Far be it from me to waste a few minutes of prime page-flipping time at the dentist's office. On Saturday before my semi-annual checkup I perused the November issue of Travel+Leisure. The cover article, titled, "Best of Paris," is in some places unintentionally amusing in light of the current youthful hijinks in France.
Writer Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni starts with an overview of the political potential of prime minister Dominique de Villepin and interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, then writes, "They're just part of the general excitement and optimism of Paris these days." (Both men figure prominently in the excitement of Paris, although the optimism is suddenly subdued.)
Soon, Fraser-Cavassoni uncorks THE best line in the entire issue, "Suddenly, the City of Light is smoldering again."
Let me repeat, just to make sure you don't mis-read it: "Suddenly, the City of Light is smoldering again."
Elsewhere, the article discusses the Hôtel du Petit Moulin, with the wonderful note that the rooms are "a riot of color."
Oui, oui, les French know much these tempestuous days about "a riot of color." Or should be that "riots of color"?
As we used to say in Hidalgo County, oy gevalt.
Monday, November 07, 2005
The Secret Relationship of Jews and Cricket: Who Knew?
Leave the comfortable yet self-tormented shores of American Ashkenazic Jewry and wonders emerge from the fog. Jewish film festivals are a great way to vicariously meet our landsmen of different habits and hues, and actions. See enough films and startling patterns take shape. I had that experience during the Jewish Film Festival of Lower Fairfield County, which finished last night. Out of the three films I saw, two of them involved the deep love of Jews for . . . cricket.
I delighted to see people playing cricket, a game far removed from the mainstream American, and American Jewish, experience. Well, not totally removed; in 2000 I played cricket for the one time in my life, when a team from the Stamford office of Mongoose & Co. (my affectionate pet name for the World's Greatest Consulting Firm, which employed me at the time) squared off against a team from a New Jersey office. Mostly I recall how hard it was to hit the ball, and the little sandwiches we ate on the sidelines.
So the Jews-and-cricket themes resonated with me. First I saw Wondrous Oblivion, set in London in the early 1960s. David Wiseman, 11, is the son of Holocaust survivors. He's a cricket fanatic but not a very good player, as the cruel boys of Slitherin House (oops, wrong movie, right characteristics) remind him. Hope emerges when a cricket-enabled Jamaican family moves in next door. What follows combines elements of "Bend It Like Beckham" with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
Last night's closing film, Turn Left at the End of the World, is an exceptionally good Israeli/French film from last year. It deals with Indian and Moroccan immigrants to Israel in 1968. Tensions abound, but the Indians find solace and a way of contributing to their new desert community through cricket. Compared to the green fields of Wondrous Oblivion, Turn Lefts puts cricket in a desert, complete with camels and highly untraditional audience behavior. In another contrast, Turn Left throbs with images of hot and naughty Sephardic girls. This Hebrew-language site has stills from the movie that give a slight sense of the visually delightful cast (and that applies to the guys in the film, too).
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, cricket. Sorry, I got distracted there by Sephardic girls. Other bloggers have thought more deeply about the intense relationship of Jews and cricket, and you can read their informed thinking at Normblog and Adloyada. So the next time you see cricketeers in a park, splendid in white and eating cucumber sandwiches, just remember -- they may include members of the tribe, sticky wicket division.
I delighted to see people playing cricket, a game far removed from the mainstream American, and American Jewish, experience. Well, not totally removed; in 2000 I played cricket for the one time in my life, when a team from the Stamford office of Mongoose & Co. (my affectionate pet name for the World's Greatest Consulting Firm, which employed me at the time) squared off against a team from a New Jersey office. Mostly I recall how hard it was to hit the ball, and the little sandwiches we ate on the sidelines.
So the Jews-and-cricket themes resonated with me. First I saw Wondrous Oblivion, set in London in the early 1960s. David Wiseman, 11, is the son of Holocaust survivors. He's a cricket fanatic but not a very good player, as the cruel boys of Slitherin House (oops, wrong movie, right characteristics) remind him. Hope emerges when a cricket-enabled Jamaican family moves in next door. What follows combines elements of "Bend It Like Beckham" with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
Last night's closing film, Turn Left at the End of the World, is an exceptionally good Israeli/French film from last year. It deals with Indian and Moroccan immigrants to Israel in 1968. Tensions abound, but the Indians find solace and a way of contributing to their new desert community through cricket. Compared to the green fields of Wondrous Oblivion, Turn Lefts puts cricket in a desert, complete with camels and highly untraditional audience behavior. In another contrast, Turn Left throbs with images of hot and naughty Sephardic girls. This Hebrew-language site has stills from the movie that give a slight sense of the visually delightful cast (and that applies to the guys in the film, too).
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, cricket. Sorry, I got distracted there by Sephardic girls. Other bloggers have thought more deeply about the intense relationship of Jews and cricket, and you can read their informed thinking at Normblog and Adloyada. So the next time you see cricketeers in a park, splendid in white and eating cucumber sandwiches, just remember -- they may include members of the tribe, sticky wicket division.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Bring Me the Aroma of Carlos Santana
Cosmopolitan magazine always amuses and informs me, far more than the lame pages of, say, GQ or Maxim. The October issue alerted me to the dangers of thongs and unhygienic bikini waxes (ouch!). The ads are great, too, for mysterious products I never need, in colors of subtleties I'll never grasp.
Without a doubt the most attention-grabbing ad in the October issue has the simple headling, "Introducing Carlos Santana(TM) fragrances for men and women." The tagline at the bottom purrs, "Arouse Your Senses." Red-themed native-looking artwork shows Santana with his ever-present hat against a background of densely drawn bongos, spirals, hands, eyes-in-hearts, and even a man looking like Carlos putting his hand on the head of a kneeling peon, an ambiguous scene suggesting either a blessing or a plea for oral sex.
Now, celebrity perfumes are common. Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Jessica Parker, Shania Twain have them. I can see the logical connection between fashionable, attractive women and fragrannces. But the connection is much more tenuous with men, as seen in the belly-flop of Donald Trump's fragrance.
Santana's stab at the smell test connects me to a lot of musical memories. Coming of age in the late 1960s in a heavily Hispanic part of the country, I liked his early music with its mix of Latin rhythms and Spanish lyrics and rock instrumentation. Abraxas from 1970 had very heavy (as we used to say then) liner notes. Early Santana had a sound that remains fresh 35 years later; the only other group I can say that about is ZZ Top. The music was so evocative of swirling colors, palm trees, the border experience, the possibilities of music beyond Anglo pop sounds.
I always wondered what Santana (the man, not the band) smelled like. After Woodstock, I figured he was sweaty. After he went off the spiritual deep end and called himself Devadip Carlos Santana, I figured he smelled like an Austin head shop full of black-light posters.
And now Santana is answering the question, at fine retail outlets everywhere. Or, cut out the middleman and buy directly from the Santana website. Santana is sending his message of peace and love to a suffering world with fragrances for both men and women. He must be doing something right in the technical sense, since perfume pros like the stuff.
Like a good marketer, Santana knows the difference between boys and girls. Not for him is a unisexual odor for everybody. Nope, sometimes he smells like a guy, and in those very special moments he wants to smell like a girl. So he made sure his products have just the right appeal for the moment. Note:
For men: "This smooth, woody musk fragrance was inspired by the music and passions of Carlos Santana. The aroma just after rainfall, in combination with the clean notes of Maja soap, is the essence of this timeless creation."
"Carlos Santana For Women blends exotic fruits with subtle florals and rounds out the scent with soft, sensuous musk to create a seductive, warm fragrance."
I have to wonder what smooth-talker got Santana to sign up for this misguided vanity project. (He may not even be that serious about it. The Santana Fragrances site is still under construction, a deadly marketing error.) He already sells hats, shirts, books, CDs, and other tchatchkas on his website, and his record sales over 40 years mean he's not hurting financially. The product just makes no sense; as a man I wouldn't wear the stuff, and if I gave the female fragrance to a Significant Other I'd probably get the bottle cracked over my head (note to self: need to write about the harrowing Mother's Day Tiffany's silver challah knife episode).
Sorry, Charlie: I'm not buying it, literally or figuratively. Now if there were a Santana home hair-weave kit . . .
Without a doubt the most attention-grabbing ad in the October issue has the simple headling, "Introducing Carlos Santana(TM) fragrances for men and women." The tagline at the bottom purrs, "Arouse Your Senses." Red-themed native-looking artwork shows Santana with his ever-present hat against a background of densely drawn bongos, spirals, hands, eyes-in-hearts, and even a man looking like Carlos putting his hand on the head of a kneeling peon, an ambiguous scene suggesting either a blessing or a plea for oral sex.
Now, celebrity perfumes are common. Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Jessica Parker, Shania Twain have them. I can see the logical connection between fashionable, attractive women and fragrannces. But the connection is much more tenuous with men, as seen in the belly-flop of Donald Trump's fragrance.
Santana's stab at the smell test connects me to a lot of musical memories. Coming of age in the late 1960s in a heavily Hispanic part of the country, I liked his early music with its mix of Latin rhythms and Spanish lyrics and rock instrumentation. Abraxas from 1970 had very heavy (as we used to say then) liner notes. Early Santana had a sound that remains fresh 35 years later; the only other group I can say that about is ZZ Top. The music was so evocative of swirling colors, palm trees, the border experience, the possibilities of music beyond Anglo pop sounds.
I always wondered what Santana (the man, not the band) smelled like. After Woodstock, I figured he was sweaty. After he went off the spiritual deep end and called himself Devadip Carlos Santana, I figured he smelled like an Austin head shop full of black-light posters.
And now Santana is answering the question, at fine retail outlets everywhere. Or, cut out the middleman and buy directly from the Santana website. Santana is sending his message of peace and love to a suffering world with fragrances for both men and women. He must be doing something right in the technical sense, since perfume pros like the stuff.
Like a good marketer, Santana knows the difference between boys and girls. Not for him is a unisexual odor for everybody. Nope, sometimes he smells like a guy, and in those very special moments he wants to smell like a girl. So he made sure his products have just the right appeal for the moment. Note:
For men: "This smooth, woody musk fragrance was inspired by the music and passions of Carlos Santana. The aroma just after rainfall, in combination with the clean notes of Maja soap, is the essence of this timeless creation."
"Carlos Santana For Women blends exotic fruits with subtle florals and rounds out the scent with soft, sensuous musk to create a seductive, warm fragrance."
I have to wonder what smooth-talker got Santana to sign up for this misguided vanity project. (He may not even be that serious about it. The Santana Fragrances site is still under construction, a deadly marketing error.) He already sells hats, shirts, books, CDs, and other tchatchkas on his website, and his record sales over 40 years mean he's not hurting financially. The product just makes no sense; as a man I wouldn't wear the stuff, and if I gave the female fragrance to a Significant Other I'd probably get the bottle cracked over my head (note to self: need to write about the harrowing Mother's Day Tiffany's silver challah knife episode).
Sorry, Charlie: I'm not buying it, literally or figuratively. Now if there were a Santana home hair-weave kit . . .
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Loathsome Marketing, First in a Series
As a demographic unit, I'm a tasty morsel for financial marketers. Born in the center of the baby boom (1957), white collar, single, urban, nicely cash-flowed, investment oriented, and educated, I'm a "good catch," as somebody recently said in another context.
So the American Express spin-off, Ameriprise Financial, had people like me in mind for its new advertising campaign now being flogged on TV and Metro-North trains. These ads tout Ameriprise's financial planning for a generation as "unique" as mine. You may have seen the ads with a VW hippie van morphing into something more modern. Train ads show 15 or so iconic images of the 1960s and 1970s carefully balanced between the social categories we referred to at Mission High School in Texas as the "dopers" and the "ropers."
So, you'll see peace symbols and Cub Scouts, long-haired hippie freaks and cheerleaders, groovy types and squares, images that make me want to tune in to VH1 more than they inspire me to ponder my financial needs.
