Whitewater Rafting, Chernobyl and the Tale of the Moroccan Dentist

Like so many stories, this one involves a cab ride. In late September I traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, for an in-person gathering of my far-flung team at work. We haven’t met since 2019 and I looked forward to getting to know new members and reconnect with the veterans. A highlight of the schedule: A trip to the U.S. National Whitewater Center. Based on the website, its visitors are the kind of people who would be featured in Outdoors magazine. The center enabled our hardy band of white-collar proposal writers, designers, managers and administrators to challenge ourselves by hiking, biking, rope walks, kayaking, whitewater rafting and zip lining.

I’ve never done zip lining or whitewater rafting. Rowing and canoeing as a Boy Scout 50 years ago I could handle, but online scenes of rafts plunging up and down in the center's foaming waters felt way too close to the conclusion of Moby-Dick. I’m ready for Social Security—at my age could I summon rafting savvy from deep in my reptilian survival instinct? I could have opted for hiking, but, well, you know what the kids say, YOLO—you only live once. I brought up a quick-dry t-shirt, swim trunks, Teva sandals and a sturdy band to hold my glasses on in case I went rafting and plunged into the raging waves. Responding to my doubts about whether I wanted to risk it, my younger brother Cooper texted me, “Come on!! Try something different!”

My reply: “Blub blub.”

Finally, I opted for the newness of whitewater rafting and zip lining. The guides at the Whitewater Center were extremely safety conscious, so I felt confident about taking the plunges, in the literal and figurative senses. My big concern was keeping my glasses on in the raft and not bonking my head on a rock if I got thrown into the water. I’m happy to report I stayed in the raft and the glasses stayed on my head. 

Next I did zip lining. After at least 30 minutes of safety prep, I climbed up the 100-foot launch tower for the Double Dare zip line and finally enjoyed 45 seconds (each direction) of soundless gliding over the water course and islands. I barely had time to orient myself to what I observed. But I found the airborne challenge exhilarating; the phrases "zipless" and "fear of flying" mingled in my mind.

I found myself musing, the experience took a half hour of talking and arranging, followed by a minute of ecstatic flying— so similar to other memorable adult endeavors, but that's a matter for another post (or another book). 

Daring zip-liner after challenging his fear of flying.

By that evening, when our team headed to the Optimist Mill food court for dinner, the afternoon of the strenuous life was already passing from activity to legend. During the cab ride, I said to colleagues, “I can take whitewater rafting and zip lining off my bucket list. I also want to go to Chernobyl, but that’s moved down my list, due to current circumstances there.”

One new colleague, Tanya, exclaimed, “You don’t want to go to Chernobyl! I grew up around there! Don't do it!”

The cabbie’s ears perked up. “You’re from Ukraine? I speak Russian!”

And he did. The driver and Tonya amiably chatted for a while then switched to English. Eager to join in, I offered that my paternal grandfather was born in the shtetl of Vishnevets, so I have that connection to Ukraine. I also talked about the itinerary of my 1987 trip to the USSR (Moscow, Tblisi, Sochi, Leningrad). The driver then shared more about his background. He came to the U.S. from Morocco, where he had been a dentist. He held up his cell phone showing a photo of him performing dental surgery. So he wasn’t jiving.

I finally asked, “How did somebody from Morocco learn Russian?” I was thinking, maybe he was an exchange student during the final years of the USSR, taking part in what the propagandists called the friendship of nations.

“Online dating,” he said.

“I can identify with that, that’s how I got interested in studying Brazilian Portuguese,” I quipped.

Besides English and Russian, our multilingual driver also spoke Arabic, French and Spanish, skills that must serve him very well while ferrying passengers around Mecklenburg County. He loved living in the U.S. and still returned to Morocco. He was the kind of tale-spinning, highly observant cabbie that pops up in movies. And here he was, in real life. What would have been a prosaic mile-long trip turned into a cross-culture, cross-languages adventure that I’ll always associate with whitewater rafting. 

And I also connect the ride to the delayed bucket list trip to war-torn isotope-ravaged Chernobyl. Just between us, I still want to get there one of these days, Tanya's well-informed warning notwithstanding. You know—YOLO. 

The wild waters, ready to welcome humans in rafts. 

The Gun in My Hand

From a young age, I knew I didn’t like guns. This made me an outlier growing up in the 1960s in Mission, on the Texas-Mexico border. That realization came to me through a three-day ritual around Labor Day: the white-winged dove hunting season in the brushy fields, orchards and muddy roads along the Rio Grande. My mother, younger brother Cooper and I would go with friends to these massive social occasions. The shotguns boomed, the birds fell and I hated it all. I didn’t mind the killing so much as the noise. To this day I startle easily, and every shot made me cover my ears.

Guns were integral to the culture. Guys at Mission High School had gun racks in their pickups. Photos of the homecoming bonfire’s stack of wood showed my peers guarding it with shotguns. It seemed like just teen macho posturing then, but insanity now. Would they start blasting away if boys from McAllen High School tried to ignite the bonfire early?

