Normalizing Assassination with "Best of the Best"

As student romcom dance movies go, Best of the Best of Netflix brings a smart fresh twist: it’s about rival Bollywood-fusion dance teams facing off in a collegiate competition in Southern California. Being a fan of Bollywood spectaculars, I like the dive into the fashions, grueling practices, creative decisions and the self-acknowledged stereotypes.

But it fails spectacularly in one tiny snippet that most viewers might have missed. Or, even worse, it succeeds as one more favorable nod rationalizing murder.

Facial expressions are critical!

I noticed the trend in the last season of Hacks, where a character, responding to moves by a corporate executive, shouts, "We need to kill him! We need to Luigi his ass!"

Luigi, of course, refers to Luigi Mangione, the achingly handsome heartthrob of today’s Manson Family crews looking for their violence fix as a form of protest.

Tell the story with your face.

In Best of the Best, the team leader tells dancers, “Facial expressions are critical! Tell the story with your face.” The camera pans on dancers responding to prompts, like “Dimple, he cheated on you.” Sad face.

Dimple, he cheated on you.

Then, “Anaji, they freed Luigi.” Pan to a young woman tossing her long hair in the throes of what looks like orgasmic delight of the “I'll have what she's having” ilk.

Anjali, they freed Luigi.

The scene flew by, but the sense was very clear. Freeing the (alleged!) assassin provoked a sensation of glee, ecstasy, satisfaction, or something else very positive. Whatever shades of nuance the scene expresses, the Luigi shout-out reflects careful decisions by writers, actors, directors to say, “Yeah, let’s celebrate assassination!”

What concerns me even more: I barely consume any mass culture. That I happened to here “Luigi!” references in a comedy series and a new movie makes me wonder how widespread the adulation is—and when will it become emulation.

Luigi soooooo hot!

Why We Do That Thing We Do

I performed this piece at the monthly open mic at the Hudson Valley Writers Center on Sept. 18. I address it to my fellow performers to pose the burning question of "why"? I provide my thoughts on the topic, with evidence.

Why do we do these open mics, pouring our hearts into our prose and poetry? Creative fulfillment, recognition, extravagant publishing contracts? Appearances on shows like “America’s Got Iambic Pentameter Talent”?

My why combines personal expression with a keen sense of history. That said, the level of feedback is very low. Clicks on my blog posts and open mics on YouTube barely create a ripple. By far the most viewed is one I did right there in Sleepy Hollow in 2019, “To Live and Die in Mission, Texas,” 1,200 views. Nothing else comes close.

Recently I’ve discovered one of my “why” reasons: Connection with readers and listeners. The pace of personal contact is picking up.

Due to the devouring power of AI, people are finding essays I’ve written at the Times of Israel and contacted me for more information. I always reply and nurture the relationship.

An April 2015 article, "Birthright Germany, Part 7: From Germany With Questions," published after I had visited Germany, mentioned my Uncle Max and Aunt Ruth in Texas. I knew Max was from Czechoslovakia. Family lore said Max and Ruth helped rescue or resettle Holocaust survivors from Europe. I could find nothing about this. Then, 11 years later, I received a cryptic email asking about Max and Ruth. I spoke with the sender, who was related to Max. Given some data points, I verified that Max and Ruth had helped a teen who had escaped Czechoslovakia on a “kindertransport” in the late 1930s. The teen ultimately resettled in Texas and was very close to Max and Ruth. This exchange enlarged my family circle and forged a profound link to history.

The very same article mentioned my partner Naomi’s grandmother, Valesca Schulman Leiseroff. I always provide complete names in my historical essays. That paid off here, when a woman in London researching the Schulman family’s history contacted me. Naomi shared some of the plentiful records her grandmother and father had saved. Naomi and the woman found they were second cousins.

I’ve done several essays mentioning my great-great-grandfather, Rabbi Hayyim Schwarz. He moved from Germany to Texas in 1873. A few weeks ago, a woman contacted me about her research on Rabbi Schwarz and families in Germany. It turns out my great-grandmother Valeria and her great-grandfather Leo were siblings, so we’re closely related. Her research found Rabbi Schwarz published a German-language prayer book (Siddur) in 1854 titled Poems and Psalms for the Holy Worship of Reichenbach's Jewish Community in Silesia. No copies exist, so it probably was meant only for his congregation. I guess I inherited the writing gene from him.

