November 28, 2013
It occurs to me, thinking about the number of allusions I have made to the neighborhoods of Manhattan that shaped me, that so many of those neighborhoods either do not exist anymore, or have lost their neighborhood character.
Robert Moses destroyed working-class the neighborhoods of the Bronx around the Cross Bronx Expressway and other thoroughfares to northern New York. The exigencies of maintaining an economically sustainable city are doing the rest in 2013.
Yorkville, that German and Central European area whose hub was 86th Street from Third Avenue to the East River, is gone, replaced by high-rises that face each other like plates in a dishwasher. Gone is Elk Candy, that temple of the art of marzipan; Gone is Ideal Restaurant, right next door, with its Yankee Pot Roast and baked beans. Gone is Café Geiger and Die Kleine Konditorei, two high-toned German restaurant-cafés modeled on the Viennese. Gone are the German and German-Jewish bakeries, patronized by one and all, selling stollen, danish, kuchen, French crullers and apple turnovers. My parents were great fans of all of this viennoiserie, preferring them to the exquisite pastries to be had from the fine French patisseries: Dumas and Bonté in particular. (Dumas was on Lexington between 92nd and 93rd, while Bonté was on Third Avenue in the 60s.)
Gone are the German-Jewish owned shops on the Upper West Side: glaziers, hardware store owners, liquor shops, delicatessens. Gone are the cafeterías owned by Cubans that dotted Broadway, Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. Gone are the all-night bagel bakeries, gone are most of the Italian pastry shops, with their ice--ees, cremolata, and spumoni (--although di Roberti's on First Avenue between 11th and 12th is still doing a good business).
Gone is the life of the distinct villages of Manhattan. What has replaced them are units commercial and residential managed to extract the maximum profitability. After 9/11/2001 the future of New York became conclusively verticalized: more apartments in high-rises built by eager developers would be purchased by young people in the highest-paying jobs in law and investment banking; purchased by more people seeking either to escape onerous taxes in foreign jurisdictions or very wealthy individuals.
The logic is unassailable: New York has endured "boom and bust" cycles throughout its history, and any city manager who can find a way to meet the payroll for the uniformed services and keep the city safe is going to keep New York attractive to cooperative and condominium owners. The price of paying that bill and skirting the fiscal crises that almost brought New York to its knees is a city where the middle-class (let alone the unsubsidized working class) is disappearing.
Walking in Central Park yesterday and taking in the view of Upper Fifth Avenue from about 100th Street, I was struck by the sight of a new, super-tall high-rise apartment building with a banner at its top. The banner gives the phone number to call for "Rentals" in block letters. What is striking about the panorama of the area is that the building is so out of scale with the rest of the buildings. A bit farther on, another high-rise pushed up.
The streetscape of the metropolis has been altered and will continue to be altered, with the result that New York will be more gleaming and vertical. What I always liked about the city before its latest incarnation was that you could escape that verticality by going to one of the neighborhoods, places where people who lived in tenements and old brownstones still put out folding chairs in the summer, when they didn't sit on the stoop.
Escape from the verticality that makes New York what it is in the minds of the world is no longer the option it was: --which may explain the popularity of Brooklyn, which is much harder to navigate, but whose axis remains largely horizontal.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Pre-Thanksgiving New York
November 27, 2013
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving and Chaunukkah coming, too, Manhattan is quiet. I walk to the Metropolitan Museum through Central Park, which is empty, save for a few dedicated runners and one sole cyclist. It is so pleasurable to walk through the park in the middle of the day when no one is there. Even at the 90th Street entrance to the running path along the reservoir, Fred Lebow's bronze statue stands alone. There are no cars in the park. The weather is cool and wet and I am dressed for it, so have a lovely stroll.
Arriving at the museum, I encounter a different constellation: there is a line to wait on to enter and have bags checked by the security guards; the great hall, while not wall-to-wall (as it is most days now), is still packed. I buy a ticket, but decide I will stay only briefly: The crowds at the Museum are good business for the institution, but don't suit me.
In the four bays endowed by Enid Haupt and the Information desk in the center of the hall, five beautiful seasonal floral displays once again stun my eye. Few things in the museum please me as much as these, changed weekly thanks to the bequest, allowing visitors to feast on outstanding examples of the floral arranging art.
The other artworks that are personal favorites are the 18th century pastels in the museum's collection, particularly the study of the handsome and lubricious Louis XV by Quentin de la Tour; and another of the simply ravishing Olivier Journu of Bordeaux. In his portrait, Olivier Journu wears a pale rose velvet waistcoat adorned with a corsage of matching roses in the top buttonhole: He looks amazingly like Gary Cooper in a powdered wig, his turquoise eyes and open smile beguiling and winsome.
The displays of porcelain figures in the European Decorative Arts galleries behind and to the left of the Grand Staircase are reliably empty. Bustelli, Luck, Lücke, Kändler-- the finest modelers, created delectable figures of comedia dell'arte characters --Scapin, Harlequin, Isabella, Columbine-- for the finest porcelain factories: Meissen, Höchst, Capodimonte. The figures' tiny faces are so lifelike and animated, modern versions don't compare, both because today's porcelain mixture is not quite the same, but also because the modelers of the 20th and 21st century don't have the immersion in the period from which the characters sprang that the great 18th modelers in porcelain did. They are just copyists, however skilled.
Finally, I go to see the bedroom from the Palazzo Sagredo in Venice built in 1742, a room at the end of the British Decorative Arts Galleries few people know about or take the trouble to find. The bedroom is lined with rich green silk wall coverings in a brocatelle pattern. There is an appropriately ethereal oval painting with large gilded frame, The Triumph Of Dawn Over Night by Diziani in the center of the ceiling. In the corners of the room, beautifully molded armorini, life-sized figures of winged children, flutter. If I wanted to dream of heaven, this bedroom is the one in which I believe I could summon the empyrean.
My visit over, I walk across the park again, this time leaving it via the Tennis Courts near 94th Street. These are part of my childhood: my elementary school is on 95th Street and I knew of at least one parent who played on the courts before picking up her son, David Weston, a classmate of my sister's. Mrs. Weston could have stepped out of a Claire McCardell ad: tall, slender, brunette hair swept up, red gingham shirt, navy blue trousers and needle-nose sneakers, wood tennis racket in hand, a long-haired collie on a leash.
I decide to walk down 95th Street from Central Park West to Columbus and past the school, a tiny private school founded by a Scotsman named Alexander Robertson in 1789. It was a school which had in its first classes the children of black freemen. Indeed, I had a classmate, Wendy Jones, who was of African descent, at a time (the late 1950s) when African-American children were rarely students in private schools in Manhattan. I can still remember walking with Wendy to the bus stop and noticing that her eyes were tearing as we talked. Knowing that blacks were less well-treated than other Americans, I thought that perhaps something I had said was insensitive and had provoked her tears. I asked her, and she quickly told me not to worry, that her eyes watered from the wind. (I hope that was the truth.)
The school is so small I had only six classmates in my sixth grade graduating class. The building on 95th Street feeds directly into a room that contains part of Andrew Carnegie's library, as well as a statue of Robert Burns. Beyond that room is the entrance to the Second Presbyterian Church, which was founded in 1756. It was there that we had our "Christmas Pageant" --which is now a multi-cultural holiday celebration with no religious connection.
Nonetheless, it was nice to walk by the building, which is in good condition, thanks to the building on top of the school of a luxury high-rise. The school sold the air rights and the luxury apartment building is actually consistent with those on the rest of the block and surrounding area. The present headmistress, Reverend Leslie Merlin, has been there many years, although she did not succeed James G. Spence, the Scotsman who was headmaster as well as Reverend of Second Presbyterian when I and my sister were students.
Dr. Spence was married to a Lebanese Christian (the school librarian, and a terror), with whom he had three children, Ian, Doreen, and Colin. There was also another Scottish girl, Fiona, who was in Doreen's class. In my class we had Hans Vogel, a German boy, Kathy Voinoff, (Russian descent), Susan Agay (Hungarian), Paulette Tunis (French), Wendy Metelitz, Todd Walker and Richard Kirsch (American Jewish); Cheryl Cosgrove and Christopher Norris (Amerian Protestant). Yul Brynner's niece, Laura Linda Raymond, was a class ahead of me; in my sister's class was the son of Frank Sutton, the actor who played the irascible sergeant to Jim Nabor's rube on the TV's "Gomer Pyle". Cheryl and Christopher's parents were all in show business, too.
To give you an idea what "show business" meant in those days, Paulette Tunis' mother, a beautiful woman with short black hair, sparkling light green eyes and a beautiful figure, worked as a photographer at the Copacabana, wearing a skimpy outfit to take snaps of celebrities, a big camera with a giant flash on her hip, ever at the ready. Christopher Norris, a lovely girl with long, very blond hair, was a working performer: in the second grade, she was in a musical based on Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", in which she played Mitty's daughter, "Penina". Christopher's father was a bandleader, in an era when that was still a glamorous occupation. The whole fair-haired family lived in a "classic six" apartment at The Turin, at 333 Central Park West, not far from the school. I remember visiting once, and discovering they had a white grand piano in the sunken living room, which was carpeted with a white shag rug. A white shag rug!
Cheryl Cosgrove's parents did commercials for a living. They, like Christopher's parents, were tall, slender and looked as thought they stepped out of "Look" magazine --the dads slightly tanned, in expensive suits of classic cut, the mothers tall and able to carry off the pouffed skirts that became fashionable after Dior premiered the "New Look". These parents were more sophisticated than the others, as was obvious in Christopher's case the Halloween she and I were both in the first grade, when her mother dressed her as a Playboy bunny. (I went as a hobo --each in our way shocked our first grade teacher, Mrs. de Castro, of whom more later.) Through these fancy parents I and my classmates got to attend the first of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, to get on TV shows that needed kids (including one with Jack Gilford, who was the first "Hysterium" in "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum"). Also, in 1962 we also got to cut an album with Vaughn Meader, the voice impersonator who began a promising career with pitch-perfect imitations of John F. Kennedy, only to have it all turn to ashes on November 22, 1963.
We lost a few of the original group through the years, so there were only seven of us by the time we graduated, in the sixth grade. Of course, I remember my teachers: Mrs. Ceath (kindergarten), Mrs. de Castro (1st grade), Mrs. Walton (3rd and 4th grades), and Mrs. Goldsmith (5th and 6th grades).
Nonetheless, it was a shock to walk past the school and see my first grade classroom through the windows, intact. The stair down to the room, the place where the teacher sat, the play area, the bookcases, were all in the same places. I even remember the corner where, if you misbehaved, you were put.
Miriam Perkins de Castro, my first grade teacher, was a high-born Maine lady in her sixties who fell in love with and married Mr. de Castro, a bald, tanned, tennis-playing Cuban, whom she always called "De". "Mrs. de" loved anything in a shade of purple, and only wore clothes in that color. She spoke in a plummy New England accent and once confessed her family were all Republicans, a daring admission in New York anytime. She was incapable of a mean thought or action. For some reason, one Christmas season, she invited my mother and my sister and I to tea at the apartment she shared with "De" at 360 Central Park West, around the corner from the school. We had Ritz crackers for the first time, and thought we had gone to heaven. "Mrs. de" had a Swedish angel chime, a four candle holder whose heat caused the tiny chimes suspended from angel figures to turn and strike small bells for so long as the tapers burned. The effect was magical, and we were rapt.
When I remember my childhood this way I think, "How wonderful New York was!" I was a child, and life was kind.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving and Chaunukkah coming, too, Manhattan is quiet. I walk to the Metropolitan Museum through Central Park, which is empty, save for a few dedicated runners and one sole cyclist. It is so pleasurable to walk through the park in the middle of the day when no one is there. Even at the 90th Street entrance to the running path along the reservoir, Fred Lebow's bronze statue stands alone. There are no cars in the park. The weather is cool and wet and I am dressed for it, so have a lovely stroll.
Arriving at the museum, I encounter a different constellation: there is a line to wait on to enter and have bags checked by the security guards; the great hall, while not wall-to-wall (as it is most days now), is still packed. I buy a ticket, but decide I will stay only briefly: The crowds at the Museum are good business for the institution, but don't suit me.
In the four bays endowed by Enid Haupt and the Information desk in the center of the hall, five beautiful seasonal floral displays once again stun my eye. Few things in the museum please me as much as these, changed weekly thanks to the bequest, allowing visitors to feast on outstanding examples of the floral arranging art.
The other artworks that are personal favorites are the 18th century pastels in the museum's collection, particularly the study of the handsome and lubricious Louis XV by Quentin de la Tour; and another of the simply ravishing Olivier Journu of Bordeaux. In his portrait, Olivier Journu wears a pale rose velvet waistcoat adorned with a corsage of matching roses in the top buttonhole: He looks amazingly like Gary Cooper in a powdered wig, his turquoise eyes and open smile beguiling and winsome.
The displays of porcelain figures in the European Decorative Arts galleries behind and to the left of the Grand Staircase are reliably empty. Bustelli, Luck, Lücke, Kändler-- the finest modelers, created delectable figures of comedia dell'arte characters --Scapin, Harlequin, Isabella, Columbine-- for the finest porcelain factories: Meissen, Höchst, Capodimonte. The figures' tiny faces are so lifelike and animated, modern versions don't compare, both because today's porcelain mixture is not quite the same, but also because the modelers of the 20th and 21st century don't have the immersion in the period from which the characters sprang that the great 18th modelers in porcelain did. They are just copyists, however skilled.
Finally, I go to see the bedroom from the Palazzo Sagredo in Venice built in 1742, a room at the end of the British Decorative Arts Galleries few people know about or take the trouble to find. The bedroom is lined with rich green silk wall coverings in a brocatelle pattern. There is an appropriately ethereal oval painting with large gilded frame, The Triumph Of Dawn Over Night by Diziani in the center of the ceiling. In the corners of the room, beautifully molded armorini, life-sized figures of winged children, flutter. If I wanted to dream of heaven, this bedroom is the one in which I believe I could summon the empyrean.
My visit over, I walk across the park again, this time leaving it via the Tennis Courts near 94th Street. These are part of my childhood: my elementary school is on 95th Street and I knew of at least one parent who played on the courts before picking up her son, David Weston, a classmate of my sister's. Mrs. Weston could have stepped out of a Claire McCardell ad: tall, slender, brunette hair swept up, red gingham shirt, navy blue trousers and needle-nose sneakers, wood tennis racket in hand, a long-haired collie on a leash.
I decide to walk down 95th Street from Central Park West to Columbus and past the school, a tiny private school founded by a Scotsman named Alexander Robertson in 1789. It was a school which had in its first classes the children of black freemen. Indeed, I had a classmate, Wendy Jones, who was of African descent, at a time (the late 1950s) when African-American children were rarely students in private schools in Manhattan. I can still remember walking with Wendy to the bus stop and noticing that her eyes were tearing as we talked. Knowing that blacks were less well-treated than other Americans, I thought that perhaps something I had said was insensitive and had provoked her tears. I asked her, and she quickly told me not to worry, that her eyes watered from the wind. (I hope that was the truth.)
The school is so small I had only six classmates in my sixth grade graduating class. The building on 95th Street feeds directly into a room that contains part of Andrew Carnegie's library, as well as a statue of Robert Burns. Beyond that room is the entrance to the Second Presbyterian Church, which was founded in 1756. It was there that we had our "Christmas Pageant" --which is now a multi-cultural holiday celebration with no religious connection.
Nonetheless, it was nice to walk by the building, which is in good condition, thanks to the building on top of the school of a luxury high-rise. The school sold the air rights and the luxury apartment building is actually consistent with those on the rest of the block and surrounding area. The present headmistress, Reverend Leslie Merlin, has been there many years, although she did not succeed James G. Spence, the Scotsman who was headmaster as well as Reverend of Second Presbyterian when I and my sister were students.
Dr. Spence was married to a Lebanese Christian (the school librarian, and a terror), with whom he had three children, Ian, Doreen, and Colin. There was also another Scottish girl, Fiona, who was in Doreen's class. In my class we had Hans Vogel, a German boy, Kathy Voinoff, (Russian descent), Susan Agay (Hungarian), Paulette Tunis (French), Wendy Metelitz, Todd Walker and Richard Kirsch (American Jewish); Cheryl Cosgrove and Christopher Norris (Amerian Protestant). Yul Brynner's niece, Laura Linda Raymond, was a class ahead of me; in my sister's class was the son of Frank Sutton, the actor who played the irascible sergeant to Jim Nabor's rube on the TV's "Gomer Pyle". Cheryl and Christopher's parents were all in show business, too.
To give you an idea what "show business" meant in those days, Paulette Tunis' mother, a beautiful woman with short black hair, sparkling light green eyes and a beautiful figure, worked as a photographer at the Copacabana, wearing a skimpy outfit to take snaps of celebrities, a big camera with a giant flash on her hip, ever at the ready. Christopher Norris, a lovely girl with long, very blond hair, was a working performer: in the second grade, she was in a musical based on Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", in which she played Mitty's daughter, "Penina". Christopher's father was a bandleader, in an era when that was still a glamorous occupation. The whole fair-haired family lived in a "classic six" apartment at The Turin, at 333 Central Park West, not far from the school. I remember visiting once, and discovering they had a white grand piano in the sunken living room, which was carpeted with a white shag rug. A white shag rug!