For this baby-boomer, alas, Ameriprise is establishing a negative brand image. I cringe to see the calculated cultural shorthand that supposedly speaks to my generation, whatever that is. The opening music on the Ameriprise website, "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" by Crazy Elephant, only compounds the problem by showing a total lack of creativity. What could be easier than to dust off 60s music to support a marketing message for baby boomers? I don't learn anything about Ameriprise (not that I'm curious, anyway) but I got a heavy load of 60s shtick. I can only hope Crazy Elephant makes a fortune off the licensing fee -- sticking it to the Man, if you will.
If Ameriprise wanted to grab my attention, its marketing must take risks. Let's start with life insurance. I've got SBLI term insurance with my son as the beneficiary for the day when I'm gathered unto my fathers (later rather than sooner, but living in NYC you never know). So, in all honesty, life insurance is all about dying. With that cheerful thought in mind, I suggest Ameriprise frame its insurance pitch with the song "Don't Fear the Reaper" by the Blue Oyster Cult. That would cut through the clutter and get directly to the point of insurance. I would be mightily impressed. Better yet, have the members of the Blue Oyster Cult talk about their insurance choices.
The same thinking goes for retirement investments. Don't show me gauzy images of silver-haired men and women out boating or dancing at their country club. Talk about survival in a world very unlike the world of our parents, a stable world where my mother worked for 21 straight years at exactly the same job as a secretary at the insurance agency of Conway, Dooley & Martin. What could be more appropriate for retirement planning than Gloria Gaynor belting, "I will survive!" in all her disco majesty? My tagline suggestion for Ameriprise: "You survived Nehru jackets, puka beads, Jimmy Carter, punk rock, and Enron. Now, get ready to survive . . . retirement." Now that's what I call marketing.
I doubt Ameriprise will move in this direction. Probably the baby-boomer narcissism pitch will fizzle out into something even more pedestrian. Then again, perhaps Ameriprise will get desperate and won't fear the reaper.
Full disclosure: By this point you're thinking, "OK, Mr. Mission2Moscow, you think you're so smart, what's your approach to financial planning?" Good question, quick answers: The two biggest influences on my actions have been:
1. Columnist Jonathan Clements of the Wall Street Journal, who strongly supports the use of index funds, which I use for the bulk of my retirement savings
2. Financial expert Andrew Tobias always makes sense to me, with his ruthlessly practical advice. He is a big fan of SBLI.
So the American Express spin-off, Ameriprise Financial, had people like me in mind for its new advertising campaign now being flogged on TV and Metro-North trains. These ads tout Ameriprise's financial planning for a generation as "unique" as mine. You may have seen the ads with a VW hippie van morphing into something more modern. Train ads show 15 or so iconic images of the 1960s and 1970s carefully balanced between the social categories we referred to at Mission High School in Texas as the "dopers" and the "ropers."
So, you'll see peace symbols and Cub Scouts, long-haired hippie freaks and cheerleaders, groovy types and squares, images that make me want to tune in to VH1 more than they inspire me to ponder my financial needs.
For this baby-boomer, alas, Ameriprise is establishing a negative brand image. I cringe to see the calculated cultural shorthand that supposedly speaks to my generation, whatever that is. The opening music on the Ameriprise website, "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" by Crazy Elephant, only compounds the problem by showing a total lack of creativity. What could be easier than to dust off 60s music to support a marketing message for baby boomers? I don't learn anything about Ameriprise (not that I'm curious, anyway) but I got a heavy load of 60s shtick. I can only hope Crazy Elephant makes a fortune off the licensing fee -- sticking it to the Man, if you will.
If Ameriprise wanted to grab my attention, its marketing must take risks. Let's start with life insurance. I've got SBLI term insurance with my son as the beneficiary for the day when I'm gathered unto my fathers (later rather than sooner, but living in NYC you never know). So, in all honesty, life insurance is all about dying. With that cheerful thought in mind, I suggest Ameriprise frame its insurance pitch with the song "Don't Fear the Reaper" by the Blue Oyster Cult. That would cut through the clutter and get directly to the point of insurance. I would be mightily impressed. Better yet, have the members of the Blue Oyster Cult talk about their insurance choices.
The same thinking goes for retirement investments. Don't show me gauzy images of silver-haired men and women out boating or dancing at their country club. Talk about survival in a world very unlike the world of our parents, a stable world where my mother worked for 21 straight years at exactly the same job as a secretary at the insurance agency of Conway, Dooley & Martin. What could be more appropriate for retirement planning than Gloria Gaynor belting, "I will survive!" in all her disco majesty? My tagline suggestion for Ameriprise: "You survived Nehru jackets, puka beads, Jimmy Carter, punk rock, and Enron. Now, get ready to survive . . . retirement." Now that's what I call marketing.
I doubt Ameriprise will move in this direction. Probably the baby-boomer narcissism pitch will fizzle out into something even more pedestrian. Then again, perhaps Ameriprise will get desperate and won't fear the reaper.
Full disclosure: By this point you're thinking, "OK, Mr. Mission2Moscow, you think you're so smart, what's your approach to financial planning?" Good question, quick answers: The two biggest influences on my actions have been:
1. Columnist Jonathan Clements of the Wall Street Journal, who strongly supports the use of index funds, which I use for the bulk of my retirement savings
2. Financial expert Andrew Tobias always makes sense to me, with his ruthlessly practical advice. He is a big fan of SBLI.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Don't Mourn; Organize (My Thoughts)
This blog has been sporadic for several months, a place to post links to articles in the Princeton Alumni Weekly and essays I was writing for Texas-based website "The Back Word." Over the summer the Back Word went down the drain, and I've spent several months mourning the loss of a forum for essays I loved writing.
Today I posted the text of those essays here, as a way to organize my thoughts. I'm tired of mourning, for the Back Word and other matters that I'll write about one of these days. If I want to write, I'll write here and let the "getting rich and famous" part come later. This being the first day of the month, let the new approach begin today, with an observation on the Village Halloween Parade I attended last night.
How to Have a Truly Transgressive Halloween Parade
I've lived in and around New York for 25 years, but had never ventured downtown to this drag-queen driven festival of fun known as the Village Halloween Parade. In this new mode of experimentation, I walked from my cushy office high over swanky Park Avenue to 6th Avenue and 21st Street, at the conclusion of the parade, to see what the fuss was about.
I did what all good New Yorkers do when a big event takes place; I stood around waiting and waiting. Finally the parade reached its north end. I'm glad I stayed around. Some highlights:
* The poignant New Orleans kick-off, with a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."
* Two men dressed as the Pope doing a ring-around-the-rosy dance, then kissing
* Various S&M themes, usually a woman whacking a man (that's the PC way to show things, isn't it?)
*At least three groups dressed as "The Gates," the enormously popular exhibit from February that festooned Central Park with thousands of, well, gates, with orange fabric flapping in the cold Gotham breeze
The parade had surprisingly few people dressed as President Bush, sparing it from becoming a dreary political event. I saw more people dressed as priests and nuns.
Which brings up a thought: For all the daring, outrageous, transgressive New Yorkers in the parade, couldn't anybody work up the nerve to dress as an Islamic imam, perhaps running amok with a guillotine? Or as break-dancing burka-clad women? That's topical. The opportunities to be naughty are huge, and surely sophisticated New Yorkers would get the joke. Well, except for the folks found on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and other places normally under FBI surveillance. Unlike Catholics who must put up with a lot of hilarity aimed at their faith, the Islamists are a little touchy and may not react with the live-and-let-live attitude so prized in tolerant societies. They, you know, kill people who cross them (definitely they don't like anything involving crosses).
Perhaps next year some Halloween Parade denizens will decide to not play it safe and show a truly transgressive spirit. But I'm not holding my breath.
Today I posted the text of those essays here, as a way to organize my thoughts. I'm tired of mourning, for the Back Word and other matters that I'll write about one of these days. If I want to write, I'll write here and let the "getting rich and famous" part come later. This being the first day of the month, let the new approach begin today, with an observation on the Village Halloween Parade I attended last night.
How to Have a Truly Transgressive Halloween Parade
I've lived in and around New York for 25 years, but had never ventured downtown to this drag-queen driven festival of fun known as the Village Halloween Parade. In this new mode of experimentation, I walked from my cushy office high over swanky Park Avenue to 6th Avenue and 21st Street, at the conclusion of the parade, to see what the fuss was about.
I did what all good New Yorkers do when a big event takes place; I stood around waiting and waiting. Finally the parade reached its north end. I'm glad I stayed around. Some highlights:
* The poignant New Orleans kick-off, with a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."
* Two men dressed as the Pope doing a ring-around-the-rosy dance, then kissing
* Various S&M themes, usually a woman whacking a man (that's the PC way to show things, isn't it?)
*At least three groups dressed as "The Gates," the enormously popular exhibit from February that festooned Central Park with thousands of, well, gates, with orange fabric flapping in the cold Gotham breeze
The parade had surprisingly few people dressed as President Bush, sparing it from becoming a dreary political event. I saw more people dressed as priests and nuns.
Which brings up a thought: For all the daring, outrageous, transgressive New Yorkers in the parade, couldn't anybody work up the nerve to dress as an Islamic imam, perhaps running amok with a guillotine? Or as break-dancing burka-clad women? That's topical. The opportunities to be naughty are huge, and surely sophisticated New Yorkers would get the joke. Well, except for the folks found on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and other places normally under FBI surveillance. Unlike Catholics who must put up with a lot of hilarity aimed at their faith, the Islamists are a little touchy and may not react with the live-and-let-live attitude so prized in tolerant societies. They, you know, kill people who cross them (definitely they don't like anything involving crosses).
Perhaps next year some Halloween Parade denizens will decide to not play it safe and show a truly transgressive spirit. But I'm not holding my breath.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Ranchito Morbido, Never to be on The Back Word
All good things must end, but must it be before my essays get published? The Back Word, the Texas website that brought several essays to the public, is no longer publishing new material. That's a shame, because I had more topics I wanted to explore. The shutdown came just before the site was going to publish this essay, a "lighter" version of an essay that should appear a Jewish paper in October.
I'll miss the Back Word, the thrill of waking up on the first of the month to check for a new essay being posted, the chance to email the URL to friends. I had fun and I got my creative cogs kickstarted, so I'll buckle down and try to market these essays and others still a-borning to other outlets (perhaps some that will even pay me). And now, the grand finale:
Ranchito Morbido: My Little Place in Texas
I grew up in a rented house on a dusty alley in Mission, Texas, about three blocks from the Missouri-Pacific tracks that divided the town into Hispanic and Anglo sections. My mother rented the house, which didn’t even have its own mailbox, for 21 years and never had any interest in buying real estate. She preferred to invest in the stock market. I still have shares of General Motors, Sunoco and TXU (formerly Texas Utilities) that I inherited when she died in 1984.
Yet, her legacy includes a little bit of Texas land that proudly bears the Wallach name. I haven’t seen our portion of the state since 1989, but I think about it often. I can picture it in my mind’s eye, shaded by the oak and mesquite trees in Gonzales, the historic town on the rolling road from San Antonio to Houston. In the distant future that draws closer every day, I’d like to return to Gonzales and the only property I’ll ever call my own in Texas.
I’m referring to the Jewish cemetery on Water Street in Gonzales. The place always fascinated me, as the final resting ground for my mother, two grandparents, two great-grandparents, and one great-great-grandmother (Charlotte Bath, died 1912), along with aunts, uncles and cousins. I want to be buried there, too. In doing so, I’ll be part of a family presence in Gonzales that goes back at least to the 1890s. The last living Gonzales cousins headed to the bright lights of Lockhart in the 1970s, but the deceased liked Gonzales just fine, and there they remain.
My mother died in Tyler, where she lived with her older sister Charlotte during the last three years of her cancer-shortened life. Afterward, Aunt Charlotte arranged for the headstone in the Jewish cemetery. It was as simple as Mom’s life. It says, “Shirley Lissner Wallach, March 11, 1920 – January 12, 1984.” It lies a few feet from her parents, Jared and Eva Lissner.