McAllen, Texas, July 2011

Local members of the National Rifle Association held safety instruction at my Boy Scout troop, so I knew the basics of gun safety. First rule: treat every gun as if it were loaded, even if you think it’s not, and never point it at anybody unless you intend to shoot. I Iearned early on the risk of ignoring the rules. A teen showing off a gun shot and killed the brother of an acquaintance of mine.

Accidents are one form of gun violence. I felt the visceral pain of another form. My family was very close with another family. Gretchen was my mother’s dear friend, and her son John was a year older than me. We played baseball, rode bikes, shot hoops in their driveway and shared Sunday lunches. I didn’t know Gretchen’s husband Melvin much. He was a mostly silent, disabled oil field worker who read the NRA magazine American Rifleman.

In the early 1970s, Melvin used one of his guns to commit suicide. We had rushed to the house before John arrived from somewhere and Gretchen had to tell him his father had killed himself. I remember John walking in and looking around, wondering why people were in the house.

John struggled in high school, joined the Navy and eventually worked as a PE teacher at an elementary school. Then one day he disciplined some girls over something. They accused him of molesting them. He didn’t but the accusation was devastating. Soon, John killed himself. Did he use a gun of his father’s? I don’t know. I have learned that if you’re suicidal and have access to a gun, most likely you’ll succeed if you shoot yourself. Almost 90 percent of attempts are fatal. No other method is as lethal. As we’ve all learned far too often lately in places like Uvalde (almost 300 miles northwest of Mission) the combination of guns, poor impulse control and mental health issues is a witch’s brew.

I’m still aghast at an example of my own gun handling. Home from college in 1976, I drove with Cooper down to the levees south of Mission for target practice. We used his pistol, a Colt Woodsman .22 that he bought from a friend of our mom’s for $30. Photos show I’m clearly enjoying myself. In one I’m aiming the gun right at Cooper. I cringe to think of that instant, when everything could have gone terribly wrong. I failed to treat the gun in my hands with the respect a weapon always demands. 

Mission, Texas December 1976

Fast forward 27 years to 2003. I visit Cooper in Houston. He takes me to a shooting range. I’d never been to one. The sound is deafening. Thousands of brassy shell cartridges fill barrels and crunch underfoot. I’m hesitant at first but I shoot at targets with a Glock pistol and then a rifle. 

Again, more photos. This time, no fooling around. Something about the novel action of hefting, aiming and firing that Glock stirred me. I had a very memorable time with this peak male bonding, so wildly out of my comfort zone. It’s worth noting that on the same trip I bought my first digital camera, a one megapixel Vivitar Vivicam. I instantly became a fan of digital photography and I’m always packing a camera.

That was my first and only session at a shooting range. None of my gun-savvy friends and family who’d want to take me shooting live within a thousand miles of my home. Anyway, I’d rather hold a digital camera in my hand than a gun. The contrasts between cameras and guns are stark. Cameras make way less noise, I can keep shooting until I get the result I want, I can fix mistakes with editing or just delete them, it doesn’t matter if somebody points a camera back at me, and I’m much better at aiming a camera. I’ll take a Canon over a Glock any day of the week.

I never wanted to pluck and eat whitewings, anyway.

Houston, May 2003

Underground Radio Memories Meet the Internet: From Bang to Erik Satie

If you’re 60 or older, you grew up before the Web made music widely available. You heard something on the radio and you bought the record if you wanted to keep it. Otherwise, the music vanished. And if you heard something once and didn’t remember the band or song title, you were out of luck. You were left chasing the wisp of an aural moment that you could not retrieve.

When I heard and liked music pre-Internet, the drive to acquire it was strong. The 1974 movie Chinatown entranced me but I could never find the soundtrack composed by Jerry Goldsmith. Even when I lived in New York, the mighty Tower Records didn’t stock it. Finally, on a 1984 trip in Europe, I found the soundtrack in the Virgin Megastore in London. I snagged a copy for 18 pounds and very carefully carried it back on my flight on Virgin Atlantic to my studio apartment in Brooklyn. With the theme and 1930s classics “I Can’t Get Started” and “The Way You Look Tonight,” it moved my musical interests towards what’s now called The Great American Songbook. My only regret is I didn’t buy every copy I could get my hands on, since they sell for a mint online.

Radio listening also brought me experiences that took decades to unwind. I once won a contest held by the big Top 40 station in my area, KRIO-AM in McAllen, Texas. This was in 1972 and my mother drove me to the station to get my prize, an album titled Bang by the group of the same name. I was aghast, expecting something by, say, Steppenwolf or Deep Purple. Nope, I could only take Bang. Spinning the platter on our stereo back home, I found it sluggish and I didn’t keep it long. The group vanished and I never could find out anything about Bang online, which sounds impossible, but true—until, literally, I tried again while writing this piece and found the group’s website. The site provides enough videos and tracks to slake my interest. This year marks its 50^th anniversary and an anniversary album is in the works. 

The website shows that Bang album cover, which looks just the way I remember it from a half-century ago. I dove right in to listening to the music and I can’t say my opinion changed. Still, I give the band a lot of credit for recording several albums and touring, and hanging on to do a golden anniversary album. At best, Bang reaches the level of early Grand Funk Railroad and Black Sabbath. Bang probably delivers more, well, bang for the buck in a live setting than on vinyl.