Cheryl Cosgrove's parents did commercials for a living. They, like Christopher's parents, were tall, slender and looked as thought they stepped out of "Look" magazine --the dads slightly tanned, in expensive suits of classic cut, the mothers tall and able to carry off the pouffed skirts that became fashionable after Dior premiered the "New Look". These parents were more sophisticated than the others, as was obvious in Christopher's case the Halloween she and I were both in the first grade, when her mother dressed her as a Playboy bunny. (I went as a hobo --each in our way shocked our first grade teacher, Mrs. de Castro, of whom more later.) Through these fancy parents I and my classmates got to attend the first of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, to get on TV shows that needed kids (including one with Jack Gilford, who was the first "Hysterium" in "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum"). Also, in 1962 we also got to cut an album with Vaughn Meader, the voice impersonator who began a promising career with pitch-perfect imitations of John F. Kennedy, only to have it all turn to ashes on November 22, 1963.
We lost a few of the original group through the years, so there were only seven of us by the time we graduated, in the sixth grade. Of course, I remember my teachers: Mrs. Ceath (kindergarten), Mrs. de Castro (1st grade), Mrs. Walton (3rd and 4th grades), and Mrs. Goldsmith (5th and 6th grades).
Nonetheless, it was a shock to walk past the school and see my first grade classroom through the windows, intact. The stair down to the room, the place where the teacher sat, the play area, the bookcases, were all in the same places. I even remember the corner where, if you misbehaved, you were put.
Miriam Perkins de Castro, my first grade teacher, was a high-born Maine lady in her sixties who fell in love with and married Mr. de Castro, a bald, tanned, tennis-playing Cuban, whom she always called "De". "Mrs. de" loved anything in a shade of purple, and only wore clothes in that color. She spoke in a plummy New England accent and once confessed her family were all Republicans, a daring admission in New York anytime. She was incapable of a mean thought or action. For some reason, one Christmas season, she invited my mother and my sister and I to tea at the apartment she shared with "De" at 360 Central Park West, around the corner from the school. We had Ritz crackers for the first time, and thought we had gone to heaven. "Mrs. de" had a Swedish angel chime, a four candle holder whose heat caused the tiny chimes suspended from angel figures to turn and strike small bells for so long as the tapers burned. The effect was magical, and we were rapt.
When I remember my childhood this way I think, "How wonderful New York was!" I was a child, and life was kind.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Getting Tough With Beau
November 26, 2013
Puppies grow up to be dogs, hopefully good ones. Our hopes to the contrary however, the most attractive little critter untrained, can turn into a rootin', tootin' terror. Beau, whom I apostrophized yesterday --Beautiful Beau, is showing a dominating, stubborn side that bodes badly for our relationship. His nipping of my feet has generated more than one "Ouch!"; my hands are covered with tiny cuts from Beau's sharp teeth. Beau is also leaping to get at my face, and trying to jump into my lap when I sit down. I can't stop all this a moment too soon.
I go to the online sources and realize I have to don rubber gloves when Beau is nippy; more, I have to stick my gloved hand into his mouth sideways as far as it will go, until Beau no longer finds the biting pleasurable. Indeed, when I do this, he tries opening his mouth wider to escape the rubber mass at the back of his mouth, but can't. After a few tastes of this, Beau is supposed to stop nipping.
Halting the jumping up is more challenging, as the conventional wisdom is that whenever it occurs, I have to force Beau down and hold him there until he stops resisting the downward force of my hands. This is distasteful to me, but if after a few times, it stops the behavior from recurring I will be glad. He will be a dangerous dog if I can't, and those dogs are put down.
Holding Beau down is, however easier said than done. He resists with all his strength, even though one of my hands is pressing on his neck, and the other on his haunches. It takes all my strength to restrain him, and he only weighs thirteen pounds and a few ounces,. As I am holding him down he growls briefly, then stops resisting. I am supposed to walk away now, but instead I caress his back: I have hurt him, and I feel terrible about it. On the other hand, a 40 pound dog that leaps at my face trying to bite off my nose, is not my idea of the dog I want to have around.
Fortunately, I have to go out, so I put him in his crate and go out. When I return, I have been away longer than ever before: by accident not design, I have been away four hours more than I intended. I return worried Beau has not been able to control his bladder, and will have soiled his mattress. I need not have worried. Not only has he not soiled his bed, he is delighted to see me, and does not hold my earlier harshness against me.
More, when I place him on his Wee Wee pad, he lets me stroke his head and back, looking at me affectionately. Then he "does his numbers" perfectly.
We will see what tomorrow brings. After all, as Scarlett O'Hara said, "Tomorrow is another day." Truer words were never spoken about training a puppy.
Puppies grow up to be dogs, hopefully good ones. Our hopes to the contrary however, the most attractive little critter untrained, can turn into a rootin', tootin' terror. Beau, whom I apostrophized yesterday --Beautiful Beau, is showing a dominating, stubborn side that bodes badly for our relationship. His nipping of my feet has generated more than one "Ouch!"; my hands are covered with tiny cuts from Beau's sharp teeth. Beau is also leaping to get at my face, and trying to jump into my lap when I sit down. I can't stop all this a moment too soon.
I go to the online sources and realize I have to don rubber gloves when Beau is nippy; more, I have to stick my gloved hand into his mouth sideways as far as it will go, until Beau no longer finds the biting pleasurable. Indeed, when I do this, he tries opening his mouth wider to escape the rubber mass at the back of his mouth, but can't. After a few tastes of this, Beau is supposed to stop nipping.
Halting the jumping up is more challenging, as the conventional wisdom is that whenever it occurs, I have to force Beau down and hold him there until he stops resisting the downward force of my hands. This is distasteful to me, but if after a few times, it stops the behavior from recurring I will be glad. He will be a dangerous dog if I can't, and those dogs are put down.
Holding Beau down is, however easier said than done. He resists with all his strength, even though one of my hands is pressing on his neck, and the other on his haunches. It takes all my strength to restrain him, and he only weighs thirteen pounds and a few ounces,. As I am holding him down he growls briefly, then stops resisting. I am supposed to walk away now, but instead I caress his back: I have hurt him, and I feel terrible about it. On the other hand, a 40 pound dog that leaps at my face trying to bite off my nose, is not my idea of the dog I want to have around.
Fortunately, I have to go out, so I put him in his crate and go out. When I return, I have been away longer than ever before: by accident not design, I have been away four hours more than I intended. I return worried Beau has not been able to control his bladder, and will have soiled his mattress. I need not have worried. Not only has he not soiled his bed, he is delighted to see me, and does not hold my earlier harshness against me.
More, when I place him on his Wee Wee pad, he lets me stroke his head and back, looking at me affectionately. Then he "does his numbers" perfectly.
We will see what tomorrow brings. After all, as Scarlett O'Hara said, "Tomorrow is another day." Truer words were never spoken about training a puppy.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Overcoming Obstacles: A Big Day for Beau
November 25, 2013
It's become bitterly cold in New York and everyone is coping as best they can, switching to the puffy down jacket and assuming the "Michelin tire man" look; or, if you are younger, the flat and fashionable micro down. A few of us are still cycling, although once the wet weather arrives, I will opt for "spinning" on a stationary bicycle at the gym a few blocks away. Forty-five minutes of high-speed pedaling under the direction of a pumped-up gym instructor is not for the faint-hearted, but perhaps it is the only alternative to dangerously slick streets.
What I find particularly appealing about the local gym is that it will be offering classes on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. There will be a spinning class at 9:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, which appeals to my sense of rightness. If I'm going to eat more than usual, then I ought to exercise at least as much as usual.
But then I've always been enamored of the ideal of mens sana in corpore sano. I first learned of the ideal (a Greek contribution to Western civilization), reading the Cornford translation of Plato's Republic my senior year in high school. To test the body's limits has always seemed to me as essential as testing the mind's. I think I owe much of my ability to cope with life's challenges to my having never abandoned the habit of motion, if you will.
In fact, when I was at Harvard, at a particularly stressful moment in my time there, it was the will to exhaust myself physically by exercise that kept me from suicide. At the end of the summer before the start of my junior year I broke up with my long-time boyfriend. I was living in an apartment with a pre-med student, a young woman from Boulder, Colorado named Karen Fogel. We were not close, but she wanted to live in an apartment (as did I), and we thought we could room together, despite not being more than acquaintances.
One night in early October 1973, on the way home from the "Lucky Garden", a Chinese restaurant in North Cambridge, she and another Radcliffe student were jumped from behind and stabbed, both seriously. As a result, I lost my roommate, whom I had projected would offer some company to tide me over while I adjusted to my new single status. With her gone, I faced an empty, unfurnished apartment.
As I was one of the few young women to take up with a young man in freshman year, I did not enter the lottery for Harvard housing, remaining at Radcliffe as a sophomore and junior. When I broke up with my boyfriend and my roommate was hospitalized, I lost the social network I had built around my boyfriend, and any hopes for a new network, and it was tough. I wasn't from an affluent enough background to socialize with most of my peers, many of whom regularly went skiing in places like Vail, or who had weekly allowances far larger than what I could earn as a student simultaneously trying to earn a degree and make a little money to keep myself in books and movies.
My aloneness was particularly felt on weekends when, not being in a dormitory, I did not have the life on the hall to distract me from my woes. Also, at Harvard when I was there, there were a few suicides. An Asian young woman who was admitted to Harvard at 16 threw herself off the roof of Cabot, a dormitory in South House. A young man jumped off the roof of "new" Mather, an ugly, newly-built, high-rise dormitory whose layout discouraged interaction among residents, unlike the more traditional dorms. A shiver went through me every time I heard of someone so young taking their life: Harvard may be the most competitive environment for young people in the world; the pressures of relentless competition can be isolating. When I found myself without either a boyfriend or a roommate in Wolbach Hall, the apartment building associated with the residential complex to which I was assigned as a freshman ("North House"), I began to crumble slowly.
One night I had a panic attack and thought of killing myself. At one moment, though, I just got angry. Why should I, who had labored so hard to be accepted to Harvard, who had fought my parents to let me apply, who had gone there without the support of my parents, accepting that my fate there would not be easy or "typical" --who had made the calculation that, no matter how difficult it could become over the course of the four years, in the end, it would all be "worth it". And as I weighed whether I really wanted to end my life, I realized that I still believed that: so instead of slitting my wrists, or jumping off a building, or taking an overdose, I just uttered an expletive and threw myself down on the floor and started doing, of all things --"sit-ups"! "Sit-ups" saved me --it sounds hilarious, I know, but it is the truth. After I had done about one hundred, I was so exhausted I was drained of anxiety. And I persevered and graduated --not on time, but two years later --with honors in "general studies".
Why any of the above has any relationship to Beau's big day is beyond my power to explain cogently, so consider the story a sort of lagniappe --a free offering from my biography, a memory of being in difficulties and prevailing against them. I cannot help but thinking that my little dog's days test him, too.
Today he went to see the vet for a rabies shot. Whenever he visits the vet he is picked up and put on the scale, then he has a thermometer stuck inside his rectum: "Ouch!" I hold him and look in his eyes and he doesn't squirm too much, so he must be an enduring soul. Next, the doctor opens up his eyes by pulling the lids back and staring in. "Ugh!" Finally, the doctor takes out a big needle and gives him the injection. "Aarrgh!" As the first year of a dog's life is reckoned as being the equivalent of ten human years, Beau is enduring all this at the age of two and a half. Yet he doesn't bark or whimper or cry, he takes it all in stride.
The vet said that I can take Beau out for a five-minute walk once a day to get him used to being outside, even though it will be mid-December before he will be able to go out and meet other dogs. I jump at the chance to get Beau to experience life beyond the confines of the apartment and once we get home from the vet's I remove him from the carrier, put his leash on and take him outside. It will be his first outing.
We walk up 111th Street from Broadway to Amsterdam and then back, before its time to go in. Beau is curious about the sawhorses the police have put down (For what reason, I don't know.) He does not approach the barriers protecting the trees that line the street and the plants that surround them. He walks by my side, with my occasionally saying "Heel", but Beau essentially doing so, never pulling on the leash. We pass lots of "street furniture", but Beau remains largely undistracted, a new experience for me with a dog.
I do not want to encourage Beau to get any closer to the trees, as I want him to be a good canine citizen. Too many dog owners in New York allow their dogs to soil the earth of these plots, destroying the work of neighbors who meticulously cultivate the plantings. In fact, in the building I live the owner of an enormous black Labrador used to allow the dog to leap the barrier directly in front of the building and relieve himself in the plot. As the dog was enormous, he literally "watered" the flower beds. The neighbor was oblivious to the obligation of civility dog ownership imposes. The practice stopped only with the dog's death, which was barely lamented.
Somehow it seems less the dog than the owner who is at fault. Its instinct was to jump in the flower bed, but it was the owner's duty not to, literally, give the instinct rein. Similarly, an old man down the street who walks a "mop" of a dog, allows it to drop its turds without retrieving them in a plastic bag. On my apartment building floor, the owner of a pair of Japanese "Chins" never notices they have left something behind after entering the elevator.
I want Beau to be a good citizen, so when others meet him they will never say "beautiful, but dumb". As a flea-bitten, worm-ridden child of Charleston's woods, he wasn't born with the equivalent of a "silver spoon in his mouth" --American Kennel Club papers; but he's hard-working, bright and spirited. I daresay I'm anthropomorphizing him when I apostrophize:
O Beau! What hopes I have for you!
Little brown dog, if you can 'make it' here
You'll 'make it' anywhere!
O Beau! Who? You! That's Who!
Your 'Beau regard'
All accord
Promises much
As a nonesuch
Boykin Spaniel
Splendid animal!
It's become bitterly cold in New York and everyone is coping as best they can, switching to the puffy down jacket and assuming the "Michelin tire man" look; or, if you are younger, the flat and fashionable micro down. A few of us are still cycling, although once the wet weather arrives, I will opt for "spinning" on a stationary bicycle at the gym a few blocks away. Forty-five minutes of high-speed pedaling under the direction of a pumped-up gym instructor is not for the faint-hearted, but perhaps it is the only alternative to dangerously slick streets.
What I find particularly appealing about the local gym is that it will be offering classes on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. There will be a spinning class at 9:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, which appeals to my sense of rightness. If I'm going to eat more than usual, then I ought to exercise at least as much as usual.
But then I've always been enamored of the ideal of mens sana in corpore sano. I first learned of the ideal (a Greek contribution to Western civilization), reading the Cornford translation of Plato's Republic my senior year in high school. To test the body's limits has always seemed to me as essential as testing the mind's. I think I owe much of my ability to cope with life's challenges to my having never abandoned the habit of motion, if you will.
In fact, when I was at Harvard, at a particularly stressful moment in my time there, it was the will to exhaust myself physically by exercise that kept me from suicide. At the end of the summer before the start of my junior year I broke up with my long-time boyfriend. I was living in an apartment with a pre-med student, a young woman from Boulder, Colorado named Karen Fogel. We were not close, but she wanted to live in an apartment (as did I), and we thought we could room together, despite not being more than acquaintances.
One night in early October 1973, on the way home from the "Lucky Garden", a Chinese restaurant in North Cambridge, she and another Radcliffe student were jumped from behind and stabbed, both seriously. As a result, I lost my roommate, whom I had projected would offer some company to tide me over while I adjusted to my new single status. With her gone, I faced an empty, unfurnished apartment.
As I was one of the few young women to take up with a young man in freshman year, I did not enter the lottery for Harvard housing, remaining at Radcliffe as a sophomore and junior. When I broke up with my boyfriend and my roommate was hospitalized, I lost the social network I had built around my boyfriend, and any hopes for a new network, and it was tough. I wasn't from an affluent enough background to socialize with most of my peers, many of whom regularly went skiing in places like Vail, or who had weekly allowances far larger than what I could earn as a student simultaneously trying to earn a degree and make a little money to keep myself in books and movies.
My aloneness was particularly felt on weekends when, not being in a dormitory, I did not have the life on the hall to distract me from my woes. Also, at Harvard when I was there, there were a few suicides. An Asian young woman who was admitted to Harvard at 16 threw herself off the roof of Cabot, a dormitory in South House. A young man jumped off the roof of "new" Mather, an ugly, newly-built, high-rise dormitory whose layout discouraged interaction among residents, unlike the more traditional dorms. A shiver went through me every time I heard of someone so young taking their life: Harvard may be the most competitive environment for young people in the world; the pressures of relentless competition can be isolating. When I found myself without either a boyfriend or a roommate in Wolbach Hall, the apartment building associated with the residential complex to which I was assigned as a freshman ("North House"), I began to crumble slowly.
One night I had a panic attack and thought of killing myself. At one moment, though, I just got angry. Why should I, who had labored so hard to be accepted to Harvard, who had fought my parents to let me apply, who had gone there without the support of my parents, accepting that my fate there would not be easy or "typical" --who had made the calculation that, no matter how difficult it could become over the course of the four years, in the end, it would all be "worth it". And as I weighed whether I really wanted to end my life, I realized that I still believed that: so instead of slitting my wrists, or jumping off a building, or taking an overdose, I just uttered an expletive and threw myself down on the floor and started doing, of all things --"sit-ups"! "Sit-ups" saved me --it sounds hilarious, I know, but it is the truth. After I had done about one hundred, I was so exhausted I was drained of anxiety. And I persevered and graduated --not on time, but two years later --with honors in "general studies".
