My (Short) Time in the Big House

 I’ll start with a confession. I spent time at Sing Sing Prison and Rikers Island in the 1980s.

You may be thinking, “Wow, this bald Jewish guy in his 60s who works for an accounting firm must have been a real bad-ass back in the day. Either that or he was a criminal defense attorney.”

I’m afraid to say I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a jail-qualifying bad-ass. Maybe a dumb-ass at critical junctures of life. I’ve never been an attorney. No, back in the 80s I was a trade magazine reporter.

Writing for trade magazines lacks the name recognition and glamor of writing for a big-city newspaper or The New Yorker. I toiled for niche publications like Drycleaners News, The Business of Fur,  Leather Today, Banks in Insurance Report, and Magazine Age. Still, this line of work gave me entrée to Sing Sing and Rikers.

In 1984 I was writing for Quick Frozen Foods. My assignment: write about frozen food at the Big House, Sing Sing Correctional Facility. That sounded fun. The headline was “Frozen Fare Gives Prison Chefs Something to ‘Sing-Sing’ About.” That punderful headline practically wrote itself.

Staff at Sing Sing gave me very clear instructions on how to get there from the Ossining train station a half-mile away. I arrived, signed in, was frisked, then went with my notepad and camera to get that story. The highly cooperative foodservice team gave me a lot of great detail on their operations. Nutrition director John Caserta took pride in his operation to feed 2,230 men with a professional staff of 11 and 130 inmate workers, along with 14 security officers. Consistency is the key, as one official with Bureau of Prisons said of the realities of prison life: “In a pure socialistic society, everybody has what everyone one else has. With any differences a black market grows.” So prisoners at the Allenwood “country club prison and the lifers at Leavenworth in Kansas” get the same grub.

Sgt. Leander McCall Jr., head of foodservice security made a big impression. I described him as “an imposing man with a handshake like a vise, he brooks no foolishness.” Caserta described him as “the motivator.” My impression: dedicated people kept the place working. I also learned the first rule of prison foodservice. And that is (drum roll please):

“Don’t run out of food.” Hungry customers are unhappy customers, especially in a penitentiary.

Four years after Sing Sing, I had my adventure at Rikers. By then I was the East Coast Editor of Video Store magazine, covering what was then the thriving video retailing industry before Blockbuster obliterated the industry and then Netflix crushed Blockbuster and most of the remaining video stores.

While Sing Sing was enjoyable, Rikers was epic. I joined the press group invited to Rikers when rap group Public Enemy performed at Rikers, an event every bit as historic as Johnny Cash’s concert at Folsom Prison. The performance was being filmed as part of a music video. Public Enemy was the first group to every play at Rikers, and they came loaded with songs that instantly connected with the audience: Don’t Believe the Hype, Bring the Noise and the classic Fight the Power.

I can’t find any articles I wrote about Rikers, but I did make a laconic note in my journal on August 14, 1988. The was after I returned, exhausted, from the big video industry convention in Las Vegas. I wrote, “Friday wasn’t much of a day off. I went to Rikers for the Public Enemy gig. That turned into an all-day romp in the heat of a prison and I didn’t return here until 5:15.”

The best summary of the event is the 2013 article “Public Enemy at Rikers: An Oral History.”

Lindsey Williams came up with the idea for the show. The then 22-year-old Def Jam executive was putting together a marketing plan for the group’s sophomore album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. PE was on Run-DMC’s Tougher Than Leather tour, and Williams, who was traveling with the group, proposed that they visit and perform at prisons in selected cities. . .

Planning the show took just over a week; the paperwork was expedited by a tangential relationship between members of PE’s camp and the Rikers staff. Turkkan arranged for two buses to transport 150 members of the press from midtown Manhattan to Rikers . . .

The press arrived at Rikers before noon. They were patted down, taken on a brief tour, and then ushered into a small room. Security was minimal, with the only restriction being that press refrain from asking the prisoners what they were in for.

Two hundred and fifty prisoners, most of them black and Latino, entered the bare-bones auditorium. Even by August-in-NYC standards it was brutally hot and the prisoners’ jumpsuits were drenched in sweat. In keeping with protocol there were two guards per inmate with an additional 25 to 30 guards outside the auditorium, and additional officers from other houses on alert. The press stood behind barricades and formed a horseshoe on the perimeter of the crowded room a few feet away from the inmates who were seated in plastic chairs.

Yes, I remember the heat, the earsplitting noise, the tough-as-nails Rikers guards and the holding pen for us reporters, who stuck out like pale sore thumbs in our natty sports jackets and penny loafers.

I now work in communications for a professional services firm. While that’s highly satisfying and has lasted as long as all my magazine gigs taken together, I still look back fondly to the unpredictable zest of writing for the trades. I never knew what I'd find on my plate. And that's something to sing about.

The French Connection

France forms the bookends of my parents’ five-year marriage, almost all of it spent in that country. Letters they wrote give me details about their move to France in 1955, after they were married in Texas, and their bitter transatlantic split in 1959-1960. In between those dates my brother Cooper and I were born there. After their divorce, France summarized the rancor separating these two wildly mismatched people. As I get older, I look back on their push-and-pull and wonder what might have happened had my French connection remained in place.

In the beginning, newlyweds Shirley and Mark enjoyed their new life. Married that March in McAllen, Texas, my mother had flown to France to connect with my father, who had moved to France to pursue a career in the auto industry while working a day job as a mechanic on a U.S. Air Force base in Chateauroux. A typed single-spaced letter my mother wrote to Dearest Ones (presumably her parents and sister in Tyler, Texas) on August 3, 1955 brims with details about the TWA flight from Idlewild (now JFK) Airport in New York, to Gander, Newfoundland, to Paris. After reuniting, they were Americans in Paris. My mother wrote, “Wednesday we walked to the section where the fine shops are. All the shops are beautiful—didn’t buy anything except a thing for my hair.”

Stylish at the auto show.

Saturday they took the train to Chateauroux, a trip of a bit more than two hours. She related: “Mark thought he could rent a car, but couldn’t—we did rent a two wheel, two seater Vespa scooter. You should have seen us—especially me in a tight skirt. No one pays any attention to you.”