By the early 1970s music my interests had matured past the 3-minute pop delights of KRIO to more sophisticated music then heard on KBFM of Edinburg, Texas. One program played what was then called underground music on the show “The Enchanted Forest,” hosted by a DJ who called himself Yosemite. You can’t get more early 70s than “The Enchanted Forest” hosted by Yosemite, right?? The show played the long versions of Doors and Yes songs. Sometimes an unknown band whacked me upside the head. Yosemite once played material by a band called Jade Warrior. As the name suggests, the music had Japanese colorings. My teen imagination assumed the group was from Japan and made awesome music replete with exotic drumming and flutes. Alas, I could never find anything by Jade Warrior. 

Then I started researching this column and of course Jade Warrior popped up. Far from being sons of the Land of the Rising Sun, Jade Warrior was an English progressive rock band with interests in African and Japanese music. Thus, the name did make sense, as did songs with titles like “Three Horned Dragon King" and "Minnamato's Dream.” The albums made solid background listening with those groovy 70s names, Floating World, Last Autumn’s Dream and Way of the Sun, and I can hear what dazzled me as a high school student. While I liked the memory of Jade Warrior more than the YouTube reality, I might dip into the catalog if the spirit of the samurai moves me.

The Internet did help me circle back to a single obscure reference in a popular album. One of the very first albums my brother Cooper and I got was the self-titled second album from Blood, Sweat & Tears, released in January 1969. As pre-teens, we didn’t really connect with the first cut, the “Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie" (1st and 2nd Movements). Songs like “Smiling Phases,” “God Bless the Child” and the disturbing (if you’re a kid) “And When I Die” written by Laura Nyro were and are more accessible, with lyrics.

Still, the title lodged in my brain for decades, as I asked myself,  "Who is Erik Satie?”

In 2021 I looked up Satie on YouTube. His piano compositions from the late 1800s through the 1920s mesmerized me. From the first listening I couldn’t get enough of Satie’s sound. The YouTube piece “3 Hours of Once Upon a Time in Paris” is often the soundtrack of my workday.

Satie was a very odd duck, his own worst enemy as this article shows, while fellow composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy thrived. But lifestyle aside, Satie’s music connects deeply with me. Ravel and Debussy are also excellent in that pathbreaking modern sound. My views were also colored by Ravel’s Bolero as featured in the Bo Derek movie 10.

The Internet intersected with musical memories and fantasies in other ways. My enjoyment of artists bobbed up and down as I rediscovered them. Renaissance (more 70s British prog rock!) faded, early Grand Funk proved grating (I guess you gotta be 14 years old to really dig that Michigan power trio sound). Quicksilver Messenger Service’s Happy Trails album had a 24-minute “suite” based on the Bo Diddley song “Who Do You Love?” I never heard it but in my teen obsession with “longer is better” songs like “In-A Gadda-Da-Vida,” I assumed it was mind-blowingly brilliant. Then I finally gave it a listen on YouTube, or I heard as much as I could handle before I switched to something more concise. I'm sure it sounded more engaging for audience members. I listened to it again when writing this post to make sure I hadn't overlooked an element of hidden genius. I didn't. 

So thanks, Internet, for bringing me back to Bang and Jade Warrior, satisfying my curiosity about "Who Do You Love?" and introducing me to Erik Satie. 

Next, maybe I'll listen to Humble Pie's 1971 "I Walk on Gilded Splinters," recorded live at the Fillmore East, all 23 minutes and 28 seconds of it. At that length, it's got to be glorious. Yosemite told me so in 1973. 

 

A Texas Citizenship Education, 1975

My home state of Texas has been in the news lately, roiled by politics, school massacres, border crossings, abortion and other issues. This story gives you a sense of what I experienced on social issues growing up there in the 1960s and 1970s.

In June 1975, my high school sent me to the “Citizenship Seminar” organized by Civitan International, a service organization. It was at LeTourneau College (now University) in Longview, Texas, 560 miles from my boyhood home in Mission, on the Mexican border. A girl from my class at Mission High School also attended, and she played a key role in my seminar experiences. 

Re-reading my teen journal entries, I was struck by how Civitan intersected with my growing sense of Jewish identity. Speakers at Civitan forced me to take a stand – literally. Hand in the air, “Yes, I am one of THOSE people.”

Some context sets the tone for Civitan. I saved the seminar’s program. Its back page included the Civitan Creed, which included this declaration: “My Creed was proclaimed by the Man of Galilee when He declared, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even to them.’” So that points to a perspective perfectly aligned with the Christian nature of LeTorneau. I would not be getting official exposure to alternative views.

The program was distilled 100 proof Texas conservative thinking. I wrote about a “stormy meeting” with Norma Gabler, part of a husband-and-wife team with her husband Mel. They successfully pressured publishers of textbooks sold in Texas and elsewhere to alter their subversive, anti-American content. I wrote,

“The session evolved into a shouting match on whether George Washington had VD. That had to do with the accuracy of history books. Then she moved on to a discussion of evolution and creation in science texts.”

