The Irish Sense of Timing: Happy St. Patrick's Day

Today is St. Patrick's Day, which for many Irish Americans is a mixture of nostalgia and pride. This particular celebration for me is tinged with sadness, as it happens to be the 30th anniversary of the last Paddy's Day my Dad would know.

Even that sadness is very Irish in its nature, as Chesteron once noted:

For the Great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.
 
This post is one of the first I wrote for this blog, with some edits.

I have a bit of Irish blood in the veins, courtesy of my father. He was proud of his heritage and embodied its characteristic traits: gregarious; a talent for storytelling; a decent tenor voice exercised regularly in church; an acquaintance with barley, hops, and yeast; and a deep love of family, like all Brooklyn Irish. He married a lovely Lutheran woman of Swiss/German/Norwegian descent, but that's a story for another day.

When I was at university in Southampton, England, on a college exchange program, I became the first of the clan to visit the old country.

It was a backpacking tour with a fellow American. We had crossed from Fishguard, Wales to Rosslare, Wexford, which meant by the time we got up to Dublin, it was late and cold and dark and we were very tired. We were trying to get to our B&B by metro bus, and weren’t sure which direction to go. So we waited on one side of the street, and when the bus came, the driver said we needed to be across the street to go in the other direction.

So over we went. It was now even colder and darker, we were beyond exhausted and time was dragging horribly. So this is what purgatory feels like? After forty-five minutes of standing in the freezing Dublin air, we finally see the bus coming along. The door opens, and it’s the same bus, same driver—

Huh. Well . . . .what . . .why didn’t you let us on over there?

“Well, you’d been going in the wrong direction, now, wouldn’t you?”

There is some funny logic there (and some toying with the young Americans).

When I told my father that story he laughed and laughed. He had never been to Ireland, but it struck a deep chord with him, reminding him of some of the distinctly Irish quirkiness of his own father and uncles.

Of course I learned what it is to be Irish American from him. Some things just happened organically in daily life,  like the Irish Coffee ritual and the tip that it's the brown sugar that separates the real from the faux.  Other lessons were very deliberate: like the year he hand wrote the words to important Irish songs for me: The Wild Colonial Boy, MacNamara's Band, The Irish Soldier Boy, and the most important, The Wearing of the Green. An important history lesson in itself, as a teenager the last line "For they're hanging men an' women there for the wearin' o' the Green," haunted me. It seems around the 1789 Irish Rebellion, the Brits so feared the nationalism of a color that wearing green was high treason, punishable by hanging. More about that here


"O Paddy dear, an' did ye hear the news that's goin' round?
The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground;
St. Patrick's Day no more we'll keep, his colour can't be seen,
For there's a cruel law agin the wearin' o' the Green.

I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand,
And he said, "How's dear old Ireland, and how does she stand?"
She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
For they're hanging men an' women there for the wearin' o' the Green."


The Gift of a Trip to Ireland
After college I got a job as a copywriter for a travel company, writing the itineraries for the brochures of deluxe escorted tours. An idea popped into my head: I wanted to buy an escorted tour for my parents to see Ireland. Travel had never been part of their lives together. Money was usually tight, and 8 years of college bills was quite a strain. My father never talked about a desire to go to Ireland, but you knew it was there.

With help from my older brother, I found that we could buy my parents an escorted American Express trip. I became giddy at the idea. We would give it to them for Christmas, and the tour we picked was in May. Just perfect.

I bought a Fodor’s Guide to Ireland to wrap-up, and made a HUGE oak tag card. On the cover I put a big paper clock, with hands just before 12, and the words IT’S TIME . . . . (Inside): For you to go to Ireland ! surrounded by photos from the tour brochure. Everything was set.

On Christmas morning we gave the Fodor’s book to Mom to open, and the card to Dad. He seemed quite stunned. He became very quiet as it sunk in that his children had the means and the desire to give him this trip, a desire of a lifetime. Such moments are deeply vivid, and very rare.

And then . . .
And then, everything turned. My father was diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer in January, just after New Years. He died in April. The tour went on without him in May.

How cruel. How could God have denied him this trip ? How macabre and eerie my Christmas card: IT’S TIME. Yes, a phrase often associated with your time being up, but not here—-not on a happy Christmas morning, not about a great trip, not coming from me.

To make this all even more heart-wrenching, I had planned a trip myself to Ireland back in December, to go in March. I would be visiting a college friend who was doing post graduate work in Galway.

By March Dad was pretty ill, but it would have been too much of a shock to him if I canceled my trip, and so I went with the heaviest of hearts.  I remember spending a good part of one day crying in a church in Gort, the town nearest to Lady Gregory's Coole Park, where I had made a pilgrimage to visit Yeats's Wild Swans at Coole.

I got home on March 17, and we had the usual family gathering with my uncles/aunts/godparents. My dad was frail, but rallied to get dressed and join the gang. The photo above shows my Uncle John, his best friend of 30 years, at his side.

Dad died almost an exact month later, on April 16, which happened to be Easter Monday.  That was pretty cosmic.

It is only now, 20 years later, [now 30 years later!] that I can see what an Irish end my dad had. It was sad and tragic, yet imbued with that particular Irish sense of death we know from the great plays and poems of O’Casey and Synge, and Yeats: because life is so precious, death comes with irony, some irreverence, a tinge of comedy, and ultimately, hope.

I’ve been to Ireland several times since he died. I’ve got some new great stories to tell, the next time I see him.

The Irish Coffee ritual was not limited to St. Patrick's Day. And though Crosby sang about a "belt of Bushmills," it's from Northern Ireland & these were the days when that mattered. No money to the IRA. So Dublin Jameson it was.

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 Mapeel     3/17/2015     Christmas, family, Ireland, Steed   

James Joyce's "The Dead": a.k.a Have Yourself a Merry "Little Christmas"

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

* * * * * *

For many, the Day of "The Dead" is el Dia de los Muertos.

For me, it’s January 6. Little Christmas. Twelfth Night. The Feast of Three Kings, the day to reread and savor the final story in James Joyce’s Dubliners and so experience Epiphany in all its meanings.