Signs of dissatisfaction appear immediately. “Monday I was awful lonesome, but kept busy, mostly washing. Visited the little house for a while with the Sgt.’s wife and at 6:00 Mark came in and I opened cans and we ate. . . Yesterday I washed some more and then walked to Niberne, a town about 1 ¾ miles from here and bought bread. I wanted two loaves but I must have said twa instead of du and ended up with three of them. Had a cup of French coffee and walked home.” Later in the day they looked at apartments in Chateauroux. She wrote, “Mark likes it here in the country, but it is too lonely since cleaning is nothing and then all I have to do is read or sit. So into town we go. Too, I want a bathroom of my own.”

Her first impressions of the locals were very positive. “The French seem to be nice people and the country is all like a picture. The flowers are so beautiful I can’t describe them, and Daddy, you would love the gardens, they are about the size of our backyard and have two rows of all kinds of vegetables.”

“Mark looks wonderful—it is so nice to be with him again—haven’t been mad a time, yet.” That is offhand comment, in retrospect, was ominous.

My father typed a paragraph at the end of the letter. “Dear folks, now you know about Paris. Actually we only hit the high spots—and we ate at some really crazy restaurants, Russian food on flaming swords—snails, all kinds of things. Shirl is happy about the week in Paris and as soon as we really get settled we will write more often. Love, Mark.”

I have little other documentation of the four years my parents spent in France. My brother and I were both born there at the base’s hospital. Photo albums show happy scenes, my parents in stylish outfits at car shows. I’m decked out in cute toddler clothes and a beret, and clutch baguettes bigger than me.

Fed up with financial and personality clashes, my mother returned to Tyler with my brother and me in 1959. Dad stayed in France. She exchanged rancorous letters with him via airmail. She saw him as financially feckless, he sneered that she needed to go to charm school. In 1960 she moved to her hometown of Mission, Texas and there we remained.

She emphatically stated her feelings in her will from January 27, 1960, signed when she was 39 years old. The will said:

I realize I have made no provision in this will for my husband, MARK K. WALLACH. We are not now living together as husband and wife and the greatest portion of my estate consists of property which I have inherited from my father and mother, JARED J. LISSNER and EVA M. LISSNER, and of property I owned prior to my marriage. In view of these facts it is my intention that my said husband should receive no share of my estate, since it is my wish and judgment that my estate should pass to and vest in my children.

The Hidalgo County Recordings column in the McAllen Monitor of May 7, 1961, listed her divorce suit filed in the 92^nd District Court in Edinburg. I know because she saved the clipping—given to her in a card that said “The News is Out” with a note on the inside: “Shirley, Here Tiz. I’ll get the stamp on next trip, D.” She kept the card and clipping in her wedding album. Was she being ironic, sentimental or simply a thorough chronicler of her life, as evidenced that she often typed letters on carbon paper to keep her own copy? In the early 1980s I did exactly that when I wrote letters to her.

I remember nothing of France, although I must have known as much French as a two-year old could learn. We traded the South of France for the South of Texas, two geographies that defined my parents’ wildly divergent personalities.

Our home had some evidence of France. The kitchen featured a framed drawing of dogs peeing against a wall, a famous piece popular with tourists by Boris O’Klein called “Naughty Dogs."  We had the photo albums. My mother was good friends with a saleswoman named Paulette with a charming French accent at her favorite clothing store, the Valley Mercantile in McAllen. My brother and I learned whatever French songs American kids knew at the time, like “Frère Jacques.” Classmates in my elementary school thought I had trouble pronouncing the letter "r."

France insinuated itself into my parents’ acidic views of each other. My mother saw it as the symbol of what she loathed about my father: his Eurocentric snobbery, his disdain for her and her Texas viewpoint, his self-absorption. My father lamented that my brother and I didn’t speak French, dressed like ranch hands rather than boulevardiers, didn’t travel around Europe, didn’t appreciate opera, ballet and art. and didn't have love affairs with beautiful older women like all the sophisticated French (men) do. No middle ground existed in their positions.

Needless to say, France, the land of my birth, never ranked high on my list of adolescent interests. To do so felt like a betrayal of our mother. I look Spanish in high school, not French. If I had dual citizenship, it never meant anything. Any vestigial knowledge of the language stayed buried in me. I took Spanish rather than French in high school and college, then Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian and Portuguese as an adult with a language-learning obsession.

Still, France mattered as the empty place in my earliest memory where my parents were a couple and Cooper and I absorbed the local culture.

I visited France in September 1984 during a month in Europe. My mother had died of cancer that January, I was a freelance writer between relationships and so I locked the door on my Brooklyn studio apartment and jetted off on Virgin Atlantic for the extended travel I never had after college. After London, I moved on to Paris and bought train tickets for the two-hour trip to Chateauroux.

Returning to Paris.

I remember feeling anxious on the train. What was I doing? I didn’t speak the language and knew nothing about my destination other than its name. I wrote about the experience in the December 1984 edition of a short-lived publication called New Men’s News. Titled “In Search of Memories,” it records a forlorn pilgrimage to see where my mother had lived and loved, and where I began living:

I had to see Chateauroux.

I did that during a month-long vacation. Once there, I walked down one road, then back, confused. Now what? The staff at the local tourist office couldn’t speak English; I couldn’t speak French. I indicated with a State Department birth registration form that I wanted to find the Air Force base. They shook their heads.

“Le hospital c’est kaput?” I asked, mangling three languages in one sentence.

“Oui, c’est kaput,” a woman said. She did sketch a route to the old “base Americaine” on a map. With this help I strolled through the noontime streets. I clutched every detail, and thought, “So this is it.” Little cars were parked on the sidewalks, and most stores had closed. Parents and children walked hand in hand, and my throat tightened. There, 25 years earlier, went I.

I walked out of town to a highway. Far away was a toy-like air traffic control tower and the former air base. I thought, “This is far enough.” I took a picture and turned around.

Nothing dramatic happened. Nobody rushed out and gasped, “Monsieur Wallach, oui?” I bought croissants, and got caught in a rain shower. The ordinary events matched the way my mother lived—steady and dependable.