Mel and Norma Gabler making a point with large numbers, something about evolution?

“After dinner, we “rapped” about topics like foreign aid, capital punishment and prostitution. I spoke about capital punishment twice. A girl nicknamed Bunny quoted, “Thou shalt not kill.” I later said that was a mistranslation [of Jewish texts]. Bunny countered with, “Well, I know you’re a Jew,” and I felt startled. I asked her how she knew that and she said my classmate from Mission told her I was.”

Clay Smothers.

For real red-meat table-pounding, you couldn’t top black conservative Clay Smothers, who later represented Dallas in the Texas House of Representatives. I reported, “He was very candid on race relations.” Let’s leave it at that. He made Texas Monthly’s list of the Ten Worst Texas Legislators in 1977, an honor illustrated by his quote, “I am against blacks, Mexicans, women, Indians, and queers talking to me about their rights.”

Smothers’ comments about school busing drew a dissent from Martin from Dallas, a friend I made that week (proof that the concept of "Jewdar" works even if I didn't know why). I described Martin as “definitely liberal.” Martin later heard my tense exchange with Bunny, and asked me if I was Jewish, and I said yes. I wrote:

“He said, ‘After what the girl said in the meeting last night, I figured you were.’”

Martin had an obviously Jewish last name, some version of Silver. We skipped activities to talk about Jews, Israel and school.

Another speaker was Kurt Swanda from Fort Worth. His topic: “Of All the Countries, Why America.” I wrote that Swanda was “alternately a prisoner and soldier of and in both" the Wehrmacht and Red Army in World War II. Besides telling gory details about what he saw, Swanda asserted the Russians were way more bestial than the Germans.

Warming to the topic, he shifted gears.

“Any Hebrews, any Jewish People in here?” he asked in his eastern European accent. Hmmm. The Moment of Truth. I timidly raised my hand, knowing with Martin not at that session I’d be the only Jew present. The seminar director noticed and said, “Hey, there’s one back here.” I raised my hand all the way up. Nothing else to do. He asked me if I knew anything about the ghettos. Yes, I said. A little.”

A year later I left for Princeton and rarely returned home except for family visits and high school reunions. Forty-seven years later, Texans still argue about textbooks and rights and abortion and borders and subversive infiltration and who's the liberal and who's the conservative, and so much more. Gabler, Smothers and Swanda have all died. LeTourneau brands itself as "the Christian polytechnic university." 

I wonder if Martin from Dallas remembers our conversations. I had never been able to talk so openly with another Jewish teen about the issues roiling my life. The intensity of our brief connection remains with me. And what about Bunny, who called me out for being Jewish? I never forgot her, either.

The Ultimate Writing Assignment: Your Obituary

I've written a huge range of materials in my life, from Led Zeppelin-influenced high school poetry to business journalism, celebrity Q&As with the likes of Abbie Hoffman and Cesar Chavez, movie reviews, corporate proposals, PowerPoint presentations, press releases, video scripts, resume edits for friends, blog posts (you're reading one right now!), open mic presentations, my 2012 memoir and other scurrilous materials. I've also taken classes that involve a writing prompt meant to challenge my creativity.

In that spirit, I’m going to throw out the ultimate writing prompt. Your assignment: write your own obituary. What would you say?

I’m thinking about this following the death of my partner Naomi’s father on February 25, which I'll always associate with the Russian invasion of Ukraine the previous day. Eric Leiseroff was 96 and had a fascinating life. I wrote Eric’s obituary that appeared on the website of the funeral home, along with a very short version for the regional daily newspaper. How did I summarize his 96 years?

Let’s start at the beginning. He was born in Dresden, Germany in1925 and had the last bar mitzvah in Dresden weeks before the Nazis and their supporters torched the main synagogue during Kristallnacht. Eric (then Erich) and his mother got out of Germany on one of the last trains, a nail-biting trip through Germany, France and Spain, arriving in Lisbon, Portugal in mid-June 1941. They sailed on the SS Excalibur to New York, learning upon arrival that Germany had invaded the USSR. Eric quickly learned English and in 1944 he volunteered for the US Army. Assigned to the 89^th Infantry Division, known as the "Rolling W," he put his German fluency to work interrogating prisoners in Germany and Austria. Eric was with one of the first groups of GIs to reach the Ohrdruf concentration camp.

He returned to the U.S. in 1946, just 20 years old, in pursuit of what he called “a boring life.” He spent 57 years at one job, as a salesman of “fancy paper” used, for example, for linings of perfume boxes. He married Cecelia Katz in 1950 and they were loving partners for 68 years.

The piece earned respectful reviews on LinkedIn, where I posted it. My younger brother read it, then called to say, “I want you to write my obituary!”

“Let’s talk about that in 30 years,” I said.

Or maybe now. Writing your obituary in advance is like prudent estate planning. You never know when it’ll come in handy. I’ve always remembered somebody who did exactly that. I read a memorial in the Princeton Alumni Weekly for Richard R. Uhl '39. He was a creative professional, starting as a musician and producer of radio and TV shows and eventually becoming executive creative director of an ad agency. Then I came to the last paragraph of his memorial:

Our class secretary from 1981 to 2007 and memorialist until 2010, Dick wrote 453 columns and 418 memorials, including all but the last two sentences of this one. The class expresses deep gratitude for his faithful chronicling of our lives and our deaths.