One more story. Earlier this month I published an essay titled “Converging Lives in Transit: Lisbon, June of 1941.” It outlined the stories of four families who all left Lisbon for New York in June 1941. One was Naomi’s father and his mother; another was the artist Marc Chagall. For those of you in Westchester County, you can find Chagall’s stained-glass windows in the Union Church of Pocantico Hills. They’re magnificent.

The section on Eric’s time in Lisbon was the longest, taken from the memoir I helped him write. Soon after posting the piece, I had several comments. They all shared details about Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral eAbranches, the Portuguese consul-general in Bordeaux, France. By issuing thousands of visas, he ignored strict orders from the Portuguese dictator António Salazar, who wanted to keep desperate Jews and others out of Portugal. I had heard of de Sousa Mendes, but Eric’s memoir credited Salazar with admitting refugees, for a price. I replied to everybody and said I would consider a follow-up post on de Sousa Mendes. He and his family were severely punished for defying the dictator. Long after his 1954 death De Sousa Mendes gained worldwide recognition for his fearless actions, including Yad Vashem in Israel.

So keep writing and speaking, get your pieces out there. I bet most of you can tell stories about similar impact. You have no idea who might be reading and taking your works to heart. You may not get rich or famous, but you’ll shake somebody’s world or at least locate some unknown relatives.

The Walking Dead Goes Full Spaghetti Western

I’ve always blown hot and cold on The Walking Dead (TWD). I devoured the first seven or eight seasons, until the constant ad breaks and sluggish acting exhausted my enthusiasm. I tried the spin-off Fear the Walking Dead but found the characters so unlikeable that I hoped they would be bitten just to put them out of their thespian misery. Other spin-offs followed, focusing on specific characters and new situations. Tired of them all and lacking access to AMC+, I put them out of my mind. The whole original series is on Netflix but I just didn’t care.

Then I heard about The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, featuring the rough and surly but chivalric biker-type character who’d been around TWD forever. I gave it a try on Netflix and liked it, especially because it moved TWD out of the United States. Parts of Fear the Walking Dead were set in Mexico, if I recall, but that couldn’t overcome the problems with the characters. The TWD U.S. settings, mostly in Georgia, Virginia and other parts of the South, were getting stale. I’ve always appreciated sci-fi and apocalyptic shows set out in the wide world, like World War Z (South Korea, Israel and Nova Scotia, among others), District 9 (South Africa) Sleep Dealer (Mexico) and the morally gripping Godzilla Minus One (Japan). The world doesn't always end in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, after all

But the Daryl Dixon cycle went in a refreshing new direction: East. I like calling it The Walking Dead’s European Vacation! The first and second seasons are in France, and end with an ill-starred move by Daryl, his fellow traveler Carol Peletier and some Brits through the Chunnel to reach London. Season 3, which I just watched, starts in London and through unfortunate circumstances winds up in coastal Spain.

And that’s where my attention really perked up. From the start I picked up vibes from one of my favorite movie genres, the Spaghetti Westerns filmed in Spain in the 1960s. The color tones, the Spanish guitar music, the sweeping vistas all looked and sound straight out of the Sergio Leone playbook. And then there’s Daryl Dixon, as an updated version of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. The delightful similarities couldn’t be a coincidence and, I learned, that was all deliberate. A promotional poster even has the headline “The Good. The Bad. The Undead.” One scene even shows the poster for a spaghetti western.

Some other points of similarity that fascinated me:

• The gated town ruled over by the local caudillo
• Ringing church bells and quasi-religious processions
• The Spanish “king” arriving with his thuggish entourage to bestow gifts on the peasants in exchange for a comely young virgin chosen in a terrifying ceremony called La Ofrenda.
• A band of lepers pleading for support against another vile, foppish character who steals their water and rides around in a walker-pulled train (Daryl of course knows what to do).
• A young woman fighter in a hat and bandolero straight out of a scene from the Mexican Revolution.
• An epic gunfight in the town square at the finale

The Spain season also inspired political thoughts. The Spanish village that Daryl and Carol enter, Solaz del Mar, seems workable enough on the surface, other than La Ofrenda. But, step by step, the two Americans shake the place up, similar to their noble troublemaking in the French setting in the first two seasons. They just can’t help getting involved and creating chaos. Is this a subtle indicator of the durability of American imperialism surviving the Apocalypse? The series needs plots, so conflict is required, and taking TWD out of what was the United States to Europe does assure culture clashes (although somebody’s always around who speaks English).