Returning to Paris, I felt relieved and somehow empty . . . A part of me will always be vacant, but the search cleared away the gnawing I felt inside. There’s no place left to go, except headlong into my own history.

That line—“There, 25 years earlier, went I”—reaches out, 40 years later, to describe the French connection I explore. In the past decade, I became a big fan of French music of the eras of Django Reinhardt, Edith Piaf, Josephine Baker and France Gall. And I put a lot of time into French new wave and other genres. I’ve seen many of the classics: Breathless, Jules and Jim, Elevator to the Gallows (with that incredible soundtrack improvised by Miles Davis), Bob le Flambeur, Rififi, Cléo from 5 to 7, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Alphaville, Shoot the Piano Player. The damning Holocaust film La Rafle, about the roundup of Paris Jews in 1942 by French cops, haunts me. 

While French movies from any era are enjoyable, those of the 1950s and 1960s especially resonate. I find myself peering around corners, watching those parents with children, noticing the cars and fashions, mentally strolling the rain-glistened boulevards and casting my mind back to the what-ifs of life.

• What if my parents remained married and we settled into a stable expatriate life?
• What if my parents divorced but my mother remained in France and my brother and I had a bi-cultural upbringing?
• What we my parents divorced and we returned to Texas but our father took us to France for visits to introduce us to what he liked about France and Europe? 

The last is the most plausible scenario, but it requires a radically retooled father with the financial resources to afford a European family vacation, not to mention an ability to accept and bond with boys from Texas. Both points, I know from experience, were in the realm of fantasy.

I can't change the past but I can change the present, and I did. Since that trip to Chateauroux, self-acceptance and curiosity replaced that vacant feeling. That didn't happen tout de suite, but in my own sweet time. And I'm sure I'll be back to France. A visit, some maturation and that stack of airmail letters colored in some of the blank spaces of my life’s cartography.

What more can I say? C’est la vie.

Rogue Messages as Scammable Scannable Poetry

The unstoppable waves of scam messages are dangerous but, once I started collecting them, took on a weird appeal. Silly on their own, collectively they have a rhythm and psychological urgency that makes them worth a look.

I never took them as messages "accidently" sent to the wrong email or phone. They're purely the output of criminal gangs looking to engage, cultivate, lure and rob victims. I never respond, despite the saucy photos sometimes included (right, I'm exactly their type, bald Jewish guys), or the chiding, pouting tone wondering why I'm ignoring their breathless desire for connection. They sound so wounded!

This is the start of my ongoing grotesquerie of lures with the hooks just waiting to latch on. Will AI make them better focused and personalized? I hope not, but with voice capture technologies and methods to mimic individual writing styles, that threat is approaching (if you get an email from me saying I've been arrested and need bail money, ignore it). 

See how these sound. To add some ambiguity to the collection, several are real messages.

I am expanding my network and perhaps you have ignored my friend request because you are busy, but I hope that when you are free I will hear back from you, establish contact and give me a chance to ask you for advice

Hello, great to see your professional resume. I would love to meet someone with experience like you. I hope we can form new friendships. Can we chat if we have time? 

Are you busy?

Delivery service: Provide the correct delivery address to avoid delay in receiving the goods due to incomplete door number. After replying "OK", reconfirm your address . . . 

This number has been stored in my mobile phone for a long time, but I don't know who it is. Who are you?

It's been a long time since we saw each other. How are you and your family? (identical messages from the same fake number, two minutes apart.)

Hi, we have received your sample for testing from your healthcare provider 

Good afternoon 🌞are you getting my texts?

You're busy

I was hoping we could get to know each other but you didn't respond

Please reply me

I was worried.

This number has been in my phone for a while but I don't know who it is, who you are

We temporarily placed your 

Amazon suspended

To restore follow instruction below

Can you come over now ??? Where are you?

Hello, do you remember me? 

USPS, we are currently unable to effect delivery. update the shipping address to resume delivery.

Hi! I left your number at that last party and I just remembered to contact you now, what 

Alisa, did you take my email by mistake yesterday? There is a customer email of mine in it.

Do you want to go out to sea together tomorrow?

Do you mind looking in the front closet by the front door on the shelf if the game Twister is there?

Hi Hanal, yesterday afternoon I asked my assistant to send you an order, did you receive it? 

Hello , I was hoping we could get to know more each other but you didn't reply yet. Are you busy or don't want to back to me? So I guess this is it, you are going to keep ignoring me.

Don't YU remember who am I?

Hello!WHere Have you been?

Hey, how was your weekend? Are you home yet?

Hey! Dear friend, you are invited to join the cryptocurrency internal discussion group. Lead you to earn 2K-50K per day . click to add group

Are you OK? Reply stop to unsubscribe (that's a tricky new twist, replying is exactly what the scammers want, to know this is a working number)

Hello, I'm Joanne. Do you know me? Reply STOP to unsubscribe.

Would you do me a favor and ask Naomi to text me?

Tim, I'm Ana, my father asked me to pick you up at Seoul Incheon International Airport. Message me when you get off the plane, please. 

Serena, is everything okay? Reply STOP to unsubscribe.

In Fashion: Armadillo and Peacock

 I’m a great admirer of the work of linguist Deborah Tannen. She wrote “You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation” and other books. A 1993 essay in The New York Times Magazine, "Marked Women, Unmarked Men," especially struck me. Observing men and women at an academic event, she wrote, 

“Each of the women at the conference had to make decisions about hair, clothing, makeup and accessories, and each decision carried meaning. Every style available to us was marked. The men in our group had made decisions, too, but the range from which they chose was incomparably narrower.”

Ain't that the truth. Women’s decisions resonate and, if asked, they’d tell the stories of clothing and accessories: where bought, who was she shopping with, the occasion, the hair stylist and salon. When writing this, I asked my partner Naomi to run down the details of which she wore at that moment. She related, “The pants and blouse come from J. Jill because they fit me. Clothes are hard to find because I’m petite so when I found these pants fit, I got them in four colors. The earrings come from the market at Yellow Monkey Village in Cross River. I was there with my friend Suzanne and artisans had displays and I liked these.”  