That stopped me cold, so much that I included it in this blog post. I can see myself doing exactly what Richard Uhl did. I’ve joked that my obituary would be a rewrite of my JDate profile of 20 years ago, what a swell guy I am or, given the circumstances, was. I’m reminded of what Winston Churchill said: “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

But how do you capture a life beyond the basics? What would you, dear reader, or I write about ourselves in a final summing-up for those who remain? Something comforting and yet wryly self-observant, the high points and the proverbial warts and all?

I wrestled with that issue when I spoke at my father's memorial service in 2018 at the Veterans Administration cemetery in Rockland County, New York. Our relationship had been very rocky but at a memorial attended by his widow and friends I wanted to be fair and positive. I wrote this the morning of the memorial:

My father lived 92 years and he lived each day fully. Like Frank Sinatra sang, he did it his way. Along the way, he had a tremendous influence on me—my interest in the Ivy League, my interest in Judaism, and blues music and even opera. I’m also a camera guy. I didn’t name my son after a car, however. So, a lot of what I am today is a reflection of what he was and what he imparted to me. His legacy will linger on and may his memory be a blessing. Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet—Blessed be the True Judge.

That was tough; writing about myself is even more challenging. In thinking about this piece, mental patterns from decades past flooded back: self-denigrating and pitying, focused on failures and unmet potential. I brooded over comments my father threw at me, like the time he said I walked like a girl (what teen wants to hear that?), and when a significant other termed me “a self-involved prick who just doesn’t get it.” But with and perspective, I’ve moved past being my own worst critic to a more accepting stage. I’d try to say that in my memorial.

Maybe I’d do multiple versions of it for different audiences. I’d need one for the back of the book memorials of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, of course Then there would be a final Facebook entry complete with favorite photos spanning a lifetime, since I always like to illustrate my writings.

Given the world’s state, I may be whistling past the graveyard here. Maybe Vladimir Putin will work out his psychological issues by starting World War III. At that point the world will need a lot of obituaries and mine would get lost in the shuffle. Again, Winston Churchill had a fitting comment from 1941: “If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.”

But I’ll end, in every sense of the word, on a high note, something I’ve said before: There’s no statute of limitation on changing your life. Never stop trying, or thinking your enjoyment of life is over because you reached an arbitrary sell-by date. Circumstances change, as we all learned the past two years. Challenges arise, history moves on, we get a step slower, but it's in our ability to steer our lives in new and surprising directions. I know, because I am still steering. And writing about it now and in that final writing prompt.

Pandemic Dining: The First Two Years

When the pandemic began, my employer started a program that let employees expense $50 per week on meals at local restaurants. This gesture lasted for several weeks and I valued every meal and my employer's bold gesture at the time of crisis and uncertainty.

And after that? My partner Naomi and I kept right on going with what we call our “Friday feast.” We liked the culinary treat and the chance to help out the area’s economy. Indoor dining was out, but we quickly set up a circuit of pickups from local joints.

  

We hit all the hot spots of Katonah, NY: Pizza Station with its tasty artichoke and spinach pies; La Familia for the pasta experience; Sinapi’s for the $19.99 family special (complete with finger-lickin'-good garlic knots); Muscoot Tavern for a summer splurge under an outdoor tent; Tengda, our favorite for Asian fusion food. I can attest from first-hand knowledge that Tengda made diners work for the grub. Its early-pandemic system required customers to stand outside after getting a text that our orders were ready—followed by a 20-minute wait to get in to pick up and pay. The long Friday lines on drizzly winter nights showed that Tengda has very loyal customers.

Then there’s the hip Mt. Kisco foodie scene. I pick up Indian street food at Little Kabob Station, then race home with the paneer tikka, lasoni gobi and saag paneer. Once we ate outside with a friend across the street at Little Drunken Chef (part of the same operation), huddled as close as possible to the tall outdoor heating pillars. On the same block is one of our favorites, the Georgian restaurant, Badageoni (as in Georgia the country not Georgia the national collegiate football champion). We first went crazy over Georgian food at a hole in the wall place we discovered in Jerusalem. The best dish: Adjaruli Khachapuri. It’s been described as a “homemade bread canoe [where you] scoop up gobs of bubbly filling, a mix of creamy mozzarella, sharp feta and just-barely-set egg.” (And don't forget the massive gobs of butter.) Cardiologists may not recommend adjaruli but, hey, YOLO—you only live once.

Speaking of Jerusalem, pandemic dining even took on religious aspects. I tracked the pandemic’s spasms of restriction and relaxation at my synagogue, Chabad of Bedford. I always enjoyed the kiddushes, or meals we shared after services: typical foods were challah rolls, whitefish, egg salad, tuna salad, cholent stew, lox and rugelach. The kiddushes ended when in-person services stopped in March 2020. Outdoor services and soon kiddushes returned that summer, Services moved inside and kiddushes returned in that short golden window in 2021 where vaccines created a whisper of normality. But as new variants hit, the masks returned and the kiddushes ended. That's where things stand now. In response, every two weeks I swing by the Mt. Kisco Smokehouse to pick up a container of lox trimmings, so we can enjoy kiddush-style bagels and cream cheese at home.