The word epiphany comes from the Greek “epiphaneia” meaning “manifestation." The feast originated in the Greek Orthodox faith, there called Theophany, and it celebrates when the Christ child’s divinity shone through his humanity, as acknowledged by the Magi’s adoration.

James Joyce is generally credited with the crossover of such a religiously charged word to secular life and literature. A Google search brings this definition: Epiphany in fiction, when a character suddenly experiences a deep realization about himself or herself; a truth that is grasped in an ordinary rather than a melodramatic moment.

Leave it to the angry Irish Catholic apostate—taught by the Jesuits at Belvedere College, a willing devotee of Aquinas—to be attracted to the Greek-inflected word and the sheer power of an idea manifested into discernible reality.

Joyce explored his own secular theology of epiphany in Stephen Hero—an early sketch for A Portrait of the Artist, which he hoped to publish as a novel that never happened. From that sketch: “By an epiphany he [Stephen Hero] meant 'a sudden spiritual manifestation,’ whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments.”

The Little Christmas Party at Aunt Kate's

And so it is with extreme care that Joyce brings us the annual Little Christmas party at Aunt Kate’s Dublin home, where he captures “the most delicate and evanescent of moments” for the ages. The life in the story is deep and textured—-every sense is engaged, history swirls, humor abounds; we are rooted in place and time by specific references and stirred by timeless emotions. You can read the masterpiece here, and Wallace Gray’s notes are an excellent, down-to-earth guide to the references.

There are many epiphanies in this story, and much is made of Gabriel’s decision that “The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward”—to connect again with his Irish soul and not travel out to Belgium or Germany—in what is one of the most famous last paragraphs in literature.

But the epiphany I cherish most is the underlying one of Gabriel’s realization about his wife Gretta.

Gabriel’s first reaction to Gretta’s mood after hearing The Lass of Aughrim is “He longed to be master of her strange mood.”

He suffers through terrible emotions in their hotel room. His lust for Gretta quickly decays to anger when she mentions the boy in Galway from many years ago:

“While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead.”

Oh Gabriel—all that self doubt, all that horrible self criticism because you think that Gretta is comparing you to another. It’s not about YOU. She’s simply filled with a memory of her own past. Please let her have that part of her life, and don’t punish her for it.

And then, Gabriel does just that.

“Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully. . . So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life.

“He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

“Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love.”

From that realization, Gabriel’s soul is opened, and once that happens, anything is possible.

Joyce leaves us in silver shadows, in the peace of falling snow that unites the living and the dead. Critics disagree as to whether Gabriel is spiritually dead at the end, or if now that he realizes he has never fully lived, something more is possible.

At each year’s reading, I like to think that Garbriel and Gretta go on to happier, more deeply conscious lives with each other. But it remains a serious question: do we ever know even the person who most intimately shares our life?




[photos from John Huston's excellent film adaptation of The Dead.]

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 Mapeel     1/06/2015     Christmas, James Joyce, Steed   

From Venus With Love, Poetry

 Valentine’s Day summons up memories for me of  the time Steed and I spent with the BVS (British Venusian Society) a while back.

It also calls to mind some of the great poetry of the ages.

I always thought Matthew Arnold had the best all round take on love in that exquisite last stanza of Dover Beach. We imagine the lovers are happily at some cute Victorian B&B near the English Channel, when the speaker (choose your gender) starts to hear the waves bring “the eternal note of sadness in.”


After more depressing thoughts, the speaker turns and utters the timeless supplication:

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,

[actually . . . ]

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.

It’s just you and me, babe.

Parallel Lines

The Metaphysical Poets are the supreme masters of the heartsick. In their striking metaphysical conceits—from nature, geometry, physiks of varying sorts—they capture deep, intense difficulties of the heart with amazing wit and beauty.

Here is Andrew Marvell in his “The Definition of Love”

As lines, so love's oblique, may well

Themselves in every angle greet:

But ours, so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

Those haunting, parallel lines. Filled with the infinite, in sight of one another, but apart. I have known those lines well. I am one of those lines.

Then there is John Donne’s great “Valediction on Weeping,” with the exquisite image of the tear minted, like a coin, with the face of the beloved who is the cause of the crying. And again, the lovers are apart, on diverse shores.

Let me pour forth

My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,

For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,

And by this mintage they are something worth,

For thus they be

Pregnant of thee;

Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,

When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,

So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore.

And then the powerful image of breathing for each other

“Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,

Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.”

So thanks, Valentine's Day, for the look at great poetry even outside of April's National Poetry Month.

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 Mapeel     2/13/2013     poetry, Steed   

Great Scots: Happy Birthday Rabbie Burns

Don't forget,  January 25, is Rabbie Burns’s birthday—St. Andrew's Societies all over the world will be celebrating in spades. Steed and I had a Scottish adventure once—it was a great excuse to see him in a kilt.

I don't know a lot about Robert Burns, but I will ever be grateful to William Strunk, Jr., and E.B.White for literally starting their essential Elements of Style with this:


1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles's friend
Burns's poems
the witch's malice

It could not be more clear. I don't know why so many people think that Burns's is wrong.


Scots in the Irish House
Coming from an Irish background, some Scottish things did drift in amid the Celts. I discovered Sir Walter Scott as a girl and read through the Waverly novels and the epic poem,  Lady of the Lake, with the odd indirect influence on Schubert's Ellens Dritter Gesang (later adapted to use the full lyrics of the Latin Ave Maria). I liked the McMillian & Wife episodes whenever the Commissioner wore a kilt.

One Scot of childhood in particular was  Sir Harry Lauder. Lauder was one of the most famous musical hall performers of all time, known to Americans of WWII for his years of farewell tours, before his death in 1950. I later learned that some Scots blamed him for the caricature of the canny, cheap Scotsmen in a kilt that they didn’t particularly like.

But Lauder was of his time, and he built a career that brought him to lunches at Buckingham palace and to working with Charlie Chaplain, and Laurel and Hardy in early Hollywood. Not too shabby.