Why any of the above has any relationship to Beau's big day is beyond my power to explain cogently, so consider the story a sort of lagniappe --a free offering from my biography, a memory of being in difficulties and prevailing against them. I cannot help but thinking that my little dog's days test him, too.
Today he went to see the vet for a rabies shot. Whenever he visits the vet he is picked up and put on the scale, then he has a thermometer stuck inside his rectum: "Ouch!" I hold him and look in his eyes and he doesn't squirm too much, so he must be an enduring soul. Next, the doctor opens up his eyes by pulling the lids back and staring in. "Ugh!" Finally, the doctor takes out a big needle and gives him the injection. "Aarrgh!" As the first year of a dog's life is reckoned as being the equivalent of ten human years, Beau is enduring all this at the age of two and a half. Yet he doesn't bark or whimper or cry, he takes it all in stride.
The vet said that I can take Beau out for a five-minute walk once a day to get him used to being outside, even though it will be mid-December before he will be able to go out and meet other dogs. I jump at the chance to get Beau to experience life beyond the confines of the apartment and once we get home from the vet's I remove him from the carrier, put his leash on and take him outside. It will be his first outing.
We walk up 111th Street from Broadway to Amsterdam and then back, before its time to go in. Beau is curious about the sawhorses the police have put down (For what reason, I don't know.) He does not approach the barriers protecting the trees that line the street and the plants that surround them. He walks by my side, with my occasionally saying "Heel", but Beau essentially doing so, never pulling on the leash. We pass lots of "street furniture", but Beau remains largely undistracted, a new experience for me with a dog.
I do not want to encourage Beau to get any closer to the trees, as I want him to be a good canine citizen. Too many dog owners in New York allow their dogs to soil the earth of these plots, destroying the work of neighbors who meticulously cultivate the plantings. In fact, in the building I live the owner of an enormous black Labrador used to allow the dog to leap the barrier directly in front of the building and relieve himself in the plot. As the dog was enormous, he literally "watered" the flower beds. The neighbor was oblivious to the obligation of civility dog ownership imposes. The practice stopped only with the dog's death, which was barely lamented.
Somehow it seems less the dog than the owner who is at fault. Its instinct was to jump in the flower bed, but it was the owner's duty not to, literally, give the instinct rein. Similarly, an old man down the street who walks a "mop" of a dog, allows it to drop its turds without retrieving them in a plastic bag. On my apartment building floor, the owner of a pair of Japanese "Chins" never notices they have left something behind after entering the elevator.
I want Beau to be a good citizen, so when others meet him they will never say "beautiful, but dumb". As a flea-bitten, worm-ridden child of Charleston's woods, he wasn't born with the equivalent of a "silver spoon in his mouth" --American Kennel Club papers; but he's hard-working, bright and spirited. I daresay I'm anthropomorphizing him when I apostrophize:
O Beau! What hopes I have for you!
Little brown dog, if you can 'make it' here
You'll 'make it' anywhere!
O Beau! Who? You! That's Who!
Your 'Beau regard'
All accord
Promises much
As a nonesuch
Boykin Spaniel
Splendid animal!
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Beauregard's Growing Pains
November 23, 2013
Some say that the moment we leave the womb, suffering begins. In Beauregard's case, one might say that that became particularly true once the woman with the dark hair took him away from South Carolina to her apartment in Manhattan, where he lives now.
The first night away from his brothers, his mother, his father and uncle, he was put in a cell, which was itself placed in a lightless room. He cried all night.
The next night he was removed from the cell and put in a prison, with the only difference being that his jailer --the woman with the dark hair-- slept at his side throughout the night. The next day the jailer decided to put his prison on the elevated platform where she slept. He didn't cry so much that night.
The jailer started controlling his life immediately, making him sit before she would put down his food and water, and taking both away as soon as he was through. Whenever he was let out from prison for a brief time, he would attempt to get out of her sight --but she watched him like a hawk, murmuring "Uh-Unh!" each time he approached an area not in her immediate control. Of course, he got used to the sound --and recogned that it meant he ought to move away from the area into which he had ventured. A few times he tried letting her know what he thought of her by putting down markers on her rugs --but it was counter-productive. She just got upset.
When Beauregard did what she wanted --peeing and defecating on the paper sheets she put down, one after the other-- she would tell him he was "good", and signal that he would get a reward. That reward was one more bead of food --which he only got after he assumed the "Sit" position. All that for one bead of food!
Beauregard's mouth hurt, so he would chew things to try to ease the discomfort. Here he had to be careful, because he could chew some things, but not others: the jailer didn't mind him tearing at the rug in the bathroom, but didn't like him nibbling at books or newspapers or hanging tassels. And she didn't think it was funny when he occasionally took one end of a Wee-Wee pad in his mouth and paraded around the apartment with it.
The jailer liked throwing him things to run after and bring back to her: a ball, a rolled-up sock, a large plastic shampoo bottle. In the mornings, she would get her jailer's whistle and blow --one of those high blasts that only he could hear-- then shout "Fetch!" --the signal for him to run to pick up the thing thrown. After he picked it up, she would say "Come!" and when he approached she would wrench it from his mouth, saying "Drop it!" --Why?
If she had to go out, the jailer would pick him up and put him in prison, closing the door of the room where she slept behind her. He would cry a little bit at first, but Beauregard was resigned after a few minutes, knowing his protests were in vain. Sometimes though, his jailer would pay attention: in the morning, for instance, when his cries always ended with his jailer opening the prison gate and picking him up, then placing him on the kitchen floor near the Wee-Wee pad, standing over him until he peed.
His joy was short-lived, though. After doing #1, his jailer would pick him up, put him back in prison and go back to sleep. On these occasions, at least, he could get some of his own back: if he'd slept enough, he'd keep crying until finally, the jailer had to get up, remove him from prison and go get him his food. By that time, the jailer was fully awake, whether she'd slept enough or not.
The funny thing was that the jailer could be very nice sometimes. She was always regular with the reward after he peed --so much so, that he peed at every opportunity, so he could get another bead of food. And she would occasionally give him a little piece of a pig ear, or a frozen carrot stick --and even a biscuit, sometimes. So even though she was a tyrant, she wasn't without feeling.
She let him bite her shoes and socks, and didn't mind if he gnawed at her cycling shoes. And she would bring him things to chew on --today she brought him a yellow rubber "pacifier" and a tennis ball, too. And when he slept at her feet, she would interrupt her reading and stroke his back, which felt good.
The nicest thing about her was that in the evenings she would hold him in her arms and put him in her lap, where he could fall asleep so fast it was as if his eyes had been sprinkled with sandman's dust. That was the best time. At moments like those, he felt Oh! So close to her!
Then she would go and spoil it all by telling him he had to go back to prison and locking him up again.
Some say that the moment we leave the womb, suffering begins. In Beauregard's case, one might say that that became particularly true once the woman with the dark hair took him away from South Carolina to her apartment in Manhattan, where he lives now.
The first night away from his brothers, his mother, his father and uncle, he was put in a cell, which was itself placed in a lightless room. He cried all night.
The next night he was removed from the cell and put in a prison, with the only difference being that his jailer --the woman with the dark hair-- slept at his side throughout the night. The next day the jailer decided to put his prison on the elevated platform where she slept. He didn't cry so much that night.
The jailer started controlling his life immediately, making him sit before she would put down his food and water, and taking both away as soon as he was through. Whenever he was let out from prison for a brief time, he would attempt to get out of her sight --but she watched him like a hawk, murmuring "Uh-Unh!" each time he approached an area not in her immediate control. Of course, he got used to the sound --and recogned that it meant he ought to move away from the area into which he had ventured. A few times he tried letting her know what he thought of her by putting down markers on her rugs --but it was counter-productive. She just got upset.
When Beauregard did what she wanted --peeing and defecating on the paper sheets she put down, one after the other-- she would tell him he was "good", and signal that he would get a reward. That reward was one more bead of food --which he only got after he assumed the "Sit" position. All that for one bead of food!
Beauregard's mouth hurt, so he would chew things to try to ease the discomfort. Here he had to be careful, because he could chew some things, but not others: the jailer didn't mind him tearing at the rug in the bathroom, but didn't like him nibbling at books or newspapers or hanging tassels. And she didn't think it was funny when he occasionally took one end of a Wee-Wee pad in his mouth and paraded around the apartment with it.
The jailer liked throwing him things to run after and bring back to her: a ball, a rolled-up sock, a large plastic shampoo bottle. In the mornings, she would get her jailer's whistle and blow --one of those high blasts that only he could hear-- then shout "Fetch!" --the signal for him to run to pick up the thing thrown. After he picked it up, she would say "Come!" and when he approached she would wrench it from his mouth, saying "Drop it!" --Why?
If she had to go out, the jailer would pick him up and put him in prison, closing the door of the room where she slept behind her. He would cry a little bit at first, but Beauregard was resigned after a few minutes, knowing his protests were in vain. Sometimes though, his jailer would pay attention: in the morning, for instance, when his cries always ended with his jailer opening the prison gate and picking him up, then placing him on the kitchen floor near the Wee-Wee pad, standing over him until he peed.
His joy was short-lived, though. After doing #1, his jailer would pick him up, put him back in prison and go back to sleep. On these occasions, at least, he could get some of his own back: if he'd slept enough, he'd keep crying until finally, the jailer had to get up, remove him from prison and go get him his food. By that time, the jailer was fully awake, whether she'd slept enough or not.
The funny thing was that the jailer could be very nice sometimes. She was always regular with the reward after he peed --so much so, that he peed at every opportunity, so he could get another bead of food. And she would occasionally give him a little piece of a pig ear, or a frozen carrot stick --and even a biscuit, sometimes. So even though she was a tyrant, she wasn't without feeling.
She let him bite her shoes and socks, and didn't mind if he gnawed at her cycling shoes. And she would bring him things to chew on --today she brought him a yellow rubber "pacifier" and a tennis ball, too. And when he slept at her feet, she would interrupt her reading and stroke his back, which felt good.
The nicest thing about her was that in the evenings she would hold him in her arms and put him in her lap, where he could fall asleep so fast it was as if his eyes had been sprinkled with sandman's dust. That was the best time. At moments like those, he felt Oh! So close to her!
Then she would go and spoil it all by telling him he had to go back to prison and locking him up again.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
The Tug At The Heart
November 21, 2013
All successful people make priorities: it is a key element of success, divining that which must be attended to, from that which need not, or might be attended to after more pressing concerns are addressed.
Which is what makes the love of an animal such an anomaly in the life of an organized, analytical, goal-oriented individual. You needn't project that I write about myself: I freely admit that I am besotted my puppy dog, "Beau".
To look at a living thing, realize its helplessness, conclude that you are able to lessen its fraught existence, then find that the selfsame rationale of your head has in fact, struck deeply into your heart--is to sum up the emotion that has taken over my existence since I brought the little brown dog from South Carolina home.
The dog is not a "toy" --it cannot be put down and to the side when I tire of it. And with each gesture I make in acknowledgement of its unique way of summoning me, I realize that I enter into an intimate relationship with an animal, not a human being. So Beau can't talk back to me, and he can't hurt me, because he will never assume that I want anything but the best for him. Even when he thinks that I oughtn't to have exercised my authority over him-- say, by putting him in his crate while I go briefly out-- after a point he resigns himself to not getting his way. And never holds against me that I made the decision to coop him up.
What I find most curious is that, at one level, I am parroting all the clichés about why owning a dog is desirable: "He's a good companion", "He's been so easy to housebreak". At another, the truth is, he's not perfect: he makes demands on my energies, he still needs to be watched, he needs to be cleaned up after once in a while.
What I would be less likely to forgive in a fellow-human, I willingly forgive in this little thing. Is it because I know he will only, as the years go on, become a more physically strong variation on what he is now, never developing independently of me, as a child does? Is it because I know that he will, even more, as the years go on (should I live so long with my forces relatively intact), need me to shelter him as his strength ebbs? Is it because we may, at this point, grow old together in more or less the same rhythm?
I had a professor of the law that governs the first amendment of the Constitution, a Jesuit who specialized in freedom of religion cases. His teaching method was to ask Socratically what our Constitution meant when it guaranteed religious liberty, even as he explained to us what the Justices of the country's highest Court said it meant. The professor was also a priest, and a Jesuit, at that. He married my husband and I, and he knew us for many years. There was no one whose insights I cherished more.
So I asked him one day, "I love our dogs so much. Will they be with us in heaven? They don't have souls, so does that exclude them?"
His answer was that at one time, it would have been categorically stated that animals did not have souls. He quoted Saint Thomas Aquinas, the theologian whose writings are the foundation of Catholic faith. Saint Thomas distinguished between man --a creature with a soul, and the power to discern right from wrong-- and animals like the whale, whose migrations from ocean to ocean are guided by instinct, rather than thought.
However, this priest concluded (in a flourish wholly Jesuitical), that today it was not uniformly accepted that Saint Thomas Aquinas had got it completely right when thinking about animals as a group, when so many clear distinctions appear between what one species can apprehend and another. So the migratory instinct of whales could be distinguished, say, from the devotion of "Fala", the Scottish Terrier to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom many witnesses swore had a preternatural intelligence when it came to FDR.
My professor-priest wrapped up the subject with a more telling question:
"The question isn't really, though, whether your dogs will get into heaven--"
And at this point, he leaned in towards me a little bit, to make his point--
"--But will you?"
All successful people make priorities: it is a key element of success, divining that which must be attended to, from that which need not, or might be attended to after more pressing concerns are addressed.
Which is what makes the love of an animal such an anomaly in the life of an organized, analytical, goal-oriented individual. You needn't project that I write about myself: I freely admit that I am besotted my puppy dog, "Beau".
To look at a living thing, realize its helplessness, conclude that you are able to lessen its fraught existence, then find that the selfsame rationale of your head has in fact, struck deeply into your heart--is to sum up the emotion that has taken over my existence since I brought the little brown dog from South Carolina home.
The dog is not a "toy" --it cannot be put down and to the side when I tire of it. And with each gesture I make in acknowledgement of its unique way of summoning me, I realize that I enter into an intimate relationship with an animal, not a human being. So Beau can't talk back to me, and he can't hurt me, because he will never assume that I want anything but the best for him. Even when he thinks that I oughtn't to have exercised my authority over him-- say, by putting him in his crate while I go briefly out-- after a point he resigns himself to not getting his way. And never holds against me that I made the decision to coop him up.
What I find most curious is that, at one level, I am parroting all the clichés about why owning a dog is desirable: "He's a good companion", "He's been so easy to housebreak". At another, the truth is, he's not perfect: he makes demands on my energies, he still needs to be watched, he needs to be cleaned up after once in a while.
What I would be less likely to forgive in a fellow-human, I willingly forgive in this little thing. Is it because I know he will only, as the years go on, become a more physically strong variation on what he is now, never developing independently of me, as a child does? Is it because I know that he will, even more, as the years go on (should I live so long with my forces relatively intact), need me to shelter him as his strength ebbs? Is it because we may, at this point, grow old together in more or less the same rhythm?
I had a professor of the law that governs the first amendment of the Constitution, a Jesuit who specialized in freedom of religion cases. His teaching method was to ask Socratically what our Constitution meant when it guaranteed religious liberty, even as he explained to us what the Justices of the country's highest Court said it meant. The professor was also a priest, and a Jesuit, at that. He married my husband and I, and he knew us for many years. There was no one whose insights I cherished more.
So I asked him one day, "I love our dogs so much. Will they be with us in heaven? They don't have souls, so does that exclude them?"
His answer was that at one time, it would have been categorically stated that animals did not have souls. He quoted Saint Thomas Aquinas, the theologian whose writings are the foundation of Catholic faith. Saint Thomas distinguished between man --a creature with a soul, and the power to discern right from wrong-- and animals like the whale, whose migrations from ocean to ocean are guided by instinct, rather than thought.
However, this priest concluded (in a flourish wholly Jesuitical), that today it was not uniformly accepted that Saint Thomas Aquinas had got it completely right when thinking about animals as a group, when so many clear distinctions appear between what one species can apprehend and another. So the migratory instinct of whales could be distinguished, say, from the devotion of "Fala", the Scottish Terrier to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom many witnesses swore had a preternatural intelligence when it came to FDR.
My professor-priest wrapped up the subject with a more telling question:
"The question isn't really, though, whether your dogs will get into heaven--"
And at this point, he leaned in towards me a little bit, to make his point--
"--But will you?"
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Yesteryear's "Lectio" recaptured
November 20, 2013
Beau gets me up at about a quarter of seven each morning: I have taken to lolling in bed for about fifteen minutes after he shakes himself awake, the sound of which is my new alarm clock.
I march around the bed, in my nightshirt and slippers, pulling back the curtains to let the light in, opening one of the windows to let the fresh air enter the bedroom. After that, I open the door to the crate Beau sleeps in on the bed and he steps out of the crate and sits on the end of the bed. I pick him up, put him on the floor and start for the kitchen to make breakfast for both of us.