Season three of Dixon raises the bar on spectacular set pieces with the walkers. Besides the usual surprise encounters with herds of walkers (cue the knives, swords and arrows), the characters take part in scenes that are amazing in their choreography, editing and sheer mayhem. One involves the train, another with walkers used as marionettes in a stage performance for the heartless aristocrats during La Ofrenda, until they’re cut loose to attack the audience. The inventiveness will be hard to top but I’m sure producers will come up with wild scenarios as The Walking Dead’s European Vacation moves on. Maybe next time in Ukraine's Chernobyl, for nuke-enhanced (or cured!) walkers?

Finally, this season offered some surprisingly saucy dialogue. That’s refreshing since “saucy” is the last word I’d associate with the grim world of the TWD universe. Some sensuality may be hiding in the spinoffs, but here you get Carol, in the realm of attraction to a villager, telling a Spanish woman, “But has anybody ever told you that you are a horny old lady?”

The smiling reply: “Usually they don’t call me a lady.”

A little bit of that goes a long way to lightening the mood of TWD.

Protecting Your Stuff, 1983 Edition

 In 1983 I was living in a studio apartment on Amity Street in Brooklyn. Those were the days of dirty subways, crumbling neighborhoods and enough crime to keep me on edge. Fortunately, the NYPD had its “Operation Identification” program enabling citizens to get their identity on to personal belongings. If stolen and located, they could be traced back to the rightful owner.

The identifying detail was your Social Security number, etched with an engraver in specified areas of personal property.

Over 40 years later, I marvel that I took advantage of this program, involving an identifier now guarded with great attention. Identify theft—what’s that?

The instruction form had a list of valuables, along with a table of items I marked, details about the manufacturers and serial numbers, and where I had marked the item. The sheet explained:

When this form has been completed, file it in a safe place. If any of the items listed are stolen or lost, notify the Police Department at once and show this form to the investigating officer. Information shown here will enhance our chances of recovering your property and returning to you.

My list shows what I considered property with enough value to warrant an etching. I showed admirable attention to the manufacturer and serial number. Most items were electronics. Consider:

• Camera flash, Canon 177A
• Phone answering machine, Record-a-Call
• Camera #1, Canon G-III QL
• Camera #2, Canon AE-1
• Typewriter #1, IBM Model IIc
• Typewriter #2, Royal Quiet Deluxe
• Iron, GE Light & Easy
• Photographer’s lamp, Smith-Victor (red)
• Big stand fan
• Stereo turntable, Technics 
• Stereo receiver, Kenwood
• Stereo speakers (2) Realistic
• Menorah
• Home computer, Timex 1000

This list carried such incredible importance that for over 40 years I stored it in a document folder with my birth certificate, my wills, passports and old drivers licenses. Don't you dare mess with my GE iron! Hands off my phone answering machine, which played such a crucial role in my go-go 80s lifestyle. The list lingered there for decades after it had any practical value, so I finally transferred it to a less secure document storage folder.

Security measures have evolved over the decades. Nobody puts their Social Security number on items; I hope not, anyway. AirTags are useful for tracking valuables. Approaches now are more about photographs, invoices, model numbers, safes, insurance, and home security systems. I doubt anybody etches anything at all.

All the items listed above are long gone except the menorah—some things are built to last, priceless in their own way. On its base, I can still very faintly see the magic number, along with “NYC.”

The 50th Reunion: The Lovely, Melancholy Task

Last month I attended my 50^th high school reunion in Mission, Texas. Camera in hand I devoted myself to the lovely, melancholy task of documenting that town I knew and how it has grown and evolved from a town of 11,000 to 90,000 now. Nobody asked me to record the town. That’s just what I’ve always done.

Former Conway, Dooley & Martin building.

What Dublin was to James Joyce, Mission is to me.