My parents always played his "Wee doch 'n' doris" at all their important parties.

There's a good old Scottish custom, that has stood the test of time,
It's a custon that is carried out in ev'ry land and clime.
Where brother Scots fore-gather, it's aye the usual thing.
When just before they say guid-nicht, they fill their cups and sing-

Just a wee deoch-an-doris, just a wee drap that's a'
Just a wee deoch-an-doris before we gang a-wa'
There's a wee wifie waitin', in a wee but an ben
If you can say, "It's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht" ye a'richt ye ken

I carried a warm feeling for Lauder in my heart for many years with little resonance in the world, when one day, about 12 years ago, the great Lou Dorfsman took me to an opening of Al Hirschfeld's photography at the Leica gallery.  Lou and he were old friends.

“Mr. Hirschfeld, what a thrill to meet the man who drew Harry Lauder.”

In fact, I had read that Hirschfeld’s drawing of Lauder was his very first for the NY Times, and it launched his career there.

Hirschfeld looked genuinely surprised to hear Lauder’s name. He looked so intently at me with those clear, blue, blue eyes, that all I could think of to do in response was to start singing a bit of "Doech an Doris. “Oh my goodness—-how old are you?” he smiled, as he pressed my hand very strongly. He said he thought “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’" was the greater song, and we agreed to disagree on that point.

I like to think Sir Harry and Al are performing and sketching, together again.

A GPS-based App for Mr. Burns

This new app is a great way to dip into all of Burns's great poetry lines, organized by topics like Philosphy, Religion, Love, etc.  The best feature is it will tell you how far away you are from the nearest Burns momument. In my case the one in Central Park is 2 miles away, and the next closest is 3,186 miles in Dunoon, Scotland. Good to know.

Download the app here.

And now, a gentle reminder of one of Burns's most famous line, oft misquoted:

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley"

So true, so true.

(updated from a 2007 post)

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 Mapeel     1/24/2013     literature, Scots, Steed   

"A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou"

English majors the world over are well acquainted with Edward Fitzgerald’s 1859 translation of some of the Persian mystic genius’s thousand plus poems, which he published as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Fitzgerald put the word “rubaiyat” into the English language; it’s a translation of an Arabic derivation of “four” refering to the quatrains of the poetry. I’ve really haven’t seen it used in relation to anything but this poem.

From Fitzgerald's 5th edition, Quatrain XII

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness--

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

I’m not a dedicated foodie, but I’ve found some recent delight in what the Khayyam called out as part of bliss.

A Jug of Wine: I was going to a brunch on 72nd and Broadway and I needed to pick up a bottle of wine. I saw Bacchus, Wine Made Simple, and popped in. It’s a wonderful place. They have a section of “Recession Priced” wines. I asked one of the guys for a suggestion, and he gave me a $10 Chilean wine that was crisp and light and the perfect brunch white. They have a welcoming, helping attitude, completely devoid of oenophilic snobbery. They believe that good wine of all levels should be enjoyed by everyone. I liked them so much I signed up for one of their wine clubs. Once a month they deliver 2 bottles of wine to your door, with a description that helps you place the wine. Here’s my first delivery:

Chardonnay, Stuhlmuller estate, CA, USA, 2007. Soft, yellow flower aromatics with hints of honeysuckle, spicy pear, candied lemon and sweet corn. On the palate, it has a light and creamy texture filled with flavors of lemon custard and mild tropical fish.

Pinot Gris, Del Rio estate, Oregon, USA, 2007. Ripe fruit flavors of pear, apple, and tropical fruits, with aromas of wildflower honey and a juicy, mouthwatering freshness. This wine is spicy, aromatic, and exceptionally versatile.

A Loaf of Bread: The most exquisite flatbread is from Margaret’s Artisan Bakery. My favorite flavor is Rosemary and Sea Salt. The flatbread is truly light and crispy; many store flatbreads are horribly dry. The flavors are strong and completely fresh. Rosemary, that evergreen branch of the mint family, has a long literary tradition for its association with remembrance: "There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance." (Hamlet, iv. 5) The name comes from the Latin for rosmarinus, meaning “dew of the sea.” Maybe that’s why it tastes so amazing with sea salt in one of the great culinary pairings.






If my recent reality of good wine and bread wasn’t enough of a connection to this world-classic verse, Steed quotes it to Mrs. Peel in the episode “Return of the Cybernauts.” I first heard it as a kid, and it has always stayed with me.

And Thou. Still a fluid concept.

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 Mapeel     10/16/2009     Steed   

Trainspotting Monty Python, et al

Inspector: I suggest you murdered your father for his seat reservation.

Tony: I may have had the motive, Inspector, but I could not have done it, for I have only just arrived from Gillingham on the 8:13 and here's my restaurant car ticket to prove it.

Jasmina: The 8:13 from Gillingham doesn't have a restaurant car.

Tony: Oh, er... did I say the 8:13, I meant the 7:58 stopping train.

Lady Partridge: But the 7:58 stopping train arrived at Swindon at 8:19 owing to annual point maintenance at Wisborough Junction.

John: So how did you make the connection with the 8:I3 which left six minutes earlier?

Tony: Oh, er, simple! I caught the 7:16 Football Special arriving at Swindon at 8:09.

Jasmina: But the 7:16 Football Special only stops at Swindon on alternate Saturdays.

Tony: Oh, yes! How daft of me. Of course I.came on the Holidaymaker Spedal calling at Bedford, Colmworth, Fen Dinon, Sutton, Wallington and Gillingham.


The Monty Python Agatha Christie Time Table Sketch is one of my all-time favorites. There was a time when the tradition of the British rail service meant something. Their trains ran efficiently, and on schedule, and everyone knew and loved particular schedules the way we might know baseball stats for a favorite team.