I’m proof that men’s range of options is narrow. I’ve joked I can dress in total darkness because my clothes are so standardized: jeans or khakis, mostly button-down shirts from Lands’ End , J. Crew, LL Bean, Brooks Brothers and especially Eddie Bauer, switching to Tommy Bahama beach shirts for hot weather. My shopping venue of choice: Goodwill stores and factory outlets, where I hunt for Levi's jeans and Merrell's hiking shoes. 

Still, if you scan the perimeter of my accessories you'll see that I carefully choose my watches and my ties. They carry a lot of delightful emotional freight and thrill me when I strap the watch on or pull the tie snug up against the neck of my button-down shirts. They might not be as noticeable or dramatic as, say, jade earrings, strappy high heels, or a little black dress from Nordstrom’s, but a careful observer could tease meaning from my adornment. Just ask.

Back when I had to wear ties to work as a member of the cubicle-dwelling white-collar proletariat, I settled on my specific style. I adored the Art Deco look for ties, with their bold colors and patterns. I also had a thing for  Italian ties I got in Italy in 1989, giving them so much use they finally fell apart. Two orange ties from the Princeton University Store are reserved for alumni events, where we Tigers swan about in glorious combinations of orange and black and nobody thinks we look peculiar. These days, I wear ties two or three times a year. My go-to ties for the past 20 or so years were designed by Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia. They were a gift and I treasure them. Garcia’s ties, like his music, totally sync with my tastes. What worked 40 years ago works now in my “touch of grey” phase of life.

The essential tie collection

Now, let’s talk about watches. I got into watches as a kid. I was big into 60s and 70s style watch bands, woven leather, black leather with multiple buckles (heavy metal!) and military olive. As an adult with some discretionary income, I indulged in watches that did a lot more than tell time. I started with an Art Deco Gruen piece from a flea market on the Upper West Side. On that 1989 Italian t, I bought a Raketa watch from the USSR, then a decade later two more, a Poljot (Flight) and a Komandirskie. The Raketa’s perpetual calendar ran from 1980 to the inconceivably distant year of 2000. They’re very distinctive looking—like all Russian watches—keep terrible time. As such, they're a perfect metaphor for the dysfunction of Soviet communism. But I still like them and wear them since my smart phone gives me the right time, anyway.

Heavy metal from Gruen, the USSR and Seiko.

The exciting news is I achieved my boyhood dream of getting a vintage Hamilton watch. This isn’t a modern digital version made by Swatch in Switzerland. I’m talking about the real deal from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the ones advertised for decades in National Geographic. I bought a Hamilton and an Elgin in a package deal at Shop Goodwill for a mere $40, then spent many many times that amount to get them overhauled and working. While the Elgin is cranky still, the Hamilton runs fine and is one of my adult dress-up watches, along with a watch from my brother Cooper. He’s a true watch connoisseur with an eye for fine mechanics. He got me a vintage Longines that had sat for 50 years in a Dallas safe deposit box before it came his way. When you see me at a swanky Westchester Country art opening or cocktail party, I'll be wearing my Longines or Hamilton with a Jerry Garcia tie.

I feel a lot of affection for my ties and watches. They define my look and add a splash of color and idiosyncratic style to the Levi's and Eddie Bauer schema I've always favored. I may dress like a colorless armadillo, but sometimes I my inner peacock take flight.

Raketa with the 20-year calendar. 

Roughing It at Philmont, August 1973

I recently found this essay, which I wrote 50 years ago. In August 1973, to cap off my years in the Boy Scouts, I joined a trip to the Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico with other teens from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Once I returned home to Mission, I immediately turned my notes into this travel piece, about our sweaty, exciting, exhausting and enlightening adventure in the mountains of New Mexico. The altitude and cold were challenges for us flatlanders used to living at sea level. I omitted the "Lord of the Flies" vibe that settled over our hardy band on the way home, where male energy and tiredness led to some pushing and snarling, but at least no knife fights broke out. I wrote this when I was 15 years old.

--------------

Anyway, this Sunday I got back from a trip to Philmont. We gathered at our Council camp, Perry, on August 1. We gathered up health forms and spent about two hours decorating up our dilapidated bus. On one side we had “Rio Grande Council” and “Stewardess Wanted Badly.” On the other side was “Mafia Staff Car” and “Philmont or Bust.” Also there were initials, foot prints, “Army Surplus” and “Navy issue” on the front with “Don’t Honk we’re peddling as fast as we can” on the back window. I guess I was pretty excited because I didn’t get much sleep that nite.

Finally in the morning we stowed our gear, had a lite breakfast and waited around for a TV crew which never arrived. At long last we departed for the Kingsville Navy Air Base for lunch.

Now, describing our crew, it was not too large; 24 boys and two adult advisors, Mr. Don Hensel of Donna and Mr. Robert Barbosa of McAllen. We split into crews of 12. The bus was slow, loud and too small. Most of us had to share a seat, which isn’t much fun on long bus trips, especially when you feel like stretching out. One guy brought a tape player and another a cassette but they couldn’t be heard above the noise.

At Kingsville the young man in charge of us gave us a tour of the base, then we had lunch. One thing that impressed me was the food. Also, they give you a choice of about 10 drinks. I usually got chocolate milk.

From here it was on to Lackland of San Antonio. We had a long wait as Mr. Hensel tried to get us through, but I suppose it was worth it. It was the biggest and best of the four bases we stopped at. We stayed at the gym. That evening we went to a Rec Center where we blew our $$$ on pinball machines. Some went skating, but I was chicken (no co-ordination). Some of us wanted to go to a movie but that was voted down. We walked over to a bowling alley but couldn’t get in. We started talking with some black airmen and one happened to be an Eagle Scout from N. Carolina, I think. Also, he was (I think he said) Chief of his OA [Order of the Arrow] area and had attended the ’69 jamboree. All he could say was, “Man, I sure had fun in Scouting.” He was so enthusiastic it took ten minutes before we could leave. He says he might want to be a Scoutmaster once his hitch is up.

After this we went to the gym where we lifted weights, played handball and basketball.