I strolled around downtown Mission to see the commercial district. The Spanish-style building where my mother worked for Conway, Dooley & Martin Insurance Agency now houses a healthcare provider. Ghosts hovered over North Conway Avenue, the main drag, as I overlaid businesses long gone: David’s Pharmacy, Rexall Pharmacy, First State Bank (where I had a passbook savings account paying a fixed 5 percent! Sign me up for that!), Later’s Supermarket, Dondlinger’s Appliances. Dr. Martin and Dr. Livengood, who made house calls. The Border Theater, a historical landmark, is still there but I don’t see movies playing.

The tracks.

I wandered in the 95-degree heat toward the railroad tracks that split Mission into north and south segments, rails of both commerce and intense symbolism. I’ve got photos going back to 1975 of the tracks. They always drew me. I was in luck: I saw a line of 10 rail cars on the regular tracks and six graffiti-scarred ones on a weed-grown side track. From different angles I captured background elements that added context. The most notable was the venerable Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, an anchor of Mission’s skyline and society for over 100 years. I shot palm trees in the distance framed in the space between two cars.

Palm trees amid railroad steel.

Across the tracks and down South Conway Avenue, to the “Mexican” part of town. Heading south, I passed Mission Feed and Hardware Supply, and Mission Western Wear. They’re old-time retailers. South Mission was always intensely photogenic. The Leo Pena Placita Park was locked up, so I couldn’t get in. It honors Mission veterans, highlighting those who died in service. The place looked rundown, needing lots of TLC in keeping with its solemn purpose.

Driving a distance from my hotel, the Bungalows on Shary Road, I rediscovered the Valley I remembered: wide vistas, towering Gulf Coast clouds, fields, mobile homes. What I had been so oblivious to as a teen now looked utterly familiar, timeless, serene—the home I had.

I visited St.Peter’s Novitiate southwest of town, built in 1912 as a seminary. In the 70s I walked around and photographed this stately building and surrounding greenery. Then a fire destroyed it in 2009. Seeing the skeletal ruins on top of a hill, isolated behind a high fence, shocked me. It stands like an ancient ruin of Rome.

The hillside offered a panoramic view of fields and roads, rolling down to Mexico about a half-mile away.

The unceasing wind gusted through the quiet where I could hear birds chirping. The place encourages meditation. Perhaps the novitiate’s remains are a miracle, the defiance of faith over the calamity of fire.

St. Peter's Novitiate.

Later a friend and I drove to the National Butterfly Center, a 100-acre wildlife center and native species botanical garden. This was new to me. We slathered on sunscreen and checked out the trails and butterflies. On the drive back we drove parallel to a stretch of the rust-colored border wall, which reminded me of sculptor Frank Serra’s monumental work Tilted Arc, a relic of New York in the 1980s. We didn’t stop to take photos because the Border Patrol has eyes in the sky and everywhere else. Why ask for trouble?

But, I saw some encouraging signs in town, such as a bookstore/performance space, Vellichor Books and More, perfect for open mics, and a vintage store that had Jewish books and even art. I especially liked the Mission Historical Museum, in the old city hall. I had donated copies of town and high school newspapers I had written for to the museum. To my delight, one exhibit had a photo of a school band from 1930. It includes one girl, kneeling, with a saxophone. I told the museum staff who she was—my mother, Shirley Lissner when 10 years old. I know because I have a copy of that very photo.

Who knows, maybe the museum will exhibit photos I’ve taken, or recordings of my open mics about Mission, or posts from this blog, Mission2Moscow. What’s commonplace now may be valued and revealing in the decades ahead. But that future is in another country.

My mother with the saxophone, 1930. 

MHS '76 at 50: The Reunion in Haikus

In June I attended my 50th reunion at Mission High School in Mission, Texas. I go to all of our reunions, typically having the longest trip to get their from the Northeast. In 1996 I got a ceramic angel to protect me on my travels from New York and, now, Boston to Miller International Airport in McAllen. 

I wrote this piece for the monthly poetry open-mic at Whitelam Books in Reading, MA, where I now live. Haikus give me a framework for writing poetry, otherwise everything I write would sound like a combination of Led Zeppelin lyrics and Edgar Allan Poe's works. 

Fifty years out
Texas reunion beckons
Back to MHS

Mission High School
Maroon and white, Eagles fly high
I couldn’t wait to leave

But loyal alum
always return to my roots
Long flight to McAllen

Guarded by the
ceramic angels a gift
for the distant traveler
in 1996

My first impression
Blazing hot, fierce Gulf Coast winds
Turn on the AC!