I don't go a foot before Beau has grabbed the tail of my nightshirt, holding on to it so that I can drag him a few feet before he lets go his grip and tries to grab the shirttail again. I walk very slowly so as not to jostle the puppy, approaching the sink, where I pick up his food and water bowls. Within a few minutes of drinking, eating and "doing his numbers", Beau is sprightly and needs to be entertained.
I pick up the dog whistle and the sock ball I made him, Beau's eyes on the yellow shape. I blow the whistle, throw the sock ball and cry "Fetch!" --and Beau goes for it, picking up the soft shape, then bringing it back. I do this only a few times, so as not to tax his attention span.
After that, he plays "tug-of-war" with the sock ball, or an old leather belt. An empty plastic shampoo bottle has become another toy: he likes to try to get his mouth around it, and as it slips from his maw, pounce again. Most demanding of all, a blue hard-rubber racquet ball tests his patience: it will bounce a few times after I first drop it, but the residual momentum makes it roll erratically, as if it were being moved by an unseen hand. Beau lies down watching its tergiversations before finally seizing it in his paws, after which he bites down on it the way a seven-year old boy might an enormous apple.
His burst of energy exhausted, Beau lies down at my feet and bites at my shoes until, finally quiescent, he closes his eyes again and goes to sleep.
This is conducive to such reading as I have not done since I was a college student.
The habit of reading is deeply ingrained and my collection of books amounts to a library, but frequently, my best intentions to read deeply are frustrated by an inner restlessness. I read very interesting books swiftly, but I haven't been reading the books I want to read --because I am curious about the history of a particular period, because I want to delve into a particular author.
Yet that was what I did in college: I wanted to know Tolstoy's works, so I read all of them for a course. I wanted to know more about Russia and the U.S.S.R., so I took a course with Richard Pipes, one of the country's leading experts, reading his Russia Under The Old Regime, a history of the police state there. I wanted to know some English history, so I took a course that covered Georgian England to the Reform Bill, taught by John Clive, whose Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian, won the National Book Award in 1974. Those hours of reading were not work, they were pure pleasure. Those were the years when I discovered how much I could teach myself: that is to say that I learned that what I could learn was not circumscribed by the first language I spoke, or that my parents never spoke English well, or that they were not American, or that I was from Manhattan. I could study anything!
In the end I couldn't study everything well --I had no aptitude for mathematics, or chemistry, both subjects I had learned relatively easily in high school-- but I did gain confidence in my faculties, and I realized pure curiosity is without prejudice --that which is implanted in a person at birth does not necessarily have any correlation to race, national origin or socio-economic status, provided it is never squelched in the name of any of these.
I lost that pure curiosity I had in my first three years of college as the need to make a living loomed larger. I have never lost it entirely (as my library will attest), but until the need to sit still in my apartment so as to watch Beau imposed itself, moments when I could read in peace were few.
Now I find that, with Beau at my feet, I can sit in my best chair and sink into a book. Currently, I am reading Napoleon: The Path To Power 1769-1799, a great, big doorstopper of a book by Philip Dwyer. Has the "little brown dog" brought me back to my earlier self?
Beau gets me up at about a quarter of seven each morning: I have taken to lolling in bed for about fifteen minutes after he shakes himself awake, the sound of which is my new alarm clock.
I march around the bed, in my nightshirt and slippers, pulling back the curtains to let the light in, opening one of the windows to let the fresh air enter the bedroom. After that, I open the door to the crate Beau sleeps in on the bed and he steps out of the crate and sits on the end of the bed. I pick him up, put him on the floor and start for the kitchen to make breakfast for both of us.
I don't go a foot before Beau has grabbed the tail of my nightshirt, holding on to it so that I can drag him a few feet before he lets go his grip and tries to grab the shirttail again. I walk very slowly so as not to jostle the puppy, approaching the sink, where I pick up his food and water bowls. Within a few minutes of drinking, eating and "doing his numbers", Beau is sprightly and needs to be entertained.
I pick up the dog whistle and the sock ball I made him, Beau's eyes on the yellow shape. I blow the whistle, throw the sock ball and cry "Fetch!" --and Beau goes for it, picking up the soft shape, then bringing it back. I do this only a few times, so as not to tax his attention span.
After that, he plays "tug-of-war" with the sock ball, or an old leather belt. An empty plastic shampoo bottle has become another toy: he likes to try to get his mouth around it, and as it slips from his maw, pounce again. Most demanding of all, a blue hard-rubber racquet ball tests his patience: it will bounce a few times after I first drop it, but the residual momentum makes it roll erratically, as if it were being moved by an unseen hand. Beau lies down watching its tergiversations before finally seizing it in his paws, after which he bites down on it the way a seven-year old boy might an enormous apple.
His burst of energy exhausted, Beau lies down at my feet and bites at my shoes until, finally quiescent, he closes his eyes again and goes to sleep.
This is conducive to such reading as I have not done since I was a college student.
The habit of reading is deeply ingrained and my collection of books amounts to a library, but frequently, my best intentions to read deeply are frustrated by an inner restlessness. I read very interesting books swiftly, but I haven't been reading the books I want to read --because I am curious about the history of a particular period, because I want to delve into a particular author.
Yet that was what I did in college: I wanted to know Tolstoy's works, so I read all of them for a course. I wanted to know more about Russia and the U.S.S.R., so I took a course with Richard Pipes, one of the country's leading experts, reading his Russia Under The Old Regime, a history of the police state there. I wanted to know some English history, so I took a course that covered Georgian England to the Reform Bill, taught by John Clive, whose Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian, won the National Book Award in 1974. Those hours of reading were not work, they were pure pleasure. Those were the years when I discovered how much I could teach myself: that is to say that I learned that what I could learn was not circumscribed by the first language I spoke, or that my parents never spoke English well, or that they were not American, or that I was from Manhattan. I could study anything!
In the end I couldn't study everything well --I had no aptitude for mathematics, or chemistry, both subjects I had learned relatively easily in high school-- but I did gain confidence in my faculties, and I realized pure curiosity is without prejudice --that which is implanted in a person at birth does not necessarily have any correlation to race, national origin or socio-economic status, provided it is never squelched in the name of any of these.
I lost that pure curiosity I had in my first three years of college as the need to make a living loomed larger. I have never lost it entirely (as my library will attest), but until the need to sit still in my apartment so as to watch Beau imposed itself, moments when I could read in peace were few.
Now I find that, with Beau at my feet, I can sit in my best chair and sink into a book. Currently, I am reading Napoleon: The Path To Power 1769-1799, a great, big doorstopper of a book by Philip Dwyer. Has the "little brown dog" brought me back to my earlier self?
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
The Turnstile Jumper
November 19, 2013
When you have lived in New York City as long as I have, there are signs you watch for that the City is changing --for the better, or the worse.
For example, in the fifties, robberies of grocers were frequently "crimes of opportunity" as the police call them. My father was a grocer who ran a basement store above a tenement in the 1950s and early 60s, so I can testify to what that means from personal experience.
In the 1950s and 1960s, grocery stores were more common than supermarkets, and "superstores" like "COSTCO" or Trader Joe's didn't exist. The grocery stores were run either by chains, like A&P, KeyFood, Red Apple, or --in the up-market neighborhoods-- Gristede's. Or they were "Mom and Pop" operations. On weeknights, the "Mom and Pop" groceries stayed open much later than the chains, and they would open on Sundays, when the chains were closed. They would flout the "blue laws" by selling beer, which was prohibited, but frequently requested on weekends. And they paid out a sort of "protection" to the police by making them free sandwiches and letting them take a beer without taking payment. (The practice outraged my mother, but my father knew better than not to play along.) Small grocers in poor or marginal neighborhoods worked longer hours than everybody else, and being available at all hours without the benefit of the security guards supermarkets employed, made grocers vulnerable to armed robbery.
My father's grocery was smack dab in the middle of the north side of 65th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenues, a rather posh block. However, it was down the street from "Lincoln Square", which itself adjoined a famously crime-ridden area known as "San Juan Hill". And while the other side of the street was affluent, if not elegant, our side of the street was dicey, with prostitutes working the "Lido Hotel" down the street towards Columbus Avenue. (The former "Lido" is now a perfectly respectable apartment building that survived the building of Lincoln Center, unlike where we lived.)
My father kept the cans and quart bottles of beer in a refrigerator at the end of the corridor customers came into off the stairs into the store. If a customer could not find what he wanted in the refrigerator, or my mother was not there to help, he would have to leave the register unattended and walk down his side of the corridor to the refrigerator to get beer for them. The quart bottles were on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.
One day a young man came in and, after snuffling in the refrigerator, said he could not find what he was looking for. My father came out and kneeling down in front of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, handed him the quart bottle of "Colt 45" malt liquor he asked for.
The young man broke the bottle over my father's head, ran to the register and emptied it, leaving the store as fast as his legs would carry him. My father actually managed to overtake the thief in an alley, with the police in hot pursuit. The thief was apprehended and my father went to Roosevelt Hospital and had his head tended to. My mother kept with her important papers a newspaper report (including a photo of my father, with bandaged head) of the incident carried in The Daily News. The story described my father as a mild-mannered man whose outrage at the manner of the robbery spurred him to action. That the two policemen at the scene were the O'Hara brothers, who worked in adjoining precincts, gave the piece that added local color that was a specialty of Daily News stories then.
A few years later, heroin began its relentless incursion into the lives of the vulnerable poor, who had previously resorted to alcohol to blur the hard edges of their existence. The nature of the crimes committed changed with the coming of heroin to the neighborhood. The compulsion to feed the habit made addicts steal and to use guns to intimidate those they wished to rob.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, Sherman Square and adjoining Verdi Park were jointly called "Needle Park", because of the prevalence of heroin addicts shooting up amid the green spaces. Those were also the days when no one walked in Central Park after dark unless it was before or after a performance of Shakespeare in the Park, when there was some protection in leaving with the crowd.
In the 1980s and 90s, New York took another nose dive, with crime spiking, "squeegee pests" terrorizing out-of-towners, and "soft" drug use out in the open. The 1990 stabbing death of 22-year old Brian Watkins, a young man from Utah killed on the Columbus Circle subway platform when he attempted to prevent a thief from stealing his mother's purse, was emblematic of the "fear factor" that reigned in the city. The four defendants --all about the age of the victim-- had wanted to rob someone so they could go dancing at Roseland, they confessed.
Now we have a new Mayor who suspects that New York can remain as safe as it has been over the last twenty years without the use of the "stop and frisk" tactic by police. Interestingly, a few weeks ago, a shooting that had two men killing a third on the street in front of a convenience store on 87th Street and Amsterdam at 12:30 a.m. provoked the following related comment from a man of color:
The word is out, "no more stop and frisk". So guys looking for trouble are likelier to carry a weapon, 'cause they know they won't be caught and sent to jail just for that.
Ten days ago, two men entered a Columbia University building on my block, 111th Street, in the early hours of the morning, barged into an apartment and pistol-whipped two students.
And today, while I was getting ready to swipe my Metro Card through the turnstile on the downtown 110th Street IRT #1 stop, I saw an agile young man, his face hidden by the broad-striped "hoodie" he wore, vault the turnstile and move swiftly down the subway platform to where the first car stops, barely observed by the morning commuters.
A young man of about thirteen years old did see what happened. He was alone, wearing a yarmulke and the sweatshirt of Ramaz, a Jewish boys' school on the Upper West Side. I could tell from his face that he registered the same sense of threat I felt seeing the shadow of the turnstile jumper glide down the subway platform. I hope he grows up in a New York as safe as that of the last twenty years, although I fear that the city is coming to the end of an era, with what will follow anybody's guess.
When you have lived in New York City as long as I have, there are signs you watch for that the City is changing --for the better, or the worse.
For example, in the fifties, robberies of grocers were frequently "crimes of opportunity" as the police call them. My father was a grocer who ran a basement store above a tenement in the 1950s and early 60s, so I can testify to what that means from personal experience.
In the 1950s and 1960s, grocery stores were more common than supermarkets, and "superstores" like "COSTCO" or Trader Joe's didn't exist. The grocery stores were run either by chains, like A&P, KeyFood, Red Apple, or --in the up-market neighborhoods-- Gristede's. Or they were "Mom and Pop" operations. On weeknights, the "Mom and Pop" groceries stayed open much later than the chains, and they would open on Sundays, when the chains were closed. They would flout the "blue laws" by selling beer, which was prohibited, but frequently requested on weekends. And they paid out a sort of "protection" to the police by making them free sandwiches and letting them take a beer without taking payment. (The practice outraged my mother, but my father knew better than not to play along.) Small grocers in poor or marginal neighborhoods worked longer hours than everybody else, and being available at all hours without the benefit of the security guards supermarkets employed, made grocers vulnerable to armed robbery.
My father's grocery was smack dab in the middle of the north side of 65th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenues, a rather posh block. However, it was down the street from "Lincoln Square", which itself adjoined a famously crime-ridden area known as "San Juan Hill". And while the other side of the street was affluent, if not elegant, our side of the street was dicey, with prostitutes working the "Lido Hotel" down the street towards Columbus Avenue. (The former "Lido" is now a perfectly respectable apartment building that survived the building of Lincoln Center, unlike where we lived.)
My father kept the cans and quart bottles of beer in a refrigerator at the end of the corridor customers came into off the stairs into the store. If a customer could not find what he wanted in the refrigerator, or my mother was not there to help, he would have to leave the register unattended and walk down his side of the corridor to the refrigerator to get beer for them. The quart bottles were on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.
One day a young man came in and, after snuffling in the refrigerator, said he could not find what he was looking for. My father came out and kneeling down in front of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, handed him the quart bottle of "Colt 45" malt liquor he asked for.
The young man broke the bottle over my father's head, ran to the register and emptied it, leaving the store as fast as his legs would carry him. My father actually managed to overtake the thief in an alley, with the police in hot pursuit. The thief was apprehended and my father went to Roosevelt Hospital and had his head tended to. My mother kept with her important papers a newspaper report (including a photo of my father, with bandaged head) of the incident carried in The Daily News. The story described my father as a mild-mannered man whose outrage at the manner of the robbery spurred him to action. That the two policemen at the scene were the O'Hara brothers, who worked in adjoining precincts, gave the piece that added local color that was a specialty of Daily News stories then.
A few years later, heroin began its relentless incursion into the lives of the vulnerable poor, who had previously resorted to alcohol to blur the hard edges of their existence. The nature of the crimes committed changed with the coming of heroin to the neighborhood. The compulsion to feed the habit made addicts steal and to use guns to intimidate those they wished to rob.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, Sherman Square and adjoining Verdi Park were jointly called "Needle Park", because of the prevalence of heroin addicts shooting up amid the green spaces. Those were also the days when no one walked in Central Park after dark unless it was before or after a performance of Shakespeare in the Park, when there was some protection in leaving with the crowd.
In the 1980s and 90s, New York took another nose dive, with crime spiking, "squeegee pests" terrorizing out-of-towners, and "soft" drug use out in the open. The 1990 stabbing death of 22-year old Brian Watkins, a young man from Utah killed on the Columbus Circle subway platform when he attempted to prevent a thief from stealing his mother's purse, was emblematic of the "fear factor" that reigned in the city. The four defendants --all about the age of the victim-- had wanted to rob someone so they could go dancing at Roseland, they confessed.
Now we have a new Mayor who suspects that New York can remain as safe as it has been over the last twenty years without the use of the "stop and frisk" tactic by police. Interestingly, a few weeks ago, a shooting that had two men killing a third on the street in front of a convenience store on 87th Street and Amsterdam at 12:30 a.m. provoked the following related comment from a man of color:
The word is out, "no more stop and frisk". So guys looking for trouble are likelier to carry a weapon, 'cause they know they won't be caught and sent to jail just for that.
Ten days ago, two men entered a Columbia University building on my block, 111th Street, in the early hours of the morning, barged into an apartment and pistol-whipped two students.
And today, while I was getting ready to swipe my Metro Card through the turnstile on the downtown 110th Street IRT #1 stop, I saw an agile young man, his face hidden by the broad-striped "hoodie" he wore, vault the turnstile and move swiftly down the subway platform to where the first car stops, barely observed by the morning commuters.
A young man of about thirteen years old did see what happened. He was alone, wearing a yarmulke and the sweatshirt of Ramaz, a Jewish boys' school on the Upper West Side. I could tell from his face that he registered the same sense of threat I felt seeing the shadow of the turnstile jumper glide down the subway platform. I hope he grows up in a New York as safe as that of the last twenty years, although I fear that the city is coming to the end of an era, with what will follow anybody's guess.
Monday, November 18, 2013
A Son of the South Comes North
November 18, 2013
The flight to Newark with Beauregard a/k/a "Beau", could not have been easier, the night that followed could not have been worse.
All I had to house Beau in upon arriving at my apartment was the carrier I brought him up from South Carolina in. I'd been told by the woman in PETCO from whom I bought it that until I bought a proper crate, putting Beau in the carrier in the bathroom was best. It seemed like a good plan. If Beau cried, I was to ignore it, so he could get used to being separated from me.