The next morning after breakfast we took a tour of a museum and left. The next leg of our trip was from San Antonio to Goodfellow in San Angelo for lunch then on to Carlsbad. The scenery up to San Angelo was nice, but then it pretty well flattened out. From here to Philmont, most of the way was of dry, almost uninhabited, rolling land. It impressed as a huge, vast zip on the map. It was hard to imagine a place so big and empty, mile after mile. Another item that struck me was “Who would come out to string and erect all these phone poles?” They just run all over the place. I suppose somebody lives way out there. The evening of August 3^rd we arrived at a Scout Aquatic Camp there. We spent most of the evening at an amusement park adjacent to us. Again, we went crazy on the pinball machines and the 25-cent “challenge” kind. When we left, most of us slept on the bus. We had a box dinner that we picked up at Goodfellow.

The morning of the 4^th we ate breakfast at a restaurant then went to Carlsbad Caverns. We all wore red windbreakers and looked very sharp. I suppose it was OK, but since I’d been there before it was not very exciting. The walk through the Big Room was pretty much a drag. After this we got back on the bus and went to Las Vegas, N.M. We stopped in Artesia for hamburgers and drinks. We went to Las Vegas for dinner then to Storie Lake Park. We slept in cement picnic shelters. It was really cold.

Stowing my cardboard suitcase at Tent City after arrival, on the left,
Ranger Doug Kennedy in cool shades on the right. 

The morning of the 5^th we started on the last leg of the trip. We reached Philmont about 1 PM. We all shivered a little to see those high peaks. We met our Ranger, Doug Kennedy of Kansas City, put our gear in Tent City, then had lunch, then the shakedown. Most of the afternoon we were at the Trading Post. After dinner we traded patches. I swapped the Ana Topa Hutsi I have and one 35^th anniversary for a World Jamboree-Japan and two throw-ins. Also my lodge flap for a Tonkawampus in perfect shape. That night we went to the New Mexico Story campfire. It was OK.

That's me on the left with my elbows on my knees.

The 6^th we started camping. A bus took us to near the stockade and we walked to Lover’s Leap. That morning I bought a film roll, hip strap and more patches. At camp we set stuff up then Kennedy herded us up a ridge for compass training. We then bush whacked to Lover’s Leap. On the way I lost my Army canteen. We amused ourselves at Lovers’ by throwing rocks and branches off (280 foot drop straight down). After the others left Doug and I tried to find the canteen. He left soon and I tried to find it alone. I learned an important lesson: obey the Rule of Three. I darn near got lost. I got down the ridge OK but couldn’t recall what road or trail went to Lover’s camp. Luckily two staff members came along and gave me directions.

The 7^th it was off to Urraca—a scenic but-near the end—rough hike. That afternoon we went to the rapelling program. It as fun but the way to too long and I got to up and down once. That nite our crew Talespinner told us some Edgar Allen Poe stories and jokes. We were at the edge of a steep valley and they were having bear problems here and the bear came up the valley. That nite a staffer told us “Blue Lights on Urracca Mesa” which scared us all. We all made a big thing out of the bear and got nervous. It didn’t both me too much but I slept with my tennis shoes on, just in case.

The 8^th we had a long hard hike to Crater Lake. Bad camp, lots of flies. Had the farthest back camp and had a long walk after we arrived. Program-orienteering, my team was almost last. We beat one guy who lost his card and pardner. Rained hard that afternoon while we were instructed, actually, pretty fun to go crashing thru the wet brush.

Just a pleasant stroll in the high country.

August 9^th, hike to Trails Peak. Left packs in brush, hiked to top. It took a long time to up for there are no switchbacks, just straight up. Our camp that day was Lower Bonito, which was beautiful and had a good view of Trail Peak.

Aug. 10^th, Off to Fish Camp. We relaxed there for a while and picked up food. A staff member gave us cold water and a tour of the fishing lodge, we also made flies. We walked about 1.5 miles to Aqua Fria, with Lower Bonito these were the best camps. Here we fished under a dark sky. I got a point blank foto of a chipmunk here. Had to walk back to Fish Camp to get a sweatshirt I left there.

Aug. 11^th, camp at Apache Springs. This place had the best program along with Miner Park. The Indian culture, teepees, corn-grinding, arrow-making and Indian sauna really interested me. My crew ground corn. We cooked the ground corn up and nobody would eat the slop. The arrow making didn’t go very well and a storm forced us to stop. It got bone-chilling cold and rainy. Within an hour it passed on. Three others and myself tried the sauna but we didn’t heat the rocks enough, so it wasn’t effective.

Aug. 12^th—Off to Porcupine for 2 days. Another dark day. Had campfire that nite. The 13^th we hiked up to Clear Creek for Black Powder Shooting, another enjoyable and instructive stop. We were hiking most of the day. I took a shower here, the only one I had on the trail. Also washed clothes.

Aug. 14^th—Got up late that day-7:15 am. Out schedule was to travel from Porcupine to Beaubien for food then on to Black Mountain Camp. Well, we made a slight wrong turn and went all the way down to Fish Camp before realizing it! We really felt dumb. We rested awhile then took off to Porcupine to pick up the trail. WE had lunch at the bend, we goofed on. Right after we started after lunch it started raining. Hiking in the rain is fun, but wearing a pack really makes you miserable. After an hour or so it stops. We had a surprise at Black—couldn’t find a camp. The ones near the front were taken so we walked on down the valley. We came to one—too small. There as no use in all of us walking, so four guys were sent ahead to scout around. They found one. It was narrow, rocky, sloping with high grass—but it had to do. The next morning we had a cold breakfast and left as soon as possible.

Showing my climbing skills.

Aug. 15th—to Miner’s Camp. We had a fairly easy trip that a.m. We had a lumbering days program which I thoroly enjoy. It consisted of pole climbing, log sawing, log hoisting, and starting a match with an ax. The only other crew was from Arlington, which was nice. Afterward about a dozen of us went on an Earth Science hike That nite we attended a really engrossing campfire story., mostly about Cimarron, Clay Allison, etc.