Settle at the hotel
on Shary Road, fruit groves gone
Strip centers sprawl

Friends gather at night
Half century to cover
Tito’s Vodka helps

Tour ranch with pal
Edward, expert guide to raw
land’s unmarked roads

History, critters,
cactus, windmills, barbed wire, ponds
“This land can kill you”

Unforgiving land
“Don’t get lost, no cell service here,”
ruts dug by stagecoach wheels

Friday 70s party
I wear a “Ford ‘76” shirt
Cowboy hats, hippie chicks

Old and new faces
Chats settle into patterns.
Grandkids, work, sore backs

Playing tourist at
Butterfly Center, a treat.
Drive past border wall

Historical museum
Tour with David and Lois
Land sales, orchards, roads

Photo with my Mom
1930, school band
Playing saxophone

Warriors, workers
Mexican revolution
Rio Grande and railroad tracks, dividers

Drive to St. Peter’s Novitiate
Built in 1912, burned 2009
Wreckage fenced off and haunted

Saturday night at last!
Event center, dinner dance
Phone cameras flashing.

Hilda’s video series and
Forever flowers
Honor the departed

Too many, too many.
Lena, Laura, Letty,
Olalla, Joe, Nacho
Tavo, Richard
A rose for each of dozens

Deacon Javier Garcia’s benediction
Joe Valadez’s Tejano
crowd pleasing
song “Te Lo Juro”

My champagne toast
in commemoration
Salud, compadres

Kudos to the organizers
Dalia, Sylvia, Frances, Nora,
Genie, Janet, Hilda
Flawless

Bittersweet moment
Sunday morning Taco Ole
Last chance for last thoughts
So we said it; surprises
Final photos
Next journey, McAllen to Dallas to Boston
Home to Reading

An angel for the distant traveler, from 1996. 

Document Discovery in a South Texas Courthouse

I wrote this in October 2017 for LinkedIn. For this Father's Day, I'm posting it here, a glimpse into a father-son relationship.

My father recently called me to find out the date he and my late mother were divorced. He needed the information for a matter involving his military pension for serving on Okinawa in World War II.

“You were one of the parties there, not me,” I said, both amused and annoyed.

The papers had all been misplaced, he replied, in moves from South Texas to Michigan to the East Coast. He hoped I could apply my sleuthing skills to dig up the details. With some reluctance, I agreed. I knew I’d be walking into an emotional minefield in this personal case of document discovery and management.

My parents were married and then divorced in Hidalgo County, Texas, on the Texas-Mexico border. The divorce took place between 1960 and 1962. I hoped the public records would be online, but the Texas divorce decrees are online only back to 1968. The county government’s website offered up a likely source to call for details. Never could I imagine, 40 years after I last lived in Hidalgo County (Mission, to be exact), that I would be dealing with the district court in Edinburg to request this document. But I pulled up my big-boy britches and did what I had to do. If not me to help, then who?

I called and spoke to a woman who took my details and said she would contact me when she found something. I pictured her rummaging around among the divorce decrees buried deep in a box on metal shelves down in the basement of the county courthouse, like the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

After several days, my father called, anxious to get the information. I didn’t have anything to report.

“I could give you the contact’s name and number and you could call her,” I suggested.

“No, you have the right accent to talk to her,” he said, a comment that would have riled me 40 years ago as a dig at my South Texas roots but these days I just let it go and take it as a point of pride.

While waiting for a response, I recalled my mother, who died in 1984, carried in her purse her divorce notice from the public records column of the local paper, the McAllen Monitor. That must have been some kind of red-letter day in her life. I checked with my brother, but he didn’t remember that and didn’t have a clipping.

After a week, the court official called. She found the divorce decree, which she scanned and emailed to me. I thanked her for her document discovery and immediately called my father with the date, from 1961. I mailed him a printout of the decree, having no interest in keeping a hard copy for myself. To the extent I can, I’ll leave the past in the past rather than dwell on it. My father was deeply grateful for my successful South Texas sleuthing.