I first saw Mom’s gravestone on July 3, 1989, when I visited the cemetery with my then-fiancé. I hadn’t visited the place since 1966, when Mom brought my younger brother and me there to see the gravestones of her parents, both of whom died in 1959. On that 1989 visit I had to chuckle at the thought that Mom finally had some land to call her own under the Texas sky. I was starting to build a family life in the Northeast, so I saw the Gonzales cemetery as part of my past, nothing more. My fiancé and I followed the ancient Jewish tradition and put a rock on Mom’s grave, then left into our radiant future together.
Fast-forward 12 years, and the radiant future was flickering out in divorce. Fortunately, my ex and I hadn’t bought a joint burial plot, so I had the freedom to get buried wherever it so pleased me. The Northeast never held much appeal in that regard for me, since the place has never felt like “home” in a gut-level sense.
I quickly decided to be buried in Gonzales. As a final resting place, it has a lot going for it: all those family connections so I will be among my own landsmen, as the word goes in Yiddish; a temperate climate so my gravestone will last for centuries without the wear and tear caused by snow and cold in the Northeast; an inland, semi-rural location unthreatened by excessive housing development, global flooding, or any other unpleasantness coming down the pike to endanger Yankee cemeteries. As the real estate agents love to chant, “Location, location, location.”
OK, sounds great, I’m sold on the place! Where do I sign up to buy what I call my ranchito morbido?
And that’s the funny part. My efforts to find out who controls the Gonzales cemetery and buy a plot there have been utterly inconclusive. In Gonzales, as in other Jewish communities, cemetery records fade away, synagogues close, the old folks die and the young ones leave and forget about cemeteries with headstones written in the Hebrew language few can read, let alone understand. Even when a paying customer comes along, it can be impossible to find somebody in charge of Jewish cemeteries, somebody to take the check and give title to a few cubic feet of prime memorial space.
God knows I made a determined effort to find an administrator. During the divorce, I called my cousin David “Buddy” Michelson in Lockhart, formerly of Gonzales, one of the last members of my mother’s Depression-era generation. We talked about the cemetery, but he did not know who ran it. A Texas Jewish Historical Society member provided leads to information, but not what I needed.
A few years passed and I tried again. I learned that Buddy had died in 2004. The Gonzales city government directed me to Buddy’s family and I soon had a long talk with his widow, Abbi. She reminisced about the time, shortly after their marriage, when Buddy showed her his parents’ graves in Gonzales. She said Buddy cared deeply about the cemetery, establishing a trust fund to ensure its perpetual care. Ironically, Buddy wanted to be buried in San Antonio, near the graves of Abbi’s parents.
My cousin Linda, Aunt Charlotte’s daughter, recently sent me photos of the place, showing Mom’s grave and the Texas Historical marker at the cemetery. She wrote, “The cemetery is well maintained and appears to have room for more graves.” Abbi is now checking around Gonzales to find definitive information about the cemetery’s management.
In the mean time, life goes on. The divorce that led to this sequence of discovery recedes into the past, while my new life unfolds day by day. My ex and I recently wrapped up post-divorce financial matters that give me the resources to become a homeowner if I so desire. Given the run-up in real estate prices, I may delay before I take the plunge again into homeownership. I imagine I’ll buy my little plot of earth in Texas, my ranchito morbido, before I get something fancier up here.
I'll miss the Back Word, the thrill of waking up on the first of the month to check for a new essay being posted, the chance to email the URL to friends. I had fun and I got my creative cogs kickstarted, so I'll buckle down and try to market these essays and others still a-borning to other outlets (perhaps some that will even pay me). And now, the grand finale:
Ranchito Morbido: My Little Place in Texas
I grew up in a rented house on a dusty alley in Mission, Texas, about three blocks from the Missouri-Pacific tracks that divided the town into Hispanic and Anglo sections. My mother rented the house, which didn’t even have its own mailbox, for 21 years and never had any interest in buying real estate. She preferred to invest in the stock market. I still have shares of General Motors, Sunoco and TXU (formerly Texas Utilities) that I inherited when she died in 1984.
Yet, her legacy includes a little bit of Texas land that proudly bears the Wallach name. I haven’t seen our portion of the state since 1989, but I think about it often. I can picture it in my mind’s eye, shaded by the oak and mesquite trees in Gonzales, the historic town on the rolling road from San Antonio to Houston. In the distant future that draws closer every day, I’d like to return to Gonzales and the only property I’ll ever call my own in Texas.
I’m referring to the Jewish cemetery on Water Street in Gonzales. The place always fascinated me, as the final resting ground for my mother, two grandparents, two great-grandparents, and one great-great-grandmother (Charlotte Bath, died 1912), along with aunts, uncles and cousins. I want to be buried there, too. In doing so, I’ll be part of a family presence in Gonzales that goes back at least to the 1890s. The last living Gonzales cousins headed to the bright lights of Lockhart in the 1970s, but the deceased liked Gonzales just fine, and there they remain.
My mother died in Tyler, where she lived with her older sister Charlotte during the last three years of her cancer-shortened life. Afterward, Aunt Charlotte arranged for the headstone in the Jewish cemetery. It was as simple as Mom’s life. It says, “Shirley Lissner Wallach, March 11, 1920 – January 12, 1984.” It lies a few feet from her parents, Jared and Eva Lissner.
I first saw Mom’s gravestone on July 3, 1989, when I visited the cemetery with my then-fiancé. I hadn’t visited the place since 1966, when Mom brought my younger brother and me there to see the gravestones of her parents, both of whom died in 1959. On that 1989 visit I had to chuckle at the thought that Mom finally had some land to call her own under the Texas sky. I was starting to build a family life in the Northeast, so I saw the Gonzales cemetery as part of my past, nothing more. My fiancé and I followed the ancient Jewish tradition and put a rock on Mom’s grave, then left into our radiant future together.
Fast-forward 12 years, and the radiant future was flickering out in divorce. Fortunately, my ex and I hadn’t bought a joint burial plot, so I had the freedom to get buried wherever it so pleased me. The Northeast never held much appeal in that regard for me, since the place has never felt like “home” in a gut-level sense.
I quickly decided to be buried in Gonzales. As a final resting place, it has a lot going for it: all those family connections so I will be among my own landsmen, as the word goes in Yiddish; a temperate climate so my gravestone will last for centuries without the wear and tear caused by snow and cold in the Northeast; an inland, semi-rural location unthreatened by excessive housing development, global flooding, or any other unpleasantness coming down the pike to endanger Yankee cemeteries. As the real estate agents love to chant, “Location, location, location.”
OK, sounds great, I’m sold on the place! Where do I sign up to buy what I call my ranchito morbido?
And that’s the funny part. My efforts to find out who controls the Gonzales cemetery and buy a plot there have been utterly inconclusive. In Gonzales, as in other Jewish communities, cemetery records fade away, synagogues close, the old folks die and the young ones leave and forget about cemeteries with headstones written in the Hebrew language few can read, let alone understand. Even when a paying customer comes along, it can be impossible to find somebody in charge of Jewish cemeteries, somebody to take the check and give title to a few cubic feet of prime memorial space.
God knows I made a determined effort to find an administrator. During the divorce, I called my cousin David “Buddy” Michelson in Lockhart, formerly of Gonzales, one of the last members of my mother’s Depression-era generation. We talked about the cemetery, but he did not know who ran it. A Texas Jewish Historical Society member provided leads to information, but not what I needed.
A few years passed and I tried again. I learned that Buddy had died in 2004. The Gonzales city government directed me to Buddy’s family and I soon had a long talk with his widow, Abbi. She reminisced about the time, shortly after their marriage, when Buddy showed her his parents’ graves in Gonzales. She said Buddy cared deeply about the cemetery, establishing a trust fund to ensure its perpetual care. Ironically, Buddy wanted to be buried in San Antonio, near the graves of Abbi’s parents.
My cousin Linda, Aunt Charlotte’s daughter, recently sent me photos of the place, showing Mom’s grave and the Texas Historical marker at the cemetery. She wrote, “The cemetery is well maintained and appears to have room for more graves.” Abbi is now checking around Gonzales to find definitive information about the cemetery’s management.
In the mean time, life goes on. The divorce that led to this sequence of discovery recedes into the past, while my new life unfolds day by day. My ex and I recently wrapped up post-divorce financial matters that give me the resources to become a homeowner if I so desire. Given the run-up in real estate prices, I may delay before I take the plunge again into homeownership. I imagine I’ll buy my little plot of earth in Texas, my ranchito morbido, before I get something fancier up here.
Monday, August 01, 2005
Rebel Soul: Notes From a Texan Abroad
(originally published on The Back Word)
A picture taken when I met my father after eight years apart reeks with irony. He left Texas after my parents divorced, heading to Michigan and then New York City. He never returned until he paid us a weekend visit in the fall of 1970. My brother and I, aged 11 and 13, stand with him in a yard in Mission, Texas. Looking warily at the camera, standing far enough from my father to signal unease, I have my arms crossed over an orange University of Texas sweatshirt.
This is ironic because I learned, often and in rough terms, that my father hated Texas. Whether this dislike stemmed from the failed marriage, his dismay at Mission’s lack of urban sophistication, or most likely a combination of the two, he never missed a chance to knock the state. He was from St. Louis and suited to cities, my mother was from Del Rio and listened to the morning farm report on the radio. Beyond speaking English, they had nothing in common.
I saw my father a few more times, when my brother and I flew to New York to visit him and his wife. Despite escalating tension, I kept returning, lured by the bright lights and big city. He never accepted us for who we were, and instead tried to mold us into what he was and demanded we become. He started about 10 years too late, and squandered whatever goodwill we felt for him with constant attacks. The Texas we saw through our father’s eyes was a nasty place—conniving Southern Baptists intent on stealing our Jewish souls, crude mercantile behavior, no European-style culture, grubby people who couldn’t speak French. “That’s Texas thinking” was the second lowest insult possible, slightly higher than “you’re just like your mother.” He called us savages because we didn’t attend operas or symphonies! He warned, “Van, they’ll eat you alive at Princeton if you don’t know classical music.” (In fact, I discovered at Princeton that Monty Python mattered far more than Mozart.)
Texas became the symbol of the push-pull of my warring parents. The harder he tried to hammer me into being a prep-schooled, wine-sipping bon vivant in Brooks Brothers suits, the more passive-aggressively I attached to Texas. Other kids rebelled with long hair, drugs, and that damned hippie music, but I opted for a hard-edged appreciation of my Texas identity.
The mental process went like this: You don’t like Texas? That’s tough—check out my Sesquicentennial belt buckle, my beard, my taste for the twangiest mountain music and the border’s norteno sounds. To this day, a few months shy of my 48th birthday, I take intense pleasure when my father goes goggle-eyed at the Texas flag in my apartment and my faded Levi’s blue jeans. Confused youthful rebellion evolved and remained part of my adult identity. You don’t like the way I dress or act? I couldn’t say the following when I was 17, but I can easily say it at 47: That’s just too fucking bad.
Ultimately, I split the difference between Mom and Dad. In his own ham-handed way, my father profoundly influenced me. Those visits to New York opened me to post-high school options beyond my family’s traditional loyalty to the University of Texas. Like a character from a Larry McMurtry novel, I found a way out of the restless alienation I felt in small-town Texas. I did leave Texas for Princeton, moved to Brooklyn, got married, moved to Connecticut, got divorced, and never went back for more than a few days after 1977. At my 10th high school reunion, a friend reminded me, “Van, you said you were going to get the hell out of Texas.” And I did.
And I like aspects of the Northeast—the weather, New England, the career options, New York’s endless appeal to what I call my “action junkie” tendencies. But I’ve never viewed New York State or Connecticut as home. Buffalo? Syracuse? Waterbury? East Hartford? I have no childhood memories of the area, no rootedness beyond my young son and the walls of my apartment. That’s typical Wallach behavior. I’m just the latest in a paternal line of dream-chasing drifters; after all, my father, his father and I were born in three different countries, men blown like tumbleweeds across borders in pursuit of elusive fulfillment.
My late mother’s family, on the other hand, has modest dreams and happier lives. Her family has remained in Texas for seven generations, since my ancestors got the hell out of Germany in the 1860s. For proof, go to the Jewish cemetery in Gonzales, on Water Street, where you’ll see gravestones of people born as far back as the 1840s. I’m related to almost all of them.