Aug. 16th—Finally, the last day! We got up at 4:30 for pancakes, it was fairly warm morning, not the bone chillers we got higher up. We were to hike ten miles to base camp. We went up and down and finally along Tooth Ridge. We left our packs and struggled up the Tooth—exhausting. From here it was all downhill and slippery. I stumbled about five times on the way—pretty bad. It was really maddening when we could see the Base—but from afar. We walked . . . it was hot and my mouth dried up badly. At long last we made it! We all flopped down on the side of the shower building. After recovering we went to Tent City, check in tents and cooking gear, then just messed around. It’s hard to describe the feeling of RELAXATION at base—especially after a nice (tho cold) shower. I bought a drink, then patches, a belt buckle and neckerchief slide. A few of us went to the Seton Museum which I enjoyed. We ate in the mess hall then got our Arrowheads that nite at a campfire.

The next morning we had the Continental breakfast, packed and left. The entire trip home was rather long and boring. We stopped in Lubbock and at Randolph A.F.B.

Home to Mission, ready to get cleaned up. 

The Copy Editor's Dossier on "The Bucharest Dossier"

First-time novelist William Maz captured lightning in a bottle with 2022's The Bucharest Dossier. Drawing on his experiences as a childhood immigrant from Rumania and then student at Harvard, he spun a deliriously complex tale of campus spy recruitment, espionage mentorship, double- and triple-crosses during the bloody Rumanian Revolution of December 1989, and lost love. The book's film and TV rights have been optioned and a sequel will debut in June. 

It brims with great passages, as in this one from page 83, about main character Bill Hefflin and his undergrad mentor, high-society Catherine Nash:

That evening was to be followed by countless other magical nights during which she slowly brought him along, carefully, tenderly, until he had let go of his inhibitions. She had been his teacher in love as well as in spycraft.

Love and spycraft—you can't have one without the other, at least in fiction. 

As I devoured the novel about CIA analyst/maverick field agent Hefflin, I found myself taking notes, not just on striking writing but also on evidence of the decline of copy editing and fact checking in the publishing industry. One flub I could accept, but I made notes on at least six. 

The errors weren't typos, but rather indicated that the team at Oceanview Publishing needs to brush up on homonyms in English—words that sound alike but have different meanings—as well as history. Some are obvious and jarring, others a master of history and foreign language that could be explained as usages that, if corrected, could bog down the narrative. 

Here's my discussion, offered in the spirit of one writer/editor to others.

Page 25. "No need for that, Bill." Avery's face lit up with his spook's smile. "We've already put you through the ringers, and we're satisfied." Here's the first homonym. For a novel that pays attention to mangled idioms, this one really jumped out at me. You put something "through the wringers" to indicate squeezing or twisting to extract information via pressure, or to remove water from wet clothes. "Ringers" are people who make noise with bells, or an imposter or fake, as in a sports event. 

Page 26. Avery continues his spymaster spiel: "The issue is that we've never had an asset whose identity we don't know. That's a problem on many levels. We can't monitor him, provide aide if he puts up a flag, or influence him if he starts to waiver." "Aide" is a noun; "aid" is what an aide provides.

Page 36. Hefflin is musing about corruption in Rumania and worldwide. "I don't judge," Hefflin said. "In the Congo it may be a sack of flour, in Brazil a few reals, in America a lot more." This is the most subtle issue I found. It only jumped out at me because I've studied Brazilian Portuguese. The real is the name of the national currency of Brazil, but the plural form is reais. I could understand an English speaker creating the plural by adding an "s" to real, but, really, that's not accurate in Brazil's language. A worldly CIA analyst would know the difference.

Page 54. Let's go to Boston public transit matters. Hefflin is partying with fellow undergrad femme fatale and spy Catherine Nash. "We've both had too much to drink," she said to Hefflin. "He'll drive us back, then take the Metro." Would two Harvard students refer to the Metro? Author Maz graduated from Harvard and I doubt he called it that. Locals call the subway system the T.  Granted, that may sound baffling to readers who don't know Boston, so Metro conveys the transit idea. Still, "Metro" showed a lack of awareness of local nomenclature. 

Page 343. Hefflin is talking to his Soviet spy contact, Boris, who gives Hefflin details on his background as a soldier in the Red Army during World War II. "After the War, I joined the KGB. I was good at it, partly because I was no longer afraid to die." The reference to the KGB is technically accurate, since the KGB did exist after World War II, but the war ended in 1945 and the KGB didn't exist by that name until 1954. As of 1946, Soviet intelligence agencies were the NKGB, MGB and MVD. As a shorthand term for all these agencies, KGB works; explaining the name of whatever agency Boris joined would be distracting for readers in the context of the discussion. On the other hand, I'd expect two savvy Cold War operatives to use the right reference. 

Page 348. Let's finish off with another homonym. Boris is waxing nostalgic about fast times in Rumania 1989 (Christmas Day, to be exact). "Let us go back to the day when the Ceausescus were executed. It was a grizzly affair, no point masking that fact, but they deserved what they got." Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena (a/k/a "Mother of the Nation") were indeed executed, but by a firing squad; they were not the main course at the Christmas dinner of revolutionary grizzly bears, even if they did deserve that manner of dispatch. Boris meant to say "grisly." 

All this said, the book resonated with me on many levels. It had passages of great lyricism. This one deserves quoting at length from page 302, when Hefflin learns of the death of a beloved gypsy neighbor and fortune teller from his Bucharest childhood:

Hefflin sank into the chair. Tanti Bobo. in his child's mind he thought she'd always be there, the same way he had thought of his parents, and of Pincus. Now she, too, was gone. His past seemed to be evaporating, one person at a time, like a dream that fades away as one awakens. And now he'd be forever carrying the guilt."

That's powerful, something I'd like to write in my fictional efforts. I'm looking forward to the next book, The Bucharest Legacy—The Rise of the Oligarchs. I'm hoping Maz's success with his first novel gains him a bit more copy editing support for the sequel. 

The Prophet's Day Job and Other Microstories

I’ve recently been writing microstories, 100 word pieces. One will appear on the Fairfield Scribes site next month. I also did one for the Forward newspaper’s April issue on Israel’s 75^th anniversary on the theme of “first visits to Israel.” Some are fact, some barely fiction; they all reflect reality.