The document unsettled me. Here I am, on the verge of my 60th birthday, reading about my brother and me when we were still toddlers. There was the child support order, payment of legal fees and the other mopping-up of the end of a marriage. I read it once and gladly rid myself of it. The decree had a toxic quality, since I knew the rancor, resentments and silences that would follow in the decades after that red-letter day in Hidalgo County. I can envision the day, my mother taking time off from her job as a secretary at Conway, Dooley & Martin, an insurance agency in Mission, to drive to Edinburg in her Chevrolet Corvair. She did what she had to do in court, probably smoked a cigarette and returned to work to support her family. Knowing her, she probably sent a thank-you note to her lawyer, Cy Mills, for his service.

Fifty-six years passed and the decree cycled back to me. I did what I needed to do with it.

To close the loop, I mailed a handwritten note to the court official, thanking her for a job well done. She made several lives a little more secure. Meanwhile, my father and I will share a weekend lunch with our significant others at a Chinese restaurant after my birthday.

Update: My father, Mark Wallach, died in March 2018 at the age of 92 and is buried in the Veterans Administration cemetery in Rockland County, New York. 

Does "Hacks" Support Corporate Assassinations?

HBO Max's "Hacks" reached its series finale in episode 10, which I watched last week. I found it surprising, poignant, slightly contrived and a satisfying wrap-up to plot lines.

The previous episode, episode 9, however, really caught my attention. Diva comedienne Deborah Vance (played by Jean Smart), had her career comeback at Madison Square Garden derailed by vindictive corporate honcho Bob Lipka (played by Tony Goldwyn). That was just the latest in a series of abusive moves by Lipka against Vance.

Vance finds herself squaring off against Lipka in an empty Garden, as he bought all the tickets to spite her and dramatically appear to make an offer to finally shut her up.

After she declines and tells her staff, they explode into rage at the media-industry suit.  Courses of action mount in hysteria. Call the lawyers, this can't be legal! "We need to do a media alert, we need to do a press conference!"

Ava Daniels, played by Hannah Einbinder, raises the stakes: "Siri, Google how to sink a superyacht, no AI!" 

Then the excitable, no-filters talent agent Kayla Schaefer, played by Megan Stalter, declares, "We need to kill him! We need to Luigi his ass!" 

Dark comedy in action. 

Did I hear what I think I heard? The character proposed assassination as a potential response to an ugly corporate dispute?

After watching the finale, I rewatched this scene and took notes on who said what. Nobody rebuked Kayla, but Deborah shouted, "OK, stop, stop, now listen, listen."

"Luigi," of course, refers to handsome homicidal Luigi Mangioni, who "allegedly" shot and killed Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, on December 4, 2024. Since then he's been the subject of dedicated websites, positive graffiti, online funding drives, the adoration of the ditzy modern equivalent of the Manson Girls, and entertainment references, as in a Simpsons episode.

Still, Hacks made me think about the intent of this reference. Sure, Hacks has been described as a "dark comedy." Was this a hipster attempt at humor targeting corporate executives? A scathing critique of the Gen Z mindset? A progressive endorsement of violence as a valid response to corporate disagreements? How would the scene play out if Ava, played by bloody-hands-pin Hannah Einbinder, screamed, "Let's 10-7 him!" That would shock the squares for sure. Or, being Los Angeles, what about "Let's Sirhan Sirhan him!" although I doubt anybody under the age of 60 on the show would get the reference. What about "Let's Karmelo Anthony him with a knife!" That would be edgy, probably more suited for a Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" segment.

I doubt this second-long reference will cause any disturbance in the Hacks universe given the outpouring of affection for the now-concluded show and Jean Smart. I watched every episode and enjoyed the series' look at the ups and downs of Deborah Vance's LA-Vegas world. Still, a little drop of Luigi makes the dark comedy a lot more sour. 

My Parents' Airmail 1959-1960

 

I come from a family of letter writers. My mother Shirley and her sister Charlotte swapped letters every week. They remembered their mother Eva writing to her parents Esther and Lehman in the 1920s.  And she expected me to carry on the tradition when I left for college. The rule: No letters, no tuition payments.

Long after my mother died of cancer in 1984, a cousin sent me a stack of airmail letters she found that my mother and father had exchanged. They are from 1959 and 1960, when my parents had separated. My father, Mark, was in France, where my parents had moved after their 1955 wedding; my mother had returned stateside with my baby brother Cooper and me to Tyler, Texas, where Aunt Charlotte and her family lived.