As I’ve gotten older, my Texas identification moved beyond rebellion to become an intense, if physically distant, sense of who I am. That sense always existed in me, and friends and relatives always tried to stoke the flame of affection. Bill Austin, the late owner of the Upper Valley Progress in Mission, where I had been a teenage reporter, regularly sent me packages of clips from the McAllen Monitor, usually detailing political corruption in the Valley and the many dangers of Mexico. My mother sent me charming gifts such as a heavy brass armadillo, a crocheted armadillo, and a t-shirt with armadillos saying, “Homesick for Texas, send chili soon!” (Come to think of it, my mother had an intense affection for all things armadillo). So in terms of remaining attached to my roots, I am very much my mother’s son, perhaps more than when she was alive.
As the decades passed, I made peace with my father. We’ve lived within 50 miles of each other for almost 30 years. We talk and get together with my son so he can know his grandfather. I’m more outspoken when my father crosses me. We don’t talk about the past.
Being from Texas is a point of pride, an outsider’s badge in an area where practically nobody comes from the South. To identify myself as a Texan means to say, “I look at the world a little different from you. I’m not exactly like you, and I’m glad of that.” People take note of Texans while folks from, say, Ohio and Virginia are politely acknowledged, if that. Everybody’s got a Texas story, friends who moved there, a comment on the President, and saying I’m from Texas makes me the lightning rod for whatever opinions they care to spout.
Not that I’m a mindless booster or Texas-right-or-wrong type. After all, I live up here, not down there, and I’m not looking to relocate. The closest I ever came to that was when I tried to find a job in Austin in the late 1980s after I got married and my bride and I wanted to escape New York. I doubt I could ever emulate Larry McMurtry, who returned with riches and fame to open a bookstore in Archer City. Go back to Mission? No way, Jose!
Instead, I’ll build a virtual Texas through contacts with relatives and occasional visits. I’ll write essays like this that mine a deep vein of memory and conflicted emotion. I’ll cruise the websites of the McAllen Monitor, major papers, and the Texas Observer to keep up with the state’s kookiness. Of course, if I ever become McMurtry-like rich and famous, I might consider a Victorian mansion in Gonzales, the kind that looked so huge and splendid when I was a kid growing up in Texas.
A picture taken when I met my father after eight years apart reeks with irony. He left Texas after my parents divorced, heading to Michigan and then New York City. He never returned until he paid us a weekend visit in the fall of 1970. My brother and I, aged 11 and 13, stand with him in a yard in Mission, Texas. Looking warily at the camera, standing far enough from my father to signal unease, I have my arms crossed over an orange University of Texas sweatshirt.
This is ironic because I learned, often and in rough terms, that my father hated Texas. Whether this dislike stemmed from the failed marriage, his dismay at Mission’s lack of urban sophistication, or most likely a combination of the two, he never missed a chance to knock the state. He was from St. Louis and suited to cities, my mother was from Del Rio and listened to the morning farm report on the radio. Beyond speaking English, they had nothing in common.
I saw my father a few more times, when my brother and I flew to New York to visit him and his wife. Despite escalating tension, I kept returning, lured by the bright lights and big city. He never accepted us for who we were, and instead tried to mold us into what he was and demanded we become. He started about 10 years too late, and squandered whatever goodwill we felt for him with constant attacks. The Texas we saw through our father’s eyes was a nasty place—conniving Southern Baptists intent on stealing our Jewish souls, crude mercantile behavior, no European-style culture, grubby people who couldn’t speak French. “That’s Texas thinking” was the second lowest insult possible, slightly higher than “you’re just like your mother.” He called us savages because we didn’t attend operas or symphonies! He warned, “Van, they’ll eat you alive at Princeton if you don’t know classical music.” (In fact, I discovered at Princeton that Monty Python mattered far more than Mozart.)
Texas became the symbol of the push-pull of my warring parents. The harder he tried to hammer me into being a prep-schooled, wine-sipping bon vivant in Brooks Brothers suits, the more passive-aggressively I attached to Texas. Other kids rebelled with long hair, drugs, and that damned hippie music, but I opted for a hard-edged appreciation of my Texas identity.
The mental process went like this: You don’t like Texas? That’s tough—check out my Sesquicentennial belt buckle, my beard, my taste for the twangiest mountain music and the border’s norteno sounds. To this day, a few months shy of my 48th birthday, I take intense pleasure when my father goes goggle-eyed at the Texas flag in my apartment and my faded Levi’s blue jeans. Confused youthful rebellion evolved and remained part of my adult identity. You don’t like the way I dress or act? I couldn’t say the following when I was 17, but I can easily say it at 47: That’s just too fucking bad.
Ultimately, I split the difference between Mom and Dad. In his own ham-handed way, my father profoundly influenced me. Those visits to New York opened me to post-high school options beyond my family’s traditional loyalty to the University of Texas. Like a character from a Larry McMurtry novel, I found a way out of the restless alienation I felt in small-town Texas. I did leave Texas for Princeton, moved to Brooklyn, got married, moved to Connecticut, got divorced, and never went back for more than a few days after 1977. At my 10th high school reunion, a friend reminded me, “Van, you said you were going to get the hell out of Texas.” And I did.
And I like aspects of the Northeast—the weather, New England, the career options, New York’s endless appeal to what I call my “action junkie” tendencies. But I’ve never viewed New York State or Connecticut as home. Buffalo? Syracuse? Waterbury? East Hartford? I have no childhood memories of the area, no rootedness beyond my young son and the walls of my apartment. That’s typical Wallach behavior. I’m just the latest in a paternal line of dream-chasing drifters; after all, my father, his father and I were born in three different countries, men blown like tumbleweeds across borders in pursuit of elusive fulfillment.
My late mother’s family, on the other hand, has modest dreams and happier lives. Her family has remained in Texas for seven generations, since my ancestors got the hell out of Germany in the 1860s. For proof, go to the Jewish cemetery in Gonzales, on Water Street, where you’ll see gravestones of people born as far back as the 1840s. I’m related to almost all of them.
As I’ve gotten older, my Texas identification moved beyond rebellion to become an intense, if physically distant, sense of who I am. That sense always existed in me, and friends and relatives always tried to stoke the flame of affection. Bill Austin, the late owner of the Upper Valley Progress in Mission, where I had been a teenage reporter, regularly sent me packages of clips from the McAllen Monitor, usually detailing political corruption in the Valley and the many dangers of Mexico. My mother sent me charming gifts such as a heavy brass armadillo, a crocheted armadillo, and a t-shirt with armadillos saying, “Homesick for Texas, send chili soon!” (Come to think of it, my mother had an intense affection for all things armadillo). So in terms of remaining attached to my roots, I am very much my mother’s son, perhaps more than when she was alive.
As the decades passed, I made peace with my father. We’ve lived within 50 miles of each other for almost 30 years. We talk and get together with my son so he can know his grandfather. I’m more outspoken when my father crosses me. We don’t talk about the past.
Being from Texas is a point of pride, an outsider’s badge in an area where practically nobody comes from the South. To identify myself as a Texan means to say, “I look at the world a little different from you. I’m not exactly like you, and I’m glad of that.” People take note of Texans while folks from, say, Ohio and Virginia are politely acknowledged, if that. Everybody’s got a Texas story, friends who moved there, a comment on the President, and saying I’m from Texas makes me the lightning rod for whatever opinions they care to spout.
Not that I’m a mindless booster or Texas-right-or-wrong type. After all, I live up here, not down there, and I’m not looking to relocate. The closest I ever came to that was when I tried to find a job in Austin in the late 1980s after I got married and my bride and I wanted to escape New York. I doubt I could ever emulate Larry McMurtry, who returned with riches and fame to open a bookstore in Archer City. Go back to Mission? No way, Jose!
Instead, I’ll build a virtual Texas through contacts with relatives and occasional visits. I’ll write essays like this that mine a deep vein of memory and conflicted emotion. I’ll cruise the websites of the McAllen Monitor, major papers, and the Texas Observer to keep up with the state’s kookiness. Of course, if I ever become McMurtry-like rich and famous, I might consider a Victorian mansion in Gonzales, the kind that looked so huge and splendid when I was a kid growing up in Texas.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Stepping Into Wonder: New Kid at Princeton
An abridged version of this essay appeared in the Reunions Guide edition of the Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW), as part of Reunions Weekend. I wrote it as part of my 25th Reunion, which I enjoyed greatly. It does not appear online, hence I am including a longer version here. The PAW version is what I call the "broadcast" version, while here I include "cable" material that would never make it into the prim pages of PAW. The "nice" title is "Stepping Into Wonder," while the "naughty" title is "My Keyceptor is Trying to Seduce Me! And Other Tales of a Princeton Freshman." Enjoy.
------------
Stepping Into Wonder
On August 30, 1976, I flew from McAllen, Texas to Newark, N.J. to start my freshman year at Princeton. As soon as I stowed my bags and a creaky manual typewriter at the Nassau Inn, my experience began. Map in hand, I wandered the campus and found a lecture in progress. I wrote in my journal, “Finally, I discovered just what I had stumbled upon—a lecture by psychologist Carl Rogers, before a convention of Humanist Psychologists.”
That lecture, on my first day on campus, set the tone for what Princeton was, and continues to be. Coming from an isolated part of the country, where people like Carl Rogers were seen as subversive, I immediately confronted challenging people and ideas. I stepped onto campus and gained a sense of wonder at the sheer immediacy of what Princeton offered.
The experiences and impressions tumbled over one another. My journal from those days recorded the shocks of the new on social, political and sexual topics. Displays at Dillon Gym from the Association for Humanistic Psychology, for example, had “a variety of HP pamphlets and literature, each containing its own pitch toward the reader. Some had odd titles and psychic goals. The gay/lesbian arm of the meeting had a very large display of boards illustrating moderate and severe examples of anti-gay activities and also pro-gay displays.”
A few days later, I attended a “lecture-slide show by Timothy Leary on space colonization . . . I called home from Alexander Hall and told Mom of the day. I also mentioned the coed bathroom-showers here [I soon discovered this applied only to the convention]. I think it is a sane arrangement—we all have our minds potty trained.”
As a hormonally normal teenager freed from the social strictures of South Texas, I just knew Princeton would enfold me in a riotous social scene. Or so I hoped, anyway. One evening in those first weeks I met with my “keyceptor,” an upperclassman assigned to newbies to answer questions and smooth their entry into Princeton. Mine made a big impression on me, albeit not in the way Princeton hoped: “We sat in a living room and talked. She is a classics student, short, intense, buxom. ½-way through our discussion of classes I noticed she was acting rather seductive—she was lying down on the couch diddling a pen between her breasts, one of those BIC-types. I thought, ‘I guess I’m willing if she is,’ but nothing happened, that time, anyway.” We never saw each other again, but I still hear the click-click of that pen snapping through my brain synapses.
That raunchy perspective colored other aspects of my earliest Princeton days. Consider my attendance at a meeting of Undergraduates for a Stable America (USA) in Whig Hall. “We spent most of the meeting dreaming up new names for the group. Nobody likes USA. I said it first struck me as corny. I suggested the Adam Smith Society, A.S.S. I thought of a marvelous promo campaign to bolster a fun loving image: ‘Grab a piece of the A.S.S. . . .!’”
From USA my focus swung to the other end of the political spectrum. One day I was returning from a Psych lab with Jeff Sellers ‘80, “Walking back to the dorm we stopped to listen to a very intense fellow representing the Spartacus Youth League (SYL) at a table cluttered with propaganda on the walk east of East Pyne. He was probably in his early 30s, late 20s, conservatively dressed, short hair, glasses, real lefty. Finally broke away.”
“At dinner my roommates and I, stimulated by the SYL, discussed the physical traits of Communists lurking in Commons with us. Although no properly lurking males could be seen, we did see 2 girls with frizzy hair, somewhat East Europe dress. No self-respecting Red has straight hair.”