The Prophet’s Day Job

Dawn had barely scraped the Judean hills when Jeremiah’s eyes flickered open. Last night had been rough. He secretly copied the prophetic scroll the king had burned, then stood before the Temple warning that the Almighty’s patience was exhausted and invaders were surging toward the city gates. Crowds laughed as he dodged camel dung hurled by the brats. His bones and heart both ached. “They’d better start learning Babylonian PDQ,” he muttered. Time for work; he lit the fire in his market stall to prepare his famous frothy “land of milk and honey” concoctions. For Jeremiah’s drinks, even the scoffers paid top shekel.

A Second and a Half

The police car’s lights flashed behind me as soon as I crossed the Katonah train tracks. I passed under the blinking gates as they rose, an infraction. Had I waited a second and a half longer for them to stop blinking, I’d be OK. Instead, the cop ticketed me and months later I appeared in traffic court. The judge fined me, then I took a course to refresh my driving skills. Weeks later, the judge was arrested for DWI and resisting arrest, and temporarily relieved from his duties. In my heart, I wished him well for he treated me justly.

Captive Audience

Ken read his book but the New Haven Line commuter in the facing seat demanded conversation. Beer in hand and jacket wrinkled, he groused about inflation, property taxes and schools ruined by changing demographics. Guys like him never got a break. “Guess you’re not interested,” he slurred to Ken’s silence. Ken shrugged “Sorry.” The lack of engagement led to muttering about Hartford screwing taxpayers. Ken glanced around, but other riders shunned eye contact as the complaints got louder. Ken was ready to edge away when the tightly wound man stumbled off in Westport. His captive audience’s clenched shoulders finally relaxed.

Language Lessons, or Saudade

That early online connection between Brenda and Flavio felt delirious, two souls crossing borders and languages. From IMs to coffee to movie dates, they progressed. Brenda loved hearing about his São Paulo upbringing, he enjoyed her stories of New York's River Towns suburbia. Then the trajectory faltered and flatlined. Frantic to stay connected, Brenda began studying Brazilian Portuguese so he’d help her with pronunciation and grammar. Flavio dissolved from romantic hope to coolly distant tutor.

She asked him to translate a song title: “What does ‘Eu Amo Você’ mean?”

“It means, ‘I love you.’”

Brenda drifted away on—now she understood the essential word—a wave of saudade. 

“That’s what I’ve wanted to hear.”

My Kaleidescopic First Trip to Israel

I first visited Israel in June 1982 when I didn’t know an alef from a bet, but I was eager to learn. My Jewishly savvy girlfriend, Adina, urged me to go, so I joined a tour that arrived at the start of the First Lebanon W—ar. I documented the trip with my Canon AE-1 film camera. Photos from Masada, Yad Vashem, Hebron and the Western Wall mix with ominous scenes of military trucks on the move, troops mustering and tank emplacements near the Lebanon border. Pictures show the 24-year old version of Van squinting in the blinding sun, standing against sun-blasted rocks and the ancient sweep of Jerusalem. In one photo I’m holding a copy of the Jerusalem Post with the headline, “Israel-Syrian Clashes are Escalating.” 

The kaleidoscopic experiences strengthened my growing engagement with Judaism. And as a young writer, I knew a good story when I lived one. So on November 14, 1982, the Yiddish Forward’s English section ran my 3,000-word account, “My First Time—Visit to Israel.” 35 years later, I wrote a six-part online series about my SECOND trip to Israel.

Mind Games from Texas 1975 to Brooklyn 2015

Do kids still send handwritten mash notes to one another, slipped into school lockers or textbooks, passed hand-to-hand in class, delivered by giggling messengers as in an Elizabethan comedy? Or, in a time when young people are besotted and savaged by instant messaging, texting, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, are written declarations a hopelessly passé technology dating back to their grandparents in the 1970s, if not older?

I don't know, but I can speak of the spine-tingling impact of anonymous written communications. Consider these two stories separated by 40 years.

On a visit to the Brooklyn Museum in 2015, I checked my backpack in the lobby. When I retrieved it several hours later, I noticed a piece of paper tucked into its outside webbing. The page had been torn from a museum map and said this:

I caught you staring at me from across the room but you didn’t come right over. Were you being coy, well it worked. Maybe you felt the need to see the others, knowing that I would seize your full attention. You held your hands behind your back, resisting your desire to touch me. I longed for you to come close but we had to keep our distance under the watchful eye of another. You slowed, staying long enough to see all sides of me. You quietly traced my contours with your looking. I am wondering how I appeared in your eyes. I don’t know if I am projecting but you seemed to be trying to uncover something, as if I held a secret for you. So did you get what you wanted from me? Course I am left with the lingering feeling of our encounter.

That’s all. No address, no name, no next step, no closure. After my pulse returned to normal, I wet a finger and ran it across a word to see if this was, in fact, an actual written note and not a pre-printed piece of performance art that a transgressive artist had photocopied and stuck into my backpack. 

The black letter smeared slightly. The writing was real, even if what was written had no relation to the reality of that evening at the museum, where I strolled with my girlfriend the whole time. The note could only have been slipped into my backpack in the check room. I wouldn't be surprised if the artist observed me finding and reading the note.

I’m left with a mystery of identity and intent that cannot be solved. It made such an impression on me that I wrote about it then, and now, following an open mic appearance about it last Friday, I'm writing about it again, with an update you can see in the comments of the original piece. 

Mind games—these had happened before with the same confounding sense of something beckoning from just beyond my reach. The Brooklyn episode happened 40 years after other notes popped up in my locker at Mission High School in Texas.  The similarity in anonymous, teasing targeting is remarkable. Somebody knows how to get inside my head, first in 1975 when I was a teen, then 40 years later. The mysteries of hidden and malicious human contact linger on. I knew back then I was getting played but, to paraphrase Shakespeare's opening of Twelfth Night, if anonymous notes be the food of (imagined) love, play on. 

Adolescent note writing directed at me started in junior high, when a messenger handed me a passionate declaration of love from a classmate, with her real name. That was obviously a goof because that girl and I never interacted and I had no inkling of any interest from her to, as she wrote, "go around with me, I really love you Van."