Oh, I tried to ignore it, but Beau didn't just cry: he barked, he whimpered, he growled, he whined, and he mewled. Neither of us got a wink of sleep Thursday night, and when I took Beau to the vet the next morning, the vet wondered whether there wasn't something wrong, Beau was so listless. He had fleas, roundworm and hookworm and his testicles hadn't dropped, but the vet didn't think any of that was the problem, and he was puzzled. (Maybe he'd never been up all night in a carrier lying in a bathroom, crying his heart out.)
Friday night Beau slept in the crate I'd purchased for him and placed on the kitchen floor, a good-sized crate he will grow into. Despite the "sock ball" I made for him to bite on and the "'Whizzies' gator" --a chew-toy made in the shape of that large reptile found in some Southern swamps-- Beau wasn't any happier.
I realized that when Beau saw me he calmed down, so I lay down beside him on the kitchen floor at eye-level with him. Beau calmed down immediately when he saw me. I lay there for a bit before getting up to go to bed, to no avail. The crying began as soon as I left.
In the end, I spent the night on the kitchen floor with a blanket over me, but I slept more than I had the night before. I even made it to the 8:15 a.m. Mass on Sunday at my local church --to which I brought Beau in his carrier.
The day before, my pesky neighbor rang my bell at 7:45 a.m. to ask whether I had a new dog. I won't go into the details, but bringing Beau to Mass seemed better than leaving him. I only hoped the little brown dog would not make too much noise.
In fact, Beau never uttered a sound. That could have something to do with the fact he was continuously petted, because I was hunched over throughout all the parts of the liturgy that require standing, and that even when genuflecting and praying, I continued to pat the puppy with my right hand.
When it came time to take communion, I brought Beau up with me. He did not try to eat the Host. He didn't do anything, except look angelic.
He never once drew attention to himself through the entire Sunday morning service. I wonder whether his poise doesn't come from the fact that he's from the South, where it's not considered polite to draw attention to yourself. It was only when I went outside to greet the priest who celebrated the Mass and Beau poked his head out of the carrier, that the priest realized a dog had attended the service.
Sunday evening I got the bright idea to take the crate out of the kitchen and put it on my bed. I had a virtually uninterrupted night's sleep, and now Beau and I are permanent bedmates.
Which makes me wonder about whether I can still claim to be a "Lone Wolf"?
The flight to Newark with Beauregard a/k/a "Beau", could not have been easier, the night that followed could not have been worse.
All I had to house Beau in upon arriving at my apartment was the carrier I brought him up from South Carolina in. I'd been told by the woman in PETCO from whom I bought it that until I bought a proper crate, putting Beau in the carrier in the bathroom was best. It seemed like a good plan. If Beau cried, I was to ignore it, so he could get used to being separated from me.
Oh, I tried to ignore it, but Beau didn't just cry: he barked, he whimpered, he growled, he whined, and he mewled. Neither of us got a wink of sleep Thursday night, and when I took Beau to the vet the next morning, the vet wondered whether there wasn't something wrong, Beau was so listless. He had fleas, roundworm and hookworm and his testicles hadn't dropped, but the vet didn't think any of that was the problem, and he was puzzled. (Maybe he'd never been up all night in a carrier lying in a bathroom, crying his heart out.)
Friday night Beau slept in the crate I'd purchased for him and placed on the kitchen floor, a good-sized crate he will grow into. Despite the "sock ball" I made for him to bite on and the "'Whizzies' gator" --a chew-toy made in the shape of that large reptile found in some Southern swamps-- Beau wasn't any happier.
I realized that when Beau saw me he calmed down, so I lay down beside him on the kitchen floor at eye-level with him. Beau calmed down immediately when he saw me. I lay there for a bit before getting up to go to bed, to no avail. The crying began as soon as I left.
In the end, I spent the night on the kitchen floor with a blanket over me, but I slept more than I had the night before. I even made it to the 8:15 a.m. Mass on Sunday at my local church --to which I brought Beau in his carrier.
The day before, my pesky neighbor rang my bell at 7:45 a.m. to ask whether I had a new dog. I won't go into the details, but bringing Beau to Mass seemed better than leaving him. I only hoped the little brown dog would not make too much noise.
In fact, Beau never uttered a sound. That could have something to do with the fact he was continuously petted, because I was hunched over throughout all the parts of the liturgy that require standing, and that even when genuflecting and praying, I continued to pat the puppy with my right hand.
When it came time to take communion, I brought Beau up with me. He did not try to eat the Host. He didn't do anything, except look angelic.
He never once drew attention to himself through the entire Sunday morning service. I wonder whether his poise doesn't come from the fact that he's from the South, where it's not considered polite to draw attention to yourself. It was only when I went outside to greet the priest who celebrated the Mass and Beau poked his head out of the carrier, that the priest realized a dog had attended the service.
Sunday evening I got the bright idea to take the crate out of the kitchen and put it on my bed. I had a virtually uninterrupted night's sleep, and now Beau and I are permanent bedmates.
Which makes me wonder about whether I can still claim to be a "Lone Wolf"?
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Beauregard and Me
November 13, 2013
The wind blew hard all last night and this morning. Stepping outside after breakfast, it was blustery and cold, if sunny. So Charleston does get cold weather, if not as extreme as that further north.
I had lots of paperwork to go through, which took up the morning. I just had time to call "Eddie", my Jordanian cab driver, who has been taking me into Charleston every day since I arrived here. He moved here from Brooklyn five years ago and loves it, He lives in downtown Charleston with his wife and three young children. He finds the change from Brooklyn welcome: "You have the green and the ocean. What more do you need to be happy?" he tells me.
He drives me to 82 Queen, a restaurant located at that address, which is known for its Low Country cooking. I could not not try it out this trip: the one memory I retained of my visit to Charleston more than a decade ago was of the shrimp and grits served there.
This time, though, I opt for a dish of cheddar grits onto which is layered a fried green tomato, a piece of chicken breast and a crab cake. Dessert is a Mason jar of banana pudding topped with sliced bananas and Nabisco Vanilla Wafers plus home made whipped cream, with banana "hors d'oeuvres" (banana slices topped with a squirt of the whipped cream) and more Vanilla Wafers on the plate surrounding the jar. I do not finish the last quarter of the Mason jar, not for lack of trying.
While I am having my lunch, I read a local paper which trashes Jestine's, of which I wrote yesterday. In fact, the review is a classic of bad reviews, describing the "home cooking" offered as reminiscent of the worst home cook's. I decide that if I have the time, I will return to 82 Queen tomorrow instead.
More interestingly, combing the free paper for interesting local tidbits, I survey the classifieds, which include ads for puppies for sale. I come across an ad for a breeder of Boykin Spaniels "ready to go!", that is to say, puppies old enough to leave the litter. Other ads highlight retrievers and bulldogs, but it is the Boykin breeder that catches my eye. I call him.
The breeder is a 71-year old man named John McMillan, who lives in St. George, forty-five minutes north of Charleston. He is offering male puppies at $350. The litter had nine puppies, an unusually large one from which every puppy survived, a testament to John McMillan's love and care for the dogs, although he gives all credit to the bitch, who nursed every one of her babies.
I have not had a dog since 2007, although Bill and I loved Max and Mia, our dogs, who lived out their lives from early puppyhood to late life with us. I stop by the cages put up in front of pet shops by rescue organizations whenever I see them, but no dog has persuaded me to make him mine. The Boykin breeder is offering his puppies for the same amount a rescue dog goes for. The puppy's father is AKC registered, but the puppies are not registered, which is why offers them at $350 instead of the $1,000 and $900 females and males go for when registered.
I decide to drive out to St. George, which is such an exotic location that the Garmin GPS can't find it when I plug in the town name. Only when I plug in "All Search" with the address at 171 Deer Field Road, do I come up with directions to the farm, off I-95. John McMillan will be at the farm all afternoon: he also understands that I can't keep a dog in my hotel room overnight and agrees that he will have to bring any dog I might decide to take from him to the airport tomorrow.
I set out. For me, driving a car to a new location not on a grid plan (as Manhattan is), is like climbing Mount Everest: I am always conscious of what might go wrong. I make it out of the parking lot of the hotel in Mount Pleasant and onto the local road, which I have to keep on for forty miles. The GPS keeps me attuned to the shifting speed limits, which is helpful, but more, Charleston area drivers are a "moseying" sort, people stay within the speed limits. The "in and out" maneuvers that make driving in the Greater New York metropolitan area a steeplechase are just not a factor.
After forty miles or so, I turn off onto a local road, and then onto an even more rural road. I am on Deer Hill Road in less than an hour, and number "171" is the first road I turn on to-- it must be the last farm on the road. I roll onto an unpaved grassy road, remembering that rental car agreements specifically provide the car is not to be taken onto them, but keep my distance from the ruts created by tire tracks, driving about one quarter of a mile past farm outbuildings until I reach a ranch house with a porch framed by two tractors. No one is around, so I call the number I saw in the newspaper and Mr. McMillan picks up.
"I'll be right out --you made it!" he says, laughing. I remove the key from the ignition and step out of the car, which McMillan, a portly man wearing aviator style eyeglasses, a truck driver's cap, t-shirt, sweatshirt and chinos, is approaching. He greets me cordially, and a few moments later introduces me to his grandson, David Infinger, a strapping young man who is visiting his grandfather.
"We aren't usually dressed like this--" McMillan tells me, and I tell him not to worry about it. I am glad that he was willing to let me come over on such short notice. With that, he walks me over to the kennel, a very large, four-sided shed on a platform with chicken wire on three sides. One half holds five male Boykin spaniel puppies, the other half two adult males, the Daddy of the puppies, and their uncle, McMillan explains.
No sooner do I approach the kennel than the puppies all get up on their hind legs, clamoring for attention. I have never been so thoroughly, swiftly and completely seduced. For extra measure, the American Foxhound that has the run of the farm comes up to say "Hello", as does the puppies' mother. David walks into the kennel, which he can stand in comfortably while passing the puppies over the chicken wire to his grandfather, so that I can see them close-up.
McMillan takes all five and places them, one-by-one, on a small square table in front of the kennel, where the puppies sit patiently, melding into each other, and indulging in a bit of mutual nuzzling. The dog that catches my eye has slightly up-tilted eyes. a thick body and a snubbed, rather than fox-like, muzzle. He is the largest of the five, with thick, splayed feet, which remind me of those of my dog Mía, a sweet-tempered Chesapeake Bay retriever/German Shepherd mix whose web-footed walk never failed to amuse me.
I am saying I will take that dog, and will pay $200 now and the rest when the dog is delivered to me at the Budget Rent-A-Car counter at Charleston Airport tomorrow at 3:00 p.m.. McMillan is saying that that would be fine with him. His son David is taking down my cellphone number, and I am handing him $200. I have bought the dog.
Before I leave (which I want to do before it gets dark, as there are no lights on these country roads), I ask if I could use the bathroom. "Well, it's just two men here, so bear that in mind", McMillan tells me before I enter his home. It is a bit stuffed, but clean, laundry stacked neatly, no frills and perfectly fine. While I am in there, a thought occurs to me, which when I depart I share with McMillan, who is waiting for me on the porch.
"How about this --I'll call him Beauregard --"Beau" for short--" I tell him.
"That would be good, that would be a good name. Well, nice meeting you" he tells me as he shakes my hand, and I walk to my car, accompanied by David.
"I actually live in Charleston", he tells me. "I work for the Fire Department, but I like to come up here and spend time with my grandfather. It's so peaceful up here." I'll see him tomorrow for sure, and maybe McMillan, too, if David can persuade his grandfather to come along.
I do make it back to the hotel just after dark, almost without incident. All goes well, until I reach the turn off for Ridley Park Road. I don't turn onto the Croghan Spur, as I should, but onto the road that goes over the Ashley River, finding myself in Charleston, off Calhoun Street. I am able to negotiate a reversal of direction towards my hotel without trouble, arriving there safely, despite the darkness all around.
The gentleness of my experience in the countryside wraps itself around me like a cloak. Can I have just bought a ticket to a less harsh existence in taking in a helpless puppy?
The wind blew hard all last night and this morning. Stepping outside after breakfast, it was blustery and cold, if sunny. So Charleston does get cold weather, if not as extreme as that further north.
I had lots of paperwork to go through, which took up the morning. I just had time to call "Eddie", my Jordanian cab driver, who has been taking me into Charleston every day since I arrived here. He moved here from Brooklyn five years ago and loves it, He lives in downtown Charleston with his wife and three young children. He finds the change from Brooklyn welcome: "You have the green and the ocean. What more do you need to be happy?" he tells me.
He drives me to 82 Queen, a restaurant located at that address, which is known for its Low Country cooking. I could not not try it out this trip: the one memory I retained of my visit to Charleston more than a decade ago was of the shrimp and grits served there.
This time, though, I opt for a dish of cheddar grits onto which is layered a fried green tomato, a piece of chicken breast and a crab cake. Dessert is a Mason jar of banana pudding topped with sliced bananas and Nabisco Vanilla Wafers plus home made whipped cream, with banana "hors d'oeuvres" (banana slices topped with a squirt of the whipped cream) and more Vanilla Wafers on the plate surrounding the jar. I do not finish the last quarter of the Mason jar, not for lack of trying.
While I am having my lunch, I read a local paper which trashes Jestine's, of which I wrote yesterday. In fact, the review is a classic of bad reviews, describing the "home cooking" offered as reminiscent of the worst home cook's. I decide that if I have the time, I will return to 82 Queen tomorrow instead.
More interestingly, combing the free paper for interesting local tidbits, I survey the classifieds, which include ads for puppies for sale. I come across an ad for a breeder of Boykin Spaniels "ready to go!", that is to say, puppies old enough to leave the litter. Other ads highlight retrievers and bulldogs, but it is the Boykin breeder that catches my eye. I call him.
The breeder is a 71-year old man named John McMillan, who lives in St. George, forty-five minutes north of Charleston. He is offering male puppies at $350. The litter had nine puppies, an unusually large one from which every puppy survived, a testament to John McMillan's love and care for the dogs, although he gives all credit to the bitch, who nursed every one of her babies.
I have not had a dog since 2007, although Bill and I loved Max and Mia, our dogs, who lived out their lives from early puppyhood to late life with us. I stop by the cages put up in front of pet shops by rescue organizations whenever I see them, but no dog has persuaded me to make him mine. The Boykin breeder is offering his puppies for the same amount a rescue dog goes for. The puppy's father is AKC registered, but the puppies are not registered, which is why offers them at $350 instead of the $1,000 and $900 females and males go for when registered.
I decide to drive out to St. George, which is such an exotic location that the Garmin GPS can't find it when I plug in the town name. Only when I plug in "All Search" with the address at 171 Deer Field Road, do I come up with directions to the farm, off I-95. John McMillan will be at the farm all afternoon: he also understands that I can't keep a dog in my hotel room overnight and agrees that he will have to bring any dog I might decide to take from him to the airport tomorrow.
I set out. For me, driving a car to a new location not on a grid plan (as Manhattan is), is like climbing Mount Everest: I am always conscious of what might go wrong. I make it out of the parking lot of the hotel in Mount Pleasant and onto the local road, which I have to keep on for forty miles. The GPS keeps me attuned to the shifting speed limits, which is helpful, but more, Charleston area drivers are a "moseying" sort, people stay within the speed limits. The "in and out" maneuvers that make driving in the Greater New York metropolitan area a steeplechase are just not a factor.
After forty miles or so, I turn off onto a local road, and then onto an even more rural road. I am on Deer Hill Road in less than an hour, and number "171" is the first road I turn on to-- it must be the last farm on the road. I roll onto an unpaved grassy road, remembering that rental car agreements specifically provide the car is not to be taken onto them, but keep my distance from the ruts created by tire tracks, driving about one quarter of a mile past farm outbuildings until I reach a ranch house with a porch framed by two tractors. No one is around, so I call the number I saw in the newspaper and Mr. McMillan picks up.
"I'll be right out --you made it!" he says, laughing. I remove the key from the ignition and step out of the car, which McMillan, a portly man wearing aviator style eyeglasses, a truck driver's cap, t-shirt, sweatshirt and chinos, is approaching. He greets me cordially, and a few moments later introduces me to his grandson, David Infinger, a strapping young man who is visiting his grandfather.
"We aren't usually dressed like this--" McMillan tells me, and I tell him not to worry about it. I am glad that he was willing to let me come over on such short notice. With that, he walks me over to the kennel, a very large, four-sided shed on a platform with chicken wire on three sides. One half holds five male Boykin spaniel puppies, the other half two adult males, the Daddy of the puppies, and their uncle, McMillan explains.
No sooner do I approach the kennel than the puppies all get up on their hind legs, clamoring for attention. I have never been so thoroughly, swiftly and completely seduced. For extra measure, the American Foxhound that has the run of the farm comes up to say "Hello", as does the puppies' mother. David walks into the kennel, which he can stand in comfortably while passing the puppies over the chicken wire to his grandfather, so that I can see them close-up.