There are those who still kindle the rail passion, serious collectors of the classic British/Commonwealth time tables, as we see in the Sydney Morning Herald: “He and other members of the Australian Association of Time Table Collectors (there are branches in most states) find great pleasure in analysing timetables of any vintage.” You’ve got to love people who put “great pleasure” and “analyzing timetables” in the same sentence.

The Father of the Time Table
Now let us praise George Bradshaw, the 19th century cartographer and printer who is the father of the printed time table. British literature is littered with references to Bradshaws, particularly in Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie who loved the idea of complicated alibis based on train schedules (hence Monty Python). The great Dame Agatha seemed particularly smitten, writing the ABC Murders for Poirot, where an ABC Railway guide is found by each body, and the 4:50 from Paddington for Miss Marple.


This focus on train times is no mere folderol. I am going to England next week for a few weeks, and looking to get here and there on the rails. Unbelievably, I’m being boxed out by the Midland time tables. Sure, you can get from Kings Cross, London to Peterborough on National Express, then change to Midland trains to Oakham (where the Tallis Scholars Summer School takes place). But just try going from Oakham to Swaffham, the Mutt and Jeff of market towns. You can get to Swaffham, via Peterborough, but the trains only run late in the day—-not very helpful at all. This poor scheduling would not have happened in the heyday of rail travel.


When I went to university at Southampton, I enjoyed direct service into the great Waterloo Station, the terminus of the London and South Western Railway, near Waterloo Bridge. In a Wizard of Oz reversal, I imagined whenever I stepped off of the train that the station was in glorious black and white, straight out of every World War II movie. For just an instant the throng appeared as a sea of men in hats and women in stoles, before the late 20th century technicolor and Gap fashions clicked into focus.

Steed and Mrs. Peel on Track


The most famous current fictional train is the Hogwarts Express, from track 9 ¾ from King’s Cross railway station. The Brit love for their iron horses lead to two rail-themed Avenger episodes. It’s so ethnically distinct for a tv series. From the b&w era, "The Gravediggers" brings Steed to “The Sir Horace Winslip Hospital for Ailing Railwaymen" and Mrs. Peel tied to the tracks to the sounds of silent era tinkling piano. And in the color Emma Peel year, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station” has the villains trying to blow up the private rail car that will carry the prime minister. It features the station of Norborough, which I believe is just down the line from my Peterborough. (At whose cathedral the body of Mary Queen of Scotts was originally buried. My world is so connected.)

* * *
I am going on my blog break now, to have time to learn the music for the Tallis Scholars Summer School (TSSS). If I get the hang of it, I may tweet from Oxford. I’ll be back middle of July, in time for the tributes to that other moon walk. I hope you’ll come back too.

But now, watch Monty Python and the fabulous Agatha Christie Sketch.

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 Mapeel     7/03/2009     Steed, television   

Steed and Emma, Meet Michael and Fiona

I knew I liked USA’s Burn Notice last year when it premiered, but with the roll out of the second season I realized a big piece of that like is this: Michael and Fiona are the updated, newly corporeal spirits of John Steed and Emma Peel. They have same panache, intelligence, elegance, and chemistry that once set the Avengers apart on the tv landscape.

The duo dynamics are different with similar premises: most fans agree that Steed and Mrs. Peel had a romantic time somewhere in their past. We know that Michael and Fiona did. Most fans believe that Steed and Emma were then “just good friends” to quote from “Escape in Time,” although there are hints of “with benefits”—from the trip they take for her birthday at the end of “Who’s Who,” to her after midnight appearance at Steed’s apartment with a bottle of champagne in “Dead Man’s Treasure.” Ditto Michael and Fi’s relationship. We’ll have to see tomorrow where the second season finale leaves them.

Steed and Michael are the “top professionals”; Mrs. Peel and Fiona are talented women outside of the profession of spying.


Anyone who met Mrs. Peel in the sixties, or the reruns in the seventies was blown away by the independence of this female partner. Especially in the second, color Mrs. Peel season, when Diana Rigg came out from under the black-and-white shadow of leather-clad Honor Blackman into sleek, colorful, soft outfits by Alun Hughes. Which is why I was surprised to read in several interviews with Diana Rigg that she was always baffled that viewers thought Mrs. Peel was so revolutionary. Dame Diana thought Peel was very unliberated, always just doing what Steed said to do.

Now that I see Fiona, I understand what Rigg was saying. (And Diana Rigg herself has lead a highly personal, independent life, so she knows whereof she speaks.) Fiona is the truly strong, independent character. She partners with Michael to help his cases. And she’s in love with him. But she insists that he meet her in the middle—she is not going to give in to his insecurities and fears of intimacy. It’s shared terms or no terms.


Michael and Fiona are a joy to watch—they embody the spirit of male/female at its best: playful, purposeful, skeptical, foolish, and loving. If you can’t find it in real life in happily ever after, it’s at least nice to see once a week on tv.

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 Mapeel     3/04/2009     Burn Notice, Steed, television   

Solitaire, Anyone?

There’s a scene at the end of the classic Emma Peel episode “The Joker” where Steed is playing Solitaire, and Mrs. Peel starts “helping.”

Mrs. Peel: “Red eight on black nine”
Steed: “I’ve seen it”
“Then why didn’t you do it”
“I was saving it for later, I was savoring it. Solitaire, as the game implies, is a game for one person”
“I know, highly antisocial”

It’s odd that Steed doesn’t call it Patience, which was the more-common British term for the game, or it was before Solitaire got bundled into Windows.

No matter. It’s all a nice pun since the episode is Mrs. Peel-centric; she goes off alone to play bridge with Sir Cavalier Rusicana, which is a ruse devised by an old German agent who wants to kill her. Highly antisocial on both counts.

I didn’t come from a card-playing family. My mother played a mean Canasta before she got married, and my grandmother liked to play Gin Rummy, and Mille Bornes with me, but that was about it. (Speaking of Gin Rummy, it’s on the cover of the New Yorker this week, with the guy creating a card-playing robot. Hmm. Card-playing must be in the air.)

I guess all kids pick up how to play Solitaire somewhere along the line. What we call Solitaire is actually a specific Solitaire game called Klondike. There are an astonishing 300 types of Solitaire listed on Wikipedia, Klondike and Spider being the most popular.