 

Lately, Naomi and I had a unique experience in our culinary journey: we gave a place a second try after a ho-hum first tasting. A small shop serving Vietnamese pho opened in Bedford Hills. Its lack of vegetarian options for Naomi limited its appeal. About a month ago we saw the place had a new name, Dinh Dinh. "Hey, let’s see if it’s changed," I suggested. We checked it out and wow! The place had plenty on the menu for vegetarians and it’s now a regular haunt. Naomi even had a holiday lunch there with friends—inside.

Eating inside during the pandemic? Yeah, we’ve done that a few times; we can count the number on our fingers. Most recently we were at Taco Project in Pleasantville after seeing West Side Story on New Year’s Eve. When we'll venture inside again is anybody's guess. We especially look forward to indoor dining right  in Sleepy Hollow, NY—where I now do monthly open mics at the Hudson Valley Writers Center via Zoom—at the tiny and delicious Chuchok Thai. That had been a pre-pandemic ritual, the Friday combo of Thai food and in-person open mics. Until the day arrives for minimal-anxiety indoor dating, I'll keep bringing home the symbolic bacon in takeout containers and boxes. 

For now, our big decision is where to order for the endless horizon of Friday Feast. If reading about our pandemic dining adventures is making your mouth water as much as mine is as I write this, then this is a successful essay. 

Sondheim 2008: Little "Company" on the Prairie

What can I say about Stephen Sondheim that hasn’t already been said? He was generous, he was brilliant, he did the lyrics of West Side Story in his 20s. I’ve been to plays, listened to the cast recordings, watched the documentaries. I recently saw tik tik . . . BOOM on Netflix, where he encouraged playwright Jonathan Larson, who went on to write Rent. 

And then a few days later, Sondheim died, productive and convivial to the end. 

When I think of Sondheim, my mind instantly goes to a special time in my life. That’s the autumn of 2008. Everything was in flux. The financial industry and the housing market were collapsing, a political campaign pitted Barack Obama against John McCain, and I was leaving a job as a writer with a New York law firm to return to the friendly confines of the accounting industry. A new relationship was moving in the right direction.

Between jobs in late October, I took a vacation in Texas. I planned to see relatives in Austin and San Antonio, then cruise the backroads of the state. A big attraction: To see my nephew Tyler Wallach perform the lead role of Robert in Sondheim’s "Company." I couldn’t wait to see Tyler take the stage in this production by the theater and dance department of Texas State University in San Marcos. I had last watched him perform in "Godspell" in 2001, which officially made me a groupie. The personal connection made Company all the more compelling. Coming at that moment of multiple transitions in life, Company struck me time and again, as with the lyrics of Being Alive:

Somebody crown me with love.

Somebody force me to care.

Somebody let me come through,

I'll always be there,

As frightened as you,

To help us survive,

Being alive.

Being alive.

Being alive!

I saw the play with Tyler’s parents at the outdoor Glade Theater. That night of Company mesmerized me. I thought, I knew that star when he was a baby! But he’d grown up and had the singing and acting chops to do Sondheim. Afterward we got together back stage for photos, then I rolled on up I-35 to Austin.

Backstage at the Glade.

My photos map the rest of the trip. After connecting with cousins, I headed up to Crawford, Texas, site President Bush’s ranch. In the days before the election, this was my chance to see the place before he left office. I picked up souvenirs in one of the shops in town, then meandered back. I paused to take photos of election signs along the way in whistlestop towns like McGregor. I also visited family cemeteries in San Antonio and Gonzales. Before I left for home in Connecticut, I gobbled down barbeque at the world-famous Kreuz Market in Lockhart with my late cousin Abbi Michelson.

Bush country, Crawford.

Along the way, Company stayed with me. Of all the Sondheim I’ve heard over the years, Company had the biggest impact. I'm thinking of Being Alive, The Little Things You Do Together, Have I Got a Girl For You, Marry Me a Little and the anthem Ladies Who Lunch. They’re great songs and never so entrancing as when I heard them at the Glade Theater.

That crisis vacation had to end. I flew from Austin to LaGuardia, and on to Stamford, Connecticut. I started the new job, I voted in the election, I watched my retirement savings tank, I saw the “for lease” signs spring up everywhere. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, two firms where I had had job interviews, collapsed. In 2009 I took a pay cut and went to a four-day work week as my employer scrambled to avoid layoffs in the Great Recession. The new relationship moved ahead. Tyler, meanwhile, moved to New York to pursue the acting life; before long I took my son and girlfriend to see him perform in “The Drowsy Chaperone” in Brooklyn.

Friday Night Lights in McGregor.

I always looked back fondly on that 2008 adventure of a trip. I like to think Stephen Sondheim was keeping me, well, “company”  as I barreled through the rolling hills a long, long way from Broadway. So thanks, Mr. Sondheim, for all the great theater, and thanks Company and Tyler for making the magic happen when I was on the road in Texas.

