the man!" he cried, pointing at me. My heart sank. what had I done? He walked over to me and repeated his injunction, "Look at that man!" He paused as I waited for him to make a horrible example of me. "His shirt has all its buttons, his pants are pressed, his belt buckle is shiny. Now, that's a soldier!"
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Cobra Island
When we were twelve years old, my friend Sumner and I watched Cobra Woman, at the Circle Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts. The film starred Maria Montez in a dual role as the evil high priestess of a volcanic island and her good twin sister. At our age, we didn't realize that the acting was bad and the script idiotic, not could we know that Montez's phallic dance before a cobra altar would become a camp classic. We did not see that the film was, in the words of Scott Ashlin, an "amazing spectacle of bad taste." Instead, we took the ridiculous adventure story at face value and watched it enthralled. Alas, Sumner died a few years ago, but my encounter with Cobra Woman lives on.
When I was twelve, my brother was eight and our sister six. Shortly after I had seen the film, I told them that I was not who they thought I was. No, I simply looked like their brother. Their real brother was a prisoner on Cobra Island, which I proceeded to describe in lurid detail, and I told them that if they did not do whatever I wanted them to do, their brother would be killed. My acting might not have been even as good as that of Maria Montez, but it was good enough to convince my brother and sister, who begged me not to harm their brother. I then proceeded to faint, and when I came to, I was their brother again. I told them what I had seen on Cobra Island, where the inhabitants worshiped a cobra and threw condemned prisoners into a live volcano.
My play-acting continued for several months, during which I enjoyed scaring my siblings. Either they eventually wised up or I grew bored with the charade, but in any case my evil impersonator finally retired to Cobra Island, where he has remained to this day. I might have forgotten those afternoons in which I frightened my brother and sister with the story, had it not made such an impression on them. As a result they tease me about it from time to time. I'm glad they've kept its memory alive. Unlike other youthful behaviors, which sometimes make me cringe with embarrassment when I recall them, this one makes me smile.
When I was twelve, my brother was eight and our sister six. Shortly after I had seen the film, I told them that I was not who they thought I was. No, I simply looked like their brother. Their real brother was a prisoner on Cobra Island, which I proceeded to describe in lurid detail, and I told them that if they did not do whatever I wanted them to do, their brother would be killed. My acting might not have been even as good as that of Maria Montez, but it was good enough to convince my brother and sister, who begged me not to harm their brother. I then proceeded to faint, and when I came to, I was their brother again. I told them what I had seen on Cobra Island, where the inhabitants worshiped a cobra and threw condemned prisoners into a live volcano.
My play-acting continued for several months, during which I enjoyed scaring my siblings. Either they eventually wised up or I grew bored with the charade, but in any case my evil impersonator finally retired to Cobra Island, where he has remained to this day. I might have forgotten those afternoons in which I frightened my brother and sister with the story, had it not made such an impression on them. As a result they tease me about it from time to time. I'm glad they've kept its memory alive. Unlike other youthful behaviors, which sometimes make me cringe with embarrassment when I recall them, this one makes me smile.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sixteen
The triple-digit temperatures we endured last week reminded me of the time, long ago, when I spent a summer in the Deep South, where the thermometer that year often climbed over 100 and once reached 117. I was sixteen, a participant in an American Friends' Service Committee summer work camp for young people.
The ten of us, all teenagers, were assigned to work in an historically black college in Georgia. We lived in a dormitory there, our job to repair and paint those college rooms that were most in need of attention. In deference to the southern mores of the day, all of us were white, and the AFSC had taken pains to clear our project with local officials well in advance.
A few days after we arrived, an annual summer fair came to the campus. If I had possessed the sense of a mayfly, I would have kept away from it, for it was intended only for Negroes, as they were then called. But the fair's enormous Ferris wheel exerted an almost hypnotic attraction for me. Wouldn't it be fun to ride on it! I persuaded the prettiest girl in our group to go with me, and we patiently stood in line to buy tickets. We entered a gondola and soon ascended high above the campus, the only white faces in a sea of black.
That night the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on the college lawn. We never knew for sure what spooked the KKK - whether it was the sight of a white girl on a Ferris wheel patronized by blacks or the fact that white people were living in a black dormitory or both - but it was clear we could not remain in the college much longer. One of the many thoughtless things for which my parents forgave me over the years was the telegram I sent them the next day: "stay close to phone."
We spent the rest of the summer at an orphanage in South Carolina, where we worked at various agricultural tasks, none of which I remember. I ate okra and grits for the first time, discovered that frozen, peeled peaches are delicious, and began to smoke. I was introduced to segregation, which I casually accepted as simply the way things were, like the wisteria-framed porches and the accents of the locals.