I had completely forgotten about this solo pasttime until, ironically, a New Year’s party a few years ago, in a crowded vacation house in Palm Springs. Everyone was playing Hearts, decks of cards were everywhere as were parallel games of Solitaire. And it was there that I entered the hypnotic place that is the Solitaire universe.

Playing Solitaire is a truly unique combination of the relaxing and compelling. For me the cheap thrill is at the very start—what are those 7 random face-up cards going to be? The number of random patterns is fascinating. How can 4 aces turn up out of 7? But they do. Sometimes it’s all red cards, sometimes all face cards. And from there—LIKE IN LIFE—you do what you can with the hand you’re dealt. There’s not a lot of strategy to Solitaire—I try to move the cards on the deeper piles first. I build up the suits whenever I can.

There is a satisfaction to winning, to seeing everything come out all right. There is also a crystallization when you see it just “isn’t in the cards”—what you want to do is blocked by the implacability of the binary red and black. Maybe that’s what helps at the end of a long day—it helps you let go of countless pieces of everyday life that don’t always fall into place. Move on, shuffle again, get a new set of 7 cards to work with. And seven, such a mystically, spiritually charged number itself. Some say it reveals the mind of God.

I only recently found a great website to play. It offers different backgrounds and various designs of cards. It also offers 13 different varieties to choose from, including a double decked Klondike. I highly recommend it.

No look at Solitaire would be complete without a glance at the Neil Sedaka song “Solitaire.” It’s a depressing song that has become a beautiful standard. Youtube has quite a collection of renditions, including Shirley Bassey, Clay Aiken, Norway’s own Sissel, and Neil Sedaka, But for me the definitives are from Karen Carpenter, with those lush, lush low notes, and Elvis, where the words resonate with painful layers of meaning to his own oddly solitary life.

There was a man, a lonely man
Who lost his love, thru his indifference
A heart that cared, that went unshared
Until it died within his silence

And solitaire's the only game in town
And every road that takes him, takes him down
While life goes on around him everywhere
He's playing solitare

And keeping to himself begins to deal
And still the king of hearts is well concealed
Another losing game comes to an end
And he deals them out again


The Carpenters



Elvis

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 Mapeel     5/10/2008     blogs, Steed   

M.A. Peel's Balloonatic Thanksgiving Story

My crew

As is true for many of the great pairings—Crockett & Tubbs, Watson & Holmes, Mulder & Scully—Steed and I do not tell each other everything. It’s better that way; it keeps lines defined. This had the most charming consequence on Thanksgiving Day some years ago.

The Set-up

In 2003 (and again in 2004), through a friend of a friend, I was a Balloonatic-—that’s a balloon-handler in the Macy*s Thanksgiving Day Parade--a fact I did not share with Steed.

On Thanksgiving morning, I duly reported to the New Yorker Hotel at 5:30 a.m. to find fellow Balloonatics wrapped around the block several rows deep. The spirit is festive, even in the predawn, cold, pitch darkness. Like something out of a Powell-Pressburger sequence (think A Matter of Life or Death), we are sorted at the door by balloon, and sent to a particular room on one of the lower floors.

 My balloon is one of the vintage, midsized ones, called The Fish, not one of the jumbo sponsored ones. There are racks and racks of jumpsuits, each with a name of a handler. Once you have enrobed, you head out to the buses waiting outside to hustle the teams up to the Museum of Natural History, where the balloons are quietly waiting. It is brilliantly organized.

The bus ride is a riot, jammed packed with rows of color-coded people and stragglers who have clearly lost their own regiments. Up on Central Park West we file out and then walk past the police barricades on 79 and 81 street. The whole day is about walking where “civilians” cannot go—-it’s one of the great cheap thrills for a New Yorker.

In the predawn darkness, the balloons look like menacing animals that have been captured and tethered in the nick of time before destroying the village. It's actually very creepy. Then slowly the rising sun over Central Park changes the whole character of the scene, and the balloons no longer look dangerous, but are bright and cheery.

Waiting to join the line of march at 79th & CPW

We find the Fish, nestled in between Where the Wild Things Are and Super Grover. The whole block is slowly coming to life: the professional balloon people come and take off the netting holding things down, and the lines have been left a little slack, so that the Fish floats a bit up into the air. I did not go to the practice session at the Meadowlands, so this is my first experience of picking up the “bone,” the ingeniously simple cross piece with all the line wrapped around it. You circle it toward you to pull in the line, and away from you to let it out.

Out on Central Park West the bands and floats are amassing by the thousands. We hear the announcer officially open the parade and then welcome each participant as they step on to CPW, “Barney-—Welcome to the 2003 Macy*s Thanksgiving Parade,” to thunderous applause. Even to a seasoned New Yorker the parade from the inside seems very magical, if a little surreal.

Finally we get the “lines up” from the captain, and off we go. Up, up, up, we let the lines go higher and higher, and then turn on to CPW. It is a gorgeous, warm November morning. There is very little wind, and the balloon is holding beautifully.

We are directly behind a troupe of antebellum Southern Belles in pastel period costumes with parasols, who drop into a deep courtesy every once in a while, as their thing. It was a little disconcerting the first time they fell, looking like a “phasers on broad stun” scene from Star Trek. I happened to take their picture up on Central Park West as we were waiting to join the line of parade. More about that later!

"A Margaret Mitchell nightmare in pastel"

Going through Columbus Circle is really exciting—then the actual canyon of Broadway, to our 15 seconds in the spotlight in Herald Square. I am so glad I did my balloon service before they re-routed the parade to turn on Central Park South to 6th Avenue--not as much of a thrill. 