A few weeks later, I went with friends “to hear an Isaac Asimov lecture in McCosh 10. We arrived 30 minutes early but all the seats were taken except in the balcony. The lecture’s main thrust centered on the threat of overpopulation and the methods of curing it—persuading women to not have so many children.”
Ever eager to expand my cultural horizons, in late September I joined Film Society, and went to see Federico Fellini’s 1973 film Amarcord at midnight. “Jeff and I situated ourselves near the front-center. Comfortably, too much so, for after about an hour my resistance caved in under repeated assaults of sleep and I dozed a while. I saw the last 40 minutes of this Italian flick. Outside I felt so cold. It was 3 a.m., and Jeff and I walked mostly in silence to the dorm. He enjoyed the symbolism and photography and thought the subtitles detracted from his appreciation of the visual beauty. I chattered my teeth in a semblance of agreement.” The next weekend I switched gears and saw Monty Python’s And Now for Something Completely Different.
The fall of 1976 marked the presidential campaign between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Always a political junkie, I joined the University Democrats on an Oct. 10 bus trip to attend Columbus Day political events in Newark. Along with USA and SYL, the University Democrats spoke to the utter political confusion (or, as I like to see it, my independence) that puzzles my friends to this day. I wrote, “I got my 1st close view of Newark, the epitome of urban Armageddon. For a funny reason I felt at ease there and sensed a town still living an ethnic dream of a long time past.”
“In due time a procession with the usual police and fire attachments and on-the-take politicos came waving past, and finally, yes, WALTER MONDALE, looking a bit heavier than I expected. Totally uninspiring. He jumped from his open-body old car and starting gladhanding the adoring masses. . . . We began trailing Mondale along the crowded street, although my Republican leanings kept me from taking a banner or yelling. Finally he got in the car. We followed him down to a speakers’ stand, and although we could not see him, we heard a very brief nonpolitical blurb on the great contributions of Italian Americans to American culture, from Christopher Columbus to Don Vito Corleone. Retracing our route back down the street we found the GOP VP nominee, Bob Dole. My group trailed him from the sidewalk while waving posters and yelling and acting like perfect representatives of the party’s symbol.”
One encounter stands out as truly mythical. During the summer of 1976, my budding interest in the USSR led me to read Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, by George F. Kennan ’25. Before Freshman Week, I noted a discussion at the Woodrow Wilson School on the theme of “Solzhenitsyn as a Historian of 1917,” as I remember. Having had my fill of humanistic psychology for a while, I wandered over. Among the attendees was an elderly man, who listened attentively and asked some questions. With a jolt I realized George Kennan himself attended the discussion. “So this is Princeton,” I thought to myself. “Wow!” (Kennan died this spring just weeks short of his 80th Princeton Reunion, at the age of 101.)
The other great memory of those early days involves my try-out for The Daily Princetonian. I thought about this story in 2003, when former Georgia Governor Lester Maddox died. As background, Maddox ran for President in 1976 representing the American Independent Party, a candidacy that generated something other than enthusiasm among Princetonians, as I was to discover in October . . .
As I recorded the event: “Candidacy period, Monday afternoon I was flailing away with my Econ story and Ben Engel ’77 asked me if I wanted to do a story. Sure—so I was introduced to Andy Steinberg ’80 and we began working on the now-infamous Lester-Maddox-at-Cottage flap. Monday morning pranksters distributed flyers at all dorm rooms proclaiming the appearance of the good governor at Cottage that night. The 3rd Worlders raised a ruckus and by 5 Andy and I were in WWS for a pre-march meeting with Kathy Kiely ’77 and somebody else. Then, off to a larger meeting in the TW Center. On the way over I interviewed Provost Snowden. So, as for the rest of the happenings, read the Tuesday Oct. 19 edition. I get a mention at the very end. Did not finish until almost midnight. I stayed at the office to finish reading the sheets to make sure that the info I contributed to the story was correct.”
That store plunged me into national politics, an amazing experience for a 19 year old. In a few months, I wrote my first lead article for the Prince, on a lecture by Simon Wiesenthal, renowned hunter of Nazis. As with the Kennan encounter, I felt I had entered a special place where amazing people and events were part of the landscape. I didn’t just learn history, I touched it, and saw and heard the history makers.
------------
Stepping Into Wonder
On August 30, 1976, I flew from McAllen, Texas to Newark, N.J. to start my freshman year at Princeton. As soon as I stowed my bags and a creaky manual typewriter at the Nassau Inn, my experience began. Map in hand, I wandered the campus and found a lecture in progress. I wrote in my journal, “Finally, I discovered just what I had stumbled upon—a lecture by psychologist Carl Rogers, before a convention of Humanist Psychologists.”
That lecture, on my first day on campus, set the tone for what Princeton was, and continues to be. Coming from an isolated part of the country, where people like Carl Rogers were seen as subversive, I immediately confronted challenging people and ideas. I stepped onto campus and gained a sense of wonder at the sheer immediacy of what Princeton offered.
The experiences and impressions tumbled over one another. My journal from those days recorded the shocks of the new on social, political and sexual topics. Displays at Dillon Gym from the Association for Humanistic Psychology, for example, had “a variety of HP pamphlets and literature, each containing its own pitch toward the reader. Some had odd titles and psychic goals. The gay/lesbian arm of the meeting had a very large display of boards illustrating moderate and severe examples of anti-gay activities and also pro-gay displays.”
A few days later, I attended a “lecture-slide show by Timothy Leary on space colonization . . . I called home from Alexander Hall and told Mom of the day. I also mentioned the coed bathroom-showers here [I soon discovered this applied only to the convention]. I think it is a sane arrangement—we all have our minds potty trained.”
As a hormonally normal teenager freed from the social strictures of South Texas, I just knew Princeton would enfold me in a riotous social scene. Or so I hoped, anyway. One evening in those first weeks I met with my “keyceptor,” an upperclassman assigned to newbies to answer questions and smooth their entry into Princeton. Mine made a big impression on me, albeit not in the way Princeton hoped: “We sat in a living room and talked. She is a classics student, short, intense, buxom. ½-way through our discussion of classes I noticed she was acting rather seductive—she was lying down on the couch diddling a pen between her breasts, one of those BIC-types. I thought, ‘I guess I’m willing if she is,’ but nothing happened, that time, anyway.” We never saw each other again, but I still hear the click-click of that pen snapping through my brain synapses.
That raunchy perspective colored other aspects of my earliest Princeton days. Consider my attendance at a meeting of Undergraduates for a Stable America (USA) in Whig Hall. “We spent most of the meeting dreaming up new names for the group. Nobody likes USA. I said it first struck me as corny. I suggested the Adam Smith Society, A.S.S. I thought of a marvelous promo campaign to bolster a fun loving image: ‘Grab a piece of the A.S.S. . . .!’”
From USA my focus swung to the other end of the political spectrum. One day I was returning from a Psych lab with Jeff Sellers ‘80, “Walking back to the dorm we stopped to listen to a very intense fellow representing the Spartacus Youth League (SYL) at a table cluttered with propaganda on the walk east of East Pyne. He was probably in his early 30s, late 20s, conservatively dressed, short hair, glasses, real lefty. Finally broke away.”
“At dinner my roommates and I, stimulated by the SYL, discussed the physical traits of Communists lurking in Commons with us. Although no properly lurking males could be seen, we did see 2 girls with frizzy hair, somewhat East Europe dress. No self-respecting Red has straight hair.”
A few weeks later, I went with friends “to hear an Isaac Asimov lecture in McCosh 10. We arrived 30 minutes early but all the seats were taken except in the balcony. The lecture’s main thrust centered on the threat of overpopulation and the methods of curing it—persuading women to not have so many children.”
Ever eager to expand my cultural horizons, in late September I joined Film Society, and went to see Federico Fellini’s 1973 film Amarcord at midnight. “Jeff and I situated ourselves near the front-center. Comfortably, too much so, for after about an hour my resistance caved in under repeated assaults of sleep and I dozed a while. I saw the last 40 minutes of this Italian flick. Outside I felt so cold. It was 3 a.m., and Jeff and I walked mostly in silence to the dorm. He enjoyed the symbolism and photography and thought the subtitles detracted from his appreciation of the visual beauty. I chattered my teeth in a semblance of agreement.” The next weekend I switched gears and saw Monty Python’s And Now for Something Completely Different.
The fall of 1976 marked the presidential campaign between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Always a political junkie, I joined the University Democrats on an Oct. 10 bus trip to attend Columbus Day political events in Newark. Along with USA and SYL, the University Democrats spoke to the utter political confusion (or, as I like to see it, my independence) that puzzles my friends to this day. I wrote, “I got my 1st close view of Newark, the epitome of urban Armageddon. For a funny reason I felt at ease there and sensed a town still living an ethnic dream of a long time past.”
“In due time a procession with the usual police and fire attachments and on-the-take politicos came waving past, and finally, yes, WALTER MONDALE, looking a bit heavier than I expected. Totally uninspiring. He jumped from his open-body old car and starting gladhanding the adoring masses. . . . We began trailing Mondale along the crowded street, although my Republican leanings kept me from taking a banner or yelling. Finally he got in the car. We followed him down to a speakers’ stand, and although we could not see him, we heard a very brief nonpolitical blurb on the great contributions of Italian Americans to American culture, from Christopher Columbus to Don Vito Corleone. Retracing our route back down the street we found the GOP VP nominee, Bob Dole. My group trailed him from the sidewalk while waving posters and yelling and acting like perfect representatives of the party’s symbol.”
One encounter stands out as truly mythical. During the summer of 1976, my budding interest in the USSR led me to read Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, by George F. Kennan ’25. Before Freshman Week, I noted a discussion at the Woodrow Wilson School on the theme of “Solzhenitsyn as a Historian of 1917,” as I remember. Having had my fill of humanistic psychology for a while, I wandered over. Among the attendees was an elderly man, who listened attentively and asked some questions. With a jolt I realized George Kennan himself attended the discussion. “So this is Princeton,” I thought to myself. “Wow!” (Kennan died this spring just weeks short of his 80th Princeton Reunion, at the age of 101.)
The other great memory of those early days involves my try-out for The Daily Princetonian. I thought about this story in 2003, when former Georgia Governor Lester Maddox died. As background, Maddox ran for President in 1976 representing the American Independent Party, a candidacy that generated something other than enthusiasm among Princetonians, as I was to discover in October . . .
As I recorded the event: “Candidacy period, Monday afternoon I was flailing away with my Econ story and Ben Engel ’77 asked me if I wanted to do a story. Sure—so I was introduced to Andy Steinberg ’80 and we began working on the now-infamous Lester-Maddox-at-Cottage flap. Monday morning pranksters distributed flyers at all dorm rooms proclaiming the appearance of the good governor at Cottage that night. The 3rd Worlders raised a ruckus and by 5 Andy and I were in WWS for a pre-march meeting with Kathy Kiely ’77 and somebody else. Then, off to a larger meeting in the TW Center. On the way over I interviewed Provost Snowden. So, as for the rest of the happenings, read the Tuesday Oct. 19 edition. I get a mention at the very end. Did not finish until almost midnight. I stayed at the office to finish reading the sheets to make sure that the info I contributed to the story was correct.”
That store plunged me into national politics, an amazing experience for a 19 year old. In a few months, I wrote my first lead article for the Prince, on a lecture by Simon Wiesenthal, renowned hunter of Nazis. As with the Kennan encounter, I felt I had entered a special place where amazing people and events were part of the landscape. I didn’t just learn history, I touched it, and saw and heard the history makers.
Monday, May 23, 2005
A Brazilian Vacation: My Astral Week
[This appeared on English-language site in Sao Paulo, Brazil, all about my big Brazilian adventure. The site, Gringoes.com, is now what is probably a permanent vacation, as of November 2020, so here's what I wrote in 2005.]
My Brazil experience differs from others who write for Gringoes. I‘m not a long-term expat or immigrant, nor am I married to a Brazilian. I don‘t speak Portuguese. Still, my week-long visit to the country in November 2004 made a deep impression on me. Seven months later, my interest continues, so I offer to you a series of impressions, snapshots from a first-time visitor without any deep comments on national character or cultural differentiators.