Today I blush when I recall my behavior that summer. But youth is almost a synonym for foolishness, ignorance, and inexperience. With luck, these conditions lessen with age, along with emotional turmoil, confusion, and acne, and we become, if not wise, at least wiser. Alas, in the words of the proverb. we become too soon old and too late smart.
The ten of us, all teenagers, were assigned to work in an historically black college in Georgia. We lived in a dormitory there, our job to repair and paint those college rooms that were most in need of attention. In deference to the southern mores of the day, all of us were white, and the AFSC had taken pains to clear our project with local officials well in advance.
A few days after we arrived, an annual summer fair came to the campus. If I had possessed the sense of a mayfly, I would have kept away from it, for it was intended only for Negroes, as they were then called. But the fair's enormous Ferris wheel exerted an almost hypnotic attraction for me. Wouldn't it be fun to ride on it! I persuaded the prettiest girl in our group to go with me, and we patiently stood in line to buy tickets. We entered a gondola and soon ascended high above the campus, the only white faces in a sea of black.
That night the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on the college lawn. We never knew for sure what spooked the KKK - whether it was the sight of a white girl on a Ferris wheel patronized by blacks or the fact that white people were living in a black dormitory or both - but it was clear we could not remain in the college much longer. One of the many thoughtless things for which my parents forgave me over the years was the telegram I sent them the next day: "stay close to phone."
We spent the rest of the summer at an orphanage in South Carolina, where we worked at various agricultural tasks, none of which I remember. I ate okra and grits for the first time, discovered that frozen, peeled peaches are delicious, and began to smoke. I was introduced to segregation, which I casually accepted as simply the way things were, like the wisteria-framed porches and the accents of the locals.
Today I blush when I recall my behavior that summer. But youth is almost a synonym for foolishness, ignorance, and inexperience. With luck, these conditions lessen with age, along with emotional turmoil, confusion, and acne, and we become, if not wise, at least wiser. Alas, in the words of the proverb. we become too soon old and too late smart.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Too Late
For many years a man lived in the Meadowport Arch, a pedestrian underpass near the main entrance to Prospect Park. It boasts a rare double arch, the arches at right angles to one another, one facing south, with a view of the Long Meadow, and one facing east, with a view of a tree-lined path. The man slept on a curved wooden bench built into the length of a curved wooden wall, in a corner formed by the arched stonework of the southern exit.
The Meadowport Arch sheltered him from rain, snow, and wind. I would see him in his corner when I walked through the arch at the conclusion of my daily constitutional. Sometimes he was sleeping, wrapped from head to toe in blankets, his back to the eastern arch, his head towards the meadow. More often, he would be sitting on the bench, his blankets folded beside him with such precision that I wondered if he had served in the armed forces. About four feet away from his sleeping place, a dozen or so paperback books were stacked up on the bench in two piles, but I never saw him reading.
For most of the length of the Meadowport Arch, a wooden barrel vault forms the ceiling, but at the southern end, where this man lived, the ceiling is formed by an elegant cross vaulting, the intersection of two barrel vaults. The elegance suited him because he was an elegant man.
He was a slim, very dark African American, with a neatly trimmed black beard, who looked as if he were in his forties. On the few occasions when I spotted him outside his cave, when he was walking along the western side of the Long Meadow, his old dark clothes would appear well-cared for and his shoes well kept.
In the way that one creates histories for people one sees but never talks to, I imagined that he was an army veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps, I thought, he received an army pension, not enough to rent a room, but enough to buy food, razors, used clothing, and paperback books sold for 25 cents on the street. Was he lonely? He seemed walled off, enclosed. What would be his response if I greeted him one morning with a simple "hello" or "good morning"? I must have passed him hundreds of times but I never said a word to him, although I was sometimes tempted to do so.
It appears, however, that it's too late now, too late to ask him where he used to spend the coldest winter months (he would abandon his lair in January and February), too late to ask him how he obtained his books or what he read, too late to try to penetrate the glass cylinder in which he seemed to have enclosed himself. I've seen neither him nor his blankets nor his books for at least six months.
Where is he now? Perhaps he's receiving treatment at a VA hospital or at a municipal or state facility. But wherever he is, I'm unlikely to see him again. He may, in fact, be dead, the victim of his unwillingness or inability to request medical attention. Now that he is gone, I regret never having greeted him, but I must admit that were he still in his corner under the arch, I would probably continue to pass him by without a word.