But my crew went down Broadway and turned on to 34th street, where Macy*s families are in the bleachers for our moment in the sun. We then turn on to Seventh Avenue, and that’s where we start to pull in the lines, and bring the Fish to the ground. Once it’s in arm’s reach, you have to look for the numerous airlocks that are beneath velcroed flaps, and open them all to let the helium out. It takes some coaxing, but once it’s deflated, we fold it and lift it into a hotel laundry basket on wheels. Then a professional comes and rolls it into a waiting truck, like something in a spy novel. Our duty is done—we go back to the New Yorker Hotel, return the jumpsuit, and join up with family festivities.

My 15 seconds on TV, going through Herald Square

Enter Steed . . .

The next day I had an e-mail from Steed. He had spent Thanksgiving morning at a brunch of a friend whose apartment overlooks Central Park West.

He said that he had been going to the window to see the parade, off and on, between plates of quiche, when he hung out there for a few minutes, his eye drawn to a “Margaret Mitchell nightmare in pastel,” and then to an old Fish balloon that came behind them, which, because it is smaller, flew most directly at the level of the window he was at.

And he looked down and saw me at the end of one of the lines. “M.A., what were you doing there?” he wrote in his best Patrick Macnee voice.

Honest to God truth. What are the odds? I’d say astronomical. It would have been amazing enough if he had been actively looking out for me, but I never told him I would be in the parade.  Another minute of getting to the window either way and he’d have never seen me. Truly some people are connected, in very special ways, for life.

My second year in the parade had no such O.Henry twist. But still great memories of being inside such a wonder celebration.

Best wishes to all for a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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 Mapeel     11/21/2007     Steed   

Rescuers of Every Stripe

So now the tables are turned. You might remember the time Steed was laid up with an injured knee from falling down the stairs. Turned out there had been a trip wire place across the bottom step by a diabolical mastermind, to prevent him from joining me for weekend of bridge with Sir Cavalier Rusticana—- which turned out to be a ghastly setup by that joker, Prendergast.

I helped him by pouring his scotch, and Steed has returned the favor, duly coming by to fluff my pillows, pour some tea, and make sure my cell phone is charged.

A broken ankle is no joke. Leg injuries make it pretty hard to get around, so the world has shrunk to what I can see and do from the couch. I had tickets tonight for the opening of the Miller Theatre season-—oh, you full-ankled friends who are still going, have a great time.

The last two days have been a bit of a blur, as the adrenaline from the fall and break wore off, and duller reality set in. I watched the season premiere of CSI, where Grissom looks for Sara. Then today I fired up the microwave popcorn and watched Disturbia—-the teenage, modern update of Rear Window. It was enjoyable to watch the Scooby team take on the roles of Jeff and Lisa, and then take a turn into Nightmare on Elm Street.

What these two shows have in common is the rescue of someone in danger. Sara freed herself from being pinned under a car in the desert, only to wander under the merciless sun with no water, inching to a painful, certain death. Luckily, Grissom and team do not give up looking for her, and since Jorja Fox isn't leaving the series until midseason, Sara is found. Jeff/Kale’s mother is abducted by scary Perry Mason/David Morse, and Kale does not give up looking for her, as he goes through levels and levels of the Morse’s house of horrors, persistently calling “Mom, Mom.”

There is something cathartic to these standard “reached in the nick of time” endings; that’s why they dominate pop culture. I had my own unexpected rescue, after my equally unexpected smash/fall in the subway system. I’m happy to report that New Yorkers did stop to see if I was all right, and several asked me if they could do something. Someone said there was a police station in the subway and they could go get an officer. As I was trying to collect my wits and hang on to my pocketbook, I remembered that the sister of my longest, dearest friend is the police captain of that station.

When the officers came I kept babbling that I need to speak with Cherished Sister. They were certainly surprised I was asking for their commanding officer, and in such a familiar way. They were very vague, in a protective way, about whether she was there at all. After much effort I made it into the police station, where there was some serious police-business commotion going on, but I was barely taking it in.

As I was looking for my driver’s license for ID, I heard an incredulous “M.A.?” and there was Cherished Sister. And thus was I rescued from so many things-—fear, getting lost in the system, making bad, on-the-spot decisions. God, I love this city.

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 Mapeel     9/29/2007     Steed, television   

Ingmar & Michelangelo: Into the West

A quirk of fate: Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni dying on the same day. These deaths of old men—-89 and 94—-bring their work to everyone’s attention for a few blinks of the eye.

I have not seen the classic Bergmans. I’ve never felt drawn to his particular, highly intellectualized world, which Michiko Kakutani summed up as “a place where faith is tenuous; communication, elusive; and self-knowledge, illusory at best.” Many also find great beauty there. Maybe it’s a pleasure that lies before me. As for Bergman himself, at least he now has the answers to the questions of God that haunted him.

I have seen the usual Antonioni—-Blow Up and L’Avventura. (Although my favorite ambiguous b&w art film is Renais’s Last Year at Marienbad, whith those people walking endlessly through gilded, mirrored rooms.)

Steed took me to an event years ago at the Italian Consulate, where Antonioni was making a special appearance to talk about his work. The room was packed to the rafters with a very European crowd. The ambience of men in sleek suits and women in fabulous shoes was so utterly Italian that Steed and I started speaking to one another in that beautiful language. It was quite remarkable, and alas, an enchantment that dispelled when we left the marbled hall.

The Consulate gave out a stunning book of photos from the director’s career: impossibly beautiful black & white, behind-the-scenes stills, capturing beautifully dressed, cool, sophisticated men and women. I love its presence on my bookshelf. I look at those photographs when I need a sensibility shift from my own crassly colorful world. Sometimes I wish I could step into one of those scenes and live out my time there.

The directors have departed our shores, but their work continues to feed our imagination. You can’t ask for more than that.

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 Mapeel     8/01/2007     current events, Steed   

When Worlds Collide

In the last 48 hours, alternate worlds from what I believe is my actual reality have dominated the waking hours.

It started with Mad Men on Thursday night, which evoked an office landscape as foreign to me as Fafner’s cave, Brunnhilde’s rock, and the rest of the sites in the Russian Ring at Lincoln Center. Friday night was five hours of Siegfried, the third in the Ring of Valery Gergiev’s distinctive, unsettling, odd production. There was another layer of strangeness when Steed showed up in a horned faux Viking helmet—unusually playful for him.