My growing awareness of Brazil began in early 2003 when a woman I‘ll call Kitty in Rio de Janeiro contacted me through an online dating site. We‘re both Jewish, enjoyed writing, and had increasingly friendly online chats. I called her several times and she talked about me visiting her. Because of the distance and post-divorce emotional hesitance, I didn't take the offer too seriously and never considered a visit‘s pleasures. Kitty and I drifted apart and by early 2004 she met somebody local and that, as the phrase goes, was that. In retrospect, I missed a wonderful opportunity.
In September 2004 I contacted a woman in São Paulo. Let‘s call her Astral. Again, we formed a connection, as best one can online. She also invited me to visit. This time, I felt more confident and eager for an adventure. Instinct said "do it," so I surprised her, myself, and most of my family by agreeing. After considerable checking of calendars and airlines, we settled on the last week in November as the best time.
The complexities of a cross-cultural romance emerged after I ordered my tickets through my employer‘s travel office. Soon, the corporate security service sent a lengthy email wishing me "success and a safe voyage on your upcoming trip to Brazil." After that cheery opening, the email got down to the nitty-gritty. I learned, for example:
"Crime rates have been rising in Brazil, largely the result of drugs, gangs and poverty. The most significant crime problems are in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Petty theft is especially common in the tourist areas, hotel districts and beaches, while more violent crime tends to be reported in the slums surrounding these cities. In several recent incidents, however, violence has spilled over from these slums into popular tourist areas."
"Additionally, Sao Paulo has reported thefts at Guarulhos International Airport, involving carry-on luggage or briefcases that have been set down, sometimes for only a moment. Arriving and departing travelers should be especially vigilant and take the necessary precautions at this and other Brazilian airports. Sao Paulo also suffers from the same problems of street crime, which appears to be on the rise in nearly every part of the city."
"Tap water and ice may not be safe. Drink only bottled or boiled water and carbonated drinks."
The alert also listed every possible health vaccine, including for hepatitis, rabies, malaria, typhoid, yellow fever, with the bold-faced warning, "Areas of Brazil have chloroquine-resistant P. falciparum malaria." Fortunately, I read, Sao Paulo did not have a problem with malaria.
Given that I‘m a paranoid gringo when it comes to international travel, the well-intentioned warnings left me doubting the wisdom of instinct. Kidnappings, airport theft, rabies; what was I getting myself into? I forwarded the alert to Astral, writing, "What do you think? I'd better not send this to my brother-he'll freak out!" (My younger brother in Texas strongly opposed this 5,000 mile jaunt to visit a woman I barely knew in another country).
Astral replied with a light-hearted note, saying, "The only serious advice I have for your safety is that you get the best health insurance you can just in case you collapse after meeting me. And also, just in case I kidnap you to the best places in town just have plenty of valid credit cards! Now if you wish to go to the jungle in the Amazon rainforest than get all those vaccinations darling."
Still, my concerns deeply offended her. My frame of reference for Latin America stopped thousands of miles away from Brazil. I grew up on the Texas-Mexico border, and past visits to Mexico and El Salvador (of all places) merely led me to interpret Brazil in terms of those countries. "Brazil is not El Salvador," she told me, exasperated at my ignorance of the country. Even a week before I left I was asking my doctor about shots I might need. My plan to carry my passport, travelers check and other papers in a Velcro-sealed travel pack around my neck didn't impress her either.
Oh, to hell with it, I finally thought. I didn't take the shots, I didn't buy extra insurance, I just left Astral‘s phone numbers and my flight plans with my ex-wife and my brother. I simply got on the Saturday night American Airlines flight and stumbled out, the next morning, into that hotbed of criminality, Guarulhos airport.
My Brazil experience had a slow but uneventful start. I snaked through passport control and customs, going through the special Yankee line to be fingerprinted and photographed. After a long haul I finally emerged into the terminal and had my first sight of Astral in a delightful white business suit.
The next week very much reflected Astral‘s Brazil, neither a typical tourist experience nor a long-term expat‘s view. Some highlights:
Food. We visited Baby Beef, a crowded, delectable food experience, everything the travel books suggest. What I remember in even more detail is lunch on Saturday, on our way in from the airport, at a Japanese sushi restaurant downtown. Dazed from the long flight, the slog through customs, and the sheer novelty of a new city and a new friend, I think of the place as my real introduction to Brazil. A Japanese man entertained the crowd by singing American pop songs by Neil Diamond, Billy Joel and others, accompanying himself on guitar. Astral said he didn‘t actually speak English. American music by a Japanese man in Sao Paulo: in a word, surreal.
Traffic. The congestion is São Paulo is horrendous. That‘s no surprise. What surprised me was the round-the-clock bicycle traffic in Guaruja, where we spent several days for beach time. The flocks of bikes added a graceful, quiet note to the town and helped keep traffic congestion down. I even saw dozens of bikers after midnight, on the short ferry ride from Santos to Guaruja. The sturdy, practical bikes were a welcome contrast to the fashion-statement mountain bikes so popular in the U.S.
Santos. Friends of mine who had lived in Brazil and visited Santos collapsed in shock when I sang the praises of sophisticated Santos, based on a seven-hour day trip for beach, shopping, and dinner. "Santos? When I was there that was a dump!" exclaimed one. All I can see they saw one Santos, I saw another. The wide swooping beach with rocks rising from the sea proved a perfect backdrop for photos. The endless apartment buildings along the shore drive were majestic in their variety and testified to Brazilians‘ skill at constructing massive numbers of housing units (I‘m talking about the outward quantity and appeal to a U.S. apartment dweller; I have no idea about the interior quality). A few blocks inland, in the buzzing business district, we made our major touristy buys: Astral selected two CDs of MBP for me (Agora é que São Elas and Gilberto Gil Unplugged), while I got two pair of shoes.
Marketing. The weekend street-level marketing teams for upscale dwellings delighted me. Young women in coordinated uniforms tout developments by passing fliers through car windows and unfurling banners in front of stopped traffic at red lights. I‘ve never seen this kind of selling in the U.S. I even saved two fliers as marketing mementos of São Paulo: Loft Ibirapuera and Townhouse Village Morumbi.
Hebraica. The Jewish Community Center in São Paulo amazed me with its size, level of services, and friendly spirit. It stands like an oasis plopped behind (very) secure walls in the center of urban tumult. From the swimming pools to the library to the movie theater to the art gallery to the simple pleasure of strolling and greeting friends, Hebraica offered everything a close-knit community needs in a central location. It may not merit mention in general tour books, but for Jewish travelers, Hebraica is a must-see. If I lived in São Paulo for any length of time, I‘d join.
Language. The smoky bingo parlor in Guaruja suggested a great way to study numbers in Portuguese. Listening to the bingo callers, I connected what I heard to the numbers posted on the big display board. I got a double reinforcement: hear it and see it. After some time on the beach, Astral gave me a Portuguese nickname: "Peludo," (Fuzzy) which, I will always associate with that memorable week.
Entertainment. Before I left for Brazil I was already addicted to Latin telenovelas, mostly Mexican soap operas. The theme music always rocks, the star actresses are slinkily adorable, and, anyway, I could justify watching anything as a way to improve my Spanish. I had always heard Brazil does novelas better than anybody, so Astral introduced me to one of the favorites, "Senhora do Destino." One of my favorite memories of the trip was nights in Guaruja, sprawled on a beanbag chair after a day on the beach, watching "Senhora do Destino" while Astral translated. The theme music especially struck me, with its haunting, soaring vocal. The music stayed with me long after I returned, as I couldn‘t remember the performer, and Astral and I were no longer in contact. Then one evening I was listening to my Internet radio service, Rhapsody, and the unmistakable riff came on. I immediately checked the performer information, and found it was Maria Rita‘s performance of "Encontros e Despedidas." Within a week I had ordered her CD from Amazon, along with a Bebel Gilberto CD. The word that comes to mind whenever I hear Maria Rita is "magic."
And now . . . six months later, my Brazil trip slips, day by day, back in my store of memories. I have no plans to return, although that could happen someday, somehow. The place got under my skin. I‘m constantly checking out CDs from the New York Public Library, including Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Virginia Rodrigues, Elis Regina, and more by Bebel Gilberto. I‘ve investigated various Portuguese language sets to study the language, which makes the music that much more enjoyable, once I can understand a little more. I pick up free Brazilian newspapers at a money-transfer place on New York‘s West 46th Street, "Little Brazil." A friend loaned me the novel Tieta, by Jorge Amado, so I will be reading that soon. She warned me it‘s "spicy," so I know already I‘ll like it. Of course, I read Gringoes religiously. So, I expect the Brazilian romance will continue.
So, all that‘s left to say is: Obrigado, Astral.
My Brazil experience differs from others who write for Gringoes. I‘m not a long-term expat or immigrant, nor am I married to a Brazilian. I don‘t speak Portuguese. Still, my week-long visit to the country in November 2004 made a deep impression on me. Seven months later, my interest continues, so I offer to you a series of impressions, snapshots from a first-time visitor without any deep comments on national character or cultural differentiators.
My growing awareness of Brazil began in early 2003 when a woman I‘ll call Kitty in Rio de Janeiro contacted me through an online dating site. We‘re both Jewish, enjoyed writing, and had increasingly friendly online chats. I called her several times and she talked about me visiting her. Because of the distance and post-divorce emotional hesitance, I didn't take the offer too seriously and never considered a visit‘s pleasures. Kitty and I drifted apart and by early 2004 she met somebody local and that, as the phrase goes, was that. In retrospect, I missed a wonderful opportunity.
In September 2004 I contacted a woman in São Paulo. Let‘s call her Astral. Again, we formed a connection, as best one can online. She also invited me to visit. This time, I felt more confident and eager for an adventure. Instinct said "do it," so I surprised her, myself, and most of my family by agreeing. After considerable checking of calendars and airlines, we settled on the last week in November as the best time.
The complexities of a cross-cultural romance emerged after I ordered my tickets through my employer‘s travel office. Soon, the corporate security service sent a lengthy email wishing me "success and a safe voyage on your upcoming trip to Brazil." After that cheery opening, the email got down to the nitty-gritty. I learned, for example:
"Crime rates have been rising in Brazil, largely the result of drugs, gangs and poverty. The most significant crime problems are in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Petty theft is especially common in the tourist areas, hotel districts and beaches, while more violent crime tends to be reported in the slums surrounding these cities. In several recent incidents, however, violence has spilled over from these slums into popular tourist areas."
"Additionally, Sao Paulo has reported thefts at Guarulhos International Airport, involving carry-on luggage or briefcases that have been set down, sometimes for only a moment. Arriving and departing travelers should be especially vigilant and take the necessary precautions at this and other Brazilian airports. Sao Paulo also suffers from the same problems of street crime, which appears to be on the rise in nearly every part of the city."
"Tap water and ice may not be safe. Drink only bottled or boiled water and carbonated drinks."
The alert also listed every possible health vaccine, including for hepatitis, rabies, malaria, typhoid, yellow fever, with the bold-faced warning, "Areas of Brazil have chloroquine-resistant P. falciparum malaria." Fortunately, I read, Sao Paulo did not have a problem with malaria.
Given that I‘m a paranoid gringo when it comes to international travel, the well-intentioned warnings left me doubting the wisdom of instinct. Kidnappings, airport theft, rabies; what was I getting myself into? I forwarded the alert to Astral, writing, "What do you think? I'd better not send this to my brother-he'll freak out!" (My younger brother in Texas strongly opposed this 5,000 mile jaunt to visit a woman I barely knew in another country).
Astral replied with a light-hearted note, saying, "The only serious advice I have for your safety is that you get the best health insurance you can just in case you collapse after meeting me. And also, just in case I kidnap you to the best places in town just have plenty of valid credit cards! Now if you wish to go to the jungle in the Amazon rainforest than get all those vaccinations darling."