Anyway, this note business heated up in the steamy locker area of Mission High School with notes bearing the initials “M.R.” After the first one I somehow expressed my curiosity to M.R. with a response in my locker. She (or he?) responded with loopy adolescent female notes that eventually make references to her buck teeth and big ass. The piece de resistance was a hand-colored piece of cardboard, painted on one side with a stylized "W" and written on the other. Even if a fraud, the sign showed a high attention to detail and makes me wonder about which of my artistically inclined friends might have conceived this teenage masterpiece.

The back of the card said, "Someone lost something, all yours, FINDERS KEEPERS. This is a suviner from an admirer 'M.R.'"

I never heard more. I doubt M.R. used her (or his) actual initials. It could be one person, it could have been a group project from mean girls who wanted to see how I'd react. I imagine I responded exactly the way they wanted me to, like a hungry catfish swallowing a lure in the Rio Grande. Catfishing, today's kids might want to know, existed with nondigital forms of social media.  I’ll post this on Facebook—maybe M.R. is on my friends list. I never heard a bashful confession at high school reunions in Mission in the decades that followed, where liquor and loud music should have loosened up tongues and memories enough to reveal the real M.R. Am I being obsessive? You might say I'm Captain Ahab and M.R. is my now-postmenopausal Moby-Dick. Thar she blows! A hump like a snow hill!

Who was M.R., really? Maria, Mandy, Melissa, Marisol, Rosie, Renee, Rodriguez, Rivera, Ruiz, Reyna? Almost certainly none of them. Who was that sultry and oh-so-evocative Brooklyn note siren? I don’t know. However, the Brooklyn story has a coda that surprised me as much as the original letter. In 2020, five years after my original blog post about the note, I received an anonymous blog comment that led to this exchange:

Hi - I was just going through old papers and found this exact piece of paper amongst my things. I had forgotten about it until now. Like you, it was placed in my backpack when I visited the Brooklyn Museum in 2015. I thought it was real as well but now I’m thinking it was performance art. I haven’t been able to find anything else online about it. I wonder who the artist is!?

I'm curious: how did you happen to find my post on this mysterious episode, after five years?

I typed the text into Google search and your post popped up. I’m thinking about contacting the Brooklyn Museum to see if they know anything about it.

I copied part of the note’s text into a search engine. Only my blog post mentioned it. How many other such notes slid into Brooklyn backpacks that night? Could the anonymous commenter be none other than the mystery writer herself continuing the game from a safe distance? Or did M.R. teleport herself 40 years into the future from Texas to Brooklyn for one more round of teasing? While I doubt I'll ever know (or M.R. even remembers), the curious quest continues. 

Maybe M.R. will read this and IM me on Facebook—the preferred channel for us old people these days. 

Reading the Actuarial Tables

Who’s ever looked at those online longevity calculators to see how long you might live? I have. As of a week ago, my results were: 83 from the BBC, 84.2 by Social Security, and an encouraging 93 by the more detailed NorthwestMutual Life Longevity Indicator, thanks to my boring but healthy lifestyle. It sounds right; my father lived to 92, and I exercise a lot more than he ever did.

Of course, nobody has a lock on another day of this life. Five men I know died in their 60s in recent months. Last Friday marked 39 years since my mother died at 63, cancer. Nobody knows the day or hour. Except in memory, time’s arrow flies in one direction only, endlessly converting the infinite future into our limited present and past.

Let me explain these musings on mortality and “how long.” They respond to this question: does it make sense for me to get lifetime memberships to associations or lifetime magazine subscriptions? Who makes out like a bandit on the deal, me or the publisher?

I got hooked on the notion of lifetime membership in 1984, when I stayed in youth hotels during a month in Europe. I became an annual member of American Youth Hostels (AYH then, HI USA now, part of Hostelling International), then learned about a lifetime deal. I was still in my 20s and ready for globe-hopping adventures involving hostels, so why not? My lifetime membership card is dated January 29, 1987, I was 29 years old. 

The last time I used my membership was October 6, 2001, on Amsterdam Avenue in New York I stayed at the AYH building there alone, by the way, after seeing my father and his wife. I was unemployed and my life was in a shambles and in no rush to get home to the suburbs. The group still sells life membership for $250. I can't even remember what I paid back then, $150? Still, I'm glad I got that membership and supported the organization. That card's still valid, you know.

I kept my eyes open for other opportunities. I sometimes bought the quarterly magazine Jewish Currents. Founded 1946 by communists—that’s right, by fanatical proponents of godless Marxism-Leninism, bound by strict Party discipline!—it now describes itself as “a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left, and the left more broadly.” I like Currents' independence and ability to show me new perspectives. I sprang for a subscription in 2015 and even pitched then-editor Lawrence Bush on an article about my memoir, A Kosher Dating Odyssey. Bush wrote a pleasant rejection email, noting that a book with the word “kosher” in the title wouldn’t be “the cup of tea” of the Currents’ highly secular readership.

When I saw Currents offered a lifetime subscription for $300 in 2016, I checked the actuarial tables and decided I had enough years left to make the deal attractive. Hence, Currents will be rolling into my mailbox until at least the 2040s, so I hope. Or even 2050, if Northwest Mutual got it right and I keep up my fitness routine.

I found few magazines offer lifetime subscriptions. The most prominent: National Geographic for $895. That sounds like a great gift for kids, but I can read it at the library, which I never do anyway. Websites offer lifetime subscriptions to cloud storage services, but the way websites come and go, I prefer to use my 5-terabyte external hard drive for my scurrilous writings and thousands of pictures of cats and the Katonah train station.

Last month, I learned about a great offer from The Jewish Press. This is an Orthodox and highly conservative weekly based in Brooklyn, about as opposite of Jewish Currents as possible. I never subscribed but for decades I’d occasionally buy it to read about the wisdom of sages, advice for singles and their anxious parents, politics and global updates on antisemitism. The Press was offering a four-year subscription for $200. That worked out to $1 on issue, way better than the $3 cover price. After years as a “fellow traveler,” to user a term surely known by the politically aware folks at Currents, I signed up. Its 100-plus page issues roll into my mailbox every Saturday. 

Four years will get me to 2026. After that, who knows? If I'm still around, maybe I'll sign up for another four years while hanging out at a youth hostel during a globe-hopping trek. After all, I still want to get a lot of mileage out of that lifetime membership card.