At intermissions, we collided with the swing dancers letting lose to the sounds of Stompy Jones and the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra at the Midsummer Night Swing stage.

On the walk home, we jostled through the Potter fans circling the block around Barnes and Noble, with just 20 minutes to go before they would have the precious tome.

Today I will pick up my pre-ordered H.P and the Deathly Hallows, and see the gods fall in Goetterdammerung.

It’s quite a little vacation from reality.

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 Mapeel     7/21/2007     Steed   

A New Look

Steed, in consultation with Alun Hughes, has updated my digital look. Thanks Steed.

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 Mapeel     6/18/2007     Steed   

The Wagner of My Year

“In 2006 and 2007, Pluto will align with the Galactic Center three times, ushering in an unprecedented period of cosmic awareness and healing. Pluto’s conjunction with the Galactic Center occurs only once every 248 years.

How each of us experiences this transit will depend on our consciousness.” From StarPriestess.com

Which is all by way of offering some explanation for this being the year I take the plunge on Wagner.

Tonight Steed and I are headed to Lincoln Center to see the Tristan Project—the concert version of the great Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde, as envisioned by Peter Sellars and video artist Bill Viola, with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angelos Philharmonic. The performance is 5 hours (with two intermissions)—it is not for the faintheated. We were attracted by the idea of Viola’s work complementing the transcendence of Wagner’s music.

July will see us at Lincoln Center for what’s being called the rare Russian Ring. We’ve never seen any version of the Ring, so to see it with Valery Gergiev, director of the Kirov Opera, made it all the more compelling. You’ve got to love a city where one series for the performances sold out in 2 days—last July.

Wagner is a fathomless well that can be intimidating by the immensity of conflicting things you need to process about him: the staggering beauty of the music itself, the tantalizing intellectualism, the relentless anti-Semitism, the Tristan Chord alone, the mythologies of his worlds. It’s not so easily accessible. It could constitute a life-time of study. Yet study feels antithetical to the truest essence of Wagner. He had only the most minimal of formal musical training himself. He was talent personified, and I can only hope to find him on that abstract landscape—to let his work wash over me, to hopefully connect within me.

Two years ago Cadfael and I were on the Amalfi Coast, and we went inland up to Ravello. Wagner had summered there in 1880, in the Villa Rufalo, whose gardens he used for the model of Klingsor’s garden in Act II of Parsifal. The grounds are now the setting for the Ravello Festival, with that gorgeous stage that floats high above the water. [Their site has a gorgeous flash intro, worth a click.Pick a language to launch.] It was a thrill to ramble around what’s left of the old castle, to walk out to “terrace of the infinite”—those Roman busts that line the low wall on the grounds of the Villa Cimbrone (where Great Garbo honeymooned with Leopold Stokowski). Ravello is an other-worldly setting.

The experience of Wagner is other-worldly. It’s a way to break from the pedestrian cares of everyday life, to try to connect to the primal forces and truths of being human, if only for as long as it takes that last chord to completely decay.

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 Mapeel     5/02/2007     Italy, opera, Steed, Travels with Cadfael   

Q.Q.F. File: The Strange Case of the Missing Corpse

No, it’s not a newly discovered Sherlock Holmes or Nancy Drew. It’s from the Merry Quips Department from the people who brought us The Avengers.

Filmed on the set of the episode Honey for the Prince, the last of the black & white Emma Peel episodes, it was a three-minute promotion for the American market announcing that the next season would be in color.

It was only seen as still photographs in books, until recently.

Steed in evening dress is particularly handsome, Mrs. Peel’s second entrance is stunning (this one’s for you, Tim), and banter abounds. Please note the music: you'll hear several of the series theme motifs, besides the classic opening. It's very well done. Good times all around.

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 Mapeel     3/21/2007     QQF File, Steed   

Oh, Matt and Harriet . . .

I’ve held on through the entire season of Studio 60. It’s been a pretty steady diet of disappointment, a weekly witness to the failure of the very talented Aaron Sorkin to find compelling expression or engaging storytelling in his world of late night comedy. Joining Lance Mannion's Monday Night Live Blogging Party has added a funny, insightful dimension to the experience, for which I am deeply grateful to Lance.

Now the show is in a planned—although slightly early—hiatus. Maybe Sorkin will regroup. It’s hard to know what even he finds satisfying in the series. The words “Matt and Harriet have NO CHEMISTRY” have been typed/blogged/semaphored more than any other words in history, and from that fact, where can anything go? What magic can you create?

As we leave the Studio 60 gang to their holiday, I invite you to spend a moment with two characters whose chemistry is legendary.

4/2/07: We have a new video of chemistry highlights, this time to the melodic voice of Karen Carpenter's "Won't Last a Day without You."

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 Mapeel     2/19/2007     Steed, television   

Carly Simon and Thomas Tallis: O Jerusalem

I went to a shindig the other evening at the Waldorf in honor of a captain of industry, who thankfully had a great sense of humor about what is sometimes a deadly formal affair. Adam Sandler, one of the presenters, had a very funny bit about some letters to a certain male magazine that had just surfaced . . . .

But the highlight of the evening for me was when Carly Simon performed at the behest of the captain of industry. She sang “Oh Susannah” from her new album, McCartney’s “Blackbird” and then “a hymn for Howard and for New York”

Let the river run
Let all the dreamers
Wake the nations.
Come, the New Jerusalem . . . .

That line sent shivers down my spine. She’s in the deep, smoky part of her range, which as an alto, I love to hear. But beyond that, there’s something stirring about hearing the words “the New Jerusalem” sung. Jerusalem is not just any word.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum.

The week before I had heard the majesty of the word pronounced in Latin (with that lovely soft “yeah” for the “J”) at a concert of the superb Vox Vocal Ensemble, an early music a capella group under the direction of George Steel of the Miller Theatre at Columbia University. I went with John Steed’s little-known brother, Osbert, who is a musicologist. Going with Osbert is like having a living audio guide at your side—-his knowledge of composers, modes, theories, trivia, is staggering.