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, Prophet

 I recently read The Passenger, a book written immediately after Kristallnacht in 1938 by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. Drafted in only a few weeks, the book shows the terrible pressures on Jews as the Nazis racheted up their repression in the 1930s. Boschwitz managed to reach England, where he was deported to Australia as an enemy alien. In 1942 the ship returning him and 361 other passengers to England was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Atlantic. They all died. Boschwitz was 27 years old.

The book rings with passages that read like prophecy about the fate of the Jews, and also their tormentors. Boschwitz's gift allowed him to penetrate the near and far futures with unsettling accuracy. The main character, Otto Silbermann, is reduced to riding German trains as he frantically tries to recover money from his business, leave the country and avoid returning to his ransacked home. 

Boschwitz writes about what he imagines as the end result:

They'll slowly undress us first and then kill us, so our clothes won't get bloody and our banknotes won't get damaged. These days murder is performed economically.

In another passage, Boschwitz uncannily foresees the fate in store for many Germans:

Silbermann resumed his pacing. When he was twenty meters away from the SS man he again turned in his direction Am I really more anxious than other people? he asked himself. How would an SS man feel if he were forced to move about inside a Bolshevik state. And what if he had some additional marking, some feature that made him stick out like poor Fritz Stein?

These thoughts allowed him to feel his fear was justified. It was also comforting to imagine his enemies encountering their own day of dread, and Silbermann, who had always viewed the party of expropriation with disapproval and disgust, now found himself almost sympathizing with it, as his possible avenger. The idea was tremendously satisfying, and he clung to it for some time.

From a safe distance, Silbermann darted a glance at the unsuspecting man in uniform, as though to say: just wait, this is a long way from being over.

The Passenger is a short read with sharply drawn episodes. With this revised edition out, I can only mourn the loss of this great talent. Still, his book will live forever as a testament to a hinge point in history.

 

I, the Jury Member

I’m a little disappointed these days. That's because I feel like I missed out on a great civil ritual. This ritual is something people gripe about, but find worthwhile. 

I”m talking about jury duty. How many of you have been on a jury? Over the summer, I had a summons for the federal court of the Southern District of New York. 

The opportunity intrigued me. I’ve never actually been on a jury. I see it as a civic duty, as vital as voting. I was called to jury duty in Stamford when I lived in Connecticut. I sat all day for a personal injury case, a fall in the parking lot of a big retailer. At the end of the day the opposing attorneys asked about my background, readiness to serve and attitudes relevant to the case. One asked, “What’s your view of personal injury lawsuits?”

My response: “I think a lot of them are opportunistic, people looking for a payout.” As you can imagine, the defense attorney’s eyes sparkled with otherworldly delight. The plaintiff’s attorney was aghast and made sure I was never, ever on that jury. A court official thanked me for my service and sent me on my merry way.

I have been in court before, as a participant--divorce court, traffic court, experiences that I don’t want to replicate, as I was on the defendant side of the equation and once was more than enough. 

Jury duty is something else altogether and I wanted to do that. The federal court summons required me to get from Katonah down to Pearl Street in lower Manhattan. As the instructions made clear, I could forget about serving at the federal court in White Plains wasn’t an option.

I carefully prepared for the first day, where everything from process to location was new to me. I painstakingly prepared people at work for my absence. I figured out how to use e-tickets on my phone. Checking train schedules, I decided to take the 5:55 to make sure I got to court by 8:30. In fact, I was an hour early, so I rambled around Chinatown and the court district until jurors could enter. I was on my way, baby! Ready to serve the cause of justice!

I wasn’t chosen for a case on the first two days. On the third, I made the cut for a civil case. The next day was Yom Kippur and then something else came up, so court would resume the next week.

Then Sunday a court official called to say don’t come down on Monday, the case was being held over to the next week. OK. The next week I called the court to check and to my utter surprise, I learned my service was done, I didn’t need to come in. I didn’t get many details of what was going on and I didn’t ask, being in shock. I should soon get my certificate confirming I served. Several weeks later I printed the online statement confirming my service, and soon got the check for my days and travel expenses.

So, there we are. My thoughts? The judges impressed me with their careful questioning of jurors on our backgrounds, our interests, any factor that could keep us from being impartial. This took hours but resulted, at day’s end, in juries that plaintiffs and defense felt could judge fairly. 

Listening to fellow candidates, I got a glimpse into so many levels of society. Blue collar, white collar, union workers, Wall Street executives, immigrants. Every day, several were excused, for reasons obvious and also unknown. This spoke to a process that was deliberate and thoughtful.

I also liked the chance to get out of the home office for an urban experience. Granted, I felt nervous being on the subway. The pandemic and rising crime spooked me. I wore an N95 mask in response to the first, and for the second, well, I crossed my fingers and hoped. 

I also enjoyed wandering around with my trusty camera. At the end of my first day, I stumbled upon a raucous anti-mask mandate protest in Foley Square. The number of people stunned me, right there in the blue state! I documented the scene with my cellphone, the kind of street photography I miss during the pandemic. 