Still, my concerns deeply offended her. My frame of reference for Latin America stopped thousands of miles away from Brazil. I grew up on the Texas-Mexico border, and past visits to Mexico and El Salvador (of all places) merely led me to interpret Brazil in terms of those countries. "Brazil is not El Salvador," she told me, exasperated at my ignorance of the country. Even a week before I left I was asking my doctor about shots I might need. My plan to carry my passport, travelers check and other papers in a Velcro-sealed travel pack around my neck didn't impress her either.
Oh, to hell with it, I finally thought. I didn't take the shots, I didn't buy extra insurance, I just left Astral‘s phone numbers and my flight plans with my ex-wife and my brother. I simply got on the Saturday night American Airlines flight and stumbled out, the next morning, into that hotbed of criminality, Guarulhos airport.
My Brazil experience had a slow but uneventful start. I snaked through passport control and customs, going through the special Yankee line to be fingerprinted and photographed. After a long haul I finally emerged into the terminal and had my first sight of Astral in a delightful white business suit.
The next week very much reflected Astral‘s Brazil, neither a typical tourist experience nor a long-term expat‘s view. Some highlights:
Food. We visited Baby Beef, a crowded, delectable food experience, everything the travel books suggest. What I remember in even more detail is lunch on Saturday, on our way in from the airport, at a Japanese sushi restaurant downtown. Dazed from the long flight, the slog through customs, and the sheer novelty of a new city and a new friend, I think of the place as my real introduction to Brazil. A Japanese man entertained the crowd by singing American pop songs by Neil Diamond, Billy Joel and others, accompanying himself on guitar. Astral said he didn‘t actually speak English. American music by a Japanese man in Sao Paulo: in a word, surreal.
Traffic. The congestion is São Paulo is horrendous. That‘s no surprise. What surprised me was the round-the-clock bicycle traffic in Guaruja, where we spent several days for beach time. The flocks of bikes added a graceful, quiet note to the town and helped keep traffic congestion down. I even saw dozens of bikers after midnight, on the short ferry ride from Santos to Guaruja. The sturdy, practical bikes were a welcome contrast to the fashion-statement mountain bikes so popular in the U.S.
Santos. Friends of mine who had lived in Brazil and visited Santos collapsed in shock when I sang the praises of sophisticated Santos, based on a seven-hour day trip for beach, shopping, and dinner. "Santos? When I was there that was a dump!" exclaimed one. All I can see they saw one Santos, I saw another. The wide swooping beach with rocks rising from the sea proved a perfect backdrop for photos. The endless apartment buildings along the shore drive were majestic in their variety and testified to Brazilians‘ skill at constructing massive numbers of housing units (I‘m talking about the outward quantity and appeal to a U.S. apartment dweller; I have no idea about the interior quality). A few blocks inland, in the buzzing business district, we made our major touristy buys: Astral selected two CDs of MBP for me (Agora é que São Elas and Gilberto Gil Unplugged), while I got two pair of shoes.
Marketing. The weekend street-level marketing teams for upscale dwellings delighted me. Young women in coordinated uniforms tout developments by passing fliers through car windows and unfurling banners in front of stopped traffic at red lights. I‘ve never seen this kind of selling in the U.S. I even saved two fliers as marketing mementos of São Paulo: Loft Ibirapuera and Townhouse Village Morumbi.
Hebraica. The Jewish Community Center in São Paulo amazed me with its size, level of services, and friendly spirit. It stands like an oasis plopped behind (very) secure walls in the center of urban tumult. From the swimming pools to the library to the movie theater to the art gallery to the simple pleasure of strolling and greeting friends, Hebraica offered everything a close-knit community needs in a central location. It may not merit mention in general tour books, but for Jewish travelers, Hebraica is a must-see. If I lived in São Paulo for any length of time, I‘d join.
Language. The smoky bingo parlor in Guaruja suggested a great way to study numbers in Portuguese. Listening to the bingo callers, I connected what I heard to the numbers posted on the big display board. I got a double reinforcement: hear it and see it. After some time on the beach, Astral gave me a Portuguese nickname: "Peludo," (Fuzzy) which, I will always associate with that memorable week.
Entertainment. Before I left for Brazil I was already addicted to Latin telenovelas, mostly Mexican soap operas. The theme music always rocks, the star actresses are slinkily adorable, and, anyway, I could justify watching anything as a way to improve my Spanish. I had always heard Brazil does novelas better than anybody, so Astral introduced me to one of the favorites, "Senhora do Destino." One of my favorite memories of the trip was nights in Guaruja, sprawled on a beanbag chair after a day on the beach, watching "Senhora do Destino" while Astral translated. The theme music especially struck me, with its haunting, soaring vocal. The music stayed with me long after I returned, as I couldn‘t remember the performer, and Astral and I were no longer in contact. Then one evening I was listening to my Internet radio service, Rhapsody, and the unmistakable riff came on. I immediately checked the performer information, and found it was Maria Rita‘s performance of "Encontros e Despedidas." Within a week I had ordered her CD from Amazon, along with a Bebel Gilberto CD. The word that comes to mind whenever I hear Maria Rita is "magic."
And now . . . six months later, my Brazil trip slips, day by day, back in my store of memories. I have no plans to return, although that could happen someday, somehow. The place got under my skin. I‘m constantly checking out CDs from the New York Public Library, including Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Virginia Rodrigues, Elis Regina, and more by Bebel Gilberto. I‘ve investigated various Portuguese language sets to study the language, which makes the music that much more enjoyable, once I can understand a little more. I pick up free Brazilian newspapers at a money-transfer place on New York‘s West 46th Street, "Little Brazil." A friend loaned me the novel Tieta, by Jorge Amado, so I will be reading that soon. She warned me it‘s "spicy," so I know already I‘ll like it. Of course, I read Gringoes religiously. So, I expect the Brazilian romance will continue.
So, all that‘s left to say is: Obrigado, Astral.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
My Favorite Oswald
I read someplace that classical actors are judged according to how well they play Hamlet. After seeing Gary Oldman’s bravura turn in 1991’s JFK, I’ve decided that, modern actors must be judged by how well they play Lee Harvey Oswald.
Think about it: what other characters in recent American history, other than Richard Nixon and Anna Nicole Smith, have been more complex and confounding, bullying their way into our nightmares and turning history? With his bayou-coonass/Bronx accent and shifty-eyed demeanor, Oswald presents physical and psychological dimensions that would challenge the most accomplished actors.
I recently watched JFK for the first time since the movie’s release. I longed to see a lot more of Oldman’s Lee Harvey Oswald and a lot less of Kevin Costner’s New Orleans DA Jim Garrison in smoke-filled rooms. Director Oliver Stone teased the audience with fragmented McNuggets of Oswald, and left me panting for a big juicy steak of the Marine-Commie-defector.
So I started a trek to discover my favorite Oswald. Using Gerald Posner’s epochal investigation Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK as my trusty field guide to Dealey Plaza and beyond (and I’ve read the whole book, including the footnotes), I looked for movies and compared them to the historical record.
Surely, I thought, there must many films about Oswald, beyond the Kennedy biographies and factual records of the assassination. Oldman set a very high thespic bar, but I was determined to find challengers to the throne of Oswald actors.
To my amazement, almost nothing exists. Nada; zip; bupkis. While bookshelves groan and the Internet crackles with information about Oswald and the whole sordid mess, the creative film effort is pathetically small. Exhausting my web research skills, I found the Oswald shelf of your local video store would contain these films:
·JFK (1991), already mentioned. It covers the highlights of Oswald’s assassination-related life, some that really happened and others in dream-like uncertainty. Whatever one thinks about Stone’s politics, he created a hard-charging film brimming with colorful characters. Thrill at the opportunity to hear Oswald say, “I emphatically deny these charges,” “I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir,” and of course “I’m just a patsy.” Plus, Stone made good use of cute-as-a-button Quitman native Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison. And in one easily missed line, Costner, I think, refers to McAllen as a center for gun-running. Ah-ha, I found a South Texas connection to the intrigue!
·Ruby (1992), starring Danny Aiello as Jack Ruby. Willie Garson plays a colorless throwaway role as Oswald. He doesn’t appear until an hour into this sluggish but sporadically entertaining piece of speculation, in which Oswald isn’t even the shooter. Watch for X-Filer and Princeton graduate David Duchovny in a minimal role as “Officer Tippit,” the Dallas cop killed by Oswald after the assassination. Aiello’s Ruby does get some amusing lines. In one scene, he is attacked by and then beats the tar out of the abusive husband of a stripper played by the delicious Sherilyn Fenn (post-Twin Peaks, pre-anorexia). Tough-guy Ruby bellows, “You make that the last time you take out your disappointments in life on Jack Ruby!”
· Two movies bear the proud title The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. The first appeared in 1964 (I’m sure glad it wasn’t 1962). Director Larry Buchanan explores whether Oswald was mentally ill. The film appears in video with another Buchanan take on Texas terrors, titled The Other Side of Bonnie and Clyde. Specialty house Something Weird Video in Seattle markets this twin bill. The other "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" appeared on TV in 1977 and clocks in at an agonizing three hours and 12 minutes in length with John Pleshette as Oswald. This film is impossible to find.
· Love Field (1992) deserves mention not so much for its Oswald presence (just the standard TV scenes to move the plot along) but the way it uses the assassination as a mechanism to propel a Jackie-obsessed Dallas hairdresser played by Michelle Pfeiffer on her odyssey to Washington, D.C., for JFK’s funeral. On her trek she meets Dennis Haysbert (he played Senator and then President David Palmer on the first three seasons of "24") and they eventually engage in some amor prohibido. Nothing explicit gets shown, but Michelle does appear with a lovely post-coital glow on her face.
· The PBS program Frontline did an episode in 1993 called “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” While it’s a documentary, the teacher’s guide on the PBS website suggests that students watch the program and then stage their own trial of Oswald. The guide helpfully notes, “The teacher should allow some latitude in legal tactics. The purpose of this exercise is not to teach courtroom strategies. It is to explore the motivations and life of Lee Harvey Oswald.” The activity conjures up images of high school students hamming it up as Oswald, no doubt defended by Johnny Cochran-wannabees shouting, “If the Mannlicher-Carcano don’t fit, you must acquit!”
By default, Oldman wins the nod as my favorite Oswald, in the acting category. Oldman’s a great actor in a tough role. Challengers will be minimal until, oh, 2060, when some bright-eyed director, now in diapers, decides the 100th anniversary of the assassination will be a swell time to finally film an Oswald biopic.
Beyond the big and little screens, Oswald’s malign presence festers and sloshes. On the printed page and Internet, anything goes. Norman Mailer wrote the non-fiction "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery," while Don DeLillo wrote the novel "Libra." Hard-boiled crime novelist James Ellroy’s "American Tabloid" explores the down and very dirty side of organized crime and the FBI and much more in the years leading up to November 22, 1963, conspiracies, Oswald and all.
Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman added music to the mix with "Assassins." Oswald joins other killers and contenders, such as John Wilkes Booth, John Hinkley, and Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, the Charles Manson acolyte who tried to kill President Ford, to do a little song and dance. (Interesting note: Squeaky Fromme is now rotting away in the Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth; her projected release date is September 5, 2005. Take note, Secret Service!)
Staying on a musical note, Dallas musician Homer Henderson wrote one of the great transgressive songs of all time, “Lee Harvey Was a Friend of Mine,” with the lyrics,
I was born in Dallas in 1952,
Lee Harvey moved across the street on Bentley Avenue,
He used to throw the ball to me when I was just a kid,
They say he shot the president---I don't think he did.
And Lee Harvey was a friend of mine,
He used to take me fishing all the time,
He used to throw the ball to me when I was just a kid,
They say he shot the president but I don't think he did.
Wallow in Oswaldiana for any length of time, the ambiguities and slippery connections start to play games with your head. Shadows and coincidences merge into confounding patterns. For example, Willie Garson of Ruby also played Oswald in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Mad TV.” John Pleshette of 1977’s "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" also had roles in the 2004 version of "Helter Skelter" about Charles Manson) and the 1998 TV movie "The Day Lincoln was Shot." Coincidences, you say?