The Meadowport Arch sheltered him from rain, snow, and wind. I would see him in his corner when I walked through the arch at the conclusion of my daily constitutional. Sometimes he was sleeping, wrapped from head to toe in blankets, his back to the eastern arch, his head towards the meadow. More often, he would be sitting on the bench, his blankets folded beside him with such precision that I wondered if he had served in the armed forces. About four feet away from his sleeping place, a dozen or so paperback books were stacked up on the bench in two piles, but I never saw him reading.
For most of the length of the Meadowport Arch, a wooden barrel vault forms the ceiling, but at the southern end, where this man lived, the ceiling is formed by an elegant cross vaulting, the intersection of two barrel vaults. The elegance suited him because he was an elegant man.
He was a slim, very dark African American, with a neatly trimmed black beard, who looked as if he were in his forties. On the few occasions when I spotted him outside his cave, when he was walking along the western side of the Long Meadow, his old dark clothes would appear well-cared for and his shoes well kept.
In the way that one creates histories for people one sees but never talks to, I imagined that he was an army veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps, I thought, he received an army pension, not enough to rent a room, but enough to buy food, razors, used clothing, and paperback books sold for 25 cents on the street. Was he lonely? He seemed walled off, enclosed. What would be his response if I greeted him one morning with a simple "hello" or "good morning"? I must have passed him hundreds of times but I never said a word to him, although I was sometimes tempted to do so.
It appears, however, that it's too late now, too late to ask him where he used to spend the coldest winter months (he would abandon his lair in January and February), too late to ask him how he obtained his books or what he read, too late to try to penetrate the glass cylinder in which he seemed to have enclosed himself. I've seen neither him nor his blankets nor his books for at least six months.
Where is he now? Perhaps he's receiving treatment at a VA hospital or at a municipal or state facility. But wherever he is, I'm unlikely to see him again. He may, in fact, be dead, the victim of his unwillingness or inability to request medical attention. Now that he is gone, I regret never having greeted him, but I must admit that were he still in his corner under the arch, I would probably continue to pass him by without a word.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
An Untimely Death
A few weeks ago, my wife pointed out a paid obituary notice in the Times, mourning "the untimely death" of an 80-year-old man. I laughed. Eighty is not untimely! But then I remembered that I'm 78, and I stopped laughing.
When my father died 33 years ago, he was 77. At that time, I thought that a man who died at 77 had lived a long life, that 77 was not an unreasonable age at which to die. Seventy-seven was old, man, and old people die. Dad was pretty sick at the end, on dialysis for the last six months of his life, and reduced to "watching the grass grow," as he once told me. By the time he died, his quality of life was so poor that he probably would not have wanted to extend it, but I don't know if that's true because he never gave us advanced directives, either orally or in writing.
His last words to me were "I'm dying," uttered in the same matter-of-fact tone of voice he might have used to tell me the time. He was sitting up in bed, staring straight ahead as he said it, not looking at me at all. I watched his blood coursing through the tubes of his dialysis machine, not knowing what to say, so I said nothing. Ever since, I've felt I failed him, since I found nothing to say that could comfort him. I could at least have acknowledged what he said, but I was silent. Soon it was time for me to leave him, to return to New York, and to fly from there to Jerusalem. He was still sitting up, still staring straight ahead. I kissed the top of his head and said goodbye, but he didn't respond to my farewell, not even to look at me. He died two weeks later.
When I consider his suffering, I think that his death was timely, but when I consider his age, I can only view it, more than three decades later, as untimely indeed.
When my father died 33 years ago, he was 77. At that time, I thought that a man who died at 77 had lived a long life, that 77 was not an unreasonable age at which to die. Seventy-seven was old, man, and old people die. Dad was pretty sick at the end, on dialysis for the last six months of his life, and reduced to "watching the grass grow," as he once told me. By the time he died, his quality of life was so poor that he probably would not have wanted to extend it, but I don't know if that's true because he never gave us advanced directives, either orally or in writing.
His last words to me were "I'm dying," uttered in the same matter-of-fact tone of voice he might have used to tell me the time. He was sitting up in bed, staring straight ahead as he said it, not looking at me at all. I watched his blood coursing through the tubes of his dialysis machine, not knowing what to say, so I said nothing. Ever since, I've felt I failed him, since I found nothing to say that could comfort him. I could at least have acknowledged what he said, but I was silent. Soon it was time for me to leave him, to return to New York, and to fly from there to Jerusalem. He was still sitting up, still staring straight ahead. I kissed the top of his head and said goodbye, but he didn't respond to my farewell, not even to look at me. He died two weeks later.
When I consider his suffering, I think that his death was timely, but when I consider his age, I can only view it, more than three decades later, as untimely indeed.