McMillan takes all five and places them, one-by-one, on a small square table in front of the kennel, where the puppies sit patiently, melding into each other, and indulging in a bit of mutual nuzzling. The dog that catches my eye has slightly up-tilted eyes. a thick body and a snubbed, rather than fox-like, muzzle. He is the largest of the five, with thick, splayed feet, which remind me of those of my dog Mía, a sweet-tempered Chesapeake Bay retriever/German Shepherd mix whose web-footed walk never failed to amuse me.
I am saying I will take that dog, and will pay $200 now and the rest when the dog is delivered to me at the Budget Rent-A-Car counter at Charleston Airport tomorrow at 3:00 p.m.. McMillan is saying that that would be fine with him. His son David is taking down my cellphone number, and I am handing him $200. I have bought the dog.
Before I leave (which I want to do before it gets dark, as there are no lights on these country roads), I ask if I could use the bathroom. "Well, it's just two men here, so bear that in mind", McMillan tells me before I enter his home. It is a bit stuffed, but clean, laundry stacked neatly, no frills and perfectly fine. While I am in there, a thought occurs to me, which when I depart I share with McMillan, who is waiting for me on the porch.
"How about this --I'll call him Beauregard --"Beau" for short--" I tell him.
"That would be good, that would be a good name. Well, nice meeting you" he tells me as he shakes my hand, and I walk to my car, accompanied by David.
"I actually live in Charleston", he tells me. "I work for the Fire Department, but I like to come up here and spend time with my grandfather. It's so peaceful up here." I'll see him tomorrow for sure, and maybe McMillan, too, if David can persuade his grandfather to come along.
I do make it back to the hotel just after dark, almost without incident. All goes well, until I reach the turn off for Ridley Park Road. I don't turn onto the Croghan Spur, as I should, but onto the road that goes over the Ashley River, finding myself in Charleston, off Calhoun Street. I am able to negotiate a reversal of direction towards my hotel without trouble, arriving there safely, despite the darkness all around.
The gentleness of my experience in the countryside wraps itself around me like a cloak. Can I have just bought a ticket to a less harsh existence in taking in a helpless puppy?
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
More Charleston
November 12, 2013
I awoke to brilliant sunshine, after a good night's sleep in my room at Springhill Suites at Ridley Point, in an area known to locals as "West of the Ashley". After a day spent coping with the sleep deprivation created by Monday's 8:12 a.m. flight from Newark, it was a blessing to sleep in a suite whose thermostat I had turned up to toasty. I drifted off listening to Radio España broadcasting an organ concert from the La Capilla Real, Madrid.
Springhill Suites includes breakfast with the price of the room. It was a Southern affair: sausages, grits, eggs, donuts, danish, muffins, English muffins, yogurt coffee, fruit, granola and other cereals were all on offer. The Southern palate is sweeter and more fatty than that of Northerners, a legacy of the English origins of the colonies that the Northeast has largely abandoned, but which anyone who reflects on the British love of candy bars and pork pies will readily find echo in. Notwithstanding, the real estate broker who took me around to see Charleston properties today assured me that I would be able to find all the arugula I wanted if I moved here. (Indeed, there's a Whole Foods a short distance away.)
Charleston is a city with more than one culture: the historic, the maritime, the academic and the associational, to name a few. There is traditional Charleston, the world of the Washington Regiment, a state militia with its own armory and owner of one of the largest tracts of park land in the city. There is the port of Charleston, home to one of the prime Coast Guard bases in the United States. There is the Charleston of institutions of higher learning, including a medical school and a law school. There is the Charleston of the oldest Chapter of the Society of the Cinncinnati, the Colonial Dames, the Knights of Columbus, and the Yacht Club. There is also the Charleston of independent bookstores, like Blue Bicycle Books, which just held its latest Y'all Festival of regional literature. There is the Charleston of the Spoleto Festival, with its "fringe" theatre playing alongside established artists. There is the Charleston of garden societies and house tours. And there is the Charleston of cooks and chefs turning out traditional Southern dishes exceptionally made, with modern variations thereon.
This afternoon I was at Blue Bicycle Books, where I picked up a pamphlet each on Congreve and Shelley, each published by the British Council and the National Book League by Longmans, Green & Co in the 1960s. --There is no shortage of Anglophiles here. Along with these I picked up The Southerner's Handbook: A Guide To Living The Good Life by the Editors of "Garden and Gun".
"No", "Garden and Gun" is not a publication of the ladies' auxiliary of the National Rifle Association, it is a beautifully laid out magazine launched in the Spring of 2007 to celebrate Southern living. I picked up a copy at the Atlanta airport a few years ago, on the strength of its gorgeous photograph of a duck-hunting retriever and the accompanying article about training the breed to do the work for which it was bred. The editor, David di Benedetto, is the son of parents of Italian descent from Brooklyn, New York.
After paying for my purchases I asked where I might have an early dinner in the area and was sent to The Grocery on Cannon Street north of Calhoun. (Locals live north of Calhoun, someone explained to me, newcomers live south of it.) The Grocery was unfortunately not serving until later, but the hostess sent me to Two Borough Larder on Coming Street, a few blocks away. There I had a delicious bowl of three cuts of lamb accompanied by several varieties of beets and brussels sprouts, the entire dish lying on a bed of creamy horseradish-flavored hummus. Dessert was a chocolate budino, a dense chocolate pudding garnished with a top layer of salty peanuts, enjoyed with a locally ground coffee.
On the walk back to the stop at North Market and East Bay on the East Side of Charleston harbor, I passed Jestine's Kitchen, another local favorite. Jestine was Jestine Matthews, who was born in the area in 1885, the daughter of a Native American and the son of a freed slave. Jestine was raised, if not born (no records of her birth exist) on Rosebank Plantation on Wadmalaw Island, where her father worked as a farmer. In her teens, she moved to Charleston to work as a laundress. Later, she became a housekeeper for the Ellison family, with whom she remained until her retirement. She died at the age of 112 on December 18, 1997. The restaurant's menu is based on recipes Jestine Matthews cooked for the family of the owner, Dana Berlin. Many of the dishes feature meat or fish fried in a pecan crust, although brown sugar glazed ham, and fried chicken are also available. The "Blue Collar Special" is a peanut butter and banana sandwich with potato chips for three dollars and fifty cents.
A peanut butter and banana sandwich is probably a good thing to have in your knapsack when you are out hunting wild turkeys or ducks with your Boykin Spaniel. The "Boykin" is the state dog of South Carolina, a medium-sized dog with hazel eyes and a mane of hair Sophia Loren would envy. Bred to hunt in the Wateree River Swamp, it is a mild-tempered dog that loves attention. Walking across the Horse Lot on Chisholm Street this morning, I encountered one being exercised by its mistress. The broad expanse of the Horse Lot was everything a dog with energy to burn could want. The lustrous chestnut coat of the Boykin resembles that of an Irish Spaniel, although the Boykin tends to a curling coat, the Irish a straight. There are so many gorgeous breeds of working dogs here --in Bicycle Books I came across a white Portuguese Water Dog with black markings, cut in "Lion" style to expose the flanks, a show dog, fresh from a win. And yesterday I saw a handsome pointer, alertly attuned to my unfeigned interest in him.
However, the most amazing dog I saw was that belonging to a lady who owns a house near the Coast Guard fort on the Battery. I am told that its owner (known as "The Church Lady" because of her piety), has trained her dog to sit up in front of its bowl and wait while the family says its prayer of thanksgiving for the meal. Only then does the dog lay into its food. Amen.
I awoke to brilliant sunshine, after a good night's sleep in my room at Springhill Suites at Ridley Point, in an area known to locals as "West of the Ashley". After a day spent coping with the sleep deprivation created by Monday's 8:12 a.m. flight from Newark, it was a blessing to sleep in a suite whose thermostat I had turned up to toasty. I drifted off listening to Radio España broadcasting an organ concert from the La Capilla Real, Madrid.
Springhill Suites includes breakfast with the price of the room. It was a Southern affair: sausages, grits, eggs, donuts, danish, muffins, English muffins, yogurt coffee, fruit, granola and other cereals were all on offer. The Southern palate is sweeter and more fatty than that of Northerners, a legacy of the English origins of the colonies that the Northeast has largely abandoned, but which anyone who reflects on the British love of candy bars and pork pies will readily find echo in. Notwithstanding, the real estate broker who took me around to see Charleston properties today assured me that I would be able to find all the arugula I wanted if I moved here. (Indeed, there's a Whole Foods a short distance away.)
Charleston is a city with more than one culture: the historic, the maritime, the academic and the associational, to name a few. There is traditional Charleston, the world of the Washington Regiment, a state militia with its own armory and owner of one of the largest tracts of park land in the city. There is the port of Charleston, home to one of the prime Coast Guard bases in the United States. There is the Charleston of institutions of higher learning, including a medical school and a law school. There is the Charleston of the oldest Chapter of the Society of the Cinncinnati, the Colonial Dames, the Knights of Columbus, and the Yacht Club. There is also the Charleston of independent bookstores, like Blue Bicycle Books, which just held its latest Y'all Festival of regional literature. There is the Charleston of the Spoleto Festival, with its "fringe" theatre playing alongside established artists. There is the Charleston of garden societies and house tours. And there is the Charleston of cooks and chefs turning out traditional Southern dishes exceptionally made, with modern variations thereon.
This afternoon I was at Blue Bicycle Books, where I picked up a pamphlet each on Congreve and Shelley, each published by the British Council and the National Book League by Longmans, Green & Co in the 1960s. --There is no shortage of Anglophiles here. Along with these I picked up The Southerner's Handbook: A Guide To Living The Good Life by the Editors of "Garden and Gun".
"No", "Garden and Gun" is not a publication of the ladies' auxiliary of the National Rifle Association, it is a beautifully laid out magazine launched in the Spring of 2007 to celebrate Southern living. I picked up a copy at the Atlanta airport a few years ago, on the strength of its gorgeous photograph of a duck-hunting retriever and the accompanying article about training the breed to do the work for which it was bred. The editor, David di Benedetto, is the son of parents of Italian descent from Brooklyn, New York.
After paying for my purchases I asked where I might have an early dinner in the area and was sent to The Grocery on Cannon Street north of Calhoun. (Locals live north of Calhoun, someone explained to me, newcomers live south of it.) The Grocery was unfortunately not serving until later, but the hostess sent me to Two Borough Larder on Coming Street, a few blocks away. There I had a delicious bowl of three cuts of lamb accompanied by several varieties of beets and brussels sprouts, the entire dish lying on a bed of creamy horseradish-flavored hummus. Dessert was a chocolate budino, a dense chocolate pudding garnished with a top layer of salty peanuts, enjoyed with a locally ground coffee.
On the walk back to the stop at North Market and East Bay on the East Side of Charleston harbor, I passed Jestine's Kitchen, another local favorite. Jestine was Jestine Matthews, who was born in the area in 1885, the daughter of a Native American and the son of a freed slave. Jestine was raised, if not born (no records of her birth exist) on Rosebank Plantation on Wadmalaw Island, where her father worked as a farmer. In her teens, she moved to Charleston to work as a laundress. Later, she became a housekeeper for the Ellison family, with whom she remained until her retirement. She died at the age of 112 on December 18, 1997. The restaurant's menu is based on recipes Jestine Matthews cooked for the family of the owner, Dana Berlin. Many of the dishes feature meat or fish fried in a pecan crust, although brown sugar glazed ham, and fried chicken are also available. The "Blue Collar Special" is a peanut butter and banana sandwich with potato chips for three dollars and fifty cents.
A peanut butter and banana sandwich is probably a good thing to have in your knapsack when you are out hunting wild turkeys or ducks with your Boykin Spaniel. The "Boykin" is the state dog of South Carolina, a medium-sized dog with hazel eyes and a mane of hair Sophia Loren would envy. Bred to hunt in the Wateree River Swamp, it is a mild-tempered dog that loves attention. Walking across the Horse Lot on Chisholm Street this morning, I encountered one being exercised by its mistress. The broad expanse of the Horse Lot was everything a dog with energy to burn could want. The lustrous chestnut coat of the Boykin resembles that of an Irish Spaniel, although the Boykin tends to a curling coat, the Irish a straight. There are so many gorgeous breeds of working dogs here --in Bicycle Books I came across a white Portuguese Water Dog with black markings, cut in "Lion" style to expose the flanks, a show dog, fresh from a win. And yesterday I saw a handsome pointer, alertly attuned to my unfeigned interest in him.
However, the most amazing dog I saw was that belonging to a lady who owns a house near the Coast Guard fort on the Battery. I am told that its owner (known as "The Church Lady" because of her piety), has trained her dog to sit up in front of its bowl and wait while the family says its prayer of thanksgiving for the meal. Only then does the dog lay into its food. Amen.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Charleston, South Carolina
Veterans Day, 2013
It's funny to be in Charleston on Veterans Day. Because Charleston is one of the most martial towns in the entire United States. It's not only the place where, on April 12, 1861, the Civil War started, it's the home of The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, to which women were only admitted after a legal battle that went to the Supreme Court.
During the Civil War much of the city burned down. Reconstruction was not kind to Charleston, the capital of the Confederacy. In 1886 an earthquake wreaked further damage and later, two massive hurricanes heaped more destruction on the "Holy City", as Charleston is known. (A reference to the historic, religious diversity of the city and the number of its houses of worship.) Only in the late 1970s did the historic preservation movement in Charleston take hold and the city's fortunes begin to revive. But on September 21-22, 1989, Hurricane Hugo put a literal damper on the city's future, damaging much that had been rebuilt. Charleston overcame the destruction and resumed rebuilding, this time taking into account the threat of future storms, and building on a growing interest in historic preservation of America's architectural heritage. As a result, Charleston became one of America's most beautifully and continuously preserved cities, the restored mansions facing the water on East Bay Road becoming symbols of Charleston's rebirth.
Although more diverse in outlook than the rest of South Carolina, Charleston is still a place where the Daughters of the American Revolution and the members of the Charleston Historic Preservation Society count for something. It is also a place where collectors of English and American antiques do a lot of shopping, in places like Geo. C. Birlant & Co. on King Street, which has been selling "fine antiques and gifts" since 1922.
This afternoon, I met Vi, a seventyish Englishwoman from the West Country who works part-time at Birlant's. She showed me a new shipment of English china and a tantalus, a case for liquor bottles with locks on the bottles to keep dissolute servants --and/or sons-- from stealing the master's liquor. Now that Charleston has become a cruise ship destination, the shop is often invaded by tourists who come to gawk, but not to buy --and in the case of the Chinese visitors, to photograph for reproduction in Chinese factories.
"One of them --a very tall and heavy man-- made me so angry that I 'lost it'", she told me: "I picked up one of the old golf clubs we sell, took it into my grip and said 'I don't care how big you are, you will not take pictures of our merchandise --I played first division field hockey and if I have to, I will fell you!'" The martial strain infects everyone in Charleston, this incident makes clear, grandmothers not to be excluded.
Palate, a magazine devoted to the arts of the Southern table, does a feature on a low-country shooting club and its post-hunt feast. In addition to the obligatory photos of older club members, wizened men in plaid shirts, chinos and John Deere caps, there is a photo of a winsome young blonde, her dog and her gun, taken just after a round of skeet shooting.
In the Northeast of the United States and the West Coast, South Carolina is a by-word for bigotry, homophobia and yahoo lifestyles. Close up, though, I have to say Charleston doesn't strike me as particularly retrograde. No one is abrupt, and conversations are long, rather than brief and hurried, as they are in New York.
Agreeability is skillfully practiced, as demonstrated by the young woman with whom I conversed as I was walking to the Battery along King Street. She was walking her new puppy, an undisciplined six-month old hunting dog. No matter what I said about my own experience with two puppies --or how I said it, her response was the same: "Yes, Ma'am!" Her reply was its own reproach: with every "Yes, Ma'am!" I felt myself growing years older.
Still, to be older in Charleston seems a more agreeable fate than aging in New York. Slowing down physically in a frenetic metropolis, having to daily take the measure of one's capacity to cope with the consequences of the contrast between the two, seems more challenging than living somewhere where the natural slowness of local rhythms meshes with one's own slowing tempo.
If Charleston were a piece of music, it would be played lento. If New York were a piece of music, it would be presto. Although New York's a pretty martial place, too: you only have to turn on "New York 1" in the morning to hear about the latest shooting death. It's funny, many of those who object to the existence of South Carolina on principle are the same people who think that poor young men in New York who use guns to commit crimes should have their backgrounds taken into account. So people who use guns obtained legally for a legal and licensed purpose --hunting-- are more reprehensible than those who obtain guns illegally and use them for illegal purposes.
--Did I say that? The air in Charleston must be making me more martial-like.
It's funny to be in Charleston on Veterans Day. Because Charleston is one of the most martial towns in the entire United States. It's not only the place where, on April 12, 1861, the Civil War started, it's the home of The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, to which women were only admitted after a legal battle that went to the Supreme Court.
During the Civil War much of the city burned down. Reconstruction was not kind to Charleston, the capital of the Confederacy. In 1886 an earthquake wreaked further damage and later, two massive hurricanes heaped more destruction on the "Holy City", as Charleston is known. (A reference to the historic, religious diversity of the city and the number of its houses of worship.) Only in the late 1970s did the historic preservation movement in Charleston take hold and the city's fortunes begin to revive. But on September 21-22, 1989, Hurricane Hugo put a literal damper on the city's future, damaging much that had been rebuilt. Charleston overcame the destruction and resumed rebuilding, this time taking into account the threat of future storms, and building on a growing interest in historic preservation of America's architectural heritage. As a result, Charleston became one of America's most beautifully and continuously preserved cities, the restored mansions facing the water on East Bay Road becoming symbols of Charleston's rebirth.