The strangest dot-connecting pulls together "JFK," "Love Field," and the terrorist-battling series "24" on Fox. Hang with me here: "JFK" cast Donald Sutherland in a pivotal role, as the government operative who steers Costner’s Jim Garrison toward the conspiracy. Then, Dennis Haysbert plays a lead role in Love Field. Finally, in "24," Haysbert plays President David Palmer, while Donald’s son Keifer Sutherland plays the anti-terrorism operative Jack Bauer, who works for Palmer. Well! What does all that mean?
And now, a confession: the annals of Oswaldian speculation include my own modest, yet dare I say imaginative, contribution. You’re reading it here first, folks, a world exclusive.
In 1994, America followed the sordid case of O.J. Simpson, from the murder of Nicole through the chase of the White Bronco to the arrest, the trial, the acquittal, and the relentless search over the last decade for the real killers. Throughout the case certain facts troubled me. Echoes of past horror bounced off the walls of the courthouse into my brain, where they forced my attention. Unable to resist the compelling force of these echoes, I followed a twisting path of research that left me breathless in its stunning revelations. In the end, I wrote what is truly “my favorite Oswald” article, which I titled, “OJ and Lee Harvey: Stunning Links Revealed!”
To my bitter disappointment and undying suspicion, not a single newspaper or magazine would publish the fruits of my long and lonely hours spent delving into the arcania of two ill-led lives. Fortunately, through the magic of the Internet, I can now share my findings. My shocking thesis: “O.J. Simpson is possessed by the demon spirit of Lee Harvey Oswald!”
My research, which has yet to be refuted, charts connections between Simpson and Oswald that simply cannot be coincidences. Really! While the research and documentation run for thousands of pages (kept is a secret location to protect them from my rivals and enemies), I can provide some key findings:
· Both Oswald and Simpson trained in the deadly arts. Oswald was a Marine with extensive rifle experience. Simpson learned to wield weapons acting in movies such as "Firepower" and "Killer Force."
· In his statement read during his mad dash, Simpson wrote, “First, everyone understand I had nothing to do with Nicole’s murder.” Following Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald also denied involvement. Quoting Dallas police captain Will Fritz, Gerald Posner wrote, “He denied it and said he hadn’t killed the President.” Thus, both Simpson and Oswald said they didn’t do it. Now, you tell me: how likely is that to happen in murder cases?
· Oswald shot Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository and fled, finally being captured in the Texas Theater. Simpson flew from L.A. International Airport to Chicago’s O’Hare Plaza Hotel. Oswald went from a storage center to an entertainment place. Simpson went from an airport—a storage center for airplanes—to a hotel—where entertaining movies are shown in rooms. Their movements show uncanny similarities.
I could continue, but these examples nail the case down pretty well, the real demonic conspiracy. Now if I could just get somebody to buy my screen play. . . Gary Oldman, baby, have I got a role for you!
Think about it: what other characters in recent American history, other than Richard Nixon and Anna Nicole Smith, have been more complex and confounding, bullying their way into our nightmares and turning history? With his bayou-coonass/Bronx accent and shifty-eyed demeanor, Oswald presents physical and psychological dimensions that would challenge the most accomplished actors.
I recently watched JFK for the first time since the movie’s release. I longed to see a lot more of Oldman’s Lee Harvey Oswald and a lot less of Kevin Costner’s New Orleans DA Jim Garrison in smoke-filled rooms. Director Oliver Stone teased the audience with fragmented McNuggets of Oswald, and left me panting for a big juicy steak of the Marine-Commie-defector.
So I started a trek to discover my favorite Oswald. Using Gerald Posner’s epochal investigation Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK as my trusty field guide to Dealey Plaza and beyond (and I’ve read the whole book, including the footnotes), I looked for movies and compared them to the historical record.
Surely, I thought, there must many films about Oswald, beyond the Kennedy biographies and factual records of the assassination. Oldman set a very high thespic bar, but I was determined to find challengers to the throne of Oswald actors.
To my amazement, almost nothing exists. Nada; zip; bupkis. While bookshelves groan and the Internet crackles with information about Oswald and the whole sordid mess, the creative film effort is pathetically small. Exhausting my web research skills, I found the Oswald shelf of your local video store would contain these films:
·JFK (1991), already mentioned. It covers the highlights of Oswald’s assassination-related life, some that really happened and others in dream-like uncertainty. Whatever one thinks about Stone’s politics, he created a hard-charging film brimming with colorful characters. Thrill at the opportunity to hear Oswald say, “I emphatically deny these charges,” “I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir,” and of course “I’m just a patsy.” Plus, Stone made good use of cute-as-a-button Quitman native Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison. And in one easily missed line, Costner, I think, refers to McAllen as a center for gun-running. Ah-ha, I found a South Texas connection to the intrigue!
·Ruby (1992), starring Danny Aiello as Jack Ruby. Willie Garson plays a colorless throwaway role as Oswald. He doesn’t appear until an hour into this sluggish but sporadically entertaining piece of speculation, in which Oswald isn’t even the shooter. Watch for X-Filer and Princeton graduate David Duchovny in a minimal role as “Officer Tippit,” the Dallas cop killed by Oswald after the assassination. Aiello’s Ruby does get some amusing lines. In one scene, he is attacked by and then beats the tar out of the abusive husband of a stripper played by the delicious Sherilyn Fenn (post-Twin Peaks, pre-anorexia). Tough-guy Ruby bellows, “You make that the last time you take out your disappointments in life on Jack Ruby!”
· Two movies bear the proud title The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. The first appeared in 1964 (I’m sure glad it wasn’t 1962). Director Larry Buchanan explores whether Oswald was mentally ill. The film appears in video with another Buchanan take on Texas terrors, titled The Other Side of Bonnie and Clyde. Specialty house Something Weird Video in Seattle markets this twin bill. The other "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" appeared on TV in 1977 and clocks in at an agonizing three hours and 12 minutes in length with John Pleshette as Oswald. This film is impossible to find.
· Love Field (1992) deserves mention not so much for its Oswald presence (just the standard TV scenes to move the plot along) but the way it uses the assassination as a mechanism to propel a Jackie-obsessed Dallas hairdresser played by Michelle Pfeiffer on her odyssey to Washington, D.C., for JFK’s funeral. On her trek she meets Dennis Haysbert (he played Senator and then President David Palmer on the first three seasons of "24") and they eventually engage in some amor prohibido. Nothing explicit gets shown, but Michelle does appear with a lovely post-coital glow on her face.
· The PBS program Frontline did an episode in 1993 called “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” While it’s a documentary, the teacher’s guide on the PBS website suggests that students watch the program and then stage their own trial of Oswald. The guide helpfully notes, “The teacher should allow some latitude in legal tactics. The purpose of this exercise is not to teach courtroom strategies. It is to explore the motivations and life of Lee Harvey Oswald.” The activity conjures up images of high school students hamming it up as Oswald, no doubt defended by Johnny Cochran-wannabees shouting, “If the Mannlicher-Carcano don’t fit, you must acquit!”
By default, Oldman wins the nod as my favorite Oswald, in the acting category. Oldman’s a great actor in a tough role. Challengers will be minimal until, oh, 2060, when some bright-eyed director, now in diapers, decides the 100th anniversary of the assassination will be a swell time to finally film an Oswald biopic.
Beyond the big and little screens, Oswald’s malign presence festers and sloshes. On the printed page and Internet, anything goes. Norman Mailer wrote the non-fiction "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery," while Don DeLillo wrote the novel "Libra." Hard-boiled crime novelist James Ellroy’s "American Tabloid" explores the down and very dirty side of organized crime and the FBI and much more in the years leading up to November 22, 1963, conspiracies, Oswald and all.
Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman added music to the mix with "Assassins." Oswald joins other killers and contenders, such as John Wilkes Booth, John Hinkley, and Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, the Charles Manson acolyte who tried to kill President Ford, to do a little song and dance. (Interesting note: Squeaky Fromme is now rotting away in the Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth; her projected release date is September 5, 2005. Take note, Secret Service!)
Staying on a musical note, Dallas musician Homer Henderson wrote one of the great transgressive songs of all time, “Lee Harvey Was a Friend of Mine,” with the lyrics,
I was born in Dallas in 1952,
Lee Harvey moved across the street on Bentley Avenue,
He used to throw the ball to me when I was just a kid,
They say he shot the president---I don't think he did.
And Lee Harvey was a friend of mine,
He used to take me fishing all the time,
He used to throw the ball to me when I was just a kid,
They say he shot the president but I don't think he did.
Wallow in Oswaldiana for any length of time, the ambiguities and slippery connections start to play games with your head. Shadows and coincidences merge into confounding patterns. For example, Willie Garson of Ruby also played Oswald in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Mad TV.” John Pleshette of 1977’s "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" also had roles in the 2004 version of "Helter Skelter" about Charles Manson) and the 1998 TV movie "The Day Lincoln was Shot." Coincidences, you say?
The strangest dot-connecting pulls together "JFK," "Love Field," and the terrorist-battling series "24" on Fox. Hang with me here: "JFK" cast Donald Sutherland in a pivotal role, as the government operative who steers Costner’s Jim Garrison toward the conspiracy. Then, Dennis Haysbert plays a lead role in Love Field. Finally, in "24," Haysbert plays President David Palmer, while Donald’s son Keifer Sutherland plays the anti-terrorism operative Jack Bauer, who works for Palmer. Well! What does all that mean?
And now, a confession: the annals of Oswaldian speculation include my own modest, yet dare I say imaginative, contribution. You’re reading it here first, folks, a world exclusive.
In 1994, America followed the sordid case of O.J. Simpson, from the murder of Nicole through the chase of the White Bronco to the arrest, the trial, the acquittal, and the relentless search over the last decade for the real killers. Throughout the case certain facts troubled me. Echoes of past horror bounced off the walls of the courthouse into my brain, where they forced my attention. Unable to resist the compelling force of these echoes, I followed a twisting path of research that left me breathless in its stunning revelations. In the end, I wrote what is truly “my favorite Oswald” article, which I titled, “OJ and Lee Harvey: Stunning Links Revealed!”
To my bitter disappointment and undying suspicion, not a single newspaper or magazine would publish the fruits of my long and lonely hours spent delving into the arcania of two ill-led lives. Fortunately, through the magic of the Internet, I can now share my findings. My shocking thesis: “O.J. Simpson is possessed by the demon spirit of Lee Harvey Oswald!”
My research, which has yet to be refuted, charts connections between Simpson and Oswald that simply cannot be coincidences. Really! While the research and documentation run for thousands of pages (kept is a secret location to protect them from my rivals and enemies), I can provide some key findings:
· Both Oswald and Simpson trained in the deadly arts. Oswald was a Marine with extensive rifle experience. Simpson learned to wield weapons acting in movies such as "Firepower" and "Killer Force."
· In his statement read during his mad dash, Simpson wrote, “First, everyone understand I had nothing to do with Nicole’s murder.” Following Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald also denied involvement. Quoting Dallas police captain Will Fritz, Gerald Posner wrote, “He denied it and said he hadn’t killed the President.” Thus, both Simpson and Oswald said they didn’t do it. Now, you tell me: how likely is that to happen in murder cases?
· Oswald shot Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository and fled, finally being captured in the Texas Theater. Simpson flew from L.A. International Airport to Chicago’s O’Hare Plaza Hotel. Oswald went from a storage center to an entertainment place. Simpson went from an airport—a storage center for airplanes—to a hotel—where entertaining movies are shown in rooms. Their movements show uncanny similarities.
I could continue, but these examples nail the case down pretty well, the real demonic conspiracy. Now if I could just get somebody to buy my screen play. . . Gary Oldman, baby, have I got a role for you!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
The Law of Spontaneous Conversations, Massachusetts Edition
There’s something about me that draws people who want to talk. They can’t wait to tell me their obsessions and life stories. Whether I respo...
-
The Internet as we know it now did not exist in the 1970s. Had it, I'm sure I would have been a teen blogger with my essays. I recently ... -
I was an intern for the summers of 1978 and 1979 at Newsday, then based in Garden City, NY. Afterward I agreed to respond to questions from ...
-
I've been a fan of the business-oriented series Billions (Showtime) and Succession (HBO) since they started. Both unfold in New York a...