Monday, July 5, 2010
The Quilts of Nancy Halpern
Nancy Homer Halpern is a distinguished quilter, who has taught, lectured, and conducted workshops all over the world. When the Vermont Quilt Festival in Burlington recently gave a retrospective of her work, my wife and I flew up to attend it. We knew nothing about quilting, but we went because Nancy is our friend.
If quilts make you think of your great-grandmother and traditional, symmetrical designs, you'd be surprised to see Nancy's semi-abstract quilts. Here is how she describes one of them: "This represents the climbing of a tower that starts underwater (lower left) and rises through ground level to emerge into the sky (top right). It contains many references to W. B. Yeats' tower poems, and one is quilted into it." The illusion of sweeping motion in that quilt, as in many others, is striking.
Just as a great novel creates a world in which you lose yourself while reading, each of Nancy's quilts creates a world into which you can immerse yourself. We spent hours at the exhibition on each of two consecutive days, and I looked at each quilt time after time, yet each time I looked, I would find new complexities, new relationships, just as you might in a novel as you reread it.
Nancy is now working on a quilt inspired by W. S. Merwin's poem, Separation, "Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle / Everything I do is stitched with its color." (When telling us about it, she asked an intriguing question: "What is the color of absence?") The attempt to represent this poem through patches of colored fabric, stitched onto another fabric with batting in between, suggests an extraordinary sensibility. She has transformed a domestic craft into art. You can see two examples of her work at www.Sheinstein.addr.com/Nancy.html.
The people she's met, the places she's seen, and scenes from her everyday life have found their way into her quilts. "A rambling Maine shed" served as a backdrop for one; the Essex River, where she learned to swim, informed another; her kitchen inspired a third. "Garlic Spaghetti" resulted from her collaboration with the cookbook writer Crescent Dragonwagon, whose handwritten recipe for that dish is on the back of the quilt. Among quilts suggested by her travels is one representing "an astonishing sunset" that she saw in Prague. Another shows a hill town "somewhere between Italy and Tibet." Bergamo's Old City prompted yet another. Taken together, her quilts provide a kind of super-quilt, a retrospective of Nancy's life so far.
As I contemplated her quilts, I wondered if, as I look back at my life and try to make sense of it, an increasing preoccupation these days, I'll be able to piece together its colors, textures, and forms, its dreams, incidents, achievements, and failures, like the elements in Nancy's quilts. Will I discover an overall design, like that tower rising to the sky? If so, it will have arisen without planning, unlike the quilts of Nancy Homer Halpern.
If quilts make you think of your great-grandmother and traditional, symmetrical designs, you'd be surprised to see Nancy's semi-abstract quilts. Here is how she describes one of them: "This represents the climbing of a tower that starts underwater (lower left) and rises through ground level to emerge into the sky (top right). It contains many references to W. B. Yeats' tower poems, and one is quilted into it." The illusion of sweeping motion in that quilt, as in many others, is striking.
Just as a great novel creates a world in which you lose yourself while reading, each of Nancy's quilts creates a world into which you can immerse yourself. We spent hours at the exhibition on each of two consecutive days, and I looked at each quilt time after time, yet each time I looked, I would find new complexities, new relationships, just as you might in a novel as you reread it.
Nancy is now working on a quilt inspired by W. S. Merwin's poem, Separation, "Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle / Everything I do is stitched with its color." (When telling us about it, she asked an intriguing question: "What is the color of absence?") The attempt to represent this poem through patches of colored fabric, stitched onto another fabric with batting in between, suggests an extraordinary sensibility. She has transformed a domestic craft into art. You can see two examples of her work at www.Sheinstein.addr.com/Nancy.html.
The people she's met, the places she's seen, and scenes from her everyday life have found their way into her quilts. "A rambling Maine shed" served as a backdrop for one; the Essex River, where she learned to swim, informed another; her kitchen inspired a third. "Garlic Spaghetti" resulted from her collaboration with the cookbook writer Crescent Dragonwagon, whose handwritten recipe for that dish is on the back of the quilt. Among quilts suggested by her travels is one representing "an astonishing sunset" that she saw in Prague. Another shows a hill town "somewhere between Italy and Tibet." Bergamo's Old City prompted yet another. Taken together, her quilts provide a kind of super-quilt, a retrospective of Nancy's life so far.
As I contemplated her quilts, I wondered if, as I look back at my life and try to make sense of it, an increasing preoccupation these days, I'll be able to piece together its colors, textures, and forms, its dreams, incidents, achievements, and failures, like the elements in Nancy's quilts. Will I discover an overall design, like that tower rising to the sky? If so, it will have arisen without planning, unlike the quilts of Nancy Homer Halpern.