The Vox concert offered the Lamentations of Jeremiah from the English composers Parsley, White, Byrd, and Mr. Tallis. The text they all set comes from the Latin translation of the book of Lamentations (which follows the book of Jeremiah) for liturgical use during the Holy Week service of Tenebrae. It was written by the prophet, or one of his followers, after the destruction of the Temple as a people mourned their defeat at the hands of their enemies. In Judaism it is read on Tisha B’Av, the fast day that commemorates the catastrophic event.

Different Renassiance composers set various parts of the whole text, which has a fascinating structure: each of the 5 chapters has 22 verses, corresponding to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, except chapter 3 which has the multiple of 66 verses. This wiki page details all the verses-—it’s the clearest delineation I’ve ever seen.

A greatly beloved setting is by Thomas Tallis. He set the first five verses of chapter one.

Aleph
Beth
Ghimel
Daleth
Heth

It’s all exquisitely mournful, but for me, Beth is the most beautiful.

PLORANS PLORAVIT IN NOCTE—-“by night she weeps in sorrow.” I could live in that Latin. I love the sound of plorans—-it’s so much more expressive than crying.

ET LACRIMAE EIUS IN MAXILLIS EIUS—“and tears run down her cheeks.” Lacrimae are so much deeper than tears.

And after that personal/national sadness is sung, comes the haunting supplication:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum.
Your nation is in ruins, you need to return to the Lord your God.

No one other place is as important to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity as Jerusalem. Does the word simply hold the weight of all that import, and is that what sends the chills when the Vox Ensemble sings the sublime line of Tallis, or Carly Simon sings it in exuberance? Whichever, for me it is a very special aural moment in an overly visual world.

I entreat you to discover the sublime beauty of Renaissance polyphony, if you are not already a devotee, and the glories of the Tallis Scholars. For you tristate people, go hear this art in person at the Vox’s next concert.

As for Carly, her New Jerusalem is the soundtrack to this fan video for The West Wing. What a perfect salute to the Latin-speaking President Bartlet. Boy, I miss that show.

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 Mapeel     2/10/2007     music, Steed, television, West Wing   

Q.Q.F. File: American Crossword Tournament, Online!

Steed asked me for help with 9 down in the Times crossword:

"It moves in the dark, it leaves no mark, it's as hard as steel"

That's an easy one . . .

Q.Q.F. is discovering that the American Crossword Tournament, in its thirtieth year this March, has an online playing component. Imagine—-you can be in the comfort of your home and compete with the whacky/geeky crew we met in Patrick Creadon’s documentary Wordplay: the astonishing 20-year-old two time champ Tyler Hinman; Al Sanders, nobly still at it after his crushing 2005 defeat; Ellen Ripstein, the Susan Lucci of the tournament—they will all be there.

The Tournament, run by the NY Times’s puzzle editor Will Shortz, takes place at the Marriott in Stamford, Ct, March 23 to 25. Registering online allows you to play along with the rounds of puzzles (but not compete for a prize.)

I am a longtime, inveterate, daily puzzle solver. Speed is not something I associate with doing puzzles. But this is just great. Register now!

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 Mapeel     2/03/2007     QQF File, Steed   

1.15.07: A Uniquely American Day

It’s Martin Luther King Day. The only national individual besides the looooooong dead Presidents Washington and Lincoln to be so honored. It was first formally observed in January 1986 and had a bumpy start, with holdouts in the South and Arizonia for years.

But it seems to have settled into the national consciousness, and the idea of “A day On, not a day Off,” is building, to do something—-paint a schoolroom, help seniors fill out paperwork, help outpatients get to a doctor’s visit—-coordinated by the MLK Day Organization and a great website.

In the midst of our constant East-looking, this holiday redirects our attention, for a national nanosecond, to our own history, and issues.

In recent years it overlaps with the Golden Globe Awards.
From the sublime to . . . . .

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association. If it didn’t exist, Evelyn Waugh would have had to create it in order to mock it. Sixty years ago, reporters from foreign publications banded together in their quest to disperse news about Hollywood to countries outside North America. It’s an association of about 86 journalists, although many of the most prominent foreign publications, like Le Monde of the Time of London, are not represented, according to a NY Times article.

Whatever its genesis or original purpose, HFPA is the animus behind the Golden Globe awards—-those precursors to the Oscars that bring the film and tv people together in one room for a "party."

There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging excellence and, along with jazz, we certainly contribute the award show to world culture.

The third part of the day’s trifecta is hours 3 and 4 of the 6th season of 24. I haven’t been watching this series, and this season premiere seemed a good time to jump in.

The action, the suspense, and the suspension of belief is everything they say. It is the most riveting tv watching there is—you can’t read or do the crossword puzzle during screentime.

I have finally met Jack Bauer, our idealized American, that individual who can think on his feet, who can accurately assess complex situations quickly, and who continually, personally, makes things happen.

No wonder this show is so popular, especially now.

As a projection of national psyche, there is much about the storytelling of 24 to talk about.

But on MLK day, when Kiefer Sutherland and 24 are both up for Golden Globe awards, let's leave it at, "Goodnight, America." Steed and I are going to go catch the second half of Lawrence of Arabia over on TCM before turning in.

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 Mapeel     1/15/2007     Steed, television   

Green grow the rushes, O

I can’t get this song out of my head:

"I'll sing you one, O
Green grow the rushes, O

What is your one, O?
One is one and all alone
and ever more shall be so!

I'll sing you a two, O
Green grow the rushes, O

What is your two, O?
Two, two, the lilly white boys, clothed all in green, ho ho

One is one and all alone
and ever more shall be so!"

Steed is accompanying me to a house party at the estate of a famous book collector. Then I’m off to Antigua for New Year’s. (I told Steed I was going to Bermuda, so shh.)

Compliments of the season to all. See you in the new year.

"Here comes a candle to light you to bed. . ."

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 Mapeel     12/24/2006     Steed