Mom saved all the letters from Dad and made copies of some of her typed responses. Reading them 60 years after the fact, I truly recognized her plain-spoken eloquence.

Let’s start with the marital context. My father’s letters echo the browbeating tone that sounded so familiar from my visits to him as a teen, when he lived in Manhattan. He alternated between trying to hustle money for his dubious business ventures and berating Mom for her personality, her post-childbirth appearance and her baffling need to work. December 4, 1959, he wrote,

 “Since you are still sulking in your shell I’ll say a few things, as you can see I am in no position to send you money. . . If you have confidence in me then do what you once proposed, sell everything and come back, or bring the stocks and some money or get a loan on the stocks.”

My mother’s letters start with a wistful, affectionate mood. June 7, 1960: “When I married you it wasn’t for your money or your good looks—call it love if you like. . . You have many good traits and I still love you. I would like nothing better than to be with you again and have our family together.”

But she turned to a steely determination to move on as a divorced working mom. No, she would NOT attend charm school (he really did suggest that!), hock her wedding ring, sell her late parents’ stock investments and return to France. I broke the following paragraph from November 28, 1960 into poetic lines,

“If all your troubles were just plain hard luck I could be sorry for you

but I think you brought so much of this on yourself.

The day I married you, you didn’t have a dime and now you are broke again

but badly in debt, this time you work it out alone.

I am going on with the divorce—

this life is going to get me if I don’t,

you know a person can stand just so much.

Maybe later when you get your problems worked out

 and get a job where you can take care of your family

 you will come courtin’ again, until that time it is quits for us.”

Hearing my mother’s Texas accent in every line, I thought, “She could have been writing songs for Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette.”

Dad returned to Texas, they divorced, he soon remarried a retired ballet academy owner and moved to New York. Cooper and I saw him one weekend in 10 years.

Mom and I exchanged hundreds of letters while I was in college and then a writer in Brooklyn. I saved all her letters, and typed mine on carbon paper so I have all my replies.

And she still had things to say about Dad. In November 1983 Cooper had visited me. I tried to get us together with our father, but that didn’t happen. She wrote, “I know you all enjoyed being together. Too bad Mark is such a stinker and didn’t get to be with you all. It was his loss.”

The last letter from her was December 27, 1983, two weeks before she died. I was trying to support myself as a freelance writer in Brooklyn. Her final thoughts:

“Wanna buy the Dallas Cowboys? We don’t have to worry about watching them anymore this year. I hope ’84 will be a good year for you, may even find a job. Love, lots of kisses, Mom.”

After Mom died, I continued to write weekly to Aunt Charlotte until she died, 13 years later.

What to make of this? Mom had an authentic voice. Chatty, earthy, absolutely honest. She could capture a mood in a few phrases that left no confusion about where she stood. I can only aspire to that. What a legacy. If any of you have letters from friends and family, treasure them. And write some yourself—folks will be shocked to get them and will express their delight when they email you a note of thanks. Shirley and Charlotte would be mighty pleased with you all for doing that

Everyday Poetry, in Honor of Bill Buschel

Bill Buschel, who died in February 23, turbocharged my involvement in open mics. I had spoken before at literary salons and libraries, but I didn’t see how to move ahead. Then I discovered the Hudson Valley Writers Center open mic in 2019. With Bill running the show I became a regular. Over the months and years, first in person and then on Zoom during and after the pandemic, I found my voice with his encouragement.

From Bill’s astute, heartfelt comments I learned the value of the telling phase, how words can capture a moment, a personality speaking out, or lashing out. In his honor, I’m calling this piece “Everyday Poetry,” lines I’ve heard over the decades, or said myself, that I associate with a dot in time. I’ve provided context for them. They fall into four topical obsessions: Texas, dating, travel and my parents.

Nobody thinks, “Oh, I’m speaking in poetry!” but, looking back, they were.  

The wonder years on the border

“They sit in the dark, because dark are their sins.” Spoken by a devout Baptist lady, looking askance at her daughter and her son-in-law watching TV in the darkness of their den, with window shades pulled down to block the blazing Texas sunshine. 