Although more diverse in outlook than the rest of South Carolina, Charleston is still a place where the Daughters of the American Revolution and the members of the Charleston Historic Preservation Society count for something. It is also a place where collectors of English and American antiques do a lot of shopping, in places like Geo. C. Birlant & Co. on King Street, which has been selling "fine antiques and gifts" since 1922.
This afternoon, I met Vi, a seventyish Englishwoman from the West Country who works part-time at Birlant's. She showed me a new shipment of English china and a tantalus, a case for liquor bottles with locks on the bottles to keep dissolute servants --and/or sons-- from stealing the master's liquor. Now that Charleston has become a cruise ship destination, the shop is often invaded by tourists who come to gawk, but not to buy --and in the case of the Chinese visitors, to photograph for reproduction in Chinese factories.
"One of them --a very tall and heavy man-- made me so angry that I 'lost it'", she told me: "I picked up one of the old golf clubs we sell, took it into my grip and said 'I don't care how big you are, you will not take pictures of our merchandise --I played first division field hockey and if I have to, I will fell you!'" The martial strain infects everyone in Charleston, this incident makes clear, grandmothers not to be excluded.
Palate, a magazine devoted to the arts of the Southern table, does a feature on a low-country shooting club and its post-hunt feast. In addition to the obligatory photos of older club members, wizened men in plaid shirts, chinos and John Deere caps, there is a photo of a winsome young blonde, her dog and her gun, taken just after a round of skeet shooting.
In the Northeast of the United States and the West Coast, South Carolina is a by-word for bigotry, homophobia and yahoo lifestyles. Close up, though, I have to say Charleston doesn't strike me as particularly retrograde. No one is abrupt, and conversations are long, rather than brief and hurried, as they are in New York.
Agreeability is skillfully practiced, as demonstrated by the young woman with whom I conversed as I was walking to the Battery along King Street. She was walking her new puppy, an undisciplined six-month old hunting dog. No matter what I said about my own experience with two puppies --or how I said it, her response was the same: "Yes, Ma'am!" Her reply was its own reproach: with every "Yes, Ma'am!" I felt myself growing years older.
Still, to be older in Charleston seems a more agreeable fate than aging in New York. Slowing down physically in a frenetic metropolis, having to daily take the measure of one's capacity to cope with the consequences of the contrast between the two, seems more challenging than living somewhere where the natural slowness of local rhythms meshes with one's own slowing tempo.
If Charleston were a piece of music, it would be played lento. If New York were a piece of music, it would be presto. Although New York's a pretty martial place, too: you only have to turn on "New York 1" in the morning to hear about the latest shooting death. It's funny, many of those who object to the existence of South Carolina on principle are the same people who think that poor young men in New York who use guns to commit crimes should have their backgrounds taken into account. So people who use guns obtained legally for a legal and licensed purpose --hunting-- are more reprehensible than those who obtain guns illegally and use them for illegal purposes.
--Did I say that? The air in Charleston must be making me more martial-like.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Where The Waste Land Ends
November 10, 2013
When I was a sophomore in college, I took two seminars on "Psychology and Religion", with a popular instructor named Alan Nelson, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at the Harvard Divinity School. The year was 1972-'73. The year before I had taken a freshman seminar with Harvey Cox, the activist theologian known for his book "The Secular City", which argued that organized religion had little claim on the life of the spirit, a radical notion at the time.
We were all learning Transcendental Meditation ("™") and studying other spiritual disciplines, be they za-Zen, Hindu meditation, Sufism or the way of the Bahá'ís. Those who had money to burn paid to go to Arica, a commune in Chile where enlightenment was the stuff of daily life. I was a disciple of a Hindu teacher, Sri Chinmoy, whose meditation style I had been introduced to by two women in the "Psychology and Religion" seminars, Maydelle Hagenbush and Marion Lennihan. For the semester I spent away from college and living at home with my parents, working nights at the New York Times as a file clerk in the morgue, I also practiced Hinduism, wearing a sari and eating Indian vegetarian food. It was the spring semester of 1975, the year Nixon resigned. My parents thought the world would come to an end any day, and their daughter with it. Away from the heady air of Cambridge, though, Sri Chinmoy's religious practice began to look more and more like a cult to me, and I became disillusioned with all the hoopla about "Guru-said this" and "Guru said that". Folding a sari correctly every day was pretty tedious, too.
Despite the chaos in two-party politics and the clash of values, the world still seemed to me a pretty benign place. The world of books (or what used to be called "the life of the mind") still influenced the discourse and people still talked about "ideas", rather than "rights", the trope that dominates our times.
Harvard professors --men in tweed jackets-- still said memorable, witty things: Donald Fleming, the philosopher, lecturing in Humanities 5, the survey of philosophy course, observed "Every age has its prevalent hypocrisy. Ours is that everyone is having more sex than they are actually having." And Richard Pipes, the historian of the Russian state: "It is not true that Catherine the Great was killed by a horse, as the scurrilous gossip would have had it." (A reference to the rumor the Empress died attempting to have her sexual lusts equinely satisfied.)
In September 1971, at Radcliffe, where I resided in North "House" (the collection of dormitories singly administered), there was a computer lab in the next House over, "South House". Those studying computer science were an obsessive lot, and the computer lab was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (The libraries were only open until midnight.) The computer wonks would work until after midnight, then watch re-runs of "Star Trek" on late night Boston television. It was not unusual to come back from a party on a weekend and find two or three bespectacled young men cross-legged in front of the TV screen, mouthing the words to the Star Trek scripts and offering commentary for those of us no more initiated in the world of the Starship Enterprise than we were in Fortran or Basic.
In 1972-73 I read Theodore Roszak's book, Where The Waste Land Ends, which I consider the book that most influenced me as an undergraduate. Roszak, a cultural historian best known for coining the term "counterculture", wrote Where The Waste Land Ends to make his case against modern man's worship of technology. "Our culture has struck a Faustian bargain for power over man and nature, and it will not easily resign its wager. It still looks to its machines, its science, its big economic systems for security, prosperity, salvation" (xvii).
What alternative to technology's encroachment did Roszak offer? "Romantic artists rediscovered the meaning of transcendent symbols and thereby returned western culture to the Old Gnosis, and what part the rhapsodic intellect must play in our journey to the visionary commonwealth".
I wasn't so sure I bought the latter half of the critique. Anyone who knows anything about the Romantic crowd knows that some of them were irresponsible libertines (Byron and Shelley) others visionaries (Blake and Keats). Only Goethe, simultaneously a man of science and of poetry, rises above the heap of teeming egos and passions. --And Goethe was a high-ranking civil servant, when you come right down to it. When I think of what Roszak's plea that modern man develop his "rhapsodic intellect" might result in, all I can think of is a dinner where great talkers hold sway. I'd love to be invited, but I wouldn't go to have my problems solved.
In 1972 Theodore Roszak published Where The Waste Land Ends; in 1973 Bill Gates came to Harvard as a freshman, met Steve Ballmer, and shortly after dropped out to start Microsoft. Wonks became the "avant garde" and the rest of us took notice. I read all of Tolstoy, and signed up for a course in shorthand and typing at Harvard Summer School. I would drop out a year later, return in the spring of 1976 and graduate with honors in 1977. Protest was a dead letter by then, and the counterculture had withered on the vine. From November 1973 to March 1975, the economy had been in recession and the classes of '74 and '75 had a hard time finding jobs. The classes of '76 and '77 were well-aware of what life right after college had been for a good many upperclassmen, and modified their behavior accordingly: suddenly everyone was at the library, studying, planning to go to law school or medical school as soon as they graduated. The private clubs (which had been rejected by the countercultural classes --1968 to 1974), became popular again, and membership in the Gilbert & Sullivan Society, once considered a redoubt of eccentrics and counterrevolutionaries, was suddenly a good thing to have on your resumé.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Remembrance
November 9, 2013
It has occurred to me of late that the shape of the world I live in has changed significantly not once, but twice in my lifetime.
As a child born in the 1950s, the world my parents inhabited was one of Jello, Nescafé and network television, in which respectable people dressed modestly, and the United States was the only place in the world where freedom and prosperity went hand in hand. Coming of age in the 1970s that all changed: respect was not what you got for a life of Babbitry, but of non-conformism. Government was discredited after Watergate, journalists became media figures and breaking the law no longer meant social banishment, provided the law was broken over a matter of principle. It was a new age.
I think that since the 1970s the world has changed again, in a way that would be largely mystifying to my parents, because it mystifies me a bit, I admit. Although my father seemed to sense a new world was in the offing: He once asked me "Did I think human nature could be changed, could values long-held and on which societies were built, could they disappear and a new man appear?" That was a theoretical question in my father's time. Now it is a certainty.
The world I live in, an affluent, educated one, has embraced non-traditional ideas about what a family is or ought to be, for instance. Family ties are weaker, individuals have more ambit to select the lifestyle that suits them, and the world is "globalized". We are all connected, but it seems we listen to each other less. We are too busy, too preoccupied with ourselves to spend time with each other. And I have grown older.
I still think of myself as young. That is to say, what physical restrictions I have are minor and I continue to live actively. Yet in a subway car, college co-eds ask me whether I would like to sit down before they take the empty seat. And I gratefully take them up on their offer.
We are, most of us, resigned to the ever-increasing pace of life: we must all keep up with the new technological developments the way our parents used to worry about keeping up with the Joneses. We spend a lot of time shredding paper, making sure we have the latest version of Spyware and anti-virus software and worrying about whether economic catastrophe is not just around the corner. Whenever someone sends us an alert about a computer virus, we forward it to our friends and family, the way a password for a speakeasy used to be, as quickly and quietly as possible. At the back of our minds as we do so is the thought: "What would happen to my life if my computer, with all the information I have on it, became the property of others?" We educate ourselves as to how to identify the virus in an e-mail attachment, how to install the new anti-virus software, and doing so, hope we have saved our computer from foreign takeover.
Are we having any fun? Or have we moved seamlessly from the world of the counterculture, with its promises of a new dawn ("The Age of Aquarius"), to the Orwellian one without noticing? It's a problem of middle age, perhaps: The young have their animal spirits and capacity for enthusiasm, while their elders are chastened and more timid. There are, however, alternative cultures to the digitalized one that dominates our lives, cultures that do not exclude on the basis of age: The vogue for "Steampunk" --crafts and clothing directly inspired by life before the steam engine, has been taken up by people disaffected with the digital world, even if the craftsmen still need the Internet to sell their wares on Etsy. At flea markets, dealers in manual typewriters, and even IBM "Selectrics", are doing a good business, evidence of an undercurrent of skepticism about making all communication paperless.
So you have a choice:
Instead of sending your lover an e-mail, you can send a typewritten letter replete with smudges created by typewriter ribbon, and your signature in ink, all of it written on old stationery.
--Or you can send an electronic card, complete with fluttering digital hearts, and a Cupid that will shoot an arrow into a cartoon heart, a cheap, quick expression of your deepest feelings.
Which will your lover remember?
It has occurred to me of late that the shape of the world I live in has changed significantly not once, but twice in my lifetime.
As a child born in the 1950s, the world my parents inhabited was one of Jello, Nescafé and network television, in which respectable people dressed modestly, and the United States was the only place in the world where freedom and prosperity went hand in hand. Coming of age in the 1970s that all changed: respect was not what you got for a life of Babbitry, but of non-conformism. Government was discredited after Watergate, journalists became media figures and breaking the law no longer meant social banishment, provided the law was broken over a matter of principle. It was a new age.
I think that since the 1970s the world has changed again, in a way that would be largely mystifying to my parents, because it mystifies me a bit, I admit. Although my father seemed to sense a new world was in the offing: He once asked me "Did I think human nature could be changed, could values long-held and on which societies were built, could they disappear and a new man appear?" That was a theoretical question in my father's time. Now it is a certainty.
The world I live in, an affluent, educated one, has embraced non-traditional ideas about what a family is or ought to be, for instance. Family ties are weaker, individuals have more ambit to select the lifestyle that suits them, and the world is "globalized". We are all connected, but it seems we listen to each other less. We are too busy, too preoccupied with ourselves to spend time with each other. And I have grown older.
I still think of myself as young. That is to say, what physical restrictions I have are minor and I continue to live actively. Yet in a subway car, college co-eds ask me whether I would like to sit down before they take the empty seat. And I gratefully take them up on their offer.
We are, most of us, resigned to the ever-increasing pace of life: we must all keep up with the new technological developments the way our parents used to worry about keeping up with the Joneses. We spend a lot of time shredding paper, making sure we have the latest version of Spyware and anti-virus software and worrying about whether economic catastrophe is not just around the corner. Whenever someone sends us an alert about a computer virus, we forward it to our friends and family, the way a password for a speakeasy used to be, as quickly and quietly as possible. At the back of our minds as we do so is the thought: "What would happen to my life if my computer, with all the information I have on it, became the property of others?" We educate ourselves as to how to identify the virus in an e-mail attachment, how to install the new anti-virus software, and doing so, hope we have saved our computer from foreign takeover.
Are we having any fun? Or have we moved seamlessly from the world of the counterculture, with its promises of a new dawn ("The Age of Aquarius"), to the Orwellian one without noticing? It's a problem of middle age, perhaps: The young have their animal spirits and capacity for enthusiasm, while their elders are chastened and more timid. There are, however, alternative cultures to the digitalized one that dominates our lives, cultures that do not exclude on the basis of age: The vogue for "Steampunk" --crafts and clothing directly inspired by life before the steam engine, has been taken up by people disaffected with the digital world, even if the craftsmen still need the Internet to sell their wares on Etsy. At flea markets, dealers in manual typewriters, and even IBM "Selectrics", are doing a good business, evidence of an undercurrent of skepticism about making all communication paperless.
So you have a choice:
Instead of sending your lover an e-mail, you can send a typewritten letter replete with smudges created by typewriter ribbon, and your signature in ink, all of it written on old stationery.
--Or you can send an electronic card, complete with fluttering digital hearts, and a Cupid that will shoot an arrow into a cartoon heart, a cheap, quick expression of your deepest feelings.
Which will your lover remember?
Friday, November 8, 2013
Winter is icummen in
November 9, 2013
In New York City, Winter is icummen in as Ezra Pound wrote, and people are taking it badly.
After a lulling Indian Summer, temperatures dropped during the week, and tonight, Friday, they are absolutely cold. Everyone is hang-dog-faced, as if no one told them the good weather would ever end, and they are not happy about it. New York's winter winds are starting to slap us around. We are not quite ready for winter, judging by the glum faces in the subway cars and the uniformly drab turn-out.
In a few days, we will recognize that winter is part of life in New York and pull out the sweaters with Icelandic prints, the duck boots and the funny knitted hats. Skating on the ice rinks in Central Park and at Rockefeller Center will be more popular, and everyone will start talking about the installation of the mammoth Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.
At the Metropolitan Museum, the Neapolitan Crêche, with its hundreds of carved figures of Wise Men, shepherds, angels and the Holy Family, will light up every evening at 6 p.m. The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park will have an exhibit associating its medieval collections with the season.
On the eve of Thanksgiving, behind the Museum of Natural History, the gigantic balloons made to look like popular cartoon figures --Mickey Mouse, Superman, Miss Piggy-- will be inflated while thousands of visitors file by to watch under the glare of cameras and police keeping the rota orderly.
Thanksgiving Day, Macy's parade will kick-off at 9:00 a.m., and every inch of Central Park West from the Museum to Columbus Circle, down to Macy's Seventh Avenue and 34th Street store, will be chock-a-block. When I was a little girl and we lived at "Lincoln Square" --65th Street between Central Park West and Columbus-- , my parents would let my sister and I, a kindergartner and a first-grader, walk down the street to Central Park West alone, to watch the parade. We would squeeze ourselves through gaps between legs larger than ours to get to the front. There we would watch the parade until it was time to go home. It is one of my happiest memories.
In Manhattan, when it becomes very cold and the sun is shining, the limestone façades shimmer. The winter light and the fewer number of people out in the cold weather turn the city into a movie set. Should we have snow, that is still another way of experiencing the life of the city: the newspaper vendors, the food trucks, the buses are there for you: I once rode down to a popular British grocery on Hudson Street, Myers of Keswick, in a blizzard, arriving just before it closed, so I could pick up one of their pork pies. I rode the M6 bus through the snow, the only passenger all the way through Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Herald Square and the Theatre District, before anyone joined me. There is a delectable stillness all around whenever it snows hard here.
The next day, everyone goes back into action. If the snow falls on a weekend, no one more so than parents with young children: Central Park is invaded, every hill in the heart of the park, the Great Lawn and the Sheep Meadow, is the scene of a battle for sledding space.