So now I’m back in the home office. No more trips to Pearl Street. Can you volunteer to do jury duty? Maybe that’ll be a post-retirement project in the future. I still want the opportunity to sit in judgment. I’ll  see if I can get the coveted White Plains assignment the next time, thanks.

Big demo at Foley Square, near the court.

My First Time to Vote and Assorted Election Adventures

 Voting has always been a favorite civic duty of mine. I look forward to casting my ballots, even if I’m usually backing the losing horse in the race. I have always liked observing the political process and taking part in it on every election day. 

Chalk that enthusiasm up to my 1960s-70s civics education in public schools. I learned voting is an essential part of democracy. As soon as I turned 18 in 1975, I registered. This was in Texas, back when the Texas Republican Party wasn’t the well-oiled political juggernaut we know and love today (well, maybe not everybody loves it). Indeed, the party infrastructure was so minimal that its primaries had voters stick paper ballots in shoe boxes, or so I heard. That lack of political presence didn’t appeal to me, the GOP didn't offer enough candidates and electability, so I registered as a Democrat. That act didn’t stop the local GOP contingent in Hidalgo County from asking me to start a “Youth for Ford” group at my high school as part of the 1976 campaign. I didn’t do that, although I kept the campaign swag, like a groovy “President Ford ‘76” T-shirt and a roll of President Ford stickers.

Still wearable, 45 years later. 

My maiden voyage voter came on May 1, 1976, the Texas Democratic primary. I proudly cast my vote for  . . . Jerry Brown, yes, Governor Moonbeam, who was young and dynamic and dating Linda Ronstadt. People said if Brown were elected president, Ronstadt could hold the role of “First Chick.” I must have been in the hip, aware, forward-looking youth demographic that Brown wanted to reach. Voting for Jerry Brown was the first of many times I’ve supported off-brand candidates to give support to the independent thinkers and protest the limitations of the two-party system. I’m still doing that and still getting the same results. Some things never change. 

In October 1976 politics became up close and personal for one afternoon. I joined the Princeton University Student Democrats for a trip up to Newark for a Columbus Day parade. Vice presidential candidates Walter Mondale and Bob Dole both appeared. I must have had glimpses of both of them. I cannot imagine two national-ticket candidates from the GOP and Democrats appearing at the same event these days, especially not Columbus Day, now that most reviled of civic observances among some political factions in our troubled times.

Anyway, I voted absentee for Gerald Ford, so the t-shirt and stickers must have swayed my opinion. Then in 1980, Carter vs. Reagan squared off in an election colored by a terrible economy, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Three Mile Island and the Iranian hostage crisis—names and crises similar to the current situation. I cast my ballot for the thinking man’s candidate, John Anderson, a breakaway Republican. I even have a Princeton Students for Anderson button somewhere. Needless to say, Anderson didn’t move into the White House but he impressed me then and he still does. 

The campaign cycles rolled through. I took notice of Jesse Jackson’s confident, plainspoken presence in the Democratic primaries of 1984 and 1988. I might have even voted for him, as the spoiler candidate in the New York primaries.  And don't forget idiosyncratic Ross Perot in 1992, with his slide show.

The grimmest election day involved a voting place where I didn’t even vote. This was November 3, 1992. I was the east coast editor of a trade magazine called Video Store. On October 31, MCA Home Video president Robert Blattner was killed in an airplane crash in Colorado. His funeral was on election day, at Congregation Agudath Shalom in Stamford. In my role as an industry reporter, I attended the funeral. Agudath Shalom was also a polling place, so I had the unsettling experience of attending a funeral where the mourners and voters were streaming into the same building. 

Fast forward to election day November 2008. I’m living in Stamford and go to a school in the Springdale neighborhood to vote. Compared to the short lines I’d always encountered, I had to wait at least an hour. That’s the kind of enthusiasm Barack Obama created. In a notable coincidence, I lived on Hope Street at the time the Hope and Change candidate was elected. 

My adventures in voting in 2016 and 2020 weren’t just political—they were visual. Sensing the 2016 election had great historical consequences, I ran around Manhattan taking photos of news crews, police, TV network booths, anything to capture the moment. I especially photographed the news trucks lined up on 6th Avenue, next to the New York Hilton Midtown where Donald Trump had his headquarters for that world-historical night. I didn’t get to the Javits Center, where Hillary Clinton’s supporters had gathered for a celebration that never happened.

Avenue of the Americas, across the street from the New York Hilton Midtown.

The 2020 election also gave me visuals, up to a certain date. I happened to be in Boston the last week of February, perfectly timed to check out a Bernie Sanders rally at Boston Common on February 29. The weather was freezing, my cold stiff fingers struggled with the camera, the crowd was a sea of pro-Bernie blue and the onrushing pandemic turned the world upside down 10 days later. Bernie soon got frozen out of the campaign. The rest is history still unfolding.

Bernie blesses the masses.

So here we are, another election done. I did my part in the Town of Bedford and Westchester County. I didn’t find any dramatic photos to take, since town elections rarely generate visual excitement. But 2022 and 2024—if I can get into Manhattan after voting locally, that’ll be another story.

Have camera, will travel, at least to Grand Central for an election.