“I’d sit here and talk and you’d eat it all up.” Something directed to me by a fellow high school student, explaining why she wouldn’t go out with me.

Shirley-isms and stuff my father said

Some are what I call Shirley-isms, named after my late mother, Shirley Wallach. She had an earthy, ribald quality to what she said. For example: “She sure knows how to wobble her twat,” about a beauty pageant contestant, the daughter of a dear friend of hers. In my youthful innocence, I thought “twat” referred to her hindquarters. How wrong I was!

“Don’t get anybody pregnant,” her sole piece of advice in 1976 when I left Mission, Texas, for Princeton University. She had nothing to worry about during my college years. She also passed on this bit of life experience when noting a friend was in the family way: “Pregnant ladies need to pee a lot.”

“You’re just like your father.” “You’re just like your mother.” My divorced parents, alas, used me as a target in the unfixable resentments of their short marriage. They both expressed the same thought. My mother spoke from frustration, my father from malice. 

“They’ll eat you alive at Princeton if you don’t know opera.” That’s from my father, part of his relentless campaign to convince me to spend my senior year of high school at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, to become a polished young gentleman. Actually, not knowing much about Bruce Springsteen was a bigger impediment at Old Nassau.

 Youthful influencers and fellow Texans

This sports classic came from an assistant coach for my high school baseball team. Coach Canales thought some of the players weren’t hustling enough at a practice, so he said, “Grandma was slow but she was old.” Did the guys run faster? I don’t know, but I remember this pithy observation and use it to this day. 

“Motorcycle helmet laws are a form of communism,” a beauty from my high school typing teacher, which captures a common political viewpoint of Texas in the 1970s. Maybe now, too. 

“Polo, I’m going to get the hell out of Texas.” A high school classmate reminded me I told him this. And I did get the hell out, although I always like going back. In fact, I’ll be returning to my 50^th reunion in June.

“The Sandinistas are going to march up through Mexico and invade Harlingen.” This was a prophetic comment by a high school classmate at our 10^th reunion on the Texas-Mexico border in 1986 during the Reagan era, after the revolution in Nicaragua. Amusing and somewhat dubious sounding at the time, the comment became far more accurate when the Biden-Harris junta flung open the borders to one and all in 2021. And yes, tens of thousands, or even more, barreled across the Rio Grande where we had lived.

“I love it here in Texas, we can build whatever we want and shoot our guns.” As said by a contact involved in Houston real estate. The building part is because Houston really does have no zoning laws.

 Sharp observations from tour guides

“One thousand percent they hate the Jews here,” from Benny, my tour guide in Israel in June 1982 when our group visited Hebron, in Judea and Samaria.

Marina in the Kremlin

“It is not so interesting to kill them quickly,” a keen historical observation by Marina, my peppy Intourist tour guide in Moscow in September 1987. She was referring to how Ivan the Terrible treated the nobles, but I’ll always associate that with the vast bloody sweep of Russian history. I’ve borrowed the phrase when I share my thoughts on innovative approaches to criminal justice and counter-terrorism. 

 Paradise lost

Two poetic musings come from a romantic interest of the early 1980s. “Van, you’re only 25 but I’m already 25.” She wanted to move our relationship along, after two months. Her biological clock was ticking and she had no time to waste.

She also said, “I’ve been fucked so many times I had to get a bigger diaphragm.” Was she trying to make me jealous, or grateful that a woman of such vast erotic experience was dating me? People who knew about such sensitive matters later told me, "Ummmm, no, that’s not the way it works."

And finally: “You’re a self-involved prick who just doesn’t get it.” Another moment from a relationship gone south. That could be the title of the next volume of my memoirs, or a key line in a rom-com novel.

What do others remember about me? 

All these memories are coming, of course, from my side of the story. I am sure I have said many, many things that lodged in people's memories, ranging from moving to hurtful to sublimely idiotic. I would often blurt something without thinking through the implications. I cringe at the time I told a woman her mother's apartment was, if I recall correctly, "a great example of 1950s Jewish home decorating." That certainly didn't land right.  

If anybody reading this wants to contribute your own example of my everyday poetry, well, hit me with your best shot. 

 Remembering Bill Buschel in his own words

So, Bill, thanks for everything. May your memory be a blessing for your many friends and family. I'll always remember you.