The big exhibits open at the museums, the blockbuster films scheduled for Christmas premiere, the Winter Antiques Show comes to the Seventh Regiment Armory. Cyclists are fewer, but some persist in riding, even in the most frigid conditions. No one thinks them eccentric. The Circle Line still goes around Manhattan Island, the Staten Island Ferry never stops running, and Ellis Island remains open.
The IKEA Ferry to Red Hook Brooklyn continues to ply the waters of the Brooklyn waterfront to take customers there, where they can buy Swedish food: smoked fish spreads to squeeze out of tubes and onto slices of bread; salmon roe, lingonberry jam. If you walk from IKEA on to Van Brunt Street, you can walk into the Fairway supermarket and buy a sandwich and a coffee to enjoy outside while you take in the Statue of Liberty from the only unobstructed vantage point in the five boroughs. As the ferries crisscross the harbor, you can dream of when Brooklyn was a city in itself, and Red Hook was where the boats unloading cargo docked, in the Erie Basin on the other side of the Upper Bay from Bayonne.
Best of all, when it is really cold here, or when it really snows, all the movie theaters are empty. You can actually enjoy a movie in peace then.
The next day the snow starts to turn to slush, the salt on the sidewalk ruins good leather, and burns the soles of dogs' feet. Everyone gets used to winter eventually, or you don't live here. It's winter like nowhere else --or maybe it isn't.
In New York City, Winter is icummen in as Ezra Pound wrote, and people are taking it badly.
After a lulling Indian Summer, temperatures dropped during the week, and tonight, Friday, they are absolutely cold. Everyone is hang-dog-faced, as if no one told them the good weather would ever end, and they are not happy about it. New York's winter winds are starting to slap us around. We are not quite ready for winter, judging by the glum faces in the subway cars and the uniformly drab turn-out.
In a few days, we will recognize that winter is part of life in New York and pull out the sweaters with Icelandic prints, the duck boots and the funny knitted hats. Skating on the ice rinks in Central Park and at Rockefeller Center will be more popular, and everyone will start talking about the installation of the mammoth Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.
At the Metropolitan Museum, the Neapolitan Crêche, with its hundreds of carved figures of Wise Men, shepherds, angels and the Holy Family, will light up every evening at 6 p.m. The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park will have an exhibit associating its medieval collections with the season.
On the eve of Thanksgiving, behind the Museum of Natural History, the gigantic balloons made to look like popular cartoon figures --Mickey Mouse, Superman, Miss Piggy-- will be inflated while thousands of visitors file by to watch under the glare of cameras and police keeping the rota orderly.
Thanksgiving Day, Macy's parade will kick-off at 9:00 a.m., and every inch of Central Park West from the Museum to Columbus Circle, down to Macy's Seventh Avenue and 34th Street store, will be chock-a-block. When I was a little girl and we lived at "Lincoln Square" --65th Street between Central Park West and Columbus-- , my parents would let my sister and I, a kindergartner and a first-grader, walk down the street to Central Park West alone, to watch the parade. We would squeeze ourselves through gaps between legs larger than ours to get to the front. There we would watch the parade until it was time to go home. It is one of my happiest memories.
In Manhattan, when it becomes very cold and the sun is shining, the limestone façades shimmer. The winter light and the fewer number of people out in the cold weather turn the city into a movie set. Should we have snow, that is still another way of experiencing the life of the city: the newspaper vendors, the food trucks, the buses are there for you: I once rode down to a popular British grocery on Hudson Street, Myers of Keswick, in a blizzard, arriving just before it closed, so I could pick up one of their pork pies. I rode the M6 bus through the snow, the only passenger all the way through Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Herald Square and the Theatre District, before anyone joined me. There is a delectable stillness all around whenever it snows hard here.
The next day, everyone goes back into action. If the snow falls on a weekend, no one more so than parents with young children: Central Park is invaded, every hill in the heart of the park, the Great Lawn and the Sheep Meadow, is the scene of a battle for sledding space.
The big exhibits open at the museums, the blockbuster films scheduled for Christmas premiere, the Winter Antiques Show comes to the Seventh Regiment Armory. Cyclists are fewer, but some persist in riding, even in the most frigid conditions. No one thinks them eccentric. The Circle Line still goes around Manhattan Island, the Staten Island Ferry never stops running, and Ellis Island remains open.
The IKEA Ferry to Red Hook Brooklyn continues to ply the waters of the Brooklyn waterfront to take customers there, where they can buy Swedish food: smoked fish spreads to squeeze out of tubes and onto slices of bread; salmon roe, lingonberry jam. If you walk from IKEA on to Van Brunt Street, you can walk into the Fairway supermarket and buy a sandwich and a coffee to enjoy outside while you take in the Statue of Liberty from the only unobstructed vantage point in the five boroughs. As the ferries crisscross the harbor, you can dream of when Brooklyn was a city in itself, and Red Hook was where the boats unloading cargo docked, in the Erie Basin on the other side of the Upper Bay from Bayonne.
Best of all, when it is really cold here, or when it really snows, all the movie theaters are empty. You can actually enjoy a movie in peace then.
The next day the snow starts to turn to slush, the salt on the sidewalk ruins good leather, and burns the soles of dogs' feet. Everyone gets used to winter eventually, or you don't live here. It's winter like nowhere else --or maybe it isn't.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
The Gods Of My Youth
November 5, 2013
Someone left a paperback book, The Modern Poets: An American-British Anthology by John Malcolm Brinnin, photographs by Rollie McKenna, in the "Swap Area" here --the shelves in the basement of my apartment building where neighbors leave whatever they think is still usable and no longer wish to keep. The book was published in 1963, so the modern poets compiled inside are no longer that: indeed, many of them are the magisterial figures of twentieth century poetry, while others mere attendants on them.
Had the book not contained McKenna's excellent and revealing photographs, it probably would not have had such a hold on me, but seeing the faces of so many of my literary gods brought back my six years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971 to 1977. At Harvard then were, among the poets included in The Modern Poets, Robert Lowell, whom I remember shuffling along Massachusetts Avenue, long grey hair askew, black glasses not quite balanced on his face, shabby brown overcoat thrown over similarly drab trousers and shirt, face abstracted. Elizabeth Bishop, too, shutting between Cambridge and Brazil; and Anthony Hecht, the formalist poet whom I interviewed for The Harvard Independent, the weekly newspaper for which I was the Book Editor.
What happened to the love of poetry? True, unlike the English schools, where schoolboys learned to distinguish hexameters from alexandrines and iambic pentameter, memorizing whole poems like "Invictus" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade", the American approach was less formal, but no less passionate. Evening poetry readings at the coffeehouse behind the Harvard Coop were packed, particularly when "feminist" poets --Marge Piercy and Adrienne Rich-- read. In 1972 Rich made waves when she walked out of the Signet Society Christmas dinner in protest after a speaker at the dinner regaled the audience with tales of his visit to a Boston burlesque show in the company of the literary society's steward. Rich, a protégé of W.H. Auden, refused to deliver a reading in what she termed a "male dominated institution".
Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton published poems and killed themselves. W.H. Auden was still alive in 1972 --he died the next year. So was Ezra Pound --at least until All Saint's Day, when he died. John Berryman died January 7 of that year. Delmore Schwartz and Randall Jarrell died in the 1960s. Alan Ginsberg died in 1997. Galway Kinnell is still alive. T.S. Eliot never died, being apotheosized by Prufrock, which Pound edited.
Also included in The Modern Poets is Robert Fitzgerald, best known for his translations of The Illiad and The Odyssey. Fitzgerald was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, a plum position there in which he succeeded another poet and diplomat, Archibald MacLeish.
As part of his duties, Fitzgerald organized the Boylston Prize competition, a prize in elocution given "for the delivery of memorized selections from English, Greek, or Latin literature" not to exceed five minutes in length. The competition took place on two days over two weeks, with the only qualification being delivery to the English department of the selection to be declaimed by the undergraduate. The first day was grueling, as the judges --representing the cloth, the bar and education, as stipulated in the original grant for the prize -- had to sit there and hear all comers. The undergraduate who gave the most outstanding recitation of a poem or a passage of dramatic verse won $175 and had his photograph taken for The Crimson. The second prize was $100. I don't know what the judges got.
I competed for the prize, offering as my selection Juliet's last monologue, Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I was standing in the middle of the stage in Boylston Hall when I began speaking my piece, Fitzgerald sitting to the side, bespectacled. He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man in his sixties, with longish grey hair framing a strong, eagle-eyed face. I don't remember noticing anyone else among the judges. Perhaps they only judged the finalists Fitzgerald selected, my memory fails me.
I started out confidently, but at some moment felt that something in my delivery was boring Fitzgerald. Whereupon shame and shyness seized me, hurtling me headlong and hound doggedly to the sorry end of my lines. I shambled offstage, wondering how had I dared waste the great translator's time.
The winners of the prize that year, 1976, were Felipe Noguera and Mira Nair. I don't know what happened to Noguera, but Nair went on to become an internationally famous filmmaker. Nair won with Jocasta's speech from Seneca's Oedipus, the speech which ends with her plunging the sword into her entrails. The translation from the Greek was that of Ted Hughes, but the bloodcurdling scream was Nair's.
My money was on Japes Emerson, a tall, slender, fair-skinned and brown-haired boy who acted in many Harvard productions. He wore his hair parted in the middle and over his ears, his long face accentuated by the style. He was elongated naturally: his blue blazer, dark polo shirt and jeans heightened the impression, and suited the delivery of his selection for the competition: Browning's My Last Duchess.
My Last Duchess is a monologue delivered by a Renaissance duke, whose young wife has recently died. He is showing the emissary of a family with a daughter to marry around his collection of art works when he stops before a portrait of the last duchess. In describing her, it becomes clear that the duke grew to hate his wife's gentle disposition. "She had a heart too soon made glad" he says, explaining why he killed her. Now he seeks her replacement by another young beauty, exchanging wives as easily as he would one of the art works in his collection. It is a piece that requires an actor to convey the aristocrat's coldness, but also his covetousness. It's funny, years later, I retained the memory of Emerson's performance, thinking he had taken second prize to Nair's first. It was only in checking the Harvard archives that I realized my mistake. Noguera, who declaimed The Meaning of the Fourth of July for Black People by Frederick Douglas, made no impression.
There were opportunities at Harvard to study poetry and to write it as well. I studied Milton with Herschel Baker, the dean of Milton studies. He, like Milton, was going blind, but he hadn't completely lost his sight: visiting him once in his office in the stacks of Widener Library, he called me a "comely Spanish beauty". A male classmate in the same class who had the impression Baker disliked him, used to refer to Baker's "gimlet eye" --a glance that fixed you. David Perkins let me devise an independent study around --Pound, writing during his "Imagist" phase, as well as Marianne Moore and others. With Zachary Leader (who went on to become the official biographer of Kingsley Amis, and now Saul Bellow), I studied the Metaphysical poets --Donne, Herbert and Marvell.
I even wrote some poetry. I only remember one poem I wrote, inspired by Personae, Pound's second book of poems, published in 1909. It has no title, but I will give it one now:
Poets in their youth
I think, when I am sixty
I'll be covered with scars.
Memories of cigarette burns linger
Tiny shadows, in the slip
Of fingers, idling, past their prime.
A friend in the hospital
Has the clearest skin:
Her mouth is like a poppy
Drying in the sun.
Someone left a paperback book, The Modern Poets: An American-British Anthology by John Malcolm Brinnin, photographs by Rollie McKenna, in the "Swap Area" here --the shelves in the basement of my apartment building where neighbors leave whatever they think is still usable and no longer wish to keep. The book was published in 1963, so the modern poets compiled inside are no longer that: indeed, many of them are the magisterial figures of twentieth century poetry, while others mere attendants on them.
Had the book not contained McKenna's excellent and revealing photographs, it probably would not have had such a hold on me, but seeing the faces of so many of my literary gods brought back my six years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971 to 1977. At Harvard then were, among the poets included in The Modern Poets, Robert Lowell, whom I remember shuffling along Massachusetts Avenue, long grey hair askew, black glasses not quite balanced on his face, shabby brown overcoat thrown over similarly drab trousers and shirt, face abstracted. Elizabeth Bishop, too, shutting between Cambridge and Brazil; and Anthony Hecht, the formalist poet whom I interviewed for The Harvard Independent, the weekly newspaper for which I was the Book Editor.
What happened to the love of poetry? True, unlike the English schools, where schoolboys learned to distinguish hexameters from alexandrines and iambic pentameter, memorizing whole poems like "Invictus" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade", the American approach was less formal, but no less passionate. Evening poetry readings at the coffeehouse behind the Harvard Coop were packed, particularly when "feminist" poets --Marge Piercy and Adrienne Rich-- read. In 1972 Rich made waves when she walked out of the Signet Society Christmas dinner in protest after a speaker at the dinner regaled the audience with tales of his visit to a Boston burlesque show in the company of the literary society's steward. Rich, a protégé of W.H. Auden, refused to deliver a reading in what she termed a "male dominated institution".
Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton published poems and killed themselves. W.H. Auden was still alive in 1972 --he died the next year. So was Ezra Pound --at least until All Saint's Day, when he died. John Berryman died January 7 of that year. Delmore Schwartz and Randall Jarrell died in the 1960s. Alan Ginsberg died in 1997. Galway Kinnell is still alive. T.S. Eliot never died, being apotheosized by Prufrock, which Pound edited.
Also included in The Modern Poets is Robert Fitzgerald, best known for his translations of The Illiad and The Odyssey. Fitzgerald was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, a plum position there in which he succeeded another poet and diplomat, Archibald MacLeish.
As part of his duties, Fitzgerald organized the Boylston Prize competition, a prize in elocution given "for the delivery of memorized selections from English, Greek, or Latin literature" not to exceed five minutes in length. The competition took place on two days over two weeks, with the only qualification being delivery to the English department of the selection to be declaimed by the undergraduate. The first day was grueling, as the judges --representing the cloth, the bar and education, as stipulated in the original grant for the prize -- had to sit there and hear all comers. The undergraduate who gave the most outstanding recitation of a poem or a passage of dramatic verse won $175 and had his photograph taken for The Crimson. The second prize was $100. I don't know what the judges got.
I competed for the prize, offering as my selection Juliet's last monologue, Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I was standing in the middle of the stage in Boylston Hall when I began speaking my piece, Fitzgerald sitting to the side, bespectacled. He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man in his sixties, with longish grey hair framing a strong, eagle-eyed face. I don't remember noticing anyone else among the judges. Perhaps they only judged the finalists Fitzgerald selected, my memory fails me.
I started out confidently, but at some moment felt that something in my delivery was boring Fitzgerald. Whereupon shame and shyness seized me, hurtling me headlong and hound doggedly to the sorry end of my lines. I shambled offstage, wondering how had I dared waste the great translator's time.
The winners of the prize that year, 1976, were Felipe Noguera and Mira Nair. I don't know what happened to Noguera, but Nair went on to become an internationally famous filmmaker. Nair won with Jocasta's speech from Seneca's Oedipus, the speech which ends with her plunging the sword into her entrails. The translation from the Greek was that of Ted Hughes, but the bloodcurdling scream was Nair's.
My money was on Japes Emerson, a tall, slender, fair-skinned and brown-haired boy who acted in many Harvard productions. He wore his hair parted in the middle and over his ears, his long face accentuated by the style. He was elongated naturally: his blue blazer, dark polo shirt and jeans heightened the impression, and suited the delivery of his selection for the competition: Browning's My Last Duchess.
My Last Duchess is a monologue delivered by a Renaissance duke, whose young wife has recently died. He is showing the emissary of a family with a daughter to marry around his collection of art works when he stops before a portrait of the last duchess. In describing her, it becomes clear that the duke grew to hate his wife's gentle disposition. "She had a heart too soon made glad" he says, explaining why he killed her. Now he seeks her replacement by another young beauty, exchanging wives as easily as he would one of the art works in his collection. It is a piece that requires an actor to convey the aristocrat's coldness, but also his covetousness. It's funny, years later, I retained the memory of Emerson's performance, thinking he had taken second prize to Nair's first. It was only in checking the Harvard archives that I realized my mistake. Noguera, who declaimed The Meaning of the Fourth of July for Black People by Frederick Douglas, made no impression.
There were opportunities at Harvard to study poetry and to write it as well. I studied Milton with Herschel Baker, the dean of Milton studies. He, like Milton, was going blind, but he hadn't completely lost his sight: visiting him once in his office in the stacks of Widener Library, he called me a "comely Spanish beauty". A male classmate in the same class who had the impression Baker disliked him, used to refer to Baker's "gimlet eye" --a glance that fixed you. David Perkins let me devise an independent study around --Pound, writing during his "Imagist" phase, as well as Marianne Moore and others. With Zachary Leader (who went on to become the official biographer of Kingsley Amis, and now Saul Bellow), I studied the Metaphysical poets --Donne, Herbert and Marvell.
I even wrote some poetry. I only remember one poem I wrote, inspired by Personae, Pound's second book of poems, published in 1909. It has no title, but I will give it one now:
Poets in their youth
I think, when I am sixty
I'll be covered with scars.
Memories of cigarette burns linger
Tiny shadows, in the slip
Of fingers, idling, past their prime.
A friend in the hospital
Has the clearest skin:
Her mouth is like a poppy
Drying in the sun.
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