Friday, July 2, 2010
William
When William was born, his parents called him Billy. His aunts and his uncles called him Billy too, as did his cousins. But his first-grade teacher, Miss March, called him Bill, and Bill he stayed for a very long time.
There were, of course, exceptions. First of all, his parents and aunts and uncles continued to call him Billy long after he was a boy. His brother and sister never abandoned Billy completely and alternate between Billy and Bill. He is both Uncle Billy and Uncle Bill to their children. And a girl at college, long dead, on whom he had an unreciprocated crush, called him Willy.
So, with few exceptions, William went through life being Bill until about 20 years ago, when he reached the age of 60. By that time, he felt that he had become sufficiently mature to merit using the name with which he was born. It's not that he had anything against Bill or Billy as names. He had several friends named Bill and he was a devoted fan of Billy Collins. It's just that he began to think of himself as William.
Still, he didn't like to ask people who had always called him Bill or Billy to call him William. He hadn't liked it when a friend asked him to call him Peter instead of Pete. He hadn't liked it when another friend transformed himself from Leon M. Mitchell, whom William had always called Lee, to L. McBride Mitchell, whom he was asked to call Mac. Of course, William acceded to his friends' wishes, but he didn't like having to do it. Change is hard, and he didn't want to inflict it on his old friends and relations.
But if he introduced himself as William to strangers, they wouldn't have any problem calling him William, and this is what he did. True, it was awkward when people who knew him as William met people who knew him as Bill, but those occasions were rare. It was only when he moved to Brooklyn that trouble arose. Here he met lots of new people - neighbors, members of his religious congregation, participants in his book club - who, much to his pleasure, now call him William as a matter of course. But he has lots of old friends in Manhattan who know him as Bill, and it was neither possible nor desirable to keep them away from his new friends in Brooklyn. What should he do?
He decided that at his age, close to 80, he could do as he pleased. He wouldn't ask his old friends and his family to call him William, but he would sign his e-mail messages to them as William and he would say "this is William" when calling them on the phone. His wife has supported him in this decision by referring to him as William when she talks to them. If they continue to call him Bill or Billy, he won't worry about it. What's important to him is his presentation of himself. And that self is William.
William doesn't know for whom he was named - it's the custom in his community for infants to be named for a dead relative - but he likes to think that that relative, at long last, is being properly memorialized. And he hopes that if any of his great-grandchildren are named after him, their parents will call him William right from the start and that this future William won't later call himself Bill.
There were, of course, exceptions. First of all, his parents and aunts and uncles continued to call him Billy long after he was a boy. His brother and sister never abandoned Billy completely and alternate between Billy and Bill. He is both Uncle Billy and Uncle Bill to their children. And a girl at college, long dead, on whom he had an unreciprocated crush, called him Willy.
So, with few exceptions, William went through life being Bill until about 20 years ago, when he reached the age of 60. By that time, he felt that he had become sufficiently mature to merit using the name with which he was born. It's not that he had anything against Bill or Billy as names. He had several friends named Bill and he was a devoted fan of Billy Collins. It's just that he began to think of himself as William.
Still, he didn't like to ask people who had always called him Bill or Billy to call him William. He hadn't liked it when a friend asked him to call him Peter instead of Pete. He hadn't liked it when another friend transformed himself from Leon M. Mitchell, whom William had always called Lee, to L. McBride Mitchell, whom he was asked to call Mac. Of course, William acceded to his friends' wishes, but he didn't like having to do it. Change is hard, and he didn't want to inflict it on his old friends and relations.
But if he introduced himself as William to strangers, they wouldn't have any problem calling him William, and this is what he did. True, it was awkward when people who knew him as William met people who knew him as Bill, but those occasions were rare. It was only when he moved to Brooklyn that trouble arose. Here he met lots of new people - neighbors, members of his religious congregation, participants in his book club - who, much to his pleasure, now call him William as a matter of course. But he has lots of old friends in Manhattan who know him as Bill, and it was neither possible nor desirable to keep them away from his new friends in Brooklyn. What should he do?
He decided that at his age, close to 80, he could do as he pleased. He wouldn't ask his old friends and his family to call him William, but he would sign his e-mail messages to them as William and he would say "this is William" when calling them on the phone. His wife has supported him in this decision by referring to him as William when she talks to them. If they continue to call him Bill or Billy, he won't worry about it. What's important to him is his presentation of himself. And that self is William.
William doesn't know for whom he was named - it's the custom in his community for infants to be named for a dead relative - but he likes to think that that relative, at long last, is being properly memorialized. And he hopes that if any of his great-grandchildren are named after him, their parents will call him William right from the start and that this future William won't later call himself Bill.
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